Only Make Believe (32 page)

Asdeck stood a little taller, obviously surprised and impressed. “And it appears he’s had some success?”

“He’s just getting started, Admiral. This here’s the first one he’s got back to me on. But he does say—” Bud held up the letter. “‘We believe we can give you positives on at least three additional sets within the next several weeks.’”

“Good work, Top Sergeant. Excellent.”

“Yes, sir, these anonymous communications is going to put some Klanners and church-going assholes in court. Federal court, unless I miss my guess. See, using the U.S. mails to threaten a citizen, that’s a federal offense—a felony. I had a word with the federal deputy that arrested the embezzler, Mr. O’Malley. He mentioned a young district prosecutor who’s just itching to take on the Klan. Federal prosecutor. You watch, Admiral, we’re gonna clean up Lee County. This letter, it’s only the beginning.”

Bud glanced at the photocopy again. “Dan, you’ll never guess who wrote this horse shit about cutting off your stuff with the flaming sword.”

“Maybe Dan doesn’t want to know,” Asdeck put in. “Not until the man’s safely behind bars.”

Bud grinned. “I’ll give you gentlemen a hint. He’s a business owner in Lee County. Teaches Sunday school. Family man—has a real nice family, they tell me. Gives to the March of Dimes. Ran for office not long ago.”

“Could be anybody,” Asdeck murmured. “Could be a member of this club.”

“No, sir. Lucky for us, he ain’t.”

Asdeck laughed and clapped Bud on the back. “Full speed ahead, then, Sergeant. Blow the self-righteous bastards out of the water.”

Bud held his empty glass aloft. “Sir, we’re gonna bayonet every one of them assholes with their own flaming swords.”

I signaled Carmen for more champagne.

“We’re gonna nail the miserable sons of bitches to gas-soaked crosses. We’re gonna light matches and send the yellow-bellied Klanners straight back to Hell.”

Asdeck and I exchanged looks. “We’ve created a monster,” I said.

Bud laughed. “Gotcha, Lieutenant,” he answered, grinning broadly. “The identifications and possible charges are real. The rest, well, it’s all just make-believe.”

Diva Capri is based on ideas presented in Amy Bloom’s
Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude
(Random House, 2002).
Only Make Believe
is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are imaginary and any resemblance to actual persons is accidental. In order to tell this story I have silently rearranged the geography and racial and political fault lines of Fort Myers and southwest Florida. The needless sinking of the USS
Indianapolis
,
the resulting loss of almost nine hundred men and the disaster’s subsequent cover-up by the U.S. Navy, however, are a matter of public record.

Ensan Case, to whom this book is dedicated, created the prototype on which all of my fiction is based. Without him there would be no Dan Ewing, Bud Wright or Joe Harding. Katherine V. Forrest, Jim Duggins, Nathalie Dupree, Jerry Gross, Don Weise and the late Eli Kaplan offered valuable advice during the novel’s long course of composition. Steve Berman, my friend as well as my editor at Lethe Press, granted me considerable latitude in preparing this and other works for publication. John Eby’s reading of the next-to-last draft was helpful and encouraging in all the right ways.

Elliott Mackle’s
first novel,
It Takes Two
(2003),
was compared to the work of Christopher Bram and Carl Hiaasen. The
“why-done-it”
crime story was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
Only Make Believe
is set about two years after the conclusion of that novel. Mackle served four years in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam era, achieving the rank of captain. He was stationed in California, Italy and Libya, the latter the setting for
Captain Harding and His Men
(2012),
a sequel to the multiple-award-winning
Captain Harding’s Six-Day War
(2011)
. Hot off the Presses
(2010), a romantic exposé of the racial and sexual politics surrounding the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, is based in part on Mackle’s adventures as a staff writer for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
.
The newspaper’s dining critic for a decade, he also reported on military affairs, travel and the national restaurant scene. He has written for
Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Los Angeles Times, Florida Historical Quarterly, Atlanta
and
Charleston
magazines and was a longtime columnist at
Creative Loafing
, the South’s leading alternative newsweekly. Mackle wrote and produced segments for Nathalie Dupree’s popular television series,
New Southern Cooking
, and authored a drama about gay bashing for Georgia Public Television. Along the way, he managed a horse farm, served as a child nutrition advocate for the State of Georgia, volunteered at an AIDS shelter, was founding co-chair of Emory University’s GLBT alumni association and taught critical and editorial writing at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta with his partner of forty years.