Scott looked at Richard. What the fuck was he talking about?
“What do you mean, ‘what I deserve’? We’re doing business here, don’t worry about what I fucking deserve.”
Richard was looking at him in a funny way. It made the hair stand up on the back of Scott’s neck.
“Where’s the stash, Richard?” Scott asked.
“I got your stash,” Richard said. “Right between my legs, man. Your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
The gun was in Richard’s hand all of a sudden. He had taken it out of the paper sack, along with some bungee cords.
“Stop fucking around, Richard,” Scott said. “I don’t suck cock. Put the goddam gun down and let’s do the deal.”
He was scared; if you’re not scared when somebody’s pointing a gun at you you’re either crazy or brain-dead. But he was more angry than scared; fucking Richard, the bastard was going to try and make him suck him off as part of the deal? No fucking way.
“Put the gun away,” Scott said again. “Let’s do the business we said we were going to do and bail out of here.”
Richard smiled at him then.
“This is our business,” he said.
The lamb had sheared the wolf.
“You ain’t got no grass up here, do you, motherfucker?”
“That’s right, baby,” Richard said, grinning. “The only grass you’re going to be tasting tonight is the clump growing around my root.”
He cocked the gun, walked to Scott, placed the end of the barrel against Scott’s temple.
“On your knees, cocksucker,” he commanded.
Scott had no choice. He went down to his knees.
“Hands behind your back.”
He tied Scott’s hands together with one of the bungee cords.
Scott’s eyes were squeezed shut. This isn’t happening, he told himself. It’s a bad dream.
“Open your eyes, sweetie,” Richard said. “I’ve got that joint you’ve been waiting to suck. I’m going to get you high like you’ve never been.”
Scott opened his eyes. Richard’s cock was in his face. He may have been a limp dick with a woman last night, but now he was stiff as a poker.
“Kiss it,” Richard said. He stuck the end of the gun barrel in Scott’s ear, “Like it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted in your life.” He had a big shit-eating grin on his face. “Admit it to yourself, man. You’re gay. You’re as gay as I am. So start doing what comes naturally.”
Scott had no choice. He put his lips around the tip of Richard’s penis, and started sucking.
Richard started moaning. He sounded like a girl, almost like last night’s whore, when Scott had eaten her.
Scott was a primo pussy eater; lots of women had told him he gave the best head they’d ever had. He was good at it because he loved it. But that was women; he didn’t suck cock, never had, never would. Until now.
“More,” Richard said. “Take more of it. You love it, goddam it—take it all.”
He was moaning, gyrating his hips, fucking Scott in the mouth. With his free hand he grabbed the hair at the back of Scott’s head, pulling Scott to him, pushing his cock deeper into Scott’s throat. Like Scott had done two nights before in the men’s room of the gay bar. Like he’d done to the sad faggot he’d mugged.
Richard started to come in Scott’s mouth, spurting semen. Scott gagged, tried to spit it out.
“Swallow it!” Richard pushed the gun into Scott’s ear.
Scott swallowed. And then he was crying. He didn’t know when he started, he was crying like a baby.
“What’re you crying for, miss?” Richard asked him, mocking him.
Scott stared up at him. What kind of asshole question … ?
“What are you crying about?” Richard asked again. “You liked it. You fucking loved it, didn’t you? Admit you loved it.”
“Fuck you,” Scott said.
“Wouldn’t you like to,” Richard answered.
He squatted down, his face right next to Scott’s.
“You loved it,” Richard taunted him. His cock was still semierect, spider legs of semen spurting out. “That’s why you’re crying—because you liked it. You’re gay, Scott. You’re as gay as I am. You just wouldn’t admit it to yourself. But now—now you have to.”
Richard started laughing.
“Big macho stud. You’re as queer as any queen on Forty-second Street. You’re the ultimate macho queen. The ultimate phony queen.”
He stood on unsteady legs, weaving his dripping phallus in Scott’s face.
“You’re out of the closet now,” Richard said. “And you can’t go back in.”
Richard was staggering around, laughing, his cock flopping in the breeze, waving the gun around like a drunken sailor. He was into himself, he’d gotten what he wanted from Scott.
“I’m going to give you a treat,” Richard said. “I’m going to let you fuck me. Right up the ol’ chocolate highway. Something I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of practice doing.”
Scott’s hands were still tied, he couldn’t do anything, Richard had the gun.
“Pretend I’m one of those whores you like to fuck, except when you close your eyes you’re wishing it was a man. Admit it, Scott,” Richard said.
He had to do what Richard said. It scared Scott, because Richard was a gay doper, and the thought of AIDS popped into Scott’s mind, but Richard had the gun on him, he had to.
He fucked Richard royally. Like he was fucking a fourteen-year-old virgin.
When he finished, Richard started mocking him again.
“Don’t say I never did you no favors,” Richard said. “I just gave you the ride of your young life, son.”
He was sitting on his bare ass on the ground, laughing to beat the band.
And one of the ends of the bungee cord popped, and the rope went slack on Scott’s bound wrists.
And he was moving at Richard, rising, and Richard didn’t see him coming, in his euphoria he didn’t realize that Scott had broken loose, Scott felt like he was moving underwater, in slow motion, he was off his knees, pushing up, and then Richard saw him, and his face had shock written all over it, and Richard started to raise the gun.
“He had the gun on me,” Scott says in a low tone, his voice quivering from crying.
“He was going to shoot you,” I say, confirming for him.
“He would’ve,” Scott nods. “No question.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“’Cause I was too fast for him. He couldn’t react fast enough.”
“You managed to get the gun away from him.”
Scott nods.
“I grabbed it out of his hand. I wasn’t thinking, I just knew if I didn’t he’d kill me.”
“Then what did you do?”
He looks up at me, tears streaming down his face.
“I killed him, man. I blew his goddam brains out.”
He looks past me, begging understanding.
“I had to. He made me. He made me! I ain’t no faggot, man! He made me! I ain’t no faggot! Never!”
Martinez recesses the court to give Scott Ray time to pull himself together. Scott sits on a bench in a corner of the empty corridor outside the courtroom, reading the Bible. I watch from a distance, making sure no one disturbs him.
“What happened then?” I ask.
It’s been an hour since Martinez excused everyone, after Scott finished telling what he had done. We’re back inside the courtroom again.
“After I shot him?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember exactly. I kind of freaked ’cause I didn’t really mean to kill him. It’s like I didn’t have control over myself … over anything.”
He’s becoming agitated again, reliving the events up on the mountain.
“Take your time,” I say. “Just take your time and try to think straight.”
“I freaked out. I remember hearing a bunch more shots and wondering where they came from, then I lo
oked down at the gun in my hand and thinking ‘why is this gun going off?’ And then I realized I was firing it at him, until it was empty. I don’t even know if I hit him any more times, I wasn’t aware of anything right then.”
He looks up at Martinez, as if in supplication.
“I don’t know nothing about what I was doing then,” he says. “It was like it wasn’t me; it was somebody else using me.”
“I understand,” Martinez says.
I’m watching; watching everyone—Judge Martinez, Robertson, Mary Lou, the bikers. They’re all wrapped up in this, all there up on that mountain with Scott Ray.
“Then what?” I say, prodding gently.
“I sat down. My legs collapsed under me.”
“You sat down next to the body.”
“Yeh.”
“Why didn’t you run away?”
“I couldn’t move.”
“So you sat there. For how long?”
He shakes his head.
“An hour?” I ask.
“At least. Probably longer.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I started to freak out again. I was looking at him, and he was turning white, like a dead fish, that ugly kind of dead-fish white, and I started getting angry at him again. Real angry. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted to do some business and be on my way. I done some bad things in my life, I don’t deny it, but I never killed anyone. I swear to that. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I believe that,” I tell him. I wait a moment: “Go on. Then what happened?”
“I took that knife he’d brought and started stabbing him with it. I was crying and cursing him for making me kill him for no reason.”
“You stabbed him after he was dead?”
“He’d been dead from the minute the first shot was fired.”
“More than an hour before.”
“Yes.”
“Did he bleed much from the stab wounds?”
He shakes his head.
“He wasn’t bleeding hardly at all. There wasn’t no blood coming out. It was already starting to settle.”
“Okay. Keep going.”
“I realized I had to hide him off the road better, ’cause he’d get found too fast where he was, and somebody might’ve seen me pick him up, or at the motel, or something, so I dragged him into the brush.”
“And that was it?” I ask. “After that you left?”
He shakes his head again.
“I cut off his cock.”
“Why?”
“Because he made me put it in my mouth! Because he made me do it.” His eyes pop open. He scans the courtroom, trying to look at everyone, to make sure they see him, make sure they understand.
“He made me suck him off!” he cries. “He made me!”
“And that’s why you did it,” I ask rhetorically.
“Partly,” he says.
“Why else?”
“Because he deserved it,” Scott Ray says defiantly. “I knew he’d be found sooner or later. I’d have called the cops myself if he hadn’t been.” He looks at me, defiance in his eyes. “I wanted everyone to know what he was,” he says. “That he was a faggot rip-off artist. I wanted everyone to see it.”
“YOU TELL AN INTERESTING story, Mr. Ray.” Robertson stands in front of Scott. Considering the torpedoes that have been shot into his case, he seems relatively composed. But he’s a true believer, he’ll believe the bikers did it to his dying day, no matter what anyone says or does.
“It ain’t a story. It’s the truth.”
“So you say.”
“That’s right,” Scott says with some defiance in his voice. “I swore on a Holy Bible to tell the truth and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t swear on Jesus’ name in vain.”
“It is a good story,” Robertson says. “I will admit that.”
“It’s the truth, damnit! I’m telling the truth.”
“I don’t think the truth in this case exists anymore, Mr. Ray,” Robertson says. “Everything’s gotten so crazy now that there is no truth. There’s what you say, what she says, what my people say, what the defendants say. You all have your own truth, and none of it’s the real truth, as far as I can tell.”
“Mine is,” Scott says doggedly.
“Really,” Robertson says, mocking him.
“Yes.” Firm, sure.
Robertson shakes his head ‘no.’ He turns to Martinez.
“Everything this witness has told us could have been learned from newspapers, magazines, and television, your honor. There is nothing new here that could compel the court to believe this man’s story. It is no more credible than the recanting of Rita Gomez.”
“You saying you don’t believe me?” Scott asks incredulously.
“I think you’re as absolute and complete a liar as I’ll ever meet,” Robertson says.
“Why the hell would I be coming up here and saying I did it, saying I’m the one should be in jail, maybe getting the gas chamber or however you kill people, if I didn’t do it?” Scott asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe someone put you up to it. Maybe you’re some kind of religious fanatic who wants to save the world.”
I stand.
“This is ludicrous, your honor,” I say to Martinez. “This man has put his life on the line here. I’m sure you respect and understand that.”
Martinez nods that he does.
“Then where’s the evidence?” Robertson shoots back at me. “In all this time, all these recanting witnesses, you haven’t produced one shred of real evidence to buttress these outrageous, ridiculous claims. You haven’t shown this court one piece of hard physical evidence that would prove this isn’t anything more than an elaborate concoction, a cluster of intricately interwoven lies. Not one real, physical fact.”
I look at him for a moment, as if pondering the truth of what he’s said. Martinez is looking at me, too: One thing, counselor, he’s saying silently, give us one real piece of evidence.
“Where’s your smoking gun?” Robertson asks.
“It was never found,” I say.
“It was never found,” Robertson echoes, bitterly.
I walk around the defense table, up to the witness stand. The French have a saying: ‘Revenge is a dish that is best eaten cold.’ After two terrible years, my clients and I are about to have our well-deserved feast. I will never sucker-punch an opponent in a courtroom as I am about to do to Robertson at this moment.
“Mr. Ray,” I say. “This gun you say you took away from Richard Bartless, that you used to kill him. Whatever happened to it?”
“I hid it,” he answers.
“Do you remember where?”
“Yes.”
HE HAD THROWN THE GUN into a culvert halfway down the mountain from where the killing took place. It takes the police less than an hour to find it.
“YOUR HONOR. We request that the court dismiss all charges against our clients and order their immediate release.”
“Objection,” Robertson responds tonelessly. He is, if nothing else, consistent in his convictions.
Martinez stares him down.
“So ordered.”
He bangs his gavel.
“The defendants are free to go,” he states. “And gentlemen … this court offers you its heartfelt apologies. I’m sure I can say for everyone concerned …” he looks hard at Robertson as he says this … “that I wish none of this had ever happened.”
It’s just us in the courtroom: the bikers, Mary Lou, and me. After the hugging and dancing are over, and the reality of their freedom has sunk in, Lone Wolf sidles up to me.
“Why, man? Why did you keep going? Why didn’t you give up on us, like everyone else?”
It’s a question I’d asked myself, many times over.
“Because one time,” I tell him, “just one time, I wanted to get something right.”
IT’S DARK NOW. Everyone has scattered. Mary Lou has gone home, waiting for me.
I’m in the m
ountains above town, near where it all happened. It’s very peaceful up here; there’s no suggestion that the violence and death that birthed these terrible events still linger. And maybe now, finally, it doesn’t. Maybe the rains and the snows and the years of passage and exorcism have washed it all away, so that I can again bring my child here to feel, at least while we’re in the moment, nothing but peace.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS NOVEL WAS BEGUN in a UCSB extension class taught by Shelly Lowenkopf. Mr. Lowenkopf’s guidance, support, and ongoing enthusiasm helped me start this book and, more importantly, see it through to its finish.
My brother, David A. Freedman, who is a practicing attorney in New Mexico, has been a helpful source of local information, as well as assisting me with the legal and technical language and passages.
Jerry Adler, Jack Laird, Ronda Gomez-Quinones, Abby Mann, Howard Krakow, and Norman Powell have been especially supportive at different times in my life, when being so was not always easy or popular.
Most importantly, my wife, Rendy, has always been there for me, during the bad times as well as the good.
About the Author
J. F. Freedman is the New York Times bestselling author of Against the Wind, The Disappearance, House of Smoke, and In My Dark Dreams, among other titles. He is also an award-winning film and television director, writer, and producer. He lives in California.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by J. F. Freedman
Cover design by Angela Goddard
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