Death in Hollywood

As I half feared, Dave Dolon's truck was still there beside the stable barn, where it had been yesterday when I left. And the pinto pony was still in the training ring corral. I parked the Mustang by the house and went into the barn and called out Dave's name. There was no answer, and I suddenly felt depressed. And something else. I could feel my heart beating, faster than I would have wanted. And my breathing was heavy and ragged.

I walked back out of the barn and around to the corral. The pinto was acting just the way it had been when I'd left yesterday morning--prancing around and shaking its mane and whinnying. I saw that there was enough feed and water in the troughs. I watched it jittering around the corral and saw that its pattern of movement didn't cover the whole area. I took sugar cubes out of the box on the fence where I was standing and held them out, and the horse came to me and nuzzled my hand as I fed him the cubes. I stroked his neck and felt him tremble, his heart racing as fast as mine was.

The pinto was still making snorting noises and low whinnies, which covered the sound of the approach behind me. The first thing I knew my wrists had been handcuffed out wide beside me on the other side of fence posts. I felt a body close behind me, embracing me. His hand at my waist in front, undoing my belt buckle and unzipping my trousers.

"Where's Dave, Gordon?" I whispered. I tried to keep my voice modulated, not to show the fear--and disappointment and disgust--I was feeling. But I imagine I wasn't successful.

"You shouldn't have asked, Clint. This could have just been a pleasant fuck."

"Now that I know, I doubt there will be any more pleasant fucks, Gordon."

"Have it your own way. If it's the last one, it's the last one."

I felt the cold barrel of a pistol next to my cheek. I can't claim I was surprised.

"And Andrew Dix, Gordon. He with Dave? And maybe Gustav too?"

"My, my, my. You have been a busy boy, haven't you? Pity."

I felt my trousers and briefs slide down my legs, and being pulled away. I also heard the heavy breathing. He wanted me. A split condom packet flipped out through the fence and into the corral. Trojan Magnums.

"Why my parents, Gordon? Oh, God . . . go slow."

"It's not like you're going to care for long, Clint. Just as long as I'm enjoying it, that's good enough. And I'd hoped to go on enjoying it for years. Again, a pity."

I writhed as best I could, but it felt like he was trying to get his whole fist inside me. He wasn't giving me any time at all to open up.

"My parents were your gravy train, Gordon. I thought you loved my father. And Emilio. Why him?"

"They were all annoying--and in the way. Your mother was a harping bitch about your dad and me. And she wasn't a bit better herself. With Magda. And your father wasn't controllable; I couldn't keep him focused on me. Christ, he was even sniffing around you. And then when I did Emilio, having found him with your father that night when we'd had a fight and I came back to make it all better--only to find he'd already gotten Emilio strung up on his bedposts and was having a jolly old time with him--I lost control. Afterward, your father said he didn't want anything to do with me because I'd killed Emilio. He didn't turn me in, but he held it over my head. Even on that last day, in front of the others, he made a reference to it."

"And my tutor, Robert? . . . oh, shit, oh shit, Gordon. Ohhhhhh!"

The real fucking had begun. Again without giving me a chance to open fully to that magnum of his.

"He was convenient. I had Gustav seduce him away for a weekend in Las Vegas. He left the ranch without even knowing Emilio was floating in the pool. Gustav offed him there. I'd written a confession for him already--there were plenty of handwriting samples of his around the ranch house, and, just as I expected, the police were so happy to have someone unimportant and unconnected to pin Emilio's death on that they didn't look at the suicide note with their eyes open. But what I want to know is how did you figure it out? It's been twenty years and you were too young and not paying attention to anything but other men's cocks when Emilio died. You weren't even here when your parents died. How did you put it together?"

"A couple of things you did . . . and one thing . . . you didn't do." I was gasping it out. He was deep inside me, stroking fast and hard--and deep. I could hardly breathe. "You recommended Gustav to my father for employment, and then you used Gustav both to do your crimes and to cover them up. Tilton . . . ohhhhhhhh! . . . You were the one who recommended Gustav to my mother as temporary chauffer. You already were planning ahead. On Emilio, Gustav was your alibi for the night he died. He testified that you and he were together all night. If I'd been here for the inquest, I would have known to say that you were with my father earlier that night. And I just now came from interviewing Eugene Shelton--the Gene of our day. He said that Gustav was with him the whole night. That left you free to be killing Emilio. And my father free to see you do it."

"So, what else?"

"What you didn't do. You didn't tell Gustav my mother couldn't drive. I figure my dad was in the front passenger seat when they drove away from Tilton's house--and my mother in back, with Gustav driving. I don't know if he killed them or just rendered them unconscious before sending the Bentley over the side. But I'll bet, with my dad already slumped in the passenger seat, Gustav had to put my mother behind the wheel. That's why I never could accept it was an accident after being told she was found wedged in the driver's seat. She couldn't have driven them ten feet from Tilton's house. She didn't drive."

I was speaking rapidly, fighting through the pain of his brutal assault and trying to keep Gordon focused on what I was saying. I didn't want him to hear the sirens until it was too late for him. I was risking all, but I figured he wouldn't kill me until he had come. And Gordon could fuck for a long time before he came.

"What's that?" Gordon suddenly asked. "You've been stalling me until help arrived?"

The sirens were close enough now that even Gordon could tell they'd swung on the ranch drive from the main highway.

I felt the cold steel of the pistol against my temple, and at nearly the same moment I felt his ejaculation start deep inside me.

The world exploded. I remember thinking, idiotically, that I would never have guessed that someone would hear the gunshot from the bullet that killed them. But then I realized that I hadn't been shot. The bullet wasn't meant for me. Gordon's body slumped against mine, and he slid to the ground behind me.

The police cars hadn't quite made it to the stable area before the shot went off--so I knew it wasn't them--that Gordon had shot himself.

"You OK?" Danny asked as he got to me. He was fiddling around in the jeans Gordon had on the ground--after mistakenly trying my trousers first--in search of the keys to the handcuffs that still had me spread-eagled against the corral fence. The maneuver was clumsy, though, as he had a hand on my leg too, as if he wanted to assure himself that I was there and was OK.

"You could have waited to come in if you thought he'd be here," he admonished me. "We hustled as fast as we could."

"It's nice seeing you too, Danny," I answered, with an attempt at a laugh, which failed because I was shaking like a leaf. "I didn't think he'd be so quick to decide what was up."

"Pity he took the easy way out. Guess there will be a lot we won't know now."

I was free and had pulled on my briefs and trousers. I rubbed my wrists where they had chaffed from Gordon's brutal thrusts having jerked my arms around.

"He confirmed most of it," I said. "And I think we'll find some other answers right here."

"Other answers?" Danny Asked.

"Yeah." I turned back toward the corral and pulled Danny in beside me. "See that pinto pony there, Danny?"

"Yeah. So?"

"If you watched it for a while, you'd see it's real unsettled and not happy about something. And you'd see that it avoids that quadrant of the arena over in the back corner there. If you don't want to watch for a while, you'll have to take my word for it."

"OK. And so?"

"When we get a crew to dig back there, I think we'll find Dave Dolon, the owner of the pinto and the truck over there. I'll tell you about that later. But my guess is that you'll also find Andrew Dix. And I wouldn't be surprised if you found the twenty-year-gone bones of Gustav Gunnerson, as well. I don't think he just vanished. He helped cover up Emilio's murder--which Gordon did personally--and then pushed Robert Sinclair off the building in Las Vegas to provide the police with a murderer for Emilio. And he murdered my parents too--for Gordon Fields. At that point, I guess he'd worn out his usefulness to Gordon and knew dangerously too much. So, I'd say he's been back there, under the naturally scruffed-up surface of the training arena since just hours or days after my parent's death. If Andrew Dix is there, Gordon did that himself--to keep him from being able to tell us more about what was going on twenty-one years ago."

"God, you gravitate to the dangerous ones, Clint. Sounds like he kept busy. Glad we got here in time."

"Me too, Danny. Me too."

* * * *

I called my financial guy, Holi Tasker, on my cell as soon as we got to the motel. I was pretty shaken up at the ranch--more than I wanted to show to the guys down at the police department, so Danny suggested we stop at the motel, which was on the way, so I could calm down. Danny was on his phone too, checking in with his lieutenant. I suddenly didn't want to ever see the ranch again. There were attachments I wanted to maintain with my past, but the ranch certainly wasn't one of them. Danny had just said we'd stop here--not do anything heavy--but when his call was finished and I was still telling Tasker I was ready to sell the ranch and what I wanted him to do with the money from that, Danny had come over from the side of the bed he'd been on to my side, and I felt his thighs go around mine and his chest against my shoulder blades, and he encircled my waist with his arms and nuzzled his face into the hollow of my neck.

"What do you want to do now?" he whispered as I clicked off my cell phone.

"You know what I want to do now," I whispered back. "You always know what I want to do."

I lay gasping and sweating on the motel bed. Danny had fucked me--repeatedly--while holding me in a struggling-for-breath embrace. It was as if he couldn't get close enough to me, that he wanted our bodies to merge, held rigidly in a vice-like grip, with the only moving part being the magnificent ebony dick of his moving deep inside me--and my buttocks moving back to meet his thrusts.

"Danny, please. You're suffocating me. I love it, of course, but--"

"You scared me. I expected to see the red Mustang outside the gate to the ranch. And then when I didn't. I was so afraid I'd lost you. I nearly died when I heard the gunshot."

"It's OK, it's OK, Danny. I'm OK. We're here now. It's just us here now. It's over. We did good. We still make a great team, you and me."

He loosened his grip--but not the completeness of his embrace. And his cock was on the rise again, already starting to move again inside me. I sighed and took his woolly head between my hands and brought our lips together in a sweet, deep kiss.

"I feel good that you worried about me," I said when we came up for air. His cock wasn't letting up, though; he was digging deeper, picking up the stroking.

After a few minutes of silence as we both worked to adjust the fuck, to get into a rhythm that made us both feel like one, fine-tuned machine, punctuated with gasps and groans and moans and sighs, Danny spoke again.

"Can this never stop? Not this motel. But somethin' permanent. You transfer to L.A.? The two of us back together?"

I didn't answer immediately. I thought my body--how hard I'd worked to fall into the rhythm of his fuck. Letting him control me and take whatever he wanted from me. Me completely open to him, sucking him deep into my channel, the two of us becoming one. I thought that, with that total capitulation, I was showing him what I was willing to do.

Good thing I didn't answer, though, because the next thing I knew, the cell phone on the nightstand was buzzing away.

"Sorry, I gotta take this, Danny," I said when I rolled away from him and saw what the number calling was. "It's my lieutenant in New York."

"Glad I got you, Clint. It's Hank. We need you back as soon as you can settle up there in L.A. We've lost contact with Hank. He's been working on the inside with the Scarlotti case. And, well, we got a ransom note on him. Someone laid it all out. Can't be the Scarlottis, or there'd be no need for a note. But somebody's got Hank and wants a million to give him back in one piece. And that's the best-case scenario on that."

I turned and looked at Danny, who was staring back at me with eyes of need and want. He had a hand on my leg again--again as if trying to reassure himself again that I was there.

But my lieutenant had said the one name and the one situation that could focus me directly on what I really wanted, what I really needed.

"I'll take the next plane out Burt," I answered, without hesitation.

[Note: The next, and final, book of the Clint Folsom GM promiscuous bottom NYPD detective, "Death to the Past," will start posting soon.]