Chase: Roman

each other for a while, but they both knew the night was only for sleeping. It was the first night in many months that Chase did not dream at all.
        
        At eight-thirty there were two young men at the apartment complex pool, one of them polishing the metalwork above the waterline while the other scrubbed the white diving board preparatory to opening for business at ten o'clock. They watched Glenda with unconcealed interest, and Chase wondered if they shouldn't be taught some manners. When one of them whistled, however, Chase saw that Glenda only smiled, accepting as flattery what his mother would have called rudeness. It was another of the little differences of perspective between them that made Chase feel old and tired.
        Chase went to the boy polishing the ladder at the shallow end of the pool. ‘Martin Cable?’
        ‘That's Marty,’ the boy said, pointing to the guard on the driving board.
        Martin Cable was lean but muscular, his arms bulging modestly even when they weren't flexed, tighter and stringier than a weight lifter. He had a lot of dark hair that covered his ears and the nape of his neck, but his face still held no sign of a beard. He sat up on the board as they approached, slightly above them.
        ‘Martin Cable?’ Chase asked.
        ‘Yes?’ He had none of Jerry Taylor's attitude of boredom and appeared willing to be friendly, unlike Norman Bates. The sun, reflected by the water, made odd, shimmering spots on his face and chest.
        ‘I understand you were a friend of Mike Karnes.’
        ‘Of a sort.’
        ‘I've got some questions I'd like to ask, if you can spare a few minutes.’
        The boy glanced at Glenda, let his gaze travel down to her slim ankles and then work its way leisurely back up again. While he enjoyed the view, he made up his mind and said, ‘Yeah, sure, ask away.’
        ‘How well did you know Mike?’
        ‘Close friends, shared his car sometimes for double dates.’
        ‘Same year in school?’
        ‘Yeah. Graduated together June a year ago.’
        ‘Was Mike a terror with the girls?’ Chase asked.
        ‘Was he ever!’ the boy said. ‘Christ!’
        ‘I had heard that besides Louise Allenby, he kept several other girls on the string.’
        ‘Not only on the string,’ Cable said. ‘But satisfied. He just couldn't get enough of it, maybe because it was still so new to him.’
        ‘New?’ Chase asked. He thought they were both talking about the same thing, but now he wasn't sure.
        ‘He got his first piece when he was a junior, the last day of school that year. Overnight he changed from a bashful, sportsminded teenage boy into - well, a stud. You know how that is, you ever see it happen to someone?’
        ‘Yes,’ Chase said.
        ‘We told him he'd wear it out if he didn't slow down.’
        It seemed the proper moment to broach the main topic without forcing him to clam up, since they had already established Mike Karnes's claim to manhood. ‘Did he ever tell you about another man - making a pass at him?’
        ‘A queer?’
        ‘Yes.’
        He looked at Glenda again, back at Chase, mulling over the possibilities. He said, ‘You haven't told me who you are.’
        Chase told him, introduced Glenda.
        ‘That doesn't explain this sudden interest in Mike.’
        Chase said, ‘I don't think the police are doing anything on the case. You know my connection with it. I don't relish having a madman running around loose with a grudge against me.’
        Cable nodded. When he spoke, a moment later, his words were quick and run together, as if he were betraying a trust and wanted to get it over with as quickly as he could. ‘Two years ago Mike got laid for the first time, and everything slipped a little for him after that. If you know his parents, you understand how it could happen. They'd never let on to him that there was anything fun in life, let alone something like sex. He just sort of broke loose, all at once. After that, his grades dropped.’
        ‘When was this?’
        ‘Just past the middle of the second semester of our senior year. He wanted to get into State, but he wasn't going to make it if he showed as poorly in the second term as in the first. Physics was his worst subject, and when it got really bad, he started taking sessions with a tutor.’
        ‘And who was that?’ Chase asked.
        ‘A teacher who did that kind