An Excerpt from "Speaking of Michelangelo"

Prologue

The Death of Basie

Dinsdale Carruthers was in a particularly foul mood. It was hot, as it was every day in July and for that matter, most of the Goddamned year, and Dinsdale hated the heat. He hated the heat only slightly less than he hated his wife, Doreen, and that was a pocketful. He sat on the porch, even though it was cooler inside the trailer, because at least out on the porch he wasn’t badgered by his wife’s constant yammering.
Dinsdale watched as Basie sniffed around the gazanias, as he always did when he searched for a suitable place to piss. It wasn’t a big yard, but it was fenced in and over the years, Dinsdale was certain that Basie, even though he weighed only three and a half pounds, had probably pissed on every square inch of it at least once, more than likely twice. The dog was nearly ten years old and his eyes were going bad and his legs were stiff—but he sure could piss.
Basie went about his business—the gazanias had proved unsuitable—and Dinsdale wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He looked at the trailers that surrounded him. Most of the residents didn’t come out much in the heat of the day. Mountain Palms was a retirement “village” located on the outskirts of Mesa, Arizona, and not many of the old folks could stomach the heat. Dinsdale didn’t care much for it, but by all rights watching a dog piss in the heat still beat Doreen’s yammering. He didn’t talk much to his neighbors and didn’t much care what they thought about him sitting outside in the heat. In a village full of senile, grumpy, overheated retirees, Dinsdale was among the most obstinate of them all—a “King Prick”, as Harry Collins used to say, back in the days when Dinsdale blew lead alto sax in the Collins band during the war.
Now, nearing sixty-eight, he was afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and cataracts—he had more in common with his surly little dog than Doreen—and saddled with a wife he couldn’t stand and hadn’t been able to stand for most of the years they had been married. Dinsdale, or Denny as his pals used to call him back when he was a hepcat, had given up life on the road, living out of a smelly trailer with twelve other men, to settle down and marry. The Collins band had been based out of Lincoln, Nebraska and the travel had been brutal and the pay meager, but those years on the road had been the happiest in Dinsdale’s life. That’s how it had been. Playing dance halls at night, then grabbing a post-gig meal at a local greasy spoon—if they could find one that was still open, before piling into the trailer and sleeping the miles away. If you were lucky, maybe some Betty would come back to the bus with you for a few minutes of the Cha Cha Cha while the other musicians ate.
Basie pissed on the hibiscus and Dinsdale smiled as he thought of the signal used by the bandmates—hanging a white towel on the doorknob of the band’s bus let the others know to clear off for a bit while the Cha Cha Cha was danced in the bunks inside.
Dinsdale often thought of the good times. Blowing sax in the Collins band for $9.00 a night and travelling around the Midwest—it beat trimming back the honeysuckle and picking up dog shit while Doreen sat in the trailer reading her trashy romance novels. His world had come crashing down on him that day in 1950 when Doreen had tracked him down at a barn dance in Omaha to tell him that she was “in the family way”. Then a pleasant, mousy old maid of twenty-seven, she had matured into a hateful, cold woman as the years went by, no doubt spurred by Dinsdale’s indifference to her and their daughter. Doing the honorable thing, Dinsdale had quit the band, married Doreen went to work for her father at his farm-supply store, selling tractors and plows and settled down for a life of Midwestern convention.
The years went by slowly at first, as Doreen raised their colicky, irritable baby and Dinsdale worked seventeen hours a day to try and make ends meet. Eventually, Dinsdale became the store manager, and when the old man died, Dinsdale took over completely. The child grew up, went to school and moved away, as children sometimes do. Without their daughter to raise, Doreen had become sullen and mean-tempered. She had constantly badgered Dinsdale about the long hours he put in at the store, and he reminded her often that he had given up the only thing he had truly loved—his music—to run the Goddamned store in the first place. She had driven him to the arms and beds of other women and he was sure she had done the same, the hateful bitch.
Glen Miller. When Dinsdale needed peace, he would pull out his hi-fi albums and play the music of the big bands. Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” was his favorite and he wore the record out. It drove his wife and daughter nuts over the years, and that in itself made it worth the price of a new record. The years gained steam as Dinsdale approached his fifties—he battled a drinking problem and tried to gain a handle on his extra-marital dalliances, all the while attempting to keep the store in the black. Every problem had seemed so important then, and even thoughts of forming his own swing band had eventually evaporated. Eventually, his hi-fi records were his only link to the past, his glory days.
His fifties had come and gone, then his sixties and suddenly, it was all over. All the work, all the troubles. His drinking, the affairs, the countless hours worrying over money all seemed like a bad dream, someone else’s life. Now there was only arthritis and bad eyes. And the dog. He sold the store, invested the profits and moved with his wife to the endless sunshine of the great West—Arizona. He lived in a hot little tin can in the middle of the desert, surrounded by other bad-tempered retirees, all waiting to get in the box. For Dinsdale, given the hibiscus, the dogshit and Doreen’s sour disposition, the outlook was bleak. But there was Basie—a Yorkshire terrier and the pride of Dinsdale’s baleful existence.
Named after Count Basie, the little dog had been given to Dinsdale by Doreen on his fifty-eighth birthday and Dinsdale had taken immediately to the little critter. At times it seemed that he and Basie were soulmates. The dog had little use for humans in general and barely tolerated Doreen. Dinsdale felt much the same way. When Basie felt like it, he would hop into Dinsdale’s lap and breathe a heavy sigh before lying down in the comfortable hollow between Dinsdale’s legs. But more often than not, he preferred to prowl the yard, peering through the chain link fence that surrounded it and barking at the passersby.
This day was hotter than most and Dinsdale regretted, as he often did, the decision to move to Mesa year-round. It was a hot, dry, miserable desert populated by snotty-assed, horn-blowing nincompoops for whom Dinsdale had no use. It’s not that he had any desire to return to the muggy, mosquito haven of the Midwest, he just didn’t particularly care for Arizona, or its people.
Basie moved slowly about the yard, his stiff, ten year-old legs shuffling beneath him, his tongue hanging from his mouth, nose to the sky, searching the airstream for strangers at whom to yap. Dinsdale, still grumpy and hot, saw the mailman approaching and got up to fetch the stack of bills he had prepared for mailing the previous evening. He shook his head as he turned the doorknob, once again briefly thinking of the old white towel signal of the Cha Cha Cha. How things had turned out, he thought. Sixty-eight and still paying a stack of bills every two weeks, trying to stretch every penny to it’s fullest. The screen door slammed behind him and he heard Doreen stir in the living room—the hateful bitch.

The Dark Bond of Sin - Prologue

Prologue


He watched the Mustang pull out of the parking lot and weave onto the street, moving slowly as it headed on its way, the brake lights flickering every few feet and he imagined the driver trying to focus his bleary, drunken eyes. He smiled and fumbled in his trouser pockets for his keys. He dropped the keys and stooped to pick them up, nearly stumbling into the door. “Whoa,” he said to himself as he tried to clear his vision enough to guide the key to the lock.
He should have been dropped off at the rented house, where his wife waited and would clean him up and put him to bed, but he had the feeling that tonight was going to be a long one. That’s why he had the driver drop him here, at the “secret place”. He had rented this apartment as soon as he got to town, so he would have a place to carry on without having to deal with motels and such. After all, he was a famous man; he didn’t need rumors to begin flying about his off-duty escapades. He had been in the business too long—he knew how be discreet.
Sex had always been easy for him to procure, his deviant tastes a bit more difficult, but for a man in his position, certainly not impossible. He liked it rough and he liked it kinky. The advent of the home videotape cameras had been a Godsend—there was nothing he enjoyed more than viewing himself administering a brutal once-over to a helpless woman. If not him, then Pete. He had gone out and purchased one of the first home units on the market, paying far too much for the cumbersome machine. He had upgraded many times over the years, always buying top of the line—he craved quality. He loved to watch them squirm in discomfort on the screen as he stood over them, his famous face betraying no mercy—cold and unforgiving, the face that had made him one of the biggest box-office draws of the 80’s. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they begged and eventually they were allowed to go on their way, usually none worse for the wear, always captured on tape. Now there were computers, DVDs and high-definition televisions and cameras the size of a pack of cigarettes. There was no more hauling around of heavy, bulky equipment – he could fit everything he needed in a carry-on bag. Laptop, camera and accessories, all in a single, lightweight bag.
He let himself into the room—it was a studio apartment with a kitchenette—his needs here were very specific, and excess space was not one of them. He shuffled past a large flat screen high definition television and a small, expensive video camera mounted on a tripod and accidentally kicked over a stack of pornographic DVDs on the floor.
He sat on the bed and kicked off his shoes. He reached for the bottle of Chivas on the bedside table and poured himself a tall drink into a dirty glass that sat by the bottle. He drank half the scotch and removed his shirt and pants, throwing them on the chair in the corner. He stood up and weaved to the bathroom, nearly running into the digital camera and tripod on his way. “Careful,” he slurred to himself. “That would probably hurt…”
He giggled and made it to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet, one hand on the wall and tried to focus as he urinated, missing the bowl for the first two or three seconds, managing to soak his socks. “Fuck,” he muttered and tucked his meat back into his drawers, stroking it through the silk boxers out of sheer habit as he stumbled back into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed like that for a few minutes, rubbing his dick, waiting for the spins to let up. He took a deep breath, then reached for the glass of scotch and the telephone. He dragged the phone onto the bed and drained the booze and tried to recall Pete’s number. “947…” He closed his eyes and didn’t like all the motion that was going on behind the lids. He fought off a sudden wave of nausea and set the glass down on the table by the bottle, where it had sat before.
He dialed a number on the phone and listened to it ring for a full minute before lying back on the covers, receiver to his ear. “Come on Petey,” he mumbled. “Goddamn it…” His eyes began to close and he was near passing out when a knock came to the door. He shot upright and nearly pitched forward. The room was spinning and he stood uncertainly and began to lurch toward the door. “That’s more like it,” he shouted, kicking the stack of DVDs once more with one piss-soaked sock. He opened the door and focused on the form before him. “Hey,” he said, breathing deeply, attempting to regain his equilibrium. The visitor swung a tire iron and too late, he raised his arm to defend himself. The metal bar caught him on the temple and he stumbled backward over the pile of DVDs, tripping over the camera and tripod on his way down. The next blow hit him in the mouth and he swallowed several teeth as he gasped for air. The third hit him over the eye and the room began to spin at a dizzying rate. The pain was tremendous and each swing of the tire iron felt like an explosion in his head. Again and again the iron came down, smashing his nose, then his finely-chiseled cheeks. At first, he was too shocked and drunk to resist, now he was simply battered beyond voluntary movement. The blood flowed down his face into his eyes and he choked on the blood running down his throat. The room grew quiet, save for the sound of his assailant’s heavy breathing. He coughed up blood and began to lose consciousness. His eyes tried to focus and he heard the door close and tried to scream, but only spit up more blood. Things went dark and within moments, Cash Decker was dead.