The Carma Klown,
Chapter 16
© 2013 by the author
Saturday, ca. 1:00 p.m., June 12, 2010
Michael walked his sister back to her car and then took the subway to One Police Plaza. He hadn't been lying when he told his sister that he had work to do. The investigation into the identity of the Klown was moving on several fronts, and he wanted to be in on it. He had some ideas he wanted to follow up. The windows in the reconstruction and those on the Syswide building were close enough to be a match, but he still had to check out the building across the street and find its owner and who might have access to it.
Almost as soon as he turned on his computer, he received an emailed update from Star in Your Own Porn. He had arranged for an automatic notification from them whenever a new Carma Klown video surfaced. A new video had been posted that morning at 9:18. He cursed the delay in learning about it. If he hadn't been so busy with his family, he would have known about it hours ago. And apparently no one on the task force had thought to check. They were relying on him to do the computer work too much. Someone should have noticed this before. He quickly called up the video and downloaded it to a flash drive.
A surprising number of the people working on the investigation had come in, and Michael quickly notified everyone to gather in the conference room. The group had grown so large that several people had to stand. Michael inserted the thumb drive with the video into the AV computer and put it up on the big monitor. As soon as the video ended, Altmann sent two detectives to find Parish Haydn IV and bring him in for questioning. If Haydn put up an argument, they were to detain him as a material witness. He could call his lawyer on the way to One Police Plaza. The Captain then called for comments on the video. The discussion was spirited and full of ideas. Curiously Michael sat silent throughout the discussion. When Altmann asked him for his opinion, he said only that he wanted to take another look at the video privately to doublecheck his impressions before speaking.
When the meeting broke up, Michael returned to his cubicle and loaded the video on to his machine.
. . . Parish Haydn IV looked down at the selection of dildos on the table. "This is the one I use when I can't take the time to open myself up for one of the bigger ones." He held up a flesh-colored dildo about an inch in diameter at the base and six inches long. "When I first started, it was all that I could tolerate, but now I need a much larger dildo to get me off. I keep it mainly for nostalgic reasons."
"This is another favorite." The black latex dildo was a series of five flattened spheres of increasing size joined together one below another. The first one was half an inch in diameter, the last about three inches. Overall, with the base, it was about eight inches long.
"When I really need a good screw, I use this one." Haydn's eyes gleamed and he licked his lips with anticipation. "This one feels so good." The business end of the dildo was a foot long. It was shaped like a gigantic screw, with wide ribbed threads running in spirals down the entire length. "I just insert the tip and then begin turning it and it just bores into me. It's wonderful."
"Finally, this is my gateway to heaven." He held up a realistically shaped dildo and traced the veins running up and down it with one of his fingers. It was sixteen inches long and four inches in diameter at the lower end. "Once I get this baby in, I don't want to take it out." He began kissing and licking it, saying over and over, "My precious, my precious. Daddy wubs you."
"So these are your favorites?"
"Yes," Haydn stopped fondling his precious. He looked annoyed at the interruption. "I love them. I love all my dildos, but these are my four favorite ones."
"But if you love to use them on yourself, where is the punishment?"
Haydn looked confused. "Well, uh, I don't know. I guess they're not a punishment anymore. Maybe they were at first, but now I enjoy them too much."
"Didn't we agree that a corporate criminal like yourself who has spent his entire life fucking others financially needs to be punished?"
"Yes, that's true. I need to be punished for all my crimes." Haydn looked with dismay at the dildo he was holding. Suddenly it didn't seem suited to the purpose.
"And didn't we agree that a worthless, pathetic, old faggot such as yourself has to use sex toys to punish himself because no one is willing to come near him?"
"Yes, a worthless, pathetic, old faggot like myself has to use sex toys to punish myself. This is true."
"How are you going to punish yourself then, if you enjoy using your sex toys on yourself?"
Haydn was stumped. He looked around at all his dildos. They were no longer tools for punishment. Suddenly his face lit up with joy. "I know."
"What?"
"I don't like rimming. It's filthy, and disgusting, and awful. You've punished all the other corporate criminals by making them rim someone. So you could make me do that."
"But how do I know that you don't like that as well? Maybe you're just pretending to hate rimming and trying to manipulate me into letting you do something you really like. You're not a good man, Parish. You don't want to be let off with a light punishment, do you?"
Haydn gave a sly smile. "No, I need to be punished. And I really do hate rimming."
"So you've rimmed someone before?"
"No, never. I would never do that." He clasped the dildo even more tightly. "Please, it would make a good punishment for me."
"You really like it, don't you?" The man's voice chivvied him.
"Yeah, I really do." Haydn grinned. "I love to rim other men. I'll pay. I have lots of money." He pulled out his wallet and began dropping bills on the table. "I got some money from the bank earlier today just so I would have enough."
"Count it."
"Yes, Sir." Haydn began carefully counting the bills, holding each so that all of it was visible. The camera zoomed in to show each bill this time. Haydn had six $1,000 bills and forty $100 bills. The $100 bill with the missing corner was not among them. When he had counted out the $10,000, he opened his wallet and started adding twenties and tens.
"Stop. You will need cabfare home."
"Yes, Sir." Haydn looked uncertain for the first time. "Is it enough, Sir?"
"Yes, it's enough. In fact, it's enough for you to have a special treat today, Parish." The voice grew smooth and tempting. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."
"But you have to do something in return, Parish. There's no free lunch."
"Anything, Sir, anything."
"You have to put on a really good show for the camera, Parish. I want you to show everyone just how much you love to rim another man's ass. Show the camera lots of tongue. Throw yourself into it. I want your tongue down our volunteer's ass. I want everyone you've ever kissed to wonder whose ass your disgusting potty tongue was licking. I want everyone who sees you eat in the future to see a mental image of you eating out another man's ass. Can you do that for me, Parish?"
"Sir, yes, Sir."
"I hope so, Parish. Now why don't you start by getting that dildo you're holding inside you."
Haydn's smile was so wide that it almost cracked his face. He squealed in delight as he slathered so much lube over the dildo that it dripped in wide threads onto the floor. When it was ready, he sat it on the floor and tore off his clothes until he was totally naked. The camera moved slowly up and down the dildo, catching every glimmer of light. When Hadyn began lowering himself onto the dildo, the camera followed his progress as the dildo disappeared inside him inch by inch, and the microphone caught every groan of pleasure. He was ecstatic in his gratitude. It took him 22 minutes to insert it all the way. It was in so far that the square flange at the end had been pushed deep between Hadyn's fat buttocks. Rolls of flesh oozed over the end of the dildo and held it securely in place.
"Very good. Now kneel on all fours like a dog."
Haydn hurriedly complied. The camera moved behind him so that the base of the dildo was visible against the pale white of Haydn's ass. The Klown tattoo came into view on his left buttock. A noise off-screen made him look over his shoulder toward something behind him. His eyes gleamed as his mouth opened in anticipation. He licked his lips with his tongue.
As in the other videos, a well-built man walked into the scene. His legs appeared on screen first. His calves were matted with a dense pelt of black hair. Above them, as the man moved further into view, the back of his thighs and then his ass and the lower part of his back became visible along with his hands and forearms. In contrast to his calves and his forearms, the rest of his body, at least the parts that were visible, was hairless and glowed starkly white against the black space surrounding the two figures. The second men who had appeared in the other videos could have been male models. The new man didn't have quite the polished, gym-bunny figure they had had, but that made him even more masculine looking.
The second man knelt and presented his back to the camera. Almost as soon as he stopped moving, Haydn leapt forward and began licking his ass. He pulled the man's buttocks apart so that the asshole was visible. He stuck his tongue out as far as he could and began licking it in long, slow, deliberate swoops, pausing at the top of each stroke as if to savor the taste. He grew increasingly agitated as he continued. The camera caught the frantic jabbing of his tongue against the man's anus. Haydn seemed almost frustrated that he could not force his tongue to penetrate the other man.
"Perhaps a little lube would help, Parish?" The Klown chuckled. "I have the perfect substance. One this man knows well."
Suddenly the lower half of another man moved into view from the direction of the second man's head. He was naked. His erect penis swayed slightly from side to side as he moved. His legs straddled the second man's body. When he stopped moving, the head of his cock was positioned directly over the second man's ass crack.
The third man began leisurely stroking his cock, pulling the foreskin back so that the head emerged. His hand moved slowly up and down. After a few strokes, he paused for a second and squeezed his cock gently. A bead of pre-cum appeared on the tip. It gradually doubled in size and then formed into a ball. Still linked to the piss slit by a glistening thread of gold, the ball hung an inch beneath the head for several beats and then fell tantalizingly slowly. The camera stared at it as if hypnotized. It descended between the second man's cheeks and unerringly landed on his anus. Haydn lapped it up and spread it around with the tip of his tongue.
The third man began to stroke faster and faster. His legs began to buckle as his body twisted back and forth. As he came, he aimed his cock at the ass crack and filled it with his cum. The cum gushed from his cock in unbelievable amounts.
The cum drove Haydn wild. He plunged his face into the crack and began pushing it into the second man's anus. His grunts were those of a famished man. He stopped only when the Klown told him that his time was up.
Michael barely paid attention as the video cycled through the by-now familiar Klown cartoon zooming away in his miniature car. He wasn't looking at the screen but at something visible only to himself.
As he had watched the video in the conference room for the first time, he had to fight to maintain self-control to keep himself from shouting out and turning it off. He wanted to pick up the AV computer and smash it against the floor and stomp on it. He wanted to chase everybody away. If it had been within his power, he would have made them instantly forget what they were seeing. But he couldn't. He was paralyzed. He couldn't move. He couldn't say anything. Luckily everyone had been concentrating so intently on the monitor that his reactions had gone unnoticed.
The instant the second man's legs had appeared on the screen, he recognized him. He had seen those legs practically every day for the past seven years. He had touched them with wonder and with love. When more of the man's body had appeared on screen, his fears were confirmed. It was Jeff. That bastard Klown had taken Jeff and used him.
And when the third man appeared, he also recognized him. He had never seen himself from that angle, but the cock was his, the wiry hair surrounding the groin was his. He felt defiled.
He knew that he had to tell Altmann. He couldn't be part of the investigation now. He was no longer part of the case as a detective. Now he was a participant in the crime. But first he had to talk to Jeff. He didn't want Jeff to find out from someone else.
He pulled out his phone and sent a text to his lover telling him to try to get home as soon as possible—something important had come up. When he finished, he thumbed through his pictures until he found one of Jeff. It was his favorite, and he kept it on his phone so that he could look at it when they were apart. He remembered the day he had snapped it. Jeff had just finished playing a game of tennis. His face glowed from the exertion, and his hair was damp with sweat. The moisture had made it even curlier than usual. Jeff had won the game, and he was smiling in victory. He had run over to where Michael was sitting watching the game and thrown himself down on the bench beside Michael. Spontaneously, Jeff had wrapped an arm across Michael's shoulders and pulled him close. Then he had kissed him—a public display of affection that had been greeted with cheers from some of the other spectators. "My good luck charm." That's what he had called Michael. "My good luck charm." Michael wondered if Jeff would ever call him that again.
He was staring at the photograph when Ellen Corwin walked into his cubicle. She glanced over his shoulder at the display on his phone and said, "Oooh, who's the handsome man? Is that your partner? God, he's gorgeous. What's his name? Tell me he has a brother. If there's any justice in this world, he has a brother equally as gorgeous—and unattached!"
Captain Altmann walked down the aisle toward them. "I'm glad I caught the two of you together. Phil has just told me that his group has discovered that Syswide leased the building across the street three months ago. They've applied for permission to renovate it. We're getting a search warrant right now. We're planning to go in tomorrow." He arrived in time to hear the end of Ellen's cries of delight. He, too, looked over Michael's shoulder. "Hmm. He is an attractive man." He patted Michael on the shoulder. "You should put his picture on your desk or pin one to the wall. The rest of us keep family pictures near us. You should too. It helps remind us of what's important.
Michael blushed. He couldn't bear to talk about Jeff at that moment. He knew he would break down if he thought about Jeff. "That's good news, Captain. Can we be included in the search? There might be computers."
Altmann looked at him curiously. He must have found it odd that Michael hadn't responded to their comments about Jeff. But he apparently decided to drop the subject in favor of answering Michael's request. "That's why I'm here. To tell you that your presence is required. Both of you be here by 8:00 tomorrow morning. Have you got something for us, Ellen?" He pointed to a printout she was carrying.
"Yeah, I think so. I thought I heard something when we were watching the tape, but I wanted to check it out. Look at this. These are sonograms of the Klown's voice on all the first seven videos. You can see that they are more or less the same. We know that he's using a voice-distortion program to disguise his voice, and the sonograms are consistent throughout all the earlier tapes and most of the new one. It's just at the end, when the Klown speaks for the last time on this video—when he says, `I have the perfect substance. One this man knows well.' Look at the sonogram for that segment. It's different. I think the Klown forgot to process that last bit through his voice-distortion software. This may be his real voice. When we catch the Klown, we might be able to ID him through his voice. It will be another piece of evidence."
Michael attended to what Ellen and the Captain were saying with only half a mind. He nodded and said yes and no at the right moments. He gathered himself together enough to suggest that they send a tape of the segment in question to his voice expert at City University to see if the sound patterns could be pinned to any regional accent. The expert might even be able to use the sonogram to create a voice to speak an extended passage that would give them more to work with. He tried to be part of the conversation if only to feel normal and unsullied again for a few moments. Just another cop doing his job—but he wasn't sure if he would ever be just another cop again.
The phrases "one this man knows well" and "the perfect substance" kept echoing in his mind. The Klown had got that right. Jeff was well acquainted with the perfect substance. Hadn't he smeared it all over Jeff's body last night? What would his lover think of him now? The cop who was supposed to protect him, to keep him safe, to keep the evil at bay—the cop who had failed to do all those things. How could Jeff ever trust him again? Because of him, Jeff had become involved in the Klown case, and in the most damaging way possible. Once Michael spoke to Altmann, Jeff would become a witness. He would be called in and questioned by some stranger—someone who didn't know either of them, someone "impartial." Whatever either of them said would become part of the record of the case. Their relationship, their private life, would be exposed to the view of anyone with access to the case file. If there was a trial, the Klown's lawyers would learn during the discovery process that the lover of one of the lead investigators and the investigator himself had appeared in a video. They would make sure that came out at the trial so that they could call into question everything he had done in his part of the investigation. They would use the word "gay" at every opportunity to discredit him and prejudice the jury against him and Jeff. They would loudly disclaim the idea that Jeff and he had willingly participated in making the video, but their very disclaimers would imply that that was precisely what they had done.
And Internal Affairs would handle his own questioning—no one from the squad would be allowed to interrogate him for fear of bias. He was too close to the investigation and the Department would have to prove that he hadn't compromised any evidence. He would be taken off the case and probably even suspended until the Department was satisfied that his part in the Klown's videos was unintentional. His body would be inspected and probed. His blood would be sampled and analyzed. Every case he had ever worked on would be taken apart in the search for evidence that might incriminate him. Oh, they would say that they were attempting to exonerate him. But his career was as good as over now. And everyone would know why. He could understand why Milowski had committed suicide. He was tainted, and no one would ever again consider him fit for police work. He would have to resign.
And his entire family would share his shame. No one would allow them to forget what their son had done. Even their carefully worded expressions of sympathy—"It's so sad what happened to your son"—would be aimed at stabbing the knife a little deeper. He should have listened to his parents. They had protested against his choice of career. They had educated him to have an "important" career, not be some drudge working in a police department. They wanted him to become a doctor like his sister or a professor—someone they could brag about in the endless game of family competition with its seemingly offhand mentions of "my son the Harvard professor who discovered the cure for cancer" or "my son the surgeon" or "my son the CEO." His parents wouldn't say anything to him. They wouldn't have to. "I told you so" would be behind everything they said to him. That is, if they would even speak to him.
And they would blame Jeff. Jeff was always the convenient scapegoat for what they found wrong with his life. When Jeff and he had found an apartment together when they were in college, and his parents first figured out that he was attached to Jeff, they accused Jeff of seducing him into being gay. They refused to accept his statements that he had known he was gay since he was a teenager. They brought up every girl he had been friends with in high school and cited her as evidence that he had been straight until he met Jeff. Family dinners became trials in which he had to deal with the latest young woman of marriageable age that his parents had found. And when he had announced that he wasn't going on to graduate school but had applied to the Police Academy, they had blamed Jeff for that too. It was as if they thought he was a pawn and Jeff made all the decisions, and he was too besotted to make up his own mind.
When they finally grudgingly accepted Jeff as part of his life, they had begun to include him in the family. But they greeted Jeff with smiles that were too bright, and they spoke too loudly and too enthusiastically. But when Jeff's back was turned, the looks directed at him were anything but friendly. When his mother visited, she used the excuse of putting away the food she always brought to inspect the kitchen. Any food that she thought too "American" would be hauled out and labeled as Jeff's. She would hold it up and sneer, "I hope you're not eating this trash Jeff buys. Junk food." He had taken a certain pleasure in telling her that he was the one who ate the junk food, not Jeff.
The last two or three years there had been an improvement. His parents would have preferred that he was straight, but they had finally accepted that he was gay. Leah and her husband Tim had helped. Their enthusiasm for his relationship with Jeff was clear, and Tim and Jeff had become good friends. They were even doubles partners in their tennis league. Then one day his father had shown up at their apartment when Michael was at work and had a long conversation with Jeff, the first of many. All Jeff would say was that the two of them shared certain concerns. He wouldn't say about what, but Michael guessed that both worried about his being in danger because of his job. The day he heard his mother say, "Listen to Jeff. He knows better than you," he knew that there had been a change. And now she was even planning their wedding and making arrangements for them to have children.
All that was in jeopardy now. If they found out that Jeff and he had participated in a Carma Klown video, however unconsciously, Jeff would become the villain.
Saturday, ca. 5:00 p.m., June 12, 2010
He hadn't wanted Jeff to view the video, but Jeff had insisted. "I want to know the worst" was all he said. They sat beside each other on the sofa holding hands. Jeff had groaned when he appeared. He stiffened with anger as soon as Haydn began to rim him. "I'll kill him." And when Michael became the third man in the video, he put his arm around Michael's shoulders and said, "You can't tell anyone about this."
"I have to. It would jeopardize the case if it comes out later."
"No one's going to know. No one but me has ever seen you . . . I mean no one's ever seen you like . . ."
"I know what you mean."
"And I'll let the hair on my body grow. It won't look the same as in the video in a couple of weeks."
"You shave your body?"
"Yes. I've been doing it for years." When Michael looked startled, Jeff hastened to explain, "When we first met, it was smooth and you made such a big deal of how wonderful it felt and how much you like to touch it that when I started growing hair on my back, I began shaving it off."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"We can discuss this later. The short answer is that I didn't want to lose you."
"Lose you? What sort of person do you think I am that I would let something like that come between us."
"We'll talk about this later. Right now we have to focus on what we're going to do about this video. You said that everyone in these videos has been drugged and has no memory of being in them. I certainly don't, do you?"
"No."
"So we have nothing to confess to. As far as we know, those are some other guys, not us."
"But we do know that they're us."
"It's not you. That's not what you look like at all. And I will swear to that on a stack of bibles. That is not you."
"Jeff!"
"What?"
"We can't do this."
"Yes, we can, and we will. If you love me, you will never tell anyone that that is me in that piece of shit. Never. And if you love me, you will catch the guy who did this and you will find such irrefutable evidence that you have the right man that he won't be able to deny it. I want you to ruin this man."
Michael hung his head.
"And what about your career? Would you be able to stay in the department if this became known? I know you. You won't let this affect the way you pursue this case. You're too honorable and honest to change the way you do things just because some fucking bastard did this to us. We are not going to let that filthy SOB ruin our lives."
"Jeff."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's settled." Jeff stood up and strode into the kitchen. The refrigerator door was opened and then slammed shut a few seconds later. Jeff reappeared with two beers in hand. He popped one open and handed it to Michael. "Drink this. When you finish that, I'll get you another one. And then we are going to take a very long, very hot shower and scrub the dirt off us. And then we are going to go to bed and make love to each other. Real love."
Jeff's rage stunned Michael. He had never seen Jeff so furious. His chest was heaving with the anger of his breaths. "That bastard. How could he do this to us? How could he use anyone like that? It's obscene. He's going to pay for this. We're going to make him pay for this." Jeff took a swig of beer and then slammed the can down on the coffee table. "Come on. Let's get that filth off of us."
Jeff grabbed Michael by the hand and dragged him into the bedroom. He tore their clothes off and pulled Michael into the shower. The water was too hot for Michael's comfort, and Jeff was scrubbing him so forcefully with the washcloth that it felt like he was trying to rub the top layer of skin off.
"Jeff, careful. Not so hard."
Jeff stopped. A look of dismay covered his face as he realized what he was doing. "Oh my god, Michael, I'm so sorry. It's just that I'm so angry about what he did to us. I wanted to get rid of every trace of that man on us." He clasped Michael's body against his and pressed his forehead hard against Michael's. They stood there with the water running over their heads and down their bodies. Michael closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of Jeff against him. Jeff's hands clutched the small of his back tightly. Each time Jeff breathed in, his stomach pressed against Michael. Gradually Jeff's breathing calmed. He relaxed, and the pressure on Michael's forehead lessened.
Michael felt the familiar solidity of Jeff's body. He massaged it gently beneath his hands. And then he risked a kiss. Just his lips against Jeff's.
Jeff heaved a sob and then almost collapsed in Michael's arms. "That bastard. That bastard." Michael found himself struggling to support Jeff and hold him upright.
"Shhh. Don't think about him. Think about us. He can't hurt us. He can't destroy us." At least Michael hoped that was true. If he said it, he could make it true. He could make words have that power. He had to make Jeff focus on "us," on the two of them and their relationship. He turned off the shower and grabbed a towel from the rack. He draped it around Jeff's head and shoulders and gave a few perfunctory swipes with it. It didn't matter that both of them were still dripping. What mattered was holding each other tightly.
The two tumbled onto the bed, mindless of their wet bodies. They flowed together in a shared need to comfort and to be comforted in the oblivion of making love.
Hours later, Michael awoke for a moment. He had been dreaming about something Captain Altmann had said earlier. Something he had said about Jeff's picture. Then Jeff stirred next to him, and he forgot about his dream.