Secrets by Ian DeShils
Chapter 9
EAST COAST INTERLUDE
On the surface this was just another business trip, yet we planned well in advance to coincide with a very special date. Ostensibly, we were opening our newest east coast office, but the truth is the trip was more for play than work.
We celebrated with a fine meal followed by a bit too much to drink and ended up walking hand in hand along the esplanade, oblivious to the stares we received. The alcohol loosened our inhibitions making us mellow, and since we knew almost no one in New York, we didn't give a damn what strangers thought. This was our time, and we intended to enjoy it.
"I would still like to give you something." Jake said quietly as we looked out across the water. I knew it would come up again, I counted on it and immediately went into a fully rehearsed routine complete with fake histrionics.
"What now, a parting gift? That's it, isn't it you're planning on leaving!"
I smote forehead with palm and moaned, "Oh, and after I've given him the best years of my life!"
Jake laughed, "Yeah, sure, I'll be trucking out any decade now!" he replied, popping me lightly on the back of the head. "Seriously though, wouldn't you like some little reminder of this day? After all, it is our fifteenth anniversary!"
"Oh, all right, if you think it's that important. Only this means I have to rush out and buy you something too, and you know what a cheapskate I am!"
All day I carried on as though I didn't know what he had in his pocket. Jake was the bearer of gifts and for many years, I a major recipient, so much so that it sometimes drove me up the wall. Our apartment was filled with stuff I can never get rid of simply because they came from Jake. This time I flatly said No Gift and had been unyielding in that decision, right up until that moment.
Jake was delighted, he got such pleasure out of giving that I never had the heart to just say 'no', and I must admit the thought behind each of those things touched me deeply. He just didn't realize they were all unnecessary. Fifteen years ago he'd given me the most precious gift of all; his friendship and love and an unwavering commitment that had lasted through all our difficulties.
I never told him, but for years I've been aware when he was about to bring me something. He'd start acting sly and pleased with himself then suddenly he'd spring it on me and it usually cost a bundle.
One of the advantages of being head of the investigative branch was my ability to find out what Jake was up to when he began acting 'gifty'. These last few years, in pure self defense, I had him tailed whenever he began acting like that and as soon as I found out what he was up to, I got busy and tried to direct the gift buying towards more modest items. This time, a change of tactics was in order, so I never said a word about not wanting a Rolex. Instead I ordered an identical one for Jake complete with matching inscription and wrapping paper, and when he handed me 'the little something' he'd been carrying around all day, I handed him my gift, then watched his face while trying not to laugh.
Later that evening as I began emptying my pockets onto the dresser, Jake stepped up behind me, draped his arms around my neck and stood looking at our reflection in the mirror.
"You know, Teddy, I think it worked out pretty good."
"What?" I asked.
"You and me. All the articles I used to read pointed to six or seven years as the limit for a relationship like ours, yet we've been together more than twice that long. I used to worry that you'd get tired of me. Reading all that stuff made me nervous, but it never crosses my mind anymore.
I looked at his mirrored image in astonishment,
"My God, we've been together so long we think alike. I had the same idea about you, especially after Annie came along. I figured we were done for.
"That'll be the day!" he laughed, pulling us tightly together, "You know how I feel about Annie. She's the finest woman who ever walked the earth and I won't lie, there was something exciting there, only I think it had more to do with the thought of fathering a child than anything else. It's a good thing I'm a perfect gentleman." He chuckled, "I used to get so hot watching you two, that a few times I came close to giving you a little surprise!"
Jake bumping against me suggestively and I guffawed,
"Well, at least Annie would have been surprised! I hate to burst your bubble, big fella, but it's been a long time since that would have surprised me and even longer since you were a perfect gentleman about it."
We laughed, rocking against each other. I pulled his arms tighter about me. God he was handsome, I swear he got better looking every year. After all this time I still found him irrisistable.
"Have you ever wondered what our life would be like now if we had stayed with the Department?" I asked
"Sure have." He chuckled, "Only I can't see us making it this long. We were sure to get nailed eventually. Remember those nights in the patrol car? I couldn't keep my hands off you, I remember thinking that you just too damn sexy in a uniform."
"Is that why you kept trying to take it off? All this time I thought you wanted me naked for an entirely different reason."
Jake laughed and began nuzzling my ear. After a moment he whispered, "Turn around." With slow deliberation he began undressing me, one button at a time, carefully folding my shirt and tie and making a big production of it until at last I stood before him wearing only briefs. He touched me through the material, tracing the outline of my burgeoning hardness, then delicately ran his hands along my body, barely touching, sending shivers up my spine. When he again arrived at the briefs, he slipped his fingers down inside the waist band and began working them downward as he sank to his knees.
This was but the overture to a evening filled with delight, and he released me when he felt my first pangs of urgency. Nuzzling his way upward, he found my lips and that strong sweet tongue brought with it a desire for something more. Where Jake had been slow in his undressing, I worked in feverish haste, then turned him slightly so he could watch in the mirror.
Later we used the bed to continue that same sweet torture. Intense kisses interspersed with tantalizing moments of teasing, coming close, then slacking off, until finally the pressure built beyond restraint and we switched around to reach for the climax simultaneously. In moments Jake burst forth and with the taste of that great flood, I came in wrenching shudders and Jake moaned, echoing my ecstasy.
Warm and mellow we lay lazy in the afterglow, murmuring in the darkness, and Jake said,
"Here we are, nearly forty and I don't feel any older now than when we met. "
"Maybe this is the wrong moment to bring it up," I teased, "But you are loosing your hair. I believe I ran onto that bare spot just awhile ago. It's right here!." I said, reaching up to finger a quarter sized vacancy.
"I know, its a bitch!." he replied, "But don't get too smug my furry headed pal. Your smile lines are hanging around now even when you're not smiling. Anyway, that's not what I meant. It's just that we still act like kids. You turn me on as much now as you did that very first night when you dragged me to your bed and forced me into this life of shame."
"Whoa, there, I don't recall any force! As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember hearing 'Oh, God, Yes, Yes, Yes,' or something along those lines."
Jake chuckled as he snuggled closer,
"But, you did force me, you know." he said softly, "You forced me to make a decision. I could have remained silent and miserable, instead I chose to speak up and I've never been sorry, Teddy. Of all my thirty-eight years, these last fifteen with you are the ones I treasure and I want it to stay this way for the rest of our lives. You know, sometimes I can see us fifty years from now, two old men in rest home, shocking the shit out of the staff and enjoying every minute of it. That's assuming, of course, you'll still love me when I'm ancient, bald and toothless."
"Jeez, that sounds so delightful, I can hardly wait!" I laughed, "On the other hand, if we're still capable of having sex at that age, it will probably shock us more than the staff."
I combed my fingers through that mass of curly chest hair, reveling in it as always, and said, "But you are right about these last fifteen years. It's been more than I had ever hoped for and we have beaten the odds, haven't we? You're still my sweet friend, my love, and when you're away at night, I wake up searching the bed for you just like always." Then, nuzzling closer I added puckishly, "I guess that means we're good for at least another fifteen and by then I'm pretty sure I'll be over the shock of seeing you bald."
Jake tried to smother me with a pillow, but that ended in a spat of sincere and tender kisses, then, spooned together, legs entwined we fell asleep. The perfect ending to a perfect day.
Notes
A wondrous change is overtaking Jake. It's all coming back to him. I sat down to write the story of our anniversary and he began hanging over my shoulder, reading as I typed. Suddenly he said,
"No, not the park, we were on the esplanade that night. Remember the boats?"
And he was exactly right. He urged me on, offering clear and concise memories of that day, and when I finished, he put his arms around me and said, "Thank you, Teddy, thank you for everything." It was a truly tender moment.
Jake continues to slip away at times, but it's amazing how much he remembers now. I never know what he's going to bring up next. The other day he asked how Sammy was doing and I had to tell him that Sam died last year. Jake was saddened, but it didn't cause a retreat.
It's almost like old times now, except one for thing. I can't explain it, but it seems like Jake is trying too hard to be the person I've written about. I went back over the stories and realized I had overly romanticized our life together. Those were only incidents, not our daily existence. What I haven't touched on were our unshared interests and those later business commitments that kept us apart for days and weeks on end. My stories made it look like we were together every day walking hand in hand from the moment we met. . . Hardly. . . Over the years we developed many divergent interests. He gave up flying even before we left Mira Lida and never pursued a private license. It is still one of my hobbies although not so high on the list that I've ever considered buying a plane. Jake took up sailing some fifteen years ago. I tried it only once and decided there wasn't enough dramamine in the world to get me out there again. After GSI started making money we got involved in various charity events. One of the fund raisers was golf and it became a real passion of mine. Jake hated it. He considered the game about as exciting as watching cows graze. There were lot of things like that I didn't write about.
Another glaring mistake in those stories is my description of Jake's personality. He wasn't Just the compassionate lover I described. Committed; yes. Faithful; I'm sure. Always gentle and tender? Not by a long shot!
I remember picking him up at the airport one day after a trip to Chicago. He came back flushed with victory, having just closed a deal worth several hundred grand, and I thought maybe he wanted to celebrate that evening. He kept answering, "Yeah. . OK. . Whatever. ." to the suggestions I made, while at the same time steering me toward the airport bathrooms. Once inside, he pulled me into a stall and there on the cold fixture we had sex without the slightest bit tenderness. It was so wild and dangerous, so completely unexpected that it turned me on like nothing we ever did before. It also scared the hell out of me. It's a wonder we didn't get nailed, we were in there for half an hour.
Over the years, it became a regular thing with Jake. Carl once got an eyeful while driving us back from a meeting in Fresno, and then there was that time at the office when Jake forgot to lock the door and Josey walked in. Poor Josephine, she gained a whole new appreciation for knocking on closed doors.
I still don't know why a successful business deal turned him into a horny raging bull. I guess it's just one of those quirks there's no accounting for. After that first time, I refused to meet him at the airport. I figured if he ever closed a million dollar deal, he would probably rape me right there on the concourse.
Why haven't I written about those incidents I wonder? Maybe I just wanted Jake to see the person I've missed the most these last three years. Not that his other side wasn't exciting, it certainly was, and I miss that daredevil spontaneity as well, but evidently not as much as I missed his sweetness. . .
These last few days I've been carefully probing to find the extent of Jake's recovery. He still can't recall the shooting or any of the things leading up to it. Also, he is rather vague about some things, it's like he remembers, but can't quite connecting himself to those memories. Occasionally he will refer to himself as "he" instead of "I", and that makes me think my stories are all mixed up with his actual memories of the events.
Last night at dinner I made the mistake of mentioning Carla. Again that look of fear. In seconds he retreated to wherever it is he hides and I finished the meal across from a child jabbering about playing a board game after dinner. The change was almost instantaneous. One moment he was here, the next, gone, but I now know for sure that Carla is the key. Carla and the shooting. But how do they come together? To my knowledge, the last time Jake saw Carla was at the divorce proceedings almost twenty-five years ago. There is nothing I can lay my finger on, but I'm sure there is a connection, if only in Jake's mind.
We finished the game early and went to bed. Jake was restless. Usually after he retreats, he will just snuggle down and go to sleep, but not this time. It took a long quiet talk to get him settled. He hasn't acted this way since we left California, but I could plainly see he was in for one of his old bad nights.
Nightmares
Lightning struck all around me and I was scared. Then I saw a girl I used to know, her black hair shinning in the moonlight, her red lips smiling. She was sitting in the kitchen, the sun shinning on the table and I.. . . Then the lightning stuck again and this time it hit me and it hit her too and. . . I woke up screaming! Teddy had his arms about me telling me everything was OK, but I was still so awful scared.
Jake had his lightning dream again last night. I know it's the shooting, but he dreams about a storm with thunder and lightning.
Alex and I sat in the back up car watching Art hold the limo door for the young couple. They were joking about something, Art was laughing, then gun shots thundered, echoing through the cavernous parking ramp. Art spun and dropped. The girl clutched her side and went down screaming while her husband tried to reach her through a hail of bullets that spattered all around them. Jake popped up from the driver's side, gun drawn, and began firing at someone out of sight behind a support column. Alex bailed out at a dead run toward the rear of that column while I kicked the car into gear, flooring it to get between the kids and their assailant. As I whipped up beside the limo, another roar of guns came from behind Jake shattering the glass in both cars and I saw Jake turn and fire.
It was over in a moment. Art lay dead, Jake badly wounded. The girl had taken a bullet across the ribs, painful but not life threatening. The two assailants were down, one of them dead. Jake's last shot caught her between the eyes and she lay there in the dim light, dark hair spattered with blood and brains, the top of her head blown away. Alex had her partner, a man face down, tied with plastic strip cuffs. By the time the police and ambulance arrived, he had worked the fellow over a bit, but had gotten little information.
I was working on Jake when they came, trying to staunch the blood, telling him to hang on. He was out cold and I thought I was going to loose him at any moment. He had a gash above his ear. I could see the whiteness of his skull through the blood. Bits of bone protruded outward like slivers and I couldn't tell if a bullet had actually entered there or just grazed him. He had two more wounds in his back, none, thank God, near the spine, but how he ever managed to return fire on that woman, I'll never know.
Six hours later the surgeons told us Jake would live. He was in a coma and they would only guess for how long, but all indications were that he would live. The head wound was not as serious as first thought. It was a hard graze, sufficient to cause a skull fracture, but no bullet particle actually entered. They thought the most serious wound was the punctured lung. That, they said might cause problems later on. The rest, I was assured was only a matter of normal recovery. How wrong they were. . .
I couldn't do a thing for Jake waiting at the hospital, but I could try to find out who the hell was behind the shooting. Art's widow was inconsolable. Art spent twenty-five years in the LAPD, retiring without a scratch only to die on a routine escort job. It didn't make any sense.
The newlywed couple, Jason and Ellie Shaw, came to us almost the minute they hit LA. They were looking to hire bodyguards for their stay, two weeks max, and then they were leaving on an extended tour of the islands and the Far East. Wealth has its privileges, of course, but it did seem rather strange. Honeymooners seldom want other people underfoot, especially gun toting middle aged men, and yet armed guards were exactly what they specified. According to Shaw, his wife Ellie had recently been mugged. Her jewelry and purse stolen in broad daylight on a crowded Boston street and she was now too frightened to go anywhere without protection. It sounded reasonable to Josephine who did the interview, especially when the Shaw's shelled out ten grand in advance.
I heard absolutely no complaints from the men assigned to the Shaws. The couple took them to fancy restaurants, always picking up the tab, gave them little gifts and made their job pleasant in every way. The youngsters really had little to worry about. They stayed at a fine hotel, shopped the Wilshire boutiques and likely gained more attention for their hired entourage then anything else. Jake chuckled as he went over daily reports, saying, that the places those two visited, Ellie could have worn the crown jewels of England in perfect safety. The job went totally without incident until the second week when a boat they hired for a cruise to Catalina blew up at the dock. Even that didn't ring alarm bells. The fire department ruled the explosion an accident, an LP cook stove with a faulty gas valve and we foolishly took their word for it.
Newlyweds have a tendency to be late for appointments and in this case it was a very lucky thing. That morning, their over active hormones kept those kids and four of our men from becoming shark bait halfway between Long Beach and Catalina.
We offered bodyguard services in only a few large cities like LA, but even there, providing armed personal guards is not an easy task. At the La Brea office, only Art and few others had concealed weapons permits. Bodyguard work usually requires nothing more than keeping fans and photographers away from celebrities, so weapons were never a priority with us. Of course Jake and I had gun permits, unused and unneeded for years, yet still active. I've often wished that wasn't the case. It was the possession of those permits that got Jake shot.
Flu had taken a toll of our La Brea office that month. Half our people were either coming down with it, or just getting over it. On the night of the shooting, Jake and I were covering for two of our regular men who were home puking their guts out. Neither of us had done that kind of work in years, but I enjoyed the change. It was almost like old times when Jake and I used to do all the leg work.
That night we were heading for a rock concert with only one little fly in the ointment. There were six of us and the youngsters could get their hands on only four tickets. It didn't matter to me, I'm not fond of heavy metal anyway. Alex wanted to see it, Art didn't, but Jake over ruled him, so Art and Alex escorted the couple inside while Jake and I went for coffee at a nearby cafe. It was over coffee that he told me that there was something about Ellie Shaw that bothered him. On the way to the concert, she kept looking out the window and pulling back if a car stayed along side, yet she didn't seem the least bit nervous about being in a crowd, in fact she appeared to relax.
After the shooting, the first thing I did was run a background check of our clients. They seemed to have unlimited funds and the boy did come from a fairly wealthy family, but the girl was a complete enigma. She was only eighteen yet for the last eight years appeared to have traveled almost continuously, her passport showed stamps from half the countries in the world. Both her parents were dead and the grandmother who raised her, apparently had not yet returned from a trip taken at about the time the kids came to LA.
Something was fishy. A supposedly wealthy child who had done nothing but travel since she was ten? When the hell did she go to school? The more we delved, the more it became obvious that the girl existed in a vacuum. We could find no school records, trust funds or bank accounts, no tax records, not even a drivers license, and beyond a passport and birth certificate, little to show the girl was alive. We got so wound up in tracing her, we nearly missed the fact that the boy's parents were now almost broke. They lost nearly everything in a land deal just a few months earlier and yet the kids spent money as if they'd struck the mother lode. A few inquiries and I found the Shaw's had dropped nearly two hundred grand in the two weeks they'd been in LA.
Drugs. It was a natural assumption considering the money involved and maybe it wasn't that far from wrong, but it turned out to be simple larceny. Only it wasn't simple because it was a theft from someone who's idea of indemnity insurance was six well placed hollow point slugs.
The name Gambini surfaced in connection with the grandmother and we began weaving the ends together. The girl's grandmother was about the same age as old man Gambini himself, perhaps a distant relative or an old girlfriend, but the actual relationship was so well hidden we never found it. The lady however, appeared above reproach and spent her time and money taking her granddaughter on innumerable pleasure trips to Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It became obvious to us that she was some sort of courier, probably moving money from one place to another and when we presented the kids with the facts we had, the girl broke down and told us the rest. On their last trip, the old lady died of a heart attack. On instructions, Ellie passed the goods on to another courier, but first lightened the load by some ten million dollars in bearer bonds and cash.
The girl didn't look stupid, but she had acted like a complete fool. Did she think the mob wouldn't miss the money? Plainly, an operation like that required a lot of people on the take, everyone from baggage handlers to minor officials in at least a dozen countries. Alex, who has a touch of larceny in his soul, remarked that she'd passed up a perfect opportunity, then offered several ways she could have absconded with the entire lot by simply throwing suspicion on a few foreign officials.
The kids were placed in protective custody and if it hadn't been for Jake, I would have just turned the whole thing over to the FBI and been done with it. Only, I just couldn't do it. I found that Gambini wasn't the only one who could hold a grudge, and what he had done to Art and Jake called for retribution!
GSI gave second careers to hundreds of ex cops, retired government agents and the like and we paid them well, perhaps not as well as the taxpayers had, but more than enough to keep them off the bread lines. Our main business was security services. We had guards in thousands of sites across the country and to go along with that, I built the investigative branch into a tightly knit group of people who were extremely good at what they did. I carefully picking the best of the best, and then made sure they maintained contact with their old friends still working in the various agencies. Our forte was gathering data and boiling it down to a substance we could use. If a theft occurred at one of our guarded sites, we usually nailed the culprit in a matter of hours.
We shagged Gambini, looking for some opening into his organization where we could slip a finger in without getting it cut off. Strangely enough, we discovered that GSI provided security for several of his supposedly legitimate enterprises and so we began there, turning every stone, looking for the connections between Mob and those business and as we dug them out, we quietly turned everything over to the FBI.
By the time I learned just how much that assassination attempt cost Jake, Gambini was already feeling pressure as his various businesses came under scrutiny. We never exposed ourselves, just sat back and applied a red hot poker were it hurt the most, but when I was done with Gambini and his crowd, their losses to the little thief was but a drop in the bucket by comparison.
I am not a power freak nor the least bit vindictive about most things, but don't fuck with my family and expect me to do nothing about it!
The next morning Jake was restless. His nightmare still bothered him and he wandered around the house doing unneeded little jobs to occupy his mind. It was late afternoon before he once more took an interest in the writing and by then I was nearly finished, only I wouldn't show it to him until he described the dream. I thought it important that he compare his nightmare to what actually happened that night, so I entered it just as he told it and then printed it out. Jake read it over and over,
"I don't remember this." he said, "Are you sure it happened? Who did I kill?"
I told him her name, Rosita Pandaris and he shook his head,
"This doesn't seem real, I don't remember any of it."
"Pandaris was tough cookie, Jake. She was half a hard ball hit team. They've connected her to at least a dozen murders, here and in Mexico and believe me, she would have blown you away without thinking twice. It was hard to believe though from the pictures I saw. Pandaris was pretty enough to be a model, beautiful actually, with long black hair like Carla's. . ."
The moment I mentioned Carla's name, Jake's eyes grew large and he retreated. His childish persona took over instantly, but in such a frenzied state as I have never seen before. He began babbling about everything and nothing, running about playing with the souvenirs of the house like a child in his terrible two's. He has retreated further from reality than ever before. I despaired, why hadn't I let it go when he was almost back to the present? Why did I keep pushing? I fear I have caused irreparable harm.
The following morning he was only slightly better. It took three days for any calmness to return to Jake, but when it did, he was his old self again. His old childish self. In the week since then he has not returned once.
I have lost him to the past, to the place where no decisions are required, where there is no need to face the unthinkable. It wasn't Carla on the parking ramp that night, but for some reason Jake thinks it was. How or why such an idea could seat so heavily in his mind is something I cannot comprehend.
Once long ago Jake told me, "Good, bad or indifferent, we never really get over our first love." I thought he was talking about my confrontation with Sarge, but he must have meant Carla as well. Hidden in our hearts seems to lie a shadow of that first love that can touch us for the rest of our lives.
When I think about it now, I realize that if not for Jake, I would have left the Sidewinder with Sarge that night and I'm equally sure that had Carla been a faithful loving wife, Jake would have never looked in my direction in the first place. Whether anyone would have been happy is another question. First loves cannot guarantee that, they only guarantee that you will always be affected by them.
There are still a couple of months before the road is passable. I'll try again to interest him in the journal. Right now he doesn't want to look at it, not even the earlier parts that so intrigued him before.
Since this last upset, Jake has come down with a bad case of cabin fever and is anxious to go hiking again. There's been no fresh snow for several days now. He is outside for a short time everyday, walking the yard and testing the snow depth. Tomorrow he wants to hike down to the last corral and back. It seems safe enough. The snow is now less than knee deep in most places, but there is a forecast of another storm moving in. . .
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