by Hal Bodner
“You have a good evening, OK?”
“Yeah. Right,” replied the bartender, still puzzled and absently scratching at an imaginary itch on his neck.
Chris turned with a small, private smile and left the bar to rejoin Troy.
As the two continued their walk down Santa Monica, Chris managed to keep Troy out of subsequent bars, although he was certain to note the names, location, and type of clientele of each.
They arrived at the Abbey only forty-five minutes late. Chris had been prepared for the decor to be faux-Gothic. After all, California was famous for its hot dog-shaped frankfurter stands and flower shops constructed to look like daisies, but Chris was pleasantly surprised that the Abbey’s architecture seemed almost normal. There were no crucifixes hanging on the walls, no gargoyles peeping from the eaves, nor were the waiters dressed in brown homespun robes tied with lengths of raw hemp as Chris had imagined.
Instead, The Abbey was a pleasant patio-style bar and restaurant, with plastic chairs, wooden tables and brightly colored umbrellas softly lit by hidden floodlights. The only oddity was that, at one time, the place seemed to have been part of the statuary shop still located next door. The courtyard surrounding the fenced in patio was littered with cement planters and stone benches. A fountain, topped by a huge bronze Mercury, stretching more than twelve feet from the top of his helmet to the tips of his winged sandals, dominated the area. Clasping a gilt laurel leaf in one of its outstretched arms, the statue was otherwise totally nude and had a magnificent physique.
Troy stopped short in the entryway, causing Chris to smack into him from the rear. Chris began to prepare a suitably testy remark when he noticed Troy eyeing the statue speculatively, his expression laced with a look that could be described as a cross between awe and hunger. Chris traced Troy’s gaze with his own and sighed in exasperation, which quickly turned to pique.
“First of all,” he said, “it’s not real. And if it were, it’d tear you apart.”
“I know,” replied Troy, dreamily. “But it’d be a marvelous way to go, wouldn’t it?”
Chris shoved him off balance and broke the mood. Grabbing Troy by the scruff of the neck, Chris guided him firmly toward the bar proper.
As they moved across the patio, Chris’ eyes bugged slightly at the assortment of beautiful men lounging about in various stages of semi-dress, laughing, chatting, and enjoying their drinks. There was a short, muscular black haired lad in the corner, alone at a table reading a magazine, who Chris found particularly fetching; he made a mental note to try and speak to him before they left. The young man was what Troy would call a “KTF” or “Kitchen Table Fuck”, which, as near as Chris could determine, meant that upon bringing the lad home one should immediately bend him over the nearest piece of furniture capable of supporting his weight, have one’s way with him, and immediately send him back whence he came.
“Well, well, well,” commented Troy, loudly, in his best Bette Davis voice, “if it isn’t Miss Thing.”
Almost every head on the patio turned inquisitively in response to Troy’s comment, some with slight anger, others with various degrees of surprise and pleasure—all obviously assuming that they had been addressed. As one by one they realized they were not the subjects of Troy’s greeting, they turned back to their business, except of course for those half dozen or so who found Troy attractive. These erstwhile gentlemen either continued to stare, with various degrees of obviousness or discretion depending on their natures, or smiled enchantingly, trying to catch Troy’s attention. Troy regally ignored them all.
Becky O’Brien was seated at a patio table just outside the open french doors of the shop, a plate of chocolate chip cookies at her right and a half finished pie overflowing with some sort of unidentifiable fruit filling at her left. As Chris approached her table, she saw the blond in tow and her expectant smile transformed into a grimace of distaste as if she’d just found a large insect in her fruit pie.
Rising, both arms outstretched for a hug, she failed to mask her annoyance at Troy and smiled brightly at Chris.
“It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has, Becky,” said Chris, permitting a chaste hug.
Holding Chris at arms length, she commented, “My god! It’s been years and you haven’t aged a day!”
“Oil of Olay,” piped Troy, plopping down into a vacant seat, “You should go out and buy a jar. It’d do you good.” With false sincerity, he added, “I know someone who can get you a bulk discount.”
“Troy...” Chris began warningly, but Troy had already lost interest and had turned away, trying to scope both the patio and the interior of the shop for likely companions for the evening.
“Just ignore him,” Chris said.
Becky smiled uncomfortably. “That’s sometimes difficult to do,” she said as she slid her chubby frame back into the chair. “Really,” she continued, “You must be, what? Forty-something?”
Chris shifted uncomfortably, afraid of where the conversation was leading. “I’ve always been older than I look.”
“You look fantastic.”
“Good genes,” said Chris tersely, his tone indicating that he didn’t want to continue the line of thought.
Becky looked at him keenly. Chris could see the wheels spinning in her quick mind. Her expression cleared and with a small shrug she asked, “Want something?” She indicated the sweets on the table.
Chris patted his stomach, shaking his head with mock sorrow.
“Karen Carpenter’s still around, huh?” She sadly surveyed the spread before her. “Maybe I should try that.”
“Maybe you should,” piped Troy archly. He rose gracefully and began to nonchalantly make his way across the patio without any apparent destination. From long experience, Chris estimated that Troy’s path would take him just within range of one of the customers whose eyes had remained fixed on him since they’d come in, a blondish body builder wearing a striped tank top and shorts. Troy bent over to adjust one of his socks, his tight little butt perkily thrust out in the general direction of the striped tank top and Chris turned back to Becky, certain that they wouldn’t be disturbed by Troy’s asides—for at least fifteen minutes.
“Well, I’m here.”
“What do you think of L.A.?”
“To be honest,” Chris mused, “I’m not very impressed. Everything looks like a set from an old Maria Montez movie, covered in neon.”
Becky laughed, “You think West Hollywood’s bad? I’ll have to take you down to Olvera Street, the oldest street in Los Angeles. It dates from 1800-something and they’ve turned it into a tourist trap.”
“Eighteen hundreds? They call that old?” Chris’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “In Philadelphia I have silverware older than this entire damned state!”
Becky chuckled for a moment then became more serious. “Our little problem’s gotten worse.”
“Another one?”
She nodded. “We found him yesterday. I knew him. Fortunately not well.”
“Any clues?”
Becky pulled out a copy of the autopsy report and handed it across the table. Chris opened it, while she dug into her pie. Around healthy mouthfuls, chewing daintily, she commented, “It looks like I was right. We found teeth marks this time. Some lunatic thinks he’s Frank Langella.”
Chris finished reading the report in silence and closed it, passing it back to Becky. He sighed heavily.
“Becky,” he began slowly, “I know you wanted me out here on the coast...”
She started to interrupt, but Chris stopped her with a lifted hand and went on.
“Whatever your reasons are, I hope they don’t have to do with the husband hunt.” He turned to look at Troy, who had started up a conversation with the blond boy. From the confused look on the young man’s face, Chris was certain Troy was dazzling him with his wit and vivaciousness.
“I took him for better or worse. Usually, he manages to turn the ‘better’ part into the best. But he’s quite capable of
making the ‘worse’ part...well...into something even worse still. It depends on his mood, I guess. As for you, my dear,” Chris continued with a gentle smile, “you are rather persistent.”
Becky looked at him, blushing slightly “You can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?” Her eyes narrowed as she examined him critically, while Chris squirmed slightly in his seat. Finally, she shook her head. “I really can’t believe how fabulous you look.”
“Could we please stop talking about my age?” Chris asked irritably.
Becky grinned mischievously. “In a minute.”
Chris glared at her, but she couldn’t resist needling.
She lifted a forkful of gluey fruit filling to her mouth and licked it from the spoon with as much lasciviousness as she could manage. Leaning forward, a smidgen of filling smearing her lower lip, she breathed huskily, “I never have had any self-control, you know. How do you two feel about three-ways?”
Chris stiffened and looked at her suspiciously, not entirely certain she was joking. “I thought you wanted marriage, not just a tumble.”
“A tumble?” she snorted and patted her middle before attacking one of the cookies. “With my weight, it’d be more like a rock slide.”
“Anyway,” Chris continued, certain now there was a germ of truthfulness underneath Becky’s banter, “it’d have to be a package deal.”
“There is that,” Becky said, the corners of her mouth wrinkling in distaste. She glanced over to where Troy was busily “entertaining” the blond boy. “He is stunning,” she said wistfully, then turned back to face Chris. “I don’t suppose we could stuff a sock in his mouth or something?” she asked absently.
“Where would we find one big enough?” Chris asked with one of those closed mouth grins Becky found so irresistible.
She put down her fork and reached across the table to take one of Chris’s hands in hers. “All right. All right. Enough already.”
Chris sighed with mock relief. “Thank God. I was just getting ready to grab him and head back to Philly. Where it’s safe. Where the men are men...and the women are too.”
“I’d never forgive you,” Becky said, grinning. Her mood turned suddenly serious. “You know, if things were different, we could have been good together.”
“How Jacqueline Susann,” Chris said, arching an eyebrow.
“Oh, I know it’s hopeless,” she sighed. “Just like most things in my life.”
“Becky—” he began, but she cut him off, smiling sadly.
“Yes, I know you’re going to say just the right thing, just like you always do, and make me feel better. But it’s time we both faced reality. Look at me. I’m a fat, middle-aged woman living in a gay town cutting up corpses for a living. What chance do I have of meeting any nice guys? Sure, I joined one of those Jewish singles groups for a while. I met this very nice guy, recently divorced. Unfortunately, when he asked me what I did for a living I told him.” She threw up her hands in exasperation.
“It was like I had the plague or something. First he turned the color of one of my patients. Then he started wiping his hands on his pants. You know, like he was trying to get the dead smell off or something.” She sighed. “I even considered dating only funeral directors for a while. There are a few straight ones, you know. But it’s kind of incestuous, if you know what I mean.”
It was Chris’s turn to try to interrupt.
“Let me finish,” she said. “I’m closing on fifty and single. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. At my age, in my position, you stop looking for a white knight to come riding along and sweep you off your feet and start concentrating on friends. And even though I know there’s no chance of you and me ever, well, you know...” Her voice trailed off. There was silence for a minute until the coroner resumed her attack on the pie and patted her bulging middle. “Anyway, any knight that’s gonna try and carry me off into the sunset better have a lifetime gym membership and be riding a water buffalo!”
Chris said nothing.
“All kidding aside, what I need from you isn’t matrimony, it’s help. Nothing ever happens in this town. If it weren’t for the fact that half our population is over retirement age and if they die without a doctor, you gotta do an autopsy, I’d probably be out of a job.” She laughed, briefly, “You wouldn’t think the competition in the body biz was fierce, but it is.”
Her eyes narrowed and she looked Chris directly in the eyes. “We’ve got a serial killer on the loose. If the Captain and I can’t figure out how to catch the son of a bitch, we may both be out of jobs. Our City Manager is not the most patient of people.”
Her tone became almost pleading, “I’ve got no life, Chris. I go to work and come home. I spend most of my free time working for charity—Aid for AIDS, UNICEF, the goddamned animal shelter. I guess maybe I don’t like being alone. In short, Chris, my job is really all I have and I need you to help me keep it.” There was silence for a few minutes.
“Are you quite finished?” Chris asked testily. Becky nodded. “I am sick to death of you coming down on yourself that way,” he said harshly. “If you don’t have any respect for yourself, for God’s sake, have some for me. Do you really think I’d have let you drag me all the way out here to Broken Dreams City if I thought you were really the lonely-heart fat slob you paint yourself?”
Becky blinked in shock as Chris continued. “I don’t see that there’s much I can do that you can’t. But I’ll try. Under one condition.”
Becky leaned forward expectantly.
“One more self-disparaging remark out of you, and Troy and I really will take the next flight back to Philly. Deal?”
Becky smiled, chastised. “Deal.”
“Good. Now tell me everything...”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Becky left the Abbey an hour later, leaving behind a copy of the case file and autopsy reports. Chris found it remarkably easy to collar Troy and drag him away from his new boyfriend. “Pretty but dull,” was Troy’s only comment.
Chris snorted and resumed his perusal of the report, a frown creasing his forehead, while Troy became more and more frustrated, trying to signal a waiter for a drink. Unfortunately for him, the Abbey was in the midst of the evening rush and, though he smiled, blinked, giggled, and waved coquettishly, he couldn’t seem to draw anyone’s attention.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed with disgust. “You’d think they had enough blonds out here to go around!”
“Shh, monkey,” Chris said absently, “I’m reading.”
Troy turned in his seat and fixed a determined glare on one waiter, taking orders at the next table. “The service around here is terrible!” he announced. “What does a person have to do to get a drink around here? Scream?”
The waiter turned to him haughtily and without hesitation replied, “Scream? Mary, for you, this is a stretch?” and loftily walked off into the restaurant proper.
Troy’s mouth dropped open. Too affronted to reply, he sat for a moment, shocked. He recovered admirably, however, and was just about to follow the offender in order to give him a piece of his mind when Chris finally closed the file and leaned back in his chair, tapping one finger thoughtfully on the table.
A now completely sober and much more serious Troy was quick to put the offending incident behind him and concentrate on the matter at hand, especially since his lover had missed seeing his momentary embarrassment. He turned to Chris and inquired, “She knows about you?”
Chris thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
“She suspects?” Troy pressed, taking the autopsy report and glancing at the contents.
“No,” said Chris with more certainty. “I mean she thinks I’m eccentric, but she’s probably not given it much thought.” He mused some more. “As far as Becky’s concerned, I’m independently wealthy spending my time writing, teaching, getting degrees, or doing whatever else I want.” He grinned. “A modern dilettante.”
“She should try living with you and your little hobbies.”
Chris glared at him.
“My dear,” said Troy, patting his arm gently, “you can be rather compulsive at times.” He turned a page and continued reading as, with a spare fork, he started to idly pick the chocolate chips out of half a cookie Becky had uncharacteristically left behind. “How did she handle the age thing?” he asked absently, concentrating on Becky’s report. “You were worried about that.”
“I do believe,” said Chris with a smile, “that she thinks me foolish and rather vain for having already had a face-lift at my tender years.”
“You’re kidding!” Troy looked up from the file and started to giggle. “Just think, you and I could open up a surgical practice out here and put half the doctors in Beverly Hills out of business!”
“True.” Chris’ expression sobered. “I’ll have to be careful. She believes the bulimia story, so at least I won’t have to keep coming up with excuses not to eat. But it’s going to be tough coming up with reasons for seeing her only at night. In Philly it’s almost always overcast and we mostly went out after class. I don’t want her putting two and two together. Then there’s that age thing.”
Troy had a mischievous glint in his eye. “We could always gray your hair and put lines in your face.”
“Funny,” Chris snapped. He stood up, grabbed the file from Troy, and started for the exit. Troy followed him out of the Abbey and they started to walk up the street. “Hopefully,” Chris said sternly, “we’re not going to be here long enough for that to matter. I want to help her catch this guy and get out.”
“Back to Philadelphia?” Troy pouted. “It’s so colonial there! We’ve only got another five or ten years there anyway. Before someone starts to notice how young...” Troy cut short his sentence in response to a glare from Chris. “I was only suggesting...I mean, we’ve never lived in California. It’s not like you weren’t considering it just last night.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” said Chris, dismissing the notion. “Right now I want to concentrate on what we know about the killer. Any ideas?”