The Hardest Thing

the adjacent room at the Starlight. Martin listened quietly, nodding his head and occasionally asking me to clarify a point.

    “And the only thing I could think to do was to come back to New York and confront them,” I said. “And then I met you.” And you fucked some common sense into me, I should have added. You made me realize that I couldn’t do this on my own. That even I, with my famous twelve years of combat experience, couldn’t take on an organized crime outfit like Marshall’s single-handed. I needed help, I needed to start working with the authorities, and I needed to ditch my action-hero fantasies.
    “You never considered putting it in the hands of the police.”
    “I considered it.”
    “But you don’t trust them?”
    I shrugged.
    “Okay, Dan. As it happens, I do know a couple of people involved in the Peters investigation.”
    “That’s convenient.”
    “Just goes to show,” said Martin, draining his coffee and lobbing the cup into the trash, “that you never know who you might pick up in a gym. What do you say we go back to my apartment and do a bit of planning. I’m just over at Morningside Heights.”
    “My place is closer.” I nodded toward 109th Street.
    “I’m sure it is. But Ferrari knows your address. Call me old-fashioned, but I really don’t want anyone putting a bullet through your brain just yet.” He put a hand on my leg and squeezed. “I’ve got other things in mind.”
    I followed him back to Morningside Heights like an eager puppy dog. It’s great being an officer in the USMC, it’s great fucking the asses of guys in their teens and twenties, but sometimes my heart belongs to daddy.

The Law 9
    After a full night on the end of Martin Kingston’s cock I was barely capable of walking, let alone figuring out how to bring down an organized crime ring. Fortunately, testing the limits of my ass seemed to help Martin to think clearly. He was up at seven o’clock, making coffee and phone calls, while I stumbled around the bathroom and washed the dried cum off my belly. When I emerged in nothing but a white towel, Martin was dressed in a shirt and tie.
    “Breakfast?”
    “Sure.”
    He put toast and cereal in front of me, while jabbing buttons on his phone.
    “Jack? It’s Martin. Hey, good, thanks.” I ate while he talked; I was starving. “Listen, you’re working on the Trey Peters case, right? Okay. Well, yeah, maybe. How does attempted murder and kidnapping sound? Pretty sure, yes.” Martin stood behind me and rubbed my neck. “I’ve got a man here who has a tale to tell. You want to hear it?”

    An hour later we were sitting in the lobby of a law firm on the corner of Broad and Wall Street. The floor was marble and the walls were made of some fancy yellow stone I don’t even know the name of. Martin looked comfortable, his legs crossed, glancing at the front of the New York Times . I felt like a fish out of water, even in a borrowed shirt and pants. Anyone who noticed me sitting nervously on that leather sofa would have thought “criminal.”
    “Jack” turned out to be John Everett Rendell of Parker-Rendell, one of the best law firms in the city, as Martin told me as we rode the elevator to the eighteenth floor. I could believe it. This was the first time I’ve ever seen a potted palm actually inside an elevator.
    “Martin!”
    “Jack!”
    There was a lot of handshaking and backslapping; Jack Rendell was maybe five years younger than Martin, and in excellent shape. I felt haggard and sleazy.
    “This is Major Dan Stagg.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Major.” Rendell had the firm handshake and intense gaze that I’d encountered in a few senior officers when I was a young marine. I stood a little taller. “Once a marine, always a marine, right?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Self-defense training. The New Hampshire cops say you nearly killed that guy who broke into your room.”
    “Oh.” I suppose I was glad to hear that he was alive, although one death more or less on my conscience doesn’t make too much difference. “Should I write to say sorry?”

    Rendell smiled. “Martin says you have something to tell me.”
    “Yeah, about…”
    Before I could say more I was ushered into his office—I say “office,” but it was more like a carpeted football field—and the door was closed behind us. One wall was entirely glass.
    “Sit down. Coffee?”
    “Sure.”
    He poured from a steel jug. “Relax, Major. We won’t be disturbed.”
    Martin