The Definitive Albert J. Sterne (31 page)

“That’s supposed to be amusing, is it?”

“Not really.” They were both too raw, even for this mild bickering. Fletch eased around, sat in the man’s lap, as insistent as a child. Albert, with a great show of reluctance, lifted his arms to encircle Fletch’s waist. They held on, faces hidden from each other. “I  do love you. More than as a friend.”

“You expect too much.”

“No more than you’re capable of.”

“Far more,” Albert corrected him.

“Then I’ll suffer for it.” Fletch needed to offer this man something, but neither of them seemed to want to make promises or plans beyond the fact they would be lovers at least until the weekend after next. A  confidence had usually sufficed in the past, or a declaration of vulnerability that Albert could choose whether to be rude about. “I  was thinking about the sex,” Fletcher said.

“No.”

“I don’t mean now.” Fletch tried for a chuckle. “You expect far too much of me, if you think I’d be capable after last night. It’s just that I had this idea for a bit of fun and figured there’s no one better qualified to play with.”

“I’m sure you could find someone who’s more willing.”

“You’re perfect for it,” Fletch assured him, and he whispered the details in Albert’s ear. This way, there might be no promises, but there would at least be short term plans made, and Albert would be sure Fletch was interested. As a strategy, it would do. Fletch lifted his head. Their faces were maybe six inches apart.

Albert looked at him, unfazed behind his dark glasses, expression betraying nothing. “And what would be the point of the exercise?”

Fletch laughed at that. Surely it was self-evident. “Come on,” he teased, “wouldn’t you like to tie me up and have your wicked way with me?”

“For some weeks now, I have had my way with you every time we’ve been in the same town, Ash, and I haven’t had to capture you yet. Our conversation had led me to believe you were willing to continue on the same basis.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned obtuse.”

“Isn’t the point more that I tie you up and do all the things that I know
you
enjoy?”

“I guess so,” Fletch said grudgingly.

“I have no problem with you choosing to take a fairly passive role in sex but it does mean that I shoulder most of the associated responsibility. In fact, it seems as if I would be more at your beck and call than ever.”

“All right, all right. Forget it.” So this hadn’t been such a great idea. It was more than time to call it quits for the day - they had gone through too much already. He dropped his head onto Albert’s shoulder, and said, “You really know how to take me to pieces, don’t you?”

“It’s all part of the service,” Albert said.

“What - embarrassing me?”

“Perhaps
mortifying
is more accurate in this context.”

Fletcher frowned. The dry humor rang true, but something about the wording didn’t. “Albert  -”

“It appears that you’ve progressed from empathizing with your pet murderer, to identifying with his victims.”

Albert was rarely that nasty to him. “How can you damned well say that?” Fletch asked, stung despite himself. “I  tell you this nice little fantasy of mine and you ruin it.”

“What did you expect?”

“I didn’t expect to  - Now, if I ever find someone to play that with, I’ll be thinking of this killer instead. Fear isn’t an aphrodisiac; not your own fear.”

“But you would expect to feel a
soupçon
of fear while playing the game, wouldn’t you? Just so much, and no more, because you trust the person you’re playing it with.”

“Leave it alone, Albert. Forget it.”

“If you trust him  -”

Fletch pushed away from the man, put some distance between them. “Leave it alone, damn you.”

Albert stood as well. “Perhaps I’ll phone for a taxi to take me to the airport.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Fletcher snapped.

They were silent throughout the drive and didn’t even speak at the airport. Albert did, however, allow Fletch to shake his hand in farewell.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

NEW ORLEANS

DECEMBER 1984

John Garrett strolled down the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his Saints jacket, newspapers under one arm. He knew the walk by instinct now, knew where to step to avoid the haphazard gutters and the bags of garbage, the abrupt bumps and depressions caused by tree roots and the high water table. While the summer weather lasted, he’d learned where to dodge the drips from air conditioning units, too, but the oppressive humidity had finally broken three weeks ago. There had been no fall: this city had only two seasons. Though today was officially the third day of winter, the bitterly cold weather had immediately followed the end of the heat. And Garrett, for one, welcomed it.

This city he found himself in was not only hot, it was flatter than a pancake and five feet below sea level - all of which seemed bizarre to a man used to cool climates and mountains. Who on earth had the idea to build a city in this swampland, fed by the omnipotent river and encroached on by the hungry ocean? There must have been desperate need for a trading port or defense of the river mouth, or some such thing.

Strolling, Garrett took it slow and easy, which tended to be the New Orleans pace at this time of day. No one had hurried in the heat and no one sped up now winter had arrived. The walk to buy the newspapers, with the humidity a physical presence bearing down on him even this early, had been all the exercise a man of Garrett’s build had needed. In fact, he wondered if he’d even survive the height of summer in this place.

He reached the cafe where he regularly took breakfast and sat in his usual seat. They brought him coffee and a pastry, and he opened up the first paper. He had to order it in from Oregon, which was irritatingly obvious, so he used the name Smith and walked a half mile out of his way to a newsstand that specialized in papers and magazines from across the States and from Canada and overseas. He could buy the
Weekend Australian
off the rack, for God’s sake, but he had to have a special standing order for the Oregon paper.

But he was prepared to do all that, and take the risk, in order to follow his case. Annoying, that three murders were barely enough to make the national papers and the television news. Murder was just background noise these days. What would he have to do, hit double digits within one state to get decent press coverage? But that was part of the whole idea - keep it within limits, keep it local, don’t give the feds an excuse to sniff around. Acceptable risks, minimal danger, just slide past the trouble with an irresistible smile. One day, too far in the future for him to picture clearly, Garrett would let everyone know what he’d achieved, and how many deaths, how many unsolved murders could be attributed to his charm and wits. Perhaps a posthumous confession of some sort, or he’d write a best seller once he was too old for them to send him to jail.

There was nothing in the paper today, so no progress had been made. Not that the police didn’t lie to reporters, either directly or by omission, in misguided attempts to manipulate the case. But Oregon had been quiet for over ten days now, and there was no sign of the FBI renewing its early, low key interest - though there had been mention of Bureau help from interstate. Garrett hoped that had simply been forensics or some other technical assistance, but whatever it was, nothing seemed to have come of it.

He was beginning to breathe easier at last. For too long a while, Garrett had feared he’d blundered, and badly. Finding a fresh body and old blood stains in the cellar, neither of which he could explain. Giving in to the temptation of taking Tony from the construction site. None of that had been sensible. But he’d disposed of the stranger’s body out in the forest, in such a way that the police suspected there was a second murderer; he’d bricked over the entrance to the cellar, laminating the end of the cupboard so smoothly no one would guess it had ever been a door; and he’d left Tony until last, once the construction job was over, ambushing the boy on his way out for the evening, seducing the unseducable. Sure, Garrett had been clever - but after the fact rather than before. It worried him, that there might be something else, some forgotten detail, that he hadn’t dealt with.

Nothing in the paper, nothing for his scrapbook. He would toss the thing into one of the trash cans on the walk to work - a different one each day, which was as anonymous a method of disposal as he bothered with.

He reached for the local
Times-Picayune
, mouth already quirking into a smile. They took crime seriously in New Orleans and with good reason - the city gave Washington DC competition in the race for the highest murder rate each year. It had amused Garrett to find the local paper kept a running tally. There it was: a box on the front page headed
MORE VIOLENT DEATHS
, and
327
underneath in large black numerals, which meant another five deaths since yesterday. So melodramatic! Garrett scanned the surrounding article. The latest murders had been shootings, three deaths in one incident, with a mugging that had gone too far providing the only variety. Garrett thought happily of the day when the paper’s murder toll would increase, with far more macabre details than this commonplace violence, and Garrett alone would know who had been responsible.
Fall 1986
, he promised them.
If you find the bodies quickly enough, I  might even beat the Christmas rush
.

They took their football seriously here, too. Garrett turned to the sports pages. On his arrival, Garrett had immediately bought the camouflage of a New Orleans Saints jacket. It was classy, in black and gold, and he was better pleased with it than most he’d worn. He could not, however, say the same for the team itself, who were so bad and lost so often, it was almost funny. This time, his new loyalty was definitely nothing more than convenience.

Garrett stood, dropped the correct money plus a two dollar tip by his cup and walked out. He hadn’t said a word to anyone in the cafe for weeks now - he was just a regular, always turned up at the same time Monday to Saturday, always had coffee with cream and one refill and a pastry, always tipped generously. Besides which the cafe only ever had female staff for some god-forsaken reason, and Garrett generally ignored anyone of that gender and mostly they ignored him. Garrett enjoyed making influential friends in the right places, took pleasure in supervising young men and developing camaraderie in the workplace - like in the hardware store he was managing now - but there were plenty of situations he liked to slip quietly through. He was sensible, he had it all figured. Though these days anytime there was a young man around who met his tastes, Garrett found it hard to resist flirting a little, trying his luck.

These weeks in New Orleans, he reflected as he resumed his stroll down the sidewalk, had been happy ones from that point of view at least - there were lovely young men in abundance here, in all shapes and sizes and colors. But, despite that, he hadn’t yet taken up any of the multitude of opportunities. He’d been too worried over Oregon, his faith in himself too shaken.

Garrett always followed his cases. He loved getting away with this, misleading the police, leaving the state before they’d even found the bodies let alone cast their investigative net. At home, he kept all the newspaper clippings, the missing person notices, the funeral announcements, along with the boys’ jewelry and wallets. In his imagination, he relived those deaths again and again as he held the silver chains and crucifix earrings in his hands, as he gazed at the photos reproduced in the newspapers’ grainy black and white, as he had rough and tumble sex with some unsuspecting young man.

He walked into the hardware store with a smile on his face.

“Hey  … you got lucky last night, Mr Garrett?” Kenny murmured through a grin, in that charmingly insinuating manner of his.

“No, just day dreaming,” Garrett replied. As he headed for the office, Garrett looked back to cock an eyebrow at his employee. At twenty-seven, Kenny was older than Garrett usually liked them, but he appreciated the man’s attitude. It was sweet to contemplate the lips that were so full it seemed they’d already swollen from savage biting kisses; it was sweet to wonder whether the dark skin would show bruises.

But taking Kenny would not be sensible. Tony had been enough of a risk, one worker amongst a hundred. Here, Garrett supervised three full time staff, and another three casuals. The odds were definitely against him.

Though who knew what he’d be doing by fall 1986? Garrett had taken on this job because he’d arrived in the craziness of the Big Easy, unusually restless, unable to settle, unsure of what he wanted to do. And the contracted manager of this place suffered a heart attack and needed eight to ten weeks off work. Available in the right place at the right time, Garrett was offered generous payment by a desperate and grateful owner. It was fun, in many ways, to be carrying something this simple, and it filled in the time until he figured out exactly what he wanted to do. Meanwhile, the owner was a rich businessman, someone useful to know, to be able to call on for favors. No matter how curiously reluctant Garrett felt, he had to start the process of fitting in, of being respectable. He did not mean to end up on a list of suspects as an itinerant store manager, with a black shop assistant his only friend.