A Misdemeanor
Evan Candiman draped his lithe, young body into my lap. He was nude and I was in my shirtsleeves. He kissed me with a mouth that tasted of lemon drops. His last name was pronounced ‘Can-dim-an’ but everyone called him ‘Candy Man’ because he loved sweets.
He was one of Mitch’s newest whores and one I hadn’t had yet. I told my employer that I’d take my weekly gratuity in rough trade, and I wanted to play with her new toy. She arranged for me and the Candy Man to have an evening together. We were in one of the regular bedrooms on the second floor of Mitch’s funhouse. I chose a regular room for our tryst because I didn’t want any fantasy bullshit to distract from a new experience.
I ran my hand along his smooth, soft skin. It was the color of fresh cream and smelled faintly of lavender. I planned to tell him to ditch the perfume for our future engagements. I preferred my men to smell like men.
He took his sweet tongue from my mouth and lapped it over my lips. “What do you want, Daddy?”
He started poorly. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
He apologized quickly, like a good whore should. “Sorry, Law. Just playing around.”
I didn’t make a big deal of the error. He didn’t know me at all, certainly not enough to know what I liked and what I didn’t. I told him I wanted to bottom for a change. He was well-endowed and I was in the mood for a top who could throw a rough fuck. He was surprised by my request but expressed himself ready to give me what I wanted.
We kissed some more and he started to unbutton my shirt. When he had a few open, he slipped his hand inside to touch my stomach. He pulled back. “Your undershirt is awful! How do you wear that thing? It’s got so much starch in it, the wrinkles are set.”
It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about because I never wore undershirts. I explained what he felt. “I was wounded in the war. Those wrinkles are my scars.”
His eyes grew nervous. He unclasped all my buttons and opened my shirt. He barely glanced at my body before he closed the fabric again. He gagged and heaved. “I CAN’T!” He scrambled off me and backed to the far side of the room. “NO, NO, NO! I CAN’T!”
I didn’t understand. “You can’t what?”
He gagged and wretched again. “I can’t have sex with you.” He wiped his palm on the wall like he was trying to scrub something away. “I can’t believe I touched it. I can still feel it on my hand.”
I was enraged. I leapt out of the chair and wrapped my hands around his throat. I slammed his head into the wall and squeezed his windpipe shut. His color went from creamy pale to red, then purple. I released him and punched his face. He crumpled to the floor and begged me to stop. “PLEASE, DON’T! I’M SORRY!”
I hauled him up to hit him again. Just as his face was even with mine, it changed. A scraggly brown beard sprouted from his chin and long brown hair covered his head. His face thinned out. He became Doc. “You’re an asshole.” He said.
* * * *
I startled awake as Walt drove us into the parking lot of the 6th district police station at 11th and Winter, just south of Vine Street. “Where the fuck are we?”
He reminded me. “At the police station to deal with the boy who broke the window last night. Don’t you remember?”
I rubbed my face to wake it up. My hands objected with pain. “I remember, I remember. I guess I nodded off.”
“You slept the whole way over the bridge. Are you well? I hope you’re not getting sick.”
“I’m fine. I haven’t been sleeping right is all.”
“You talked in your sleep.”
“Did I?”
“I couldn’t make out what you said, but you seemed angry.”
I remembered the dream vividly, especially when the whore I was beating became Doc. “Do you believe dreams mean something?”
He parked the car in one of the too-small parking spots. “Sometimes they do. What did you dream?”
I waved away the question. “Doesn’t matter. Or maybe it does. I’ll tell you later.”
He agreed to listen whenever I was ready to talk and we went into the station.
* * * *
Detective Vigoda welcomed us around his desk. We were in the busy main room of the detective’s squad. People were having conversations all around or filling in forms on noisy typewriters. He thanked us for coming and took statements from both me and Walt. Since Walt and I were equal partners in the business, he asked what we wanted to do about Malcom.
Walt wanted more information. “Do you know why he did it?”
Detective Vigoda shook his oblong head. He looked like a russet potato with thinning hair and a two-day beard. “He won’t say. He won’t say much of anything except that he knows his rights. He doesn’t have much of a record. He’s been arrested a few times at protests but never charged with anything. If you want to press charges, it’ll be a misdemeanor. He could do a year, or the judge might give him community service and some probation. You’d have to appear in court, but likely only for one day. It’s a simple enough case.”
Walt asked my opinion. I didn’t know what to do. I asked if I could speak to Mouthy Malcom. He agreed to have him brought to an interview room. He would have to be present during the discussion, but he promised to keep anything we said off the record.
The three of us went to a small, interior room in the station. Malcom joined us a few minutes later. He looked like shit and all his bravado was gone. His afro was misshapen and crushed to one side and his clothes were rumpled from having slept in them. I expected him to bluster, but he didn’t. He sat and kept his eyes on the table between us.
I opened the conversation. “I’d like to know why you tried to throw a brick through the window of our restaurant last night.”
His answer came back so softly, I had to strain to hear it. “You narc’ed on Tiny.”
“I what?”
He explained. “You told. Tiny was gettin’ by. He almost had enough cash to do what he wanted. You show up and he cleared. Didn’t tell nobody where he was goin. He just cleared. You fuckin’ told. Had’ta been you. He musta known the man was comin’ for ‘im and he cleared.”
I rubbed my face and swore into my palms. I laid my hands on the table and wished they didn’t hurt so damn bad. “You’re an ass. You’ll probably always be an ass. You ran off half-cocked and all it got you was a night in jail. You’re lucky I’m not twenty years younger or I’d have beat the fuck out of you and then turned you over to the cops.”
I stood up and asked the detective to let us out. He opened the door. Just before I strode through it, I offered some advice to Malcom. “You want to know where your friend is? Talk to Lion. He’ll probably slap your face again, but he’ll give you the answer, then you’ll owe me an apology.”
Detective Vigoda shut the door on the interview room and stood with me and Walt in the corridor. He pointed his pencil toward the closed door. “Should I understand any of that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Are you pressing charges?”
“No…yes, I don’t fucking know. Would you give us a minute?”
The detective moved to the end of the corridor so Walt and I could speak in relative privacy. I explained what happened. “This is mostly my fault. I mean, not really, but kind of. Tiny was a draft dodger I met at the Y. He must’ve been friends with Malcom. He was supposed to spend two weeks at the apartment and work in the kitchen to earn his passage to Canada. He couldn’t cut it in the kitchen so I told Owen to pay him off and put him on the bus. That was last night. He’s probably in Ottawa by now. When I offered him a way out of his troubles, I told him he had to stay at the apartment and not go out because if he got picked up while he was working for us, he’d talk.”
Walt interrupted. “What do you mean, he’d talk?”
“He’d say that I hired him with the full knowledge that he was a dodger. If the authorities found out, they could pull our business license. I wanted to help the kid, but not at the risk of our business. I guess he wanted to prove he could keep a secret, so when he left the Y, he just left without telling anyone.
“Malcom realized he was gone and figured I threatened Tiny with the authorities, probably to get information out of him about Doc. He got mad and threw a brick at our restaurant to get revenge. I’m pissed because of what he cost us, but I admire the little fuck a little bit too. Walt’s Special is forty or fifty blocks from the Y. He must’ve ridden the bus for hours to get revenge for his friend. He’s still a coward for not dealing with me face-to-face, but I…I don’t know.”
Walt finished my thought for me. “You respect his motivation if not the execution.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. What do you think? I don’t think grinding him through the system and sending him to prison is right. I wish there was a way to punish him a little, but there isn’t. It’s all or nothing. You suffered worse than me. I leave it to you.”
He crossed his arms to consider the matter. “Do you think he would learn anything from jail?”
I shook my head. “Does anyone learn anything from jail? He’s a petty little man who pulled a petty little stunt. Locking him up with thugs is only going to make him worse. We got the window fixed for free and we lost a little money. He took a couple punches, had a gun pointed in his face, and spent the night in jail. Maybe, just maybe he’s a little wiser than he was last night. If he talks to Lion and finds out he was completely wrong about the whole thing, maybe he’ll think just a little more before he tosses another brick.” I shrugged. “But probably not.”
Walt shrugged to match mine. “Let him go. The punishment should match the crime. A year in jail is too much for a broken window and one night’s receipts.”
I called the detective back and offered a small explanation for our decision. “He tossed his brick to defend a friend he thought I wronged. I didn’t wrong anyone. I told him who could give him the information he needed about what actually happened. He did us a little harm and cost us a little money, but he spent the night in jail and maybe, just maybe he learned something. It’s not worth him spending a year in prison. Cut him loose and we’ll consider the matter settled.”
The detective nodded his russet potato head and escorted us out of the station. Walt started the car and backed it from the spot. He shifted gears and shook his head at the windshield. “You meet the most interesting people, Love.”
I chuckled at his good-natured teasing. “They’re drawn to me like moths to a flame. I wonder what that says about you.”
He laughed and drove us home.
* * * *
Walt made coffee while I sat. I told him about the dreams I’d been having and what I thought they might mean. “Each one starts with a real event, something I did that I’m not proud of. The first was about a man I killed in the war. The second was about when me and another man on the detective’s squad beat some information out of a gun for hire. The third was about a whore I beat up when he wouldn’t have sex with me because of my scars. At the end of each dream, the person I’m hurting becomes Doc. He calls me an asshole, and then I wake up.”
“Sounds awful.” He filled two mugs and brought them to the table to sit down. “I know you feel guilty about what happened with Doc. The war was on your mind the day I had my heart attack because that was the day you spoke to Ben’s class. What about the other events? Have you been thinking about the past?”
I sampled the coffee. It was delicious like Walt’s coffee always was. “I suppose I’ve been thinking about it. You said we’ve got more days behind us than ahead. My fucking hands hurt all the time. Everywhere I look I see things I used to do but can’t anymore. The man is coming to deliver the trees soon. That’s just another reminder of how old I’ve gotten.”
He sipped his coffee and shook his head over it like it was bitter. “That’s not quite what I meant. Last night, I asked if you were afraid of being judged. You didn’t answer me. Are you afraid to stand before God to answer for your life?”
“YES!” I surprised myself with the outburst. “I mean, yes. For years I blamed my father for throwing me out and turning me into a violent animal. I blamed my circumstances for the things I did during the war. That stuff is true to an extent, but I don’t think God is going to buy it if I say I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Did you repent your sins?”
Leave it to Walt to hit me with logic. “No, I never have.”
“Why not?”
I parroted his question before I tried to answer it. “Why not? I suppose I didn’t want to admit that any of what I did was wrong.”
He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. For most men the posture would be one of deflection or defiance. For Walt, it was a posture of thoughtfulness. “Love, were we right to use the atomic bomb against Japan to end World War II?”
I didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but I answered the question as he asked it. “I think it was justified. I think it saved more lives than it took. I don’t think the war would have ended if we hadn’t used the bomb.”
He offered the other side of the argument. “There are a lot of people who say we shouldn’t have used it. They say we started the nuclear age and we’re all likely to die in a nuclear holocaust because of our reckless use of that new technology against civilians. They say we committed a war crime.”
“I disagree.”
“Do you disagree because it’s you and me talking, or would you disagree with anyone?”
“I would disagree with anyone who said our bombings were unjust.”
“Why do you suppose those people say what they say?”
“They have 20/20 hindsight. They want to pretend we didn’t consider the ramifications when we used a weapon no one had ever seen.”
“Do you have 20/20 hindsight about your own life?”
“I…uh…hmmm.” I didn’t know. His question set me on my haunches to think.
He didn’t leave me to think on my own. “I don’t excuse everything you did, Love. You told me some of it, but not all. I think you’ve basically been a good man your whole life, but you didn’t always give yourself credit. You tried to protect your friend Peter during the war. An evil man wouldn’t have done that. You looked out for the Kingdom of Keystone when you were a detective.”
I interrupted. “That was a whorehouse I went to. Keeping the vice boys out so I could roll in the flesh doesn’t make me a saint.”
“Is that the only reason you did it? Did you protect Madam Mitchell because she paid you, or did you look out for her and her employees because they needed protection? Could she have existed without you? Could the people who worked there have made a living without you? Or would they have been harassed and jailed like so many others were back then?”
The answer was easy and obvious. Madam Mitch’s would not have been able to thrive without my protection. It likely would have struggled along like a lot of other whorehouses did, both queer and straight. The cops would have raided it whenever they felt like and thrown all the queers in jail. They would have destroyed lives over and over because they could. If I hadn’t protected it, Mitch’s wouldn’t have been the magical place it was. David never would have been able to seek refuge there. I never would have met him, and our lives would have been very different.
Walt pressed on with his oration. “You protected David when he needed it. You paid for his future. You saved me from the robber. You worked yourself to death in your detective business. The very last case you took for Bea, you worked right up until you were evicted. You protected her memory of her brother, made sure his murderers were punished, and exposed war profiteers. My God, what more do you want?
“You might have been ruthless at times, but you were never evil. If you insist that you did bad things, repent them. The Lord tells us to lay our sins before him and ask forgiveness. If you’re haunted by your actions, do that. Ask forgiveness and trust that the Lord loves you enough to forgive. What else can you do? What else can any of us do?”
He was right, like he usually was. I wasn’t sure about the stuff he said about me always being good. I beat the Candiman whore savagely when he refused me. That wasn’t the action of a man overflowing with the milk of human kindness. I knew I did wrong almost immediately. I apologized to the man and made sure he received medical treatment for the injuries I inflicted. I also paid him for the money he lost while he recovered and another month beyond. I did the best I could to make things right but I’d still done something unforgivable. The only thing I could do beyond what I’d already done was apologize to God and repent.
Doc was different though. I’d wronged him and I could make it right. I didn’t have to bear that sin on my soul. I resolved to pray over the life I led before I joined my life to Walt’s. I also resolved to find my friend and apologize for the brutality of my words. I asked Walt to help me.
He agreed. “Of course, I’ll help you find him. I owe him my thanks as well. It was me that he helped save after all.”
The front door buzzer sounded. Walt said what we both knew. “That’ll be the man with the trees. We’ll get them set up and we can figure out what to do about finding Doc.”
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