I met Detective Sherbet at a sandwich shop on Amerige St. in downtown Fullerton. Sherbet was a big man with a big cop mustache. He wore an old blue suit and a bright yellow tie. He ordered coffee and a donut. I ordered a Diet Pepsi, but thought the donut idea was a pretty good one. So I had the waitress bring me three of whatever she had left, because when it comes to donuts, any flavor will do.
“What if she brings you a pink donut?” asked Detective Sherbet.
“Pink is good,” I said.
“I hate pink.”
“In general?”
He thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah.” He paused, looked away. “My boy likes pink.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“How old is your boy?”
“Eight.”
“Maybe he will grow out of it.”
“Let’s hope.”
The waitress brought me three cake donuts. Chocolate, glazed, and pink.
Uh oh.
“Are you okay with me eating this?” I asked, pointing to Sherbet’s arch-nemesis, the pink-frosted donut.
He nodded, shrugging. The man had serious issues. I ate the pink donut quickly, nonetheless. As I did, Sherbet watched me curiously, as if I was a monkey in a zoo exhibiting strange behavior. Funny, when I was done, I didn’t feel gay.
“Any good?” he asked.
“Quite,” I said. “And no gay side effects. At least not yet.”
“Maybe I’ll have one.”
And he did. One pink donut. After the waitress set it before him, he picked it up warily with his thumb and forefinger, careful of the pink frosting. He studied it from a few angles, and then bit into it.
“Your son would be proud,” I said.
“I love the kid.”
“But you think he might be gay.”
“Let’s change the subject,” he said.
“Thankfully,” I said. Actually, Detective Sherbet wasn’t so much homophobic as homo-terrified, as in terrified his kid might grow up to be gay. Someone needed some counseling here, and it wasn’t the kid.
“So that crackpot hired you,” said Sherbet. There was pink frosting in the corner of his mouth. Lord, he looked gay.
“Crackpot being Jones T. Jones.”
“A shyster if I’ve ever met one. Anything to make a buck. Hell, I even had my suspicions that he offed the historian just to generate more press for that damn store of his. Have you been there?”
I nodded.
He said, “Place gives me the fucking creeps.”
“So he’s clean?”
“Sure he’s clean. Everyone’s clean. Kid ran out of gas, wandered around the desert until he died of heat and thirst.”
“Hell of a way to go.”
Sherbet shrugged, and as he did so his mustache twitched simultaneously. Perhaps the motor neurons in his shoulders were connected to his upper lip.
“I hear Willie was a smart kid,” I said.
Sherbet nodded. “Smart enough to get a Masters in history from