Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

anything about the case yet. Yeah, I gave myself a laugh with that one.
    I swung the flashlight around, and the place lit up like a jewelry store, glints of light dancing everywhere off pieces of broken glass and bottle caps. Evidently it was a dump for winos after they had their way with their bottles. If Miss Saint-Ville had scattered a cache of stolen jewels here, it might have escaped anyone’s notice, except she’d left a dead body with it. That tended to draw a bit of attention from the cops.
    I edged down the alley, peering into the niches that had been bricked up along the sides of the buildings. Probably windows in the Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    old days, judging by the brick arches over them. Reggie had said she was found all the way at the end, propped up against the brick wall that backed the alley. I could see the reflection of chalk lines, drawn around where they’d found her.
    Bad way to see your last sunset, trapped like a rat in a maze with only a man who hated you enough to off you for company.
    Zip. I saw nothing that conveyed any secret knowledge to me.
    And what did I really know about her? Miss McIntyre hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. Maybe I was better off in the archives of the newspapers. But Reggie hadn’t sent me on this wild goose chase without a reason. We were friends, but he knew I wouldn’t let him get away with sending me here to look for nothing.
    I tracked my light across the pavement, trying to overlap each pass. When I finally found it, it looked like a bottle cap unless you knew what you were looking for. The kind of thing I would expect to see in a dirty alley. I could see how the cops missed it.
    But when I moved the light back to take a second look, there was something about the shape inscribed on the bottle cap that caught my eye….
    Standing there looking down at it, suddenly I was three thousand miles away, in a war zone on a stinking hot island in the Pacific.
    Looking down at two twigs, one short, one long, laid out to form the same symbol on that disc.
    The sign that only a select few of the soldiers recognized, a sign that said there was action behind the bushes or in the back of a nearby Jeep.
    The sign of the Lambda.
    A Greek symbol belonging to an exclusive fraternity of men. The story went that the Lambda was placed on the shields of gay men and their lovers, men who were part of the fighting elite of the Greek army.
    Men who were honored for their bond.
    Maybe the first queer who thought to use the sign had a good education along with a perverted sense of humor, because the U.S.
    Army didn’t think of us as part of any elite fraternity. They tended to 24

    CATT FORD

    take a dimmer view of queers, even ones who enlisted to fight for their country. But station a couple of platoons of men on an island without any women, and even the straightest amongst them might get a little bent with frustration.
    Some men hooked up for the duration, and the officers tended to turn a blind eye unless they made it obvious. But if you wanted some hot man-on-man action with no strings, this was the symbol you looked for: scratched into the dirt beside a path, or maybe two spoons placed at right angles tipped you off. If the bushes were shaking, you just waited your turn.
    I recognized it, and when Reggie found that sign down this alley, he must have too. But being a cop, there was no way he could draw attention to it, because then he’d have to explain how he knew what it meant. It must have really gone against the grain with him to have to leave a potential clue to a murder in place because he couldn’t risk explaining how he knew what it meant. And now I had a pretty good idea as to who had sent Lily McIntyre my way.
    I put the gun away and crouched there, fingering the disc. I chuckled softly to myself.
    “What’s so funny, peeper?”

    Oh fuck! It was a set-up! I was terrified that Reggie had sold me so he could make sure the clue was found, and I was going to turn around to find a hundred cops standing behind me, guns drawn.
    My heart was racing as I drew my own gun again and rolled on my shoulder, aiming it upward at the shadow looming over me, before I recognized his ugly shoes and relaxed.
    “Artie, fuck off! You know better than to creep up on a man holding a gun!”
    He sniggered. “You weren’t holding it, Greyson . You put it away.”
    “Don’t call me that, it’s Grey,” I said automatically, stowing the piece