The Hired Man (29 page)

We exchanged goodbyes and hung up.

*

It did pretty much seem like the case had been taken completely out of my hands, now. The police were slow, and they were a little dense at times, but they certainly were not stupid.
They'd put the pieces together in short order.

As I said, I still found it almost impossible to think of Gary as being a murderer. Murderers are people you don't know—some badly lit, sullen face with a two-day beard stubble looking out at you from a Wanted poster or a mug shot. Not a beautiful photographer's model with sea-green eyes and a natural smile. Not right. Not right, and not fair.

Welcome to reality, Hardesty.

I looked at my watch: it was just after 10:00 a.m. The Glicks were still undoubtedly meeting with Offermann and Richman and God knows whom else. I wanted very much to talk to Glen O'Banyon, but he was in the meeting, too. Since he was representing the Glicks, ModelMen and, by extension, all the escorts, I felt I could talk openly to him under the laws of privilege.

I put in a call to his office and told Donna that it was imperative I speak to him as soon as he could possibly do so. I was curious how Glicks' interview had gone, of course, but I also wanted to see if I might have set myself up for a possible obstruction of justice charge, unlikely as that might be, for not telling Richman immediately about Gary's Porsche.

God knows I couldn't say anything to the Glicks, or to anyone else. And there really was the possibility that I was way off base on this one. Richman hadn't said a word about its being a Porsche, or even a foreign car. Just a silver sports car. But Gary knew Anderson, and Gary knew Billy, and Gary was openly bisexual….

I suddenly remembered that, in one of my first talks with the Glicks, they'd said they did routine criminal background checks on all their escorts. Now I wondered if that policy might have come along after they started up, and that it therefore might not have included Gary or Matt. On the other hand, Arnold Glick was a shrewd businessman, and I didn't think he'd have let Gary's being related to his wife keep him from doing a check. I made a point to ask them as soon as I had a chance.

*

Einstein was right—time
is
relative, and an hour can be an eternity when you're waiting for something. I was sure it must have been at least midnight when the phone finally rang, but the sun was still up, and my watch said it was a few minutes short of noon.

“Dick,” the readily identifiable voice said, “it's Glen O'Banyon. I just got back from the Glicks' interview, and I've got to be in court at two, but if you'd like to meet me at Etheridge's for a quick lunch at around twelve-forty-five…”

“Sure,” I said.

“Good. I've got to run by my office for some court papers, so I should be just about on time. See you there.” And he hung up.

Busy man.

*

Etheridge's is directly across from the City Building, and I'd met O'Banyon there several times when I'd worked with him on a previous case. He had what I could only think of as a permanently reserved booth in the back of the restaurant; I'd never seen anyone else sitting there. The waiter, whose name I'd learned over previous lunches was Alex, saw me come in and escorted me to the booth without my having to ask. I'd semi-hit on him one time while waiting for O'Banyon, and he'd made a point of subtly mentioning his other half, Jerry. Well, you can't win ‘em all.

I was just pouring myself a second cup of coffee from the carafe when O'Banyon arrived. He was about halfway to the booth when he stopped to talk with someone. Finally, he made his way to the back and sat down, as always first putting his briefcase on the side of the thickly padded bench closest to the wall. He reached across the table for our customary handshake.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “Judge Kurst had a question for me.”

“No problem.”

He took his napkin and put it on his lap then reached for the coffee carafe.

“You're looking good,” he said. “Chasing murderers seems to keep you in shape.”

“On the outside, maybe.”

He smiled and nodded.

“So what's—”

Alex came up to ask if we were ready to order. Neither of us had looked at the menu, but even I knew it fairly well by now, so we just ordered our regulars—a Caesar salad for O'Banyon, the chicken and dumplings special for me. Alex smiled, gave me a quick wink, and left.

“…going on?” O'Banyon finished, picking up in mid-question.

I hoped I wasn't going to sound too far out in left field but figured there was no time to beat around the bush.

“Well, first off, I was wondering how the interview went. None of my business, probably, but that never slows me down.”

He smiled again.

“So I've noticed,” he said. “It went quite well, I think. Captain Offermann suggested a possible conflict of interest in my representing the Glicks while ‘being involved,' as he put it, with one of their escorts. The fact of the matter is that I did not pay for Phil's…company…at any time.

“We met that evening he accompanied Stuart Anderson to Senator Marshfield's campaign fund-raiser. To say I was impressed is something of an understatement. When he mentioned he was a model for ModelMen, I called the Glicks the next day to find out more about him. They arranged, on their own, to have Phil spend the evening with me. I assume, of course, that they reimbursed him for his time, but that had nothing to do with me. We went out to dinner again a few weeks later, strictly socially, and strictly dinner.” He sighed heavily. “I must say, though, that Phil is an incredible piece of work.”

Indeed,
I thought.

“But back to the Glicks's interview. It went as well as could be expected. If it had been merely Stuart Anderson's death, the police would have had a lot more reason to come down on ModelMen and its escorts, but Billy Steiner's murder weakened that particular approach. And had it been merely Billy's death, the police would have had a lot stronger case for demanding ModelMen's client list on the grounds that the perpetrator might well have been one of the clients. But with both a client and an escort dead…

“And then along came Laurie Travers, and everything went back up into the air. So, the result was mostly a fishing expedition. Lt. Richman raised the question of which of ModelMen's escorts were known to be bisexual. Not much grass grows under that one's feet, that's for sure.”

“I think they're going to arrest Gary Bancroft,” I said. “Probably fairly soon.”

He had started to take a sip of coffee but paused the cup halfway to his mouth and looked up at me without moving his head.

“Yes, I'd think so, too. What do you know that I don't?”

I told him everything I knew, suspected, conjectured. I told him of Gary's past—what I knew of it—of his being Iris's son, of having been abandoned when he was very young and of my assumption he had some pretty serious anger issues. I realized full well that the prostitute's death had been the key; if she hadn't been killed, I don't know how long it would have taken me, if I'd have managed to reach any solution at all.

I then proceeded to muddy the waters by telling him about Matt, about his tendency to play rough, about his still not totally clear relationship with Gary. He was as good a candidate for Anderson's and Billy's murders as Gary was. It was Laurie Travers' murder that tipped the scale toward Gary.

O'Banyon took his sip of coffee and returned his cup to the saucer. He looked at me without speaking for a moment then said, “And why did he kill Stuart Anderson and Billy Steiner?”

God, I wished he hadn't asked me that! I didn't have one single solid fact to back me up, just gut feelings and intuition, neither of which carries very much weight in a court of law. Well, I'd been right to go with my instincts often enough in the past.

Luckily, Alex arrived with our food, and we concentrated on eating in silence for a few moments while I gathered my thoughts and tried to put them in some sort of order that would make sense to O'Banyon.

“I think,” I said as I cut one of the dumplings in half and swirled it around in the cream sauce, trying to get a chunk of chicken to climb on board, “that if it was Gary, he didn't necessarily set out to kill either one of them. With Anderson, I think it might have been something like spontaneous anger. Anderson apparently told just about everyone he came in contact with he was planning to send his eight-year-old son away. That could pretty easily really piss off somebody who'd been abandoned by his mother when he was even younger than that.

“I wouldn't be surprised if Billy was probably mostly an accident. Having an asthma attack while your face is pushed into a pillow with somebody really strong on top of you, forcing you down, well… And that Billy refused to get fucked without a condom might have made the killer mad. He did it anyway, and Billy probably wasn't cooperating.”

“And the prostitute?”

I sighed. “That's the rub. Why the hell would he steal a knife from Anderson and deliberately use it to kill a prostitute? I can't imagine either Gary or Matt being that stupid. I can't believe
anyone
being that stupid unless the killer is rubbing our noses in something.”

“And I still keep coming back to the fact that, of the three dead, one was gay, one bi, and one straight,” O'Banyon said.

I shook my head slowly, as if trying to shake loose a thought or two I knew was in there somewhere.

“I know,” I said. “And it just doesn't make sense. But the fact of the matter is the police will pretty much consider Gary the prime suspect, with Matt, as soon as they find out about him, if they haven't already, a close second, and I don't know what to do about it.”

Alex came to take our plates away, refresh our coffee and, at O'Banyon's request, leave the check.

“Do
you
think it's Gary?” O'Banyon asked when Alex had gone.

I shook my head again.

“I really don't know,” I said. “It's too obvious, in a way. There's an awful lot I still don't know and want to find out.”

It suddenly occurred to me that, when it comes to investigating murders, the police have certain definite advantages in that they usually have a built-in objectivity. They don't know the suspect as a person, never spent time social time with him.
And never went to bed with him
, my mind added.

O'Banyon looked at his watch.

“Sorry, Dick, I've got to get to court. I'm sure you'll be able to get to the bottom of this mess. I really like the Glicks, and to think that one of their employees might be a murderer, and especially that it might be Iris Glick's…son, really boggles the mind. If there's anything you need from me… Give me a call as soon as you find out anything, will you?”

“I will,” I said.

He looked at the check, reached into his jacket for his wallet, and extracted a bill, which he placed under the check. We rose to leave and, waving to Alex as he emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food, went out into the street. O'Banyon extended his hand for our parting handshake, but just as we were ready to release, he tightened his grip, and his face grew serious.

“Be careful,” he said then released my hand.

I nodded and gave him a small wave as he headed for the crosswalk leading to the City Building. As I headed for my car, I noticed the aroma of uncollected garbage. The sanitary workers' strike showed no signs of ending soon, and the side effect was getting harder for average citizens to ignore.

*

Getting Gary and Matt together might take a little juggling, especially if, as both of them had indicated, there'd been some sort of rift between them. Just how deep the rift went I had no idea. I suspected it might go beyond Matt's feeling betrayed by Gary's not having intervened when Matt got fired from ModelMen.

I tried calling Matt first and got his machine. I left a message for him to call me as soon as he could. I then dialed Gary, and a sleepy voice answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Gary, it's Dick. Did I wake you?”

“Yeah, but that's okay. Had a late shoot last night. What's up?”

“I was thinking of getting together with you and Matt. I've got a couple questions, and I can ask you both at the same time.”

There was a brief pause. “I don't think that's a very good idea.”

“Oh?”

“I've pretty much cut all ties to Matt, and I prefer to leave it that way.”

Now I was
really
curious.

“Can I ask…?”

Another pause, then a sigh.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Well,” I said, “I can appreciate that, but I'm afraid we really have to. Can I come by your place…now?”

There was a significant pause, then: “I've got to be at police headquarters at four-thirty for questioning. I suppose we could talk for a few minutes, if you really insist.”