Victor J. Banis

by Deadly Nightshade

  Paterson felt something hard pressed against his chest.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Does that sort of thing happen a lot?” Tom asked. “To… you know, to guys like you?”

  “Often enough. Too much,” Stanley said. “Queer haters.” He added, in a frosty voice, “You know all about that kind of thing, don’t you?”

  “Me?”

  “Give me a break. You haven’t made much of a secret about how you feel.”

  “Yeah, well, I never hated anybody that way. That’s sick, isn’t it? I mean, people are people. If you don’t like ‘em, you don’t have to play with them.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” Stanley said dryly.

  Tom pulled up at the curb outside Stanley’s apartment and waited for Stanley to climb out. Stanley put a hand on the door handle and paused. The light from the streetlamp glinted on some splinters of window glass still clinging to the upholstery. He brushed at them and looked across the front seat at Tom.

  “You’re not going to walk me to my door?”

  “To your door? Are you kidding? Why would I do that?”

  “Like a date. Remember?”

  “Stanley, this isn’t after the prom. We’re cops.”

  “I know, but…” Stanley gave him a little-boy look, his eyes wide. “It just—those gay bashers. That kind of thing upsets me. I keep thinking about them. That guy with the lead pipe.” Tom frowned. “What, you’ve never been scared about anything?”

  “Jesus, that was miles from here.”

  “They might have followed us.”

  “Stanley, they didn’t even have a car, plus I kicked their asses. Big time.”

  “Okay. But they aren’t the only guys like that. How do we know there’s not somebody else just as mean hanging around waiting for me to come home?” He gestured out the window. “Look how dark it is at my front steps. You’d feel awful if your partner got attacked twice in one night, wouldn’t you? It would look like you weren’t even trying.”

  “Shit.” Tom flung his door open and jumped out. “Come on, then, Miss Pussy.”

  “Sticks and stones,” Stanley said. He got out and hurried to catch up, did a little skip. “Will you hold my hand?”

  “No.” Tom shoved his hands into his pockets.

  They reached Stanley’s front door. Stanley feigned peering into the bushes on either side. Tom thought he was laying it on a little heavy, and wondered if he was being suckered.

  “Safe, now?” Tom asked.

  Stanley handed him a ring of keys. “Would you look inside?”

  “Stanley…” in an impatient voice.

  “Please.”

  Tom grunted, took the keys.

  “The one with the pink plastic ring,” Stanley said.

  “I could have guessed.” He unlocked the door, shoved it inward, glanced at Stanley, who gave him a timid kind of smile. Tom sighed again, led the way inside, found the light switch.

  “You want me to check under the bed?” he asked.

  For a moment he thought Stanley was going to say “yes,” but he gave his head a shake. “No. That’s okay.”

  He sniffed. It occurred to Tom that, just at the moment, Stanley really did look like a scared ten-year-old. If he was acting, it was a good act.

  “Fuck.” Tom went past him, went into the small living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, turning lights on everywhere. For effect, he actually flipped back the spread on the bed and bent down to look underneath. “There’s no one here, okay?” He came back to where Stanley had remained in the hall, just inside the front door.

  “Thank you. Really,” Stanley said, giving him a smile both relieved and embarrassed.

  They stood facing one another, closer than Tom actually felt comfortable with. “How the hell did you ever get to be a cop, if you’re that easily scared? I mean, why.”

  “My dad,” Stanley said. “He was always down on me for being such a sissy. I had to do something macho, to get his respect. Cop sounded interesting. All those guys in their hot uniforms.”

  “Did it work?”

  “The hot uniforms?” Stanley brightened. “Well, there’s a couple of guys at the station, I won’t tell you their names, but—”

  “I meant about your dad.”

  Stanley shook his head. “Oh, him. No, he still hates me. Now he calls me the sissy cop. When he remembers who I am, anyway. I’m never sure if he really can’t remember me or he’s just pretending, to shut me out.”

  “You’re not a sissy,” Tom surprised himself by saying. “You can be ballsy enough when you have to be.

  Like, the way you stood up to me when we got assigned. You’re just… oh, hell, I don’t know…”

  “Nervous and boy crazy?”

  Tom laughed despite himself. “You’re a crazy little mother fucker, that’s for sure. How’s the shoulder?”

  Stanley rotated his arm tentatively, opened and closed his fingers. “It’s okay.”

  “Take your shirt off.”

  Stanley actually wriggled with delight. “Strip search? Mutual strip search?”

  “The shirt, Stanley.” Tom did not look amused.

  Stanley sighed. “Oh, okay.” He peeled the shirt off. It was clumsier than he’d expected. His arm wasn’t broken but it really wasn’t working normally either. He let the shirt dangle from one hand and stood like a chastened schoolboy. He was kind of embarrassed by his reed thin body. Not that there weren’t plenty of guys who liked it well enough, but it wasn’t a cop kind of body. Not like Tom’s big, hunky hairy one, certainly. He shivered a little.

  Tom ran a hand over his shoulder, felt gingerly, pumped his arm up and down, keeping his face carefully neutral. “Nothing broken,” he said, “but it’s going to be sore. You should have somebody look at it.”

  “I’ve got a friend who’s a nurse. I’ll give him a call.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Tom…” Stanley got serious, put his good hand tentatively on Tom’s shoulder. It felt like rock. He resisted the urge to feel his muscles. “Thank you. Really. For saving me back there. I panicked. I’d have been dead before I thought what to do. I’m no hero. I don’t want to get killed.”

  “Stanley, it isn’t getting killed that makes a cop a hero, it’s the willingness. Besides, cops don’t survive because they’re tough—”

  “You are.”

  “Or because they’re particularly smart. They survive because they’re a team, they’ve got backup. That’s why they put two cops together on this sort of thing, to cover one another’s backs.”

  And why, it suddenly occurred to him, they had assigned him to this case with Stanley. Because Stanley was smart, smart enough, probably, to solve this case, and he knew all about the gay stuff, especially, in this instance, the drag stuff, which Tom would have known nothing about on his own—but he was a wuss. He needed somebody tough to look after him, to do just what Tom had done tonight, save his ass.

  Tom had never really thought about how vulnerable somebody like Stanley was, little and effeminate.

  Skinny, really, his skin too pale, hairless. Probably guys like those skinheads went after him all the time.

  Becoming a cop hadn’t changed any of that. He still looked just as helpless as he must always have looked, just as much a come-on for guys with masculinity hang-ups, like those gay bashers.

  On his own, he probably would have had his head cracked open tonight. Probably even if he’d been paired up with most of the guys on the squad. He could see one or two of them letting Stanley get his head cracked open. Hell, he could see one or two of them cracking Stanley’s head open themselves. The thought kind of disturbed him.

  But, despite his distaste for gay guys, it had felt entirely normal for Tom to take care of things back there in that parking lot, to come to Stanley’s rescue like that. It was a part of his personal cop code.

  And, oddly, Stanley’s having been so helpless didn’t arouse Tom’s scorn the way his flippancy had up to this po
int. It made him feel strangely protective. Like, a big brother, or… or something, he wasn’t sure what.

  Like Stanley needed him, needed someone big and strong and macho, that he could lean on. To his surprise, being needed appealed to him in some funny way, to his masculinity.

  Tom surprised himself even more by grabbing hold of Stanley out of the blue, pulling him close, and kissing him, briefly. Like in the bar, only this time he was the aggressor, which was more normal for him. He was used to taking charge.

  “What was that all about?” Stanley asked when the kiss ended—too quickly to his way of thinking.

  “I was just making sure I still didn’t like it. After, you know, there in the bar.”

  “And the verdict is…? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “I didn’t,” Tom said in a flat voice. He turned again and went out the front door, walking very quickly toward the car at the curb.

  “So why was King Kong on the rampage?” Stanley called after him. “He was practically beating his chest.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Tom…”

  Tom paused and looked back at him.”What?” he asked in a surly voice.

  “I don’t really think you’re ugly.”

  “Don’t even go there, Stanley,” Tom said, clambering into the car. “You’re still queer and I still don’t like it.” The car door slammed and in a moment he was gone with a squeal of tires on wet pavement.

  Stanley went to the front steps. “I lied,” he shouted after him. “You’re as ugly as horseshit! You’re the ugliest man I ever laid eyes on, you big ape.”

  An older man walked a Spaniel on a leash past the front yard. He looked after Tom’s vanishing taillights, at Stanley on his doorstep, and after the car again.

  “I thought he was pretty hot, actually,” the stranger said. The Spaniel took a good sniff at the bushes.

  “Fine. I’ll wrap him in swaddling clothes and leave him on your frigging doorstep,” Stanley said. He slammed his door shut. He forgot and used his right hand. It sent spasms of pain up his arm.

  He hated straight men. Especially big hairy ones. Most especially big hairy ones who made his balls tingle.

  § § § § §

  Chris came straight from work.

  “Please tell me the ape didn’t do this,” he said, bandaging Stanley’s shoulder.

  “He was trying to molest me. I was fighting for my virtue.”

  “Honey, you lost that fight years ago.” He stuck a last piece of tape on the bandage, worked a sling over Stanley’s shoulder and slipped his arm in it. “So, are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “Gay bashers. Actually the ape saved me. Saved my life, probably. It was kind of sweet, really.”

  Chris eyed him critically. “You don’t have a ‘kind-of-sweet’ look on your face. There’s something you’re not telling me. What else happened?’

  “He kissed me.”

  “Just like that, out of the blue? This straight guy whups on the bad guys and then he kisses you?”

  “Uh huh. Well, see, I kissed him first. Earlier. At this bar.”

  “Stanley, this is another swan dive.”

  “It’s not, I swear it. I hate him, totally, absolutely. It’s mutual, too. No chance of this kissing business ever happening again. Take my word for it. It was just a moment of madness. Two moments of madness, actually.

  One of mine and one of his. To get even.” Chris stared at him blankly. “It’s just a homicide detective thing.

  You’re a civilian. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Right,” Chris said.

  Stanley’s phone rang.

  § § § § §

  There was a bar Tom sometimes frequented on Townsend, in an otherwise industrial neighborhood. A straight bar. No goddamn queers and no fucking drag queens, he told himself angrily when he walked through the curtained door. He knew what he needed, knew the perfect antidote to this day’s craziness. For a moment there, back at Stanley’s place, something had come over him. He’d actually found himself drawn to the little fag. Vulnerable? Little boy? Where had that shit come from? Stanley was about as helpless as a diamond back rattler. And about as dangerous, too.

  Well, whatever had come over him, the way to cure it was a good piece of ass, and he’d never been here that he couldn’t pick one up. This time he set a record, had barely taken a sip of a beer before he caught a buxom blonde giving him the eye.

  “You got any plans for the night?” he asked her without preamble. He wasn’t in a frame of mind for farting around.

  “I didn’t, a minute ago,” she said. She gave him the look. Women looked at him that way a lot. It occurred to him out of the blue that it was also the way Stanley looked at him sometimes. He pushed that thought stubbornly aside.

  “You do now. Let’s go,” he said. She barely hesitated, slipped down off the bar stool and went toward the door with him.

  “Are we in a rush?” she asked, hurrying to keep up with him. He was walking so fast, she almost had to run.

  “You know what it’s like when you need something bad,” he said.

  She giggled. The sound reminded him uncomfortably of Stanley. The fucking asshole even giggled like a woman.

  § § § § §

  It wasn’t exactly a gold star performance, but it worked. By the time they were naked in bed, him atop and inside her, he had completely forgotten Stanley Korski.

  He was about to go off, could already feel the familiar tingle in his gonads, when the phone beat him to it, went off first. He thought about ignoring it, but cop instinct took over. Telephone calls in the middle of the night were not usually happy tidings, not for homicide detectives.

  “Sorry,” he said, rolling off of her and grabbing the phone. She gave a little mew of displeasure and rolled after him, reaching round him to take hold of his cock.

  “There’s been another one,” Stanley’s voice greeted him.

  Tom groaned. His dick, until now poker rigid, went instantly limp in the blonde’s hand. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry? Why are you apologizing to me?”

  “I wasn’t. To you, I mean.”

  It took Stanley a minute for that to sink in. “Are you telling me you’ve got someone there? Crap, you just left me at my door an hour ago. After kissing me. You two timer. What do you do, keep them stacked in the cupboard?”

  “Something like that. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Fine. And leave her in the cupboard.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Stanley was wearing a makeshift sling. “My friend, Chris,” he said when Tom commented on it. “He’s a nurse. I called him. I told him you molested me.”

  It was raining again, a steady determined drizzle. This time they showed their IDs right up front. It didn’t matter, the place was already crawling with uniforms, the street outside crowded with black and whites. One of the uniforms directed them to a doorway a few doors down. The victim was lying in a heap in its shadows.

  “Shot, in the chest, close range,” the uniform said. “We found a shell.”

  “Twenty-two, right?” Tom said.

  The cop nodded. “We’ve got a witness, or sort of,” he said. “Homeless guy, says he went by just a minute before.”

  They went to talk to him, a wino who hadn’t done a lot of showering lately.

  “There was this guy,” he waved a hand in the direction of the body six feet away in the doorway, “and a chick. When I went by, they looked like they were getting something going.” He shivered and looked around hopefully. “Anybody got a cigarette?”

  The uniform took out a pack, shook a cigarette loose, and handed it to him. Everyone waited while he got it lit from the uniform’s lighter, inhaled deeply, held it for a long time in his lungs, and finally blew out a great gray cloud of smoke, coughing with wheezy satisfaction. The uniform had returned the pack to his pocket.

  The wino gave the bulge a yearning glance, which the uniform pretended not to notice.

  “
You got a good look at the one he was with?” Tom asked.

  “Pretty good. Long dark hair, skirt up to here.” He indicated the general area of his bony rump.

  “Did you notice anything, uh, peculiar about her?” Stanley asked.

  “You mean, like was she a drag queen? Sure. I spotted that right off.” He glanced in the direction of the entrance to Carla’s Web. “You get a lot of them around here. Don’t bother me none. Some of them are pretty good about handing out a dollar or two. They know what it’s like, things being tough.” His eyes went over the three of them, sizing them up as if debating with himself who might be good for a dollar or two.

  “So, that was all you saw, the two of them chatting one another up?” Stanley asked.

  “Hell, no. Like I said, it looked like they were leading up to some action. You know.” He pumped his hips. All three of them instinctively moved back a step. “So I crossed the street. It’s darker over there, see.

  The street light’s out.” He pointed. “And I kind of strolled back this way, figured they might be about to put on a show, and sure enough, she was on her knees, gobbling the goop. Looked like he was enjoying himself plenty. Can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t have minded some of that myself, you know what I mean?” He winked in Tom’s direction.

  “Not with this one, you wouldn’t,” Stanley said. “You saw what a climax is like with her. You don’t come, you go.”

  The wino looked again in the direction of the dead man and winced. “Yeah, you got a point there,” he said. He thought a minute. “Still, there’s worse ways to go, ain’t there? I mean, you know how long it’s been since anybody sucked the old Johnny?” He gave them a toothy grin.

  “So then?” Tom prompted. He wasn’t interested in the guy’s Johnny.

  “Well, then she got up. Off her knees. I thought at first maybe he’d cracked his nut, you know, only he looked disappointed. They said something, I couldn’t catch it from across the street, and then, all of a sudden, there’s this bang. A gunshot, you know, only kind of muffled because they were so close together. And he falls down, and she takes off running. That direction.” He pointed toward the parking lot.