“Old Mrs. Beasley,” Carl said in a voice dripping scorn, the first emotion he had shown. “I saw her, just for a second, at her bedroom window, staring out at us. She whipped her curtains closed, but I know she was peeking out the side the whole time.

  The bitch. Wouldn’t want to miss the show.” All said without a trace of a stutter.

  “I’d say you’re right. That type, they complain, but they like to catch all the action.” He paused, but Carl had nothing further to offer. “She says you had a fight about something, that it got violent, you threw him to the ground…”

  “It-it wasn’t like that.”

  “This woman is lying?”

  Carl sighed and lifted a finger to his mouth to chew on a nail. If Libby hadn’t warned Stanley about the nervous stutter, he would probably have seen Carl’s behavior as a kind of 60 Victor Banis

  resistance, resentment, but it was obvious Carl was all a-jitter, and painfully shy to boot. “N-not exactly,” he said. “I just think, well, she didn’t see what she thought she saw, is-is all.”

  “About the blow job? He wasn’t sucking your cock?” Maybe some shock tactics would help.

  Carl’s face reddened and he looked down at his shoes.

  “Okay, he was. And he wasn’t. It was, it was a f-fucked up situation.”

  “I’d say so,” Stanley said dryly. He didn’t know any way to make this easier for the young man. He waited, but Carl was apparently waiting too.

  “So, what was it with you two, exactly? You and this Donnie? Lovers, tricks, what?”

  “It was nothing like that. I’m not into guys, really. I can’t say I’ve never fooled around, ‘cause I have. If a guy wants to give me, you know, a blow job,” in an odd sort of modesty, he blushed over the common vulgarism, “hell, why not, the way I see it. It isn’t like women are crawling all over me day and night.

  It beats jacking off, is what I mean to say. Which is about all I do otherwise.”

  “Was that what it was with you and Donnie? Your regular head station?”

  “No, not until… well, no, n-not really. It was more like…

  see, I don’t know if they told you, I’m what they call the town loser…”

  “They?”

  Carl looked surprised by the question. “A lot of people. The locals. Because of all the drugs, all those busts. I guess you heard about that.”

  “Some.”

  “Well, it’s true. I don’t p-pretend to be any kind of angel. So, yeah, I guess you’d say I’m the t-town loser. Everybody pretty much shuns me, even the d-druggies—I don’t have the money most of the time to score, meaning if we’re going to get h-high, it’s on their dime. After a while, they decided my company wasn’t worth it. C-can’t say I blame them, really.”

  “And Donnie?”

  DEADLY WRONG 61

  “He was the town q-queer.” He said it in a sullen voice, seeming more concerned for Donnie’s reputation than he had been for his own. “You know, half the guys in town, when they c-couldn’t get laid, they would come around looking for a b-blow job or a quick butt fuck, and after he got them off—

  Donnie never turned anybody down. His motto was, like, any guy, anytime, anywhere—well, then they’d beat the sh-shit out of him more times than not. For sure, they didn’t invite him to their p-parties. Mostly, if they saw him on the street in the daylight, other people around, they p-pretended they didn’t see him, or make fun of him. Call him names. You know how it is.”

  Stanley did know. Any fairly obvious gay man did. The big difference was in how they handled it. It had never been much of a problem for him. The people who put him down were mostly the ones whose opinions didn’t interest him anyway.

  Ignorant louts, he had long since developed a hard shell of indifference to their taunts. But some gays took it all to heart, formed their ideas about themselves from the ideas of disapproving others. Donnie clearly had been one of those.

  “He must have had a real problem with self esteem.”

  Carl laughed, without amusement. “Not really. He didn’t have any s-self esteem to have a problem with. Neither of us did, I guess.” He thought for a minute. “Anyway, over time, we just sort of g-gravitated to one another. Nobody else wanted us, except when they wanted to use him—like a t-toilet you take a piss in, you know what I mean, that’s all it was with the guys and him. But, the thing is, he was kind of a sweet kid, really. I mean, considering all the shit he took. It was his old man, you know. Hell on wheels kind of guy. Used to beat the tar out of the kids—there was a d-daughter too. She lit out a long time ago. I heard she was working the streets down in L.A., p-peddling her ass, I mean, for a while, before she OD’d. But old man McIntosh, he got the first piece, you can bet on it. He used to f-fuck both the kids, Donnie said. Equal opportunity b-bastard.”

  “What about the mother?”

  “He’d long ago beat any fight out of her, beaten her into a bottle. He had a hot temper. That’s what finally did him in. He got in a fight with some guy in a bar, got his ass k-kicked big 62 Victor Banis

  time. The guy left him out cold in the parking lot of the W-way Down Tavern. He was there for a long time, half the night maybe, people going in and out saw him. Nobody offered him any help. Nobody could stand the f-fucker. Anyway, sometime during the night, he must have come to enough to try to drive home. He never made it, missed a curve, wrapped the car around the tree.”

  “I’m guessing there weren’t a lot of mourners.”

  Again, that bark of a laugh devoid of any amusement. “Too bad it didn’t happen a lot sooner, maybe Donnie wouldn’t have been so fucked up. Hell, he was only thirteen, fourteen, something like that, but this shit, it had been going on since he was real little. Up till then, though, Donnie had been a kind of lay-low guy, but after his old man died, it wasn’t anytime before he was flaunting himself, made no secret of being queer. Did everything but rent a billboard to announce it. Sometimes I wondered if he was looking for someone to take the old man’s place, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I don’t imagine there were too many weeks somebody didn’t kn-knock him around, whether they got their jollies first or not.”

  He paused again, looking into the distance, remembering.

  “But, like I say, he was sweet. And bright, too, I couldn’t imagine what he saw in a dumb hick like me, but the funny thing was, he always kind of, like, looked up to me. He was the only person in my whole life who ever did that. I mean, my Mom makes a big thing about how much she loves me, and Libby’s good to me, but, well, it’s like, they never really knew me, if that makes any sense.”

  “I think so,” Stanley said.

  “And, to me, Donnie was like a kid brother. It wasn’t anything special, what we had going—not much of a friendship, really. We’d just get t-together, shoot the shit, sometimes smoke some pot.” He raised his eyes and looked directly into Stanley’s.

  “All that shit people are saying, about Donnie being into drugs—he wasn’t, not really. A joint sometimes, but that was about all.”

  DEADLY WRONG 63

  All of which was very interesting, Stanley thought, but it was a long way from the twenty-four-thousand-dollar question. He asked it outright. “How did he die?”

  Carl shook his head and ran a hand over his eyes. “I d-ddon’t know, I t-tell you.” The stutter back, more pronounced than ever.

  “You confessed to his murder.”

  He sniffed. “I thought I had k-k-killed him. I don’t mean, intentionally. We were—oh, m-m-man, it’s kind of hard to talk about.”

  “You’re going to have to talk about it. Sooner or later.

  Probably a lot. It might as well be with me.” Stanley hesitated.

  Carl remained silent, staring down at his hands with an expression of anguish. “This witness, Mrs. Barkley…”

  “Beasley.”

  “She says she saw the two of you, having sex. He was—she put it more delicately, but, he was sucking you.”

  Carl looked at some place over Stanley’s head. “We didn’t…

  well, we did, kind of.”

  “How do you kind of get a head job from someone?”

  “He wanted to. He tried to. We were high. This was out in the little park by the lake. We were sitting on the bench there.

  Toking. Talking a little, not much. Just kind of chilling out. And then, out of the blue, Donnie reached over and started feeling me up. It surprised the hell out of me. The two of us, we’d never done anything like that. I don’t think I’d ever even thought of it, not with him, and I’d never dreamed he did either. And then, there he was, fumbling with my fly, taking my dick out. It kind of freaked me out, to tell you the truth.”

  “But you didn’t stop him?”

  He looked particularly uncomfortable with that question.

  “No. N-not at first, anyway. It was… oh, hell, like I said, we were totally high. And it had been a long time since I’d had any kind of action. I don’t think I’d even jerked of for a while, not in a day or two. “

  Which, Stanley thought, was pretty close to abstinence for a nineteen year old boy.

  64 Victor Banis

  “So, sure, I got hard in a second, soon as he took hold of it.

  Just automatic. And, when he put his mouth on it, when he went down on me, well, shit, it felt good. How can somebody sucking your cock not feel good, you know what I’m saying?”

  Stanley nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.

  “Only, it d-didn’t, either, it d-didn’t feel right, somehow. I thought about all those guys, t-taking advantage of him, all the time using him, and his old man and everything, and it made me feel totally weird, dirty, sort of, using him the same way they did, like I was just another one of those d-dicks.”

  He flexed and unflexed his hands, getting more excited as he talked, his legs beginning to jump spasmodically, his voice getting tighter. “I p-pushed him away. I got up, kind of staggering, you know, trying to put my d-dick back in my pants.”

  As if he were reenacting the scene, he jumped up suddenly from the sofa and began to pace in a circle, his words coming faster now, too fast to stutter. “And he got up too, hanging on to me, trying to keep hold of it, begging me to let him do it, saying how he really wanted to, all kinds of crazy shit about how much he loved sucking cock, and what a good job he’d give me, how happy he could make me. It was fucking unreal, the whole thing. We must have looked crazy, dancing around in a circle, fighting over my cock—we were stoned—and—and then, I shoved him, hard, and he kind of spun around, and f-fell down.” He stopped cold for a moment, stopped pacing even.

  “And, I walked off, stuffing myself back into my pants, telling him—fuck, I don’t know what I said, exactly. I was pissed. At him. At myself, maybe more than him. For getting hard. For liking it. I don’t know. I went home. That’s the last ttime I ever saw him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He went silent, breathing hard, blinking rapidly. Looking at him, Stanley saw a glint of moisture in his eyes.

  “And he hit his head when he fell.” It was a statement of fact.

  “That’s w-what they say. So, I guess I did k-kill him, even if it was accidental. When they asked me, I told them, that’s what happened. I shoved him and he f-fell and hit his head. So, yeah, I said I killed him. Only…”

  He looked directly at Stanley again. “Only, later, when they’d locked me in that jail cell, when I started thinking about it, you know, kind of like replaying it in my head, the thing is, I would have sworn, when he fell, he fell face down. I remembered, saying, when I was walking away, I said something like, ‘if you want to eat something dirty, eat some real dirt.’ Like, you know, his face was in the dirt, was what I meant. But, when they found him, he was lying on his back, and his head was on that rock.

  The one that cracked his skull open. But, if he landed on a rock, cracked his skull, wouldn’t I have heard it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m no forensic expert, but skulls crack pretty easily, as I understand it.”

  Carl considered that. “I sure as shit thought he landed face down.” He paused for another moment of thought. “So,” he said, “you think you can get me off?”

  “That’s a question for your lawyer. I’m just, well, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, to be honest. A favor for your sister, mostly. I promised I’d look around some, see if I could learn anything that might point the locals in another direction.

  But, you know, they’re talking involuntary manslaughter. You’re looking at, worst case scenario, maybe five years. It’s not like you’re going to the gas chamber. Your first felony, heck, if you cooperated all the way down the line, you could even get off with probation. I’m not saying you would, I’m just saying, maybe. Prosecuting attorneys, they’re generally pretty busy, 66 Victor Banis

  judges too. They like to settle if they can, without a trial. Saves everybody time and trouble. And money.”

  “Plead guilty, you mean?” Stanley nodded, watching closely to see what reaction that got. Not much, though. Carl’s face showed no emotion. It was like the distress he had shown a moment earlier had been switched off somehow—or, buried so deep you’d need some serious digging to find it.

  “I could do the time,” Carl said eventually, more as if he were speaking to himself than to Stanley. “Hell, it seems sometimes like I’ve lived my whole life in some kind of prison.

  So, that’s not it. It’s just…” He paused. “I just don’t like the idea of people believing I k-killed Donnie McIntosh,” he said in a firm, clear voice. “I don’t like even thinking myself that I did it. ‘Cause, I swear to you, I don’t believe I d-did. At first, the way they described it to me, I thought maybe that was how it came down, but now…” He shrugged and shook his head.

  Stanley sighed. Carl probably was a loser. Everybody else seemed to think so, and he seemed to think the same thing himself, though that may have been nothing more than those other opinions influencing his own. Self esteem was a fragile thing in some people.

  He was convinced, however, that Carl wasn’t just giving him a song and dance about the death of Donnie McIntosh. If he was any judge of character, Carl honestly didn’t believe he had killed Donnie. What’s more, he had convinced Stanley as well.

  Stanley didn’t believe it either.

  But if that was true, it meant something was wrong. Deadly wrong. Because it could only come down to one thing: if it hadn’t happened the way the police had described it, the way the scene appeared when they found Donnie, then someone else had killed him, and not accidentally.

  It meant murder, plain and simple.

  Or, murder plain, he corrected himself—but, so far as he could see at the moment, not so simple. Murder never was, he’d begun to realize. And hadn’t he come here for a vacation?

  Because he had been certain there wasn’t really any murder involved? He sure hadn’t come here expecting to solve a murder case. The last one of those, someone had tried, very DEADLY WRONG 67

  hard, to kill him, as a result of which he had sworn off of murder investigations. Or had tried to, until SFPD had refused to accept his resignation. He sighed. Tom was right. He was a magnet for trouble.

  He considered just bowing out of this situation. The police were convinced they had it solved. The likelihood that he would be able to prove anything to the contrary was slim.

  Still, whatever his misgivings, he believed the story that Carl had told him—and Carl, and Libby, were expecting him to help right what was, almost certainly, a gross injustice. Just how he was supposed to do that, though, he hadn’t a clue.

  “That’s going to be a hard defense to sell,” he said. Carl gave him a quizzical look. “Donnie trying to molest you. You defending your honor.”

  He was surprised at what a smile did to Carl’s face, and he realized with a shock it was the first time in this whole meeting that Carl had smiled. For the first time, too, he could see why little Donnie might have wanted to molest him. Smiling, dimples showing, and shed for the moment of his usual hang dog look, Carl was actually kind of cute. Not movie star good looking, but like the kid next door you’d surreptitiously watch cutting the lawn and occasionally fantasize about getting into his pants, if only on an off night. When you were feeling particularly horny.

  Slow though he might be in some ways, Carl nonetheless picked up on the change in Stanley’s reaction to him. The dull brown eyes watching Stanley glinted slightly with a new kind of interest, grew speculative.

  “It wasn’t, you know, the idea of a guy,” he said, in a lower voice, not a trace of a stutter, looking at something over Stanley’s head. “I mean, I already said, I’ve always swung both ways. Like, I’m straight myself, straight enough, I guess, but it never bothered me any if a guy wanted to get something going.

  It was just Donnie I didn’t want to do it with, him and me being kind of friends, and the history he had, all those guys poking him steady, taking advantage, what they did, it just didn’t seem to be right. But, that was just him.”

  68 Victor Banis

  He paused, waiting to see if Stanley was following his reasoning, decided that maybe he hadn’t made himself clear enough. “That doesn’t mean, you know, I’d say no to, well, someone else, if they wanted to. I guess, to tell the truth, I kind of dig messing around with a guy. The right guy, anyway.” He swallowed hard, added in a quick rush of words, blushing slightly, “Like you, Stan. If you were interested.”

  “Stanley.” And, for a brief moment or two, Stanley was interested. He’d lost out on the man he was in love with back in San Francisco, nothing but grief was ever going to come of that.

  It had been a while since anything had come, period.

  And it wasn’t hard to imagine that Carl looked kind of nice under the clothes he wore with so little style. Most likely way better out of them than in. Probably, he’d clean up nicely, as the saying went. Plus, even in the loose fitting pants there was a promising bulge at the crotch, or had that grown slightly in the last minute or so?