Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“Big enough, baby, big enough.”

I slipped the condom on and knelt between her long legs. I ran my fingers down her slit and they came up dripping. I held it to her lips and watched her lick them clean.
“You are such a slut.”
I lasted about five minutes the first time. Twenty minutes later she got me up again and I lasted twenty minutes before I came inside her mouth. I’d used a second condom but when I got close she had me pull out and slip it off and stick my cock, which was so hard it actually did hurt, into her mouth and she made it feel better.
The third time came about two hours later as we lay in a bed that reminded me of the one on the Bonne Chance, at least in its size. This time she mounted me and did a reverse cowboy. I’d seen it on porno films, but I’d never actually done it before. I guess I’ve been kind of slow, sexually speaking. Missionary, doggie, anal and oral had always been enough for me with Debbie and then Aline.
It was a strange sensation, watching her and visualizing her in her television persona and superimposing that over the naked figure slipping up and down on my cock wet with her juices. I almost felt like I was outside my body watching myself, except the sensation of hammering myself into her as far as I could go every time she rammed herself down on me was all too real.
Later she lay with her back against my chest and I cupped her sweaty breasts and played with the inch-long nipples.
“I still don’t really believe this.”
“Believe it, Mr. Maitland. This is all real and you felt very real inside me a few minutes ago.”
I kissed the back of her neck and said, “I could never even have daydreamed this six months or a year ago.”
She rolled over into me and kissed back.
“It’s only been six months, Bill. It didn’t feel real for me for more than a year after my split with my second ex. I felt—honest to God—like I was cheating on my ex, and we’d been divorced for awhile. But, sometimes—and I didn’t do this all that much—when I’d wake up next to a guy I’d have this momentary flash of guilt and wonder how I could be doing this to him—my ex. And I’d only been married for four years.”
‘It took a year?”
“To stop feeling guilty? No, about six months. But I still dreamed about him for another six months.”
She leaned back.


“I know it must feel like a hundred years ago since you were single, Bill. But we were all single before we got married. There is a life outside of marriage. There are millions of us, and most of us are pretty happy, most of the time. Just, stop being so serious. Have some fun and, if it’s meant to be different, it will happen.”
Sometime that morning I woke up with her nestled against me, her sweet smelling fragrance all around me, and realized where I was and who I was with. And, for the first time, other than the nights I’d spent with Aline, I didn’t feel as if I’d awakened into a nightmare, lost and alone.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

OCTOBER 5, 2005 -- WEDNESDAY - NOON


Bad things happen in threes.
I stood behind the widow, in the second row of mourners. We were standing as the security officer honor guard fired their rifles into the brilliant cloudless skies. She wore black, as did her daughter. It looked like half the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was in attendance.
I caught some hard looks when people thought I wasn’t looking. Some of them didn’t bother to look away, just stared at me when I caught them. Sheriff Knight stood in the front row. He had looked at me as I walked into the church filled with blue uniforms. I stared right back at him. I didn’t blame him for his feelings, but I had gotten James killed. The least I could do was attend his funeral.
I had driven my own car to the Evergreen Cemetery on 45th Street. Traffic was blocked for miles as the funeral procession filed into the cemetery. I had to walk nearly a half mile and I was hot and sweaty by the time I got to the burial site. They had chairs for nearly a hundred people, and there must have been another 400 standing.
I made my way through the crowd of blue and they melted away as I walked among them. When I got to the row of seats immediately behind Elexus James I stared at the cop sitting behind her. He didn’t have to, but he got up and moved away. I sat behind him and tapped her on the shoulder.
I hadn’t seen her since that day in James’ hospital room. He had fought a good fight. It had taken him another four days to die. It looked like she’d aged ten years in the four days.
“Mrs. James, I’m sorry I was out of town when your husband passed. I didn’t want to talk over the phone. I couldn’t get back any sooner, but I wanted to come and express my condolences in person. He was a good man.”
She just looked at me for a moment. Her eyes were red, but dry. It looked as if she didn’t have any more tears in her to shed.


She still didn’t say anything but the pretty teenager sitting next to her started crying and said, “You....you...”
“No, Conisha! No!”
She looked from her daughter to me.
“She’s young, Mr. Maitland, and this has - hit her hard. Please, forgive her.
She’s young, and we’re...”
I was wrong. She had a few tears left.
Knight stood beside her and put his arm around her. He sat down beside her and held her through the funeral. She never looked back at me again. Neither did he.
As I sat there and listened to the minister my mind wandered back to the previous Thursday. It looked like the same group of men in blue had surrounded Howser’s wife, daughter and son. His son wore the Ranger uniform he hadn’t even changed after arriving from Afghanistan via Jacksonville Naval Air Station on a straight fly-in.
Howser’s parents had flown in from Michigan and he had a brother and sister who had flown in from Alabama and California respectively with their children. I had deliberately come late to the Oaklawn Cemetery on San Jose Boulevard, but the cops knew who I was, as did the television and press photographers who took my picture.
This funeral took place under an overcast sky that threatened to rain at any minute. The relative darkness seemed more appropriate for saying goodbye than watching men carrying the casket containing your mortal remains to your final resting place on a day when you should have been going to the beach. It was a typical Jacksonville October day, unseasonably warm.
Back on Thursday, I had waited until the minister had finished, the security officer squad had fired into the sky and Howser’s friends had said goodbye to his widow. Knight just nodded at me. I had a feeling he was going to be a long time, if ever, getting over the hard feelings he had for me.
Finally, there were only the television crews waiting a good distance away with the still photographers, Howser’s family, a few cops and myself. I walked up to Mrs. Howser and she held her hand out. Her son and daughter stared at me with unreadable expressions. I don’t know what I would have felt looking at the man in some way responsible for the death of my father.
“I’m glad you came, Mr. Maitland. I wanted Molly and Bert to be able to meet you. I’ve told them about what happened and why, and I’ve told them that their father admired you. I didn’t want them to have any false impressions of what happened.”
Molly Howser just stared at me, shook her head with the tears running down her face and stumbled away. Her mother followed her, grabbing her by the


shoulders and pulling her to her.
Bert Howser was almost a younger carbon copy of his father, rail thin, six-foot-two, but with a full head of sandy hair. He put his hands behind his back, as if he was on parade inspection. His uniform was rumpled, but his shoes were shined.
“My mother has told me....about what happened, Mr. Maitland. I appreciate your coming by here. Dad would have appreciated the gesture.”
“He was a good man and a good cop - it’s Sergeant, isn’t it?” “Yes. I...uh....if...”
He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.
“I’m a soldier, Mr. Maitland. I enlisted knowing that I might not come back. I’ve got a fiancée and she’s....she knows what the deal is. But, you don’t expect your father ”
He shook his head and looked into the distance beyond me.
“He loved what he did. He was a little disappointed that I decided to make a career in the military - but he understood and I understood him. I’d never tell Mom but, I think if he knew he was going to die, he’d rather have gone out this way than die slow with cancer or something.”
He looked down at the ground and rubbed his lip with his forefinger.
“The doctors told us they found heart problems in the autopsy. In a few months or more he probably would have had an attack or had symptoms. They’d have taken him off the street and given him a desk job, if they didn’t put him out to pasture. He would have hated that.”
I held out my hand and he shook it without looking at me. I walked away leaving him standing alone near the place where his father would be buried. I thought that at least he was lucky in that he would have a grave to visit. I hadn’t been back to the mine where my father lay buried since I was eight years old, and I probably never would.
I’d heard the clicking of cameras as I’d shook his hand and figured they’d appear somewhere.
As I walked away from James’ funeral the same cameras were clicking. I knew the stories that were coming.
“Maitland’s deadly touch continues.”
People died around me. Good or bad. It had seemed almost humorous when I’d first been tagged as the Angel of Death and people started treating me differently. It had stopped being funny a while back, especially because I’d begun to wonder myself.
Oh, and the third bad thing...
Two hours after I’d walked away from Bert Howser I drove down the paved road under the arch reading Old City Cemetery. It was a smaller cemetery in the


largely black section of downtown Jacksonville. It was seemingly deserted except for Channel Four and Channel 12 television trucks parked just inside the entrance.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Camera crews stood outside the trucks and stared at me as I pulled in, but I was already by them before they could get their cameras aimed at me. I drove down a winding road until I saw a small knot of vehicles off to the right. I pulled in behind one and got out. A small group of people, maybe thirty in all, was standing near an open grave site. A casket was set up on a stand and a black minister stood in front of the casket.

In the front row of mourners was a small black, white-haired woman surrounded by three good-sized men. As one of the men, alerted by the murmurs of the crowd, turned to look at me I saw the resemblance. It was an older, heavier Shawn Smith. All of them turned to look at me as the first man to spot me came toward me at a fast walk.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said, his fists clenched. He was about six-two, heavily muscled. He was trembling. One of the other men with the old woman walked up behind him.
“Eddie, don’t. Don’t do this in front of momma.”
“I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands if he don’t walk his ass out of here.

Now.”

I held my hands in front of me, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. He had six inches and probably a hundred pounds on me. Even with the boxing lessons I’d had, I didn’t want any trouble with him, especially since in his shoes I’d probably feel the same.
“Mr. Smith? You’d be Eddie Smith, Shawn’s older brother, right? And you’re Carl, right?”
Carl Smith put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and told me, “Mr. Maitland, please get out of here. My brother is a law abiding man, but this is a bad day for him, for all of us. Don’t make it worse.”
Eddie Smith pushed his brother’s hand away and stared at me.
“Where are the photographers, you piece of shit? Just couldn’t pass up another chance to get a little more publicity. ‘Angel of Death comes to the Killer Cop’s funeral.’ I bet the tabloids will eat it up.”
“No photographers and I won’t stay long, if you’ll give me just a couple of minutes. I was going to stay at the back until the service was over and have a couple of words with your mother, if I could.”
“You get away from her, from us. I’ll kill you before I let you hurt her more.
You killed her baby, you asshole. My baby brother.” “Edward!”


The white haired woman had come up behind him. She leaned heavily on a cane. She looked like she weighed 100 pounds if she was soaking wet, and yet she had borne four bruising sons.
“Momma, go back. This is that piece of shit- “
“Edward, I’m not one of your floozy girlfriends, and this is your brother’s funeral. You will not use that kind of language on this day.”
She stared at me, Her face was lined and the lines had lines. I couldn’t imagine when she had been a young woman conceiving and bearing these sons.
“Mrs. Smith.”
“Mr. Maitland, why are you here?”
“I came to express my condolences for your loss, Mrs. Smith.”
“You goddamned hypocrite. You got him killed and you have the balls to come here and-“
“Edward, show some respect for your brother. Mr. Maitland, you could have sent a card. Why did you feel it necessary to show up in person? You have to know that my sons are very upset. Shawn was my baby, our baby, and they helped raise him after my husband died when he was just a toddler.”
“I’m very sorry to intrude on your personal grief, Mrs. Smith. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry it turned out this way. I never intended for it to end like this. I knew that Shawn might, probably would, have to serve some prison time, but people go in and come out all the time. He could have built a new life, a different life, and he had a lot of friends. He could have come back.”
The brother who hadn’t spoken, Cyrus, had joined us.
“As what? A crooked cop who shot a man in the back and killed him? How do you come back from that? I tried to talk sense to him, but he thought it was the end of everything. When he lost Melanie, it was like the heart went out of him. I knew he was going to do something crazy, but he wouldn’t have, and he wouldn’t have lost Melanie, if you hadn’t kept hounding him.”
“I thought he had murdered a man, maybe in passion, but it was still murder, and I couldn’t walk away.”
“It’s done now. It’s over, Mr. Maitland. We’ll bury my son and go on with our lives. I appreciate your having the decency to come here and talk to me.”
Eddie Smith said, “We’ll go on with our lives as the family of the killer cop who murdered three men and then shot down two of his fellow cops before they shot him down like a mad dog. That’s what we’ll go on with and what we’ll have to tell his nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews when they come along. That’s what we’ll tell them about my baby brother.”
I shook my head and reached out to take his mother’s hand. She stiffened, but didn’t pull away.


“No, tell them that your baby brother, your son, Mrs. Smith, was a good and a brave cop. He saved lives and shot down bad guys. He earned commendations. He was liked and respected by the men he served with. He served the public for ten years. He never had a blemish on his record, but then he fell in love. Love makes people do strange things. He made a mistake and it cost him his life, but the way he died doesn’t change the way he lived his life. Maybe the public will always look at him as the Killer Cop, but you can tell his nieces and nephews that he was a good cop and a good man, and there are records to prove it.”
As I walked back to my Escalade I knew they’d probably never forgive me for the part I had played in Shawn’s death. But they hadn’t committed Shawn’s crimes. They just had to pay for them for the rest of their lives. I hoped my words would help them, even a little bit, to remember the good that Shawn Smith had done in his short life.
I felt tired as hell - maybe it was finally all over. However I didn’t know as I drove away from Smith’s family that James would die in the hospital within 36 hours. I’d have one more funeral to attend before I could start trying to forget about Shawn Smith. I also knew that, try as I might, I never would.
The gunfire in the FOP hall had only taken seconds, but the ripples of those seconds would change lives for years to come. The sad thing is that I had learned over the past ten plus years that that’s the way it always is. Episodes of violence never ever end nice and neat, maybe because life isn’t that way.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

OCTOBER 5, 2005 -- WEDNESDAY - 3 P.M.

She had thought she was too late. By the time she had found parking at Jacksonville International Airport, made her way to the departure terminal and found the ticket counter for United, it was already 3 p.m. She knew that Clint was flying out on a 5:30 flight and he’d said he had to be at the airport by 3 at the latest to make that flight.
She looked around trying to make out his slender frame topped by dark hair streaked with gray, but there were so many people. This was a silly, foolish thing to be doing, but even though they’d said goodbye the night he told her about his African adventure, she felt like there was too much unsaid.
He found her. She turned around and he was standing there, two suitcases at his feet.
“You’re really trying to make it hard for me to leave, aren’t you?”
She was in his arms and kissing him as hard as she could. She heard laughter and even a little applause from passengers streaming around them. Finally they separated and she saw that his shirt was wet with her tears. He looked at her strangely and she realized his eyes were misting.


“Why are you doing this, Debbie? I know you don’t love me. I’m your friend but I never thought or said I was anything more. Have I been misreading the signals all this time?”
She took his hand and said, “Can we talk? Do you have a few minutes?”
He looked around, then said, “probably a few minutes. Let’s find someplace to sit down and have a coffee, but I can’t take too long.”
They found a Starbucks and he ordered while she sat at the one free table in the place. In a few minutes he came over with their Cappuccinos and said, “Somehow this feels like Déjà Vu all over again.”
She drank, to have something to do with her hands and to avoid having to look at him directly.
“I’m glad you came, Debbie. I’m glad I had a chance to say goodbye, but what’s going on? What the hell was that kiss all about?”
She finally made herself look up at him. He was just Clint. That made her feel so damned good, yet terrified her at the same time.
“I know...”
She took a breath.
“I know that you said you didn’t love me. You’ve never made a secret of that and I never said I loved you. We’re friends with benefits, but I love you like a friend. You don’t know how important you’ve become in my life. No matter how shitty I’ve felt, no matter how guilty I’ve felt, no matter how bad I’ve felt, you’ve been there for me.”
He grinned that familiar grin and made a casual gesture toward her body and said, “Okay, Deb, but it hasn’t been hardship duty. There’s a world full of guys that would have killed for the pleasure of consoling you. As the old saying, goes, it’s a rough job, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
“I know, Clint, but all I gave you was sex and you could have gotten that a lot of places. You helped me keep my head on,”
He reached out and took her hand.
“You value yourself too lightly, Deb. You remember what I said. There are guys who would die for your smile - not your body, not sex with you, but your smile. If I could have loved anybody, if I could ever have got my head on straight and got over my wife, I could have seen myself with you. The thing is, by the time I got there, you’ll be back with Bill. The timing was never right for us.”
“Why do you say that? Why won’t you believe me when I tell you Bill and I will never get back together, ever?”
He smiled and ran a finger along the side of her face.
“You’ll never know, unfortunately, what it’s like for a guy just to look at you. You can’t think like a man, so you’ll never know how we look at female beauty.


Trust me, you’re a very rare treasure. Why I’m so sure you’ll be back with Bill? Because you still love him, because you get a look on your face when his name is mentioned, because you get so damned angry when his name is mentioned. You don’t get angry like that at people you’ve left behind.”
“I’m not going back because I don’t want to. Our marriage died a slow, painful death and I won’t go back to that but, even - even - if I wanted to, he would never take me back. I can’t tell you why, but he won’t. He’s moved on.”
“I won’t say writers are psychics, but we do have a pretty good grasp of human emotions, and I’m pretty good at reading people as an old newspaper reporter and writer. He was in love with you that night that I met him at your place. It was written all over him.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

She sipped at her drink and said, without looking up at him, “Maybe, but you didn’t see him the night that we met him and Aline at his condo. Maybe he did love me, and I was egotistical enough to think he always would, but he’s in love with her now.”

“He wouldn’t be the first man, or woman, to be in love with two people at the same time.”
She turned her attention back to her drink. After a moment, she said, “Even if you don’t love me, I know you love making love to me. If you think what we had was hot, stay with me, don’t get on that damned plane, and I’ll drain you so dry you’ll need IVs every night. We’ll try every position in the Kama Sutra and come up with a few new ones of our own.”
He just smiled at her.
“I don’t think any woman, any person, has ever paid me that great a compliment, Deb. If it was just the sex, shit, I’d stay. If I didn’t know you were in love with another man, I’d think seriously about winning you for myself. I have no idea what it would feel like seeing that look in your eyes for me that you have when you hear his name. I have a feeling it would be wonderful, but...”

“But...?”

“I don’t know how to explain it and I wish I could. I just feel like this is something I need to do - something I have to do. It’s just like when I had to write that first novel, and it changed my life. I don’t know what I’ll find in Africa, but I feel like I can’t live the rest of my life not knowing what I’ve missed.”
Then she was crying again and hating it.
“I don’t know why I can’t make you understand, Clint. I have this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that when you walk away to the boarding area, that will be the last time I ever see you. I don’t think you’re coming back. I think you’re going to die over there and that thought. devastates me.
“Bill - Bill is never coming back. Doug is gone and I won’t see him again, and you’ve getting ready to leave me. My husband, my lover, my friend. It feels


like I’m losing everything.”
He moved around to put his arms around her.
“It might feel that way, but you’re not. You’ve got your kids, a good job, friends and your ex working in the same building. He’s alive and I will come back. Your feminine intuition has been wrong before.”
He put his arms down and reached into his wallet. Not looking at her, he took a crumpled check out and put it on the table. He motioned to it and she picked it up. It was a check for $10,000 -- made out to her. Beside it he put a folded piece of white copy paper.

“What?”

He deliberately looked down at the table rather than meeting her eyes. “I—uh...I need to ask you for a favor, Deb, a big favor and I don’t want you

to get upset when I tell you what it is, okay?”

“What kind of favor?” But even as she was asking the question she remembered their late night conversation and knew what it was.

“I plan on coming back but, nothing in life is certain, and if I don’t...” He took a last sip of his Cappuccino.

“I was going to mail this to you with a note from London, where we’ll stop before heading for Africa. It’s fate that you showed up here.”
He pointed to the check and paper.
“I would like you to cash and deposit this into your account and hold it. If I don’t come back, this will pay for a pretty good sized marble monument. I want you to have it put up on her grave. It’s in Palatka Memorial Gardens cemetery. There’s just a little marker there now. I....after she died I wasn’t.....real happy with her and I didn’t put anything but the bare minimum at her grave site.”
He reached back into the wallet and pulled out an old and frayed color photograph. It had been sealed in plastic so it had stood up pretty well to the ravages of time. The woman, who had long, black straight hair down to her waist, sat in the bend of a huge tree trunk on a lushly manicured lawn with a large building that had to be a courthouse behind her.
She wore a green blouse over a dark green short skirt that rode up on her thighs as she sat forward, smiling at whoever had taken the photo.
“I’ve carried it for 25 years,” he said, biting his lip, “It’s the last picture I have of her—when she still loved me.”
He ran his thumb over the picture.
“You can see how beautiful she was. Too beautiful to die as young as she did.
She was only 24 - only 24.”
He stared at it and Debbie felt that he had gone somewhere where only two people existed.
He took a deep breath.


“I should have done this a long time ago. She uh.  she was an only child and
her parents are gone now. My parents died a few years ago and my brother never really knew her. He lives up in Canada. All our friends are long gone, scattered to the four winds.”
He looked up and met Debbie’s eyes. She wondered if any man would ever again look at her the way he looked at the faded photo on the table.
“She was so beautiful. Before it all fell apart, she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. But I’m....the only one left alive who knows how beautiful she was, how wonderful she was. If something happens to me. ”
He took her hand.
“It’s not right that she should be forgotten like that. If we had had children, there would be somebody to mourn her, somebody to bring flowers, to keep her memory alive. It’s not much, but all I can do is put up a memorial, a granite marker, to tell people who pass by that somebody special lived and is buried there.
“I want you to have her name—Margaret Elise Abbott—put on the marker, and the dates January 3, 1956 and November 7, 1980, and these words—‘Here Lies A Most Beautiful Lady.’ The $10,000 should more than cover the expenses.”

“No.”

She tried to pull back but he held her hand.

“I don’t expect you’ll have to. I expect to come back and I want to do it myself. I want to say goodbye to her properly but, I couldn’t stand the thought of dying and letting her be forgotten. I don’t want you to do anything until you know I’m not coming back. Do this for me, Debbie. Be my friend. “
She closed her eyes and felt him release her hand. He slipped the check under her palm. He kissed her cheek and stood. When she opened her eyes he and the photo of the love of his life were gone.
 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 14: THE CLEAN UP CREW—SECRETS


Everyone has secrets.
When I was 12 years old a friend and I discovered a treasure trove of Juggs, Flings, Gents, Playboys and Penthouses buried in a cardboard box in a shed in their back yard otherwise stacked with old newspapers, Life and Parade and Readers Digest magazines.
We did the usual 12-year-old things. I already knew about jerking off.
There were no dirty magazines around, my mother being a protective single mom and there were no men around on a regular basis except for a guy who worked at a drugstore on 103rd Street not too far from our Westside home and on most Fridays would take her out to a seafood restaurant for shrimp while a 17-year-old high college senior would let me watch TV while she talked with her boyfriend.
But we did have JC Penney's catalogs and some of those bra illustrations were pretty hot for a 12-year-old. And, of course there were pictures and magazines that guys at college would pass around.
But I’d never seen anything like Juggs. Fling and Gent were incredible, but Juggs was…I fell instantly in love. Beautiful girls and older women with incredible, huge breasts topped by aureole as big as dinner plates, distended nipples surrounded by visible milk ducts in those women whom I later learned must have had children and breast-fed before their modeling shots were taken.
For awhile I thought I was going to hurt my penis. I spent every spare minute I could get away from my mother, when she was working or out of the house for any reason, frantically jerking, cumming on my hand or into toilet paper, staring at pictures of beautiful women with huge breasts in the two dozen magazines my friend had sold me.
She must have noticed something. Probably the way I couldn’t look her in the eye when she’d come in from work or we’d be sitting in the living room watching television.
It wasn’t just that I realized that she was a woman and that she had breasts like the ones I fantasized over, underneath her blouses. Or that I noticed when she brought in plain white bras and panties in a basket from the line out back of our Westside home. Noticed in a way I never had before.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want her looking at me. Because I knew if she looked for more than an instant she would see it on me, on my face.
I felt that something important and terrible had changed inside me. Before she had just been mom. Now she was a set of breasts swinging freely under her


blouse, her behind visible under her dress.
She was in some way naked to me now, the same way Mrs. Baker at college had been transformed, the way my friend Eddie’s mother had become a tormenting nymph as she worked outside in shorts and a t-shirt with no bra.
If I could have gone back to the day we had discovered that trove of men’s magazines, if I could have erased it from my mind, even if I lost the incredible pleasure of the moment of spurting, I would have.
Because I didn’t want to carry around the secret that burned in my mind now.
And then of course there was the day when she walked into my bedroom home earlier from work than I’d expected. I couldn’t’ speak and she didn’t say a word. Just stared at me with an expression I’d never seen on her face before. Then turned and walked out without a word.
I stayed in my room for hours. Other than pulling my pants up and cleaning off my sticky dick, and hiding my Juggs magazines, I didn’t move. I couldn’t think. It seemed that time had come to a stop, the world had ended. I could never leave that room again. Could never face her without seeing that expression again.
She knocked on my door.

“Dinner’s ready, Billy. Wash up and come out.” A half hour later she knocked again.

Finally an hour later the knob turned and she stepped inside.

I couldn’t look at her. I was sitting up on my bed, studying a Fantastic Four comic with single minded intensity.
“Billy…..Billy….look at me.”
I raised my eyes from Mr. Fantastic and The Thing and found her gaze focused on me like a laser.
I felt like scrubbing my eyeballs with steel wool. She was a beautiful woman.
My mother was a beautiful woman.
“Billy, I know you’re embarrassed. I am too. But…you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s….natural…at your age. I just wasn’t expecting it. If your father was here…”

She took a deep breath and I noticed the way her breasts rose and fell. “But he isn’t.”

I went back to studying the The Fantastic Four.

She was standing beside me and pulled the comic from my hands. “Billy, look at me.”

I did.

She sat down beside me.

“Your father would do this better, but I’ll do the best I can. You weren’t doing anything wrong. Boys do that. Your father…told me he used to do it…a lot. It’s something you outgrow – mostly.”


She stood up.
“I know you’re embarrassed now. But that will pass. If you ever want to talk about it…I’ll tell Brian and he will talk to you. He’s a guy. You can talk to him the way you can’t talk to me. Okay?”
We didn’t talk for awhile. But eventually it got better. And to this day I think, and hope, that she thought I was embarrassed because she walked in on me masturbating. But that is one secret that will go down into the grave with me. Nobody knows what was really bothering me.
Everyone has secrets.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

OCTOBER 5, 2005 -- WEDNESDAY - 4:30 P.M.


I had returned from James’ funeral and was diving back into the accumulated paperwork that had piled up over a week. I make it a habit just to glance at arrest reports, to see if anybody interesting might have entered the system. I almost overlooked it, but something caught my attention and then I realized the name I was looking at.
I rang the Lieutenant in charge at the jail and asked him about the prisoner who’d been brought in Monday and had sat in the jail for the past two days.
“The charge is aggravated battery and attempted murder but there’s no bond.

Why?”

“He was going to go before a judge Tuesday morning,” Lieutenant “Red” Butler said with his Arkansas Hillbilly Twang that 20 years out of the Ozarks had never eroded.
“He nearly killed a woman, tried to strangle her, but he didn’t finish the job. He scared the hell out of her and she filed an order to keep him the hell away from her regardless of the charges the arresting officer filed. However, before he could go in front of the judge, the son of a bitch nearly killed two inmates in the general holding cell where we were keeping him. He also sent one of my guys to University with a dislocated shoulder when he tried to get in the middle of it.”
“What happened? Why weren’t more charges filed against him?”
“Two of our alleged tough guy thugs moved in on him Monday night. Before it was over, he’d crippled one guy—smashed his knee up, broke his arm and collarbone - and beat the other guy so badly that he’s in the hospital in a coma. Harrington, Bob Harrington, was on shift duty and came in to try to save the guy. The ‘victim’ did something that nearly tore Harrington’s shoulder out of its socket.”
“Why the hell no charges?”
“Cameras caught the whole thing. He was defending himself. The two guys in the hospital started it all and he—uh—he tore them up before anybody could do anything to stop him. When he realized that Harrington was a jail officer, he


backed off. He even helped pop his shoulder back in its socket before the other officers could get in there.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Cameras don’t lie. We have audio as well. One of your guys told us we’d be lucky if he didn’t wind up suing us and making a bundle off the city for not protecting him better than we did.”
“Where is he now, and has he seen a judge?”
“No, we couldn’t charge him, but in light of everything that happened, and the fact the woman he nearly killed is terrified and begging us to keep him behind bars, we managed to put off a court appearance for a few days. That gives us a chance to figure out what the hell is going on and maybe let this guy cool down. We’re keeping him in a solitary holding cell. It’s not safe to leave him in the general population.”
“I’m coming down, Red. I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Don’t tell him I’m coming.”
“To what do we owe this honor? You don’t usually come down for a face to face with anybody.”
“It’s personal.”
Butler himself was waiting at the entrance to the maze of halls and walkways that make up the jail when I got down there. They buzzed me in through the admitting door and he led the way. It took 10 minutes to reach one of the few individual cells we kept for dangerous visitors or those who were in danger themselves in the general population.
There was a hallway about four feet across, bars and a room with only enough space for a cot, a sink and an overhead television. A dark haired man lay on the cot, his arms folded under his head, staring at the television which was broadcasting soap operas at that time of day.
Butler stood beside me and he noticed that I didn’t get close to the bars, or close enough so that the man lying relaxed on the cot could get to me before I could move back.
“I guess you do know the guy,” he said. “Paul. Paul Donnally.”
After a moment, Donnally turned his head toward me and glanced at both of us. Butler he didn’t recognize, but I could tell he remembered me. I looked for what I’d seen in his eyes the day I’d fought Doug at UNF, but they were simply blank. He turned his head back away from me to stare at the ceiling.
I told Butler to get me a chair and when it came I sat down across from Donnally.
‘Mr. Donnally, I need to talk to you. Could you give me a few minutes of your time?”


He was silent for an unnerving amount of time, then sat up on his cot so quickly I almost leaned back away from him.
“I guess I’ve got the time, Mr. Maitland, but what brings a man of your stature down to talk to a simple wife beater?”
“Not beaten, the hospital records said she might have permanent damage to her vocal cords. You strangled her so severely you actually broke a number of blood vessels in her throat. They say it’s a miracle she didn’t die there, choke to death on her own blood. That was your wife, your wife of nearly 20 years. Why did you try to kill her?”
He looked at the floor as though studying the tile pattern, then said, “I didn’t try to kill her. If I had, she’d be dead.”
“You came very close.”
“I just lost it for a minute but I didn’t want to kill her.”

He could have been discussing the weather, or the last Jaguars game. “You know that you’re a very dangerous man, don’t you?”

He shook his head.

“We’re all dangerous.”

“You nearly kill your wife. You send two big bruisers to the hospital, one with life threatening injuries. You nearly tear a jail officer’s shoulder off. That makes you more dangerous than most. That makes me wonder if I should do anything I can to keep you off the streets and away from other people you could hurt.”
He looked at me for a moment, dropped his eyes and then looked back at me and I almost jumped out of my skin. Whatever it was that he was hiding flashed across his eyes for a moment.
“I guess you’re probably right, Mr. Maitland. I probably shouldn’t be let out of here. I’ll make it easy on you. I’ll plead guilty to aggravated battery and attempted murder. That should put me away for a while.”
I just stared at him for a moment. I wondered what was going on behind those blank screens of eyes. I still had the certainty in my gut that he was a very dangerous man, but I just didn’t get the vibes that he was a bad man, and yet he had nearly murdered his wife. Forget the two thugs, they’d deserved whatever they got, but he had nearly strangled the mother of his two college age children.
“Do you want to talk?” “No.”
“Would you mind - are you going to raise legal hell with us if we keep you here a few more days investigating what happened - before you go in front of a judge? You could get out quicker if you ask to see the judge.”
He shook his head again.
“No, I’m fine here. It’s good for thinking, no distractions.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“I’ll be back, Paul. Is it okay if I call you Paul?”

“Why not? It’s my name. You mind if I call you Mr. Maitland?”
I shook my head. How the hell could I like the guy, and not want to be in the same cell with him?
I stood to leave. He looked at me again and I didn’t see the darkness in him.
“You ever think, Mr. Maitland, how we wound up like this? Me in here with a wife I love more than life itself and want to strangle until her heart stops, and you out there with a wife that you gave your life to, and she threw you away. How do things like that happen?”
“I wish I knew, Paul. I really wish I knew.”
I was walking across the street and back to the courthouse when I saw Debbie walking in from the Bay Street entrance. She carried the briefcase she’d started using since she’d started with the Public Defender’s Office and as always she looked good. She also looked like she’d lost her last friend and it was plain she’d been crying.
I kicked myself, but there was always the possibility that something was wrong with the kids. I knew that’s what I told myself but I knew it just kept her thinking that I still cared about her and, of course, I didn’t - I really didn’t!
I cut her off and it was an indication of how deep in her thoughts she was that she didn’t see me until I was standing directly in front of her. She had to stop abruptly.
“Bill. I didn’t-“
“Is everything okay, Deb? The kids alright?”
“The kids? Yeah - they’re both fine, I think. Haven’t talked to Kelly in a couple of days. BJ’s back in college and seems to be doing okay, if I can stay on him to do his homework.”

“Then?”

“Clint...just flew out of JIA.”

I couldn’t help feeling a little twinge of, something, but I had liked the guy. “I’m - sorry, Deb, I know you liked the guy. Is he coming back soon, or at

all?”

She clouded over and I knew I’d said exactly the wrong thing. “Why are all men such stupid macho idiots?”

“To give women something to work with?”

She looked at the big clock on the wall of the entrance to the courthouse and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to check in with Johnny. You’re looking good, Bill. That head wound cleared up nicely.”
Then she walked away. Something felt odd about that encounter and then I realized she hadn’t been the one pushing for us to talk. She must have really


developed feelings for the guy and, again, I didn’t know quite how that made me feel.
When I got back to my office there was a blonde guy in the waiting area who looked vaguely familiar, although I wasn’t sure where I knew him from. Cheryl said, “This is Mr. Tucker, Mr. Maitland. Do you have a moment?”
I headed into my office and told her to send him in.

He folded his long, lanky frame—he had to be about six foot three or four—into the chair opposite me and said, “It’s Gil Tucker; we met on the Bonne Chance. I could see you trying to place me. Remember, at the Captain’s Dinner.”

I remembered. I was surprised that Ms. Stein hadn’t eaten him alive but he looked none the worse for wear.
“Yeah, it’s good to see you again. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to talk to you about Paul Donnally and see if I can get permission to see him. The officer on duty down there said he was being kept away from the general population and not receiving visitors.”
“How do you know Donnally?”

“We used to be next door neighbors, for years, and I’m his best friend.” “What kind of guy is he? Did you have any idea he was going to try to

strangle his wife?”

“No. Not that she didn’t deserve it. Actually, that’s kind of strong but, anyway, Paul is the last person on earth anyone would ever expect to do ANYTHING violent. It’s not in his nature, or it wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get really angry in all the years I’ve known him—until recently.”
“What happened?”
“Too long to go into. She’s been cheating on him for years and he was blind. She’s the...the kind of woman...I’ll tell you the kind of woman she is. Paul is my best friend. He pulled me out of Hell when my own marriage fell apart. Even knowing what she’s done to him, if she showed up at my apartment at 3 a.m., I don’t know that I wouldn’t do her. That’s the kind of woman she is.
“Anyway, he found out what she was up to, the kind of woman she really is, in the worst possible way. I had to scbang up what was left and try to put him back together again. He might have been able to walk away, but the bitch wouldn’t let him alone. He tried to avoid her but....and when he met her  he
snapped. That’s all I can figure. I still don’t understand it.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “I need to talk to him. I can get him the best defense attorneys around. I have a little money, actually, a lot. I worked for Bell Labs and I have a few patents. I’d like to get him out of the jail.”
“He doesn’t want to get out. I was just down there and he’s in a single cell for the safety of everybody else down there. He put two inmates into the hospital and nearly put one of the jail officers out.”

“Paul? Paul did that?”

“There’s things about the man you obviously don’t know.”

“Obviously. It’s like finding out that the world is flat. But I’d still like to see him.”

“Sure, I’ll call down and let them know to let you in. Do I need to remind you not to bring in any files or hacksaws?”

He smiled back.

“Attorneys are much more effective.”

As he stood to walk out, he looked back at me and said, “He’s not the kind of man you think he is, Maitland, he really isn’t, no matter what it looks like.”

I watched him as he went out the door, thinking that everybody deserved one friend like Gil Tucker, or Lew Walters.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

OCTOBER 6, 2005 -- THURSDAY - 6:30 P.M.


I was in my Escalade heading for Baymeadows, where the woman with the biggest, or at least the sexiest, tits in the world was waiting to go out to dinner with me when my cell rang. I saw that it was an SA number.
“What is it, Mitch? DO NOT SAY an emergency has come up.” “An emergency has come up.”
“I told you not to say that. What is it?”
“We’ve got a lady here who apparently is a cousin of Wilbur Bell. She’s doing her damnedest to talk old Wilbur out of testifying against Sutton. I’ve got the room bugged so I could hear what was going on and she’s telling him he’s wasting his time because they’ll never convict Sutton. Also, Wilbur’s daughter might ‘come into some money’ if Wilbur conveniently develops amnesia about the whole thing.”
“That asshole and his mother never quit. Let me get over there and see if I can convince the cousin to roll over on Sutton and momma. It would be nice to put them away for jury tampering even if we never get him on murder charges. Get her out of there but don’t let her get away. Wilbur is too far gone to even let him be disturbed by shit like this. Sutton will get the same benefit if she precipitates a heart attack and kills him off.”
It was a gamble because we couldn’t use the information obtained by the bug if the cousin turned stubborn on us and refused to admit she was trying to tamper with a witness. However, it gave us a shot, and that made it worthwhile to leave the biggest tits in the western hemisphere unexamined for another few days.
I punched in Myra’s number.
“Hello, Bill. Please tell me this is to confirm that you’re on your way over here. I got dressed up and this one has buttons strong enough to hold me in but it’s low cut enough to be. interesting.”


“I wish, Myra. Something has come up. I’ve got to go. It’s important or I’d be over there in 30 minutes. Is there any chance that, maybe, we could get together for drinks later tonight?”
“Tomorrow’s a work day Bill, you know that, and some of us need our beauty sleep. Besides, you show up on my doorstep at 11 p.m., we get to drinking and we’re liable to do something we’ll regret.”
“You might, I won’t.”
“I don’t think so. Besides, it’s not like you’re dying for - relief, is it?” “That means.  ?”
“A little birdie told me that Celestial Madonna was grinning ear to ear when you left her in New York this past weekend, and it wasn’t just because you give good interview, was it?”
“Myra, you think I’d mix business and pleasure?” “I think you’re a man.”
“It was an interesting weekend.”
“You’d have had more fun with me, but that’s too catty. I’m glad you had a good time. Let’s try to reschedule.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow or come up and see you. I don’t know about this weekend, but we will get together.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Right now I guess I’ll get out of these clothes, lay down naked on my satin sheets and rub lotion where I need it. Bye.”
I ALMOST kept going to her apartment, but the ghost of my father whispered in my ear and I did the right thing. I drove to Baptist Medical Center, made sure Wilbur was still breathing, spent a frustrating hour trying to threaten or cajole the cousin into rolling over on the Suttons but finally gave up. She was either too stubborn, too stupid or too greedy to be rollable, but I made sure the nurses and staff knew this lady was never to be allowed in or anywhere near Sutton’s room again.
Then I went home and for the first time in a long time jerked off to a porno about a huge breasted nympho on one of the better computer porn sites. It helped
—a little bit.

OCTOBER 7, 2005 -- FRIDAY - 9 A.M.

I stood up in front of Judge Larry Martin, a young black judge only a few years older than myself, and watched Paul Donnally being walked by bailiffs to the defendant’s table from the area where prisoners were kept before they were called. Johnny August stood at the table waiting for him. That alone was enough to raise a stir among the knowledgeable courthouse watchers. The Public Defender never appeared on first hearings before a judge. The newest and lowliest of the low did this scut work, but not today.


Before Donnally had even gotten into place, August turned his nearly sightless eyes toward me, then looked back at the judge and said, “Your honor, I want to formally protest the action of Assistant State Attorney William Maitland. The bond he is requesting is an affront to decency,”
Martin looked at me and asked, “Mr. Maitland, do you have anything you want to say about this matter. Not that I have any doubt that you do.”
Before I could answer, August in his best tone of feigned outrage, interrupted, “Your honor, how can there be any justification for a million dollar CASH bond in a case that—at worst—might involve attempted first degree murder and will likely be pled down to a much less severe offense. Serial killers and terrorists don’t face million dollar CASH bonds. It is unheard of, unless Mr. Maitland thinks we’re dealing with a multi-millionaire cold blooded murderer who will run to a country without an extradition treaty as soon as he walks out of here. My client is a public relations professional at a local university, a white collar worker of limited financial means, who has never been guilty of even a traffic infraction, much less a serious crime. I am more of a flight risk than Mr. Donnally.”
Martin let August make his spiel, then directed his attention back to me.
“I’ll grant that a million dollar cash bond is unusual, your honor, but I do think it’s justified in this case. First, the defendant is charged with attempting to murder his wife by crushing her throat with his bare hands and almost succeeding. His wife sent a letter to my office begging us to keep her husband in custody because of her very real fear that the next time he sees her, he will complete the job. She has hired private security preparing for the possibility that he might make bond.
“Secondly, while in custody, he became involved in a disturbance with fellow inmates that left one in a coma and the other with serious injuries, both of whom are still being treated at University Medical Center. In the same incident he ripped a jail officer’s arm literally out of its socket. He attempted to aid the officer afterwards and it appears the officer might not suffer permanent damage.
“To sum up, while in custody and being overseen he did serious bodily damage to three grown, good-sized men, with his bare hands. I leave it to your imagination what he might do to a five-foot-four, 120 pound woman with those same bare hands. Also, we are dealing with a domestic situation here. You and I are both aware that some of the most heinous violence we see comes in exactly such situations. Finally, the bond is appropriate because Mr. Donnally has requested and agreed to such a bond.”
August must have been warned because he quickly said, “It’s clear, your honor, that Mr. Donnally is under severe emotional pressure and quite honestly feels so guilty about the attack on his wife that he feels being kept in custody is


an appropriate punishment for what he’s done. Nonetheless, bond is not our system’s way of punishing people for what they’ve done. Mr. Donnally has friends and family who will stay with him and monitor his behavior to avoid any recurrence of such an incident.”
“Ask Mr. Donnally,” I told Martin. “Ask him what he thinks.”
Martin looked at Donnally, in handcuffs and leg chains unlike any other inmate brought over from the jail. Both his bailiffs were carrying security officer-issue Tasers as well.
“Mr. Donnally, is what Mr. Maitland says true? You asked for and agreed to a million dollar cash bond?”
“Yes, your honor?” “Why?”
“I asked for a high cash bond so I couldn’t be bonded out. My wife and I, are having serious problems and she will not leave me alone. I am afraid that, if I wind up in close proximity to her again, I will kill her, and we have two children. I’m doing this to protect her until it’s safe for me to be free again.”
“You realize, Mr. Donnally, that we are not running a free hotel and recovery unit in our jail? It wasn’t designed to give individuals such as yourself a place to get your emotions under control before venturing out again.”
“We are, as are his friends, in the process of obtaining psychiatric counseling for Mr. Donnally,” I told Martin, “The state has no intention of turning the Duval County Jail into a recovery facility. This is a short term strategy to prevent a tragedy, your honor. No one will be served if Mrs. Donnally is murdered, her husband becomes a murderer, and their children are deprived of their parents. We merely ask that you let this bond remain in place for a relatively short period of time.”
“The state might have the best of intentions, your honor, but this is not the proper way to go about it,” August said.
Martin thought about it for a half minute, then said, “I tend to agree, but in the interests of public safety and with the understanding that this will be brought back before the court shortly to be changed, I’ll set the bond at this time.”