Only Make Believe (2 page)

During the applause for Colonel Woodworth, I surveyed the room. Once again I admired the hand-made Lalique chandelier, the mirror-backed bar, the Art Moderne tray ceiling and recessed neon lighting, the brushed metal tables and cocktail chairs, the grove of artificial palm trees spray-painted snow white and sprinkled with silver glitter.

The Woodworths got up to dance. Other couples followed. At the bar, a gaunt, red-faced man wearing a Norfolk jacket, brown cords and Jodhpur boots drummed his fingers on the polished mahogany, anxious for the next drink. I knew his face but not his name. At the poker table, a man named Wayne Larue Barfield, one of the town’s leading trial lawyers, threw in his cards, slowly got to his feet and limped across the room. The former Captain Barfield had left most of one leg and several fingers on a battlefield in Italy. He greeted Lucille Shepherd, wife of the county coroner, and Betty Harris, my number-one party girl, and spoke briefly to a tall, wide-shouldered younger man standing beside her. Nodding, the younger man excused himself and followed Barfield out the door.

Further down the bar, two businessmen brushed elbows, seemingly deep in conversation. I happened to know they were old army buddies and about my age. I’d initialed their special-requests forms back in December. The men were in town for a sales meeting at the Bradford Hotel, three blocks away. They wore wedding rings and had wives and kids back home. They’d asked for connecting rooms.

A young woman in a low-cut, red silk dress entered the room, crossed to the card table and halted behind one of the players, a paunchy retiree from Orlando named Elmo Glissen. Acting as if they were the only people in the room, the girl, Monica (“Call me Monique”) Donnahew, began slowly, meaningfully massaging Glissen’s thick, hairy neck with her red-tipped fingers. The girl was local, a clerk at Flossie Hill’s department store. Glissen had signed her into the club. I wondered how they’d met.

When Monique began to rock her shapely hips against the back of Glissen’s chair, he tossed his cards on the table and followed her to the dance floor.

Another player, Lemuel Shepherd Jr., MD, Lucille’s husband and one of our charter members, glared resentfully at their backs, then spotted me. He raised a hand, threw me a come-hither gesture and bent to reshuffle the cards. I reported for duty.

“Doc?” I said. “Good to see you. Anything you gentlemen need? Drinks freshened up all around?”

“Mr. Eeew-ing, would you mind sitting in for Elmo? That girl’s taking h-h-his mind off his cards. Which is fine, I suppose, ha ha. But we want to keep the game ga-going. I thought you could lend a hand just temporarily—put your oar in, so to speak.”

Doc weighed well over three hundred pounds and stood six-four. His thinning hair had once been redder than mine, his voice perhaps less like the cry of a whooping crane. He laughed again and passed the cards to the thin, hawk-nosed man on his left, Ralph Nype, city editor at the Fort Myers
News-Press
.

“Doc, you aim to clean Elmo’s clock, that’s all,” Nype said, his accent hard-edged Ohio. He shuffled once more. “Cut for me, if you will, Dan.”

The other man at the table, a former Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Bolivia and Paraguay, fingered a stack of silver dollars. “May I presume to observe, Doctor Shepherd, that you’ve already cleaned your most esteemed brother-in-law’s timepiece. Could it be that you intend to bankrupt the three of us before Counselor Barfield returns from the rest room?”

“You have a way with words, Mr. Ambassador. My
esteemed
brother-in-law who is now holding down the bar over there? All I’m doing is charging the
inebriated
S.O.B. a week or two’s rent. Otherwise, I’ll have him in my house and on my bar tab until it quits snowing up in Philadelphia next April.”

The city editor dealt five cards. The ex-under secretary fanned his hand, removed one card, laid it on the table and set ten silver eagles beside it. “Dealer? I’ll take one.”

“An ace, Mr. Ambassador?”

“An ace would be most appreciated. But I’ll take it as it comes.”

My back was to the room and my mind on the lonely pair of deuces I’d drawn. So I almost dropped the cards when a fist gently punched my ear. I recognized the touch.

“Hey, Bud,” I said without looking up. “How were the Everglades?”

“Same as ever. Just glades.” This was standard Florida-boy repartee.

Doc groaned.

Staff Sergeant Spencer “Bud” Wright, USMC Reserve, slid into the empty chair beside me. “Good to be back in civilization. Whole weekend was SNAFU.”

Like that of many veterans, Bud’s vocabulary was littered with military acronyms and sayings. SNAFU: Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

Nype drew two new cards. “That would be Madame Chang’s esteemed brother-in-law, am I right? Chang Sna Fu?”

Bud ignored him. “See, the stated object of this weekend’s highly complex maneuvers for the one-twenty-seventh Marine Corps Reserve was living off the land. My platoon killed and dressed out eight head of deer, a boatload of bass, cat and mullet, a hundred and some-odd ducks, twenty-three rattlers and four dead oak trees for fuel.”

Doc Shepherd whistled. “Isn’t hunting season over? You want to get in on this game, Bud?”

Bud shook his head. “No, sir. And, see, it’s always open season for the military. But I have to wonder if there’s that many deer and ducks and bass in Korea.” He covered his mouth and coughed. “Guess I shouldn’t be giving out what could be classified information, what with a member of the press listening in.”

“There are deers and ducks everywhere,” Nype said. “Except the South Pole.” He threw in his cards. “I’m out.”

The ex-under secretary doubled his bet. “You were on maneuvers in the
Everglades
?” He drew out the last word as if Bud had just returned from Siberia. “You’re military? I thought I saw you prowling around here last week wearing a suit and a side arm. I said to my wife, hmm, secret service or perhaps FBI. Mary Lou speculated that President Truman might be coming to town.”

Bud grinned. “No, sir. House detective, part time. Lee County detective part time. Reserve meetings on Wednesday nights and the first full weekend of the month.”

I let my right leg drift sideways, under the table. When my knee touched Bud’s, he returned the pressure. We’d met at the American Legion hall two years earlier. Like me, Bud Wright was a Florida native and veteran of the Pacific war. Unlike me, he’d twice been decorated for bravery, once after a Jap sergeant’s bayonet ripped him from hipbone to earlobe. Before the medics got to him, Bud sent the Nip NCO and three corporals back to their ancestors. I loved that scar, a series of zigzag lines that begged to be kissed. For me, Bud’s battle damage was one of the sexiest things about him. We’d become lovers—not without difficulties and multiple misunderstandings—the month we met.

“I’m busted.” I threw in my cards. The ex-under secretary raised and called. Doc Shepherd matched and won. Nype shuffled and dealt again. As I reached for my cards I intentionally leaned closer to Bud. He’d changed from utilities to civilian clothes but his sweaty, muddy aroma got my blood pumping pleasantly. We hadn’t been alone since the previous Thursday morning. I wanted to get naked with him right now, be in his arms upstairs, and play our kind of poker.

I checked my hand: three aces and two kings, a practically unbeatable combination. I showed it to Bud, then set the cards face down. Underneath the tabletop, Bud’s hand stroked my knee and—briefly—the inside of my thigh. I took a deep, involuntary breath, held it and assumed a neutral, who-me poker face.

“For luck,” Bud muttered, turning away and raising a finger to signal Carmen Veranda, the Caloosa’s food-and-beverage manager, who’d just entered the club.

Carmen waved and headed our way. As usual, Carmen was wearing a severe, tightly cut black suit, light rouge and mascara, clear fingernail polish and high-heel boots. Drafted right out of a South Texas high school and assigned to an Army USO unit early in 1943, the dark-eyed sissy boy had reinvented himself while performing in soldier shows in North Africa and Italy. Although his legal name was Cabildo Morales, everybody at the Caloosa knew the little San Antonio Rose as Carmen. He was Tommy’s Carpenter’s longtime partner and my right-hand man. He had a way with words.

“
Buenos noches
, my gentlemens and bossman. How may I eserve you, please? Doctor Sheep? Another round? Sergeant Buddy? Beer?”

“Beer and some kind a sandwich,” Bud answered. “I’ll eat over at the bar, get out of these gents’ way.”

“French fries or slaw?”

“Both, and lemon pie if you got it.”

“Lemon meringue, most
especial
, coming right up.”

I looked around the table. Doc and Nype had taken two cards each, the ex-under secretary three. I put a twenty dollar bill on the table. “Thought this was your night off,” I said, glancing at Carmen, then back to the players.

“Boss man, welcome to Bali Hai. I’m going to perform my new, very
especial
‘South Pacific’ medley.” He cocked his hip and winked, Mary Martin in an instant. “I am here since noon. We had some
especial
requests to catch up on, as you know. So, in
un momentito
—now hear this, yes?—‘Some Enchanted Evening.’”

The ex-under secretary examined his cards and matched me. Nype folded. Doc Shepherd doubled. The ex-under secretary folded. I matched Doc and called him.

He showed me three jacks and a pair of sixes. As I raked in the pot, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Wayne Larue Barfield, the one-legged lawyer, was back in the game. His muscular shadow, a nephew, I found out later, helped him into the chair and stalked away. Carmen distributed fresh napkins and asked Barfield about a refill on his C-and-C.

Tommy announced a break, the music stopped, Elmo Glissen returned to the table and Bud and I repaired to the bar.

I drank a second beer while Bud wolfed his supper. Three seats down, Lucille Shepherd and Betty Harris, both avid golfers, chatted amiably about putts and pars and holes in one. The tall man in the Norfolk jacket—Doc Shepherd’s Philadelphia brother-in-law, now identified by his sister as Larry Doolittle—was still on his feet, slowly downing shots of Haig Pinch with beer chasers. Before Bud had finished his sandwich, the Diva, the Woodworths and the pair of Army buddies signed their tabs and departed.

When Carmen delivered Bud’s pie, Doolittle snapped his fingers in Carmen’s direction, barked, “Refill, missy,” and pushed his empty glasses forward. Carmen paused, removed the used glasses one by one, reached under the counter for a bar rag and swabbed the bar top until it shone. “Oh, yes, indeed, thank you so very much, sir,” Carmen answered, flashing the kind of razor-blade smile that must have earned Gloria Grahame her MGM contract. “On Doc Sheep’s tab again, am I not wrong?”

Carmen turned to Muscles. “Freshen up that beer, Mr. Fletcher?”

Muscles Fletcher smiled, shook his head and pulled the half-empty bottle of Schlitz closer to his chest. “One’s my limit,” he said. “I got to drive my uncle.” His accent was local—coastal drawl with a cowtown edge, not that much different from Bud’s.

Carmen set up Doolittle’s whiskey and chaser and disappeared backstage. Doolittle addressed his whiskey before downing it. “Fucking Miss Nancy. Prissing around here like a French whore. Turns my stomach.”

Betty Harris shot him a look.

Doolittle drained his glass. “Don’t know why they let fairies work in a first-class place like this. Can’t stand the sons of bitches. Always going after little boys like they do. And hanging around the bus station looking for God knows what.”

“Be quiet,” Lucille Shepherd ordered. “Do you want us to be thrown out of here?”

“Ought to be caster-rated. Just like a steer.”

KAHH-ster-rated, STEE-ah.

Doolittle’s Pennsylvania accent was as sharp as his tongue. I could almost feel the cold knife slicing through my tender flesh.

Horny bastard,
I thought.
Probably hasn’t gotten laid in a year. Given the right circumstances, Carmen could have you on your knees and begging for it inside fifteen minutes.

Muscles sucked his beer. “He’s OK. Works like a dog, Uncle Wayne says.”

Not that Carmen would touch either one of these bulls, faithful as he is to his Tommy.

“Bitch in heat, more like. Ought to teach ’em a lesson. Yeah. So decent people don’t have to look at ’em.”

When does it stop?
The Caloosa’s the only live-and-let-live club between Miami and Tampa and they still talk hate. Even here.
Jesus
.

I wanted to punch the drunken man out, knock his ugly words down his Yankee throat, pull Bud’s weapon out of its holster, march him down to the river and drown him in the swift-moving current—in short, show him what a fighting-mad homosexual can do when pushed to the limit.

But wouldn’t it be more fun to watch these two men breed? Dose the bastards with Spanish fly, strip them down, force them to mount each other. Take snapshots to pass around later.

Of course I couldn’t do any of that. Like I said, I was working. I knew the rules and recognized the importance of camouflage and self-protective silence. The asshole was a customer and so was the nephew, even if neither was paying, much less a member of the club. So I simply turned toward Larry Doolittle and stared. He didn’t notice. And, as far as I could tell, Bud didn’t hear what he said.