Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

That day was both frustrating and challenging for Kavanagh, not least of all because he'd forgotten what day it was—which was sort of dumb, he decided, considering all of the parading and Tom foolery that was going on around him.

The frustration was because Kavanagh was just a consultant here. A juicy case had just come up—one where time could be of the essence. The two young men hadn't died the same night. There had been four days between when the medical examiner had said they'd been disemboweled. It just had taken longer to find the body of Brandon near the rougher side of the city, near the Faubourg Marigny docks, than that of Parin in the more gentile Garden District. If this, indeed, was a serial killer—and when Kavanagh thought that thought, he looked around to make sure that Leon Monroe wasn't there to read he thoughts—they, or rather, the New Orleans cops, may not have more than a day or two before the killer would strike again.

Marco and Felix were just sitting at their desks, shooting the bull, for an hour after the morning meeting. Every once in a while they looked over at Kavanagh and grinned—to an irritating extent. The NYPD consultant wanted to tell them to get off their tails and go out and find the killer of the type of lay Kavanagh enjoyed. But, of course, he couldn't do that. They didn't work for him; Kavanagh was just a consultant here.

Shortly before noon, Kavanagh found out why they were hanging around. He reached down to open the bottom drawer of his desk, to find that the handle was missing. Then, when he opened the top drawer, a bunch of balloon snakes jumped out at him, almost giving him a coronary.

Marco's and Felix' grins turned into guffaws. Felix chanted out, "Hey, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey," which was punctuated by Marco's "April Fool, big guy."

Kavanagh shared in the smiles as best he could, but he left soon after for lunch, going, without giving it much thought, to the coffee shop on Dauphine near his hotel. Kyle was there and rushed over to take his order, although a young black waiter—swishy in a way that didn't really attract Kavanagh, although he was a cute piece—gave Kyle a look that told the vice cop that this might not be Kyle's table. Kavanagh ordered, as the blond waiter stood real close to him, giving him puppy dog eyes, and moved, with a toss of his very nice tail, off to the kitchen.

"This should be my table," a voice said.

Kavanagh looked up to find the black waiter standing there. "Excuse me?" he said.

"This is really my table. And I think you're not going to get what you expect from Kyle—least not what you could easily have from me."

"I don't understand," the detective said. But, in fact, he did understand. He hadn't hidden his interest in Kyle enough, he thought.

"I mean I think you're sexy as hell. If it's a guy you want, I could be your guy. You're a top, ain't you? You're not going to get it from Kyle. He's just a tease. He's a virgin."

"Oh, well, I think you've misunderstood," Kavanagh said. "I'm not into guys."

"I wouldn't bet on that, sugar," the black waiter muttered, and then he was off as Kyle came back with the Coke the detective had ordered. If the black, swishy piece thought he'd lose interest on the supposition that Kyle hadn't taken cock before, Kavanagh thought, he was very wrong. This was probably the hunky cop's second-most-favorite vice—curing young guys of their virginity.

As Kyle put the Coke down on the table, Kavanagh put his hand near where the soft drink landed. "Do you ever get to leave here?" he asked.

"Sure. Every night at 9:30. I usually am the one to close the place down."

"Maybe some night, you'd like—"

"Yes, I'd like that," Kyle said. He let his fingertips brush across Kavanagh's knuckles before moving away.

Yes, he wants me, Kavanagh thought, with satisfaction. Just a matter of plucking the fruit off the tree.

On the way back to the station, Kavanagh decided he couldn't just sit around on his hands on this case. It would drive him crazy. It was Marco and Felix' case, but there was one avenue they had been told not to pursue. He'd been told not to pursue it either, but he didn't really work for Leon Monroe. And it would frustrate him like hell to be sitting around waiting to be asked to consult on something.

He knew Brent would get him the information if he was nice to him. He stopped at the research clerk's desk on the way into the unit, but Brent wasn't there.

"Where's Brent?" he asked Marco, who was busy putting on his suit jacket. Felix was standing and doing the same. Kavanagh wondered if they'd done something else to his desk for April Fools' Day that would be so messy that they didn't want to be around to be splashed with it—but he decided that, if they'd done anything, they couldn't resist staying around to see the results of it.

"He's off doing his other job," Marco said.

"His other job?"

"Yes," Felix chimed in. "We only have him part time—which is more time than the captain would like to have him, as you no doubt have noticed. He also works as a courier, taking documents around from here to other government offices. He should be back in a couple of hours."

"He's got yet another job—a night job," Marco said in a slightly sneery voice, "but that's at night and we don't talk about it at the station."

A couple of hours was too long to sit and wonder if a screw had been taken out of his desk chair in honor of the first day of April, Kavanagh thought. Monroe wasn't here either. His office was off the main Homicide unit bullpen. Kavanagh had a computer and a telephone and his own two feet. He could work without a research assistant, although one with the skills of working the New Orleans systems would be a help.

Kavanagh didn't know whether Brent would have helped him crack the mystery of who Steve Parin's sugar daddy had been, but after three hours of work from his desk, Kavanagh had come up with only dead ends and blank walls. He got the sense, though, that it wasn't that the information wasn't out there and was known by some he could ask; it was that they didn't want to tell him, that City Hall had the lid on the question. That could only mean that the guy they were protecting was somebody important, somebody worth City Hall's protection.

He grabbed his suit coat and hit the street for a couple of more hours, right up to where the city turned over from office work to serious partying, but he finished the work day no less frustrated than he'd been returning from lunch.

He needed a steak so rare that it mooed, and he needed to lay someone. He was a man with needs. He was a victim of cum buildup and could shoot five or six times in a day before reaching mellow. It was April 1st and a hedonist festival was under way on the streets of New Orleans. It was a night to lay someone.

He took care of the steak part at a restaurant in the French Quarter and then went looking for a gay bar to pick up a little blond rent-boy for the night.

April Fools' Day must be a day for strange coincidences, he thought, because when he walked into a bar at random—one with a group of male prostitutes milling out in front of it, unfortunately none of them a combination of small, young, blond, and for rent—he quickly saw that Brent was sitting in a booth in the back corner of the bar. The bar was in full, uninhibited party mode. Men weren't just cruising and flirting at the tables and on the dance floor, where the music was too loud and not enough on key. They were also fucking in the corners.

Brent was in one of the corners. Kavanagh took up a position at the bar, where he was turned away from Brent but could see back in the corner through the mirror behind the bar. While he was fighting with himself over whether to keep his sex life separate from the office or not, his choices were cut down to a "too late to ask." He hadn't been watching, but Brent no longer was alone. He had been joined, no doubt by someone he was expecting, because they already were down to the dirty. Brent was sideways on the bench on the far side of the booth, his left leg on the right shoulder of a burly guy crouched over him, and his right leg on the table top, resting on a pair of trousers that had come off someone—no doubt off Brent.

From the expression on Brent's face that Kavanagh could see reflected in the mirror and the way he was flinching in rhythm and being moved back and forth against the back wall of the booth, it was obvious that he was being fucked. From the frequency with which the face of the big man with his back to Kavanagh was being lowered to Brent's for a kiss, it was obvious that Brent was enjoying the fuck.

It obviously wasn't going to be Brent for Kavanagh that evening, so he started shopping around. There was plenty of interest in him, but nothing small, young, and blond. It occurred to him then that he'd set up something tentatively with Kyle. This would be a great night to debauch a virgin, he thought. He started to rise from the bar, but then sat down hard again and averted his face.

Brent and his companion were coming out of the booth and heading for the door, arm in arm.

Brent's companion was Captain Leon Monroe.

Talk about April Fools and strange coincidences, Kavanagh thought. Waiting for the two to be well away from the bar, Kavanagh paid his tab and went out on the street, which already was packed with revelers, the middle of the street sort of cleared for the passing of floats and bands. As he crossed the street, a reveler—a small, young, blond—leaned off a float, lowered three strands of colorful beads over his neck, kissed him on the mouth, and floated on.

It hit Kavanagh that this could have been the same guy he had fucked in his hotel room four times the previous night. The guy had shown the promise of being able to go for five or six screws. Just what Kavanagh was in the mood for tonight. But as quick as he'd been there, just as quick he was gone. Kavanagh went in pursuit, but try as he might, as he walked through the warren of streets that was the French Quarter, he couldn't pick out the float he was looking for.

And frustration of frustrations, when he got to the coffee bar on Dauphine, it was 9:35 and the café was dark, deserted, and locked.

He was frustrated as hell. And his balls ached. He needed to get his rocks off.