A Time for Secrets (20 page)

“What? Why do I need an alibi?”

“The guys who were trying to set me up killed two men that night. I’d like to know you weren’t along for the ride.”

His face was blank, then angry. “You’re full of shit.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been told that before.”

Since I was pretty sure he was just an asshole and not a murdering asshole, I told him to suck my dick. He hesitated like he might refuse, but then he popped it into his mouth.

He flicked his tongue around the head of my dick, twisted his head in a way that gave the whole thing a nice twirling sensation, and then jammed my dick so far down his throat I wondered if I’d get it back. He’d done this before. A lot.

While he sucked me, I worked my way out of my jean jacket, shoulder holster, and T-shirt. I pulled his shirt off over his head. This forced him to stop sucking my dick, but only for a moment. As soon as the shirt was over his head, he was back on me.

His body was tautly muscled. He was the kind of guy who spent time on it, lavished attention on it. My bet was that he did a lot more at the gym besides jerking off in the locker room. There was hair around his nipples, but other than that he was pretty hairless.

I twisted around, so I could get to his cock. I opened his jeans and there was his dick with its now semi-famous beauty mark. I pulled it into my mouth. Competitiveness can really screw up a sexual encounter, but when you sixty-nine, it can actually be a plus. I began to match the kid move for move. He went deep, so I went deep. He did his little twist move, and I copied it. As games go this was one where we both won.

Still, I couldn’t resist being the definitive winner. I upped the ante by running my tongue around his balls, grabbing him by both round ass cheeks, and then I licked my way to his anus. He tried to keep up, but when my tongue began to tease his pucker hole, he began to moan and his legs went up in the air. I suspected cock sucking was not his only well-developed skill.

Once I got him quivering and ready to beg, I stood up and lifted him off the floor. We kicked off our jeans, and I pushed him onto my desk. Reaching over him, I pulled the little jar of Vaseline out of my top drawer and set to work getting him ready. He looked up at me for a moment then clamped his eyes shut. I pushed into him as roughly as I could, expecting his eyes to pop open. They stayed shut. He grimaced and panted a little, but he reached down and began to jerk his stiff dick with its cute little twist to the left.

I fucked him hard and deep, and he raised his hips to meet each thrust. One thing was missing, though. I stopped fucking him, leaned over him, and got very close. “Look at me,” I told him. He kept his eyes clamped shut. I grabbed his face in one hand and said it again, “Look at me, asshole.”

His eyes flew open, angry, hating me. I stared at him until his hatred made me smile. Then I began to pump him again. He kept his eyes on mine as I fucked him as hard as I could. A few strokes later, he gasped and a string of cum flew out of him and landed in the middle of his chest. I wanted to keep fucking him for a long time, fucking him until he just hated it, but just the idea of torturing him with my dick made me come in a few wrenching thrusts.

I’d barely finished when Wilson scrambled out from under me and began to put his clothes back on. Zipping his jeans, he said, “I have a girlfriend, you know. I keep her happy.”

“Good for you,” I told him, but couldn’t help adding, “You seem to know your way around a man, though.”

He shrugged. It wasn’t information he was interested in.

“When did you start having sex with men?” I asked.

“Eleven.”

“You were eleven? Eleven years old?”

“Yeah. I just said that.”

“Was it with another kid?”

“No. It was with my minister.”

“Holy shit,” I said, not realizing how apt a thing to say it was. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’d heard jokes about priests and altar boys all my life, though I never put much stock in them.

“He was just teaching me. You know, things a boy should know.”

I had no clue what to say to that.

“I wasn’t supposed to like it much, but I guess I did. He said I’d grow out of it.” The anger was coming back into his voice.

“Had he grown out of it?” I asked.

“He wasn’t queer,” he said, defensively. “I told you, he was just teaching me…”

“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “He wasn’t queer. An asshole who fucks kids doesn’t have the guts to be queer.”

Wilson looked confused. I’d obviously just put things in a way he’d never thought about. I wasn’t sure he liked it, but I forged ahead. “Look there’s nothing wrong with you except people have filled your head with a bunch of shit. The sooner you shake it out, the better off you’ll be.”

“Whatever.” He was pretty much dressed and pushing his way out of my office.

“If you need to talk some time, you give me a call,” I yelled after him, though I couldn’t say why I did. He was a jerk. He’d lied on a police report in order to get me arrested. He lied to his girlfriend, obviously on a regular basis. And when you tried to help him, he was not what you’d call grateful.

And he was nothing to me, so why did I give a shit?

I cleaned myself up in my little lavatory and then dug up the police report. I called Harker and read him the names off the report and asked him to find out what he could.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked.

“I’ve got an idea I want to pursue.”

“You wanna tell me what it is?”

“Not particularly,” I said, honestly.

“Because I won’t like it?”

“Because it’s probably a bad idea.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway.”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

When I got into the limousine, Sugar Pilson said, “You’re like a bad penny, Mr. Nowak. You just keep turning up.”

If you listened closely, you could hear a bit of a Texas accent in Sugar’s well-modulated voice. She’d come to Chicago as the child bride of an elder Pilson, a position she’d held for a little more than a year. Since then, her absurdly generous divorce settlement had allowed her to become a fixture on the Chicago social scene.

Roughly my age, she looked more like a coed. Her hair was blond, with only a little professional help, and her eyes sapphire blue. That night she wore a gold lamé gown, dramatic and surprisingly tasteful. It was vaguely Grecian, wrapping itself tightly around her lithe little body. I figured she spent a lot of time at home following along to Jane Fonda’s workout video, or at some private exercise studio. I didn’t hold it against her, though I have to say, if I liked women I’d have gone for Sugar big time. I sometimes wondered if she had a brother.

“Thank you for doing this, Sugar,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“I like a mystery as well as the next girl. Can’t you tell me anything? Who’s our target?”

“Target? I’m a private investigator, not a hit man.”

“You know what I meant. Who are we investigating?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Client confidentiality.”

“But I can guess, can’t I?” She asked, with an arch grin. “I like guessing.”

“Guess away.”

My acquaintance with Sugar was slight. I’d met her on a case and spoken to her at Earl Silver’s funeral, but our brief interactions had made me feel she might be willing to bring me along to a gathering of Chicago’s elite. Also, she was the only person I knew who might get me into the fundraiser for juvenile diabetes that just happened to be chaired by one Mrs. Thomas Finnegan. The society page of any newspaper can be a useful investigating tool, believe it or not.

Sugar glanced at my outfit but politely decided not to comment. I wore a five-year-old black suit with wide lapels and a flare in the leg, a pair of burgundy top-siders—the darkest pair of shoes I owned, and a button-down white shirt with an over-wide blue silk tie. It was the best I could do under the circumstances, and coincidentally confused the hell out of Harker who’d wanted to know where I was going.

“My hairdresser despises you,” Sugar said.

“What did I ever do to him?”

“He was going to be my escort until you called.”

“How gracious of him to step aside,” I said.

She smirked. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

Another glance at my outfit told me her hairdresser would have shown up in a tuxedo. The limousine pulled up in front of the Art Institute, coming to a stop in front of the southernmost lion. Cast in tarnished bronze, the lion looked away from us as though not sure he should approve. We waited for the driver to open our door. When he did, I climbed out and turned to help Sugar.

The front of the Art Institute was lit up like a movie premiere and its grand steps were dotted with Chicago’s wealthy and elite. Sugar had to stop and greet at least five couples before we got to the entrance.

The reception was being held inside on the Grand Staircase, and it was true to its name. The entire foyer area was faced in polished gray and beige marble with steps running at each other from different directions, meeting in wide landings here and there. On the landings, caterers had set up a couple of bars, while waiters passed hot hors d’oeuvres. The railings were a lovely warm cedar color, and the railings below were painted to match the marble. Sugar ran a bejeweled hand up a railing as we climbed to the first landing. Above us was a skylight covering most of the lobby. Looking up, I could almost see a few stars, the city’s light obliterating the rest.

Sound echoed and bounced against all the marble, and it seemed like there was a much bigger crowd than was there. Sugar had timed our arrival well. There were about a hundred people on the stairs, about half the expected crowd, so we weren’t too early, and we weren’t too late. Both apparently were bad form. I scanned the crowd for Finnegan, but didn’t see him.

At the first landing, I asked Sugar if she’d like a glass of champagne. “Darling, does a fish swim?” she replied, and I resolved to keep her glass full at all times during the evening.

I walked over to the catering table and took a couple glasses of pre-poured champagne. Before I got back to Sugar, she’d been surrounded by a clutch of society matrons in their early sixties.

As I handed Sugar her champagne, she introduced me in the same way she had to her friends on the stairs. “Ladies, this is Nick Nowak. He’s a private detective. Just like Humphrey Bogart in the movies.” I smiled. One of the couples we’d met on the way in had been much younger, and she’d changed her intro of me to “Just like Tom Selleck on TV.”

Neither introduction was appreciated. I’d been hoping to remain somewhat incognito. She must have picked this up from my look because she leaned over and whispered, “You’re hardly going to get any new clients if no one knows what you do.”

“I’m not here for new clients,” I whispered back.

“A good businessman is always on the lookout for new business.” She turned her attention back to her socialites and I scanned the staircase, looking for Thomas Finnegan.

Instead, at the top of the stairs, I saw Earl Silver’s widow, Gloria
,
holding court. She looked stunning in a long black satin gown with giant puffy shoulders and her hair icy blond hair knotted at the back of her head. Just then, Sugar nodded a goodbye to her friends and led me up the stairs to Gloria.

“You’re not after Gloria, are you? What’s she done?” Sugar whispered.

“No, it’s not Gloria,” I hissed back.

“Pity,” Sugar drawled.

I didn’t think it possible, but when she saw me, Gloria’s face turned even harder.

“Sugar Pilson, you’re associating with a scurrilous sort,” she said, and I knew that something similar would be appearing in what had once been her husband’s column and was now hers,
The Silver Spoon
.

“Gloria darling, you know perfectly well the room is full of the most scurrilous people in Chicago. No one gets wealthy in this town without at least a touch of larceny.” She kissed Gloria on the cheek.

“And I can quote you on that?”

“If you do, I’ll deny it to my grave.”

While the two of them gossiped, I continued to search for my target, as Sugar had so aptly called him. Seemingly by mutual agreement, though nothing was said, Gloria and Sugar smiled at each other and Sugar leaned over to me and said, “We should say hello to the hostess.”

Fay Finnegan stood on the opposite landing near the entrance to the Pilson Family Gallery. As we walked by it I asked Sugar, “Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Oh heavens no. The gallery has been there for decades. It was my former mother-in-law’s pet project.”

“Do you run into your former family often?” I asked.

“Constantly. It’s the light of my life forcing them to be polite.”

Fay Finnegan was dumpy, poorly dressed, and obviously miserable. Still, she put on a good face when Sugar greeted her and introduced me. This time she introduced me as being in security, which made me wonder if she had some idea who it was I wanted to meet.

Sugar and Fay exchanged some meaningless pleasantries about the event and the importance of doing something about juvenile diabetes, though by that point in the evening no one had said exactly what was going to be done about the disease. For all I knew people were giving money to spread it.

“How long have you and the Alderman been married
?
” I asked.

“Oh my,” Mrs. Finnegan said, since it was probably the only specific question she’d been asked that evening. “Nearly thirty years. We have two children out on their own and three still in college and a big old empty house.” Where I had the distinct impression she’d like to spend more time.

“And which do you prefer, being married to a policeman or an alderman?”

She frowned just slightly and said, “I prefer being married to my husband, whatever he chooses to do.”

“I must say your husband has been doing the most wonderful things as an alderman. That has to be rewarding,” Sugar said diplomatically.

“What things?” I asked her.

Sugar burst into a laugh. “Why Nick Nowak, didn’t your mother ever teach you never to demand facts from a lady? It’s downright rude. Fay knows perfectly well I don’t live in the Alderman’s district, so I really have no idea what he’s done. I was leaving a conversational opening for her to tell us what he’s done.”