If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going

by Tinnean

  “Even his pubic hair?”

  “If he’s thorough.”

  “I have some pictures of him buck-naked.” They were the ones I’d come across in Honeycutt’s Bible.

  “I tell you what, Vince. Fax me a copy of the best one you’ve got and I’ll ask around. Give me a couple of hours.”

  “Thanks, Kory.”

  “No problem.”

  Quinn tapped on the pocket door that closed off the closet and bathroom from the master bedroom. “Want to get some lunch, Mark?” he called.

  I raised my voice. “Sure.” Then I said to Kory in a lower voice, “Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  “You’ve got it, Vince. And if you haven’t done anything to Honeycutt, give it some thought. I can make it worth your while. He’s bad news.” He hung up, and I did as well. Then I flushed the john.

  I didn’t want Quinn to get suspicious. It was bad enough he’d probably wonder why all of a sudden I had to fax something.

  ***

  Quinn and I were just finishing lunch at Au Bon Pain when my cell phone rang, “It’s Raining Men.” I didn’t really need to look at the screen to know who it was, but I did anyway, and then gazed across at Quinn.

  “Sorry, babe.” I rose. “I have to take this.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I squeezed his shoulder and walked out into the street. “That was fast,” I said to Kory.

  “I recognized him.”

  “What’ve you got for me?”

  “He uses the professional name of Connor. He’s been working out of town for the past few years. One of my boys ran into him at the William Henry Harrison.”

  “He’s not there now.”

  “No. When he has to pay the tab himself, Connor likes to use the Garland Rooms on Tenth Street. I called to see if he wanted me to set up an appointment for him.”

  “And…?”

  “He’s busy tonight, but tomorrow at noon?”

  “That works for me.” It was perfect. Quinn would be long gone. “But why so early on a Sunday?”

  “What, do you think he’s like that character in Never on Sunday? He works whenever he can get it. Besides, he expects to be fed.”

  “Fair enough. Thanks, Kory. If you get any other information, let me know. Oh, and send me your bill.” His time was valuable, even if he wasn’t servicing a john.

  “Will do. Gotta run, Vince. Monday night is my inaugural ball, and I have to make sure everything is just the way it should be. The last thing I want to hear is Charlemagne gloating that his was bigger than mine. Say, if you have some free time, why don’t you drop in? It’s going to be at the Dolley Madison Room.”

  “Thanks for the invite.” Unless you were a high-ranking politician, a diplomat, or royalty, getting one of those took an act of God. And for this affair it was even tougher, since only rent boys attended.

  “Oh, and bring someone if you’d like.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. Show Quinn off at an affair like that? I’d like nothing better. But he worked for the CIA, and in spite of the rent boys’ own strict policy about what happened if you talked about who you saw at one of their functions—you did, and it would be the last one you ever got an invite to—that would cause him nothing but trouble. “Bye.” I hung up and went back into Au Bon Pain.

  “Problem, Mark?”

  “I won’t be able to go riding with you tomorrow.” I reached for my Pepsi. Was he going to be pissed at me for backing out? I still hadn’t bought myself a pair of jodhpurs, going on the premise that if I didn’t, maybe one day he’d stop asking me to get on a horse.

  I frowned. As much as I didn’t like riding, I liked the thought of him giving up on me even less.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ve gotta buy a pair of jodhpurs.”

  “No, I have plenty.”

  “For me, Quinn.”

  “Yes?” A smile lit his face. Such a little thing to make him happy. I’d have to do this more often. “I know the perfect place. We can go shopping as soon as we’re done here if you’d like.”

  “Okay. But I still can’t go riding tomorrow. I have to look into something for a friend.”

  “Yes?” He studied my eyes, his smile still there.

  I grinned and shook my head. On the one hand, I had no problem telling Quinn what I was up to, but on the other, he couldn’t talk about what he didn’t know.

  He picked up his glass of unsweetened raspberry iced tea and tapped it against mine. “Here’s hoping you find what you’re looking for.”

  ***

  “I’m sorry to eat and run,” Quinn said Sunday morning as he slid his arms into his riding jacket and shrugged it over his shoulders.

  “You don’t want to be late.” And I had that noon appointment to see Connor.

  His cell phone suddenly played “The Flower Duet.” “Why would Mother...?” He took out the phone I’d made him buy early last fall. “Good morning, Mother. ... Mmm. ... I hope everything is all right. ... Oh, yes? ... Certainl—Mother, are you sure you’re all right? ... All right, then, I’ll meet you there in about three quarters of an hour. ... I love you, too.” He hung up and gazed into space, his brow—what I could see of it under the hair that was always spilling over it—furrowed.

  “Everything okay, Quinn?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. Mother just wanted to let me know we won’t be riding today.” He looked down at his riding clothes and smiled ruefully. “I’ll need to change. She wants me to meet her at Charmaine.” He finally met my gaze. “I’d have asked if you cared to join us, but I know you’ll be busy.”

  “Thanks for the thought.”

  “You’re welcome.” He reached up and tugged my ear. “Well, if I’m not to keep Mother waiting, I’d better hurry.” He turned and headed back toward the bedroom.

  Once there, he set his phone on the night table and sat on the bed.

  I straddled his leg and yanked off his boots, one at a time, reminiscent of when he’d done the same for me. I took them into the closet and stood them in their corner.

  “Want me to pick out something for you?” I called.

  “If you wouldn’t mind?”

  I placed a pair of black slacks on the bed, along with a blue-gray shirt and black socks. “Leave your riding clothes where they are. I’ll hang them up later.”

  “Thank you, Mark.”

  “That’s what significant others are for. Now, do you want a tie?” I held up three, one gray with teal highlights, one green with chocolate brown highlights, and the third solid black

  “Yes, perhaps I’d better.” He selected the green one. It was a favorite of mine, since it brought out the green in his eyes. “How do I look?” He held his arms out and turned slowly.

  “Gorgeous. Don’t forget your cell phone.”

  He retrieved it and tucked it into a pocket. “Dinner Friday?”

  “You bet.” I had my arm around his shoulders as we walked down the hallway to the front door.

  He turned into my embrace and kissed me, tasting of Pep-O-Mint.

  I got a grip on his ass and pulled him snug against me. For a weekend that had such a shitty start, it was ending well.

  “Quinn.”

  “Yes, Mark?”

  “Nothing. Just… Quinn.”

  He smiled and cradled my cheek, and I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his palm. I didn’t want to let him go, but we both had things to do.

  I opened the coat closet, handed him his jacket, and grabbed my own.

  We took the stairs down to the lobby and strolled out into the cool March morning.

  His car was parked in the spare space I’d been allocated, and I walked with him to it.

  “Drive carefully, okay? And tell Portia I said hi.”

  “I will. And Gregor?”

  “Sneer at him for me. I wouldn’t want him to feel left out.”

  He gave a huff of laughter. “Of course not.” He touched my arm, and then got in his car and started the engi
ne.

  I stepped back and watched as, with a final wave, he drove off.

  Chapter 10

  Garland Rooms was a three-story brownstone on Tenth Street that had been converted into a boarding house. Connor met me in the parlor on the ground floor and let me look him up and down while he surreptitiously did the same. He wore skintight jeans and a long-sleeved Henley. His hair was a mass of blond cornrows, and mascara spiked his eyelashes. I could see why a man like Honeycutt would want him. He looked like jailbait… until you saw the expression in his eyes.

  “It’s a hundred up front, and another hundred after.”

  “I just want to talk.”

  He shrugged. “It’s the same however you want to do it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He thought I wanted to talk dirty to him? I didn’t say anything, just took a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet and handed it to him.

  “And you still give me extra for lunch.” He held it up to the light, looking for the silk threads that would indicate it wasn’t counterfeit, and then tucked it away in a front pocket of his jeans, deliberately drawing attention to the bulge of his cock.

  “Okay, it’s this way.” And he led me up the stairs to his room at the rear of the third floor, making sure I got an eyeful of his ass.

  He flung the door open with a flourish, and I stepped in. I remembered how tidy Pretty Boy’s room had been, all those years ago, and he hadn’t been expecting company. This room—jeans and shirts were draped over a chair and dumped in a corner beneath a double window. The bedspread was lumpy and wrinkled. He stretched out across it with negligent ease.

  He saw the way I looked over the room and flushed. “You’re early. I didn’t have a chance to straighten up.” There was resentment in his voice.

  “Actually, I’m right on time. I always am.”

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. “Start talking.” He scratched at his arm. Were there track marks under his sleeve?

  I shoved the clothes off the chair, sat down, and crossed my legs.

  “You know Alfred Honeycutt.”

  He bolted upright. “What are you talking about?” The abrupt change in his attitude from blasé to panicky was almost laughable.

  “He was keeping you.” I nodded toward the watch on the battered dresser. “That’s a Cartier, if I’m not mistaken. He wasn’t pleased that you took it with you when you left.”

  “He gave it to me!”

  “But he wanted something in return, and I’m not talking about your ass.”

  “I… I don’t—”

  “No. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Honeycutt wanted a rent boy known in the business as Sweetcheeks. Your job was to lure Sweets into his parlor.”

  “What do you care?”

  “He happens to be a friend of mine.” I draped an arm over the back of the chair and let my suit jacket fall open to reveal my Glock.

  “What do you—Look, forget about lunch. I’ll give you your money back. I’ll give you a blow job. You can fuck me!”

  I shook my head at each offer and he became more frantic.

  “Please…!”

  “Start talking.”

  “What?”

  “I’m paying you to talk.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with how you knew Sweetcheeks?”

  “I… I was in his stable for a while a few years ago.”

  “I don’t remember seeing you.”

  For a second I thought he was going to sneer at me, but then his gaze darted to the Glock, and he swallowed. “I wasn’t there long.”

  “Why were you willing to sell Sweets out?”

  “I wasn’t… Honeycutt is a wealthy man. He’d have made Sweets’s fortune!”

  “But Sweets isn’t in the business anymore.”

  His lips took a petulant twist. “For how long? He thought the guy he was living with would stay with him forever, but that’s bullshit.”

  “What did that matter to you?” I wasn’t inclined to agree with him, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “Honeycutt was going to cut me loose. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get that dirty old man’s notice? But he took one look at Sweets, and his tongue hung out. That was when he decided he was done with me. He gave him his business card, and even though Sweets tore it up, he still wanted him. And now he has the nerve to ask for his watch back? I don’t fucking think so!”

  “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”

  “Huh?”

  “Were you aware Honeycutt planned to sell Sweetcheeks?”

  “What are you talking about? People don’t get sold nowadays.” He really believed that? “Anyway, Honeycutt told me he wanted him for himself! That’s why I—”

  “He had a buyer for him. If you’d succeeded in getting Sweets to Honeycutt’s hotel room, he’d have been drugged and shipped out of the country. And considering where his final destination was, do you want me to give you the odds of his chances of ever turning up alive?”

  He looked like he was about to throw up.

  “No, I didn’t think so.” I stared at him thoughtfully. “According to Honeycutt, he picked you up here in DC.”

  “The lying bastard. We hooked up in New York.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “About four months.”

  Yeah, he was a lying bastard. “Were you with him when he got the videotape?”

  “Ye-yes. Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of? Did you see the woman who gave it to him?”

  “No. We were at a restaurant in South Beach, Marisol’s. I… I went to the men’s room, and… and when I got back, he had it. He wanted to go to the hotel room right away so he could look at it.” He glanced away. “He fucked me while he was watching it. He didn’t even give me a chance to shower….”

  “Did you recognize Sweetcheeks?”

  “After the fourth or fifth time, yeah. There’s one shot of the side of his face almost at the end. I’d seen that expression on his face once, and suddenly it clicked.”

  “And you told Honeycutt.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Yeah. He was pissed when he realized I’d tricked in the men’s room and I was desperate to distract him.” And that was why he’d wanted to shower?

  “Y’know what, Connor? I think you’d better leave DC. A lot of the boys like Sweets and if it gets out what you’ve done, well, let’s just say this town isn’t going to be too healthy for you.” I got up, took out my wallet, and peeled off another hundred dollar bill. For what he’d had a hand in, he was lucky I didn’t give him the same treatment as Honeycutt. “As for lunch, this should cover it for you. Be grateful I’m feeling generous.” I gave him a twenty and walked out.

  I’d hoped he might have a lead to “Jane Smith,” but that seemed to be a wash, so tomorrow I’d talk to Romero.

  Now I had to go looking for our Miss Smith.

  I’d managed to come up with a current address for her, and I drove to the Frederick W. de Woedtke Apartments in Annandale.

  The buildings were neutral almost to the point of invisibility, which was probably appropriate, given who’d chosen to live there.

  I parked and walked up to the middle building. Miss Smith’s apartment was on the first floor. I started to rap on the door, and an interesting thing happened.

  It swung open—the lock hadn’t been engaged.

  I pulled out my Glock and used my elbow to ease the door farther back. The foyer opened onto the living/dining room, and a quick sweep revealed it was empty.

  But I heard crooning coming from the kitchen. The soft sound didn’t hide the irritation of the words, though. “You miserable, strimpin’ cat, get your ass over here so I can feed you and go home. Why I ever promised Becca… Ah hah! Gotcha!”

  I put my Glock away and called out, “Hello?”

  There was a bang, “Ow!” and then a head popped up beyond the pass-through. The guy was in his early twenties, and he clut
ched a gray tabby kitten to his chest with one hand, while he rubbed his head with the other. The kitten yowled, and its hind legs pistoned in an attempt to do as much damage as they could.

  “Who’re you?” He scowled and switched his grip to the scruff of the kitten’s neck, giving it a shake. “Bastard,” he snarled.

  “Sorry.” I assumed that last was directed at the kitten and not me. “My name is Joe Wells. And you are?”

  “Uh... I’m Randy.”

  “Randy.” I’d have offered my hand through the pass through, but the kitten was intent on giving him a hard time, and I didn’t want to get within range of its claws. “I was looking for Miss Smith.”

  “She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You look official.”

  “Thanks, I think, but I’m just a mechanic.” He looked over my suit, and I gave him my most harmless grin. “I’m dressed like this because I’ve just come from church.”

  “I see. Well, you’ve missed her.”

  “That’s a shame. When will she be home?”

  “God knows.”

  Okay. “Well, do you know where I can find her?”

  “No,” he snapped, resentment obvious in his tone. “She said she had a family emergency and left early Thursday afternoon.”

  So I’d missed her by a couple of days. “Will she be back?”

  “I sure as hell hope so! She left this demon behind, and I’m stuck feeding it. And is it grateful? No, it isn’t! Look what the fucking thing did to me!” He held out his free hand, which was crisscrossed with scratch marks that looked fresh. And painful.

  I couldn’t say I blamed the kitten. If the person who was supposed to be looking after me kept referring to me as it, I’d be pretty annoyed too.

  “But you don’t know?”

  “What, if Becca will be back?” He shrugged. “She told Mr. Cruikshank she’d get in touch with him as soon as she knew what was going on back home.”

  “Who’s Cruikshank?”

  “He’s the complex manager.”

  “Did she leave a forwarding address?”

  “If she had, don’t you think I’d have shipped this… this nightmare to wherever she was? Don’t you dare!” he snapped at the kitten, which looked like it was getting ready to strike again. “Look, I’ve got stuff to do. Since you’re here, do me a favor and feed this pain in the ass!” He barreled around the peninsula and into the dining area, and thrust the kitten into my arms. With a final glare and a grimace at the blood on his hands and arms, he bolted through the front door and slammed it shut behind him before I could object.