The Dream Ender

by Dorien Grey

  But he could have said “took” rather than “stole.”

  He could have, but he didn’t. Enough with the semantics, already!

  “That’s not what I was getting at,” I said unconvincingly. “I just thought that if you’d been there you might have some idea about how whoever stole it might have gotten in—there was no sign of forced entry.” I wasn’t quite sure what I was fishing for with that one, unless to see if Brewer knew about the back porch.

  “Can’t help you,” he said. “I know where he lives—a friend of mine lives just down the block from him—but I’ve never been to Jake’s.”

  “The cops found fingerprints they’re pretty sure belong to the guy who stole the gun. Now we just have to figure out who they belong to.”

  Brewer gave me that smile again, bent down below the counter and came up with an empty beer bottle, which he wiped carefully with a towel. He then wrapped both hands around it and set it down in front of me.

  “Here you go,” he said. “I’ll save you the trouble of trying to get mine.”

  Now that was unexpected. I didn’t pick it up, but fully intended to take it with me when I left.

  “Damn,” I said. “You take all the fun out of it!” And returned his grin. “I’m afraid not everyone I’ll be checking on will be so cooperative.” I rattled off the names of the six from the meeting. “I know all those guys have been at Jake’s. Anything you know about them that might help me out?”

  He thought a minute, then shook his head. “Nope, not really,” he said. “Except maybe Art. I don’t trust him.”

  Obviously, he was aware that Manners and Pete Reardon were close.

  “Any specific reason?” I asked.

  Again the head shake. “I think Reardon uses him to spy on what’s going on over here. I’ve heard a rumor Art thinks that if Reardon got his hands on the Male Call, he’d have Art run it for him. I think he’s just blowing smoke out his ass, and if he’s waiting for me to sell to Reardon, he’s got a long wait.”

  One of the guys from the pool table came over to the bar with two empty bottles, and Brewer moved off to get two more. He didn’t seem in any great hurry to come back and talk, busying himself instead with something in one of the coolers, so I took my time finishing my beer, set the empty on the bar, used a napkin to pick up the bottle with his prints and got up to leave. I walked over to where he was still busy doing whatever he was doing.

  “Thanks for talking with me,” I said, making a small gesture with the empty bottle. “I hope you didn’t take my questioning personally.”

  Brewer shrugged. “Hey,” he said, “that’s your job. I wish you luck in getting Jake off the hook—though I’d hate to see anybody go to jail for doing a public service in getting rid of Cal.”

  *

  Well, so much for Brewer being a viable suspect. That he had so quickly volunteered his fingerprints had really surprised me, and my suspicious nature wondered if there might have been a reason.

  Oh, come on, Hardesty! a mind-voice—the one in charge of skepticism—said, a bit impatiently. What reason could there be? There doesn’t have to be a sinister motive behind every single human action.

  It was right, of course. I did have something of a tendency to second-, third-, and fourth-guess myself, which was both frustrating and counterproductive.

  But Brewer had made a comment in there somewhere that had rung a bell. What the hell was it? Ah, yes, the rumor that Art Manners thought he was going to be managing the Male Call when—and if, both equally unlikely—Brewer sold to Reardon. I had no idea where that one had come from and should have asked, though Brewer probably hadn’t a clue either. Rumors are rather like mushrooms in that they just spring up out of a pile of shit. I hadn’t been aware that Manners had any sort of bar-managing background—if, indeed, he did.

  My thoughts were luckily sidetracked when I pulled into the garage and headed up for the apartment and dinner.

  Sunday brunch at Bob and Mario’s was just what I needed—not one single word from anybody about the case. I knew it wasn’t because they weren’t interested or curious, but that they, like good friends often do, intuitively knew I’d fill them in when I was ready.

  *

  Butch and Pancake, the two no-longer-kittens, kept Joshua totally occupied playing with or harassing them—depending on whether you were seeing it from Joshua’s or the cats’ perspective. The cats took it all in good stride until Joshua did something I didn’t see which elicited an ears-back hiss and a quick claws-extended swipe at his hand from Butch, at which point Jonathan called Joshua over to join us at the table. Mario suggested we take our coffee into the backyard so Joshua could play while we grown-ups continued catching up on each others’ lives and activities. Both Bob and Mario were great storytellers, and we as usual had a lot of laughs.

  *

  Monday morning first thing I called the City Annex to leave a message for Marty Gresham and was surprised to find him in.

  “Not out chasing the bad guys?” I asked.

  “Not today. Dan’s in court on a case that’s been hanging on since before we partnered up, and I’m doing paperwork.”

  “Can I buy you lunch?” I asked.

  “I never pass up a free meal,” he said. “Warman Park?”

  “Nah, let’s splurge and go to a real restaurant. How about Sandler’s around twelve fifteen?”

  “See you there,” he said.

  Because I wanted to start collecting fingerprints from the guys at the meeting, I dug out my old fingerprint kit and checked it to be sure it was still okay by taking my own prints. Noting that everything seemed in order, I then took the beer bottle Carl Brewer had given me and used the kit’s brush, iron shavings, and wide clear tape to lift his prints, putting the tape into a glassine envelope.

  So far, so good. Now all I had to do was remember to keep the kit nearby everywhere I went.

  Since I knew Don Gleason lived above his shop, I called him first. The phone rang several times, and I was just about ready to hang up when I heard the receiver being picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Don, hi. This is Dick Hardesty.” I explained that the police had found the gun that had killed Cal Hysong and had traced it to Jake, who swore it had been stolen.

  “Jake was the one they’d arrested?” he asked, though I had assumed he already knew.

  “Afraid so,” I said. “Though, as I say, I’d stake my life he didn’t do it.” I then told him that fingerprint evidence had been found at Jake’s apartment to back up his claim, and that I was collecting fingerprints from everyone who had been at the meeting in order to eliminate them as suspects and asked if I could get his.

  “Sure,” he said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  Exactly, my mind-voice agreed, mentally crossing Gleason off the suspects list. It’s the ones who won’t be willing to give them you’ll have to concentrate on.

  Still, having asked, I’d have to take them. Better safe than sorry.

  “I’ll stop by around eleven, if you’re going to be there,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment with a client at one, so eleven should be fine. I’ll leave the door open, and if I’m not in the shop, come on upstairs—I’ll be either in or just getting out of the shower.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you then.”

  I tried the other five numbers and got no answer. I didn’t want to leave a message for those who had machines. Asking them to voluntarily give me their fingerprints was imposition enough; I didn’t want to ask them to call me back for the privilege.

  *

  I got to Gleason’s a few minutes before eleven. Peering in through the window, I couldn’t see either him or the glow of the acetylene torch, so I tried the knob and it was, as he’d said, open.

  I noticed that his motorcycle, sitting just inside the door, seemed to have been recently buffed to a high shine. I then wandered toward the back in case he might be busy back there and took my first
real look at his sculptures.

  I’m not really big on modern art, I’m afraid. If I see a statue titled Nude Whistling I expect to see something I can say, “Yeah, that’s a nude whistling.” Gleason’s art was mostly free-form, but I could appreciate it for what it was, and many of the pieces created strong impressions of power, or grace. The largest went from floor to just short of the ceiling—a writhing, twisting collage of metal giving the effect of debris caught in a tornado. It exuded an almost tangible sense of power. Others were deceptively simple—even delicate, if you can say that about metal—and there were two mobiles that looked as though they were somehow defying gravity. I was impressed.

  Not finding him on the ground floor, I made my way up the wooden stairs to his apartment. The door at the top was open, and I went in.

  “Don?” I called. I could hear water running, which stopped at my call.

  “I’m in here,” he said from what I assumed to be the bedroom. “Come on back.” I followed his voice to where I could look through the open door to the bathroom. Don as out of sight but then stepped into view, drying his hair.

  Nude not whistling, I thought, though I was tempted to do some whistling of my own. He looked like something Michelangelo might have done on one of his better days. I found it kind of ironic that Don Gleason had been one of the last guys I’d had sex with before I met Jonathan, and seeing him again now brought back strong memories of what my crotch-voice still occasionally insisted on referring to as “the good old days.”

  But I forced my mind away from such thoughts by dragging out the scale of what I would gain from another romp with Don or anyone else against what I would lose in destroying my relationship with Jonathan. No contest.

  Wimp! my crotch-voice muttered.

  Gleason wrapped the towel around his waist and padded into the room, going to the dresser to rummage around for underwear and socks. He dropped his towel to step into his shorts, reminding me once again just why I turned out gay rather than straight.

  “Still can’t get over the idea that Jake’s gun killed Cal, or that he’s been arrested for the murder,” he said, turning toward me and sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his socks.

  “Right,” I said, “but as I said, he didn’t do it.”

  “Right,” he echoed.

  Having put on his socks, Gleason stood up, giving me yet another chance to reflect on my decision for monogamy. He indicated the fingerprint kit I hadn’t realized I was still holding.

  “So, that’s for the prints?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Since the D.A. sort of tied the hands of the police when it came to looking at other possibilities once Jake was arrested, I decided to do some of their work for them. They can’t initiate an investigation at this point, but they’ll compare all the prints I bring them to those they found at Jake’s.”

  I moved to the dresser and set the kit on top of it, opening it. Gleason came over to stand beside me. A little too close, I thought, but, hey…

  “Which fingers do you want?” he asked as I took out a print card with little labeled squares for each finger.

  “We probably should do them all,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said amicably, offering me his left hand.

  I took it and one finger at a time rolled the tips over the pad, transferring each to the appropriate space.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” he said with a sexy smile.

  “Years of practice,” I said, trying to channel my full concentration into what I was doing.

  When I’d finished, he made no effort to back away. I reached for the solvent and one of the paper towels I’d put in the kit.

  “These should get rid of the ink,” I said, noticing with mild discomfort that he was staring at me. He took the wet towel from my hands with probably a little more contact than was necessary.

  “So, you’ve got a partner, huh?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “No fooling around?” He flexed his impressively muscled pecs just in case I might not have gotten what he was asking.

  I sighed. “I’m afraid not.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

  Oh, yes, I do! all my mind-voices chorused.

  “You’re probably right,” I said, though recalling we hadn’t really been on the same page sexually the one time we’d gotten together made it easier.

  Looking for a way to change the subject, I remembered his motorcycle and the posters for the AIDS ride I’d seen on the street near the Male Call.

  “So, are you going on the Spike’s bike ride this Sunday? I hear it might rain.”

  “Yeah. We’ll be running up to Neelyville. Should be a good group, and a little rain won’t hurt anybody. I’ve been helping Pete with the registrations—we’ve got forty guys and a contingent of fifteen women from Dykes on Bikes so far.”

  “That’s great!” I said. “Any of the guys from the meeting at Jake’s going?”

  “Chuck Fells and Art, for sure,” he said.

  His mention of Art Manners reminded me.

  “You and Art are good friends?” I asked.

  “Not good friends, no. He’s okay, and we ride together with Pete’s group. But we don’t hang around together much otherwise.”

  “I’ve heard he and Pete are pretty close.”

  “From what I know, yeah. I’ve heard they’re fuck-buddies. Art tries to hide it, but I know he’d do anything for Pete.”

  Interesting.

  “You know anything more about Manners?” I asked.

  “I know he comes from a lot of money, though he tries not to show it. I hear his old man is Richard Manners of Tri-State Industries.”

  Tri-State Industries was one of the city’s largest employers.

  We talked while he finished getting dressed, until a glance at my watch told me I had to get going if I was going to make it to Sandler’s in time to meet Marty.

  “I’d better get going,” I said. “I appreciate your cooperation, Don, you’ve been a big help.”

  “Any time,” he said. “And tell Jake I’m rooting for him.”

  “Will do,” I replied, picking up my bag to leave. “Have a good time on Sunday.”

  *

  The first thing I noticed when Marty walked into the restaurant was how attractive he was. Coming so close as it did after my encounter with a naked Don Gleason, I determined that Jonathan and I—okay, especially I—needed a little quality fantasy playtime. Luckily, mindreading is not one of Marty’s abilities. He came over to the table I’d taken, we shook hands, and he sat down.

  We talked a bit about what was going on in our private lives; Marty announced his wife was pregnant with their second child.

  Lucky her! a mind-voice—my crotch, obviously—observed.

  Watch it, Hardesty! the other voices cautioned—totally unnecessarily, I might add.

  I told him about Joshua’s appendicitis, at which he expressed sympathy, and my week-long stint as watchdog, comfort giver, and toy picker-upper, at which he just smiled.

  “At least you never had to do dirty-diaper duty,” he said. “Consider yourself blessed.”

  As a matter of fact, I did.

  After we’d ordered, I picked up the paper bag beside me.

  “I brought you a few things,” I said. “A couple sets of fingerprints I’m almost positive won’t match those on the window ledge, since they were given voluntarily. I’ve got another five sets to collect. I really hope you don’t mind doing this for me.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I wouldn’t want the D.A. to know what we’re doing, but if you’re right and Jacobson didn’t shoot Hysong, we’d just have to do all this ourselves. You’re saving us some time, and the taxpayers some money.”

  “Glad you see it that way,” I said.

  Since Marty wasn’t privy to what new information the D.A.’s office might have on the case, we just concentrated on our lunch and casual conversation.

  *


  As soon as I returned to the office, I tried calling the guys on the meeting list again. I’d rather hoped I might catch Butch Reed on his day off but left a message on his machine asking him to call me.

  Right after dinner that night, while Jonathan and Joshua watered the plants and fed the fish, I sat down with the phone and began redialing the numbers. I subconsciously put Manners and Spinoza at the bottom of the list, since I figured they were the most likely to give me a hard time and I wanted to put off any hard times as long as I could.

  I tried Steve Morse first and was lucky enough to catch him in. When I explained what I wanted and why I wanted it, he seemed a bit hesitant.

  “I don’t know, Dick,” he said. “While I want to help you, I’ve got pretty firm convictions about the right to privacy. Being fingerprinted is just one more erosion of that privacy.”

  “I can appreciate your position, Steve,” I said, “but this involves a murder. I’m convinced the police will be expanding their investigation soon, and if we can show them the prints they have aren’t yours, it can save you them having to hassle you. Once they start looking into it, they might—however wrongly—take the refusal to give prints as an indication of possible guilt. If we can eliminate you right off the bat, why not do it?”

  There was a rather long pause, then: “Well, I…”

  Sensing he was reconsidering, I said, “Look, it will only take a few minutes. I can meet you on your lunch hour, or right after work, or whenever and wherever is convenient for you.”

  Another pause, followed by a sigh. “Well, I usually take my lunch to work and eat in Barnes Park. I suppose if you want to meet me there between noon and one…”

  “That’ll be great,” I said. “Any particular part of the park?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, there are some benches within easy sight of the men’s room. I like the view.”

  “A man of exquisite taste,” I said, also laughing. “I’ll see you there, then. And thanks.”

  It occurred to me as I hung up that I had no idea what he looked like. I’ve never understood why these things always come to me after I’ve hung up, but…I’d find him.

  And again I thought about how kind of stupid it was to actually take fingerprints from someone willing to give them. The fact they were willing all but ruled them out as a suspect, as far as I was concerned. Still, I’d learned never to underestimate the power of a devious mind. So, far better safe than sorry.