“Of course I have. Who hasn’t?”
“Have they tried to talk to you?” If they had it wasn’t in the files I was given. But then, unproductive interviews might not be.
“Yeah, they picked me up. Tried to push me around.”
“Push you around how?”
“They kept asking me about this Perelli guy who got murdered. I never heard of him but they kept saying I knew him, that I knew what happened to him, that I was there. That was the best, that I was there.” Alcohol was clogging my brain so I didn’t really know what he meant. Fortunately, he kept talking. “Finally, I said, ‘Tell me about this guy Perelli. Where was he murdered? When was he murdered?’ Come to find out he was murdered in nineteen seventy-two. Fuck them. In nineteen seventy-two I was seventeen years old. I was trying to pass fucking algebra. I mean, what do they think? That I skipped out on my homework to go whack some guy I never heard of?”
“They probably do think that. Catching a high school assassin would make their day.”
“Thing is, I’m nobody, and I want to stay nobody. I work part-time for Jimmy, that’s all. I pick up money at this bar, at that restaurant. Yeah, somebody doesn’t want to pay I make a few threats, mostly that I’m gonna call Jimmy. They still don’t pay; I go ahead and call Jimmy. He sends someone else to take care of it. I don’t know from nothing.”
“So you don’t have any ambitions in the Outfit?”
“Shit. I didn’t even know I was in the Outfit until the Feds told me. I run my uncle’s video store. He’s got three of them. Drive-In Video. We got drive through windows like you’re at the bank. You heard of them?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, you will. I’m saving up to open up one of my own.” He gave me a long, simmering look. “You got more questions?”
“No, I think that covers it. Thanks.”
I started to walk back to my friends. Quickly, he said, “I got a question.”
“Okay. What is it?”
He looked from side to side like he was going to tell me a secret. “You wanna fuck?”
“Sure, why not?” I said, quickly. The mental arithmetic was easy. I could fuck this sexy little mobster or I could fuck Bobby Martin who probably wouldn’t even bother to stop talking while I was doing it.
“You’re not too drunk are you?” Mickey asked.
“No. I’m fine.” Okay, I had no idea if I was too drunk. But I wasn’t going to say, “Yeah, never mind.”
We left the bar. I didn’t bother to say goodbye to anyone. Didn’t bother to tell Bobby there’d been a change of plans. Out on the street, I asked, “You have a car?”
“Of course, I have a car. What kind of a mook do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.”
He frowned at me and led me over to a brand new Camaro. It was white, with two red stripes down the hood, and a T-bar roof. Mickey noticed me looking the car over. “It’s a little loud, but I like it.”
I chuckled. “You should see my car.”
“Yeah? What you got?”
“It’s a Nova. Lime green. Black stripes. Mag Wheels.”
He nodded approvingly. “All right.”
When we got settled in the low-slung bucket seats, Mickey said, “We gotta go to your place.”
“Why? Do you live with your parents?”
“What’s it to you? It saves me a lot of money, okay?”
“Hey, it’s no big deal. Lots of guys live with their parents.” That wasn’t exactly true in my experience, but it seemed like a good thing to say.
“I don’t give a fuck what you think,” he said, suddenly sullen. His pride was wounded and I liked him better for it.
“I live on Lake Shore Drive just above Belmont.”
“Ritzy,” he said as he did a U-turn on Wells and got us headed north.
“I think it’s actually one of the cheapest buildings south of Evanston.”
“Okay, not ritzy.”
“I just moved in.”
The drive was about twenty blocks. I tried to figure out how many miles that might be, but alcohol and math don’t mix. Parking on Lake Shore Drive is crazy tight, so we drove around the block a couple of times.
Mickey told me to, “Pray to Parkella”
“Who?”
“Parkella the Goddess of parking.”
“Oh. Sure.” I tried to look like I might be praying which is about as close to praying as I came anymore. “You’re not Catholic?”
“Of course I’m Catholic.”
“Then you should be praying to Mother Cabrini.”
“Who’s that? She live in the projects?”
To be honest, I only remembered her because of Cabrini-Green. “No, she’s dead. She’s the saint who finds you parking spaces.”
“Not if Parkella finds me one first.” A minute or so later, he said, “Here we go.” And began to parallel park. “It never fails. Parkella always come through.”
Quickly, we walked up to my building. It was still a new experience to pull out my keys and open the door from the outer lobby to the inner lobby. I wondered how often I’d be doing it with a virtual stranger in tow, then thought, If they’re all as sexy as Mickey, hopefully often . In the elevator, I turned to give him a smile and he pulled me down for a kiss. It was sweet and wet. As soon as we got into the apartment he looked around. “There’s no bed?”
“It was worn out. I’m going to use my sofa bed for a while.”
“Yeah. Where’s the sofa bed?”
“It’s not here yet.”
“No kidding.”
“I just moved in yesterday.”
“So we’re going to fuck on the floor?” He seemed a little offended by the idea.
“Is that a first for you?”
“I’m not a whore.”
That made me laugh.
“What the fuck is funny?”
“Talking to you is like adding two and two and getting five.”
He eyed me for a long time. I’m not so sure he wasn’t doing some math in his head to figure out if two and two did really make five. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” he finally said.
“It’s more an observation.”
“This is the kind of situation where compliments help.”
“Turn around,” I told him.
He did. He was facing the lake so it was natural to say, “Nice view.”
“Drop your pants.”
He looked over his shoulder at me and then undid his belt. His jeans dropped to the floor. Underneath, he wore a pair of red Jockey shorts with a white waistband.
“And the underwear, too.”
Bending over, he pulled his underwear down. When he stood back up his T-shirt partly covered his ass.
“Lift up your shirt.”
His ass was ample and round, sitting on thick thighs. “That’s what I thought,” I said.
“What did you think?”
“That you have a nice ass.”
“I know I have a nice ass.”
“You wanted compliments. That’s a compliment. You have a nice ass. You have a very nice ass.”
“Yeah, what about the rest of me?”
“The rest of you goes well with your ass.”
He broke out laughing. “So it’s like that, huh?”
“Like what?”
“Like, you wanna fuck me.”
“Isn’t that why you came here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought I’d fuck you.”
I stepped over to him and pushed my hips up to his naked ass. And said, “Yeah. Maybe not.” My dick was getting hard and through my jeans I pushed it between the firm cheeks of his ass. I hoped this wasn’t going to be an issue. Then he arched his back and ground into me. I figured I could relax.
I nuzzled his neck, as he reached his arms behind him and undid my belt, then awkwardly unzipped my pants. While he did that, I reached around and grabbed him by the cock. He was hard, straining. It was a nice handful, l
onger than I’d expected. I liked it. My jeans slipped down my hips and my cock popped out. I’d skipped underwear that day. It was somewhere around, I just hadn’t felt like digging for it. Besides, it was sexy to go without sometimes. Mickey rubbed my prick up and down the crack of his ass while I pumped his. I chewed on his neck and managed to elicit a nice long moan.
A few minutes later we were crawling onto the makeshift bed I’d created on the floor. Our clothes had come off while traversing the few feet between the window and my temporary bedroom. Mickey was even better looking without his clothes. His belly was tight and his chest wide. He was muscled but not overly. I thought we might roll around for a bit first, but he got on his stomach and lifted his ass in the air. That was my cue.
“I’ll be right back,” I said and went to get the condom and lube out of the bathroom. Mickey kept his ass in the air and his face in the pillow. “Hurry,” he said. I did the best I could, given my unfamiliarity with condoms. I got the package open and rolled it down my cock, then lubed up my swathed dick and his ass. I aimed my cock and pushed into him.
“Oh, fucking Christ,” he moaned. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I pumped him slowly a few times to see if he’d kick me out. When he didn’t, I held him by the hips and began to drive into him hard and fast. I ran my hands down his back to his shoulders and grabbed onto them to leverage myself each time I pounded into him.
“I like way your hands feel on me,” he whispered.
I tried to comply by running my hands across his wide back, slipping around and tweaking his nipples. Placing my big hands on his narrow waist.
“That’s it, just like that. Make me happy,” he said. Making him happy seemed like a tall order, but if he meant for the next few minutes I might be able to pull it off.
Aside from the making of dubious choices, drinking has two very common effects on fucking. One is that it can make an erection impossible. Two, is that it can make coming a challenge. Usually you got one or the other. As I was fucking Mickey, I began to realize the second effect was taking hold. Which might have been fine, except I wanted to come. I really wanted to come. I rammed into him as hard as I could. Then I told him to squeeze his ass, tight. I closed my eyes and tried thinking about Joseph, that I was fucking Joseph, that it was Joseph’s ass squeezing my dick. It seemed like forever but it was probably just a minute later that I came. I shivered. Gave Mickey’s ass a few final pumps and than rolled off him to lie on the bedding. I pulled the condom off and dropped it onto the carpet next to the bedding. I’d deal with it later.
Almost immediately, Mickey was up and looking for his clothes.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Fucking gives me energy. I could go for a three mile run.”
Sometimes fucking gave me energy, too. But not that much.
I stretched out to pull my coat closer so I could get to my cigarettes. When I did, I rolled into a puddle of Mickey’s cum. “Oh, I didn’t know you came.”
“Of course I came. You think I’d have let you stop if I hadn’t?”
“We just met. I don’t know what you’d do.”
“Okay. For future reference, you’re not done unless I come.”
“Got it.”
He noticed the condom on the floor. He bent over and picked it up daintily between two fingers. “What’s this?”
“It’s a condom.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You just fucked me with a condom?”
“Yes. I did.”
“What do you think? I’m gonna get pregnant? It don’t work that way.”
“The condom prevents disease. You know, AIDS.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, only fags get AIDS.”
I was momentarily stunned. “And what are you and I?”
“We’re men. You don’t think you’re a fag, do you? Come on. Fags are little flitty things who talk with a lisp and like to play with girl’s hair. I’m not like that. Neither are you.”
I didn’t think my lack of a lisp would save me from AIDS. I didn’t think it would save Mickey either. He was dressed. I was relieved that he’d be leaving soon. He must have misread my look though, because he said, “I’d stay but I don’t sleep on the fucking floor.”
“Some other time then,” I said.
“Yeah, call me when you get a bed.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and put it on the windowsill. I could have gotten up and given him one of mine but I didn’t bother. Less than a minute later he walked out of my apartment.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up on Sunday morning with a hangover that pulsed and thundered like a Kansas tornado. Not that I’d ever been in a Kansas tornado, but they look pretty bad on the news. A couple of ideas floated around in my head as I took a bath. One was that I needed to get a shower curtain. Another was something that Sugar and Brian were talking about. Drug addicts got AIDS. Why did I think that meant something? Then the word “lesions” popped into my soggy head. What were lesions exactly? I wondered. They were blemishes. Sores. Tumors. Ross had lesions on his neck. Red and purple spots. Wes Berkson had lesions on his arm and his ankles. He was a drug addict. Shit. He had Karposi’s Sarcoma. He had AIDS. I got out of the bathtub and threw up into the sink. It didn’t help the pounding in my head one bit.
I brushed the taste of bile out of my mouth and then put on a lot of Polo. I stank of alcohol and knew it. But there was nothing I could do about it. Looking out the window, the sky was hazy and a little foggy. I tried to think where my umbrella was in case it started to rain and realized I had no idea. I finished dressing and left to go find my car. It was parked about half a block down from Brian’s. He was up in his condo asleep with Franklin. I envied them. I wanted to be asleep.
Driving out to Edison Park, I tried to think what it meant that Wes Berkson had AIDS. That was probably the thing he told his wife that caused her to stab him. Except that she killed Jane Weeks earlier that same day. Did Jane have AIDS too? Was she the one who gave it to Wes? Wes must have told Madeline that he was sick. And that Jane was sick.
So if AIDS was the reason then Madeline already knew. She already knew and planned the whole thing. It wasn’t a crime of passion it was the premeditated murder of two people. But why? Why kill people who were going to die anyway?
Then I remembered the insurance. Melody had said buying it was Wes’ idea. Not only did she kill a dying man, but his death would have meant—wait, no. Wouldn’t he have had to have a medical exam to get that much insurance? Okay, he might have found some kind of policy that didn’t require an exam but the minute they suspected he knew he had AIDS when he bought the policy they would cancel payment. The insurance was a dead end. The act of a desperate man and not much more. No, what I wanted to figure out was why? Why did Madeline kill two people dying of AIDS?
I pulled up in front of Mrs. Harker’s condo. Really, I just wanted to put my seat back and fall asleep. It was still morning. I could sleep for another hour or two and then go in. Or, I could get this over with, and go home and go back to sleep. I decided on the latter. Mrs. Harker answered my buzz quickly. She opened the door in the midst of putting on her coat. Picking up her purse off a side table, she yelled over her shoulder, “Boy! You come now. Is time.”
“Is time for what?” I asked.
“Is time for church.”
“Oh,” I said, wishing I’d been smart enough to drive around the corner and take that nap. Terry popped up behind Mrs. Harker. He was clean and neatly dressed in a gray suit. I’d never seen it before, so I had to guess that Mrs. Harker had bought it for him.
“Hey,” he said to me.
“Hey,” I said back. “All right. I’ll drive you guys to church.”
“No. Not in ugly car.”
“Okay, you want to take the bus, go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
She shook her head at me and said, “Come.”
Reluctantly, I walked into the condo, which smelled of baking meat, and then followed her into
the galley kitchen. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but I knew there was a garage just off the kitchen. I think only the first floor condos had them, while the ones on the second floor were shit out of luck. Inside the garage was Harker’s 1979 Lincoln Versailles. It was a small four-door sedan built on a Granada’s frame and painted a peachy flesh color with the vinyl half roof matching the color perfectly.
“You want me to drive you to church in this?”
Harker had always kept the car up immaculately. Now though, it was dusty and in need of a good polish. It had been sitting there for at least a year and a half. I wasn’t even sure it would start. She took a set of keys out of her coat pocket and held them out to me. “Yes, you take to church. Then you keep. Sell ugly car.”
“Why does she keep saying your car’s ugly? This one’s pretty—”
I raised a hand to stop him. The Versailles was an ugly car and it drove like a waterbed. But, it would draw a lot less attention than the Nova. And, I could sell the Nova and split the money with Mrs. Harker. Well, try to split the money with her. She probably wouldn’t take it, but she might allow me to reimburse her for whatever she spent on Terry.
My stomach flopped when I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. It smelled like stale cigarette smoke and cologne laced with cinnamon. It smelled of Harker. Well, it smelled like the inside of a car, but it also smelled of Harker. I wasn’t sure I was ready to have something of Harker’s, wasn’t sure I was ready to remember him fondly. I was mad at him. I’d been mad at him for a long time. Driving his car everywhere meant I’d have to be on better terms with the memory of him. I put the key in the ignition and turned. The engine whined into life. Mrs. Harker and Terry climbed in and I drove to St. Boniface the Martyr.
Before we walked in, I took Terry by the arm and told Mrs. Harker that I was going to have a cigarette before mass. She frowned at me but went into the church. I don’t know why she hated my smoking so much. Harker smoked. Not as much as I did, and not much at all after he got sick, but still, he’d smoked. I lit up and gave Terry a stern look.
“How are you and Mrs. Harker getting along?”
Boystown 7: Bloodlines Page 17