All Fools' Day Foolery

[This is a three-part completed story and will finish posting within a week]

[For an earlier story in the NYPD vice detective Mike Kavanagh series, see “Inevitable Case.”]

Mike Kavanagh stood at the French balcony window of his “seen better times” hotel on Canal Street, looking at the festival parade units forming below him, and then beyond to the western edge of the French Quarter. He was lucky to have found a residence hotel this near work that had smoking rooms, and he didn’t mind the water damage to his ceiling thanks to Hurricane Katrina and not yet fixed. It made a $150 difference a day in what he was paying--or, rather, in what the New York Police Department was paying.

A Mummer’s band was tuning up below his window. As he absentmindedly puffed on his cigarette and scratched his hairy belly and then his equally hairy balls, he was hoping that the band was, in fact, just tuning up and wouldn’t carry that cacophony of sound into the French Quarter.

This was the second day of the city’s three-day All Fools’ Day Parade festival, clustered around April Fools’ Day, and designed to augment the earlier-in-the-year Mardi Gras festivities that brought so much good business into New Orleans. This new attempt to bring cash into the city was much needed for the continuing recovery from Katrina, no matter that the festival usually would fall within what should be somber Lent and thus make blasphemy of the whole Mardi Gras concept.

He turned his head and looked at the bed. The sheets were tussled in a way that celebrated the wrestling match that had gone on already on the bed. The blond was young and small bodied, although perfectly proportioned. He had been plucked off the street late the previous night at the height of the parade and partying in the French quarter. He had followed Kavanagh around, yipping like a thirsty puppy and begging the hunky police detective to take him home and fuck him--so Kavanagh had obliged him to exhaustion.

The cutie had a pink, studded dog collar on his neck, bands of pink and blue feathers around his biceps and ankles, and a blue leather belt around his waist that had supported a pink loincloth, now detached from the back and fanned out under him over the pillow his belly was resting on. The pillow had served to roll his pert buttocks up toward the ceiling. He had rings on his fingers and toes, his normally bleach-blond hair was spiked and frosted with pink and blue, and his more-pretty-than-handsome face was lipsticked and mascaraed. The mascara had run in the heat of the previous night’s battles. He had lost the battle--multiple times.

He lay there, stretched out on his belly, his eyes following Kavanagh around the room, panting softly as an indication he’d been exhausted and belabored. The belabored part might have had something to do with handle of the string of graduated beads projecting from his ass, that last, biggest bead not quite inside him.

Kavanagh stubbed out his cigarette on the window pane, dropped the stub to the floor in front of the window at the edge of where the carpet started, to join other stubs there, and walked over to stand next to the side of the bed. The blond reached out to palm Kavanagh’s bare buttocks and to slide over imperceptively to enable him to open his mouth over the older man’s erection. As the young man tried, unsuccessfully, to deep throat him, both of them listening for the clicking of the older man’s Prince Albert cock ring on the blond’s teeth, Kavanagh reached down and patted the last bead home. The young man jerked and moaned deeply, but he took the invasion. After determining that the young man could accommodate it, Kavanagh fisted the handle on the bead string and slowly pulled the string out of the young man’s ass. The young man groaned and murmured, “You. I want you inside me again. Fuck me again, Daddy.”

Pulling back on his hips to withdraw from the blond’s mouth, Kavanagh reached over to the nightstand and picked up a Trojan Magnum condom packet. He split it open, dropped it on the floor by the bed to join three other empty packets and spent condoms, and, with the trembling help of the blond, who spent as much time fondling the shaft as sheathing it, with the “god, it’s huge” comment Kavanagh was used to hearing, rolled the condom on his erection.

He climbed up on the bed and hovered his six-and-a-half feet of nearly solid muscle over the much smaller, lither blond, stiff arming his fists into the mattress on either side of the young man’s feathered biceps. He slowly entered the young man’s ass, which had been kept open to his demanding requirements by the beads after the cock’s previous visitation, and, assuming a push-up position, started his morning exercise of mining the moaning young man’s ass. The young man grunted and groaned, but he raised his buttocks to give Kavanagh deeper entry.

“Yes, Daddy, yes.”

Later, $150 poorer and the young man gone, no doubt to return to his revelries on the street, Kavanagh showered, dressed in a wrinkled business suit, snapped his badge on his belt, and left to push himself through the ranks of the paraders already pouring in the streets. His goal was to part the sea of revelers to reach police headquarters in the French Quarter, where he was an exchange officer from the NYPD sent to help New Orleans establish a Vice Homicide unit.

This would be his vacation this year. Having a new crop of young, willing blonds to pick from would have to do in place of a real vacation, which he might have taken here anyway, having heard of all the young male pussy available in the city. That was his own vice; he had to have it constantly, and he had a thing for young, willowy blonds, especially ones who sold themselves for money and could open themselves enough to accommodate him.

* * * *

Kavanagh stopped for his usual coffee and bagel at the hole-in-the-wall coffee bar on Dauphine, just inside the French Quarter from his Canal Street hotel. He had found the place on his second morning in New Orleans and had continued going there for a quick breakfast and a less quick lunch ever since. He didn’t know if it was the coffee or the waiter, Kyle, who usually served him, that went down easy. It could be either--or both.

Was that on purpose, he wondered as Kyle touched his hand when putting his coffee down and then brushed his arm as he pulled around the table to go back to the coffee bar. He and Kyle had been playing this bear and mouse game for over a week now. That’s how Kavanagh had to think of it, him being this tall, husky, hairy beast and Kyle being that willowy blond type who made Kavanagh go hard. He was hard now, watching the slight roll of the young blond’s pert butt as he returned to the coffee bar. Visions of laying the waiter on top of one of the tables went through Kavanagh’s mind, and he castigated himself. He’d just dedicated a night to getting his rocks off four times with a rent-boy. Surely . . . But, no, it was his lot in life to be ever ready, especially for a sweet little blond trick.

Kyle on his back on the table, the palms of his hands pressing into Kavanagh’s chest, burying his fingers in the matting of the hair there, an empty gesture of “no” when his eyes, even with the frightened deer look in them, were being so “yes, yes.” Arching his back, the look in the eyes going wild, his mouth opening in a wide “Oh, shit” as he feels the stretching entry of the first couple of inches in what is going to be a very long, thick, and rough journey.

He was brought back to the present by the off-key sound of a rag-tag band going by on Dauphine, headed deeper into the French Quarter. Not yet 9:00 in the morning and day two of the All Fool’s Day festival had already begun. Already this raucous festival was standing on Kavanagh’s only nerve.

Kavanagh saw that he’d finished his coffee and bagel during his reverie and that, as usual, he was late getting into the station. There was a 9:30 status meeting to get to. There was sure to be business, especially now that the prostitutes were out in force on the street again for the festival. New Orleans needed what he had brought from New York--expertise in getting a Vice Homicide unit, separate from simply homicide, going. If any city needed it more than New York had, it would be New Orleans, especially during Mardi Gras and this new street parade festival.

Captain Monroe hadn’t been a fool about that. He’d asked the NYPD for help and not a moment too soon, as Kavanagh learned when he got to the station.

Kyle held up the coffee pot and gave Kavanagh a quizzical look. Mike knew he didn’t have time for another cup. He shrugged and shook his head “no,” as he rose from the table and put his usual, plus a generous tip, money on the table. Kyle put the pot down and was at the door when Kavanagh exited, all smiles and a “Have a good day.”

Yes, Kavanagh thought, he could have this young man’s ass, if he wanted it. And of course he did. Kavanagh wanted it about three times an hour, and he wanted it from a bad boy blond, although Kyle didn’t seem to be the bad boy type. He was blond and small and more pretty than handsome, though, which was three-quarters of Kavanagh’s turn-on specifications. That was the irony of Mike Kavanagh specializing in vice homicide and the reason, perhaps, that he was so good at it. He could think like the perpetrators--because he was one himself.

There was something about him that was a sex magnet for young blonds who wanted to be manhandled. He didn’t know what it was, other than being a big, handsome bear, with a nice smile, sensual lips, and the look of danger in his eyes. He didn’t analyze it. He just enjoyed that it was in play, because it brought exactly the sweet-on-the surface but nasty-seeking underneath little pieces to him he enjoyed. It continued working as he entered the police station and walked up the stairs toward the space that had been set aside, next to the squad room for Homicide, presided over by Captain Leon Monroe. The captain was a real character and a native Cajun and a fixture in the New Orleans police department going back to the pre-Katrina corruption days. That’s how eras were marked in New Orleans now--before and after Katrina.

That’s how almost everything was divided in New Orleans.

He was met on the landing before his floor by Brent, a flighty and flouncy young blond, the unit’s research clerk.

“Good, you’re here,” Brent said, giving Kavanagh an “I could eat you alive” look. “I came looking for you. Captain Monroe is about to start the morning briefing. Wanted to get off an early start. I can get you a cup of coffee--or do anything else for you you want.” Brent flirted with all the men, but he laid the innuendo on thick for Kavanagh.

It was a bald offer. Brent wasn’t subtle. He wanted the big, beautiful brute who was the rough-life cop from up north, New York City, to fuck him. He had done everything but lie on Kavanagh’s desk and open his legs. Brent had cased out this visitor real well. He even knew from moments in the locker room after workouts in the station gym that Kavanagh was hairy in ways very sensual to Brent and, more important, was horse hung and PA pierced. He had to be a serious player. No one puts a PA in their cock head who isn’t happy to use it.

Kavanagh knew it was a bald offer. It was a bit too bald for him, and Brent had two things that weren’t going for him. He was too easy for a guy not looking to be paid for it and he was a work colleague. Kavanagh drew the line at doing it with anyone he had to work with it. Sex and the office just didn’t mix. Nothing but grief could ensue from that.

Brent did have a very nice ass, though, begging to have a hard cock slipped into its crack. Kavanagh followed Brent up the stairs, Brent provocatively jutting out his butt and shaking it. Yes, Kavanagh had the urge to run his hand--and more--up into the crevice between the two orbs, but he resisted. Not in the office.

* * * *

“It’s a shame,” Marco, the heavy-set Italian cop said, as he passed the photos on around the table at the morning meeting.

“Sure is,” Mike Kavanagh agreed, as he passed them on to Felix, Marco’s muscled-up black sidekick. Somehow Kavanagh didn’t think they were talking about the same shame, although he was sorry the two were dead. To him it was a shame that they were wasted, both of the disemboweled bodies shown in the photo being young blonds. He couldn’t really tell what their faces were like, though, as both had been painted up in clown faces. From the way they were dressed--or almost dressed--he surmised they’d been plucked off the streets they were working at night, maybe out of the All Fools’ Day parades.

“Just what we need in the city just now--a serial killer; a Jack the Ripper,” Felix said, as he handed the photos back to Captain Monroe at the head of the table. Both of the cops--Marco and Felix--who were the beginning of the New Orleans Vice Homicide unit, were young, in their upper twenties. They were sort of a beauty and the beast pairing, Marco bordering on fat slob and Felix being very much aware of his cut body, but they had come over from Homicide together and worked well as a team. Monroe was the old hand of the unit, commanding both Homicide and this new subset of that section. Tall, bulky, kept from being obese by being  nearing middle-age body-builder muscular, he was a bald former Marine. He also was a survivor in the New Orleans police department of old, which meant that he went along to get along and could be bought. He also was hard as nails.

At the moment he was glaring at Felix and leaning on Brent, who was sitting at the wall away from the table and taking notes. “I don’t want to hear anything about serial killers at this point, Felix. And I don’t want to hear any reporters quoting unnamed sources on that either. And you, Brent. Hey, faggot, wake up and take notes--but not anything about serial killers, you hear?”

“Yes, Captain,” Brent murmured, obviously stung by the name calling. No one else around the table took notice, though, as Brent obviously was  a flaming faggot and no one would win with Monroe by calling out his bigotry.

It was the captain’s obvious distain and prejudice, though, that kept Kavanagh’s cards very close to his chest on that point. His own chief back at the NYPD knew about him--and used Kavanagh’s expertise in that realm mercilessly--but he hadn’t, to Kavanagh’s understanding, passed that special skill of Kavanagh’s on to the New Orleans’ police. All that Captain Monroe knew was that Kavanagh’s unit in New York had a phenomenal case closing rate and that Kavanagh was the star of the unit.

“What do you think?” Monroe said, turning to Kavanagh.

“Tell me what we know about them. Any links? Where were they found? The method of kill and the clown faces do seem to link them. What else is there?”

“They weren’t found in the same place in town, although both in alleys,” Marco said. “This one, Steve Parin, was found in the Garden District. And this one, Tye Brandon, near the docks in Faubourg Marigny, so on opposite ends of the French Quarter, but both near the river and both in prostitute pickup areas.”

“So, maybe both rent-boys?” Kavanagh said. “And both small, young, and blond. There’s that in common.” He looked at the photos with a particular private feeling of loss. Both dead before he could use them. They both were what he gravitated to, used, and then tossed away, with no complaints from any of them. “Day jobs either of them?”

“Yes, and this is where they diverge,” Marco said. “Brandon was a street vender, selling hot dogs in the French Quarter. Low life with just a room near the docks. Parin was just a mail clerk, but he was living with a sugar daddy in the Garden District. So, two different worlds, really.”

“A sugar daddy? And he is who and has what as an alibi? And does he buy hot dogs on the street?”

Monroe cleared his throat. “There’s nothing there. The man wasn’t even in town during the first kill, and it’s not an avenue for us to pursue. Don’t put anything on that in your notes, sweet cheeks,” Monroe turned to Brent, who was shrinking in his seat.

“Yes, sir, no, sir,” he answered.

So, Kavanagh thought, City Hall has already ruled on that. Monroe’s checked out the sugar daddy but is going to keep a lid on that one for someone. Well, OK, it’s not my department.

“We’re sure both were men of the night?” Kavanagh asked.

“That’s what my sources all said about Parin,” Marco answered.

“Confirmed about Brandon too,” Felix added.

“Where was this Parin a mail clerk?” Kavanagh asked.

“The Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the F. Edwards Herbert Federal Building on South Maestri Place, in the French Quarter,” Marco answered, reading from his notes.

“And where does this vendor’s cart park?” Kavanagh asked.

It was time for Felix to look at his notes and respond. “Also on South Maestri Place,” he said.

No one said anything for a moment or two; they just shared looks around. That was a link.

“Well, I think it’s just possible that we have here what you don’t want us to name yet, Captain,” the guest detective said. Beyond that, he also had a premonition that this sugar daddy they also couldn’t talk about just might be some big wig at the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Maybe yet another example of not doing your business at and near where you work.

“Shit,” Monroe said. “And with a festival on and young blond prostitutes pouring out on the streets at night.”

“Pity,” Kavanagh then said, taking another look at the photos--and knowing that his “pity” was for a different reason than that of the other detectives. “And the disemboweling. Nasty stuff.”

“Someone who hates queers?” Marco offered, visibly avoiding looking at Monroe.

“Or who loves them to death,” Kavanagh said.

They all heard the gagging sound, but all of the men at the table studiously avoided looking at Brent, as the small, young, obviously “I put out for demanding men” blond quickly departed from the room.

“Fuckin’ faggot,” Monroe said under his breath--but not far enough under his breath for the word not to resonate through the room.

It was yet another reason, though, that Kavanagh could smell a “who cares?” cover up in the offing.

* * * *

That day was both frustrating and challenging for Kavanagh, not least of all because he’d forgotten what day it was--which was sort of dumb, he decided, considering all of the parading and Tom foolery that was going on around him.

The frustration was because Kavanagh was just a consultant here. A juicy case had just come up--one where time could be of the essence. The two young men hadn’t died the same night. There had been four days between when the medical examiner had said they’d been disemboweled. It just had taken longer to find the body of Brandon near the rougher side of the city, near the Faubourg Marigny docks, than that of Parin in the more gentile Garden District. If this, indeed, was a serial killer--and when Kavanagh thought that thought, he looked around to make sure that Leon Monroe wasn’t there to read he thoughts--they, or rather, the New Orleans cops, may not have more than a day or two before the killer would strike again.

Marco and Felix were just sitting at their desks, shooting the bull, for an hour after the morning meeting. Every once in a while they looked over at Kavanagh and grinned--to an irritating extent. The NYPD consultant wanted to tell them to get off their tails and go out and find the killer of the type of lay Kavanagh enjoyed. But, of course, he couldn’t do that. They didn’t work for him; Kavanagh was just a consultant here.

Shortly before noon, Kavanagh found out why they were hanging around. He reached down to open the bottom drawer of his desk, to find that the handle was missing. Then, when he opened the top drawer, a bunch of balloon snakes jumped out at him, almost giving him a coronary.

Marco’s and Felix’ grins turned into guffaws. Felix chanted out, “Hey, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey,” which was punctuated by Marco’s “April Fool, big guy.”

Kavanagh shared in the smiles as best he could, but he left soon after for lunch, going, without giving it much thought, to the coffee shop on Dauphine near his hotel. Kyle was there and rushed over to take his order, although a young black waiter--swishy in a way that didn’t really attract Kavanagh, although he was a cute piece--gave Kyle a look that told the vice cop that this might not be Kyle’s table. Kavanagh ordered, as the blond waiter stood real close to him, giving him puppy dog eyes, and moved, with a toss of his very nice tail, off to the kitchen.

“This should be my table,” a voice said.

Kavanagh looked up to find the black waiter standing there. “Excuse me?” he said.

“This is really my table. And I think you’re not going to get what you expect from Kyle--least not what you could easily have from me.”

“I don’t understand,” the detective said. But, in fact, he did understand. He hadn’t hidden his interest in Kyle enough, he thought.

“I mean I think you’re sexy as hell. If it’s a guy you want, I could be your guy. You’re a top, ain’t you? You’re not going to get it from Kyle. He’s just a tease. He’s a virgin.”

“Oh, well, I think you’ve misunderstood,” Kavanagh said. “I’m not into guys.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, sugar,” the black waiter muttered, and then he was off as Kyle came back with the Coke the detective had ordered. If the black, swishy piece thought he’d lose interest on the supposition that Kyle hadn’t taken cock before, Kavanagh thought, he was very wrong. This was probably the hunky cop’s second-most-favorite vice--curing young guys of their virginity.

As Kyle put the Coke down on the table, Kavanagh put his hand near where the soft drink landed. “Do you ever get to leave here?” he asked.

“Sure. Every night at 9:30. I usually am the one to close the place down.”

“Maybe some night, you’d like--”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Kyle said. He let his fingertips brush across Kavanagh’s knuckles before moving away.

Yes, he wants me, Kavanagh thought, with satisfaction. Just a matter of plucking the fruit off the tree.

On the way back to the station, Kavanagh decided he couldn’t just sit around on his hands on this case. It would drive him crazy. It was Marco and Felix’ case, but there was one avenue they had been told not to pursue. He’d been told not to pursue it either, but he didn’t really work for Leon Monroe. And it would frustrate him like hell to be sitting around waiting to be asked to consult on something.

He knew Brent would get him the information if he was nice to him. He stopped at the research clerk’s desk on the way into the unit, but Brent wasn’t there.

“Where’s Brent?” he asked Marco, who was busy putting on his suit jacket. Felix was standing and doing the same. Kavanagh wondered if they’d done something else to his desk for April Fools’ Day that would be so messy that they didn’t want to be around to be splashed with it--but he decided that, if they’d done anything, they couldn’t resist staying around to see the results of it.

“He’s off doing his other job,” Marco said.

“His other job?”

“Yes,” Felix chimed in. “We only have him part time--which is more time than the captain would like to have him, as you no doubt have noticed. He also works as a courier, taking documents around from here to other government offices. He should be back in a couple of hours.”

“He’s got yet another job--a night job,” Marco said in a slightly sneery voice, “but that’s at night and we don’t talk about it at the station.”

A couple of hours was too long to sit and wonder if a screw had been taken out of his desk chair in honor of the first day of April, Kavanagh thought. Monroe wasn’t here either. His office was off the main Homicide unit bullpen. Kavanagh had a computer and a telephone and his own two feet. He could work without a research assistant, although one with the skills of working the New Orleans systems would be a help.

Kavanagh didn’t know whether Brent would have helped him crack the mystery of who Steve Parin’s sugar daddy had been, but after three hours of work from his desk, Kavanagh had come up with only dead ends and blank walls. He got the sense, though, that it wasn’t that the information wasn’t out there and was known by some he could ask; it was that they didn’t want to tell him, that City Hall had the lid on the question. That could only mean that the guy they were protecting was somebody important, somebody worth City Hall’s protection.

He grabbed his suit coat and hit the street for a couple of more hours, right up to where the city turned over from office work to serious partying, but he finished the work day no less frustrated than he’d been returning from lunch.

He needed a steak so rare that it mooed, and he needed to lay someone. He was a man with needs. He was a victim of cum buildup and could shoot five or six times in a day before reaching mellow. It was April 1st and a hedonist festival was under way on the streets of New Orleans. It was a night to lay someone.

He took care of the steak part at a restaurant in the French Quarter and then went looking for a gay bar to pick up a little blond rent-boy for the night.

April Fools’ Day must be a day for strange coincidences, he thought, because when he walked into a bar at random--one with a group of male prostitutes milling out in front of it, unfortunately none of them a combination of small, young, blond, and for rent--he quickly saw that Brent was sitting in a booth in the back corner of the bar. The bar was in full, uninhibited party mode. Men weren’t just cruising and flirting at the tables and on the dance floor, where the music was too loud and not enough on key. They were also fucking in the corners.

Brent was in one of the corners. Kavanagh took up a position at the bar, where he was turned away from Brent but could see back in the corner through the mirror behind the bar. While he was fighting with himself over whether to keep his sex life separate from the office or not, his choices were cut down to a “too late to ask.” He hadn’t been watching, but Brent no longer was alone. He had been joined, no doubt by someone he was expecting, because they already were down to the dirty. Brent was sideways on the bench on the far side of the booth, his left leg on the right shoulder of a burly guy crouched over him, and his right leg on the table top, resting on a pair of trousers that had come off someone--no doubt off Brent.

From the expression on Brent’s face that Kavanagh could see reflected in the mirror and the way he was flinching in rhythm and being moved back and forth against the back wall of the booth, it was obvious that he was being fucked. From the frequency with which the face of the big man with his back to Kavanagh was being lowered to Brent’s for a kiss, it was obvious that Brent was enjoying the fuck.

It obviously wasn’t going to be Brent for Kavanagh that evening, so he started shopping around. There was plenty of interest in him, but nothing small, young, and blond. It occurred to him then that he’d set up something tentatively with Kyle. This would be a great night to debauch a virgin, he thought. He started to rise from the bar, but then sat down hard again and averted his face.

Brent and his companion were coming out of the booth and heading for the door, arm in arm.

Brent’s companion was Captain Leon Monroe.

Talk about April Fools and strange coincidences, Kavanagh thought. Waiting for the two to be well away from the bar, Kavanagh paid his tab and went out on the street, which already was packed with revelers, the middle of the street sort of cleared for the passing of floats and bands. As he crossed the street, a reveler--a small, young, blond--leaned off a float, lowered three strands of colorful beads over his neck, kissed him on the mouth, and floated on.

It hit Kavanagh that this could have been the same guy he had fucked in his hotel room four times the previous night. The guy had shown the promise of being able to go for five or six screws. Just what Kavanagh was in the mood for tonight. But as quick as he’d been there, just as quick he was gone. Kavanagh went in pursuit, but try as he might, as he walked through the warren of streets that was the French Quarter, he couldn’t pick out the float he was looking for.

And frustration of frustrations, when he got to the coffee bar on Dauphine, it was 9:35 and the café was dark, deserted, and locked.

He was frustrated as hell. And his balls ached. He needed to get his rocks off.

* * * *

The current case was going through his mind as Kavanagh was walking back to his hotel from the closed coffee bar. He’d gotten all the way to the hotel lobby when the name “Faubourg Marigny” entered his mind. That was a low-lying district to the east of the French Quarter that had been badly flooded during Katrina. He thought about it because that was the area in which one of the victims’ bodies had been found. It also entered his mind, though, because it was the quarter in which he’d found an exclusive male brothel he’d used twice before, when he was flush enough with cash, that accommodated tastes like his without fuss and gave a 50 percent cops’ discount.

The house was on Frenchmen Street that ran diagonally out from the French Quarter in a northeast direction and that sported nightclubs and hotels in the blocks close to the Quarter, many of which were only now being rehabilitated following the flood. After a few blocks, though, the street ran into a quieter residential area. The brothel was one of the few buildings in the area that had survived largely unscathed. It had been a low-country bayou one-story plantation house that had been moved into the city, originally on a rural lot, and constructed on stilts. The ground floor became a brick-floored patio, and the upper, living floor included a parlor, dining room, kitchen and six bedrooms. Each of the bedrooms now had both a bathroom and a male prostitute installed for the pleasure of men with money and rough tastes.

A short lawn with lush bordering foliage and an iron lace fence separated the front of the brothel from the street and gave the activity in the building a bit of privacy.

At a 50 percent professional discount, Kavanagh could just about indulge himself here one night every two weeks.

He decided that this was one of those nights.

As he walked onto the front lawn, he saw a small group of men, most of them paired off, lounging around on the patio under the house. As luck would have it, his usual small, young, blond wasn’t paired and, seeing Kavanagh nod as he approached, rose from a chaise lounge and ascended a staircase at the back of the house. Kavanagh went up the front steps to be greeted at the door by the house’s madam, a zaftig transvestite, calling “herself” Madame Zena, who was draped in purple and blue, tonight wearing a blue wig and carrying a purple, long-stemmed cigarette holder and hand fan. Her lipstick was black.

She recognized Kavanagh, being careful to keep track of all city officials using her establishment, knew what and who Kavanagh wanted, and guided him to one of the rooms on the front of the house. As he passed the parlor, he saw a young--well, not so very young; maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight year old--small, blond man, who was deliciously and impossibly handsome.

Kavanagh looked quizzically at Madame Zena. If he was available just maybe Kavanagh would want to change his order tonight. He was older than Kavanagh really liked, but every other aspect of him more than made up for that.

“He came with a guest,” Madame Zena whispered. “He’s just waiting. Some sort of aide, I think.”

“For . . . ?” Kavanagh asked. Who was so important that he brought an aide to wait for him to fuck someone in a male brothel?

“I’m not telling,” Zena said coquettishly, “just as I won’t tell anyone you have been here. An NYPD vice detective. Delicious. How many would you like this evening? Trojan Magnums, if I remember correctly. Oolala.” She patted his arm with her purple fan.

She was standing there, with a pile of Trojan Magnums in her hand, having pulled them from somewhere in her costume. This was how the fees were paid. The cost was by the condom, and the house provided all of the condoms. There were other arrangements for barebacking and yet others for whips and floggers, but Kavanagh hadn’t looked into any of those . . . yet. Bondage and certain toys--dildos, strings of beads, tit clamps, clothes pins--were included in the basic price. It was a pretty freewheeling house.

“Three, I think.” Kavanagh answered. He could have done five or six; he wanted to do five or six. But he barely could afford the three.

Sam 3, naked, was waiting for him in the room. They all were named Sam and distinguished only by their numbers. The lower the number, the more useful they were. Sam 1 and 2 went to the sadists. Sam 3 was on the cusp of what the two lower numbers would take. Madame Zena knew that Kavanagh was on the cusp of that in what he’d want and demand.

The young man was kneeling on the floor beside the bed. He unzipped Kavanagh and took his huge tool in his mouth, deep throating it with effort, while Kavanagh slowly stripped down. When he was fully erect, which didn’t take Kavanagh long, as he was on the edge from frustration and need already, Sam 3 rolled the first of the condoms on Kavanagh’s cock, the detective leaned down, lifted the small man by his waist and bent him over the bed. For the next few minutes Kavanagh ate out the young man’s ass, opening him up, and stroked and sucked on his small cock and balls. He didn’t take long with this, though, as he was too keyed up.

He also didn’t cover, mount, and fuck the young man from behind as he’d done for the initial fuck the last two times he had been here and had sampled Sam 3. Instead, he lifted the small body off the bed, turned him and himself, sat on the end of the bed, and, pulling the young man into his lap, facing him. Positioning the bulb of his cock at the rim of the entrance, Kavanagh suddenly slammed Sam 3’s channel down on the thick staff.

Sam 3 howled in surprise and pain, just as Kavanagh wanted him to, and Kavanagh continued to slam the channel up and down on the cock, with Sam 3, once adjusting to it, letting his torso stream back toward the floor and moaning and groaning--genuinely, Kavanagh was sure, until Kavanagh had ejaculated into the bulb of the condom.

“Now you,” Kavanagh growled, and he held the young man there, impaled on his shaft, while Sam 3 stroked himself off.

Kavanagh quickly recovered and lay back on the bed, Sam 3’s wrists bound behind him, and Kavanagh holding the young man’s waist and, once again, slamming the prostitute’s channel up and down on Kavanagh’s thick, long, hard cock--this time at great length and for some time after Sam 3 had dropped his load--to a second ejaculation. The intensity of the fuck was bouncing the headboard against the wall of the room, and Kavanagh was aware--and aroused--at the knowledge that the sound was in stereo. The headboard of the room on the other side of the wall behind him was being bounced against the wall as well, and he could hear muffled cries of passion from the room next door. Kavanagh’s bed won the longevity honors for bounce and cock slamming by far, though, and silence reigned from across the wall and Sam 3 was limp and flopping like a rag doll long before Kavanagh was finished jack hammering him on the cock.

* * * *

Luca Alba, dressed to the nines in a tight, red dress, with a short skirt, black mesh stockings, red high heels, a blonde wig, and face makeup that would make any of the All Fools’ Day festival revelers over in the French Quarter proud, was lying on the bed in the brothel, on the other side of the wall from where Kavanagh was getting his rocks off. Alba’s legs were bent and open, and he was patiently waiting for Sam 5, one of two designated house tops.

He looked over to the door to the bedroom as it opened and his eyes went big with surprise. “You,” he said.

“Yes, me,” the top answered. “Don’t say you haven’t dreamed of being with me again.”

“Yes, but I thought you were upset with me. You know it wasn’t me who wanted what we had to stop, but, this is--”

“Don’t you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, but--”

“Then shut up and grab the headboard rails over your head. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Alba did so and moaned as the top retrieved restraints from the nightstand drawer and tied Alba’s wrists off at the headboard. Then, standing back, the top began to strip down.

“Is this what you’ve been missing since we argued?” the top asked in a mocking voice, waving a good-sized, half hard cock at Alba.

“Yes, oh yes,” Alba murmured.

“And you want to suck it again, don’t you?”

“Yes. Please, yes.”

The top straddled Alba’s chest and fed his cock into Alba’s mouth. While Alba was sucking him to fully engorged, the top reached back, pulled the skirt of Alba’s dress up to his waist, grabbed a handful of the breakaway panties, and ripped them off Alba’s pelvis.

Alba gasped, released the cock from his mouth, and cried out, “Yes, yes. Fuck me!”

Repositioning himself, shoving his knees under Alba’s buttocks to raise the man’s pelvis to him, and thrusting his cock inside Alba’s ass, the top did just that--fucked him--for several minutes. Alba gasped and panted and groaned and grunted as the headboard of the bed bounced off the wall. The same sound was coming from the adjoining room, but both Alba and the top were too concentrated on the pounding that the top was giving Alba for either to notice or to care. Alba preferred being barebacked but the top was sheathed. The man on the bottom didn’t seem to care about that either. They had been estranged but now they were lovers again.

The two came simultaneously. And as they did so, the top pulled the pillow out from underneath Alba’s head and pressed it down on his face. Alba wildly scrabbled at the top and the smothering pillow with his fingernails, but that didn’t last long.

At the bedroom door six minutes later, the top turned and said to the silent room, “April Fools, asshole.”

* * * *

As he liked to do between the second and third fucks, Kavanagh left the bed and went to the window overlooking the front lawn. He leaned against the window frame and smoked a cigarette, while he recovered his vigor to make the best use of that third condom he’d paid for. Sam 3 lay on his stomach on the bed, stretched out, moaning, and watching Kavanagh enjoy his cigarette.

There was movement out on the street in front of the brothel. A black Escalade SUV had silently glided up to a stop and two men had come out of the brothel, carrying what looked like a rolled-up carpet. Madame Zena was standing half way down the front staircase, watching them. One of the men was the delicious blond Kavanagh had seen in the parlor earlier. The other man kept his face pointed away from the front of the brothel and was a complete stranger to Kavanagh. The eyes of the trained detective immediately went to the license plate and his interest increased. There was no license plate.

He watched until the carpet had been loaded into the back of the Escalade, the two men had gotten into the backseat of the vehicle, it had glided off into the night, and Madame Zena had turned and reentered the building.

Then he walked over to the nightstand, stubbed out his cigarette, opened a drawer of the nightstand, and took out a couple of lengths of padded restraint material. The handcuffs he pulled out of his own suit pocket where the suit was hanging on a hanger on the back of the bedroom door. He walked over to the bed, grabbed Sam 3 by the ankles, turned him over onto his back, and pulled his buttocks to the bottom edge of the bed. The prostitute remained malleable, complying with every position Kavanagh put him in.

Sam 3 watched Kavanagh move with his eyes, but said nothing. He moaned low when Kavanagh snapped the handcuffs on his ankles and then again as Kavanagh bound his thighs close with one of the lengths of restraints. He managed a “Yes, fuck me Daddy,” as Kavanagh connected the cuffs to his already-bound wrists and then pulled his arms over his head and tied him off at the headboard.

He was about to say something else when Kavanagh, with the comment, “We don’t want to wake anyone who is sleeping, do we?” popped a ball gag in Sam 3’s mouth.

Then Sam 3 was panting shallowly and making noises deep in his throat, as, holding the young man’s tightly bound legs up the line of his chest, Kavanagh worked to open the young man’s ass more with the use of a black Jeff Stryker dildo. Sam 3 was panting harder and making gurgling noises through the ball gag when, leaving the dildo inside him, Kavanagh started to work his own cock in above the dildo.