Death in Girne

My eyes went to the water of the harbor just below and to the right of where I was sitting on a sultry, glorious evening in the Mediterranean. There, between the bows of two bobbing small yachts, I saw them in the water and smiled to myself—two spent condoms, floating there, like gelatinous jelly fish, on the surface of the slightly oil-slicked water. Had I remembered to come out with rubbers, they reminded me. I ran a hand into the pocket of my linen trousers. Yes, three rubbers and a small tube of lube. Never leave home without them. Not in my business.

“I’m so happy you were available this evening,” Rifaat said, sitting across from me at the harborside restaurant table. “I found I needed to come to Girne from Lefkosa at the last moment. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the opportunity of laying you again.”

He reached across the table and touched the silver bar in my left nipple, visible and touchable because I’d come out in the evening wearing a black mesh athletic T. I was seeing Rifaat Ilham by appointment in the picturesque Girne harbor, but it never hurts to advertise for other business as well. Rifaat was one of the more affectionate of my regulars. He liked touching me here and there as assurance, I think, that a young, blond American would go with him and open his legs for him.

I did it for pay, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the company and cocks of men I did it for.

He’d just shown me the latest photo of his family—a wife, two boys, and a girl, the children preteens, the wife not looking all that old herself—certainly a lot younger than Rifaat. And when I’d handed the photo back to him, he’d taken my hand from across the table and was still holding it, rubbing my palm with his thumb.

We were being fairly obvious, I suppose, out here on the stone quay moving in a nearly full circle around the inner harbor of the northern Cyprus Byzantine-period town held down at one end by a medieval castle and at the other by the Dome Hotel. The Turks, who controlled this part of Cyprus, called the picturesque harbor town Girne, and the Greeks, on the southern two-thirds of the island, called it Kyrenia. All of the restaurateurs with tables swirling around the harbor knew what I was about, though, so it didn’t matter of Rifaat Ilham showed some affection.

He was an interesting man. This was the third time he’d engaged me. He’d come from mainland Turkey and had, I was told, an import business here. He lived in the capital city at the center of the island, a divided city that the Turks, in the north, called Lefkosa and the Greeks, in the south, Nicosia. Ilham must be fifty or more and he was a beefy man, but he was in great shape for his age, both hard bodied and hung, as I already well knew. His face was more one of character than of good looks, but he was all smiles and enthusiasm and was what one would call charismatic. A good salesman, I was sure. He had a body I liked too—brown, muscular, and hirsute.

He was gregarious and easy to talk to. He was giving me a leisurely dinner beside the water in the Girne harbor. We ate, drank, and chatted amicably into the hours of the early night that I liked so much here. It was a magical, ageless setting. The string of twinkling tea lights decking the tables, buildings, and bobbing yachts in the inner harbor floated a glow over the stone facades of the encircling buildings, their ground floors former shops and storage areas turned toward the harbor and their upper stories residences turned toward the upper road encircling the harbor.

I didn’t resent it then when he said, “Shall we go up to my room now? I’m booked at the Dome Hotel again.” Most of the men I served here began the night with the “Let’s go up to the room now” direction.

* * * *

There was no use sneaking by anyone at reception in the Dome. I was well known there—and tolerated. They all got their cut. There was a young man sitting in the lobby giving Ilham and me close scrutiny when we came in—he was still there, reading a newspaper, when I left. If he was a policeman, he was new to the beat. But there wasn’t so much as a murmur from those at the reception desk and Ilham guided me, hand on my butt, to the elevator.

The room was facing the inner harbor and had a floor-to-ceiling window.

“Do you want to join me?” Ilham asked. We’d both stripped and had done a bit of standing kissing and fondling inside the door. I could see that he was already set up for pleasure, with lines of Coke laid out on a sheet of paper on the desk. He was offering a couple of lines to me.

“No, thank you,” I said. “Let me know where and when you want me.” I went over to the window, leaned into the frame, and watched the late-night activity in the harbor, while he snorted some lines.

“I’ll sit at the end of the bed,” he said at length. When I turned, I saw that he was in full erection. He had what was called a beer-can cock—extraordinarily thick. He was longer than average too. That was one of the things I liked about servicing him. Average cocks did little for me anymore. I liked to be stretched and tested. Ilham did that for me. I wasn’t that wild about the drugs, though. I avoided that shit. I’ll have to say it gave him a magnificent erection though—and he’d be able to keep it for hours. With Ilham, it would be at least an hour. He took his time and wanted it more than once.

He settled on the bed and I came to him, went down on my knees between his spread thighs, took him in my mouth, and gave him slow head. Humming, he leaned over my body, moved both of his hands to my butt cheeks, and squeezed, kneaded, and pulled them apart. A finger from each of his hands went to my hole and he started the opening up process while I sucked him off.

At length, he gently pushed me off him, rose, helped me up, turned me, and laid me on my back on the bed. I led him manipulate my legs—he liked positioning me. He wanted total, unresisting surrender from the get go. He put a pillow under the small of my back to elevate and roll my pelvis up, bent and spread my legs, and pressed my feet flat on the edge of the bottom of the mattress.

For a half hour or more, he worked me over. He wanted me to come before he fucked me. He knelt below me and ate my ass out, reaming me with his tongue. He produced a cock sleeve and fucked my cock with it while he was eating me out. This was followed with work with a thick dildo. The workout was fine with me. I knew I had to be monstrously open to take his cock.

He worked me until I came for him, lathering his face with my cum—another glorious climax in death, la petite mort, a little death, the goal for me, both for me and the man I was with, any man I let inside me. Laughing, he rose, went back to the desk, and snorted a few more lines of the Coke.

He came back to the bed, still in monstrous erection. Standing over me at the foot of the bed, he made a ceremony out of slowly rolling the condom on and lubing it and my ass channel up before crouching over me, capturing my eyes with his, pressing his fists into the mattress on either side of my shoulders and slowly, ever so slowly, working his cock into me, deep and thick. I grasped his biceps in my hands, panted hard, and gave him moans that weren’t in the least bit feigned as they were with some of my customers. This was when it was for more than the money—when I was fully possessed by a man’s shaft. He was big, all-consuming inside me. He had a gold medallion on a thick gold chain around his neck. The medallion dangled in front of my face, and I took it into my mouth, sucking on it to stifle my incentive to scream, as his hips began to move, fucking me in long, hard, deep strokes.

As he lowered his muscular, hirsute chest onto to mine, becoming more intimate in the embrace, and buried his face in my throat, my hands went, first to his shoulder blades, and then as the pace of his thrusts increased and my pelvis began to gyrate to meet the rhythm of the fuck, my hands glided down his back, and I palmed and clutched his bulbous, bouncing buttocks cheeks to me, ensuring that he remain inside me with the maximum access possible.

This. This was why I did this—give myself to men, become open and vulnerable to them, lie on my back and open my legs for them, letting them cover me, use me. I didn’t do it just for the money, or even mostly for the money—there were other, less vulnerable, less painful, ways of making money. It was having a man want me, need to be inside me, covering me. A hard-bodied man on top of me, enslaving me, mastering me, becoming one with me, inside me . . . fucking me.

He came, again and again, killing me with each jerk and release, la petite mort—a little death by fuck. As I could feel him pumping the bulb of the condom full of his cum, I raised and spread my leg in a V for his victory and my satisfied, total surrender.

It wasn’t just for the money.

He pulled out of me and went back to the desk and to the Coke. I lay there, panting and watching him. He rolled the rubber off his cock and dropped it in the wastebasket next to the desk. The hotel maid the next day wouldn’t be the least surprised. Girne was a party town—especially in the summer. He turned his face to me, smiling. There was a residual smudge of white powder on his nose.

“You sure?” he asked, gesturing to the paper on the desk, with two lines of Coke remaining on it.

“No thanks,” I answered.

He shrugged, went to the en suite bathroom, pissed in the toilet with the door open so that I could still watch him. I knew he liked me to follow him with my eyes when we fucked, knowing that he was in great shape for his age, and so I did. He returned to the desk and gave me another “You sure?” look, but he didn’t offer the Coke again. Instead, he snorted it himself. He picked up another condom disk and crowned himself.

“Turn over on your belly, please,” he said, as he walked back to the bed.

I did so, and he covered me from on top, putting the bulb of his cock in position with one of his hands while the other one glided up my left arm and gripped my wrist. I jerked and gave a little cry as he mounted and penetrated me, going deep. He could get deeper access in this position than in the missionary we’d already done. His right hand glided up my right arm and he gripped that wrist as well.

Then he fucked the shit out of me.

* * * *

The bar at the British Club, tucked back in a corner of the harbor promenade between the castle walls and one of two cobblestone streets descending down into the harbor from the upper town, was still open when I left the Dome. I had a room and bath on the third floor of the building the bar was in. It wasn’t a club for Brits anymore, but it once had been, so the expatriate Brits and other Westerners on the island liked to come here when they came to Girne.

Being a rent-boy in the harbor wasn’t my only—or even my principle—job in Cyprus. I had come here as a student in archeology in my undergraduate days, and had just stayed here—two years past graduation now—afterward because the island was so rich in history and archaeological excavations—and, yes, because both Turkish and Greek men were, as a whole, gorgeous, and all man. I signed on for a dig three or four times a year, earning enough to keep me. The rent-boy work was gravy, providing my pleasure money. I was highly sexed, so often the work provided me pleasure as well, as it had done that evening with Rifaat Ilham. This was high season—the summer—for me in the rent-boy business.

For some reason. the male-on-male rent-boy business out of the Girne harbor, with men willing to take what was still the social risk in Cyprus of engaging other men for sex, wasn’t as prevalent in seasons other than summer. Perhaps it’s because there were more foreign tourists here in the summer, or it was too hot to work in fields or offices, or something else. This, strangely, contrasted with female prostitution in the harbor. Men wanted women here in all seasons and were willing to pay for it any time of year. It was mainly summer that men who wanted men were randy and frisky enough to seek out another man for pay. So, in general, during fall, winter, and spring, I worked elsewhere around the island on archaeology digs and I spent the summer here, in Girne harbor, selling my body to men. Summer here was for loving—it was part of the magical atmosphere of the inner Girne harbor.

Tanju Hamdi, my pimp and the manager of the British Club, was sitting at the end of the bar when I came in. Sami, one of my friends, but a submissive like me, so not a fuck buddy, was tending bar. He too was one of Tanju’s boys.

When I entered and Sami had pulled me a mug of Efes beer, Tanju gestured toward the back of the bar, where two pool tables held court. A couple of blond hunks were playing pool there. Chances were very good they were Danes—soldiers in the UN peacekeeping contingent that had manned the Green Line between the Greek and Turkish zones of the island since the Turkish invasion of 1974 had established the battle line running the full width of the island.

“The tall one was asking about action,” Tanju muttered.

I took my beer and walked to the back, where the tables were. I made nice with the guys and worked my way into the pool action. The tall one was Dieter. His stockier sidekick was Kurt. They were both body beautiful and had money to burn. It was Kurt who touched me as we played the table and who dirty talked me. Tall Dieter was quieter, more standing off and signaling to me with his eyes. I gauged the Dieter would be more forceful, longer lasting, in bed, and I was right.

The next morning I woke up, on my back, in the bed in my room upstairs at the British Club. Dieter somebodyorother, was between my legs, doing his morning pushups on my body. He wasn’t so big that he was taxing, but he was virile and vigorous.

At 2:30 Dieter had been on his back on my bed and I was straddling him, riding his shaft. Kurt, who had fucked me first, in a missionary, when we’d come up to my room, was saddled behind me, embracing me in his strong arms, riding me, riding Dieter. Thank God for Ilham’s preparations and beer can cock. Kurt was gone then, but Dieter remained, doing his exercises on me, as I lay on my back, legs open to him, and getting shuteye as I could. Dieter, all stamina, all man, full of cum, had done his pushups at 4:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., and now at 9:00.

I got more rest than Dieter did. He was the one on a short furlough and pushed to get his pleasure done in one lump sum. All he needed me to do was lay on my back, my channel open to his specifications, my heels rubbing the backs of his calves, my hands caressing his biceps or shoulder blades, moaning appropriately, and whispering that he was the best cocksman in the world—and he certainly was in the running.

Used condoms littered the floor by my bed. I didn’t mind. The Danes had paid Tanju well before we’d come upstairs, and they were both gorgeous studs—nothing more fit for action than a northern European UN soldier. Elham had reamed me well open before them, so I’d had no trouble taking them both.

Dieter was stopped just short of his fourth ejaculation of the morning by pounding on the door. The door opened before I could get out from underneath Dieter to answer it. The appearance of Tanju there didn’t pull the Dane off me, but the appearance of the guy in the Turkish police uniform behind the pimp did it. Dieter came off the bed, wrapping himself in the top sheet and headed for the bathroom. He picked up his clothes as he went, slammed the bathroom door behind him, and I heard the shower start as Tanju and the policeman, Balian Farki, came into the room.

I looked at them expectantly.

“Balian here says he needs to ask you some questions, Lucas—about last night.”

“Yeah, OK? What questions?” I asked, giving Tanju a sharp look. He was supposed to take care of the police. This was one of those societies that looked strict on the outside but was highly tolerant at the soft core—as long as money exchanged hands. The authorities, at all levels, were eminently corruptible. Balian Farki was a case in point. He was a senior official in the harbor but he was well paid off by Tanju, and, on top of that, he had privileges with me, which he wasn’t shy about invoking. He was in his late thirties, handsome as a Turkish movie star, bodybuilder fit, and hung. What else could a boy want, when a boy wanted a cock inside him, as I often did? My relations with him were not so much in the protection racket realm—Tanju paid him well for all of us. If there were anyone on the island that I could call a steady lover, it was Balian.

He had never confronted me as a prostitute before.

“Were you with a man at the Dome last night?” he asked, his voice gruff, all business. “Don’t bother to say you weren’t, Mr. Moore, because you were observed entering the hotel with him. Seen leaving by yourself too.”

Of course, I was seen, I thought. In many ways this is a small town, anybody’s business is everybody’s business. And, also, Balian had addressed me by surname. This must be serious business. It was serious business. When I’d admitted I’d entered the hotel with one of the guests and gone up to his room, Balian remained in an official stance.

“The man’s name was Rifaat Ilham, an importer living in Lefkosa.”

“Yeah, so?” I asked. Then it hit me. “You said ‘was.’”

“Yes, I did. He’s dead. Murdered in his room last night. You may have been the last one who saw him alive.”

* * * *

“What killed Ilham?” I asked.

“What do you think killed him, Lucas?” Farki asked, giving me a sharp look.

I wasn’t that dumb. “I have no idea,” I answered. “He was very much alive when I left him.”

“What did you and he do in the hotel room?” He was looking at the floor by the bed, where a small collection of spent condoms had accumulated.

“You know what we did, Balian. You know what I do with men here in the summer. You know what I did here, last night. I do it with you too—any time you want me.” This official pose was beginning to irritate me. We had a relationship. I let the man put his cock in me whenever he wanted to.

That gave him pause. “Lucas was back here at midnight, Balian,” Tanju interjected. “What time did this man in the Dome die?”

“We don’t know yet, the policeman said.” When I had spoken of him and me together, he had reached out and was touching the silver bar in my left nipple. I was completely naked still. “The medical examiner hasn’t made a determination on that for us. But that jives with what the hotel clerks and my men said—that Lucas left the hotel at midnight.”

“Your men?” I asked. “You were having me watched?”

“Not necessarily you, and we don’t have to go into that now.”

As he was saying that, Dieter, the Danish UN soldier, was surreptitiously—he hoped—sliding out of the bathroom, fully dressed now, and inching toward the door to the corridor behind Farki’s back. Farki was a cop, though. He saw everything.

“Just a minute. You can’t leave,” he said, swinging around to face the big Dane.

“Let him go,” Tanju said in a lower voice—and then in an even lower voice. “He’s a UN soldier. I don’t think you want to bring the UN into this.” And in a louder voice, “He’s no part of this, Balian. He was here when Lucas came back to the bar at midnight. He and Lucas have been together ever since. I can vouch for that. Whatever your case is, it doesn’t involve this young man.”

With a grunt, the policeman let the Dane go and turned and said, “You can leave too, Tanju. I’m sure you have business to do downstairs. I know where to find you if I need you.”

Hamdi took the hint and departed behind the Dane.

When they were gone, Farki came close to me, took my lips in a kiss, and let his hand run down my chest and belly and into my thatch.

“I hope you aren’t involved in this, Lucas,” he said. “Come, sit beside me.”

So, now he was going to drop the official crap. The tension drained out of the room. We sat at the foot of the bed, me naked, Farki, at least initially, fully clothed. He unbuttoned and flared his shirt, showing a muscular, lightly hirsute chest and a six-pack belly. The man worked out—sometimes he worked out on top of me. He knew his body aroused me. Turks turned me on. His hands wandered over my naked body, we kissed, and I unzipped him and pulled him out, pressing my thumb into his piss slit and lightly stroking a cock he had every reason to be proud of.

“Where do you keep the—?”

“You want that—all of it? Now?” I asked. I knew that he would, now that we’d gone this far, but he was here on a murder investigation and still he was randy for it. I wanted him to be at least a little embarrassed. I had known the man who was dead. And Balian had suggested I might have something to do with the death.

He shrugged. “It’s what you’re here for. I’m keyed up. You pulled it out.”

So, I had. And of course it’s what I was here for—a young, blond American to service randy Turks in a Turkish town. “There’s one here,” I said, finding a yet-to-be-used packet among the bedclothes.

“You do it.”

I opened the condom pack, extracted the disk, and rolled it on his cock. We were now ready for whatever. I knew he wouldn’t leave until he’d fucked me.

“Were you having me surveilled, Balian?” I asked, as we worked each other up to the inevitable. “Are you jealous of me? You know what I do.”

“It wasn’t you my men were following,” he said. “But I can’t say more about that now. Either you don’t know and don’t want to know, or you do and you are in trouble.” He let that sink in before he continued. “When you were in the hotel room with Ilham, did you see a brown leather briefcase?”

“I didn’t notice anything like that,” I said. I didn’t want him to know what all I’d seen, but a brown leather briefcase? No, not that I could remember.

“I don’t want to know about the drugs—about the cocaine. Yes, we saw evidence of that on the desk in the room.”

“I didn’t snort any of that, Balian,” I quickly said. “I am not into any sort of drugs.” Well, there was weed, but I chose to think of that not being any worse than tobacco.

“Good. A briefcase. Think hard.”

I thought hard. “No. I saw a small suitcase, but it was blue, soft sided. What is it about a brown leather . . . oh, shit. Well, OK.” He had run his hand into my long, blond hair, which the Dane had taken down along with his—his was long and blond too; we were twins as we were entwined he was humping me. Mine was a reddish blond, though, and Dieter’s had been almost platinum.

“Seni istiyorum. Seni şimdi istiyorum—I want you. I want you now,” Farki growled, and dutifully, I lay back on the bed and opened my legs. When Balian used Turkish with me, I knew he was in high heat.

“No. Binmek çük>—Ride the cock. I want you to ride the cock.”

He pulled me over into his lap, facing him. My knees dug into the mattress beside his hips. I positioned myself over his raging erection and somewhat painfully but passionately lowered my channel onto the shaft. I was surrendering to him quite willing.

He held my waist in his hands and bounced me up and down on his shaft to his ejaculation. Towards the end, he raised my legs and hooked my ankles on his shoulders, taking full control over moving my body on his cock. I extended my arms behind me, grasping his kneecaps to hold myself steady. As he jerked and came, I lifted the legs up and spread them in a V—a V for his victory and my satisfied surrender. Fucked to yet another very satisfactory death.

Every day a little death—or several.

When he disentangled himself from me and rose from the bed, he rolled the spent rubber off his cock and, giving me a sneery sort of smile, flipped it over the side of the bed to land with the others that had accumulated on the floor there in the night, his on top of the others, as if to denote that he trumped the Danish soldiers.

At the door, as he, his uniform in pristine trim again and looking quite spiffy and pleased with himself, Farki turned and said, “He was stabbed. Several times. There was a lot of hate or passion behind it.”

“I liked Ilham,” I said. “I was with him several times. He was good to me. And he was fun to talk to. I liked him. I’m sorry he’s dead. I didn’t kill him.”

“Was he as good with his cock as I am?” Farki asked.

The universal question of johns for their rent-boys. As long as they got release, why did they care? But then what Balian Farki and I had was a bit more of a relationship than most of the times a coupled with a man. Still, it was a question a male whore should not be trapped into answering. “You know I can’t make comparisons like that, Balian,” I said. “Let’s say that you do me well enough that I keep letting you do me.”

And he had done me that morning very well—very well indeed.

“Am I better than that Danish soldier?” he then asked.

“There were two Danish soldiers, Balian,” I said. “They were studs. They did me together.”

That shut him up on that topic.

The last question I asked Balian before he left my room was, “Ilham never told me what he imported. Do you know?”

“Yes. Air conditioners. Industrial strength ones—for office buildings, shops, and factories.”

“You can’t fit an air conditioning unit in a brown leather briefcase,” I said.

“No, no you can’t,” he agreed.

I was exhausted and it wasn’t yet 10:30 in the morning. I went back to bed and slept the sleep of the dead until it was dark outside again. I’d taken four men in the previous twenty hours—one of them now dead. No, wait, including the Israeli tourist on the beach in the early afternoon, on the sand in the privacy between boulders running down to the sea, with him on his back, and me riding him, it had been five. I went to sleep, dreaming of an army of men on top of me, one after the other, sometimes more than one, fucking me, each one fucking me to a blissful death, each one pestering me on whether they did it the best.

Tanju Hamdi didn’t force me out onto the street until after ten on that sultry summer night. He gave me a few hours to mourn the loss of a good customer. By the time I went out on the street, Balian Farki had called to let me know that the medical examiner had cleared my alibi. Ilham had been murdered at least a half hour after I’d been seen leaving the Dome Hotel.

“Are you sure you didn’t see a brown leather briefcase, though?” he asked.

What was it that was so important about a brown leather briefcase—and, if Farki’s men weren’t following me, was it Ilham they had been following—and was it because he was supposed to have a brown leather briefcase that now was missing?

* * * *

At midnight I was walking back down to the harbor from a pub on Kalakini Solak in the upper town, to the east, above the commercial port that was on the other side of the castle from the inner harbor. I had a German sailor from a Lebanese-chartered freighter in tow. He was nearly drunk but not so drunk to not know what he’d come to the pub for in addition to beer. And he’d had the price and had paid it. I had included a room, let by the half hour, in the British Club. We were on the steeply inclined cobble stone street leading down into the harbor when he couldn’t hold it any longer. We stopped and he slipped into an alley to relieve himself against the wall. I stayed out on the street, my back to the wall, instinctively taking up the “I’m for hire” stance, one leg bent and foot against the wall behind me, and waited for the German sailor to be done in the alley.

As I waited there, in the deep shadows, I noticed the two men—one of them appearing at the top of the incline and the other one down where the street poured into the harbor, with the British Club on the corner to the east. There was something ominous about the men. They were just standing there, for a moment, looking at me. Then, though, almost in consort, they started walking toward me.

At that moment, the German came out of the alley and both men stopped in their tracks. The German was bigger, brawnier than either the other men, and he clearly could be seen as such even in the heavily shadowed street. The German seemed not to notice the men were there. All of his attention was on me.

He wasn’t, in fact, finished with his business in the alley, and it wasn’t only his piss he couldn’t hold until we got to the British Club. He pulled me into the alley. My last moment on the street was devoted to checking above and below. The two men were retreating.

The sailor fucked me there, in the alley, up against the wall. He pushed me, back to the wall, and came in close, capturing my lips with his, his hands busy undoing my belt and his and pushing our shorts to the ground. The hands then went to our cocks. I just stood there, my hands grasping his beefy biceps and let him have his way. He didn’t want anything but a quick fuck, and he took that. He was a tall, heavy dude, beer bellied, but so strong that he was going to have what he wanted.

He had a beer can cock, but it wasn’t long. He fumbled around with a condom and then lifted my left leg, hooking my knee on his hip, which gave him enough access to my ass to get his cock inside me. Helping rather than fighting him, I tilted my hips up to be able to take more of him inside me and encircled his waist with my arms, gave him the words of encouragement and the sounds of being taken magnificently that all quick-in-and-quick-out johns—or Johannes, in his case—like him wanted to hear. Grunting with his strong thrusts up inside me, I gave him what he wanted: a warm passage to release in, the sensation of being “The Man,” the virile, irresistible stud.

“Oh, baby, baby,” I murmured in his ear, as he released. It was a service that came with the price he’d paid.

With a “Das war gut—That was good” mumble of appreciation, he stepped away from me, stripped off the condom, tossed it on the ground in the alley, pulled his shorts up, and was gone.

When I came out of the alley, the two men who had stared me down were gone too. They both were youngish and swarthy Turkish thugs as far as I could see in the dimly lit space. There weren’t many mugging down this close to the inner harbor, but I supposed there were some and that was what I had escaped, thanks to the German sailor not being about to hold his fumbling lust.

* * * *

I didn’t think any more of that strange, “almost” encounter until the next day when Tanju somewhat nervously told me Abay Dalman wanted to see me—right then—and there were two of his men here, at the British Club, to take me to him.

The two men were the ones who had almost accosted me on the road down into the inner harbor the previous night.

“I don’t think—”

“There’s nothing but to go with them, Lucas. Dalman is the major mobster in this area of the island. Don’t worry, you’ll be OK. We pay him off. It wouldn’t be good business to do anything to someone who pays him off.” Tanju’s voice was too shaky for me to have much confidence in his attempt at showing confidence, though. The man was sweating.

That didn’t stop the two thugs from taking me out of the club and across to the water, where they put me in a motorboat and motored out of the inner harbor, into the outer harbor, and then out to sea. They took me out to a large, fancy yacht within sight of the shore, but not by much.

I was hustled down into the bowels of the ship, to a small cabin dominated by a double bed with restraints chained to the four corners. There they put me in the position and did to me what I assumed the whole purpose of this cabin was for.

It was like it must have been employee’s day in the underworld. I was stripped and spread-eagled on the bed, face down and ass elevate with a bolster under my belly and wrists and ankles tied off at the four corners. The two thugs who brought me out to sea fucked me—roughly—for nearly an hour—each. The ass fuck wasn’t anything new or special for me, though. The screaming I did was the strapping one of them did on my back, ass, and thighs before he mounted and fucked me.

That must have all been to soften me up and put the fear of holding secrets to me, because not long after the second of the thugs left me, an older Turk came in. He was large of body, but powerful and mean looking, and quite clearly in command. I assumed I was now meeting the head gangster of the region, Abay Dalman.

He sat down on the side of the bed and glided his hand over me, intimately. He seemed to enjoy tracing the welts his thug had raised on my back and buttocks.

“I gave you to my men because I wanted you to know how badly I wish you to answer the one question I have for you. If I accept the answer, they’ll take you back to the harbor. If not, I’ll give you back to them until I receive a satisfied answer. If that never is provided, well, you know the expression, ‘swims with the fishes,’ I think.”

He laughed. I didn’t find that concept amusing, so I didn’t. “What’s the question?”

He didn’t answer right away. He apparently wanted me to think about how serious his question was for a while longer. He picked up the leather strap and beat me again with it. I put more power behind the stroke than his thug had and I squirmed and screamed more enthusiastically for him than I had for his boy. Then he too mounted my ass, penetrated my channel with his shaft, and fucked me to his release. When he was done, he asked the question, speaking up over my deep moans, whimpers, and sobs.

“You were the last one known to see Rifaat Ilham alive at the Dome Hotel.”

Oh shit. Rifaat Ilham again.

“He was holding something for me,” Dalman continued. “What did you do with it?”

I panicked. “With what? I don’t know what you mean.” But, then, I did know what he meant.

“He had a brown leather briefcase that was mine. I think you took it. What did you do with it? It’s mine.”

The fucking brown leather briefcase. Everyone wanted it. I’d never seen it. That’s what I said, but it was what else I’d said that saved me, I think. “I don’t know about any briefcase,” I said.

Dalman stood, took up the strap, and laid into me some more. There must have been something in what Tanju had said about not ruining something that made the man money, though, as I realized that neither he nor his thug was doing much more than redden me up and raise some welts. No skin had been broken—at least yet.

“Please, please. I can’t tell you about something I didn’t see,” I begged when he decided to rest his arm. “I never saw a briefcase in the hotel room.” But then I added. “The police asked me the same question. They asked me if I’d seen the briefcase too.”

“The police? The police asked you about the briefcase? The police know about the briefcase?”

That clearly shook him. I stuck the knife in again. “You didn’t have to kill Ilham for the briefcase. The police were there right after I left. They knew he had the briefcase.”

“Kill Ilham? I didn’t have Ilham killed,” Dalman declared. “He was a trusted associate. I thought you may have killed him and taken the briefcase.”

“I wasn’t there when he died. I left before that and have an alibi, and, as I said, I don’t know a damn thing about any briefcase. Ilham was a good customer. Why would I kill him?”

“Well, fuck,” Dalman said, and he rose off me and disappeared. Not long after that, his two thugs came in, released me and let me dress, and took me back to the inner harbor in the motorboat. They didn’t apologize or anything, and I didn’t ask for one. Although a bit painful, I’d found the strapping to be an interesting sex experience. I’d come both times they did it to me. Tanju had a salve that did wonders on the wounds.

And, since I was still alive, I guess the gangster had believed me about the briefcase and had decided that collecting protection money on me was better than letting me swim with the fishes.

Dalman had somewhat indignantly declared he hadn’t had Ilham killed, though. That was rather interesting. But I didn’t think of that for a few days.

Two days later, I was in Lefkosa, attending Rifaat Ilham’s funeral. I’d liked the man. I figured I owed him that much—to attend his funeral. He’d laid me, though, several times, so I didn’t intrude myself front and center. I hung back on the edge of the small crowd that gathered at the cemetery. The young widow had a hard time with the funeral and had to be helped by a young man—a man who I thought I recognized from somewhere.

As I was standing there beside two old crones in black, I heard one of them say, in Turkish, “So nice that her brother is here to give her support.”

The other crone snorted and said, “That’s not her brother. That’s her next husband to be.”

That jogged my memory and I remembered where I’d seen the man before.

When I got back to Girne, I called Balian Fakir immediately.

“I went to Rifaat Ilham’s funeral today,” I said, “and I saw someone there I think you should know about—Ilham’s widow was being escorted around by a man I saw in the lobby of the Dome Hotel when Ilham took me up to his room that last day. He was still there when I left the Dome.”

“Interesting,” Fakir said.

“When you talk to him, you might look around for that precious brown leather briefcase you all are interested in.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be the one talking to him,” Fakir said. “There are more efficient ways of handling something like that in Turkish Cyprus. I’ll tell someone else about it. And best you just forget about the briefcase.”

Ah, Abay Dalman.

“But if you want the brown leather briefcase—”

“I think it will be fine if it gets back into the hands of its owner. Just drop it, Lucas, for your own good.”

Ah, the complex world of the protection system in Turkish Cyprus, I thought. Well, that’s too big for me to worry about. But curiosity still picked at me. “What’s in that brown leather briefcase anyway?” I asked.

“You still don’t want to know that,” he answered.

Later, I decided he was right about that, and I didn’t mention it again. I was helped in that decision a week later when I read the obituaries in the Lefkosa newspaper and saw one about the young air conditioner installer, Demir Baki. I recognized the photo in the paper, even though he looked a couple of years younger in the photo than he’d looked in the lobby of the Dome hotel or at Rifaat Ilham’s funeral.

* * * *

The night was late in the Girne harbor, but the festive atmosphere evoked by the twinkling lights reflected off water below, the view of arms-entwined strolling couples, and the sound of laughter at the tables on the quay went on. It was after midnight—just the start of life in the Girne inner harbor. I was standing by the full-length window in the Dome Hotel, looking down into the harbor—the same window I stood at the night Rifaat Ilham last fucked me and died. I was thinking of him—fondly—and all that had transpired since he’d died. There was a sameness to this scene, though. Life goes on. The difference between the then and now was that, with Ilham, it was becoming a relationship. This was just a transaction—less messy.

The man—the client, the john, the seks istemcisi—an old Turk, gaunt, craggy faced and hawk nosed, but still, I was surprised and pleased to find out, hard bodied, a sailor, but one who owned the ship rather than sailed for someone else, was over at the desk, stroking his cock, ogling my naked body, and snorting up lines of Coke—just like Ilham had done on that night. But, unlike Ilham, he didn’t offer me a snort. He had made quite clear that I was there just to lay down for him and be laid.

This one was a mainland Turk, with a small, expensive-looking yacht docked down in the inner harbor. He was just here for the night in his sail around the Eastern Mediterranean. He had two young sailors with him, who I watched him pay attention to on his boat as I sat at a table on the quay. He wasn’t fucking them as I watched, but it was close. He obviously was in heat. He saw me too as he scanned the activity at the restaurant tables lining the quay. I angled my chair from the table, facing him, spread my legs, and let my hand dangle in front of my basket.

He came up onto the quay to sit with me. He was in sandals, wearing tight, white shorts, and with a Hawaiian-print shirt, open and flared to show a berry-brown, gaunt, hard-bodied torso. There was a gold ring in his right nipple. As he had approached, I pulled my black-mesh T-shirt over my head, folded it over the back of the chair next to me, and smiled. I was in shorts and sandals as well. I had silver bars in both nipples.

“American or English?” he asked.

“American.”

“You are a beautiful young man. Out here all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a manager nearby?”

So, both the signaling of my availability and his experience in these matters were quite clear. “I don’t need one. I’m not on a short leash,” I answered.

“You were watching me—with my boys—on my boat over there.” He put a hand on my knee, and I left it there.

“Yes.”

“Do you lay down for men? Do you take a man’s çük—his cock?”

“It depends on the man and whether he can—and will—pay.” He obviously was interested and had wanted to make sure I would bottom. He had moved fast, to gripping my cock through the material of my shorts. I was engorging for him.

“Am I such a man? Would you take my çük?”

“Yes, if circumstances were right.” This was moving along briskly, which was a good thing, as it already was approaching midnight.

He said he wanted variety and he had the money. He reached in back of my head, released the band on my ponytail, and let my hair cascade down to my shoulders.

“There, perfect,” he said. I knew then that we’d fuck. He felt me up under the table some more and suggested we book into the Dome.

“You don’t want to invite me onto the yacht?” I asked.

“The boys would be jealous,” he answered. “And there might be a bit too much sound for so near to the tables on the street.”

What an inventive way to warn me that he’d be rough. It was his money; he was the one paying for the hotel room. There was an air of danger about him. I was aroused by what I saw and heard so far.

Naked—he’d undressed and fondled me; he had his shirt flared and his shorts off, showing a nice-sized erection—I walked over to the bed and lay down on my back at the foot right where I’d perched when Ilham fucked me. I spread my legs, bending them, pressing my feet into the edge of the mattress, curling my pelvis up, showing my hole to him, ready for his size. He turned from the table and walked over to me, standing between my spread legs, as I sat up on the end of the bed, cupped his buttocks, pulled him into me, and took his cock in my mouth. While I gave him head, he reached under, handed my cock, and stroked me with one hand. His other hand was gliding over my back muscles, moving closer to my buttocks as he crouched over me. He was flexible for his age, managing to get his index finger inside me.

After a while, pressing a hand to my sternum, he pushed my shoulder blades back onto the bed. He hovered over me, rolling on a condom, and slathering his shaft and my opening with lube.

“Ne kadar güzel bir vücut—Such a beautiful body,” he whispered. “Do you understand Turkish? Do you know what I said?”

“Yes. Quickly, master—Usta—come into me quickly,” I murmured. “Sik beni—Fuck me.”

It was for pay, but I was in heat. I did this for more than money. I did this to experience la petite mort—again and again. He was a hard-bodied man. He had a hard cock. He obviously knew what he was doing.

He put himself in position at my hole, and pushed in an inch as I grimaced at the size of his mushroom cap. He moved in deeper, going in for the kill, as I arched my back and whispered, “Oh, baby, baby. Sik beni. Sik beni” He palmed my pecs, pressing my back to the mattress, and I grabbed his buttocks, holding him close to me, as he slid to the killing quick and I groaned and panted for him.

“You’re so big. So deep. Gerçekten büyük. Gerçekten derin. Be good to me, baby. Sik beni!—Fuck me!” I cried out, as he took control, picked up speed, intensity, depth. He slapped me across the face, slashing one way and then the other, snapping my head back and forth. I didn’t give a fuck. Panting and groaning, I arched my back and extended my arms out in a sacrificial cruciform form, clutching at the bedspread, as, grasping my throat in his hands, he drove it in, drove it in, drove it in.

He was good to me in the way I needed him to be—for me to feel it more than just lying under a john. It was a total fuck. He definitely knew what he was doing. As he pumped harder, faster, I raised and spread my legs in a V—a V for victory for him and satisfied surrender for me.

Every day a little death—la petite mort. No matter how much things change, they always stay the same.

Death at the Dome Hotel in Girne.