Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

Hunk by Ed Gorman

© 1994 by Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman has become one of the mystery field’s most mysterious men. Named Ghost of Honor at the 1992 Southwest Mystery Convention, Mr. Gorman is seldom present at mystery functions except in spirit. His fiction, however, is anything but ghostly, as you’ll see in this vivid little tale...

I suppose it’s vain of me but I always time myself. Sort of like running a stopwatch at a sporting event.

Tonight I was off my time. The first twenty minutes, I couldn’t really get the young woman to focus on me. She was meeting a female friend at this bar and the friend was late and Laura — the young woman — kept anxiously watching the door.

“I’m sure she’ll be along,” I said.

She looked at me and smiled. “God,” she said, “I wish I didn’t have to worry about her because I sure would like to concentrate on you.” She giggled. “You’re gorgeous.”

I’ve never known how to respond to that particular compliment. If I say yes, I am gorgeous, and thank you very much for pointing that out, then I’m an egotist. If I say no, I’m not gorgeous, then I sound phony and only begging for more compliments — because the truth is, I am in fact gorgeous. Pure genetic luck. Gorgeous.

Fortunately, I was saved from either response by a waitress who came over to tell Laura that she had a phone call.

While I waited for her to come back, I ordered us another round — scotch on the rocks for me, a Lite beer for her, though she was quite slim and quite pretty — and looked around.

It was nine o’clock and in singles bars along the Strip, the rainy Wednesday night was just starting to roll. The first exultant beat of the disco music summoning dancers to the floor. The first roaring snort of coke shared in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The first inkling in the minds of otherwise faithful wives out with girlfriends that maybe... just maybe... well, who can be faithful forever, right? And over it all a kind of despair... everybody knowing that soon enough their looks will be gone and the dance floor given over to younger and prettier people... and that life will be measured out in paychecks and annual health checkups and the ever-increasing number of funerals one attends as one gets older. But if the music is loud enough... if the drugs are spellbinding enough... if the sex is hard and fast and explosive enough... well then all these terrible intimations of age and grief can be pushed back... held at bay for one more boozy night.

“She has a cold.”

“Your friend.”

“Umm-hmm,” Laura said, sitting down again.

“So she’s not coming?”

“Right.”

“I’ll be insincere and say too bad.”

She giggled. She sounded like a ten-year-old girl, all high clean innocent laughter. I loved it. “Well, she kept trying to be noble and say that she hated to see me stuck here so maybe she’d come down after all but— Well, I said I’d struggle through somehow.”

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “God, you really are gorgeous. I just can’t believe you’re a chauffeur.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“You’re the one who should be being ‘chauffed’ around. Or is that a word?”

“It is now.”

“Do you like it?”

“ ‘Chauffed’?”

“No, you know what I mean. Being — well, like a servant.”

“Oh, he’s very nice and very democratic about things.” I indicated my corporate gray suit. “This is what I wear to work.”

“Not that — what do you call it — uniform?”

“Livery.”

“Oh. Right. Livery.”

I smiled. “I don’t even have to wear that dorky little hat. In fact—” I checked my digital wrist watch. Four thousand dollars worth of digital wrist watch. Mr. Trueblood is really generous indeed. “In fact, I’m at work now.”

“Now? Right now?”

“Yes. Mr. Trueblood is down the street at a shop. He said he’d need half an hour and that I should feel free to pop in here and have a drink.”

“Oh shoot.”

“What?”

“Then you’ll be leaving right away, won’t you?”

“For tonight. But there’ll be other nights.”

She looked at me again. The way they all look at me, especially after they’ve had one or two drinks over their usual limit. “God, I’ll bet you’re a heartbreaker.” She’d been drinking for two hours.

I shrugged. “That’s the assumption everybody makes. But I’ve had my heart broken a few times — once, quite badly.”

Her hand found mine again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been flip.”

I made a big thing of changing the subject, of implying that my heart had been broken far worse than I’d let on. “How would you like to see the limousine?”

“Right now?”

“Sure? Why not. Mr. Trueblood probably won’t be back for another ten minutes or so.”

“You won’t get in trouble?”

“No. I told you. He’s very understanding.”

“God, he really sounds like it.”

“C’mon, then.”

I left money for both the bill and a fair but not memorable tip.

A minute later we walked through the light blue neon rain to the long black stretch limousine in the far shadows of the bar’s parking lot. Raindrops clung to her dark hair and made it sparkle.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s gorgeous.”

As we walked, I checked my watch again. My best time was a year ago in Las Vegas. Found a lounge, went inside, found a likely candidate, and had her in the limo in less than twelve minutes. I’m not one of those perpetual adolescents who constantly boasts about his skill with women — but twelve minutes is pretty damned good time.

She walked around the limo as if she were a customer on a car lot. I half-expected her to kick a tire and ask me what kind of mileage it got.

“This is the biggest limo I’ve ever seen,” she said. She was a little wobbly from her drinks.

I opened the front door on the passenger side. “Here’s the front.”

She peeked in. “Wow. What’re all those gadgets?”

She had a wonderful backside, made even more wonderful by the way she was leaning over to peer into the car.

“Mostly automatic features for getting in and out of the estate. Mr. Trueblood really likes his privacy.”

“Hey,” she said, looking back at the glass separating front from back. “Everything is — what do you call it — opaque. You can’t see anything at all.”

She stood up, extricated herself from the front seat. Grinned. “He really must like his privacy. Does he have — intimate moments back there or something?”

I grinned back. “I’m not sure. The truth is, whatever he does, he keeps to himself. I’ve never even seen the back.”

“Oh bull.”

“No. True.”

“Don’t you have a key?”

I smiled my best boyish smile. “Oh, I have a key all right. But I’m just afraid that about the time I open the back door and look inside— Well, that’s when Mr. Trueblood will show up. And when I was interviewing for this job, that’s one of the first things he told me. That I was never to open the back doors and look inside. Strictly off-limits.”

“Well, aren’t you curious?”

I laughed. “Aren’t I curious? Of course I am. Very curious.”

She glanced around the parking lot. “Well, what’s wrong with right now?”

“Oh no,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

“C’mon. Now you’ve got me curious.”

“I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.”

Another quick glance around the lot. “I’ll tell you what.”

“What?” I said.

“You open the door and peek inside — and I’ll keep watch for you. Then you keep watch and I’ll look back there. All right?”

“Well—”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

And she stood on her tiptoes and gave me a cute little kiss on the corner of my mouth.

“Well—” I said.

“C’mon, hurry up. What’s he wearing?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Trueblood, of course.”

“Oh, a buff blue suit and a dark hat.”

“I hate hats on men.”

“Well, he’s got one on.”

“All right. Buff blue suit and dark hat. I’ll go up near the sidewalk and watch for him. Which direction will he be coming from?”

“East.”

She giggled. “I never was a girl scout. Which way is east?”

“Left.”

“All right. Buff blue suit. Dark hat. Coming from the east. I’ll go watch for him. You get the back door open now and look inside.”

“Right.”

She hurried to the front of the parking lot.

I got the back door opened and looked inside.

Two minutes later, I went up to the sidewalk and said, “God, it’s incredible.” The night smelled of rain and cigarette smoke from the bar. Cars hissed by in the neon night.

“The backseat? It’s really incredible?”

“Right. It has everything.”

“Like a bar and stuff?”

“A bar is just the beginning. It’s even got a—” I gave her my best devilish grin. “Well, go find out for yourself.”

I handed her the key.

“Better hurry up,” I said.

“God, this is great,” she said, taking the keys and turning back to the limo.

Ten minutes later, I steered the limo out of the parking lot and onto the street.

A few minutes earlier, there’d been a scream back there so I knew that Mr. Trueblood hadn’t used the chloroform on her yet. But he never waited long. And, in fact, I hadn’t heard a peep from back there since except for the very occasional growl.

Mr. Trueblood always growls when he really gets going. The more growls the messier the backseat will be in the morning when it’s time for me to clean everything up.

But he never completely destroys them because he wants to leave a little something for me.

I drove on into the night and decided to turn up the radio just a tad so I didn’t have to hear the growling.