The Dream Ender

by Dorien Grey

  “Well, I’ve got my suspicions,” he said.

  “Oh? Like what, if I can ask?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Manners hadn’t been shoring up Reardon financially for quite awhile. It’s pretty clear to me Reardon held the hoop and Manners jumped through it.”

  “Master/slave, you mean?” I asked. That had never occurred to me.

  “No, I don’t think it went that far, but I think Manners would do just about whatever Reardon told him to.”

  Like kill Cal Hysong? The thought came totally out of the blue and actually startled me. And I realized that’s what I’d been trying to remember about what Gleason had said—that Manners would do anything for Reardon.

  “Like I think I told you,” Brewer continued, unaware of my thought processes, “I always suspected the only reason Manners came to the Male Call was to keep an eye on things for Reardon.”

  “Interesting,” I said, and meant it.

  I was curious about the most recent offer he’d received and why he’d turned it down, so I asked. Again, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d refused to answer—it wasn’t any of my business, really, but that never stopped me from asking a question.

  “The offer came from a guy whose name I recognized from the Dog Collar days as being one of Reardon’s cronies. I might have taken it if I hadn’t realized what was going on.”

  “But aren’t you obligated to take an offer if it meets your asking price?”

  “If I was going through a realtor, yes, which is why I’m doing it myself. You can always come down on a deal, but you can’t go up. By doing it myself, I’ve got control over who gets it. It’s a hassle, but I’m deadly serious when I say it’s not going to Reardon. I’ll lock up the place and walk away first.”

  We wrapped up the conversation a minute or two later. I didn’t even set the receiver back on the cradle before dialing Glen’s office.

  Transferred to Donna, I asked if she could have Glen call me as soon as was convenient.

  “He’ll be calling in momentarily,” she said pleasantly—Donna is never anything but pleasant, “and I’ll give him the message. Are you in your office?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be here for a while and will wait to hear from him.”

  Not five minutes later the phone rang.

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Dick, Glen. Are you free for lunch?”

  “I can be, sure,” I said. “Etheridge’s?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m taking a deposition near the Imperator. You want to meet me there at our usual time?”

  “Sure,” I said, glancing at my watch. I could just make it.

  “Okay. See you there,” and he hung up.

  The Imperator? That place was way out of my league. I’d had dinner there once a long time ago—about the time of the Dog Collar fire, and as a matter of fact, while I was working on a case that involved it. Fantastic food, but at those prices it should be. Actually, I remembered, I had no idea what it cost—the menus had no prices and the tab went directly to the host, who fortunately wasn’t me. But it’s like Andrew Carnegie or some rich guy once said, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”

  Luckily, I kept a sport jacket and tie neatly folded in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet for just such contingencies. I hadn’t had occasion to use them in a long time but was glad they were there.

  Chapter 23

  The Imperator was just as I remembered it—the very definition of the word elegance. Lots of heavy, rich paneling—probably mahogany—ornately carved moldings, soft lighting, large potted plants, original art you knew didn’t come from a Starving Artists’ sale, thick burgundy carpets with a quiet blue pattern of some sort that muffled any sounds in the large room. I took a glance around looking for Glen; not seeing him, I stepped to the maitre d’s podium.

  “I’m meeting Mr. O’Banyon,” I said—I had no doubt he’d know who I meant, “but assume he’s not here yet?”

  The maitre d’, impeccably dressed, impeccably groomed, and impeccably well-mannered, smiled and said, “Mr. O’Banyon is expected any moment. Let me show you to his table.” He then led me to a corner of the room near the large windows looking out over a manicured courtyard.

  “Your waiter will be here momentarily,” he said, smiling, and turned to go back to his podium, where two crisply business-suited men awaited his attention.

  I wondered briefly what there was about the very rich that their clothes never seemed to wrinkle.

  A white-coated waiter appeared to ask if I would like a cocktail, and I told him I would wait. Smiling, he poured water into a stemmed goblet, then carefully and expertly tonged a sliced wedge of lemon onto the rim and left.

  As I waited I looked around the room a bit more closely. I’d realized after my first visit that the restaurant that had gotten its name and many of its decorative features from the old pre-WWI German ocean liner Imperator, which was confiscated by the British after the war and renamed the Berengaria. That fact accounted for the large marble bust of Kaiser Wilhelm at the entrance and the elegant glass domed ceiling, which had come from the ship’s banquet hall.

  Glen arrived as I was closely following the movements of a busboy who was definitely not part of the original ship’s crew.

  Apparently having noticed where my attention was focused, Glen grinned as he sat down.

  “Admiring the scenery?” he asked.

  I grinned sheepishly. “Very much,” I said.

  “Well, the Imperator does provide the best in everything.”

  “Obviously,” I agreed. “So, what’s the occasion? The Imperator is a step or two above our usual meeting spots.”

  “No occasion, really. It’s just that we all deserve a little self-indulgence from time to time. And since I was nearby…”

  “Well, I certainly appreciate being included in this one,” I said.

  The waiter appeared with menus and to ask if we’d like a drink before lunch. When Glen said he’d like a vodka gimlet, I decided to step away from my usual Manhattan or Old Fashioned and try a martini, which I’d not had in I couldn’t remember how long. I wasn’t all that wild about martinis, but I liked the olives.

  “You don’t have to get back to your deposition?” I asked, and Glen shook his head, picking up the menu.

  “Finished it. So, I thought I’d make it a double indulgence—lunch at the Imperator plus no rush to get back to the office. Glad you could join me. I can assuage my guilt by the fact we’re talking about a case.

  “I read your report over the weekend, and I’ve already arranged for Pete Reardon to come in so I can to depose him on Manners’ confession. I guess I’ve got you to thank for convincing him to come forward. But I gather something else is new?”

  “Well, I really don’t know if this directly bears on the case, but I think it’s important to let you know about it.”

  I then outlined my conversation with Carl Brewer, pausing only when the waiter brought our drinks. I was delighted to see two enormous cannonball olives skewered on the toothpick in my martini. I immediately ate one, putting the other, and the toothpick, on my bread plate.

  “There’s something about this whole buying-Brewer-out business that bothers me. The fact that Brewer said he’d been approached with an offer from somebody he thought was fronting for Reardon tells me that Manners’ offer of financial support had gone further than just being an offer. If Reardon was, indeed, behind the latest offer on the Male Call, that means he had to have the money to have made it, and the only way he could have gotten it was through Manners. I’d like to know how that came about.”

  Glen looked at me and shrugged. “Interesting point, but I don’t know how we could easily find out. I could subpoena Reardon’s financial records, but I’d have to have some more solid basis for doing it than just curiosity.”

  I knew he was right, and I also wasn’t quite sure what we could do with the information if we had it, or what it might mean.
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br />   We finished our drinks, and the waiter magically appeared to ask if we’d like another. We opted to order instead and did, both of us choosing the Veal Oscar and Glen urged me to try a small bowl of their world-famous—if the Imperator claimed it was world-famous, I believed them—Sweet Potato Bisque. More food than I needed, but how often did I get to eat at the Imperator?

  “Well, it sounds like things are starting to look up for Jake,” I said.

  He gave me a small smile. “That depends on just how far off the deep end St. John happens to be. It makes no sense for him to insist on pursuing the case, but with the elections coming up, he probably feels he needs all the grandstanding he can get. He’s skating on thin ice and he knows it, but I won’t be surprised if his intention is to continue milking it until the election and drop it as soon as it’s over. I just don’t appreciate his continuing to put Jake through all this.”

  Our lunch arrived, and the conversation switched to more general and less stressful subjects. But even as we relaxed and concentrated on the food, something paced impatiently back and forth in the back of my mind like the sound of footsteps in the attic, but it was so nebulous at the moment I didn’t want to bring it up.

  *

  Bits and pieces. The money. The relationship. Manners’ motive for killing Hysong. The Male Call. The accident that killed Manners. That damned motorcycle. I kept worrying them like a dog with a bone all the way back to the office and was, as so often happens, more than a little pissed at myself for not being able to immediately see the connection, if there was one.

  I found myself concentrating on Manners’ motive for the killing. He had lost a friend—from what I’d heard he didn’t have many—to AIDS and blamed Hysong for it. So had a lot of other guys. The humiliation of Hysong having beaten him in a fight probably festered for someone who considered himself as butch as Manners did. He claimed he had never had sex with Hysong himself, but I wondered.

  I made a mental note to call Tim after dinner, to see if he might be able to look at the coroner’s records to see if, just by chance, Manners showed any signs of AIDS, which might indicate that not only had he had sex with Hysong at some point but that he believed Hysong had given it to him. That would strengthen his motive.

  Once I started off on that path my mind began weaving a scenario made totally of speculation. Reardon had said Manners had been severely depressed before the ride. If Manners did have AIDS, when did he learn about it? And—reaching way out into left field—if he found out about it just before the ride, was there the possibility the accident that killed him had not been an accident but suicide?

  Stretching, Hardesty, a mind-voice said. Really stretching.

  It was right, of course, but I suddenly wanted to take a look at the police report on the accident. I picked up the phone and dialed the City Annex, asking to speak to Detective Gresham. I was a little surprised to hear his voice when the phone was picked up.

  “Detective Gresham.”

  “Marty, hi. It’s Dick. Can I ask yet another favor of you?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Can you get me a copy of the police report on Art Manners’ death?”

  There was only a slight pause before, “Yeah, I can do that. Any reason?”

  “Just a hunch,” I said.

  “Okay. No problem. I’ll leave it at the desk for you within the hour.”

  “Thanks, Marty,” I said.

  *

  I left work a little early to swing by the City Annex to pick up the report and read it while walking back to my car in the Warman Park underground garage.

  The semi driver reported he was rounding a curve in heavy rain when he saw two motorcycles coming toward him, fast. The one behind looked like it was trying to catch up to the first one and had pulled up almost beside it when they passed the semi’s cab. The driver felt the impact of the wheels passing over the cycle and driver and came to an immediate halt, calling for help on his CB radio.

  A nearby squad car was there within three minutes and an ambulance and another squad arrived fifteen minutes later. The report of the driver of the second motorcycle (Reardon) claimed he had still been some distance behind Manners when Manners’ bike suddenly swerved and slid beneath the semi. Nothing was noted about the apparent discrepancy between the accounts of how close the two bikes had been, but given the traumatic circumstances of the accident and the different perspectives of Reardon and the driver, I didn’t make too much of it.

  Well, I’m not sure exactly what I was looking for, but whatever it was, I didn’t find it. Still, the “sudden swerve” might have been due not to road conditions but to a deliberate act on Manners’ part.

  Still, if I were going to kill myself, I think I’d look for a way that didn’t involve an eighteen-wheel semi truck.

  Yeah, my mind countered, but he was a biker doing what he loved to do. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad choice. And obviously it was quick, if not painless.

  *

  I called Tim after dinner to ask if he could check on whether Manners might have had AIDS. I was right in assuming Tim hadn’t been involved in the examination of Manners’ body, since the accident had happened on a Sunday, when he was off.

  One of the things I most admired about Tim—and all my friends, now that I think of it—is that he never asked why I wanted to know whatever it was I asked of him. He just said he’d get back to me and we moved on to other subjects. He and Phil were planning an informal dinner gathering of the gang at their place the Friday before Jake’s trial as a way of showing our collective support and maybe taking Jake and Jared’s minds off the pressure for a few hours. I thought it was a great idea and accepted immediately.

  When he heard me mention Tim’s name, Joshua—who, I learned at length at dinner, had inexplicably been given some sort of good conduct award at day care (I suspected either everyone else had gotten one, too, or he had somehow rigged the awards process)—insisted on sharing the information with Uncle Tim, after which Jonathan also got on the line for a few minutes.

  *

  Story Time came and went—Joshua requested a retelling of yet another of his many favorites, “The Ugly Duckling,” and Jonathan did the honors—and after my watching a little TV while Jonathan studied for his horticulture class, we went to bed and at Jonathan’s suggestion played a pleasantly exhausting game of “Tarzan and the Shipwrecked Sailor.” I have no idea where he comes up with the titles for these games, but it sure was fun.

  Normally, I’d be out like a light within four minutes, but instead I found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling.

  Manners had killed Hysong. Okay, I could accept that, especially if it turned out he had gotten AIDS from Hysong, which at the moment was purely speculation. The case was solved. So, why couldn’t I just wrap the whole thing up and move on?

  There doesn’t have to be a link between everything, a mind-voice counseled wisely. All this other stuff about Reardon and the money and the Male Call didn’t all have to be part of the same puzzle. Why was I trying to insist they were?

  And then I was on a motorcycle in the rain and Joshua had just come home with a Nobel Prize and I was asleep.

  *

  Tim called me at the office during his coffee break Tuesday afternoon to let me know he’d checked Manners’ autopsy results. Though there was little doubt as to the cause of death, there was no evidence of AIDS, though he added the coroner’s office did not yet have the facilities for doing AIDS blood tests. They’d known Hysong had it because of the lesions on his body; Manners had no such indications. Which, while it did not mean he did not have the virus, probably meant that if he did it hadn’t yet manifested itself and Manners would not have been aware of it.

  After hanging up, I could almost hear an ignition switch being turned in my head and my mental motor revving up.

  So, why was Manners so depressed before the ride? There could have been any number of reasons, of course, but it was Reardon’s mentioning it that had triggered my spe
culating that Manners might have found he had AIDS and killed himself. That theory was pretty much shot full of holes now.

  But why would Reardon lead me to believe Manners was depressed if he wasn’t? To plant exactly the seed that was planted about suicide? Was Reardon that smart? And why would he do it?

  One of the biggest problems with being a private investigator, as I have said before, is that I find myself questioning everything—doubting everyone’s word, looking for the cracks in every wall. And sometimes, reading things between the lines that simply weren’t there. I’ve really never understood my mind, or how it works the way it does, or why it and my gut often know things I don’t. I’d been hired to prove that Jake was innocent of killing Cal Hysong. I’d done that. Point A to Point B. What the hell was I doing roaming around points F, P, and X? The whole Male Call/Reardon/Manners thing was only peripheral to the fact that Art Manners had killed Cal Hysong and Jake was, indeed, innocent.

  But I still sat at my desk, my mind idly rummaging through a large pile of guesses and pieces of information that had for some reason clung to me like static-charged lint. I’d gone over them all before, of course, but they were still there—the relationship between Reardon and Manners; their financial arrangement, if there had been one and if it had survived beyond Manners’ death, which I suspected it had, since Brewer had gotten an offer on the Male Call after Manners had died. It was, of course, possible the money had come from somewhere else—maybe from the crony who made the offer.

  Convoluted sentence, convoluted thoughts.

  If the offer had come from someone fronting for Reardon, though, there were two possible explanations. One, Reardon knew Brewer would never take an offer he made directly, and two, Reardon was for some reason trying to cover up the fact that he might have had access to Manners’ money. The first was the most logical, the second more typical of my line of thinking.

  And there was that damned motorcycle again. Why had it been backed up the ramp? Maybe because there was something wrong with the side now closest to the wall? There was only one way to know—go back to the Spike and look.