So, Michael hadn’t kil ed Al en either? I real y was the worst detective ever.
I bucked my hips wildly, but there was no way I was going to get him off me.
No one to help me either.
“Paul!” I screamed out one more time.
“No more of that,” Michael said. He brought his hands back to my neck. They tightened around me. I couldn’t breathe.
“Stryker,” I tried to scream, “help me!”
But with Michael’s huge hands on my throat I could barely be heard.
“Shhh,” Michael said. “Shhh.” He leaned in more.
“Tony!” I cried, but by now, only in my mind. “I love you!”
I felt a huge rush of heat as adrenaline surged through me, but there was nowhere for it to go.
The lights in the room flickered and dimmed until I realized it wasn’t the lights at al.
It was my life that was going out.
Michael’s face started to float away.
Blackness descended.
This was it.
Good-bye, world.
What a shitty way to go.
From a hundred miles away, I heard a sizzle and then a thud.
Michael’s arms relaxed and released.
I turned onto my side and gasped for breath.
Michael’s body rol ed off me and slumped to the floor. It was a minute before I could look up.
Paul Harrington stood there, naked, holding the Taser limply in his hands. Tears rol ed down his cheeks and his shoulders shook. “You bastard,” he said, looking at Michael’s unconscious body. “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard, you bastard…”
I pul ed myself up and put an arm around Paul. “It’s OK,” I told him. “It’s over. It’s over now.” He dropped the stun gun. He put his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s over.”
There was a loud bang and I felt Paul’s arms go limp as he slumped to the floor. A bright red bloom of blood spread across his chest. What? I turned to the door.
I saw who Michael referred to as “wifey.” Not his wife. His brother’s.
Paul’s wife, Alana Harrington, stood at the top of the stairs holding a smal pistol. She wore a black business suit, black pil box hat, and black leather boots.
Damn if she didn’t look a little like Darth Vader.
“You boys,” she said, descending the steps, “I can’t turn my back on my own husband for a minute without finding him making out with some guy in my own house.”
She shrugged. “Can you blame me for shooting him?”
I thought I had been in Michael’s house this whole time, but real y it was Paul’s. Somehow, though, I knew this sick little playroom wasn’t his. Looking at Alana, I understood who the real master around here was.
Or should I say “mistress?”
Alana walked over to Michael’s inert body and kicked him absently. “Useless piece of shit. Fun to play with, and not without his talents, but, stil, look at him.”
She went over to the cabinet and took out a long whip. She transferred her gun to her left hand and held the whip with her right. She flicked it with an expertise not seen since Michel e Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns. The tip landed with exact precision on Michael’s exposed butt with enough snap to draw blood.
But not enough to rouse him.
“Useless!” Alana cried. She sneered at his backside. “Maybe if he could have kept it in his pants I wouldn’t have to clean up this mess.”
Michael had used almost the same words. Now that I had a chance to give his ass a good look, I saw that the lash mark Alana delivered today wasn’t the first one to scar him. “So,” I asked, “how long have you and Michael been having an affair?”
“Aren’t you the clever one?” she asked. “Paul had always been of little interest to me, but he was rich, and trying so desperately to be straight. I knew I wouldn’t have to put up with much sex from him so I figured ‘what the hel.’ We married, I had everything I ever wanted. Life was good.
“But, as you can imagine, things were a little boring. I had playmates, of course, men Paul knew nothing about. He was so busy with his own secrets he never suspected mine.
“When I met Michael, though, there was a chal enge. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on between him and Paul. When I confronted Michael, he thought I’d go to the police.
Imagine that!
“I loved it! His control over Paul was amazing! Oh, together, the things we’d have poor Paul do! I’d be dripping with excitement. In the beginning, being with Michael was thril ing. Thril ing!”
She planted her stiletto heel in the smal of his back and pressed down hard. No response.
“But after a while I understood what he real y wanted. Isn’t it what al men want?” She kneeled next to him and stroked his hair. “He wanted to be told what to do. He wanted to be punished,”
She stood up and cracked the whip over his head.
“He wanted Mommy.”
Every top wants to be a bottom.
Alana narrowed her eyes. “What do you want, Kevin?”
On her lips, my name sounded like a curse.
“Wel,” I said, “now that you ask, I would real y, real y like to leave.” I walked towards my clothing.
“And don’t worry-your secrets are safe with me.
You guys just keep on doing… whatever it is you’re doing and I’l be on my way.” I reached for my pants.
“Freeze, faggot,” Alana thundered, pointing her pistol at me. I froze.
“Jesus!” she cried. “My husband, my lover, their father, you-I’m surrounded by faggots!
“Here’s how I see this going down,” she continued. “I shoot you now. When the big dummy wakes up,” she gestured towards Michael, “we’l figure out some way to make it look like you and Paul kil ed each other in a lover’s quarrel. I’l be the grieving widow and no one wil ever be the wiser.
“A year or two from now, I’l marry Michael. With al the money he’s been making at the Center, especial y after I gave him some particularly bril iant suggestions on how to increase his revenue, I think I’l be pretty comfortable, don’t you?”
Now, I was sure who was in charge. It wasn’t Paul.
It wasn’t Michael. It was Alana who held the whip.
Literal y, as it turns out.
“It was your idea to have him make those men kil themselves?” I asked her.
Her grin was pure evil. “Guilty as charged!” she said cheerily. “But those weren’t men,” she added.
“They were faggots, like you.” She looked at Paul.
His face was white as snow, but I could see his chest stil rise and fal. He wasn’t dead. At least not yet.
“Like him. Trust me, they won’t be missed.”
Her hatred of gay men, her twisted relationships with the Harrington men… it was Alana who murdered my friend, wasn’t it? I final y figured it out.
“You kil ed Al en, you psychotic little bitch!” I shouted at her. “And I miss him! And Paul misses him too!”
Alana looked at me quizzical y. “Al en? Michael’s father? I didn’t kil Al en. Why would I kil Al en?”
Damn. Was I never going to get this right? Who did kil Al en?
She pointed the gun at me.
“You, however, should not have cal ed me a bitch.”
I had run of out tricks.
There was nothing left me to do, nowhere for me to go.
I wouldn’t beg, though. Fuck her.
She pul ed the trigger. A shot rang out. Blood exploded across my face and chest.
It didn’t hurt, though.
That was weird.
Then I realized the blood wasn’t mine.
Alana fel to the floor.
Twenty feet behind her, at the top of the stairs, Tony Rinaldi stood with his service revolver in both hands. “Police-freeze!” he shouted. Then, to me,
“are you hurt?”
I’ve been happy to see that son of a bitch before in my life, but never with such good reason. If I wasn’t already in love with him, I’m pretty sure I would have fal en right then and there.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
He raced down the stairs, keeping an eye on Michael and Paul.
“I think they’re out,” I said.
Tony stood awkwardly in front of me.