Biceps Of Death (18 page)
Authors: David Stukas
20
How to Curry Favor from an Ex-Boyfriend
A
few hours later, we met John Bekkman’s ex at a restaurant for brunch, with us agreeing to pick up the tab. One glance at Drake Hobart left no doubt as to why a romance between him and John was doomed from the very beginning. Whereas John was outdoorsy and dynamic, Drake was the epitome of a forty-plus New York City queen. From the yellow cable-knit cotton sweater thrown lightly over his shoulders to the feminine slipper-like shoes that graced his feet (not to mention his dyed yellow hair that was way too long for the first decade of the new millennium), Drake probably broke out in hives over the thought of ever having to leave the isle of Manhattan. Whatever brought them together in the first place would remain as elusive as what came seconds before the universe’s Big Bang.
few hours later, we met John Bekkman’s ex at a restaurant for brunch, with us agreeing to pick up the tab. One glance at Drake Hobart left no doubt as to why a romance between him and John was doomed from the very beginning. Whereas John was outdoorsy and dynamic, Drake was the epitome of a forty-plus New York City queen. From the yellow cable-knit cotton sweater thrown lightly over his shoulders to the feminine slipper-like shoes that graced his feet (not to mention his dyed yellow hair that was way too long for the first decade of the new millennium), Drake probably broke out in hives over the thought of ever having to leave the isle of Manhattan. Whatever brought them together in the first place would remain as elusive as what came seconds before the universe’s Big Bang.
“So you dumped a tureen of soup on his head?” Monette asked with a chuckle.
“The whole thing, right there in his seat with everyone watching,” Drake stated proudly. “The son of a bitch just dumped me after seven years. Seven years!”
“Seven years!” I exclaimed. “Is that diamonds? Or is it paper?”
Monette jumped in. “No, I think that anyone who can stay together for seven years deserves real estate, like an island. Capri maybe.”
“Well, he deserved far worse than that for dumping me for Mr. Muscles.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Isn’t that always the way! You have him rolling in the aisles with your wit, you cook like Wolfgang Puck, you subvert your needs to his, and some musclehead catches his eyes with washboard abs and your boyfriend dumps you like Donna Summer dumped her gay fans when she went Christian.”
“Ain’t it the truth!” Drake lamented. “I said, ‘John, you’re dumping me for a guy who works for the circus?’”
Monette and I eyed each other in amazement as if we had just discovered the mother lode. Indeed, we had.
Monette shuddered briefly, then forged ahead.
“The circus, you say? Like Ringling Brothers?”
“No, no. Cirque de Soleil.”
Another flash of discovery between the two of us.
“Drake, could you tell us what role he had in Cirque?” Monette said, beaming like she was on the cusp of a great discovery.
“He was a contortionist. You see, he was Asian and had a very small frame. He was, like five-feet-four or something like that. He could climb up poles with just his hands, pulling his body up without even using his feet. And he could fit inside tiny boxes they used in the act, which is unusual for a man since women are usually contortionists. It has something to do with the way the female body is constructed.”
Monette was frothing over with excitement. I wasn’t as hot on the trail as she was, but I could sense the general direction her logic was taking her.
“Drake,” she continued, “do you know if John is still with this guy?”
“His name’s Michael. Michael Lau. Yes, I’m sure he is. You don’t see a lot of them together. Michael stays in the background because he was fired from Cirque for not showing up for work ... he trained and trained with the circus, then turned into a big no-show. I guess once he became boyfriends with John, he no longer had to work. John, if you didn’t know it, is stinking rich.”
“We did some research on John,” I added. “He’s quite the adventurer, isn’t he?”
“That was part of what put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship—besides Michael Lau, that is.”
“And how was that?” Monette inquired.
“Oh God, he was always off with his buddies, whitewater rafting some river in Chile, kayaking some lake in Argentina, spelunking some cave in Hawaii,” Drake reported.
“And you didn’t want to join him on his outings, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No, Robert, I could care less about John or being outdoors. It didn’t matter anyway since he dissuaded me from accompanying him and his buddies.”
“His buddies?” Monette asked in surprise.
“Oh, like I was cuckolded or something? No, I don’t ever think he had sex with these guys, although I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”
“Why was that?” I asked.
“Oh, they were ex-cops, mountaineers, real athletic guys.”
“I see,” Monette said through a haze of deep thought. “Drake, I have one last question for you, and I need an accurate answer, so think very carefully and if you’re not sure, call me back when you have the answer.”
Drake looked amused, as if the answer to a single, simple question would be so earth-shaking.
“Yeah, go ahead,” he answered with a slightly nervous chuckle.
“Where was John on December seventh, 2002?”
“Oh, that’s easy. We were in Amsterdam for our anniversary. . . an anniversary I will never forget—our last.”
“And why is that?” Monette asked.
“Because he got me drunk and I slept the whole night. Then after we got back to the States a week later, he broke up with me. Some anniversary, huh?”
Monette shook her head in sympathy. “Yeah, some anniversary.”
We finished our lunch hurriedly, paid the bill, and thanked Drake graciously over and over. Monette grabbed my arm and dragged me to the street curb, furiously flagged down a cab, and pulled me inside.
“We’ve got work to do,” she said breathlessly, as if there wasn’t a moment to lose. “We’ll go to Michael’s apartment and I’ll spill everything. Then we need to call McMillan and tell him everything.”
I sat staring out at the buildings rushing by while Monette bit her lip and tapped her hand nervously on the cab’s window ledge. We arrived at Michael’s apartment, walked right past the sleeping doorman, and were whisked up the elevator, where Monette practically tugged me down the hall and broke down Michael’s apartment door in excitement.
“We need to look at the CD again. Let’s go down to the computer room!” she said, barging through the door and surprising a naked Michael in mid-jerk, webcamming with another naked guy on the plasma screen in front of him.
“Michael, could you leave us, please! This is an emergency!” she said, pushing him out the door of his own room and throwing a T-shirt at him that he’d left behind in the rush, inscribed with the caption, IF I WANT YOUR OPINION, I’LL TAKE MY DICK OUT OF YOUR MOUTH AND ASK YOU.
I could hear Michael grab something out of a hall closet, followed by a loud slam of his apartment door, indicating he had gone out in a rage.
Monette was on a mission. Her fingers pecked on the keyboard like a frantic chicken and brought up the infamous photo CD.
“So I suppose you’re going to tell me what this is all about?”
“All in good time, my pretty, all in good time,” she shot out of the corner of her mouth as she tapped away.
“There! See!”
“Yeah, it’s a picture of John Bekkman having a fantasy in the living room of his apartment. I don’t see what’s so important about it.”
“Remember what you said about some sinister organization in the background?”
“Yes,” I said, peering at the photo. “I don’t see anything in the background that looks sinister.” I squinted at the walls and furniture, trying like the dickens to see a hidden swastika, hammer and sickle, or even a freemason’s logo. “All I see are a bunch of paintings.”
Monette put her finger on her nose while pointing another at me; her sign for “on the nose, buddy boy.”
“Whaaat?!” I stammered. “The guy collects art and donates it to museums. I don’t see what’s so special about that.”
“That painting you see there on the wall,” she said, pointing to a Van Gogh, “was one of two pictures stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam during the early morning hours on December seventh, 2002.”
My mouth opened but no sound came out of it. I remained silent while the enormity of the thought sank in.
“OH SHIT!” I eventually managed to eke out.
“Oh shit is right,” Monette said, the tone in her voice echoing the heavy atmosphere that descended over the room. We were up against a conspiracy that involved dollars that made Eric’s pitiful blackmail scheme look like eating a few grapes at the local Safeway without paying for them.
“But I didn’t see the painting when we visited John ... come to think of it,” I said.
“You’re right. Neither did I—at first. Remember when I commented that the wall had been painted recently because it smelled of paint. In the photo here, the wall behind the painting is a vivid yellow, like in Van Gogh’s masterpiece. But when he put up a Kandinsky in its place, he had the wall painted red to show the work off to its best.”
The light was dawning on me finally.
“So when John had Cody photograph him in a sexual scene in his apartment, he was probably so in the heat of passion that he forgot about the painting. Plus, he was blindfolded at the time, so he wasn’t thinking. Afterwards, he either realized that he had made a big mistake or Eric gave him a sample of the photos—it doesn’t matter since the cat was just about out of the bag. The thing was, if John were able to contain the number of people who viewed the CD, he had the hope that no one would notice the stolen artwork on his walls. And to be truthful, few people would.”
“I got you so far, Monette, but what made you start thinking that John was our man?”
“Robert, it was so simple. Someone went to a lot of trouble to get into your apartment. Clue one: a very elaborate break-in. Clue number two: Once we discovered that someone shimmied down between two walls—probably to keep the number of burglars to a minimum because of the reporters—I suspected that John was involved. After all, John was an adventurer, he had a taste for dangerous sports, like kayaking, skydiving, and—”
“Mountain climbing,” I said, finishing Monette’s thought. “Of course, how could I have been so stupid?!”
“You see what I meant about the little clues being important. If you examined
how
someone broke into your apartment, it could tell you far more than
why
they did it.”
how
someone broke into your apartment, it could tell you far more than
why
they did it.”
“Okay, here’s something that’s been bugging me: How did my idea of a sinister organization get you thinking about John? Did my comment get you thinking about a ring of art thieves?”
“No, it wasn’t that at all. The only word that made me think of looking at the pictures more intensely wasn’t your idea of
a sinister organization in the background—
just the word
background.
You see, I know the blackmailees had a lot at stake, but not enough to kill two people and set their target on a third, fourth, and maybe more. I felt that there was something we couldn’t see in the photos that merited going on a killing spree, so I sat down and started looking at everything item by item, what was in the room, what was visible outside windows, what people were wearing, who was doing what, and when I saw the artwork in various apartments, I started thinking. Was some of it stolen? Was some of it forged? So I looked up each piece on the Internet, and before long, eureka!”
a sinister organization in the background—
just the word
background.
You see, I know the blackmailees had a lot at stake, but not enough to kill two people and set their target on a third, fourth, and maybe more. I felt that there was something we couldn’t see in the photos that merited going on a killing spree, so I sat down and started looking at everything item by item, what was in the room, what was visible outside windows, what people were wearing, who was doing what, and when I saw the artwork in various apartments, I started thinking. Was some of it stolen? Was some of it forged? So I looked up each piece on the Internet, and before long, eureka!”
“Well, I, for one, think we should get on the phone to McMillan and let him know we’ve cracked the case.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Monette echoed.
“You talk to him, Monette, since you figured everything out.”
So we got McMillan on the phone and Monette gave a breathless account of how she’d unraveled the case of the Flying Personal Trainers. McMillan asked all kinds of questions: How did we find out about John Bekkman’s ex-boyfriend, how did we know of John’s whereabouts the day of the break-in at the Van Gogh Museum, and how did we figure out how John or an accomplice entered Robert’s apartment without leaving any traces?
McMillan must have complimented Monette and I one hundred times, because Monette kept saying “thank you” or “we’re flattered” or “it wasn’t anything two insanely intelligent geniuses couldn’t do.”
“Yes, well, thank you, Detective. I think that we’d be flattered and glad to have a celebratory dinner,” Monette said into the phone. “Champagne, oh, Robert and I have never had enough, but I’m warning you,” she laughed, “you’d better get our statements
before
we have that magnum of champagne! Okay, fine, Robert and I aren’t doing anything else the rest of the day. Great, see you downstairs in one hour.”
before
we have that magnum of champagne! Okay, fine, Robert and I aren’t doing anything else the rest of the day. Great, see you downstairs in one hour.”
Monette hung up the phone and was absolutely glowing.
“So I take it he wants us to make some statements at the station, then he’s taking us out to dinner?”
“You got it. He said he’s a little embarrassed that he missed such obvious clues, but I told him that we wouldn’t tell his department that we solved the case since it would probably mean a promotion. He’s going to be indebted to you for this, Robert.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?”
“It complicates the situation, Monette.”
“What, are you having feelings about McMillan?”
“I don’t know. I can’t seem to separate whether I’m interested in him because he’s interested in me, or whether it’s the real thing. Marc is still very much in the picture, Monette. It was just so much easier when I only had one guy to worry about. Now I’ve got two to choose between.”
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