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Wiseguy

"Collateral Damage"
by Suz

1991



He looks like hell. The suit is another Sid's Shack special, and it looks like he's slept in it for a week. His eyes are bloodshot, his face is gray, and I'd swear he's lost more hair than when I saw him last in Lynchboro four months ago. By the looks of it, he may have been pulling it out himself - in handfuls. Whatever it is he's come all this way to tell me looks like it may kill him to say it. Which means whatever it is, it's bad. He'd only look this way if Vince was in some kind of jam again. "Hello, Buckwheat," I greet him. Keep it cool. Let him tell it at his own speed. If I can just keep from ripping the words out of his throat while he figures out how to say it.

"I need your help. I've tried everything else I can think of, and it's gotten me nowhere," McPike tells me.

Okay, that wasn't it. What I was expecting, I mean. Help? From me? McPike would sooner die the death of a thousand cuts than admit he needed anything from me. "Help," I repeat, trying it out and deciding I still don't believe it. "Not another visit to 'American Gothic'-vile?" I inquire with the trademark sarcasm.

"Vince is gone. Kidnapped," Frank snarls. "A week ago."

I go cold. I was right. He has slept in that suit for days... "Kidnapped." Again with the repetition. Mostly to cover the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as a mental list of the myriad of thugs who'd have a reason to snatch one Vincent Michael Terranova, undercover operative for the OCB, unreels in my head like the roll-call in a maximum security prison.

"What the fuck are you, a parrot?!" McPike hisses at me.

"Frank, you're not exactly giving me a basis for intelligent comment, here. You call me at midnight, tell me you can't talk about it on the phone, that something's up, something only I can possibly help you with, now you show up in my neck of the woods and tell me you let someone snatch Vinnie? You're his field supervisor. You're supposed to supervise, dammit! Who took him and why?" I ask, doing my best not to kill him where he stands. Just about the only thing holding me back right now is the fact that nothing I could possibly do to him could be worse than what's already happened. Vince is the center of his freaking universe. Best friend. Partner. I wonder if 'lover' has made it onto the list yet. Vinnie has that effect on people. The man is like a dog. Loyal to an absolute fault. And capable of making anyone he turns those blue eyes of his on into a fucking conquest. I should know. He's done it to me. Mr. 'I-am-a-coiled-snake' Lococco. Who's spent my life not needing anyone. Until he showed up. Goddammit-to-hell!

"Vince got involved in some Salvadoran refugee thing through his brother's old parish. A priest had stumbled into a gun-running ring, and went to Vince for help because of his reputation as a connected guy in the neighborhood. He got too close to whatever it was, and one of the Salvadoran Death Squads snatched him out of his kitchen. Everything I've been able to turn up says the CIA may be involved. It's looking like a drugs-for-arms scam along the lines of Iran-Contra." He's looking at me with those blood-shot, Basset-hound eyes, like he's expecting me to be able to pull a name out of my hat, a connection. Anything. Fuck him.

"That's all you've got?" I ask after a second, trying to keep the expletives out of my voice.

"Essentially," he admits, staring at me with those worried, desperate eyes.

"And you expect me to do what with this?" I ask, the steel showing now.

"Find him. Bring him back. Bring back his body. Or find someone who can. You owe him, Lococco," he says, the desperation in his voice, now, too.

Like hell. "Lynchboro evened the score, Frank. In both our books."

"So you're telling me you're just going to leave him to rot in some jungle prison somewhere? If I had the energy, I'd shoot you right here," McPike tells me, sagging like an old sofa as he turns away to walk back out my front door.

"You look like you could use a drink, Buckwheat," I open my mouth and could shoot myself for doing it. He pauses in the doorway, looking back at me over his shoulder, waiting, not sure if it was an invitation. Neither am I. I look at the little Irishman for a second while I work that one out. "As I recall, you like your beer light," I say cynically and move out of the way. It's another split second before McPike turns around and stalks into my Nob Hill flat, standing in the middle of the livingroom and staring out at the panorama of the East Bay hills and the San Francisco financial district. He looks lost. Like the basic laws of physics were just repealed or something. I understand that. I'm feeling it too. Goddamn you, Vince. When will you learn to listen to me? I cover that sissy moment of empathy by banging around in the refrigerator and getting out a couple of local long-necked microbrews then popping the tops on them. What I want is a stiff scotch, but something tells me there'll be plenty of time for that later as I try and figure out how I got involved in this whole disaster in the first place. "How'd you find me?" I ask as I hand McPike his beer.

"Vinnie's will," he says. It stops me cold.

"His will?" I repeat yet again. Polly want a cracker. "The OCB has already written him off?" McPike can hear the fury in my voice. I don't bother to hide it.

"At the CIA's insistence. His memorial service is the day after tomorrow."

I put my beer down carefully, because if I don't, I'm going to hurl it straight through the plate glass window. I start pacing, working through all the ramifications of that single fact and what it tells me. Fifteen years with the Company makes me something of an expert, at least in the field of covert ops. And Vincent Terranova appears to have walked into the middle of yet another one. Only this time, no one fell for those big blue eyes of his. Not unless they hauled him off to be a love slave in a mansion in San Salvador. I can only wish.

"I promised him..." McPike's voice chokes, then he swallows another mouthful of beer and starts again. "I made him a promise... that if he was killed in the line of duty, I'd scatter his ashes in Dodger Stadium. Unless I have a body, I can't keep that promise."

I stare at him for a long minute, waiting to see what maudlin tripe will come spilling out of the man next. I can see the pain radiating off of him like the heat haze off a desert highway, feel it beat against my own. I grit my teeth on it. No. I don't have time for this. When I babysat Vinnie after his little AWOL episode last winter in Lynchboro, I tried to get him to see his days with the OCB were numbered. He didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to hear about the burnout I could see eating away at him. Didn't want to quit the life. The adrenaline rush. Not even for me. I offered him everything I had to get him to stay. To quit the work. He laughed when he told me he didn't want my fucking money. Mel's money. And he went home to Brooklyn. And McPike. Vinnie was the one who burned the bridge, not me. And here I stand, looking across the chasm he left in my chest when he walked away, at the man on the other side of it. And goddammit, I never told Vince why I wanted him to stay. "You're so sure it'd be a body?" I ask.

Something in my voice makes Frank glance at me, and I look away, out the window, knowing what he'll see in my face.

"Everyone else who was involved is dead, Roger. Why spare him?" is the irrefutable logic of the answer.

I start pacing again, praying I can burn off the rage that feels like it's going to erupt through the pores of my skin. "I told him to quit," I say, to no one in particular.

"So did I," McPike says, voice breaking. "No one can keep up a run of luck like his," he adds flatly, getting a grip on himself. It's more than I can do.

"Why didn't the OCB force him to take a desk job after Lynchboro? Huh? Answer me that, Frank. Oh, let me guess. The bureaucrats wanted one more taste - just one - of the glory days. Am I right?" My voice drops to the sibilant hiss of an angry snake as I glare at him. He's staring at me like I've grown a second head. "Am. I. Right." It's no longer a question, every word a separate statement.

"We tried. He refused. What were we supposed to do, Lococco, chain him to a desk until he gave in?" McPike doesn't break eye contact. He knows, now, how much this hurts. The sympathy in his face just stokes the anger.

I pick up my beer and down the whole thing without stopping, feeling the carbonation burn my esophagus on the way down. Then I take the bottle and hurl it at the window. The bottle shatters. The window remains unbroken. Another personal trademark, that bullet proof glass. I had half wondered if my rage would be strong enough to break it. But the pain is stronger. Strong enough to break me. And McPike, too, by the looks of it. He takes a single step towards me and I back up, snarling like a rabid wolf. He walks away and sits down on my distressed leather sofa, ignoring me. I thank him silently as I head for my wet bar and snatch up an unopened bottle of forty year old single malt scotch. "If we're going to have another wake for the sonovabitch," I say, dropping into the other end of the couch like a dead weight, "then this time, let's do it right." I hand him the bottle and he cracks the seal without looking my way, swigging a healthy mouthful, then a second, before handing it back.



It's nearly midnight, twenty four hours after my first intimation that the polar north of my life has somehow ceased to be. I am directionless, here in the darkness of my livingroom, my only companion an equally lost soul whose head is starting to droop against the backrest of the couch. I wish I could get that drunk. The fire of the alcohol has no effect on the ice that flows out from my soul like the glaciers of Greenland. I ask the question that has whirled through my thoughts like summer fireflies all night. "Why was I in Vinnie's will?" I know why he's in mine. In the likelihood that the CIA succeeds in killing me, I wanted him to have... everything he wouldn't accept from me in life. To make up for the things I couldn't give him in life. God help me.

"He had some things he wanted to make sure you got," McPike slurs, reaching into the breast pocket of his rumpled suit coat and removing a heavy cream-colored mailing envelope. He hands it to me, then lays it on the sofa when he realizes I have no intention of taking it from him. I sit in the dark and stare at that envelope where it gleams dimly in the glow of the city nightscape outside my windows. What have you left me, Vince? When all I ever wanted was to know you're around? I am nothing without you to reflect me. To redefine me. To show me who I really am. To make me human again. Eventually, I take the envelope and tear it open, dumping the contents onto my lap. The three condoms make me laugh, and McPike steals a look at me but doesn't say anything. The ring is a surprise, though, a heavy gold one, old-fashioned, a signet of some sort indistinguishable in the gloom. There's also a cigarette case. Or that's what it looks like till I open it to see my reflection flash in the mirror that lines one side. Cigarettes do indeed fill the other. I'd been bugging him to quit when I talked to him last. Under the smokes is a folded piece of paper, and I take it out, reaching beside me to turn on the table lamp at my elbow. It's a note, his handwriting surprisingly neat for a lefty, and I read it over, trying to focus on the words as they blur before me. The ring was his father's, a gift from that harridan mother of his when he hit sixteen. A reminder, his note says. That he swore he'd avenge me on the lives of his family. That he'd still keep that promise, if he could. Only now he's the one who needs avenging. The condoms are a personal joke between us, another reminder, this time of the day we met, and my invitation to him to join me in 'entertaining' the three Finnish stewardesses-slash-whores Susan sent my way that day in Stockton. The mirrored cigarette case has an inscription on the back, the note says, and I turn it over. In Old English script, a quote from a Grimm's fairy tale taunts me. I can almost hear him smirking at me as I read it: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all? I clench my fist around the gold case, gritting my teeth. Oh without a doubt, you were, Buckwheat. Look in the mirror, Roger, I read the last line of his note, see yourself. You're my friend, and nothing can change that.

Goddamn you, Vince. I love you and you've left me. I will not let you do this to me. My eyes burn as I stare into that mirror, searching for whatever it was he saw when he looked at me. The face I've lived with all my life is unremarkable, though one or two women have told me it was attractive. Irish nose, wavy reddish hair, gray eyes that sometimes go green. It's hard to believe a monster lurks inside that façade. A monster Vince tried to help me slay. Self-loathing makes me snap the case shut on that hated reflection and I drop it on the lamp table, slipping the ring onto my hand as I curl my fingers over it. Family, Vinnie. You were all I had. And now there's nothing.

We stare out the window again for another hour, silent. I'm going to do this, whatever 'this' is, as much for McPike as for myself. And for the same reason.

Not knowing is unacceptable.

Frank has finally fallen asleep, sagging limply into the corner of the couch, and I get up, going for a spare blanket which I shake over him before I head for my own room to lie staring at the ceiling until dawn lightens the sky outside. I think it will be a very long time before I sleep again. I hear the sound of someone in the bathroom and I get up, not bothering to dress. It's my house, and McPike is hardly a threat. I start the coffee brewing, the big restaurant grade espresso machine hissing and gurgling like a science experiment about to explode. Frank wanders in, settling at a bar stool on the other side of the counter, ignoring my nudity, resting his head in his hands miserably. He now has a hangover to add to his other griefs. He takes the mug I hand him gratefully and sips at the coffee as though hoping it will cure more than the hangover. I take my turn in the bathroom.

"Tell me exactly what happened," I request, when I emerge, showered, shaved and clothed.

He does, or as much of it as he knows. Even the NYPD and FBI forensics teams found little in the way of evidence. No fingerprints, beyond the white palm print that acted as a signature for the crime, no hair or fibers, nothing that shouldn't have been there, except that Vince was inarguably missing. He told me about the frantic visit to DC to try to breach the veils of silence shrouding the CIA in Langley, his failure to enlist the Attorney General in the effort, Beckstead's attempts to get somewhere, and finally his solo efforts, falling back on the one skill Frank McPike has in spades. He is nothing if not an exceptional cop. He tracked the Salvadorans as far as Florida. Which means that's where I'll pick up the trail.

While McPike is constrained by a lifetime of law enforcement work, I have no such handicap. I don't care even slightly how many laws get broken as long as the pieces lead me to Vince. Frank knows it. He's asking me to do the dirty work for him. Because he knows I can. And will. One last time. Whatever the cost to my sanity. Hell, that's been questionable for years, anyway. Which puts me in mind of a contact I have in South Florida, a 'retired' ATF agent by the name of Evan Freed. He makes me look like the poster child for rational behavior. His suicidal streak is even wider than mine, and he has contacts in the Central and South American underworlds that dovetail with my own, an inheritance from my days with the Profitts. It pays to know where the bodies are buried - and who buried them.

By the time I get McPike to promise to send along a complete copy of the file, he's looking a little less deathly. It's a strange feeling to know I'm responsible for bringing a little peace to someone's soul, without having to kill them first, I mean. He actually looks like he can let it rest as long as he knows I'm handling it. Whether I can is beside the point. Faith is a wonderful thing, don't you think? I just pray it's not misplaced. I send him on his way, ignoring him when he asks if I'm coming to the memorial. That sort of thing has never been my cup of tea, so to speak. And some stubborn little voice in the back of my head says it's too soon to write off Vinnie and his incredible luck. Because I know there's more to it than luck. He's canny, willful, with a frightening intelligence masked by that pretty Jersey thug exterior. He's a player. If there's any way to find an angle, some way to save his own life, he'll have found it. Now all I have to do is find him, before time and luck run out.

When I shut the door on Frank, I start making calls. It takes most of that day before I have things set up so I can go running off to places unknown for some indeterminate length of time in search of a dark-haired needle in the green haystack of the jungles of Central America.

***************************************************

Evan meets me at the Broward County airfield, which is fortunately large enough to handle my Lear. My pilot is on notice that his services will be required at a moment's notice for an indefinite period of time. He's a vet, flew a gunship in the Sudan, and went private when I offered him the opportunity to travel intermittently while pulling down a hefty retainer. He can fly damned near anything, and may very well have too, where we're going. He knows the routine, and has the run of the area, as long as he stays within an hour of the airfield. His pager number is etched behind my eyelids.

I climb into Freed's piece-of-shit '91 TransAm, trying to keep my mouth shut. There's no knowing what'll set him off, and disparaging comments about his taste in automobiles could very well be a trigger. He drives like a teenaged drag racer, his cigarettes trailing nicotine and carcinogens down the highway after us as we head for his townhouse. His choice of words, not mine. It looks like a mansion, to me, a pastel salmon stucco monstrosity with arches and colonnades and all the South Florida trappings of wealth. Mel always hated Florida, and I never understood why, since it was developed by builders who all had the same extravagant tastes he did. I hate it with a passion. When I'm in this part of the world, I usually hang out on a little island off St. Croix that I bought with some of Mel's millions. There's not much there except sand and solitude. Not a stucco mansion in sight. Just a rambling turn of the century stone and palm wood house that's stood up to ninety years of hurricanes without a scratch.

I try to ignore the reek of tobacco that permeates the house, taking the beer Evan hands me as we settle into white leather chairs on opposite sides of a three inch thick slab of marble set on a clear glass cube eighteen inches square. "You're doing okay for yourself," I comment. There was a time when that would have surprised me. Freed is about three years younger than I am, and actually bears me a passing resemblance when his eyes aren't so bloodshot you can actually tell what color they are. It doesn't look like his drinking habits have changed much. He worked undercover for the ATF on a number of high profile cases until he caught a bullet meant for a friend and was forced into retiring. He runs some businesses just this side of legal, with a sideline in small arms smuggling. Fitting, somehow.

"Yeah, well, don't sound so disappointed, Lococco," Freed quips with the same sort of sarcasm I'm prone to myself.

"Just surprised," I tell him. "Your old buddies at the ATF haven't shut you down yet?"

Freed laughs and lights yet another in an endless succession of cigarettes. "They keep trying," he says with a self-satisfied grin. "That's what they get for forcing me to retire. I know the game better'n any of the rest of them. Hell, if I was still on board, I could catch me in a second." He shrugs, the grin flashing again. "So what's your deal this time? I haven't heard much from you since you went legit, you sonovabitch. Guess running some mega-million dollar company or whatever it is you spend your time at is less hazardous than the gun-running you used to do for Profitt, huh?"

It's my turn to shrug. "It fills the days," I answer. And it does, after a fashion. It's also boring as hell, once you get over the rush that comes with making a billion out of a hundred million. At a certain point, wealth becomes pretty much self-maintaining, as long as the employees don't get greedy. I keep an eye out for that, since it's what got me started, myself. So far, it hasn't been a problem. "I'm looking for someone," I begin, and tell him a somewhat modified version of the facts. He knows I'm not giving him everything, but he knows me well enough to know the parts I leave out don't matter, at least not to him. He listens to the whole sad story, that smirk of his never leaving his face. I finish, and wait for the inevitable smartass comment.

"I never knew you had it in you, Lococco. I didn't think 'friend' was in your vocabulary. So what makes this Terranova guy so special?" Evan prods.

A lot of things I won't go into, you bastard, but I answer with a piece of the truth. "He saved my life. He saved more than that. I owe him. And now I need to return the favor. Whatever it was he walked into is probably CIA-linked. It's gonna be buried under dead ends and bogus leads and every trick the company has to get us off the trail. And I need someone who knows the refugee communities down here to get me in. Sell me as a drug buyer, an arms dealer, whatever it takes. I have the resources to back any play you come up with, but get me connected."

Freed smells desperation like a shark smells blood in the water. Only the sharpness in his eyes gives away his interest, but I can sense him taking this more seriously, all of a sudden. "What's in it for me?" he asks, taking another drag.

"The adrenaline rush isn't enough these days, huh?" I snap. "The usual fee, plus a hazardous duty bonus, and another bonus at the end if I find what I'm looking for," I finish.

"Dead or alive?" he asks coldly.

"Either. If I find him, you earn yourself a cool million. That enough of an inducement?" I ask with the same chill.

Evan grins again, that profoundly irritating expression making me want to clock him. "It'll do," he says and finishes his beer.



That night we're off to a shanty town on the outskirts of north Miami, a rundown suburb that's taken on a new life as a refugee enclave. It's like walking through any open air market in Central America, street-side stalls loaded with brightly colored miscellany, food vendors selling grilled delicacies of dubious origin, too many people, kids, everything I hate about crowded third-world poverty. Crowded anything, for that matter. Agoraphobia has been a little penance of mine since childhood, and this kind of population density makes me very, very unhappy. And Freed knows it, the bastard.

He takes his time, chatting up the señoritas, stealing samples from the food vendors and green grocers, and generally proving himself to be totally at home here. Eventually we make our way to the farther end of the main concentration of people and duck into a shop that purports to be selling luggage. My Spanish is passable, but Freed's is fluent. He gets us past the heavy-set muscle at the counter and into the back room where we are obviously expected.

"Julio, Ramon, this is Roger Lococco," Evan makes the introductions.

I wonder if 'Julio' came by the name because of a slight similarity to the singer as I stand there doing my impersonation of a stone wall. We weren't frisked coming in, and I'm not sure whether that's a sign of stupidity, or one of overconfidence. Either way, I'm glad my H&K is still in the waist holster at the small of my back under the linen jacket.

"Mr. Lococco," 'Julio' greets me with the gracious inclination of his head that one uses to ensure the supplicant is clear on the privilege of appearing before one. He's starting to piss me off. "It's been a while since your name has come up," he adds.

"I've been busy," I say. True enough, though not the way he thinks. Staying out of the CIA's way for the past few years doesn't really take that much effort, especially not now that General Masters is in a nice cozy lockup. But I'm going to be hitting their radar pretty damned soon, now. He eyes me, and I eye him right back.

"So what can we help the former enforcer of the former Mel Profitt with?" he asks.

I grin at him, that mostly insane look that generally makes people think twice before they push me any further. There is nothing 'former' about my reputation for lethality when provoked. "I need to find someone who does business with a splinter group of Salvadorans," I begin. The cover story I spin is that I'm looking to capitalize on Mel's old connections, but I want protection. I've heard these goons are good, as defined by the term 'vicious', and I'm interested in seeing if I can hire them to police my hypothetical drug empire. A lot of Profitt's contacts were in Central America, including El Salvador, so it's not as dicey as it sounds at first blush. 'Julio' goes for it, promising to see what he can come up with after receiving the promise of a fat finder's fee. We take our leave, and I make Freed drop me at a decent hotel not far from his house. Another night spent drinking isn't going to get me anywhere I want to be, and Evan, who sleeps even less than I do, makes up for it by trying to achieve a coma by chugging Jack Daniels. He promises to pick me up in the morning, and heads home.

I check into a suite and wander around restlessly, looking over the security arrangements out of habit. At this rate, I'm never going to unwind enough to get some sleep. Finally I troop downstairs to the bar and order a drink, nursing it as I check out the clientele. A lot of suntanned flesh and artificially white teeth, big hair and all of it trim and toned and tempting as hell, I conclude, as I watch the beauty pageant unfold. Getting laid has a certain appeal at the moment, and fortunately that's seldom a problem for me. A lot of these jaded beauties crave the excitement of the unknown, and I offer that in abundance. I've never made apologies for the fact that my temperament and profession have left an... aura, or whatever, around me. I've always attracted the women who want the dangerous liaisons, not the mundane ones. Fine by me, since they almost never expect me to hang around long. In fact, most of them are usually married, which is even better. No strings attached, by either party.

I make my selection from the female smorgasbord and do the polite conversation thing for long enough to make my intentions plain. She's amenable, so I escort her upstairs to my suite and ply her with the champagne I bought from the bartender on the way out.

She's a brunette, sleek as any feline, and every bit as hedonistic, soliciting my touch, my caress, my tongue as shamelessly as a cat in heat. I'm happy to oblige, since it gets me what I want, which is to be fucked within an inch of my life. And she is good. I'd suggest she consider a career change, only in this day and age, I don't think it'll go over well. She takes me down her throat, all the way to the balls, and I swear, I've died and gone to heaven. She's mastered the art of the tease, and takes me to the edge - but not over it - repeatedly while I return the favor. Only I finish the job. Repeatedly. When she's had her fill, she slides the condom over me and I have her on her back between one heartbeat and the next, moving into her hard and fast, her knees over my shoulders, her hands on my chest, pulling me closer. Deeper. I swear, any deeper, and I'll puncture her lung, or maybe rupture her spleen. And right now, neither of us could care less. I feel her come, clenching around me like a vice, and I explode, locking eyes with her. Eyes the same shade of evening sky as Vinnie's. Goddammit. Fathomless blue, guileless, emotionally transparent. Vinnie, dammit, where are you?

I roll away from her, spent, more than just physically, eyes closed. It doesn't help. He wavers in my mind's eye like reflections in a pond, laughter not disguising the pain I recognize in those amazing eyes. It's been there all along, all the time I've known him. Oh, it's not like it's obvious, most of the time, but I recognize it. I mean, I've been living with the same kinds of demons for a long time myself. Is that what it is? Empathy? How the hell did he sucker me in? I fell for his act, then I fell for him, even when I knew better. Me. the rough, tough, hard-to-bluff pick-of-the-litter. One of the Company's top assassins. Master spy. Right. More like some sort of mindless cyborg, a government killing machine who's conveniently exempt from Asimov's Laws of Robotics. It's only the real robots who're programmed with the directive not to harm a human being. People - creatures - like me, who blind themselves, who disregard the morality we claim to uphold, destroy everything around us, including what we fight to protect. And that's your real legacy to me, isn't it, Vince? You made me eat Eve's apple, and now I find I was the snake in the Garden. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And the more you know, the more dangerous knowledge becomes. Is that what happened to you, Buckwheat? A little knowledge become too much?

Her touch on me again distracts me from my brooding, and I seize her wrist, preventing her from peeling me out of the condom. I know it hurts her, but she doesn't make a sound as I glare into those dammed blue eyes, wide open, now, and dark with both fear and arousal. And suddenly I want her again, want to fuck her while I look into those eyes and dream of someone else. I've never willingly fucked a man in my adult life, Vinnie, but you'd be the one. I let her go the instant I'm sure she knows she's stirred my interest again.

Now she unsheathes me, and takes me back into her hot, wet mouth, sucking me like a Popsicle, savoring the taste of my semen as she teases me hard again. I wrap my hands in the darkness of her hair, holding her head lightly, imagining it's Vince who's going down on me with this enthusiastic hunger. What the hell is wrong with me? I don't do men.

I keep telling myself that as my current partner runs that sweet tongue over me, under me, through me, then kisses her way up the center line of my belly to my chest to suck on a nipple. It's never done much for me before, but now it primes me for a second orgasm in record time, that in combination with her fingertips just inside the edge of my foreskin. Like any professional, she knows when she's got her customer where she wants him, and she slides another condom over me then straddles my hips, taking me into her hot and dripping body. I can feel how wet she is even through the latex, as though I'd come directly into that blazing heat the first time.

This time, she fucks me. I play with the generous breasts that bob before me with all the perkiness silicon can provide while she rides me. When she comes again, I grab her ass and roll her under me, pumping hard, then pull out of her, rolling her onto her belly and yanking her up onto all fours as I penetrate her ass. I move slowly, but I don't let her squirm away, her own struggles driving my thrust the way her own juices lubricate the way. God, she's tight, so tight. Is this what it feels like, Vinnie? I begin to move in her slowly, reaching forward past her waist to her cunt, stroking her slippery clit with twenty-plus years of expertise, and she stops fighting me, her soft cries deepening as pleasure takes the place of pain. I make sure she comes again before I catch hold of her hips with both hands and drive myself into her as deeply as I can, plunging into her over and over, mindlessly, Vinnie's blue, blue eyes laughing in my head, grinning at me, that I-told-you-so look in them. Is this why you told me what happened between you and Steelgrave? So I'd spend the rest of my life wondering just how far friendship goes?

When I come this time, it's even more explosive than the first time, and I pull her down beside me, still deep within her as we lie panting and sweating on my bed.

"I don't even know your name," she says after a minute.

"Does it matter?" I ask without really caring.

"Not even a little," she answers as she eases away from me.

I'm softening now, and slide free of her, my cock lying limp over my thigh as I stroke her tanned ass. It's been a long, long time since I've done that. This was how I lost my virginity in boarding school when I was about thirteen, only not with a woman. She rolls over to face me and I'm surprised at the compassion in her face. I'd expected to be slapped, not kissed, but that's what she does, to my never ending surprise, giving it just enough tongue to make me wonder if I can manage another orgasm. And then she gets up, slipping her dress over her head and collecting her underwear and shoes before ducking out into the hall without another word.

***************************************************

When Evan picks me up the next morning, he has to wait while I finish dressing. I've overslept, which astonishes me. He lounges on my bed with that knowing smirk of his, smoking, while I buckle on my shoulder harness and put on the gray silk jacket.

"Now I know why you ditched me, Lococco," he bugs me, and I spare him a glare as I head for the door. "It smells like a brothel in here."

I don't bother to answer, since he's right, the scent of sex perfuming the room like musk. He follows me out like an obedient dog and we head for his crapola car and another joy ride to Miami.

This time, we meet 'Julio' and Ramon at a restaurant for a late breakfast. Freed has his usual scotch on the rocks and the rest of us actually order off the menu. Much as I hate Florida, the food is usually pretty good. I guess that's what comes of being a tourist mecca.

While we wait for the food, Ramon hands over a manila folder with an assortment of paper in it. I open it and take them out, looking over the collection quickly. There's a newspaper article, two grainy photos and three variously sized scraps of paper with names and addresses on them. I look up to eye Ramon.

"It's only been twelve hours, Mr. Lococco," he shrugs with a grin. "We may have more for you by tonight, but this should get you started."

"Wrong, Buckwheat," I tell him and hand the papers back politely as I let that ice field freeze up in my eyes. "The deal is, you get your finder's fee when you've actually found these guys. Arrange a meeting. I walk into their territory without an appropriate introduction, and I'll be the main target on their private shooting range."

'Julio' grins at me then glances Ramon's way. "I told you he wasn't as stupid as all that. After all, he's still alive. And Mel isn't," he tells his associate.

Ramon glares at me, then picks up the envelope and puts it back wherever it came from. "You were right when you said they are vicious," he complains. "It may take several days before we can get them to agree to a place. They will insist on checking you out before they meet with you."

"Let them check. The only thing they'll find is that I'll happily go elsewhere if they take too long to make up their minds about whether or not they care to arrive at a business arrangement." I lean forward over the table slightly as I let the killer show in my eyes. I'm getting tired of this. "If they want to behave like amateurs, that's their prerogative. But I have things to do and places to go, and a shitload of money to make. If they want a taste, have them contact me." I give him the name of the hotel and get up. Freed tosses back the last of his scotch and follows me out.

"Well that took some brass ones," he says conversationally.

I wonder if he's ever completely sober anymore. "I'm not waiting around for their convenience. A friend of mine's life may be in jeopardy, Evan. The longer it takes for me to track him down the less likely it is that it's going to be alive." I get into his car and slam the door as he turns it on, roaring out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.



Vinnie grins at me with that shit-eating look that never fails to piss me off as he drops onto my couch with a grunt, putting his feet on my coffee table.

"What are you doing here?" I ask him irritably. "You're supposed to be dead in Central America, Buckwheat. I'm just about to come riding in at the head of the calvary to save your ass."

"What's the point in saving it if it's dead anyway?" he asks me, that grin never fading.

"Because it's a nice ass," I say sarcastically. "Besides, I'd know it if you were really dead. You wouldn't be cluttering up my dreams like this if you were in a ditch somewhere. And Frank's half-crazy, worrying about you." It's a low blow, but he sobers, that sadness that's never far away back in his eyes as he looks up at me.

"I know. It should never have gone down the way it did, Rog. I didn't know exactly what I was dealing with, so I was sloppy. Frank taught me better."

"FRANK taught you better? So did I, you jerk. You think I told you to call me if you ever needed me just to hear myself talk?" I ask him, angry down deep, furious with him for disregarding everything he was ever taught about undercover work, simply because he hadn't considered himself on the job. "You should have called me the second you got even the tiniest hint that you were screwed! I could have had you out of Brooklyn in minutes, you stupid, stubborn son of a bitch! Why the hell didn't you call me?" I demand.

"Because there wasn't time, Roger," he says. "And I wouldn't have risked your life, anyway. It was my mess, it was my job to clean it up."

I stare at him, that tendency to martyrdom only fueling my anger with him. "You self-righteous prick," I say, my teeth gritted on the rage. "You're so much better than the rest of us that you never need help?" He stares up at me with those magnificent eyes, eyes that change through a spectrum of blues like the iridescence in a peacock's tail. His eyes are like his own personal mood ring. Goddammit Vinnie, I haven't even finished figuring out how to read you, yet, and you knew me inside out the day we first met. Okay, so the OCB briefing helped, but it went a lot deeper than that, didn't it? He just waits for me to say something, as though he can hear everything running through my head. Who knows? Maybe he can, somehow, this specter. "I'm only doing this for McPike," I tell him, wondering why.

He stares up at me, then climbs to his feet to stand looking at me for a long second. Then he slips a hand up the back of my neck and kisses me, his mouth just barely brushing mine.

"I know why you're doing this, Rog," he says as the dream fractures and fades like a changing kaleidoscope.



I wake with a start, feeling the sun beating down on me where I lie on one of the lounges alongside Evan's pool. I'm glad as hell Freed is elsewhere, doing whatever it is he does, because I'm lying here naked as the day I was born with the biggest hard-on I've had in years, yesterday's little exercise included. So now I'm having wet dreams about you, huh, Vinnie? If you aren't dead, I may wish you were, before this is over. I don't need this. I don't need this in a big way. I can't afford to need you like this. And I don't have the first fucking clue what to do about it.

I lie there in the sun, letting it go, sublimating the desperate urge to do something. Anything. The hardest part of any operation is always the waiting. It's never changed. But lying here telling myself that waiting may see you dead is the hardest any wait has ever been, Buckwheat. Where are you?

***************************************************

That question takes me another week to start narrowing down. Evan, my psychotic shadow, and I, finally get our tickets to ride. We have a meeting scheduled with someone 'Julio' and Ramon say is connected to my Salvadoran splinter group. Finally. I get the impression his job is to give us the once over, make sure I am who I say I am, before we get passed along to the next level.

Evan and I are getting thoroughly tired of each other. I consider him self indulgent and in dire need of psychotherapy. Which I suppose is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but he's going to be dead in a few more years, whether of cirrhosis, lung cancer or a stray bullet, if he doesn't make a dent in whatever it is that's eating him. I have a hard time getting rid of him in the evenings, persuading him to leave me at my hotel, and more than once in the last seven days, he's lingered in the bar with me, riding on my coattails, so to speak, collecting one of the beach babes that have started hanging around me. I've had the opportunity to take a different piece of eye-candy to bed most nights, but I settle for the sleek little cat of the first night, when she's there. She's beginning to grow on me, and she's a hellova lay. So Evan's been helping himself. Hell if I know how he can perform, considering the amount of alcohol he drinks, but that's hardly my problem.

He breaks into my thoughts with a sarcastic comment, making it clear that I've missed whatever it was he was trying to tell me. "Yeah, so what?" I ask, electing to piss him off. I want that whacko edge of his showing when we get wherever it is we're going. When Freed starts getting wound up, people tend to give him wide berth. It may be all the safety margin we get.

"Man, Lococco, you are a world-class asshole," he snarls. "What's with the cold shoulder the last forty five minutes? I say something to offend your delicate sensibilities? Or are you just staring out at the scenery, daydreaming about your buddy? What is it? I didn't shave close enough for you? You don't like my cologne? My taste in Armani suits?"

I glance at him again. "You haven't shaved in three days, you smell like a distillery and that suit probably hasn't seen the inside of a cleaners in a year," I answer flatly. "What you wear and how you wear it doesn't even begin to register as an interest of mine," I tell him. "What I'm wondering, is, how the hell you can talk your way into a woman's bed, looking like you do."

Now he's really pissed off. His snarl is silent as he guns the big V-8 and weaves through slower traffic like a stunt driver in the French Connection. I grin, starting to laugh, and the look he throws at me smokes like acid on my skin. I laugh harder, and slowly, he realizes he's being had. By the time we get where we're headed, he's laughing, too, those dead gray eyes of his even crazier than usual.

We're driving into a gravel quarry about ten miles from the North Miami suburb our contacts call home. It's a Sunday afternoon, so the place is deserted, surreal, with craters and heaps of rubble scattered randomly around, like an extraterrestrial landscape. We follow directions, pulling to a stop in the shade of the rusted and derelict-looking loading silo the quarrymen use to fill the big dump trucks that haul the rock away. It looks like it's held up only by the inertia of the rickety sheets of corrugated tin as they lean drunkenly against each other. It's hard to believe the equipment actually works. As if to prove me wrong, the dilapidated conveyer belt next to the car grinds into gear as we get out. Evan has his gun drawn before he even knows where the danger is, feral and dangerous as a barracuda. I clap a hand over the top of the pistol, forcing his arm down. I'm not interested in a shootout, and the last thing I need is for him to go off half-cocked. Literally. Freed's car phone chooses that moment to begin ringing insistently, and I reach into the car to answer it. "Yeah," I say without inflection.

"Ride the belt up," comes the instruction in heavily accented English. I can barely hear him over the rumble and creaking of the conveyor. I do what I've been told, jumping up onto the separate horizontal belt that feeds onto the sloped portion. The sharply angled section that climbs jerkily up to a fourth story height before dumping its cargo into the vast gravel hopper used to fill the dump trucks is deeply ridged, making it easy to keep my footing as I ride it up, crouching to keep from being pitched off the side by it's uneven progress. Freed watches me warily until I'm about twenty feet off the ground, then scrambles up himself, not bothering to crouch, instead, crossing his arms over his chest, looking like Washington crossing the Delaware as his rumpled linen jacket flaps in the breeze. He grins up at me with a waggle of his eyebrows, silent commentary on my more cautious stance.

As the belt reaches the top of the incline, I can see the trio of Hispanic men, all of them in their early thirties, watching our progress. I catch hold of some piping and swing myself off the belt and onto a catwalk that seems to be held aloft by prayer alone. I can feel it sway and vibrate with the movement of the belt behind me. "Dónde estas?" I greet them, the sarcasm in my tone unmistakable.

The center man smiles without humor. "Lococco, I assume?" he asks in Harvard English. I can hear the New England twang even over the noise of the machinery, and the incongruity makes me grin. All he's missing is the school tie. Maybe he'll treat us all to a performance of the school song...

"Roger Lococco," I confirm. "That bozo is my associate, Evan Freed," I add as Evan steps lightly off the belt to stand at my back.

Our host nods to himself, and the machine pistols his bodyguards are carrying go back to being concealed weapons. "You'll have to excuse the delay. We have a number of things going on at the moment, and I wasn't sure we had the resources to accommodate your needs," he says as he steps back into the shadows of the interior. Evan and I follow him in, the pair of thugs remaining outside.

There's an echoing walkway, one side of which opens into the silo, wide enough to be considered a room of sorts. A rickety card table stands in the center of the floor space with three folding chairs placed around it. Our host takes the one that puts his back to the door. Both Freed and I are impressed at this display of trust, taking our respective seats as our pistols go onto the table in front of us. Outside, the belt is shut down, coming to a squealing, grinding halt. Silence descends as we eye each other.

"Your reputation precedes you, Lococco," our host says, settling back in his chair.

"And does it say anything about mind-reading?" I ask with deliberate irony.

He grins, and reaches forward across the table, hand extended. "Excuse my lack of manners. We don't generally stand on formality," he says. "Allow me to introduce myself. Renaldo deVega," he names himself, smiling again. It's an expression that makes me nervous, setting the hair on the back of my neck to prickling. In the manner of predators, all three of us are fully aware of the danger each of us represents. It's a mini balance of power. It's also nerve wracking. Naturally, none of that shows on my face, or in my posture, though. I've been at this a good bit longer than junior, here. He's doing well, for a relative beginner, though.

I hesitate long enough to generate a little uncertainty in him, then shake his hand. "Pleasure to meet you," I say with the same careful irony. "Your reputation is reasonably noteworthy, yourself. Or at least, your organization's reputation," I tell him after a moment.

He smiles again at this. "It's becoming so," he agrees. "So what is it we can do for you?" he asks.

All of this is filler, while we size each other up, like wolves evaluating a stranger amongst them. He's good-looking, as far as that goes, maybe thirty four or so, with the attitude that comes with silver service for a multitude. He's the child of wealth and privilege, and seems bent on remaining both wealthy and privileged no matter how many bodies he has to walk over to do it. I won't regret it if I have to kill him. Especially if he had anything to do with snatching Vince. "I have hopes of resuming control of several 'businesses' in El Salvador. Since I'm reasonably sure there's going to be some... resistance to that plan on the part of the middle management, I'm looking for enough muscle to make my point, and to make sure I get my way. What I've heard about your operation is that it's the same sort of ruthless as Jim Brown's Jamaican posses were a few years back. I may not need that level of deterrence, but I'd rather have it and not need it then need it and wind up dead."

DeVega purses his lips as he thinks about this, obviously considering how to maximize his potential for personal gain. "And what makes you so sure that my organization has any interest in acting as your personal bodyguard?" he asks.

"I doubt they do," I answer, settling back in my wobbly chair. "That's why I'm here. To pique that interest."

He waits for me to continue, and when I don't, raises an eyebrow curiously. "Pique away," he invites.

I flash the razor-slash smile that lets him know I'm dealing with what I consider to be the hired help, and finally respond. "I don't particularly enjoy repeating myself, deVega. If you're in the position to make a decision, fine. If not, take me to whoever is."

He shakes his head, negating the suggestion. "Not until I know what sort of arrangement you have in mind," he tells me.

I stare him down, not speaking until I see the subtle shift of position that tells me I've made my point. "I imagine you're familiar with my former employer's business empire, and his... unfortunate end?" I ask rhetorically. People like deVega knew Mel and his business all too well.

He nods, but says nothing.

I continue. "Well, I'm the one who inherited his overseas operations. Now that the heat on me has cooled, I'm ready to step into the ring again. Only I'm not stupid enough to think the people who've been running things the last three years are just going to stand aside and let me. So this is the deal. Any business I resume control over, your organization becomes the de facto distributorship for. We split the profits sixty forty, my favor, and any operation, in any country south of Mexico, I walk back into, becomes part of your power base. Not to mention that you'll have a source of armament even the CIA can't beat. All I'm looking for is to rebuild what went to seed while I was occupied... elsewhere." The thing is, this is all too plausible. If I wanted too, I could out-Mel Mel himself. I may never have made it to college, but my Master's degree is from the school of hard knocks, and Mel's knocks were harder than most. I knew his business better than he did, at least the parts that required actually getting your hands dirty. Remember what I said about knowing where the bodies were buried? Well, that's because I did a lot of the burying.

I watch him while he thinks it over. He's obviously buying it, and this is when I know my reputation hasn't exactly quieted down much. Finally he nods, having made a decision. "It sounds promising," he says, standing. "I'll talk to the people who need to make the final call. Where can I find you if they agree to hear more?"

I tell him, and give him Evan's private number for good measure, getting up myself. We shake hands again, and he steps into the white light outside, leaving Freed and me in the dusty gloom of the silo. "So you think they'll bite?" I ask him, curious about his impressions of the last fifteen minutes.

Evan shoves his gun back into its holster and gets up. "Well, if I didn't know better, I would," he says. "Com'mon, boss-man, let's blow this place."

I swim laps in the hotel pool for the next three hours until the kiddies start clogging the water beyond my ability to avoid and I climb out to lie in the sun. I just hope I don't nod off and drop into some erotic dream again. Something about lying in the sun seems to send me into a torpor, and I feel almost drugged as I lie there like a lizard, basking in the Florida heat. It's like I'm storing energy against some future need, a human solar collector. When deVega settles onto the chaise beside my own, I hardly move a muscle, ignoring him.

He plays along, maintaining the silence for several minutes before getting impatient. "We're interested in hearing the specifics of your plans," he tells me at last, voice soft enough that it won't be heard over the din of shrieking children.

"When and where?" I ask.

We set a time, and he departs, leaving me to sunbathe in relative peace. This time, I do fall asleep. Vinnie is never far away when I shut my eyes, and he materializes again with something approaching predictability.



"Rog, what're you doing?" he asks, pacing back and forth along the edge of the pool in his jeans and cowboy boots. His jeans are comfortably worn over all the portions of his anatomy that generally see the most wear, and that I sure as hell shouldn't be noticing like this. He does have a beautiful ass. The rest of the package is damned nice, too. He's tall, around six three, and built like one of those Spanish bulls they use in the ring. He has the same animal grace and power, and is totally oblivious to his aesthetic appeal. Most of the time, anyway.

"I'm trying to track you down," I answer eventually as he pauses in his pacing to eye me where I'm lying on the chaise lounge in my birthday suit again.

"Roger, these people are crazier than Profitt, and meaner, too!" he says, agitated.

Tell me something I hadn't already worked out on my own.

"In case it slipped your mind, Buckwheat, so am I," I remind him. I know there've been times in our acquaintance when he was seconds from shooting me like a rabid dog. He takes the point.

"Rog, be careful. Please? My life isn't worth yours." He crouches down beside the chaise to bring those eyes of his to bear. I can see the worry in them, and I try to ignore the ache it puts in my chest. Worry. For me. I've spent all my life knowing there wasn't another human being on the planet who gave a damn what happened to me. Until Vince. Which makes that worry both incomprehensible to me, and also intensely alluring. Vince, your life is worth everything I've got. It's all that matters to me.

"According to who? What gives you the right to tell me how to behave? This is my choice, Vinnie, not yours. If I want to stand on top of the Space Needle in downtown Seattle and jump naked into a fountain, who the hell are you to stop me?" I demand, angry with him again.

He just looks at me with those heartbreaker eyes. "Your friend," he answers at last.

I look right back, sitting up and swinging my feet to the concrete as I lean forward, locking eyes with him. We're knee to knee, damned near nose to nose, as I stare at him. "And I'm yours," I tell him. I love you. You're the only thing in my life I can say that about. He doesn't break eye contact, and I wait to see if he's going to respond before I continue.

"So if you think I'm going to sit on my ass while you take your last breath, alone, on foreign soil, when there's any chance at all I can stop it, you must not think much of me." That hurts him. I can see the denial bubbling up in his expression as I watch him.

"Geezus, Rog," he says. I recognize that wounded puppy look, the knowledge that he has unintentionally cast aspersions on everything from my intelligence to my competence, to my feelings for him. Seeing him speechless, pushing those big old catholic guilt buttons of his, is dirty pool, but I've made my point.

"You think you've got the market cornered on friendly concern, Buckwheat?" I ask him at last. "Or on a willingness to do whatever it takes - for a friend?"

He shakes his head in the negative as he drops his gaze. I don't know what possesses me as I take hold of his chin with one hand and force his head back up. I go one-on-one with those bottomless eyes, making sure he's looking back at me, and this time, I kiss him. Hard.

I force my way past his lips, my tongue searching for his. I find it, feel him groan softly as I stroke him, tease the inside of his lower lip with my teeth. It's different than kissing a woman, I realize. How exactly, I'm not sure. Hungrier, maybe. More aggressive. There's nothing submissive about either of us, right then. He's kissing me back with everything he's got, his hands in my hair as he catches my head and immobilizes me, refusing to end the contact.



And I panic, wrenching away as I jerk awake to find myself back beside a noisy hotel pool, panting as though I'd just run a marathon. Evan is sprawled in a chair next to me watching me as I try to get the effects of the dream under control, sipping his scotch on the rocks with a speculative look on his face. I ignore him while I try to get a grip on myself. I'm painfully aware of the hard-on bulging against my swim trunks, knowing there's nothing I can do about it except let time take its toll. Trying to get a handle on the dream itself is pointless, here, now, too, which leaves me in the unsatisfactory position of being unable to do anything about anything that second. I glare at Evan instead, settling for venting my multitude of frustrations on him. "What do you want?" I demand.

His gray eyes sweep over me, that speculation far from fading, taking in everything. In that instant I'm reminded he was not only a player, but a cop, for a very long time. His instincts are far from dull, regardless of how much he drinks. "Some of whatever it was you were dreaming about," he replies sarcastically. Except he's completely serious. It surprises me that he's letting me see that.

"I doubt it," I tell him coldly, trying to refuse knowledge of that oddly vulnerable expression in his eyes. It's the first time since I've known him that something besides anger and pain and cynicism have appeared on those blank slates. Shit. What the hell is with me? This penchant for other men's eyes is beginning to freak me out.

He's quiet for a time, staring out at the pool. Only I get the feeling whatever he's looking at has nothing to do with the view in front of him. "You ever been in love?" he asks me out of the blue. I just stare at him, wondering where the hell that came from.

"Well, have you?" he repeats, glancing at me this time.

"Supposing it was any of your business, no. I don't think so. At least not the way most people mean," I answer eventually. At least not until recently, I add to myself.

Freed nods. "Me either. At least not the way most people mean."

I'm not sure if he's mocking me or telling me something, so I keep my mouth shut, not wanting to invite confessions here at the poolside. My feelings are none of his business. And his are none of mine. Only he apparently doesn't share that sentiment.

"When I was coming through the Police Academy, I hung with a couple of like-minded assholes. We did everything together. We were that classes' bad-ass Three Musketeers. Shit, we were trouble from the word 'go'. I loved 'em. I would'a killed for them. I would'a died for them. Only it's too late, now." He swallows the last of his drink in a gulp and turns to look at me with that smirk that makes me want to punch him, only the agony in his eyes makes me look away. This definitely constitutes 'more information than I needed', I realize as I consider the implications of that raging loss in Freed's face.

"Com'mon, Lococco. Let me buy you a drink and tell you how I screwed up the loves of my life," he says, getting up and staring down at me, that smirk still in place. It does nothing to conceal the desolation in his face, though. I really don't want to hear this, and he knows it, but he needs to say it, whatever it is.

I sigh and get up, heading for my rooms without looking back to see if he's following me. I let him shut the door to my suite and go find the bottle of bourbon I bought last time the cat came back to bed with me. The bottle is still nearly full. It won't be by the time this is over, I know, and I crack it open and pour a splash into a pair of the hotel tumblers from the bathroom. I hand one to Freed and set the other on my coffee table as I go into the bedroom to get some clothes on. If I'm going to be hearing confession, I guess it'd better be the basic black get-up. Not a problem, since most of my wardrobe is black or gray. Color is optional for a killer. Even an ex-killer. When I reemerge, rolling my cuffs up over my wrists, Freed has appropriated the bourbon and poured himself a full tumbler. I can tell he plans on finishing the bottle. Maybe in the hopes of reaching that alcohol-induced coma he keeps trying for.

"Have a seat," he waves a hand at the little seating arrangement in the suite's 'livingroom' graciously, a host in my space. It pisses me off, but I sit down opposite him, picking up my glass, which he's half-filled. This is going to be a barrel of laughs.

"Sonny, Mike and me, we all applied for Metro Dade, and we made it onto the street beat as a bunch of flatfoots with ideas. None of us planned on staying in uniforms, no glory. Nah, we were looking at undercover work. We spent our off-time studying for the detective's exam and making our plans for how we were gonna shake up the department with our brilliance." Freed's voice is dripping with self-mockery. He pauses and spends a few minutes sucking on his bourbon.

"The night we passed the exam, we went out and got hammered. We musta hit half the strip clubs in the district that night. Sonny was engaged at the time, but it didn't stop him from getting laid that night, more than once. Me either. Mike claimed he was too blitzed to get it up, so Sonny an' me, we got our rocks off with a couple of the off-duty dancers and went back out to find Mikey holdin' down the bar, talking football with the barkeep. All totally innocent, right?" Evan glances at me to see if I'm making whatever connection it is he's trying to point me at. I keep my expression blank, waiting to hear where this is going.

"So, by now, I'm the one who's too blitzed to get it up, or down, or anywhere except horizontal. Sonny tells Mike to get me home so he can go home and make nice with Caroline, and he heads out. So Mikey, the good partner, does what he's told and brings me home. His home. No biggie, I been in and outta his place for the past three years, right? Practically every fucking weekend." This evolves into another one of Freed's silences as he spends a few minutes reliving whatever happened, and absorbing more alcohol. Remind me to refrain from expressing my opinions on the psychiatric needs of others. I don't recall having passed my psychiatry certification, but here I am, listening to a guy spill his guts about some deep dark secret that he's trying to take with him to an early grave. I've had more fun hanging from a torturer's rack, frankly.

Freed must know his audience is underwhelmed, but it doesn't shut him up. "He got me undressed and I passed out on his couch. Mikey went to bed. I had to get up sometime in the middle of the night to go puke, and I practically fell over him on my way back outta his bathroom. See, he slept on this futon-thing on the floor. So there I am, wandering around in his room in the dark, practically falling on him. I wake him up, no surprise, and he tells me to stop banging around and go to sleep. So I lie down next to him and pass out."

That's it? Years of suicidal angst about passing out in his partner's bed? My lack of comprehension obviously shows, because Evan laughs and downs a huge swallow of the bourbon.

"Funny, huh?" he says, grinning at me, more of that self-loathing in his expression. Self-loathing I understand. But nothing I've heard so far seems to justify that condemnation. "Only it gets better. When I wake up the next morning, hung-over as all hell, we're lying there, buck-naked, in the same bed, and Mikey has an arm over me, his face against my shoulder, dead to the world. He's dead asleep, I'm barely awake, and I'm lying there, feeling him against me, just..."

Enjoying it. I understand that, I realize, having felt something similar after Vince and I finally passed out in my suite in Stockton. The bed was a little more crowded then, but it was Vince I woke up next to. It was the first time I'd shut my eyes on another man in almost twenty years. At that moment, in that place, he was no threat to me. I don't usually trust anyone, especially not Mob button men with press coverage. But I trusted him. I still don't know how I knew I could. Freed recognizes my comprehension and goes on.

"Neither of us said anything about it, after. I mean, what the hell, nothing happened, right?" He looks to me for reassurance I don't know if I can give, and that he knows is invalid, even if I could. Because something did happen, something inside him. Something he wasn't ready for, or sure about and it scared him to death. I know that feeling, too. I've been all too familiar with that sensation in the past two weeks.

"So, anyway, Mikey and Sonny and I, we go on to be bad-ass plainclothes detectives, like we've bad-assed everything else. Until our Lieutenant hands us an undercover assignment about six months after we got our shields. Someone was dealing poppers in the gay bars downtown and people were starting to turn up dead. We were supposed to shut it down. Only Mike wanted off the assignment. Sonny didn't think much about it and told me to back off when I started razzing Mike about how he didn't want to set foot in those places 'cause he'd be recognized by the clientele. Geezus, I was such a stupid prick. I couldn't leave well enough alone. No. I had to keep bugging him. Until he came out to Sonny and me." Freed looks up at me, and I can see the blasted landscape of his soul in those dead eyes. "He was gay. And neither Sonny or I had had any fucking clue. I totally freaked. I'd been in his bed, naked, for chrissakes. With his arm around me and his head on my shoulder. Jesus Christ. I went off like a nuke. I made life a living hell for him. I exposed him to the department. Got him tied to a desk job while they looked for excuses to ditch him, and Sonny, he just stood there, watching us come apart like I'd ripped the heart outta him or something. About six weeks after it all started, Mike responded to a call on his way home. He walked into an armed robbery at a gas station without even pulling his piece, and took a load of buckshot in the chest point blank. It was suicide. And I might as well have been the one who pulled the trigger. Sonny thought so, too. He didn't say a word to me for almost eight years. Until we hooked up on the case that got me drummed outta the ATF. I took those bullets to save his life. All I wanted was for him to forgive me for what I did to Mike."

"Did he?" I ask. It's the first thing I've said since this whole confessional started.

Freed laughs, a sound completely devoid of humor. "He didn't have the chance. As far as he knows, I'm dead. The bureau maintained the fiction that I was killed in the line of duty when their shrinks said I'd keep trying till I got it right, and actually bought it on the job. They forced me into retiring, and I'm collecting a psychiatric pension under a false ID they created for me. As far as Sonny is concerned, I got what I deserved, when I let Guzman plug me."

"How do you know what he thinks?" I ask. Devil's advocate. Because I can't claim to know anything, myself. Except what I'm told. "Maybe he's the one you should be telling all this too."

"You don't think I did? Oh, not the part about winding up in Mike's bed, but he knew I blamed myself for what happened to Mike. Knew it was eating me alive. Knew it would kill me if he didn't say he forgave me." Evan has lived so long with his self-hatred I wonder if there's anything else left for him. Maybe a bullet would be a mercy, after all. There've been times when it would have been true for me. And there may be again, if I can't find Vinnie. Or if he's dead when I do.

"So maybe you need to try again. Find this Sonny guy. Tell him your story, even the part about falling into bed with Mike. Make him understand."

"How the hell can I do that when I don't fucking understand, myself!?" Freed snarls, eyes tearing.

Abruptly, I understand what my roll is here, as father-confessor. I am a mirror for Freed, as much due to our rather noticeable resemblance to each other as out of simple proximity. A homophobe with homoerotic inclinations. How Evan figured it out, I don't know. Maybe it takes one to know one. Which also explains McPike's awareness of the impact his news would have on me. I just can't see Vinnie and McPike together. Not like that. Something unaccustomed tightens inside me uncomfortably. Jealousy? The idea of Vince with someone else is making me jealous? Geezus, I'm in deep. Over-my-head deep. And I realize something else, too, as I sit there, thinking about this.

"You ever tell Sonny you loved him?" I ask.

Freed pauses mid-motion as he's lifting his glass to his mouth, staring at me with rage flashing over his face. He slams the glass onto the table and leans forward towards me as if he'd like to disembowel me on the spot. "Whaddayou mean, tell him I love him?"

"Just what I said," I answer calmly, sipping from my own glass for the first time. "Tell him you love him. Tell him you've had dreams about him. Tell him you want to fuck his brains out. Whatever. See what happens."

Freed stares at me as if I've mutated before his eyes into some three-headed alien from outer space. He blinks at me and slowly comprehension starts to seep through his eyes like raindrops down a pane of glass. "This is about Terranova. Isn't it?"

"I thought we were talking about you. Your baggage. Your sexual identity." I stare back at him, daring him to say whatever it is he's thinking. He does.

"You're in love with Terranova, and you never told him. Hell, maybe you didn't even know it, till he went missing on you. That's what makes him special, isn't it?" He watches me for my response, one I shield from him.

"Vinnie isn't the subject under discussion, here. And even if he was, what I feel for him, about him, isn't really any of your concern. And if you think I give a damn what you feel for Sonny, you're wrong. But I think you give a damn. I think you'd give more than a damn to come clean with him, whatever that means, exactly. And I think until you do, you're gonna keep looking for the easy bullet. The one that'll end the pain. And that that'll get you off the hook with Sonny, somehow."

Evan just looks at me with those empty eyes for a long minute, then finishes off his bourbon and gets up, heading for the door without a word. As he opens it, stepping out into the hall, he looks back over his shoulder for a second. "So where do we meet deVega's people?" he asks me.

I tell him, and he shuts the door, leaving me and my bottle of bourbon unfinished.

***************************************************

The meeting with deVega's contacts gets us one step closer to my objective. We make it through that level of scrutiny with a deal in place. The Salvadorans will watch my back on a single visit to a single operation, and if it goes well, will discuss further business dealings with me at their compound outside San Salvador, in the mountains to the east. This is where I kiss Freed and his tortured fantasies goodbye.

"Like hell," he says.

"You're not coming with me." I refuse to give in to this. The last thing I need is for him to pull one of his suicide stunts in a Central American jungle somewhere.

"If you think I'm gonna let you walk into a situation like this on your own, you must think I'm a total idiot. I've got a million-dollar bonus at stake here. It may be peanuts to you, but it'd fix me for scotch for life," Freed tells me, that grin in place.

I glare at him, determined to ditch him somehow. I have my pilot on stand-by to fly me to El Salvador, where I've made arrangements to buy a Vietnam surplus Huey to get around the jungles in. I've also made arrangements with some of my former military contacts to meet me there. The Salvadorans are not the only army I'm assembling. If I have to use force to get back what they stole from me, I want to be sure I can actually count on it being where I need it, when I need it. I refuse to argue with Evan, so I just shut up, hoping he'll take that as a 'yes', when all it is, is a polite way of winning the argument. In point of fact, I've already deposited a million dollars in Evan's name in an escrow account that'll clear in about three weeks, regardless of what happens in El Salvador. What he does with it is up to him, but I figure he's earned it, what with one thing and another.

When I reach the Broward County airfield that morning at three a.m., Evan is waiting on the plane for me. He looks like he's spent the last two nights sleeping on the little Lear. There's not much I can do except give in gracefully, so I ignore him as I give my pilot the go-ahead to take off. I'm interested to see Evan has switched from bourbon to something colorless in honor of the flight, and I'm downright amazed, halfway through it, when I realize he's been drinking water. Just water. He's not looking very good, which I guess is no surprise, given the fact that his blood has been ninety proof for years, now. Suddenly running on empty, he's sober for the first time since I've known him. I can tell, because the pain in his face is etched deep without the usual anesthetic to numb it. He smokes without let-up the whole flight, and it's a positive relief when we finally make landfall in El Salvador's capitol, San Salvador.

DeVega's group meets us at the hotel the next morning before daylight, and we take off in the helicopter for the well-hidden cocaine processing plant I have in mind for my first conquest. It's one of Mel's, a small outfit, and according to my contacts, still operational. It's got 'target' painted all over it. With the Salvadorans at my back, and Freed beside me looking cranky enough to blow us all up, the local yokels give up without much of a fight. The automatic weapons I've arranged for the Salvadorans to be carrying are a fairly significant incentive for Mel's former employees to accept employment under me, instead of continuing to struggle along on their own.

We leave a handful of the Salvadorans to keep an eye on things, then head back for the capitol city and a conference with deVega's people. Everyone agrees that it went well, that there's a brilliant future ahead for us all, and we're in business. I am invited to the splinter group's mountain enclave two days later to provide a detailed list of businesses I intend to reclaim. And so I near my goal. I occupy myself with getting my people in place, Freed and my pilot procuring a second, larger helicopter, and by the time the day rolls around, we're as ready as we're going to get. The idea is, Evan and I will go in as honored guests and check the place out. Depending on what we find, the rest of the troops will drop in under cover of darkness to liberate anyone inside the enclave. Naturally there's more to it than that, but that's the condensed version. The safety net is, if my team hasn't heard from me by this time tomorrow, they come in, guns blazing in the assumption that everything's gone to hell. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.



***************************************************

We arrive at the camp by mid-morning, greeted by the titular head of the military functions of the group, a short, squat mustachioed man who looks like he could be a body double for Pancho Villa, even down to the bandoleers crisscrossed over his chest. He's introduced as General Jorgé Esteves. General, in my opinion, is a little self-aggrandizing for the head of a group of terrorists, but hey, that's just me. And maybe, judging by the look on Freed's face, him, too.

We get the grand tour, the enclave a run-down colonial-era house that's definitely seen better days. The place is a former coffee plantation now engaged in bringing all the benefits of the coca leaf to first world junkies everywhere, and funneling arms to organizations the CIA chooses to aid in spite of national laws to the contrary. We are in the heart of U.S. destabilization policy, here. We are proudly shown the crop fields under their camouflage netting, and after a surprisingly decent lunch with the ranking officers of this enterprising little militia, we get the tour of the house and grounds. The house is the officer's barracks, enough remnants of the former occupant's wealth remaining to make it remarkably comfortable considering the remoteness of the location. The main outbuilding is where the coke gets refined, bakers' racks of white powder drying under heat lamps powered by a diesel generator out back. We are carefully steered away from the half-dozen or so smaller outbuildings, glossed over as storage.

That, naturally, leaves me to conclude that if Vince is anywhere, it's in one of those buildings. Freed is on the same track, bless his demented little mind. Leaving me to distract 'El General' and his officers with a discussion of business, Freed excuses himself and vanishes. I keep half my attention on what's going on outside the large study we're in, hoping I won't hear anything, trying to focus enough on the conversation going on around me to not tip my hand. When Evan slips back into the room, looking as if he never left, I can finally give all my attention to what's being discussed. It really is too bad I've sworn off running contraband, because I could make a fucking fortune. If I needed one. Of course, if I touched this one, Vince would never have anything to do with me once he found out. Instead, I'll have to settle for getting him back, or seeing him buried, and shutting down the government drugs-for-arms pipeline. Or at least this particular conduit.

We wrap things up and head back for the capitol to stage our rescue effort, praying Vince is actually up there, somewhere.

***************************************************

We have the helicopter put us down about five miles from the hacienda, and my pilot agrees to wait in the middle of the coca field we landed in until he gets our evac signal. We check out our field radios and our weapons, then head out, a single-file march through a million-dollar landscape illuminated by the full moon overhead. Fortunately, I have enough experience with path-finding, and enough confidence in my men, to be reasonably sure we're heading the right way. The fact that I had McPike pinpoint the hacienda's location via satellite doesn't hurt, either. We have the exact GPS position we're headed for, courtesy of the same U.S. government whose plans we're trying to thwart. Sort of karmic, don't you think?

I spend the time it takes us to reach the enclave wondering what we'll find. Evan told me, when we'd returned to our hotel, that he'd snooped around the small outbuildings, and discovered they were outfitted as blocks of four jail cells. As far as he could determine, most of them were empty, but one or two did appear to have occupants. Obviously, those buildings are our first target. My hope is, we can avoid giving ourselves away until we have what we came for, but if we can't find Vince, I'm going to have to interrogate the officers until I find out where he is. My team knows it, and they're hoping for the easy answer, too. That we'll find him in one of the cells.

Of course, we couldn't get that lucky. Only two of them have occupants, both startled looking peasants whom we set free, and who flee into the darkness in grateful silence. God knows why they were being held. Probably trying to procure a little of the local product for themselves. Which means an armed invasion of the hacienda itself. My men take the staff officers, and Evan and I make our way to the General's wing.

Obviously, security is mostly provided by the distance of the enclave from the capitol, because except for the handful of sentries around the compound's perimeter, guards have been non-existent. Which is just dandy, since it makes penetration as easy as your favorite euphemism. We find our way into the General's ante chamber and waltz into his bedroom to find him dead asleep in the arms of a mistress. Freed cable ties the General to the bed frame, then wakes her gently as I press the silencer muzzle of the H&K to 'El General's' forehead. He opens his eyes in the dark as the woman beside him scrambles out of bed, tugging against his restraints, futilely. Evan locks her in the bathroom, making sure she's not going to go shimmying out the window by cable tying her to the plumbing and ensuring her silence with a duct tape gag.

I concentrate on the General. My Spanish is good enough for a field interrogation, especially when my gun is pointed at his frontal lobe. "Where is Vincent Terranova?" I ask him, wondering if he even knows the name of his mysterious kidnap victim from Brooklyn. He stares at me in the gloom, maintaining his silence. I know this is going to get me nowhere in a hurry, and I motion to Evan to bring me the tape. I slap a gag over the General's mouth and rest my gun muzzle against his calf muscle, wrapping it in one of the pillows scattered in the woman's wake. I fire, feeling him jerk hard against the cable ties. "Now. Where is Vince Terranova?" I ask him again.

It's not until I shoot him in the thigh and have my gun against the next logical portion of his anatomy that he buckles. The garbled noises he makes through the gag resolve themselves into a description of the cellars under the house. Converted to torture chambers in which to house their prisoners until they have determined that they cannot be ransomed or otherwise turn a profit for their captors, these medieval-style dungeons are dank with years of neglect and foul perversion. I'm glad, as we slip our way down the algae-slick stairs, that I pumped a round into 'El General's' twisted brain. If Vince is down here, the General got off easy.

Evan and I split up. I take the far end of the slimy hall and work my way back toward Freed who's opening the doors closest to the stairs. I hear him call my name quietly as I rummage around in one chamber, looking for anything that may tell me where Vince is, and I feel the adrenaline flood my bloodstream at that hail. I go careening back toward Evan and swing into the doorway, one hand on the jam to keep from overshooting my mark. And there he is, god help him.

The reek permeating the room smells of death. Vince is manacled to a seeping wall, slouched suspended, knees not quite touching the floor, his full weight on his arms. He's dressed only in jeans, torn, stained with urine and dysentery, head lolling onto his chest. He's battered and bloody and when I see the slight rise and fall of his chest, I think he may be the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. Without even stopping to think about it, I aim my gun at the manacle chain looped through a ring on the wall and fire. It parts, sending him sprawling onto the noxious floor face first.

"Shit," Freed curses, moving into the room. "I'd'a caught him if you'd warned me you were gonna do that," he tells me irritably as he crouches beside Vinnie's unmoving body and feels for a pulse. "You didn't do him any favors, Lococco. He's alive, but I don't know how long he'll stay that way. He's not going to be walking five miles in the dark back to our evac site, that's for damned sure."

"No shit," I snap as I crouch on Vinnie's other side and roll him gently onto his back. He's a mess. In just about every possible way. Where it isn't bloody or bruised, his skin is the sort of colorless gray you find on a day-old corpse. His face is pulpy with old beatings, both eyes swollen shut, blood smeared over one entire side of his face. The only recognizable feature is that roman nose of his, which seems to have escaped being broken, somehow. Hell if I can explain it, given the size of that particular target. There's part of me that's tempted to kiss him on the spot, Freed be damned, but that particular can of worms can be opened later, if I muster the nerve. Instead, I unbutton his jeans and pull them loose from his skin carefully. I peel them off, leaving them on the slick stone floor along with the majority of the putrid stench wafting from him, and with Evan's help, I get him back upstairs and outside. I find my team leader and have him call the pilot to let him know we need an onsite pick-up, and then we wait.



The second we land back in the capitol, I'm on the phone to Frank, and he tells me he'll handle things with the State Department. Vince is medivaced to the largest private hospital in San Salvador, and three of my men, along with Evan, stand guard outside his room until the Embassy people can get there. By the time Frank's current paramour, a State Department babe named Lillah Warfield, arrives ten hours later, Vince is listed as being in stable, but serious condition. She greets me like she's known me for years, which annoys me until she tells me she was Vince and Frank's contact through the Profitt debacle. So I guess, from her perspective, she has known me for years. It'd just've been nice if someone would let me in on these things.

She and I spend the next day trying to get a straight answer from the doctors about how soon Vince can travel, and after an endless litany of the things wrong with him, the short answer is, as soon as he's rehydrated enough, they'll release him, as long as we promise he's going straight back into the hospital as soon as we hit the states. I make that guarantee, and less than forty eight hours after we dragged him out of a hell hole straight out of Danté, we have him on a gurney in my Lear, along with Warfield and an Embassy nurse. He's still semi-conscious, between the drugs and his injuries, but just getting the muck washed off has improved things dramatically, at least for the rest of us.

McPike is there to meet us when we land in Miami, and I swear, I'm about to see a grown man cry when he takes his first look at Vince before they load him onto an ambulance for his trip to Miami General. He's hustled off, Evan going with him, as McPike hugs his lady, then pumps my hand like a politician stumping for office.

"Roger," he starts, eyeing me, and I can see him misting up.

"I just did what I said I would, Frank. Don't get all sappy on me now," I warn him, and he grins at me, hugging Warfield again in lieu of laying a hand on me.

We make our way to the hospital, and settle in to wait for Vince to regain consciousness. It takes another three days, and when he finally wakes up enough to be coherent, we're in for a nasty shock. Those usually brilliant eyes are clouded and vague, and the doctors go on about the concussion and hysterical amnesia, and seem geared up for making him a semi-permanent guest. I blow a fuse.

"He is not staying here. He may still be a target, and even if he's not, he's not going to make any progress regaining his memory locked up here!" I insist. McPike is inclined to back me with the medics, but he wants to take him home to Brooklyn, to see if familiar places and people will snap him out of it. I beg to differ.

"Look, Frank, he's been through a hell you can't even begin to imagine. We have no idea how long it's going to be before he's healed enough to start dealing with whatever happened. I know a place, just off St. Croix, where he can spend the next ten years just lying in the sun, if that's what it takes to bring him back the rest of the way. Then, when he's ready, and not one second before, he can go back home to his mother, and you. But I'm telling you right now, if you try to keep him in the OCB after this, I will personally cut you open and string your entrails around the Washington Monument. He is through, Frank. As in done. As in permanently retired. As in I'll chain him to some immovable object before I let him go back undercover after this. And if you're his friend, you'll back me."

McPike knows when he's better off not arguing, and this is one of those times. He agrees to have Vince released into my custody, and a week later, he and I are on the jet to St. Croix. My property manager meets us at the airport, and he and his staff load the helicopter with provisions and my pilot takes us on the last short hop to my private paradise. Vince has been silent since he recovered consciousness, gazing into some other universe with those unfocused blue eyes. I think it's that vagueness that scared Frank into trying things my way, and keeping that bitch of a mother of Vinnie's out of his hair for a while. She, of course, kicked up a hellova fuss, until Frank had Vinnie's Lifeguard explain the situation to her. And where I've taken him, even her Mafia don of a husband won't be able to track him down. And it wouldn't surprise me if she harasses him into trying it.

After the first day, I send my staff back to St. Croix, since Vince seems less agitated when there are no strangers present. It takes another week before I begin to see occasional flashes of that intellect of his in his expression, but I just go on doing what I've been doing, which is basically not much. I talk to him intermittently, feed him, spend time in his company, and leave him be when he seems to need that. I'm not sure how it is I can tell, since the cues are subtle to the point of non-existence, or they would be to most people, but to me, it's as if they're written on a billboard in twenty foot letters. This is the first time in my memory that I can recall being so intensely synched with another human being. Not even in my days in the military have I experienced anything that comes close.

I chart it as progress when Vinnie starts tagging after me like a Labrador puppy, watching me with interest as I rattle around the big old house attending to all the little details a property manager can't get to right away. I'm replacing a section of shingles that were torn loose in the last tropical storm that passed through when a shadow falls over my work. I look up to see Vince, standing on the ladder, watching me. I move aside to allow him onto the roof beside me and hand him the hammer. He finishes the job in silence, and then looks up at me, waiting for something. I'm not sure what, so I settle for grinning at him. He smiles back, faintly, but it's the most animation I've seen on his face since he woke up in the hospital.

This slow progress is a double-edged sword. Along with the moments of recognition, come the nightmares. Night has become an endurance sport, and neither of us are getting much sleep as violent dreams sift up from Vince's subconscious mind. It's not until I lie down beside him that things improve. And that's how I begin sleeping with him. At first, that's all it is. Sleep.

As I lie there in the tropical night, Vinnie's big frame warm against my chest, I'm struck by the incongruity of it. If someone had tried to tell me that there would come a day when I'd share my bed with another man, I'd probably have castrated them on the spot. And yet here I am. Holding another man in my arms, physically shielding him from the night terrors that disturb the tranquil darkness. The weird thing is, it isn't sexual. I was more aroused by the dream Vince than I am by the reality I hold. But he needs me. Needs the physical contact, the comfort of another human being. And I'm the only option, out here, on this remote little island. And I begin to realize that being needed is a powerful thing.

A day or two later, I'm lying in the sand on the beach not far from the house when Vinnie joins me, handing me a glass of something or other. I thank him, trying not to make too big a deal of it, even though it's the first time he's initiated any overture like this since we got here. He sits down beside me and sips his own drink. Neither of us have a stitch on, and the last of his bruises have pretty much faded to blotchy purple and yellow rings that mark their farthest extent like some sort of tide line. I watch him stare off across the electric blue of the water, sipping his drink, obviously thinking about things. When he speaks, I'm just about floored.

"Roger, you ever think about how you'll die?" he asks, turning to look at me. His eyes are almost the same shade as the ocean, and I'm suddenly adrift in them without my bearings.

"Huh?" I answer stupidly.

"You ever think about how you'll die?" he repeats, this time a faint smile in those eyes. I latch onto that smile like a life preserver.

"Yeah," I admit, not much liking the topic. "Why?"

"When I was in that... place... the only thing that kept going through my head was, 'this wasn't the way I thought it'd happen'," he explains as he watches me for my reaction.

"Good," I snap. "Being kidnapped by political terrorists to be used as a bargaining ploy against a government that is trying to use those same terrorists to funnel weapons to countries unfriendly to the U.S. wouldn't exactly be the first thing to leap to my mind, either."

And he laughs. A real Vinnie laugh, with the eyes and everything, including that 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' look that I always hated. Only now, I can't remember why. I don't think I've ever seen him look better. I let him see the grin I smother down, and he laughs harder.

"No, that's not what I meant," he says when he's calmed down a little. He's still grinning that shit-eating grin. "I meant, I always figured I'd buy it on the job, I just didn't think it would be the 'Angel of Death' himself who rescued me and brought me to his version of heaven. Which, by the way, could use a few pretty native girls."

I raise an eyebrow at this, and the grin widens. "What makes you think there's sex in paradise?" I ask him sarcastically.

"Roger, there's sex anywhere you are. I think you consider it one of the basic food groups," he says.

I shrug, a little defensively. "It's an appetite. I feed it. What's the problem?"

He eyes me for a second then flops down on his stomach in the sand next to me. "No problem," he answers as he closes his eyes and throws an arm over my waist. I lie there wondering what to make of that unconscious possessiveness, as well as the choices of conversation. A man who's hardly said two words in three weeks decides to inaugurate his vocal chords again with a discussion of death and sex. All we need is taxes, and we have ourselves a cocktail party.



When I wake up, the sun is nearing the horizon, and Vince lies warm and solid at my back, that arm still around me. I can feel the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck, and the sense of eroticism shocks me. It is an intimacy I can't define, sleeping dreamlessly in the embrace of another human being, and I realize with another shock that it may very well be the first time I've had that experience. I feel him shift, which is my first intimation that he's awake, and knows I am, too. Now what? I wonder, fighting down something like panic. Only Vince isn't like that. He can feel me tense up and he shifts away, letting a little air flow between us. I shiver suddenly, chilled and startled by an irrational feeling of abandonment.

"You were cold," he tells me as he sits up next to me.

I roll onto my back, into the warmth of the spot he just vacated, watching him as he stands up, brushing the sand off his skin. The sun is setting and the molten light hits the ridges of his muscles with gold-leaf highlights, hiding the last of the bruising beneath that gentle burnish. Jesus Christ, he's beautiful. I just lie there, staring up at him while he watches the sun go down. I'm caught by surprise when he catches my eye, his puzzlement furrowing his forehead. "Rog?" he asks. "Are you okay?"

"I'm just fine, Buckwheat," I assure him. And so, by god, are you, I add to myself, as I get up. We walk back to the house without saying anything, and he watches me fix dinner. Neither of us have bothered to get dressed. There doesn't seem to be much point. We're totally alone, no one within thirty miles who'd give a damn about dressing for dinner. He does take a shower while I finish putting together the meal, and his dark hair is slicked to his head as he returns to the kitchen, still naked as the day he was born.

"Watch the steaks while I grab a shower," I request, and he steps up to the grill while I take my turn rinsing the sand off. When I come out, he's found the wine opener and a bottle of a Napa Valley Cabernet, and is sipping a glass as he stares out the big windows at the tropical stars that glitter overhead. The meat and everything else is on the table in the diningroom, and he smiles a little at me as I pull up a chair.

He doesn't say much during the meal, just watching me, those eyes big and serious. It makes me a little less nervous to realize he has no more idea than I do what comes next, and I don't mean the physical mechanics of it, either.

"Rog?" he starts about half way through the food.

"Yeah?" I respond when he doesn't continue, looking up to meet his grave blue eyes.

"How'd you know I was gone?"

"Frank," I tell him. "He tracked me down to the address you had for me in your will."

He flushes slightly and looks down at his plate. "Sorry about that... I figured if anyone ever looked at that, I'd be in the ground somewhere. And I really did want you to have that stuff." He looks up at me, that little-boy look in his eyes. I can see why women can't resist him. Hell, neither can I. So when he reaches across the table to grab my hand, the one with the ring on it, I'm startled, but I don't resist. He turns the heavy band on my finger and trails his fingertips over my palm. The sensation goes straight to my groin, and all of a sudden, neither of us is hungry for food anymore. "It looks good on you," he says, voice soft, a little husky.

"Yeah, well a friend gave it to me," I say a little sarcastically, then I think better of it. "It's important to me," I add, my own voice going soft. When he smiles this time, something clenches in the center of my chest almost painfully. He's still smiling when he gets up to clear the table. I watch him move, a big man, fully in his prime, built like he could have been a model for one of the statues of athletes that decorate the coliseum in Rome.

For the first time since the nightmares started, we go to bed in separate rooms. It's as though, with the return of conversation, the ease of simple physical closeness is gone, needing to be reestablished again under new guidelines.

I'm not asleep when he comes into my room at about three a.m.

"Rog?"

"Yeah," I answer quietly. "Can't sleep?"

"No," he admits. "You mind if I ask you something?" He sits down on the edge of the mattress as I roll over to face him.

"What?"

"Why'd you really come down there to save my ass?"

What do I say? To him? To myself? Can I afford the truth? Can I afford not to tell it? I close my eyes, unable to meet his look, even in the dark. "Because you're my friend. Because I love you."

I can feel the bed shift under him as he lies down beside me, and I open my eyes as I feel him brush a wayward curl off my forehead. His living warmth radiates from his skin like the glow of coals, and I'm looking straight into those glorious eyes, eyes that truly see me. No shadow in my soul can escape those eyes, the center of my universe, and no shadow goes unforgiven.

"You love me," he says, the subtle surprise in his voice confusing me as he runs the fingers of one hand down my chest.

"I love you," I mouth silently, knowing it's true, true in ways that I could never have believed. The touch of his hand on my chest is doing things to me that I would not have credited, and my pulse accelerates with anxiety and arousal both. It's a wordless question, that touch, one that generates a wordless response in me, my body reacting to the instinctive tenderness of his hands, the gentle question, the entreaty. I don't know how to ask for what I want from him, and I settle for running my own fingertips along the angle of his jaw, then down his throat and over his collarbone. The sigh that escapes him makes me smile, and I realize he wants the same thing. To be touched, to be held. To be loved.

It's been a very, very long time since I've voluntarily lain like this with another guy. The last time was when I was fourteen, trapped in an all male boarding school in Berchardt, Texas. I don't count the recent nights I've spent in Vinnie's bed, because those weren't about sex. This is. This is about trust. About friendship that transcends the limitations usually associated with it. This is about love. And god knows, it's about desire.

That alone is enough to freak me out, if I start thinking about it. Desire has always been about women, for me. Until now. Nameless, faceless receptacles for my passions, temporary mates to assuage basic biological needs. With a single exception, none of them have endured in my life beyond a few weeks, or perhaps months, departing when it became obvious to them that I couldn't give them whatever it was they were looking for, namely, commitment. Vince is different. He has steadfastly, stubbornly, refused to drift out of my life. He has gradually slipped past all my defenses and become a friend. Sex with a friend is an entirely new concept for me, and the shiver of nervousness in the pit of my stomach is about the potential risks that change in the relationship leaves me open to. The risk that I may jeopardize the very friendship that I want so intensely. That by taking it to a physical level, the fundamental trust may be eroded or compromised.

"Have you done this before?" I ask him, knowing the answer.

Vince nods slightly, his thumb brushing lightly over my lips and down my chin. I can feel the night's growth of beard disturbed by that touch, astonished that it could suddenly become an erotic sensation that sends need spiraling through my abdomen, hardening my loins, tightening my balls. "Sonny and I... kinda stumbled into something like this, a few months before it all went to hell," he says softly, sadness coloring his voice. "Neither of us really meant for it to happen, but it did."

I think about it for a minute or two, distracted by the light stroke of his fingers along the line of my jaw, a gentle exploration, unthreatening, innocently arousing. "Show me," I request.

I see his smile in the dark. "I'm not exactly an expert, Rog," he warns me as he caresses the edge of my left ear, fingering the pair of tiny earrings that pierce the lobe, one onyx post, one gold ring. Acquired in a moment of drunken machismo just before my penetration of Mel Profitt's organization, their former connotations of homosexual leanings fallen by the wayside in the eighties. "You're such a homophobe... Why'd you ever do this?" he wants to know.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," I say dryly. "I was hanging with a crowd of dealers and assorted other thugs in Miami, establishing a cover that'd eventually get me close to Mel. Call it protective coloration."

He chuckles softly, stroking them again and then leaning in closer to brush his tongue over them. The wet heat followed by the coolness it leaves in its wake go straight to my libido and my breath catches in my throat as I realize his face is a fraction of an inch from my own, his breath warm on my cheek. His lips brush past the same spot his fingers touched mere seconds before, lightly, almost accidentally, giving me the opportunity to withdraw without recriminations. And, almost, I do, my heart hammering in my chest, sweat breaking between my shoulder blades.

"Is this how it was, with Sonny?" I ask, regretting it even as the words are out of my mouth.

He doesn't take offense, nose and lips tickling my throat as he runs his tongue over the skin, tasting me. "Not exactly," he assures me quietly. "It was Sonny's idea, not mine. We were drunk as hell, and the 'ladies' we were with had passed out before we were finished. When he started touching me, I couldn't decide whether to freak, or go with it. You want to hear something funny? I kept thinking that if I wigged out on him, I'd trash my cover, and even if I didn't, he'd never trust me the way he had. Never let me that close again. I slept with him in the line of duty, and I've never regretted it. No one else's ever touched me the way he did, Rog. The way I want you to..." his mouth trails up my neck again, nuzzling me lightly, the question still unresolved on my end.

I lower my face into the dark hair, scenting the cleanness of soap, the subtle aroma of him, and feel the kiss against my adam's apple, a little suction, the barest hint of his teeth, and abruptly, doubt is banished, subsumed in overwhelming need. I kiss him on the forehead tentatively, and slowly we find our way towards each other. When lips meet, it's like high voltage zinging through my blood, my cock rock hard without so much as a touch needed to bring me to the edge. I can't help the groan as I feel the tip of his tongue trace along the inside of my upper lip, then past my teeth, to stroke along my own. He tastes exactly like he did in my dreams, I realized hazily as I weave my fingers through his hair so I can kiss him back. I arch my back, bringing myself into contact with him from knees to chest, feeling his erection alongside my own. This time he's the one who groans, and the sensation of power is heady and totally unexpected. Maybe neither of us really knows what the hell we're doing, but as long as it feels this good, who the hell cares?

"Tell me you want this," he whispers, and I can hear the near-desperation in his voice. "That you want me," he continues, lips barely touching mine, his breath so soft against my skin.

More than I've ever wanted anything in my life, Vince, I think, and can only manage a nod and a garbled laugh. "Oh, yeah," I reply. Hell of a question to ask me when I'm lying here with a hard on the size of Genoa salami.

"You're sure?" he gives me a last out, one I no longer want. What I want is him. All of him, touched, tasted, made mine, my claim staked on his living flesh with my own.

In answer, I guide one of his big hands downward between our bodies over my abdomen, to my groin, letting his palm come to rest along the shaft of my penis. "I'm sure," I answer in a whisper of my own, feeling him stroke me intimately, cupping my balls with gentle care, moving up the shaft's length softly to graze the edge of my foreskin where it stretches tight against the head. God, I'm sure. I'm sure I'm going to come in his hand if he doesn't cut it out. "Vince, god, I'm sure!"

He grins fleetingly and kisses me again, more aggressively than he has before, and there's no doubt in either of our minds that we're in uncharted territory now. I'm startled when he gets up and heads for the bathroom, returning a few seconds later with a container of Vaseline, and I fight down the panic attack that threatens to swamp me unexpectedly. I swallow hard, taking it from him when he hands it to me, waiting as he settles back beside me. I make a deliberate effort to slow my breathing, to still my racing heart, to disengage my fight or flight reflexes. He senses my shattered composure and he rolls onto his side, facing me, resting his forehead against mine and just gazes into my eyes as he strokes my back. His hands and his forehead are the only points of contact between us, and despite the warmth of a tropical night, I'm suddenly chilled, shivering. Vince gathers me closer, his body heat thawing the rigidity out of my muscles.

We lie there in the light of the Milky Way that comes pouring in my bedroom windows, silvery illumination glazing our skins with stardust. I relax against him, closing my eyes, concentrating on simply feeling him, experiencing the sensations he's stirring in me, letting thought and reason and the baggage of years fall by the wayside. This time, I take the initiative, and when I open my eyes again, locking gazes with him, I begin to explore him with the same care he used minutes before. I've dabbled in sculpture for years, mostly welding and iron work, but human anatomy is no mystery to me. This level of intimacy with another man's body, though, is way outside my realm of experience, and my hands move slowly over him, revealing him to my touch. His sigh of pleasure eases my fears of inexperience, and I immerse myself in the moment. Immerse myself in him, the taste of him, the smell of his skin, its texture, the softness of the hair on his forearms, its coarseness on legs and pubic areas. The corded muscle of his body is limned in the cool light, a bas relief made three dimensional, sturdy, beautiful, with the same solid grace as a classical statue.

I concentrate on him, on gaining confidence that his body does indeed respond the way my own does, self assurance returning slowly as that fact is confirmed. His arousal is almost an afterthought on my part, my goal far more selfish than his pleasure. Knowledge, the ability to predict what will please him, comes first. The fact that he responds so uninhibitedly, with such pleasure, is the guideline I use to measure the success of my studies. When I run my tongue up the massive shaft of his prick, savoring him, impressed and maybe the tiniest bit envious of his size, he moans, his hands threading though my hair as he cradles my head. "God, Roger, please..." he begs, neither of us entirely sure what he's asking for.

Since we're definitely making this up as we go along, I experiment, taking him into my mouth and slip my tongue inside the foreskin. His groan is accompanied by the tightening of every muscle in his abdomen as he strains against the orgasm I can feel trembling against my lips. I can taste the tiny drop of semen that beads at the tip, giving away just how ready he is, and as I release the head of his cock and run my tongue along the bulging vein that runs the length of the underside, I hear his breathing falter, sharp gasps of intense desire, and his hands tighten against my skull. When I exhale over his testicles, following it up with the sort of attention from lips and tongue that always sends me into hyperdrive, I can feel he's about to lose it, and I return to my original position and take him over that edge.

"Ahh, god, Roger," he moans as his cock jerks hard against the back of my throat twice, three times, a fourth, and I have to swallow fast to keep from choking on his ejaculate as it pours down my throat with bittersweet heat. I stay where I am until I'm sure he's given me everything he's got, and then ease back up along his belly until we're lying face to face, my erection still rampant between us. He kisses me softly, searching out the taste of himself on my lips, and I sigh as I feel his hands run over my spine to my ass. I return the gesture, the feel of his muscled ass against my palms enticing beyond belief. Trailing my fingertips along the cleft between his buttocks, I ask my own silent question. "Fuck me, Roger," is the answer I get, the one I've been hoping for, dreaming about, and I reach behind me for the Vaseline on the nightstand and begin to anoint my beloved as though he were a Roman gladiator about to step into the ring. When he's slick, I let him coat my prick, and kiss him hard before urging him onto his other side, his back to me as I fondle his flaccid penis, spending time on his balls, knowing how much I enjoy it myself when a lover lingers over them. I pull one of the pillows down and wedge it against his belly, and he leans forward against it, his uppermost leg bent forward to brace himself, allowing me unfettered access to everything from his ass to his cock.

And I take full advantage. I'm so turned on by this time, I have to remind myself to move slowly, to ease into him gently, as I begin my penetration. His moan confirms that it's been a very long time since he's been fucked this way. I can feel the tightness of him around me, and I have to keep up a whispered monologue reminding him to relax, to let me in, as I caress his abdomen, his chest, his prick. When I've reached my full depth, my balls warm against his, I begin to move inside him, his silent whimpers concerning me until his hand covers the one of mine that caresses the inside of his thigh, urging me deeper as he braces himself against my thrusts. I can feel the bulge of his prostate against my penis, and I take aim for it, nailing it dead-on on both entry and withdrawal, moving harder, faster, my own need so intense I can barely manage a rational thought. Both of us are panting by this time, and Vince is chanting my name under his breath like a mantra. It's maybe the sexiest thing I've ever had a lover do at the brink of orgasm. Though his cock is still soft, I can feel him tightening around me even more, impossibly, and as that moment of ultimate pleasure explodes like fireworks along my every nerve, I hear him cry out with his own ecstatic moan, and realize, erection or not, he just had himself another orgasm. I lie there, buried inside him, unable to bear the thought of freeing myself from his exquisite grip. Instead, I nuzzle the nape of his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat on the skin, and stroke him, gentling him, easing the tension in his trembling muscles, half worried by his reaction.

I whisper his name in his ear, along with quiet endearments, reassurances, slowly feeling him relax against me. His sigh, from the bottom of his lungs, is long, slow, and speaks of satiation, pleasure unexpected. As I move to free myself, he protests.

"No, Rog, stay. Please?" he asks softly. "Just ... be... with me?"

I can't help smiling into the damp darkness of his hair. "Always, Buckwheat," I promise him. "I'm not going anywhere."

We fall asleep that way, Vince warm against my chest, and wake again together, in the cool light preceding dawn, to lie staring into each other's eyes with amazement as we try it again. The sunrise is warming the sky with pink and gold when he mumbles a reiteration of his initial question against my mouth.

"Why'd you go down there to save my ass?" he asks again, teasingly, this time.

"You have to ask?" I tease back. "Besides, it's a hellova nice ass..." I assure him as I run my hands over the portion of his anatomy under discussion.

to be continued...

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