The Hardest Thing

equipment.”
    “Just a tiny little thing, no bigger than a quarter, sewn into my jacket pocket. I didn’t even have to switch it on.”
    “Sounds like Mr. Marshall has a fancy surveillance operation.”
    “My only instructions were to do whatever Mr. Peters wanted, and if I took my jacket off—if!—to leave it no more than four feet away. He was staying in a hotel on the Upper West Side; the suite was bigger than the house I grew up in. Huge bathroom, whirlpool, room service, the works. All of it paid for by Marshall Land.”
    “A trap.”
    “It was so easy. Peters started talking dirty the minute I walked in the door, getting me to strip for him, telling me everything he wanted to do to me. I gave him the full show, throwing my clothes around the room—making sure that the jacket landed in the right place, of course. After a while he wanted to move into the bathroom, so I had to think fast. I told him I had something special for him in my jacket pocket—a couple of tabs of Viagra. Oh, yeah! He was like a kid in a candy store! I hung my jacket over the back of the bathroom door and just hoped that the sound of the whirlpool wouldn’t be too loud.”

    “Very conscientious of you.”
    “I’m a professional,” said Jody, grabbing my hand and bringing it to his ass. “At least, I was. So we took our pills and we fucked all over the bathroom, and at least I had a chance to clean him up a bit. Peters was one of those guys who likes to tell you what they’re doing to you while they’re doing it—even if they can’t do it properly—so he gave Marshall and Ferrari everything they needed. We finished off in the bedroom, and he got very grouchy with me. Called me a lot of nasty names. They’re like that, the Trey Peterses of this world. One minute they love you, the next minute they hate you. And I thought well, asshole, you’ll get what’s coming. I got dressed and said goodbye and that was that. Job done. A week later, it was on the news.”
    “He was dead.”
    “Right. Car accident. He’d gone straight into one of the pillars under a railway bridge in Queens. Police were looking for witnesses.”
    “I take it you didn’t go forward.”
    “I didn’t see anything.”
    “Of course not. And you didn’t say anything to Marshall.”
    “No.”
    “How long ago was this?”
    “Four or five months.”
    “Okay.” It was dark now, away from the streetlights of Lincoln, and I put my arms around Jody and kissed him on the mouth. I hated what had happened to him—neglected by his junkie mother, abused by her boyfriends, busted, imprisoned, fucked by fat old men who despised him—and I wanted to make it all better.
And how the hell are you going to do that, Dan? Stick another dick in his ass?
    “Come on,” I said after a while, “it’s getting cold. Let’s go back to the motel.”
    We retraced our steps. “I didn’t hear from Mr. Marshall for a few weeks after that, and I started to get worried. The rent was still paid on the apartment, and Ferrari would deliver money, but Marshall himself never wanted to see me and never even called. I knew he had to be careful with his wife and his business associates, and he always told me to be patient, that one day we’d be together properly. But after a while I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and I went to his office.”
    “I bet he was pleased to see you.”
    Jody ignored the sarcasm. “Yes, he was actually. He’d just been really busy with this deal that was going through, and his wife was being very demanding. He apologized.”
    “Great.”
    “And he was worried about the Trey Peters business.”
    “I bet he was.” Who was on Marshall’s back, I wondered: the police? The District Attorney?
    “He asked if anyone had tried to talk to me about Mr. Peters, and I said of course not, and even if they did I would never say a word.”
    “That must have been a relief to him.”
    “And that’s when he suggested I should maybe get out of town for a while, until it had all blown over.”
    “I see. And was this before or after someone tried to shoot you in 54th Street?”
    “Oh.” We were close to the motel now, and he looked as if he wanted to run. “I …I can’t remember.”

    “Because that sort of thing is easy to forget, right?”
    We walked into the darkness between streetlights. Jody stood close enough to whisper. “That never happened.”
    “No shit.”
    “It’s what they told me to tell you, if you asked any