Only Make Believe (17 page)

Bud put his arm around my neck and tried to cover my mouth. “Why don’t you shut up, Lieutenant?”

I reached behind me and squeezed his crotch. “Why don’t we get in the water, Sarge, and see if your water wings still work?”

Gregg said, “And you’re a cop? And when you’re on duty—?”

“This is Florida,” I said again. “The rules are different here.”

“It gets complicated,” Bud admitted genially. “But we get by.”

Spud spoke through clenched teeth. “What you’ve got is what we wanted except, goddamn it, what we’ve got back home is what we
have
. I can’t just leave and I’m fucked, I’m goddamned fucked. I’m never gonna get it right.”

Gregg moved closer to his buddy, patting his back, ruffling his hair again. “Don’t, don’t.”

“Why can’t we have this all our lives and not just one week a year? What’s happened to us, the plans we made back in Germany?”

Spud’s voice broke. “When the children are out of school, then maybe—”

Neither one of us wanted to see grown men cry. Bud and I pulled down our bathing trunks, dove into the chilly water naked and swam away.

When we returned to the boat twenty minutes later we found Gregg and Spud sitting close together, also naked and visibly aroused. They quickly covered themselves with towels. Bud and I didn’t bother to dress.

When we’d finished lunch I said, “We trust you guys like you trust each other. We all got through the war. We all do what we can when and where we can. See?” Reaching over, I pulled Bud toward me and rubbed his neck the way I knew he liked.

Gregg kissed Spud chastely on the cheek. “It’s just hard,” he said, “the way things are.”

“We didn’t think,” Spud said. “When all our friends back home started getting married—”

I pointed over my shoulder. “The forward cabin,” I said. “There’s a bunk. You can close the door. Bud and I figured out a lot on that bunk. We didn’t think it could work out either. So far, it has.” I squeezed Bud’s ear. “Is that right, Sarge?”

“Right. Yes. It is. So far.”

While I packed up the leftovers and opened two more beers, Bud hauled the anchor, climbed up to the fly-bridge and started the engine.

“We might ought to have left all that alone,” Bud observed when I joined him topside. “Butting in. None of our business. And ours none of theirs.”

We’d put on shorts and shirts for the ride up the river. I squeezed his bare, hairy thigh. “Sarge, when we got together for that first meeting at the Legion hall, were you even hoping something like this would happen?”

He looked surprised. “Course not. I was happy enough dating Slim. Had me a new job. Thought it was all I could handle.”

“You’re a handful yourself. You know that.”

“Don’t get all lovey-dovey, Lieutenant. Probably just the beer talking.”

I squeezed his thigh again. “We can talk some more after a shower. Back at the hotel.”

“You sure got a dirty mind, Lieutenant.”

“Dirty for you.”

New-Press
(Fort Myers), Friday, January 12, 1951:

DEAD BUSINESSMAN’S SHOCKING SECRET LIFE

— By Ralph Nype, City Editor

Exclusive information obtained by the News-Press indicates that Nicholas C. DiGennaro, 37, the Bradenton executive who died early Monday after a beating at a riverside hotel, may have invited the vicious attack. According to inside sources, Mr. DiGennaro allegedly practiced unnatural vices. Married and the father of two, the burly businessman was clad in women’s foundation garments and Nylon stockings when assaulted at a local hotel. Furnishings in the man’s room were disturbed and cash was removed but no other objects of value taken.

Witnesses report that DiGennaro sashayed around the public areas of the riverside hostelry dressed in an evening gown and wig during the dinner hour. A source at the hotel said this was not Mr. DiGennaro’s first such appearance in Myers. The source admitted it is possible that someone accompanied Mr. DiGennaro upstairs.

Lee Memorial Hospital records reveal that Mr. DiGennaro died of heart failure. Detective S. Wright of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department refused to speculate on any connection between the attack and the victim’s limp-wristed performance at the historic property. Officer Wright also refused comment as to whether the dead man might be considered an alleged invert or degenerate. No suspect has been apprehended in the case.

Coleman Husby, downtown business owner and presiding elder of the Southwest Florida Council of Churches, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that perverted passion is running rampant along the riverside. “That hotel has practically become a haven for abominations of every type,” he said. “Sinners who seek the crime against nature that dares not say its name are certainly among them,” he charged. Elder Husby added that the hotel and its private club rooms are rumored to employ persons who are allegedly of the same debauched persuasion.

DiGennaro, originally a native of New Jersey, moved to the Sunshine State in 1938 to become one of Bradenton’s most noted business, educational and religious leaders. He operated DiGennaro and Co., a leading wholesaler of school books and supplies. The firm sponsors a Catholic-youth-league softball team and Mr. DiGennaro personally underwrote all staff salaries and sports equipment purchases at the Big Cypress Boy Scout Camp near Sunniland. However, a check of the Manatee and Collier county vice units showed no record of arrests for child molestation, unnatural acts or self-exposure under DiGennaro’s name.

Neither the deceased’s wife, Mrs. Amelia DiGennaro, 35, son Nicholas C. (“Chuck”) Jr., 16, or daughter Cecilia (“Cissy”), 15, would speak to a reporter who called at the family home. But a neighbor, Louise A. Warnke, described the widow as “distraught” and the children as “beautiful kids, and taking it well.” Mrs. Warnke, a social worker for the Veterans Administration, when pressed about the effect of such shocking revelations on a family, said she was most worried about the DiGennaros’ son. “Chuck is such a sensitive, handsome boy,” she told the News-Press. “I’m afraid he may already be adversely affected by his father’s lavender tendencies, and thus ruined as a man even before he reaches his majority.”

Bud and I were seated on the sofa in my second-floor room. He read through the story twice, wadded up the page and hurled it across the room.

“Fuckin’ fucker Nype dragging in those kids,” he shouted.

“Amen to that. Calling the boy queer. He’s only sixteen. Calling him beautiful. He’ll never live it down.”

Bud had spent the night on guard duty, roaming the halls and grounds, alert for unwelcome guests and assholes armed with lipstick. I’d slept alone. An hour before dawn he’d used his pass key to enter my room. He waked me with a rough kiss, tossed the unread newspaper on the table and retired to the bathroom to clean up. I rolled out of bed, phoned the kitchen for coffee and scanned the headlines. Blammo.

Bud slammed a fist on the arm of the sofa. “Tells the whole fucking world what we needed to keep under wraps. Dan, I want Nype out of here—now, for good. Or I might go after the draft-dodging, free loading, pussy-starved asshole myself.”

“He’s pissed. Thinks I misled him. He got his first story all wrong. Didn’t bother to check his facts and got chewed out. This is Ralphie’s payback.”

“You did mislead him. And instead he brings me into it.”

I crossed the room to the bathroom, surveyed my face in the mirror and reached for the shaving cream. “You didn’t tell him anything. He admits that much. At least he didn’t mention the name of the hotel. That’s part of our deal.”

Bud moved in behind me and put his hands on my naked sides. “Some deal. Bastard treats the club like his personal playpen, then goes and writes us up like we was a fruitcake dive on the Frisco waterfront.”

“Touch me some more,” I said. “Rub my back. Then my front.”

“Are you crazy? With room service on the way?”

But he did as I said. He started with my shoulders. I dropped my hands and soaked in the pleasure as he squeezed and stroked.

“Goddamn foot-kissing asshole,” he whispered in my ear. “Putting me in a story alongside chickenshit about Boy Scouts and crimes against nature.”

“And we’re pretty sure a Boy Scout was the last thing DiGennaro wanted.”

Bud ran his knuckles up and down my spine. “We’re not dead sure, not yet. Anyhow, that ain’t my point. You know I can’t afford to have people connect you and me to perversion. We got to keep our noses clean in public. That right, Lieutenant? That right?”

“Sure, Sarge, I know. I do. But Doc Shepherd, Carmen and the beauty parlor man all fingered DiGennaro as a pervert for women. Lingerie got him going like you’re getting me.” I glanced up and caught his eyes in the mirror.

He reached around, felt my rigid nipples and winked. “Goddamn, Dan, we could toast marshmallows on these things.”

When I shuddered and leaned forward, bracing myself on the sink, he held me tighter and licked my neck. I took a breath. He slipped one big hand down inside my shorts and touched me gently. I could feel his hips and hardening cock moving behind me.

“We gotta hurry,” he said. “Are you with me?”

I turned, kissed his mouth and tried to get hold of his belt.

Somebody knocked. Bud was still dressed and more or less presentable. I was wearing only slippers and boxers that had suddenly gotten very tight in front. “You better get that.”

He hesitated, then stepped back, wiped the smear of shaving cream off his upper lip, adjusted his pants and shouted, “Be right there.” He shut the bathroom door behind him.

By the time I shaved, cold-showered and dressed, Bud was on his second cup of coffee. Carmen, bread basket in hand, turned and bowed elaborately to me. “Bossman, I have information of the greatest interest. As I am telling Detective Bud at this very moment.”

Bud gestured toward the napkin-covered basket. Carmen unveiled the contents like a magician drawing a cloth off a top hat and said, “One of our birds is about to go fly the coop.”

Carmen prepared a plate for me. “Mrs. Lucille Shepherd she was in the club last night. She happen to mention that her brother is returned from shooting little birds in the Everglades. She say he is going north on the next train.”

Bud picked up a pecan roll and waved it. “And I say Mr. Larry Doolittle ain’t going nowhere until he accounts for his time early Monday morning.”

Carmen cocked her hip. “Mr. Doolittle, he may not remember too good, eh? Mr
.
Doolittle, he sucks down Haig Pinch fast as we can pour it—and puts it on Doc Shepherd’s tab.”

Bud laughed. “Mr. Doolittle, he was observed talking to the Diva late Sunday night. Mr. Doolittle, he ain’t married and he’s been off in the glades with a bunch of men doing no telling what. Mr. Doolittle, he got some explaining to do.”

A colored maid in uniform and starched cap opened the Shepherds’ front door. “Miz Shepherd, she ain’t up and around yet,” the woman said pleasantly. “Perhaps you be so kind as to stop by after lunch?”

Bud flashed his badge. “No need to disturb Miz Shepherd. It’s her brother we want to talk to. If you could just show us where his room is?”

The maid looked unsure. “I better go ask if—”

Bud took a step forward as if ready to push the woman aside. I knew he was faking.

She flinched. “He be out in the guest cottage. Just step right around the garage there. I know he be up. I took him coffee a little while ago. He be packing for Philadelphia, I believe.”

The screen door to the cottage was unlatched, the wood door behind it cracked open. Bud knocked, a voice called out, “Huh?” and we stepped inside.

Larry Doolittle looked like a college professor gone to seed. Lanky and balding, with tired blue eyes and sloped shoulders, he wore only piss-stained shorts, an undershirt, striped socks with elastic sock garters and scuffed dress shoes. An open whisky bottle stood beside his crushed hat on the dresser. A leather valise, folded field cot and shotgun case were stacked beside the door.

Quickly stepping into a pair of wrinkled pants, Doolittle tried to put up a strong front. “What the hell, Dan? Busting in here first thing in the morning. And who are you? Don’t you think you might give a man a bit of privacy before—?”

Bud showed him his badge, explained the situation and told him he’d been observed talking to a guest in the Caloosa Club shortly before the unfortunate individual in question was assaulted. I took a step back, indicating that I was merely a witness.

Doolittle huffed and shook his arms like an animal anxious to be let out of its cage. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Haven’t even had breakfast. Did you see Bertha in there?”

“I have to talk to everybody who was at the club on Sunday night,” Bud continued evenly. “Just have to be sure you’re in the clear, sir. We’re aware that after you finished up your card game you had a drink or two with the ladies at the bar.”

“Ladies? Oh, the ladies. Yes, Betty Boobs, I talked to her for a while. Never liked paying for it, though. There was that old dragon dressed in black, Norene Something?”