Thursday, January 31, 2019
Don Travis: The Dancer (Part 3 of 3 Parts)
Don Travis: The Dancer (Part 3 of 3 Parts): dontravis.com blog post #322 Courtesy of Wikipedia TO MY READERS : The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I h...
The Dancer (Part 3 of 3 Parts)
dontravis.com
blog post #322
 |
| Courtesy of Wikipedia |
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I
have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the
corrective suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments
directly to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
Last week, Rob got the seemingly homophobic Carlos to try
out the sauna in Rob’s apartment house. After a relaxing shower and a brew,
they fell asleep in chairs. Rob roused his guest and put him to bed in a guest
room. What in the world happens next?
*****
THE DANCER
We ate a good breakfast before
Carlos left he next morning. He worked half-day shifts on Saturdays and Mondays.
I casually suggested I was free that evening, but Carlos had other plans. However,
he agreed to try the sauna again Monday.
When Carlos arrived straight
from work Monday afternoon, we ate a shrimp salad for lunch and hit the sauna. He
talked about his job as if I knew the people there. I liked that; he was
involving me in his life. He confided that he wanted to go into the silk-screening
business for himself in his own neighborhood someday. Things were pleasant
until I got careless. He caught me staring at something I had no business
examining with such interest. He faltered for a second but resumed telling me
about his future plans. Our relationship would have survived that had it not
been for what happened at the apartment later. I took a shower and toweled off
in my bedroom. Carlos’ presence in the next room and the sexy flamenco dancer on
the wall were too much. I got aroused.
“Amigo, what say we…” The voice from the open doorway died. Carlos’
eyes went from my rampant member to the framed poster, and then back to me. “Uh,
think I made a mistake. Better go,” he said abruptly.
I trailed him into the living room
as I struggled into my damp robe. “Carlos, don’t get the wrong idea. Please
don’t…” The door slammed on my protest.
The week dragged by. There was
no listing for Carlos in the phone book or with the operator. When I dialed him
at work, he wouldn’t take the call. On Monday, I hit the Turkish bath. He did
not show. Friday afternoon, I hung around outside his workplace at quitting
time. There was no sign of him. Saturday evening the phone rang.
“Meet me at the diner. Fifteen
minutes,” he said abruptly and hung up.
Carlos was already seated at a
booth when I arrived. With his mouth fixed in a firm line, his eyes bored holes
in me as I walked toward him. He spoke as soon as I sat.
“Tell me straight out. Are you
a maricón…a queer?”
I met his stare. “Let me tell
you a story, and you tell me what I am.” He did not say a word as I related my
sexual history, including what finished off my marriage. He stared at me in
silence for a full minute after I finished.
“You never did it with a guy
before that? Or after?” I shook my head. “Did you follow me into the steam room
to get to me?”
I equivocated. “I followed you
because I wanted to get to know you.”
“But you didn’t want me?”
“I didn’t say that. I put it
aside when I knew how you felt about…it.”
“Do you want me? Yes or no?”
“Yes. But I’d rather have a
friendship, Carlos.”
“How’m I supposed to be friends
with a guy who wants to queer me?”
“I hoped you could separate
the two things. I can.”
“Yeah, well… I can’t.”
“Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Yeah. You do that. Don’t call
me at work anymore.” He started to get up, then hesitated. “That picture. You
get it before you met me or after?”
“Before. That’s why you caught
my eye that day. I halfway thought you were the dancer.”
“Sick!” he said as he
departed.
I’d handled my divorce easier
than losing a budding friendship with that young man. I did the only thing I
knew, worked hard at a new project. A month struggled by. One Saturday
afternoon the buzzer sounded. “Yes?”
“Can I come up?”
My heart leapt into my throat.
“Sure.”
Carlos looked so handsome
standing at the door that I couldn’t speak and had to invite him inside with a
sweep of my hand. He wore black jeans, a black shirt with pink trim, and boots.
“How you been?” he asked as he
brushed by me.
“Making it,” I replied and
ventured to add. “Missed you.”
“Me, too,” he mumbled as he
walked into the den and stood looking at the river. Suddenly, he turned around.
“This is stupid. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I’m glad you did. That tells
me something.”
His voice caught in his throat
as he spoke. “What does it tell you?”
“It tells me that despite what
you say, you’re interested. You can deny it if you want, but you’re curious.”
“Curious about what?” he
demanded.
“About what it would be like
between you and me.”
His face darkened. “You think
I’m queer?”
I shook my head. “No, but I
think you want to know how it would be.”
“Hell, I coulda done that
anytime down at the baths. I had to fight them off.”
“Not what you were looking
for.”
“Looking for?” His voice rose
dangerously.
“Why did you keep coming back?”
“For the steam. Why else?”
“Because—whether you realized
it or not—you were looking for someone. Not someone you’d consider as a fairy.
Ordinary guy.”
“For what?”
“To experiment with.” I
screwed up my courage and blundered on. “And you found him. But you don’t know
what to do next.”
Carlos swallowed hard. “You so
all fired smart, tell me. Tell me what to do next.”
“Say it’s okay for me to touch
you.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed a
couple of times, but no words came out of his mouth. Finally, he nodded.
As he stood in the middle of
my apartment, I moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Slowly, so as not
to startle him, I caressed his smooth cheek, fingered his pouty lips, and
explored his hard pecs. Shifting around behind him, I pulled him against me and grew bolder.
I experienced the hum of his body and an occasional quiver as I moved my hands
over him and hoped it was from passion, not fear. I covered him with the flat
of my hand and felt him react.
“I knew you were peligroso when you first came into the
steam room,” he growled deep in his throat. “More dangerous than all the
others. Don’t know why I didn’t chase you out.”
With those words, I knew things
would be all right.
Later, as he slept beside me
in my bed, I relived the marvelous previous hour. I’d had one of those “earth
shattering” experiences people always nattered about. And it had been real… at
least for me. I didn’t know what would happen next. In all probability we’d share
one another again, perhaps even for a while. But I had no illusions this was a
permanent thing. I would take all of him he allowed and learn to be satisfied
with that. In the meantime, enjoy.
Before sleep claimed me, I glanced
through the gloom to the poster on my wall, startled anew by the uncanny
resemblance to my Carlos… my dancer.
*****
And
there you have it. Consummation! Nirvana. Heaven on earth. But even as he basks
in the glow of such ecstasy, Rob wonders how long it will last. That’s a question
for you, dear reader. Is this a passing in the night or the beginning of a long relationship? Let me know what you think.
Abaddon’s Locusts,
the
fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, came
out earlier this month. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please
post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the
publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
The Dancer (Part 2 of 3 Parts)
dontravis.com
blog post #321
|
| Courtesy of Wikipedia |
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I
have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the
corrective suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments
directly to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
WARNING: Some readers will find language in the following
story to be offensive, but it accurately represents at time that was—and in too
many places, still is. Enjoy the story, don’t concentrate on such language.
Last week, we saw our protagonist Rob introduced to gay sex
when he is seduced by his young brother in law. Now divorced, Rob yearns for
something he doesn’t know how to pursue. He fixates on the poster of a young
flamenco dancer, has it framed, and hangs it in his bedroom where he uses it as
an altar to his lust. He’s reasonably satisfied with that arrangement until he
spots his flamenco dancer entering a Turkish bath off Times Square. He follows
the young man and realizes it’s not his dancer, but a look-alike. We last saw
Rob as he enters a steam room where he finds his Adonis.
*****
THE DANCER
The door opened, disturbing the young
man again. It was my unwelcome pursuer. “Outa here, cabrón!” the youth snarled. The man muttered defiantly but
withdrew. “You new here?” I nodded. “Gotta watch your cojones around here,” he said in a husky voice.
“I’m finding that out,”
“It’s a shame. With me,
sweat’s a way to relax. These queens mess it up and make it something dirty.”
I swallowed hard and said
nothing.
He held out his hand. “I’m
Carlos.” He did not exactly have an accent, it was more the rapidity of his
speech and a slight lilt.
“Rob,” I responded. Even through
the swirling waves of steam, he was excruciatingly handsome.
“That queer was after you, you
know. He’s one of the worst.”
“Th-this is the first time
I’ve been in a place like this. Think it’ll be my last, too. I’ll stick to the
sauna in my building from now on.”
“What made you try this dump?”
“Saw you,” I blurted. He
glanced at me sharply. “You looked okay, so I thought it was probably a decent
place,” I added quickly.
He relaxed. “Sorry I misled
you.”
“Not your fault. Uh, maybe
you’d rather I left you alone.”
“You seem okay. You like the
steam?”
“Never tried it before.”
“It’s good, but you gotta watch
out in a place like this. You gotta let them know right away to keep their
distance. First few times, they drove me nuts. Had to get nasty before they got
the message.”
“Complain to the management.”
“Naw. It’s the queers that
keep them in business. Faggots didn’t come looking for meat the place would
close down. They probably wish I’d go someplace else and stop bothering their
fairies.” He gave his deep laugh again.
“Maybe we oughta go to the
sauna at my place. I’m sure as hell not comfortable here.”
“Weekends the maricónes are crawling outa the
woodwork. Sometimes they do their thing right in front of you. I don’t come on
the weekends any more. Mondays are the best. I only work half days on Monday,
and my job’s not far from here.”
We talked easily while the wet
heat stewed the living juices out of every pore of my body. Carlos was born in the
Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, made it through high school, and took work with
a silk-screening firm.
About five minutes before I
was baked into an early grave, he made noises like it was time to go. When he
rose, I padded after him to the shower where we brought our body temperature
back to normal. Afterward, I felt better than I had in some time. I watched him
as we dressed, frantic for a way to prolong contact.
“You hungry? There’s a pretty
good deli not far from here.”
“Expensive?” he wanted to
know. “Gotta watch my nickels.”
Some instinct warned me not to
offer to pay. “Not too bad. Not as cheap as a diner, but not as bad as a French
restaurant.”
He laughed aloud. “That leaves
a lot of room in between. Sure. Haven’t splurged on anything lately.”
During a dinner of Rueben
sandwiches, I learned Carlos was twenty-two and single. He broke up with his
long-time girlfriend about six months ago and wasn’t in a hurry to make another
connection. I also learned he was more than a mere physical paragon, he was an
interesting individual. That night I lay abed for a long time staring at my
purloined poster and imagining Carlos was the dancer hanging on my bedroom wall.
I beat Carlos to the sweat
room by about ten minutes the next Monday afternoon and tried to ignore
meaningful looks cast my way by an older man until he arrived. The youth
whipped off his towel, glared until the man left, and then laughed as he sat
down beside me.
“You know he’s gonna think
we’re getting it on, don’t you?” As if to emphasize his point, the door opened
a crack and then slammed shut as Carlos snarled angrily.
“I feel honored they believe
you chose me over them.”
“Some honor! How you been?”
“Had a good week,” I said. “Got
lots of work done. Think the sweat helped me last week, so I oughta try it
again. And I figured you could provide protection with that fierce growl of
yours.”
After the steam leached most
of the moisture from us, we went to a diner that fit his wallet better than the
deli. Carlos was pleasant company in addition to being great to look at. He was
willing to share his history without being garrulous. I found myself genuinely
liking him and suggested we try the sauna in my apartment building. He agreed
to give it a try on Friday.
The next four days had trouble
passing, but eventually made it. Carlos buzzed from the lobby precisely at six
o’clock, and we enjoyed a crab salad I’d prepared and a bottle of good wine before
we swaddled ourselves in terrycloth robes to walk on clogs two floors down to
the sauna. Carlos liked the dry heat; I appreciated it because it was easier to
study him without a room full of swirling steam. With towels draped demurely
over us in case one of the women tenants happened by, we sat overlong in the
place, partly because I did not want the evening to end.
The sauna enervated me so much
that Carlos reached our landing half a floor ahead of me. He grinned down the
stairwell and muttered something about a pantywaist. We showered in separate
baths and then met in the den. After putting some mellow music on the stereo,
we settled in a couple of easy chairs to admire the view outside the windows and
sip a cold brew. The easy, companionable atmosphere ended with both of us
nodding off in our chairs. I woke around midnight and showed him to a bed. He
slept soundly in my guestroom while I tossed and turned because the handsome young
man I wanted lay naked on the other side of the wall.
*****
Confrontation!
Now what will come of it? There’s a budding friendship… will there be more?
Questionable because of Carlos’ adverse reaction to gays. Next week, we’ll
learn the answer.
The fifth book in my BJ Vinson mystery series, Abaddon’s Locusts, came out on the 22nd
of this month. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a
review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
The Dancer (Part 1 of 3 Parts)
dontravis.com
blog post #320
 |
| Courtesy of Wikipedia |
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I
have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the
corrective suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments
directly to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
WARNING: Some readers will find language in the following
story to be offensive, but it accurately represents at time that was—and in too
many places, still is. Enjoy the story, don’t concentrate on such language.
*****
THE DANCER
A call from my ex-wife venting
her undiminished rage drove me out of the apartment into the streets of
Manhattan. Melanie and I had met and married in college. Upon graduation, we
moved into the apartment my folks had left me in a good high rise and pursued
successful careers—me as a writer of how-to books and Mel as a nursing
supervisor. I hadn’t realized how much trouble my marriage was in until her
younger brother visited one weekend. His first night there, while Mel was
working overtime, Brad sneaked into our bedroom and seduced me. The good-looking
nineteen-year-old introduced something new into my life and drove me out of a
stale marriage. He’d both liberated and crippled me, opening me to a new and
exciting experience while leaving me with no idea how to replicate it.
Mel’s phone call this
otherwise pleasant early summer afternoon let me know she had learned of my
liaison with her “little brother.” If
only she knew! In addition to all my other sins, I had corrupted an
innocent youth. Yeah, right.
Nursing my frustration, I
headed for my favorite place in the world… the public library. I fumed at the fates on the eight-block walk to my destination. Could I induce Brad to come
back for a visit? Not likely, given the fact he’d spilled the beans to his
sister. Should I visit a gay bar? The very thought shriveled my insides. Men’s
rooms? They say men’s rooms are places homos go to meet. That thought brought
me to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk. Is that what I had become? I
resumed pacing, unsure of the answer.
A vivid red and black poster
advertising a flamenco troupe posted outside the public library caught my eye.
A haughty young dancer stared out of the picture through smoldering eyes. His
broad shoulders and unbelievably slender hips and accentuated groin instantly
focused my desires and brought me into a state of physical discomfort. Glancing
around guiltily, I was startled to find a man at my side eyeing me boldly. When
he suggested what we could do for the handsome dancer… or for one another, I
panicked and fled down the sidewalk.
Realizing I had missed an
opportunity to find what I yearned for, I turned back, but the pleasant-looking
stranger was gone. Succumbing to a sudden urge, I did something totally out of
character. The poster came away in my hand, although the corners ripped a
little. A clerk at a nearby framing shop grumbled at my request for a rush job
but assured me it could be trimmed and framed. An hour later, I carried my
ill-gotten treasure into the apartment and hung it in my bedroom.
The unknown young man’s
whip-like body was as exciting as his features were handsome. A strong jawline
saved his beautiful face from androgyny and made me wonder at his experiences
with women—and men. Entranced, I stood before the picture and gave myself over
to lust. The poster became my shrine. I spurned human contact and turned to the
image of this young Adonis for my carnal needs. By late summer, I was content
with my existence. I no longer hunted for something I didn’t know how to hunt
One day, as I wandered the
Times Square area in a moment of leisure, something caught my eye. My dancer!
My poster strode down the sidewalk in jeans and shirt instead of a flamenco
costume. I froze, caught my breath, and hastily fell in behind him. He moved in
long, graceful strides—just as I had imagined—drawing me along helplessly in
his wake.
The tall youth turned into one
of those Turkish baths that public health officials tried to close down years
ago at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Heedless of anything other than
catching a better glimpse of my quarry, I handed over the price of admission,
accepted a large towel, and rushed inside. He stood stripping off his shirt in
the locker room, exposing a long, muscled torso. Eventually, I recovered my
wits enough to sit on a bench and remove my shoes.
This was not my dancer, but it
could have been. Hispanic, twenty or so, six-foot, hundred and seventy, broad
back, narrow waist. He nodded a silent greeting. I smiled but took my cue from
him and said nothing. He slipped jeans and briefs down his trim hips. He was breathtaking—a
dark golden tan all over. The youth fixed a towel around his waist and
disappeared through another set of doors.
I sat on the bench, shaken by
proximity to a real, live Lothario. What had his face looked like? No idea,
except he was handsome. My attention had centered on his smooth chest, flat
belly, and exciting nether regions.
A banging locker startled me
out of my trance. I undressed and rushed through the door, coming to an abrupt
halt. A big room dominated by a huge swimming pool with lounges scattered
around the edges teemed with men. Some were older, and all appeared to be on
the hunt. A dozen predatory eyes fixed on me.
I secured the towel around my
waist and fought a wave of panic. Ignore them! Go about your business and
ignore them. Go about my business? My
business was ogling a young man the way these guys were gaping at me. I strode
through the room studiously avoiding eye contact. As I reached the far doors, a
man rose from one of the lounges and started my way. Seeking to put distance
between us, I more or less blundered into the steam room. There was one
occupant. My young man. Totally naked, he sat on his towel and leaned back against
the wooden platform, legs splayed. He opened his eyes long enough to give me a
quick, irritated look. I took a seat opposite him, winced at the heat of the
wooden bench, and emulated him by sitting on my towel.
*****
Many years ago, I visited a New York Turkish bath, and it scared the hell out
of me. My tender Oklahoma roots weren’t built for such aggressive soil. I scooted right back out of there, but it looks like our hero—Rob’s his name, by the way—is
made of sterner stuff. Of course, he’s pursuing a dream. I was merely a timid youth exploring the unknown and the unfamiliar.
Tune
in next week to see if anything develops between Rob and his flamenco dancer look-alike.
Abaddon’s Locusts--my fifth BJ Vinson mystery series book--comes out on the
22nd. Hope you’ll get a copy of it. If you do, please post a review of
the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
Thursday, January 10, 2019
A Look at the Upcoming The Voxlightner Scandal
dontravis.com
blog post #319
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I
have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the corrective
suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments directly to my
personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
As I wrote last week’s post, flakes of snow feathered lightly to the ground outside my patio door. Some of the cursed stuff
is still there, especially in shady parts of the parking lot. Unusual for snow
to last this long in Albuquerque.
Another matter of potential interest. Once or twice a year,
the site gets 3,000 or so hits from Israel, usually all on one day. For last week’s
posting, I noticed a new phenomenon: 1,700 hits from Russia. They can’t all be spies,
can they? Even so, I encourage them to continue reading my blog.
Last week, we looked at my most recent novel (release date
January 22), Abaddon’s Locusts, the
fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series. This week, I’d like to give you a peek
at my latest, and as yet, unreleased novel, The
Voxlightner Scandal. The story begins when BJ’s young companion Paul
Barton, a budding investigative journalist, decides to look into the murder of
an Albuquerque author. That leads to reopening one of the state’s largest
scandals. The excerpt that follows is set in BJ's and Paul’s home on Post Oak
Drive NW in Albuquerque in July 2011.
Alas, no artwork yet exists on Vox, rendering this week’s post pictureless.
*****
THE VOXLIGHTNER SCANDAL
Chapter 1
If this was the year of the
Arab Spring, this morning’s Albuquerque
Journal neglected to mention it. The international lead story—above the
fold—reported the bombing of the government quarter in Oslo and the subsequent
murder by gunfire of sixty-eight youth activists of the Labour Party by a
native Norwegian terrorist.
The below-the-fold story told
of the death of local author John Pierce Belhaven in a garage fire mere blocks
from my home. What snagged my attention was that the terrorist attack in Norway
took place today. The local tragedy occurred two nights ago. Our paper reported
foreign events faster than local ones.
Paul strode into the kitchen
where I sat at the table munching an English muffin slathered with cream cheese
and dusted with ground black pepper. He brought with him the aroma of his
shower. He was using a new aftershave lotion… Axe, possibly.
He halted at the sight of me.
“Whoa, Vince, I was gonna fix omelets.”
The rest of the world called
me BJ. This young man, my companion and the love of my life, preferred Vince, a
pet name derived from my family moniker of Vinson.
“My stomach wouldn’t wait. By
the way I know why we heard all those sirens Wednesday night. Garage fire just
down the street.”
“Where?”
I checked the news article.
“Forty-eight eighteen.”
“Belhaven’s place?”
“I’ll admit you’re more
neighborly than I am, but how do you know who lives four blocks down the
street?”
A minute later he plopped a
bowl of instant oatmeal on the table, apparently abandoning the idea of an
omelet. “I know him from SouthWest Writers.”
Paul joined the professional
writing association a year ago when he got his Master’s in journalism from the
University of New Mexico and decided a membership would provide him some
valuable contacts. He was probably right, although I never considered
journalism as writing until he
pointed out that’s exactly what it was.
“Can I see the article when
you’re finished?” he asked.
After I commandeered the
sports section and handed over the rest, his voice startled me out of a story
about the Lobo baseball team.
“This can’t be right.”
“Uh.” I
refused to be distracted.
“Vince.” He shoved the
newspaper in front of me. “I didn’t know Belhaven well, but I know one thing
for sure. He wouldn’t repair his lawn mower. He’d have the kid who mowed his
lawn do it or else buy a new mower.” He paused. “The rest sounds right.
Belhaven would probably spill gas all over himself and somehow manage to light
it up. But I’m telling you… he’d never even try it.”
“A klutz, huh?”
Paul nodded. “You could say
that.”
“I’ll tell you what I can’t believe. This happened two days
ago, and Mrs. Wardlow hasn’t broadcast the gory details all over the
neighborhood.”
Gertrude Wardlow, the
septuagenarian widow living across the street, was a retired DEA agent and the grande
dame of our local neighborhood watch. But I had no gripes coming. She’d saved
my bacon a couple of times when suspects tried to bring grievances to my home.
More importantly she’d warned me Paul was in trouble when a gang kidnapped him
a few years back.
“Can I assume you smell a story?”
I asked.
“I smell a rat. But you’re
right, I’m going to look into it. Who do you know in the fire department?”
I gave him the name of the AFD
Arson Squad commander I’d worked with a couple of times. “You can call Gene Enriquez
if you want to know if there’s a police case working.”
“You call Lieutenant Enriquez, okay? He’ll talk to you. You’re the
confidential investigator, not me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.
Way I figure it, an investigating journalist is simply a confidential
investigator without a license.”
*****
And
so it opens, reeling backward in time to 2003 and 2004 when a gigantic scam
took $40,000,000 out of the local economy and resulted in multiple deaths. I
hope you found this teaser interesting.
I
encourage reader feedback on all my novels, and if you do read one, please post
a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Don Travis: Interview of BJ Vinson About Abaddon’s Locusts
Don Travis: Interview of BJ Vinson About Abaddon’s Locusts: dontravis.com blog post #318 Artist: Maria Fanning TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I h...
Interview of BJ Vinson About Abaddon’s Locusts
dontravis.com
blog post #318
 |
| Artist: Maria Fanning |
TO
MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I have
no way of reading or responding to your comments. Please make any comments
directly to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until
this situation is corrected. Thanks.
Outside my patio door, flakes of snow are feathering lightly
to the ground. I put it that way because we more often have wind than not when
it is snowing or raining. Snow here in the high desert country is usually the
way I like snow: I comes one day, goes away the next, and we all remember it
fondly. Not so this one. We had a blizzard (officially determined as such) last
Friday, and as the temperature remained in the 20s, it hadn’t gone anywhere. Now
here’s more to add to the mix. Okay, enough already!
Abaddon’s Locusts,
the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series,is due for release on January 22
(although I think you can get advance copies from Dreamspinner). In view of
this, I wanted to give you an interview between me and the protagonist,
Confidential Investigator Burleigh J. Vinson. (Do you blame him for going by
BJ?)
*****
Travis: First, let’s clear up this name thing. I sometimes
see it with periods between the initials and sometimes without. By the way,
what do the initials stand for?
Vinson: When I sign something formal, like a contract, it’s
B period J period Vinson. Informally, it’s BJ. What do they stand for? Well, I’m
named after my mother’s father, so it’s Burleigh J. The J is a middle initial only. Do you blame me for using initials?
Travis: Yet, your significant other, Paul Barton, calls you
Vince. Why?
Vinson: I’m BJ to everyone except two individuals. To Paul,
Vince is a pet name he draws from my family name.
Travis: And the other individual?
Vinson: Del Dahlman. He’s a local lawyer and my first
companion.
Travis: This leads to a sensitive—at least
personal—question. You’re gay, right? And you seem rather open about it.
Vinson: I don’t advertise the fact, but I don’t deny it,
either. That’s not always been the case. As a kid, I struggled to be like
everyone else. To be honest, that’s probably why I played football in high
school and enlisted in the Marine Corps. By the time I joined the Albuquerque
Police Department, I was ready to accept and admit who I was. After all, it
wasn’t a significant factor in doing the job.
Travis: It didn’t cause you a problem with the other cops?
You hear stories about them leaving their gay brothers out in the cold in
dangerous situations. And you were shot once, on the job, weren’t you?
Vinson: That’s true. Shot in the thigh while apprehending a
suspected killer. But it wasn’t from lack of support from my compadres.
Travis: So tell me about this book we cooperated to put
together.
Vinson: One of my favorite people is this mixed-blood kid
named Jazz Penrod over in Farmington. He’s super handsome and hunky and gay,
which caused Paul some needless anxiety. Jazz and his Navajo half-brother,
Henry Secatero, helped me out on a case I call the Bisti Business three years
ago. When Jazz disappeared recently, Henry came to me for help. It turned out
Jazz had been lured by sex traffickers and hooked on crack cocaine.
Travis: Why don’t we take a look at how things developed.
Excerpt from beginning
of Chapter 3 of Abaddon’s Locusts. Our
hero and the missing man’s half-brother, a Navajo named Henry Secatero go to BJ’s
old riding partner at APD, Lt. Gene Enriquez to report Jazz Penrod as missing.
Henry—who’ll we’ll call an independent soul—isn’t very cop friendly. He’s also
having trouble accepting his half-brother’s in the hands of sex traffickers. So
here’s how things go:
Henry couldn’t quite hide his discomfort at
shaking hands with a policeman—even a friendly one—the next morning when the
two of us met Gene in the downtown stationhouse. I could see that my ex-partner
was aware of the Navajo’s attitude, and no doubt he would run Henry’s ID
through the system the moment we left. I was wrong; he’d already done it.
“You always get in fights when you go to
the Blue Spruce?” Gene asked.
“Mostly.”
“It’s a good place to find them. Bad place
for staying out of them.”
“You got that right.”
The Blue Spruce was an Indian bar out on
East Central near the fairgrounds. The place was notorious for its police
calls. On the other side of the coin, it was a good spot for cops short on
traffic tickets to make quota.
“Your brother like to fight too? Or is he
all sizzle and no steak?”
Henry’s face clouded for a moment. “He’s
better at starting them and standing
around watching ever’body scrap, but he’s good backup when it’s needed.”
After that, Gene settled down and guided
Henry through filling out a request to search for his brother’s car. There
hadn’t been any results overnight, but none were expected, unless Jazz was
moving around. Or someone was using his Jeep. There were a couple of Juan Gonzaleses in the system, but when I hauled out
the photo of Jazz’s email contact, none of them matched.
Henry tapped his finger on the photograph.
“Don’t you guys have some kinda gizmo where you can compare photos and make an
ID?”
“A facial recognition program, you mean?”
Gene asked. “Scuttlebutt says it’s on its way, but we don’t have a system yet.
The state boys have something, but I’d have to have probable cause for an
arrest before I could even ask them to run a search.”
“My brother’s missing, and he was talking
to this guy. Ain’t that enough?”
“No evidence this guy’s the cause of your
brother’s disappearance. Hell, for all we know, he and his new friend are just
out having a good time. But I think BJ’s right on this, Mr. Secatero. Your
brother’s caught in the sex trade racket.”
“Call me Henry, and just because my
brother’s gay don’t mean he goes around
selling his body. Never has. Never will.”
“Look, fella—” Gene pointed a stubby finger
at Henry and nodded at me. “—don’t get your back up. I rode with this guy for
three years, and we never had trouble over
him being gay. But the human trafficking racket is getting to be big business.
Some people figure there are more people in slavery today than before the Civil
War. And I made some calls this morning and found out more kids than we’d like
to admit disappear from Indian reservations. I grant you it’s mostly women and
girls that get caught up in the sex part of it, but some boys and men do too.”
“Jazz wouldn’t stand still for that. He’d
just walk out the door and go home.”
“Unless they’re holding something over
him,” Gene said. “I’ll admit he doesn’t fit the pattern. He’s older than the norm,
and he’s male. Most are female somewhere around the ages of thirteen to fifteen
or sixteen. Usually, the traffickers
claim a debt’s gotta be paid or threaten
somebody—maybe a family member—with bodily harm or death. They’ve got lotsa
ways of making victims toe the line.”
“Not Jazz. He’d go postal.”
“Some of them do, but they’re overpowered
or done away with. So maybe he did fight them.”
Either the implications of that remark went over Henry’s
head or he chose to ignore them. “I can’t think of a damned thing they could
threaten my brother with. He knows his dad and me can take care of ourselves.
His uncle Riley will make sure his mother’s okay. There ain’t nobody else.”
*****
I
hope the book sounds as interesting to you as it does to me. If I were forced
to pick a favorite from the series right at the moment, Abaddon’s Locusts would be it.
I
encourage reader feedback on all my novels, and if you do read one, please post
a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
The Voxlightner
Scandal is
on the cusp of being finalized and on its way to DSP Publications.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to the Lovely Pines:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
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