man’s head and stuffed his cock in his mouth. After that, he had sodomized him, forcing him to bend over the wash-basin in the bathroom, holding him down with one hand on his back and pulling his fine ginger hair back with the other to force him to look at their images in the mirror.
At that point old McEwan had thrown caution to the winds, left his wife, and set up home with him in an apartment. They had become partners and had started working together, at least until Jeff had seen fit to make his exit in style, struck down by a heart attack at the private view of a highly rated painter to whom he had the exclusive rights.
Unfortunately for LaFayette, the stupid faggot had never divorced his wife, and the bitch had grabbed every bit of Jeff’s inheritance that hadn’t been left to him, which amounted to about 50 per cent.
All things considered, it hadn’t gone too badly.
But there was something else that Jeff had bequeathed him, something that in this line of work was worth all the money in the world: he had taught him the value of culture. By the time his lover’s widow had evicted him from the gallery in Chelsea, he had been in a position to stand on his own two feet. Following the trend that was slowly shifting the centre of gravity of the art world towards SoHo, he had bought a large space on the second floor of an elegant building on Greene Street, near the corner with Spring. There he had opened the L&J Gallery, determined that from now on he would be his own boss. Apart from the gallery, he also possessed the small apartment where he lived, and the seventh-floor loft on Water Street, where he had housed Jerry.
As he passed a steakhouse, closed at this hour, he looked at his reflection in the window. Saw a handsome, successful black man in his early forties, wearing a Ralph Lauren tracksuit. He uttered a phrase Jerry Ko often used: ‘It’s all going according to plan, LaFayette, all according to plan.’
Reaching the front door of Jerry’s building – a sandstone edifice with faded paint and fire escapes on the front – he searched in his pocket for the keys and realized he had left them in the Nissan. He rang the doorbell, hoping that idiot Jerry wasn’t completely sunk in a drugged stupor and would hear him.
He rang twice, but there was no reply.
He was about to go back to his car to get the keys when a figure emerged from the half-light of the entrance and pressed a button to release the door. It was a white guy wearing a grey tracksuit with the hood up and a pair of sunglasses. He kept his head tilted slightly forward, and throughout their brief encounter moved in such a way that LaFayette could not see his face. He came out as if he was in a hurry, shoving past him without the slightest apology. Once outside, he straightened his head and back and set off at a slow run.
Holding the entrance door open, so he could get inside, LaFayette watched him as he moved away. He noticed that the man was running in a strange way, as if he had a problem with his right leg.
Loser.
That was LaFayette Johnson’s opinion of all runners, and this one in particular, as he entered the lobby and pressed the button for the elevator. The door opened immediately, which probably meant that the elevator had just been used by the guy who had shoved past him. Not so athletic as to use the stairs, apparently. Or maybe the problem he had with his leg prevented him from negotiating steps easily . . .
LaFayette shrugged. He had better things to think about. He had to get Jerry back to work as quickly as possible, since he was planning to mount a show for the fall. He had already sounded out some collectors he considered trendsetters, as well as arousing the interest of the specialized press. The time had come to make the leap from New York to America and the rest of the world.
The elevator door opened on the seventh-floor landing. Jerry’s loft occupied the whole of the floor.
His door was ajar.
Suddenly and without any