{I started reading hard-boiled detective novels as quite a young teen. My interest in film noir had led me there - to Chandler, Hammett, Cain - and, interestingly enough, it was also my first exposure to gay characters in literature and film. Try reading James M. Cain's "Serenade", Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye", or even watching "The Maltese Falcon", in which there are more gay characters than straight ones!

This is my second crack at writing this story. Let's see if I'm inspired this time. . .}

"The Last Goodbye"
by MonaR.
monaram@yahoo.com

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world. . .

Oh, you think you know this one, right? Drunk, cynical private eye tells a sad story about how he was done in by a beautiful blonde with some naughty photos in her background. Or maybe a slightly dead husband who 'mysteriously' got himself shot by a lovely but ruthless redhead. Or, even better, the brunette with legs that would make a grown man weep and the controlling father who. . .

But no. This isn't one of those stories. Sit down, have a drink. I guarantee you this story is one that you won't have heard before.

It was Friday afternoon - six months last Friday, to be exact. I was going to leave work early that day. I'd hit my weekly quota of both peeking through keyholes to take photos of cheating husbands and self-loathing, so I'd planned on treating myself to a bottle of bourbon and a trip to the track to lose either the rest of my dignity or at the very least, my money. I let Jesse, my secretary, go early - partly so her disapproving looks at me would stop. She threw me one last one for the road and opened the door -

And he was standing there. No brittle, bottle-dyed blonde, no ravishing redhead; if he had been, I probably would have followed my first instinct and thrown him out and gone to the track.

But no. I told Jesse to go home and told him to sit down.

"I was just about to leave," I said, leaning back in my chair. I offered him a drink and then poured myself one when he shook his head. He was small - somewhat scruffily dressed, with short brown hair - a natural curl fighting the pomade holding it in place - and wire-rimmed glasses. I told him for an egghead by the ink stains on his fingers and the fact that he had on one brown sock and one green one. Either that, or he was a colour-blind counterfeiter. "So, what's the story? What brings you here?"

"I need to find a book," he said. His voice was deeper than I expected, somehow, and softer.

"Try the library."

He smiled, and something inside me was very glad. I should have listened to that damned little voice telling me to go and not look back. "It's not that sort of a book," he said. "It's - special; very old and not very valuable, except to me. I need it for my work."

I nodded, and poured myself another drink. "I'm a detective, not a thief, Mr.- "

"Sandburg," he said. "Blair Sandburg. What makes you think I need a thief?"

"Instinct, and the fact that you've been here for five minutes and have already lied to me."

He looked taken aback. "I - "

"Save it. Whatever this book it, it must be valuable. Otherwise, you'd be able to go to whoever has it and ask them to give it to you. That you have instead come to me to retrieve it leads me to believe that you want me to steal it for you."

"It wouldn't be stealing," he said, his voice a little harder than it had been before. "It's my book, Mr. Ellison. It was stolen from me."

"So tell the police. They'll get it back for you, without charging as much as I will."

"I can't go to the police. But you know that too, don't you?" He stood, his body shaking off some of the awkwardness it had held when he walked in - but just for a minute. He was like an actor playing a part. He took a deep breath and leaned across my desk. "I can pay you."

I shook my head. "Not enough to get me to steal for you, Mr. Sandburg. I stick my neck out for no-one. Go to the police."

"Maybe there's something else you want, besides money."

My stomach dropped down into my shoes. I thought the bourbon was going to come back up, rather less elegantly than it had gone down. This punk kid was giving me such a look - his face had changed once again, into the definition of lust. If it had been a little less dim in my office, if I'd had a little less self-control, I'd have given in to my urge to blush like a sixteen-year-old virgin on her wedding night. My knuckles tightened around the glass. "Nothing you can give me."

"No?" His voice was breathy, once again. I resisted the urge to slap him across the face, knowing I'd be giving far too much away if I did so.

"No."

"Too bad." His entire body seemed to sag under the weight of his defeat. He turned out of the room.

"I can recommend another man to you, Mr. Sandburg. Someone who would be happy to do whatever you need, for whatever price you want to pay."

He looked at me again, anger rising in his eyes, and then shook his head. "I don't need your help, Ellison. I'll get along fine on my own."

And then he was gone.

I must have stared at the closed door of my office for a good twenty minutes, not moving. He'd scared me, right to the bone, with the way he'd come on strong and kept coming. It was almost as if he'd known -

It was one time, only one time, almost eight years ago, and I'd spent all of my time since then making sure that it would never happen again. One night of two sweaty bodies and the taste of men and sex and desire and want; one night I'd seemingly never be able to shake off of me, the sour taste of sin still bitter in my mouth.

I'd wanted it before then, but wanting something doesn't make it happen. You have to move, you see, move towards something, or let yourself be moved by someone. I did, that one night.

He was a buddy from the service; we'd fought side-by-side in the desert in the middle of the war. Never once had he said a word, never to let me know that he'd seen me looking at him a couple of times even when I knew that he caught me staring. I'd never made a move, never said a word myself, never let him know the thoughts that had tortured me for as long as I could remember, thoughts that a thousand blondes with soft curves couldn't erase. I tried not to let myself dream, because my dreams always betrayed me, in the end.

He'd come to me strung out and broke, on the verge of a divorce and well on his way to the drunk of the century. I'd taken him in, given him a couch to sleep on and some food and clean clothes and told him he could stay until he could pull himself together and find somewhere else to go.

He paid me back in bed the second night that he was there, waking me up with his body. I told myself that I would push him away - but I never did. Not all that long night, or the next early dawn. I finally fell asleep at sunrise, my body aching and sweaty, my mind as clear as it had ever been.

When I woke up at noon, he was gone. So was my wallet, my self-esteem, and my ability to ever look at myself in a mirror without flinching.

Never again was I going to let that happen.

He was still standing in front of the building when I finally left, half an hour later. He looked really young, and tired. I should have walked away. I should have gotten into my car and driven as far and as fast as I could, but I didn't. I have no-one to blame but myself.

"No place to go, kid?"

"What?" I'd startled him. "No, uh - "

"Come on," I said, with a sigh, "I'll give you a ride home."

"You don't have to - "

"Come on."

We got in my car and pulled away from the curb. We drove in silence for about five minutes before I said, "I hate to tell you this, but I'm not a mind-reader."

He looked at me, puzzled.

"You have to tell me where you live," I said, with a grin.

"Oh," he said, smiling a little. "124 Goldwood."

It was in the district near the University. I nodded and continued on. That had been the direction I'd been driving in.

He leaned his head back and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes wearily. Without the wire-rims, he looked even younger than he did with them. I'd pegged him for twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, tops. I watched him out of the corner of my eye during most of the silent drive, trying to figure out what the story I didn't want him telling me really was.

"Almost there," I said, as we pulled onto Goldwood.

I must have startled him, because he dropped his glasses to the floor of the car, and had to duck down to grab them.

I shook my head, about to open my mouth to apologize, when I saw them. One in a car, one on the stoop in front of 124 Goldwood. I knew instinctively they weren't from the Welcome Wagon, nor would they be happy to see one Blair Sandburg - those were guns in their pockets, very ill-concealed guns.

I swore under my breath and sped up just a little, going right past the brownstone house. I used my free hand to hold the kid down on the floor.

"What are you - "

"Shut up," I said, under my breath. "And stay on the floor until I tell you different."

He stared at me but did what I said.

I waited until we were a dozen blocks away before I let him get up, and one eye stayed on the rear-view until we got to where we were going. My place.

He had the presence of mind not to speak until we were inside and I had drawn the blinds. He didn't say a thing until I poured myself a second drink, the first going down too fast for me to even appreciate the burning. "They were there."

"Who are 'they'?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"Okay, let's get one thing straight," I said. "You lie to me again, and I drive you straight back to 124 Goldwood and throw you out of the car at their feet."

"I don't know who they are," he said, defiant. "I know who they're working for, though."

"Great, we'll start there. Who?"

"Claude Daniels."

I couldn't stop the shock from showing on my face. "Shit. You got a death wish?"

He smiled, a silky little smile, and leaned back on the couch. "So you've heard of him."

"Everyone in the country old enough to read a paper's heard of him. Daniels is the sort of man who makes - or breaks - people. Has the governor in his back pocket, and, some say, the President in the front one. How'd you get mixed up with him?"

"Politics isn't the only thing that Claude Daniels is known for. He 'dabbles' - in just about everything. The arts, the movie industry, big business, high finance - and in education. Anything that will get him well-known to the right people, without ever having his face splashed on the front pages. That is power, Mr. Ellison. There isn't a man in this city who doesn't know his name, and possibly five people who could pick him out in a lineup."

"And you're one of them."

He nodded his head. The grin was back. "He - " he paused, for quite a while " - took a liking to what I do."

I was pretty sure I knew what the answer was already, but I bit anyway. "And what would that be?"

"I'm an anthropologist," he said, ignoring the thin layer of disgust I hadn't managed to keep from my voice. "Claude - Mr. Daniels - has been funding some work of mine."

"I'm sure." I was sure I needed another drink.

"It's a cozy arrangement. He gives me money, I give him information. Much like what you do. Only the information that I give him might some day give him the power to run this country on a much less covert basis."

"I don't believe this."

He continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Have you ever heard of 'Sentinels', Mr. Ellison?" He looked at me shrewdly. "No, of course you haven't. There are many legends in many cultures about men with super-human abilities - with strength, with sight, hearing - far beyond that of ordinary men."

"Sounds familiar," I said, dryly. "I believe the Nazis were interested in creating such a race of men."

"Oh, but these men don't have to be created, you see - they just have to be found. They already exist - at least, if my theories are correct."

"So Daniels is a fascist with dreams of world domination that you're helping to make a reality, and you expect me to help you? I don't think so."

"I don't tell him everything, Mr. Ellison," Sandburg said, the silky quality once again coming into his voice. It was disturbing me as much as his smile. "I tell him what I think he can understand - benign things, easily digested. The rest of it I've been keeping to myself. There's only one problem - my office at the University was broken into, and my notes - "

" - and this book you want me to find," I offered, helpfully.

He grimaced at me, "- and 'this book' on Sentinels was taken. Without it, my research is insupportable."

"Isn't it too late? If Daniels has it - "

"He has it, but I doubt if he'd be able to grasp it. Giving it to another scientist - well, let's just say that I took certain precautions with my own notes."

"Encoded?"

He nodded. "It won't be easy to decode. I'm the only one who knows what any of it means."

"So let me see if I can understand all of this," I said. "You want me to break in to Claude Daniels' mansion and steal back this book and your notes? Why me?"

"I answered that already," he said.

My throat tightened. "No, you didn't."

"I thought I'd find you - sympathetic. And I was right, wasn't I?"

He came close - too close. I told myself that I'd push him away, throw him out, get the hell away from him, as soon as possible. All the while these perfectly rational thoughts were going through my mind, Blair Sandburg was standing in front of me, looking for all the world like a lost puppy, big blue eyes staring at me, inside me, licking his lips.

When he kissed me, I didn't do a thing that I should have. All I did was kiss him back.

He stayed with me because there was nowhere else for him to go - going back to his apartment would have meant tipping off Daniels where he was, and that I was working with him. Even that I didn't know if he knew already - the chances that Blair had been followed to my building were great.

I made him stay in, and he didn't protest. The fact that I only had one bed didn't faze him, either. The fact that I slept with him in my arms that night, his bare flesh hugging me tight, his lips roaming trails over my body as if it had been built for his pleasure alone didn't warrant the blink of an eye. He knew exactly why I'd brought him there from the minute that he stepped into my car that afternoon. What's more, he wanted it, wanted me.

It was easy - too easy. The glasses and rumpled clothing gone, he was a dream made flesh - skin as silky as his smiles, smoky blue eyes telegraphing impossible things straight to my brain. All mine.

I should have fought it, but I didn't want to. I wanted it to be real, you see. I wanted to feel him with me for as long as I could. I wanted to do with him things that were punishable in every state with a twenty-year jail term, and I didn't even care. The only thing that mattered was his mouth, and his eyes, and his body, wrapped around mine.

This kid could get me killed, and I didn't even care.

I spent the next couple of days surveilling my territory. Daniels never seemed to go out in public, but I was to find that he didn't spend all of his time at his walled-in estate. He had a fleet of cars with smoked windows, capable of carrying a dozen people at a time, or just one. I paid garage men, maids, and even the butler to get information on his schedule. All I found out was that he didn't have one. He seemed to do everything, go everywhere, on a whim. Blair was right - that was power.

He also didn't have much of security system. No cameras on the walls, no electric fences, just a few ex-con thugs with guns around him all the time. Quiet, and efficient, just the way he did everything.

This was going to be easier than I'd thought - either that, or I was a dead man, just waiting for the guy to show up with a coffin in my size.

"Tell me what he means to you."

He didn't even have to ask me who I was talking about. It had been there, all the time, in between the two of us. He was asking me to steal for him, from a man whose very name struck fear in the hearts of half the country. Fear wasn't what the name was striking in me - it was something much darker, and even more primal. I didn't want to ask, but it was eating me alive. I needed him not to lie to me.

"He gave me money, for my work."

"And that's all."

Blair turned over. We were in bed, and there were things that he could do in bed that made me forget my name. If he'd wanted to, he could have done any one of them to keep his conversation from happening. He didn't. "Why do you want me to tell you?"

I shook my head.

He sighed. "I'm not lying to you, you know. The book, the notes - they're mine. He might have paid for them, but he doesn't own them. And he doesn't own me, either." He chewed his bottom lip, his eyes unreadable. "If you want to know if I slept with him, the answer's yes."

I'd wanted to know, and I'd desperately wanted the answer not to be yes. But I'd known all the time that it would be.

He kept talking. "I was young. I thought he loved me." He sat up in bed, reaching for the light. "Oh, hell - I wasn't a virgin when I met you, and I wasn't one when I met him, either. I know the way the wind blows for people like us." I flinched at the 'us' part. "Especially with guys like you," he said, his voice turning bitter. "Guys who want it both ways - wanting it, without wanting to want it. Only, the guilt never seems stronger than the feel of this - " he reached his hand down and wrapped it around my cock, which sprang instantly and painfully to life " - is it? Or this?"

He ducked his head down, wrapping his lips around the head of my cock and sucking it down his throat. It was his favourite position, the one at which he had me completely at his mercy. I hadn't let him fuck me - yet - and even when I fucked him, I felt how completely in control he was of everything. I wanted to feel that, but something wasn't letting me.

I came quickly, his rough tongue cleaning me thoroughly. He didn't cuddle close this time, though, didn't even touch me. I opened my eyes to find him sitting on the side of the bed, shaking.

I put my hand to his shoulder to turn him, and he flinched away. "No!" he said, brushing the tears from his cheeks. "It doesn't work like that, don't you see? I don't pour my heart out to you and have you treat me like something you scraped from your shoe!"

"Blair - "

"Leave me alone."

I wouldn't. I pulled him, roughly, until he was lying again on top of me - where he belonged. I kissed the tears away, trying desperately with every kiss to convey just how much he meant to me, how much I needed him. How much I loved him.

I wanted to be able to say it without the words.

The closest I could come to tracking Daniels' movements was discovering that he took one of three cars when he went out. It was never the same one twice in a row, and although the law of averages never worked much in my favour, I knew that the only thing that I could do was risk it. Right or wrong, I needed to know. I couldn't live any longer in this sort of limbo.

Something inside me was even hoping that he'd be there - I wanted to see him.

Blair was at my office, watching me pack up the few things I was bringing with me. He was also, rather belatedly, trying to talk me out of this.

"I never should have come to you," he said. "You're going to get caught, or worse. Let's forget about this, and go away somewhere. I'll start again - "

I shook my head. "This is bigger than you and I, Blair. You think I want a man like Daniels coming into even more power?"

"Since when do you have a sense of civic duty, Ellison?"

"Since I met you," I grinned. "You've corrupted me." He looked troubled, but I put my hand up. "I'm going. You stay here, and wait for me."

"I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not. If I do get caught, having you there would be the tip-off to the whole deal. If I'm alone, then I can play the petty-thug card. It'll be better for me." He was ready to protest, but I didn't let him. I kissed him, instead - the first time that I'd done that anywhere but in the safety of my apartment. Jesse was only a frosted glass door away. I didn't care. "Stay," I said.

He nodded his head.

I really wanted to believe him.

Looking back, I can see now that I was right about a lot of things - certainly about a lot more than I wanted to be right about. It was easy to get into the estate, and easy to crack the safe in the drawing room that I knew contained 'valuables' of an entirely different sort than the cash and bonds stashed in other safes around the place.

I was wrong about two things, though, and they were the two most important of all. One, Daniels hadn't left in the car that had driven off the grounds fifteen minutes before the lights came up in the drawing room.

"It isn't there."

I turned, surprised that I was being given the chance. Any other man would have shot me where I stood. Apparently, Daniels wanted to toy with me for a while.

He was alone. I knew it was him more by the smell of money and power that surrounded him than by any pre-conceived notions of what he looked like, even though Blair had given me a pretty good description. He looked younger than I wanted him to, for fifty-five, and better - fit, handsome, confident. I wanted him to be a freak who had lured Blair into his bed with money and promises, instead of a man that could get anyone - man or woman - into his bed with a look and a smile.

"Then maybe you could tell me where to look?"

He smiled, and reached a hand - the one without the gun in it - into his pocket. He pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. All of this, just for that little bit of cowhide and yellowed paper. I didn't like that smile, but I could live with it. "You'll never get out of here alive, you know. I hope it was worth it. I hope he was."

I played my one and only card. "You'd know as well as I. Probably better."

The smile fell from his face as if I'd slapped it off. One fist clenched tightly in anger, but he didn't let it show on his face. "I guess I would. What's your opinion on the matter?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

His smile was even more pleasant than before. "Yes, getting yourself killed for him. I always meant to ask how many others there were who'd done the same thing."

Which brings me to the second thing that I was wrong about: Blair hadn't stayed at my office.

We heard his voice before either of us saw him. "Dozens," he purred. He was behind me, at the patio doors. I couldn't see him, but Daniels could. I knew it was bad from the look on his face, and from the fact that he nearly - but not quite - dropped his gun on the floor. I turned around and -

Sudden realization hit me like a fist in the stomach. The 'academic' Blair Sandburg that had walked into my office a short week before was gone, replaced by the well-dressed, well-groomed young man in front of me who looked as though he didn't know how to pronounce the word 'anthropology'. Gone were the glasses, the inky fingertips, the slightly muzzy, absent-minded look in his eyes, replaced by a silk shirt and pressed trousers, and a .38 I recognized as one of my own.

I raised my hands. The only thing that I could do was try to buy some time. "Why did you do it, kid? Why me?"

He smiled at me, that same damn smile that had made my heart leap the very first time I saw it. "I think you know why, Ellison." Oh, I knew. It sickened me how well I knew. He glanced over at Daniels. "You want to give me the book, Claude?"

The older man shook his head. His hand was wavering. I think all of us in that room that night knew that he wouldn't shoot Blair, not even if his life depended on it. He could no more do it than I could, even knowing what both of us knew. "You'll have to kill me."

Blair nodded, his hand steady. "That's an option I'd considered."

"Give him the book," I barked.

"You don't know what this book means to me," Daniels gasped.

"Probably as much as my life means to me. Give him the damn book!"

Daniels glared at me, but held the book out.

When Blair moved forward, I made my move, diving for his ankles, knocking him off balance. Startled, the gun in his hand went off. I froze, waiting for the hot kiss of lead to hit me. I looked at Blair in that split-second, his eyes wide and terrified - but there was no blood on him. I didn't even have to look behind me. I heard the fall, saw the horror reflected in the kid's eyes.

"Claude - "

I grabbed him. "We have to get out of here."

"Claude!"

"Blair, come on!"

I don't think I had an idea that we'd actually get out of there alive, but we managed it, somehow. Lax security, the fact that the place was the size of several football fields and yet only had a dozen or so people in it, blind, stupid luck - whatever.

I took the book out of Daniels' pocket before grabbing Blair and running to my car. I practically had to drag him, he was almost a dead weight. I thought for half a second about leaving him, but I couldn't. Somehow, even though he'd lied to me over and over again, I still owed him.

I knew he didn't love me, I knew that the sex was just that - sex - and still I owed him. I owed him for the mirror that he put up in front of my face, finally showing me who and what I am.

So that's why I'm here, in this little bar in Nowhere, Mexico, drinking, telling my sad story, and watching him. He's the one over there, with the shoulder-length curly hair that's tied back with a strip of leather, the worn jeans, the half-unbuttoned shirt. He's tanned like a native, but his voice is unmistakable.

He likes to sleep with a different guy every night, if he can - although he's drinking so much that he's just starting to lose his looks, there's a puffiness in his face that will move its way down his body. He usually ends up getting so drunk that he calls the trick of the night 'Claude' before pulling him back into the alley for whatever he'll let him do. I watch him, clean him up, and take him back to our place, where we sleep through most of the day, side-by-side, barely touching. I listen to his nightmares, hear him calling out a name that will never be mine. I always said that I stuck my neck out for no-one; now I know why. The one time I did - well, I'll never get another chance, will I?

People like us don't get happy endings, you see. Not in a backwater dive in Mexico in 1954. If I'd been a little less cruel - if I'd needed him a little less - I'd have left him back there, let the police find him, let him get strapped into an electric chair that would have ended his suffering long ago. But I didn't. I brought him here with me, so I can watch him, torture myself with the sight of him like salt in an open wound. It's my punishment.

This long, slow road to death in a bar in Nowhere, Mexico, is his.

The End
MonaR.