Heart Thief Read online

  Heart Thief

  Peter de Sade

  Prologue

  Muscles rippling, the young man moved slowly, fluidly, like a cat ready to pounce. Dressed in black from head to toe with a black ski mask revealed only his flashing eyes, he scanned the back of the seaside mansion. He breathed heavily. Climbing up the cliff from the small beach to the mansion had been harder than he had expected.

  Seeing no movement from within the multimillion dollar home on Chelsea Street in La Jolla, the man turned and uncoiled the thin, knotted rope and dropped it over the rocky cliff. Hopefully, he would have the large waterproof tube he was carrying over his shoulder filled will two expensive paintings when he climbed back down to his kayak.

  He hated having to wear a wetsuit, but the water off the coast of Southern California was bone-chilling cold. It wouldn’t have done him any good to rob the mansion only to die of hypothermia before he could make his getaway. This meant the wetsuit was a necessary evil.

  Turning back to the huge mansion, the young man shook his head in disapproval of such an extravagant display of wealth. It was always a mystery to him how someone could accumulate so much wealth. Well, tonight he was going to redistribute a tiny bit of the old gay man’s wealth into his own pocket.

  This was not his first time in the mansion. The security codes might have been changed. He didn’t trust the one he had, but he didn’t need them. He knew the security system and how to circumvent it.

  Climbing up to the second floor was a breeze. He scaled the wall almost as sure-footed as a gecko, his fingers clinging to the tiny crevices between stones as he pushed upwards with the toe of his rubber boots.

  When he reached the second-story window, he used the glass cutter to remove the window pane. Using a suction cup, he pulled the glass out and slipped it into a pouch he carried on his back. Then reached inside grabbed his magnetic tape and put it over the contacts on both side of the window frame. Once they were in place, he slid the window up and slipped through like a moray eel sliding under a rock. Sorry for getting your white carpet muddy, the thief thought. Who in their right mind would install snow white carpet? the thief asked himself as he ground the heel of his rubber booties into the carpet. “Here’s my calling card, Jack!” he thought.

  Now to get the painting he knew were downstairs. He especially wanted the Jeff Koons and John Currin paintings he knew that Jack Give s had bought. The man was, above all else, an art collector and had taken great pride in cruising Matilda’s Art Gallery for young men and new painting.

  The thief smiled as he entered the library with its spectacular ocean view and spotted the two paintings he sought. To Jack Givens, there were minor works of art. He had paintings worth many millions, but for the thief, the lesser-valued paintings were his target for two very good reasons. First, they were not electronically protected, and second they were valuable but not so highly valued that they couldn’t be easily fenced to a shady Japanese gallery owner he knew.

  Thirty minutes later, the thief used his knotted line to climb down the rocky cliff to his kayak. The two painting were curled up inside the tube slung over his shoulder. He smiled as he wondered what Jack’s reaction would be to the crayon painting of naked boys he had left in place of the two painting he had stolen.

  Maybe my sketches will make me famous one day too? he thought.

  Chapter One

  Dan put the newspaper down. He had just finished reading an article about a cat burglar in the La Jolla. The article had stated that homes of five wealth residents had been burglarized in the past three months with the thief concentrating of middle-range paintings that could be -more easily fenced than the multimillion dollars paintings that were also inside the homes but not taken. The article had gone on the say that the thief had left crayon sketching of naked boys in place of the stolen paintings. And that the crayon sketches were sometime fetching almost as high of a price as the painting that were stolen. The paper had dubbed the thief “Crayon Boy”.

  Glancing at the old schoolhouse wall clock that he had recently bought at an antique shop, Dan stood up. Do I really want to go out tonight? he thought. It was the same question he had asked himself for the past four nights and had always answered no. But this time he gave in to his desire to sample some of San Diego’s gay life. He grabbed his car keys from the end table beside one of the pewter-colored sofas and headed quickly for the door before he changed his mind.

  I just wish, Jenifer, had lived to see the house, Dan thought as he paused beside his black Mercedes. With four bedrooms and four baths it was far too big for one person, but when he’d first seen it, he’d been enchanted with it. The realtor had called it, “craftsman meets contemporary”. The outside looked early 1900’s but the inside was ultra-modern. And the exterior featured a spar and sauna in a Zen-like garden. “But I don’t think Jenifer would have approved of the blue house having neon green doors!” Dan said aloud with a big sigh. His wife had been dead for a year, and now it was the time to move on to the next chapter in his life.

  He had told the painters to make the doors neon green as a sign of his coming out of the closet now that he was single and could pursue the gay lifestyle he had always denied himself. In the twenty-five years of his marriage he had never wandered from their bedroom, with either another woman or a man.

  Now that was about to change. He didn’t intend to paint a sign on his back proclaiming he was gay, but he wasn’t going to run from it any longer either. Tonight, he was going to a bar called Daddy’s Boys. He had suppressed his interest in young men for too many years. Now he was going change that. At least he had hopes.

  His age might be a factor. He was fifty-five and six months into retirement as a commercial airline pilot. His body was still taunt, but he didn’t have the six pack abs or bulging biceps of his twenties. But he was trim and fit enough to jog three miles a day. He had all his hair, even though it was now gray. Although he didn’t consider himself handsome, others told him he was. He didn’t know whether to believe them or not. But he would admit occasionally that he wasn’t butt ugly.

  As Dan climbed behind the wheel of his Mercedes, he wondered what Daddy’s Boys Bar would be like and what type of young men he would find there. Dieter, a German living in San Diego that he had gotten to know on flights to Tokyo, had recommended that he visit the bar one night after an early arrival at the airport in LA when Dieter had invited him out for drinks. Dan, had known beforehand that Dieter was gay, so he had finally gotten up enough nerve to ask him about gay bars in San Diego. That’s when Dieter had told him about Daddy’s Boys and all the hot studs that visited the bar, almost all of whom liked older men. “If you want beach boys or even gang bangers, Dan, you’ll find them at Daddy’s Boys.”

  Okay, Dieter, let’s see if I can find a sincere young man who is material for a relationship, Dan thought as he backed out of his driveway. He turned onto interstate 5 and put a Mozart flute concerto on and listened to the music to calm his nerves. He felt as though he was about to give his life a new direction. He took the off ramp for the Bay Ho area. The bar was in Bay Ho only a few blocks from the start of the La Jolla section of San Diego.

  Not what I expected? Dan thought as he drove into the parking lot. The building had an art deco look more in place with Miami Beach than San Diego. And a uniformed hunk in a security guard uniform stood by the door like some high-class doorman.

  A blond valet who would have looked more at home with a surfboard that jockeying cars run up to open the door for him.

  “Evening, sir. Here for a few drinks or longer?”

  “Maybe longer,” Dan said handing off his keys and pocketing the ticket.

  “Enjoy!” the valet said.

  “Thanks,” Dan said over his shoulder as he walked toward t
he door the security guard was already holding open.

  “Evening, Sir,” the muscular young man said and flashed a smile that stirred pent-up emotions in Dan. “Enjoy yourself.”

  With the name Daddy’s Boys I didn’t expect elegance! he thought.

  The inside was anything but elegant. It was trashy pool hall meets hustler bar! The view stopped Dan in his tracks. He must have been standing openmouthed because a man in his sixties standing near the door nodded to him. “First time here?”

  “Yeah,” was all Dan could say.

  “This is how the rich in La Jolla like their sleaze, wrapped in a candy wrapper,” the man said. “You’ll get used to it. Believe me.”

  “If you say so,” Dan said still recovering from what he had expected and reality. “I do need a drink, now,” said as he walked through the crowded mix of young men who looked as if they had just changed the oil in their motorcycles and older men in Polo shirts and Gianni Versace slacks.

  Dan was on the verge of turning around and walking back out when he passed the pool table, and his eyes fell on a stunning-looking young man. He wasn’t the Southern California surfer type or the hot Latino. He was different. He had brown doe eyes that seemed to sparkle, a warm smile. He was muscular in a slim wiry way with narrow hips and broad shoulders. His face was slightly angular with high cheeks bones.

  With that face and body, he’s got to be a model! Dan thought as he paused to watch the young man make a difficult shot that showed his skill with a pool cue matched his good looks. All thought of leaving the bar vanished when the boy glanced up and their eyes locked for an instant. The boy didn’t seem affected, but the exchange left Dan weak-kneed and momentarily disorientated.

  “What can I get you, mate?”

  Dan was surprised to find himself leaning against the bar looking back at the boy making another difficult shot. He didn’t remember walking to the bar.

  “Wine . . . a glass of wine,” he said forcing himself to glance at the bartender. In so doing he found himself looking at a Latino version of Tommy Lee Jones, acne scars and all. “Ah . . . Do you know the name of the young man shooting pool?”

  “Him! That’s Gerry Blunt. Do anything you want to do with him except shoot pool. He’s one of the best pool players I’ve seen.”

  “I don’t play pool,” Dan said.

  “Just pocket pool,” the bartender said and smiled showing perfect white teeth. “I hear he’s good at that too. But don’t get me wrong. He’s not a hustler like most of the young studs in here. He really likes gray hair.”

  “Oh,” Dan said as the bartender poured him a glass of merlot. “Then maybe there’s hope for me.”

  “Yeah, don’t count yourself out with him. From the guys I seen him leaving the bar with, and that’s not too often, you look like his type.”

  “Even better.”

  “But he’s complicated. He’s aloof. Dates but never commits.”

  “I see.”

  He seems to know a lot about Gerry. I guess from watching things develop from behind a bar you naturally get to know your customers, Dan thought as he turned back around just in time to see Gerry make the winning shot of the game.

  They locked eyes again. This time Dan thought he saw a hint of reaction.

  .

  Chapter 2

  Gerry Blunt glanced at the pool table for a long moment before he added chalk to the tip of his pool cue. His brown hair hung almost down in his eyes as he leaned over the table to line up his shoot at the eight ball. It was against the rail ten inches from the upper left side pocket. He would have to make the cue ball hit the eight ball and the rail in just the right angle to walk the eight ball into the pocket. Finally, confident that he had the right angle, he moved the cue stick forward with an almost poetic motion that forged arm and cue stick into one.

  “Da . . . Da . . . Damn you, Gerry! Th. . . Th . . . This is the fourteenth week in a row that you’ve won the pool tournament. Da . . . Da . . . Damn it, give someone else a chance,” the handsome blond haired young man standing behind Gerry said as he watched the eight ball disappear into the pocket.

  “If you win, Terry, you are going to have to earn it?” Gerry said looking not at Terry but at the older gray-haired man watching him from the bar. “Nice playing with you chums. Give your money to me next Friday too. It helps to pay the rent,” Gerry said as folded up his pool cue and put it in a leather carrier with a shoulder strap.

  Gerry stared at the older man as he approached the bar.

  “You won again?” The middle-aged bartender asked, shaking his head. He had a crewcut and earrings. “Fourteen weeks in a row. That’s a record for the bar.” He slid a fat envelope across the bar. “Seven hundred dollars.”

  “We . . . We . . . We should bar him for the tournament, Bucky. O . . . O . . . Or just hand him over the entry fees at the start of the tournament,” Terry shouted over the buzz of conversations as he racked the balls.

  “Learn how to shoot, Terry,” a handsome man of maybe twenty-four said as he entered the pool area of the bar. His preppy look contracted with the leather vest and Marlon Brando style T-shirts of most of the young men standing around the pool table or sitting nursing beers at the tables with gray-haired older men. “Go buy a book on the angles in the game of pool; it’s all about angles. Simple math.”

  “Y . . . Y . . . Yeah, right Mathew. Bu. . . Bu . . . But then we don’t all have a degree from Polly Tec.”

  “Or from high school for that matter,” Gerry called out. “Quit crying, Terry. Go turn another trick.”

  “I . . . I . . . I’m not a hustler like the rest of you. Th . . . Th . . . They go with me because they like me. I . . . I . . . I have a job! An . . . An . . . And that’s rich coming from a jail bird, Gerry. Es . . . Es . . . Especially one still seeing a parole officer.”

  Gerry shook his head and turned back to the bar as he held up his hand and gave Terry the finger.

  “One bad decision, and they never let you live it down, do they?” The gray-haired man that had been watching him constantly since he had walked into the bar said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Gerry opened his mouth to say that he didn’t need sympathy from some rich guy coming to Daddy’s Boys looking to buy a few hours of love. But what he said was, “Yeah sure. Bucky a shot of Chevis Regal Scotch.”

  The bartender didn’t respond immediately. He took a few swipes at the bar with a small towel he was holding and then glanced over at the man who’d offered to buy the drink. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Sure, give him a shot of Chevis Regal. He is a champion.”

  “Yeah, right,” Bucky said as he turned and reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a half empty bottle of Chevis Regal.

  “What do you mean, ‘yeah right’, Bucky?” Gerry said. “Like the handsome gentleman said, I’m a champion.” Gerry chuckled as he glanced at the older man. “Out slumming tonight?”

  “No, I’m out enjoying myself. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone better with a pool cue. Where did you learn how to shoot like that?”

  “My stepdad owned a bar. He made me practice two hours a day. When I got good, he made me play against customers for money.” Gerry said.

  “Wow, that must have been exciting for a young boy?”

  “It was except when I lost he took me behind the bar and beat me with a leather strap until he couldn’t swing it any longer while telling me what a piece of shit I was for losing his money.”

  “Sorry, sounds like you had a rough boyhood?”

  “On the contrary, I learned to never lose and always had a pocket full of money while other kids could hardly spring for a Coke.”

  “I see,” the man said as he watched Bucky place a full shot glass in front of Gerry. He nodded to the kid as picked up his glass of wine. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  Gerry throw the shot of scotch in the back of his mouth and swallowed. “So, you like old Bogart movies.”

  “Yeah, I like when movies were simple an
d you could tell the bad guys from the good guys. Now the good guys are almost as bad as the villains. I think it went to hell with the Dirty Harry movies.”

  “Wow, Pops, you are living in the past, I loved the Dirty Harry movies.”

  “My name is Dan . . . Dan Murphy. Pops makes me sound really old,” the man said holding out his hand.

  A look of surprise flicked across Gerry’s face as he shook the man’s hand. “Look, I know this bar is full of hustler, but I’m not one.”

  “Good, I’m not looking for a hustler.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  Dan shrugged. “Not sure. New to the gay scene. Maybe someone to go places with. Have dinner with. Someone who knows San Diego. I’m from LA.”

  “There’s no tour guide desk here in Daddy’s Boys.”

  “Can I buy you another shot?”

  “It’s your money.”

  Dan nodded at the bartender and pointed to Gerry’s drink.

  “No, Bucky, a Budweiser.”

  “I don’t mind buying you an expensive drink,” Dan said over his wine glass as he lifted it to his lips.

  “But I do. I don’t see any reason for you buying me Chives Regal when I hate the shit.”

  “Why did you ask for it?”

  “I thought it would give you the brush off.”

  “Why? You don’t like me. Am I too old for you?”

  “No, you are too nice for me. Better off if you just plunk down a handful of Benjamin Franklins on the pool table and take your pick. Have a good roll in the hay and go back to being whatever you are,” Gerry said as he picked up the bottle of Bud. “Thanks for the beer. This I like,” he said before taking a long deep drink.

  “Kind of hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Just call it my night not to be a pleasure hole for some rich guy.”

  “Which one of the boys would you recommend?”

  “Mathew,” Gerry said. “If you’ve seen the movie American Gigolo, then that’s Mathew down to the T. Educated with a degree in art and theater at Polly Tec, knows a couple of languages, and only likes older men. If you are looking for a big dick, Spike. I you just want sex and no chatting, Terry.”