However, he probably would have been upset if he’d known the man checked into the same hotel he did, requested a room on the same floor, and followed him yet again to the offices of the Bank of Bermuda.
And he probably would have been at least a little frightened if he had known that man had, at every one of Doan’s stops, waited until a few minutes after Doan had left each bank before going in, explaining to the manager with a smile about eccentric cousin Doan, you can see from that dress of his that he’s crazy, he’s gone and taken papers from Mother’s desk again and left the house, which he’s not supposed to do, with those papers, and could I get those back, please, here’s a letter from Mother, yes, that’s Doan’s aunt, he forged her signature on that document he showed you, would you, thanks.
So, by the time Doan (in a man’s bathing suit, mind you) spread out his towel by the pool, congratulating himself on a dull job well done, all four sets of the copies of the damning evidence were in the possession of Charles Ambermere’s henchman, leaving only Eleanor’s originals, deposited in a place known only to her.
“Ho, ho,” Doan chuckled to himself, “his goose is cooked now.” And he amused himself watching all the handsome young men dive into the pool until the rhythm of the waves and the song of the breezes in the palm trees rocked him into a light slumber.
“Excuse me,” the deep, silky voice said, matching it with a warm, silky touch on Doan’s shoulders. “Excuse me.”
Doan came out of sleep reluctantly. Opening his eyes, he was satisfied that the vision of male perfection before him was part of another dream, and he promptly started to drift back off.
“Hey! You’re already red.”
Doan woke up. “Oh my god you’re real,” he said.
Luke laughed. “Yeah, and you’re burned.”
“I am? But I haven’t been...oh, that’s right. I went to sleep, didn’t I? Damn jet lag straight to hell.”
“Come on, I’ve got just the thing in my room.”
I bet you do, Doan thought, completely unable to believe his great good fortune.
In his room, Luke Faraglione said, “Lie down on the bed.”
Doan was obediently there in seconds. “My mom’s a nurse, she gets this stuff for free at the hospital.”
“Ow. Ow!” Doan protested as Luke began to rub the salve into his back. “Ow. Mm. Mmmm. Aaaaahhhhh. ...”
“It’s Silvodine, they use it on real burns. This stuff works wonders.”
“Mmmmmm ...”
“Umm ...”
“Yes?”
“I just think you should know I’m not gay.”
Doan said nothing for a moment. “No more salve for me. I want to die. There’s nothing left to live for in this malevolent universe of ours.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Doan consoled him. “Genetics.”
Luke scooped some more Silvodine out of the jar and started massaging it into Doan’s skin again.
“But that still feels heavenly. Thank you for waking me before it got too bad.”
“Always glad to help a fellow San Franciscan.”
“How did you know?”
“Saw you check in.”
“An American man in a dress, where else could you be from?”
“Thank you for not saying drag queen, which is something I am not.”
“No problem.”
“What do you do back home?”
“Cop.”
Doan cursed his unlucky stars yet again: friendly, gorgeous, a man in uniform, and straight. This, after all, was Doan’s dark secret: in a city where it is not only acceptable but expected that one be unusual, Doan lusted after the conventional. In a city where it was fashionable (and not always difficult) to hate police officers, Doan lusted after them with a passion. There was something about their workmanlike normality that appealed to him; he, after all, was interesting enough for two already.
“And what do you do?”
“As little as possible.”
Luke laughed. “You’ll have to teach me how I can get that job.”
“It requires a certain, well ... devil-may-care attitude, really.”
“Ah. Afraid I never had one of those,” Luke said, somewhat surprised to find himself envious of his new friend. “By the way, I’m Luke.”
“Doan.”
“Dinner tonight okay with you? I came alone.”
“So did I. That sounds wonderful.” Considering that every man here is after parts I do not possess, he thought, the least I can do is nab someone halfway amusing to talk to. He got up off the bed and examined his back in the mirror. “It looks like several thousand snails have had a hoedown on my back. Yecch, how long does this stay on?”
“Until it all sinks in. Wear real loose dresses for a few days.”
“Thank you, I’ll do that. Well ... see you downstairs around six?”
“Yeah. See you then.”
Doan called Binky as soon as he got back to his room.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me. I’m in Bermuda.”
“You lying sack of crap, where are you? Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for days.”
“I told you. Out of the country. Right now I’m in Bermuda. I fell asleep by the pool, and was rescued by a knight in shining armor, who turned out to be straight. Go figure.”
“Wait a minute. What are you doing in Bermuda?”
“Running the last of my transcontinental errands for Eleanor Ambermere.”
“Oh, come on, Doan, I was starting to worry about you. What’s this all about?”
“Come down here and see. She gave me ten grand in expense money. And you’ve got to see this guy. He is perfect! He’s ... ohhhhh, my God!”
“What? What?”
“Binky?”
“Yes?”
“How many six foot four, black-haired, blue-eyed policemen do you think there could be in San Francisco?”
“What’s his name?” she demanded.
“Luke.”
“Oh my God, you are in Bermuda, you do work for Eleanor Ambermere, Luke the most gorgeous man in the universe is there with you, and I can’t find the gin,” she concluded with a scream, rattling madly through the refrigerator until she found the bottle.
“Wanna come down? I’ll pay your way.”
“But my job ...”
“Oh, when was the last time you cared whether you got fired or not? You can afford to get fired.”
Binky thought about it for all of ten more seconds before she said, “Yes, okay, I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Oh, goody! What fun!”
There were all sorts of advantages to wearing dresses, Doan thought as he and Luke followed the waiter to their table. One of them is that it’s a hell of a character barometer of the man with you. If he’s not embarrassed to be seen with you, he’s got more self-assurance than most. There were few traits in a man Doan prized more than that, and Luke had all of them, too. Few of the diners would ever forget the sight of the tall, dark, gorgeous man in the white suit accompanying the tall, fair man in the white silk dress (neatly accessorized with a black belt).
“Oh, by the way,” Doan said casually as he buttered a roll, “I invited someone you know to come down tomorrow.”
Luke looked up from the menu. “Oh?”
“You met her at the Policeman’s Ball.”
“The girl with her head stuck in the floral arrangement?”
“What!” Doan cackled. “Oh, tell, tell!”
“We’re talking about Binky, right?”
“That’s right. She didn’t tell me this part.”
Luke entertained Doan with the full account of that evening’s events, and Doan proved to be a most appreciative audience, nearly choking on his roll in his glee over the story.
“Well. Will I ever have words for her when I see her. The very nerve of her, not telling me such a story.”
“It is a little embarrassing,” Luke said in her defense.
“When I think of all the embarrassing things that have happened to me, and the way I went running to her with the details, I could scream. Could I get another margarita, please?” he asked the passing waiter. “Oh, crap,” he said, remembering Eleanor Ambermere. “I’ll be back, I have to go make a phone call.”
He found a phone and dialed her number. “What,” Frannie asked.
“It’s Doan. Would you tell Eleanor all the sets are delivered, and I’ll be in Bermuda if she needs me?”
“Right,” Frannie said, hanging up.
Doan returned to the table. “There. Now, what did she say when you had her all the way out of the flowers?”
CHAPTER THREE
Binky arrived the next afternoon, much to Doan’s consternation. Her timing meant that he had to meet her while Luke was on the beach, in his tiny black bathing suit that concealed almost none of that massive, gorgeous body...alone and unguarded. Doan had decided that if he couldn’t have Luke, then Binky had to. Who else would tell him all the details, and wasn’t a vicarious night with someone like Luke better than nothing at all?
She was dressed, Doan thought, entirely inappropriately for the task at hand, and telling her so formed his greeting. “You will never, except in Iran and certain parts of Greece and Sicily, attract a man by wearing a black coverall dress. Aren’t you already hotter than hell?”
She pushed her sunglasses down so she could eye him over their rims. “In a place where everyone is wearing white, even you, what is more arresting than a woman in black? Besides, it's linen, and I haven’t a thing on underneath. I feel fine.”
Doan harumphed and led her to a cab. As soon as they were on their way, Binky turned to him. “Okay. Now tell me, what’s this about transcontinental errands?”
“Oh, that,” Doan said, dismissing his trip abroad (a trip less blithe souls would have killed to take) with a wave of his hand. “Eleanor believes, and I’m afraid justifiably so, that Charles Ambermere would kill her if he knew how much she knew about his recent activities.”
“He’s such a shit,” Binky opined, echoing the opinion of several thousand San Francisco residents.
“Yes, indeedy.” He gave her a rundown on the papers.
“Oh, Doan, why doesn’t she go to the police?”
Doan looked out at the late-afternoon scene. The beach was sparsely populated, the palm trees waved gently, the sun would not be setting for many hours, but it was already marshaling colors from all the ports of the world in preparation for what was here a daily spectacle. He remembered it had been that way in Tahiti, as well, and he remembered the ecstatic look on the old lady’s face when she saw her first tropical sunset. Charles had taken away her money right after that, and it must have seemed to her at the time that she would never see another sunset like that again.
“What she has in mind,” he finally said, “is, I’m sure, far more just that anything our judicial system could mete out to him. But don’t repeat that to Luke. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”
“You two seem to have hit it off fairly well, considering how embarrassed you must have felt when you found out he was straight.”
“What ever do you mean?” he asked obliquely.
“Oh, come on, Doan. It’s me, Binky, and I’ve seen him. There’s no doubt in my mind that you tried to jump him.” She laughed. “I bet you felt like dying when he told you. What complete, utter embarrassment.”
“Mmmm, yes, dear, it was complete, utter embarrassment. But he was a gentleman about it; he put me quite at ease.” He examined his nails, enjoying the circle before the kill. “Probably the same way he put you at ease in that completely, utterly embarrassing moment when he pulled you out of that giant bouquet.”
Her eyes widened, but her instincts reacted before her mind, and she only murmured a small agreeing noise. Doan watched the landscape go by with a smile on his face, thinking maybe it wasn’t such a malevolent universe after all.
He didn’t let Binky unpack or even rest a minute, so fearful was he that Luke had been nabbed and held for sex. A fruitless search ensued, ending when they got to the hotel pool, where, right before their eyes, two large, capable hands grabbed the concrete edge of the pool, and a pair of arms rippled as they hoisted an incredible expanse of hairy-chested, already tan muscle out of the water, the head thrown back to make an arc of water off his hair, then one leg, with a thigh almost as wide as Doan’s waist, came up and rested on the edge, and then the other, and Luke stood up, dripping water like some primal being from the depths of Binky’s libido, and she swooned.
Luke dashed forward and caught her, and when she looked up, she thanked the spiteful urge that had led her to wear black. “You shouldn’t wear black,” Luke said. “Absorbs too much heat.”
At the mention of too much heat, Doan let out a small noise and sat down.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said, deciding that she would throw feminism to the winds and agree with whatever he said for the rest of her mortal life.
“Why don’t we get you upstairs and changed into ...”
“Something more comfortable?” she interrupted hopefully.
Luke smiled. “Yeah. Something more comfortable.”
Satisfaction was not a word Binky used often. There was always something better around the corner, it seemed. She often thought of a line from an Eve Babitz novel in which dissatisfaction was described as knowing that somewhere there was a fabulous party going on, to which you were not invited. Even the best of pastries, the finest champagnes, the most absolutely fabulous freshly purchased outfit, could only dull the ache of ennui temporarily. However, at this particular moment, lying in bed with Luke Faraglione after a marathon lovemaking session, Binky knew satisfaction. More, she knew at last what it was like to be in bed with a man after sex and not want him to turn into a pizza. She stretched lazily, writhing like a cat while waiting for Luke to come back from the bathroom. The amount of pleasure she took in watching him cross back to the bed, in all his exquisite buff nakedness, was probably illegal in most Southern states.
“I have never,” she stated with authority, “had a lay like that in my life.”
“Oh, really?” he asked with a wicked grin. “That’s not what Doan tells me.”
“What!”
“He says you have a weakness for cops.”
She sighed. “I’ll kill him. Yeah, it’s true, I do. I don’t know why. Cops are usually so dull and conservative and humorless ...”
“The exact opposite of you and your friends.”
“That’s probably it. I’m so amoral, I guess I like the idea of someone with clear-cut values. I’d never marry one, though, and have to move to the suburbs and be...I don’t mean I wouldn’t marry you,” she said hastily. “I mean, I’m not saying I would, but I mean ... oh, shit.” Binky hated emotional entanglements; they so often required one to explain oneself thoroughly, which her upbringing had not trained her to do.
“I know what you mean. You don’t want to end up married to some meaty-faced guy who wants you to stay home with the kids except when you’re going to church or the supermarket. I know the kind of cops you’re talking about. I’m not that kind of man.”
“Oh, I can tell. That’s why I came down here.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t come down here for the free vacation?”
She laughed. “As you’ve probably found out by now, Doan can be very persuasive.”
He laughed as well. “He nearly persuaded me to go gay.”
She idly ran her hands over Luke’s buff, hairy chest. “So how did you become a detective?”
“My father was a cop, and his father, too. The usual Italian story.”
“I thought that was the usual Irish story.”
“Same difference.”
“And now you’re after the SoMa Killer.”
Luke sighed. “Not right now, I’m not. I managed to get off the case.”
“Burnt out?”
“No. Yes. The investigation just
isn’t going anywhere. Nobody seems to have a clue who’s bumping off the worst artists in town, and nobody seems to care but the cops. And sometimes I think we don’t care much, either.”
“You mean that being the conservative, bourgeois type of guys cops are, that the deaths of a bunch of probably Commie pinko faggot artists living off the public teat in the form of NEA grants, isn’t exactly a public tragedy?”
Luke sighed. “Something like that. Everybody seems to think it’s a big joke.”
Binky tactfully decided not to mention that she saw the humor in it, herself. “Everybody except you.”
Luke shrugged. “Murder is murder. I guess at heart I am one of those boring, straight-arrow clear-sense-of-right-and-wrong cops you’re so attracted to.”
“Am I ever,” Binky said, terminating the conversation with a carefully placed hand.
Doan saw little of them for the next few days, but that, he decided quickly, was for the best. He’d cased the bars and beaches, searching for someone to help him pass the long, tropical days, but after Luke, every man seemed a bit pale. He was glad when the end of the week came and he was able to extract them from Binky’s room.
“Are you mad at me?” Binky asked him in the lounge at the airport, while Luke was away seeing to tickets and seating and luggage and whatnot.
“Mad at you? For snaring Luke?”
“No. For leaving you all alone. You don’t look like you had a good time.”
“I didn’t,” he freely confessed. “I spent a day in England, one in France, and one in Switzerland, raced down here, fell asleep by the pool and burned the hell out of myself, fell madly in love with Luke, called you to come down so the three of us could have fun, and then spent three days waiting for you to come out of your room. I definitely need a rest after this vacation’s all over. It’s been far more trying than I thought it’d be.”
“Well, at least you’ve got ten thousand bucks.”
“Oh, look, is that our plane?” Doan asked, getting up.
Binky was immediately alerted. Doan loved gossip, sex, champagne, food, and especially money, which allowed him to enjoy all the others unburdened of a responsible job, and it was not at all like him to gloss over ten thousand dollars, unless...
Death Wore a Smart Little Outfit Page 5
