Full Release (24 page)

Peter shrugged. “So, it’s like that, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s like that.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Thanksgiving came and went. A few of my old friends suddenly remembered me and started calling. I had half a dozen invitations to Thanksgiving dinner, including ones from Mrs. Enders and Simon Willow -- both of which made me cringe. Of course, the only reason anyone wanted me for dinner was because I’d been in the newspaper and on the six o’clock news. I was now a mini-celebrity of sorts. Even if it wasn’t discussed, hosts would be able to say behind my back, ‘Don’t you know who he is? He killed a man once.’ Killing a man got you almost as many invitations as an accidentally released sex tape.

Peter had decided he’d stay in a hotel until New Year’s. That seemed incredibly extravagant, but he hinted he’d worked out a “deal” with the night manager, who was apparently quite cute. He invited me to join him for a room service Thanksgiving, but I turned down even that.

I ended up taking myself out for a simple turkey dinner at semi-popular, diner-style restaurant in Silver Lake. I didn’t have to wait too long for a table, and no one recognized me. The meal wasn’t too bad, basic and homey. I might have really enjoyed the whole experience if I hadn’t been frantic about Tripp.

I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the night I killed Carlos. Once he knew I was okay, he didn’t come back to the hospital. I’d left him repeated messages. I knew he’d be involved in all sorts of interviews with his superiors and, I guess, Internal Affairs. I’d spent a whole day giving statements myself. It had to be worse for him. Killing his partner made him front page news.

Still, I wanted to hear from him.

The
Los Angeles Herald
published half a novel on the whole thing. Unfortunately, the part where they exonerated me was buried deep in the back of the paper. Right above an ad offering to buy your gold jewelry for top dollar. From the way he wrote the article, Alan Moskowitz seemed vaguely disappointed that I turned out not to be guilty. He wrote that I killed “community leader Carlos Maldonado in self defense.” He could have written that I’d killed “double-murderer Carlos Maldonado in self defense.” Maybe I was splitting a hair that didn’t need to be split, but I was actually an innocent victim. It would have been nice if he’d made that crystal clear.

A TV news crew showed up at my door. I almost declined the interview, but I had to live in this town. I had to get another job. I had to be able to make friends. It would be good if people understood that I only killed people in self-defense. I didn’t watch the interview when it was on, though. I know some people would have thrown a party, but the whole thing was somehow distasteful. I’d never had much desire to be a celebrity. If I had, I’d never have become an accountant, since it’s not your typical route to fame and fortune. And if I were to be famous, well, this isn’t the kind of thing I’d like to be famous for.

Other than being an emotional mess, I was in pretty good shape. The bullet had flown through Detective Hanson and lodged in my arm. That caused a lot of pain for the couple hours the bullet was in there, but by the time it hit me it wasn’t going fast enough to do more than bruise my bone. I was tender, but I was already getting use of my arm back.

Jeremy came by one afternoon, and surprisingly, we were able to settle things. He laid a stack of papers onto the dining table. I glanced at them. Across the top in capital letters, the title: Dissolution of Domestic Partnership. There were multiple copies. On top of the stack Jeremy placed a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.

“It’s the best I can do,” Jeremy said. “Honest.”

“Okay.” I didn’t have to think about it very long. It was hard to imagine Jeremy coming up with a better offer than this. “I’m not going to be able to get you off the mortgage right away. When I get a new job, I’ll refinance in just my name. Then I’ll ask you to sign a quitclaim.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“So, the whole thing about trying to buy my house. Was that you or was that Skye?”

“What difference does it make?” Jeremy asked.

“It makes a difference. It makes a big difference. You’ve done a lot of shitty things in the last year, and if it was Skye behind it all, then I’m not such a jerk for having loved you.”

He frowned. It wasn’t the kind of question Jeremy was comfortable with. “Not everyone’s like you, Matt. Why can’t that be enough?”

I looked down at the check he’d just given me. That was my answer. I was pretty sure Jeremy had spent all the money he took with him. In fact, I could mentally account for almost every penny. This was Skye’s money, and I seriously doubted it had been his idea to give it to me.

“Thank you, Jeremy,” I said simply.

As I walked him to the door, I felt sad. I wasn’t a perfect person, far from it, but I was a good person. I had the feeling that Skye wasn’t, and that Jeremy, for whatever reason, felt that was all he deserved; someone like Skye. Even after everything that had happened, I thought he deserved more.

When I still didn’t hear from Tripp, I spent the rest of that day sitting outside Hollywood Station waiting to see if he’d go in or out, even though I was sure they’d given him leave by that point. I tried to get his home address, but it wasn’t available anywhere online. That’s a good thing for a cop like Tripp, but it didn’t make my life any easier. I had a feeling I knew what was happening. A bad feeling.

Saturday afternoon, I decided to do something about it. I cut a photo of Tripp out of the newspaper and carefully folded it then put it into my wallet. I went online and found out where all the cop bars were in L.A. It was a toss up whether I’d find Tripp in a cop bar or a gay bar. If he was masochistic, he’d be in a cop bar; if he was just plain self-destructive, he’d be in one of the seedier gay bars.

I tried the cop bars first. I didn’t show the picture around, that would be too suspicious. Plus, having killed his partner, Tripp might not be too popular. I didn’t want to cause more trouble for him than he already had. I went to about six places, most of them in the Hollywood area. I just walked in and out of most of them. No sign of Tripp. I decided I’d start to check out gay bars.

The bars in West Hollywood seemed pretty unlikely. They were too trendy, too young and too expensive for someone drinking away his sorrows. Instead, I drove over to Silver Lake, where most of the low-end bars were. On the east side of town, I figured Tripp would be able to find the kind of place that matched his mood. I’d spent some time in those bars myself after Jeremy and I broke up.

I found him in a place called Skuffs on Silver Lake Boulevard near Effie. It was a tiny postage stamp of a place frequented by tweekers and their admirers. In the center of the small square bar was an even smaller bar. Tripp was leaning up against the bar, facing the door. I saw him the minute I walked in. He saw me, too.

He wore an expensive dress shirt and a nice pair of slacks. If they didn’t look slept-in and filthy, he would have seemed completely out of place. A bottle of beer sat in front of him and four shot glasses turned upside down on the bar. I wasn’t all that up on my bar symbolism, but that either meant people had been buying him drinks and he had four waiting or he’d had four shots. The way his eyes drooped seemed to indicate he’d already drunk the shots.

I walked over and stood next to him. Without really looking at me, he said, “Go ‘way,” then stood up and took a swing at me. Since he was dead drunk, he missed me by a good foot. Standing was a challenge; he fell into my arms. The sweetly sick smell of too much alcohol wafted off him. I half pulled, half dragged him out of the bar to my car.

On the drive home, he swore at me a few times, called me an asshole, and was nice enough not to throw up until he got out of the car. I reminded myself to hose down the driveway later. I also wondered what I was doing bringing this guy home with me, but then I remembered he’d killed someone to save me, someone he cared about. Maybe we wouldn’t fall in love and live happily ever after, but I could at least sober the guy up and talk to him.

I dumped him into my bed with the new mattress I’d bought with some of my massage money. I’d splurged on some nice sheets and pillows and a comforter with enough down to leave a flock of geese naked. Tripp grabbed me and said, “Fuck you.” Then he pulled me close and began to cry. A few minutes later, he was asleep.

I slept on the couch that night. I could have slipped in beside Tripp, but he smelled rank. I should have run him under a shower before I put him to bed. Praying he’d be better in the morning, I fell asleep.

Tripp was up before I was. He’d showered and dug through my dresser for a T-shirt to borrow. He’d squeezed into a pair of my workout shorts, but they were way too small on him. They clung pretty tightly, and as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I tried not to stare. I was still on the couch when he leaned over and examined my arm.

“Hurt?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I appreciate your saving my life.” Then I asked, “Are you gonna be okay?”

He shrugged like it wasn’t all that important. Then he said, “Yeah. Eventually.”

“Do you need to go to a meeting?” I asked.

“Later.” He sat down on the sofa next to me. He smelled deliciously of soap and toothpaste.

“I never got to ask, when did you start to think it wasn’t me?” I asked. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t bring the whole thing up, but here I was doing it, and the poor guy was barely out of bed.

“It started with Adventure Scouts,” Aaron explained. “Carlos mentioned Eddie’s being involved with them to the press, but when I talked to Javier’s mother, she didn’t remember him being with the group. I confirmed that Javier had never been a member. It seemed a weird thing for Carlos to lie about. That’s when I started to wonder if he’d been a client. The Adventure Scouts was a way to establish a connection to Javier, an acceptable connection. Sure enough, when I talked to Carlos he said they’d kept in touch. That they talked on the phone. I asked him to give me Eddie’s number.”

“And he gave you the number Eddie used for clients.”

“Exactly.”

“Why Adventure Scouts?” I asked.

“LAPD is always under-funded. The scouts volunteer to come in to answer the phone. It was a good cover for Carlos. He had been involved with Adventure Scouts when he was with the department. A lot of kids come through the program. No one would think much about it if he said he knew Javier from the Scouts.”

“What made him think he could get away with it? He was a cop. He should have known he’d get caught.”

Tripp smiled. “Cops see all the mistakes that get made. Cops know there are always loose ends that don’t make sense. He figured Lucy would be able to make the right story out of it for him.”

“I guess she was in love with him,” I said.

He shrugged. The look on his face reminded me what it must have cost him to kill his partner.

“I never expected you to show up. How did you find me?” I asked.

“I didn’t find you. I found Lucy. After they let me out of jail, I knew if I wanted to keep you safe I had to follow her. She’d made a couple call-ins during the night. I was pretty much one step behind her all night. When she reported suspicious behavior in that neighborhood, I knew something was up.”

Then I said something that really needed to be said, “Thank you. For everything you’ve done for me.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Could we stop talking about this?”

“Sure,” I said.

Of course, if we weren’t going to talk, there was only one other thing I could think of to do. I stepped forward and slipped my arms around him. I kissed him.

His lips were warm and incredibly soft. His tongue slipped into my mouth. I teased it with my own. I ran my hands up his arms to his shoulders. His thick biceps, his ropey shoulders. I ran my hand over the back of his head. His tightly shorn hair bristled against my fingers in sharp contrast to the soft skin at the back of his neck.

He pushed me up against the back of the sofa. I pulled my T-shirt off him. Slipped off the ill-fitting workout shorts. Somehow, he’d managed to squeeze a pair of boxers under the shorts. Tripp pulled me close and kissed me again. It was wonderful. It felt like I was falling into him. He slipped my T-shirt over my head. We pressed our naked chests together. He slipped a hand down the back of my jeans. A finger slipped between my buttocks. He unzipped my jeans, and his hand made its way further down the crack of my ass, until it got to my butt hole. Using his whole hand, he made a slow circle. With the other hand, he eased my cock out of my jeans.

Unexpectedly, he dropped to his knees and began to suck me off. His mouth was hot and wet. He spun his tongue around the head of my dick, and my entire body arched. I groaned and involuntarily grabbed the back of his head, forcing him down further onto me.

He pulled back and wet his fingers. While he took my balls in his mouth, he slipped a long, thin finger into me. I spread my legs wider and looked down at him. My cock bounced against his face as he rolled one of my nuts in his mouth. His eyes opened, and I looked deep into them.

Stopping what he was doing, he sat back and just looked at me. Then he smiled. I smiled back. I felt like I was seeing him. Seeing him in a way I’d never seen another person.

With a chuckle, I got down onto the floor and pushed him down onto the rug. I pulled his boxers down around his thighs. His prick was a little bigger than mine. I ran my tongue up and down his stalk while reaching my hand down and playing with his tight balls.

I slipped his dick into my mouth and took him deep into my throat. In just a few moments, it got even harder, and I could tell he was about to come. My own cock bounced in anticipation.

Tripp tried to pull out, tried to slow down, but I wouldn’t have it. I grabbed him by the hips and held him down. A sudden warmth in the back of my throat told me he was coming. Even as he was, I reached down and, in just a few short pumps, came myself. I kept him in my mouth until he stopped jerking.

I sat back against the sofa, heart pounding, panting slightly. Tripp crawled over to me and kissed me. He slipped his arms around me and held me close. We stayed like for a long time. He traced my nipples, getting them to rise.