About The Man Who Liked Wintergreen

by Lucius Parheleon
51 pages / 12000 words
ISBN: 978-1-61040-286-6
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

It's 1935 in a Los Angeles that's both booming and sleazy. Mike Warren is a slick shyster, a homosexual who makes a good living selling legal services to those no one else will defend. The Reverend Johnny Breuer is a clergyman who reconciled with his own homosexuality by giving up his congregation to serve others through charity and political reform.

After Johnny saves Mike from a murderous thug, he collects his payment by making Mike help him rescue a settlement house from the prominent attorney Johnny suspects is robbing the settlement's charitable trust blind. As the two men untangle this web of corruption, they grow increasingly close, finding that good-natured worldliness and worldly good-heartedness are not as opposed as they once both believed. Now they only have to survive a late-night visitor to Mike's beach house, and the shady trouble following in his wake, to learn if their lust is actually as clean and strong as wintergreen.

Sample

Breuer took a deep breath. "See here, Mr. Warren."

"All right, I'm looking. Reverend."

"From time to time, I run into trouble that's too murky for settlement house workers or reforming politicians to handle. Problems where the victims aren't the straightforward, photogenic sorts favored by the sob-sisters at the papers, even if their troubles are just as urgent." Breuer leaned back against the artificial leather upholstery of their booth before he made a show of glancing around the room. "Evil done to the rejected is still evil." For a moment, his eyes crinkled at the corners again. "I have learned that lesson well. But you seem to know it even better than I do. Word is, you specialize in getting all sorts of folks disentangled from their difficulties. Communists. Hoodlums. Scapegraces. Professional girls, even. Merciful work, every so often."

Offended, Mike retorted, "Not often. And I always charge what the traffic will bear."

"You do, although I've also been told the amount of your toll drops an awful lot on many of the poorer streets. Or in certain circumstances."

"As when a man has saved my life."

"How about that?" Breuer beamed. "Exactly what I was thinking."

After sighing out a mixture of exasperation and admiration, Mike said, "Two clients pro bono."

"Five."

"Four, but I get to tell you if there's nothing I can do. Any more than that, and we'll have to negotiate some other kind of exchange. Oh, and if the complications pile up too high, I’m billing you. What I've been told is that you can afford it."

"I imagine I can." Breuer paused in his drinking to scoop up some of the peanuts and shovel them into his mouth. As he looked around Brook's once more while he munched, his expression was slightly tinged with wistfulness. Without experience cross-examining witnesses, Mike might have missed it.

Perhaps the reverend's annoying insinuations that they shared higher principles were what made Mike ask silkily, "You're positive you've never visited Brook's before this evening?"

After swallowing his peanuts, Breuer said, "No." He studied Mike for several seconds and then said, voice low, "I need a certain kind of social standing to do my work, and even those policemen managed to be clear about what kind of place this is. Mind you, I'm not pointing out all the splinters in these patron's eyes while meaning to ignore what's in my own." He tapped one forefinger against the side of his nose.

Oh. That was…frank. And why was it that Mike could only spot the deeply hidden, scary fellows who were working out their bitterness on every visible homosexual within range? He was always being startled when some fellow Mary with cleaner inclinations dropped her veils.

Breuer continued, his words considering, "I suppose you're my lawyer now -- my other lawyer -- since I've paid a sort of retainer."

"We can interpret matters that way, yes," Mike said. "Although you'd better hand me a quarter at some point just to be safe. But now that I'm your legal councilor, I should warn you to beware the possibility of blackmail. Discretion--"

"I'm not too worried about present company. It helps to be a decent judge of character in my line of work, and I've been paying attention this last hour and a half. You're safe enough."

For the sake of professional politeness, Mike stuck to sharing his sneer with the lighting fixture above their table. That earned him another of those whooping laughs, although the volume was much lower this time.

"You're still playing with fire," Mike said repressively, lowering his gaze to Breuer.

"And don't I know it…"