dontravis.com
blog post #315
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TO
MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I have
no way of reading or responding to your comments. Please make any comments directly
to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com,
until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
Another piece of flash fiction this week.
*****
THAT ONE’S TROUBLE
“Seth
Fortner,” the bailiff intoned in a bored monotone.
A slender
youth rose from the cluster of prisoners awaiting arraignment in Henry Salman
Zamora’s Metro courtroom and shuffled forward uncertainly.
“That one’s trouble,” predicted the public
defender next to me.
"How so?" I asked.
“Too pretty.”
Another
lawyer scoffed. “The kid can’t be old enough for Metro.”
As if Hizzoner
were privy to the conversation, Zamora peered over his glasses. “What is this,
Mr. Prosecutor? This young man belongs in Children’s Court.”
The
assistant DA promptly handed over some papers. “The prisoner turned eighteen
two months ago, sir.”
As a probation
and parole officer for the City of Albuquerque, I had a privileged seat with a
clear view of Seth Fortner in profile. I understood the confusion. The kid’s face
was smooth, unmarked, and untroubled by a beard. He didn’t even look old enough
to have suffered through acne. Tanned, resilient skin stretched tight with the
freshness of youth. High cheekbones balanced his features perfectly. Smoky eyes
that could have been drawn by a caricaturist—brooding, and vulnerable—glanced nervously
around the small courtroom. Brown hair with blond highlights, wavy in front,
smooth at the back, couldn’t have been improved by a visit to a two
hundred-dollar stylist.
But the kid’s
frame reinforced the prosecutor’s claim. Although lanky, his torso was defined
by broad shoulders and flaring ribs seldom observed on minors. Even in baggy jailhouse
blues, the kid made me think of the guy back in school we called “High-Pockets.”
Outwardly cool,
the boy’s fear was apparent to anyone who looked carefully. Probably his first
bust. Soliciting, the docket read. Young Seth had propositioned an equally
baby-faced undercover cop.
Things went
about as expected. The kid’s public-pad mouthpiece pled him out, anticipating a
simple fine. For a while, it looked as if Zamora might upset the applecart because
Seth Bayless had no family or permanent address in the area. His problem became
mine as soon as the jurist’s eyes lit on me.
“I see Paul
Govan in the courtroom,” Zamora
“Uh, my boss
usually makes the assignments, your honor.”
“My word
carries no weight with you fellows down in Probation and Parole?” Danger lurked
in that question.
“Of course,
sir. I’m certain it will be all right for me to accept the assignment.”
Yeah, right.
My boss would tear me a new one… but he wouldn’t take the kid off my shoulders.
What was it the PD lawyer had said? “That
one’s trouble.”
It took three
hours out of my busy day to locate a halfway house with room for Fortner, and
another hour to get all of the paperwork done. Finally, I sat across my desk from
the probationer, intending to intimidate him with a dead-level stare. I was
immediately flummoxed. Some mortals are blest with either a fine profile or good
frontal features; few have both. Seth Fortner was one of the few. His eyebrows; dark and pencil thin, dipped slightly before arching gracefully over
his eyes. This guy was a looker, front, side, and back! If I was an Adonis like
this kid, I’d probably be out shagging my ass, too, but I’d sell it to the
ladies.
“Okay, Fortner,
you understand what happened, right? Judge Zamora gave you a six-month
suspended sentence with supervision. A few ground rules. No drinking of
alcoholic beverages and no drugs of any kind. You’ll be subjected to random
testing for the six months your ass is mine. Got that?”
The solemn,
respectful youth nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And stay
away from the rabbit run.”
“Rabbit
run?”
“The place you
were busted. That area out on East Central where the gays gather to sell their
goods. Got it?”
A nod this
time.
I ran down
the rest of the list and told him to report tomorrow afternoon to get with the
program. I hesitated before going personal. “You seem like a decent kid. Why were
you out peddling your butt to a bunch of fairies?”
“They like me.
And they aren’t always queer.”
My beetle
brows climbed, although I don’t know why. After ten years in this business, there
should be no more surprises.
“Even that
cop had me do him before he busted me.”
The old
eyebrows really reached for the hairline. “Come on, he—”
An elaborate
shrug. “He said you wouldn’t believe me. But he did. And he didn’t pay me,
either,” he added bitterly.
“I wouldn’t make accusations like that,
if I were you,”
“Not an
accusation. Just the way it was.”
“Well, you
stay out of trouble. Understand? You need a ride to the halfway house?”
“I can
probably hitch one.”
“No way,” I
came back at him.
He grinned,
that wide, mobile mouth curling devilishly at either end and altering his face
dramatically. He looked like a heart-wrenching male ingénue. “What’s the
matter, you afraid I’ll hit on someone?” he asked.
“Whatever. I’ll
give you a ride. You’re not about to proposition me.” Jeez, that sounded like a challenge.
His sudden calculating
look let me know he’d taken it that way and sent a shiver up my spine. He was
up for the game.
Was I?
*****
Well,
what’s the outcome of this story. Was the kid’s will stronger than the
probation officer’s? You can fashion your own ending and have fun doing it.
Please
buy a copy of my latest book, The Lovely
Pines, and provide feedback on
the novel. If you do read the book, please post a review on Amazon. Each one
helps.
Abaddon’s
Locusts is scheduled for release on January 22, 2019, and the first draft of The Voxlightner Scandal is finished and in the second draft as we
speak! Hooray.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
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See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
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