Jonathan Kellerman - Flesh And Blood

With its winking scamp logo and gloriously uddered, fresh-faced models, Duke magazine had been a major force in the crumbling of sexual censorship barriers, and Tony Duke had fought his share of legal battles. But his victories in court proved, ultimately, to be market-share defeats as each landmark decision allowed successively raunchier publications to achieve legitimacy. Now, in a world where hard-core porn rentals were the number-one video-store commodity, Duke ’s airbrushed sensibilities seemed almost quaint. When Tony Duke hit the papers these days, it was usually because he’d thrown a fund-raiser for some worthy cause.

All this and whatever else I thought I knew about him had been gleaned from the papers: California farm boy morphed to starving bookkeeper to failed Hollywood scriptwriter to the author of a dozen forgettable science fiction paperbacks, then finally to head of the gutsy publishing venture that had earned him twenty beachfront acres and the kinds of toys his readers could only dream about. But the papers printed what you gave them, and no doubt Duke employed a fleet of publicists.

He had to be what – seventy, by now?

Older man.

As far as I knew he’d never been implicated in anything violent. On the contrary, he had a reputation as someone who genuinely loved women. Years ago I’d caught the tail end of a televised interview with him – some biographical feature on a network that deluded itself as substantive. Duke had come across still boyish, if a bit frail. A small, narrow-shouldered, goateed, ludicrously tanned elf of a man with an easy-to-listen-to drawl and friendly brown eyes.

Small brown face under a steel-hued hairpiece. Your eccentric favorite uncle, on shore leave from his latest jaunt to locales exotiques , brimming with ribald anecdotes, naughty jokes, and the unspoken promise that he might, one day, take you with him.

As I watched the steaks sizzle, I continued to wonder. About Marc Anthony Duke and Lauren Teague and Shawna Yeager.

A few years ago, when our house was being rebuilt, Robin and I had rented on the beach in western Malibu. During that year I must’ve zipped past the Duke estate hundreds of times, never thinking about what went on behind those foliage-shielded walls. I had only the faintest memory of a green expanse: palms and pines, banks of devil ivy, geraniums, rubber plants. The gate that had admitted Gretchen Stengel.

Tony Duke had made a fortune knocking down barriers, but he hid behind high walls. Milo was right: If Duke was involved it was a whole new game.

I made a salad, mixed iced tea, set the table, tempted Spike outside with porterhouse, and bolted the dog door. Robin came home just as I had everything in place. She looked tired and pale, and her hair was half tied, half loose. A beautiful woman anyway, but I wondered if Tony Duke would’ve noticed.

“This is wonderful,” she said, washing up and pecking my cheek.

I took her in my arms, kissed her face, rubbed her back, ran my fingers through her curls, gently, so as not to snag. The sounds she made and the way she melted against me said I was doing okay, even though most of my concentration was spent blocking out the faces of dead people.

She found a bottle of cabernet that I’d forgotten about, and as we ate and drank my appetite returned. We did the dishes together, took a walk without Spike, holding hands, not saying much. The night was cold enough for visible breath, and the smog had traveled somewhere else. Winter, California style, was finally arriving. I’d check the garden tomorrow, maybe cut back some roses, see what the pond needed. Basic stuff. Concrete stuff. Time to get away from being useless.

When we got back home I got another peck on the cheek and a tired smile. Robin got into bed with a stack of magazines, and I went to my office and switched on the computer.

Marc Anthony Duke’s name pulled up sixteen quick hits, mostly press pieces and the official Duke magazine website, decorated with grinning portraits of the man himself and thumbnails of pastied and G-stringed Treats Through the Years that could be enlarged with a click.

I scanned for a while, learned only one new fact: Two years ago Tony Duke had gone into “ultraleisure mode” and passed the day-to-day operations of Duke Enterprises to his daughter Anita. The accompanying PR photo showed an indigo-robed Duke posing proudly with a sternly attractive brunette in her thirties wearing a strapless black evening gown. Anita Duke was taller than her father by several inches, a shapely woman with smooth, bronze shoulders and nice teeth displayed by a tentative smile that appeared anything but happy. Described as “an investment banker with a Columbia University MBA and ten years’ experience on Wall Street.” “These will be years of market growth and consumer-sensitivity for Duke Enterprises,” she predicted. “Soon we’ll be moving full-force into cyberspace.”

I searched for something less laudatory, found a couple of Bible Belt organizations listing Duke Enterprises as “a tool of Satan.” Then some paeans from fans – do-it-yourself stuff, with Tony Duke featured high on most-admired lists. From one of these I learned that Duke had been widowed two decades ago and remained single until four years ago, when he’d hooked up with a former Treat with the improbable name of Sylvana Spring (“the girl who tamed Tony!”), with whom he’d sired two children.

Any taming, though, had been short-lived. Duke and Sylvana had concluded an “amiable divorce” last year. The kids were proof, claimed the admiring webmaster, of “Tony Duke’s Eternal Virility – eat your heart out, Viagra-chompers! Beautiful Sylvan and the rugrats still live in a guesthouse right there on T.D.’s palatial Malibu spreadorama! The Man is ultra-generous and too-cool!”

Then pages of downloaded cartoons and centerfold photos, copyright infringements I supposed Duke tolerated. One unlined, doe-eyed, pouty-lipped face after another, sponge-rubber buttocks, geometrically barbered pubic triangles. And breasts. Peach-toned and pink-nippled, identically upswept, pneumatic in a way that Nature had never conceived.

I logged off, returned to the bedroom. Night chill had seeped in, and Robin was wearing a flannel nightgown, buttoned to the neck.

“I was just about to get you,” she said. “Ready to go to sleep? I am.”

Her hair was pinned, and she’d scrubbed her face clear of makeup. Her eyes still looked tired, and her lips were chapped. A tiny pimple that I hadn’t noticed before had sprouted on her forehead. I got into bed, rolled next to her, smelled toothpaste breath, the merest eau of perspiration. As she began to stretch away from me, I kissed her, touched her.

She said, “I look horrid – wasn’t planning to…”

Then she sighed, hiked up her gown, drew me to her, held me tight. She was wet when I entered her, came quickly, chewed on my nipple, and rocked the pleasure out of me. When her body peeled away from mine, she was already asleep. I lay there on my back, feeling the thump of my heartbeat, feeling alone. She began snoring lightly, and her hand snaked across the bedsheet, touched my arm, found my index finger. Her pinkie curled around the digit and held on.

Deep in slumber but gripping my finger hard.

Not daring to move, I waited for sleep.

I awoke the next morning knowing I’d dreamed but struggling to retrieve the details. Something to do with a party… palm trees, blue water, naked flesh. Or was I imagining that?

I took a very hot shower, dressed, made coffee, and brought it to Robin’s studio. She was goggled and gowned, about to enter the spray booth with a new mandolin, feigned patience when she saw me. After a few minutes of sipping and chat, I let her be and returned to the house. Thinking about parties again. Tony Duke’s lifestyle. The kind of opulence that might attract a girl like Lauren. Would be even more of a lure for the Olive Queen of Santo Leon. Had Shawna Yeager covered for a bash at the Duke estate with a story about going to the library?