A Time for Secrets (8 page)

“What did he say?”

“He said it was possible. They’re not sure.”

I thought about it for a minute, then I said, “That doesn’t seem likely. I mean, if it were a venereal disease then I’d have it, too, and I’m healthy.”

I didn’t mention that, aside from the sex vacations Harker used to take to San Francisco, I was a whole lot more promiscuous. If GRID were sexual, it made sense that I’d have gotten it first. Didn’t it? Or was it different? Was this some crazy game of Russian Roulette?

“What if that’s not true?” he asked.

“You’re afraid of giving it to me?”

“Yes.”

“If it’s something I can catch from you, then I’ve already caught it. You’ve already given it to me, and that’s just the way it is.” He didn’t look very happy with that response. “Would you blame yourself if you gave me a cold?”

“People don’t die from a cold.”

“No Bert, some people do die from colds,” I pointed out. “And we don’t know you’re going to die from this. We only know you might.” I stepped over to the door and pulled him close to me, nuzzled his ear and said, “None of this is your fault.”

He squeezed me tight, tighter than I thought he could. When he pulled away, I bent over and kissed him. His mouth was sweet and, for a change, cool. I pulled him into me, very nearly curling around him. We kissed so intently, passionately, that we lost our balance and fell against the doorjamb, breaking into laughter as we did.

I led him over to the bed and pushed him down onto it. He lay back. I crawled up next to him and kissed him. I slid a hand up his T-shirt. Caressing his soft, taut belly with its trail of thick blond hair running up to a veritable forest of hair on his chest.

Harker reached down and took hold of my stiffening prick. Pushing my hips forward, I rubbed against him. Our clothing rubbed back and forth between us, creating an exciting friction. I slipped my hand between us and found his cock. Happily, it was hard, nice and hard.

I caught his eye, and we looked at each other. This was going to be good, I could tell. Without breaking the look, I began pulling his clothes off. He was thinner than he’d been when we met, but still he was Harker. You could blindfold me and dump me in a room full of naked men and I’d find him. Not that I would mind the search.

When I got him naked, I began pulling at my own clothes. Harker made the process pretty difficult by holding our dicks together and jerking them with both hands. This cracked me up, and when I laughed so did he.

I stood up for a minute and got completely naked, then jumped back onto the bed. Pressing my naked body against his I reveled in the feel of his skin against mine. He wrapped his legs around me and whispered, “Hurry” into my ear.

I fumbled around with the Vaseline and got my dick aimed at his pucker hole. I eased in slowly, carefully. I couldn’t help but think about the guy I’d had sex with in the park just that morning. I’d been rough with him, pushing him around. Now I was gentle, careful with Harker, as though he were breakable. Once inside, I looked up and caught him smiling at me. I chuckled. “You look happy.”

“I am happy. You’re inside me.”

I started fucking him, still a little timid. After just a few strokes he told me to fuck him harder. I did.

Reaching down, I grabbed his dick and found it softening. I played with it as I pumped him, trying to get it to stiffen again. I glanced up at his face. There was obvious pleasure there. He opened his eyes and saw me looking at him. Opening his arms he pulled me close. I lay on top of him, curling the two of us into a ball, my dick hard inside of him, my hips continuing to slowly pump.

“Sometimes I wish I could sleep like this, with my dick inside you.”

Harker chuckled. “We’ll have to try that sometime.”

I stopped moving and tried to kiss him. Playfully, he turned his head away, “Some
other
time,” he said. “Right now you have work to do.”

I went back to fucking him as hard as I could, but stayed close, our chests together, our foreheads touching. Then I sat back up again to get a better angle. I was getting close. I took hold of Harker’s prick again and was happy to find signs of life. I jerked him and closed my eyes, trying not to come.

“It’s not gonna happen,” Harker said. “Just come, it’s okay.” I began to object, to promise I’d wait for him, but my dick had other ideas, and I came with a full body shudder.

“I’m sorry that wasn’t so great for you,” I said, as I wiped my dick off with the underwear I’d had on just a half an hour before.

“It was terrific, Nick,” he said. “It doesn’t always have to end the same way.”

“You’ve got a lot on your mind,” I said. “You were probably thinking too much.” Less than an hour before, he’d been worried I might catch GRID from sex with him. No wonder he had trouble.

“I wasn’t thinking anything except that I love you.”

I tucked him into me and said, “Good. Keep thinking that.” We lay there a bit, then got up and went to watch the news.

It was a slow news day. The big story was Hershey chocolate reporting that sales of Reese’s Pieces were up sixty-five percent after landing a starring role in
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
. The follow-up was on the aerobic dance craze. I suppose I should have been happy there wasn’t more bad news, but good news days always made me feel like the boom was about to drop.

We warmed up a kind of goulash Mrs. Harker had left and watched
That’s Incredible
followed by the NBC Monday Night Movie, which was something by Neil Simon. We fell asleep during the movie and didn’t budge until Johnny Carson came on. Then we moved into the bedroom.

All in all, it was a pretty nice night.

§ § § §

The phone rang and I stumbled out into my living room buck-naked. When I picked up, Detective Patrick Haggerty was on the other end. He worked out of the Town Hall district, and we’d run into each other before.

“I need you to get your ass down here, Nowak.”

I didn’t particularly like being ordered around. The fog of sleep was beginning to clear, and I realized that it was seven in the morning. The sun was shining bright, and, if they cared to, my neighbors could peek into my windows and see me standing there in the all together.

“What’s the problem, Haggerty? You need someone to wipe your butt?”

“We found a guy named Vernon Taber shot to death in his living room. We also found your business card sitting on his coffee table. If you don’t get down here and tell me everything you know about this I’m gonna figure you had something to do with it.”

I was out the door in less than five minutes. Haggerty wanted me at the Town Hall station, which was only a few blocks from my apartment. I figured I’d get there in about an hour or so.

First, I wanted to get my hands on Ronald Meek and find out what the hell was going on. Had he somehow figured out Vernon’s address? I’d let him know Vernon was in the phone book. Had he suddenly remembered Vernon’s last name and gone over and killed the man? No, I couldn’t believe Ronald would kill poor, pathetic Vernon. Or at least I hoped he hadn’t. I had the queasy feeling I might somehow be responsible for Vernon’s death.

Ronald’s apartment was two blocks north and one block west from mine. I practically ran over there. I buzzed the intercom and waited. Nothing. I could have rung the other buzzers until someone let me in but I didn’t want anyone to know I was there, and this early in the morning they’d be sure to remember me. If Haggerty found out I’d seen my client before talking to him there’d be hell to pay.

Walking back out to the sidewalk, I found the pass-through to the back of the building. Old, rickety wooden stairways clung to the back of the brick building. I climbed up to the second floor and figured out which was Ronald’s backdoor. It wasn’t difficult. The door was standing open.

I walked into a small, rudimentary kitchen. Nothing looked wrong in there. I called out Ronald’s name and waited. When he didn’t answer, I continued into the apartment. A short hallway led to the bathroom at one end and a dining room at the other. After taking a quick glance into the bathroom, I headed to the dining room. The dining room was at the front of the apartment; to my right was a door leading to the small bedroom. Years ago, Ronald had dropped potatoes from the dining room window onto Daniel’s and my attackers. Now, the room stood empty and quiet, as did the bedroom.

The living room was connected to the dining room through a wide arch. I stood in the arch and there between the dingy sofa and the stacks of tabloid newspapers lay Ronald Meek’s body face down on the dirty rug with his knees bent. There was a small hole in the back of his head but no blood anywhere on the floor. You didn’t have to be an expert to figure out he’d been shot with a small caliber gun and died quickly. I looked closely at his head and saw that the side of his forehead was now misshapen. The bullet had enough force to enter his skull but not to exit. That’s what small caliber guns do.

This was an execution-style killing. The shooter had made Ronald get on his knees, then gotten behind him and shot the old guy at close range. I couldn’t help but think how horrible those last few minutes of Ronald’s life must have been. Somehow knowing death was imminent seemed worse than simply dying. I guessed, when it was my turn, I hoped to be taken by surprise. To be crept up on and—

The thought gave me chills. I told myself to focus. I shouldn’t be in the apartment for long. It was a crime scene, and I didn’t want to disturb it any more than necessary. I glanced at the front door; there was no sign of forced entry. Nor had there been at the back. Was it possible that Ronald knew his killer? Or, at the very least, was his killer someone he felt comfortable letting into his apartment? And was this how things looked over at Vernon Taber’s place?

I glanced around to see what the apartment might tell me. The dining room didn’t have dining furniture. Instead, there was a small table with one chair shoved up against the front window; next to it, a small, three-shelved bookcase. On each shelf sat a row of gray journals with the year stamped in gold leaf lettering on the spine. Quickly, I scanned the dates. The journals began in 1938 and continued until 1982, which sat on the table. Never to be written in again.

The journals were a regular paper size, perhaps a little smaller, with a cloth binding. I considered taking the most recent one, but realized that would convince Haggerty that the killer had taken it. He’d think Ronald died for something in the journal, and I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I didn’t want Haggerty going off on a wild goose chase. I wanted him finding a killer.

A box of tissues sat on one corner of the table; I grabbed a couple and used them to turn a few pages of the journal. I scanned the last week looking for my name. It wasn’t there. But something else was. On the day he hired me, he’d made the note “Dick has agreed to help.” And just the evening before, “Dick has found him, but V. won’t see me.” I suppose it was kind of funny that he’d used the old euphemism for private detective instead of my name or initials, but I wasn’t in the mood to laugh.

I moved backward in the journal a week or so, but I didn’t find much. About a week before Ronald hired me, at the bottom of one page he’d written, “It’s time.” Nothing else. It could have meant anything, but I had the feeling it had something to do with finding Vernon. Had something happened to set this in motion?

I closed the journal and looked around the room one more time. Ronald didn’t have much money
,
that was obvious. His things spoke to a sad, shabby existence. He was a retired, lonely old man who’d just died on a dirty rug.

It was time to get out of there. First, though, using the tissue, I picked up the receiver of the heavy black phone and dialed 911. When the dispatcher came on the line I told her it was an emergency and that I needed Detective Haggerty. She didn’t want to connect me, of course; she just wanted to send out a squad car. But I pushed as hard as I could. Even suggesting she might lose her job if she didn’t find him for me toot suite. She put me on hold.

I waited, standing in the stillness staring at Ronald’s bookcase full of the journals. So many years. I wondered what they might contain. On the second shelf, I noticed a gap where it looked like one of the journals was missing. I took a step forward to check, but Haggerty was on the line barking my name.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“I’m at 861 Cornelia. My client—”

“You went to see a client first? There’s been a murder.”

“I know. My client hired me to find Vernon Taber.”

“If you tell me your client would like to confess, I might actually begin to like you.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. He’s lying on his living room floor with a bullet through the back of his head.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, so I said, “I assume that’s how Vernon Taber was murdered.”

“Get your ass out of that apartment and wait for me on the street.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

Then I hung up and went outside to wait.

CHAPTER NINE

“Two men are dead and the connection is you,” Haggerty said to me about four hours later. When he got to Meek’s apartment he’d sent me to Town Hall station to cool my heels while they worked the scene. I had enough coffee in me to float a barge and only had three smokes left. “I need an explanation, and it better be good.”

We were in a small room with walls the color of puke, a table, three chairs, and a dingy window covered in metal mesh.

“Ronald Meek hired me to find Vernon Taber,” I said.

“Why?”

“He said Vernon was an old boyfriend. He wanted to get back together with him?”

Haggerty snorted. “And you bought that?”

I hadn’t bought it a hundred percent, but I didn’t like Haggerty’s tone so I said, “Sure, why wouldn’t I?”

“I’ve worked this district for seven years. If I learned one thing about you queer boys, it’s that you’re too busy screwing like rabbits to send a Valentine’s Day card.”

I almost made a crack about drunken Irish cops, but, given Haggerty’s paunch and the broken blood vessels around his nose, I’d probably be right on the money. Which wouldn’t have made my point. I settled for a dirty look.