Milton Kurtz, Adman's father, had worked as a security guard at Herb Jenkins' Fertilizer and Recycling Plant for twenty-five years and knew everything about cow shit, but the only thing he had in common with his firstborn was his hatred of homosexuals.

David Burns had spent months sidling up to Milton who had provided him with the hundreds of pounds of fertilizer he'd needed to make his explosives. It's good to have a backup plan; that's what separates the Hannibal Lecters from the rest of society.

David smiled, thinking about the homosexuals in Washington, You came in with a whimper, but you're all going out with a bang.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As David drove down along Morris Road, looking at the city that should have been his, picturing the Potomac River inundating his ancestral town, visualizing the monuments sinking into the mud, he wished he had been able to place a thousand bombs throughout the city. Washington needs to go back to its roots, back to the days when my ancestors raised cows and grew corn. Perhaps the only thing that will solve that is a high colonic and a chance for the city to wash itself out to sea.



(The View of Washington, D.C. from St. Elizabeth's on Morris Road)

David neither saw the flashing red lights nor heard the siren until it was too late. Damn! Not me again! He glanced at his speedometer-he was doing forty in a twenty-five mile zone. All I need is another ticket. God damn it!

"May I see your driver's license and registration, please?"

David felt like knocking the crap out of the snot-nosed boy cop with the tight khaki pants and heavy bulge. This is my city, God damn it. David tried to look unperturbed as he reached inside his pants pocket and removed his wallet. I hope to God you don't see the blood stains, because if you do, I'll gun you down like a dog.

"Please step out of the van, sir."

What the hell? "Yes sir. Is anything wrong?"

"Just step out of the van."

David touched his jacket pocket, feeling for his revolver as he stepped out, following the officer.

"Your tail lights aren't working. That's a non-moving violation, sir, but I'll have to ticket you anyway."

David did a double take, "I'm sorry, officer, I had no idea." Then he remembered a secret his dad had taught him: a way to avoid fines, "Thank you for the warning, sir."

"Just be more careful next time. I'm going to give you a warning. You'll have ten days to repair the damage and have a mechanic sign off. If you don't have this repaired within ten days, you'll be fined $200."

David watched the cop's bulge double in size, "Thank you officer," I wonder if you'll have a job ten days from now. I wonder if your God damned precinct will even be here, faggot. "I'll take care of it," David tried not to smirk. "Oh, officer, can you direct me to the Eleventh Street Bridge. I seem to have gotten turned around."

"Sure, head south on Martin Luther King Avenue and make a left at the sign, that'll do it. Ah, interesting logo, We make Dead Bugs our Livelihood! . Did you think that one up?"

"I did. We kill small nasty critters."

As soon as the officer pulled off, David headed in the opposite direction-it was another trick his dad taught him. Never let a cop get behind you twice on the same day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"You ready for the queers?" Adman joked to his dad as he hugged him.

"Don't turn yourself into a fruit, son. They be peeps watching."

"Don't worry, Pop. We're taking care of the queers next week. They all gonna get what's coming."

"The only thing coming to queers is eternal damnation. Jesus tells us that, St. Paul tells us that. Men who have sex with men violate God's laws. You don't have to do nothing to them, son, Jesus has a special underground storage bin reserved for fags."

"Way underground," Adman smiled as he thought of the canals opening up and swallowing millions of homosexuals. Pop'll be so happy. I wish I could tell him. I wish I could tell him now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Garner walked out on Dato. This whole thing is getting silly. First, he tells me he's driving without a license. Now he's telling me he hasn't filed his income tax. Son of a bitch, Marion Barry doesn't file his income tax! Does Dato think I give a flying fuck? Garner walked back to the policeman's lounge. He needed coffee. Bad.

"So what's the red line, captain," Ron Everley was like a Jack Russell terrier-biting at his heels, begging for attention. "Has Dato confessed? Has he? Has he?"

Garner poured a cup of coffee, deliberately trying to spill it on the annoying little bitch.

"Has he planted bombs?"

Garner slopped in four packs of sugar and a quarter can of non-dairy creamer.

"It'll take half the city to find bombs. What we gonna do, captain? What we gonna do?"

Garner counted to ten, fending off Charon, the little dog terrier from hell, while stirring his coffee as if the Mocha Jo was the maelstrom and he was Odysseus struggling to get way from Everly, the siren bitch.

"If he's planted bombs, it'll take an army to find them." Everley barked.

Captain Garner took a long swig of coffee but it was too hot and he swished it around and around his mouth wanting to spit it at the annoying punk assed barking dog, wanting to get the hell out of the police business altogether, wanting to forget Washington and move someplace quiet like Colonial Beach, Virginia, I could own a little cottage right on the water, fish all afternoon, crab and eel whenever I want. Garner dribbled the rest of his drink back into his quart-sized World's Best Lover coffee cup and opened his mouth wide, exhaling over his tongue like his father had shown him when he was a kid blowing on his evening cocoa. "If it takes an army, we'll get an army. I've already called Homeland. They'll be sending a few hundred guys right over." Garner paused wondering how to heel the puppy, "It's their domain, now. Theirs." Down, little doggie, down!

"Why wait for Homeland, when we can order a hundred bottles of seltzer water, a few dozen clown suits and a rent a tent from Ringling Brothers."

The officer's lounge filled with laugher followed by a long deep sign as each man realized how accurate Everley's characterization of the clowns at Homeland was.

"True," Captain Garner said, "but Dato isn't making any sense. He still hasn't explained this red line on the map. It isn't the Metro Red Line, so what is it?"

"Could it be a parade route?"

"Utility lines?"

"A sewer line?"

"The power grid?"

"The Internet?"

"I bet it has something to do with communications. But why?

"The GLBT march'll be ten times larger than anything in D.C.'s history so knocking out communication would be the best disruptor. Find out where the utility lines are; see if they run along these red lines. Then find out who's been working on them."

"Can we use Homeland for that?"

"Perhaps," Garner wavered. He wasn't sure if he wanted to sock it to Homeland or use them to do something meaningful-either way would be a pain in the ass. "In the meantime, let's take advantage of the cams along Constitution. That's where this red line seems to be. Check out the video surveillance cameras. Look for crews. Look for anything irregular."

"Want me to contact Metro? Washington Gas? PEPCO?"

"Yeah, check them all. Don't miss anyone. It might be an inside job or someone with a security clearance. Do it."

"Rogers!" Captain Garner yelled. "Let's make the monkeys at Homeland do the foot work. Hound them, bark up their God damned tree if you have to, just make sure they do their job."

"Yes sir." Rogers hurried out, anxious to notify his friends at Homeland and fill them in on the unfolding scenario at the Marion Barry Building.

"Anything else, captain?" There was a slight sneer to Officer Madeline Sackela's voice. She was a fifteen-year veteran who had been overlooked for promotions so many times that she'd lost all desire to improve anything except the amount of time she spent dishing her co-workers.

"We need to figure out what these doodles mean. What have Scanlon and Carlee gotten so far?"

"They're still working on it." Walker was hesitant to tell the captain the entire cryptology department, which consisted of Scanlon and Carlee, was taking an extended lunch break. To Walker's knowledge, neither had looked at the code in the past twenty-four hours.

"That's not acceptable. I want the entire cryptology department in my office in twenty minutes-and I want some answers."

"Yes sir." Walker made his phone call from the back of the room, "Have you finished lunch? Good. We need you here now."

Eliot Scanlon's tie, which he wore dangling from his neck in a big open loop that looked as if it had been ring tossed over his head, had a spit's worth of weeks-old spaghetti sauce embedded in the middle like a miniature red badge of courage and his frayed long sleeve shirt had broccoli stains on the right elbow. His smudged brown suit jacket was the one he'd purchased on the day he graduated from the University of the District of Columbia, and his trousers, which reminded Garner of the boys in his hometown who wore high water pants, and were impervious to the laughter of everyone around them, bulged a little around his stomach and a lot around his buttocks. Scanlon mumbled as he came into the large conference room, looking down at his yellow Crocs, rubbing his right hand up and down his pant leg. His palms always turned to sweat when he knew he was going to be forced to greet anyone, but had learned a lesson from his twice-married Aunt Helen Tumarris, a shallow Vassar graduate, class of '59, who condemned him for his hygiene in front of her entire Long Island bridge club on his thirteenth birthday. Eliot's solution, which came quickly for a boy slow in social skills and quick in masturbation, was to wipe his hands straight down the sides of his pants each time he faced the ordeal of shaking hands or meeting people. As Scanlon lifted his semi-sweaty hand, Carlee Shoup arrived. Carlee stood six-foot five, weighed over four hundred pounds and was considered by both office staff and fellow detectives to be too fat and too ugly to be a Lesbian-let alone have a male sexual partner. Most of the detectives and officers made farting noises behind her back, but she never seemed to acknowledge them, since she, like Scanlon, was more wrapped up in the esoteric world of cryptology than in the world of fashion and manners.

"Good to see you, Scanlon, Carlee." Garner was the only person on the force who referred to Shoup by her first name. In many respects, he was the only one who had a scintilla of understanding of the rights of the oppressed, which was probably because he took care of his baby sister who was born with Down Syndrome but was joyous enough to nurse her cancerous yellow-billed canary with an eyedropper doped with a make-shift prescription from the local vet.

"Tell me what these numbers and letters mean," Garner said as he pointed to the letters C3H5(ONO2)3 written on the bottom of the map.

"It's a simple formula, Scanlon said. "I thought everyone knew it."

"Everyone," Carlee parroted as her lips trembled in anticipation of speaking more than one word at a time.

"You've never seen this before, Captain?" Scanlon's lips reverberated in a semi-demisemiquaver note trying to catch up to the rest of his face, "Didn't you take high school chemistry?"

I had enough trouble with biology Garner thought, even though he would never admit it. "If it's that simple, what is it?"

"Nitro." Carlee quavered.

"It's your basic highly explosive, extremely unstable nitroglycerin," Scanlon said as the drool slopped from his lower lip and slithered down his spaghetti colored tie.

The captain's phone rang and as he spoke he scribbled 3-821-3321 on his notepad over and over again.

Scanlon glanced at the paper. "What's that? Another secret code?"

"No, it's just how I record phone numbers. I invented it when the phone company decided we needed to dial area codes to reach local numbers. Washington's code is 202, so I write two. Maryland's is 301, so I write three, and Virginia's code is 703 so I write it as seven."

"What the?" Scanlon pulled out his copy of the map. "I've never been happy with that Dato code," he glanced over at Carlee. "What if 3-4, 04, 20, 15 is just like your shortcut? What if the number three represents 301? And the phone number is 404-2015? Don't look at me like that. Someone else could be using the same system." Scanlon didn't worry about Dato or his dead daughter. If he had his way, he'd send all the immigrants home on the next available tuna boat.

The phone rang six times before they all heard the recording, "We make Dead Bugs our Livelihood! We kill for fun and profit." There were scampering sounds, as if bugs were running across a linoleum floor. "Leave your name and number at the sound of the beep, we'll hop right on over." More bug sounds. A beep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kiefer Wilkerson waited until dusk before he was brave enough to head down to the Eagle, the rough-trade bar he'd read about in the city's gay newspaper, the Washington Blade. Holding his wrist as limply as he could and affecting the walk he thought most appropriate, he ambled out of the Metro toward the bar.

Kiefer let out a long breath and walked into the club, nearly tripping over a barstool as he tried to accustom his eyes to the darkness, looking for the tall dark handsome man he envisioned on those rare occasions when he was forced to mount Rhonda and pump her like a Paris Hilton rubber doll.

He sat at the end of the bar, scoping out the room, honing in on two men. The first was an Afro-American, dark skinned, 5 foot 10, 180, wearing skin tight leather jeans, black boots and a black T. Unfortunately, he was walking toward a different mark-a well built Latino with brown curly hair and a double set of eyelashes that gave him a soft sensuous look, nearly as hot as Brad Pitt but with Elizabeth Taylor's eyelashes. This could be good, Kiefer thought. If they don't hook up, I'll pick up the piece that's hottest . . . or loneliest.

Kiefer's eyes slid back to the second man at the bar-a blond with disheveled hair, smelling faintly of body wash that tried to cover his deep uncircumcised Nordic scent. The blond wore a pair of ripe gym shorts and a T. I'm not sure if he's my type-but there's something growing in those shorts. Could be a top, never know.

Kiefer finished his beer, left a ten on the bar, winked at the barkeeper and walked toward the second man. It never hurts to get in good with the barkeep. Perhaps he can hook me up.

"Hi, I'm new here. Can you tell me why the hottest guy in town comes here?" Kiefer thought his line would work-flattery had gotten him a boatload of dates with girls in high school-it had even gotten him Rhoda, for whatever good that was, but the man looked at Kiefer as if he was trash.

"I'm involved," he said, with breath that would have knocked down a cow.

Kiefer was used to failure. His marriage to Rhonda was a prime example of that-and he used it as an incentive to try harder, so he scratched his nuts and walked into the men's room. It worked for me in college, he thought, as he whipped out his cock and pissed a long steady stream, writing his name as he glanced at the men using the same troth. After pissing and shaking for at least a minute and a half before cramming everything back inside his four-sizes too tight jeans, he stepped back, trying to get a view of the entire playing field, wishing he could mouth the words to get what he wanted, but just as Kiefer turned to leave, Alejandro moved toward him.

"Nice goods," the Latino said, "but you didn't air it out long enough."

Kiefer quickly took the hint by pulling it back out, feeling stupid, like he was displaying a tad more than he wanted. Rhonda will want it soon enough, but I need this man. The hell with fish. I need this man.

"Name's Alejandro, you bottom?"

"Vers," Kiefer said, tying to remain cool, knowing how dry his mouth was, going with the safest answer.

"Well, I'm all top," Alejandro said, "so if you can handle it, follow me."

Kiefer's heart raced. He had never picked up or been picked up this quickly. The game's different in the straight world. Women play too much. They're like dancing with flamingos. Men are more like peacocks. Keifer laughed at his own joke as he stuffed his cock back into his jeans and followed the drop-dead gorgeous Latino to the street.

"I live at Ninth and M-a few blocks from here. Let's walk, boy."

Kiefer's ass tightened. He had wanted to get down to business but he hadn't expected to play the master-slave game. "I'm not into-"

"I'll tell you what you're into. Shut your hole and follow me-the sooner you know your place, the better."

Kiefer wished he could have controlled Rhonda that way. Perhaps this is what I've always wanted; perhaps this is the life I should have lived.

Alejandro's apartment was less than four blocks from the bar. How handy, Kiefer thought.

"I'm on the top floor," Alejandro said, rolling the word top off his lips in a reverberating Castilian accent as if his words were part of an epiphany.

Kiefer had expected a tenement, but, instead, discovered a swank New York style two bedroom condo, complete with fireplace, a balcony overlooking the Washington Monument, a stainless steel and granite kitchen, and floor-to-ceiling windows."What's with the décor? Are you a decorator?"

"I told you to keep your mouth shut," Alejandro said, wanting to finish the game before he allowed himself to get involved with anyone other than Carlos. "Get your ass in the bedroom and strip-and if you're not clean, I'll scrub you with a wire brush."

For a moment Kiefer thought Alejandro was serious about the brush.

After his first round of love making, Alejandro, smacked Kiefer's ass. "You're hot, man. We gotta do this again."

"You're the hot one," Kiefer said, "The way you jabbed me reminded me of the Metro Jabber."

Alejandro did a double take, he thought he had seen this man before-but he was so concerned about Carlos that he'd put the rest of the incident behind him the moment he ran off the train. I didn't really see anything-all I really know about the incident is what I've heard on TV-should I let this trick know I was there? "Yeah, I read about it in the Post. Some maniac jabbed a guy with a syringe. What was all that about?"

"I saw the guy, " Kiefer paused, wondering if he should say what he really wanted to say. "The jabber's name's Jason and-"

"Like Halloween's Jason?"

"No, like Jason and the Argonauts. He's the hottest guy I ever saw next to you."

"So? I'm second best? Roll over, let's see if you can take a real Metro jab."

Although Kiefer felt warm after making love, he felt warmer when he realized he was no longer alone.


On to Chapter Seven
June 4th
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June 1st
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