The Hired Man (4 page)

“Makes sense,” I said. “So, how many guys work through ModelMen's escort service, if that's not privileged information?”

“There's only six of us in the escort end of it, actually. Each one a different physical type, each with his own…uh, specialties. But we're all pretty…uh…versatile. And we all do modeling, too, to keep the whole thing legit. That gives ModelMen the widest range of flexibility when it comes to meeting a client's specific needs.”

He sounded like some young business executive outlining the benefits of his company's profit-sharing plan. Which, in a way, was exactly what he was doing.

When we arrived at Hughie's, the door was just opening to disgorge a mean-looking leather-clad hustler and a timid-looking suit-and-tie'd businessman.
Shark and chum,
I thought.

The place was about as busy as when we'd left it, and a couple of the same guys were still there. Bud, to my considerable surprise, was not. Another bartender I had seen once or twice before was holding sway with the usual total-lack-of-interest expression Bud usually wore.

As we entered, I immediately spotted a little blond dressed in faded Levi's with a hole in one knee and a matching short jacket—and a cowboy hat. About 5′10″, slim, an angelic teenager's face…

Phil, of course, walked us right over to him. The kid looked up from his beer, and when he spotted Phil, his face broke into a wide grin that was totally disarming. Then he realized I was with Phil, and his attention darted from Phil to me and back again, his grin making just the slightest change from cherubic to innocently naughty.

“Dick,” Phil said, wrapping one arm around the younger guy's waist, “this is Billy.”

Billy quickly set his beer down so we could shake hands.

“Nice to meet you, Dick,” he said, and his voice, as it had been on the phone, was warm and sincere.

“You, too, Billy,” I said, and really meant it. I could readily see how engaging in a little voyeurism involving the tall, dark Phil and the slight, boyish blond could well be worth whatever the Japanese businessman paid.

“We got a call from Mr. Glick just as I was leaving the apartment,” Billy said, looking up at Phil. “He wants us to be at the hotel a little early.”

“Like, how early?”

Billy shrugged. “Like now.”

Phil gave a long sigh then turned to me.

“I'm really sorry, Dick, I was hoping we could all have a drink, and you and Billy could get a chance to know one another.”

You're not the only one!
I thought. “No problem,” I said. “Next time.”

“I'll look forward to it,” Billy said, smiling.

“So, partner,” Phil said, looking at Billy, “we'd better be moseying down the trail.”

Billy looked at him, his face taking on an expression of wide-eyed total innocence.

“Whatever you say, Tex.” He then turned to me and gave me a wicked grin and a wink. “See ya, Dick,” he said.

I shook hands with both of them, and they walked out of the bar side-by-side.

Oh, to be a fly on that hotel bedroom wall!
I thought.

Chapter 2

I had a quick beer at Hughie's after Phil and Billy left then headed home. Normally, I'd have grabbed dinner, taken a shower and headed back out to the bars, but my little afternoon romp with Phil had pretty much taken the edge off my usual drive to get out there and look for Mr. Right.

Instead, I fixed dinner, took a shower, put on my robe, made a big bowl of popcorn and settled down in front of the TV. It was all sort of oddly decadent, since I so seldom did it, but what the hell.

Sunday morning was my B-schedule—I had an A and a B. The A was “wake up with a trick,” which had several variations depending on how I felt about the trick; the B-schedule had very few variations at all. Under the B, I woke up whenever I damned well felt like it (a game I play with myself, since even when I had absolutely no reason to, I was almost always awake by 6:45), stumbled into the kitchen, fixed coffee, went out into the hall to see if I could figure out where the paper boy had left it
this
time, read the paper, did the crossword puzzle, made more coffee, took a shower, then thought about breakfast. Here's where the only B-schedule variation came in—eat in or go out to brunch.

I tried calling my friend Jared, a beer delivery man working on his Ph.D. in Russian literature who was built like a battleship complete with an 18-inch gun. No luck—knowing Jared as I did, he was undoubtedly operating under a schedule A of his own. I hung up before his answering machine kicked in.

I next tried Bob Allen, a longtime friend and owner of my favorite bar, Ramón's—and his lover Mario, but again, an answering machine.

About this time, most rational people would just give up and go into the kitchen and make their own damned breakfast. Not me. I took not finding people home as a personal challenge.

Then I thought of Tim Jackson. I'd not seen Tim in far too long, but that was sort of our pattern. We always had a great time whenever we got together, but we each tended to get easily distracted. Tim was a medical examiner in the coroner's office, and he'd been a real help on a couple of the messier cases I'd handled, so on a whim I dialed his number, rather pleased that I still remembered it.

When I got his answering machine, I left a generic sort of message about having been thinking of him and wondering how he was doing, and that he should give me a call when he had the chance. Then I hung up, figured the hell with it, and went into the kitchen to fix breakfast.

So much for Sunday.

*

Five-thirty is much too early for any civilized human being to get out of bed, but I forced myself, taking absolutely no consolation in the thought that I didn't have to do it very often. Fixed a pot of coffee—I'd set it all up the night before and then forgotten to turn on the timer switch—and bumbled into the shower.

The only good thing about that time of morning was that downtown parking places were still possible to find. I parked about half a block from the Montero and, seeing I was about ten minutes early, took my time walking to the hotel. I forced myself to look in store windows I normally never would have bothered looking in—and, having looked, realized why—and walked into the Montero's lobby at exactly 7:12.

I went to the registration desk and asked for Mr. Anderson's room. The clerk smiled, looked at something I couldn't see just below the counter, then picked up the phone and punched in a number. She held the phone to her ear for about half a minute before hanging it up, saying “I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Anderson is not answering.”

Figuring he was probably still in the shower after his run and didn't hear the phone, I asked if she'd mind trying again in a minute or two then stood by the desk idly looking around the cavernous lobby while I waited. The Montero was one of the city's older and more prestigious hotels and had recently undergone a multi-million dollar renovation to restore it to its original elegance. They'd done a nice job, I decided.

After a few minutes, I turned back to the clerk, who was busy doing whatever registration clerks do when they're not taking registrations.

“Would you try Mr. Anderson's room again, please?”

She smiled her reservation clerk's smile and again picked up the phone. Another half-minute wait and again: “Mr. Anderson is not answering, sir. Perhaps he stepped out.”

I doubted that but thought I'd check out the dining room, just in case I'd misunderstood him. I thanked the clerk and headed toward the huge mahogany doors that separated the main dining room from the lobby. There were perhaps a total of six early risers sprinkled around the large room, with only a click of coffee cup on saucer or fork tapping plate to break the silence.

Anderson wasn't there.

I returned to the registration desk.

“Did Mr. Anderson by any chance leave a message for me? Dick Hardesty?”

She again checked the area under the counter then said “No, sir. Nothing.”

“He was supposed to go running this morning,” I said. “I wonder if you might have seen someone in a running suit go through the lobby?”

She shook her head. “We have quite a few runners,” she said, “but they generally leave through the parking garage.”

Hmmmm, so much for that.

Anderson had told me he was in room 1485, so I decided to just go up and see if he might still be sleeping. I didn't know how set in stone his running ritual might be. I thanked her and headed toward the bank of elevators, where one whispered open as soon as I pressed the button.

Stepping out into the total silence of the fourteenth floor, I found my way to room number 1485. There was a “Do Not Disturb” card hanging from the knob. I glanced at my watch. It was now 7:35. I knocked gently and waited. I knocked again, a bit harder. I thought I heard something inside and put my ear to the door. Definitely something—probably the television.

Odd.

I knocked yet again then decided the hell with it and returned to the elevator. When I reached the lobby, I went back to the registration desk to leave a message for Anderson, telling him I would be in my office and for him to please call when he got back. Mildly pissed, I left.

I wasn't particularly hungry, but when I got to my building I deliberately took the time to go to the café in the lobby and order a Denver omelet and coffee, which I took my own sweet time eating. Then I stopped to pick up the paper from the newsstand. When I got into the office and checked my messages, there was nothing from Anderson.

I didn't know the guy well enough to tell if this was standard operating procedure for him, but I rather doubted it. Something must have come up, although if he'd just gotten into town the night before, there wasn't really all that much time for anything to have distracted him. Oh, well.

I read the paper and started to do the crossword puzzle, but my heart wasn't in it. I called the Montero and asked them to ring Mr. Anderson's room. When they said there was no answer, I asked if he had picked up my message. He hadn't.

Since I knew he was intending to set up interviews for his prospective managers, I couldn't imagine he could just ignore the fact I had their résumés. I even toyed with the idea of trying to call Phil. He'd said he wasn't intending to see Anderson Sunday night, but things might have changed.

Still, I couldn't imagine them spending the night anywhere but in Anderson's room. Very odd, indeed.

At 11:30, the phone rang.
Finally!
I thought. I let it ring twice then picked up.

“Hardesty Investigations.”

The voice was not Anderson's.

“Dick, this is Mark Richman. Could you come down to headquarters right away?”

Mark Richman? What the hell did I do now?
I wondered.

Mark Richman was Lieutenant Mark Richman of the City Police Department, a nice guy I'd worked with before. But I'd been on his—and the department's—shit list for a while.

“Sure,” I said. “I'm expecting a client to call any minute, though. Could you tell me what this is about?”

“Stuart Anderson,” he said.

Shit!

“I'll be right there.”

I considered possible scenarios all the way to the City Building. Anderson had been busted trying to pick up an undercover cop posing as a hustler. Or, worse, he and Phil had gotten busted together. I wished I'd taken the time to call Phil before I left the office. Third possibility, they'd busted the whole ModelMen Agency, and Anderson had been caught up in it.

But if any of those things had happened, why wouldn't Anderson, or Phil, just have called me directly from jail? What was Richman doing in all this?

I parked in the underground garage beneath Warman Park and walked the two blocks to the Police Annex of the City Building. Wending my way through the sea of blue uniforms that always washed back and forth in the lobby, I went directly to the elevators and up to Richman's floor. I'd not so much as talked with him since my little falling out with the department and had no idea of the kind of reception I might expect.
Too late to worry about that now,
I thought as I knocked on the door with M. Richman written in black letters on the opaque glass section at the top.

“Come,” Richman's voice commanded.

Taking a deep breath, I turned the knob and entered.

“Dick,” he said, his face expressionless as he got out of his chair to shake hands.

“Lieutenant,” I replied, hopefully with a matching lack of expression and reaching across his desk to take his extended hand. A very quick shake-release, and he motioned me to the nearest chair.

“You were at the Montero this morning looking for Stuart Anderson?” he asked.

The question took me aback.

“Yes, I was. Why?”

“What was your business with Mr. Anderson?”

Come on, Richman, what are you getting at?

“He hired me to check out some prospective managers for his new stores here in town,” I said. “I was bringing him my report, as he'd asked me to. Is—”