The Scoop

Nick rang the doorbell at the front door of the large, somewhat secluded, house facing the ocean across New York Avenue on New York’s Fire Island for the second time and waited. He knew the guy was home just as he knew that this late in the season most of the surrounding houses had been closed up. It was reasonable for this guy to believe his was the only house Nick could have approached. It was twilight, the sun setting behind him over the distant city across the water and Long Island. There weren’t many lights on in the house, but there were a few and the guy’s Porshe was in the drive.

At last, the door opened and the man stood there in the doorway, backlit by the light in his foyer He was in his late forties maybe, movie-star handsome, with a good build, in a robe, which tried but didn’t fully manage to hide the black lace panties and bra the man was wearing. Just inside the door, Nick could see a black dress thrown on a chair and red spike heels on the floor next to the chair. He pretended not to notice.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Sorry to disturb,” Nick said, “but would you believe that my truck has broken down in front of your house and I’ve found my cellphone is dead? Could I use your phone to call the company for a tow or get my cellphone recharged?”

Kyle Kane looked out toward the street and the Atlantic Ocean beyond the barrier island. He saw the garbage truck—he hardly could avoid seeing it. He gave Nick another look, being surprised. The young man didn’t look like a garbage man. He was young enough and certainly strong enough looking to do the job, a real bodybuilder type. But he was also gorgeous and he didn’t look all that dirty, although his clothes were scruffy enough. The young man was sex on a stick—white athletic, nipples revealing T-shirt plastered on muscular chest tapering down to narrow hips. Kyle was a sucker for narrow hips. Faded jeans and combat boots. Very macho. Chiseled features, buzz-cut blond hair, pale blue eyes, and bulging biceps. He was a turn on, which surprised Kyle. He’d never thought of a garbage man in sexual terms, but this one turned him on.

He could, of course, have just gotten his cellphone and taken just a few minutes to pass this guy off—Kyle had been avoiding people ever since he’d gotten out of prison, which was in high contrast from his years as an action thriller movie star—but this guy was gorgeous, and Kyle was beginning to feel the self-imposed isolation.

“Are you alone?” He asked, peering out at the garbage truck. “Doesn’t it take more than one guy to operate one of those?”

Nick laughed. “It’s the end of our run. I let Jake off near where he lived and was just returning the truck to the company garage. It was a light day today and the truck was giving us fits anyway. The company garage is over on Bay Avenue. I was trying to get the truck back there. It didn’t want to go that far, though. Sorry it stopped in front of your house. I’m sorry if I—”

Kyle wasn’t sorry. He laughed. “Sure. Come inside. You can do both—use my cellphone and charge up yours.” He saw the young man look at him with interest and realized that he wasn’t hiding his panties and bra all that well under the robe. Could it be, he wondered, that there was interest there in his fetish? The guy could see what he was wearing and he hadn’t recoiled from it. Kyle thought more men were into this than were willing to reveal they were, but it wasn’t an interest you could assume just any other guy had. But the young guy wasn’t backing away.

Kyle decided to push this further. He let the sash of the robe come unknotted and the robe open more to gauge the young man’s reaction. It was favorable. Was there a spark of interest discernible in the young man’s eyes? Yes, Kyle thought there was, and Kyle had experience in checking out other guys who were checking him out.

He needed to get the guy into the house to pursue this possibility further.

“Come inside,” he repeated. “You must be thirsty after working.”

“You’d let a garbage man in your house after he’d walked behind a truck all day?” Nick asked.

“Sure. There’s no telling what I’d let a handsome young man do.” There, we’ll see what he’ll do with the signaling, Kyle thought. It didn’t seem to bother Nick, so the man continued. “I can offer you a beer.”

Nick looked apologetic, but he didn’t retreat from the porch. “The call and recharge would be great, but I’ve just worked a shift. I’m too grungy to come into your house. Maybe I could stay out here on the porch. It would be great to have my cellphone charged.” He extended his hand with the phone and their fingers touched and lingered for a couple of seconds longer than absolutely necessary. They exchanged a bit of something in their eye contact too, but it was only for a moment.

“Sure. You can sit out here on the porch. I’ll bring you my phone and you can watch for the tow truck from here. And about that beer?”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Nick said.

Kyle disappeared into the house with the cellphone and came back in a few minutes with his own for Nick to make the call. He brought two beers. There were two rattan chairs on the porch, facing the ocean. Kyle gestured for Nick to sit in one and he sat in the other. He now was wearing the red spike heels. Slowly, surely, progress on checking out the edge of this guy’s interests and comfort, he thought. The worst case would be that he’d just get up and walk away. Nick didn’t seem to notice the heels, though, and, if he did, he didn’t say anything or shy away from Kyle. This wasn’t lost on the former movie star. He let the robe hang open. His bra and panties were in full view. He stuck his chest out and posed his legs in a more feminine position.

While they waited for the tow truck to arrive, they sipped on their beers and engaged in small talk.

“I see there’s a ‘for sale’ sign in front of your house,” Nick said. “Are you coming or going?”

“Coming,” Kyle answered. “I’ve been away for a long time—mostly on the West Coast. Working there. I’m starting a new life . . . I hope. Fire Island seemed a likely place for me.”

“Because of its closeness to New York City?” Nick asked.

“More because of its historical lifestyle—it’s reputation for not judging and being open to all kinds of people.” OK, let’s have this “are we or are we not active gay guys?” conversation, Kyle thought. This was Fire Island; chances were better than even that this guy was gay. He was too good-looking not to be.

“Ah, yes, I understand,” Nick responded. “Gay guys. The gay lifestyle in its various forms.”

Was the young man looking at the bra and the panties and the high heels, Kyle wondered. Yes, he thought so. And he wasn’t being judgmental. But was he interested or just being polite because he was in a bind here, in a somewhat remote residential area with a broken-down garbage truck?

“And you,” Kyle asked, “what brought you to Fire Island? . . . sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Nick. I’m Nick Granger,” Nick said.

“I’m Kyle,” the man answered. “What brings you to Fire Island, Nick?”

Yes, I know who you are, Nick thought. That’s why I’m here. You’re Kyle Kane, the former big box office actor . . . the one with the sensational past . . . the one who has been to prison. Nick just didn’t know all he wanted to know about the man—yet. “Probably the same thing that brought you here,” he answered. “The lifestyle . . . and the surfing. If your interests go a bit to the kinky, you don’t get judged for that.”

“The lifestyle?” That didn’t mean Kyle hadn’t caught the introduction of the word “kinky,” or that Nick had brought it.

“Yes, I’m gay,” Nick said. “And I live for surfing, and it’s good here. Does that put you off—learning that I’m gay.”

“No, not at all.” He waved his hands down his body, pointing out that he was in drag.

Nick laughed. “You don’t have to be gay to like dressing up.”

“No, you don’t,” Kyle responded. “But it helps, and I am, as a matter of fact—gay. Surfing. Yes, you certainly look in shape enough to be a surfer. I’d like to see you out there surfing,” Kyle said, gesturing toward the ocean. He’d certainly like to see the young man in a Speedo—and in less. He pushed the envelope to see the reaction. “. . . and in just a Speedo.” No adverse reaction from Nick.

His mind was racing toward how he could turn this conversation to “Come inside and fuck me” when the bubble burst with the arrival of the tow truck.

“There it is,” Nick said. “Help has arrived. That was fast.”

“Yes, it was,” Kyle agreed, not at all pleased.

“Well, thanks for the beer,” Nick said, rising. “I should get out there and hook up with those guys.”

“Yes, right,” Kyle said, standing and taking the empty beer can from Nick. He was more interested in Nick hooking up with him than with the guys out there walking around the garbage truck and sizing up the chore at hand. “Your phone, though. It’s in the house. Let me get it for you.”

“Thanks,” Nick said, following Kyle as far as the foyer, where he stood next to the chair where the little black dress was draped—except that it wasn’t a little dress. It was big enough to fit Kyle.

When Kyle returned with Nick’s phone, their hands touched again, and again the fingers remained interlaced for longer than necessary and the eye contact was meaningful. Then Nick quite purposely looked down at the dress and didn’t flinch. Kyle couldn’t help but see that.

“Thanks for the beer and for your help,” Nick said.

“I enjoyed talking with you,” Kyle said. “Anytime you need help—or anything else—you know where I live now.”

“Yes, I do,” Nick said, with a smile. He leaned over and picked up dress from the chair and lifted it up. “Nice dress,” he said.

“It’s mine,” Kyle answered. He shrugged the robe off his shoulders and stood there, just in the bra, panties, and red spike heels, obviously offering himself to the young man.

“Yes, I figured that. Very nice,” Nick said. “You say I could visit you again sometime.”

“Yes, certainly. I’d like that.” Kyle most certainly would like that.

Then Nick turned and was gone, down the drive, to the two men walking around the garbage truck.

Kyle couldn’t stand in the doorway, as the men at the street could have seen him and that would push his luck just a bit too far, but he went to a front window, watched Nick strut down to the road, and rubbed his crotch with his hand. Nick knew where he lived now. Would Nick come back? How long before he did—if he did? He certainly didn’t shirk away from what Kyle showed he was—and was willing to be for Nick.

A week and a half went by and Nick hadn’t returned. He was just a tease, Kyle decided. The young man just hadn’t wanted to make a scene while he got the help he needed. Kyle was alone again, hiding from the world, avoiding all of those calls wanting him to dish the dirt on his past not that he was a free man again. Not free enough to return to the movies, though, or to have any sort of public life.

* * * *

Nick was sitting at the bar, trying not to listen to the drag queen on the stage at Charleen’s on East Bayview near the Bay Shore-Ocean Bay Park ferry terminal from the mainland. Charleen’s was a gay bar that had Saturday night drag night. This was Saturday night. Nick wasn’t in drag, but he’d caught the attention of everyone there who was in drag. It was recognized—and highly appreciated—that he was there in a consumer capacity rather than one of the “girls.” He was in a white T-shirt and jeans, with combat boots, tonight just as he’d been when he’d appeared at Kyle’s front door on the other side of the island nearly two weeks before. The duds were more spiffy now, and he was gorgeous. He also was pouting.

Kyle Kane, who was in drag, left a table near the stage and came up two levels of banks of tables to perch on the stool beside Nick. Others had been circling around the handsome, macho young man but hadn’t had the courage to approach him yet.

“Nick, isn’t it?” Kyle asked as he perched. He was in the little black slinky dress and the red spike heels. He was wearing a blonde wig and makeup and clanking bangle bracelets. Nick, who had no trouble discerning who it was, had to assume that the man was wearing the black lace bra and panties too.

“Why, yes, it is. Kyle, right?”

“Right. You look a bit lost in here, sweetie. You look terrific, don’t get me wrong. But do you know what kind of bar this is?”

Nick laughed. “It would be a bit difficult not to know.”

“And yet here you are.”

“I was supposed to meeting someone here.”

“But he’s stood you up?” Kyle didn’t bother to pretend that Nick would be meeting a woman here.

“It seems so.”

“A good friend of yours?”

Kyle laughed again. “I’d say not anymore, but I’ve never met him. It was all arranged on the Internet. He was paying.”

“Ah,” Kyles said, everything having been made quite clear. “If it’s just for money and you’ve never laid eyes on him, it wouldn’t be a loss if someone else put up the money, would it?”

Nick turned his eyes on Kyle, smiled, and said, “No it wouldn’t. But I did lay eyes on him. He sent me his photo.”

“Was he in drag in the photo?” Kyle asked. He was said in an innocent tone, but this was a major point. Had Nick known he was meeting a blind date in a drag bar? Had he known the man he was supposed to meet cross-dressed. And, if so, did that mean Nick gravitated to cross-dressing men?

“Yes, he was in drag in the photo.”

“Can I get you a drink?” Kyle asked.

“Sure, that would be nice,” Nick said.

“Not here. Back at my house.”

“That would be fine.”

“You remember where my house is, don’t you?”

“Yes, on New York Avenue. It once had a garbage truck parked in front of it.”

“That’s the place,” Kyle said, with a laugh. “I’ll meet you there.”

* * * *

There wasn’t the proverbial trail of garments leading from the front door of Kyle’s house to the sofa in his living room because Kyle wanted to be fucked wearing the black lace bra; the black lace panties, which were bought at an adult store and had that slit down the butt crack adult store panties often did; and the red spiked heels. The little black dress was in the foyer, though, thrown over the back of the chair Nick had first seen it draped over, and the blonde wig was on the floor at the entry into the living room from the foyer, which did give some direction.

Beyond that, there was a split condom wrapper on the floor right beside the sofa. Kyle was stretched out, belly down, along the sofa, his falsies in the black bra hooked on the outer edge of the sofa arm and his arms and head dangling over the side of the sofa. Nick, in a push-up position, was suspended over Kyle’s back, his fists pressed into the sofa arms on either side of Kyle’s shoulder tips, and his cock penetrating the slit in the butt of the black lace panties. His body was straight as a board, supported on his fists and his toes, and he was maintaining a vigorous cadence in push-up fucking Kyle.

Kyle was having a ball being balled. There hadn’t been any seduction phase. They’d both known what each wanted and they’d both gone right for it.

Act Two was upstairs on Kyle’s bed, with Nick on his back and Kyle straddling the younger man’s pelvis, skewered on Nick’s cock, and riding him in a wild cowboy.

After that, they were both exhausted and stretched out against each other, each exploring the other with his hands for the first time, their immediate hot need at least temporarily satiated.

Kyle was somewhat surprised that Nick fell in with what Kyle wanted from him so quickly and easily. But he wasn’t complaining. When they’d cooled down, he went downstairs and got them each a beer, and they reclined against the headboard of the bed and openly talked for the first time.

“That was so . . . easy,” Kyle said.

“You’re sexy in those clothes, and I think you’d have laid down for me the day the garbage truck broke down if the tow truck hadn’t shown up.”

“You bet I would have. You don’t know how disappointed I was that that didn’t happen that day. But this was so much easier than it’s ever been before. You don’t know how secretive I’d had to be about it. And it’s not easy finding guys who are into this kink. Especially for men like me.”

“Why for men like you?” Nick. “Are you ever planning to tell me that you’re a movie star?”

“You know?”

“I know you’re Kyle Kane, the action film movie star. You’ve got photos of you and every other living star you’ve worked with spilling out of your living room and into the foyer.”

“And then you also know—”

“That you’ve been in prison, yes.”

“For murder.”

“For manslaughter,” Nick said. “And there’s some question of whether you are the one who did it or not.”

“I confessed to it.”

“That doesn’t mean you did it.”

“You’d be prepared to believe I didn’t do it? And you’d be here, like this, with me, if I did?”

“No, I don’t think I’d be here with you, like this, if I really believed you did it. You didn’t, did you?”

Kyle didn’t answer right away.

“Tell me about it.”

“You followed the case . . . the trial?”

“Everything. If you tell me you killed that guy, I’ll believe it. I might even stay, if you let me check the house out to make sure there are no guns here. But if you have a story that hasn’t been told, I’m all ears.”

“To me you’re mainly cock . . . very nice cock,” Kyle said, adding in a nervous laugh.

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s OK with me too. We can fuck again and then I’ll go home.”

“And never return?”

“I don’t know. But it will be easier for me to come back again if I think you’re willing to be open and honest with me. As you said, there aren’t too many guys with a kink of wanting to fuck guys who want to dress like women, though—especially macho-looking guys like you. The fetish is much easier of the cross-dresser is androgenous. You aren’t. So, if I were you, I’d give a good thought to opportunity.”

“No, I didn’t pull the trigger and kill that sailor,” Kyle said. “But I was in a threesome with the sailor and I was dressed to kill, like tonight.”

“The other guy . . . the young actor.”

“Yes, it was Philip who shot the sailor. I’d like to say it was an accident, like we made it seem in my confession. But Philip is hotblooded and the sailor got rough.”

“The sailor was fucking you roughly and your boyfriend, Philip, shot him?” Nick asked. “Is that what really went down?”

“Yes. The studio got in before the police did and they rewrote the script, thinking they could get both Philip and me off, but the police and courts had another idea about it, and it went off the rails.”

“You’ve come this far in talking about it,” Nick said. “You might as well say it all.”

“The studio didn’t want it known that Philip and I were lovers, but they thought that was the lesser of the evils involved and they let that go. It ruined my career. It didn’t seem to hurt Philip’s.”

“No, he’s got a Broadway show going now, doesn’t he?”

“You know about that?”

“Yeah, I read about it somewhere.”

“The studio managed to suppress my cross-dressing kink, though, and they got the charge down to manslaughter and something the public could swallow better than the truth. They said I came in on the sailor forcing Philip, the sailor then went after me—I had a bloody nose and some bruises, so that I was in the action couldn’t be denied—and I shot him. They managed to depict it so that Philip and I were just friends, not lovers—that I was just visiting him when I found he was being assaulted.”

“But it was Philip who didn’t like how hot and heavy you and the sailor were going at it and ignoring him?”

“Yes.”

“And it was Philip who shot the sailor.”

“Yes.”

“But why did you take the rap for him? Why didn’t the studio pin it on Philip? The scenario could have worked with him as the shooter just as well. He was the lesser loss at the box office for them. And he’s the one who did it.”

“Philip wouldn’t have survived in prison. I knew I could. I couldn’t let Philip go to prison. Also, I starred in action movies. The studio thought it best to withhold all indication that I was engaged in sex with another man, even if it were assault. All of my movies, past and present—one way or the other, there didn’t appear to be a future—would tank at the bank. Philip could survive that suspicion better than my career could—my career. That’s all gone now anyway.”

“You love Philip?”

“Loved. Past tense, I think. Philip isn’t here now. He didn’t wait for me while I was in prison. You can fall out of love. I learned that the hard way.”

Nick, in fact, knew this of Philip—that he didn’t wait for Kyle. But this wasn’t the time or place to bring that up.

“So, do you want to leave now?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t want to, but I’ll have to,” Nick said. “I’m losing my digs and I’ll have to go out to find someplace else to live tomorrow—something a garbage man can afford.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Kyle said.

“People can’t have everything they wish,” Nick answered.

The silence was brief. Kyle was smitten, and he was so relieved to have unburdened himself with someone. And he was so grateful and aroused that that someone melded with his sexual interest. “I have four bedrooms here,” he said. “You could move in with me.”

Nick didn’t mull this any longer that Kyle had. “Then I wouldn’t have to go apartment hunting tomorrow,” he said.

“That’s right. You wouldn’t have to leave now. We could . . . again . . .”

And so, they did.

* * * *

Nick, just wearing athletic shorts on a hot New York City night in small apartment with only one inadequate window fan, was drawn to the door between the bedroom and the living room by the boisterous noise resonating in the stairwell as two men walked up to this floor shortly before midnight. He recognized the voice of one of the men, Philip Painter, a couple of years younger than Nick, and wasn’t surprised Philip was coming home at this hour on a Thursday. But he was somewhat surprised that he was bringing another man home at this hour. He guessed he wasn’t surprised Philip would bring someone else back to their apartment thinking Nick wouldn’t be there—but he was surprised Philip would do it after being on stage for performances. Philip’s Broadway play had had two performances today. Philip’s role was a taxing one. By rights, he should be exhausted after a two-performance day. It wasn’t normally a time when someone would bring someone back to his apartment to fuck while thinking his boyfriend was out of town.

But Philip wasn’t exhausted. The curtain calls must have been good and the guy he was dragging home must be a real honey, because Philip was definitely in celebration mode.

He opened the door into the apartment, saw Nick standing in the bedroom doorway, did a double-take, and pulled back into the stairwell and shut the door. Nick barely had a chance to see the other man, but he was older than either Philip or Nick, was good-looking, and one of his hands was palming Philip’s butt. There was a bit of muffled discussion in the stairwell and then Philip entered the apartment again, alone.

“You’re home,” he said to Nick. “You finished the assignment you were working on? Here, I need a beer. You want one too?” He was looking embarrassed. Not a word about the man he was bringing home to the New York City apartment that he and Nick Granger shared when Nick was in the city. Nick hadn’t been in the city for a month. He’d been on Fire Island. The last three weeks he’d been living with the former movie star and prison inmate, Kyle Kane, at Kane’s Fire Island house on New York Avenue.

“Yes, a beer would be nice, and then we should talk,” Nick said. “I guess your performances went great today.”

“Yes, great. You didn’t let me know you were coming back from your assignment today.”

And if I had, you wouldn’t have brought a man back tonight, Nick thought of saying. But he didn’t. They were beyond that. “I decided I needed to report in on my assignment. I won’t be here long.”

“Got more work to do? Going right back to wherever you are doing your research? Here’s your beer. Come on over to the sofa. Let’s have a proper ‘welcome home.’”

He was pulling Nick over to the sofa, and he was sexing Nick up, which kept Nick from responding to Philip’s first couple of questions beyond saying, “I’ve finished with the research.” And he had, in fact, finished doing the research he needed. It had started with a bit of suspicion on where Philip fit in the Kyle Kane murder case, his hooking up with Philip and linking Philip to the case even before Nick had taken the assignment he was on. Having heard Kane’s side of it now, which supported the suspicions he’d formed about Philip after a year of living with him, is what brought him back to New York and to this apartment tonight—if only briefly.

Philip didn’t let him get any further into that for a while, though. Philip was a sexy little thing and he knew exactly how to distract and to bend a man to his will. Once they were on the sofa, he was all over Nick, and Nick wasn’t able to resist, although he was determined this would be one last time. After some embracing and kissing and wrestling, Philip went down on his knees between Nick’s spread thighs and serviced the man’s cock with his mouth. They finished with Nick sitting on the sofa and Philip on his lap, facing him, his knees encasing Nick’s thighs, and his ass rising and falling on Nick’s cock to a mutual ejaculation.

Afterward, he bounced off Nick’s lap and headed for the bathroom, through the bedroom. At the bedroom door, he was caught up short.

“You’re packing. You’re packing up all of your stuff.”

“Yes, yes, I am,” Nick answered from the sofa. “It’s time for me to move on. I’m not leaving to complete my assignment. I just leaving.”

“Is it because I brought Shawn home tonight? But, no, you were packing before that.”

“It’s partly because of the Shawns and the Teds and the Jacks,” Nick answered in a tired voice. “But it’s more because of the rest of who you are and that you let Kyle Kane take the rap for you.”

“Kyle Kane? What the hell are you talking about? Is that what your assignment was? Is that what you’ve been researching? Kyle Kane’s murder case?” Philip said, his face going pale.

“Yes, but at the beginning I didn’t realize what an integral part of this case you are.”

The night went downhill from there.

* * * *

“These expenses are something else—maybe worth a feature themselves—but if they got the story, they were worth it.” Nick Granger was sitting in the New York City office of Darrell Jamison, the managing editor of the celebrity exposé magazine The Scoop that Nick often wrote freelance features for. “Did renting a garage and a tow truck and hiring two men get you where no reporter’s been able to get with Kyle Kane since he got out of prison?” Jamison asked.

“Yes, it did,” Nick answered. He took several selfie photos he’d done with both Kane and Philip Painter to establish that he had, in fact, gotten to both for the feature The Scoop had commissioned on the Kyle Kane murder case. He passed them across the desk for Jamison to see. These should be enough to establish that the expenses were legitimate. “I got into his house posing as a garbage man whose truck broke down in front of his place.” He didn’t have to cover how he’d hooked up with Philip Painter. That he was hooked up with Philip Painter had been the basis upon which he’d sold the story idea to Jamison in the first place.

“And this place is . . . ?”

“It doesn’t matter. It had a ‘for sale’ sign in front of it when I was there. He may have moved on by now. You know how hard it’s been for anyone to track him down and to get an interview.” Nick didn’t want to either lie or reveal the truth. His words here had to walk a very narrow line.

“But you tracked him down,” Jamison said.

“Yes.”

“And you got an interview. Juicy stuff. Something worth a juicy article on the man, where he’s been, whether he’s going to confess now that he’s done the time, where he goes from here? You discovered some kinks he has? There had been rumors even before the shooting.”

“Yes, I got the interview and I wrung him dry,” Nick said. “But there’s nothing there. He’s just a broken man now. No public interest that I can see.”

“You ran up these expenses and you’re telling me there isn’t a story there?”

“That was the deal, Mr. Jamison. Since I was close to Philip Painter, I’d try to get close to Kyle Kane too and check out if there was a story there. That’s all anyone else was trying to do. I did what others couldn’t do. I got to them both without them knowing I was researching for The Scoop and I got them to open up to me. I found the case was as it was presented and that, yes, both guys are gay, but there isn’t anything more of interest in the story. Kane’s career is over now anyway. People figured out there was a gay angle to it. There’s no shock value left in that story, I don’t think.”

“Shit,” Jamison said.

“Yes, but you’ve told me that in this business there are five ‘there’s not enough for a story’ in the celebrities’ lives to one fresh, new gold mine of scandal.”

“Yeah, I’ve told you that. I had this feeling about the Kane case, though, that there was more in it than met the eye and there were those rumors about maybe he liked to do the drag queen thing.”

“We can’t win them all,” Nick said, looking away from the editor, afraid that if their eyes met, Jamison would see that Nick was holding back. To distract from this possibility, Nick launched into another story idea. “On my way back from seeing Kane I took a few days to check out Fire Island. It’s always been a good hunting ground for scandals on gays. And guess who I saw being chummy on the beach? Sid Hollaway and young Jeff Blake.”

“The movie producer and that child star who is nineteen but playing younger parts?”

“The same, and they were in quite a lip lock. Maybe someone . . . or I . . . could—”

“You want to see what you can run down on that?” Jamison asked.

“I could, yes, if you like.”

When Nick left Jamison’s office, it was with authorization to do some research on this story, including checking out where the producer and young star might be staying—or had stayed—on Fire Island. There was no reason for Jamison to know that Nick had a good reason to spend much more time than that on Fire Island now—in a house facing the ocean on New York Avenue. Kyle Kane had already convinced him that he should try something more cerebral than hoisting garbage cans with the city streets his office—not that that had ever been a serious gig for Nick anyway—and Nick had allowed how he had always been interested in writing and he might try that. Kane thought that was a great idea and was quite willing to finance the change and to give Nick room and board in exchange for special favors.

On Nick’s part, he thought this would be a happy ending.