The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (65 page)

“What did you and he talk about?”

I decided to let him have it straight. “He said he was going to leave everything he owned to me. He said he was dying.”

“You knew him for a long time?”

“I didn’t know him from a hole in the wall.”

“But he just arrives on your doorstep and announces you’re his sole beneficiary. Did you know his personal estate is worth upwards of $30 million?”

“Nope.”

Pirelli shook his head. “How are you getting by now that your employer has fled the country?”

“Like everyone else, he screwed me, and left me on this fucking island. I’ve been trying to get off since.”

“Where were you between 8 and 9 a.m.?”

“Here.”

“Alone?”

I didn’t reply.

He snickered. “Look, I’ve interviewed everyone on this island, and you know what? Every one of them has someone else who will corroborate their whereabouts when Ashton Bates was killed. Now that’s pretty funny, because if you can alibi yourself, I have to start looking for a murderous frogman who climbed onto this rock and killed Bates. So, amuse me – were you alone?”

“No.”

“Who was here with you?”

“A married lady.”

“I see. And she’ll back you up?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“What did you have to drink last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“How about a very expensive and rare Jamaican rum?”

The sergeant held out a paper bag and Pirelli lifted a bottle gingerly by the mouth. It was the bottle Gretchen offered to me. There was dried blood and hair stuck to the bottom.

“Maybe.”

“The sergeant here is going to take your fingerprints. You see, this was the murder weapon. The neck, which the killer would have held, has been wiped clean, but not the bottom. What are the chances your prints are on it?”

“If it’s the bottle we shared when he came calling, I’d say there was a pretty good chance, along with the prints of his assistant, Gretchen.”

“Oh, by the way, what did you do with her?”

“What?”

“Uh, sorry. But, you just gave me a motive, a murder weapon, and opportunity. Your alibi is unreliable.”

“How do you see that?”

“I’m projecting here, but you’re in tight straits. You’re given a chance at getting your hands on millions of dollars. You decide not to wait for him to die; he could change his mind, so you help him along with that bottle. Probably took care of the woman too. As for your married lady, well, I think it’s a safe bet she’s going to say she was home, snuggled up with her hubby all night. You’re affiliated with a known criminal. You’re in a world of shit, friend.”

“I’d say you had a tough sell. Besides, he was just blowing smoke out his ass, he liked to play games.”

“Doesn’t make any difference. I just have to convince a jury that you thought he was on the level. In the meantime, we’ll be checking his will. So, I have enough right now to bring you over to Barnstable and lock you up, but I think I’ll let you stew right here. Hell, you can’t go anywhere.”

Could things get any more fucked up?

I stayed outside drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels. Night came and far over the sound the lights glowed on the Vineyard. It was Saturday night and they would be getting ready for some hard partying over there. Beyond the sound the Cape beckoned. But I was stuck on that fucking rock, imprisoned like Dante.

The whine of an engine drew my attention to the Jeep headlights bouncing toward the house. The vehicle stopped and Bones beckoned to me to get in. A chill ran up my back.

“C’mon,” he barked.

I took the bottle with me and climbed in with him. “Where are we going?”

“A place.”

“Oh.”

We drove on in silence and it began to gnaw at me that Bones might be employed in another errand, paying off another favor. We drove to the edge of the shore until a weather shack loomed in the headlights. They were scattered all around the island. Shelters for hikers.

“Get out,” he said.

“How come?”

A woman’s voice answered from the darkness. “We have much to discuss.”

It was Gretchen. Bones grinned. “Take it easy.”

He popped the Jeep into gear and drove off.

Gretchen held an oil lamp and beckoned me to follow her inside the shack. Inside a few dozen candles flickered. She sat on a small wooden bench and motioned to me to join her.

“You set me up,” I said. “Why?”

“All will be revealed. Ashton’s work is playing out just as he predicted.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s a play, a reality play, if you will. Trust him.”

“Trust him? He’s dead. Someone cracked his skull with that bottle you handed me.”

“All according to plan.”

“Lady, you’re nuts, and so was your boyfriend.”

She frowned. “Everything will fall into place. You will be hearing from Mr Pirelli, no later than tomorrow.”

“No shit. He’ll be coming for me with a set of handcuffs.”

“You are too tense. Drop your trousers.”

“What? Jesus, lady, there’s a time for fun and then there’s . . .”

She pressed one palm against my chest and pushed me back like I was a rag doll. With her other hand, she deftly unzipped my jeans. I was pushing myself back up when she yanked my pants down to my ankles. Before I could get to my feet she clamped one hand around my cock and the other around my balls. I might as well have been a kitten held by the scruff, I couldn’t move.

She wedged her thumb into the hollow at the underside of my cock, and instantly electrical pulses hummed up my rod. She released my balls as the pulses increased in speed and intensity. All at once all I could focus on was the buzz thrumming up my cock.

“There, relax,” she soothed.

“Is . . . is this what you did – to Dodie?”

“Something similar. That girl lives on the ends of her nerves. I could have kept her coming until she fell into a coma.”

That’s where I feared I was headed. I desperately need to come, but I couldn’t fire.

“Please!” I hissed.

“Oh, you’re going to beg? Good – you’re such a good subject.”

“I’m going to explode.”

“Patience.”

“Jesus, please let me . . .”

She slid her thumb down to my balls and my come splat loudly against the wooden walls. Afterward all the tension drained away. Gretchen cradled me in her arms and I passed out.

I stepped into bright sunshine and sucked in two lungsful of ocean air. I didn’t even have a hang-over, though I deserved one. Gretchen stood off toward the shore. She turned and smiled.

“Feeling better?”

“I feel great.” Then the reality of my situation set in. “Good enough for a guy who’s about to take the fall for murder.”

“Come,” she ordered, like I was a pet dog.

We walked to the village and put in to Bones’ Tavern. We’d no sooner sat down when the phone rang.

Bones lifted the receiver. “Yeah, he’s here.” He held the phone out to me.

“Yeah.”

“It’s Pirelli. We rushed the autopsy on Bates. He was terminal all right. In another week or two he would have been in agony. Docs confirmed time of death too.”

“So what?”

“There is a will. It’s filed in Worcester County and it was recently amended.”

I could see Pirelli building his case.

“Yeah, and?”

“We would have been searching for weeks before we found it, but we got an anonymous tip last night. But the reason I’m calling you is what happened when we tried to look at it.”

“Huh?”

“Justice William Thackeray Ayers tried to have it sealed.”

“Why?”

“Someone with some deep juice wants it kept under wraps. We’re talking real old school – like back before the Revolution old school.”

“No shit.”

“You want to get on my bad side – you try to obstruct justice. I don’t give a shit who you are; I’m on you like a pit bull.”

“I believe you.”

“I’ll pick you up in 15 minutes.”

“Huh?”

“We’re taking a helicopter ride.”

“Where?”

“Fitchburg – that’s where the documents are. I want you there. I have a hunch you’ll spot what we’re looking for before we do.”

Finally, I was off the island, winging over the south coast in a state police chopper. We left Buzzards Bay behind and beelined northwest until we passed the turnpike, then due north from Worcester. We landed at the small municipal airport and piled into a couple of cruisers for the ride into Fitchburg.

It was a decaying mill city in Massachusetts’ version of Appalachia. It had seen its best days too long ago to remember, and even its worst days hadn’t been tallied yet. But in the center of ramshackle buildings and abandoned factories was an oasis, a garden park that lay like a welcoming carpet to the entrance to the Northern Worcester County Registry.

We were met by a big Irish glad-hander with a nose like Bardolph, all flaming and bulbous. “Hi-Hi-Hi! Bernard Shanahan,” he greeted us.

“Pirelli, Cape and Islands ADA.”

“Good to meet ya, and how’s your mother?”

That threw Pirelli off. “Urn, she’s fine.”

“And God bless her.”

He shook my hand. “And how’s your mother?”

“She died about four years ago.”

“And don’t we miss her.”

He led us into a room, ornately detailed in carved wood. “I laid everything out for you. Mr Bates was good enough to leave an inventory and instructions.”

He closed the doors behind him and we went to work. It didn’t take long. Ashton’s instructions read like a script.

“I got it,” I said. It was all there on a bright yellow piece of paper that stuck out like a whore’s tits in church.

It was around 11 o’clock and I was alone in Bones’ Tavern. I knocked back a slug of Jack and waited.

Bradley blustered through the door and stood like a raging bear in the middle of the room.

“You? Where’s Pirelli?”

“He’ll be here.”

He laughed. “Your hash is in the fire, mister. I knew you were trash, a bag man for a thieving chink.”

“But I’m not a murderer.”

“Ha! We’ll see if a jury says so.”

“I’m not a cocksucker, either.”

He went as still as a rock. “What?”

“The night of the key party, all you bored bluebloods looking for a little thrill in your gray lives, and here comes Ashton, the gamesman, the jester.”

His ears were bright red.

“Draw a key, and get a blow job – or give a blow job – in the dark. Let the sucker guess the suckee – what a hoot.”

“You have no business talking about that night. If Walker had the balls to discipline his wife . . .”

“Yeah, Walker and his balls.”

I could hear his teeth grinding together.

“You wanted to get your mouth on those balls, didn’t you? His dick too, just like when you were kids, experimenting at Camp Bugger-Boy or whatever.”

“You prick.”

“You knew Ashton at Yale, but you knew him from years before. He was some kind of cousin umpteen times removed. Ashton knew you were in the closet, because he was right in there with you, but he wanted to come out in a big way. You ended up sandbagging him.”

“You can’t prove any of this.”

I ignored him. “When Ashton came to the island with all his wonderful games and diversions, he and you got to talking about Yale, about secrets. Maybe you got drunk and told him how you used to fool around with your younger cousin who looked up to you like some kind of family hero.

“So, Ashton came up with a way for you to taste your cousin’s cock and no one would be the wiser. You were the guy he sent to Walker’s room. It must have broken your heart that the dumb prick didn’t even realize it was you, let alone tell the difference between a man’s tongue and a woman’s. Of course, by then he was consumed by his current kink – watching Dodie get fucked by other men.

“So, no harm, no foul – until Ashton spilled what he’d done. What a prick, he revealed just enough.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Like you killed Ashton? He told you he left everything to me – a total stranger – including his piece of this accursed island. That must have driven you crazy.”

“Bastard! When they put you away his will will be voided by the courts. Ashton’s property will revert to the Chaukunamaug Trust.”

“That’s what you were counting on. But, maybe with his dying gasp, he told you about a document in his papers that spelled out the whole lurid affair. You see, he was playing a game, and using you like a pawn. He loved games – ‘reality dramas’ he called them.

“He was dying, within a couple of weeks he’d have to take mega doses of morphine, and he didn’t want to linger like that. He engineered his own murder, and he knew you so well, he knew he could goad you into it.”

“You can’t . . .”

“Yes, we can. Pirelli made it to the papers before your uncle, the Superior Court justice, could order them sealed and locked up for years with motions until they conveniently became lost or damaged. Bag man? I can’t hold a candle to you phony bastards.”

Bradley tottered toward me like a man suddenly drunk. Pirelli stepped from out of the back room with Bones and Gretchen. Two state troopers came through the door, took Bradley’s arms and put him in cuffs.

“Bradley Whitman,” Pirelli announced. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Ashton Bates.”

I bought a loft off Houston Street since returning to New York. Gretchen decorated it real nice. She’s been teaching me things: art, languages, cooking, how to hold an orgasm for up to a minute.

When we left the island I insisted on taking the ferry. I handed two five-dollar gold pieces to Al Benedict – fare for the ferryman, with a wish that I’d never ever return.