Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents)

by Omar Tyree

  Henry didn’t believe him, but what choice did he have? He didn’t want his family, friends, or coworkers to know what he had gotten himself into— especially after work had just begun to look up for him. So he had to roll the dice and pray for a lucky seven.

  “I’ve been with her about…five or six times now,” he confessed.

  “Is that it?” the detective questioned. “You sure it wasn’t more than that, in over a month. What if I asked her the same question?”

  “She could lie to you again,” Henry answered.

  “Well, that sounds like you’re in a bad situation then. Who is the jury gonna believe: an older man separated from his wife, or a sixteen-year-old girl who still lives with her mother and family?”

  Henry sunk his head into his chest and cried even louder. “I’m telling you what you’re asking me. I don’t know what else to say. I made a stupid decision.”

  “So, exactly what did you talk about when she called you? Because you couldn’t have asked her much about who she was or what she did for a living. You would have found out fairly easily that she was underaged.”

  Henry kept his head burrowed into his chest.

  “I talked about a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been talking about.”

  “Oh yeah, like what? Let me hear some of it.”

  Henry thought about acquiring a lawyer again, but he feared the detective threatening to book him down at the station. “We talked a lot about sex. And she wanted to…experience some things,” he added after a pause.

  “Is that right? And you told her you would be the one to help her experience it?”

  Henry answered by nodding his head into his chest.

  The detective shook his head. “Well, that’s pitiful. How do you think your daughter would respond to hearing that you did something like that?”

  Henry didn’t want to imagine it. He figured he had suffered enough already. He had never been handcuffed inside of a police car in his life. And the only thing he knew about the station was what he had seen on television shows or in movies. He barely even read the crime section in his own newspaper.

  Finally, the detective asked him, “Henry, you’re not gonna skip town on me, or commit suicide, if I let you go, are you? I consider myself a pretty good judge of character.”

  Henry couldn’t answer him right away. He had to think about it. Then he slowly shook his head. He told himself to have a little faith. He had told the detective the truth, and that’s all that he had to offer.

  “All right, so…I’m gonna stop by to pay a visit to LaTasha Springfield and her family, and I’m gonna hear her side of the story. And if I can straighten it all out without it making it into the courtroom, then you can come out of this thing and count your blessings.”

  Henry squeezed his eyes tightly again and mumbled, “Thank you!”

  “Now I can’t make you any promises,” the detective added. “But one thing I can promise you is this; from here on out, any false moves on your part may definitely land you in prison. And that includes speaking to LaTasha about any of this or seeing her ever again. Or you trying to skip out of town on me. So what I would advise you to do, is avoid any further contact with her, go back to work and your regular routine, and wait for me to contact you with a follow-up.”

  He continued, “And you can contact a lawyer, if you want, but I wouldn’t advise you to find one with a lawyer’s ego. He may make the situation worse for you than what it already is. You know, sometimes these lawyers like to make themselves a big deal by getting all kinds of publicity. And I wouldn’t advise you to play that game. You and I both know that what’s wrong is wrong. But I do believe in an honest man getting a second chance to prove himself in life. So let me see what I can do for you.”

  Henry heard him out and nodded his heavy head into his chest once more. He mumbled, “Thank you.”

  The detective nodded back. “All right. Well, I’ma let you go now. But you remember everything I told you.”

  When Henry arrived at home to his small, studio apartment, he felt sweaty and exhausted, as if he had just jumped off of a treadmill at the gym. He fell back across his bed and didn’t want to budge. The close call had taken everything out of him. And it wasn’t over yet.

  “I’ve really done it to myself now,” he cried up to the ceiling. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny that Tasha’s young, wet pussy had been incredible. That was the worst part of his ordeal. He had tasted the heavenly juices of youth.

  “Fuck!” he enraged. As he lay in bed, he beat his balled fists at his sides. But his frustrations wouldn’t change a damn thing. He was now forced to wait it out and continue to pray. He even thought of leaving town, or dying, as the detective had warned him not to do. But there were so many other places to live out there, and so many towns for him to start a new life. Or, if he was to be imprisoned because of his grave mistake, then maybe he would be better off if he killed himself before the detective and the police came back to get him.

  At least then I wouldn’t have to live with the shame of what I’ve done, he pondered. But then…what would happen to me once I’ve reached the gates of heaven?

  He felt that his life was no longer in his hands. So he quietly began to weep, with tears rolling down the sides of his face and landing on his bed sheets.

  If I could just have a second chance, he mused.

  “Everyone deserves at least one second chance.”

  After countless minutes had turned into hours, Henry still couldn’t find the energy to move. He even ignored his cell phone on the first two rings. But on the third ring, he read the number to see who was calling him.

  However, the call was restricted, and he definitely wasn’t up to answering any foreign phone calls that evening. What if it is Tasha calling to get him into more trouble? He ignored it.

  But once the third call was followed by a fourth, and from a restricted number again, Henry waited for the call to end before he checked his messages.

  He listened to the usual calls from coworkers, family and friends, before he reached the last two messages that were left on his cell phone that evening.

  “Hey, Henry, it’s Tasha. I know you probably don’t want to speak to me anymore, but I wanted to tell you that it was my friend who told her mom, and then her mom called my mom. And before I could even say anything about it, my mom called the police station and made a fucking complaint. So I wanted you to know that it wasn’t me. Okay?”

  Henry then listened to her second message.

  “Please don’t be mad at me, man. It wasn’t my fault. And I would never tell my business like that. I mean, I…”

  Henry shook his head and erased the message without listening to the rest of it. He didn’t want to hear it.

  “Is this girl crazy? She makes it sound like this is a slap-on-the-wrist thing. But this detective is ready to lock my ass up!”

  Furthermore, the young girl was not apologizing for lying to him about her age; she was only apologizing for being dimed out.

  And if she didn’t tell her business like that, then how would her girlfriend even know who the hell I was? Henry reasoned. I knew that was a mistake the first time she called me from that girl’s phone to pick her up that night.

  All her pleading phone calls only made him angrier.

  “That damn girl has no fucking idea what she got me into!” he stood from his bed and shouted. “This ain’t no got’ damned game! This is my life we’re talking about!”

  Nevertheless, Tasha’s desperate phone calls had given him new faith, so he vowed to fight the charges. He wasn’t going to jail for a sixteen-year-old girl! Instead, he would force her to tell the judge and jury that she had lied to him. Plain and simple. And if his family, employers, and the citizens of Richmond, Virginia, would castigate him for his poor judgment, then he would up and leave the city for a new place to live.

  Henry was determined to keep his same reserve at work the next morning. He performed his usual routines and was fortified i
n his faith that he would be proven innocent on the grounds of ignorance of her real age. But he could no longer fight the fact that he had an active sex drive. A sex drive was normal. And if he needed to finally divorce his wife and move on to a new relationship with a capable and loving woman, then so be it.

  However, Henry was also prepared for any visitor from the police station to pop in on him at work. He wouldn’t be blindsided by it again, and he would not break down and cry anymore. He was ready for it now. He even collected the names and phone numbers of three qualified lawyers in his wallet to call up and defend him whenever needed. But after the first day at work, no one came to get him.

  In fact, no one came to get him after the second day. But that hardly meant that Henry would put his guard down. He figured he would remain prepared for whatever would happen to him.

  Detective Troy Patterson had promised he would contact him again once he got down to the bottom of things, and Henry now believed him. He had no other choice. So when the detective finally caught back up with him after the third day of work, Henry was poised and ready for the verdict.

  The detective pulled him over on the side of the road again, but this time he didn’t bother to put handcuffs on him when they sat again inside of his unmarked car. That still didn’t mean that Henry wasn’t nervous though. Any man would remain nervous in his position. So he waited anxiously for the detective to give him the bitter or sweet news.

  The detective nodded to him and remained stoic. “Well, it looks like you’ve dodged a bullet, Henry. But let this be a serious wake-up call for you in the future.”

  Henry exhaled without a word.

  The detective continued, “I did some further research on the girl, talked to her mother, a few of her teachers at school, and some of her girlfriends. And at the end of the day, the girl refused to go along with pressing charges against you. Based on the facts that I’ve gathered on her, she wouldn’t have stood up in court no way.”

  Henry asked him, “Did she tell you she lied to me?” That’s all he wanted to know. Her initial lie to him held up his whole moral argument.

  The detective took a breath. “Henry, the young woman is full of lies. And with all of the things she’s gotten herself involved in lately, she has no choice but to lie.”

  Henry nodded and grinned, feeling vindicated.

  The detective eyed him sternly. “Her lie still don’t make your actions right, Henry. Now think about this for a second. If I would have skipped over your paperwork and passed it on to someone else, instead of taking it myself…You catch my drift?”

  Henry nodded and understood him perfectly. The detective had gone out of his way to save him from a giagantic mess.

  “Thanks,” Henry muttered.

  The detective leveled with him. He looked Henry square in his eyes and said, “Between me and you, you had some very fortunate timing, my friend. My oldest daughter had just put my wife and me in a similar situation. We found out she had been having conversations with a much older football player. She had told this man she was twenty-one. She had a fake ID and everything. So imagine how hurt and embarrassed I was to find this out about my own daughter, while I’m walking around investigating other cases.”

  Henry looked into the man’s brown eyes and could now empathize with him.

  The detective exhaled also. “But, no matter what, Henry, grown men have to stop looking to get involved with young women in the first place, because we all know that they’re young. And nineteen is only six years away from thirteen. But you’re nearly fifty, Henry. And fifty to nineteen is still a blowout.”

  He then pointed at Henry and warned, “So the next time this happens to you, I hope you have the reserve to walk away. Because you may not have another man on the case who can personally understand it. You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” Henry mumbled. How could he not hear the detective? He felt for the man. He felt for them both. They were both getting older while the women got younger. So the “blowouts” were more likely to happen now.

  The detective repeated, “Well, I hope you do. And you can consider this your first forgiveness. But I can’t promise you that you’ll get another.”

  “I don’t plan to need another one. I know exactly what I’m up against now. So you don’t have to worry about me at all. And thanks again.”

  Henry Morgan drove away a free man that night in more ways than one. All of his recent thoughts about divorcing his wife for good and moving on to another city had stuck with him. He could easily transfer his knowledge and skills as a newspaper ad salesman to another paper in a different town. That’s what the true go-getters did. They moved around for new opportunities, experiences and higher-paying jobs.

  The next month, Henry found himself four hours north of Richmond in the state of Delaware, where he checked out the housing and employment opportunities. He liked everything he saw.

  “Yeah, I can go for this town,” he told himself cheerfully. “Everything is wide open here. And it’s no taxes on the shopping.”

  He stopped to check out Christiana Mall off of Interstate 95. In the middle of his walk throughout the mall, an attractive mother and daughter walked out of a shoe store right in front of him and caught his undivided attention.

  The mother looked in her early forties, with the full curves and maturity of her age. She walked like a stately woman of dignity and tact. Henry was immediately impressed with her, admiring her from behind. But then her daughter stopped and turned to their left, a few feet in front of him, causing her mother to stop along with her.

  The daughter pointed with her index finger, right past Henry.

  “Let’s go to Macy’s first,” she suggested.

  Henry looked the younger woman in her face and was stunned. The teenaged daughter had the dark, slanted eyes of an Egyptian, a face as smooth as an advertisement for cocoa butter lotion, titties like a double scoop of coffee ice cream, and a perfectly rounded ass in her blue jeans.

  SHIT! Henry thought to himself. Just when he thought he was impressed with a woman closer to his age, her daughter made her look like an old leather bag. The mother was still attractive, but her curves were not as pronounced as her daughter’s. The mother’s skin was not as smooth. Her eyes were not as sharp. And her aura was no where near as explosive as her offspring’s.

  Well, you can’t compare a mother to her daughter in most situations, Henry reasoned. There was no competition physically. An older woman was an older woman. But it’s the mentality part that really counts, he insisted. And these young women are dangerous and unstable.

  Nevertheless, he gave the daughter a second look as they walked by him. Before they disappeared from his sight to enter Macy’s, he gave the daughter a third look. He couldn’t help himself.

  Jesus Christ! he exclaimed. What in the world has happened to me?

  In his private thoughts, he had already begun to wonder what the daughter’s sweet, young pussy would taste like.

  SHIT! he cursed himself a second time. I may need to see a psychiatrist now.

  Could he actually slip into being a child molester after his experience in Richmond? The idea scared him. Adults were supposed to have the conscious restraint to say no.

  “I can’t even look at them anymore,” he mumbled to as he continued to walk through the mall. But then another young woman walked out of a store in front of him, and then the next one, until Henry was quickly forced to modify his new rule.

  Well, just because you look at them, doesn’t mean you have to touch them. Looking is normal, he mused. Or maybe I can’t go out to the malls anymore.

  After further thought, he came to the conclusion that he would refrain from going to places where younger women would congregate, like malls, shopping centers or movie theaters.

  But that sounds ridiculous, he pondered. I went to all of those places before. What’s the difference now?

  Then he realized again that he had tasted the heavenly juices of youth, and he could not deny it. The experience
of a young woman had been wrong…and also invigorating.

  SHIT! Henry cursed himself a third time. Maybe the detective was right.

  He figured he would have to fight for the rest of his days to make sure he never ended up in the situation he had escaped in Richmond. But he was damned if it wouldn’t be hard; real hard!

  He walked out of the mall and headed back to his car, terrified to even look at the young women who were coming and going from the parking lot.

  SKIN DEEP

  Jason Polk positioned his expensive Hasselblad, German camera on a tripod at the perfect height and distance from the pine-wood, canopy-style bed inside of an elegant, candlelit bedroom. The soft candlelight that surrounded the room illuminated the red satin sheets atop the king-sized bed just right.

  Perfect! He double-checked the view and adjusted the lens of his camera. At twenty-eight years old, Jason was a rising star photographer with a director position at The Higher End magazine, a publication of wealth, splurges, expensive candy and grown people’s toys, including his assigned shoot at a hideaway resort in the northern suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.

  “Are you ready for me yet?” a buttery-smooth voice asked him from his right.

  “Ah, yeah, let’s ah, see how everything looks.”

  He fiddled again with his camera and tossed his long dreadlocks out of his face to see clearly.

  Gabrielle Kasey, his tempting model for the shoot, walked out from the bathroom, wearing only a golden, silk nightgown, and she was ready to obey his artistic tastes and orders. She glided through the room like a sexy, young tigress and climbed onto the red satin sheets gingerly. At twenty-one, she had been modeling for less than a year, and had not yet been trained how to pose. But her willingness to experiment made her artless efforts irresistible. And her beauty…was obvious.

  Jason took a calming breath and flexed his toned biceps, preparing himself for another splendid job of execution. He began to snap her pictures immediately.