Authors: marshall thornton
Campbell acted as if it were a great choice and ordered shepherd’s pie with a side of sauerkraut. I had Swedish meatballs with a side of applesauce. They didn’t serve alcohol, so Campbell ordered a coffee while I stuck to water.
“There’s a project I want you to work on.” I was surprised when he said it. I’d thought dinner was related to our adventure in the file room. He didn’t wait for me to ask what project, he just continued, “Accounts Payable called me asking some questions about a vendor named LB
Services. On Monday, I want you to pull whatever we have on them, invoices, check requests. I have a feeling something unpleasant has been going on.”
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“Unpleasant how?”
“I have to initial all invoices before they’re paid. Then I sign the check request. But as far as I know, we don’t deal with a company called LB Services.”
“Why do you think I’ll find anything, then?”
“I think Lenny, the poor kid who killed himself, may have been stealing from the company.”
“I’ll check the files on Monday.” I was glad I came. It was nice to see the final part of his plan set in motion. Of course, he wouldn’t want to discover the embezzlement himself. He’d want someone else to do it. When I got the information together, he’d likely ask me not to mention he’d suggested I look. He’d claim it would make me look better if I found it on my own, or some crap like that. The blowjob he’d given me was to get me on his side. I figured he was planning a couple more to keep me there.
During the rest of the dinner, we talked about nothing important. He asked me questions about my personal life, and I made up a lot of lies. Fortunately, this was nearly over and I wouldn’t have to remember them. I thought about asking about his fiancée, it did seem like the kind of thing you’d bring up after a guy sucks you off -- but I was afraid I’d somehow tip him off if I did.
When the check came, he made a show of paying for dinner. I thanked him, and we went out to the street. It had begun to rain again, just a soft drizzle, but enough to be unpleasant. Belmont is a busy street. Cabs and station wagons, filled with suburbanites out for a Friday night’s entertainment, sped by on the slick street.
Abruptly, Campbell said, “The El’s right here. Let’s take the train to my place.”
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” I said. I would have pretended to be tired, but it was only around eight o’clock.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, but didn’t press me. “Well, are we going in the same direction?”
“I live a few blocks from here.”
“Oh, that’s right.” It took me a moment to wonder why he knew where I lived. I was about to ask him how he knew, when he pushed me up against a building. I thought he was going to kiss me.
Instinctively, I turned my face away, but that just opened up his real target. His hand dove into my breast pocket, and before I could stop him he pulled out my Sig Sauer.
“I think we should take the train,” he said.
Staring down the barrel of your own gun is always persuasive. I turned to the west and headed toward the station house.
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“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“You’re not just any temp. For one thing, you find it necessary to bring a gun to work. For another, you told Terri you were a friend of Lenny’s roommate even though you pretended not to know Lenny.”
“Okay. So I knew Lenny and I’m nosy. That’s not a reason to take a guy’s gun and hold it on him.”
“Isn’t it? Nick?” He smiled. “I did a very thorough search of your jacket. In addition to this lovely accessory, I found your address book with your name and address on the first page. So, who exactly are you, Nick?”
“I’m a private investigator hired by Lenny’s mother. Whatever you’re planning, it’s a bad idea.”
He took a moment to digest what I’d just said. “No. Letting you walk away. That’s a bad idea.”
He pushed me through the thickly painted door of the El station. Inside was an ancient ticket booth with a turnstile in front of it. Next to that were a couple of modern, automated turnstiles.
Most of the structure was wooden, having been replaced countless times since it was built at the turn of the century.
I was in trouble. Campbell liked pushing people, and he was taking me up to an elevated platform. It wasn’t hard to figure out he was planning to push me in front of a train. Something I’d rather not experience.
He shoved me in front of him up to the ticket window. A middle-aged black woman in a CTA uniform gave me a bored look. I glanced back at Campbell. He was looking away, hoping the woman wouldn’t be able to get a good look at his face. This gave me an opportunity, and I went for it.
I dug around in my pocket for change, and with the change I found the card that Detective Harker had given me. I slid the change and the card to the ticket taker. After a glance at Campbell, I tapped on the counter and, when the woman looked up at me, mouthed the word
“Help.” Then I walked through the turnstile.
Campbell threw some money into the window and was through. He shoved me up the stairs to the platform. I glanced back and saw the ticket taker watching through the dirty glass of the booth. A young couple had come through the door and dropped tokens into the automated turnstiles.
I could have fought Campbell every step of the way up the stairs. But my police training kicked in. I had an offender with a gun, and I needed to make sure he didn’t hurt any innocent bystanders. If I fought too hard, someone might try to help me. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt.
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When we got to the platform, a dozen people waited for the northbound train. We weren’t far from the stairs when I dug my feet in and began to resist Campbell’s efforts to lead me to the edge of the platform. Campbell didn’t want to attract attention any more than I did. He didn’t want any witnesses.
I’m sure he’d been hoping for a larger crowd. That would have given him more anonymity. In a smaller crowd, he couldn’t afford to draw attention. That was my advantage. A train was coming, and people began moving forward. The sound of it grew as it came closer and closer to the station. Campbell tried again to move me forward, but I wouldn’t budge. He poked the gun in my back and said, “Move.”
“You’re not going to shoot me,” I told him. “Not with all these witnesses.”
The train pulled into the station. People got on; people got off. Campbell kept me still until the train pulled out and the platform cleared. We were alone on our side, staring at the small group of people on the opposite platform. We were deadlocked. He knew if he waited for the next train there’d be a new crowd of witnesses, and I started to fight. I could sense that he was nervous, unsure what to do next.
Unexpectedly, he yanked me sideways. Pushing and pulling, he led me over to the bridge people used to transfer to the opposite platform and the Ravenswood. It was a rickety-looking contraption that probably dated back to the beginning of the transit system. It went up ten steps, turned, and went up another seven. An open bridge crossed the tracks.
People on the opposite platform began to stare. What did we look like, I wondered? Did we look like a killer and his next victim? Or did we look like boyfriends who’d drunk too much at happy hour? I tripped, and Campbell dragged me up the first ten steps.
I didn’t want there to be any kind of incident before the police got here.
If
they got here. I tried not to think about what would happen if the ticket taker hadn’t called Harker. Of course, I knew that when we got to the center of the bridge, Campbell would try to push me off. I put up a fight at the landing between the two sets of steps. He was actually pretty strong. It was likely his workout routine was more intense than mine.
“You’re not getting away with this,” I told him. “A second secretary committing suicide? No one’s going to believe that.”
“They’ll believe what I make them believe,” he said arrogantly. “People always believe me.”
I heard a train coming from the north. I turned to see how far away it was and lost my footing.
Campbell was able to push me up the second set of steps to the bridge itself. I braced my feet so he couldn’t get me to move any further, but he put a foot behind mine and pushed. I lost my balance and took a few steps back to keep from falling. We were very nearly over the southbound track.
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The train got closer. Campbell was on me, one hand on my chest pushing, the other lifting my leg. I felt myself going over. I grabbed for the railing with my right hand. The sound of the train coming grew louder, forcing out all other sounds. Campbell gave me a final push and I was over the railing. I had a good grip on the railing, but the force of my body swinging over the railing made it nearly impossible to hold on. I looked down, and the train was coming into the station beneath me. I let go.
I landed on top of the moving train. I wasn’t able to get my footing on the smooth metal of the roof. I slid off, falling onto the wooden strip between the tracks. When I landed, my right leg hit at a bad angle and a sharp pain ripped through me like an electrical current. A second later I lay on the strip, the wheels of the train still moving inches from my face.
* * *
My leg turned out to be fractured just below the knee, which meant they had to stabilize my knee, so I ended up with a cast from my ankle to the middle of my thigh. I spent a lot of the first week hanging around my bedroom until I got a handle on the crutches. Mrs. Borlock insisted on helping me out and came by every day. She even tacked a little bonus onto her check. I would have objected to both, but the truth was I needed the help. Bobby and Freddie came by and brought some Birds of Paradise they’d bought at a florist on Broadway.
That Tuesday, I finally got around to reading Lenny’s poetry. It wasn’t as bad as Freddie had suggested. It wasn’t good, but I’d expected it to be the literary equivalent of Freddie’s penis paintings, and it was better than that. I guess I’d call them everyday poems. They talked about the things Lenny did with his friends and his mother. They showed Lenny to be what people thought him to be, a happy guy. But more than that, he knew it. He appreciated his life, his friends, even his mother -- he wrote a couple sticky-sweet poems about her that choked me up a little.
After I read the poems, I called her into my bedroom and told her, “I think you should read these.
There’s a little bit of sex stuff in some of them, but I think you can handle it.” She took the composition notebooks and clutched them the way she had her photo album the first day she came to my office. “I will, eventually.” Knowing what had happened to her son hadn’t relieved her pain as much as she’d hoped, but I think it made it survivable. I don’t think she’d been able to begin grieving until she knew for sure he hadn’t killed himself. Now that she knew, the grieving began.
The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Borlock went to answer it for me. A few moments later, she came back with Detective Harker. He wore the same tan suit he’d worn every time I saw him, and it still looked slept in. They stood by my bed, and we chatted for a few moments, then Mrs.
Borlock said she needed to leave. I was surprised, since I expected Harker would have
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information about what was happening with Campbell Wayne, but the look on her face said she’d had enough for the day. I promised to bring her up to date the next time I saw her.
When she was gone, Harker jumped into the facts of the case without being asked.
“When we searched Wayne’s apartment, we found a set of fake IDs with Lenny’s name and Wayne’s picture. We’re not sure yet where he got them.”
“He probably did them himself. He went to The Art Institute.”
Harker nodded agreement. “We’ve interviewed Jeanine Anderson three times. She’s sticking to her story. The last time she came in, she came in with an attorney from the same firm Campbell Wayne’s using.”
“What’s going on with Campbell?”
“He’s not saying much. Except that he doesn’t know anything about the embezzlement or Lenny’s death. He claims the two of you were having an affair and what happened at the El was just a lover’s spat gone bad.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Did you have sex with him?”
“No. He came on to me, but I turned him down,” I lied. It was better if Harker didn’t know. And I wasn’t especially proud of what had happened in the file room.
“You think he’s gay?” he asked me.
“Guys like that, I think it’s more about manipulation than sex.”
Harker thought about that for a moment. “The Monroes are standing by him. Paying for his lawyers.”
“He’ll go to prison, though?”
“Yes. He’ll go to prison.”
That seemed to finish our business, and an awkward silence fell.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For what?” he asked.
“You kept forcing your card on me. Turned out to be a good idea.”
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“I told you to get out of that office. That was a better idea.”
Abruptly, he sat on the bed and put a hand on my left thigh. I was surprised and not surprised. He looked at me, a question in his light blue eyes. I sat up further and kissed him. For such a gruff guy, his lips were surprisingly soft. I pulled him back onto the pillows with me, and we kissed for a long time.
Eventually, he sat back and opened the front of my pajamas. After playing with the hair on my chest, he leaned over and began to lick my nipples, one at a time. Quickly, they turned to hard little nubs. He rested his head on my chest and wrapped his arms around me as best he could.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he whispered.
I pushed him away and undid his tie, then quickly unbuttoned his shirt. I pushed his shirt and his jacket off at the same time. They landed somewhere on the floor.
His chest was sinewy and covered in a thin layer of blond hair. He leaned away from me, running his hand down my belly and opening my pajama bottoms. Reaching in, he pulled out my hard cock. Before he began sucking me, he ran his tongue the length of my dick, ending by spinning it round and round the tip.