Plainclothes Naked (10 page)

“We don’t have all day,
pasmado.
”

Trying to remember a prayer—
Now I lay me down to sleep
—McCar dle slung his thumbs into the elastic and tugged south. He worked the shorts to his knees and shook them the rest of the way down.

“Mm-hmmm.” Carmella cocked her head sideways, like a very large pigeon. “So it’s true what they say about you black men.”

“What’s that?” said Mac, but only because he thought he had to. “You know,” she whispered, “they always lie about how big they

are.”

“Hey now,” McCardle started, then realized he had nothing to say. Carmella shrugged. “All men are the same, but you
negritos
have more to live up to. It has to be a very, very big disappointment to all the señoritas when you pull down your pants. They must think, ‘I was expecting King Kong, and instead I’m getting a
chorizo
like the Curi

ous George.’ ”

McCardle’s face burned in a way it hadn’t since his Little Tinky days. “I’m a grower, not a show-er,” he said defensively.

Zank turned around to see what Carmella was talking about, and turned back with the ghost of a smirk on his lips. Mac’s organ didn’t interest him, only the look on his face. Kind of
glazed.
Tony’d had doubts about his partner since he got wind of the shovel thing. Mac’s crime went down in a bar Zank knew catered to homoloids. Zank
hated
homos almost as much as he hated Boy Scouts. Your Boy Scouts, especially scoutmasters—those evil
BASTARDS!
—were the biggest homos of all....

McCardle claimed he got blindsided in the Parakeet Lounge when he was in there mugging a guy. In the
bathroom
. But, the way Tony fig ured, there were plenty of other places to mug somebody. Why a gay

men’s room?
Nobody actually went there to pee, did they? Unless it was down some degenerate’s throat. Zank once held up a minister in the bathroom at Denny’s, but that was different. That was back in his crank days. He was so out of it he had to shade his eyes from the glare off the tile. The methedrine did that, made everything too bright. He thought he’d robbed the guy in an igloo, until he staggered out and saw all these zombies spooning in runny yellow eggs.
Horrible!
It was after that Tony decided to turn his life around, and switched to crack. But a
gay bar!
Any amateur could tell you, thump a chickenhawk and take his wallet, you won’t catch a robbery beef, you’ll go down for hate crime. There was a big world out there to plunder and rob. You didn’t need to hit a joint where slapping someone was a federal case. Unless, of course, you had other reasons for being there.

Now look at him, Zank fumed, about to check my oil in underwear the color of lemon meringue pie....

“You see,” Carmella snickered, “even your good friend Tony is dis appointed. Even he is wanting more of a man.”

“Shut up!” Zank sputtered, and she shifted the gun in his direction. “Believe me, I’d just as soon kill you as rub my clitty bump. And I

love
to rub my clitty bump.”

Again, Mac had to struggle not to get aroused. Just the thought of the hearty Latina, flat on her back on the motel bedspread, legs spread as she pleasured herself with pudgy thumb and forefinger....
No, stop that!
he muttered. To his horror, he found himself stiffening against the cleft of his partner’s behind.

“Caramba,”
Carmella cackled. “Looks like the little lawn jockey is getting ready to gallop.”

Zank muttered something, shifting his buttocks, and their hostess bellowed. “No juking, Señor. I got a gun, remember? I got
chor
gun.” She smiled at McCardle and repositioned herself on the bedspread, legs wide apart in her stretch capris. “Now,” she purred, “you pull

down his pants, and you do him.” “Ex... excuse me?”

McCardle closed his eyes and tried not to breathe. Maybe he could make himself pass out. Maybe—

“A señorita is
waiting.
”

When Mac opened his eyes, Carmella was aiming a dildo at him.

She wielded the plastic white missile in one hand, the .357 in other, like an old-time gunslinger. “Bang-bang,” she said, and McCardle nearly started to cry. Somewhere Dan Rather was shaking his head.

Carmella winked at him. “You want to spit on your hands, get some lubrication, thass okay. But try anything funny and I shoot you both. I don’t care. When the
policia
see what you two tried to do to me, they won’t ask questions. They’ll send me roses. And hand me that big reward.
Comprendes?
You two are going to give Carmella a pretty little show, or you’re going to die. Señor Tony,
los pants,
” she added, blowing another full-lipped kiss as she shimmied her own skin-tight capris a few inches south on her enormous thighs, to the very top of her pubes. Or where her pubes would be if she had any.

“Oh God....
Shaved,
” McCardle gasped, his breath catching in his chest. Now he was helpless. The sight of the colossal beauty’s hairless treasure was just
too much
.... He was fully erect, and mortified. Feel ing him, Zank’s face went deep red, then very pale.

“Somebody’s ready to rumba,” said Carmella huskily. She dropped the gun to her pudendum, but kept the dildo raised to her face. She seemed to be
clicking
it. “You
hombres
want to die to keep your virtue, that’s fine by Carmella. Your mommas would be very proud.”

“I’ll kill you,” Zank growled, though whether to his throbbing partner or his jolly audience wasn’t clear.

No matter.... Carmella eased back on the headboard, smiling happily, and fished in her pocketbook for a Jenny Craig bar.

“
Deliverance,
por favor.”

All the women Manny’d ever really dug had been hugely damaged. All except for his ex-wife, who was confident, adjusted, raised by adoring parents, and responsible for the three most hellish years of his adult life.
‌

Mayor Marge, whose face, in Tina’s photo, showed up in sniffing proximity to the commander in chief’s dis tended nates, was the kind of girl he once thought he should love. She attended law school while Manny slogged through the Police Academy. And she had ambi tions for both of them. It was easy, young Manny’d thought at the time, to have ambitions when you’d never been within shouting distance of failure. But that bit of insight, steeped in resentment he was barely aware of, did not keep him from pursuing her.

His in-laws’ living room—the memory still made

his mouth dry—was dominated by a mahogany breakfront packed two-deep with trophies and plaques, inscribed silver plates and framed certificates, all won by the golden-haired Marge. Archery, debate, swim meets, spelling bees . . . the breakfront was a shrine to the victory. To
winning
. Something Manny had never done once in his entire life. The night of their first date, while her father the snack-cake mogul grilled him about his “career goalposts,” Manny could not stop staring at Marge’s triumphant booty. He found himself fixated on a big blue rib bon she’d snagged for a “safety slogan” she’d thought up for a contest in second grade. The winning entry was preserved and mounted, in eight-year-old Marge’s stellar penmanship. “Don’t put yourself in dan ger, never talk to a stranger!”

All of this, to Manny, was as alien as a tray full of shrunken heads. There was absolutely nothing about Marge he could relate to, so of course he had to have her. His own father, by then a tumor-ridden depressive hunched in his den, bathed in blue TV light around the clock, had given him the one piece of advice he’d ever given after meeting Marge. The old man and the deb had chatted for a tense two minutes after Manny, under pressure from his sweetheart, had run out of excuses for not letting her meet his family.

“Sonny boy, you watch out,” his father warned him a week later, speaking over applause for a genius
Jeopardy
guest. “To a girl like that, you’re nothing but an exotic dog.”

“Meaning what?” Manny asked, all the more outraged because it sounded true.

“Meaning,” said his father, fighting off the chemo-heaves, “she’ll parade you around for a couple of years to show she’s original, but sooner or later, she’s gonna want a blue blood. When that happens, kiddo, you’ll be lucky if she leaves you lickin’ the bowl.”

Dad wasn’t completely right, Manny thought, pulling in to Marge’s mansion to have his little chat. But he wasn’t all that wrong, either. She hadn’t left him a bowl, she’d just left him. Though techni cally speaking, that wasn’t true, either, since Manny’d moved into the Tit-ville YMCA a month before the official split. Marge’s career as attorney-turned-real-estate-mogul was already launching her into the highest strata of Upper Marilyn society. And Manny’s status as lowly

beat cop, someone she’d see rousting a bus bench drunk while lunch ing with men who owned office buildings, had become less and less acceptable.

The kicker came at a dinner party Marge dragged him to, a lofty affair hosted by one Melton Heinz, heir to the ketchup throne and a prime mover in the drive to transform the industrially challenged blight they inhabited into a shining city on a hill. Or at least a high-end suburb.

Melton, a thin-faced, silver-haired man with a braying laugh, wore the first ascot Manny’d ever seen outside of
Thin Man
movies. By dessert he was still staring at it, trying to figure out how the burgundy silk stayed puffed out of Melton’s collar, defying gravity, when there was a gigantic crash in the kitchen. Manny charged in with the rest of the guests to find the cook, a six-foot-six Swede named Lars, panting by the door with his hand around the neck of a scrawny black kid. The unlucky intruder could not have been more than twelve. He wore a Pirates T-shirt over corduroy pants two sizes too big. And the Mr. Clean–like cook had him hoisted off the ground by his throat.

“I find him in garbage,” Lars announced. “Stealing.”

As if this news gave him the license he needed, Heinz marched to the door where Lars stood strangling the terrified youth. Ordering his chef to drop him, the condiment heir stepped up and slapped the boy. Hard. Then he snatched a veal chop from a plate on the counter and began wagging it back and forth in the kid’s face, baiting him. “Hun gry, are you? How about a taste of milk-fed veal?
Well?
How about it? You want a taste?”

When it was clear the captive child was not going to do tricks, Heinz cocked his head of silver hair toward his dinner guests and smiled drolly before turning back to his victim. “We can’t have you eating out of my garbage can like an
animal
. I’m a
liberal!
I’ll let you eat off my kitchen floor. Better yet, why don’t I feed you myself !”

Mister Heinz laughed his braying laugh. Then he stopped laughing and mashed the breaded veal into the boy’s mouth.

The boy still didn’t react. Only this time, before Heinz could con tinue playing, Manny was across the room. He planted himself in front of the young man, jacket pulled back so Heinz could see his piece. “I

could arrest you right now for assault and battery,” he told his startled host, “but it won’t stick unless the kid presses charges.”

If anything, the twelve-year-old was more alarmed than Heinz.

Until something in Manny’s eyes let him know it was all right.

“You could, of course, settle out of court,” Manny said, keeping it matter-of-fact. “That way you avoid all kinds of hassles.”

By now Lars looked ready to shove Manny’s face in the grapefruit juicer, but Melton Heinz raised a manicured hand to still him. The guests stayed quiet, no doubt out of respect for all that ketchup money. “Officer Rubert, you have a point,” said Heinz, still trying for droll.

Braying only slightly, he turned to his young guest. “Would fifty dollars keep you from siccing Jesse Jackson on me?”

“Five hunnert,” the boy countered, without hesitation. His glance flicked from Heinz to Manny, who nodded to let him know it was okay by him.

Heinz produced five bills. The youngster grabbed them, then made a show of counting them. Before he shoved the cash in his pocket, he looked up at the ascot-wearing Heinz and met his smirk with a dead pan gaze. “I’se lettin’ you off easy, bitch.”

That got a rise from the dinner guests. And when the newly flush boy from the hood sauntered out the kitchen door, there was no ques tion that Officer Manny Rubert would be right behind him. No ques tion, either, that he’d be sleeping at the YMCA from that night on.

Manny stepped
gingerly up the flagstone path from the street to the mayor’s residence. The mansion was a glandular Victorian which had been added to over the years. It seemed like every time he drove by, a new cupola had metastasized from the roof, another bay of windows erupted from some second-story balcony or tower. The house kept expanding, though no one officially lived there but Marge and her tiny staff.

“All this could have been yours,” cooed a voice from the open front door, and Manny smiled to see Lipton, his ex’s
GQ
-handsome, platinum-blond British personal assistant. He was standing astride the welcome mat, arms outstretched. “I look at you, Manny, and I think

Why?
You’re such a smart, sexy bloke. All this could have been yours, darling!”

The one thing Manny liked about his former wife was that she’d hired Lipton as her assistant. The spritely Brit, who wore nothing but Armani, owned a head of hair he could have sold by the pound. His pompadour was so fluffy and lustrous you wanted to sink your toes in it. The peroxide was a touch only Lipton himself could explain, and nobody asked him to. For years Manny had wondered about the relationship, idly speculating on the arcane combinations the gay fash ion plate and Her Honor His Ex might possibly concoct. You never know....

As a lover, Marge had been ardent, if a tad distracted. Manny’s dominant erotic memory was a moment when he’d mounted her from behind, pumping frantically while she flicked herself with a buzzing vibrator and barked insults on the speakerphone to a junior realtor who’d let a fixer-upper in Butt-burg go for twenty grand too cheap. “You’re in-
COM
-petent!” she’d screamed, her face mashed sideways in the pillow. “You’re a
FOOL!
You have no
FEEL
for the
BUS
-iness!” Marge timed every epithet to his thrusts, to the point where Manny felt like stopping just to spare the poor bastard any fur ther abuse.