The Ninth Man (2 page)

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 beer. 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 was 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 pocket 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 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 stage whisper, 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, as the song says, “Little David was small, but, oh, my!”

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 chitchat.

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, he opened his mouth and slowly extended his tongue. Bull’s-eye!

*

“Cigarette?” he asked, leaning across me for an ash
tray on
the night stand.

“Gave ’em up,” I said, smugly.

“You? Liggett and Myers’ best friend?” He paused to light up. “I’m proud of you. Really. It’s a filthy habit.” 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?”

“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; twenty-seven.”

Tim muttered something under his breath—it sounded like “Fuck!”—and stared into the ashtray balanced on his stomach.

“What?” I asked.

He 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 know I don’t have any right to butt into your business…”

He 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 twenty-seven. 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?”

He 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?”

“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.”

Chapter 2

It took a second to sink in. Suddenly, I wanted a
cigarette more than anything in the world.

“What do you mean, he’s the sixth one?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Tim flopped over on his stomach and bunched his pillow under his chest, supporting himself on his elbows and looking at me direct and hard. I could almost see his mind working, sending flashes of thought through his eyes.

“Look, Dick, I like you, and I think you’re the kind of guy who can be trusted. But to be honest we don’t really know each other all that well, and I could get in one hell of a lot of trouble and maybe even lose my job for divulging confidential information. I just don’t know if it’s worth it.”

I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, I understand, Tim. But six people? Something’s going on, and I think six people’s lives are worth a hell of a lot.”

“Well, there’s this, too: it’s not just six people; it’s six guys, and from what I know, six
gay
guys,” Tim said. “And of course you’re right. But they’ve managed to keep the whole thing quiet so far—either the media hasn’t caught wind of it yet, or they’re being asked to keep a lid on it to prevent another Freeway Strangler or Trashbag Murders circus.”

“How long a period did you say we’re we talking about?” I asked.

“Two months.”

“And how do you know they were all gay?”

“Six single men in their late 20s on up? Only one of them was identified by a blood relative—a father who made the identification but refused to accept the body because he said his son had died years ago. Two of them had admitted lovers—one, McDermott’s, an obvious fag, the other a guy I’d talked to in the bars—three were identified by ‘roommates’ I’ll bet my bottom dollar are ‘our people,’ and one by a friend who went into hysterics and said a lot of things he shouldn’t have.”

“And all of them were killed by cyanide?”

Tim nodded. “Cyanide, prussic acid, the same thing. All inhaled, with an extremely high concentration of residue in one nostril, and in a circle the size of a dime on one thumb. Give you any clue?”

“Poppers?” I said. “They thought they were taking a hit of amyl nitrate and it was cyanide instead? Jesus!”

Just about every gay I knew used amyl for a quick high; especially on the dance floor and during sex. One sniff and the top of your head sort of goes off. Cyanide in an amyl bottle or an inhaler!

“Yep,” Tim said. “One deep whiff, and it’s all over! About one minute, maximum. And considering the victim is inhaling deeply through just one nostril, it doesn’t take much; just 300 parts of hydrogen cyanide per million parts of air, and you’re gone.”

“And what are the police doing about all this?”

Before answering, he reached across me to pick up a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray from the night stand.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” he said, rolling over onto his back and putting the ashtray on his chest. “Their first theory apparently was that somebody’d poisoned a batch of poppers, and that whoever was unlucky enough to get a contaminated bottle ended up randomly dead. In case you hadn’t noticed they’ve yanked all the amyl out of the gay baths, bookstores and head shops—they haven’t found anything, of course, but I don’t think they care much; it just gives them another excuse to harass gay businesses.”