IT ARRIVED IN THE MAIL that morning, the first Monday of the new year, along with a dozen other envelopes and advertising brochures. Innocent-looking. Just a plain white 9x12 envelope, like millions of people send 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
a.k.a. Jake Vance
a.k.a. Hank O’Toole
5555 Winding Way,
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. 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.

Spread out on the table were 24 torn pieces of a page ripped from one of my novels. I recognized the page almost immediately, even though I hadn’t seen it in, what, 20 years? It was simple to put it together, like a jigsaw puzzle. Page 29/30 of TOO BIG, my third published novel, written thirty-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:

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 JUDGEMENT!!
JESUS HATES COCKSUCKERS!!!


Too Big had been the third in a series of 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 Private Detective, hence the moniker ‘Private Dick!’ on my business cards. And, yes, I always use the exclamation mark! Damm right!”

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! Hank O’Toole definitely is not a queen. Although he deigns to bed one or two, now and then, here and there, in his endless search for The Truth. ‘Hey,’ Hank says, ‘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 Classics: Too Bad, Too Good, Too Big, Too Much, Too Soon, Too Hot and Too Late, in what Figleaf cleverly called “The TOO Saga.” All with 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 jackoff, from beginning to end. Each chapter a gusher!” So said The Advocate. “No prize-winning prose here, but the TOO books are all very well-written. If you know what I mean.”

“Fag-Hot Sex” was what the publisher wanted – insisted upon – nothing deep, except the penetrations - and that's what I gave them: Gay porn, A.K.A. "Homo-Erotica." That’s all it was at the time. That’s all it had been for 30 years. Until now.

All of those memories went racing through my mind as I contemplated the jigsaw puzzle on the table, and tried to fathom what it might mean. I kept looking at those three blood-red sentences.

ITS TIME TO FIND OUT!
PREPARE FOR JUDGEMENT!!
JESUS HATES COCKSUCKERS!!!

Someone was very angry at 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. A woman would never read the book in the first place. Some "Ex-Gay” 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 from one of my own books, all torn up. 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, they’d 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: “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 they 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.

I’d just started my second cup of coffee when the telephone warbled again, and the same male voice said “Listen, it’s me again. 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 grabbed the phone. “Hang on, I’m here. Who is this?”

“Oh!” He gave a dramatic sigh of relief. “I am so glad you’re there! This is so scary. Okay, hi, my name is David Allen and I write stuff for The Gayzette...the voice of Gay...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 hanging on all those white wooden posts, like 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, busines-size envelope, but it had your name on the return address label, Rick Vernor, and I recognized it. 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. But not for...”

“Good! Anyway, inside 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 in the margins. 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 kill 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.” It was Monday morning, the beginning of the “Realtor’s Weekend” (Mondays and Tuesdays are our Saturdays and Sundays). “You know where I live?”

He chuckled. “Your address is right here on the envelope, on Winding Way 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, six months 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?”

“Right! It was a ‘Good Citizen’ thingy from the cops. A plaque she still has 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! 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 Rick 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. Litel,’ would you?”

“Who?”

“Dee ‘Lye-tel’ or ‘Little.’ I’m not sure which. L-I-T-E-L.”

“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. Never mind. It was years ago. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes, more or less, depending on traffic.”

“Okay.”

“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.”

“Okay.”

As I was hanging up, I heard him shout: “Ooh-kay! ”

Coming Soon: David - Chapter 2

Would you like to read Chapter 2? Please email me Dirk@DirkVanden.net

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