Tracked Down

I cleaned myself up, dressed, and threw together something to keep us from starving and was up the road not long after an ambulance had arrived. The house was a bungalow much as Sheffield's, shell walls held together with concrete and a rusty tin roof, but it wasn't in nearly the good condition that Sheffield's was and, from the number of children standing around, it housed a large family. A small section of the roof had peeled away and a ladder lay on the ground. Medics were putting a middle-aged black man in the ambulance, and Sheffield was holding one of the men's hands as they wheeled the gurney to the back of the bus.

I stood there, holding two cups of coffee and dangling a sack of food, and looking, I'm sure, totally out of place, which I was.

"Are you Ken's young man?" a black woman probably in her forties and in a colorful muumuu asked, saddling up beside me.

"I'm his houseguest, yes. Are you the man's wife?"

"Oh, my no. Maria is over there with her children. I live in the house between Ken's and here. Maria will want to go to the hospital, if she can find a way to get there, and I'll watch the children. I don't know what we would have done if Mr. Sheffield hadn't been here. He's done everything to help his neighbors out since he arrived."

"Did he come here very recently?"

She gave me a strange look and said, "Oh, my no. I think it must be ten years or more now. He's one of us on St. Croix."

I had to step off the road then, because the ambulance was moving out, in our direction. The woman went back to where the other woman—Maria, apparently—was standing in a crowd of children of various ages, and Sheffield came over to me and relieved me of a coffee cup and the sack of food.

"Thanks for bringing these, Tom. I won't have a chance to eat for a while, I think. I'm taking Maria down to the hospital and wait with her while they get Luis settled and his leg set—I think that's the only thing broken—and then I'll work on the roof when I get back."

"You'll fix his roof?" I asked, somewhat incredulously.

"Someone has to and Luis isn't going to be able to do it for a long time. The rains will drown the Williamses out if that doesn't get patched."

"Let me know when you're back and I'll come help."

"No. You have writing that needs to be done. There are a few guys further down the ridge I can pick up on my way back. They'd feel beholden to you and not be able to repay if you work on the house, and we have the neighbors organized to help each other out with these projects."

From what that woman had told me, I thought, it was Ken Sheffield who had the neighborhood organized, and he wasn't a recent arrival, or at least a neighbor said. But was she covering for him?

It probably was just as well that I'd be alone in his bungalow for a while. I could do some snooping, and it would give me time to go through all of the material that the researchers at the L.A. Times had e-mail attached to me over the past couple of days. This was getting curiouser and curiouser. The Sheffield I was sent to track down and the one I found seemed liked two entirely different men. This guy was real good at disappearing into the woodwork.

* * * *

Sheffield didn't return to his bungalow until late that afternoon, which gave me plenty of time to nose around before getting set up with my laptop in his study and going through the background material on the name he went under in Chicago, Kevin Sheffield. He didn't hide his financial papers. They were all there in the desk and in a filing cabinet within reach from the desk chair. The guy really was good. He'd established a completely separate life between here and Chicago, with his Virgin Islands residency going back more than a decade. He'd gone to great lengths to establish this retreat. I couldn't imagine how he had managed it until I read through the media coverage The Times collected and sent to me.

He vacillated back and forth in the States from being a well-covered philanthropist and playboy and, for extended times, a recluse. He had the money to run back and forth between Chicago, L.A., New York, and the Virgin Islands. The most important find in the study was an envelope in the bottom drawer of the desk, which include a false Canadian passport, with Sheffield's photo, but in the name of a Kerry Foucet, residing in Montreal. There was a bankbook from a Barcelona, Spain, bank in that name with more than $2 million in euros deposited in it. So, he had yet another retreat set up if this one didn't work. The only real question was why he'd kept his surname for the elaborate Virgin Islands setup.

But at least I knew of where $2 million of the some $100 million he was said to have absconded with could be found. There wasn't any evidence it was here in the Virgin Islands. I found a couple of local bank account books, covering another million and a bit more, but nothing like he was said to have gotten out of the States.

I turned to the news clippings I'd been sent of his last twenty years. He had spurts of being very social. He went to building, art, and theater openings. He was photographed in venues stretching from nights at the ballet to crouching in front a lion he had shot on safari. He often had a beautiful young woman on his arm. Sometime, though, there was a good-looking young man in the background, and, from what I'd learned about Sheffield, the man had been active with other men and just managed to keep it out of the public eye. He'd also managed to fool the media and public on some other vices. There was an article emphasizing that he didn't smoke or drink, but I'd seen him do both. Maybe he did it now to throw pursuers off—but again I went back to why keep the surname?

He looked good in or out of a tuxedo over the years. There were a few photos of him bare-chested on a yacht, and he had great musculature—and the tattoo on his left breast that I knew he had but hadn't closely examined yet. At some point a dozen years earlier he'd broken his left arm, but there were photos of him in a cast and sling, both when casually and formally dressed.

I started to write a feature article on finding him, and it was easy going on what his sins in the States had been, why he was of interest in tracking down, and having gotten the assignment and tracking him down to St. Croix. I, of course, didn't mention that I hooked up with him at a gay club or that I'd been invited to stay at his house—or, certainly, how I had wrangled the invitation. But at that point, my writing bogged down. The Ken Sheffield I had tracked down was not the Kevin Sheffield that I had been searching for. What he'd done to people in the States just didn't match what I knew he was doing for the Williams family up the road right now.

At some point I put the feature article aside and started working on what my real interest in writing was—a parallel story novel in which I could make the protagonist's actions match up coherently.

It was getting close to dark when he got back to the bungalow. He'd gone down to the seafront on the bay and brought back a seafood dinner for us. We broke out the beer, sat on the front porch, watching the lights along the coast of the bay light up, and feasted on seafood.

"It's just the broken leg, but Luis will be laid up for a long while. We've shared out support for them along the ridge road neighbors for the next couple of months."

"Do you do a lot of this for the neighbors?" I asked.

"We take care of each other up here," he said. "It's a simple life, but a good one. It was a good reward for being able to cash in and retire early," he answered.

It certainly was very different from what everyone thought cashing in would be for you, I thought. It just wasn't adding up. And it wasn't making writing this exposé article and telling the world where they could find Kevin Sheffield any easier. There had been many death threats from those who had lost loved ones to his financially ruining adulterated drugs. I knew that as soon as what I wrote was published, this man would have to use that Canadian passport to get to Spain under an assumed identity that I'd found in the bottom drawer of his desk.

After dinner, we went into the bedroom and I made good on my offer from that morning to saddle on his pelvis as he lay on his back and ride his cock in a wild cowboy ride.

It wouldn't be easy to give this man up.

* * * *

"Tell me about the tattoo," I said. "It's elaborate, but what is it?"

Another morning and another sex session. He was reclining against the pillows at the headboard, on his back, smoking a cigarette, and I was stretched out beside him, letting my hand roam over his body, knowing from his responses that we'd fuck again before starting our day—me to my writing, increasing more drawn to the novel I was working on than to the feature article on the lowlife worm who had fleeced sick people in their time of not wanting to believe in reality. I just could not accept this man now calling himself Ken as the Kevin I'd been sent to track down and expose. I was tracing the circular pattern of his tattoo, causing him to flinch and groan as I occasional went to the nipple in the center of the design and gave it a pinch. When I did, I felt the reaction in my other hand grasping his cock.

"It's a sign of the Zodiac. Gemini. The twins, for late May into June. We were born in early June."

"We?"

"Yes. My brother and I. We are twins. The Zodiac sign we were born under is Gemini, the twins. We both got this tattoo in our early twenties, as a lark, when we were both doing a spring break beach week from college."

"Twins? You're a twin?" I sat up in the bed. The photograph I'd seen in the study. Ken wasn't the older son in that photograph. He was one of the twins.

"Yes, but I don't like to talk about Kevin. I don't like the direction he went in. Retiring here was partly to escape being his brother—looking exactly like him and being attacked mistakenly on the street for being him."

I was about to pursue that when we both heard a car stop outside the bungalow, the sound of the porch screen door slamming, and then, causing Sheffield to launch himself from the bed, pull on his shorts, and race down the hallway, someone opening the front door with a key rather than knocking on it. I followed a little slower.

What I first heard was a gruff and bass voice exclaiming in obvious surprise. "Ken. Shit, man, I thought you were dead. We got a stiff down in the coroner's office in Frederiksted who I was sure was you."

"What do you mean? Do I look dead, Michael?"

By then I'd made it out to the living room, where the biggest, most muscular and handsome black man I'd seen for some time was standing just inside the entrance door. Beyond him, in the road, I could see a Virgin Island cop car and the man Ken had called Michael was poured into a police uniform that showed his bodybuilder body off to perfection. His face took on a big grin when we saw me emerge from the bedroom hallway. Like Ken, I'd done no more than pull on a pair of shorts.

"Ken, you stud, who is this honey you've gotten hidden in your bedroom?"

"Tom, this is a cop friend of mine, Michael Clarke. He seems to have thought I was dead and he came up here to loot my house. This is Tom Burnett, Mike, down from L.A. He's a writer, and yes, he's a great lay."

Clarke whistled. "Cool. Can I lay him too?"

"If he's good with that, yes. He says he's been a rent-boy in L.A., and he has the moves to prove it."

"Hey, guys, I'm standing right here, you know." The cop hadn't asked me directly, but, yes, he could lay me if he wanted to. He was one black bull god of a man. I was already estimating how many inches he had in that bulging crotch he was displaying.

The two of them ignored me, though.

"What's this all about, Mike? Who's this dead guy?"

"Maybe you can tell me. He's a spitting image of you. He's even got the same Zodiac tattoo you've got on your chest."

So, the cop knew about the tattoo, I thought. These two are quite chummy. I guess I didn't need them to tell me that they cruised together. I could only hope that the black bull was a top, like Ken was.

Clarke was taking out a photo, which he flashed in front of Sheffield. Ken grimaced. "We found him down in Frederiksted, in the gay bar area on the seafront. Stuffed into a barrel. He looks like you and he's got your ID in his wallet. There was a note on him saying this—meaning his death we took it—was for all the people he killed in the States. Tell me this isn't you, Ken."

"I think that's my twin brother, Kevin," Sheffield said in a low voice. "Somehow I knew it would come to this."

"What do you mean by that?" the cop asked. "I think you need to come down to the station and the coroner's office in Frederiksted, Ken. He has your ID on him. Did you know he was here in St. Croix?"

"Yes, I knew he'd come to St. Croix, but I thought he'd be gone by now. Let me get dressed better and I'll follow you down in my Jeep."

"I'll come with you," I said. They both looked at me like it was the first time they knew I was there.

"No, don't," Sheffield said. "Stay here and work on your novel. I'll be back soon . . . won't I, Michael?"

"Sure, if we can straighten this out, man," Clarke said. "I'm mighty glad it isn't you who's dead, Ken."

"A piece of me is, if it's Kevin," Sheffield said. "But it's been coming for some time." With that, he left the room to get dressed, leaving the cop and me, standing a good eight feet away from each other, looking at each other, speculatively, waiting for one of us to say something while Sheffield was off getting dressed. We didn't have much time.

"Ken said you were a rent-boy from L.A. Was he just shitting me?" Clarke was the first one to speak.

"I've done that, yes. It's not my main job. It and other things I did got me through college."

"But you went with men for money."

"Yes."

"You go with men just because you like the looks of them? You're up here with Ken, in his bed? He fucks you?"

"Yes to all."

"You exclusive with him?"

"No. You saying you want to fuck me too?"

"You'd let me?"

"Sure. You've got the body of a god."

"A black god. I'm a black boy."

"Why, yes, yes you are," I said, letting him know that color meant nothing to me.

There no longer was a distance of eight feet between us. He'd come up close, put one hand behind my head to bring our lips together. I had to go on tip toe to reach him. His other hand took one of mine and put it on his basket. I gasped for him, as he knew I would.

"You think you can take this?"

"I can try," I answered.

"Later, I hope. When we get this situation cleaned up."

Before I could answer, we heard Sheffield coming back down the hall in his combat boots, and Clarke pulled away from me.

When they'd gone, I returned to the study and sat at the desk. The first thing I did was pull out the bottom drawer and take out that false documentation with Ken's photo on it. So, how did this fit in, I wondered. And what was the dead guy, even if it was Ken's twin, doing with Ken's ID on him? Which twin was which . . . really?

I had much of the rest of the day to contemplate that, and when the door to the bungalow opened that evening as the sun was going down, it was the cop, Michael Clarke, who came in, not Ken.

Before he said anything to me at all about Ken and the dead guy in Frederiksted, Clarke put me against the wall by the door, stripping off my shorts and jock as we went into a lip lock. He unzipped and pulled himself off. He already was hard as a rock—and bull thick and long.

"Been thinking of you all the way back," he growled. He pushed my back into the wall, lifted me up, grabbed my legs under my knees and split them. I cried out as he stuffed himself inside me, splitting me, and began to rub my back up and down the rough shell-incased concrete wall with the power of his thrusts.

Holding on for dear life, I hooked my knees on his hips, threw my arms around his neck, arched my head back, and cried out "Yes, yes, YESS!"

He fucked me good—no, he fucked me great—before taking me back to the second bedroom, getting us both stripped completely down, and fucking me totally.

* * * *

"So, did you get it all straightened out. They're twins."

"Yes, that," Mike said as I crawled off him and he reached down and rolled the condom off his cock. I leaned over from where I'd landed sitting on the side of the bed and lifted the trashcan to make his contribution. There already were an embarrassing number of rubbers at the bottom of the can. "Ken's brother was on the lam from the States, where he'd had a drug scam going to killed a lot of people and he came here to change places with Ken but someone he victimized got to him first. Ken's in town making arrangements to get the body back to the States."

"I hope it's that simple," I said.

"What do you mean? You're wondering why the twin had Ken's ID on him?"

"That's part of it."

"Ken explained that. He said he knew his brother had been here—and why he had to leave the States. He came up here to see Ken with a scheme to take Ken's ID and hole up here until the pursuit calmed down and he could move on. He brought another ID for Ken to take. Ken turned him down, though, sent him away, and assumed that was the end of it."

"I know about the other identity for Ken," I said. "And I know about Kevin Sheffield and what he did in the States."

"You do?"

"Yes, and the problem is still there, I think, of who is who with these twins. Is it Kevin, the criminal, who is dead or is it Ken?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come with me. Let me show you something." I took him by the hand, both of us naked, and led him into the study. "I hope you don't have to tell him—whoever he is—where I got this, but I think you need to know more of the background here. First, on the identity. Did the twin who is still alive tell you that he still has the fake ID here? Would Kevin have left that here? Maybe, if the guy we are treating as Ken was still considering the deal." I opened the bottom drawer of the desk and brought out the fake ID and the Spanish bank account and gave it Clarke. "And look through this background material on Kevin Sheffield."

The cop looked at what I had. "I don't understand. Why do you have all of this stuff?"

"He told you I was a writer—a novelist. And I am working on a novel here but I also write for the L.A. Times, and I came here thinking the man living in this bungalow is Kevin Sheffield—that we'd tracked him down—and I'm writing a feature article on him. He doesn't know that—whoever actually lives here doesn't know that."

"So, you're not really a rent-boy?" He sounded disappointed.

"I have been, yes. And, for you, I'm happy to be. But back to the Sheffield twins. There's more from the background I've compiled here you should know. This article here, for instance, saying Kevin Sheffield doesn't smoke or drink. The man living in this bungalow does—I've seen him doing it and naturally so. Of course, the articles on Kevin Sheffield could be lies, so that's just something to consider. But, look at this photo. This is something you could have looked into in addition to checking fingerprints and such, to the extent you can reliably do so on twins who might have covered for each other all their lives. What do you see in this photo?"

"The guy's got a cast on his arm. He's broken his left arm."

"Bingo," I said. "If the other brother—Ken—has broken his left arm just like that you can have X-rays done and identify who is who."

"Yeah, that will work. So, you're convinced the guy you know is—"

"No, I can't say I'm fully convinced," I answered. "I want to believe this one is the good brother—he's certainly been good to me and I've seen him be good to others. But I just don't know for sure." And I didn't. I was still wondering why he'd kept the fake passport and the bankbook for the Spanish bank. But that he had been living here and using the Sheffield name all along seemed to bear out that he wasn't trying to hide here.