A Mutual Friend Page 17

  I tweaked his nipple. His cock jumped and his ass gripped my dick. “You’ve been a naughty, naughty boy,” I whispered as I licked the shell of his ear.

  “Oh yeah,” growled someone behind us. I gasped. My instant instinct was it’s Beelzebub. He’s followed us. Being averse to religious objects, he’s going to raise hell in a sacristy.

  But when Anton and I whipped our heads around, all we saw was the muscular form of Flannery, his striated arms gripping the top of the open door as he pressed Lily into it.

  At first I thought Anton was choking. But he was only laughing. “Jesucristo,” he chuckled.

  I slapped his oily ass. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” When I twitched my cock inside him, his dick twitched too. We laughed, spooning our torsos together with genuine love.

  Finally, Anton said, “We’d better get out of here. Who knows what those two’ll wind up doing.”

  That was true. Reluctantly I detached myself from his slick channel and stood. For lack of anything else, I picked up a lavabo towel and wiped my dick thoroughly with it.

  “Grab one of those towels and tie up my hands,” gasped Lily, nearly invisible behind the bulk of her lover.

  “That towel,” said Anton, clear as day as he yanked on his underwear and jeans, “is a manuterge and it’s used when washing hands at the lavabo.”

  Both lovers faced us now. “Yeah,” said Lily, “but he just used one to clean his dick.”

  Anton glared at me. As though we hadn’t done much more profane things that day.

  “We never get a chance to do anything,” complained Flannery. “We’re always watching for that persona loca.”

  I grinned at him, using Anton’s verbiage like that. “Did you find out anything else? We can’t find the priest.”

  Lily said, “Just that the baby’s head was decapitated. No reason for it, since they were both stuffed in a box.”

  Oh God. Talk about escalating.

  Flannery said, “I’d like to leave Crusty’s ashes on the altar, since no one is here, and say a few words.”

  So we left the sacristy, maybe not as spotless as we’d found it, and went to the altar where Flannery had already placed the cardboard box. We faced the chancel, the stained glass, and folded our hands before our crotches. It struck me that the very few people in the nave were probably praying for the dead baby. For once, the body we faced had not been killed by the illustrious Barclay Samples.

  Flannery intoned, “Dear Crusty. We knew you came from Kalispell, Montana, and you liked the Dallas Mavericks. You had a sister, Cindy, you sometimes had a crush on. Man, that picture you showed us of her in her bathing suit will stick forever in my mind.”

  Lily elbowed him.

  “Yeah. What I mean to say, Crusty, is that we had some good times together. Beating up those fags in front of the Venetian in Vegas was one of the high points.”

  “Flannery!” Lily cried.

  “What? Those were the old days, Lily! That’s how I used to think!”

  “Yeah, but can’t you reminisce about anything that doesn’t involve blacks, or fags, or Injuns?”

  Flannery shrugged. “Probably. Let’s see. Crusty, remember the time you threw your gash over the balcony and she got tangled in the power lines? So you jumped after her, only you missed and landed in that truck bed? What about that time you got bit by Wayne’s cobra? You said you didn’t need to go to the hospital, so we went to the bar and slammed a few until suddenly you were face down on the ground.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Idiots.”

  “What I’d like to take this time to say is . . . I’ve changed, Crusty. I’m not the same man who went jet skiing with you, causing a bunch of avalanches, or proving how unbreakable those glass windows were by hurling our bodies through them. I’ve really changed, man. I no longer think of fags as people we should look down on.”

  “Or people you should call fags,” suggested Anton.

  “I actually went to a farmer’s market with Lily,” said Flannery in a hopeful voice, “and didn’t feel weird about it. We went to a Banksy exhibit. I take care of the heirloom tomatoes she grows behind her shop at Herbal Legends. I’m telling you, Crusty, I’ve really changed, and I think it all started when you were protesting the helmet laws, and fishtailed and flipped over your handlebars. That’s when I began to wonder if there wasn’t something more. And I found Lily.” He looked down proudly at her. “Now I listen to black music that black people don’t even listen to anymore.”

  Both my and Anton’s phones had been buzzing for a couple of minutes. I stepped away first and read the text.

  Simon Dershowitz Facebook birdwatching friends are heading to sporting goods store. Be there in an hour.

  From the stern look on Anton’s face, I guessed he’d gotten the same text.

  U

  T

  he empty sporting goods store was in one of those outdated malls that just start to die, their business taken by big box stores or online shopping. The only open stores appeared to be a nail salon way at the other end of the mall, so Thalhammer—or should I say Dershowitz—had chosen his location wisely. There were five pickup trucks in front of the sporting good shop, probably representing Dershowitz, Finn, and the three Facebook guys, so we parked our Harleys unobtrusively around the corner.

  “Lily’s got a Colt python,” was the first thing Flannery said. He lifted up her shirt, tucked into a Catholic school plaid pleated skirt, to display the grip. He seemed very proud. He’d insisted on coming along, on our side of course, because he didn’t agree with most of the things the Death Squadders were doing. He kept saying, “I’ve matured. I’ve really matured.” Which didn’t make him sound very mature, but I appreciated his intention. He wanted to stand up for his woman and make an impression on her.

  “What’ve you got?” I asked Flannery.

  He briefly displayed a seven-shot Colt 1911. I looked to King, the domineering man who had just fucked me up the ass in a sacristy. We just nodded at each other, because we’d been to the shooting range approximately twice since taking this mission. To be honest, he wasn’t a very good shot. I don’t think he’d shot before at all in his life. I was much better, having done a lot of target practice as a kid, so we agreed I’d take point if it came to that.

  “All right,” I said. “Basically, it’s simple. We go in, demand the Bent Zealots’ Black Tar. If they pretend they don’t have it, we’ll just have to resort to violence.”

  “Like they did with King,” said Lily, “when they jacked him.”

  King had just jacked me. I was still overwhelmed, head spinning with the intensity of that experience. How did he know I loved to be “forced” to eat another man’s asshole? How often had he done that before, squatted on the face of a lot lizard, forced her to rim his hole? I thought I’d done a good job inhaling each of his colossal balls into my mouth, slurping on them so enthusiastically he’d been forced to throw me aside and spank me.

  And oh, the spanking. Noel of course had done that before. But not with holy oil and he’d never slapped my asshole and balls and cock. I spread my legs wide to show King what I wanted, and he obliged. He jacked both our erections together, his even stiffer than mine. With every slap, blood rose to the surface, the combination pain and pleasure mingling so I squirted precum when he spanked my penis.

  He was turned on, and that’s all I wanted. Once he penetrated me, he didn’t last long. That was a good sign. My man was fucking me brutally while calling me his “boy,” and when he pumped my penis and hit my prostate at the same time, I lost it. He lost it. We were both drunk in a miasma of ecstasy—especially when I realized the he-man Flannery was watching us, getting off on it—admiring King’s rounded ass, or my fat penis. Or perhaps I was angry at the church and could not resist in a twisted way ejaculating on the altar cloth. I almost wanted to bend down and lick it up, and would have if Flannery and Lily weren’t there.

  As seemed to be usual for this Rough and Ready town, we moved qu
ickly from profane sex to Flannery’s odd eulogy to now, where we made sure our pieces were loaded.

  “They’ll have pieces too,” said Flannery. “At least, Thalhammer and Finn will. I have no clue about these birdwatching assholes.”

  “If they’re really watching birds,” added Lily.

  “More than likely they are,” said King, “since they were on his regular, square Facebook page.”

  Flannery shrugged. “I’ve never noticed Thalhammer looking at a bird. What’s the plan? We shoot them, they shoot us?”

  “Well, ideally,” I said, drawing upon my New York experience, “no one shoots anyone.”

  Flannery frowned. “You mean they just hand over the black tar, no questions asked?”

  Even I realized that sounded too idealistic. “They’re not going down without a fight,” I agreed.

  Flannery said, “I’ll do it. They won’t suspect me.”

  So a plan was made.

  Naturally the front door was locked, but the back utility door wasn’t.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Lily asked Flannery, standing on tiptoes and clutching his shoulders.

  “Of course,” he said, the first time I’d noticed tenderness in his voice.

  “I mean it’s only for the Zealots, a club you hate.”

  “It’s for you,” he said affectionately, rubbing his thumb against her lower lip. “These guys were never my friends, not even in the way you are. They’d throw a toaster in my bath tub the second they thought they’d get a few bucks.”

  “Since you put it that way,” said Lily, kissing him.

  I felt that King and I should express some sort of bonhomie too. We didn’t plan on failing so of course we’d see each other on the other side. I couldn’t let King go in there without backup. I was his partner, his lover. And now I saw why King and Flannery had insisted I replace my T-shirt and leather jacket with a long-sleeved clergy shirt and Roman collar stolen from the church. I’d committed so many sins in such a short time, but I kept telling myself it was justified in setting things right between King and the Zealots. They’d never let him become their driver once they found out he’d allowed himself to be jacked by some alt-righters. I was perpetrating a fraud, I knew, since I was no longer ordained to wear these vestments, but I went along hoping it would lead to less violence. How many games did the Zealots play straight with, so to speak? They were wheelers and dealers just like the Death Squadders.

  The sun was setting behind the Chemehuevi Mountains, so at first we weren’t surprised how dark it was in the hallway. Once Flannery quietly shut the heavy metal door behind us, though, it was pitch black. I bumped into King, who led the way.

  “Whoops,” I whispered.

  King stopped me with a hand to the chest. Distant male voices echoed from a large room, laughing like goons over the clicking of little balls. Without light, we’d have to head for the sound. Wordlessly we continued, stepping softly.

  But the closer we got to the yelping and hollering men, there was surprisingly little light. In a sporting goods store, you’d expect overhead fluorescent lights. That’s what we had at the Nichols Building. It struck me that these unfortunate idiots were squatting in a building where the electricity had been turned off.

  “What the fuck?” whispered Lily, clinging to my shoulder.

  We peered around a corner display of basketballs. These guys were living by the light of camping lanterns. That made sense, in a store with camping supplies. Their bounding and thrashing shadows were thrown against the ceiling as they played some kind of ball. Like a pride of stalking cheetah, we padded down a few more aisles of footballs and mannequins dressed in tight polyester uniforms.

  “Fuck you, Luke!” yelled Thalhammer. “That was a cheap shot!”

  “Hey!” shouted back an unknown male. “How can you make a cheap shot in ping-pong?”

  Finn yelled, “What a bunch of losers. You shot Simon in the balls, Luke.”

  “Hot dogs are ready!” shouted another unknown male.

  Peeking around a manikin’s molded testicles, we saw the idiots. They were really playing ping-pong by the light of a couple of white gas camping lanterns. Thalhammer seemed outrageously angered by what couldn’t possibly have been a very painful hit, and threw his paddle on the ground. Things were in disarray around the open area, as though they’d tried playing tennis or wiffle ball and made a huge mess of things. Helmets, bats, beer bottles and cans, and even dummies were strewn on the ground. They’d obviously gotten extremely bored stuck in the store with no electricity. What did alt-righters do all day when not harassing people unlike them?

  “I’m sick of hot dogs!” whined Thalhammer.

  “I told you,” said the unknown griller, most likely the other birdwatcher, Neil. “Hot dogs stay good longer than hamburger.”

  “This is bullshit,” said Finn, fingering a hot dog bun. “Even these things are stale.”

  “Yeah,” said Luke, the irate ping-pong player. “I thought you said you had a nice office building. Let’s go back to Taos tomorrow, Neil.”

  King and I looked at each other. I knew instantly what he was thinking. These assholes sold my black tar to these Facebook morons. We both looked at Flannery, who nodded briefly, his jaw tight. It was, as they say, “go time.”

  King stepped out first with me following closely behind. I admired the way he didn’t hesitate or look back to make sure we were with him. He just strode ahead with confidence, his ass looking fine in his 501s.

  “Listen up, you racists,” King shouted. He marched to within ten feet of Luke before stopping. “That’s my rightful kilo of black.”

  Thalhammer, apparently unarmed, immediately stooped to pick up the first weapon handy, his ping-pong paddle. He raised it at hip level as if about to execute a killer backspin chop. The two birdwatchers just gaped open-mouthed, but Finn dropped his hot dog bun and whipped a revolver from the back waistband of his jeans. He held it in the idiotic sideways gangsta grip.

  Since I’d agreed to take point, I also tore my piece from my waistband and stepped into the open, using the classic Weaver stance.

  “Who the fuck are you?” shouted Thalhammer, looking from King to me with increasing surprise, probably because of my attire. Luke backed away from the table toward the grill, allowing King to step forward and lean casually on the feeble table,

  “I’m the truck driver you jacked that stuff from, you assclowns.”

  “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” said Thalhammer, basically admitting that he was one of the truck jackers.

  Finn informed his boss, “He was with us in the office building. He’s that pillbilly truck driver. But who’s the fucking priest with the gun?”

  Thalhammer shot back, “He was in the office building too.”

  I couldn’t believe they had so easily admitted to being the robbers.

  Standing next to me with hands on hips, Flannery rolled his eyes. “Cut the crap, Thalhammer. I know you were with McCoy and Robert Frost when you jacked that truck up north, before we met up in Havasu. You’ve bragged about the kilo of smack and how much you can get for it.”

  Thalhammer pivoted to aim his paddle at Flannery. “You. You fucking traitor to the cause. What the hell are you doing with these twisted weirdos? Suddenly either you’re a lesbian invader like her, or a fag. And that faggot priest can’t even speak English right.”

  King snarled, “Better than you can. So hand over my stuff and we’ll be gone.”

  Thalhammer growled back, “It ain’t that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” Thalhammer briefly looked sideways to someone for help. But Finn was giving him some seriously unsteady side-eye, too. “Because. It’s not here.”

  Still in my cop stance, I rolled my eyes. “Oh, give me a fucking break, Thalhammer or whatever your name is. If you have the tiniest shred of honor in the God-shaped hole within you, you’ll do the right thing and give King his stuff.”

  “Why is everyone
calling him Thalhammer?” Luke asked Neil.

  King banged a fist on the pool table and roared, “I’m going to get my shit one way or the other.”

  Quick as a fox, Thalhammer whipped the paddle like a Frisbee directly at King’s forehead. Before my lover was even down, I shot the dodo king in the chest, the largest target, I’d been told. Later, when I pieced everything together, I realized that without hesitation, Flannery snatched his piece from his waistband and plugged Thalhammer too, finishing what I’d started before the supremacist had even collapsed like a fallen soufflé.

  While Lily stepped up to Flannery’s side, both brandishing their pieces at Finn now, I leaped to King’s side, sliding on my knees the last few feet. A direct hit like that probably caused an instant concussion, and I dragged his torso onto my lap. His eyes lolled about like a tossing sea, but he was conscious. If his brain had sloshed against his skull, his brain could be bruised, his blood vessels torn.

  “What’s your name? Where are you?” I asked, panic-stricken.

  “Don’t even think about it!” shouted Flannery, probably to keep Finn at bay.

  “King!” I whispered. “Where are you? Who am I?”

  His eyelids fluttered, turning his face into a creepy, pale mask in the flickering of the gas lamps. He seemed about to speak.

  One of the Facebookers came at us. Like some maniac in a Peter Sellers film, his hands were shaped into claws, his lion’s roar maybe meant to distract us from the fact that his only weapon was a hockey stick, probably ripped from one of the manikins’ fists.

  Without dumping King from my lap, I was back into my shooting stance. But I had no need to shoot, luckily. I’d already shot the first man of my life. Would this be the life of a biker club demonologist?