Men of the Mean Streets

by Greg Herren

  Davis was heading into his third trial for this case. The first jury had come back with a verdict of guilty; however, it hadn’t stuck. One of the jurors came forward within a month and announced that another juror had quoted Bible verses at the rest of the jurors about the evils of homosexuality and had encouraged them to vote guilty since Duerr would spend eternity in hellfire anyway. The verdict was thrown out, and a new trial was ordered.

  The second trial had resulted in a hung jury. The lack of physical evidence combined with the lack of motive had stymied the jury. They agreed that Duerr had opportunity and means, but without motive and stronger ties to the crime, they couldn’t find him guilty.

  With the third trial getting ready to start in a month, Davis was coming to me, looking for that Holy Grail for his client, a reasonable doubt. Davis wanted me to find a plausible, alternative theory to the crime. I thought it was a long shot, but since Duerr had deep pockets and I had office expenses, why not?

  Davis dumped the files on my desk and plopped down in one of the chairs in front of my desk. “Long day.”

  “So what exactly do you want from me?” I fanned the files out like playing cards in a stacked deck. “I can’t pull something out of my ass. I know you’ve had other detectives on this already.”

  “They were corporate. They were straight. It wasn’t until now that Steve decided to let me use a gay PI. He thought it would look bad.”

  “And murdering your partner doesn’t?” I made a mental note that Davis was calling his client by his first name. It was personal. In all the cases I’d looked into for Davis, he’d always kept it on a last-name basis, to keep some distance from the client.

  Davis cleared his throat. “Yeah, well. He didn’t do it. You’ll just need to check the angles that a straight PI wouldn’t.”

  I picked up a file and started reading. “So what can you tell me that’s going to make this easier? What was the COD? I forget.”

  “Cyanide poisoning.” Davis pretended to be fascinated by something out the window. This was not good. He always did this when he didn’t want to talk about something. Maybe the papers hadn’t printed all they’d known about the case.

  “In his drink?” I knew that Duerr had a reputation for drinking, something that had not exactly been discouraged given his family’s previous profession. I’d heard about a scene he caused at a fund-raiser last year. I hadn’t been invited. A hundred dollars was a week’s groceries for me, not a single dinner with a bunch of other rich guys.

  “Um, no, injection.”

  “Injection? Sounds very personal. I understand a little now why the police liked him for the crime.” I winced a little, thinking of a syringe filled with cyanide. I hated needles. “Did they find a syringe?”

  “Down the street, wiped clean of prints. I don’t think there’s a lot to look at in that direction. The police tried as hard as they could to link Duerr to the cyanide and the needle, but they didn’t have any luck.”

  “Well, if they couldn’t do it, it’s doubtful that I will. So exactly what did you have in mind?”

  “I hate to sound cynical, but I’ve been at this long enough to want you to look at the marriage angle. There were some pretty pissed people when they learned that Steve wanted to float a same-sex marriage test case.” Davis pulled one of the files from the stack I held and put it on top of the others.

  “Mad enough to kill?” I flipped open the manila folder and looked inside. It had affidavits, four of them. Davis didn’t speak, giving me time to digest the contents. Each one had been the testimony of a witness that Duerr and Lambert had gone to the courthouse in Cincinnati and been denied a marriage license by the clerk there. The civil servant had been verbally abusive, and a few photos of the event were paper-clipped to the back cover of the folder.

  “Convinced?”

  “What? That the clerk knew he was being set up and blew a fuse? Nah, happens all the time. You’re going to need a lot more than that to make a conspiracy case stick.” I closed the folder and threw it on my desk, deciding that I wanted to keep it for another look when Davis wasn’t staring over my shoulder. I played it low-key with the client, especially one as high-maintenance as Davis. He’d want results within a week, if not less. I wanted to make it seem like a long shot.

  “Well, get started. We don’t have time to waste.” Before I could speak, Davis was out the door, and I was alone with a new case.

  *

  I started by pulling a CD from the marriage folder and sliding it into my computer. I doubted that Davis had just decided to give me music to solve a case by, so I wanted to see if it was documents or notes.

  Instead a full-screen image appeared and began to play. Someone had filmed the scene at the courthouse. Duerr and his partner came into view, both dressed in tuxes and carrying a manila folder of paperwork. The marriage clerk came to the counter, looked at them and walked away. Duerr was having none of that. I assumed that his name typically opened doors, not closed them, especially by not-so-civil servants.

  The clerk brought another man with him, and they proceeded to read Ohio constitutional law 15.11, which banned marriage and civil unions in the state of Ohio, peppered with a few choice words that I figured probably weren’t in the statute. Duerr tried to get the other man to sign a paper stating that he wouldn’t marry them, but the man balked at signing. Duerr kept pushing until the two civil servants went back behind the glass wall again and the area was silent.

  I started to click it off, but I noticed another thirty seconds of time left on the file. I kept watching. The camera scanned the small crowd that had congregated during the confrontation. At first, I couldn’t see the significance as the clip went to black, so I backed it up and played it again, this time zooming in on the faces of the crowd.

  It took me a third time, but I found what Davis had wanted me to see. Paul Greer, the head of Traditional Marriage Now in Cincinnati, was standing in the back row, face as red as my monitor would show, watching the whole thing. There was no way that it could have been a coincidence. Greer had been married for years, even though the rumors had swirled around him like pixie dust. He had no reason to be outside a small office in the courthouse unless someone had tipped him off. That meant a leak in Duerr’s group and a possible motive for murder.

  I decided that I needed to arm myself before taking on Traditional Marriage Now. I called an old buddy of mine, Aaron Wolf, to get some information. Wolf and I had been on the force together about ten years ago. He was still there, and I was in business for myself. Times change.

  He agreed to meet me, and twenty minutes later, we were having a drink at Donnelly’s Pub, down the street from my office. Donnelly’s had been in and out of trouble for years, nearly getting their license yanked last year, but they still served the best martinis in town, and I was convinced I’d need more than one to get through this case.

  Aaron Wolf had been my partner for almost twelve years, and in all that time, he’d never put on a pound, no matter what he ate or drank. He was still rail-thin with short blond hair that looked like a bristle brush. His eyes were an intense brown that made you feel as if you were the only one in the room, a great interview quality that had made more than one perp spill all.

  “The Duerr case? What possessed you to get involved in that fiasco?” Aaron waited for my response by pounding back his beer.

  “Five hundred a day and expenses, plus the need to eat and pay rent.” I looked around the bar, trying to see if I knew anyone. Not a soul. There was a blond at the end of the bar I wouldn’t mind getting to know, but not with Aaron here. He was fine with me being gay, but a bit of a prude about sex outside of relationships.

  “Good luck with that. He’s guilty as shit, you know?”

  “And just how guilty is shit? I’ve always wondered.” I took a sip of the martini and felt the vodka warm me on the way down my throat. I set the drink down after one sip, thinking that I should be more interested in what was being said than what was being poured.


  “Still got that mouth on you? Guys probably like that, eh?”

  “Adore it. So spill, what do you know?”

  “Logan, you and I know that I can’t talk about an open case. He’s going to be retried again for the murder in a couple of weeks.”

  I winced, knowing that it was only a week and I had to get something quick. “For old time’s sake? Like the old days.”

  He grunted and looked over his shoulder. “Geez, don’t get all weepy on me. It’s like this. Just the two of them in the house. One dead, one in a towel. No signs of forced entry, doors unlocked, alarm system intact but not armed. Dogs barked but nothing more, according to Duerr. Neighbors didn’t see anyone suspicious running around the neighborhood. Who else could it have been?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.” I had Aaron now. I knew the smart-ass routine always got him talking, even when it was against his best instincts.

  “Shit, why wouldn’t Davis tell you this? He’s been through two trials. He knows everything I know.”

  “That’s not how I work and you know it. I’m the one who wants to find out for myself, not from the client or his lawyer. Too many reasons for them to lie.” I’d caught Davis in a lie on another case I’d investigated for him about five years ago. He’d given me an alibi for the defendant and I took it at face value. Two days later, I blew a hole in it without breaking a sweat. We had a very tense meeting over that, where I pointed out to him that if I could do it in two days, the entire PD could break her alibi in less than an hour. He changed the defense, but never bothered to apologize.

  “Fine. We always liked Duerr for it. We found witnesses who heard them fighting. One old lady who lived down the street saw someone come and leave Duerr’s house a couple of times late at night. Ninety-year-old woman tells me that he’s getting booty calls. Her words.”

  I laughed. Aaron could barely talk about sex with his buddies. I didn’t know how embarrassed he’d have been discussing it with someone old enough to be his grandmother. “So no other suspects? At all?”

  “Don’t you think Davis would have pulled them out of his ass by now, if there were? No, not a one.” He took another hit off his beer. “What are you getting at? You’ve got an idea. I can tell.”

  “Paul Greer. He was at the courthouse the day that Duerr and Lambert tried to get married.”

  “And you think it was more than just a coincidence?”

  “It had to be. Which begs the question, how did Greer know when to show up?”

  Aaron downed the last of his beer and stood up. “You’re a good investigator. You need to find the answer to that question and the other things will fall into line.” He left and I watched the blond play pool with his friends. He never left them, and I finished the rest of my martini and went out into the frigid night air by myself.

  *

  I managed to get in touch with Davis before noon the next day, something of a miracle for him. I knew the case had to be weighing on his mind if he didn’t follow his usual regimen of socializing until two a.m. and sleeping in until ten.

  He sounded a bit frazzled when I got through to him on his office phone.

  “I need a way to get to Paul Greer. I have some questions for him about this case.”

  Davis cleared his throat and paused so long that I took a look at my cell to see if the call had been disconnected. “Why exactly do you need to see him?”

  I quickly outlined what I’d seen in the video and what I suspected.

  “I might have a way, but I won’t be able to tell you until later this afternoon. I have to go to the justice center first. Our client is back in jail.”

  I felt a cold shot run down my spine. “What did he do?”

  “Parole violation, of all things. He went to the casino boats in Indiana and didn’t notify anyone that he was going out of state. The police were tipped off and met him at the docks in Lawrenceburg. He’s been there all night.”

  I grunted, thinking that Duerr was dumber than I’d thought or perhaps someone else was. This was the second tip that I’d seen in this case, the second time someone had played God. I was still mulling the possibilities when I heard Davis talking still. “Are you there?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sorry. So call me back?”

  He assured me that he’d call back soon and hung up. I began looking at the website for the Lawrenceburg police, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone I knew and could pump for information, but no luck. I decided to keep on with my Google quest. I looked up Traditional Marriage Now and started reading through the site. Greer had started the organization back in 1996 when only Hawaii might have been interested in gay marriage. The group had been funded by religious organizations who funneled millions to them. Greer had taken some of that money for his own perks, not that it mattered to me. The less he used for his smear campaigns, the happier I was. Even though I wasn’t exactly in favor of me getting hitched, I didn’t think it fair for me to deny it to others.

  I’d printed a few pages off when the door to the office opened and Davis stepped in. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was blown around in a way that wasn’t planned. He had stubble on his chin and a small stain on his tie. He looked more like me than I normally did. He threw two tickets on the desk and started to walk out.

  “What are these?” I called after him. He turned to look at me.

  “Tickets to a TMN fund-raiser tonight. Four hundred dollars a ticket, so feel free to take someone who drinks a lot.”

  “Damn, we’re supporting the wrong side to the tune of eight hundred bucks?”

  “It’s all for a bigger cause. We are trying to free an innocent man. Justice comes in many forms, and sometimes one has to trump another.”

  “So I’m guessing that taking another man with me would be out of the question?”

  “If you want your precious answers, definitely. You’ll be undercover tonight. I got another client to buy these for me under his name.”

  I went home, showered, and changed into my only tux. I was sure Davis had several and Duerr had even more. They were part of a crowd that I wasn’t, and as I squeezed the tie around my neck, I was damned glad that I wasn’t.

  The soirée at the Phoenix downtown was about what I’d expected. I’d come stag, thinking I had the best chance to get in, learn what I could, and leave without someone else slowing me down. The room was opulent, high ceilings, loads of architectural details; the staff was dressed as well as I was. Champagne flowed and heavy couples showed their wealth with the girth. No gym bunnies here.

  I scanned the room and recognized a few lawyers from my days as a cop. No one who used my services now. They couldn’t be bothered to work with a working-class guy; they only worked with the heads of the bigger investigative agencies, which is why I thought I’d be able to pull this off. I tried to look constipated, so I’d fit in with this crowd, and began to mingle.

  I was on my second glass of champagne, and there was no sign of Paul Greer. I was about to mark this up as a wasted evening of Duerr’s money when I saw the blond from the bar across the room. His trim figure and gentle features seemed as out of place here as I felt. He was talking to two older men, both of whom seemed overly attentive to him. One fetched him another drink while the other listened raptly to his story, never taking his eyes off the boy. From his stance, I could tell that he was aware of the attentions and enjoyed it immensely.

  He put his hand on the older man’s arm and then stepped away. He headed for the restroom, and I decided to follow him. I was at a point where any coincidence was too much for me. I wanted to know why Greer had shown up at the marriage ceremony, and now I wanted to know why this boy was here.

  I turned down the little hallway to go to the restrooms, when I felt hands grab my arms. I tried to shake them off as a natural instinct, but they spun me around. I was looking at two apes, both sporting buzz-cut brown hair and tightly fitting tuxedos. The one on my right poked me in the solar plexus before I could object, and the pair dragged me out of
the ballroom as if I’d had too much to drink.

  I had no choice but to be lead along while trying to catch my breath. They had to be familiar with the hotel, because we were at the freight elevators before I could stand upright. I hadn’t thought to bring my gun tonight. It seemed innocuous and I hated the bulge it made in the coat. Even dropped in the pocket, it threw off the lines of the jacket.

  So I’d let fashion trump prevention, and now I was squished tight between two goons in the elevator. With my first breath, I asked, “Who do you work for? I want to talk to them.”

  “You weren’t invited. We don’t need your type around. We’re more than happy to see Duerr fry.”

  I paused at the amount of information they already had on me. Who had set them wise? My orientation was not immediately apparent to the people around me, so they knew enough to know who and what I was.

  One of the apes pulled open the service door to the alley behind the building. Before I could make the step down to the asphalt, something came down hard on my head. I felt my knees buckle and I saw the pavement coming up to greet me more cordially than my host had. I hit with a thud and lay there.

  I got up on one arm, but a shoe to the groin took me down again. The kicks started and I lost count of how many came in the next few minutes. Probably because I lost consciousness. I woke to the sound of a rumbling garbage truck coming down the alley. The driver looked a bit concerned but didn’t speak. I got up and looked around. No one was in the alley except for me and the trash guys. I checked my watch, but the crystal had been broken by the goons. I couldn’t know how long I’d been out or what time it was now.

  I limped to the corner. My left leg was sore and the tux pants were ripped. I cursed the whole case and wished I’d never agreed to do this for Davis.

  The sky was still a hazy gray that told me I still had time to get home and grab some sleep before I had to be at the office. As I moved down the street to where I’d parked the car, a figure stopped in my path. I cringed, thinking it was another attack from the goons or an aggressive panhandler, but I looked up to see a 6′4″ drag queen. She had mounds of brown ringlets brought up over her head and a wide-brimmed hat that coordinated with her hoop skirt. I started to say something when she pressed a card into my palm. “I don’t want to be seen with you here, but we need to talk—today. Find me at the bar and I’ll tell you enough to blow this case better than a toothless whore. Duerr was cheating on his partner, you know that?”