Scott Sherman - Third You Die

Maybe I should check out the Brent captured on camera before making any more assumptions.

I could go to the local video shop or the nearest Web site and see what was for sale. Or, I could call the boy voted in his high school yearbook Most Likely to Amass an Astonishingly Large Library of Pornography.

I decided to go the cheap route.

First, I had to check with Tony to make sure he didn’t mind my being out for the evening.

“No problem,” he answered, lowering his voice, “baby.”

Tony worked in an open cubicle at a police station in midtown. I knew he didn’t want his fellow officers wondering who he was calling “baby.” As well meaning as his term of affection was, his whispering it made it hurtful.

“I have to work a case tonight, anyway,” he said. “We found a guy in the Hudson River. Been there a couple of days. At the least. Water’s always tricky-hides a multitude of sins.” Tony’s tone betrayed his resentment. “Really fucks up time of death.”

I found it endearing that, when it came to interfering with one of his investigations, Tony could get mad at water.

“Sorry,” I offered.

“Looks like a messy one, too. The victim had been beaten. Whipped, actually. There were also bruises on his wrists that indicated he’d been handcuffed but straining to get out.”

I started to get a little worried. “COD?” I asked. You don’t live with a detective without learning some of the lingo.

“Too soon to say,” Tony answered. “Although we know he was dead before he was dropped in the river. No water in the lungs.”

“What do you know about the vic?”

“Not much. We’re pretty sure whoever put him there never meant for him to be found. He was nude. There was a rope around his ankle, and we’re assuming it was tied to something to anchor him down. But the rope either caught on something or got nibbled through by a cooperative fish or two. The body got free and floated to the surface. Lucky break.”

Things weren’t going well when that counted as good luck. “So, no ID at all?”

“We know a little. Guy was probably mid-thirties. Dark complexioned. Too much bloating and decomposition to tell much else at this time. Maceration was-hey, are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yeah,” I croaked, unconvincingly. I threw in a “sure, go ahead” to add conviction.

Tony sounded skeptical. Well, more skeptical than usual. Occupational hazard. “You know what maceration is?”

I couldn’t help it. “No, but if you let me slip my hands down your shorts, I can try and figure it out.”

Tony laughed. “It’s not as much fun as that, unfortunately. It’s the process of how things soften in liquid. In this case, human skin. After a few days underwater, the skin starts to saturate and peel away in long strips. Every hour, we lose more identifying features. The epidermis detaches and we’re left with bone and muscle. After a week-”

“I get it,” I interrupted. This was starting to sound more grisly than I wanted to hear. Besides, what few details Tony’d shared dismissed my worst fear-that the victim was Brent.

“Mr. Sensitive,” Tony teased.

“Guilty,” I admitted. “I am really sensitive. Especially when you run your tongue along my-”

“Gotta go,” Tony said, his voice cracking like a teenage boy’s. “See you later.”

I imagined him sitting at his desk, red-faced and awkwardly turned on. There were many things I loved about Tony, not least of which was how easy it was to get his motor going.

Who’s Mr. Sensitive now? I thought, smiling.

A few months ago, if Tony had said he was “working late,” I’d have been worried. We’d agreed to an open relationship. In theory, I had no problem with it.

What I didn’t like was the lying and evasiveness that accompanied it. There was a stretch back then when he was becoming increasingly unavailable. There were more and more late nights at the office and pretty thin excuses. I was convinced he wasn’t just playing the field a bit-something I felt he was entitled to after a long, monogamous marriage and a frighteningly scarce sexual history, but seeing someone in a more serious manner. Having another relationship that mattered.

Turned out I was right-but the boy he was seeing was his son, Rafi, whom he’d kept secret from me. When he finally introduced us, it was kind of a breakthrough for our relationship. But it hadn’t gone as far as I’d hoped, and I was tired of being known to Rafi as Tony’s “friend.”

Which brought me back to Kristen LaNue and my fantasies about him. How liberating would it be to be with someone who accepted me as I am, dick and all?

Now I was the one thinking of cheating.

Or was Kristen just another person on whom I was projecting what I wanted? Outside of our brief interactions, I knew nothing about him. Maybe in his private life, he was as deeply closeted as Tony. Or he was a total creep who never picks up the check and leaves the bathroom without washing his hands.

Or, god forbid, he was a plushie.

Could I make a purple dinosaur costume work?

I wouldn’t mind finding out. Not if I’d look good in a purple dinosaur costume, mind you. More about Kristen.

Probably not a good idea.

Okay, no more dwelling on the sexy Latino who seemed kind, charming, rich, and into me. Because who’d want to think about him when I could imagine skin dissolving off corpses at the bottom of the river.

Or not. No, I needed to see some skin, but the kind that was attached, and lots of it.

Now that I’d cleared it with Tony, I could place the call that would make that happen.

“You’re asking a single gay guy if he has any Brent Haven movies in his collection?” Freddy wondered incredulously when I called. “That’s like asking a fat guy if he has ice cream in his freezer.”

“Well, I assumed you had the ice cream, chubby,” I answered. “I guess I didn’t know that Brent’s movies were also membership requirements. So, can I come over and watch a few?”

“What’s the matter, Tony not putting out for you these days? Bed death already? It’s only been a few months. What are you two, lesbians?”

“That’s a mean stereotype about lesbian relationships petering out on the sex front,” I objected. “I know some women who-”

“I was just joshing,” Freddy said. “What, I can’t joke about lesbos, but you can call me ‘chubby’? Double standard much?”

I knew he wasn’t really mad. “I’m just trying to get to know Brent better.”

“I suppose you could do that by watching him on video getting tag-teamed by Lucas Fisher and Hugh Jestman,” Freddy observed. “Or you could, I don’t know, call him. Didn’t you say he gave you his number?”

“He did, but-”

“I know, why bother talking when you can form the deep emotional connection that only comes from seeing someone anally penetrated by a large vibrating egg? In my opinion, more friendships should start that way.”

“Like yours don’t,” I said. “Besides, I’d prefer talking to him. There’s just one problem.” I filled Freddy in on Brent’s disappearance and my efforts to find him.

“Oh. My. God,” Freddy intoned. “That beautiful child. You’ve done it again.”

“What?”

“Gotten another one killed.”

“Killed? Who said anything about killed?” I ran through all the other possibilities for Brent’s absence, my theories and the ones offered by the guys at SwordFight Productions.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Freddy responded. “And maybe he grew wings and flew to the moon, too. Let’s be honest, sugar. Boys who go missing around you turn up dead. Terminated. Rubbed out, knocked off, whatever. How many times does this need to happen before you accept that you have the karma of a cadaver dog? You’ve stumbled across homicides like Angela Lansbury when she played Jessica Fletcher, except without her raw sexuality. I’m calling your biography Murder, She Wrote. Again. ”