Flesh And Blood

Tony Duke had made a fortune knocking down barriers, but he hid behind high walls. Milo was right: If Duke was involved it was a whole new game.

I made a salad, mixed iced tea, set the table, tempted Spike outside with porterhouse, and bolted the dog door. Robin came home just as I had everything in place. She looked tired and pale, and her hair was half tied, half loose. A beautiful woman anyway, but I wondered if Tony Duke would’ve noticed.

“This is wonderful,” she said, washing up and pecking my cheek.

I took her in my arms, kissed her face, rubbed her back, ran my fingers through her curls, gently, so as not to snag. The sounds she made and the way she melted against me said I was doing okay, even though most of my concentration was spent blocking out the faces of dead people.

She found a bottle of cabernet that I’d forgotten about, and as we ate and drank my appetite returned. We did the dishes together, took a walk without Spike, holding hands, not saying much. The night was cold enough for visible breath, and the smog had traveled somewhere else. Winter, California style, was finally arriving. I’d check the garden tomorrow, maybe cut back some roses, see what the pond needed. Basic stuff. Concrete stuff. Time to get away from being useless.

When we got back home I got another peck on the cheek and a tired smile. Robin got into bed with a stack of magazines, and I went to my office and switched on the computer.

Marc Anthony Duke’s name pulled up sixteen quick hits, mostly press pieces and the official Duke magazine website, decorated with grinning portraits of the man himself and thumbnails of pastied and G-stringed Treats Through the Years that could be enlarged with a click.

I scanned for a while, learned only one new fact: Two years ago Tony Duke had gone into “ultraleisure mode” and passed the day-to-day operations of Duke Enterprises to his daughter Anita. The accompanying PR photo showed an indigo-robed Duke posing proudly with a sternly attractive brunette in her thirties wearing a strapless black evening gown. Anita Duke was taller than her father by several inches, a shapely woman with smooth, bronze shoulders and nice teeth displayed by a tentative smile that appeared anything but happy. Described as “an investment banker with a Columbia University MBA and ten years’ experience on Wall Street.” “These will be years of market growth and consumer-sensitivity for Duke Enterprises,” she predicted. “Soon we’ll be moving full-force into cyberspace.”

I searched for something less laudatory, found a couple of Bible Belt organizations listing Duke Enterprises as “a tool of Satan.” Then some paeans from fans – do-it-yourself stuff, with Tony Duke featured high on most-admired lists. From one of these I learned that Duke had been widowed two decades ago and remained single until four years ago, when he’d hooked up with a former Treat with the improbable name of Sylvana Spring (“the girl who tamed Tony!”), with whom he’d sired two children.

Any taming, though, had been short-lived. Duke and Sylvana had concluded an “amiable divorce” last year. The kids were proof, claimed the admiring webmaster, of “Tony Duke’s Eternal Virility – eat your heart out, Viagra- chompers! Beautiful Sylvan and the rugrats still live in a guesthouse right there on T.D.’s palatial Malibu spreadorama! The Man is ultra-generous and too-cool!”

Then pages of downloaded cartoons and centerfold photos, copyright infringements I supposed Duke tolerated. One unlined, doe-eyed, pouty-lipped face after another, sponge-rubber buttocks, geometrically barbered pubic triangles. And breasts. Peach-toned and pink-nippled, identically upswept, pneumatic in a way that Nature had never conceived.

I logged off, returned to the bedroom. Night chill had seeped in, and Robin was wearing a flannel nightgown, buttoned to the neck.

“I was just about to get you,” she said. “Ready to go to sleep? I am.”

Her hair was pinned, and she’d scrubbed her face clear of makeup. Her eyes still looked tired, and her lips were chapped. A tiny pimple that I hadn’t noticed before had sprouted on her forehead. I got into bed, rolled next to her, smelled toothpaste breath, the merest eau of perspiration. As she began to stretch away from me, I kissed her, touched her.

She said, “I look horrid – wasn’t planning to…”

Then she sighed, hiked up her gown, drew me to her, held me tight. She was wet when I entered her, came quickly, chewed on my nipple, and rocked the pleasure out of me. When her body peeled away from mine, she was already asleep. I lay there on my back, feeling the thump of my heartbeat, feeling alone. She began snoring lightly, and her hand snaked across the bedsheet, touched my arm, found my index finger. Her pinkie curled around the digit and held on.

Deep in slumber but gripping my finger hard.

Not daring to move, I waited for sleep.

I awoke the next morning knowing I’d dreamed but struggling to retrieve the details. Something to do with a party… palm trees, blue water, naked flesh. Or was I imagining that?

I took a very hot shower, dressed, made coffee, and brought it to Robin’s studio. She was goggled and gowned, about to enter the spray booth with a new mandolin, feigned patience when she saw me. After a few minutes of sipping and chat, I let her be and returned to the house. Thinking about parties again. Tony Duke’s lifestyle. The kind of opulence that might attract a girl like Lauren. Would be even more of a lure for the Olive Queen of Santo Leon. Had Shawna Yeager covered for a bash at the Duke estate with a story about going to the library?

I drove to the U, hurried into the research library, checked out spools of L.A. Times microfiche, and searched the social calendar for mention of any parties thrown by Tony Duke over the last year.

Nothing.

Given Duke’s reputation that seemed odd, and I retrieved the previous year’s worth of spools, covered another six months with still no mention of bashes or fund-raisers at the Malibu estate.

Maybe there were certain parties Tony Duke kept out of the papers. Or maybe, finding himself a father again, the King of the Easy Life had changed his ways.

I kept searching, finally found something nearly two years ago. A “star-studded” benefit for a free speech organization that had earned Duke two paragraphs in the social pages and was accompanied by photos of The Man, gaggles of Treats, and various screen-famous faces – a plastic surgeon’s bragging session. Anita Duke, too, standing behind her father wearing a conservative dark pantsuit and that same edgy smile as she looked down at her father.

His attention was elsewhere. He held two children in his lap – a plump-looking baby not more than a few months old and a two-year-old boy with a chubby face surrounded by cloud puffs of vanilla ringlets. No lounging duds for Dad – he wore a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie. The toupee was gone, and his bald head was exposed in full, iridescent glory. Older and smaller than in the official Duke shots – as captured by the paper, The Man resembled nothing but a model grandfather.

“Paternal pride” read the caption. “Magazine mogul Marc Anthony Duke relaxes with daughter Anita and her half-sibs, tykes Baxter and Sage. Only the absence of son Ben prevented the evening from being a complete family reunion.”

Son Ben.

I hurried out of the microfilm room, raced to the reference stacks, found Who’s Who, pulled out the most recent copy, and paged furiously to the D’s.

Duke, Marc Anthony (Dugger, Marvin George) b. Apr. 15, 1929.

par. George T. and Margaret L. (Baxter).

m. Lenore Mancher, June 2, 1953 (dec. 1979) children:

Benjamin J., Anita C.

m. Sylvana Spring (Cheryl Soames) June 2, 1995 (div.) children: Baxter M., Sage A…

The rest didn’t concern me.

Son Ben.

Professor Monique Lindquist’s laughter rang in my ears.