A Kiss Gone Bad wm-1

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘After Corey vanished, did Pete seem different? Troubled?’

  He could hear Lucinda’s voice in the background, apparently talking on another line, soft and mournful. ‘Pete was never the same. But all I can worry about is Sam, okay?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Faith.’ Condolences never counted for much with him. They always seemed designed to coddle the giver in the face of mortality. But he tried. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘At least it’s over. Thank you, Whit. Bye.’

  He unlocked the cafe doors and headed back to Irina’s office. An untidy whirl of papers covered her desk. A calendar from the local branch of the Texas Coastal Bank was pinned to one wall. Framed on her desk was a selection of photos of family in faraway Russia. A dour mother, a sunny brother who needed orthodontic work and wore his hair in an unstylish chop. Irina rarely spoke of them, as though they were from a chapter of life best forgotten.

  He powered up her iMac, accessed the Internet, and found himself on the Yahoo! Web portal. He began with a search for ‘Big Pete Majors,’ the film name Pete Hubble had used for his career.

  A number of Web sites popped into view, along with brief descriptions. Most of the sites appeared to be online businesses selling pornographic videos. The site with the highest relevance in the search proclaimed itself as ‘THE Big Pete Majors site for the Truly Devoted Fan.’ Whit clicked on it.

  The site belonged to a Truly Devoted Male Fan of Pete’s. It offered reviews of Pete’s cornucopia of movies, a message board where Pete’s fans could post deep thoughts, and a gallery of downloadable pictures of Pete, both by himself and in action with his co-stars.

  No banner proclaimed on the site’s front page that Pete was gone. The copy below the BIG PETE MAJORS UNOFFICIAL TEMPLE OF APPRECIATION read: If you’re a Big Pete Majors fan, you’ve come to the right place! This is a labor of love for me (I’m Kevin). ALL Pete’s fans are welcome here str8, gay, bi, whatever! Enjoy!!!!!!!! str8? Whit studied the arcane code a moment before realizing it meant ‘straight.’

  Kevin certainly had scads of free time. Whit explored the message board: there were a few dozen messages, some months old. Several messages were titled PETE LEAVING PORN?

  It was a hot rumor, and Pete’s devotees promulgated reason after reason: AIDS, erectile dysfunction, drying out in Betty Ford, conversion to fundamentalism, an ongoing bicker with porn directors. The final message was posted by Kevin: It is my privilege (as you know) to know Pete slightly, because he’s appreciated my efforts on-line, and I just talked with him via phone and he said NO WAY is he cutting out from porn!!!! He said to tell you all he really appreciates our concern, but he is due back in L.A. in a few months. He is doing some so-called legit work (hush hush) back in Texas (where one MAY surmise that everything is indeed bigger!). Don’t know if he’ll still be exclusive with director Velvet Mojo, but some Pete is better than no Pete. So stop the rumors, he’s not sick and he’s not dead and he should be back in front of cameras soon.

  The message was dated last Monday, early afternoon. Hours before Pete died.

  Whit found nothing of interest in the rest of the messages – mostly discussions of which films showed Big Pete Majors to advantage (films of particular merit were awarded a ‘two dicks up’ by one enterprising pair of critics), comments on his acting skills, discussions of which starlets he had the hottest sex scenes with. All from participants with odd code names such as lovergrrl and madforpete and boyslut69. Consumers of sex – as opposed to those actually having sex – needed reviews before plunking down their hard-earned money, Whit supposed.

  He scooted back to the Temple of Appreciation’s main Web page. He found a link to send E-mail to Web master Kevin. Whit clicked on the link and typed in: Hi Kevin, I’d like to talk to you about your recent conversation with Pete. I know Pete here in Texas, and I’m afraid I have some unsettling news and would prefer to talk rather than E-mail you. Would you please call me – my phone will pay the bill if you call my cell phone. 361-555-6788. Thank you. Judge Whit Mosley, Justice of the Peace, Encina County, Texas, He hoped his title might induce a more rapid response.

  Curiosity got the better of Whit, and he clicked on the gallery’s front link. The pictures were organized by action. Pete alone. Pete receiving oral sex. Pete masturbating. Pete doing it doggy style. Pete doing it with Asian girls. With black girls. With bottle blondes. With two girls at once. A wide menu, to appeal to the widest possible lack of taste.

  Whit remembered the boy that Pete had been: fun, carefree, quick to tease, helping to toilet-paper the oaks in front of Delford’s house, high-fiving the Mosleys after the infamous Pepto-pink paint incident with Delford’s house. That boy was gone. Maybe all this sex, all this pleasure, was a dam against the grief over what he had done to his brother.

  Whit returned to the search engine and typed a search on ‘Velvet Mojo.’ The list returned a number of sites selling videos and one site entirely devoted to Velvet herself.

  This site proclaimed itself to be VelvetRocks! the only site for America’s preeminent female director of porn. A picture of Velvet that was at least five years old, dressed in a leather biker garb with carefully moussed platinum hair. She sat astride a gleaming motorcycle. A sternness hardened her face instead of the wanton pucker of the rising starlet. The site included a listing of the movies she had directed (over sixty), links to purchase her videos, a listing of awards she had garnered from the adult film industry (seven), and a whole bevy of reviews by the pornorati, as Whit mentally termed the more slavish fans. She had performed on the other side of the camera at the beginning of her career for ten films, two of which were described on the site as ‘classics.’

  There were pictures from her appearances, available for download.

  A guiltiness Whit hadn’t known since he’d stolen peeks at his older brothers’ carefully stashed Playboys when he was young rumbled along his bones. He had never seen naked photos of a woman he knew socially. But curiosity won the advantage over refinement, and he clicked on a thumbnail-size photo.

  What slowly filled the browser’s screen was a color still from a movie that portrayed postal workers breeding at will. Velvet was in a badly buttoned clone of a mail deliverer’s uniform, her breasts about to break out from the confines of the cloth. Her blond hair was combed huge, her lips painted crimson, her cheeks rouged. One hand crept down from the flat plane of her stomach to the too-tight serge of her uniform’s skirt.

  Whit swallowed. Velvet looked far prettier in person, in her sweats and jeans and her hair not a cumulus cloud. In the picture she was a Barbie doll maddened with lust. She didn’t look like any real woman he knew. The true woman lay buried beneath the trying-too-hard stance and the stage paint. He selected a second picture for download. As the picture slowly built, Whit could see that Pete lay atop her, her oversize breasts jabbing into his over-pumped chest, both of them grinning with ecstasy so faked it looked like pain.

  A kiss gone bad, she had called it.

  He clicked off the downloading picture before the whole bonanza presented itself. He knew these people. He couldn’t watch them this way.

  On a whim, he did a Web search on Pete Hubble instead of Pete Majors. He slowly paged through the results. Zip that was relevant: only a cluster of genealogy sites that listed various Peter Hubbles from the past three hundred years in their databases. He did a similar search for Corey Hubble and got one result back other than the regular cluster of genealogy sites. The enthusiastic Kevin’s Pete-tribute site. Odd.

  He moved the mouse toward the link at the same time the office lights went black and a finger of God shrieked past his ear. The iMac’s screen burst with a bright, blinding nova. Whit fell behind the desk, clutching his head.

  ‘Hello, Judge,’ a voice rumbled from the doorway. Low, throaty, a man’s voice, hoarse, neutral of accent or drawl. ‘Stay down on the floor and you won’t be hurt.’

  Whit stayed exactly where he was, his heart pounding hard against the thin carpet. The desk shielded hi
m, but in the pitch-dark he couldn’t see his assailant. A faint electric crackle served as the dying gasp of the ruined computer. Whit heard his own ragged breathing, far too loud.

  ‘Listen, Your Honor,’ the polite voice said. ‘I could have blown your motherfucking head off now and I didn’t. That’s because I want you to listen. Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes,’ Whit croaked. He tried to think of any weapon there might be in the office: nothing.

  ‘Good. You rule that Pete Hubble committed suicide. If you don’t, you die. And so does your father. And so does his wife. And so do Claudia Salazar and Delford Spires. You will all be killed at the same time, by, uh, multiple operatives. Understand?’

  Jesus, Whit thought, Jesus Mary and Joseph.

  ‘And should you go to other authorities with this threat, not only will you be killed, but also your five brothers and their families. In Houston and in Atlanta and in Austin and in New York and in Miami. We know where all our little Mosleys flock. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Whit answered. His voice sounded raw.

  ‘Say it with conviction. I think judges need conviction.’ A small, sickening laugh. ‘Pick one of your brothers. I’ll kill him to prove I mean business.’

  Horror flooded Whit.

  ‘Pick a brother,’ the voice said genially, ‘or I order them all killed.’

  Whit gasped. ‘Please don’t. I’ll do what you want.’

  ‘Which one?’ The voice oozed enjoyment. ‘Teddy in Houston? It’d make Father’s Day rough for his three little delectable girls. Or Joe in Atlanta? That software company probably pays him big, his widow should live large on insurance. How about Mark in Austin, who so wants to be a writer? Isn’t he your favorite brother? Let’s spare the world another crappy poet.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt them. Please!’

  ‘Pick one,’ the shooter snapped.

  ‘Me. I pick me!’ he screamed. ‘Just leave them alone!’

  A slight laugh. ‘Said with conviction. So how will you rule?’

  ‘Suicide, suicide, suicide.’

  ‘Fine. I’m generous tonight so all your brothers get to wake up tomorrow and fuck their wives and breathe the air.’ A pause. ‘Sorry about Irina’s computer, but better it than the back of her head.’ In the darkness he sensed the shooter leaning over the desk, toward him. To look up would mean death.

  ‘Now here’s what we’re going to do, asshole. You’re going to stay kissing the floor here for the next thirty minutes. Because a buddy of mine is watching this cafe, and if a light comes on, or you move, I come back and shoot you. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Whit answered. ‘I completely understand.’

  ‘Don’t let me down. Judge.’

  Whit heard the door shut. He heard only the harsh labor of his own breathing. He fingered his neck, face, and ear; there was no wound. He lay perfectly still on the floor.

  The guy sounded like – what? A polite psychopath? A government agent? Or like a tough guy who’d seen a lot of bad movies. Multiple operatives. Who the hell was this?

  You willing to take a chance? With your life and your family’s?

  He let the thirty minutes pass, not moving in the darkness. His cell phone rang, and rang, and rang, but he did not answer it.

  27

  From the bay Port Leo appeared as a luminous stitch against the black fabric of the night. The always open Port Leo State Pier glowed along its long thrust into St Leo Bay, and even from this distance Whit saw stick figures moving, eclipsing the lights, and he imagined he could see the lines the fishermen cast out into the bay, as thin as spider’s silk. Whit sat in the bow of Don’t Ask and sipped at a jelly jar full of bourbon.

  He had left the cafe, hauling Irina’s ruined computer after him and cleaning up the debris. He’d phoned Babe, said he wouldn’t be home that night and that he’d dropped Irina’s computer while moving it. He promised to replace the computer.

  Babe sounded unconvinced. ‘You’re not with this girlfriend of Hubble’s, are you? You better not be blowing this election thinking with your dick.’

  ‘I’m not, and thanks for the vote of confidence. Be sure all your doors are locked. Daddy. And keep your gun at your bedside.’

  ‘What? Christ, Whit, what is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Just do it,’ Whit said. ‘I got to go.’

  Whit felt safe in one place, and that place was now settled in the calm of the bay, a big-ass moat between him and the world.

  Gooch poured the right bourbon and was the consummate listener. When Whit finished, outlining the investigation, the attack, and the threats against him and his family, Gooch said, ‘Of course we have to destroy these people.’

  Whit said nothing.

  ‘It’s an insult to the rule of law. Even when the rule of law is The Not-Always-Respectable but Ever-Honorable Whit.’ Gooch sipped his spring water and stared out over the empty dark of the water.

  ‘I should warn Dad and Irina and my brothers.’

  ‘If this jerk wanted them dead right now, he wouldn’t have bothered telling you. Listen to me. Whoever did this is scum and he deserves a quick ending.’

  Whit listened to the water slap against the sides of the Don’t Ask. ‘If they’re following me, they might figure out that I’ve told you.’

  ‘I’m hardly the authorities. I’m simply a grizzled fishing guide.’ Gooch finished his drink. ‘I’m curious as to who could field this army of darkness, devoted to nothing but eliminating a legion of Mosleys.’

  ‘Junior Deloache.’

  Gooch shrugged. ‘Junior doesn’t strike me as the forceful type on his own.’

  ‘So he sends one of his goons in his place.’

  ‘But this person knew details about you, your family. Junior is not oriented toward homework. Who else’s cage have you and Claudia rattled?’

  ‘Well, Delford took her off the case and she’s steamed about it.’

  ‘But Delford was threatened as well.’

  Whit shrugged. ‘Could be a cover so I don’t suspect him. But there’s a huge stretch between Delford yanking Claudia off this case and then Delford ordering me to be shot at and my whole family threatened. My God, I’ve known Delford Spires for years. No way.’

  ‘What about our senator?’

  ‘Not Lucinda’s style. You may not like her, but she’s not the kind to use thugs.’

  ‘Lucinda Hubble is exactly the type to use hired muscle. I am not fooled like our fair electorate. I do not find her amusing or colorful or even particularly bright. There is something missing in that woman’s eyes, some common trace of humanity. I don’t doubt she lets Faith’s hands get dirty while she keeps her own gloves white.’

  ‘But this guy clearly didn’t know about the suicide note Sam found. The note makes it much more likely I’ll rule for suicide, even without a threat. If the shooter knew about that… why threaten me? I think it puts the Hubbles in the clear.’

  ‘Indulge me, Whit. What if it was a Hubble? Say your fair Faith.’

  ‘I’m indulging.’ Whit kept his voice steady.

  ‘At the least Lucinda is Pete’s mother. There’s a bond there that should survive just about anything, and you say she was clearly torn about him coming home. But Faith, this is nothing but nightmare for her. If Pete comes home and sours the election for his mother, Faith loses her job. Pete wants her kid and thought he had enough leverage against her that he hired a lawyer. If he did have dirt, it had to be radioactive for him to be considered the superior parent. She’s down two strikes. And she’s fiercely protective of Lucinda. Her I could see.’

  Whit took a hard swallow of the bourbon, let it burn his throat. ‘She’d be capable of killing Pete. I have no illusions there. But they consider the case closed now because of the note. She doesn’t benefit from this threat against me.’

  ‘Unless she doubts you buy the note and wants insurance.’ Gooch showed compassion the only way he knew how, by shifting subjects. ‘And Jabez Jones? His name kee
ps popping up here.’

  ‘I think not,’ Whit said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Gunplay doesn’t seem his style.’

  ‘There’s a lot of testosterone in his ministry. You know, the Bible is deplorably violent.’ Gooch smiled. ‘You’re neglecting one other possibility.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Velvet.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Am not.’

  ‘She’s the one clamoring hardest for me to rule homicide. It makes no sense.’

  ‘Look, Whit, she could be working a carefully constructed sham. She looks like Pete’s advocate, but she retires from town quietly when you rule suicide. She nicely puts herself out of suspicion.’

  ‘I just don’t see her as a killer.’

  ‘Christ, Whit, are you sleeping with her, too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never know about people, Whit.’

  The statement and Gooch’s even tone made Whit stop. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Another blanket of clouds unfurled over the western Gulf after the fall of evening; Whit longed to see the long swath of stars that scored the autumn sky over the coast. He heard a soft whispering, and he looked over the bow. Barely discernible in the darkness, several dark shapes surfaced into the gentle cups of waves, puffed misty air, then slowly submerged again. A small herd of porpoises, sleeping. He listened to them rise and fall in their total calm.

  ‘So how are you going to rule?’ Gooch finally asked.

  Whit set down his drink. The shakiness had passed, but the liquor hadn’t calmed him – just made him scared and drunk, all at once. ‘Ruling for suicide makes everyone safe. For now. But what does that say about me? You think people here would vote for me or respect me if they knew I caved in to a threat?’

  ‘I’ve known cowards, Whit. You ain’t one.’

  ‘I lay on that floor for the instructed thirty minutes. I didn’t even answer my cell phone when it rang.’