Full Release by Marshall Thornton (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

get my belongings back. The place reminded me of a pawnshop, and the unhappy civilian behind the counter looked like a pawnbroker. Eventually, he brought out a box with all my things. It happened to be the same box Jeremy kept his porn in. In addition to my now useless cell phone and my laptop, they were giving me back Jeremy’s porn. As each item was checked off on the form that went with the box, the unhappy clerk read it aloud, including each individual DVD titled. “One DVD Fists of Fury, one DVD Piss Boys of Chicago.” And it went on and on.

I remembered I had porn on my computer, as well. I wondered if they’d gone through that, too. Was it really porn on the thumb drive? Would Cameron even know what real gay porn was? I let the clerk drone on while I called Tiffany. She picked up on the third ring.

“Hey,” I said, “did you bring that Pez drive with you to work?”

“Yeah, it’s in my purse. It’s not the kind of thing you leave with a fifteen-year-old.”

I skipped a second apology and asked, “Can I come by and get it?”

She hesitated a moment and said, “Um, sure.”

“Great. I’ll be there in about a half hour.”

I grabbed my box of belongings and left. I hurried out to my car and drove to Burbank. Tiffany had left me a drive-on pass so I could park in the underground garage. I zipped up to my old office, luckily not running into anyone I knew, and expecting to find Tiffany in her cubicle, I didn’t.

In fact, the cubicle was empty. All her paraphernalia -- the pictures of her boys, her framed AA degree, the buttons with kittens on them -- it was all gone. I looked around, then walked into my old office, where Tiffany sat behind my desk. Well, her desk. She had the decency to blush.

“You got my job,” I said.

“I feel bad, I really do. But it did seem like you were going to jail.”

“How did you get my job? I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but Sonja doesn’t like you.”

“I caught Sonja and Charles in a compromising position and happened to have my phone on me, so I took a photo…”

“Um…wait, Charles is--”

“Not a closet case.”

“So you blackmailed your way into my job?” It had been a surprise to find out Eddie was a blackmailer. It was bigger one to find out Tiffany was one too.

“I don’t like to think of it that way,” she said, “but yes. Sonja couldn’t exactly give the job to Charles after I took that picture, could she?”

I thought about it for a moment. In a way, I was impressed; I never expected Tiffany to do something like that. On the other hand, she scared me a little. I thought it best to say, “Do me a favor, when you get Sonja’s job, keep me in mind.” Then I asked for the Pez drive and left.

I didn’t have the patience to wait until I got home to watch the video. After I left the studio, I pulled into a hilly side street on the way back to my house. If I’d followed the winding streets upward, I’d have ended up near the Hollywood Reservoir. I parked as best I could then pulled out my laptop, hoping it had a charge, hoping they hadn’t deliberately destroyed it. It took forever to power up, but finally it was on. I plugged in the flash drive, clicked on the file and put in the password El Gordo. That opened the folder. I clicked on the quick time file, and it came up in the player.

It took a moment for me to figure out what I was seeing. The video was dark, but I could clearly see two entwined figures on a bed. Both male. Both naked. It wasn’t a professional porno. I wasn’t even what they called amateur porn on the Internet. This was something different. One of the men was Eddie. Suddenly, I realized that this was shot in the garage-slash-studio behind Sylvia’s house. Eddie was taping this man without his knowledge, I was pretty certain of it.

The man’s face was turned away from the camera, buried in Eddie’s lap. I sped forward to see if I could get a good look at his face. Later in the video, as he’s fucking Eddie doggie style, Eddie slowly moves them toward the camera so that the man’s face will…yes, there he is. He looked familiar, but it was still very dark. He was stocky, well-muscled, had black hair… it was Carlos Maldonado.

Hanson was protecting Maldonado. Her former partner. A rising political figure. Things began to make sense. A guy who wanted to do things for the community. I turned the video off. I didn’t need to see any more. Though I suppose I should have continued to see if Carlos tried choking Eddie, or if they had any kind of conversation when they finished. Maybe I’d finished watching it some other time.

Right then, I needed to think about what to do. Now that I had the video, the answer to the murders, what did I do with it? I couldn’t just bring the Pez drive to the police. It was far too possible I’d find another friend of Maldonado’s. I supposed I could call Alan Moskowitz at the Herald. Would that be safe? He’d written a real puff piece of Maldonado, though. Did the budding politician have allies at the paper? Newspaper people had seemed incorruptible when I was a kid. Now they seemed as bad as politicians. The safest choice would be to give the drive to Tripp’s lawyer. But I didn’t have his name. Tripp hadn’t said.

If Tripp didn’t get out of jail soon, I could go back to visit him in the morning and get his lawyer’s name. Unfortunately, that was a long way off and just knowing what was on the video made me feel vulnerable. I