Tricks Gone Bad

In the high desert west of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a passionate interlude between two men goes off the tracks. A young journalist for The El Paso Times reports the crime but misses the key questions. Why would a man with a successful career, a home and loving family, risk everything for a casual encounter with a stranger? And why did he have to die?

After covering the Juarez murder, the young journalist is soon embroiled in his own trick gone bad; a betrayal which could cast a permanent shadow over his life. And it's not the only time the reporter risks personal and professional ruin without asking important questions.

"Tricks Gone Bad" – An erotic tapestry of fact and fiction that begins and ends with a real-life murder in the Chihuahua desert. Cunningly told moments set in the misty suspension of consequences required for sex with strangers.

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EL PASO, 1985 – David is on the phone with the Chihuahua state judicial chief, an oily, odious man who makes David nervous. The chief is undoubtedly corrupt; the type of taunting public official who will sneeringly serve up an unlikely version of events and then pause to gauge whether the reporters are going with it. Not that he doesn't provide valuable information. But like an onion, the chief must be peeled back by careful questions which rarely come from the Mexican press.

The chief is giving David the latest on a missing El Paso man. It's a typically poor connection with Mexico and David is having to shout his questions. It was funny at first, but now the copy editors sigh and roll their eyes. Why doesn't he just open the window and yell, says one. They might hear him better.

It's a little past 7 p.m. and there's enough time to get something in the state edition. It's a juicy scoop that will rankle David's competitor at the afternoon paper, which won't go to print until noon the next day. El Paso police will also be annoyed that he's gotten the information directly from the Mexicans before they can sanitize it.

Fuck 'em all!

As David shouts and takes frantic notes at his cluttered desk, the fluorescent-lit newsroom bustles with the organized chaos of a newspaper revving up to print. In a crescendo rising to meet each of the evening deadlines, photographers will argue passionately for artistic display of their shots as content editors confer nervously with their laboring writers. All competing for yardage in the news hole divvied up by harried copy editors wielding pica poles and measuring wheels. The orchestral hum will grow in intensity until the building itself vibrates with the rolling of the presses.

Over the sputtering line, the chief is taking unusual relish in sharing the sad details told to detectives by a young man they arrested that afternoon. David wonders how they got such a thorough confession from the man in such a short span. But that's a question for another day.

The victim is an American businessman who has been missing for several days. According to the "vagrant's" story, the businessman picked him up at the downtown public library in El Paso. They drove in the man's van back across the border to an isolated picnic site in the Chihuahua desert west of Juarez, where they drank beer and smoked weed.

The chief seems a little drunk or hopped up. He sensuously describes how the American businessman sucked the young man's dick and then allowed himself to be anally fucked. Is this some Mexican imperialism at play? Slipping the Mexican verga to Uncle Sam? Or is he trying to make a point to a U.S. journalist that this degenerate brought it on himself? Mexico is not to blame.

The party in the desert goes downhill. The El Paso man is stabbed several times and run over with his own van. The young Mexican was stopped that afternoon driving the van, and was later persuaded to lead police to the remote campsite where the El Paso man's body was decomposing.

David M. Hancock is the author of a short story collection "The Man Who Lost His Gayness" and an upcoming volume of poetry "50 At The Orgy." He is a longtime journalist who has worked for CBS News, The Miami Herald and several Texas newspapers. He lives in New York City.