The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

“We said we wouldn’t—”

“I’ll keep it to myself, I promise you,” I said, guessing it might be something more than another quick exchange of glances while the man had been walking his dog.

“Well, it’s just odd you should ask that, Clyde,” Neil said, looking behind him quickly to make sure no one else was within hearing distance, “because a few weeks back, Max, one of our mates, said he had a scary encounter with this bloke.”

“Really?” I said, my interest really aroused.

“Max lives in Brook Street, Clyde. He told us he’d been leaning on the balcony of his flat late one night having a smoke and had seen a man get out of a cab outside the cricket oval. He watched as the bloke headed over the road towards the back of the grandstand, but before he wandered off into the shadows, he stopped on the footpath, took his hat off and held his watch up to the light of the streetlamp to check the time—that’s when Max had glimpsed his face and recognised your feller.”

“Do you remember when exactly this happened?” I asked, starting to feel a little excited and anxious at the same time. I was positive I was going to hear about the night of the first murder, opposite my flat.

“Few weeks before Christmas,” Neil said.

“Thursday, the fourteenth in the evening?”

The two men exchanged looks and then Neil nodded. “Sounds about right. Why do you ask, Clyde?”

“Go on, you were saying about your friend recognising this man in the photo.”

I knew the block of flats, directly opposite the oval. “Max” must have lived on one of the upper floors to be able to see through the branches of the trees in front of the sports ground—and, if it was a pickup place, most likely had a pair of binoculars at hand to check out the comings and goings.

“Max said he was feeling antsy and had never forgotten what this bloke of yours liked to do here in the steam room, so he went downstairs and followed after him. The grandstand and men’s toilet underneath can go off from time to time, so Max thought he was onto a winner. When he found him, your man was sitting up in the stand at the back and had put his hat on, pulled down, covering his face, like Cagney in a gangster movie—you have to remember how odd this looked because it was after midnight—both his shirt and jacket unbuttoned and spread wide open, baring everything. He was completely naked otherwise. His trousers and underpants folded on the seat next to him, his shoes and socks on top. Otherwise, he sat there with his knees apart, stark naked and playing with himself.”

“And your mate, ‘Max’—I’m guessing that’s not his real name—what did he do?”

“Well, he hesitated for a bit, mainly because of the hat. Who wears a hat in the almost pitch-black? If he’d taken everything else off apart from his shirt and jacket, why was he still wearing his bloody Stetson? Anyway, by now, Max said his dick had overruled his sense of caution. The bloke started whispering and beckoned Max to come closer. So he wandered up, leaned down to have a feel, and then pulled his own out and asked the man if he wanted to chew on it.”

“And?”

“Well, the man said he was really in the mood for a root and asked Max if he liked to take it. I don’t know if anyone told you, but that bloke in your picture has a very big one when it’s hard and our friend’s no angel, so he said he’d couldn’t think of anything he’d like better. After that, the man got all amorous, pulled Max down onto his knee, kissing him, running his hands over his body, until he begged Max to go down on him for a while, all the while telling Max how handsome and sexy he was.”

“And?”

“You’re not getting off on this are you, Clyde?” Neil asked with a grin.

I glanced down at my lap. We were all three naked. “Does it look like it?” I said, laughing at the obvious flirtation, but then firmly informed him I was not available and asked him to continue.

“Max said there came a time when he was really aching for the man to give it to him, and, by this time, he’d stripped off all his own clothes so turned around and bent over one of the bleachers and told the man to go for it. But the bloke just pulled him to his feet and kissed him hard, rubbing up against him, saying that he wanted to do it downstairs in a toilet cubicle where it’s private and where they wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“But I suppose Max wasn’t interested in that?”

“No, and let me tell you, Clyde, I was surprised myself because Max never takes anyone home, but he told the man that he lived close by and asked if he wanted to go to his flat. Your bloke would have none of it, insisting, cajoling, trying to lead him downstairs, gently at first, drawing him by the arm, but when Max resisted, it became more aggressive, forceful. So Max pulled away and told the man to take his hands off him.”

“What happened?”

“The man started to get a bit snarly, so Max told him he’d had enough, picked up his clothes, and went home. Said he was shaking when he got in the door and had three scotches before he felt calm enough to go to bed.”

I thought then that “Max” was the luckiest bloke in the world. Instead, some poor soldier with a skinful of grog had ended up on the wrong end of a straight-edge razor, choking on his own blood on the floor of a cubicle in a public toilet, a couple of hundred yards from where I lived.

“Do you think Max might talk to me? Privately, off the record?” I knew I