by Rob Rosen
He blinked. I blinked some more. Ray blinked. Then Chad sighed. “Arthur. Arthur tried to kill you?”
“Good guess,” said Ray.
“Or bad,” said I. “Very, very bad.”
“Arthur,” Chad said.
“Arthur,” Ray said.
My fingertip remained noseward. “Arthur.”
“He must’ve been trying to protect me,” Chad said.
“By killing me.”
“He loves me.”
“He hates me.”
Ray raised his hand. “Not to put an end to this fascinating conversation, but, sooner or later, the loving/hating man in question is going to find us in here, and I for one would prefer not to be in here at that time.”
I nodded and locked eyes with Chad. “I’m a detective, Chad. Your husband hired me on the pretense of spying on you, but, in reality, had me spy on the club, on Auntie, on Pearl. Yes, he’s trying to protect you, just like you’re trying to protect him, by dealing drugs.”
He sucked in his breath. “You know?”
My nodding picked up. “I’m an excellent detective.” Just ask my mom.
“So, now what?”
Ray’s hand re-raised. “Now we get out of here, while we still can.” He looked from Chad to me and back again. “Uh, please.”
Chad turned and waved for us to follow. Which is why we were running outside, behind the mansion, a moment later. And as to why I was staring at Chad’s running-shorts-encased ass, well, I wasn’t dead, at least not yet, and Chad’s ass was a rather fetching alternative to pondering my recent and still-perhaps soon demise. Which is a long way of saying that Chad was running in front of me and Chad had a stellar ass.
“Really?” said Ray, who was running beside me. I pointed at the bouncing ass in front of us. Ray nodded. “Fine.”
I turned his way and whispered. “What if he’s taking us somewhere to kill us?”
Chad stopped running. We nearly ran right into him. He turned around just as we came to an abrupt stop, now on the property line between his mansion and the one behind us, a hedge-wall dividing the two. “I’m not going to kill you guys.”
I turned to Ray. “He heard.”
Ray nodded. “Hard to whisper when you’re out of breath.”
“Plus, we were staring at your butt.”
Ray rolled his eyes. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Sorry, terror makes me blurt things out.” I pointed at my shorts. “It’s a wonder I haven’t peed myself.” I again locked eyes with Chad. “You’re not going to kill us; so, now what?”
“Now what?” he replied, rather too loudly for my liking. “You’re the excellent detective! Ray told us we needed to leave! We left! Tag, mother fucker; you’re it!”
I winced. Men in hiding shouldn’t holler. I didn’t learn that in detective school; it was just common sense. “I’ve never heard you curse, Chad.”
“Now seems a good time, Mary! Don’t you think?” He crouched down, his face in his hands. Judging from the up and down his shoulders were going, I guessed he was sobbing. When he looked back up, my hunch proved correct. “My husband tried to kill you.”
I nodded. “To be fair, he is a dick.”
“But I love him,” he sniffled.
“Doesn’t make him any less of a dick.”
Ray patted my shoulder. “Maybe we can be a bit more constructive here, Barry.”
“His husband tried to kill me. His husband is a dick. How much constructing can we do here, Ray?”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “Why are you involved in all this? Is this what you were hired to do, to uncover a drug ring?”
A sigh burst forth. I shook my head. “I’m involved, at least now, because I care about you, about all of you. Or, you know, most of you.” Not Arthur or Auntie or Pearl, but the rest of them, sure. Even though most of them double-crossed me. Not that I knew that when I decided to keep on investigating, but still.
His sigh echoed mine. Chad made it an unhappy trio. “To help us is to harm us,” he said.
I thought to object. I quickly thought the better of it. “Auntie has something on each of you. If I turn her in, if the drug ring goes bust, all your secrets potentially come out.”
Ray nodded. Chad nodded. “If Auntie even thinks you’re closing in on her,” said Chad, “we’re all screwed. Plus…”
I knew the plus. I knew it all too well. Hell, I smelled it on me even as I was still drying off. “Plus, your husband tried to kill me. Even if we dropped this whole thing, even if I washed my whiskey-reeking hands of it, there’s no getting around that.”
He shook his head. A final tear pried free from beneath a lid. “He loves me, Mary. He was trying to protect me. What he did to you was horrible, but I still love him; I can’t help that.” He blinked, and the tear streaked down his face. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for all of them, for me especially. They were all my friends, my lovers, my traitors.
“If I walk away from all this, if I walk away and you all get caught anyway, if the police find out I knew what I know, I’ll be in the jail cell next to you, trying to figure out how to carve a shiv from a bar of soap”
They didn’t know how to answer me. I didn’t know how to answer me either. Was there even an answer? I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. And so, we simply kept walking, through the hedge to the next property over. FYI, ouch. FYI, ouch was a far better cry than a bullet hole.
We walked around the other mansion, winding up on a different street. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining. It was a perfectly lousy day.
“So what do we do next?” I finally said, thereby breaking the peace.
Down the new street we headed, though where we were heading to was anyone’s guess. “What do you want to do, Barry?” asked Ray.
“Take a nap,” I replied. “And a shower. Not necessarily in that order.”
“After those things,” said Ray. “What do you want to do after that?”
I looked at Chad. I looked at Ray. I looked up to the blue sky. I knew what I wanted. “To take down Auntie and the drug ring.”
“And what of us?”
I shrugged and kept walking. “We’ll think of something.”
Chapter 10
I found myself alone at my apartment a while later, a bucket of ice cream in front of me, mega-spoon in hand, post-much-needed-shower and cry. I was depressed. I couldn’t count on my boyfriend, the turncoat, and so I turned to my one true friend: chocolate chocolate-chip from a certain hard to pronounce confectioner with a penchant for umlauts.
What was I to do now? Did I save them all, turn them all in, walk away from this mess? None of the above seemed the obvious answer, but how could I do none of them? Saving them would prove next to near impossible and most certainly dangerous. Turning them in would be totally impossible, even though they all betrayed me. And walking away would, more than likely, come back to haunt me. Heck, the whole thing was haunting me as it was. Casper should haunt so well.
In any case, I already promised to help. In truth, I really did want to help. Help is what I did for a living; I just didn’t want it to be what I did for a, uh, deathing. I thought to call my parents, but this was my mess, not theirs. Plus, if this shit was as dangerous as I thought, I’d already involved them too much as it was.
I flicked on my cell. I knew who I had to call. I had to call him because I needed his help, needed all their help. I flicked my cell off. I couldn’t call him. What would I say? You’re a dick but I want to save you from your own dickdom? I loved you but you’re a dick who dicked me over? And, fine, I had dick on my mind, but, to be fair, Jeff had one glorious dick, a dick I was sure to miss, plus the man attached to said dick. I flicked my phone back on. I stared at it. I blinked, swallowed, flicked it off with a heavy sigh. This went on until there was a knock on my door.
I jumped. I was sitting in my kitchen in nothing but a bath-towel, drowning my sorrows in a bucket of German-sounding ice-cream. If Arthur had come to finish the job
on me, I supposed this was a better way to go than in a barrel of whiskey, but only by a pinch.
“Who is it?” I shouted at the door.
There was no answer. I rolled my eyes and hopped up. I walked to the door and peeked through the peephole. “Figures,” I exhaled, then cracked the door open. “Fuckwad,” I said.
Jeff frowned. “I deserve that.”
“You know that I know?”
He nodded. “Chad called me. I rushed over. I need to explain.”
“I’m naked and have company.”
“Does your company have an umlaut hanging over him?”
I exhaled. “You know me too well, Jeff. Sadly, I don’t know you at all. I mean, I thought I did, but…”
“You do, Barry. You do. Please, please just let me explain.” He added the cherry to the souring ice cream in my belly. “I love you.”
“You betrayed me,” I barely managed to squeak out. “You lied to me. I was almost killed today.”
He nodded. “Chad told me. But I wasn’t responsible for that. In fact, I was trying to protect you, even though it could’ve cost me everything.” A tear broke free from his eye, from mine. I was in my doorway in a towel, crying. My life suddenly felt like a soap opera. One of those melodramatic Mexican ones. Where people cry and get slapped a lot, then make passionate love. FYI, I’d almost been killed an hour earlier, so please don’t judge me on crying in my doorway, slapping him, and then making passionate love to him.
“You smell like whiskey,” he said, fifteen minutes later, which is how long passionate love making takes when you almost just got killed.
“I tried to wash it off. Stuff soaks into your skin. Who knew?” We were side by side. I was staring at the ceiling. I loved Jeff and I hated Jeff. Oh sure, I loved him more while I was fucking him, but now the hate was riding up like too-tight Jockey shorts. There’s a thin line between love and hate. Turns out, it’s butt-crack-thin. I looked from the ceiling to him. “You promised me you weren’t in cahoots with Auntie. You swore it.”
He sighed. “There’s that word again.”
“Too Scooby-Doo, huh?”
A tiny smile rose up his face. “A tad. And I’m not. In cahoots.” His sigh echoed. “That is to say, I am, but not against you. I helped you, Barry. I helped you every time you asked me for help. I helped you even if it could’ve meant Auntie turning on me. I never told her what you were up to. Never did, no matter how bad it could be for me. Plus, all that stuff I found out for you, I was learning for the first time. Auntie has each of us do our parts, but none of us knows the whole.”
“And you did all this because—”
“Because I love you. And because, maybe, just maybe, you can save us all.”
My heart pounded. My head pounded. Both were hurting something fierce. “Wanna fuck?”
He cocked an eye. He cocked a cock, too. I saw it flinch. “We just did.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but fucking is much nicer than this conversation.”
“Do you love me, Barry?”
There went that pounding heart of mine again. “Unfortunately, yes.”
The glimmer of a smile returned. “But at least that was a yes.”
“You’re naked and hard, Jeff. That doesn’t hurt.”
He flung the sheets over him. The tenting remained. “And now?”
I exhaled. “Fine, I still love you. And now what? You’re a criminal. All of you are criminals. Not past-tense. Current. Current-tense. You’re all criminals. I’m a private detective. You’re the enemy. And my telling the judge that I love you isn’t going to prevent all of us from finding ourselves behind bars. And not the good kind of bars, either. No whiskey behind those bars.” As if I’d have a hankering for that in the foreseeable future. Too bad Mary, Queen of Tequila didn’t have quite the same ring to it. “Still…”
He removed the sheets. His dick remained steadfast and true. My heart pounded again, my dick in sync. “You have a plan?”
I nodded. My dick did the same. Seemed like both heads were in agreement. First time for everything, I supposed. “We need to team up against her.”
“Auntie?”
“Auntie, right. We need to work together to bring her down.”
His smile faded, suddenly looking more nervous than horny. “We can’t. She has something on each of us. If we bring her down, she brings us all down with her.”
I already knew all that. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. I just hoped my way didn’t require an actual will. Not that I had much to leave anyone, but still.
* * * *
So that’s how we all ended up together, me and Ray and Chad and Jeff, plus all the other queens: Luna Tic, Bobo Van Ness—cigarette and all—Maureen Povich, and Connie Hung. My living room seemed tiny with so many large personalities in it. I’d made margaritas, strong, with nary a hint of mix. Booze, I figured, would grease the wheels. Or, you know, keep them civil.
“What the fuck are we doing here,” groused Bobo, puffing away on my couch. FYI, she was somewhat smiling. FYI, that was civil for her.
I stood. I gulped—down my drink, that is. I lifted my hand to quiet them down. These, however, were drag queens, and a hand without cash in it did very little. “Bitches, please!” I shouted. They blinked indignantly and clutched their imaginary pearls, but quiet down they did. “We’re here for more than just a drink.”
“Chips?” said Connie, who had finally recovered from her pneumonia.
I sighed and returned with a bag of chips. “Better?”
She shrugged. “What, no salsa?”
“Salsa!” shouted Luna, quickly followed by Maureen and Connie.
Chad looked my way wistfully. “An army works better on a full stomach.”
They all nodded. Luna scratched her chin, her head coming to a rest. “An army? What fucking army is this? The Salvation Army? Because, girl, this group gave up salvation six hundred drinks and five hundred men ago.”
I stared at her, our eyes locking in. “And many dozen years in prison.”
I could actually hear them all suck in their collective breaths. “Um, huh?” Luna choked out.
“I’m not actually a drag queen.”
Bobo chuckled, then smoker’s-cough-hacked. “You’re just now figuring that out?”
I reached over and finished her drink. That’d teach her. The others quieted down and grabbed for their margarita glasses. Smart queens. “I’m actually a private detective.”
Luna hiccupped and pointed at Maureen with her free hand. “She did it!”
“I did not!” shouted Maureen, then tilted her head. “Wait, did what?” She looked at me. “Either way, I didn’t do it.” She glared at Luna. “Bitch.”
To which Luna retorted, “I’m rubber you’re a washed up drunk who lip-syncs worse than Britney.”
I again held up my hand. “Ladies…” I glanced at each of them. They were out of drag. I mean, there was a bracelet here, an earring there, a smudge of eyeliner, a bit of concealer, but old habits, dying, blah, blah, blah. “Gentle, uh, men.” I nodded. It’d have to do. “I wasn’t hired to investigate any of you.” I briefly looked Chad’s way. “Mostly.” I poured myself another margarita. I refilled Bobo’s glass. I wasn’t an animal, after all. “In any case, in the course of my investigation, I uncovered your pasts, your prison sentences, the connection each of you has.” I paused. “The connection each of you still has.”
Luna rose—unsteadily but rose nonetheless. “What are you implying, Mary? Spill it.” She looked down at her nearly empty glass. “Figuratively speaking.”
“Auntie,” I said. “She’s blackmailing all of you. You were all in prison with her. She has something on all of you. Now she’s running a drug ring and you’re each a part of it.” I stared up at the ceiling and squinted, then took a swig of margarita and said, “Yep, that about covers it. Any questions?” Eight hands simultaneously shot up. I jumped at the swarm of them. “Um, yeah, maybe I should elucidate further.” The hands went down, save
for one, Luna’s. “Elucidate. Means to clarify,” I clarified. The final hand went down just as Jeff stood up.
“Look,” my boyfriend—and yes, that’s what we still were, phew—said, “Barry here—” Three hands shot up. Jeff rolled his eyes. “Mary’s real name is Barry. Barry here was investigating Chad for Chad’s husband, Arthur. During the investigation, Barry found out about our incarcerations. He further figured out that Auntie is blackmailing all of us. Now he wants to turn the tables, free us from our servitude—” Luna’s hand again rose northward, “Enslavement. Free us from our enslavement and bring Auntie to justice.”
All hands again shot up. I sighed. “Without any of your secrets being released by Auntie,” I added, and all hands slowly descended. “The question remains—”
“How?” Ray said.
I nodded. “Yes, how?”
The others frowned. “So,” said Bobo, “you’ve come to save us without any sort of plan. That about right?” She dropped her cigarette in an ashtray that she’d retrieved from her purse. Apparently, she came prepared.
I sat in a chair. I blinked her way as the ashtray made its way back inside her purse. “Group effort.”
She blinked my way. “Except, our group, as you say, is an enslaved bunch of ex-cons. Of drag queens, I might add. And so-so drag queens at that.”
“Hey!” shouted Maureen.
Lucy sighed. “Mostly Luna.”
“Hey!” shouted Luna, then shrugged and went back to her drink.
“In any case,” continued Connie, “Auntie keeps us in the dark about her operation. We all know we’re being blackmailed. We all know our parts. But none of us knows what the others do, what Auntie really does. And, even if we did, there’s nothing we can do about it, because if Auntie goes to jail, all our secrets become public knowledge. Or worse, we all go to jail with her.” She glowered my way. “Been there, done that, Mary, and no thanks.” Her glass was empty. She rose to leave. The others did the same.
“Wait!” shouted Chad.
“For what?” said Maureen. “Connie is right. There is no way out of this. If Auntie goes down, we all go down. And while I usually so love going down…”
