He Blew Blue Jazz: Book #4 in the Mike Montego Series

Chapter One

I suspect my peaceful Thanksgiving weekend is about to be disturbed when a stylish, well-coifed woman steps into the lobby of the Hollywood police station where I currently have front desk duty. The low sun behind her creates a softly radiant glow on her lustrous raven-colored hair—like one of those Revlon ads in Life magazine. Very cinematic. Her do is teased at the crown, à la Barbra Streisand. She’s wearing a blue pastel suit with a short, boxy powder blue jacket and over-sized buttons. Like something Jackie Kennedy might wear. Damned if it doesn’t look better on this woman than on the First Lady.

She hesitates a moment to glance about, and coolly scans the room like she’s sizing up the place before gracefully approaching the front desk where I straddle a stool. Her furrowed brow signals trouble.

I shove the Sports Section of the Sunday L.A. Times below the counter as the woman approaches. A major sacrifice. I’m one of a handful of men left in L.A. who still care about pro football in Angel Town, given the woeful record of the hapless Rams. I’d been deeply into a lengthy article about how Vince Lombardi, a coaching genius, would most likely bring Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers to their second straight national championship this year, thanks in large part to their ridiculously gifted quarterback, Bart Starr. Ah, but even the great ones occasionally stumble. Yesterday, the Green Bay Packers, 10-zip this season, winners of 12 games in a row, unexpectedly lost to the Detroit Lions. Hey, Detroit has a good team, but still a stunning loss. I mean the Packers had outscored their opponents 309-74 through their previous ten games, winning by an average of nearly 24 points. Just goes to show that nothing’s sacred, ’cept maybe death and Marilyn’s cleavage.

Which brings me back to the attractive woman, whose big brown eyes glimmer in recognition as they give me the once-over. So do mine.

I know this lady.

She’s my high school buddy’s mother. So much for fleeting daydreams of Babs Streisand and Jackie.

Her name is Grace Allan, and her brow smoothes out the moment she stops at the high counter. There’s something about her that both commands my respect and sends a little shiver of dread down my spine.

Mike Montego, she says breathily. Those vivid blue eyes—I’d know them anywhere. How long has it been…eight years? And you, now a police officer, so handsome in that dark-blue uniform. Why, I’d give you a big hug if this counter wasn’t so tall.

She flashes a warm smile; one I readily remember. Shaking off the shiver, I slide gingerly off my stool.

Hey, can’t let that stop you.

My gunshot wounds prevent me from getting too carried away. They’re the reason I’m working the light-duty assignment. Hurrying carefully to the end of the counter, I trigger the release button and swing open the wooden pony-door. Mrs. Allan meets me half way, near the corner of the L-shaped counter. We hug warmly. Upon our letting go, I note her brow has furrowed again. I say nothing, figuring I’ll learn her reason for being here soon enough.

Hand signaling to my front-desk partner, I call out Rosy, I’m buying this lady a cuppa joe.

Rosy Rosenbloom is a burly senior officer. He’s also my landlord in Manhattan Beach where I rent the attic apartment in his three-story house.

He tears off a length of wide, light-brown paper rolling out of a noisy rat-a-tatting Teletypewriter below the counter, shifts the ever-present Roi-Tan cigar in his mouth and says, Gotcha covered, Tonto.

He’s eyeing me like he knows something.

Grace Allan lets out a short laugh.

Oh yes. Tonto, your nickname. How could I forget? It fits your olive complexion and black wavy hair. She still has the charm that once made me feel like close family. So why the damn shiver? Must be the gunshot wounds. Or maybe the lousy coffee I’ve been downing.

The Tonto tag came about when I was a boy farmed out to live with a strict Christian family in North Hollywood. My mother worked full-time and felt she couldn’t adequately care for me during the week. At least I got to spend most weekends with her, usually from mid-Saturday mornings to mid-Sunday afternoons. Precious time got chewed up traveling to and from the San Fernando Valley, an hour each way on the red trolley.

Anyway, my religious foster family did not appreciate my boyish cussing. Leading to the bitter taste of a piece of green soap. To keep it on the bathroom sink where it belonged, I went to the local library and searched through a Spanish dictionary because I’m half Spanish thanks to my father who divorced Mom soon after my arrival. Anyway, my thinking: look for a word or words they wouldn’t understand. I found the perfect phrase, "tanto peor," meaning so much the worse. Not as tough sounding as the other guys’ swear words, but it kept the Palmolive out of my mouth. Mostly I would blurt, "tanto. English-speakers heard tonto," and the tag was born. These days I let the occasional damn or even fuck slip out; chalk it up to adulthood in general, and life as a street cop in particular.

I escort Mrs. Allan down the narrow corridor to the small coffee room near the rear station entry, and pull out a dented metal chair. After she sits, I go to the sideboard and fill a fresh paper cup with the world’s worst coffee, then top up my own in a noble gesture of solidarity. I recall she takes hers black, same as me. I amble back with the hot cups, my fingertips starting to burn as I place them on the Formica tabletop. I slowly lower myself into a chair and smile across at her. Her slight frown and concerned expression bothers me. I immediately start rubbing my thumbnail, a nervous habit.

My month-old wounds, courtesy of a recently deceased mobster, not my doing, still feel a bit sore. Thankfully though, in a week or so I’ll be off this desk job and back doing what I enjoy, working the Felony Car Unit, FCU. It’s a plainclothes patrol assignment focusing on nabbing robbers and burglars. It’s good, clean fun. And best of all, it’s a stepping-stone toward becoming a homicide detective. My dream job.

Mrs. Allan sips at her hot coffee, grasping the paper cup with a slightly trembling hand and says, Eddie is missing, I believe for quite some time. I’m so worried.

She sighs, then her red lips compress. She may be middle-aged, but she’s still a hot looker. I squirm in discomfort on the aluminum chair.

Her only child and I had hit it off from day one at dear old Hollywood High. Home of the Sheiks. I don’t think that’s the way it’s actually supposed to be spelled, but hey, we’re talking about a high school here. We might have had the only sports teams in the country named after the popular romantic silent film actor. Rudolph Valentino. You know, the Sheik.

Anyway, Eddie and I were best buddies for three of the most important years in my young, red-blooded American boy’s life. I often swam and generally goofed around in their large pool up in the heights of Hollywood on the opposite side of town from Mom’s place near Western Avenue; if there were any railroad tracks in the vicinity, we definitely lived on the other side of them. Thankfully, I finally got to live with her when I enrolled in high school; but, I had to put up with her new husband.

After our graduation, the ceremony took place in the Hollywood Bowl, I enlisted in the Army, and we lost contact.

I so want to push Mrs. Allan for an explanation, but she oozes anxiety, so I decide to let her explain at her own pace. Her anxiousness seeps across the tabletop like saltwater bubbling up in the bottom of a leaking lifeboat. My body tenses, my thumb itches. I will myself to stop rubbing it, a damn nervous habit.

Setting her cup on the table, but still gripping it, she says, "Late this afternoon I flew in from Rome. I’d been there for the past several weeks. Eddie’s father, Robert Lee—Mike, you might remember that he’s a cinematographer—anyway, Robert, along with Leon Shamroy and Jack Hildyard, were there finishing up the filming of Cleopatra—oh, forgive me, I’m running on."

She jerkily glances about the small room, then seems to gather herself.

I fear that something is definitely wrong. I expected Eddie to meet me as prearranged at the airport when I arrived, but he never showed up.

Seeing her moist eyes now intense looking. I feel another shiver coming on. The thumb continues to itch.

I’m so worried, she repeats.

Her obvious anxiety has me tempted to hold her free hand, but I don’t. Could have something to do with the double whammy that she’s my mother’s age, and gorgeous.

When did you last speak to Eddie? I ask, wondering if he actually still lives at home.

She blinks and a flash of guilt passes over her glistening dark eyes.

The day I arrived in Rome I meant to call him, to let him know I arrived safely, but I got caught up with other things, and, well, my son is seldom at the house, and international calls, you know, they can be a hassle.

So you haven’t been in touch with Eddie for nearly a month?

Her slender fingers now stroke the paper coffee cup.

I did send postcards home—that’s another thing. The mail hadn’t been picked up. I found it spread over the entryway, including all the post cards I’d sent.

I sip my now barely warm coffee, then set down the cup.

Mrs. Allan, were you able to tell when the mail stopped getting picked up at you home?

Her brown eyes sharpen, and then she smiles.

Please Mike, call me Grace. She twists her left wrist and glances at her red-polished fingernails. "That’s what bothers me—frightens me, actually. None of our mail had been gathered…we have a slot in the front door with a catch-box, but it had overflowed—as I said, mail was strewn all over the floor."

Now grasping her coffee cup in both hands, she adds, It’s as if Eddie hadn’t been in the house since the day I left.

Okay, so much for wondering if Eddie still lives at home.

Still, I’m curious. So, he doesn’t live with you?

Heavens no. She shakes her head. The day following your class graduation ceremony he left. Ever since then, he’s played gigs all over town, and in Vegas. When I flew to Italy, his group, it’s a sextet, played at Peacock Alley.

She studies me expressing a hopeful look as she takes a sip. I’m familiar with the Peacock, a jazz joint on the west side of our division.

Eddie, a talented musician, played tenor sax in the school band. He and five other guys were heavily into bebop while there. They started jamming in his garage, working diligently to improve their chops on bass, drums, piano, tenor sax, trombone and trumpet. Eventually they became good enough to score gigs at various house parties thrown by our classmates. I tried to hang with them, and briefly took up the trombone, but soon realized I had better stick with sliding into third, and so gave up my unpromising musical career for baseball.

Still, I dug their music, although I didn’t play, and I enjoyed dancing, and actually did pretty damn well. My style, called dirty boogie often saw me cutting loose; everyone on the floor often would stop and watch. Only one girl, a cutie, could keep up with me. She later went professional, and now dances with Tito Puente. Josie Powell billed as the Mambo Queen. Guess that would’ve made me the Mambo King. Or maybe the Mambo Prince.

During our senior year in school, Eddie’s group became less frenetic, calmer. They soon called themselves the Soul Blues Six. Eddie described their style as blue jazz. I got into their new, smooth sounds.

And now, here sits Eddie’s mom. I understand her worry, but explain there’s nothing the Department can, or likely will, do. The defeated look she shoots at me is wrenching. She’s clearly distraught, but what can I do?

I glance away, knowing I’m letting her down, and feel lousy about it. I also can feel trouble coming on. I’m not a detective, at least not yet. But I have been known to carry out the odd investigation on my own. Internal Affairs on the fifth floor downtown has a file on me to prove it. Like I said, trouble.

I slug back my cool coffee, hesitate for an instant, sigh, then go ahead and ask what kind of car Eddie drives. I’m my own worst enemy. L learn that he owns a year-old blue Corvair.

We finish our java pretty much in silence. The tapered fingernails on her left hand tap dance on the side of her paper cup. Sensing her frustration, I surprise myself by laying my hand over her wrist, stilling her fidgeting fingers. It helps ease my own tension and finger itching.

Although Department protocol requires that a person be missing for 24 hours before a report is taken, I smile as genuinely as possible and tell her that I will file a Missing Person report. Eddie’s sudden disappearance is compelling. At least I think it is, even though I doubt the Hollywood homicide detectives upstairs will agree with me. Her story does give me the leeway to embellish a bit when filling in the circumstances box; I’ll say he’s been gone for a few days. Sadly, such reports, except in high-profile cases or where there are signs of foul play, usually stay in a file drawer, and only get acted on when the person is found, often as a corpse.

Here comes that shiver again, this time scurrying across my shoulders.

Grace, I’ve got the next two days off. I’ll do some checking on my own—see if I can learn where Eddie might’ve gone.

The relief on her face is sufficient payment for what I feel will be a waste of my time. I rise. She starts to get up as well.

Please stay seated, I tell her. I must get a report form—be right back.

Mike, I really can’t express how grateful I am for whatever you can do. Maybe it’s a mother’s intuition, but I feel that something dreadful has happened to my son.

I give her a too-weak smile and quickly leave the room.

Upon my return, I get the necessary information from her and complete the report. I ask if Eddie is dating anyone regularly. She doesn’t know. I ask for a recent photo of him. She pulls a small one from her red leather clutch purse and hands it to me.

I listen as she says, It’s his graduation picture, not recent. She sounds apologetic. I have to smile, realizing my mother doesn’t have a recent photograph of me, either. Thoughtless sons.

I glance at the formal picture. Eddie’s curly black hair doesn’t have a part. It’s too wild. The devious grin I remember is right there, front and center.

Grace searches about for a place to dispose of her cup. I gesture for it and along with my empty one, shove one into the other, and then toss both into a wastebasket over by the sideboard. Swish. Two points.

Give me a few days, I say. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, are you going to be all right?

She lets out a tremulous breath, and smiles as she scoots back her chair and stands.

"Yes, Mike, I’ll be fine. Elmo returned with me on the flight back to the States. You haven’t met him, but Elmo Williams is a close family friend. He’s editing the film I mentioned earlier, Cleopatra. He joined me in the taxi ride and saw me into the house." Her fingernails now tap dance on the tabletop.

We both spied the mail on the floor. Elmo knows my concern…he suggested I notify the police. She glances toward the hallway. He assured me that he will be available should I need him.

Okay. I slide the one-page report in front of her. Sign here, please. I point at the signature box.

She bends to sign it, giving me a faint whiff of a perfume a woman her age shouldn’t be wearing—but I’m glad she is.

I escort her down the hall and out into the lobby where we say goodbye. I tell her I’ll be in touch and then watch her step out through the west exit to Wilcox Avenue. She looks as impressive walking away as she does face to face. I sigh, feeling like I’ve let her down, like I’ve failed her.

Back behind the counter straddling the tall stool, I peer sideways at Rosy, who obviously is waiting to hear the whole story. There’s no big secret here. So I tell him, including the fact that I plan to check out the Peacock Alley tomorrow.

Rosy quickly shifts the soggy stogie in his mouth, a familiar maneuver.

So, Tonto is gonna play detective, again? His twinkling eyes, squinting above a cheeky face, reflect the overhead fluorescent light. I thought, with your gunshot wounds, that you would have learned your lesson by now.

Chapter Two

End-of-watch, EOW, finds me upstairs in the locker room. It’s 0300 hours. I change into my usual off-duty attire: Levi’s, a gray sweatshirt, the sleeves cut off just above the cuffs, and oxblood huaraches sans socks.

Downstairs, I exit the building through the south doorway that opens into a wide drive-through breezeway. It separates the two-story station from a small receiving hospital in matching orange-brick.

I stride east around the hospital to Cole Place, turn right, and head to the employees’ parking lot and my ’58 white-with-red-trim Chevrolet pickup, the limited edition Cameo model. I keep it cherry looking thinking how one day it might be a classic. Right. And the Rams’ll win a title soon, too. Still, you never know.

During the last hours of the Mid-watch, the cold shiver turns into a blue funk, worming its way into my brain. Talking with Grace had made me realize how much I miss the jazz sessions with Eddie and his group in the hillside garage...all those years ago. How did I leave all that behind so easily? I mean how hard can it be to get good at something as simple as the trombone, anyway? I’m a decent ballplayer, but it’s not like I am receiving calls from anxious Dodger scouts, pleading with me to turn pro.

My musings bring back how I felt the afternoon I graduated from high school.

Free, that’s the word that best describes it. Free to see the world—free to escape the confines of home. Mom re-married to a fireman. Steve Buckingham, the man with all the answers, and just as many nosy questions. To say we’ve never been close would be like pointing out it’s cold in Duluth, Minnesota in the winter. A slight understatement. I had found it quite easy to leave home; and though my friends weren’t forgotten, they were left behind, until Grace Allan appeared at the front desk tonight.

I am on auto-pilot, listening to jazz, while driving home to Manhattan Beach and my attic apartment, named the Pelican’s Perch by the previous renter, a deputy sheriff. Soon, I am coasting my way down the grade to the dark Pacific, I wonder how on earth I’m supposed to locate Eddie.

For starters, I’ll free up some hours by skipping Monday evening’s criminology class. And I will forego Tuesday evenings kenpo session. I will mean missing practice for the fourth straight week. Three weeks off for bad behavior (on the part of the asshole who shot me), and now another one missed to see if I could track down a boyhood pal.

I routinely practice the Okinawan-style martial arts form that I’ve studied for over thirteen years. I’ve reached the Godan level of assistant instructor, a big deal; at least it is for me. And I’m damn anxious to get back into the dojo, but if anyone in the world is likely to understand why I need to do what I can to find an old friend, it is my sensei, the elder Yoshi Kono, and his grandson, Kenji, Kenny, my sparring partner.

During my junior high school years, I had resided with the Japanese family in Torrance, having left the foster family in North Hollywood. A move that was courtesy of a Mexican kid, a bully who’d taunted me about my surname and me not speaking Spanish. The big oaf, easily twice my size, had been held back two years because of poor grades. Not the brightest bulb in la lámpara. One afternoon, he’d pushed me against the white picket fence in front of my foster home and expressed his general dismay at my lack of sufficient machismo with the help of his trusty switchblade.

Luckily Eagon Quinn, a homicide detective, my mentor and longtime friend of Mom’s, spotted the shallow cut on the side of my neck the following Saturday. He quizzed me on what had happened, and then convinced Mom that I should move in with the Konos at the end of the semester. Literally, a life-changer.

I remember when Eagon first told me about the Kono family, and all the humiliation and hassles they had to go through during the Second World War. When he said they practiced kenpo, I was intrigued; and when he suggested I make kenpo a part of my life, I listened. Like I said, that was over thirteen years ago. I always think back on that big, clumsy Mexican kid with a bit of fondness now. No bully, no Konos. No switchblade, no kenpo. Good really can come from bad. Go figure.

Kenny, four years my elder, soon emerged as my big brother. He immediately began teaching me kata, martial arts routines in a style that few America had a clue about. Kenny, now a fellow LAPD officer, heads up the Physical Fitness Unit at the Academy. He stands a couple of inches shorter than my six one height, but he’s definitely not a man to mess with.

Years later, while a recruit in police training, I found myself going through an ugly divorce. Again, the Konos took me in, no questions asked. When I did my tour in the Army, I’d married Cherli, a damn pretty German girl whom I’d met while stationed in Darmstadt. Like Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union, a damn big mistake. I’ll skip the sordid details. Suffice it to say if she hadn’t self-aborted, I’d be a dad today, and have a son. Turns out Cherli was worried that completing the pregnancy would ruin her figure. And that would jeopardize her dreams of a glamorous future in Tinseltown and show biz—dreams that have never materialized. Hey, I’d simply been a convenient means to a bad end.

I should never’ve told her I lived in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, that ugly experience has seriously screwed up my relationship with Julie Preston, my girlfriend. Julie is serious about me, and keeps hinting she’d like more permanency in our relationship. But I worry that my feelings for her—a hot mixture of lust and what I suspect might be love—are eerily similar to what I once had felt for Cherli. At least Julie has no ambitions to be the next Lauren Bacall, although she certainly has the necessary face and equipment.

In response to Julie’s overt hints, I keep telling her my first goal is to make detective-grade and work homicide cases. I throw in the fact that getting off the street and working a detective job is safer. Okay, I’ve been laying it on a bit thick, being just a trifle disingenuous, but I can do without another divorce. Anyway, she seems to be buying it.

Watching Steve and Mom together has done little to improve my impression of the glories of wedlock. Although she puts on a good front and acts happy in public, I know Mom well enough to realize she isn’t.

My fault.

My thoughts go back to the night a dozen years ago, when I passed by her open bedroom doorway and saw her sitting on the bed in the dark. I could tell that she was weeping, and I spied a black telephone on her lap.

I asked softly, What’s the matter?

Unable to hide her tears, she simply replied, Steve’s coming over.

Not totally understanding, I asked why that made her cry?

It took a bit of hemming and hawing, but when she finally opened up, it pissed me off. I already knew that Steve had asked her to marry him years earlier, and that she’d told him she wanted to get my blessing before she answered.

Being a youngster without a dad, her words thrilled me, and I quickly said, Yes. I mean, what the hell did I know?

However, nothing came from it. I expected the man to ask her again; and, for a long time I paid little mind to the fact that he didn’t. Maybe his ego had been bruised because she hadn’t accepted his proposal immediately. In any event, no new one followed; and now they were eight more years into their relationship with her being unable to date other men because of Steve’s constant hovering, not quite stalking, but close.

But back to that darkened bedroom, and why his coming over had her crying. She hesitantly explained she wanted to date other guys, but couldn’t get past one or two evenings with any new man, because Steve would always be around when they brought her home. He basically chased them away.

Earlier that same evening, I had seen her being dropped off across the street. The man driving the car was a colleague and had brought her home from work. Innocent as the driven snow. Steve, as usual, had been staking out our duplex and saw the drop-off. Thus the jealous phone call.

And my Mom’s tears.

Besides being infuriated, frustration overwhelmed me.

Mother, do you love Steve, or not? She wanted me to call her Mother, not Mom.

Dabbing at her wet eyes she said softly, Yes.

Do you want to marry him?

Another soft Yes.

At times, to this day, I wish I hadn’t pressed her. In any event, Steve soon arrived.

Still pissed, I confronted him at the lighted front stoop just as he placed a foot on the bottom step. I called him out demanding, Either marry my mother or leave her alone.

After a momentary hesitation and a hard-eyed glare—I think the big man thought about decking me or bowling past me to enter—he agreed to marry her.

So I stepped aside. Hey, I was a skinny thirteen-year-old at the time. What the hell did I know?

Depressing the remote control button I watch the garage door lift. Modern magic. Moments later, I’m upstairs in the Perch, lying nude on the bed. Often Julie comes upstairs from her ground floor studio apartment and sleeps with me, but she’d spent the day with her folks, and had called the station earlier to tell me she’d decided to go straight from their place to her Monday morning interior design class at UCLA. She’s in graduate school studying interior design and decor. That’s probably what attracted her to me in the first place, my impeccable taste in home furnishings. You should see my couch.

My uncanny sense of style certainly hasn’t impressed her wealthy parents. Tastefully sensible blue-bloods that they are, they’ve forgone the pleasure of dropping by my lofty pad—hell, they’ve only visited their daughter’s studio apartment on one occasion, as far as I know. The Prestons have a large, Elizabethan-style manor high in shady Laurel Canyon, much closer to the sprawling redbrick UCLA campus than here in Manhattan Beach.

Sleep soon captures me. I drift off to the soulful sounds of Eddie Allan blowing blue jazz on his tenor sax, courtesy of that jukebox in my dreams.

Six hours or so have passed when a seagull hovering outside the salt-crusted windows screams, stirring me awake. Rather than turn over and seek more slumber, I relax in a twilight haze, a brief period when the gray-matter gremlins like to play with my mind. Some of my clearest thinking takes place at these times. Curious, how often the best stuff happens when you’re not really trying. Go figure.

The gremlins come through. A game-plan seed is planted in the fertile fields of my frontal lobe, a way to find Eddie. I celebrate my cleverness by drifting back into slumberland, stacking up a few more zzz’s.

I awaken with a start, at the delicious sensation of slender fingers stroking high up my inner thigh, edging toward my groin arousing it. I’m vaguely aware of a husky whisper in my left ear. An excellent way to wake up. I highly recommend it.

"Does Tonto wanna come?" is all it takes. I literally spring to life as Julie quickly mouths my member, first with her soft ruby lips, then, moving up, with her other, moist pair. She doesn’t let me off my backside. But then who’s trying to get up? I do the only sensible thing under the circumstances, and lie there helplessly, letting her have her way with me.

Actually, she’s been having her way with me quite a lot lately, concerned that my bullet wounds haven’t yet healed enough for me to lead the charge.

My doctor told me I should hold off at least six weeks before launching into any real physical activity. But, medical genius that I am, four weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day night, after returning from an all-day cruise on Eagon Quinn’s sleek 54-foot Chris-Craft to Catalina Island, I felt it time to unleash the mighty Montego machine on an unsuspecting, but always willing, girlfriend.

Back at the Perch that evening and feeling no pain (yet), I broke the glad tidings, and dived right in. The next morning my insides felt like someone had sneaked into my gut and beaten the shit out of me with a rubber truncheon, literally from the inside out. Love, it turns out, does hurt. At least it does when you make love like a wild man for hours only a month after serving as a human firing-range target. Thus the ever-thoughtful Julie’s concern.

By the way, Eagon Quinn is why I’m an LAPD cop. After twenty-five years on the job, the former homicide detective is now a trial attorney with a downtown office in the ornate Bradbury Building. Very spiffy. His dream is to be a Superior Court judge. Personally, I want to be him when I grow up, but not the legal beagle or bench part.

My mind continues to wander while I threaten to burst loose inside Julie’s warm wetness. Usually, thinking about things like ways to shoot a seagull without leaving my bed, or how many blows I can land on the makiwara post in 60 seconds helps hold off the inevitable for a respectable length of time. But the Rubicon is about to be crossed here, and damn soon. Julie’s unceasing gyrations and soft, insistently sexy sounds bring me to the edge.

She knows I’m close to coming, and whether for her own enjoyment, or simply because she’s in the moment, she turns up the volume on her deep throaty purring, further exciting my erotic senses. She ends her wild ride atop me with a whoopee, worthy of a galloping Dale Evans.

Thank God she isn’t wearing spurs.

Her romping triggers an electric bolt that escapes my shaft, resulting in a series of explosive sparks.

There are times when we finish our lovemaking that a veil of guilt crosses her smooth, high cheek-boned face. Not exactly the expression one is looking for in the moments immediately after sex. Freudian expert that I am, I blame Julie’s parents, especially her father. Her upbringing was similar to mine, strict and full of church-going religious do’s and don’ts—don’ts like pre-marital sex, for instance. While Sundays rarely find her in a pew these days, she has quietly kept her faith, and with it a nagging sense that her lusty love of screwing like a bunny in heat is somehow wrong.

In moments of candor she’s chalked up her near-compulsion to do it, as often, in as many places and in as many unique ways as possible, to her thorough introduction to the fine art of fucking at the hands (and other bodily parts) of a then-college professor of hers when she’d been a naïve, 19-year-old art student.

Obviously, she had been both a willing and clever student; I can happily attest to that. She has certainly taught me a thing or two in the bedroom.

Anyway, I’m glad her guilt isn’t showing this cool morning. Maybe today’s the start of a looser, freer, more accepting-of-herself Julie. I hope so, in more ways then one.

Maybe the whole notion of wanting to be a detective before making an honest woman of her needs to be rethought. I really am such a sensitive guy.

When she goes down to her studio apartment to dress for her art class, I noisily blend my usual all-American liquid breakfast concoction—today it’s Cheerios, a Valencia orange, a glob of sage honey, wheat germ, and a pint of Coca-Cola.

After downing it in numerous long gulps, I do several mild leg stretches, and then go downstairs to the deck and attack the heavy bag that I had installed. It doesn’t take long before my wounds are warning me to go easy, to quit pushing so much.

Following a brisk shower, I pull on my clothes. I’m riding my Triumph to work today, so I decide to wear ankle-high black boots with low walking heels instead of my usual huaraches.