Dreams Die First (4 page)

“I just called up and ordered it.”

“You called up and ordered it?” I repeated. “Just like that?”

He nodded. “They were very nice. I told them to rush because I needed everything for dinner.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “They didn’t ask you for money or anything?”

“Why should they? I just charged it.”

I was getting punchy. “You ever stop to think how I’m going to pay for it? I haven’t any money.”

“That’s nothing. I told you I’m rich.”

“When did you tell me?”

“Last night. Don’t you remember?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember anything about last night.”

“You were reading your poetry, the window was open and it began to rain. You were naked and you said that the Lord was washing away your sins. It was beautiful. Then you began to cry and said the world was all fucked up because of money and that if everyone had been born rich, there wouldn’t be any problems. That’s when I told you I was rich and I had problems. And you felt sorry for me. That’s when I fell in love with you. No one had ever felt sorry for me before.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “I must have been stoned out of my head.”

“No,” he said quickly. “You were really cool. You made me see things more clearly than I had ever seen them before.”

“I did?”

He nodded. “I called my father and told him I forgave him.”

I hadn’t the faintest notion of what he was talking about. He saw the expression on my face. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

I shook my head.

“You were on Hollywood Boulevard hitching a ride—”

I had a sudden flash of memory. “The silver-blue Rolls convertible?”

“Yes. I stopped to pick you up and we began to talk. I said I would drive you home, but you said a car like that in this neighborhood would get ripped off. So we put it in a garage a few blocks away.”

It was beginning to come back to me. We’d stopped in a liquor store and he’d paid for a few bottles of wine; then we’d come to my place and talked. Mostly about his father and how his father could not accept the fact that his son was gay. And how he constantly tried to keep the boy hidden from his congregation. After all, the Reverend Sam Gannon was almost as famous as Billy Graham, Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman combined. You could see him almost every week on television, preaching to the world that God cures all. Yet even God couldn’t straighten out His son. Jesus did His own thing and look at all the trouble He’d got himself into. I remembered telling the boy to tell that to his father. I also remembered something else. We just talked. We never fucked.

“Okay, Bobby,” I said, finally remembering the boy’s name. “I just got it together.”

“Good,” he said, smiling. “Now, relax while I finish dinner.”

“We’re going to have to talk,” I said.

He nodded. “After dinner.”

I turned to Verita, who had been watching us. “We got a shot for nothing. I never fucked him.”

She looked at me, relief in her eyes. “That proves one thing. Lonergan doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.”

I slumped onto the couch and reached for a cigarette.

She stood looking down at me. “Lonergan isn’t going to like it.”

“Fuck him.”

“Not that easy. He’s tough. He usually gets what he wants.”

“Not this time.”

A shadow came into her eyes. “You’ll hear from him.”

She was right about that. The knock came just as we were finishing dinner. I started to get up.

“Finish your coffee,” Bobby said, opening the door. Over his shoulder I could see the Collector.

He pushed past the boy, his eyes taking in the room before looking down at me. “Got the best of both worlds, haven’t you?”

“I’m trying.”

“Lonergan wants to see you.”

“Okay. Tell him I’ll be over later.”

“He wants to see you now.”

“There’s no rush. We’ve got nothing to talk about. Besides, I haven’t finished dinner.”

I sensed rather than saw his movement. I was a lot slower than I had been in the Green Berets seven years ago, but a lot faster than he could have expected. My knee and elbow came up, the knee catching him in the balls, my elbow jammed into his Adam’s apple. He gave a weird kind of grunt and fell onto his knees. Then slowly he rolled over on his back. His eyes bulged in a face that had turned a strange shade of pale gray-blue, his mouth was open, gasping for air, and his hands clutched at his genitals.

I looked down at him and, after a moment, saw the natural black color begin to return to his face. Without getting out of my chair, I picked up the steak knife and held the point to his throat while I opened his jacket and took the heater from his belt holster. I waited until he caught his breath. “I don’t like being pushed. I said I would come over later.”

His eyes crossed as he looked down at the knife held to his throat. Lonergan’s voice came from the still-open doorway. “Feel better now, Gareth?”

He was slim and pale and his eyes were narrowed behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. He stepped into the room, his bodyguard on his heels. “You’ve proved yourself. Now you can let him up.”

I straightened up and put the knife back on the table. I met his eyes. “You got my message?”

He nodded.

“I’m not interested in the paper. It’s like buying my way into bankruptcy.”

“You’re right.”

I was silent.

“If you had gone for that deal, I wouldn’t have made it. I can’t stand stupidity.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Would you take the paper if it were free and clear of all attachments?”

I glanced at Verita. She nodded almost imperceptibly. I turned back to him. “Yes.”

“You’ll still have to get a loan to carry the operating expenses.”

Verita spoke before I had a chance to answer. “The only way he can afford that is if he gets to keep twenty-five percent of the classified advertising revenue.”

“Your accountant’s pretty sharp,” he said. “Twenty percent.”

I looked at Verita. “With twenty percent we could just make it,” she said. “But it would be tight.”

“Let me think about it. I’ll let you know in the morning.”

Lonergan’s voice turned hard. “You’ll let me know now.”

I was silent while I thought. What the hell did I know about running a newspaper even if it was just an advertising freebie?

“Afraid you can’t cut it, Gareth? All the big talk about writing and publishing is different now that you might have to put your money where your mouth is.”

I still didn’t say anything.

“At least your father tried, even if he didn’t have the guts to carry it through. You haven’t even got the guts to begin.” His voice had taken on an icy edge.

I remembered that voice from when I was a kid and knew that it reflected a controlled contempt for the rest of the world. I was suddenly angry. I wasn’t going to let him or the sound of his voice push me into doing anything I wasn’t ready to do.

“I’ll need help,” I said. “Experienced help. Will Persky still be around?”

“If you want him.”

“I’ll need an art director, reporters, photographers.”

“There are services that supply all that. You don’t need them on your payroll,” he said.

“Have you figured out how many copies I would have to sell at a quarter each to break even?” I asked Verita.

“About fifteen thousand,” she said. “But nobody ever paid for the paper before.”

“I know that, but that’s not the kind of paper I want to run. I want a chance to make some real money.”

Lonergan smiled suddenly. For a moment I almost suspected he had a sense of humor. “Gareth,” he said, “I’m beginning to think you’re growing up. This is the first time I’ve ever heard you express an interest in money.”

“What’s wrong with that, Uncle John? Being rich hasn’t seemed to cramp your lifestyle.”

“It might cramp yours.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“Then we have a deal?”

I nodded. I leaned forward and helped the Collector to his feet. I held out his gun. He took it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I get nervous when people make sudden moves toward me.”

He growled something roughly in his throat.

“Your throat might be sore for a few days,” I said. “But don’t worry about it. Just gargle with warm salt water and it’ll be all right.”

“Come on, Bill,” Lonergan said, moving toward the door. “Let’s leave these good people to finish their dinner.”

In the doorway he looked back at me. “Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning in my office in Beverly Hills.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good night, Gareth.”

“Good night, Uncle John.”

The door closed behind him and I turned to Verita. “I guess we’re in the publishing business,” I said.

She didn’t speak.

“You’ll come with me, of course.”

“But my job.”

“I’m offering you a better one. A chance to do what you trained for. Besides, I need you. You know I’m not a businessman.”

She looked at me for a moment. “I can take a leave of absence while we see how it works out.”

“That’s okay with me. At least that way if I go on my ass, you won’t get hurt.”

“I’ve got the strangest feeling,” she said in a hushed voice.

“What’s that?”

“Your stars have crossed. And the path of your life will change.”

“I don’t know what that means. Is it good or bad?”

She hesitated. “Good, I think.”

There was a knock at the door. I started to open it, but Bobby got there first. The bodyguard looked over the boy’s head. “Mr. Lonergan asked if you wanted a car sent for you.”

“Please thank him,” I answered. “But tell him I have transportation.”

The door closed. Bobby came back toward me, his eyes wide. “Are you really buying a newspaper?”

“Yes,” I said. “Not much of a paper, but it’s something.”

“I was art director of my college paper,” he said.

I laughed. “Okay. You got a job. You’re now the art director of the
Hollywood Express
.”

Suddenly we all were laughing and none of us really knew why. Except that maybe Verita was right. Our stars had crossed and somehow the world had changed.

CHAPTER 6

I held the small gold spoon carefully to my nostril and took a deep snort. The cocaine exploded in my brain like a sunburst and I suddenly felt energized as if there were nothing in the world that I could not do.

Bobby and Verita had just finished off the dishes. When I began to laugh, they both turned to look at me.

“Dynamite,” I said. “Pure dynamite. Where’d you get it?”

“The dealer told me it was pure,” Bobby said.

I laughed again. “Superpure.” I gave the spoon and the vial of coke to him. “That’s rich.”

Bobby looked at Verita. She shook her head. “No, thanks. I get headaches.”

He had a snort and put it back in his jacket pocket. His eyes were shining. “Did you mean what you said?”

“What did I say?”

“About my being art director on your paper?”

“Sure, but I can’t pay a big salary.”

“That’s not important. It’s the opportunity I want. Nobody ever offered me a real job before.”

“Well, you’ve got it now.”

“What kind of paper is it?”

“Right now it’s an advertising throwaway. But that’s not what it’s going to be when I get through with it.”

“What will it be then?”

“A cross between the underground papers and
Playboy
. We’re going to hit people where they live. In the balls.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“
Playboy
fudges,” I said. “They airbrush their articles just like they airbrush the pussies off their girls. The underground press shovels the shit so hard your fingers smell from just holding one of their rags. I think there’s a balance, a way of telling it how it is and at the same time not make the reader feel he’s covered with dirt.”

“But that’s not what Lonergan wants,” Verita said. “He wants the kind of paper that it is.”

“What Lonergan is buying is a laundry. Four pages of advertising to convert his cash. He doesn’t give a damn about the rest of it. You can print it on toilet paper for all he cares.”

“I don’t know,” Verita said doubtfully.

“I do. I’ve known him all my life. Money is his only passion.”

“You called him Uncle John,” she said.

“He’s my uncle, my mother’s brother.”

She took a deep breath. Now she understood. “You don’t like him?”

“I don’t feel one way or the other,” I said. But it wasn’t true. If anything, I felt too much. There was not one area in my life that Uncle John did not seem to touch. And that began even before I was born. First, with my mother, then, my father.

“I’m tired,” I said abruptly. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’d better be going home then,” Verita said quickly.

“No,” Bobby said. “You don’t have to go. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Shit, Verita, it’s too late for you to go,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I snapped. “Coke always makes me horny. Come to bed. I want to fuck the ass off you.” I started for the bedroom. When I saw the tears suddenly well up in Bobby’s eyes, I stopped. “What’s with you?”

“I love you, Gareth,” he wailed. “I want to be your slave. I want you to love me.”

I put an arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “I love you, Bobby, but not that way. I feel like a big brother to you.”

He wiped at his eyes. “I never had a brother.”

“Neither did I.”

He smiled. “I like that. It’s pure.”

“Superpure. Like the coke. Now I’m going to bed.”

Verita followed me into the bedroom about ten minutes later. I couldn’t wait until I got her clothes off. My cock felt as if it were made out of stone. We fucked until I collapsed with exhaustion. But I still didn’t come. Cocaine did that to me. She was asleep almost before I rolled off her. I closed my eyes and zonked.

It seemed as if I had been asleep for hours when I felt a nuzzling at my balls. Still in the twilight zone, I put my hands in her hair and guided my cock into her mouth. Her mouth was warm and expert. At times I felt as if she were going to swallow me alive. “Oh, baby, you do that so good,” I murmured. Then I exploded. The orgasm seemed to drain all the fluids from my body, leaving me empty and exhausted. A few seconds later I dropped back into a deep sleep.