Murder in the Rue St. Ann (16 page)

I went to the links page, but the only one was to Top Rope’s home page.

Okay then, where, would wrestlers go to meet each other? There has to be sites about gay wrestling, personal ads and all of that stuff on the Net. I mean, every other imaginable fetish had several sites. I typed “gay,” “wrestling,” and “personals into my search engine, lit a cigarette and waited.

So much for quitting—the cigarette felt perfectly natural there, like I’d never stopped. Okay, granted, I’d been smokeless for only about five weeks. It was kind of like a controlled addiction—I’d sneak one whenever there was no chance in hell Paul would find out. Being with Paul had changed me. I hadn’t minded letting go of the cigarettes and pot if it meant having him around. Oh, he’d never said anything about dumping me if I kept it up, but his disapproving silence whenever I’d light up around him spoke volumes. Once, I’d lit one after we’d come back from the gym dripping with sweat. He’d looked at me and said, “You know, you take better care of your car than your body.” Shrugging, he added with an air of complete indifference, “And you can always get another car.”

 I’d taken another puff off the cigarette—I’d always enjoyed the after-work out cigarette the best, when the heart is pumping and the blood is full of oxygen—and put it out, as I watched him peel the sweaty clothes off and walk bare-assed toward the bathroom. When I’d joined him under the shower’s hot water spray, he just smiled at me. “You know, kissing you after you’ve been smoking doesn’t turn me on.”

Statements like that made in that context will make you quit anything—or at least cut back..

But now I took another drag and enjoyed the exquisite feeling of the smoke filling my lungs and the delicious taste of the menthol in my mouth. The search engine had found 30 sites. I clicked on the first link and saw a white home page with a line drawing of two incredibly muscular men in bikinis and boots wrestling. The bikinis were tight, leaving no doubt as to the enormous size of the men’s genitalia. The header line read “Where real men meet to wrestle.” I clicked the “personals’ link, which brought up a search page. I typed in ‘new orleans’. The computer hummed as it brought up a list of wrestlers in the city as well as a tiny thumbnail photo of each guy. I scrolled through the page, recognizing some of the guys from the bars or the gym. About halfway down the page was ‘Cody Dallas,’ with the same picture from his own website. I clicked on the ad, and a profile popped up. A bunch of pictures of Paul posing and flexing in different bikinis ran along the left gutter. There was even a shot of him from behind in the red one, the lycra hugging his hard bubble butt like sausage skin, the muscles in his back standing out as he flexed his arms.

Who wouldn’t want to wrestle him?
 I swallowed and started reading the profile.
Who wouldn’t want to fuck him?

NAME: Paul. Make wrestling videos as Cody Dallas for Top Rope Productions.

AGE: 29

HEIGHT: 5’ 9 WEIGHT: 185 HAIR: Brown

EYES: Brown

CHEST: 46WAIST: 30 BICEPS: 18QUADS: 26

LIKES: I like submission wrestling mostly; can do pro or pro/fantasy. Age and size unimportant, as long as you work out regularly and have some stamina. Not interested in guys who just want to roll around as a pretext to having sex—I like to compete. Wrestling is a great work out. Preferred gear is speedos or jocks, but pretty much open to whatever my opponent is comfortable with. Really enjoy the body contact, the feel of muscles straining, determining who the better man is. Willing to do erotic if chemistry is there—but don’t expect it.  Favorite holds are scissors, nelsons, camel clutches, backbreakers. Drop me a line with a shirtless pic, and let’s get it on.

I stared at it for a moment.

The cursor kept blinking, mocking me.

There was a blue link that read simply, “Email this wrestler.”

I took another breath. Erotic wrestling?

What the hell does that mean?

Sex wrestling, you idiot. Duh. Even an idiot could figure that out. What else could it mean?

So had he been ‘erotic wrestling’ after we’d started seeing each other? After we’d agreed to only see each other?

I lit another cigarette with shaking fingers.

I looked at the thumbnails, clicking on the one of Paul’s rear view. It blew up into a full-page window. Paul was standing in what I recognized as his living room—it was hard to mistake the stained glass windows.  His back was to the camera (and just who, I wondered, had taken these pictures anyway?), his lats fanned out to their full extent, making his waist look even tinier than usual. His ass looked incredible, round, hard and inviting. I closed the window, and shut my eyes.

Think, Chanse, think.

If the guy who sent the email wasn’t just a voyeur, it was possible he cruised these kinds of sites. Therefore, didn’t it make sense to list myself on a few of the sites and see what happened? I clicked on “create your own listing.”

Okay, it was a longshot, I thought as I typed up in my own ad. But other than getting a court order, which was an even bigger longshot, there was no way to find out this guy’s name. I had to make this ad as appealing as Paul’s to try to draw this guy out into the open. I might not have the mystique of being a video star, but my body was looking good, especially compared to some of the others ones I’d noticed on the ‘new orleans’ page.

NAME: Chanse

AGE: 29

HEIGHT: 6’4WEIGHT: 220HAIR: Blondish-brown

EYES: Gray

CHEST: 48WAIST: 33BICEPS: 20QUADS: 30

LIKES: New to wrestling. My boyfriend makes videos as Cody Dallas. He’s a great teacher, but am looking for some other guys to wrestle as well to get more experience with so I can get into the business. I love the body contact, I love to sweat, I get really turned on by wrestling. Will wrestle in anything, don’t have mats but have space in my apartment. Interested in doing tag teams with partner eventually.  Erotic is fine, but open to anything within reason. Former college athlete. Are you man enough to take me on? Let’s see who the better man is.

I hesitated, my finger on the mouse, poised to click send. Was that enough information? If the guy cruised these sites, mentioning ‘Cody Dallas’ should flush him out—especially the part about being Cody’s boyfriend. Getting in touch with me might give the guy the chance to get even with the guy who’d caused him to retire.

I clicked.

A window popped up. “Would you like to post some pictures with your ad? Ads with pictures get the most responses.”

Again, I hesitated. When Paul and I had gone to South Beach, we’d brought my digital camera. I didn’t like the idea of posting pictures of myself on a website. What if someone I knew came across them somehow?

 But if pictures were what it took—

I opened the folder with the pictures from South Beach, and scrolled through the thumbnails. I clicked on one of me standing ankle deep in the water, in my black squarecut with the white stripes up the side. The picture opened full size. My arms were folded, my eyes squinting in the sun. My biceps looked huge, as did my legs and chest. I was wet from the water, beads of water glistening in the sun on my shoulders, chest and arms. The squarecut was soaked and clinging to my privates. When I’d first seen the picture I’d kind of been embarrassed, but Paul had loved it. “You look so hot,” he grinned at me as we sat in front of the computer. “I’m getting pretty excited…”

 I attached the picture, and started cruising through the others. I picked out three more, including one of me in the bathroom getting ready to shave in my white underwear. It was a side shot, and the angle of the camera and the way I was standing made my package look huge. It also made my ass look round and inviting.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

I attached the pictures and clicked ‘send.’

A window opened. “Your ad will appear in the next couple of hours. Thanks for joining!”

Grimly, I pulled up another site. Might as well get listed on all of them.

After finishing with the web-sites, I decided to head down to the Quarter to talk to Dominique, find out her movements last night. The report I’d faxed her nailing Williams for the harassment couldn’t have made her happy.

 I tried calling Paul on my cell phone as I drove, but I got his voicemail.

Probably screening calls
, I thought as I hung up before the beep and tossed my phone into the passenger seat. I couldn’t blame him. Hell, I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.
You really fucked up this time, buddy
.

I parked on Dauphine Street and stopped at Matassas to buy a pack of cigarettes. Paul was probably never going to speak to me again—it wasn’t likely he’d smell smoke on my breath any time soon. Christ on the cross.

I was on my second one when I turned onto St. Ann. There was someone standing in front of the gate to the attitude office, smoking a cigarette. As I got closer I recognized the magazine editor. “Hi Ghentry.” I said when I got within hearing distance. “How you doing?”

He glared at me. “As good as can be expected, I guess.”  He ground out his cigarette under his shoe savagely. He shrugged. “Sorry, man. It’s just—aw, fuck.”

“It’s not every day your boss gets murdered.” I used my most sympathetic voice. “That’s gotta be rough.”

“Yeah.”  He shrugged, rolling his eyes.  “I never knew anyone who was murdered before.” He shook his head. “I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it, you know?”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You want to go get some coffee and talk?”

He looked at me funny. “Talk? About what?”

I shrugged. “What happened last night.”

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

We walked to the CC’s on the corner of St. Philip and Royal. It wasn’t very crowded, so we got our coffee, and sat down at a table in the back. I pulled out my notebook and pen. “So, what happened yesterday?”

He looked at me funny. “What do you mean?”

“I’m looking into this.” I looked at him. “The guy they’ve arrested is my boyfriend.”

His eyes widened. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I didn’t answer.

He shook his head. “Man oh man….” He sighed. “I can tell you what I told the police.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s see.” He bit his lip. “It was a pretty normal day, really. Julian was making sales calls, I was working on editing a couple of articles, and then around five the two of us ordered dinner. We asked Mark if he wanted anything, but he said he was going out to dinner later.”

“Did he say with whom?”

“No, but he didn’t have to. I figured he was going out with Ricky.”

“Ricky?”

“Ricky Dahlgren, his boyfriend.” He spelled the last name for me.

“He had a boyfriend?” This was the first I’d heard of this. Maybe Paul hadn’t known about him. I felt a little bit of relief, a lifting of my spirits. If Mark had a boyfriend, then he and Paul probably hadn’t been—

Chanse, you ARE an asshole.

“Yeah.” He laughed. “I never understood what he saw in Ricky, though. What a jerk.” I just raised my eyebrows. “I mean, Ricky was good looking and all, nice body, all of that, but he was in his early twenties and I don’t think he’d been out very long.”

“Why do you say that?”

He shrugged. “He was still really caught up in all that macho straight boy bullshit, you know? Like he’d say things like ‘I like watching hockey because of the fights’—you know, crazy shit like that. I got the sense he wasn’t comfortable in his gay skin yet. And he was kind of mean to Mark.”

“How so?”

“Well, I always got the sense Mark wasn’t really happy with him. Mark always seemed really sad when he talked about him—and he never really talked about him very much. You know how boyfriends are—it’s usually ‘Ricky this’ and ‘Ricky that.’ Not Mark. And for the most part, Ricky didn’t have much to do with any of us—he’d drop in to see Mark, and if Mark wasn’t there he’d hang out with us for a couple of minutes, say something really stupid, like the hockey thing, and then would leave and not come back until Mark was there. And it’s not like Mark wasn’t a good looking guy—he could have done a LOT better than Ricky.”

“So, you two ordered dinner?” I prodded.

“Yeah, from the Moon Wok.” He took a drink of his coffee. “Then around 5:30 Mark said he was going back to his apartment.”

“That was in the slave quarter in back, right?”

Ghentry nodded. “Then about 6:30 Dominique called on a rampage…man, she was pissed off.”

“Did she say why?” I’d sent her the fax around six.

“Not to me. She never would talk to anyone but Mark.” He gave a weak smile. “She was furious, though—didn’t seem to believe me when I said Mark wasn’t in the office. She called both me and him some choice names—I was pretty upset when she finally hung up. Then, around seven, Ricky showed up.”

“And how did he seem?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him.” He shrugged. “I didn’t actually see him—Zane did. He saw him go by the window—what did he say?” He frowned for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t remember exactly, but Zane didn’t like Ricky at all, and he said some nasty things about him—you know, rolling his eyes and all.”