The Hardest Thing

lately, but Channing—Officer Eric Johannsen, NYPD—takes the gold medal. He smacked himself smartly on the right buttock; the flesh quivered, and a pink handprint quickly developed on the pale skin.
As a final gesture, he pulled the cheeks apart and gave SilverMan (and the three of us) a quick flash of his rosebud hole. We all sighed.
    Channing flipped over and sat down with a bounce.
    - You like?
    - Very much. So how much for a massage please?
    - $350. That okay? As long as you’re below 72nd otherwise cab fare on top J
    - That’s fine, I’m in Midtown.
    - Great. Can be with you in 20 mins. Address?
    There followed a long pause. Had Channing overplayed his hand? Had SilverMan suddenly got cold feet? We waited. Channing carried on stroking his abs. Nothing. Shit! We’d lost him.
    And then Channing pulled his underpants right down and gave us all a view of his dick.
    - The Time. 49th near Broadway. Meet in lobby in 20mins okay?
    - On my way.
    He gave the camera one final heartbreaking smile and closed the lid of the laptop. “Channing” was no more. We had one naked blond police officer in his early twenties, stark naked with a hard-on, blushing and grinning at three very horny middle-aged men who were finding it difficult to keep their minds on the job.
    “How was I, guys?”
    There was no time for compliments. “You did well. Get dressed. The car’s waiting.”

    The Time hotel has the kind of security that you don’t notice until you try to get into the elevator without being announced. There’s a beautiful young woman on the reception desk and a couple of bellhops hovering near the concierge desk in the shadows—and there are surveillance cameras covering every inch of the lobby. In order to access any of the guests, you have to be scrutinized by a video security phone. Every room has a full closed-circuit-TV view of the lobby. It could have been designed with absconding criminals in mind.
    In the good old days we’d have busted into the lobby, flashed our badges and swarmed up the stairs to the relevant floor, maybe posting a couple of men on the fire escape in case our quarry tried anything daring. Marshall was too smart for that kind of approach. He’d chosen a final refuge that was hermetically sealed against intruders.
    We parked a block back from the entrance. Marshall might be watching the street; he might even have guards posted around the hotel area. Sounds overcautious, perhaps, but there was no point in risking a gunfight if we could avoid it.
    A single plainclothes officer went in to talk to the receptionist; if we made a commotion, our bird would fly. Once he’d explained, quietly and calmly, that the Time was now the site of a police operation and that her help would be “appreciated,” we released “Channing” onto the street. I watched his ass in grey stretch jersey bouncing toward the posh entrance of the hotel.
    “Okay, he’s in.”
    And now we waited. In ten minutes—by which time we expected Marshall’s attention might have wandered
from the security monitors to the more pleasant view of Channing’s white ass and rose pink hole—we would follow him upstairs in the elevator and make our arrest.
    All quiet on 49th Street. Nobody running, no cars screeching to a halt in front of the Time, no shouting or gunfire. Ten minutes passed. The five of us moved noiselessly across the lobby.
    “Room 405.”
    “What’s the name?”
    “Joseph Thorne.”
    Shit—not SilverMan, and not, obviously, Marshall. We still had no sure way of knowing that we had the right man. Could just be some unfortunate random rich guy with an early morning flight and a taste for bubble-butted blond trade. City must be full of ’em.
    The night manager let us into the elevator and reluctantly handed over a keycard. He looked furious, and on the verge of tears.
    If Marshall had booked into a cheaper hotel—somewhere like the place my trick from the Downtown Diner took me, for instance—the plan would have worked like a charm. The NYPD is good at breaking down doors. But the Time was just a little too well designed for that.
    We flanked the door, two on each side. Solid dark brown wood—teak or mahogany or something like that, but it might as well have been veneered steel. No amount of kicking was going to bring that sucker down. Even shooting the lock was out of the question. Our only option was to use the keycard, and hope that Marshall—if it was Marshall—was so engrossed in Channing’s