Mating Season

by Jon Loomis

  “I don’t know,” Cavalo said. “I don’t know what it is. I swear to God—if I knew what it was, I’d tell you if I had it!”

  Duckworth chuckled. He was wearing his favorite pink jacket and the lucky alligator shoes he’d bought in Mexico. (“Not so lucky for the alligator,” he would say when women asked about them. It was one of his favorite jokes.) “Well, let’s just say for the sake of argument that maybe you did have it,” he said. He peeled a strip of duct tape from the roll and put it over Cavalo’s mouth. Then he held Cavalo’s head still with his left hand, and with his right he ran the pointed tip of Lucille’s blade slowly and lightly down the side of Cavalo’s cheek.

  Cavalo tried to scream, but hardly any sound came out.

  Duckworth smiled and watched the slow welling of blood in the wound. He wore latex gloves: He was cautious with his health—he didn’t want to catch anything. “Let’s just say,” Duckworth said, “for the sake of argument, that we started to cut things off. Would you still tell us you didn’t have it?” He peeled the duct tape off Cavalo’s mouth.

  “What?” Cavalo said, eyes brimming. “Don’t have what? I don’t know what you mean—”

  “Oh, we’re not talking about cutting off anything important,” Duckworth said, putting the tape back over Cavalo’s mouth. He took his jacket off and hung it on a chair. Then he smiled. “Maybe an ear, that’s all. Then if we’re still not sure we believe you, a nose or a few fingers. No big deal, really.”

  Cavalo’s eyes got big. He made some muffled sounds under the tape.

  “So,” Duckworth said, planting his hams on the edge of the futon, near Cavalo’s armpit. “Let’s try again. For keeps now. No more do-overs. Ready?”

  Cavalo shook his head vigorously, grunting into the tape.

  Duckworth grabbed Cavalo’s chin and held it still. “Bobby?” he said. “Lucille’s getting impatient. You need to listen. Are you listening?”

  Cavalo nodded, eyes wide.

  “Last chance, Bobby,” Duckworth said. The music thumped from the boom box—a peppy little salsa number now. “It’s a simple question, Bobby. A simple yes or no. We’re not dancing anymore.” He leaned close, looking into Cavalo’s eyes as he peeled the duct tape off. He waited a beat while he listened to the sound of Cavalo’s rapid breathing. Then he leaned closer still, his nose almost touching Cavalo’s. “Last chance, Bobby. Last. Chance. I know you know what I’m looking for. Do you have it?”

  If anything, Kotowski’s house was even more cluttered than usual. Stacks of books and newspapers covered almost every surface; a small outboard engine lay in pieces on the living room rug. Coffin could envision Kotowski in twenty years, unwashed, happy in his senescence, the house crammed with junk—trash bags full of beer cans and magazines piled to the ceiling, only narrow aisles left to walk through.

  “There’s one thing about this business I don’t really get,” Coffin said. He and Kotowski still played chess almost every week, even though neither of them played very well or liked the game very much.

  “Really?” Kotowski said. “Just one?” He pushed a pawn, took it back, pushed it again.

  A couple of Kotowski’s new paintings stood propped against the wall: one with a figure who looked like Karl Rove as Dr. Frankenstein bringing a monstrous Dick Cheney to life; in the other a figure who looked like Dick Cheney with George W. Bush as a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on his knee, sharp little fangs in his mouth. Kotowski’s rich new collector snapped them up as fast as he could paint them.

  “Okay, more than one,” Coffin said, eyeing the board. “Didn’t I take that knight of yours, like, three moves ago?”

  “Are you accusing me of cheating, Coffin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine,” Kotowski said, taking the knight off the board. “You’re such a stickler.”

  Coffin leaned back in his chair and pushed his fingers through his hair. “This whole thing with Kenji Sole tying up and spanking her boyfriends,” he said. “What’s the psychology there?”

  “Don’t forget the strap-on,” Kotowski said. “That’s the really amusing part.”

  Coffin sipped his beer. “I’m kind of a stranger to that whole world. I get the whole gay/straight/bi thing, I mean that seems pretty straightforward—”

  “There’s nothing straightforward about bisexuality,” Kotowksi said, a small cloud of dust rising as he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Are you going to move, or what?”

  “I sort of understand the transgender thing, and the cross-dressing thing—”

  “The grass is always greener,” Kotowski said, “when you’re wearing lace panties. I’m planning to shoot myself when I turn eighty; could you move before then?”

  “But the whole dominant-submissive thing—”

  “Come on, Coffin,” Kotowski said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never given a woman a smack on the ass in the heat of passion.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  Kotowski threw up his hands and made a retching sound. “Oh my God,” he said. “Too much sharing! I think I’m going to hurl.”

  Coffin moved his queen two spaces to the right. “Check,” he said.

  “Check?” Kotowski said, interposing a bishop. “You call that a check?”

  “So, what?” Coffin said. “Does that make me, like, Dominant Guy now?”

  “Dominant? You? Ha!” Kotowski said. “If you were any more vanilla, you’d be a freaking milkshake—though, you’ve had the impulse once or twice.”

  “So what’s the difference?”

  “If you were a real dom, you’d be more interested in the ass-smacking than the fucking.” Kotowski drained his beer, stood up, and padded into the kitchen for another.

  “Why?” Coffin moved his queen again. “That’s the part I don’t understand. How is smacking someone on the ass—or being smacked on the ass—better than sex?”

  Kotowski plopped into his chair, a small cloud of dust rising around him. “How is anything better than sex?” he said. “It just is. Hell, at my age lots of things are better than sex.”

  “Really?” Coffin said. “Like what?”

  “I was joking,” Kotowski said. He looked at the board. “Did you cheat? You’re not supposed to cheat.”

  “So it’s a control thing, fine. Got it. What about the submissives? What’s in it for them?”

  Kotowski looked at him, eyes the color of wood smoke. “Trust,” he said. He took a cigarette from Coffin’s pack and lit it with Coffin’s lighter. “And risk. You give control of your body to another person. You have to trust them not to push you past your limits. Not too far, anyway. Trust makes it possible. Risk makes it exciting.”

  “You’d still have a safe word,” Coffin said. “So it’s trust and risk with an escape hatch.”

  Kotowski studied the chessboard for a long moment. “Fuck,” he said. “How did you do that? Time for the Kotowski defense.” Then he shook the board until all of the pieces fell over.

  After Lola had dropped Coffin off at Kotowski’s, she thought about going back to her apartment, then decided against it. Should she stay at Frank’s? Sleeping on his mother’s Victorian sofa was an even less appealing prospect than going back to her own ruined bedroom. She drove east on Bradford, away from her place. She turned onto Allerton, the last connecting street before Bradford and Commercial joined. She found herself in front of Kate’s house—a pretty Cape Cod, one of the few affordable year-round rentals left in town. The lights were on. Lola put the Crown Vic in park, shut it off, and climbed out. It was very dark. The moon floated above the harbor, wreathed in yellow clouds. Lola flipped her cell phone open and dialed.

  “Hey, you,” Kate said after the second ring.

  “Hi,” Lola said. “I’m outside.”

  The living room curtains moved. Kate waved through the window. “So you are,” she said. “Would you like to come in? I have a nice couch we could sit on, and I have bourbon . . .”

  “I like bourbon and a nice couch,” Lola
said. The door opened. A shaft of yellow light fell across the grass. Kate stood in the doorway, tall and slim and smiling.

  Chapter 10

  It was morning. Lola sat at Coffin’s desk, picking through the papers in his in-box. “What’s with the suit, Frank?” she said, glancing up. “Going to a funeral or something?”

  The fat sewer pipe rumbled overhead.

  “Yep,” Coffin said. “So are you. Let’s take separate cars—I’ve got to drive up to Boston later.”

  “Kenji’s funeral’s today? Thanks for the heads-up,” Lola said, looking at her uniform. “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”

  “So change,” Coffin said. “It doesn’t start till ten o’clock. I’ll meet you at the cemetery. Catholic section.”

  “Kenji Sole was Catholic?”

  “Lapsed, I’m guessing.”

  Lola stood, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Lapsed?” she said, already halfway out the door. “I guess that’s one word for it.”

  After she was gone, Coffin thumbed through his in-box. There were two new cases: a break-in and a series of bad checks, all written by the same two people. They would have to wait.

  The phone rang. Coffin picked up the receiver and punched line one. “Coffin,” he said.

  “Detective Coffin? It’s Dr. Branstool at Valley View.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Coffin said. “Don’t tell me she’s run away again?”

  “I’m very sorry, Detective,” Branstool said. “I really feel terrible about this. I mean, I know how bad it looks. We’re a bit under-staffed at the moment, what with the budget cuts and all—”

  “Any idea how long she’s been gone?”

  “We’re pretty sure she was in her room at midnight bed check.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “When we went to wake her this morning, we found that she’d stuffed some clothes and pillows under her covers, to create the effect—”

  “What are you guys going to fall for next? A gun carved out of soap?”

  “Well, we can’t exactly strap her to the bed,” Branstool said. “Not unless you sign a waiver.”

  “So that’s the choice?” Coffin said. “Tie her to the bed or let her wander off?”

  “We’ve sent a couple of attendants out to look for her,” Branstool said, “but I thought it best to let you know.”

  “Thanks. Great job you people are doing up there.” Coffin hung up. A drop of condensation from the sewer pipe splashed onto his desktop, just missing his coffee cup.

  The gravesite was halfway up the hill, overlooking the access road and the low, sandy hills beyond it. In the middle distance, Shank Painter Road curved out to the highway. Beyond that was the beach forest, the National Seashore, and the Atlantic Ocean, all obscured at the moment by thin, swirling fog.

  The usual canopy had been set up, thirty or so folding chairs in neat rows beneath it. The coffin—a monumental rosewood number—sat on a support frame over the newly dug grave, draped in a big bouquet of white roses. Four gravediggers stood nearby, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly. When the service was over, they would lower the coffin into the sandy ground.

  As Coffin climbed out of the Fiesta, the heavy mass of cloud that had been rolling in all morning parked itself overhead and began to dispense a slow, chilly rain. The moss on the tombstones turned suddenly, impossibly green, fluorescing in the aqueous light.

  Lola was already there. She wore a short charcoal-colored jacket, black trousers, and a black silk blouse, open at the throat. Her shoes were black, too—flats, good for walking on cemetery grass.

  Coffin pulled up his jacket collar, then fished among the clutter in the Fiesta’s backseat for an umbrella. He found one: It was small and half sprung, and when he opened it a dead mouse fell out, landing on the pavement beside his shoe.

  “Ew,” Lola said, regarding the desiccated mouse as it lay curled on the sidewalk. She hooked a thumb toward Coffin’s car. “Any chance the DVR’s in there somewhere?”

  Coffin tried not to stare at her backside as she opened the Camaro’s trunk and pulled out a sleek black umbrella, popping it open just before the rain began in earnest.

  The funeral was sparsely attended. Kenji Sole’s father was there, sitting under the canopy, looking old and frail in a black suit and no socks. Priestess Maiya sat beside him, wearing a slim black evening gown, black sunglasses, and a broad black hat with an ostrich plume. Gracie, the monkey, sat on her shoulder. A wide black bow was tied around her neck.

  “Oh my God,” Lola said. “It’s Holly Golightly in mourning.”

  A few chairs away, Stan Carswell wept openly. A young woman Coffin recognized as a reporter for the Cape Cod Times stood at the periphery, taking notes. A middle-aged priest in a wrinkled cassock stood by the coffin, stuttering a bit as he recited the canticle: “R-r-r-requiem æ-t-t-ternam dona ei, D-d-d-omine . . .” Father Kevin? Father Keith? Coffin couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been to church in years.

  “Not much of a crowd,” Lola said.

  “I guess all the boyfriends are busy trying to patch up their marriages,” Coffin said. “It’s always interesting to see who shows up at these things—and who doesn’t.”

  Lola looked at Coffin, head tilted a bit. Her eyes were more gray than blue in the muted light. “Is that why we’re here? To see who shows up?”

  “It’s a question of appearances—in domestic cases especially. If you’ve killed your girlfriend, say, and you don’t show up and pretend to be sad, people will start to wonder. Of course, if you show up and can’t keep it together, that’s risky, too. Quiet dignity is what you want—no throwing yourself on the casket. A strained expression, maybe a couple of tears that you dab with a handkerchief.”

  “So what’s your read on Carswell?” Lola said.

  Stan Carswell was sobbing audibly. Coffin watched him for a minute, then gazed at Lola’s umbrella with envy. His was leaking. “The reaction fits the story,” he said. “He was in love, she’s dead, he’s sad.”

  “Or acting. Or he’s overcome by guilt.”

  “Maybe,” Coffin said. “Or he’s worried about getting caught. Or he misses all the Kenji-drama.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to see Priestess Maiya.”

  “Because you thought she didn’t do it? Or because you thought she did?”

  “The first thing. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Coffin rubbed his mustache. It was almost entirely gray; he was pretty sure it made him look old. “There could be layers of meaning here,” Coffin said. “Maybe it’s for J. Hedrick’s benefit. Playing the supportive girlfriend and all that.”

  Lola nodded. “Maybe it’s some complicated gender thing: woman-plays-drag-queen-plays-woman goes to funeral. Maybe she’s going to have sex with the priest when the service is over.”

  “Right,” Coffin said. “Her camera crew will jump out from behind a mausoleum and film the whole thing.”

  “It’s a lovely spot here, really,” J. Hedrick Sole said when the funeral was over. They walked together slowly through the cemetery, between the mossed and tilting rows of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gravestones that always reminded Coffin of bad Victorian teeth. “If one has to be buried somewhere, one could do a lot worse.”

  Coffin wanted to say that if it was him, he’d prefer to be a bit farther above sea level, but he stopped himself. Instead he said, “I wish we had better news for you about the investigation.”

  “Not going well, eh?” J. Hedrick said. “I feared as much.”

  “We’re still trying to sort out who might have been with her the night she died,” Coffin said. “It’s a very complicated picture.”

  “She was a very complicated subject,” Priestess Maiya said, giving Gracie a peanut. Gracie shelled the peanut with her nimble little hands, ate it, and chittered for another.

  “I suppose you could say that,” Coffin said. “Yes.” He stopped walking. Lola, J. Hedrick, and Priestess Maiya stopped, too. “Have you read her disse
rtation, by any chance?”

  “Me? No,” J. Hedrick said. “Couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Maiya has.”

  “You have?” Lola said.

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Priestess Maiya said. “It’s actually quite good. Kenji was very bright, in her way. It’s a discussion of porn as a coercive art form. The coercive aspect, from Kenji’s point of view, is what makes porn interesting to viewers, and ultimately to critics.”

  “Coercive how?” Coffin asked. He ran his hand over the head of an alabaster dog lying forever at the feet of its master, one Captain Jeremiah Slocum. The dog was scabbed in pale green lichen, but its eyes were eerily blank.

  “Both in the making and in the viewing. Although I take issue with her argument that all of the actors are coerced. It may not be everyone’s dream job, but it’s better than digging ditches.”

  “Isn’t it true that a lot of them are coerced?” Lola said. “Pimped into the business by their boyfriends? Or even sold into it as sex slaves in some countries?”

  “What if you just can’t find a better job?” Coffin said. “Could that be considered a form of economic coercion?”

  “Right on both counts,” said Priestess Maiya. “In fact, for a lot of viewers the idea of coercion is part of the excitement.”

  “Bah,” said J. Hedrick. “Liberal claptrap. Nobody has to do that for a living. Not in the United States of America.”

  “So the act of viewing is coercive how, again?” Coffin said. “I mean, the film’s already been made, right?”

  “Right,” Priestess Maiya said, “but what if, as an actor, you’ve had second thoughts? What if you’ve moved on with your life, had children, say, gone to college, gotten a job? Anyone who wanted to could, in theory, find those movies of you having sex and watch them over and over again, without your permission. There’s nothing you could do about it.”

  “Nonsense,” J. Hedrick said. He coughed, then spat a stringy gob into the grass. “No one makes them sign the contract. No one makes them take the money. They could just as easily work at McDonald’s and never have a thing to be ashamed of.”