“Now you’re just being droll. Do you know he’s a male prostitute?”
Daddy investigated Peter? Shock. Who knew he cared. “Was. Was a male prostitute. I noticed you emphasized the prostitute part, but not the male part. You’d feel better if I picked a less prostitooty boy?” Prostitooty? I might have gone a little hysterical as I neared work. The sex shop gave me an idea of how to handle the rest of my day, though. I pulled into its parking lot.
“I’d prefer you didn’t do these things to piss me off.” Uh oh, Daddy’s cussing. Things must be bad.
I sighed, because regardless of what he thought of me, at one point I did love my father. It hurt like shit to love someone that just shut you out, but I was done with all of that. “I have to go now, Dad. Sign on the window says there’s a special on cock cages.” What the fuck was a cock cage? I wasn’t ready for gay sex shops, obviously.
Silence.
Right about now my father was venturing how hard I was trying to get back at him by moving in with a guy whose last name I don’t know. Of course he didn’t know Peter and I had nothing to do with each other anymore.
“Don’t worry, Dad, even though I can’t legally marry Peter in Colorado, we’ll be sure to invite you to the one in—” I grinned wider as the phone signaled Desmond Glass had hung up.
Givin' It Before Gettin’ It—Always Beat Them To the Punch
Just seeing my partner cheered me up immediately. As he lifted his eyes over the computer monitor, I placed a giant butt plug on his desk. It reminded me of a mini beige traffic cone. “It’s an early hump day gift!”
“Jesus, save me from idiots,” Luis said, eyeing the plastic encased sex toy with an expression that could only be described as beaten.
“And, because I love you so much.” I tossed an issue of Butt magazine next to the other present. No kidding, there was such a syndication.
“There’s no being around you.”
“No lube, though. Wasn’t on sale,” I whispered loudly.
“Just get to your desk, cabrón.” Luis typed as I sat down. I presumed he was sending me the new evidence collected by the crime scene unit. Studying my inbox, I was proven correct. My eyes scanned the pages of financials as I removed my jacket.
“Alvarado’s bank accounts and my partner has a new term of endearment for me. Things are looking up.” I checked out my crotch. “Soon anyway.”
It was no secret around the station; that was apparent from the collection of goodies in my drawers and atop my desk. I gingerly removed a framed picture of a man’s anus and tossed it in an envelope addressed to Delmonico, placing it in my outbox. A muffled sound had me opening my center drawer. A vibrator switched to ‘on’ rolled noisily toward the edge. A few tubes of lube came tumbling after. “Hey, Luis. I was wrong. I do have lube. You like the cherry flavored kind?” I thanked the entire station and pocketed the lube and about six of the hundreds of condoms overstuffed in my second drawer. The banana was a quandary. I wasn’t sure if it was meant as an innuendo or a snack from an admirer. I ate it, and left an issue of Bears magazine prominently displayed on my desk. Because I was thoughtful like that.
I was sure worse was to come, but I could take it. I’d keep telling myself that, hoping eventually it would be true.
Luis shook his head and tossed the butt plug and magazine in the trash. “You are several kinds of fucked up, cabrón.”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled around the banana. While I scrolled through the account, I seriously considered pouring some cherry flavored lube over the fruit like it was syrup, just because some of the guys were watching for my reaction to my ‘gifts’. They got bored when I gave none.
Three hours later I was deep into trying to make sense of a spreadsheet while my partner was trying to run down the last of the passport owners by checking with snitches, hospitals and local illegal immigrant safe havens. “Luis,” I double clicked on a few entries in the software program Alvarado used to keep track of money. Most of it was to legitimate businesses, or so it seemed. In reality, a lot of it was probably laundered through one of the enterprises or all of them. The trick was to find out which ones and trace the money backward. “Something seems off.”
“I love it when you say that,” Luis said, moving around behind me to see my screen.
“Has the accountant looked through this yet?”
Luis shook his head. “He’s on it now. Why?”
“How much cash did we find at Alvarado’s?”
He reached over and pulled a file off his desk and flipped through it. “Two hundred twenty-five thousand and some change.”