Death in Manhattan

"Let me go in and check with the captain again."

"Thank you, that would be helpful."

The young woman had been giving me the once over several more times than once in the more than an hour that I'd been sitting outside the captain's office after the appointed hour that he'd summoned me. And I think that if I had been sitting here more than fifteen minutes more, she'd have asked me if I was married and would pointedly have told me that she wasn't. But I already knew that she was and that her husband was a big bruiser and jealous as all get out. And he had every reason to be. I'd been clued in that she dropped her skirt for every good-looking young cop who came through this office. She was good looking enough; her problem with me was that I wasn't remotely interested in women.

I hoped this was about the detective's exam. It was the first time I'd taken it, and guys weren't supposed to pass it until something like the third time. But I'd felt pretty good about it. And I had more preparation than most cops on the beat. I had a masters in criminal justice from Penn State. And I'd been on the job here in Richmond, Virginia, for two years.

I could have stayed in Pennsylvania after Penn State. I'd been recruited hard by the Philadelphia force. But I wanted someplace not so cold--and someplace not so dangerous. Not dangerous in terms of life threatening--one shouldn't even think of being a cop if he was going to let that bother him. But dangerous in terms of what was just waiting to happen. I'd been ripe for the assistant football coach my first year at the university; it hadn't taken much for him to corner me in the locker room shower after everyone else was gone. After two years of that, though, he'd told me I was too old for him, and he'd left me alone--not that I wanted to be left alone. Since then he seemed to want them younger and younger every year. I didn't want to get embroiled in what I knew would come down about what he was getting away with, what I hadn't called him on, so as soon as I had my master's degree in hand, I skipped the state.

Thinking about that as I sat waiting to see the captain made me start thinking why this captain might have summoned me. He'd never done so before, and this wasn't my direct line of command. I was just a traffic cop in the 3rd precinct--the cushy West End of Virginia's capital. If it wasn't about the detective's exam, what was it about?

I hoped I'd been discrete enough about my personal vice. I knew it was enough to get me bounced off the force, but I had my needs. Maybe I was feeding my needs too close to home. I went to the clubs in Shockoe Bottom fairly frequently--well, increasingly frequently--but I tried to maintain a low profile. I'd only stay around long enough for the right guy to make the right proposition. I didn't exactly scream to the world why I went to those places. And if there was any hint of seeing another cop, I'd split.

But this led to me breaking out in a sweat. Alvaro Flores. Had Internal Affairs gotten wind of my link up with Alvaro Flores? God, I hoped not. I hadn't known that Alvaro was head of the Latin Kings gang in the city until after we'd fucked a couple of times. And after I knew, I made sure not to hook up with him anywhere in public. I should have given him up, of course. But I couldn't do that. He could cock with the best.

And I was so weak in that realm.

I'd had a rough day. Three teenagers had wrapped a car around a telephone pole near the campus of the University of Richmond, and I'd been the first one of the scene. Their bodies were in rough shape, and it had been overwhelming and disturbing. When I got off work, I wanted to blow off steam, to forget what I'd seen. And when I was in a mood like that, I wanted it rough. Alvaro and several other guys in leather had come off their bikes and into the Barcode club on East Grace.

He'd been what I wanted--a mean-looking tall Hispanic, all tattooed and muscled up and dripping with attitude. And I obviously was what he wanted too, as he gravitated right to me. He had me lapped at his table in quick time. I could feel his want for me, and it was making me pant for him. I think he would have taken me right there. I told him he could do what he wanted with me, but not there. So, he fucked me tied to his cycle in a shed where they probably were chopping cars. I didn't care what they were doing, as long as he didn't stop what he was doing.

That led to almost weekly encounters, during which I got my fix for the rougher side of sex. I was sure I'd been discrete about it. If the department had found out, though, that could very well be the reason I had been summoned to the captain's office. And if so, I could kiss the detectives' exam--

"Captain Stevens is ready to see you now, Sergeant Folsom." She was batting her eyes at me. I could almost feel her palpable need for me to show interest in her--to ask her out. That gave me a bit of strength as I moved to door to Captain Stevens' office. She was his secretary. She did his typing and filing. If what Stevens had called me on the carpet for was about having sex with a Hispanic gang leader, that she'd hardly be trying to get me to hook up with her. Besides Captain Stevens was the deputy chief for operations. If they were on to me about hooking up with a gang leader, it should be the deputy chief for Internal Affairs' office I should be entering.

"Ah, Sergeant Folsom--may I call you Clint?--please shut the door and take a seat. I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but we're putting together a very important sting operation."

He hadn't given me time to say "yay" or "nay" to the informality, but I'm sure that was on purpose--to show his authority. I'm sure neither one of us believed for a minute that I'd call him Seymour.

I sat down and we eyed each other for a moment. I saw his initial smile turn into a more serious expression. "I has come to my attention that you are involved in a behavioral issue, Clint."

Here it comes, I thought. He couldn't even say gay activity, no less than fucking around with other men. My personal weakness was to be that I had a behavioral issue--not that I was a satyriasis and craved to have men's cocks inside me. Or that that had nothing to do with how good a cop I could be. I wondered if it made any difference that it was a gangster like Flores. Then I answered my own question--of course it made a difference.

"I understand," I said. "You need go no further." I started to rise. I was already wondering what I could do with a masters degree in criminal justice if I couldn't be a cop. Maybe go for a law degree now? I didn't need a salary. I didn't even know how a cop could live on the salary they were paid. How much deeper did I need to bury my wants and desires in the next career?

"Please sit, Clint. The basic issue is something we can address later. For now, it seems that the position you've attained in the situation can be put to great advantage to us in this sting operation I'm working on."

Oh, shit, I thought. He's going to put me undercover with Flores. I never told him Flores was a cop. He never asked; he was also too anxious to get inside me. I was never really a person for him. Just a depository for his lust. Not that I cared. But I'm going to go undercover inside Flores' gang and he's going to find out and I'm going to die. Then there will be no more "situation" for the Richmond police department to be concerned about.

"Are you with me, Clint?" Stevens interjected into my racing thoughts. "As I said, we need not address your actions. I need you to help with our sting operation on Kwame Jackson."

"Kwame Jackson?" I was shocked. It was the same issue really, but I didn't think in a million years that it would be Professor Jackson who the department had connected me with rather than Flores.

"Yes, I've been informed he's quite attentive to you and that you have his trust--that you spend a couple of nights a week at his home."

"Kwame Jackson is a respected professor at the University of Richmond. Yes, I've been seeing him--and for the purposes you seem to have concluded. But what's the department's interest in Jackson?"

"He is one of the biggest drug dealers in the city and is a direct conduit to a major supplier of drugs in the United States."

"I don't believe it," I answered, sinking into my chair, the wind having been completely knocked out of my sails.

Kwame Jackson taught southern history at the University of Richmond. I had decided that if I was going to live in the South, I needed to get a better feel for its history and culture. I was basically a southern California boy, so neither history nor culture, for that matter, had meant much to me. But as soon as I moved to Richmond, I realized that here it mattered very much. You couldn't get anything done in Richmond without an appreciation for how the South worked.

I had signed up to audit Jackson's class. Being a little older than most of his students and more assertive, I had gotten his notice in class. Well, as he told me later, it was my remarkable resemblance to my movie star father that had first attained his notice. He was a movie buff and knew my parents' work well--both of them were box-office stars in the era in which Jackson was following films closely. He was a contemporary of my parents.

Jackson had invited me to his home to look over the memorabilia of my parents' movies that he had collected. I went, but not because he wanted me to see his collection. I wasn't nearly as impressed with my now-deceased parents as he was; I had known them a lot better and more intimately than he did. I had gone more because he was one beautiful black man. Although in his late fifties, he was in superb condition and had the mulatto best-mix of Caucasian and black features that Jamaica, where he originated from, was famous for. From the first day I had attended his class, I had been mesmerized by his looks and the fluid way he moved around on the stage during his lectures. And I had quickly turned to imagine how he looked without that tailored suit and silk tie he always wore to class.

At his home I found out. He didn't really want to review his movie memorabilia collection either. He wanted to fuck me. And I let him. After I nearly hyperventilated at the beauty of his naked body and magnificent jet-black equipment, I stripped for him and turned my belly to his sofa, draped my arms and chest over the sofa's arms, raised my rump to him, and moaned and sighed as he covered me and slowly and completely possessed me, and fucked me to heaven.

Since that evening, as Captain Stevens was accusing, I had been in Kwame Jackson's bed overnight at least twice and sometime three times a week. And I'd yet to be bored by the working of that magnificent black cock inside me.

"We don't want you to stop seeing Jackson, Clint. We want you to cultivate his interest and trust. He somehow obtains large quantities of cocaine that enter from South America into Florida and is selling it on the University of Richmond campus--through students of his who he is controlling through sex. It's quite possible he is cultivating you to distribute for him too. He doesn't know you are a policeman, I surmise?"

"It's never come up. He went directly to my affiliation with Hollywood. I don't live the lifestyle of a policeman on the university campus. He probably thinks I have no employment--and don't need any."

"Good. That will work to our advantage. If he's cultivating you, we wish for that to continue. The ideal will be if you can be with him when he gets the drugs from his supplier. You will, of course, work with us on this."

It hadn't been a question. And considering what Stevens knew--even if he didn't know about Alvaro Flores and the Latin Kings gang--the only other choice I had was to just get up and take a walk away from a career in law enforcement. I wasn't ready to do that. As nice as Jackson's cocking was, if he was a drug dealer to university students, he deserved to be put away. Besides, his wasn't the only cock in town. I was very good at proving that.

"Yes, certainly," I answered. "Just tell me what you want me to do."

* * * *

I didn't have to pretend that I was lost to him. I was laying, twisted, on Jackson's bed, my torso flat on its back on the surface of the bed with Jackson's torso hovering over me and his lips crushing mine. I was laying on one hip, with my buttocks cuddled into Jackson's groin. He had just ejaculated inside me, and he was slowly jacking me off with his hand. I came for him with a groan and a sigh.

We remained there for a few minutes, both lightly panting.

"I want you again," he whispered when his lips released mine. "I can't get enough of you."

"You don't have to ask," I murmured. And, indeed, he didn't. I'd help track him down if he was a drug dealer, but I'd let him fuck me any time he wanted to. I'd come to his jail cell for it, if it was permitted.

"Gotta make a stop," he said. "Gotta get hard for you again."

He pulled his softening cock out of me and turned and rolled out of the bed and onto his feet. This was becoming a ritual with him. He'd fuck me and, emotionally, he'd want to do it again right away. Physically, though, he needed time to recharge. He'd leave me and go into his bathroom, and shortly afterward, he'd reappear in full erection. And then his second cocking would be longer than the first, working me for longer before he ejaculated again.

I gave him a few minutes and then, suspecting what I'd find--and that it would be what I wanted to find--I left the bed, padded over to the bathroom door, and slowly pushed it open.

Jackson was huddled over the sink cabinet. He held a rolled-up banknote in his hand and was leaning over the surface of the cabinet. A piece of paper lay on the cabinet surface, with lines of a white powder on it. He was snorting a line into his nose.

"Can I have some of that too?" I asked. It quite obviously was cocaine.

"You snort?" Jackson said, turning his head toward me and showing surprise in his face.

"Sure. I move a little of it too. You should have seen some of the parties my parents' crowd had in Hollywood." This part was quite true. But neither I nor my parents had taken the drugs. At least I hadn't. Who could tell what my parents had been willing to do?

He stood up from the counter and handed me the rolled-up banknote.

"Enjoy," He said. "There's a lot more where this came from. You've been enjoying the longer fuckings from the effect of it. No reason why you can't dance on the clouds along with me when we fuck."

I leaned over the counter, turning myself so that he couldn't see that I was running the end of the rolled banknote alongside a line, rather than on it, and pushing the cocaine away with the other hand.

"Ah, sweet," I said. "I see you're hard again and I'm already dancing in heaven. Let's fuck."

I gave him the fuck of his life then--trying to show him that the cocaine had enhanced our lovemaking. Afterward, as I lay in his embrace, I started pushing the nickel.

"Great stuff. Where do you get it from?"

"I've got a connection in Florida."

"Gotta get me some of that," I murmured. "Wasn't that sex incredible? Just think of what we could do, swingin' on the clouds together."

"Ever flown in a single-engine plane before?"

* * * *

"He says he has a Cessna Skylane he keeps at the Middle Peninsula Regional Airport near West Point, over toward Williamsburg. Says when he needs a new supply he flies down to near Miami. He seems to think he can fly under the radar."

"He and a bunch of other drug dealers," Captain Stevens said, with a snort. "And a lot of them seem to be right. If you can get on one of those flights with him and get a GPS aboard, we'll be able to follow him down. We can get his phones tapped and see who he's talking to on the other end. Then we can start putting together a bust."

"I can try make the connection, yes," I answered.

"Scared?"

"Shit yes."

Jackson was on a high the day we flew down. He was so proud and taken with himself to show me how smart he was that he said he couldn't wait for some sex. His plane, a single engine Cessna Skylane, was tied down between two other small aircraft behind a hangar. Before he had me release the tie downs, he pulled me into the backseat of the plane and I rode his cock. Seeing as how I assumed it would be our last time, one way or the other, I gave him a good ride, and after he was finished, I turned and slipped down on my knees between his legs and cleaned his fat, jet-black cock for him.

I told him I was as exhilarated by the adventure we were going on as he was, and he believed me. "Exhilarated" wasn't what I actually felt. "Scared spitless" was closer to the mark. I was more afraid of whoever he was dealing with on the Florida end than I was with him. But I was a cop. And I wanted to be a detective. If this was to be my one and only sting investigation--if I was going to be thrown out of the department as soon as this was over even if I survived it--I wanted to make this one a good bust--if this, indeed was the day.

Jackson hadn't told me before we took off that this was a drug run; he'd only told me that he was taking me for a airplane ride today. I thought I could tell by how keyed up he was, though, that this was the real deal. Chances were good that it was just a dry run, but he seemed too tense for that. And Stevens and his team were ready to suffer several false starts if that's what it took to reel Jackson and his supplier in.

I was glad Jackson wasn't telling me ahead of time when we were going for drugs--or even for sure that this is what he used the airplane for. If I wasn't given the details beforehand, there was no reason for him to believe that I had ratted on him.

"So, you asked about how I got the white stuff," he said after he'd gotten us up in the air. "Rather than tell you, I thought I'd show you. That's how much under my skin you are. I'm willing to cut you in on this cash cow."

"Yeah, you can count me in." I tried to sound excited about the prospect.

I wondered how many other students he suborned to push drugs for him on campus he'd fed this line to. Was this all an act with him--was he just using his gigantic dick and great body to recruit guys--and maybe girls too--to put their futures on the line for him? The possibility that this was what was happening--and that I wasn't as special for him as he was letting on--helped take the sting out of what I was about to do.

"Sound great to me," I repeated after a couple of moments of silence. "So, we're going for some stuff."

"You could say so, yes."

"But I don't understand how this works."

"It's not hard. This is a big country and law enforcement is spread thin, thanks to the economy--and the immensity of the drug supply and demand. So are the aviation authorities--spread thin. I've got a system that keeps working."

"Great," I answered, holding my breath on whether he was going to explain it in detail for the commo link I'd stuck up under the instrument panel dashboard. And then he did.

"This Skylane has a souped-up engine and extra oil tanks. We can go faster and longer than the specs indicate. I file a flight plan for Tampa Bay. Then, as you can see I'm doing now, I swing out over the ocean and ride the waves low all the way down to southern Florida. My contact has a different camouflaged airstrip in the Everglades designated each time for a pickup. After we do a quick exchange, my cash for his crop, we're up in the air again, and curving out over the gulf, toward Tampa Bay. We arrive there ahead of time or right on time for the time and distance this baby is listed. It's so simple that it works every time. Used to be that airfields up and down the flight line checked in with pilots and spotted for planes. No one has the manpower to do that anymore, and there are a hell of a lot more small planes up here than there were a decade ago."

"Sweet," I said, with a whistle of appreciation--and a hope that Stevens' team got it all on tape.

Then I sat and prayed--prayed that the team wouldn't lose track of the plane and that this wouldn't be the day that Jackson's supplier decided to stop doing business with him and shot him--both of us--and took the cash without providing cocaine in return. That was the big unknown in all of this--Jackson's supplier in Florida.

But it was set to be just another simple deal completion.

The supplier, a mean-looking fat Colombian no doubt enjoying the delights of Miami Beach under a false political asylum privilege, was wary of me being there beside the plane while they made their exchange, but he carried through with the turnover. And he just sighed and motioned for the two goons with him to lower their machineguns when police roared in from all sides and pinned us all down between Jackson's plane and the suppliers' Escalade.

I couldn't be happier when I was roughly pushed down on my face on the tarmac along with Jackson and his friends and was manhandled as badly as they were. We were all bundled into separate vehicles for the trip out of the Everglades and back into Miami. The separate vehicles were employed so that Jackson wouldn't suspect that I wasn't going the same place as he and his friends were going. I didn't have a chance to check that out, because I never saw Jackson again. The Richmond police made sure that my testimony wasn't needed. They worked out a story that showed they'd busted the operation from the Florida end.

I was going back to Richmond to face the music for an entirely different dance.

* * * *

"I have good news and bad news, Sergeant Folsom," the deputy chief for internal affairs said as I sat on the other side of his desk in Richmond police headquarters on Broad Street. The office of the deputy chief for operations, Seymour Stevens, was down the hall. It was significant that I was here in Internal Affairs now rather than in the Operations area--but I couldn't say I was surprised.

"What's the bad news?" I asked.

"Ah, I think you'd like to hear the good news first," the captain answered. He was being almost jolly. He was enjoying this. He was one of those florid-faced Irish types. He probably celebrated for three nights in a row when he was able to drum a gay guy off the force.

"OK, then, the good news first." I was being calm and droll. I wasn't going to give him extra enjoyment time.

"First, congratulations on your part in the bust of a major drug ring supplying Richmond. I'm sure there will be a commendation for that--although you won't be here for the ceremony."

Just as I figured.

"OK, the bad news."

"Wait. There's more good news."

Oh, goody.

"I'm happy to be able to tell you that you passed your detective exam."

I could have leaped for joy--if I didn't know that you couldn't be a police detective if you no longer were a policeman.

"But the bad news--for us, because your recent participation in the drug sting indicates that you would be a great asset to this department--is that you, of course, can no longer serve in this department. It isn't just because there is a rule against not declaring you are gay--and, yes, we know of your involvement with the Latin Kings gang leader, Flores, too--but it's also because those behind this major drug supplier you've just helped us catch might come looking for you here. So, if you want to stay a cop, we're going to have to move you."

"Want to stay a cop? If I want to stay a cop? I have that option."

"Yes, of course. We're a small department here. But in some of the larger cities, men with your skills and . . . umm . . . your proclivities can serve effectively on special teams. The New York City police are prepared to offer you a detective position on a special homicide squad. That is if--"

What could I say--and how fast could I say it? Not just staying a cop, but also making detective on a homicide squad so quickly.

"When do I need to show up to the assignment?"