Bluff Walk. Charles R. Crawford
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soft glow of a television through a downstairs window. I crossed through the shrubs along the fence without incident, and had an equally uneventful trip through the next two yards. Either nobody had a dog, or they had brought them inside out of the heat.
At the boundary of Jack’s place, I discovered that the field stone wall I had seen from the street extended all the way around the sides and back of his yard. I knew I could make a running leap and get my hands on top of the wall, but I also knew that it might have glass shards embedded in the cement on top. I pulled my pack off, leaned my back against the wall, and put my feet against a tree that grew a convenient three feet away. By placing my palms against the wall and alternating pressure on my feet and back, I climbed up the wall far enough to reach backwards over my head and gingerly feel along the top. It was flat and smooth and about a foot wide. Better safe than sorry.
I got back down, retrieved my pack, and levered myself up on to the wall. Both Jack and his neighbor had planted magnolias and pines along the wall, and they provided a perfect screen for my careful stroll down the wall toward the houses.
I walked the wall till it ran flush along the side of the four-car garage, and stopped and reconnoitered. Because of the magnolias, I couldn’t see anything of Jack’s yard except the faint glimmer of lights. I could smell the chlorine of a swimming pool, but I couldn’t tell if it was in his yard or the neighbor’s.
I had a choice of dropping off the wall into the yard, or trying to get above the magnolia screen. I opted for height. One of the pines I had seen from the road grew almost against the wall, and I could see its first thick branch sticking out over the yard some ten feet above my head. I shinnied up the tree, thankful for the long sleeves and gloves on the rough, resinous bark. I stopped about half way up when I had cleared the magnolias and peeked around the trunk, but couldn’t see anyone. I got to the limb and kept going until my feet were even with it, and then twisted around the trunk so I could stand on it. It was not a quiet process, and I could only hope that the hum of air conditioners covered the noise of crumbling bark and my rasping breath.
Another limb grew a convenient distance above the first one, giving me a place to rest my butt. I was twenty feet above the ground, and my first move was to strap the opposite end of the safety belt I was clever enough to wear around the tree trunk. It would be hard to explain to Jack’s gardener the next morning why I was lying under his tree with a broken back.
I then took in the set for the movie I hoped to film. The back yard featured a huge flagstone patio that flowed around a swimming pool and through meticulously groomed flower beds. There were soft electric lights in the plantings and along the edges of the patio, and lights glowed underwater in the pool. The lights didn’t illuminate very far into the heavy night air, and I knew that their effect on someone on the patio would be to make things outside their reach even darker.
The back of the house itself had more leaded windows, including a massive bow window in the kitchen. Upstairs, in the middle of the house and slightly below my perch, a row of six adjacent windows looked out from what I assumed to be the master bedroom. I pulled out my video camera, turned up the magnification, and peered in.
The room looked like a photograph from Architectural Digest. Paintings that appeared to be the real thing hung on the walls, antique furniture was tastefully spaced, and a king size rice bed with the spread turned back at one corner was centered on a carpet that must have cost more than a new Mercedes. I could read the time on the gold clock that stood on the night stand by the bed. I told myself I could afford a room like that if I didn’t spend so much on expensive video equipment, but I’d have a hard time writing it off as a business expense.
I checked the camera on the back yard, took a swig of water to replace some of the fluid I had sweated out, and settled back to wait. It was ten forty five.
I knew there was a big chance I was wasting my time. I had spent days and weeks in similar circumstances before coming up with anything, and sometimes had discovered nothing at all. On the other hand, I didn’t have a lot of choices. I could follow Jack, and might even see him with another man in a public place, but the chances of finding him in a compromising position where I could film him were remote. The best I could hope for would be to see him going into a motel room with someone and coming out later, but that could be explained as some kind of business meeting. I was betting that Jack would feel most at home on his own turf, and I was betting on the strength of the sex urge. Jack’s attorney had surely given him the standard advice to be chaste during the pendency of the divorce proceeding, but Jack would as surely ignore it. Everybody else did. I could only hope he didn’t pull the curtains too soon.
The night was full of the sounds of a Southern city in the summer. Mosquitoes whined around my ears, and crickets chirped in the grass. Traffic noise was muffled by the humid air and the dense vegetation. Air conditioning units started and stopped, and the occasional dog barked.
It had been a long day, and the fatigue helped my brain slip into neutral and make the waiting easier. Even so, by twelve thirty the ache in my ass and the vision of a cold beer were tempting me to call it a night. I checked the time by looking through my videocam at the clock on Jack’s bedside table, and told myself I would wait another fifteen minutes. I waited what I thought was fifteen minutes, and then another estimated five, before I looked at my watch. It was either keeping different time than Jack’s clock, or it had only been ten minutes. I circled my left arm around the tree trunk, and stood up to relieve my back and butt.
While I was reaching my right arm and the camera over my head to stretch, I heard a car pull up to the house and stop. There was the sound of a garage door opening and closing, and then a short period of silence. I eased back on to the limb.
A shaft of light spilled out over the yard as a door on the side of the garage opened. I heard low voices, and Jack Jones himself walked down the softly lighted path toward the pool. My heart rate increased. The prey was in the kill zone, and I aimed my weapon at him.
Jack was wearing a white Brooks Brothers shirt, starched pleated khakis, and an alligator belt with moccasins to match. He still had a full head of gray hair, and a golf course tan. Except for a softness under his chin, his features looked young. I had a very, very good camera.
A much younger man was with Jack, which was not unexpected. His appearance was a bit of a surprise, though. I don’t know what I had expected, but it was not someone who dressed almost exactly like Jack, and who carried himself with the same patrician air.
The young man sat down in a chair, and Jack disappeared inside the pool house. He came back in a couple of minutes with two martini glasses and a pitcher on a tray, which he set down on a small table beside the other man. Jack poured, and he and his friend touched glasses and sipped. I was too hot to enjoy a martini, but I thought Jack probably mixed a good gin and tonic, too. I could hear the sound of their voices and make out a word here and there, but I couldn’t follow their conversation. Halfway through the second drink, though, I noticed Jack’s hand resting on the other man’s thigh. It was more than enough for me, but I knew Amanda would want all she could get. I didn’t have to wait long.
Jack swiveled around in his chair, put his arm around the other man’s shoulders, and gave him a long, lingering kiss. I had never seen two grown men kiss each other on the mouth, much less filmed it from twenty feet up a pine tree at one in the morning. The discomfort I felt from the pine branch under my butt and the heat quickly became nothing compared to what I felt as I looked through the camera.
First on the patio furniture, and then in the pool, Jack proceeded to provide all the evidence anyone could want concerning his sexual orientation. Long before Jack and the other man walked naked through the back door and into the house, I had turned off the camera and was trying to identify constellations through the pine needles.
2 _____________________
I was in Amanda’s office in a Front Street high rise the next morning at ten, eager to get rid of the videocassette.
“That was quick,” she said, “and you thought it would be hard.”
“I got lucky. At least I think I did,” I replied.
“What do you mean?