Only Make Believe (26 page)

Probably nothing in life hits a man as hard as the death of his father. And when the father’s been murdered? Murdered wearing a woman’s whalebone corset and Nylon stockings? Leaving a trunk full of dirty pictures as an inheritance?

From the tense set of Bud’s shoulders, I could see he wasn’t finished asking questions. Chuck was clearly not telling the whole story. Not yet.

“Did you talk to him about it?” Bud said. “Did he ever give you the old birds-and-bees talk?”

Chuck lay on his back, staring at the sky, tears running down past his ears. “They gave me a religious pamphlet. Left it on my bed, under a set of clean pajamas. Baltimore Catechism shit, rules in code. Don’t do this, it’s a mortal sin to do that—without ever really saying what this or that is. Had some diagrams. I figured it out.” He took a deep breath. “Bastard.”

“Your daddy?” Bud’s lips hardly moved when he asked the question. “You were angry at your daddy? Did he ever do anything … anything to you or—?”

Chuck still didn’t get it. “My best friend Cy, his daddy took him for a walk, out on the beach on Estero Island. Explained to him about how it all works—boys’ bodies, girls’ bodies. Answered all his questions about, you know, playing with yourself, about protecting girls and women who aren’t as strong, even gave him a box of rubbers. Told him to come back anytime he had questions.”

“Good man,” Bud said. “Cy’s daddy is no bastard, huh?”

“And Cy told me. We always share info and everything. Only I couldn’t tell Cy about Daddy, not until last weekend, anyhow. Who wants to tell anybody that his Daddy—you know?” Rising on both elbows, he looked from Bud to me and back. “You guys are best friends too, right?”

Bud clenched his jaw. “Right. Yes.”

“For how long? Since you were little kids?”

“Nothing like that,” Bud said. “What about you and—?”

“Cy. He’s one I was out with Sunday night. Cy and his cousin Eldon. Took Cy’s jalopy.”

“Your daddy was a selfish bastard,” Bud suddenly said, upping the ante. “He held out on his son. Called his daughter’s boyfriend trash. And was no good to your mother. I’d be angry at the bastard, too.”

I followed his lead without knowing exactly where he was going. “Is that the reason he got killed?”

Bud rolled toward Chuck, pulled himself upright and knelt beside the boy. “You said you didn’t ever see your daddy in the hotel. But maybe Cy and your mother saw him—entered his room and beat him. Or maybe you two boys persuaded Mr. Roy Boy to help you out.”

Chuck finally got it. Throwing me a look that combined fear, surprise and disappointment, he jumped to his feet. “Oh, no. No, sir. I’m leaving here now. Jeez, I trusted you guys.” He swiped the sweat off his arms and turned toward the door of the rooming house. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.”

“What are you telling me, son?” Bud touched the boy’s arm. “Sounds like somebody’s lying.”

“Get your hand off me. I wouldn’t. You got to be kidding.” More tears rolled down his tan, handsome face. He just stood there and sobbed, looking like a kicked puppy. “I was with Cy and Eldon all night until I got home. At the beach. They took care of me. They brought me home. In Cy’s daddy’s old Ford. See, I was so upset about Daddy. Because, Jeez—oh fuck—OK, I’ll say it. He took the foot locker with him to Myers. Took it with him to your
fucking
hotel. It was in the trunk of the car when we got it back. Only the sex stuff—the corset, the funny jock strap, some of the pictures—they were gone. He must have had them with him in his room. Is that what got him hurt so bad?” He glared at me. “In your hotel? The sex stuff?”

The boy was right. I’d seen every item he mentioned in room 522.

“Call Cy. I would never. Oh, Jeez. You call Cy and Eldon. You’ve got their numbers. I don’t know what time I came in. All that beer I had. I don’t remember. You know? You call them.”

“I know,” Bud said, handing Chuck a clean towel. “I’ll do that. Just for the record.”

Chuck swabbed his eyes and threw me another hard glance.

“Hell of a situation,” Bud said. “Your daddy was murdered. It’s my job to find out who and why. Everybody’s under suspicion until they aren’t.”

“Bud’s working through a long list. A lot of people didn’t like the way your daddy did business.”

The kid buried his face in the towel, sobbing. Bud threw an arm around him and pulled him down, hip to hip, on the doorstep.

“Daddy wasn’t a homo, was he? Why’d he have to—oh, my God, I don’t get it. What’s going to happen to me? What’s this all about? You tricked me. Both of you. Liars. Fucking liars.”

“Chuck, listen to me, Chuck. Cry it all out. Takes a damn brave man to break down in front of other men. I know it hurts bad now. But it’s good. Trust me. I’ve seen it on troop ships and in foxholes. Me, I broke down the first time in a dressing station on Iwo Jima. A tent was all it was, I broke down after I watched the commander of my unit bleed to death, Captain Leo Westover, a man I loved, a man that saved my life twice, a man I’d of followed down to hell.”

Chuck was hugging his gut, head down, his whole body shaking.

Bud began to squeeze the boy’s neck and rub the top of his head. “Chuck, listen to me. This is real good. And I want you to know how much I value what you’ve told me. You’re brave but you’re holding together. You got the strength for it. You’re behaving like a man—under goddamn horrible circumstances.”

Bud glanced up at me. “Why don’t you go get us a Coke, huh?”

I caught the hint and went inside. The room was dark. A sheet of plywood had been nailed across the shot-out window. I took a leak in Bud’s toilet and fetched three sodas and a bag of Lorna Doone cookies from the kitchen. When I returned, Bud and Chuck were sitting side by side on the grass. Chuck’s spine was stiff as a broom. Bud was making notes on a scrap of paper, the flyleaf of his workout manual. Chuck glanced up at me, took the sheet from Bud and read over his statement. He wasn’t crying any more. He looked numb, drained. Nodding, he signed the paper, handed it back to Bud, refused the soda with a none-for-me gesture and stood up. He thanked us both, tried a smile that didn’t quite work, said he sure had enjoyed the workout and sure hoped we found his Daddy’s killer soon.

And then he was gone. I handed Bud a soda, sank down beside him and ripped open the package of cookies. “Poor kid,” I said. “You gave him a hell of a drill. Are you finally convinced he’s not guilty of anything more than blackout drinking?”

Bud just shook his head. “Daddy took the fucking footlocker with him. Those pictures we found in the room, under the bed. What a birds-and-bees education this kid’s had.”

“Yeah. And what a team we make, huh, Sarge—good cop, bad cop? Classic.”

Bud didn’t see the joke, if it was a joke. “I thought we were the Hardy Boys.” He reached for the bag of Lorna Doones and fished out a handful.

“And then you pull a double reverse on him, go from hard-nose investigator to loving Uncle Bud in two seconds flat. And then back again.”

“His story was all over the map. I was trying to make sense of it.”

“The kid talks daddy, daddy, daddy. But it looks like he didn’t have one, not a lot of the time. Not even a close-by uncle or decent teacher or coach to advise him, far as I can tell. At least I had Uncle Bob.”

“And you know better’n anybody I didn’t have even that, except with old Coach Andy. And he, yeah, he messed me up some, slapping me down the way he did when I got so horny and fresh in the shower that time. But still—”

Bud had been raised by his maternal grandmother in a cabin outside LaBelle. When he was seven, his mother died giving birth to a little brother. There was a storm, a bridge washed out, the midwife arrived too late. The infant lasted two days. Bud’s father, a ranch hand, lasted two more years. He took off one August morning, remarking only that he intended to apply for a new job. The job turned out to be in Texas. A postcard from outside Abilene was the last the family ever heard of him. Fathers—family ties—were a touchy subject for Bud.

“Right toward the end,” I said, “with the boy, you were great—gentle and understanding but more than that: opening up to him, letting him see that a rough customer like yourself has a heart and soul.” I touched Bud’s knee and then his chest. “I love your soul, Sarge. Sexiest soul I ever saw.”

Bud glanced around. “Stow that sweet talk. Chuck’s all boy but a real male. I can relate to that. And what were you doing? You were just eating up that shit about fancy jock straps and young boys playing with themselves.”

“Hold it, Sarge. That’s the evidence in your case. Little boys don’t get me excited.”

Not unless they look like a budding Mike Rizzo. No, I take that back. Chuck doesn’t excite me, not that way. It’s just the resemblance—to a younger Mike, a younger Bud, those dark eyes, the outdoors tan, the willingness to listen when I talk too much—yeah, a boy on the way to becoming the kind of man I can love. Yeah, I noticed him. Sure I did.

“Hold it yourself, Lieutenant. Like you said, he lied before. He surprised us both this afternoon. Hell, maybe he’s got more nerve than we did at that age. Could be he’s a better actor than his daddy. Could be he’s still making it all up.”

“He sure knows more about sex than I did at that age.”

“You know plenty now. Maybe too much. We can’t even talk man-to-man like buddies. Sometimes I think you’re more comfortable with big-mouth whores and pervert queers who want to be women. I can’t help how it is with me. I’m goddamn turned off by all that. In a way, you’re kind of weird yourself and—fuck, what’s the word? Cynical! Too cynical for me. Maybe we’re just not a match, not a pair.”

Where the hell did all this come from?

And with that, Bud threw the soda bottle into the trash can and stormed inside.

Bud was slumped in a chair in his room, his face in his hands. I locked the door, turned on a light and knelt beside him.

“I can’t never be a father,” he whispered. “And I don’t have any nephew to buddy up with and teach things to.”

I patted his leg. “Me neither. Never will.”

“You may laugh, Dan. But I always wanted to be a dad.”

“I’m not laughing at you, Sarge.”

“That kid could be my son. He’s—hell, I ain’t blind to his wide-open face and ballsy attitude. You notice a boy like that.”

Half crying, half growling, Bud leaned forward. “I know you ain’t making eyes at him, either. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s a man, or learning to be. He can’t do it on his own. But he sure as hell don’t need anything like what old Coach Andy put me through.”

Bud’s shoulders went rigid. The sad, sexy, remembering growl took over and he was back in the shower with his high school baseball coach, his mentor and best friend. “That’s a big ’un you got there, Buddy Boy. Hot water and bar soap feels good down there, don’t it? Yeah, yeah? Looks like the bat you hit that home run with. Yeah, Christ, me, too. Just look at my pecker. Aw, Boy. It gets that way after my boys win me a game. Aw, Christ, boy. Goddamn, hey, look at you. Look at you. Hey! Aw, no. Aw, aw. What you doing? No. Aw, Christ. Hands to yourself now, boy. None of that. None of that. Hands to yourself.”

I took Bud’s right hand and drew it to my lips. “Your old coach never knew what he missed,” I whispered.

Bud let me open his hand and kiss his palm. “Coach Andy, he set me back, what? Years? He didn’t intend to. There was no meanness in it. I know that. He wouldn’t of hurt his favorite Buddy Boy. I know damn well neither one of us would do anything like that to Junior—Chuck, I mean.”

“A lot of people probably think just that, though.” I kissed the tips of Bud’s fingers. “That men like us go after boys like Chuck, fuck them right out of the cradle, turn them into fairies and homos before they’ve kissed their first girl.”

Bud freed his hand and moved into my arms. He was suddenly kneeling in front of me, pulling me close, kissing my neck, licking my ears. His mouth moved down to my bare chest. His hands were on my belt buckle, the buttons at the waist, the zipper and trunks. Bud suddenly laughed. “Like breaking into a bank down here. Let’s get all this armor off you. Here, get down on the rug with me. I want to see what we got to work with.”

I kicked off my shoes. He pulled the pants and shorts halfway down my thighs and crawled on top of me. Gently stroking the hair below my navel, he moved his face down to my waist. “Gorgeous. You’re gorgeous when you get this way. You ready for me? Looks like it. Tastes like it.” He touched my leg just below my balls, then gently ran his fingertips upward, tracing the creases on both sides of my scrotum. “Feels like it.”

“I’ve been ready for a week, Buddy Boy. Careful.” I rolled out from under him. “Careful. We’ve got time, plenty of time, take your time, Buddy.”

Rocking backwards, I pulled the khakis and trunks over my feet and kicked them away. Bud was wearing only shorts now, so he was just as easy to strip. I slipped my thumbs inside the waistband. Down came the sweaty cotton, exposing his stubby, rigid cock and drawn-up balls. He leaned back, supporting himself on his elbows, knees apart, seeking my eyes, nodding yes, yes. Connecting. I touched him like he’d touched me, mirroring, tracing the creases and touching the tip, moving on him as gently as I could, sliding the foreskin slowly down and back, down and back, tasting him.