boystown (18 page)

Frowning, he looked up and asked, “Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” He was so short I had to practically pick him up to kiss him.

Of course, I knew I shouldn’t have sex with him. It wasn’t what you’d call a reliable interrogation technique. But he didn’t seem to know why Lenny killed himself, didn’t even think Lenny did kill himself, so it was hard to see the harm in it.

Pushing me away, Freddie flopped down on the bed and, lifting his hips, slid off his gym shorts.

His dick was semi-hard in anticipation and belonged on a much bigger man. I slipped off my jacket and began to undo the underarm holster holding my 9mm Sig Sauer.

“No,” Freddie said with a devilish smile. “Leave that on.”

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I threw my jacket on the floor and joined Freddie on the bed. Taking him into my arms, I kissed him long and deep. There was something sexy about his being completely naked and my having most of my clothes still on. My hard on rubbed against his, the cotton of my jeans making it all the more exciting. He pulled away from me and looked into my eyes. “You’re a good kisser.”

I thanked him for the compliment by kissing him some more. His hands were in my jeans, working to unbutton them and set my dick free. Once he got it into the open, he gave an appreciative little growl. He jerked me a few times and then rubbed our cocks together.

“This is going to be so good,” he whispered, then rolled over and spooned his naked butt into my lap. I ran my hands across his chest, pinching his nipples. He reached behind himself, grabbing my dick and rubbing the head along the crack of his ass.

His breathing began to come faster, and, somewhat abruptly, he reached around the edge of the mattress and pulled out a small container of Vaseline. Quickly, he lubed up my dick and his pucker hole. Before I slid my dick in, he said, “Take it easy at first.”

I fucked him slowly for a bit, lying there on my side with my pants down around my knees, giving him time to relax into it. Soon, though, I became impatient and pushed him over until he was face down. I crawled on top of him and slipped my cock back into him. He groaned happily.

My hands on his hips, I had to splay my legs wide to get a good angle. I thrust into him until the muscles on the insides of my legs began to ache. I pulled my legs closer together and lifted him up with me. His knees were off the bed, his ass practically floating in front of me as I pounded into him. His moaning began to blend into one long keening sound that reminded me of a siren.

Then I flipped him over. I wanted to see the look on his face while I screwed him. When he looked up at me, he stopped moaning and grinned. I slid back into him. “Yeah, that’s it,” he whispered.

Taking his cock into my hand, I started to jack him off. Matching each stroke with a thrust. He pushed my hand away, “You’re going to make me come too soon.”

I wanted to make him come, though, so I fucked him harder and faster. My holstered gun bounced against my ribs. He arched his hips, meeting each thrust. His hard cock bounced on his belly, and then he was coming. I reached out and jerked him a few times to help him along. All the while, I kept fucking him.

When he stopped spasming, Freddie said, “Pull it out. I want to see you come.”

I pulled out of him and began to jack myself off. It only took a few pumps and I was coming all over Freddie’s reddened dick and his already sticky belly. I collapsed on top of him. He slipped his arms around me and squeezed me close.

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When he’d caught his breath, he said, “I hope this means you’ll try extra hard to find out what happened to Lenny.”

I pulled away from him, “Is that what this is about? You fucked me so I’d do a good job?”

“No, I fucked you because you’re sexy. But I can still ask for special treatment, can’t I?”

“I always do a good job,” I said.

He shrugged. “You never asked for my alibi.”

“Okay, tell me your alibi.” Obviously, he was eager to do so.

“The night before Lenny died, I got drunk off my ass on Long Island Iced Teas and took the bus in the wrong direction! This big, burly black guy took pity on me. After that, all I remember is holding onto a bathroom sink in some apartment while the black guy fucked the living daylights out of me. I woke up the next morning around eleven. I had no idea where I was.” He watched me to see what kind of reaction his story might get.

I didn’t know what the big deal was with his alibi. Was he that desperate to display his sexual prowess? Did he want to present himself as some kind of slut? Was this his way of saying,

“don’t take what we just did too seriously”?

I dead-panned it. “Could you find this guy again?”

“Probably not.”

“Then it’s not an alibi, is it?”

He frowned. “Oh. I guess not.”

I rolled over and looked at him. “Can you think of anything else that might be important?”

Freddie thought for a moment, then smiled. “He would have liked you. That’s for sure. You’re just his type.”

It was time for me to leave, so I got off the bed. My hands and cock were still gooey with Vaseline. “Which way is the bathroom?”

“It’s right across the hall.”

With my pants around my ankles, I had to waddle across the hall. When I got halfway to the john, the front door opened and in walked Bobby Martin. Immediately, I remembered him. I’d picked him up at The Loading Zone a couple months before. I never saw him after that. We hadn’t exchanged numbers.

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He took a moment to look me up and down. My greasy shirttails, my red, sticky cock hanging out, my hairy knees. He smiled and said, “Well, nice to see you again.”

I wanted to punch someone.

* * *

The next morning it was raining in a way that reminded me of Noah and his ark. I walked out of my apartment and decided to take a cab. I’d been cursing myself for my behavior at Lenny’s apartment for nearly twenty-four hours, and promised myself I’d get this case back on a professional level.

At some point I was going to have to interview Bobby Martin. I’d declined to do it the day before. It would have been more convenient, of course, but when interviewing a subject you should at least have the illusion of the upper hand. This is natural for a police officer, but for a private investigator it’s harder to establish, and as a private investigator caught with his pants down it’s all but impossible. I promised myself I’d get back to him soon.

The station for the eighteenth district was on Chicago Avenue; it was three stories, brick, and had a Gothic-looking, white granite façade. I jumped out of the cab and ran into the building. I’d called around and found out that a Detective Harker had handled the Borlock case. The sergeant at the front desk told me he was located on the third floor.

When I got to the third floor, I found that most of the floor was devoted to one big room with desks spread around it. Four-drawer file cabinets created wall-like barriers between some of the desks. Harker’s desk was in the back corner, hiding behind a couple file cabinets.

Detective Bert Harker was forty-something, about five-foot-seven, had a blond crew cut and a nose that was bent at the bridge, making his profile look like the Indian on the flipside of a buffalo nickel. When he looked up at me, I could see that his eyes were a washed-out blue. The aviator-style glasses he wore made them seem just a little too big. He wore a rumpled, tan suit with a white shirt and a dark tie. Underneath, his body looked to be wiry and tense, like he was poised to spring at any moment.

“Detective Harker?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Nick Nowak. I’m a private--”

“I know who you are.”

Most of my family was on the job, plus I’d been a cop myself for about six years and left under a kind of cloud. The fact that he knew me wasn’t a good thing. “I’ve been hired by Helen Borlock to look into her son’s death.”

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“Suicide,” he corrected.

“Mrs. Borlock says he was a pretty happy kid.”

Harker shrugged. “She’s his mother. What else is she gonna say?”

“I talked to one of his roommates. He said pretty much the same thing.”

“Yeah, well, his boss, Campbell Wayne, said Lenny seemed depressed. Mentioned he was having problems with his roommates. Said he showed up a couple times like he was on something.”

This was new, and exactly the kind of thing I needed to know. “You wanna tell me about Campbell Wayne?”

“Vice President of Marketing at JTM Properties, located on the forty-second floor of the Hancock. Too slick for my taste, but I have no reason to doubt what he said.”

“What else do you have?”

“You wanna see the file?” he asked.

I figured he was taunting me. “Don’t pull my leg, okay?”

“If I pull your leg, you’ll know it.” If he hadn’t said it in such an expressionless way, I might have thought he was flirting. Without missing a beat, he continued, “It’s not an active investigation. And we’d all like Mrs. Borlock to stop calling. When you figure out this is a suicide, which you will, you’ll get Mrs. Borlock to leave us alone. Deal?”

I nodded. “I’ll make sure she understands.”

Harker walked over to a filing cabinet and dug around for the file. When he found it, he looked around the big room and said, “Come on.” He led me back to a small interview room with just a table, a metal ashtray, and a couple chairs. He tossed the file onto the table. It was manila, about an eighth of an inch thick. I thought that was pretty sad. A guy’s life and death reduced to an eighth of an inch.

I pulled up a chair while Harker leaned against a wall. Even though there wasn’t much in the file, I took a pad out of my jacket pocket and got ready to take some notes. I lit a cigarette so I could concentrate. There was an autopsy report that counted up exactly how many bones Lenny broke falling from the seventh floor to land next to a flower stand on the first. It noted that some blood had been sent for a toxicology report, but that report wasn’t in the file -- probably hadn’t come back yet. There were witness statements from the florist on the first floor and a customer she was waiting on; neither of whom saw anything until Lenny had already hit the marble floor about ten feet from where they stood.

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The whole time I was reading the file, Harker watched me. It began to bug me, so I said, “You stay in here much longer and the whole district is gonna think you’re getting a blowjob.”

He stared at me a moment, then said, “And if I leave you alone with my file, half of it walks away in your pocket.”

I couldn’t deny that, so I went back to studying the file. The most important thing in it was the witness statement from Jeanine Anderson, a hostess at The Gold Mine, a high-end hamburger chain with a gold rush theme. She was setting up her station when she noticed Lenny lingering around the spot he eventually jumped from. She said he was alone and that he looked sad. I jotted down her name and the gist of her statement.

According to the detective’s report, it was determined that Lenny must have jumped from a spot between twelve and fifteen feet north of the elevator. I made a note to check that out. I looked over the statement from Campbell Wayne. It said the things Harker had told me. It also said that Lenny was a good worker, conscientious and detail-oriented. He was punctual and sometimes wrote poetry at his desk during lunch. On the day Lenny died, he’d arrived on time and gone for a coffee break about ten o’clock. They noticed he hadn’t come back, but it wasn’t until several hours later that they heard he’d gone next door to Water Tower and jumped.

“Why go to work at all?”

The comment was more to myself, but Harker answered, “Maybe he didn’t decide to do it until he got there.”

“I suppose. But slitting your wrists in a nice warm bath seems cozier.” Did it, though? One of his roommates would have found him. And they’d have had to clean up the mess. Maybe this was the most considerate way he could think to do it.

“I heard about you, you know,” Harker said. “About what happened.”

I closed the file. I’d gotten pretty much everything I could out of it.

“Yeah, what did you hear?” I asked. If he was subtly trying to call me a fag, I wasn’t going to stand for it. I’d rather he come right out and say it.

“I heard you and your boyfriend got jumped.” After a long pause, he asked, “How’s he doing?”

Suddenly, I couldn’t really breathe. I don’t know whether it was because he was talking about my ex, a subject that always messed with my head, or whether the fact that he was a cop and he was maybe being nice about the whole thing was scaring the shit out of me.

“I don’t know how he’s doing. We don’t talk,” I managed to say.

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He nodded like he knew this was always the outcome when two gay lovers got beaten up by four suburban teenagers. We exchanged business cards, and I hurried out of the station like everyone in it had an infectious disease.

* * *

When I got back to my office, I looked up the number for JTM Properties and put in a call to Campbell Wayne. It was about ten-forty-five. A man answered the phone.

“Campbell Wayne, please,” I said.

“Who’s calling?” he asked. Obviously, he was a temp like Lenny. I told him who I was and why I was calling. “Just a moment.”

He put me on hold. I listened to the silence for about two minutes, then he was back on the line.

“Mr. Wayne is not available at the moment. Can I have him call you?”

I left my number.

I spent the rest of the day doing background checks for a brokerage firm that kicks me a steady amount of work. They’ve got offices all over the country and a surprising number of people with access to cash accounts. I check for felonies, extra names, and general bad behavior. I suggest they
not
hire about ten percent of the people whose names they send. Presumably, they take my suggestions.

At five-fifteen, Campbell Wayne still hadn’t called me back. That was a problem. It was also a problem that I’d smoked an entire pack of cigarettes since lunch. Something was bugging me. I hoped it was Campbell Wayne and the Borlock case.