Hobbled (31 page)

And when the redheaded guy kicked Dinkens in the head from the
other
side, it was all Bradley could do not to scream “Penalty. Unnecessary roughness! But that’s okay. Go ahead and do it anyway!”

Those two kicks in the head pretty much knocked the poop juice out of Mr. Dinkens. If he was awake after the second kick, he sure didn’t show it. In fact, he never moved again.

“Danny!” Luke screamed. He ran to the pile of cast-off clothes and dropped to his knees at Danny’s side.

It was about then Danny opened his eyes and said, “Hi, baby.”

Luke smiled down at him and kissed him on the lips. Then he kissed him a few more times. He showered Danny’s face with so many kisses even Mrs. Trumball began to look a little surprised.

But not nearly as surprised as the two men who’d kicked Dinkens in the head.

They ran to the pile of discarded clothing right behind Luke. By then Luke was finished smothering Danny with kisses. He was now cradling Danny’s head in his arms and urging him not to move so he wouldn’t hurt his leg any more than it was already hurt. While he did that, the tall man with the dark hair bent over Danny and gave him a hug.

“Whoa there, buddy!” Luke cried. “Why are you hugging my boyfriend?”

The man gazed into Luke’s face and Luke recognized the guy in the zoo picture on the wall in Danny’s kitchen. “Oh. Mr. Shay. My God. I mean, I’m sorry. I mean—uh—my God. It’s a real pleasure to meet you. Yessiree. A real pleasure indeed.”

Luke finally stopped stammering and shut the hell up.

“Hi, Dad,” Danny said.

Danny’s father’s eyebrow shot up, but he didn’t speak. Even in his confusion, he looked like he was trying not to smile.

The redheaded man came up behind Danny’s dad and slipped an arm around him to help him to his feet. When they stood, their hands came together in a clench and stayed there.

Danny looked at the other man. The shorter man. The man with reddish hair. The man holding his father’s hand. “You’re Luke’s dad. You must be. You look just like him.”

Danny and Luke just stared at their two fathers clasping hands, while the two fathers stood there looking down at them. Danny brought Luke’s fingers up to his face and gave each one a kiss. Danny’s father did the same with the man’s hand he was holding. Then the four men understood everything.

“I think I see what your business trips were all about,” Danny finally said.

His father grinned. “And I think I see what you wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk about. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, “I’m—” and then he turned toward the tiny room behind the furnace, groaning when he twisted his leg. “My God, Luke! Strickland! We have to take care of Strickland!”

It was then they all heard the cooing going on. It was Mrs. Trumball and the two boys. Mrs. Trumball was holding a glass of water to Strickland’s parched lips, helping him drink, cooing words of comfort into his ear, telling him everything would be all right. Bradley had rummaged through the pile of cast-off clothing to find an old shirt to cover Strickland’s nakedness. DeVon was still in the process of rooting through the pockets in Dinkens’s bathrobe. Finally, he pulled out a key and held it up in the air for everyone to see. “Aha!” he cried. “Freedom!”

He quickly slipped the key into the rusty old manacle holding Strickland’s hand to the ring in the wall, and with a clank and a sigh, Strickland lowered his arm for the first time in three days.

Then he wept, and the boys and Mrs. Trumball wrapped their arms around the young man and wept with him.

It was right then, a day late and a dollar short, that sixteen cops from the San Diego Police Department, each and every one of them looking smug and self-important, came barreling through both basement doors and stomping down both flights of stairs like a herd of blue-clad bison.

“Danny Shay!” Somebody screamed through a bullhorn. “Your light turned red, Bucko. You’re under arrest!”

Luke and Danny could only laugh. It was just too ridiculous. Then their dads laughed. Then Mrs. Trumball laughed, but that was only because DeVon had returned her unbroken bottle of gin from where he found it under the stairs where it rolled after she bonked Dinkens in the head with it, knocking his teeth halfway across the basement.

“Stupid cops,” Mrs. Trumball groused. “Never around when you
need
them, but boy, the moment you
don’t
need them, they show up in droves.” She took a healthy slug of gin to calm her nerves, not caring what anybody thought about it. In fact, maybe her days of
hiding
and drinking were over. Maybe from now on she would simply
drink.
She was tired of slinking around. Maybe there would be even more exciting nights like this in her future, if she just got out of the house a little more often.

She tossed back a second slug of gin and mulled it over while she went back to comforting Strickland.
The poor boy.

Dinkens gave a snort now and then, but he never woke up through all the ensuing commotion. When he did wake up, Danny figured he would be in for quite a surprise.

Danny tried not to grimace and fidget around while Luke ever so gently wrapped a folded blanket around his broken leg and shattered cast and secured it with his belt to keep the bone in place until the EMTs arrived. Danny stared up at his dad, who was still holding hands with Luke’s dad. The two of them were looking down at Danny and Luke and smiling proudly. Neither of them seemed particularly surprised to find their two sons so affectionate with each other. But as far as surprises went, Danny didn’t figure anybody had received a bigger surprise than
he
had.

It was amazing. His dad looked almost as happy as Danny felt.

And apparently he was gayer than a goose, just like Danny. Danny supposed that was what he had wanted to talk about when he got back from Tucson. That and the fact he was dragging a lover back home with him, and Danny’s new mom was actually going to be another dad.

Good Lord, now he and his dad were both with the men they loved.

Who in the world would ever have seen
that
surprise coming?

Meanwhile the sixteen cops milled around looking mightily confused, obviously wondering whom to arrest first.

Chapter 16

D
ANNY
was in his room, sprawled out in his recliner, staring down at the brand new cast on his leg. If anything, he hated this cast more than the last one. This one was tighter. It hurt more. Or maybe his leg was still sore from the night before. He tilted his head just a smidgeon to the right and considered his other leg, which was now blessedly monitor free. And what a relief
that
was. The left leg might be miserable as hell, but the right leg was happy as a clam. Then Danny shifted his eyes to the middle and stared at Luke’s gorgeous face. He was squatting on the floor at Danny’s feet with his chin on the footrest of the recliner, looking lovingly up at Danny’s face. Luke had his fingers tucked inside the top of Danny’s cast, just below the knee, because Danny said it made it hurt less when he did. With his other hand, Luke was stroking Danny’s warm thigh and getting lascivious thoughts. Luke suspected Danny was getting the same thoughts he was.

They were both in their daily uniform of baggy shorts and T-shirts. The sun was climbing up the morning sky outside Danny’s bedroom window, and the storm was happily over. It probably wouldn’t rain again for six months. But that’s San Diego for you.

Courtesy of their fathers, Luke and Danny were holding celebratory beers in their hands and taking a sip now and then while they talked. Neither of them was too crazy about the taste.

They were sure as hell crazy about each other, though.

Luke held his beer up in a toast. “Here’s to the judge for releasing you from house arrest and stripping you of that goddamn ankle monitor and commending you for your selfless act of bravery in helping to rescue poor Charlie. You’re a hero, Danny. Who’d have thunk it, huh?”

Danny laughed while they clinked their bottles together. “You’re a hero too. The judge said so. And while we’re thanking our friend the judge, let’s also thank him for having second thoughts and deciding to have the D.A.’s office investigate my old boss for siphoning money from his employees’ paychecks. The bastard.”

“The bastard,” Luke agreed, hoisting his beer.

Again they clinked their bottles together.

And one more toast. “Here’s to Mrs. Trumball,” Danny said. “The woman came through like the trooper she truly is. She promised help would be forthcoming, and by golly help forthcame. Or however you say it.” As an afterthought, he added, “And here’s to hoping that someday soon she’ll learn how to remove her makeup at night so it won’t keep accumulating like a bazillion coats of paint.”

Luke giggled.

They had learned only that morning it was Mrs. Trumball who contacted Danny’s dad the evening before and told him to get his ass home because the neighborhood was going to hell in a handbasket and his son was in the middle of it. So when she told the boys help was on the way, she knew of what she spoke.

They also learned that after the escapade in Dinkens’s basement, Mrs. Trumball had ratted out DeVon and Bradley to their parents about roaming the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night. Now, Mrs. Trumball reported, the two boys were under their own form of house arrest, grounded until somewhere in the vicinity of their thirtieth birthdays. Danny and Luke figured they were going to miss seeing the boys around. But maybe not much. The little shits.

“To Mrs. Trumball,” Luke said. “God bless her gin-soaked tattling heart.” And again their bottles clinked.

At the sound of paper tearing, they looked over to the bookcase by the window where Frederick was mangling a copy of
The Wind in the Willows
. Having grown tired of Mark Twain, he had apparently decided to see what damage he could do in the world of children’s literature. Judging by the scraps of paper scattered all over the carpet beneath him, the damage was turning out to be considerable. Mr. Toad was having a rough day indeed.

Granger was licking his balls by the door. And that is pretty much all that needs to be said about that.

“Why do you think he did it?” Danny asked. “Dinkens, I mean. Just why the heck did he do it? Take all those lives. Hurt all those people.”

Luke gave his head a sad little shake. “Who knows? Sick. Mean. Just plain nuts. Who knows? At least Strickland’s going to be okay. He lost his finger but he kept his life. That’s something.”

“Physically, he’ll be all right,” Danny said, “but who knows what the ordeal did to his head. He’ll probably need to do some healing inside. I think I would. The other victims weren’t so lucky.”

Luke sadly gazed through the open window. “No. They weren’t.”

Behind them, Danny’s bedroom doorknob rattled. But then it stopped. Silence reigned for a good ten seconds while they heard hushed voices in the hall. Eventually, there came a gentle rapping on the door.

“Can we come in?” a voice called out.

Danny grinned. It was his dad. Probably afraid of walking in on some sort of horrible new gay sex rite only homosexuals under the age of nineteen know about. At least Danny had his dad trained not to just walk on in like he used to back in the days when Danny only had sex with himself. That was a step in the right direction. And by the way, boy was Danny glad
those
days were over.

“Come on in!” Danny yelled. To Luke, he muttered, “You stay exactly where you are.”

Luke gave him a mock salute and kissed his toe. “I intend to,” he said. “They’ll have to get used to it sooner or later.”

The door opened and both fathers walked into the room. They were in matching bathrobes Danny had never seen before. They weren’t holding hands at the moment, but Danny thought their cheeks were suspiciously rosy. He wondered just exactly what they might have been doing to make them look like that. Then he decided maybe he didn’t want to know.

They sat side by side at the edge of the bed, hips touching, staring at their two sons in front of them. Luke’s hand was still resting on Danny’s thigh, the fingers of his other hand were still tucked inside the top of Danny’s cast, and he wasn’t about to move either of them. He seemed slightly surprised when no one asked him to.

Danny studied Luke’s dad. The guy really was handsome. He looked a lot like Luke. Ginger hair, shorter than Danny’s dad, but like Luke, better built. Danny’s father smiled gently at Danny as Danny scoped out the man beside him.

“His name is Jeff. Jeff Jamison,” his father said. “Jeff, this is my son, Danny. You met Mr. Jamison last night, Danny, but maybe you don’t remember, what with all the excitement and everything.”

“Hello, Danny,” Luke’s dad said. “Call me Jeff.” His voice was as soft as butter. He had an easy smile Danny suspected rarely left his face. Danny liked the man immediately. And he was thrilled for his dad too. He really was. They looked happy together, and Danny was glad his father had found someone.

Was Danny shocked to have learned his father was gay? No, he decided. Not at all. It was just the way some people are. What they did in their bedrooms didn’t matter. What mattered was what they felt in their hearts. How they treated the people around them. How they lived the lives that were given them. That’s what mattered.