The Dirt Peddler
The Dirt Peddler: A Dick Hardesty Mystery
By Dorien Grey
Copyright 2016 by Dorien Grey
Cover Copyright 2016 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 2003.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental
Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing
A World Ago: A Navy Man's Letters Home (1954â1956)
Short Circuits: A Life in Blogs (Volume 1)
The Butcher's Son
The Ninth Man
The Bar Watcher
The Hired Man
The Good Cop
The Bottle Ghosts
The Dirt Peddler
A Dick Hardesty Mystery
Dorien Grey
Chapter 1
If you're like most people, whenever someone lobs a cliché into the conversation, you tend to mentally roll your eyes toward the ceiling and heave a sigh. I'm usually guilty of the same response unless I stop to remember how it is that clichés become clichés in the first place. In a way, clichés are a lot like fortune cookiesâpretty bland on the outside, but more often than not with a bit of universal truth tucked in the middle.
“The pen is mightier than the sword” has always been one of my favorites because the overlooked truth in that one is that our entire culture is in fact set upon a foundation of written words. Words move us, inspire us, sooth us, anger us: they're the building blocks of civilization.
Writers as a group tend to be pretty much aware of the power of words and use them responsibly, but some choose to indeed use words as their personal swords, which they wield either to defend or attack. But swords have double edges, and if the wielder is not careful, one of the people they hurt, even unwittingly, can be themselves.
And that's exactly what happened to the Dirt Peddler
.
*
“Can we get our money back?” Jonathan asked as we left the theater.
“I don't think so,” I said. “You didn't like it? It was your idea, you know.”
“Well, it sure wasn't what I was expecting.”
“And the title didn't clue you in?
L'amour Triste
?”
“Oh, sure. Like I speak fluent Hungarian.”
I looked at him to verify that he was pulling my leg, and he grinned.
“Okay, okay,
Sad Love
. But the guys in the ad were really hot. How was I to know they were just going to sit there and moon over one another for two and a half hours?” Jonathan said, rolling his eyes.
“There was that one pretty interesting love scene at the end.”
“How could you tell? It looked like it was being photographed through the bottom of a fish tank.”
“Live and learn.”
“Gee, let me write that down!”
I grabbed him by the back of the neck with one hand and squeezed until he yelped.
Actually,
L'amour Triste
was part of the city's first gay film festival playing at what was normally The Central's gay porn house.
Jonathan and I were still at that stage of our relationship where even monthly anniversaries were special occasions, and for this one, ourâ¦uhâ¦our “several-th,” we chose a night at the movies before going out for our “traditional” anniversary dinner.
I had also bought him a book he really wanted,
An Illustrated Guide to Decorative Shrubs of North America
. He'd just completed his first semester toward his associate degree in horticulture technology and really loved anything and everything that had to do with plants, trees, flowers, and shrubsâjust about anything with roots.
Not surprisingly, it had to be special ordered and I'd decided to show my support for Bennington Books having opened a big new store in The Central, the city's ever-expanding gay district. That a large, established chain had chosen The Central was further evidence of how the times were changing, and how far the gay community had come. And Bennington was not in real competition with the smaller, independent, community-oriented bookstores, which had provided so much support for gay and lesbian authors over the years. This was just my way of saying “thanks” to a mainstream company for recognizing the buying power of the gay community.
I'd gotten a notice the day before saying the book was in, so after we left the movie and before going on to dinner, we stopped there. Bennington's was within walking distance of the theater, and as we approached the store I suddenly remembered that as part of its grand opening, there was a big to-do scheduled for that night: a personal appearance and book signing by Tony T. Tunderew, a local author whose book,
Dirty Little Minds
, had been at the top of the
NY Times
Best Sellers list for three weeks.
I've always been somewhat leery of people who insist on using their middle initials as part of their nameâand especially those who appear to be overly fond of alliteration.
Dirty Little Minds
was Tunderew's first book, a steamy, barely fictionalized guided-sewer exposé of Governor Harry Keene, who had recently resigned in the wake of widespread rumors involving his alleged financial ties to the operator of a prostitution ring, whose services were widely available to the state's executive branch.
Neither Tunderew nor the subject of the book was gay, so it struck me as a little odd that he'd be doing a signing in the heart of the gay community, but then I realized again that times were changing, and the event was to promote the new store, no matter where the store might have been. And that it drew people from outside of the community was yet another sign of the times.
There was a line stretching out onto the sidewalk of people clutching their copies of the book, awaiting Tunderew's signature. Jonathan suggested we should just forget it and come back the next day, but I grabbed him by the hand and “excuse me'd” past those blocking the door. The line inside snaked its way past tables and racks of books to the rear of the store, where a crowd surrounded what I assume had to have been some sort of table. It was impossible to see either the table or whoeverâ¦uh, Tunderew, maybe?â¦might be sitting behind it.
There was no one behind the counter when we walked up to it, but a moment later a clerk, who had passed us headed for the front tables with an armload of
Dirty Little Minds
, hurried over.
“Sorry,” he said. “A real madhouse tonight.”
“So we noticed,” I said, and told him why we'd come. He smiled, glanced under the counter and, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, reached down and pulled out the book. Jonathan's face broke into a huge grin as the clerk set it on the counter.
“Wow! This is great!” he said excitedly, immediately beginning to turn through the pages. “Thank you, Dick!”
The clerk gave us both a knowing grin.
*
A week or so later, as I was making out my final report on a just-completed case, the phone rang.
“Hardesty Investigations.”
“Dick, Glen O'Banyon.”
O'Banyon was one of the city's leading attorneys, and I'd worked on a number of cases for him. I was a little surprised to hear directly from him, since he usually went through his secretary, Donna.
“Glen, hi. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you'd like to meet me for a drink this afternoonâsay around four thirty at Hughie's?”
Now that came as something of a surprise. I almost always met him at his office when he had an assignment for me. And at Hughie's? Hughie's was a hustler bar about two blocks from work, and I had met him there a couple times on a much earlier case, butâ¦
“Sure.” I figured I'd find out exactly what was going on when we met. “I'll see you then.”
“Good. Well, I've got to get to court. Later.”
I called the apartment to leave a message telling Jonathan I'd be a little late getting home.
*
Ah, Hughie's. I hadn't been there, I don't think, since I met Jonathan. But it hadn't changed. Hughie's never changed. It was exactly the same when I walked in at four fifteenâearly as everâas it had been the first time I wandered in for a beer right after I'd first opened my office.
Bud, the bartender, saw me come in and automatically reached into the cooler for a frosted mug, drew me a dark draft, and had it on the bar by the time I reached it.
“How's it goin', Dick?” he asked, as though I'd been in yesterday afternoon.
“Fine, Bud. You?”
He just shrugged, took my money, and moved off to the register.
The place was starting to fill up. The hustlersâthose who hadn't already been there most of the dayâwere drifting in from the streets in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the johns as the local offices and businesses closed. I recognized a couple of them, but most were new; the turnover rate in hustling was always high, and I didn't care to speculate as to the reasons.
One of the guys my crotch had been concentrating onâa really good-looking, rough-around-th
e-
edges blond started looking, then moving in my direction.
Shit! Now what'll you do?
my mind asked.
Yeah, like this is your first time,
another mind-voice responded.
Luckily, at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Glen O'Banyon standing beside me. As with the other times we'd met at Hughie's, this was not the executive tower, dressed-to-impress lawyer; this was a guy in a baseball cap, a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, and pair of pretty threadbare Levi's. Not one person in twenty he saw every day would readily recognize him.
“Thanks for meeting me, Dick.” He kept one hand on my shoulder while he signaled Bud with the other.
The blond number had stopped in mid step when he saw O'Banyon come up, and looked at me with one raised eyebrow. I gave him a quick half smile and a shrug, and he turned and went back to where I'd first spotted him. My crotch was
not
happy, though the rest of me was guiltily relieved.
“No problem. It's good to see you in civvies.”
Bud had come over and O'Banyon waited until he'd ordered before turning to me with a grin.
“Yeah. I really need to get out more.”
He scooped a bill out of his pocket and exchanged it for the beer Bud had brought him.
“So what can I do for you?” I knew full well this wasn't strictly a social get-together.
He pushed himself away from the bar, picked up his beer, and gestured for me to follow him to the far corner of the front of the bar, where no one else had gathered yet. We set our drinks on one of the tall, steering-wheel-sized tables flanked by two high stools.
“I may have a case for you.”
“Great!” I didn't have to ask or say anything else; I knew he'd tell me.
He took a long swig of his beer and pulled one of the stools closer to sit down.
“I've got a client with a whole shitload of problems, most of which he brought on himself. Strictly between you and me, he's a pain in the ass. Less than a year ago he was a very junior executive at Craylaw and Collier. Today people are falling all over themselves to cozy up to him, and his ego has completely run off with what little common sense he might have had to begin with.”
