It Takes Two (10 page)

“You’re turning me queer,” he whispered late one night a few weeks later, sounding sad. We were stretched out on an old blanket on a deserted beach on Sanibel Island. “I like you a lot. I like being with you,” he confessed. “And I like it with Slim”—Slim being Slim Nichols, a waitress at the Arcade Café on First Street. “You teach me more,” he said, “but—”

At that point I put my hand over his mouth. “But she poaches eggs better,” I murmured in his ear. “And probably darns your socks. I got four cooks working for me. I’ll buy you socks if you need them. So what do you want for breakfast? I wouldn’t mind waking up with you day after day.”

That was more than I intended to say. His admission had gotten to me. Still, he didn’t exactly take my words as a proposal of marriage. Reaching out past the edge of the blanket, he grabbed a handful of sand and forced it into my mouth, gripping my neck with his other hand. “How about I have me a redheaded ex-lieutenant for midnight chow. And then the hungry lieutenant can have a slice of tough old jarhead for dessert.”

I spit the sand onto his chest and rubbed it in hard, the grains catching the black curly hairs. “If I didn’t rate my Buddy pretty high,” I answered, trying to talk around the sand in my mouth, “I’d tell him queer was too good for an ex-marine. I’d tell him to forget using words like that. And I’d say lemme go wash the sand out—so Coach don’t scratch his Buddy’s piece of barracuda bait when he swallows it later.”

Hiking on Estero Island one stormy November afternoon, I asked if he and Coach Andy ever touched each other.

“Course not,” he answered without hesitation, not even looking up.

“But you wanted to. You knew what his hard cock looked like.”

Bud took a breath but didn’t break stride. “Like I say, I hero-worshiped him. And he always slapped me on the butt after I hit a good one. And he rubbed my shoulders before I went up to bat. He hugged us when we scored. And I guess I got ideas.”

“And what happened?”

“We was in the showers late, after a big game my junior year. I got a hard-on and he got one too. Nobody else there. Hell, I’d seen players shoot off together in the showers, even pull each other off. But I’d never done nothin’ like that. Coach was lookin’ at me, soapin’ himself hard and staring at my bone. So I reached for him.”

“And he reached back?”

“He slapped my hand away. And then he just grabbed his towel and got out of there. Took me aside the next day and told me I needed to learn to keep my hands to myself. And he never patted my butt or massaged my shoulders again. But we didn’t stop being friends. And he kept to the tutoring schedule.”

“Look but don’t touch,” I said. “Even though he must’ve wanted to mix it up as much as you did. Probably more.”

“You think so? Course I wondered. Felt real guilty and embarrassed at the time. Scared I was turning queer. Did I tell you he was a married man? I went to my granny—only because she was who I talked to the most. Told her I liked one of my teachers real much. And she said that was natural. So I said, ‘No, I mean I really like him. But I don’t think he likes me.’ And she hugged me and said it was good I knew my feelings, and that I’d always been a loving grandson to her and there’d be plenty of time to find somebody who loved me as much as she and all my family did.”

“Nice. And your old coach didn’t sit you down and explain that he couldn’t risk touching a student without risking his job? No matter how close you two were, or how he felt? Didn’t mention the words ‘jail bait’?”

“No, I guess he didn’t.”

I stopped walking. Bud took a couple more steps, then turned back, looking quizzical. We’d halted near a deserted stretch of beach bordered by sea oats and oak scrub.

“So what Coach Andy taught you,” I said, “is that being forward doesn’t get you what you want. And that looking without touching doesn’t get you off either.”

“Hadn’t never thought of it like that.”

“He taught you not to make the first move—unless you want to risk getting your hand slapped. Boy, he was some molder of young male minds. I’m sure glad he didn’t coach me.”

And then I thought,
Hell, Dan, Mike Rizzo made the first move on you. And you never even saw anybody jerking in a shower, much less tried to help out, until after the war. You’re a big one to talk
.

Bud’s fists were suddenly up close to his chest. He had an angry, confused expression on his face. Then he blinked and almost immediately he opened his hands, palms facing outward. “Don’t talk about my coach,” he said, an edge to his voice.

“What do you want, Buddy?”

“What do you mean?” he answered, his strong hands still hovering.

“You can make the first move with me any time,” I said. “There’s no way Coach Dan is gonna slap his Buddy down.”

“Fucking Coach,” Bud answered, glancing around. Far out on the Gulf, a lone sailboat pointed north. “You don’t mean right out here on the beach in broad daylight!”

“We can get in the water and make like we’re in the shower. We just won the big game. Slugger Buddy Wright hit two home runs. And Coach Andy is swinging his soapy bat. His bases are loaded. He wants it as much as his Buddy does.”

“I want to touch you, Coach. Can I touch you?” Bud had lowered his hands to his sides.

I reached out and slapped his butt. “Let’s get wet,” I said. “Don’t let my trunks float away when you pull them off me.”

“Fucking pervert,” Bud said, grinning.

“Only for jail bait. You know I’ll do anything for the team.”

We used the bunk of the fishing boat another time that fall and once, when we’d both had too much to drink, Bud’s war-surplus Lee County Jeep, parked in a palm grove ten miles out of town. Romance? Hell, yes. Can’t get any more romantic than sucking off your buddy in a Jeep by moonlight.

Love? I didn’t know what real love was. But, as things turned out, I gave myself another good talking-to that Saturday in February—the night I spent alone in Bud’s room, the night the detective broke a date to shadow the Klan march through Colored Town.

Lieutenant, you got to admit horsing around with this cop is great. He’s nothing like Mike. He’s not as pushy. But the feelings go deeper—when he can put them into words. The nightmares are gone. Maybe he’s the one…

Hold on, Dan. You’re not even close to tied down. And vice versa. He’s still seeing the waitress. Who makes the first move there?

Horse shit, Lieutenant. He’ll forget the bitch once we’re together every day, after he quits his Dick Tracy job and comes to work for me.

Then ask him. Make the first fucking move. You’ve still got nothing to lose
.

And so on, until I fell fast asleep.

Small-town papers use extra ink to distance themselves from sensational local events, especially local events involving powerful advertisers. Hillard Norris’s three-column obituary topped the front page of the Monday morning
News-Press
. Continued inside on page six, the extensive coverage included an appreciative editorial, an oversize photo of Norris’s late father-in-law, William Rufus “Big Bill” Turnipblossom, and two portraits of the dead man himself. The story might as well have been written by a press agent.

“Ford Dealer Mourned,” ran the headline. Sub-heads supplied context but few details: “Shot Dead on South Side” and “Civic Leader’s Passing a Tragic Loss to Myers.”

Sarasota native Hillard Albert Norris Jr., born in 1908, was fulsomely praised as the highly successful managing partner of the largest car dealership in Southwest Florida, a company founded by his dynamic and forward-looking father-in-law. Norris was recalled fondly by several of his employees and associates, cited as a generous contributor to the Community Chest and lauded as a leading Mason, past president of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Florida Ford Dealers Association, member of the Board of Stewards of the First Methodist Church, former delegate to the Florida Democratic Convention, graduate of the University of Florida, member of Sigma Nu, an Eagle Scout and so on.

The grieving widow was identified as a civic-minded descendant of Florida pioneers on both sides. Her genealogy was detailed in three paragraphs. Her activities—Women’s Club, wartime Gray Lady, Hospital Committee Chairwoman, PTA volunteer and so on—filled four succeeding paragraphs.

The couple’s daughter, Hillary, said to be presently at school in Mount Dora, earned two paragraphs.

Although paragraph sixteen did mention that Norris’s body had been found Sunday morning in a tourist court on the south side of town, the establishment itself was not named. Nor was a name attached to second victim, described only as “a colored man” who was “also found dead on the scene.”

Post-mortem gunplay was ignored altogether.

Beyond general remarks concerning an ongoing investigation, the anonymous law enforcement officer mentioned in the uncredited story refused to speculate on what may have happened. Funeral arrangements were said to be incomplete.

When I saw the dead man’s picture, I remembered him right away. An outwardly likeable small-town mogul with thinning hair and heavy-duty ego, Norris had been one of the Caloosa Club’s regular poker players. Norris was never a big winner or a notable loser. And he was always a guest of his pal, an equally well-connected real estate broker and lawyer named H. (Hugh) Ridley Boldt. Norris had let me know right away that neither cards, liquor nor offbeat personalities (the club room’s principal attractions) interested him much. But I never gave him a thought until his widow took a shot at me.

Ridley Boldt, a paid-up member who always picked up drink tabs when he won, gambled with us once or twice a week, often accompanied by his wife. The little woman, who also happened to be Willene Norris’s first cousin, was mentioned toward the bottom of Norris’s obituary.

I clipped out the story and stashed it in a desk drawer in my office at the Caloosa. The office wasn’t much: a Mission Oak desk, a couple of metal filing cabinets, a bookshelf lined with hotel-school manuals, stacks of old menus and equipment catalogs, a flourishing philodendron vine in a blue and white Japanese pot. The drawers of the desk were mostly empty. I kept a framed photo of Mike Rizzo and the
Indianapolis
in the top drawer. For some reason I tucked the obituary clipping right under it.

Having worked all day Monday I was sipping coffee in the office just before dusk and sternly telling myself I ought to go swim half a mile before dinner, when a bellhop ushered in an apologetic Detective Wright.

“Mind if I shut the door?” Bud said after the bellboy departed. “Got my nuts busted all fucking day long. And they was already in bad shape.”

He looked rumpled and definitely hung over: dark aviator glasses, a brown herringbone jacket, blue trousers with no belt and a tan necktie that didn’t match the coat or the pants. When I switched off the overhead light, he removed the shades. His eyes resembled a brown and red jigsaw puzzle. Looking into them was enough to make me wince.

“Aspirin didn’t help?” I asked, leaning back in my swivel chair, comfy as hell.

“Fucking yes, they helped. Else I’d of put the gun to my head”—he patted the holster inside his coat—“by noon. Been chewing them pills like candy.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Shut up. Thought of food makes me gag. Ought to blame you anyhow for leaving that rot-gut Bacardi at my place. You better take it with you next time.”

I knew exactly how he felt, having overdosed on Bacardi a time or two myself. So I was sympathetic up to a point. But we were both moderately aggressive males and he was pushing me a little too hard. “You left me with a case of blue-balls this morning,” I said. “Do you hear me complaining? No, I took a cold shower like a man.”

He glanced at the door to be sure it was closed, then touched the front of his trousers. “I’m hurtin’ too, down here where the goddamn Norris woman kicked me. But I’ll make it up to you,” he muttered. “Some way.”

His unexpected answer took me up short. He’d gone from aggression to submission in two sentences. Smiling, I said, “Couple of ways come to mind, Sarge.”

He nodded, meaning we’d discuss my needs later.

“Got roughed up the minute I hit the office,” he said. “Number 1, the boss come back from Ocala and wherever else the fuck he’d been. He chewed up my report on the Royal Plaza Motor Lodge incident first thing. Had me rewrite the sucker two times, said the first couple of passes was too long. You ever hear somebody complain about too much detail on a homicide report? Don’t make no sense. Then come to find out he didn’t like me naming any names in the Klan write-up. Said the citizens I reported as present was merely alleged and rumored, and I ought not to put them down.”

When I suggested that the Klanners were probably the sheriff’s relatives and political allies, Bud laughed quietly and continued his tired tirade.

“What’s more, County Commissioner Frates called up and reamed the boss’s ass out, said he ought to control his troops better and not let them manhandle a lady, especially when the lady is the wife and daughter of powerful constituents. Especially when the lady and her mama own a third of downtown. Especially when the lady is a personal friend and political supporter of the honorable fart and double-fart, you get the picture. So then I had to go all through what I’d written down in the first report and been ordered to take out, about Mrs. Norris sliding her car near about into the crime scene, busting up Doc Shepherd’s camera and picking up the gun and cutting loose and all. Took another hour to turn all that into a letter over the boss’s John Hancock. For Commissioner Fart-sees.”