The Dirt Peddler

by Dorien Grey

  I made a mental note to call Glen O’Banyon on Monday to express my regret over his losing a client, but I suspected his reaction to Tunderew’s passing would be pretty much what mine was.

  We then got on with our day.

  Apparently Randy’s big date had worked out, since he hadn’t come back or called, but he had pretty much indicated it would be a weekend-long thing.

  We were just getting ready to go to the laundry and do the week’s grocery shopping when the phone rang.

  “I got it,” Jonathan said and hurried over to pick it up.

  I was busy tossing clothes into the laundry bag, but I heard him say “Yes, it is.” A very long pause and then: “No, he’s just staying with us for a few days.” He had my full attention at this point. Another pause then, “No, I don’t.” Followed by the longest pause of all, and finally a little boy’s voice saying, “Thank you.”

  The sound of that “Thank you” was like a bucket of ice water being thrown on the back of my neck. I hurried into the living room to see Jonathan staring down at the phone, which he’d put back on the cradle. “You know who was in the car with Mr. Tunderew?”

  I knew.

  Chapter 6

  Jeezus!

  My first concern was Jonathan. His face was ashen and he looked as though he were in shock—which I suppose he was. I hurried over to him and put my arms around him, and he just stood there, his arms at his side, like some softer version of a department store manikin. He didn’t cry, and that, knowing that Jonathan could cry over just about anything sad, really got to me. I led him over to the couch and sat him down.

  “What was Randy…” he started to ask, looking at the coffee table, then stopped. I’m sure he started to ask what Randy was doing in a car with Tony Tunderew, but he knew why. That’s what hustlers do; they get in cars with people. But this wasn’t just a street corner pickup. Randy had gone to meet someone specific, and it was obvious to me, at least, that it had to have been Tony Tunderew he was meeting. The blackmail threats had a solid base—Tony T. Tunderew, world-class homophobe, liked guys. Ironic as all hell that he should be found dead in a car with a hustler.

  I immediately felt ashamed of myself. It wasn’t “a hustler”—it was Randy Jacobs, someone I knew.

  There was the very outside possibility that Tunderew wasn’t the guy Randy was supposed to meet. Maybe that guy didn’t show up. Tunderew struck me as the kind of closeted anal retentive who would cruise the bus station for young guys just arriving in town.

  The timing, though…Randy was supposed to meet the guy at seven fifteen. Would it take about forty-five minutes to get to the area the accident took place? It could. It was raining. Maybe Tunderew stopped for gas along the way. Maybe Tunderew was running late in picking Randy up.

  That Randy Jacobs would somehow have known Tony Tunderew, though…that just didn’t make much sense.

  But Tunderew was on the road headed for his cabin. Neeleyville’s a hell of a long ride just for a quick trick. If Randy was just a street corner pickup, they could just as well have taken care of business in the car.

  Well, there would be one way to know for sure if Tunderew were the one Randy had been waiting for: if he was, Randy would have had his dopp kit with him; if it was just a quick pickup, it would be in a locker in the bus terminal.

  Brilliant line of thinking, Sherlock. But what the hell difference does it make one way or the other? Randy’s dead. Tunderew’s dead. Whatever they were doing in that car is totally moot. They’re dead.

  All of this took place in my brain as I sat beside Jonathan on the couch, silent.

  “Did Randy have any relatives you know of?” I figured the silence had gone on long enough. I reached out to take his hand.

  Jonathan shook his head.

  “The policeman on the phone asked me that, but Randy never said anything about his family, if he had one. As I told you, he’d been in foster care most of his life until he ran away.” He sighed and turned his hand over so we could intertwine fingers.

  I didn’t ask how the police had had our number. Obviously Jonathan had given it to Randy or Randy had copied it down while he was here.

  “It’s scary,” Jonathan said, talking more to himself than to me, “and sad. Really sad. To think that all Randy had was me…I mean us. And I really didn’t know him all that well. Not really. I didn’t even know him well enough to know if we were really friends.” He looked at me and shook his head slowly. “Funny the things that make people friends. Sometimes it isn’t so much that you have things in common as it is that you don’t have anything else.”

  I could sense that the shock of hearing of Randy’s death was fading into the reality of it.

  He looked at me and I could see his eyes start to water.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, “and I’ve got Bob and Mario and Tim and Phil and Jared and my fish and my plants and the people I work with and school and…and Randy didn’t have anybody. Or anything. Just a new pair of sneakers. And now he never will.”

  A tear ran down the side of his nose signaling the cloudburst to come. I put my arm around him, and pulled him toward me just in time.

  *

  Needless to say, the rest of Saturday was pretty much shot. We did go out, later in the day, to drop off the laundry and to make a quick run through the grocery store, just for essentials.

  There was a message on the machine from Tim and Phil when we got home, saying they’d talked to Jared and would be joining us for brunch Sunday.

  “I’ll call them back and cancel,” I said, but Jonathan shook his head.

  “No, I’d like to go if you would. I can’t just sit around moping.”

  “Well, you want to go out to dinner tonight, then?”

  He gave me a small smile. “Not really. I think I’ll just concentrate on getting my moping out of the way. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I walked over and hugged him. “You’re entitled. I’ll leave you alone, but I’ll be here if you need me.”

  “Thanks.”

  He just stood there a moment, then wandered off to the kitchen to feed his fish.

  I called Tim and Phil back. I was typically-me nosy about whether Tim, as an assistant medical examiner at the coroner’s office, might be assigned to work on either Tunderew or Randy. I had no reason to suspect that anything unusual—other than sufficient trauma from the accident to cause death—would be found, but if by chance it was, I’d like to know about it.

  Phil answered the phone; we talked for a few minutes and verified the time and place for Sunday’s brunch. I told him briefly about the accident and Randy, though not about my short and unpleasant relationship with Tony T. Tunderew, and said not to think it unusual if Jonathan were not his usual talkative self. He understood. He, Jonathan, and Randy all shared a hustling background, but Phil and Jonathan were among the lucky ones who had gotten out of it alive and relatively unscathed.

  Telling me to give Jonathan a hug for him, Phil turned the phone over to Tim. I explained again about the accident and asked him if he could let me know in the rare event that anything peculiar were to show up in the autopsies. He said he would and, like Phil, told me to let Jonathan know they were thinking of him.

  Jonathan had returned to the living room with a watering can and began watering his plants, plants that he’d managed to accumulate by bringing home throwaways from his work and nursing them back to health.

  On my way to the bathroom, I went quickly into the guest bedroom and moved Randy’s battered duffle bag from beside the bed into the closet and closed the door. I smoothed out the bedspread to get rid of the still visible indentation where Randy’d set his dopp kit. We could figure out what to do with his things later; Jonathan didn’t need any more reminders right now.

  We had a quiet dinner—emphasis on the “quiet”—watching TV with me on the couch and Jonathan sitting on the floor, leaning back against me, and went to bed fairly early.

  *

  Sunday went better than I’
d expected. Jonathan was quiet, for him, but by the time we left to meet Jared, Phil, and Tim at Calypso’s, he apparently had put his moping behind him. Randy was gone and nothing could bring him back, and I think Jonathan realized it.

  We were the first to arrive at Calypso’s. Jared had said he would order a table on the patio, but after letting the maître d’ know we were there, we decided to wait for the others at the bar. I ordered a Bloody Mary for me and a Virgin Mary for Jonathan, and we moved to a clear area near the patio end of the bar to wait. As always on a Sunday the place was crowded, and I was debating on whether we should ask the maître d’ to be seated now lest he be tempted to give our table to someone else if the others took too long to arrive.

  A moment or two later, though, I glanced to the entrance to see Jared—you couldn’t miss a body and face as spectacular as Jared Martinsen’s at sixty paces—moving through the crowd, followed by an equally spectacular hunk I did not recognize. It took me a minute to realize they were apparently together, which struck me as a real first. Jared had never brought anyone to any of our get-togethers.

  Interesting, I thought.

  “Dick. Jonathan,” Jared said as we exchanged handshakes. He turned to the guy beside him. “This is Jake.”

  Oh, indeed it is, my crotch said appreciatively. While Jake, Jonathan, and I shook hands—a really strong, natural grip, I noted—I took stock of Jared’s new friend and was struck by how well they complemented each other. They could have been cast from the same body mold—the incredibly but naturally muscled one very rarely used, I might add—but whereas Jared had dark hair and dark eyes, Jake was true Nordic blue-eyed blond. If just looking at Jared switched on every gay boy’s fantasy of the ultimate leather man, Jake was without a doubt a gay Paul Bunyan. That image wasn’t hurt by the fact that he was wearing a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tight Levi’s that amply demonstrated that he and Jared shared other attributes.

  “Hope you don’t mind my coming along,” Jake said, “but Jared wanted me to meet you all.”

  Do we mind, boys and girls? my mind asked.

  No, we don’t mind at all. Not a bit, it answered.

  “We hooked up Friday night at Venture,” Jared said, which again struck me as being of more than passing interest. It implied that he had spent the entire weekend with the same guy, which surely had to be a first.

  Jared moved to the bar to order their drinks, and Jake turned to Jonathan. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, Jonathan?” he asked.

  Scorpio Alert!

  Cool it, Hardesty.

  “I don’t think so,” Jonathan said, glancing quickly at me to see if I might be reacting to the idea, then looking at him more closely said, “Oh, yeah, at New Eden! You were working on the garage!” He paused long enough to give me an evil-kid grin before turning back to Jake and adding, “I didn’t recognize you with your shirt on!”

  “Thanks, I think,” Jake said, smiling. “But that’s right. You were with the landscapers.”

  “You’re in construction?” I asked in what surely had to be the most idiotically redundant question of the year.

  “Yeah,” he said as Jared returned, handing him his drink. “I’ve got a contracting outfit. We build houses, mostly. We’ve done a couple of things out at New Eden, including the Dinsmores’ new place.”

  I noticed that, as he talked, he put his free arm around Jared’s waist, casually.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Tim’s voice said from behind me, startling me. I’d been concentrating on the Jared/Jake dynamics so intently I didn’t even know they’d come in.

  Handshakes all around, introductions made, and Tim and Phil’s drinks ordered, Jared caught the maître d’s eye and indicated we were ready to sit down.

  *

  Have I mentioned—probably any fewer than two dozen times—that I really enjoy brunch? This one was particularly nice on several levels. First, I could see it had taken Jonathan’s mind off Randy for the moment; secondly because I was fairly well awed by the Jared/Jake thing, whatever it might be. As I said, this is the first time Jared had ever brought someone to our gatherings. His weekend trips to town were usually trick marathons, with as many as four different guys coming and going in the course of two days. At the risk of being redundant again, Jake was obviously something special.

  And Tim had a bit of news we all found pretty impressive: Phil had been contacted by a New York talent agent who had seen his ads as official underwear model for Spartan Briefs, and wanted him to come to New York to try out for a part on one of the biggest soap operas on TV.

  “And?” Jonathan and I echoed at the same time.

  Phil, who had sat there looking mildly embarrassed while Tim told of it, said: “And I turned it down, of course.”

  “Why?” Jonathan asked, wide-eyed.

  “Well,” Phil finished his drink and signaling the waiter for another round for the table, “for one thing I’m not an actor. For another thing, I’m away from home too much of the time as it is, and since we’ve both got good jobs here, I couldn’t ask Tim to give up his, and there’s no way in hell I’d move to New York alone.” He reached over and punched Tim lightly on the shoulder. “Besides, it took me long enough to find this guy. I’m not going to lose him.”

  Tim grinned. “I told him he could go if he wanted to. But I didn’t mean it.”

  *

  I was surprised when I got to the office Monday morning to find a message from Lieutenant Mark Richman of the City Police. While I’d developed a very comfortable working arrangement with him over the course of several cases, and we’d even had a couple of beers together, I knew this wasn’t a social call. I was afraid I did know what it was about, though, and I was not happy.

  I called City Annex and asked for Lieutenant Richman’s extension. “Lieutenant,” I said when I heard his familiar voice, “it’s Dick Hardesty. I got your message.”

  “Thanks for returning it so quickly. Do you have any plans for lunch today?” Richman never was one to waste much time on idle chit-chat.

  “Uh, no,” I said, then did a little cutting-to-the-chase myself and said, “Where and when?”

  “Sandler’s? Quarter after?”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  We’d met at the same place and at the same time so often now, and always in relation to a case, that we’d developed almost a verbal shorthand. I knew he wanted to talk to me about Tunderew, but how he possibly could have known I’d had anything at all to do with the late unlamented, I couldn’t imagine.

  Richman was sharp, but…that sharp?

  After I’d hung up with Richman, I called Glen O’Banyon’s office and left a message for him to call me when he had a chance.

  *

  The waiter had just poured my second cup of coffee when I saw Lieutenant Richman enter. It never ceases to amaze me how the mind digs its own little ruts and refuses to let you get out of them. I’d seen Mark Richman too many times to count, yet every single time I did I thought of what a shame it was that he was straight. Oh, well.

  “Dick,” he said by way of greeting, reaching across the table to shake hands before sliding into the bench across from me.

  “Lieutenant.”

  The waiter hurried over with his coffee and we placed our usual order—we’d done this so often neither of us needed to look at a menu. When the waiter left, Richman poured his usual third-of-a-cup of sugar into his coffee.

  “How do you know Randy Jacobs?”

  Randy? Not Tunderew?

  “He, uh, was a friend of Jonathan’s. He was staying with us for a few days. How did you know I knew him?”

  Richman took a sip of his coffee.

  “He had your phone number in his pocket, for one thing. I went through both his and Tunderew’s personal effects. I went through Jacobs’ things first—there weren’t many—and I recognized your number the minute I saw it.”

  Well, that would have been very flattering if you were gay, I thought, but a
little disconcerting since you’re not.

  “I’m curious. Was his dopp kit in the car?”

  He nodded. “We assumed that’s who it belonged to. Why do you ask?”

  Because that pretty much proves that Tunderew was the guy Randy planned to meet, and not some casual pickup, I thought. But I didn’t say that to Richman. I wanted to see where all this was going, first.

  “Just curious. He took it with him when he left the apartment.”

  The waiter arrived with our food and, as usual, Richman dug right in. He paused after a few forkfuls and said, “And then we come to Tunderew.”

  Here it comes. “Tunderew?”

  He looked at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say, “Don’t play games.”

  “Tunderew. It was a pretty messy wreck, and they found Tunderew’s briefcase smashed open, with papers all over the ground. Apparently, it had not been locked. If it had been, we couldn’t have opened it.

  He kept an address book, and your name was in it. From what little I know of the man, I doubted you and he were golfing buddies.”

  “Hardly. Though I would have been happy to use a nine iron on him. Do you have any reason to think the accident wasn’t accidental?”

  “Not really. They did find skid marks and some broken glass, possibly from one of Tunderew’s headlights. It appears as though he had braked to avoid something…maybe a deer…but hit it, lost control and swerved through the guardrail.”

  “Did they find a dead deer?”

  “No, though it might possibly have not been killed outright and wandered off into the woods; we’re checking on that. No blood, either, though.”

  “So maybe he hit another car? Rear ended it?”

  He shrugged. “Possibly. We’ll know more when we examine the glass found on the road. But if he’d hit another car, chances are he’d at least have broken the tail lights, and I didn’t see anything about them having found any red glass.”

  He speared the last piece of his meatloaf, mopped up the remaining gravy with it, and transferred it to his mouth. When he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “But as to the question of whether it might not have been an accident, maybe it’s just my copying your famous tendency to follow your gut reactions, but let’s see… There’s a dead famous writer who has your name in his address book, a dead young male passenger whose relationship to the writer is unknown, and your phone number in the young man’s pocket. Why do I smell the vague aroma of fish?”