The Last Thing I Saw

by Richard Stevenson

  “Did you know Bryan’s boyfriend Eddie Wenske?”

  “Oh, sure. Eddie was a hunk. I even read his book about coming out in middle school. Bryan said he was…what? He disappeared or something?”

  “He did. A couple of months ago.”

  “Bryan was really upset. There was some bad stuff between them for a while, and they weren’t even seeing each other. Sometimes they’d stay at Eddie’s place and sometimes they’d stay here at Bryan’s, but for a long time Bryan never went over there at all.”

  “You know a lot about Bryan’s life.”

  “Well, we chatted about the men in our lives in the laundry room, and like that. Sure, we’d dish and commiserate.”

  “And exchange recipes.”

  Gummer gave me a look. “Can I just say something, Donald?”

  “Sure.”

  “I know you’re gay.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because you are being very careful not to look at me below the neck. The strain is showing.”

  “What if I told you that you are mistaken, Elvis? That back in Albany I have a wife and eleven children?”

  He chortled. “Don’t worry. I won’t come on to you.”

  “That’s just as well.”

  “I dreamed last night that I was having sex with a guy who started bleeding and bleeding, and blood was coming out of his nose and mouth and ears and dick and ass, and even his navel ripped open and blood was pouring out. Right now, I can’t imagine ever having sex with a man again.”

  I told Gummer I thought he’d get over that, and he said he was going to try.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Gummer didn’t want to go back into Bryan Kim’s apartment and he wasn’t sure the police would approve of my doing so, but reluctantly he lent me the key. Yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched across the door, but I unlocked it and shoved it open with my foot and ducked under the tape. Gummer’s mention of a certain type of Mexican meat market had been apt; Kim’s living room smelled like a slaughterhouse in a tropical country that made do without a lot of meddlesome government sanitary regulations. A throw rug was missing from the hardwood floor, apparently having been carried off by the forensics team. The stained floor next to where the rug had lain had been cleaned but only perfunctorily. I noted blood spatters on the nearby leather couch and even as far away as an end table with a lamp whose pretty silk shade was spotted. The scene suggested a great deal of violence.

  Across the room were a good-sized plasma TV and an elaborate sound setup. The CDs next to it were current pop with some dance-club house music. On a shelf were framed photos of Kim in the company of what appeared to be a sober Korean-American family of five. Alongside the pictures was Kim’s local Emmy for “distinguished Boston news coverage.”

  Among the books on a nearby shelf was Wenske’s Notes from the Bush. I checked the inscription, which read: “To Bryan—good reporter, hot number, beloved pal—Eddie.” I also noted that the book’s printed dedication was to My parents, Susan and Herb Wenske. There was also a copy of Weed Wars.

  It was neither inscribed nor autographed. Its printed dedication was To Paul Delaney. Who was Paul Delaney? He had to be someone important in Wenske’s life, but his name hadn’t come up.

  Kim’s bedroom had a king-sized bed, neatly made, with a handsome Japanese cotton coverlet. The bookmarked book on the bedside table was Mary Ann in Autumn, the final Tales of the City volume. Kim had made it to page 73. The closet was stuffed with what looked like a small fortune in well-crafted dark suits, a supposed occupational necessity—though an Albany news anchor had once confessed to me that for him it was the other way around: he needed to be on television so he’d have an excuse to own all those suits.

  It looked as if somebody had already been through Kim’s desk. The police? The killer? The drawers were empty and their contents had been arranged in neat piles on top. It was basically just entertainment brochures and advertising. Anything more personal or potentially revealing—letters, bills, bank and credit card statements—had been taken away, I guessed. There was no computer, just—as with Wenske’s desk—a space where one must have sat. So who took that? The police or the killer?

  Kim’s tidy bathroom contained a lot of toiletries but nothing that told me anything noteworthy about who Kim was. The only pharmaceuticals in his medicine cabinet were Tylenol, over-the-counter cold remedies and some prescription Cialis, a 30-tablet box of 5mg each, the daily dose.

  I checked the kitchen to see if maybe a large knife was missing, suggesting that the killer had not planned on attacking Kim and had simply grabbed a knife in a rage. But I had no idea how many knives Kim owned to begin with, so I learned nothing. Anyway, the nearly empty fridge and the Thai and Korean boxed entrees in the freezer suggested that not a lot of cooking had gotten done in this kitchen. And not a lot of cheesecakes baked. I looked around for a recipe collection but found none.

  § § §

  Marilyn Fogle had said she was in the midst of a fund drive at the NPR station where she was vice president for development, and would I mind if she picked up some salad and panini at Panera and we ate them in her kitchen? Her ex-husband had their two teenaged daughters for the weekend, so we would be able to talk without any distractions. I offered to pick up the food, but she said not to bother, she had to pass Panera anyway on the way home from the station.

  The house didn’t look like the abode of the vice president of anything, just a cozy clapboard ranch with soon-to-burst-into-bloom tulips along the walk up to the front door. The car in the driveway was a Subaru wagon of non-recent vintage with carefully nonpartisan good-cause bumper stickers plastered across the hatch.

  At her kitchen table, Fogle produced a Karlsberg for me and poured herself a glass of Chablis. “I do apologize for the store-bought fare, but it’s that time of year, as I hope you will have noticed.”

  “I have indeed. I admit I changed to another station on the car radio.”

  “But not before you made your pledge, I hope.”

  “Sorry, but I’m one of those people who steal it.”

  She looked as if she wasn’t sure if I was kidding, so I told her I was. “My partner Timothy Callahan takes care of that. He tithes for both of us.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t you get tired of saying thank you to each of your gazillion contributors?”

  “No, never. We’d go out and wash their feet if that’s what it took to keep public radio going.”

  “This sounds like Wenske family-style missionary zeal. Where have I heard this before?”

  She laughed. In her mid-forties, Fogle was rangy and a little bit stooped in a black pants suit and lemon yellow blouse. She had the beginnings of a wrinkled neck, a lot of sandy hair like her brother, and the same sly smile.

  She said, “Yes, we’re all fanatics, I guess. Dad going after the Wall Street crooks, Eddie exposing the ethically challenged and socially misguided. And me keeping the world safe for All Things Considered. Mom used to take the world more or less as it was until she opened The Party’s on Us and became a mushrooms-and-cheese-in-puff-pastry zealot. Now she’s crazed and over-scheduled just like my brother and me.”

  I almost asked her if she had a second brother, then realized who she meant. “I take it you agreed with your mother’s decision to hire me to search for Eddie.”

  “You bet I did. I almost looked into hiring a private investigator myself. I got as far as the Yellow Pages. But to tell you the truth, my savings are not what I’d planned on at my age, this house is underwater and can’t be re-mortgaged until late in the century, and Bond, my ex, is out of work and almost no help at all. So for financial reasons I never made the call. Thank God, Mom has a little money from her mother, and you are what she’s spending it on.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt, but only briefly, for I planned on earning my fee, even if it meant delivering bad news to the Wenskes. I said, “Bond. Did he trade in…you know?”

  “No.
If only. Bond re-strings tennis rackets. And he’s working on his novel.”

  “I was an English major, and that could have been me.”

  “He’s great with Becca and Lisa though. You might meet them. Bond will be dropping them off in about an hour. I know they’re pleased that you’re in the picture. They’re very fond of Eddie, and I know they’d be even more upset about his being missing if they didn’t have so much else on their minds. Though they couldn’t possibly be any more of a mess than I am. I wake up at night thinking about Eddie, and if I think about him long enough, I come down with a perfect bitch of a migraine.”

  Fogle had laid out plates and flatware on the kitchen table and spread out the Panera good eats, and we helped ourselves.

  “I know you’ve been in touch with the police,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ve been more than in touch. I’ve been a total pain in the ass.”

  “That’s necessary sometimes. Police detectives are busy people.”

  “At first, I just thought Eddie wasn’t reachable because he was up to here in something he was working on. He could be like that, focused to the point of driving everybody else crazy who wasn’t in on his current mania. But when Bryan got worried, he called me and then I began to worry too. And now…with what’s happened to Bryan…I can’t…” Her voice broke and she shook her head. “I know I should be really upset about poor Bryan, but all I can think about is: What if the same thing happened to Eddie? And his body is…somewhere. Oh Jesus. Oh crap.”

  “I know. It’s worrisome,” was my lame response.

  “Donald, what do the police know about Bryan’s death? Anything at all? You said you were in touch with them.”

  “They have no leads, as far as I know. The detective in charge is aware of Bryan’s connection with Eddie, and I expect you’ll hear from him, a guy named Marsden Davis who seems competent.”

  “Good.”

  “Does your mother know about Bryan? I’ll call her tonight.”

  “I spoke to her. She reacted the same way I did. All she can think about is Eddie. She feels a little guilty—just like I do—because we were never that crazy about Bryan in the first place.”

  “He sounded like a lot of work.”

  “Yes, but Eddie said the one thing you could count on with Bryan was his professional integrity, and that meant a lot to Eddie. If Bryan had been as faithful to Eddie as he had been to Channel Six News, everything would have gone a lot more smoothly.”

  “Faithful?”

  “I don’t mean sexually. I have no idea what their arrangements were in that regard. Gay men have their mysterious ways. I know that. I mean emotionally faithful. And of course physically present. Bryan just seemed incapable of committing, and he had a history of jumping into relationships with guys and then panicking and jumping out again. But the two of them just seemed to hit it off in so many ways, and I know there was a strong physical attraction. In fact, I got a little tired of hearing about Bryan’s satiny muscular butt. I do know they were trying to make a go of it the second time around.”

  The prosciutto and chevre panini were excellent, as was the big fresh green salad with walnuts and cranberries. The beer was helpful, too, though I thought better of asking for a second bottle.

  I said, “I’m guessing there’s a connection between Bryan’s murder and your brother’s disappearance, though of course they could be coincidental. I understand that Bryan was helping Eddie with the gay media book he was researching. Your mother said Bryan knew people at Hey Look TV, and they were turning out to be good sources for the critical story he was writing about the network and its bad labor practices and general sleaziness. Do you happen to know who any of those people at the network are?”

  “No, but I know who might know. Luke Pearlman was a classmate of Bryan’s at NYU, and he’s in TV news in New York, a producer at Channel Four. He got the girls in to meet Lady Gaga at NBC one time. I know Luke is part of that gay Tisch Broadcasting School-NYU crowd, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of Eddie’s sources.”

  I made a note of this. “Who,” I asked, “is Paul Delaney? Weed Wars is dedicated to him.”

  “Oh, Paul is one of Eddie’s heroes. He was his first editor at the Globe, and Eddie says he learned nearly everything he knows about journalism from Paul. It’s sad about Paul, though. He got a top job at The L.A. Times, and then the paper was sold to a no-news-background idiot—an all too common story in journalism today—and Paul got canned. He’s working at some small weekly out there now, and I think he’s struggling. He called when he heard Eddie was missing, and he was very concerned.”

  “I’ll look him up if I get to L.A.”

  “You might go there? Looking for Eddie?”

  “Los Angeles is the headquarters for Hey Look Media. So, who knows.”

  “The police seem to think a drug cartel did something to Eddie. You don’t think so?”

  “It’s a possibility, I’m sorry to say. But the police are only guessing. Their own sources say they know of no revenge killing of a journalist.”

  “But you’ll do your own digging? I assumed you would. Mother assumes that too.”

  The Wenskes were probably wondering if they might not be taken for a ride by me, business class to L.A., a suite at the Beverly Hilton. Despite my pretty good professional reputation around Albany they had no way of knowing I had over the years absorbed the parsimonious ways of Timothy Callahan, who had learned expense-account budgeting during his vow-of-poverty two years in the Peace Corps.

  I told Fogle I would follow every possible path, including the Weed Wars connection, to finding out what had become of her brother. Then I said, “Your mother told me that you were concerned about some—not to be too melodramatic about it, I hope—secret life you thought Eddie might be living. She even used the term dark side. What made you think this?”

  She poured herself another quarter of a glass of wine. “I know it sounds…what? Exaggerated?”

  “More than that, the way your mother expressed it.”

  “I know. She picked that up from me. The dark side talk.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But, you know, I think it’s true.”

  “When you say dark side, I take it you’re not talking about the occult.”

  “Hardly. The Wenskes are all laughably literal-minded. The spirit world is not for us, nor are we mentally wobbly or criminally inclined.”

  “Then, what?”

  “I don’t know. But Mom probably told you. Eddie used to disappear late at night and then lie to me about where he was. This was after I moved out of here for a while last year and stayed with Eddie. Bond and I had been driving each other up the wall—believe me, you don’t need to hear about that—and he couldn’t afford to move out, so I left until he found a job. He got into an Arby’s management training program, thinking it would be strictly a shift kind of thing, and the rest of the time he could work on his novel. The Arby’s thing didn’t last, of course, but we don’t need to go into that either. Anyway, I ended up at Eddie’s for three weeks. He insisted that I get his bed, and he slept on the couch. I was embarrassed and ashamed, but I was such a wreck at the time that I gratefully took him up on it. I’d drive here after work and fix the girls’ dinner, and then I’d drive back into Boston and sleep at Eddie’s.”

  “It sounds dreadful.”

  “It was. The first few nights he was so sweet and attentive to me, and he listened to all my woes, and it really helped. And he kept being nice and supportive, except often after I fell asleep, he’d go out and not come back until early in the morning, three or even four. I’d sometimes get up to take something for my headaches or go to the bathroom, and the light would be on in the living room and I’d look in and he wouldn’t be there. I asked him one time where he was and he said at the Globe. But he wasn’t even working there anymore, and I have friends there, and I asked if they had run into him, and they said no. I wasn’t spying on him, really, I was just puzzled. And when I asked him ab
out it, he got really defensive. I joked about him maybe having a new boyfriend—this was when he and Bryan were on the outs—but he said, oh no, if he had one he’d tell me and introduce him. Which I believed. Anyway, this kept happening, and if I asked where he’d been, Eddie looked really uncomfortable and changed the subject. Once he actually snapped at me and told me to just drop it, and I could see he meant it, and I never asked him about it again. But it was all so out of character for Eddie that I worried, and then when he disappeared I was afraid that maybe he went out one night to wherever it was he needed to go after midnight, and that last time he just…he just never came back.”

  Based on what I knew by then about Eddie Wenske’s personal and professional lives, this description of events was about as plausible as any I’d heard. But of course it explained nothing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back at the Westin, I phoned Timmy, and he was anxious for my report.

  “I was going to call you if you hadn’t called. Good grief, I saw in The Times about Bryan Kim. What happened?”

  “If you read the paper, you know about as much as I do. Kim was killed several hours before we were supposed to meet at the hotel and go to dinner. Apparently he was bringing along a third party, identity unknown, and I’m guessing it wasn’t just social. The point of the dinner was to talk about Wenske’s disappearance.”

  “So then, does it sound like Kim being killed had something to do with Wenske, and somebody thought he had to shut Kim up?”

  “It sounds like that, and it sounds like a lot of other things too. Such as Kim the man of many boyfriends may have once been involved with a psycho who turned up again, this time off his meds. Or Kim the investigative reporter may have been digging into something that made somebody feel threatened enough to want to shut him up and maybe serve as a warning to others. Or Kim had his own secret dark side, so-called, that led to his brutal murder. The list goes on, and I am going to hope that the Boston cops are competent enough to explore all the possibilities. The guy in charge seems capable, so we’ll see.”