Biceps Of Death (7 page)

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Authors: David Stukas

BOOK: Biceps Of Death
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Monette had a smile on her face and was desperately trying to suppress it. “Maybe we should change the subject for now. You said that whoever broke into your apartment took your laptop?”
“Yes, but it was insured. At least one thing is going my way—if you can look at a burglary as a positive event. Now I can get a bigger model.”
“I’m so happy for you. Anyway, can they open your files, or are they protected in some way, like with a password?”
“Both. Just to log into my computer, you need to have a password. Then the file is protected too. But you’d have to be a genius to figure out the password.”
“Is it
berunkis?
” Monette suggested.
“How the fuck did you know? No one knows that word, except for my grandmother, Martha the Obscure.”
“Oh, c’mon, Robert. You use that word all the time. You think it’s safe because no one knows Lithuanian. You made the fatal mistake of telling me one time—I just figured that you would use it because it was as obscure as the tales your grandmother told you.”
“Anyway, the only way to get the computer usable again is to erase the entire disk and reformat it, destroying the contents at the same time.”
“Okay, so whoever stole your computer knows that it’s inaccessible but they have your laptop and the CD that was lying next to it on your desk. So they probably think their work is done. We might be able to eliminate one culprit from our list of suspects.”
“Yes, but who? We haven’t even started asking them questions,” I reminded her.
“It’s better than nothing. The one suspect that seems the least interested in getting their hands on the CD might be our murderer.”
“But what if my burglars aren’t the actual murderers—just men who want to keep their secret sex life just that—secret?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out over the course of the next few days,” Monette responded. The girl already had a plan. “We say we’ve still got the CD, or a copy of it, and we use that as our leverage to get in to see our suspects.”
“Yeah, and look where it got the first person who tried that: on Madison Avenue, being scraped off the pavement with putty knives.”
Monette held her arm high into the sky as if waving to a bird of prey. When Monette was on to something, she could get pretty dramatic with her hands. Thank goodness she didn’t have priceless Ming china in the house.
“In all this confusion, we need to stick to the basics. First, who would resent having to pay blackmail money for the pictures? And second, who had the opportunity to commit the crime? What was the name of the first guy. Uh, Obie ... ?”
“Cody. Cody Walker,” I corrected her.
“Yes. So he had this sideline business ... making people’s fantasies come true. So why kill the second bodybuilder? What was his name?”
“Eric Bogert,” I answered.
“Yes, Eric. I would think that killing off the first personal trainer would be enough to scare the second into abandoning his blackmailing. See, we don’t know enough about what happened before the two murders. If we understood that, we’d know the motivations the killers have. Robert, I think it’s time we got on the Internet. I may be a committed lesbian, but I’m dying to see what a traffic cone looks like up a man’s butt.”
5
How the Hell Did That Get Up There?
W
e gathered around Monette’s computer in her living room and watched eagerly as the screen came to life.
“Now where did you store the pictures?” she asked, clicking her way around from site to site. I gave her the website address where I have online storage facilities. She clicked on the folder marked
Vacation Pictures
and downloaded the contents to her own computer.
“Hey, those are
my
pictures,” I said as I now realized that myself and a very clever burglar were no longer the only owners of the incriminating pictures.
“I can’t believe you, Robert. Here I am assuming great risk to myself by downloading these potentially valuable pictures and you’re being stingy. Plus, this way, I can look at them at my leisure without having to go on the Internet.”
I looked at her skeptically.
Monette rolled her eyes back at me in response. “Robert, I know that my sex life isn’t that good right now—okay, ever—but sitting around with a vibrator inside of me looking at pictures of naked men ...” she said as she clicked on one of the folders and was presented with a man doing, well, what I thought was impossible. “... successfully sitting on a mature eggplant is one of the last things I can imagine doing. Look at it, Robert, he’s swallowed the—!”
“Yes, I see ... the whole vegetable! Monette, dear, could you please click on another folder ... this is something I don’t want to see.”
“Okay, let’s go about this thing logically,” Monette suggested. “I think we’re looking for two different people. One stole the original CD from your locker. The other, from your apartment. I can’t believe the two are the same. What I’m theorizing is that our suspects are so desperate to keep their pictures out of the public eye, that everyone is about to go over the edge—and two just did.”
“Yes, Monette, but stealing a compact disk and murdering two people are not quite the same thing.”
“True, but I said some people are quite desperate. They killed to suppress the CD, then broke into your locker and your apartment to get the disk.”
“So now that they think they have the disk, they might rest, right?” I said hopefully.
“Let’s hope so,” Monette replied. “Okay, it’s time to make a list of our suspects so we can go strong-arm them into giving us some information.”
“Monette, these guys aren’t going to let us blackmail them into telling us information.”
“Remember, Robert, if you’re going to be a great detective, never assume.”
“Because you make an
ass
out of
u
and
me
,” I added, reciting what hundreds of college kids before me have heard by nerdy professors thinking this was the first time their class ever heard it.
“Okay, let’s go through the index of Eric’s clients, match them up to their particular fantasies, and come up with a list of suspects.”
Click, click, click. Monette moved from the index to the various client picture folders. “Check
this
out,” she implored me.
I peered into the computer glow to see a man with a heavy five-o’clock shadow with barrettes in his hair and heavily applied lipstick dressed in a bustier with hot pants and hairy legs tucked into red-hot marabou mules. It was like watching an extremely bad drag show.
“Now I know where Frank got the inspiration for his last collection,” I said.
“Frank Addams. Forced feminization.” Click, click. “Add that to the pad, Robert,” Monette instructed me.
“Check,” I replied.
“Chet Ponyweather. Horse-riding gear, ass beating with a riding crop. Wears a horse saddle occasionally. Hey—you and Chet have something in common, but his top rides sidesaddle—very proper.”
“Very funny. Got it. Proceed.”
“George Sheffield, Republican mayoral candidate, into dressing like a baby. Now where the hell do you get oversize infant clothing like that?” Monette asked to the air around her.
“Baby Gap for Big and Tall Men?” I offered.
“Two points, Robert.”
“Uh-huh. Next.”
“Oh fuck me backwards on a tractor!” she blurted out in tones that would not only wake the dead, but make them put their boney hands to their ears. “Hardcourt, my boss! He’s into wearing superhero outfits!” she laughed. “I don’t believe my luck today. Spiderman, Batman, and here he is tied up as Robin. Heh, heh, heh, something tells me I’m going to be getting that raise after all. Are you getting this down, Robert?”
“Yes, Hardcourt, Robin, Spiderman ...”
“And the saddest-looking Batman I’ve ever seen. Not even Adam West on TV’s
Batman
was that paunchy. It’s a good thing he’s wearing that chest plate with the built-in abs. Okay, okay, I’ll stop. On to the next.”
Click, click.
Monette began shouting in horror. “Please, gouge out my eyes! I’ve seen the flabby ass and Baptist-sausage-and-pancake-church-supper stomach of televangelist Allen Firstborn!”
When she was done performing her theatrics, her eyes lit up and sparkled like supernovas. “Allen Firstborn ... ALLEN FIRSTBORN! I DON’T BELIEVE IT! It’s like someone just gave me a banana cream pie and a clear shot at Dr. Laura!”
It was too good to be true, but there he was in the flesh, literally.
“Eeeeeuuuuuw!” the two of us chorused.
Monette shielded her eyes in horror. “I don’t ever want to see anything like that again. Oh, are we going to have fun with this!” Monette squealed, which was quite something since Monette was not the kind of woman who squealed.
“You read my thoughts exactly. And Monette ...” I said, placing my hand on hers in mock seriousness. “No matter what happens to me, you get these pictures to any Rupert Murdoch newspaper, okay? Promise me.”
“You have my solemn word, Robert. So was Allen doing what I thought he was doing before I considered gouging out my eyes with grapefruit spoons?”
“If you lived on upper Park Avenue, you’d say he was getting a high colonic.”
“Very tastefully presented, Robert.”
“Thank you.”
“I assume that there is some kind of fetish thing going on here. You don’t think he’s one of those overpampered people who can no longer take a dump like normal people?” Monette asked.
“I think this guy is into medical scenes. See the speculum on the rolling medical table?”
“Bravo, Robert. A good point well spotted. You know what I’m noticing about all these photographs?”
“That it makes you want to swear off sex completely?”
“That too. No, none of these pictures have Eric in them. Cody seems to have taken them all. I’m getting the feeling that Cody did all the work and Eric did the blackmailing.”
“I’ve had the same sneaking suspicion,” I added.
We continued to go through the folders of clients, with me making detailed notes on our legal pad matrix. Monette looked at me with a sudden seriousness. “Jesus, now I know just how badly people want to get their hands on this CD. Millions of dollars are at stake here ... in political circles, religious circles—and we’ve just begun to lift the rocks up in this messy affair. There’s no telling what will crawl out next.”
Without taking my eyes off the computer screen, I asked, “Monette, you’re not sorry you let me stay here for the night, are you?”
Her reply was instantaneous. “Heavens no, Robert. We’ve been through three murder cases, wars, famines, and one showing of
Dogma,
with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. No, I wouldn’t desert you in this time of need.” Just to emphasize the point, she gave me one of her rib-cracking hugs. “You did take more than one cab, didn’t you?”
“To lose the reporters?”
“Well, them, but, more importantly, someone nastier.”
“Oh, Mr. X? Yes, I took several. I even had cab number two do an illegal U-turn on East Seventy-Ninth Street, followed by a dash down Eightieth, then back onto the FDR Drive.”
“Good boy. Okay, first things first. We need to know who’s after that CD because until we do, your life isn’t worth a plugged nickel.”
“Well, when you put it like that, Monette, my future all seems so bright.”
“You know what I mean. Now who is the detective assigned to your case?”
“McMillan. Luke McMillan.”
“Yes, Detective McMillan. Unfortunately, he is not going to come out and give you a lot of information because that’s privileged for the grand jury. But I think we have enough to go on with our little fetish matrix. Don’t you worry—we’ll find out who’s after you—and why.
“Wow, I just can’t get over how rich Cody’s clientele was. It looks like he did most of his calls to the clients’ apartments. Jesus! Look at these apartments, Robert! The guy in the last folder had a place on Fifth Avenue, around Eighty-Fourth Street, judging from the position of the Metropolitan Museum in the photo. Outrageously expensive furniture, stunning views. Look at this guy’s place, Robert. A genuine Van Gogh on the wall.”
“Wow. How can you be sure it’s Van Gogh?”
“It’s early Van Gogh. Look at the brushstrokes. It’s his usual theme, too. Peasants in rural France. Coming out of a church on a Sunday morning in autumn. Beautiful.”
“Do you think it’s real?”
“Without a doubt. Rich people don’t have posters and framed copies from the Metropolitan Museum gift shop on their occasional tables. No wonder someone’s going to such extremes to get that CD. There are reputations at stake. Some of these guys could be the CEOs of companies that manufacture household cleaners that Methodists in Kansas use to clean their toilets. Knowing that the CEO likes paying a personal trainer to stick fruit and vegetables up his bum isn’t going to fly very well with its customers, whose brains have been disintegrated by these very cleaning products. No, these people will be out for blood. The guys on this disk are probably shittin’ on their priceless Persian rugs right now.”
“Did you notice the Picasso etching on the table in that one guy’s apartment ... the one wearing the riding outfit in the last folder?”
“Chet Ponyweather’s? Yes, I did notice it. I also noticed that Frank Addams has several Julian Schnabels in his apartment.”
“Hmm, there’s a lot to be explored here,” Monette remarked, closing folders and putting her computer to sleep. “Well, I think that’s enough for tonight. How about bad movie night?”
“
The Testicles from Planet Eros
?” I asked.
“Robert, forget about exposing yourself for the cameras. By tomorrow, everyone will have forgotten about it. How about
The Beast with a Million Eyes
? And I could make my famous nosebleed nachos ...” Monette suggested like a sadistic Julia Child.
“How about a pizza?” I countered.
“Robert, you always love my five-alarm nachos.”
“Of course I do, but not tonight. My stomach’s upset about this mess I’m in.”
Grabbing my chin, Monette looked straight into my eyes, and perhaps into my heart. “Remember, you’re not in this thing alone. I’m always here.”
“Thanks, Monette. You’re the kind of friend I need right now.” I was silent for a moment, then changed the subject. “Besides, I need a pizza because I’m not getting any younger, Monette. The last batch of your nachos taught me the meaning of the word
flaming asshole
.”
Monette gave a loud laugh that stopped short of cracking plaster. “Okay, I’ll call in the pizza. But at least let me have some jalapeños on it.”
“On
half
... I want mushrooms on my side.”
Monette opened a bottle of red wine, popped the tape into the VCR, and we waited for the pizza to arrive. Monette didn’t start the movie just yet—that would be blasphemy to watch a bad movie without a slice of cheese pie in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. So we talked about nothing important for some time until the door intercom blared in Monette’s hallway.
“Yes?”
“Pizza delivery,” the voice yelled.
(Why, I wondered, do people always feel they have to yell into the intercom? If you would just talk in a calm rational voice, you’d be heard loud and clear. But no, everyone has to talk so loudly, they make the entire point of the intercom unnecessary or cause so much distortion that you can’t hear the person on the other end.)
A minute later, there was a knock on the door. Monette opened it.
“Mmmm, smells wonderful!” she said. “So where’s Gino?” Monette asked.
“Gino?” the deliveryman asked.
“Gino, the usual delivery man.”
“Oh, he sick,” pizza man replied.
“Well, tell him I hope he feels better.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him,” the man said, smiled, then closed the door gently behind him.
“Movie time,” Monette announced, carrying the pizza box into the living area, where we sat on the sofa she once rescued from a dumpster and watched the movie to its pathetic conclusion. True to my fear, my nose started bleeding after eating one too many jalapeños.

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