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A Sneak-Preview of the Gay mystery novel to be published by RoseDog Books on or about Sept. 1, 2010.
www.rosedogbooks.com
ALL OF ME
(Can You Take All Of Me?)
A Gay Mystery
by Dirk Vanden
CHAPTER 1 - THE LETTER
MY SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY BEGAN BADLY, LIKE AN OMEN. The letter arrived in the mail, Monday morning, along with several envelopes that looked like birthday cards from Insurance companies, plus the usual assortment of advertising brochures and catalogs. An innocent-looking, plain white 9x12 envelope, like they sell in office-supply stores, like millions of people send to each other in the mail every day. I started to put it aside, to open a bill, but then I noticed it had my own return address on a computer-printed label, up in the left-hand corner. A matching label was almost perfectly centered on the front of the envelope.
Richard Vernor
aka Jake Vance
aka Hank O’Toole
#1 Winding Way Circle,
Fair Oaks, CA 95628
I put it on the kitchen table, then sat and studied it for several minutes, with all sorts of wild ideas bubbling up in my head. I was quite sure I hadn’t sent it to myself – unless I was going crazy! That didn’t seem likely – although I wasn’t sure I’d know I was crazy if I was crazy. Was it a joke? Could it be some kind of Terrorist thing? When I tried to think of some logical reason why anyone like me would be getting a mail-bomb or Anthrax, I decided I was being far too paranoid. I laughed and opened the envelope -- very carefully, I’ll admit. But no explosion, no white powder. Worse! My heart started pounding the instant I realized what the envelope contained.
It was a page ripped from one of my novels. I recognized it almost immediately, even though I hadn’t seen it in, what, forty years? Page 29/30 of Too Big, my third published novel, written forty-some-odd-years ago, and long-since out of print — as far as I knew. Page 30 was the last few lines of Chapter 1:
-30-
I began to wonder what would happen if he didn’t pull his enormous piece of meat out of my throat and let me breathe?
Suddenly he swallowed my cock all the way down and plunged his own cock up to its hairy hilt and made a sound like a strangled bull, as his huge prick pulsed and I could feel his hot cum squirting down my throat as my own cock exploded into him!
Cumming, I wondered if you could cum in the afterlife?
? ? ?
ITS TIME TO FIND OUT !
PREPARE FOR JUDGMENT !!
JESUS HATES COCKSUCKERS !!!
Too Big had been the third in a series of seven novels, published in the late sixties and early seventies, about Gay Mystery Sleuth “Hank O’Toole, Private Dick!” Every novel began with the same first paragraph: “My name is Henry, which is long for Hank, and I‘m a Licensed Private Detective, hence the moniker ‘Private Dick!’ on my business cards. And, yes, I always use the exclamation mark!”
The New York Native reviewer wrote: “Hank’s initials spell H.0.T. and HOT he is! Hank O’Toole is a dream come true for some of us who are queer for men, not queens! No offence! Hank O’Toole definitely is not a queen, but he deigns to bed one or two, now and then, here and there, in his endless search for Truth and Right! ‘Hey,’ Hank says in Too Much (6-12-69): ‘to each his own. There’s room on the planet for all kinds of us.’ Ah-men, Hank! Ah-men!”
Too Big, Hank’s third sleuthing job, had him tracking down a serial-killer of Gay men, who was going around San Francisco, murdering cocksuckers by choking them to death with his very big cock down their throats. As Hank put it: “So, I boned-up on deep-throating – practiced on Dobbin – and found, to my pleasant surprise – and his! – that I could actually go all the way down and still breathe around one of the biggest! ‘What can I say? I’m a big guy. Big throat too, I guess. Okay?’”
The book had been written as part of an explosion of Gay porn, back in the late 60's and early 70's. I’d had seven books published by a company in San Diego called Figleaf Pleasure Readers: Too Bad, Too Much, Too Big, Too Good (To Be True), Too Far, Too Soon and Too Late, in what Figleaf cleverly called “The TOO Saga.” In their ads, the double-O’s looked like testicles. All of the books featured Hank O’Toole looking for a different Gay murderer, or murderer of Gays, seducing every suspect until he finds the bad guy in the last chapter.
“Total J-O, from beginning to end. Each chapter a gusher!” So said B-A-R, The Gay Bar Newspaper in San Francisco, in 1972. “No prize-winning prose here, but the TOO books are all very well-written. If you know what I mean.”
Back in the mid-sixties, in college, I had written my first novel, To Themselves Unknown -- a “probing and sensitive” story about a teenage Mormon boy from Utah, realizing he was Gay, and after fighting it all through college, finally accepting his sexuality and leaving the LDS Church because of it. A friend who read the manuscript suggested a publisher called Figleaf Pleasure Readers, in San Diego, which had published, he said, several Gay titles and might consider mine. So I sent it to them, and they sent it right back, with a note saying that while my novel had a “literary” feeling to it, it was not what they were looking for. They said they might reconsider publishing my book if I added what they called “Fag-Hots:”
“Hot fag-sex on the first page and as often as the story permits, the kinkier the better.”
Along with the returned manuscript, they sent four of their recent paperback publications to show me what they were looking for. The books were called Homo on The Range, Homo-Sweet-Homo, Homo Erectus, and Fagged Out! They were all infuriatingly bad – badly written by bad writers with bad attitudes. My guess was that they were composed by heterosexual hacks trying to imagine what it felt like to be "Queer." Terrible things happened to their ‘heroes’ in the end. They were all appropriately punished for their “sins.”
I was insulted and challenged. I knew I could write better “fag-hots” than that crap. And mine wouldn’t be put-downs. It was the Hippie Sixties and Flower Power was blossoming. Gay Lib was just budding, and there was a feeling of change in the air. A Gay author named Richard Amory had just published a ground-breaking novel called Song Of The Loon, about Fur Trappers andwell-hung GayIndians! I decided to put To Themselves Unknown on the shelf, for the time being, and write a positive story about a Gay Detective named Hank O’Toole, (inspired, of course, by Peter) and how he came to meet his “off-and-on” lover, Dobbin Dubinski.
That idea evolved into the possibility of doing a series, using the same characters, but in a different adventure for each episode. Like a young, "out" Sherlock and Watson. I resolved to write “the best damn fag-hots on the market.” Every chapter would be a sex-episode, with Hank or Dobbin or both, chasing male suspects, Gay and Straight, seducing every one until they found the bad guy in the final chapter. I also resolved that the books would end happily. After solving the mystery, Hank and Dobbin would go striding manfully, hand-in-hand, into a new sunset, together.
Figleaf loved Too Bad and asked for another, then another, and another, until I finally ran out of ideas for sequels – and they went bankrupt in the early ‘70s! They wanted nothing deep except the penetrations - and that's what I gave them: “Fag-Hots.” Gay porn, "Homo-Erotica." That’s all it was at the time. That’s all it had been for forty years. Until now.
Of course, not all of my reviews had been glowing testimonials. Several accused me of “advocating drugs!” Some complained of Hank & Dobbin’s “morality” – as though there were some kind of Gay-Moral-Code being broken, by the two of them having sex with so many different men. In those days, anything Gay was illegal! Nothing we did was “moral.” Doing drugs was as common in the ‘70s as “Rock and Roll.” One reviewer had nastily called me “the Lord of Smut.” Could someone like that be behind something like this?
What in the world had happened to trigger such an angry reaction to something long-gone, dead and buried?
ITS TIME TO FIND OUT!
PREPARE FOR JUDGMENT!!
JESUS HATES COCKSUCKERS!!!
Someone very religious was very angry with me for writing that book and was trying to scare me. Okay! Mission accomplished! I was scared! Someone who didn’t like me had my home address, my real name and my old Gay pseudonym – and had somehow confused me with my main character. It had to be a man, a woman would never do such a thing. (I couldn’t imagine a woman ever reading my books in the first place.) Some "Ex-Gay” Mormon or Born-Again Christian had somehow found one of my out-of-print books, and decided he didn’t like it. It or me.
I started wondering if I should call the police. Who would I call? What would I say? “Hi, there. Someone just sent me a page torn out of one of my own books. With a threatening note at the bottom”
“I see. . . And what sort of book was this, Mr. . . . ? What did you say your name was?”
Surely they had caller-ID and would know what my name was. I did not want to get the police involved in this. I had a local reputation that could be smeared by the wrong people.
As I was trying to decide how worried to get, the phone warbled. My answering machine picked it up after the second ring: “You have reached the Vernor residence, please leave a message.” Beep!
“Oh...uh, hi! I’m sorry,” stammered a young male voice. “I was, uh, hoping to catch you.... I called your office, but your service said you were probably home. Look, I need to talk to you...about this...I mean, I just got....” He hesitated for a long moment. “Oh, look, maybe you better call me when you get back. Please call back, this could be very important.” He left a number which compared with the one on my own Caller-ID, which identified the place he was calling from: THE RIVER CITY GAYZETTE, “The Voice of Gay Sacramento”. I run one of the ads for my Real Estate Company in each weekly edition:
“VERNOR ESTATES –
You’re Almost Home!
Let us help you find it.
We understand your special needs.”
This was surely about my ad, and I was in no mood to talk about advertising at the moment. I was much too absorbed in and worried about the mystery in front of me. I’d call him back later. Or let Kat take care of it on Wednesday.
I’d just started my second cup of coffee when the telephone rang again, and the same male voice said “Hi, it’s me again. Listen, I have reason to think we both may be in serious danger, so this could be really important, Okay? So Please, please call me as soon as.....”
I punched the speaker-button. “Hang on, I’m here! Who’s this?”
“Oh, god!” He gave a dramatic sigh of relief. “I am so glad you’re there! This is so scary. Okay, hi, my name is David Mackenzie, and I write stuff for The Gayzette...the voice of ...but you know that! We run your ads.” He made a noise like a small wounded animal. “I just found that out! You know? I mean all this time, I’ve seen Vernor Estates, you know, your ad, and your signs out there on all those lopsided crucifixes, and you’re Rick Vernor, and it turns out we’ve actually met, but I had no idea who you really were until this really scary letter arrived...this morning...here at work.”
It took a moment to process all that he’d just said. When it made sense, I said “Oh, shit!"
“Do you know about the letter?”
“I got one, too. This morning”
“Oh, shit!” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay, tell me about your letter.”
“Well, it was just this big white, you know, business-size envelope, but it had your name on the return address label, Richard Vernor, and I recognized that name. But under that it said ‘a.k.a. Jake Vance.’ And then under that, it said ‘Hank O’Toole!’ Blew my mind! I mean, that’s the first time I made the connection. You’re Jake Vance!” He paused for a moment, then demanded: “You are, aren’t you?”
I laughed and said “Yes. I’m Jake Vance. Or I was...”
“Well, that’s just amazing! Anyway, in the envelope was just this single page torn out of one of your books, the fourth one, I think, Too Big, with some very scary stuff written at the bottom. At first I thought it was some kind of publicity thing, you know, like you’d just published your new book and you were sending notes like these to every Gay newspaper. And then I wondered, maybe you really were going to murder me for some reason and this was your way of warning me. But that’s crazy! Isn’t it? And it wasn’t you who sent it, was it?”
“No,” I said. “I got one, too. Besides, why would I want to murder you? I don’t even know you!”
“I know,” he said. “I mean, you do but you don’t! Know me, I mean!” He laughed uncomfortably. “I thought, maybe he’s crazy, going around murdering Gay newspaper reporters. I mean, some of them need to be, you know? But seriously, could we get together about this? Not on the phone?”
“Yes,” I told him. “As soon as you want to.”
“Now,” he said quickly. “I’m not doing anything here.”
“Fine with me. It’s my day off.” Mondays and Tuesdays are our Saturdays and Sundays – Realtor’s weekend. “You know where I live?”
He chuckled. “Your address is right here on my envelope, on Winding Way Circle, in Fair Oaks, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ve always wanted to live on Winding Way,” he said, almost wistfully. “It always seemed so...you know, appropriate?”
I laughed. “Well, maybe it is. Come out and see. You know how to get here?”
He laughed. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I was born and raised right here in River City. I’m a gen-u-ine native! No, really, I’ve been up and down on Winding Way more times than I can count! And that’s not just a pun. Anyway, we had a fund-raiser party for the paper there – at your house – last summer. The Gayzette. Didn’t we?”
“Oh....yes,” I said, remembering the event, a year ago, that Kat, my office manager, had arranged, as “good public relations” for us -- with both the Gay community and "da Fuz" as Kat calls the Police. "Yes we did, I remember. I hosted a reception for your editor, Whatshername? Judith....”
“Judy Shapiro.”
“Shapiro, yes.... She got some kind of award, didn’t she?”
“It was a ‘Good Citizen’ thingy from the cops. A plaque she has proudly hanging on her office wall. Presented by Officer Smiley himself." He made a soft humming sound. "For a series of editorials saying basically that Gays and Cops have got to get along. Duh! The money we raised went to fight Lesbian Breast Cancer. I didn’t think Lesbians got breast cancer, but they do. Anyway, that’s where I met you.” He laughed. “Except I had no idea who you were! I mean, besides this real-estate-dude who had a really cool house on the street I’d always wanted to live on. I had no idea you were really Jake Vance! Listen, one thing, I gotta tell you: I am your number one fan! No, really! I’ve got every one of your books! Hey, would you autograph...? Oh, shit! I won’t have them with me, will I? Would you, sometime, you know, autograph them for me?”
“Of course. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be ‘D. Litle,’ would you?”
“Who?”
“Dee ‘Lite-el’ or ‘Little.’ I’m not sure which. L-I-T-L-E.”
“Delight-ul?”
“Initial D. D, like David. Your name.”
“Why would I be him?”
“He claimed to be my ‘number one fan.’ His name could have been David. He wrote me several very strange letters from one of those Mail-Boxes-R-Us places.... Never mind. It was years ago. I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“All right. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes, more or less, depending on traffic.”
“Hey!” I called into the phone. “It was the third, not the fourth.”
“What?”
“Book.”
“What?”
“Too Big was my third book.”
“Oh,” he muttered. “Right.” After a brief silence, he said “Oh! Right! Okay, see you soon, all right?”
“All right.”
As I was hanging up, I heard him shout: “All Right!”
***
CHAPTER 2 - DAVID
I showered quickly, decided against shaving, then dressed in my well-worn, gardening denims and a faded blue sweat shirt. As I started out the door, I saw myself in the mirror, and laughed. Without thinking, I had dressed in my old "cruising outfit." I started out again, then stopped and stepped back in front of the mirror. “Happy Birthday!” I told myself. "You don't look at all bad for sixty! Little bit of a belly there, but if you stand up straight and suck it in...." I laughed again and let my belly sag, and told my image "That phase of your life is over, old man!" My image sagged sadly. “Happy Birthday anyway.”
Yeah, right!
I had deliberately avoided anything that could be remotely called “celebrating.” I was passing a milestone in my life that, in my opinion, really didn’t call for celebration. Kat had wanted to throw a big party, inviting all our old clients – “great publicity!” But when I explained we couldn’t afford it, financially, she agreed. I was determined to ignore “my day” as much as possible. I had planned on reading a new Kellerman murder mystery – relaxed – out on the patio, on the lounge, in the sun, with maybe a cold can of beer, with peanuts or pretzels – to spend the first day of my sixth decade on this planet, all by myself, as far away from the rest of the world as I could possibly get – without going to the mountains.
It wasn’t getting off to a good start!
In the kitchen, I started fixing coffee, trusting that a real newspaper man would drink coffee by the gallon, even if that paper was Gay. The beans had just finished grinding when I heard the crunch of tires in gravel, from the turnaround out front. Shortly afterward, the gate bell rang and I buzzed it open with the remote.
David Mackenzie was not quite what I expected. I'd envisioned a young, enthusiastic, dedicated Gay-Journalism-Major from American River College or Sac State. In fact, he looked very much like a lost but aging student ready to ask directions on how to get someplace – he even had a backpack, which he eventually slung down and carried like a briefcase – but he was no kid.
He was closer to forty than twenty. He could have played basketball or baseball ten years ago. Probably still could, for that matter. Slim and trim. I always check men's crotches upon first meeting; it's an old habit, dating from high school, and although I often deliberately try to not look, I usually do. I rarely see anything interesting, but occasionally I spy something worth fantasizing about - even though I had long ago stopped actually doing what I fantasized about.
David was showing no basket, but had large hands, and sculpted thumbs. Six foot something - about my height - dark brown hair, cut short to match his neatly-trimmed beard, which accentuated his jaw line – the beard and moustache more auburn than brown. And blue eyes. Lapis blue. There were even golden specks in his irises. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn't think who - probably someone on television or in the movies. I was sure he had no trouble scoring in the bars. Muscular arms – but no tattoos! An artist would have painted him naked. He wore tan cargo pants, and a faded blue t-shirt that proclaimed "I AM, THEREFORE I THINK!” above a drawing of Rodin's statue "The Thinker." Under that in smaller type, it read "Right now, I'm trying to think where I left my clothes last night."
His eyes met mine and he smiled broadly. "Hi, I'm David. Remember? We've already met." He had a very firm handshake, and held my hand a tad longer than he needed to. Not that I objected. He grinned, then pulled his hand back. I backed away, put my hands behind me, smiled foolishly, and invited him in.
I had switched on the background music system earlier, and Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranjuez had started playing. "Would you prefer some other music?” I asked. “Rock? Jazz?"
"Oh, no! I love this! Whatsisname? Romero, right? Pepe, right? No, I listened to this years ago. He was the guy from that family of guitar players – Los Romeros – my mother had all their records. And Segovia's. And some other guy's. Back in the days of vinyl! Probably still has them, up in the attic. She loved the guitar. Played one herself, as a child. She used to make me copies on tapes that I could play in my car. Or on my stereo in college. I called it ‘Mom's background music for my life.' Rodrigo, right? I probably still have this on tape, somewhere. No, no, this takes me back! "
Walking through the front room, he paused and looked around. "Yeah, I remember this place. I told Matthew I'd love to live here."
"Matthew?"
"Matthew...my..." he paused and shrugged, "my Significant Other. Isn't that a stupid name for it? My partner. My ‘better’ half. He’s a loan officer at River City C-U. Mister Big in the Gay Business Association."
"Ah!" I said sympathetically. I couldn't help noticing that he hadn't called Matthew his "lover." I was starting to remember David from the newspaper shindig, last year, but I couldn't remember anyone named Matthew.
He turned away to study the titles in a bookcase and I studied his profile. He looked back and grinned. "What?"
"Sorry. I was just...trying to think who you look like?"
"Billy Beaner."
"Who?"
"Mom thinks I look like 'Billy Beaner,' she calls him. Billy Bean. Gay baseball player."
I shook my head. "I was thinking Farley Granger?"
"Who?"
"Strangers on a Train? With Robert Walker?"
"Matthew thinks I look like Hugh Grant. That's who he fantasizes fucking him."
"Who's Hugh Grant?"
He tilted his head and made that wounded-animal sound. His expression clearly said “Old Man, you’re out of touch with reality! What cave did you just crawl out of?”
He said: "Big Mack thinks I look like Mom. Actually, I think I look more like me than anyone else."
"I'm sorry, of course you do. Nothing wrong with that. And Big Mack?” I asked.
“My stepfather.”
“Ah.”
He paused to turn and grin at me. “I call him ‘Big Mack’ because he looks good enough to eat! But I don’t know how he tastes, okay?”
“Okay,” I said agreeably, as I led him into the kitchen.
He dropped his backpack beside the chair closest to the stove – Ace’s old place – and took a large white envelope from one of the side-pockets to put it on the table. Big and white, with computer-printed labels, just like mine. Except that this one had his name in the address label: David Mackenzie c/o The River City Gayzette. The return address, up in the left hand corner, was identical to the address label on my envelope. They'd probably been printed at the same time.
"But why?" I asked him. "Why would he send the letter to you? I mean, I can see why he would send it to me. Or, at least, why I he's pissed off at me. It’s my book. He read it and didn't like it! But why you? Why the Gay newspaper?"
"Maybe something I wrote, some article, pissed him off.”
“Then why not send the article?”
“Maybe he wants publicity."
"For what?"
He shrugged. "For whatever he's planning to do. You haven't seen what he wrote." He opened the envelope and withdrew the single page. 169/170. On the bottom of 169, in big red felt-tip ink it read:
DEATH TO COCKSUCKERS!
YOU ARE ABOMINATIONS!
IT IS GODS LAW!
"Oh, shit!"
"That’s not all!" He turned the page over. In the bottom margin, in the same angry red printing:
TOO LATE TO BE SAVED!
YOUR TOO BAD!!
HA HA!!!
I took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. "Just what I needed!"
"What?" David asked. "To be saved?"
"No. To have some religious nut on my case for writing Gay fuck-books forty years ago! And yours! I don’t understand."
"Tell me about it! Have you pissed off any Jehovah's Witnesses lately? Or Mormon Missionaries?"
I had started to measure the freshly-ground coffee, laughed and almost spilled it.
"What?" he asked.
"I almost was a Mormon Missionary."
"Oh, I know! I mean, I sort of figured that out from Too Good To be True.” He chuckled wickedly. “'Cum, cum, ye Saints!' Was that a hoot? In that dirty old steam bath in Salt Lake City?" He hummed the beginning from Jaws. "Was it suicide or murder? Did the Bishop do it? Or his son, the Missionary? Or was it his son’s best friend, his Mission-Companion, or any of the other Missionaries between Provo and Ogden? There were twelve, right? Like the twelve apostles?"
I cringed, remembering the audacity of it. "I was pissed at Mormons when I wrote that."
He laughed. "No shit?! I never would have guessed!"
I studied him, slightly dazed by his memory of my books. I'd never met anyone who knew them like he did – or liked them as much as he claimed to do. "Actually,” I told him, “it really was a big deal for me, because that book ended up getting me officially kicked out of The Church."
"Really? Far Out! What happened?"
I finished measuring the coffee and started the drip, then leaned back against the cupboard, facing him. He sat on the edge of the table, facing me.
“In the early seventies, The Advocate had a cover-story that turned out to be about my second cousin. My oldest cousin's oldest son, from Provo, good Mormon family, was called on a Mission. You know about Missions?"
He nodded emphatically. "Oh, yeah. My Mom’s an ex-Mormon. I’m not. She never had me baptized or anything. In fact, she kept me away from ‘that shit.’ Her word. ‘Childish nonsense,’ she calls it. And Big Mack is a lapsed Catholic. But Mom has brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, all of them with dozens of kids and a mother and a father, who are all variously good and not-so-good Mormons – so, yeah, I know about Mormons. Go on."
"Well, my second-cousin and his 'friend,' same age, nineteen or twenty, both good Mormon boys, both going to BYU, had both been called on missions but to different parts of the world. They went to their bishop together and told him they were in love with each other and wanted to go on their Mission together. He called them 'abominations in the sight of God,' condemned them to burn in Hell forever if they ever indulged in those sinful feelings for each other. Too late! They already had. So they drove up Provo Canyon, and killed themselves — or each other. Both of them had hunting rifles and both were dead when a deer-hunter found them. There was a note in their pickup, telling their story, which ended: 'We are not abominations. God knows that.'
"Anyway, I was furious! I wrote Too Good To Be True in a couple of weeks, and when it came out, I sent my old bishop an autographed copy, along with a copy of the story from The Advocate, and requested my name be removed from their list of ‘Saints,’ saying I didn't want to belong to a religion that caused men to kill themselves because they loved each other."
"Far out! Good for you!" He was looking at me with something like amazed admiration. "That I didn't know! That's perfect for the article! Did they excommunicate you?"
"What article?” I asked quickly. "No, no, this is not for any article. I don’t want any publicity about this!"
“Why not?” he demanded. “This is a great story! Mysterious Gay Mystery Writer gets Mysterious Mail Threats.” He’d already headlined his exclusive.
“First of all,” I said, “I don’t want my Real Estate clients to know I wrote dirty books forty years ago. It wouldn’t be good for business.”
“They were not ‘dirty books!” he said, almost angrily. “Only if you consider Gay sex dirty. I don’t. And neither do you! Do you?”
“Of course not!” I said, “But that’s what most people thought they were, at the time, and I’m sure most of them still would. The publisher called them ‘fag-hots.’ One reviewer called them ‘smut!’ Lots of reviews called them ‘good’ dirty books, ‘well-written,’ but ‘dirty books’ nonetheless. As far as I know, nobody has called them ‘Gay Literature.’”
“Well, they may not be, technically, but they’re Gay History. And they’re Gay books, so technically, they’re ‘Gay literature.’ And, as you said, they were ‘very well written.’”
“Thank you! However...part of the reason I stopped writing was that one reviews called me ‘the lord of smut.’ I didn’t like that. I’m an old farm-boy and I’ve seen what real smut can do to a field of corn. My books were not smut! Any more than they were fag-hots!”
“Your books were Gay Erotica. Why quibble?”
“I just don’t want to have to explain myself to some innocent young Gay couple buying their first house, who saw your article in the Gayzette: ‘Are you the one who wrote all those seventies-stroke books?’ Isn’t that what they call them now?”
“All right, all right!” He held up his hands in surrender. "No article. No problem. Go on, did they excommunicate you?"
I nodded. "Yes, they did, but they don't call it that, only if they kick you out – for, say, getting caught blowing the scoutmaster, out behind the Church House – for that they would excommunicate you. If you ask out, like I did, they open the church doors and wish you God-speed. With an invitation to return as soon as I repented! They ‘released’ me - from eternal servitude. I officially don't have to spend Eternity with Mormons. Thank God! I still have the badly-typewritten letter to prove it, packed away somewhere. I framed it and hung it on the wall of our bathroom, up in Orangevale. When Ace died and I sold the house, I packed it away somewhere."
The coffee finished dripping. I gave David a blue mug to match his eyes, and chose a deep rose-red one for myself, filled each cup, took the Amaretto creamer from the refrigerator and splashed some into my cup. He nodded and said "Please," and I creamed his coffee for him. He grinned and thanked me.
“I had stopped going to services when I was sixteen but I hadn’t really quit. So this made it official. Now I can say I’m a certified Ex-Mormon.” I went around the table to sit facing him. "You really do know the books, don't you? I’m surprised. I’ve never met anyone....”
"I told you." he said. "I'm your number one fan. At least, here in Sacramento. I'm sure you have fans all across the country."
I shook my head. "Not now. They're all dead."
"No way."
"David, those books were published forty years ago, '70, '71, 72 – my readers were the AIDS-generation – and they're all dead! Except for you and D. Litel – and for all I know, he's dead too. And how did you get them? You're not much older than the books, yourself."
"Well, thank you very much! I'm thirty-nine – I know I don't look it! Joking! No, I had a friend, a good friend, an older man – and yes, he died of AIDS – but Charles had all your books. In perfect condition. He had an incredible library of Gay books, porn and otherwise. Capote, Vidal, Rechy, Amory, Townsend, Vanden, hundreds of books. But he highly recommended Jake Vance, and loaned me his copy of Too Bad. From then on, I was hooked on Hank O'Toole, Private Dick!" He laughed. "And his off-and-on lover, Dobbin Dubinski."
We both said in unison: "because he's as big as a horse, of course!" and laughed at each other. Hank had always used that phrase when he described his “off-and-on-friend” to somebody new.
David said, “Poor Dobbin never could get his quotations quite right. What do they call that?”
“Malapropism.”
“Oh, yeah. Like: ‘that’s water up the creek.’”
“Or: ‘There’s more than one way to beat a dead cat.’”
“‘One man’s meat is another man’s plaything.’”
“‘To fuck is human, but a good blowjob is divine.’”
David grinned. “My favorite is: ‘He wouldn’t say “love” if he had a mouthful!’”
“I had a whole list of sayings he could fuck up like that. Only used up a few of them.”
“Your books were fun to read. And hot!" He laughed and shook his head and looked down as he said,"I mean, you probably gave me more boners and squirts than anyone!” He blushed and turned away for a moment. Then he looked back and grinned. “You didn’t make me feel guilty! Some of Charles' other books were like, oh-my-God-I'm-Queer-I'm-going-to-kill-myself stuff, you know? ‘The love that dare not speak it's name.' That sort of bullshit. But your books... In your books it wasn't just okay to be Gay, it was good! It was fun!"
He sucked in a deep breath and studied me. "Wow! I have wanted to do this for, I don't know how long! Ever since I read Too Bad, and then Too Soon, and then Too Big..." he laughed and spread his hands wide to indicate the whole series. "More with each book. I mean, I've wanted to just thank you for writing them! And it took this..." He gestured angrily at the envelopes and pages on the table.
"Yeah," I said, "but I'm glad. In a way. Otherwise I never would have met my ‘number one fan.’" It sounded corny, and I surprised myself by saying it aloud, but it was true. I was thoroughly enjoying his company. And the blatant flattery wasn't hurting at all. I'd been needing a few strokes.
Also, it had been many years since I’d sat at my own kitchen table, across from an attractive and vital young man - who looked like he would look very good naked – and who thought I was more than just a dirty-book writer. I couldn’t help undressing him in my imagination – as Rodrigo’s lushly romantic Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre played in the background.
We both listened to the music, smiling at each other. Then he said "Well, I’m just glad I finally met you, even this way. You've probably already figured out that I'm a writer, too. Nothing like you. A couple of short stories in fuck-magazines. Articles for the Gayzette. But I want to write novels. I would love to write a Gay detective novel. They're very popular right now."
"Are they? Maybe I started a trend."
"Absolutely," he said seriously. "One reference book we have at the paper makes that very point — that Jake Vance started the Gay Detective genre, single-handed – so to speak.” He chuckled.
"I'm in a book?"
He studied me, amazed. “Are you kidding? Yes, you're in a book! You're in several. Gay reference stuff. We have them all at the Gayzette. You’re Gay History. They call you a ‘Pioneer!’"
I made a disbelieving noise. “Hey! I’m a fucking Gay Pioneer!”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, grinning. “No, really! They sell them in the Gay bookstore,’Our World,’ downtown. Not your books. The reference books.'"
"I've never been in there."
"Really?" He tilted his head and regarded me as though I must be insane – or from another planet.
"Really," I said. I studied him again, wondering if I could really talk with this guy, tell him stuff I hadn't told anyone. "I've sort of backed away from Gay stuff," I told him. "That whole Gay author thing turned very sour when people started treating me like I’d farted in church. As a result, I’m out of touch, socially, with Gay Life, the Gay Community, that whole thing, at least twenty years – mainly since Ace died."
"I don't know about Ace," he said.
"Ace was my lover for eighteen years. He died in 1988. Of AIDS, of course. The whole bunch we ran with, down in The City and then up here, they're all dead. All but me. The reason I'm still here is that I stopped having Gay sex. And without the sex, the Gay community had nothing to offer me. I hate that whole Empress thing."
"Too Much!" He cried, dramatically. “Who Killed Delite Fantastic? Was it Gloria Mundy? Tequilla Mockingbird? Tempest Fuggit? Buggered to death in high drag by her Lady in Waiting!” He grinned at me, showing a set of perfect teeth. His grin tilted up to one side looking rakish. "I'm sorry! You were talking about Ace."
"You have a very good memory. They gave me hell for that one in some of the reviews I got. The guy at The Advocate really took me to task for, quote, 'portraying drag queens in a negative light'."
"You're kidding?"
"This was the seventies, after Stonewall. Drag Queens were heroes.”
“Or something,” he said, and grinned. "I'm sorry, I keep interrupting. You were telling me about Ace."
"Asa Hartz,” I said fondly. “His family name was Hartzman, Asa Emmanuel Hartzman. Named after both grandfathers. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Hungary. He was Jewish all the way back to Moses. They'd never heard of the 'ace of hearts,' they didn't speak English, so they had no idea they were saddling him with a name kids would make fun of. But Ace loved it. He didn't care if they laughed at his name — they wouldn't forget it. He'd tell people 'just remember the Ace-of-Hearts man.' Of course, his business cards looked like little playing cards.
“For three years, back in the late seventies, Ace was 'Sacramento's Celebrity Chef!' He was 'head-cook,' as he liked to call himself, at a place called 'Good Eats' in old-town Folsom. The little, intimate restaurant was owned by a rich, Good-Republican developer, who loved Ace's cooking. We catered a fundraiser for Ronald Regan there that raised, I don’t remember how many million. Ace was a very liberal Democrat, and he despised ‘Ronnie Baby,’ as he called him, but he got a thousand dollar tip for that little buffet. He also got an autographed picture from Ronnie-Baby, thanking him for helping him raise all that money. I still have it, somewhere.
“Celebrity Chef was on Chanel 13 in the noon news, a little five-minute cooking segment, featuring gourmet stuff you could do in your microwave. You could send a stamped-self-addressed envelope for a copy of the recipe. Women would stop him in a supermarket to tell him they had sent for his microwave version of Boeuf l’Orange, or whatever, and how much they loved it. They adored him! And he loved it! At least, there’s that. He really enjoyed it.
“His new Organic Restaurant was going to be called ACE’S. With the four playing cards as his logo. He had a spot picked out and was talking to the developer – same guy who owned Good Eats – when he started having night-sweats, then little purple splotches that turned out to be Kaposi Sarcoma, ‘K-S,’ ‘Gay Cancer.’ From there it was downhill for three years. He couldn’t have anything to do with cooking. Word quickly got out and spread in the culinary community that Celebrity Chef Asa Hartz had AIDS. Everybody who had adored him suddenly shunned him. That hurt him so much, he went inside himself and never came back out. He literally shrank out of existence.
“When he died, it even made the evening news in Florida, where his mother and two aunts were having supper, watching Walter Cronkite. Suddenly, there was a picture of her son, with his little rainbow-beanie that he wore instead of a chef’s hat, dead of AIDS in Sacramento. His sister had told Mama that he had leukemia. But no one had told her yet that he’d died. Somehow the story made the national news before anyone told her. Poor Bessie, there she was, with her two Jewish sisters, all widows in a retirement community Ace had called Little Israel, in Florida, and there was her only son, Asa Emanuel, on national television, ‘Sacramento’s Celebrity Chef, Asa Hartz, dead of AIDS at age 39.’ She almost had a heart attack. Fairly shortly after that, she developed dementia.”
"I’m so sorry,” David said sincerely. “I remember him now. I think I saw some of those shows. On the noon news. Or Mom watched them.... I’ll bet she even sent for some of his recipes. Did he ever take part in those Hepatitis B experiments, back in the late seventies?’
“How did you know that?”
“Because I just wrote an article for The Gazette called 'AIDS, THE MAN-MADE DOOMSDAY VACCINE.' ‘Gay Holocaust’ isn’t a big secret any more, although they’ll never admit it. There are dozens of sites online about it. Books about it, like The Doctors of Death, and Queer Blood. Forget Green Monkeys. The HIV-AIDS epidemic was started in this country as a top-secret germ-warfare experiment, way back in the seventies, under President Carter – and continued with the secret or tacit approval of every President since. An injectable serum which destroys the immune system, was secretly but knowingly applied to those groups that certain Evangelical members of our government decided were undesirable: Queers and Niggers. We were polluting their perfect society. We were the reason it wasn’t working right. At first it was spread by tainted serum for Hepatitis, in clinics in every major city in the country, and then by sex by the recipients. The perfect Secret Ethnic-Cleansing Weapon. They thought! Much better than Concentration Camps and Gas Chambers! They even had a national ad-campaign, asking Gay men to volunteer to help find a cure for Hepatitis. An honorable cause – if you believed it.”
“We saw those ads in all the Gay newspapers.” I said. “There were flyers posted all over San Francisco. I can remember seeing them tacked to telephone poles and in store windows along Market and Castro. Ace volunteered. He thought he was doing a good thing. So did all of our friends – all but me. I didn’t. I hate needles...”
“That probably saved your life. I firmly believe that Asa Hartz and all the rest are the victims of our own government’s most recent attempt at ethnic-cleansing. Now AIDS has spread into the general human population, not just the faggots and coons, but now white teenagers! Big mistake!”
We were both silent, considering the implications of David’s hypothesis. They were too horrifying to think about.
"You know,” he said, “I remember his obit in the Gayzette. You almost look like that picture. Did you look alike?"
"We looked like brothers. Lots of people assumed we were and that's why we were living together – and we let them think so. It was less complicated than explaining the real relationship – back in those days. We were very much like brothers, anyway, and not much like lovers. We had sex only occasionally at first, then rarely. After he got HIV, not at all."
"Not at all'?"
"Nope."
"In twenty years?"
“More.”
“With anybody?”
"Nobody but me," I assured him.
"That's depressing!"
"Yes, it is, isn't it? Let's talk about something else."
He studied me again with a sad sort of smile on his lips. I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to kiss him? His moustache would tickle. I remembered having a beard and kissing another man with a beard. Facial-electricity! I took a quick, deep breath and picked up one of the envelopes to study it, as though it might hold a clue that I somehow hadn’t noticed earlier.
"Maybe the reason he sent it to me,” David said, “is that he knows I'm your fan, so he's dragging me into whatever he has in mind for you."
"Then it would have to be someone you know. Someone who knows you're my fan. Who would know that?"
He thought about it, knitting his forehead seriously. "Nobody," he said, shaking his head.
"Maybe it's Matthew," I said. "Maybe he's jealous!"
He almost did a spit-take but managed to swallow the coffee without choking. He held up his hand for me to wait. It took several gulps to get it down. "Matthew? No ... I don't think so. Matthew just isn’t the type to send letters or pages torn out of books. If he’s pissed off, he says so. No, I ... You know, now that I think of it...we've never talked about you. Or your books. He may not even know your books. He doesn't particularly like books. He prefers tapes. Now DVDs. Have you seen some of the new HD-DVD porn? My goodness! It's like 'Live, and in person! Right here in your living room, the world's biggest cocks and the world's most amazing cocksuckers!' Of course Matthew had to have one of those big wide screens. We're still paying for it! But it's incredible! The picture is so sharp, you can almost reach out and grab...! I’m Sorry! I'm babbling again. What are we going to do?"
I shrugged. "Wait for the next shoe to drop?"
"Call the cops?" he asked brightly.
"Has a crime been committed?"
"Not that I know of -- unless it's against the law to use somebody else's return address."
“Or tear up somebody’s dirty book.”
“Well maybe that isn’t illegal now,” he said seriously, “but it should be.”
I laughed. “I’ll vote for you in the next election. Meanwhile, I don't know what else we can do except wait. Maybe make a list of anyone we can think of who would do this."
"I can't think of anyone."
"Neither can I."
The gate bell rang.
I punched the com-button and asked “Who is it?”
A scratchy voice responded,“Sacramento Sheriffs’ Department. Detectives Rossini and Kendal, homicide. Could we come up for a few minutes please?”
David said “Oh shit!”
After a confused glance at David, I punched the buzzer to open the gate, then,with him following, went, to the front door.
Two men climbed the stairs then stood on the landing, smiling seriously. I seemed to recognize both of them, but couldn’t remember from where. One was short and very muscular, in blue jeans with a sky-blue sports coat over a lighter blue form-fitting polo shirt, complete with pony. He had a Sheriff's badge in a black leather wallet, which he flashed for both of us, then snapped it shut like a detective on TV!
"Hi!" he said as he surveyed the two of us. "I'm Steve Rossini, Detective with the Sacramento County Sheriffs." He turned to gesture toward the other man. "And this is my partner, Detective Richard Kendall.” As we all shook hands, he continued: “You may recall, we all met here last year – at that newspaper party? Could we come in for a few minutes?"
It took an awkward moment for me to respond. I flashed on all of the times I'd been confronted by policemen, in the old days – not that long ago – when it was still illegal to be Gay, and a cop at my door would have meant Be Afraid! But those times had changed, I told myself. 'Da Fuz' were now our friends. "Of course!" I said, stepping back to let them go in front of me. In my mind, the theme from Miami Vice played as they walked past me into the house. ("Sacramento Vice!" Ta-da-da-da!) I wondered which one was the "good cop."
Kendall was catalog-model handsome, blond where his partner had dark brown, almost black hair. Tall, about 6'4" or 5", his buffed muscles strained at his variation of Steve's "uniform," except that his polo shirt was pure white and pony-less; it had a little Marine Corps insignia embroidered over his heart, where the pony should have been. He wore brown chinos with a khaki military type jacket folded over one arm. I remembered both of them from the reception.
Detective Rossini walked straight into the kitchen as though he knew exactly where he was going.
"What's it about, Detective?"
He turned and smiled quickly. If you blinked, you missed it. "Call me Steve," he said. His word was law.
“Steve,” I said obediently. He grinned again, then waved toward the chairs around the table. "Can we sit down?"
"Absolutely!" I said.
Detective Kendall sat at the head of the table, fitting his jacket neatly over the back of the chair; Steve sat at the foot, with David and me on either side. As they both leaned over to look at the two pages on the table, Steve said “Well, whadda ya know!”
Kendall said "Uh-huh."
David and I both said "What?"
Steve took a piece of paper from his inside pocket, and unfolded it. "Photocopy," he said, "Original's locked up." He spread the page on the table alongside the other two. It was a color copy of yet another page from Too Big, this one the first page of chapter one, that began: "My name is Henry, which is long for Hank and I'm a Private Detective...." The Title, TOO BIG had been traced in that bloody red marker and another copy of my address label had been stuck to the top of the page. On the bottom was printed:
COCKSUCKERS ARE ABOMINATIONS!
JESUS HATES ABOMINATIONS!!
ABOMINATIONS MUST DIE!!!
***
CHAPTER 3: LAW & ORDER
Detective Steve Rossini looked like a movie or TV-series cop. Mediterranean, with black wavy hair, brown eyes, dark skin. Handsome as hell, and he knew it. A long time ago, as a child, or when he started puberty, he looked in the mirror and thought “I’ll either be an actor or a cop. Maybe both.” And there he sat!
His partner, Detective Kendall – Steve called him Ken -- looked like an actor in a movie about the Marines. His hair was flat across the top and shaved militarily short on the sides. His face was so clean-shaven it shined. His eyes were ice-glacier blue. He smiled a lot, but the smiles looked practiced and mechanical and his eyes seemed to peer right through me, either to my inner core, or to something just over my shoulder. His unseeing stare made me a little nervous.
Although it seemed like he was Bad Cop by default, on his polo shirt, just above the Marine Corps emblem, he wore a small plastic badge featuring a bright yellow “smiley-face” wearing a blue policeman’s cap, merrily tilted. I remembered him from the newspaper party. He had presented the Good Citizen Award to David’s boss. This was “Officer Smiley,” who did a lot of community relations stuff for “da fuz,” such as giving school-kids little Officer Smiley badges as rewards for being Good Kids, and Good Citizen awards to Lesbians who ran Police-friendly Gay newspapers.
Steve was looking from David to me, curiously. “Uh, are you two...?”
Both David and I said “No!” too quickly and we grinned at each other. I said “No, David is here because he got one of those pages in the mail, too. That one.” I pointed to it. “ We were just wondering if we should call the cops or not.”
“Well,” Steve said, “here we are anyway. Maybe we’re all telepathic or something. More likely, some asshole wants us all to know he’s pissed off at cocksuckers – his terminology. Seems we got us a little mystery to unravel. You’re the mystery-writer. Any clues you care to offer?”
I pointed to the photocopy and asked “Where did this come from?”
“A murder scene,” he said. “A young man was found – a young Gay man – we’re quite sure he was Gay, all the usual S and M paraphernalia was present. He was found in his home in Citrus Heights, not far from here, actually, and that page from your book was lying on the body! We’re assuming it wasn’t you calling that kind of attention to yourself – but that remains an open question.”
He gave me one of his quick grins. I had a feeling he was enjoying himself. He seemed to be acting like a TV “Homicide Detective,” for David and me – and maybe for Officer Smiley. “We’re still trying to ascertain the time of death, but it’s difficult, he’d been dead several days, maybe a week or more, when they found him.” He looked pointedly at me, then at David. “I’m sure you can both account for your time the last couple of weekends, can’t you?” He gave us that grin again.
“How did he die?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“You tell me,” he said.
“Okay, but I’m not a suspect, right? This is straight from my book.”
“Go on.”
“He was strangled, right? Suffocated. But there were no marks on his throat.”
“Only the killer, the cops and the author of the book would know that.”
“And a reader!” David insisted. “Somebody has obviously been reading his books – this one at least. Any reader could have known it.”
Steve acknowledged David's protest with a parental grin.
“Check his esophagus and stomach for semen,” I said.
“Bingo!” Steve actually winked and grinned at me. “We’re doing just that, but thanks for the suggestion. That’s what your book is about, isn’t it?”
“That was my fictional killer’s ‘M-O,’ yes. Strangulation by penis.”
Steve suppressed a chuckle which caused him to choke, which made him cough, which made his face get even darker. “That would have to be a pretty big one, wouldn’t it?” he asked, finally, quite seriously. “I mean, I haven’t read your book - not yet - just the first page. But, like, how big is big?”
“Big is...oh...." I shrugged, looking into his eyes, enjoying it. "Eight or nine inches,” I said. “and fat.”
“Maybe ten,” David added “Ten or eleven would do it.”
Steve laughed. “Well, it wasn’t me, then!” He looked at me, grinning, then at David. We both shook our heads. Then we all laughed and looked at Officer Smiley who actually grinned and slowly shook his head. Steve turned to me and nodded knowingly.
We studied each other briefly while we considered what had been said in the last few minutes, and by whom, and what it might or might not mean. Finally, Steve said, “Dick...is that what they call you?”
“Actually, ‘Rick,’” I corrected him.
“Ah, Rick! Sorry! Do you have a copy of this book I could borrow? My curiosity has been aroused and I think your book might offer some kind of clue.”
“That’s what the killer is desperately trying to tell us,” I said.
“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” Steve asked.
I told him, “You’ll probably find the murder fully described in the book. No signs of a struggle, but with that ‘date-rape’ drug in his system? Ro-hip-something?”
"Ro-hyp-nol." he pronounced it correctly. “The kids call them ‘Roopies,’ or ‘Roofies.’ We don’t know yet. Also in the book?”
“Chapter one.”
There was a long moment when we looked into each other’s eyes. Then he said “Okay!” and stood up from the table in a way that let us know that we should all do the same thing; the meeting was over. He had an unspoken air of authority – which was very sexy – and he knew how good he looked, the way he stood there, for just a Kodak Moment, posed in just such a way that his crotch was thrust slightly forward, showing a lump where a lump was supposed to be. I got goose bumps down my back, contemplating it! I reminded myself that nothing could possibly happen between us because he was a cop and I was celibate! Never the twain shall meet. Never mind goose bumps! It wouldn’t work.
“I have a copy, yes,” I told him, “but it’s packed away in a box in the store room. I think I know where it is, but it’s been twenty years. It’ll take a few minutes.”
“Don’t bother,” David told Steve. “Go online. Go to Google. Tell it ‘Too Big, by Jake Vance’. You’ll get maybe a page full of places where you can buy copies. It may cost a hundred bucks.”
Steve said, “A hundred bucks!”
I said, “You’re kidding!”
David glowered at me. “I don’t remember for sure,” he added, his veracity impugned. “It’s been a while since I checked it out, but at some point in the past, I remember at least one website bookseller had one of your books for a hundred dollars, US. I don’t remember which one.” He turned to me. “You didn’t know?”
“I had no idea!”
“How much would you get for that?” Steve asked. “For royalties.”
I laughed! “Nothing. The publishers gave me a flat five hundred bucks per book, forty years ago. No contracts, no royalties, even though I was their best-selling author for two years. Besides, they’ve been out of business for years! Went bankrupt back in the seventies.”
“But there were unsold copies in the warehouse, I’ll bet,” David said, “and they’re still on the market.” He smiled broadly as he enlightened us. “I thought sure you’d know. If it was me, I’d know!”
“Well, I didn’t know,” I insisted. “This is all a surprise to me. This morning I was just another Real Estate Broker, reading my mail....”
“And it’s not even your birthday, is it?” Steve joked. “Surprise Party? Get it?” He turned to David. “Google Jake Vance?”
“Actually, it is...” I began, but David cut me off.
“The Too Series,” he said. “There are seven of them.” He named them all, in order.
Steve seemed impressed – with something about David – I wasn’t sure what, but I doubted that it had anything to do with my books.
“I’ll check it out,” Steve said, shaking David’s hand first, then mine, which he grabbed and held in an iron grip, which clearly told me: This guy works out. This guy is sexy as hell. This guy is not to be messed with!
He gave my hand a last hard squeeze and said “Okay, I’ll be in touch. Please don’t leave town without telling me in advance. I mean, you can come and go whenever and wherever you want. Okay? I just need to know. Don’t worry. It’s my job. Our job.” He corrected himself and nodded toward Ken. “I may need to ask you a few more questions. Probably will, in fact. Both of you. But no pressure, come and go, just let me know. Okay? Oh, and, Rick, would you see if you can find that copy. You know, just in case I can’t get the Department to spring a hundred bucks for a dirty book. Okay?”
We nodded to each other. “Okay.”
He motioned to the pages on the table. “Could I have these — and the envelopes they came in?”
“Sure,” I said. “Both our fingerprints will be all over these.”
“And maybe someone else’s, too,” he said, carefully using his folded copy of my book page to gather everything into one envelope. “And that reminds me, you both need to come in and be fingerprinted. Would that be possible, soon?”
“But we didn’t do anything,” David protested.
“For elimination,” Steve said patiently. “Any prints that aren’t yours could be the killer's. Okay?”
“Oh,” David said, grinning foolishly. “Of course.” Then he added: “Or the Postman’s!”
Steve sighed, but smiled at him and this time the smile didn’t quickly vanish. I watched his eyes move up and down David’s body. He grabbed David’s arm, squeezed it and said. “Hey, we all make mistakes, don’t we?” He winked at David. “Let’s hope the killer made at least one.”
He led us back through the house the way we had come, gave us another quick grin as he paused on the landing to let Ken go past him and start down the stairs. “Talk to you gentlemen later. Okay? Thanks for your time. And, Rick, I’ll call you about that book. See if you can find it, Okay?” And he was gone, trotting down the stairs and out the gate to their car in the parking area. It was an unmarked, scruffy black Ford, several years old. Probably not his, but the County’s. His own car was probably a red Ferrari – or more likely a white four-door pickup truck. With big tires.
He looked back over his shoulder to see if we were still watching, grinned and nodded, but didn't wave, went around and got in on the passenger side. Officer Smiley was driving.
* * *
Would you like to read more? The book is being published by Rose Dog Books as an e-book and POD paperback: www.rosedogbooks.com.
It will also be available in Kindle and other e-reader formats, and is scheduled to be downloadable Sept. 1, 2010.
Please contact me at Dirk@DirkVanden.net for an exact date of publication and availability on Amazon.com. Thanks! Dirk
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