Harlan's Race by Patricia Nell Warren Page A

iodine from the house’s medical supplies. The injuries were not serious. But our bodies, even our genitals, were stinging from dozens of tiny cuts. Vince, laying on his back, had shut his eyes instinctively — but he had a bit of glass in one eye and got panicky because it hurt so terribly. While I calmed him, Rayburn removed it with a magnifying glass and medical tweezers.
    By then, Steve had made a search outside. The bay was silent, shimmering under the moon. Boardwalks were empty. Beyond our shelter-belt of wild cherry brush, a few lights shown in neighboring houses.
    “Call the cops?” he said dubiously.
    Vince and I traded looks. For once, briefly, Vince and I were in the same throbbing emotional place. There went my gay dream that we could walk the streets of America without fear. But a fish knife, and a hitch as a jarhead, did not equip me for this kind of war. Windows that broke over me and my lover also broke over Betsy and Falcon, over everybody I cared about. It was time to swallow my pride, and call in the experts.
    “Fuck the police,” I said past the cut on my lip. “Let’s get Chino and Harry.”
    “Oh God, not the babykillers again,” Rayburn protested.
    “You got a better idea?” I was wrathfully grabbing the phone.
    ‘Yeah ... world peace,” George insisted.
    ‘You call this peace?” yelled Vince, his voice breaking. He yanked down his briefs, and grabbed his bare iodine-painted genitals at George.
    “Jeez,” said George, agonizing, caught in the question. ‘We’ve all had our losses. We’re all hurting bad, some way. But you two guys are both getting waaaaay out there, man. I don’t feel like I know you any more.”
    George and his friend left, to walk back to The Grove.
    H-C Security didn’t answer. They must be out on a job.
    It took another hour to clean up the bedroom. Behind the other bed in the room we finally found the thing that had broken the window. Somehow I’d expected a .22 bullet. Instead, it was a smooth rock, about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. The kind of rock that anyone could pick up on the beach. Glued on it, in little black letters cut from a newspaper, was one word:
    LEV.
    The cut-and-paste style was familiar. This thing was from “the secret admirer”. We picked it up in a cloth, and put it in a clean baggie, not wanting to damage any fingerprints that might be on it.
    “What the hell is LEV.?” asked Steve.
    “A name, maybe,” I said.
    “Lev is a Jewish name.”
    “This is different... looks like an acronym.”
    “The period makes it an abbreviation,” said my textconscious friend.
    “ Leviticus, maybe?”
    ‘Why Leviticus'?” Steve wasn’t as Bible-wise as I was.
    “Because,” I said patiently, “that’s the part of the Old Testament with the Hebrew laws in it. The death penalty for faggots, among others.”
    By the time we got Chino and Harry on the phone, it was 4:15 in the morning, New York time — 1:15 a.m. California time. Harry was a professional — he didn’t waste time saying, “I told you so”.
    “How about an expenses-paid summer on Fire Island, and your time, in exchange for getting to the bottom of this?” I asked wearily.
    ‘We’ll replace ourselves on this concert gig we’ve got. Meet us on ...” He paused, evidently looking at airline schedules right at his elbow. “... United flight 64 arriving Kennedy 11:30 a.m. tomorrow.”
    In the morning, Vince and I went into New York so that Doc Jacobs could check the first-aid job on our cuts. Both of us were subdued, brooding. With me, emotions always imploded, staying inside. But Vince was the exploder. When we got back to Hotel Goodnight, he was off on his own tangent again, and started berating Steve and me. He didn’t think we were going far enough to deal with LEV. Most likely, the guy had helped kill Billy. Other than throwing more money at bodyguards, we were just taking it laying down, he said. We were chickenshits, always sucking the straight cock, always knuckling