The Next One Will Kill You Read online

  Copyright 2018, 2020 Neil S. Plakcy.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Reviews:

  “The most interesting part of the book concerns Angus’s developing friendship with an older gentleman, Tom, who becomes integral to solving the case. Most readers will look forward to seeing a lot more of Angus” – Publishers Weekly, November 2016

  “Neil S. Plakcy’s The Next One Will Kill You is best described as exhilarating, escapist entertainment. The novel’s exciting and fun nature generates from the fact that it never takes itself too seriously and the fact that Plakcy manages to avoid allowing the players to sink to stereotypical caricatures is a testament to his faith in the original concept.” – BOLO Books, October 2016.

  1 – Unexpected Audience

  I WAS DETERMINED TO help my brother, even if I had to strip naked in front of a crowd of rowdy drunks to do it. Which was why I had laid out a range of clothes on my bed, from my baggiest sweatpants and a XXL T-shirt an old boyfriend had left behind, down to a pair of boxers and a jockstrap.

  “What’s the matter, Angus? Can’t make up your mind what to wear?” my roommate Jonas asked as he stuck his head into my bedroom.

  “No, I’m wearing all of it,” I said. “I signed up for the gay strip trivia contest at Lazy Dick’s tonight. My little brother has a chance to go on a study abroad program to Italy next summer, and I want to win the thousand-dollar prize for him.”

  “You’re crazy,” Jonas said.

  “I’ve been boning up on gay trivia ever since I found out about the contest,” I said.

  “Boning up.” Jonas giggled.

  “Go on, get out of here,” I said. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

  When I finished I looked in the mirror. I have a skinny frame, and the bulk the layers of clothes gave me was flattering. I’ve been told I have a friendly, open face. It gets me a lot of attention at gay bars. Or maybe my pecs, which I work on religiously, are the key. Either way, I usually drink for free.

  I drove over to the club in my brand-new Mini Cooper. I had never owned a car before, scrambling around Penn State on foot, by bus, or hitching rides with friends, and I still couldn’t believe it was mine. My friends had told me to buy the convertible model, but with my fair skin I’d be a walking sunburn.

  Lazy Dick’s is a sprawling bar right in the heart of Wilton Manors, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale that is gay central for Broward County. A covered patio with large tables surrounding a dance floor wraps around the front of the single-story building. The younger guys—and the older men chasing them—hang out on the patio, under a grass roof festooned with Mardi Gras beads, beer ads, and pinups of whoever is appearing at the local strip clubs. When I pulled into the parking lot I could hear Cher blasting from the speakers and smell the beer and testosterone.

  I walked inside, where it was darker and more intimate, with cozy booths for two. The lighting was dim and flattered those who hadn’t had work done yet. I found the emcee, a plus-sized drag queen named Helen Wheels, and signed in with her.

  I waited nervously for the call to the stage, sweating under all those layers of clothing. Then I heard someone say, “Finally, a familiar face in this joint.”

  I turned around to see Vito Mastroianni, a fellow special agent from the FBI field office in Miami. He was with Roly Gutierrez, another agent, and I was stunned to see them there. As far as I knew, both guys were straight, which meant this wasn’t a recreational visit. Roly worked on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, while Vito and I were assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force, though not to the same cases. Was there some kind of international or domestic terrorism going on at Lazy Dick’s? Was I right in the middle of the action?

  I remembered a clause in some paperwork I’d filled out when I first joined the FBI. Something about sexual behavior of a public nature which reflected a lack of discretion or judgment. If I lost, could I get away without shucking my jockstrap?

  Vito and Roly couldn’t be there to warn me from entering the contest. How could they have known I’d be in it anyway? It wasn’t like my redheaded mug had been in any of the ads. And I was sure they both had better things to do on a Sunday night than make sure I didn’t wag my weenie in public.

  So what the hell were these guys doing at Lazy Dick’s?

  “Need your help, rookie,” Vito said. “We were supposed to meet a source here and he hasn’t shown up, and nobody’s willing to tell us squat about him.”

  “A source? What kind of source?”

  “Angus Green!”

  I looked over, and Helen Wheels was waving in my direction. “We’re ready to go on.”

  “I have to... I’m supposed to...” I stuttered.

  “Go on, we’ll wait,” Roly said. I watched them return to a table in the front row as I got in line behind Helen, and the other contestants and I trooped up behind her like ducklings following Mama. The Sondheim tune playing in the background stopped abruptly and the spotlight came on – but a few feet to the left of Helen. “Hello! Over here!” she called, and the light moved to her.

  She introduced each of us, to accompanying applause and catcalls. There were ten of us in the competition, from a couple of older men to the guy on my right, a bodybuilder with glazed eyes who was probably just there to show off his amazing buffness.

  I was right; he flubbed the first question, about which gay icon’s death in 1969 was alleged to have played a part in the Stonewall Riots. “The rainbow flag?” he asked.

  Well, that was a gay icon, all right, but rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

  The audience buzzed him with raspberries. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not correct,” Helen said. “It’s time to lose an article of clothing.”

  The guy shrugged and pulled off his T-shirt, and the crowd cheered to see his washboard abs and bulging pecs. He performed a couple of body-builder poses, and someone in the audience called, “Work it, baby!”

  Helen primped her black bouffant hairdo and passed the question to me. I answered, “Judy Garland.”

  At the end of the first round, I was still fully clothed and sweating under the hot lights. Helen said, “Let’s have a round of tequila for our contestants,” and Kyle, the blond twink bartender, walked down the row handing us shots.

  I wasn’t about to flub my chance to win by getting drunk. Fortunately I had begun to tend bar once I legally could, and I’d learned how to take a shot without drinking it. I waited until everyone had shots in hand, and we all leaned our heads back at the same time. I covered my shot glass with both hands and tossed the glass back—just to the right of my mouth, so that the tequila went flying behind me instead of inside me.

  The crowd was too busy cheering to notice my trick. Unfortunately, the questions got harder as the rounds progressed, and within half an hour I’d kicked off both shoes and both socks, pulled off my oversized T-shirt, and even dropped my baggy sweats.

  It was hard to focus on the game knowing that Roly and Vito were in the audience. I’d been out and proud since my first days at the Bureau but there was something different about looking like a fool in front of two FBI veterans. What would they think of me? What would they say about me at the office? And what kind of source could Vito and Roly possibly be meeting at a gay bar in Wilton Manors?

  Once there were fewer of us on stage, I couldn’t pretend to drink the tequila shots anymore and I had to begin downing them. After more rounds passed, I was left on stage with a brainiac named Andrew. He was a trivia machine, and there was no way I was going to beat him. I could see the prize money fluttering away from me. Second place was only a hundred bucks, which would only buy my brother a couple of pizzas in Italy.

  I thought about quitting before I embarrassed myself any further. Stumble off the stage, find Vito and Roly and jump back into the role of newly-minted FBI special agent, one I had worked hard to achieve.

  We went through another couple of rounds, and Andrew began to falter. I could still win. But could I hold onto my job, too? I really wanted to be able to give that thousand bucks to Danny. Give my little bro the opportunity to roam the hills of Tuscany, absorbing the culture and flirting with the belle ragazze.

  “Angus?” Helen asked.

  I looked over at her. Andrew had flubbed a question while I was freaking out. His hand was in the waistband of his briefs, ready to drop them and cede the cash to me if I could get the question right. I was wearing only a jockstrap by then, so if I failed I’d have to pull it off and expose my goods to the crowd—and my colleagues.

  “You have an answer?” Helen asked.

  “Can you repeat the question?”

  Helen sighed theatrically, and her fake boobs threatened to jump out of her dress and assault Vito and Roly in the front row. “What lesbian or feminist symbol was first used in the Nazi concentration camps? If you get this right, Angus, you’re our winner. Get it wrong, and you go into sudden death with Andrew.”

  My first thought was the pink triangle. But was that just for gay men? I closed my eyes and concentrated. And then I remembered a lesbian I had known through the Rainbow Roundtable at Penn State. She’d had a black triangle appliquéd to her backpack, and I’d asked her about the significance of it.

 
I opened my eyes and smiled. Looking right at my FBI colleagues, I said, “The black triangle.”

  The audience was quiet, until Helen said, “That is correct. You are our winner!”

  Kyle handed Helen a lavender sash and a paper crown, and she kissed me on both cheeks, then draped the sash around my neck. It was cheap polyester and made my bare chest itch, but I didn’t care. She put the crown on my head, and I blew kisses to the crowd. I was so excited—I’d won the money for Danny.

  When I finished bowing and pirouetting, the house lights came up. The glare was startling, and as my bar buddies came up to congratulate me, I struggled to get my eyes to focus. After all the kissing and hugging was done, I pulled on my shorts and T-shirt, and carried the rest of my crap over to the table where Roly and Vito sat, empty beer glasses in front of them.

  It was funny to see them out of their normal FBI drag—dark suits, white shirts, power ties. Vito wore an XXL New York Jets T-shirt, while Roly, a lot slimmer, advertised his allegiance to the Miami Dolphins. Straight guys in a gay bar. Of course they’d wear football shirts, as if they were proclaiming their heterosexuality. Didn’t they know that some gay guys were sports buffs? With that curl of black chest hair coming out of the top of his shirt, big, beefy Vito screamed “bear,” and I could see a couple of guys eyeing him.

  I took the third seat. “Roly. Vito. How can I help you find information on this source you were supposed to meet?”

  “Not while you’re drunk,” Roly replied. “Monday morning, we’re going to have a meeting. The three of us. Then you can get started.”

  They both stood up. Vito said, “Yo, rookie, there’s no rule that you have to carry your weapon with you when you’re off duty, but most of us do. Doesn’t look like you are, unless you’ve got a Glock 22 in your shorts. ” He snickered.

  They walked toward the door. I looked after them, and I could see those twenty weeks of training at the FBI academy in Quantico go out the window, along with my job in the Miami field office and my dream of doing something more exciting with my life than preparing tax returns. I ran for the bathroom, reaching the toilet just as I let go all that tequila.

  2 – Criminal Activity

  I WAS TOO DRUNK TO drive home, so I hitched a ride with Jonas, and I had him stop at the bank so I could deposit the cash I’d won. After I took a long hot shower, I transferred the money from my account to Danny’s. Then I went back over what Roly and Vito could have been doing at Lazy Dick’s. What kind of information could their source have been able to provide?

  I’d spent years working in bars and restaurants and knew all kinds of criminal activity that could go on in one. Managers who skimmed the register to pay off gambling debts, bartenders who served up everything from marijuana to steroids along with drafts and cocktails, and a sous chef who had walked off with whole slabs of beef and bottles of pricey champagne, which he sold to the restaurant down the street.

  Was any of that important enough to merit FBI interest? There were always rumors that bars, particularly gay bars, had ties to organized crime. Hell, that had been news back in the days of Stonewall. But was it the case in Wilton Manors?

  More importantly, how would Roly and Vito handle seeing me at Lazy Dick’s, participating in the strip trivia contest? I’d never lied to the FBI about being gay. Any cursory investigation would have turned up my role of treasurer to the Rainbow Roundtable at Penn State, and a host of other activities I’d participated in.

  I knew both Roly and Vito, but just to say hello to. There was no reason why they’d be picked to spy on me. And it wasn’t like I was delivering strip-o-grams dressed in FBI gear or anything. I hadn’t violated any laws. Hell, I hadn’t even shown my three-piece set up there, though the jockstrap had been pretty revealing.

  Though most of my time in the Miami office of the FBI was spent behind a desk, I loved it when I had the chance to go out in the field. There were bad guys out there, and I was doing my part to stop them. I was doing a good job, and every day I was learning something new. Had I thrown it all away in a few moments of near-nudity?

  As I was struggling to fall asleep, my phone beeped with an e-mail from Danny, thanking me for the cash. At the end he wrote, “Gotta talk to you soon, bro. Things going on up here.”

  Things? What kind of things? School things? Girlfriend things? Danny was as resolutely hetero as I was homo, and movie-actor handsome. Since puberty he’d been surrounded by a coterie of adoring females. He was smart, too, and though he had a part-time job at the same restaurant where I’d worked, I made sure he stayed focused on school.

  Our father had died when I was ten and Danny was five, and our mother remarried about five years later. Our mom’s second husband was an okay guy, but he refused to give either of us a penny to go to college. I’d worked my way through a bachelor’s and a master’s in five years at Penn State as a waiter and bartender, accumulating a boatload of student loans because I had to cover what the school thought Mom and Roger should. I wanted to make things easier for Danny.

  Danny looked up to me, and I’d always taken care of him. After our dad died, I let him cry, let him sleep in my bed, walked him to and from school every day holding his hand. When I hit puberty and realized I was attracted to guys, not girls, I freaked out, worried I might infect Danny or something, but when he was ten I caught him making out with the little girl next door, and I relaxed.

  I looked at the clock; it was one a.m. Should I call him? Or wait for him to call me? I’d wait. It might turn out to be nothing, or work itself out.

  When my alarm went off at seven I didn’t feel like I’d slept at all. I was at my desk reviewing weekend surveillance reports when Roly came to my office door. “Conference room,” he said. “Now.”

  Roly was a Cuban-American guy who’d been in the Miami office for a dozen years, turning down promotions to stay near his family. He was a snazzy dresser, always wearing tailored suits. He’d brought a machine into the office to make Cuban coffee and he often brought tiny cups of it he called cortaditos to meetings.

  I followed him down the hall, figuring that he and Vito would fill me in on their investigation. Vito was Italian-American, a career FBI guy who had moved around the country, getting a promotion each time. Like every male agent, he wore a dark suit to work, though he often switched the standard white shirt for a pale blue or green one. He was heftier and taller than Roly, but they were both the kind of guys whose looks screamed “federal agent.”

  I hadn’t mastered the FBI look yet. I bought my suits at a warehouse store and my white shirts at Sawgrass Mills, the big outlet mall. When I looked in the mirror after getting dressed, sometimes I felt like a little kid wearing an adult costume.

  My adrenaline level soared when we reached the conference room and I saw the Special Agent in Charge in the conference room talking to Vito. Had the SAC vetoed my chance to help Vito and Roly when he discovered I’d taken my clothes off in order to win a measly thousand bucks?

  I hesitated in the doorway as Roly slid into a chair next to the SAC, a middle-aged guy, neatly trimmed hair, ordinary suit. “Come in, Agent Green. Sit down,” the SAC said, motioning to a chair next to Vito. He looked like any attorney or accountant you’d run into on the commuter trains in the northeast. “You’re working on the armored car detail, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said as I sat.

  “I’ve heard you’re doing good work there. They’re going to be sorry to lose you.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You can’t fire me for taking my clothes off. I wasn’t even naked.”

  The SAC’s eyebrows rose. “Nobody’s firing you,” he said. “Though you should be careful where you’ve been taking your clothes off. Roly and Vito have asked to have you transferred to a case they’re working. Any problems with that?”

  I shook my head, my stomach churning and my head spinning. “No, sir.”

  “Good.” He stood up. “Young agents need good mentors. You’ve got two of the best here. I expect you to learn from them.”

  “Yes sir.” I waited until he had left the room to turn to Roly and Vito and say, “Now will one of you please tell me what the fuck is going on?”