They beat him to it, Tom leading the charge, taking a direct angle that brought him there first. He was standing in front of the motorcycle, feet planted wide, by the time its owner strolled up, watching him warily.

  “Nice bike,” Tom said.

  The biker looked at it like he’d never noticed it before. “I guess.” He put on his hat and stared back at Tom.

  “Norton, Manx,” Stanley said. They both looked surprised at him. “I had a one time—” He started to say “boyfriend” and checked himself. “An acquaintance who collected them. ‘54, right?”

  168 Victor Banis

  “Right.” The biker looked him up and down, barely acknowledged Carl. He switched his attention back to Tom.

  Alpha male to alpha male “You ride?”

  “Some. Not enough.”

  “What’s your mount?”

  “Hog.” Another thing Stanley hadn’t known about the man.

  How could he hope to get past the frenzied action stage if all he knew was the man’s genital dimensions? Maybe he should start keeping a journal. Dear Diary, today I learned…

  “I’m Tom Danzel.”

  “They call me Lobo.” They shook hands, sizing one another up, like a pair of wary dogs. Testosterone sniffing. In that regard, Stanley thought they were probably pretty evenly matched. Sometimes that made things easier, sort of like, my kind of pal, and sometimes it made for trouble. I can piss further than you. In that contest Stanley would bet on Tom, if only because he had an inch or two advantage over most of the competition.

  “You got a couple of minutes?” Tom asked. “To talk?”

  “You’re cop, right?”

  “In San Francisco, yes. Here, it’s unofficial. Just a friendly chat.”

  Lobo looked around. The black limousine from the funeral home was just pulling away, Amanda McIntosh invisible beyond tinted windows. There was nobody else around.

  Still, they were only a few yards off the road. Anybody could drive past, and it probably wasn’t the best idea for a biker to be seen chatting with a couple of cops, officially or not. Bikers didn’t generally like cops. Most of them didn’t like bikers who were friendly with cops, either.

  “There’s a bar just down the road,” Lobo said.

  “The Handle Bar?” Stanley asked. He wasn’t particular eager to pay another visit there. Even in a crowd, and who knew which side of the fence Lobo would be on if there were any trouble.

  Lobo shook his head. “No, it’s called Joe’s Joint,” and added, significantly, “Nobody goes there.”

  DEADLY WRONG 169

  They let him pull out first, and followed him. The rain, satisfied that the mourning was over, had petered out altogether. Joe’s Joint turned out to be a small building about a mile away, set back from the road, with no sign.

  Lobo dismounted and waited for them, and led the way inside. They all paused just inside for their eyes to adjust to the gloom. A lone bartender sat behind the bar reading a girlie magazine. Brashly painted cars chased one another round and round the screen of a silent television. In the background, Willie Nelson sang from an old fashioned juke box: Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.

  The place was empty except for the bartender, who looked up as they came in. He recognized Lobo, and nodded. “Long time no see,” he said, curiosity showing as he looked the others over. His eyes paused ever so slightly on Carl, probably guessing his age, and decided not to make an issue of it.

  “What’s up, bro?”

  “Not much, just hanging. Corona.”

  “Four of them,” Tom said. He looked around, picked the table farthest from the bar, and nodded toward it. Stanley led the way, Carl and Lobo trailing after him. Tom waited for the beers, carried them to the table and passed them around. He took a chair, turning it backwards to the table, and straddled it.

  Everyone took a sip of beer. Lobo’s eyes moved around the table. “Carl,” he said in a nod of recognition, with no hint of friendliness. Carl only nodded back and took another nervous swallow. Stanley was dismissed with no more than a fleeting glance. Again, Lobo settled on Tom as the leader of the pack.

  “It’s your party,” he said.

  Tom drank, seemed in no hurry to begin. Finally, he said,

  “You were friendly with the kid who was killed, right?

  McIntosh?”

  “Little Donnie?” Lobo laughed without humor. “I wouldn’t say friendly, exactly. Donnie didn’t have any friends that I know of. Not real friends, no buds, if you know what I mean.”

  “You were at his funeral.”

  Lobo shrugged, avoided Tom’s eyes. “I was passing by. Just curious, that’s all. It don’t mean anything.”

  170 Victor Banis

  “You had sex with him,” Stanley said. “Some kind of sex. I’d call that friendly. Kind of friendly.”

  Lobo looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, considered Stanley’s remarks. “You saw the pictures, right?”

  Stanley nodded. “I thought there’d be at least one of me back at his house, but I couldn’t find it when I looked.”

  Stanley remembered then. “I left the bedroom window open.”

  Lobo nodded. “Old Lady McIntosh, she was passed out, I could hear her snoring in the next room. She didn’t even know I was there. But I didn’t find any pictures. Not of myself. I guess you beat me to it.”

  Stanley took the pictures out of his jacket pocket, found the one of Lobo, and reached it across the table. Lobo looked at it without taking it. “It isn’t like it looks, you know,” he said.

  “A naked guy, his dick at attention? It looks to me like someone was getting serviced.”

  “Or, maybe there’s some other explanation,” Tom said. “I’d be interested to hear it.”

  Lobo sighed, shook his head, looked into the distance as if remembering. “You got to understand,” he said, “the way Donnie was. When he got something on his mind—shit, dick, I mean, no use beating around the bush, when he got dick on his mind—he could be real determined. The little fucker wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s how’s come he got himself into so much trouble. Guys’d turn him down, it wasn’t like everybody was sniffing after him all the time, looking for a piece.”

  “Some were,” Carl said.

  Lobo gave him another disinterested look. “Well, some were, sure. That’s probably true.”

  “Rack, for instance,” Stanley said.

  Lobo slanted a wary glance at him. “You’d have to ask Rack about that, I keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

  “Go on,” Tom said. “So, there were guys looking for action.

  You were talking about the ones who turned him down, though.”

  DEADLY WRONG 171

  “Right.” Lobo thought for a moment. “Only, if they did, if they turned him down, it was like I said, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d bug the piss out of them, rag at them, on and on, till they’d finally give in and let him have some dick, and then, when they’d shot their load, they’d be sore for letting him talk them into it. You know how it is, once you get your nuts off, things look different. They say when it’s stiff a dick doesn’t have any conscience, but once it’s gone soft, it can be pretty mean, too. That’s when they’d kick his ass.”

  Tom nodded, thinking about that. “So he came on to you, is what you’re telling me? Ragged you into it? Against your will, sort of.”

  “Sort of, yeah. I mean, I know what you’re thinking, but not like that either, not exactly. With Donnie, it wasn’t like, say, the way you’d come on to a guy,” he said to Stanley.

  “Which is? In your opinion?” Stanley’s voice was frosty. It didn’t help that he’d seen Tom’s quickly suppressed grin of amusement.

  “What I mean is, he didn’t just come right out and say he wanted to suck your dick.”

  “Neither do I, as a matter of fact. I like to think I’m a bit more subtle than that, thank you. I generally start by sending flowers. White camellias, as a rule.”

  Lobo tried sorting that out, decided it was beyond his grasp, and let it go. “Or, well, sometimes he did, come right out and say it. He could be pretty up front. He wasn’t what you’d call shy about stuff. But, like, say he did, came right out with it, and you told him no. Which is what I did, the first time he asked.

  Actually, tell you the honest truth, he asked me a lot, kept trying to talk me into it. I work at the Chevron, late nights. He’d come by, hang around when there was nobody there, follow me inside when I was working on a car. Going on and on, could he suck me, could he rim my ass? If I went to the head, he’d ask if I wanted to piss on him.” He shook his head. “Can you believe that? Got to where I’d lock the door after myself, just to be safe.”

  “I expect he was a real threat,” Stanley said, but Lobo didn’t seem to catch the irony.

  172 Victor Banis

  “And it ain’t like I’m some kind of virgin, I’m not saying that, I just didn’t… hell, I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t in the right space. Or maybe it was just him. Pussy’s my thing.

  You know what I mean?” This last to Tom.

  “Totally,” Tom said. Stanley bit off the sarcastic remark that rose to his lips. Probably this was not the appropriate time to bring up their relationship. Whatever that was, he added mentally.

  “So then, Donnie, he changes his tune, he just wants to see me naked, wants to take a picture of me, he swears that’s all.

  Like, he thinks you’re the best looking dude he’s ever seen.

  ‘Come on,’ he says,’“ Lobo said in a mincing falsetto, “‘come on, just strip for me, that’s all I’m asking, just let me see you with your clothes off, I’ll bet you are really hot.’“

  “This was at the station?”

  “No, we were back at my place. This was later.” He paused for a swig of beer. “Well, fuck, I’m not the bashful kind, and he keeps whining and begging, ‘come on, please, man, please,’ so, yeah, I get naked for him, and he takes a couple of snaps and then he’s like, you know, would I work it up, he’d love to get a shot of it stiff, see how big it is. And, hell, it ain’t so shabby, you know what I’m saying? You’ve seen the pictures, right?” He gave Stanley another look. Stanley resolutely ignored it. The man was getting no compliments from him.

  “Only, once you got it standing for him, he’s all happy and grinning and thanking you. Except, if he’s going to take a picture of it, it would look a lot better, wouldn’t it, if it was wet and shiny, you know, like if it was slick with spit, like somebody’d been sucking on it. He’d love to have just one picture of it all slicked up, he’s just gonna wet it down, is all.

  Well, fuck, there you are, your dick is hard as a rock, and he’s got his mouth on it, and next thing you know, you’re getting a blow job, whether you’d wanted one or not to start out with.”

  He gave them a kind of shame-faced grin. “A pretty good one, if you want to know the truth. I got to give him that, he knew his business. He might have had to talk you into it, but once he started swinging, you forgot all that. Least, till you cracked your nut.”

  DEADLY WRONG 173

  Carl sniffed noisily. Lobo flicked a glance at him, but Carl was looking away, at a Budweiser sign on the wall over the bar, Clydesdales pulling a beer wagon around and around in an endless cycle. He might not have been listening.

  Stanley was thinking about the photo of Lobo, grinning ear to ear, not appearing in the least like a man who’d had to be convinced to shed his clothes, get his dick up, a load off.

  Appearing like a man having a grand old time. And if he was so uninterested, what were they doing back at his place anyway?

  This from a man who locked himself into the john for safety’s sake?

  “So, then,” Tom said, his face and voice noncommittal,

  “after this kid—how old was this guy, anyway?”

  “Eighteen,” Carl said, still watching the Clydesdales.”

  “Eighteen.” Tom seemed to contemplate that fact for a moment. He sighed wearily and shook his head. “So, after this kid molests you, takes advantage of you, then what?”

  “What do you mean, then what?”

  “Did you shove him around a little bit? Rough him up? I hear that was the usual drill.”

  Lobo had the grace at least to look a bit embarrassed.

  “Some,” he said. “Not seriously, just a little.” He looked from Tom to Stanley, got defensive. “He expected it, you know. He liked it, if a guy gave him some shit. Hey, I didn’t really whale into him, nothing like that. A couple of punches, light ones, didn’t even bruise him. Actually, I slapped him.” He pantomimed a gentle slap. “More like a love tap, if you want to know. It was just kind of like, the cherry on the sundae, you know what I mean. For little Donnie. Everybody kicked his ass.”

  “After they fucked it,” Stanley said

  Lobo’s look was not friendly. “Sometimes before, too.” He finished his beer. “We done?”

  Tom looked at Stanley, who nodded. Lobo pushed his chair back, got up.

  “Did he ever take you up to his cave?” Tom thought to ask.

  174 Victor Banis

  Lobo hesitated, seemed to consider what he wanted to say, finally shrugged again. “Once.”

  “Was that you, burned the photos?”

  “Fuck.” Lobo shook his head, sighed noisily. “I didn’t want

  ‘em getting around, okay? Anybody could understand that, couldn’t they? The town pussy, he’s got naked pictures of me. I didn’t want anybody thinking I was his steady, or anything.”

  “That was Rack, wasn’t it?” Stanley asked. “His steady.”

  The look Lobo gave him was even cooler than before. “Like I said already, that’s none of my affair, you’d have to talk to Rack about stuff like that.” He paused for a moment. “I wouldn’t advise it, though. Rack’s a tough guy.”

  “So am I,” Tom said, not sounding like he was bragging, just making a statement of fact.

  Lobo looked at him, seemed about to argue, and thought better of it. “Thanks for the beer,” he said. “See you around.”

  He moved to go.

  “Were you up there this morning,” Tom asked. “To that cave?”

  “Me? No, yesterday. I just wanted to find the pictures, get rid of them. Why?”

  “Somebody shot at us,” Tom said.

  Lobo looked surprised. “Wasn’t me. Hell, I just got up out of bed twenty, thirty minutes before the funeral.”

  Something popped into Stanley’s head. “The flowers,” he said on an impulse. “At the funeral. You sent them, didn’t you?”

  Lobo looked embarrassed. “What makes you think that?” he asked. “Why would I send flowers to some little punk, sucked me off a few times?”

  “How many times, anyway?” Tom asked.

  Lobo left that unanswered, turned his back on them.

  Sunlight brightened the bar briefly as he disappeared out the door. They heard the Norton roar to life a minute later, the sound fading very gradually as he made a slow exit.

  The three of them sat in silence, finishing their beers. “That solves the mystery of the burned pictures, at least,” Tom said.

  DEADLY WRONG 175

  “But it doesn’t tell us much else. It doesn’t tell us who shot at us.”

  “If you believe him,” Stanley said. “He didn’t want people knowing about him and Donnie. Maybe…”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I believed him when he said he wasn’t up there today. He looked genuinely surprised when I mentioned the shooting.”

  “You’re probably right,” Stanley agreed. “Anyway, the flowers kind of eliminate him as a suspect, don’t they?”

  “I’m glad he didn’t really kick the shit out of Donnie,” Carl said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Stanley said after a minute.

  “Maybe he actually liked him.”

  “Maybe,” Stanley agreed. “A little, anyway.”

  They got up. “‘Nother round?” the bartender asked, but Tom shook his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Drop me at the Safeway,” Carl said as they drove the main street of the village. “There’re a few things I need to pick up for the house.”

  Stanley knew perfectly well he should decline the suggestion.

  Carl was intended to be more or less in his family’s care, and not running around town on his own. Stanley was sort of the substitute babysitter.

  And he would have vetoed Carl’s suggestion had he not been in something of a pique regarding the young man. Not so much jealousy, not full blown jealousy, certainly, and how could it be? Really, he felt sorry for the boy. But he had problems enough of his own when it came to Tom Danzel, without some starry-eyed kid poaching on his turf.

  For an assortment of reasons, then, he was indeed not particularly enamored of Carl’s company, not at the moment.

  They dropped him at the edge of the mall’s parking lot, and drove on.

  “I was thinking of something,” Stanley started to say, when his cell phone rang. Again, there was no one there when he answered. He checked the number. “His mother. She sure acts like she’s got something she wants to tell us.”

  “Maybe we should stop by and see what that’s all about.”

  “I guess,” Stanley said, with no real enthusiasm. He’d been thinking of an hour or so available to them, Carl out of their hair, the cabin to themselves. Visiting Penelope Hunter wasn’t exactly what he’d had on his mind. “But just for a couple of minutes, okay?”

  Tom gave him a quizzical look, but Stanley only flashed him an innocent smile.

  “Sure,” Tom agreed.

  § § § § §

  178 Victor Banis

  There was no answer to their knock at the door. They circled about the cabin and found Hannah just returning from a walk with Josephine. For the moment, she hadn’t seen them.

  She paused near the lakeshore to take a swing at a pebble with the golf club she carried. The pebble hit the water some forty feet from the shore, making a considerable splash.