Read Online Revision of Justice by John Morgan Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

with great looks and no more talent than it takes to sell shoes.”
    “JaFari must have had something going for him. Roberta Brickman hired him as her assistant.”
    Teal reacted with a snort.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “That’s what she told me at the party.”
    Teal raised his eyebrows, seeming to accept it.
    “I knew Farr had a low-level job at ITA. Working as a runner or something. But working for an agent of her caliber?” He paused, then shrugged a little. “Maybe he finally got his act together. Stranger things have happened.”
    The bartender announced last call. Teal raised his glass, set it down next to mine, and the bartender whisked them away.
    “You still haven’t told me why you picked up Winchester’s cigar.”
    He kept his eyes averted, saying nothing.
    “Talk to me, Teal. Unless you’d rather talk to DeWinter.”
    He dropped his head for a long moment, staring at the bar. When he looked back up, his eyes blinked back tears. He might have been acting; I suspected not.
    “Obviously, I did it to protect Dylan.”
    “Then you think he’s connected to JaFari’s death.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Why then?”
    “Dylan went down there looking for Ray Farr, who’s gay. Or bisexual, whatever. I followed him down hoping for a quickie. If the police find that out, the press finds out. You know how reporters are. You people won’t leave it alone until you’ve dug up every choice little morsel. The more tawdry, the better. You guys live for that stuff.
    “They’d connect Dylan to me, to JaFari, to half the kids he slept with. Straight directors can get away with sleeping around like that. Look at Polanski—he diddled a thirteen-year-old girl and he still works, even sits as a judge at film festivals. So do a few hundred other breeders like him who never got caught. But Dylan’s career would be over with the first headline. He’d be lucky to make a living shooting commercials back in Australia. I don’t think he could live with that.”
    A tear spilled over; he wiped it quickly away.
    “You fell as hard for him as JaFari, didn’t you, Teal? You still carry a torch.”
    He glared at me for a moment, then looked away as the bartender set fresh drinks in front of us. Teal gave him more money, and we drank in silence for a minute or two. The bar was slowly emptying out.
    “I never liked being the last one out of a bar,” I said.
    “You haven’t finished your wine.”
    I picked up my glass and drank it down. Then I shoved the glass away and slid my other hand up Teal’s thigh.
    “My place or yours?”
    Teal was staring straight ahead, into the empty dining room.
    “Maybe I don’t like being taken for granted.”
    “It’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it, Teal? You’re supposed to take me for granted.”
    His mouth curled unattractively. Then he tipped his head back and swallowed the last of his scotch. He set his glass down and looked at me in a way that suggested desire behind the hatred.
    “You really think you’re something, don’t you, Justice?”
    I stroked the inside of his thigh, then reached deeper, where I felt the meat between his legs getting hard. “Shall we go?”
     
    *
     
    Back on Norma Place, the house was dark; Maurice and Fred had finally ended their earnest conversation and gone to bed.
    Teal followed me up the gravel-strewn drive to the garage. We mounted the stairs to the small apartment at the top, where I’d lived rent free for more than a year, since ending a six-year drinking binge that somehow had failed to kill me.
    Inside, I left the lights out. Our shirts came off first, each of us handling that step ourselves, quickly and efficiently.
    When I reached out, I was surprised to find Teal’s body firmer than his soft looks had suggested. We dropped our pants and shorts to our ankles and left them there. Teal’s torso was tightly muscled and hairless down to his lower belly, where an erection rose up that was well out of proportion to