And a touch of murder …

Lashes

            Billy Boy had them drooling at Lashes the moment we entered the dive.  I had never seen so many eyes all directed at one person in a bar before and I had seen some hunks be ogled.

            The duster coats only saw Billy Boy through their lust.  The sequined dresses saw him through the eyes of the green goddess.  I felt like I was in the reddest necked honky tonk in the deepest part of Dixie and wondered if we were going to get out of there reasonably intact.  I could see me being torn limb from limb so the pretend cowboys could get to Billy Boy; and I could see him trampled to death by the ersatz girls in their stilettos.

            I never was one to dwell on nightmares - I just have them.

            "We'll circulate a bit, love."

            "That means splitting up!"  He was grinning when I glanced askantly over at him.

            "Here in the bar only!" I growled.  "Keep the conversation on Jacqueline Le Mee.  We need info on him and anybody he was seeing the last month he was alive."

            "I get a week at the beach for doing this, Phil."  He said, smiling back at me.  "Don't think for a moment I'm not going to get mine for decking out in this shit!"

            I nodded.  "We may want to come back and talk to some of these - uh-"  I glanced about quickly at the sequined gowns and 1890 cowboy outfits surrounding us.  There wasn't a single person who appeared normal. "These people. "

            Billy Boy wasn't in a gown and sequins.  He wore a black pants suit.  He looked like Marlene Dietrich back when she had still been doing her one woman stage shows in Europe.  Of course, his medium‑length pale blond hair, blue contact lens, and small frame helped create that illusion.  He was a man being the sexiest woman I'd ever seen.

            A part of me was beginning to like this side of him.  I had always been a sucker for Dietrich.  She was the one woman who ever really turned me on.  I forced thought of the strange attraction away and plunged for the bar.

            "Hi, big boy."  I turned toward the voice that was too close to my ear.  Standing in front of me was a sequined, girdled, powdered, bewigged thing as tall as I was.  "Want to buy a girl a drink?" she asked in a gushing imitation of Marilyn Monroe.  A very poor imitation.

            I smiled and nodded.  "What would the lady like?" I asked, stressing my nearly forgotten British accent.

            "Oohh ... You're English!" she gushed again.  Then, collecting her wits quickly, she continued, "I'd sure like an Apricot Sour, honey."

            At the bar, I couldn't help but notice Billy had garnered three of the dustered cowboys at his stool and had them mesmerised. I wanted to tell him that this wasn't show time ‑it was he who was supposed to be getting information, not giving it.  Damn, but he was a fine looking Marlene!

            I returned to the overweight Marilyn and smiled as I handed him his drink.  "Is my accent that obvious?" I asked innocently.

            "It sure is, honey!  It sticks out like a sore thumb!"  He smiled invitingly.  "Are you in town for long?"

            "A week or so," I allowed.  "Not too many of us Brits come around, I guess."

            "You're the first one in a month," Marilyn admitted, forgetting her gush and sounding like a man.  "There was one - a short balding man - hanging around back then.  But he was creepy as all hell - weird eyes that seemed to follow you around!"

            My ears perked up, my curiosity pricked.  Even the timing as I understood it was right.

            "I know a local girl - met her last year down in Macon," I admitted then, deciding it was definitely time to bring up the corpse before Marilyn got any more interested.  "Perhaps you know her - Jacqueline Le Mee?"

            Disgust flitted across Marilyn's painted face before it was replaced with shame.  "She's dead, honey."  Her voice was strangely hushed.  "She was murdered right upstairs in the hotel about two-weeks  ago - nasty!"  She wagged her head at the memory.

            "Murdered?"  Marilyn nodded slowly.   "Do they know who did it?"  She shook her head, her eyes on me.  "Who do you think did it?" I asked quickly.

            "It wouldn't surprise me any to find out that little creep I was just talking about did it!  God!  What a fucking dwork!"

            I smiled demurely.  "I hope that isn't an indictment of all us subjects of the queen," I offered apologetically.

            "Oh, no, honey!" Marilyn shot back, her eyes becoming wide in surprise at the connection I'd made.  "There are creeps everywhere you go ‑you've just got to watch out for them!"  He smiled enticingly.

            "Thanks!" I smiled back.  "I was getting worried there."  I touched his arm gently, caressing it, to dispel the tension I'd felt growing between us.   Across the room, I could see Billy Boy had cut his crowd of admirers down to one and that they seemed to be getting into it heavily.  I suddenly understood why I'd never allowed myself to have a lover in the twenty years before he entered my life - I was a jealous son of a bitch when it came to seeing my lover talking to another man.

           I forced my attention back to Marilyn and tried to forget about Billy Boy and the men he was drawing to him.

            "It's hard to imagine her dead," I mumbled, doing my best to sound heart-broken.  "She was a bit of fluff - but sweet."  Marilyn touched my arm, trying to be kind.   "Tell me about her, love.  I'd lost all contact over the past year."

            It wasn't long before Marilyn leant toward me and gave me a peck on the cheek.  "Honey, I've got to go to work."  My brows went up questioningly.   "I do a show here.  Will you stay and watch me?"  I nodded and smiled.

            The floor show was - well - different.

            I have always expected my entertainment to be entertaining.  Lip‑synching fat ersatz white girls emoting to and pretending to sing as Whitney Houston and Dionne Warwick do not qualify as entertaining in my presumedly staid world view.  They certainly don't qualify for tips with all that emoting.

            Perhaps, Marilyn and her troupe of bogus girls were good.  I was certainly no judge.  There were an overabundance of amply fat, tightly encased hocks being swirled about on the stage.   The girls perspired freely under the hot lights, and their heavy make‑up melted throughout the show.  The music, however, was fine as long as I shut my eyes and only heard it without having to watch all the theatrics.

            Marilyn knew her bar, however; and it had been Jacqueline's life once she'd moved to Atlanta.  I figured I had enough background on my corpse to make some intelligent guesses about where I should go from here.  And I certainly was not very interested in Marilyn's plans for me after she'd led her troupe through their act and was again free.

            I looked around for Billy Boy in his Marlene drag.  I didn't see him in the first sweep my eyes made of the bar; and my heart skipped a beat.  I was ready to beat a precipitous retreat with the information I had before Marilyn could work his presumed charms on me; but I sure as bloody hell wasn't going to leave my beau behind.  My jealousy flared bright green as my mind immediately began to conjure up images of him entertaining any of the ersatz cowboys who'd congregated about him throughout the evening.

            The bloody ass!  He'd worked the damned Atlanta streets for a couple of years as a hustler!  He knew going anywhere with a guy in a bar was tantamount to a bout in the sack!  I was rapidly working myself into a rage where I'd be ready to kill him.  Not just kick him out of my flat and my life ‑but kill him.  Bastard!  I started to make my way through the ersatz girls and their admirers toward the bar, my anger blazing higher and higher as I imagined what Billy Boy could be doing.

            He came out of the loo as I reached the bar.  My anger died as quickly as if it'd been stuck into a vacuum.  My adrenaline rushed from my blood stream and I suddenly felt weak.  I also knew what an ass I had proved to be.  Fortunately, Billy Boy hadn't seen it.  "Hi, love!" I greeted him cheerily.  "Want to get out of this joint?"

            His eyes flashed bright. "Whatever, baby. You know me, I'm just a willing fool."  His shiteating grin stayed on his face as he followed me out of Lashes into the car park.

            Billy Boy didn't know it, but I figured I owed him a lot to make up for all the nasty thoughts I'd been entertaining about him.  I didn't tell him about them ‑there was no use in letting him know how and where I was most vulnerable ‑but, the moment we were home, I told myself I'd start making up for them.

            "Want to go someplace where we'll feel like we belong?" I asked the moment we were outside.

            His face brightened, bringing sudden light to the night-enshrouded car park.  "Goddamn!  Yes!"

            We drove to Burkhart's.

            "Do you really want to show me off in full drag like this?"  he asked, snuggling up against me as we stood in front of the building.

            "Why not, love?"  I grinned.  "You make a beautiful Dietrich.  It's a side of you some of your old friends might like to see."  I twirled an imaginary moustache.  "You never know - we might have to hire you out - or something."

            "Phil!"  His voice held warning.  "This was to help you.  It's something between just you and me.  I don't mind guys seeing me like this - or, even, knowing it's me under this fuckin' make-up.  Just so long as the two of us understand that it's not going any further than it is right now!"

            "I wasn't serious, love," I told him defensively.

            He smiled then.  "I knew you weren't, baby.  I just wanted to establish our exact parameters so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings later on.  Now, let's go in there and let me really put on the ritz!"

            His eyes sparkling as they scanned the appointments on the far wall.  He stood steady on black high heels.  His hair shone pale gold.  A small smile was fixed on his lightly rouged lips.  His cheeks were highlighted by just enough rouge to bring them out.  I marveled at what he'd wrought.

            The eyes of the men on this open floor were those of loyal subjects gazing fondly on their sovereign.  They didn't hold lust, they held awe and respect. Somehow, the poor, queer farmboy from Kentucky had been transformed into a queen.  At that moment, there was no trace of my Billy Boy in the exquisite creature.  I was enthralled.  And so was everyone else.

            Marlene took the inside stairs back down to the first floor with his hand on my arm.  He was making a regal entrance, consciously not taking any of his newly acquired subjects by surprise.  As his foot touched the floor, a tall man bowed and, smiling, presented my Billy Boy with a microphone and gestured over his shoulder at the makeshift stage.  "Please sing for us," he asked, and I was struck by just how much his request sounded like a child asking Her Royal Highness to cut a ribbon or some other act expected of the royalty of my childhood.

            I stood back, again part of Billy Boy's adoring public.  I didn't know what to expect as he stepped onto the stage and smiled at the men who were approaching the stage to be near him. The other bar beside our own emptied and men left their pool games.  Suddenly I realised that the den of a dozen conversations was gone.  There was only Marlene and her expectant subjects, their faces all turned toward her.

            A quick, tentative smile played across her lips and, then, she was bowing to us.  Rising, she brought the microphone close to her lips.  In a throaty, sultry voice, she began to sing the words of Lili Marlene.   And she was Marlene Dietrich incarnate.

* * *

I took his heels off for him as soon as he'd plopped his ass down on the sofa and began to massage his feet.  Then, I got him a Cape Cod with a double shot of vodka to help him calm down.  He smiled wanly as he took it from my hand.  "Thanks, baby - this is exactly what the doctor ordered!"

            "You were great, love! I don't think even Olivier or Burton could have done any better ..."

            "Richard Burton didn't have my body either ..."  He grinned happily.   "And I don't know who the shit Olivier was."

            "He was a better Shakespearean actor than Burton ... Where in the hell did you learn to do that kind of stuff?"  I stared up at him.  "Shit!  It was like you had stopped being yourself all together and were the real Marlene Dietrich suddenly!"

            Billy Boy chuckled wickedly.  "I actually surprised you, didn't I, Phil?"  I nodded.  "Well, I sang in our church choir all the way through high school and I was a drama major that first year of university.  I also saw Blue Angel six times."  He grinned again.  "Do I have Dietrich down pat?"

            "Jesus!  Don't you, though."  I remembered then.  "Did you learn anything from those cowboy types at Lashes?"

            "There were a bald, fat guy who was Le Mee's shadow her last few weeks - he had an accent a mile long."

            I frowned.  "What kind of accent?"

            "British!   The way I heard it, that guy sounded like that Sir Peter Wimsey you like to watch on the TV - that bad, you know?"  He smiled benignly, knowing full well he was slicing me up and that I wouldn't react ‑at least until he'd told me what he'd learned.

            I smiled and bent forward to kiss his cheek.  "Asshole!" he growled and grabbed my arms.  "You don't get away with just a little peck - putting me through this shit!"  He laughed suddenly.  "You're going to have to make love to me this way, honey.  You're going to have to make love to me like you would a woman tonight!"

            "Shit!" I grunted, knowing I'd been had.  But, then, I already knew the little bastard had me by the balls.  He was merely twisting them gently this time.  "Did you get a description?" I asked, trying to put the best face on my incapacity at his hands.

            "That - and a name too."

            I stared at him in surprise.  The little tart had the capability to make a good detective.  Seductive, and looking like a young Marlene Dietrich, he probably could even get the head of MI-6 himself to spill his guts with barely more than a come‑hither look.

            "So-?" I looked down at him expectantly.  "Who was our British suitor?" I asked when he hadn't volunteered the information.

            "A twerp named Matthew - Matthew A. Woods.  Only, the boys started calling him 'Sir Matt' after he'd been around for several days."

            "A peer?"  I stared at Billy Boy without comprehension.  A nobleman after that fat piece of fluff I'd seen in the xeroxed copy of a portfolio photograph?  It was hard for me to believe a member of the British peerage would stoop so low.  Yet, I had to admit to myself that the peerage was made up of human beings; and that humans were innately unpredictable.  The lads going after those overgrown heifers in sequined gowns down at Lashes were a perfect example.

            "That's what sweet little Jacqueline was going around telling everybody who'd listen those last days of hers."  He smiled sweetly up at me and, then, raised his empty glass to me.  "Another one?"

            I fixed Marlene another drink - doubled - and returned to the living room.  "Let's go to bed, love," I suggested as I handed him his drink.

            "Carry me there?"  I stared down at him and imagined the busted disc in my spine from carrying his 140 pounds into the bedroom.  Just as I was going to make a smart response, I remembered that I'd been mentally accusing him of being a slut while he'd been in the wc alone.       "I'll try," I managed to answer contritely.   Clumsily then, I scooped him up and started to carry him back to our room.

            Fortunately, he stopped being Marlene at some point in my undressing him and became Billy Boy again. 

            "Pull this fuckin' tape off my chest, honey!" he commanded as I unbuttoned his shirt down to his navel.  "Pull it off and let's get down and dirty!"

            "You'd better be happy you don't have a rug to get pulled."

            He chuckled.  "You're right, honey!"  He grinned up at me.  "This is the first time in years I'm glad I didn't have chest hair!"

            I loosened one end of the tape that pulled his chest forward and gave him the appearance of breasts and leaned forward to kiss his lips.  Then, I yanked.  Billy Boy sat up in the bed, screaming in agony.

            I glanced back at him when I had the tape off him.  "That's why you don't want to do drag, love ... It hurts when you have to go back to being yourself." There were still tears in his eyes as they met mine.

            "You're a fuckin' asshole, Phil!" he growled under his breath and his hands went around my neck, pulling my face down to his.  "Kiss me, you limey bastard!" he grunted just before our lips touched.

            Billy Boy was naked and hard as he pushed me back against the bed.  "Let me ride you, Phil," he pleaded as he pressed me into the mattress under us.  "I'm going to ride you all the way to heaven tonight, honey!" 

            His lips found mine and his tongue unfurled into my mouth as he climbed onto me.  I felt his hand groping down my abdomen, searching blindly for my cock; the globes of his asscheeks pressed against my stomach.  I relaxed.  And permitted my fingers to travel over his back toward his globes. 

            Billy Boy had my cock pressing against his sphinctre and my fingers were frantically trying to spread his globes wider so that I could pierce them easily.  He sat up then, his body straight as it pressed against the weapon at its entrance. 

           He grunted and I was sliding into his creamy lovechute, impaling him with nine thick inches of prime John Bull.   His Kentucky-grown lovegland was going to sing "God Save The Queen" before I let it go.

            Billy was riding my cock as fast as he could and my clasped hand on his own member was keeping time with his humping movements.  I permitted myself to wonder how I'd ever get bored with this.  It was the best fucking I'd ever had - or conceived of having - and it was all mine.  He'd given it to me freely and openly.  And I loved him for it - along with a lot of other reasons.

            I smiled up at him as I felt his body tighten.  Above me, I felt Billy Boy's body jerking toward an orgasm as he continued to ride me.

            "Oh, yeah!" he groaned. "Fuckin' A!!!" he grunted and I felt his cock grow in my hand.  Then, I felt his jizz spatter against my chest.  "Oh, Lordy!," he moaned as he still humped the impaling spear of my manhood with the same degree of intensity  he'd shown when he first slid down the bloody thing.

            "I want more!" he wailed.  "I want it all!  Oh, shit!  Phil, honey, you're so fuckin' good for me ... Come in me!  Give it all to me!"   He speeded up his movement on me and I gave up trying to keep up with him with my hand on his still hard cock.  I was past controlling our sex; I was going to come no matter what happened to us at that moment.

            "Tighten up that bloody ass!" I demanded between clinched teeth.  "Oh, shit!  You're doing it right, love!  Just keep it up.  Oh, yeah!"

            "Come on, Phil!" he grunted.  "Come in me!"

            "Yeah, love.  Ride my cock up your ass!   Ride it, I say.  Jesus!"  I felt the first volley of juice crash down my lovechannel toward his creamy lovechute.  He bucked as he felt it hit deep inside him and begin to coat his guts.

            "Yeah!"  he moaned and finally began to slow his movement. "Oh, yeah, baby!"  He bent forward and kissed me sloppily. "I love you, Phil N. Goode.  I love you so damn much!"

            I grinned.  This was my Billy Boy and I, for one, was bloody glad to have him back -no matter how much I liked his Marlene.  "Phil ...?" I looked up at him.  "I almost forgot ... Those yoyos said there was somebody else sniffing around Jacqueline's twat on top of that limey ..."

            My attention tried to make the leap.  I tried to jump from the euphoria that enfolded me after good sex to the detective I was.  But it was Dunkirk and Gallipoli all over again - one bloody mess!  "Who?" I managed to ask.

            "Some bruiser of a black guy-" He grinned down at me, unwilling to let me go even as I shrivelled.  "One that sounded a lot like your favourite detective."

            "Willie Ashburn?"  I stared up at him like he was a squadron of Messerschmitts honing in on my ass and I was a bloody dirigible.

            "Sure did sound like him!"  He smiled his thanks and dismounted.  "Does your boy get into crossdressers - as well as British PIs?"  I stared at him in horror, imagining that hunk of black manhood stooping that low.  "Want a drink?" Billy Boy asked as he slid off the bed and stood over me.

            He laughed then.  "Don't be so surprised, Phil ... Shit!  You were drooling for my Marlene - why shouldn't old Willie get hot for some twat-camouflaged cock now and then?"

* * *

The next morning I went looking for answers that would make sense to both me and my employer.  The first stop on my itinerary was the fleatrap above Lashes that called itself a residential hotel.

            The big, middle-aged man behind the counter needed a shave.  The armpits of his shirt were wet in the hot, humid lobby.  And his eyes tracked an errant fly as it decided a place on the counter to alight.  He grinned wickedly as it did so and raised a rolled up paper.  "Shut that goddamn door!" he hissed out of the side of his mouth at me before walloping the counter with enough force to kill a full grown Dobermann.

            Obediently, I pushed the door to behind myself and approached him.  We were alone with the exception of the two lobby crones sitting by the coin laundry. "I'd like to ask a few questions," I offered in my best conspiratorial whisper.

            "What do I look like - the information kiosk at the mall?"

            I reached into my pocket and retrieved my money clip.  Pulling off a twenty, I smiled.  "I need to know about Jacqueline Le Mee and her friends."

            "You ain't no fuckin' cop - they never pay for nuttin'."  He took my twenty in his beefy palm and looked at me.  "What'd you like to know?"

            "She lived here - did she have many visitors?"

            He guffawed.  "She used to bring 'em in two and three a night - a regular freeway lady, only it was Memorial Drive behind us.  A couple of months ago, she dropped back to one regular overnighter - five and six times a week.  Big fuckin' Nigger buck!  She kept up some trade on the side too - but that boy was that girl's main squeeze.  Then, this past month-"  The beefy palm appeared on the counter and wiggled its fingers invitingly.

            I pulled out another twenty.  "She started seeing some short little wimp - English as hell -even more than you, and prissy.  That was three or so nights a week - after she'd pulled a gig downstairs ... They alternated - that English guy and the black guy."

            "Any more?" I asked and watched the hand appear on the counter again.  I rolled my eyes and greased it again.

            "Just the night she bought the big one.  A big black woman went up to the room with her - I guess to help her with something."

            "Did our girl have any friends about?"

            The man stared at me like I was an insect and, then, laughed.  "That whore?  Hell, mister!  She didn't have time to sit down and socialise - she was too busy humping her ass raw!"

            "This black chap she saw regularly?"  I described Willie Ashburn, the homicide detective I was always fantasizing about.

            "That's him!"  The man's eyes looked like he was about to become ecstatic.  "Big mother!  I'll bet he’s hung like a firetruck."

            I thanked the desk clerk and retreated.  My office was only three blocks away and I had nearly a full bottle of my favorite Scottish bird waiting there to commune with me.  I felt a definite need to do some serious communing right then.

            I poured a couple of fingers of Famous Grouse and listened intently to hear if my Scottish game hen was speaking to me yet.  Earl Moone, Atlanta's premier leatherman and erstwhile solicitor was paying me ten thousand US to find out who killed my corpse - and to do so quietly and discreetly.  I had a peer and fellow subject of the crown who liked his girls heavy and bogus.  And I had a black body-by-god whose description was too suspiciously like Atlanta's number one homicide detective.  Finally, I had a big black mama who didn't fit anywhere.  It didn't make any sense and my Scottish muse was keeping her silence. 

            After another finger of Famous Grouse, I decided I was going to have to swallow my pride and talk to the Marilyn heifer at Lashes again.  I called Billy Boy and told him not to keep dinner for me and, then, called a pizza delivery.

            I walked to Lashes and stepped inside.  Empty, it was an even worse dive than it'd seemed the night before.  Marilyn spotted me before my eyes had had a chance to adjust and started for me.  By the time I was able to make her out it looked like I stood directly in the path of a Centurion tank at full throttle.  "You!" he hissed.

            "I'm a dick," I offered by way of explanation.

            "I'd say you are, you damned asshole!  Leaving a girl high and dry!"

            "I'm a private investigator, love."  I pulled out my id.  "Phil N. Goode at your service."

            "What do you want, cocksucker?" he asked and there was nothing remotely feminine in his voice now.

            "I need to find out who killed your girl and why, love."

            "Hell!  If I'd've known that, I'd've already given it to the fuckin' cops!  Fuck!  They probably think I did it!"

            "Why?"

            "That cunt was gonna open up another tv bar in this town - a real nice one so I've been told.  She'd've siphoned off half my customers - a great motive.  Only, I didn't kill her, and I've got witnesses who'll back me up!"

            I stared at this Marilyn.  Things were beginning to click in my mind - but I still needed a few things linked up yet.   "She had a black guy following her about."

            "Fuck!   He had his nose stuck up her ass!  She couldn't even fart without him knowing it!"

            "He was also scoring her?"

            "Hell!  That was his pussy.  Until that limey showed up.  Then, he was forced to share it. But he also got into dolling himself up - and that's something that English bastard never did."

            "The black guy - he crossdressed?"

            "Fucking A!"

            "I think you've helped me a lot, Marilyn."

            "How?"

            "You knew the recipe.  Thanks!"  I left and hailed a cab.  I was going home to Billy Boy.  A night of his type of attention would put the edge to what I knew so I could talk to the leather-clad solicitor and society patron, Earl Moone, in the morning.  Assuming everything fit when I got home and looked at it closely, I'd collect my fee and take Billy Boy someplace pleasant - a nice beach where civilised people played.  Some place like Provincetown.

* * *

I was kneading scented oil into the firmest pair of assglobes  I ever hoped to see.  "Come on, Phil, give it to me," he grunted.

            "We've got to work this thing out, love."

            "Work it in would be better right now.  Jesus!  I've got a hard-on that almost hurts!"

            "Why would Atlanta's finest homicide detective kill the girl, Billy Boy?"

            "He loved her ... At least, he didn't like the egg on his face from her dumping him ..."

            "He was sharing her - she hadn't dumped him ..."

            Billy Boy rolled over and looked me in the eye.  "Honey, that fuckin' cop you've got the hots for was so in that fat piece he even started decking out in drag for her ... And she turns around and puts him on half time and gives him a piece of the business to buy him off - probably a small one at that!"

            "Why even do that?"

            "Cops control things, Phil ... With your sweet Willie in their line-up, they weren't gonna get hit - even with a minor or a prostitution rap ... He was their insurance policy!  He wanted Jacqueline Le Mee, even as your fellow Brit and his money had her by the short hairs ... The best bet is she jumped for the money and the white meat, baby - and Willie got left at the bus stop!"

            "And it ate at him?"