Victor J. Banis

by Deadly Nightshade

  Tom thought hard for a minute. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not used to this drag queen thing, it confuses me. She could have been, though. I thought, when she first sat down, she looked familiar, like maybe I had met her before, but not dressed up like a woman, you know what I mean?

  “One thing’s for sure,” he added after a moment, “I’m getting more and more interested in our Gaye Dawn.” The look Stanley gave him was pure evil. It was Tom’s turn to look innocent.

  “Professionally, I mean.”

  § § § § §

  Stanley had dinner at The Cove with Chris.

  “So,” Chris asked, taking a hearty bite out of his cheeseburger, “How’s the homicide thing going?”

  “Great.” Stanley picked up his burger, contemplated it, and put it back on the plate. He picked up a French fry instead and nibbled decorously at one end. Christ stared at him, paused in his chewing.

  “You’re not hungry?” he asked.

  “Not awfully.”

  “Oh, dear.” Chris put his own burger back on his plate. “When you lose your appetite, it can only mean one of two things. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  Stanley managed a laugh. “No. Not that.”

  “But, all things being physiologically equal, you could be?”

  “If I were female, you mean. Yes, I guess so. No, wait, that takes actual intercourse, doesn’t it? So, no, I couldn’t be pregnant.”

  “But there was some form of sexual interaction?”

  Stanley studied his French fry, took another nibble. “Uh-huh. Yes.”

  “Meaning, we’re talking about a blow job?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Honey, you can’t sort of suck a dick. It was a dick, right?” Stanley nodded. “And you had it in your mouth?” Another nod. “And stuff came out of it, creamy stuff, man stuff.”

  “Come,” Stanley said and sighed. “A humongous load of it.”

  “Speaking as a nurse, that is what is what is known in medical terms as a blow job.” Chris pushed his plate aside, took a sip of his iced tea, unsweetened, with lemon. “Was this cock attached to anyone I know—it was attached, I take it, not something free standing.”

  “Yes. I mean, yes, it was attached, and no, not to anyone you know.”

  Chris looked at him long and hard for a moment. “Oh, shit,” he said, his eyes going wide, “Don’t tell me, not the straight cop? The hot one? The Neanderthal?” Stanley smiled grimly and nodded.

  “Mother of pearl. I thought you told me he hated fags?”

  “He did. Does.”

  “Oh, boy. Score one for our team.” Chris paused, torn between looking commiserative and being excited.

  Excitement won. “So, tell all. How was it? You said he was hung big. And totally hot.”

  “He is, something out of a porn fantasy. Only, it was just something that happened. It’s never going to happen again.”

  Chris clucked his tongue. “Oh, dear, this is worse than I thought. Don’t tell me—you haven’t got a case on this big ape, as you so affectionately call him?”

  Stanley looked altogether miserable. He tried to swallow another bite of the French fry, but it refused to go down. “In the worst way,” he said. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Crap. And he’s going to be picking me up in forty minutes. We’re hitting the clubs again. I need to catch a cab.”

  “I can run you home,” Chris said, waving at Solange for their check. “Is anything going to happen, do you suppose? How do you think Mister Macho would feel about a three way? I’ve always wanted to do a cop—

  you don’t count, I mean the real thing. I sort of thought, in uniform, but I’ll settle for a gun in a shoulder holster and a big…” He saw Stanley’s expression, and bit off whatever he had been going to say.

  “Actually, there’s always cabs at the corner,” he said. “I planned on doing some shopping before I went home.”

  § § § § §

  Tom and Stanley stopped by the station on their way to The Boom Boom Room. Tom had gotten so used to Stanley’s manner, he hardly even thought of it any more. He had forgotten how the others regarded him till he was alone in the homicide room with the other detectives.

  “How’s it going with little Stanley,” one of them asked with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

  “Stanley’s okay to work with,” Tom said, more defensively than he’d intended. He looked around, realized they were all watching him, waiting for his response—all of them not quite smirking. “He’s really sharp, actually. He’s gonna make a kick ass detective in time.”

  The future kick ass detective picked that moment to come into the room—practically skipping, Tom thought, his heart sinking. He couldn’t have looked gayer if he’d worked at it.

  “Hello, boys,” he greeted them, flashing his queeniest smile around the room. “How’s it hanging?” Which, really, was an expression several of the guys used regularly, but it sounded very different, coming from him.

  No one answered. Everyone looked away, some of them with a quick glance first in Tom’s direction.

  Someone muffled a snicker.

  “Let’s go,” Tom said gruffly.

  The silence lay like a cloud of smoke between them. They were in the car, on their way to The Boom Boom Room, when Stanley asked, “Are you mad again?”

  “No,” Tom answered him curtly.

  He was, but he didn’t want to discuss it—in large part because he wasn’t even sure who he was mad at.

  He glanced sideways at Stanley. As if on cue, Stanley looked at him and smiled, a hesitant, hopeful kind of smile.

  That ignited something inside Tom, some odd little spark that started in his brain and flared in his chest, and spilled down through his guts to his balls, and made them tingle ominously. Even King Kong, roused momentarily from sleep, seemed to wonder what was going on.

  “Everything okay?” Stanley asked.

  All of a sudden, Tom wasn’t angry. He was more like confused. He smiled back, a little shamefacedly.

  “Everything’s cool,” he said.

  Well, fuck the boys back at the station, he thought. What did they know anyway, the stupid pricks? Probably some of them went out bashing fags on their nights off. One or two of them, he wouldn’t be surprised if they sucked cock.

  Only, not as good as Stanley, probably.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Gaye Dawn, they were told, was in her dressing room. She couldn’t be disturbed.

  “Fuck that,” Tom said, in no frame of mind to put up with any shit. They went to her dressing room, Tom in the lead and Acheson following at their heels and making clucking-hen noises.

  Tom knocked at the starred door, the kind of bang-bang-bang knocking you couldn’t ignore. Silence within. Several heads poked out of the large communal dressing room next door, eyes wide.

  Tom gave them one ferocious scowl and they all disappeared. He had just raised his fist to knock again when the door flew inward and an angry Gaylord stood framed in the opening.

  “I’m busy,” he said in an icy voice. “Come back later.”

  He might have closed the door, but Tom’s broad shoulders got in the way. “This is later,” he said.

  Gaylord blinked and backed out of his way. “And you don’t look especially busy to me. We heard you were getting dressed.”

  “What I do isn’t just about putting on a dress and makeup. I have to get myself in the right frame of mind,” Gaylord said. He looked angrily in Acheson’s direction. “This is going to throw me off completely.”

  “I tried to stop them,” Acheson said, his voice just verging on whiny.

  “We’ve been trying to talk to you for a couple of days,” Tom said. “I was beginning to get the impression you didn’t like us.”

  “I came looking for you last night, but you’d already gone.” Despite his obvious annoyance, Gaylord smiled and gave Tom a flirtatious look. “Oh, and I like you well enough, sugar.” Stanley coughed.

  Gaylord looked at
him and back at Tom. “Do I get the feeling you’re just a teensy bit hostile?” he asked.

  “Someone tried to shoot me last night,” Tom said.

  “To death,” Stanley added, smiling sweetly.

  Gaylord laughed. “Honey, if I had anything like that in mind, it wouldn’t be shooting, it would be fucking you to death,” he told Tom. “Oh, there might be some shooting before we were finished.”

  Tom ignored that, strode to a table where an array of wigs stood on foam heads. “No red hair?” he asked.

  “I had one, but I tossed it,” Gaylord said. “Not my color.”

  Stanley had gone to the rack of dresses in the alcove. “Or gold lamè dresses?”

  “Please, I’m a drag queen. The law requires at least one lamè dress.” He saw the glance Stanley gave the rack. “I don’t keep everything here, you know.”

  “Do you have a gun?” Tom asked.

  There was just the slightest of hesitations before he said, “No.”

  Stanley, watching Acheson in the mirror, saw his eyes drop to one of the drawers in the dressing table, and slide quickly away.

  Stanley reached past Gaylord and opened the drawer. Lip gloss, eye shadow, eyebrow pencils, tweezers…

  “It got stolen,” Gaylord said. “A while ago.”

  “What caliber was it?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Gaylord said. “It was a small gun, that’s all I know. A John gave it to me a long time back. You run into a lot of nut cases in this life. Some bastard tried to rough me up one night. So, this guy I was seeing, it was before Jake,” he added quickly before Jake could protest, “he said I should have one just in case the asshole came back. I don’t know anything about guns. They scare me, to tell you the truth. He showed me how to use it, he said I had to be close to somebody if I was going to shoot them with it, real close.” He poked a finger at Stanley’s chest and said, “Bang. Like that. I put it in the drawer then and pretty much forgot about it.”

  “But you knew it was stolen?” Stanley said.

  “Yes. But I don’t even know when. I was looking for something a week or two ago and I realized all of a sudden it wasn’t there. I asked Jake if he’d taken it.”

  “I hadn’t,” Acheson said.

  “Are there lots of people in and out of here?” Tom asked.

  “Not usually. But the door isn’t locked.”

  “Lucky came by the other night,” Acheson said. He was speaking to Gaye, but Stanley thought the remark was really intended for them, a reminder. “She said she was looking for mascara.”

  “That bitch. Let her buy her own.” Gaye’s eyes sparked angrily. She turned back to Tom. “Well, there you have it. Anyone could come in if they wanted. I didn’t think much of it, either, the gun being missing.

  Like I said, things can get rough for drag queens. I just figured another one of the girls had some trouble and borrowed it. To be honest, I figured it would come home in time.”

  “And you didn’t report it missing? You get sore about another queen borrowing makeup and it doesn’t bother you that a gun disappears from your dressing table?”

  “I pay for my mascara. Besides, that’s a personal kind of thing. The gun, well.” He shrugged. “The guy who gave it to me, he told me it wasn’t registered. I didn’t want to get him into any trouble.”

  “This John, what was his name? Tom asked.

  She gave him a sly smile. “John,” she said. “I don’t think I ever caught his last name. We’re not always real formal around here.”

  “The first time we talked to you,” Stanley said, “You said you had never watched any of Hartman’s performances, but you mentioned all the girlfriends in and out. If you hadn’t peeked, how did you know about them?”

  Gaylord laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. He was the talk of the town. Besides, Jake here never missed a show. I got the blow by blow—so to speak. It did get him all worked up.” He blew Acheson a kiss. “I guess I should have stopped by to thank Hartman.”

  “But you didn’t?” Stanley asked. “Stop by, I mean?”

  “No. I already told you. I never actually met the man.”

  “We were here two nights ago,” Stanley said. “You weren’t. In your dressing room, I mean. But your street clothes were. Do you usually go out in costume?”

  “Probably I went outside for a cigarette. We’re not supposed to smoke in here. That’s against the law.”

  “You weren’t in the alley, either.”

  Gaye gave him a look just short of a smile. “Maybe I walked around the corner. That’s not against the law, is it?”

  “But why would you?”

  “Or maybe I was with a John. In a car. Did you check all the parked cars?”

  “Gaye…” Acheson’s voice was a bleat.

  “Relax, darling, I’m just kidding.” He looked from Stanley to Tom. “I’ve got a show to get ready for. Are we done here?”

  Tom looked at the rack of dresses again. “The rest of your costumes are at home?” he asked. Gaylord nodded. “Suppose we wanted to see them?”

  “Suppose you got a search warrant,” Gaylord said.

  “We might,” Tom said. He knew they didn’t have enough to get a search warrant, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He looked at Stanley. “Finished?”

  “For now,” Stanley said. He had the feeling there was something more he ought to ask, but he didn’t know what it was.

  “Stick around for the show,” Gaylord said as they were going out. “Drinks on me.”

  § § § § §

  They stayed for her performance. If their appearance in her dressing room had thrown Gaye Dawn off her stride, it didn’t show. If anything, Stanley thought she was better than the last time. Like something had inspired her. He had a nagging suspicion he knew the source of her inspiration. He gave Tom a frosty glance.

  “What?” Tom said, puzzled.

  “Like you didn’t know.”

  “I don’t.” Tom looked more puzzled than ever, but Stanley ignored him.

  “I have a special guest in the audience tonight,” Gaye said after her first number. “This song is for Tom.”

  She blew a kiss in the general direction of their table. Several people looked. Tom turned red and frowned at the lookers and they quickly looked away. Gaye began to sing, “You Made Me Love You.”

  Embarrassed though he was, Tom had to admit she was good. He found himself thinking of the whole special world of drag, a world he had hardly been aware of in the past, almost a separate city within the city.

  Actually, within the city within the city. He was glad, really, that Stanley was on this case with him. He’d have been completely lost without him.

  He looked around at the audience. They were all watching Gaye intently, obviously savoring her performance. It struck him again that most of these people were straight. Oddly, he felt more distaste for them than he did for the performers or for gays in general. What brought these onlookers here but a kind of snobbishness, a desire to look down their noses and smirk, less obviously, but no less surely than the cops at the station smirked at Stanley?

  He thought of what Stanley had said before, “Someone to feel superior too.” If you thought about it, though, that was sicker than guys just being what they were. If you were gay, probably you couldn’t help yourself, but the people paying to see the performers could. It was only their own sense of superiority, wasn’t it, that made the show so appealing to them? Let’s go watch the freaks at play. It gave him a new perspective that he would never have imagined before—and a new sympathy for people like Gaye Dawn—and Stanley.

  He glanced sideways at Stanley. He was rapt, tapping his fingers on the table top in time to the music. In the light from the stage, his eyes glittered brightly. He took a sip of his Coke and unconsciously ran his tongue over his lips. Underneath the table, King Kong took note of that tongue and its movement. Tom put a hand down to pat him, as if consoling him. He stole another glance at Stanley. Re
ally, even without the makeup and shit, he was way prettier than Gaye Dawn. His mouth, for instance. You couldn’t look at it and not think…

  He drained his glass in one long draught and with his other hand, signaled for the waitress.

  § § § § §

  The number ended, another began. It seemed to Stanley that Tom was drinking an awful lot. He was asking for doubles, and chugging them down about as fast as the waitress could bring them. Like he was deliberately trying to get plastered—and succeeding.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Stanley asked him at one point.

  “Great,” Tom said, giving him a drunken leer. “And getting better by the glass.” He downed another double, neat, and winked at Stanley. “You like me kind of helpless and weak, don’t you, Stan my baby?”

  “Not that weak,” Stanley said. “And it’s Stanley.”

  To his great surprise, Tom reached across and pinched his cheek. “You know, you are cute,” he said.

  “Have you ever done drag?”

  “A time or two. Why?”

  “Just wondered.” Tom gave him a boozy smile. “Maybe I should try kissing you again, to see if I feel any different about it.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” Stanley said in a chilly voice. He had an uncomfortable feeling about where this was going. He hated guys who had to get drunk before they could do anything. Anyway, they both knew that had been a mistake. It wasn’t going to happen again.

  The grin slipped off Tom’s face and he looked away, signaling the waitress for another drink. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, sounding appropriately chastened. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

  “You probably shouldn’t have any more to drink, either.”

  But he did. By the time Gaye’s show had ended, again to thunderous applause, Tom was drunk. Very drunk.

  “You know, Stan,” Tom said, and quickly corrected himself, “Stanley, I think maybe you had better drive us home.”

  When they were in the car, though, Stanley behind the wheel, he wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. What Tom wanted to happen next—or, for that matter, what he himself wanted. He thought about what had happened before between them. It had been good—too good, and too bad, too.