by David Stukas
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
“It still sounds like Michael. A backhanded comment, followed by a shallow apology, then a one-eighty-degree change of direction in the conversation about the size of the box on some guy.”
“Just kidding, Robert. You have a perfect body, but even better, it’s attached to a perfect mind.”
I pinched myself just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming this guy up.
“Look, Marc, the police are all over this case and they’re watching everyone like a hawk. And if they’re not keeping an eye on me, the press is taking up the slack. I can’t even take a crap without them asking me about it. Just because someone broke into my apartment looking for the CD with all the pictures on it ...” I began to say.
“They broke into your apartment?!” Marc exclaimed.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean the bodybuilder killer did it. Eventually, everyone in New York gets their apartment broken into.”
“Let me ask you one question, Robert.”
“Yes?”
“Did they steal your laptop?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Robert, this is serious. I’m worried for you.”
“You ought to be. I had some pictures of me on my computer that I certainly don’t want getting out into circulation. I’m kind of wearing a saddle on my back and being ridden by a German count who is naked save some fancy cowboy boots with spurs.”
“Robert, you’ve shocked me! When you were here, I had to plead with you to get you to wear the Desert Storm cammies during sex. I should have tried the saddle first.”
The guy had a sense of humor. Monette’s wit was razor sharp. Michael ... well ... there goes my theory. Since Michael claimed never to have picked up a book in his life and had little interest in movies or any other form of culture, he had none of the shared-culture base so essential to a sense of humor. Plus, he was incredibly wealthy—or at least his family was. The funniest people, I have found, come from the middle and lower classes—there’s so much more to overcome and satirize. From the wealthy person’s point of view, there’s nothing funny about hearing a story about a debutante playing tennis or a gazillionaire playboy falling off a polo pony. But a middle- or a lower-class person could have you bunching up phlegm over the same incident told from their point of view—on the other side of the polo grounds fence. This may explain why Dina Merrill or Gloria Vanderbilt never did good stand-up comedy.
But I digress.
To sum things up, Marc made me promise to phone him immediately if anything happened and to keep a sharp eye out for anyone suspicious. We exchanged kisses over the telephone, said our goodbyes, and hung up.
I retrieved my protein shake from the refrigerator, drank it all down like a good little boy, then had a quick shower.
While I was sitting on my bed applying moisturizer to my perpetually dry elbows, I dialed a phone number located in Brooklyn. Little did I know that this fateful telephone call would not just change the course of my life forever, but set up a chain of events that would lead to a bloody nose, another body falling from a balcony—this time, in front of my eyes—and a tragic loss to the Leaping Lesbians of Park Slope soccer team.
4
Watch That Last Step—It’s a Doozy!
“Hello? Monette?”
“Robert?”
“No, Barbara Eden—who else did you think it was?”
“I saw your debut on the evening news! Are you okay, Robert?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, if you don’t count my desire to fill one of those oversize squirt guns with urine and soak the reporters that have been dogging me all day long.”
“Someone broke into your apartment and ransacked it, didn’t they?”
I was stunned. Monette, perhaps the world’s greatest unknown detective (and certainly the tallest), was becoming scary in her ability to sense trouble.
“How did you know!” I exclaimed.
“Marc told me a half hour ago.”
“So why did he call you?”
“Robert, he’s really concerned! This guy’s madly in love with you and he asked me to look out for you. So you got broken into, huh?”
“Well, you don’t have to sound so calm about it,” I remarked.
“My apartment’s been broken into dozens of times, but there’s nothing to take. After all, who’d steal mystery novels?”
Monette had a point. She claims to have read every detective novel ever written, and a trip to her apartment would confirm that claim. Her modest one-bedroom apartment in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn was lined from floor to ceiling with mystery novels. If you wanted to sit down, you had to move a pile of books. If you wanted to eat something, another pile needed to be shifted. In fact, if you wanted to move in her apartment, you had to step over piles of Dorothy L. Sayers, Sue Grafton, and Agatha Christie. And these were her favorite mysteries that she had kept—she’d donated dump-truck loads of crime novels to the library.
“They get anything?” Monette inquired.
“No, they just wrecked the place searching for the CD, which they got—the copy of it. Oh yeah, they took my laptop.”
“... assuming the CD pictures were on your computer as well. You’re lucky someone broke in.”
“Why, because it’s the first time in years that I managed to get a man in my apartment?”
“No, silly,” Monette chided me. “Don’t you see?”
“Apparently not.”
“Whoever burgled your place thinks they’ve got the original disk. They might leave you alone now.”
“Monette, you’re a genius, but you’ve forgotten one thing: It doesn’t guarantee that the murderer got the disk. It could be just one of the guys on it who doesn’t want his pictures plastered all over the tabloids.”
“True. Are the photos that bad?”
“Well, one of the guys is dressed in diapers and another is having a traffic cone stuck up his bum. You be the judge if you’d want to see that in the newspapers or magazines.”
“I’ve seen worse ones in the New York Post,” Monette said. “A traffic cone—that’s one I haven’t heard.”
“You should see the stuff on that disk ... things I didn’t even know existed.”
“Like what?” Monette probed.
“Well, I’m not going to go into the disgusting things, but one guy was into being stepped on.”
“Kicked?”
“No, stepped on like he was really small, and Cody, the trainer, was really big.”
“It’s called microphilia,” Monette explained.
“How does everyone know so much about this?” I asked.
“The Internet. That, and the fact that I was talking online to some lesbian who was thrilled by the fact that I stand six-feet-four-inches tall.”
“So she likes tall women?”
“No, it goes much deeper than that. She has a room in her house where everything is really big. You know, chairs seven feet high, dresser drawers so big you have to climb them.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Guess what her online name was.”
“Tiny Tina?”
“Nope. LillyPutian. Get it? Lilliputian.”
“Monette, don’t you ever accuse me again of making some really wrong picks when it comes to dates. LillyPutian. That puts my feces-throwing Scott in the shade.”
“Robert, you make it sound like casual feces tossing. Scott threw his own feces at the mayor’s car more than once. He hit Martha Stewart’s limo three times.”
“Yes, Monette, but at least he was making a political statement.”
“A political statement? Robert, need I remind you that he was doing it because the mayor dismissed his plan to dig under Grand Central Station to unearth Hitler’s bunker that he claimed was hidden there. And as for the reasons behind creaming Martha Stewart’s car, I ... I ... think I can muster some sympathy for his feelings.”
“Okay, okay, so neither of us have been very successful in the past
in securing decent dates,” I admitted.
“Well, you have. How’s Marc?”
“Fine. He’s in the middle of some big automobile party. Good money.”
“Well, that’s nice. Maybe now he can afford to take you in as his boy-toy and you can go live in Palm Springs and swim and write novels all day.”
“There’s just one little hitch in that plan, Monette.”
“What’s that?”
“I need to keep someone from murdering me first.”
“Now just calm down, Robert. Why don’t you tidy up your apartment first, then pack a bag and spend a night over here? And take a cab—I don’t want you riding the subway.”
“Okay, Monette, but can you keep that Tasmanian devil cat away from me while I’m there? She’s always looking at me like she wants to sink her claws into my back.”
“Amelia? She wouldn’t hurt a fly, Robert.”
“The last time I was there, she flew out from behind a cabinet and went for my jugular.”
“She was just playing.”
“You taught her to hate men.”
“Yes, I enrolled her at the Lesbian Separatist Man-Hater Obedience School. Now she only follows the commands of women. I just can’t tell which woman—she doesn’t do a single thing I tell her to do.”
“I’ll see you in about two hours. Right now, I have to pick up what’s left of the pieces of my life and pack a bag. Lock up the cat, would you—in chains?”
Park Slope in Brooklyn is only a short cab ride away from Manhattan, but it’s worlds away in attitude. Life is slower there, less pretentious, and less competitive. This is perhaps why so many lesbians have chosen to live there instead of on the gilded isle I had just left behind. There might also be something to the fact that while imperious rental agents or real estate brokers might laugh you off the face of Manhattan at the mention of down payments that you thought were enormous, you might actually get in the door of a co-op in Park Slope.
Monette, following this theory, had a one-bedroom apartment that she, unfortunately, didn’t own, but rented because the rent was so low. So low, in fact, that she said she would die there and the reality was, rent control had that effect on people’s lives: If you got in early, you couldn’t give it up. Anyway, her place was on the second floor of a six-story apartment building, but what she lacked in view, she made up for in interior space—all necessary for housing the world’s greatest collection of crime novels. It even had a tiny balcony facing the street, reached by a double-hung window that could be thrown open to reveal a space the size of your average bath mat that was actually the roof for a bay window for the apartment downstairs, but Monette’s entrepre-neuring landlords had seized on this opportunity like a fly on the proverbial pile of shit and had a small platform built to enable a person foolish enough to stand on it to do so. Anyway, the balcony, which was now home to a huge pot of white geraniums, beckoned to me as I arrived in front of Monette’s building. If you had cataracts, blocked out the occasional honking car horn, and had three zombie cocktails in you, you’d swear you were in Tuscany. Bellissimo!
Monette buzzed me into the building and I climbed the stairs to the second floor, where my Amazon friend with the flaming red hair stood waiting for me like a old friend—which she was.
“Robert, c’mon in,” she bellowed, clapping me on the back like a longshoreman with an anger management problem.
It was just Monette. Being six foot four inches and of ample frame, it was easy for her to underestimate her own strength. But there were compensating factors. She was the star player for her champion lesbian soccer team, the Leaping Lesbians of Park Slope. With a clear shot, she could kick a field goal from more than halfway across the field, taking out the goalie in the process.
I looked everywhere for her hellcat, Amelia, but she was nowhere to be seen. I spotted Monette’s bedroom door down the hall and noted that it was closed, and hopefully the she-lion was on the other side of it, bolted in.
“Just put your bags anywhere, Robert. You know, I was thinking about your situation for a while.”
I am about to be murdered and she’s calling it a situation. I wondered what she called a mass murder?
Monette moved a pile of books the size of the Boulder Dam and sat down in a purple upholstered chair. “I don’t think anyone wants to kill you—at least not yet.”
“Gee, I feel better already, Monette.”
“No, now listen up and stop trying to be funny—which I know you are.” She gave me a little wink that made me feel that everything was going to be fine. “If someone wanted you dead, they would have done it already. They got into your apartment. They could have been waiting there, hiding in your bathroom with a garrote in their hands. You walk in, and screech!” she said, throwing an imaginary rope around my neck and tightening it with a quick pull of the arms. “It’s quick, easy, and best of all, quiet.”
I sat there, too terrified to move—or breathe. I could feel the rope around my pretty little neck already, the gloved hands of my assailant briskly rubbing against my ears as I struggled to stomp on his foot and free myself. He would go down like dead weight as I would spin around, whisking the Walther PPK from my concealed suit jacket holster and firing several times into the body of my assassin. I would adjust my bow tie, brush the dust off my tuxedo, and seat myself back at the baccarat table. Bond. James Bond.
I heard Monette’s voice from afar.
“Robert? Tell me something. You didn’t see the news broadcast of you coming out of your building this morning, did you?”
My reply was instant and decisive. “No, and I never want to see another news program again as long as I live, which is saying a lot since I love Katie Couric.”
“Well, I think you should see what I recorded while I was at work,” Monette gently suggested. “I don’t normally record the news, but with the circumstances you find yourself in, I wanted to keep an eye on how the media is handling you.”
“Why, I didn’t say anything to the reporters. You didn’t happen to catch any of the reporters lifting my wallet from my back pants pocket, did you?”
“No, but I got something you should see and I want you to sit down when you watch it.”
This wasn’t looking good. I could tell Monette was handling this issue with the delicacy of a bomb diffuser with Parkinson’s disease. Careful was the word.
She moved a pile of books on the sofa along with a catnip toy and put them both on the floor at my feet. She slipped a videocassette into the VCR and there I was leaving my building, gym bag in hand. I watched as I stood on the top step, confronted for the first time by the reporters and the flashes of their cameras and the spotlights of the television cameras. I watched myself stand there, my genitals showing from the gap in my pants fly, which I had forgotten to zip up.
“OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD!” I exclaimed in agony.
“That’s exactly what I said when I saw it.”
“OH NO, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” I screamed again, shaking my head in agony and covering my eyes, hoping that this was all a dream. I uncovered my eyes for an instant and discovered that it wasn’t.
“I can never go out in public again!” I lamented. “The one day I don’t wear underwear because every pair is in the dirty clothes pile and I haven’t been to the Laundromat is the one day I walk out in front of dozens of reporters with my fly open.”
Monette had a smile on her face and was desperately trying to suppress it. “Maybe we should change the subject for now. You said that whoever broke into your apartment took your laptop?”
“Yes, but it was insured. At least one thing is going my way—if you can look at a burglary as a positive event. Now I can get a bigger model.”
“I’m so happy for you. Anyway, can they open your files, or are they protected in some way, like with a password?”
“Both. Just to log into my computer, you need to have a password. Then the file is protected too. But you’d have to be a genius to figure out the password.�
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“Is it berunkis?” Monette suggested.
“How the fuck did you know? No one knows that word, except for my grandmother, Martha the Obscure.”
“Oh, c’mon, Robert. You use that word all the time. You think it’s safe because no one knows Lithuanian. You made the fatal mistake of telling me one time—I just figured that you would use it because it was as obscure as the tales your grandmother told you.”
“Anyway, the only way to get the computer usable again is to erase the entire disk and reformat it, destroying the contents at the same time.”
“Okay, so whoever stole your computer knows that it’s inaccessible but they have your laptop and the CD that was lying next to it on your desk. So they probably think their work is done. We might be able to eliminate one culprit from our list of suspects.”
“Yes, but who? We haven’t even started asking them questions,” I reminded her.
“It’s better than nothing. The one suspect that seems the least interested in getting their hands on the CD might be our murderer.”
“But what if my burglars aren’t the actual murderers—just men who want to keep their secret sex life just that—secret?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out over the course of the next few days,” Monette responded. The girl already had a plan. “We say we’ve still got the CD, or a copy of it, and we use that as our leverage to get in to see our suspects.”
“Yeah, and look where it got the first person who tried that: on Madison Avenue, being scraped off the pavement with putty knives.”
Monette held her arm high into the sky as if waving to a bird of prey. When Monette was on to something, she could get pretty dramatic with her hands. Thank goodness she didn’t have priceless Ming china in the house.
“In all this confusion, we need to stick to the basics. First, who would resent having to pay blackmail money for the pictures? And second, who had the opportunity to commit the crime? What was the name of the first guy. Uh, Obie ... ?”
“Cody. Cody Walker,” I corrected her.
“Yes. So he had this sideline business ... making people’s fantasies come true. So why kill the second bodybuilder? What was his name?”