Only Make Believe (3 page)

A few minutes later, when Tommy returned to the piano and Carmen opened with “Happy Talk,” I nudged my buddy and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

Without looking my way, he whispered back, “I missed you, too, Lieutenant. Was a terrible weekend. Goddamn terrible three days. Tell you about it later.”

“You ready to go upstairs? We can play strip poker.”

“I need to do a walkthrough first.”

I finished my beer and stood up. “Lead the way, Sarge.”

Bud reached inside his jacket and patted his weapon. “Any problems I should be aware of? When I came in, Phil on the front desk said it’s been real quiet.”

Bud halted at the clubroom door. “Brian? We got any assholes in the house?”

Brian laughed. “One or two.”

“Keep an eye on those boys at the bar,” I said. “The tall one, Doc Shepherd’s brother in law, he’s tight and running his filthy mouth.”

“They give you any trouble,” Bud said, “knock their heads together and call the switchboard. Dan or somebody’ll know where to find me.”

Brian slid open the top drawer in his desk revealing a black leather pouch filled with ball bearings. “Oh, I do believe I can persuade any assholes to behave themselves,” he said. “Nobody’s getting out of line on my watch. Everything’s under control, gents.”

Bud slapped him on the back and went to work. We began our inspection with the dining room, kitchen, pantry, swimming pool, cabanas, boat dock, parking lots and locker rooms. Except for the kitchen, all were deserted and secure. We rode the elevator to seven, traded ass grabs and quick kisses on the roof and proceeded to march through the halls of every guest floor. Forty-five minutes later we ended up in my second-floor, river-view single.

Bud started pulling off his clothes before I even got the door locked. “Can’t hardly stand myself. I must smell like a goat.”

I touched the front of his pants. “A horny goat, yeah.”

“Feels good. Only I got to get in the shower.” He threw his jacket and shoulder holster at the sofa.

“Hold me a little first, OK?”

He tossed his shirt on top of the jacket, peeled off his undershirt and drew me close. “I need this, too, Lieutenant.”

I slipped one hand inside the back of his trousers and began stroking the rough hair on his ass. “You’re gonna get what you need, big man. Whatever you need. This OK?”

He kissed my neck and ears, then took a step back and began unbuttoning my shirt. His fingers were calloused and raw but he knew how to be gentle. He pulled the shirt off me, rubbed it across my chest and put it to his face.

I unbuckled his belt, undid the front of his pants and let them fall to his ankles. When I pushed his GI boxer shorts down his stubby cock rose up to meet my hand.

He shuddered and took another step back. “Damn, goddamn, Lieutenant. I always forget how good it feels when you do that.”

“Gonna get better, Sarge. Just as soon as I get undressed.”

“Shower, shower.” He stepped out of his pants, pulled off his shoes and socks and headed for the bathroom, his board-stiff erection leading the way.

By the time he got the hot water going, I was stripped and in position behind him.

He laughed when I applied a bar of Dial soap to the crack of his wet ass. “Don’t know what feels better, Dan, this shower or you doing that.”

I replaced the soap with two fingers, playing, not pushing. He bent forward and the hot water pelted my face. I reached around in front of him. He’d gone soft so I turned him around to face me. “You OK, Bud?”

“Sure I am. No—actually no, no I ain’t. But it ain’t about you. I got to do a follow-up report on the weekend fuck-up first thing tomorrow. Had a trooper hurt bad this morning. We got this shave-tail lieutenant newly assigned to the unit. Only they ain’t gonna let me fault him for it.”

He reached down to touch me. I was still hard as stone. “You listening to me, Dan?”

“Sure. What about the shavetail? Keep doing that.”

“I’ve said it before. Except for Captain Yeomans, they’ve bled us of good leadership, sent every officer with at least a month’s field experience to Korea or Parris Island. We need more by-the-book training. My troopers and the NCOs both, we was already wore out. And this lieutenant had the young troops out jogging through fucking sawgrass before the sun was up.”

“That’ll teach ’em to join the Marines. Sawgrass can kill a man.”

“They got sawgrass in Guadalcanal, not fucking Korea. All it does is snow and rain in Korea. I blame myself. Should of stopped him.”

Taking the bar of Dial from me, he soaped my cock and balls. “You sure do stay hard. This feel good?”

I thrust into his fist, pulled back and thrust again. “I had a tough time saving it for you. You remember Mrs. Simms? The rich widow from Charleston with the diamond bracelets? She got after me in the club last night. I was so horny for you—and feeling so lonely—I almost went upstairs with her.”

Bud stepped around me, carefully turned me until the soap was washed away, then cut off the water. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He stepped out of the shower and started toweling down.

I rinsed off and followed him. “You OK? I was kidding. Just kidding.”

Suddenly, he grabbed me, growled and said, “Can’t trust you with loose women. That right? That right?” Laughing, he wrestled me out of the bathroom and onto the bedroom rug, tickling my ribs and rubbing me down with the towel. “Have to show you what’s worth waiting for.”

He rolled me onto my back. I always loved it when he surprised me with his brawny, good-natured antics.

“Isn’t any woman can do this for you. That right?” He was on top of me, first riding me lengthwise, like a canoe on rough water, then upright, a jockey on a horse, his cock hard again, pointing at my face. “Not like this, huh? You lonely for this, huh?”

I tried to reach him with my mouth. He shook his butt and slid back, his taut foreskin just out of reach. “Been on my mind, you and me like this, the last two days.”

He pushed forward and let me taste him. “Oh, God,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah.”

We rolled around for perhaps twenty minutes, one taking the initiative and then the other, happy to be together, men playing boys’ games—or maybe it was the other way round—wary of getting too close to a mutual explosion, yet always ready for the suddenly desperate word or unmistakable gesture that meant “Now, yes, with me, now, yes.”

“Let’s get in bed,” I finally said.

“You ready to finish up?”

“I’m ready to get a pillow under my head.”

“I might put a pillow under something else. So I get the proper angle of attack.”

“Think you’re so smart.”

“You like the way I think when we do this, huh, Lieutenant?”

“Up we go, Bud. Come on.”

We arranged ourselves across the narrow double bed and snuggled up close, sweating lightly in the chill room, nowhere near satisfied but going to be.

“Might take a nap,” Bud finally said, running lazy fingers through the red-blond hair on my chest.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Leave the bathroom light on, OK? Be good to see your mug when I wake up.”

“You’re still hard as a mountain goat.”

“I’ll stay that way if you don’t quit pulling on it. Turn over.”

“So you can fuck me in your sleep?”

“Hell, no. I want you to be awake for … that kind of … ride.”

A few seconds later he drifted off. I’m not sure how long he slept, or whether I slept at all. A little after two a.m. the phone on the bedside table began ringing. I reached for it automatically.

“Boss, this is Phil, down at the front desk. We got a problem on five.”

Bud wrapped an arm around my waist, bit my neck and started to poke my butt.

“What kind of problem? Can it wait?”

“Don’t think so, boss. It’s pretty bad. I already phoned to the hospital. Ambulance ought to be here any minute. We can’t find Detective Wright. You want I should I call the police?”

“Forget the police,” I told Phil. “Detective Wright’s in the building. Tell me what happened?”

The desk clerk’s voice had gone breathless with panicky self-importance. “Guest in room 522 got attacked. School supplies dealer from Bradenton. Nicholas C. DiGennaro. Club member. Checked in Sunday morning. Party of one.”

I gently pushed Bud off me and reached for my pants. “Who found him?”

“The guest phoned downstairs, asked for Carmen. Operator told him Carmen wasn’t available. He cursed her out. After that, he must have dropped the phone. Operator sent the bellboy up with a pass key. Room was unlocked. Guest was unconscious, phone off the hook. Bellboy called me from the room, said it was bad, terrible, never seen nothing like it. A lot of blood.”

“Meet me on five in three minutes.”

We took the fire stairs. As part-time house dick, Bud was my physical back-up and managerial muscle. But as a part-time Lee County detective he worked cases, not hours. At the moment, he wasn’t officially on duty or even assigned to the case—assuming there was a case, if and when it became necessary to inform the authorities.

When we got upstairs, the medics had just entered the room. Phil stood at the door, his hand over his mouth.

I looked inside. A middle-aged medic in a white uniform knelt by the victim, checking eyes, nose and mouth with a flashlight. “Talk to me lady, can you talk to me?” He looked up at Phil. “She’s out cold but breathing pretty good.”

Lady? Phil said it was a man.

The second, younger medic applied a stethoscope to the victim’s corseted chest. “It ain’t no lady, Chet.”

The men’s white-jacketed torsos blocked my view of the victim’s face. At first, all I could see was a substantial form clad in a tits-to-hips girdle, garter belt, Nylon stockings and a single high-heel shoe.

Bud pushed past me, identified himself, glanced down at the victim and muttered, “What the fuck?”

I stepped closer for a better look. Framed by the garter belt and a nest of wiry pubic hair lay a dark, sausage-like penis and a scrotum the size and shape of a small eggplant. The man’s legs were as hairy as his crotch but his solid chest, shoulders and arms were shaved. There was a rough cut or scrape high up on his thigh.

“He, she, whatever. This individual’s lost some teeth,” the older medic said. “Bit the tongue on the right side. Jaw could be broken. Shoulder, maybe. Possible concussion. Lipstick the same color as the blood, how about them apples?”

“Don’t like the sound of the heart,” his associate answered. “We better transfer Miss Pansy to the stretcher and get on downstairs.”

“Right. We can’t do nothing for him here. Could be internal injuries. Sawbones gonna have to see to him.”

“Probably deserved it,” his partner said. “Turns my stomach.”

“Asked for it, yeah.”

“They all do.”

“Fuckin’ perverts—wanting to be women.”

“Wantin’ to have a pussy instead of fucking ’em.”

“We ought to change shifts, you know that, Newt? Not work so many graveyards.” He looked up at Phil. “You want to call that elevator for us?”

I glanced around the room. The unmade bed was pushed sideways, catty-corner to the window. The desk chair was overturned. On the dresser, Floria Tosca’s rhinestone tiara, earrings and bracelets lay atop the neatly folded white gloves. A large pair of lacy women’s panties and a white athletic supporter with a single strap had been kicked into a corner, coming to rest beside the other high-heel shoe.

“You got a name on this cocksucker?” the younger medic asked.

“Nicholas C. DiGennaro,” Phil answered. “From Bradenton.”

“Diva Capri,” I snapped, not thinking. “She was putting on a show.”

She? Miss Pansy? ‘They all
do’?
Listen up, Cracker boys. They all
don’t.
And I should know. I’m a cocksucker and a butt-fucker. But I don’t wear dresses and I never wanted a pussy. I’m a man who loves men—one particular man at the moment. I’m not like you think
,
not like the diva
.
Nothing like that.

I inspected the diva more closely. The medics’ conventional sarcasm, the risk that they would connect Bud and me to the injured transvestite, my lack of control over the situation—it all angered and frustrated me, made me feel half ashamed that I couldn’t defend the victim out loud.

Bud caught the look on my face, held up a warning finger and turned to the older medic. “Chet, we’ll need a full report on this individual’s injuries. Looks like some kind of assault-and-battery charge is gonna be involved.”

“We’ll see what we can do, detective,” Chet answered, an insolent edge to his voice. “But what’s the use? Beat-up cocksuckers don’t hardly ever press charges, do they? Wouldn’t that just be asking for more trouble, huh?”

“A full report,” Bud repeated, his tone cold steel. “This individual is a guest from out of town. We go by the book.”

Bud was handling this better than I was. His face was blank, neutral; his message strictly business:
Just doing my job, gents, so work with me
.