All Fools' Day Foolery

Sam 3 watched Kavanagh move with his eyes, but said nothing. He moaned low when Kavanagh snapped the handcuffs on his ankles and then again as Kavanagh bound his thighs close with one of the lengths of restraints. He managed a "Yes, fuck me Daddy," as Kavanagh connected the cuffs to his already-bound wrists and then pulled his arms over his head and tied him off at the headboard.

He was about to say something else when Kavanagh, with the comment, "We don't want to wake anyone who is sleeping, do we?" popped a ball gag in Sam 3's mouth.

Then Sam 3 was panting shallowly and making noises deep in his throat, as, holding the young man's tightly bound legs up the line of his chest, Kavanagh worked to open the young man's ass more with the use of a black Jeff Stryker dildo. Sam 3 was panting harder and making gurgling noises through the ball gag when, leaving the dildo inside him, Kavanagh started to work his own cock in above the dildo.

* * * *

"Fuck you, Felix. This had better not be your idea of a belated April Fools' joke." Kavanagh's alarm clock claimed it was not yet 5:30 a.m. and he hadn't gotten in from his tension-relieving visit on the other side of the French Quarter until nearly 2:00. It had taken a second phone call, with an ad nauseam number of rings to get him to pick up the phone by the bed. He rolled over, sat up on the side of the bed, and instinctively reached for his cigarettes. His hand wavered over the pack and he didn't pick it up, saying instead, "Eh, what?"

"All hell's broken out here at HQ, man, and Leon wants you to come in right away. It's Brent. He's dead."

"Brent? Our Brent? Dead? How can that be? How did it happen?"

"Victim number three," Felix said. "Found on Canal, just up from your hotel. In the back of an Escalade. Wait a minute, Leon's saying somethin'. Oh, he says you're just to walk a couple of blocks toward the river from your hotel, man. You'll be at the scene. Gotta go."

The scene wasn't hard to find. The black Escalade, missing license plates, was surrounded by police cars with their lights on and the side of the road had been cordoned off to keep the curious back from being able to see into the open hatch door. There were scores of black Escalades roaming the city streets, Kavanagh was sure, but, regardless, seeing this one reminded him of seeing something being hustled into an identical vehicle outside the brothel not more than six hours previously.

As he got closer, he could see why the crowd was being held back so far. The group of lurkers and watchers was growing, as it was a busy street, even at this time of the morning, and this was where the All Fools' Day parades formed up. The festival had one more day, this one, to run. He could see that the body was still in the back of the SUV, although he couldn't identify it as being Brent, not the least because he looked away as soon as he saw that the victim's entrails had come out of the lower belly cavity. The clown makeup on Brent's face also registered in the few seconds Kavanagh had seen the body.

In his book, three of these happening within a week was going to register as a serial killer. The details on the deaths of the first two hadn't been made public yet. What registered more than the condition of the body, though, from a brief look see was the rug the body was lying on. It looked like the same pattern that Kavanagh had seen being stuffed in the back of an Escalade at the brothel.

He was going to have to be careful here. How much could he tell Monroe and the guys about what he'd seen last night that might link here? Surely they could figure out that the brothel he'd been to was an all-male one. He was going to just let them run on less information than he already had.

He saw where Felix and Marco were standing and walked up to them. "Where's Leon?" he asked. It was the first thing he thought of asking, although he hadn't really given any thought to what the first question he was going to ask was. It would seem a natural enough question to Marco and Felix for him to ask, but they'd be wrong why he chose that question. The last time Kavanagh had seen Brent was late in the evening of the previous day. And what he'd seen Brent doing was being fucked by Leon Monroe in a bar and then leaving with the captain.

On that basis, Kavanagh thought that was a pretty good question to be asking.

"He was called back to the station," Monroe said. "Something big's going down."

"What could be bigger than what we have right here?" Kavanagh asked. "One of our own dead—and in connection with the biggest case we have going. It's like the serial killer is mocking us."

"So you do think this is a serial killer?" Felix asked. "Yesterday we were told—"

"Yeah, I think that now," Kavanagh said. "Three in a week, with these markings. How in the hell was he found?" He almost asked how he was found like this so soon—less than nine hours after Kavanagh had last seen him alive and kicking, without the clown makeup or his entrails cut out of him, and with their police captain. But of course he couldn't tell Marco and Felix this. Brent had been off on his courier runs and unseen by anyone of them, supposedly, since the previous afternoon.

"No parking along here for the festival," Felix answered. "The area was still supposed to be kept clear for parade staging through today. The Escalade was here, the police were going to have it towed, and then they looked in the back window."

"Whose Escalade is it?"

"It wasn't difficult tracing the VIN number. It belongs to the federal government. Just in case the president visits New Orleans, I was told." This from Marco. "One of several stored in a government storage lot. But it was reported either out without a proper checkout or stolen early this morning. They're dusting it for prints now, but who knows if they'll find anything on anyone not connected with the government? Only if someone was really sloppy."

That's when Kavanagh remembered something else strange that he'd seen from the brothel window the previous night. The guys carrying the rolled carpet out had been wearing gloves. That hadn't meant anything then. Of course, there was no reason it meant anything now. It made no sense there could be a connection. There was no reason Brent should have been at the brothel even if he was selling himself at night. He had a sex date last night—with Monroe—and the brothel on Frenchmen Street was way, way out of Brent's league even if he was a rent-boy. Still, it was that rug in the back of the SUV and the missing tags that had him trying to connect dots.

"He shouldn't still be here, like this," Kavanagh said. "He's one of ours. Where's the medical examiner?"

"He was on his way but we're told he was diverted," Felix said. "We're waiting on him."

"And Leon? He should be here," Kavanagh said. For more reasons than the consulting detective from New York could reveal, he thought.

Marco's cell rang. "Yeah, Captain, he's here." He handed the phone to Kavanagh, who found out why neither Leon nor the medical examiner were here.

"Need you back at another scene, Kavanagh. Got such a hot potato one here that the brass want it bounced to you to tie up in a pretty package."

"What's more important than Brent, Leon?" Kavanagh asked, not too politely.

"A dead chief justice of the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals," Monroe answered. "Luca Alba."

"And so?" Kavanagh asked.

"I take it you don't watch news. Alba is in the center of a political fight. The president nominated him for the Supreme Court and people who are pissed about that have been coming out of the woodwork and digging up dirt on him. He's from one of New Orleans' cushiest families. City Hall wants this one tamped down fast. Need you at the scene. It's just around the corner from where you are, on St. Charles Avenue, in the Garden District. There's nothing we can do for Brent now."

Other than find his killer and find out where you were when he died, Kavanagh thought, as he passed the cell phone back to Felix. He hadn't said anything like that to Monroe on the phone with Felix standing right there, though, of course.

* * * *

The address Kavanagh went to on St. Charles was literally just around the corner from the Escalade crime scene on Canal and didn't take as much as ten minutes for Kavanagh to find. It was in an upscale residential area with huge antebellum mansions that had been cut up into apartments on expensively landscaped postage stamp-sized lots, but, as Kavanagh found out with the federal judge's apartment, ones that were huge, took up whole floors of the building, and were luxurious.

Alba's apartment was on the second floor, reached by a private elevator or via a wide marble staircase rising up from a large marble entrance foyer. There probably were only three apartments in the building.

He had it out with Captain Monroe on the curved staircase in initially angry hushed tones that echoed all around the foyer walls, making their words—luckily—largely unintelligible to anyone but themselves. Policeman, guys in white coats, and civilians in suits were swirling around them, careful to stay out of their way as it looked like they'd be using their fists at any point in the conversation.

"Shit, you say?" Monroe said, looking belligerent, shocked, and trapped at the same time.

"You heard me," Kavanagh countered, poking a finger in the air not far from Monroe's chest.

"I was there. In the bar, last night. I saw you with Brent. I saw what the two of you were doing. Before we go another step in either case, I need to know where you went with Brent afterward and for how long. And I need to know time of death from the medical examiner. Or I'm going straight to the commissioner."

"You think I had anything to do with Brent's death? And therefore with the others?" He either was genuinely indignant or had a lot of gall.

"What would you think if you were me? You did Brent . . ."

At this Monroe reached out and touched Kavanagh's sleeve and shushed him, looking around at the people streaming past. "I didn't do him the way you make it sound," he hissed.

" . . . you fucked Brent in the bar and left with him."

"And we parted at the door. Brent was in a tizzy from me hazing him in the morning meeting. He was gonna talk about us, and I had to throw some homo hating flak in the air to put the guys off the scent. Then I had to get him back under control . . . but I had something else on last night and he said he had a date too. We parted outside the bar door. I had a poker game on at my house to go to."

"Shall we call your wife to verify that?"

"Hell, no, we won't fuckin' talk to Mary Ann about this. But I'll do just as good." He took out his cell phone, punched in some numbers, and gave Kavanagh a quick look at the name of the screen of who he was calling. "Phil. It's Leon. I've got a guy here who wants to know about where I was last night from 10:00 on till 2:30, what I was doing, and who I was doin' it with. No, don't ask and I won't ask about the golf course going up on that public domain-seized land north of the city. Here, listen to him."

Monroe handed the phone over to Kavanagh and let him hear what the deputy mayor of New Orleans—in a voice Kavanagh recognized—had to say about the late-starting and ending poker game at Leon Monroe's house the previous night.

"Now, let's just wait and see until we get a time of death on Brent," said when he'd disconnected. "I'm confident that will rule me out. I got you over here to work on the Alba death. Me and City Hall have different takes on this. Marco and Felix will work on Brent and the other clown-face guttings. Believe me, I'm not going to let Brent's killer get away with that. But before you think of broadcasting what Brent and I were doing, let me tell you that I know about your thing for rent-boys too. And that you give it rough."

"Shit," Kavanagh exclaimed.

"Yes, shit. A couple of real fuckers, ain't we? But that's how it is and it can stay between us. Now come upstairs and get a load of the stiff before they haul it away."

"Why me? Why me on this case? But I guess I get it. Alba's a hot potato. A presidential appointment to the Supreme Court. High profile. But what is it that makes it a hot potato?"

"Between you and me, who are now close buddies, with shared secrets? Yeah, we need an outsider to be the face of this. And we need to tamp this down before a fire starts. I told you the appointment for this guy was going south—that the skeletons were beginning to fall out of his closet—and that some of these skeletons go way back in New Orleans. It was enough to give him—and others, I'm sure—a heart attack. And that's what the ME is going to put on the death certificate. But between you and me, buddy, this was a murder. The ME said he was suffocated. And I've seen my share of transferred and set-up death scenes, and this is one of them. The man was stiffed and probably not here."

"But why Vice—and why Homicide—if you want to make this a natural causes?"

"It's not me who wants it to be natural causes. It's City Hall, and with each passing minute, it's everyone else up the line—probably to the White House—by now who want it to be natural causes. You'll be transferred on paper to just being a distinguished visiting colleague who gets this case because you're from out of town and we've got a reputation for police corruption in New Orleans already. But it's homicide because we're convinced he was offed and it's Vice because whoever did him wasn't careful enough. They didn't get all of the makeup off his face and they didn't take his bra off when they put nightclothes on him. Again between thee and me, one of those skeletons falling out of his closet concerns rumors he liked to dress up and be fucked."

"OK, OK, but if you just want to cover it over—" Kavanagh said.

"I don't want to just cover it over," Monroe retorted. "I want to find the fucker who did this—which is your specialty—and I want to see him brought to justice, even if it can't be done within the system. Even if I have to take care of it myself. I'm still a cop. And I didn't kill Brent, and we'll get his guy, even if it has to be outside the books. And now, let's get upstairs and you start doing an investigation in spite of what we do on the surface. And that means I can't help you much and neither can the station, but I've heard you have your ways of getting things done and settled. Just give me a name when you're done. And then walk away humming."

"OK, I've got some ideas, but what if these aren't two different investigations—the clown-face serial killer and Alba's killer? I've been stonewalled on the Garden District roommate of one of the victims. Maybe that was Alba? Or maybe it was someone else who links?"

"It wasn't Alba, and I'm not giving you that name. I don't see how you could see a link, though."

"And without a name I'm not revealing anything I know as a possible link."

"Well, all I can say is if the name you give me matches the name I've been told not to give out, I'll still take care of it."

"You'll take care of it?"

"I'll gut the bastard myself and paint him a clown face, OK? I wasn't just messing around with Brent—it was more than that. OK? Now, let's get out of this traffic and go upstairs. There's a nervous Nelly up there for you to talk to and maybe interrogate in your own way—he looks your type."

"There's one thing you could do for me that would show effort up the line on the case," Kavanagh said as they continued up the stairs. "See if you can get a listing of what sort of dirt was coming up on Alba in the appointment investigations. The key to his murder might be there."

"Will do. I'll make calls as soon as we're finished upstairs. What in the hell is that noise outside?"

"Guess the parade is starting up again for the All Fools' Day festival. Glad it's the last day for that."

"You and me both, buddy. Guess we have more in common that just liking to nail young guys."

* * * *

What a surprise Kavanagh got when he and Monroe entered Alba's apartment. Sitting there in his living room much the way the guy had been sitting in the parlor of the brothel was the blond late-twenties honey Madame Zena had told Kavanagh was an aide to one of her clients and was waiting for him to be done. The guy was sitting, looking both nervous and forlorn, and smoking a cigarette.

He looked up at Kavanagh and smiled wanly, his hand fluttering to his blond hair as if to check for stray strands so the detective wouldn't get a bad impression. His cheeks were wet like he'd been crying. There was interest in his face when he looked at Kavanagh, but no sign of recognition that the detective walked by him the previous night in the brothel.

He was good looking but too old for Kavanagh's interests. He would have been happy to fuck the guy ten years earlier—not that he'd throw him out of bed now. Kavanagh smiled back, but it wasn't a "let's connect" smile.

"This is Alba's law clerk, Paul Worth," Monroe said, gesturing to the young man. "He says he lives here. This here's Detective Mike Kavanagh, on loan from the NYPD. He's lead on this case."

"This case?" Worth asked. "Luca died in his sleep of a heart attack. It wasn't expected, but his doctors said that heart trouble was developing. He was under a lot of stress over an important appointment. The heart issue was causing him to consider dropping consideration for the appointment. I think it's the stress that did it." Turning to Kavanagh, he smiled and said, "Detective Kavanagh," in recognition of the introduction. It was a special smile—a special interest smile.

"Mr. Worth," Kavanagh responded. Was that a flutter of eyelashes he saw—and maybe just a bit too much information on Alba's condition?

"He's an important man. We just have to cover all of the bases," Monroe said. "Can you hold tight here to talk with Detective Kavanagh after we've checked out the justice's bedroom?"

"Certainly, detective," Worth answered. "I live here and my life was completely in service to the justice's. I have nowhere else I need to be."

Just how fully in service to Alba was Worth, Kavanagh wondered as he followed Monroe down the hall. They passed the door of an obviously inhabited bedroom en route, so at least it seemed that the two men had separate bedrooms.

When they got to Alba's bedroom, Kavanagh saw what Monroe meant about the justice not dying here. He'd already been told about the bra, which was under what must have passed in the dark as an undershirt but what turned out to be a camisole. And his sleeping pants had been put on him backwards. The rest of the room was immaculate, though. There was a dressing table, but no sign of any of the makeup the judge had been wearing. He was laying there, arms crossed on his chest, legs pulled together. Not really how the last minutes of a heart attack victim would go.

Without speaking, Monroe leaned over and brought Kavanagh attention to the dead man's hands. His fingernails were all broken and bloody. He fought being offed but had lost—and as neatly as the bed was made, that fight didn't happen here.

"This led me to call someone before bringing in the Medical Examiner." Monroe whispered to Kavanagh because the ME was still in the room, putting his tools back in his bag and looking none too happy. "The ME had to be put in line on what he'd put on the certificate no matter what he found. What he found was suffocation, probably by a pillow, but nothing like that is here—his nose bled and he had makeup on his face. There's nothing here that mirrors that. So . . ." and here Monroe raised his voice, ". . . we have a case of heart attack."

The ME snapped his bag shut, gave Monroe a dirty look, gave some instructions to one of the coroners' office technicians standing by to take the body away, and then abruptly turned and left the room. It was only then that Kavanagh honed in on one of the technicians being Manny Lopez, a sexy young Hispanic who Kavanagh had seen both on the job and at a gay bar. Manny was young and had been on the make for Kavanagh in the bar. But he wasn't blond, he didn't rent himself out, and Kavanagh had this rule about hooking up with guys from the office, the coroner's office being part of the police establishment. So, Kavanagh hadn't responded to Manny's signaling . . . until now. Now Kavanagh had the thought in the back of his mind that Lopez could be a source for information the detective sorely needed and was officially being denied.