the 9th man
the 9th man
Dick Hardesty Mystery by
Dorien Grey
e-Book Division
GLB Publishers
San Francisco
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © 2000 by Dorien Grey
All rights
reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
No part
of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without
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to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion
in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Published in the United States by
GLB Publishers
P.O. Box 78212, San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
Cover by GLB
Publishers
This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products
of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
ISBN 1-879194-88-0
Library
of Congress Card Number:
00-110115
Number Two
in the Dick Hardesty Series
An e-Book Edition
2001
* * *
It was hotter
than hell, the air conditioner hadn't worked since the Titanic went down,
and I was in no mood for the bleached-blond queen who came swishing across
the room toward me after making an entrance that made me wonder whatever
happened to Loretta Young. There were times when I almost wished I had a
few straight clients, and this was one of those times. Still, I told myself,
it isn't the principle of the thing, it's the money.
I stood up and extended my hand. As I expected, the proffered appendage
was limp and vaguely clammy.
"Mr. Rholfing." I made it a statement, not a question. Clients, I've
found, expect you to be decisive. Authoritative. Butch. It's bullshit, but
it works.
"Yes, Mr. Hardesty." Jesus, he sounded as nelly as he looked. "I'm
so glad you could see me." I felt his eyes giving my entire body
a radar scan.
He was wearing one of those cloying perfumes/colognes that emanate
an almost visible fog around the wearer.
"Have
a chair," I said, indicating the one that would have been upwind if there'd
been any movement of air through the open window, which there wasn't.
I
sat down behind my desk and watched as Rholfing fluttered down, with considerable
butt-wiggling, and immediately crossed his legs at the knee. He was dressed
all in perma-starched white, with a flaming yellow ascot which missed his
hair color by about eight shades. He looked like a butter-pecan ice cream
cone with delusions of grandeur. After the talcum had settled, I sat back
in my own chair and forced myself to stare directly at my prospective
client--mentally picturing a maraschino cherry and some chopped nuts atop
the carefully coifed curls.
Rholfing leaned forward, crossing his wrists on his crossed knees,
and said simply: "Someone has killed my lover."
Why me, Lord? Why do I get all the cracked marbles?
We stared at one another in silence for a moment or two until I finally
managed to remind myself that that's what I'm in business for: to solve other
people's mysteries.
"Any
idea who?" I asked.
"How should I know?" he said, exasperated, his manicured hands
fluttering up a short distance from his knees, only to settle back,
studiedly.
"Well, at the risk of sounding a bit like a B movie," I said, "isn't
this a matter for the police?"
Rholfing
stared at me as though I'd just farted in church.
"The police all but said that he committed suicide. The
police," he said finally, "eat shit. Somebody killed him."
The thought flashed through my mind that anyone sharing an evening,
let alone a life, with the character in front of me might well be a candidate
for suicide. "Exactly what makes you think he was murdered?" I asked, choosing
not to get into a long discussion of the merits and flaws of law
enforcement.
"Bobby was 27 years old, healthy as a horse--hung like one, too--and
never had a sick day in his life, unless you count hangovers. Personally,
I don't. And all of a sudden he's dead in some cheap, tacky hotel room without
a mark on him and the police think it was suicide!"
"I assume there was an autopsy," I said. "What did they say about
that?"
"Oh,
they said several things, none of which a lady cares to repeat. The gist
of it was that while it was perfectly all right for a fruit like me to come
down to the morgue to identify the body, since I was neither a blood relative
nor his legal guardian, I had no right whatsoever to any information other
than that he's dead--which any fool could see, with him lying there on that
fucking slab!"
"And that was it?"
Rholfing took a small white handkerchief from his shoulder bag and
dabbed at the corners of his mouth. He then carefully folded it, returned
it to the bag, zipped the bag shut, and re-creased the already razor-sharp
crease in his trousers with thumb and forefinger before finally re-meeting
my gaze.
"Not
quite," he said. "Two of the burly cretins took me into a small room and
subtly asked me what my experience had been with poisons. Poisons!
Me! I was tempted to tell them to drop by some afternoon for tea
and I'd see what I could do, but I'd just had the fumigators in. Me!
Lucretia Borgia! Can you imagine?"
As a matter of fact, I could.
"Now, I may be a fairy," he continued, smoothing down the back of his
hair with one hand, "but I certainly am not stupid! Their refusing to tell
me how he died in one breath and asking me about poisons in the next was
about as subtle as a lighted match on the Hindenburg.
"Bobby
was murdered. There's no question about it. And knowing how the
police in this city feel about faggots, the only way anyone is going
to find out who killed Bobby is for me to hire you. You
come. . ." (he gave me a smile I'm sure he meant to be disarming, but came
across outright lecherous) ". . .very highly recommended."
"Thanks,"
I said, awkwardly. I never did learn how to accept compliments very well--even
those without hooks in them. "Have you spoken to Bobby's parents about this?"
I asked.
"What
parents?" Rholfing asked, haughtily. "He told me he had a grandfather back
in Utah somewhere, but he never mentioned parents, if he ever had any."
"So can you tell me anything about Bobby that might help?" I
asked.
"Well, he was a tramp--that much I know. He'd go home with anything
in pants. I told him I was going to get him his own portable glory hole and
put it out in the street in front of the apartment. At least that way I'd
know where he was all the time."
"Did the police say anything about drugs?"
Rholfing thought a moment, lips pursed, nose wrinkled, brows knit,
eyes looking upward at nothing. "I don't think so. Just poisons."
"Did he use drugs?" I asked.
Rholfing
sighed. "No, thank God. That was one of his good points--about his only one,
come to think of it: he never got mixed up with drugs. Oh, he'd smoke a joint
now and then, but I guess we all do, don't we?" He gave me a
conspiratorial wink--the kind you can see from the top row of the balcony--and
that coy/lecherous smile again.
I didn't say anything for a moment (that's a bad habit I have; when
I don't have anything to say, I tend not to say anything--bugs the shit out
of a lot of people), and Rholfing sat there looking more and more uncomfortable
as the seconds dragged on. He pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from God
knows where and began waving it gently back and forth beneath his chin. A
tiny droplet of perspiration crept from his hairline and meandered its way
across his left temple.
Finally,
he couldn't stand it. "Well? Will you take the case?"
"Okay,"
I said. "But I don't have much to go on." God! Where had I heard that line
before?
"Well,
find something," Rholfing blurted, revealing the rolled-steel interior
behind that whipped-cream and lace facade. "You're the big, strong
detective. To the cops he's just another dead fag, and good riddance--but
nobody kills my lover and gets away with it." He must have anticipated my
next comment, because he hastened to add: "Don't worry about the money. Daddy
has five or six acres of downtown Fort Worth, and he'll give me anything
I want just for me to stay the hell away from there."
I
found myself in something of a quandary. I had--clichés aside--very
little to go on. Given Rholfing's account of the circumstances of the death,
however accurate or inaccurate they may have been, and despite his denial
of his lover's drug use, the obvious assumption was that it was very likely
a routine drug overdose. But that's why people hire me in the first place;
if they knew all the answers, who'd need a detective? The police were notoriously
uncooperative in anything that smacked of homosexuality. And I wasn't exactly
in a position to pass up a potential client-- particularly one whose Daddy
had five or six acres of downtown Fort Worth.
I thought of Tim Jackson, a sometime-trick and pretty good friend of
mine who works in the county coroner's office. I'd never had the occasion
to use his professional services, but maybe now was the time.
"Okay,
Mr. Rholfing; I'll check it out," I said. "But don't expect miracles." I
thought he was going to leap across the desk and kiss me. Fortunately, he
didn't.
"Now, about my fee. . ." I began, but he cut me off by digging into his shoulder
bag and coming up with a bunch of crisp, new $100 bills.
"Will
this be enough? For a retinue, or whatever in hell it is you call it?"
"Retainer,
and it'll do just fine," I said, making a conscious effort not to grab it
out of his hand.
"You
will call me, won't you?" he said, rising out of his chair as graceful
as a hot-air balloon and again giving me the radar scan. "Even if you don't
have anything to report, I'd appreciate your keeping in. . . close.
. .touch." He used one hand to adjust his shoulder bag while the other made
an inspection of the back of his shirt, pulling and tugging at imaginary
wrinkles. "Perhaps you could stop by for a drink some evening?" He sounded
like Delilah asking Samson to stop by for a haircut. "You do have
my name and address, don't you?"
I
assured him I had written them down when he called for the appointment, resisting
the temptation to speculate that every tearoom wall in town had his number.
I rose and he, eyes glued to my crotch, offered me a dead hand at the end
of a limp wrist. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to kiss it or shake
it, so I took the latter course, and he turned on his little ballerina feet
and swished to the door.
"Oh,
there is one little thing," I called after him as his hand reached for the
knob. He turned quickly, eyes sparkling coquet-tishly.
"Yes?"
"About
your lover."
"Who?"
"Your
lover. Bobby."
"Oh. Yes."
He looked disappointed.
"It
might help if I knew his last name."
"McDermott,"
he said over his shoulder as he opened the door. "Bobby McDermott." And with
that, he was gone.
I
sat back down, leaned back in my chair, and put my thumbnail between my teeth--a
dumb habit, I'll admit, but that's the kind of thing you do when you go from
three packs of cigarettes a day to nothing. I stared at the door for a minute,
then pulled my thumb out of my mouth, reached for a note pad, and wrote "Bobby
McDermott."
Part
of me felt slightly guilty for taking Rholfing's money; one call to Tim Jackson
should confirm that it was drugs and give me whatever other information I
might need to wrap the whole matter up.
It
was five thirty; too late to reach Tim at the office but, if I waited a few
minutes, I could probably reach him at home. Suddenly, I was looking at my
crotch, and it was reminding me of how long it had been since I'd seen
Tim.
It
was too hot to wait in the office, so I decided to go down the street to
Hughie's and have a drink. I could call Tim from there. Thin wisps of Rholfing's
cologne still hung in the air so, cursing the broken air conditioner and
hoping it wouldn't rain, I left the window wide open as I closed the door
behind me.
* * *
Hughie's is a hustler bar about two blocks from the office. I like
to stop in every now and then to watch the hustlers and johns go through
their little mating dances; the hustlers preening and strutting, or just
standing around trying to out-butch one another; the johns-- middle class
business executives, most of them--sidling up, pretending they've just wandered
into the bar by accident. The "casual" opening remarks ("Sure is hot today,
isn't it?" "Say, that's a nice-looking shirt you've got on." "Can I buy you
a drink?"). The john buying the hustler a drink, then two; the exit with
the john looking nervous but trying to act cool, the hustler sauntering casually
through the door as if he were just stepping outside to see if it's
raining.
The whole place has a sort of morbid fascination, if you like living
vicariously, which I don't. I go there mainly because it's close and because
you can often learn things at Hughie's you couldn't learn elsewhere without
a lot of hassle.
Out
of curiosity, when I ordered my beer I asked Bud, the bartender, if he'd
ever heard of a guy called Bobby McDermott.
"Sorry,
Dick," he said, drawing a dark into a frosty glass (that's another reason
I go to Hughie's--it's a dive, but they frost their beer glasses, and it's
one of the few places that has dark beer on tap). "Nobody's much on names
around here, in case you hadn't noticed. What's the dude look like?"
I had another slight pang of guilt when I realized I had no idea.
"I
dunno," I said, trying to sound casual. "It's not important; just thought
you might know him."
"Huh-uh,"
Bud said, taking my money. "I don't think so. But if anybody'd know him,
it'd be Tessie." He looked around. "Not here right now. If he's not here
for happy hour, he'll be in around ten or eleven."
"Thanks, Bud," I called to his back as he moved off down the bar to
serve another customer. I took a couple deep draughts, fought back a belch,
and rummaged through my change for a coin. I waited until there was a lull
on the jukebox and went to the phone to dial Tim.
It rang four times and I was just about to hang up when Tim
answered.
"'Lo?" Jesus, even his voice was sexy. I kicked myself for not having
kept in closer touch with him.
"Hi, Tim,"
I said, hoping he wouldn't remember just how long it had been. "It's Dick.
Hardesty. Just get home?"
"A while
ago. I was just getting ready to hop into the shower. Care to join me?"
"Only
if you'll agree to drop the soap," I said.
Tim
laughed. "They don't call me 'Old Slippery Fingers' for nothing. Where the
hell have you been anyway? I thought you'd given me up for lost."
"No way.
It's just that I've been. . .ah. . .you know. . ." Always quick with an answer,
that's me.
"That's
okay," Tim said, laughing again. "I know how it is. So when are we going
to get together?"
"Well,
as a matter of fact, there was something I wanted to talk over with you.
You going to be home for awhile?"
"Sure;
I'm in for the night. Come on over--it'll be nice to see you again. We can
talk over old times and. . .uh. . .see what comes up."
"Still
World's Champion Prickteaser, I see," I said. "See you in ten minutes." I
hung up, went back to the bar to chug-a-lug the rest of my beer, waved goodbye
to Bud, and sauntered out the door like a hustler checking to see if it was
raining.
* * *
Tim's apartment is a ten-minute walk from Hughie's. I made it in seven. I
rang the bell, and the door opened the length of the safety- latch chain.
Tim's curly brown hair appeared first as he peered around the corner of the
door, then his bright blue eyes and big, shit-eating grin.
"Hi," he said in a sotto-voiced stage whisper and looking me over with mock
seriousness.
"What's the password?"
"Necrophilia,"
I whispered, and Tim leaned against the door, laughing, and closed it. I
could hear the chain being released. Then the door opened again, wider this
time, and Tim's head and bare shoulders appeared from behind it.
"Come
on in," he laughed. He apparently had just gotten out of the shower and was
wearing nothing but a towel and an ear-to-ear grin. He closed the door behind
me and refastened the chain.
"There's a
drag queen two doors down who's always coming by for a cup of Vaseline or
something every time he knows I'm home," Tim said, still smiling. "Actually,
he's just hot for m'bod."
"Well,
he'll just have to take a number and stand in line like everybody else,"
I said, grabbing him in a bear hug and lifting him off the floor. Tim threw
his arms around my neck and returned the hug--then his eyes grew wide and
he got that little-boy look that always made me melt.
"To
paraphrase my good friend Mae West," he said, staring directly into my eyes
with the tip of his nose pressed against mine, "is that a gun in your pocket,
or are you just glad to see me?"
"Damn,"
I said, still holding him off the floor, "and I wanted it to be a surprise."
I opened my mouth wide and, with a loud hiss, clamped my lips wetly on the
base of his neck at the shoulder, applying a slow pressure with my
teeth.
Tim struggled to get away. "You give me a hickey, you bastard, and
your ass is grass."
I set him down and held him at arm's length, noticing with pleasure
that I'd found his "On" button.
"You want
to talk now, or later?" he asked.
"Later,"
I said, unfastening his towel and letting it drop to the floor. Tim might
have the face and body of a teenager, but he packed an adult's equipment--and
then some.
We made
our way to the bedroom and Tim sprawled on the bed on his stomach, facing
me and watching me as I stood just inside the door and undressed. It was
all part of the ritual we followed on those occasions--too rare, I realized
as I watched him watching me; when we got together; neither of us wasted
much time in idle chit-chat. As I took off my pants and shorts, Tim's face
slowly broke into that wicked-little-kid grin and, when I stood there fully
naked, he slowly crooked his index finger at me. As I walked over to the
bed, straight toward him, Tim opened his mouth and slowly extended his tongue.
Bull's-eye!
* * *
"Cigarette?"
he asked, leaning across me for an ashtray on the night stand.
"Gave
'em up," I said, smugly.
"You?
Liggett & Myers' best friend?" He paused to light up. "I'm proud of you.
Really. It's a filthy habit." And he blew a long stream of smoke into my
face.
"You
little. . ." I said, lunging out to tickle him under the arm, which always
drove him up the wall. He shrieked and rolled away from me, almost falling
off the bed in the process.
"Don't! Please! I'll be good! Honest!" he gasped between arias of laughter
and frantic flailing trying to fend off my insistent tickling. Finally, fearful
that the neighbors might be considering calling the police, I stopped.
Tim lay limp, catching his breath. He took a long drag from his cigarette,
which had somehow come through the struggle unscathed, and carefully blew
the smoke away from me. After a minute, he plumped up his pillow and scooted
himself up on the bed, his back against the headboard.
"Okay, so let's talk," he said.
"About what?" I asked.
"About
whatever it was you called me about," he said with a grin.
I
duplicated his pillow-plumping and hoisted myself up beside him. "You know
I hate to mix business with pleasure, but. . ."
"Yeah,
yeah, I know. So 'but' what?"
"Your
office had a case recently--you probably don't remember it with all those
stiffs you have coming and going. Mostly going. But this one was kind of
different. Young guy named Bobby McDermott; 27."
Tim
muttered something under his breath--it sounded like "Fuck!" --and stared
into the ashtray balanced on his stomach.
"What?"
I asked.
Tim
turned his head and looked at me, strangely, his eyes searching my face.
He said nothing.
I
felt a twinge of guilt. "Hey, Tim, I'm sorry," I said. "I know I don't have
any right to butt into your business. . ."
Tim shrugged and relaxed a little. "It's okay," he said, finally. "Yeah,
I remember Bobby McDermott. What about him?"
"The police apparently indicated to his lover that he killed himself.
Probably poison. His lover swears he was murdered."
Tim
stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray, staring at it and continuing to tamp
it long after it was out. "What makes him think that?"
Patience
was never one of my greater virtues, and obviously Tim knew something he
wasn't too eager to share with me.
"Come on, Tim! The guy's 27. Healthy as a horse--hung like one, too,
I understand. No apparent problems--unless you count the lover, but that's
another story. Apparently the only thing he was addicted to is sex, and I've
never heard of anyone fucking themselves to death, have you?" Tim shrugged,
avoiding my eyes. "And then the cops ask the lover what he knows about poisons.
That strikes me as more than a little strange; they don't ask about drugs,
but poisons."
Tim
pursed his lips, thought a moment, then turned to me with a deep sigh. "Well,"
he said, shaking his head, "somebody was bound to catch on, sooner or
later."
"Catch
on to what?" I asked, with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"First
of all, he didn't die of drugs; it was poison. Cyanide, to be exact. Apparently
inhaled. Secondly, I'm pretty sure it wasn't suicide."
"What
makes you think that?" I asked.
"Apart
from the fact that cyanide is a pretty esoteric way for anybody to commit
suicide, how would someone like McDermott manage to get hold of it? It's
not impossible to come by, but it's not exactly a household product. But
what really blows a hole in the suicide theory--and a little detail that
the cops apparently chose to overlook--is that from what I understand, there
was absolutely nothing in the room to indicate how he managed to inhale cyanide.
No bottles, vials, inhalers, rags, nothing."
"Weird," I said, the butterflies still there.
"It gets weirder when you consider that Bobby McDermott wasn't the
first case we've had like it in the past couple weeks. He's the sixth
one."
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