The Bar Watcher

by Dorien Grey

  I was definitely on to something but, as is so often the case, wasn’t sure exactly what that something was.

  I found nothing else of interest in the alley, and the rest of the block consisted of pretty standard commercial buildings with a number of gay-owned businesses—bookstore, vegetarian restaurant, clothing store, etc.

  Which brought me back to the entrance to Rage. I opened the door and entered the lobby. Sure enough, the blond Adonis was on duty, every perfectly shaped muscle on prominent display beneath the Rage T-shirt.

  As I approached the window, he stared at me then gave a nod toward the door, which buzzed to unlock as I reached for the handle. To the left was the door to Comstock’s office, which was blocked by a sill-to-floor “X” of yellow “Police: Do Not Cross” tape; to the right, an open door to the registration area, where the blond stood by the counter, unsmiling.

  “Hi,” I said, stepping inside the room. “I’m Dick Hardesty.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he said, noticeably unimpressed.

  “And your name is…?” I asked, a little puzzled and mildly irked by his attitude.

  “Troy,” he said, his face impassive.

  “Well, Troy,” I said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions, and it looks like you’re not overly busy at the moment.”

  “I’ve got paperwork,” he said, sounding defensive.

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, trying to ignore what I was beginning to see as a blooming case of Major Attitude. “But I also assume you’ve been instructed to cooperate with me. Am I right?”

  He shrugged.

  “Good,” I said.

  I noticed a tall stool by the counter and pulled it to me, straddling it to sit down.

  “Let’s start with how long you’ve worked here.”

  Troy leaned against the counter on one nicely muscled arm and crossed one ankle over the other.

  “Since it opened,” he said.

  I had one of my hunches and decided to follow up on it.

  “How well did you know Barry Comstock?”

  A brief look of anxiety crossed his cover-model face.

  “He was my boss,” he said, but I got the definite feeling that wasn’t exactly all.

  “Just your boss, huh?”

  Troy’s face flushed, and he looked down at the floor.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “He was my boss. I told the police all this shit already.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not the police.” Then, sensing maybe I was being a little hard on the kid, I tried another tack. “Come on, Troy. Barry Comstock was murdered. I know you thought I was the one who killed him, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. He was gay, you’re gay, I’m gay—this is a family thing, here. Help me out.”

  He shifted his position slightly, uncrossing his ankles. Still looking at the floor, he gave another small shrug.

  “Like how?” he asked.

  “For starters, how did you happen to find Barry’s body?”

  Troy gave a huge, lung-emptying sigh. “He was here in the office with me, going over some receipts, and then he left to go back to his office. I had to run into the back for a minute, and a few seconds after I got back I heard Barry say something like ‘What the fuck?’ and then a thud—probably him hitting the floor.

  “I ran over, and there he was, on his back on the floor with that letter opener sticking out of his chest.”

  “And no sign of anybody around?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  I pondered that bit of information for a moment, then said, “So, tell me a little more about your relationship with Barry Comstock.”

  He sighed again and reached for a matching stool behind a file cabinet.

  “Well,” he said, some of the attitude missing from his voice, “I work here for Barry, and I was sort of his assistant in his other business.”

  “The videos?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I was in some of them when we first started, but then Barry made me his assistant.”

  I leaned forward. “And what did you do as assistant?” Troy shrugged, not looking directly at me.

  “Lots of things,” he said. “Helping the cameraman, setting up props, working with the lighting, recruiting…”

  I caught that one in mid-air. “Recruiting?” I asked. “From Rage’s membership?”

  He nodded.

  “How did that work?”

  His gaze swept idly around the room, meeting my eyes for only a moment then moving on, casually.

  “I get hit on a lot,” he said, in what I’m sure was an understatement of classic proportions. “A guy comes in, we like each other, we talk a couple minutes, I call one of the attendants up front to watch the desk, and I take the guy to a room right next to Barry’s office. I buzz Barry as I’m on my way to the room, and he watches through a two-way mirror he’s got hidden behind a picture on his wall.

  “If he thinks the guy has talent, he comes out of his office just as me and the guy are leaving the room and invites the guy in for a talk. Then he holds his own audition, and if the guy passes and is willing to do porn, he gets a job.” I found myself oddly envious of Comstock. What a neat racket!

  “And if the guy doesn’t go along?” I asked.

  Troy sat back, rotating his shoulders as if to relieve tension.

  “No problem,” he said. “The guy’s not interested, he’s not interested. Although Barry could get a little…well, aggressive at times.”

  “Meaning?”

  Troy hesitated, as if he didn’t want to speak ill of his departed employer, then apparently realized Comstock wouldn’t be filing any objections and continued.

  “Meaning one guy punched him out one time.”

  “And how did Barry respond to that?”

  “He yanked the guy’s membership.”

  At this point, the front door opened, and two USDA Choice specimens came into the lobby. Troy got up and moved to the window to greet them, check their membership cards and have them sign in. That completed, he reached under the counter for the buzzer, and the two guys passed by the open doorway on their way to the locker room. We exchanged smiles and nods.

  They paused for a moment seeing the yellow-taped X then moved on without a word.

  When they’d gone, I got up from the stool.

  “Thanks, Troy,” I said, extending my hand, which he took, and for the first time, he gave me a smile.

  “Sorry if I was a little…whatever,” he said. “Barry was really pretty damned good to me, and the last time I saw you, he was yelling at you…and then he was dead.”

  “I understand,” I said, and I did. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to look around the place for awhile.”

  “Sure,” he said, then gave me another quick smile. “Too bad you’re not a member,” he said, and ran a spread-fingered hand across his chest…slowly.

  “I just might join one of these days,” I said as I turned toward the door. “I’ll see you a little later.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  *

  Noting that the police tape was loosely attached to the bottom of each side of the doorframe, I easily detached one end to enable me to open the door and stoop/squeeze past the rest of the tape. Once inside, I closed the door and went immediately to the large painting of the nude torso. Moving it slightly to one side, I found the two-way mirror looking into a small room with a single bed, and a nightstand upon which was an assortment of lubricants, a bottle of poppers and a small bowl filled with condoms. There was a wooden chair in the corner with a stack of towels on the seat.

  Putting the picture back in place, I opened the door beside it and entered the room. For so small a space, there were three doors—the one I’d just entered through and one at each end of the room. The one to my right undoubtedly led to the hallway; the one to the left was the doorway to the alley. It was my guess the parking space directly across the alley was where Comstock parked, and that he came and went through
this side door. I suspected, from the keys I’d found outside the door, so had the killer. Without being seen by anyone.

  There was a deadbolt lock, but I noted it wasn’t engaged.

  Just as I was reaffixing the tape to the bottom of the doorframe after leaving Comstock’s office, I was passed by another club member who’d just entered. He was built like a Clydesdale and, from what I could see, hung like one, too. I really did have to reconsider joining… The door to the registration office was closed, and I thought it advisable to knock rather than just barge in. Troy opened the door a crack then, seeing it was me, opened it fully to let me enter.

  “That was fast,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think I saw what I needed to. Tell me, is that door to the alley always locked?”

  “The police asked the same thing. I told them it was.”

  “And deadbolted?”

  “No, the deadbolt’s broken. Barry was going to see about getting a new one, but he never did.”

  “Who else had a key to that door?”

  “Nobody,” Troy said. “Barry was the only one who ever used it.” He was silent a moment, brows slightly knitted in thought. “But I know he had a spare set of keys somewhere—in his car, I think.”

  “His car?”

  Troy looked at his reflection in the reception window and smoothed back a wayward lock of hair above his left ear with one hand. “One time he thought he lost his keys after an audition with one of the members, and he had to go somewhere. I guess the car was the only place the spare keys could have been.”

  Of course! “And where’s the car now?” I asked.

  “Still at the dealership, I guess. He had me call them right after that asshole slit his tires and top, and they came and got it to fix it.”

  “Do you remember which dealership?”

  Troy furrowed his brows briefly.

  “Central Imports,” he said.

  I made a mental note to stop by the dealership in the morning.

  Chris, my ex, had one of those little magnetic key boxes, which he kept in the driver’s side front wheel well. Comstock might have had one, too—I’d be sure to find out. “Hello?” I heard Troy say, and realized I’d been staring off into space again.

  “Sorry. You said some guy had his membership yanked because he’d punched Comstock? Do you remember his name, by any chance?”

  “Sure,” Troy said, leaning against the counter on one elbow. “A hunk like that isn’t easy to forget. His name was Jared.”

  “Jared Martinson?” I wasn’t surprised—he had said his membership was revoked, and he’d made it clear he had no particular love for Comstock.

  “Yeah. What a body! And hung! Jeezus, I’ve seen horses with smaller dicks!”

  Let me count the ways,

  “Do you know what happened? Why Jared punched him?” I had a pretty good idea but thought I’d better make sure.

  Troy shook his head. “Barry wouldn’t talk about it, but I can pretty well figure it out. As usual, he came out of his office just as Jared and I came into the hall. He asked Jared into his office, and Jared looked confused, but went in with him. A few minutes later, I heard shouting—I’m pretty sure it was Jared—but couldn’t make out the words. And a second or two after that, there were a couple of thuds, and Jared comes steaming out of Barry’s office looking really pissed, and storms out the door, and Barry’s standing there with blood pouring out of his nose and his fly open. I guess you don’t fuck with Jared.”

  I’ll try to remember that.

  “Two more things,” I said. “Can I have a list of everyone who was in Rage the night of the murder?”

  “The cops took our registration book,” Troy said, “but I always make a copy of who comes in on any given day. I’d just set it aside when Barry came in to go over the receipts. I can get it for you. Not more than twenty guys in the place, though—it was still early.”

  He opened a drawer and shuffled through some papers, coming up with a small notebook, which he handed to me.

  “That’s the members,” he said. “I’ll have to check for sure on just which employees were on duty.”

  “Great,” I said. “I can pick that up later.” Then, remembering the second loose key in my pocket, I said, “Do you have Comstock’s address?”

  “Eleven-oh-one Spruce,” Troy said without having to stop to think.

  “House or apartment?”

  “A house. Big old Victorian. We used it for a lot of the videos.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment; our eyes met and locked, and I was once more convinced that ESP lives. I was also aware it was suddenly very, very warm in that small office, and I decided I’d better get out while the getting was good.

  “Well, thanks a lot for your time, Troy,” I heard myself say. “I appreciate it. I guess I’d better get going.” My feet, however, didn’t make any attempt to move.

  “Did you see the room?” Troy asked, his free hand moving to his crotch.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” I said, staring at the growing bulge in his sprayed-on trousers.

  “It’s a slow night,” he said. “You wanna see it again?”

  Shit, yes! “You talked me into it.”

  Chapter 3

  I was able to pry myself out of bed the next morning in time to arrive at Central Imports when the service department opened at eight. I could tell the moment I walked in the door this wasn’t Joe’s Neighborhood Garage. There were a number of exorbitantly expensive cars scattered around the large shop in various states of repair, some on hoists, some hooked up to lots of expensive-looking machines that appeared as though they would be more comfortable in a hospital operating room. The floor was clean enough to eat off of.

  I walked up to the service desk and asked the neatly uniformed man behind it for the manager. He smiled and disappeared behind a rack of boxed parts, to return within seconds.

  “He’ll be right with you.”

  A moment later, a tall, very good-looking guy came from behind the rack, and I recognized him immediately as a guy I’d tricked with out of Ramón’s several weeks earlier—though I’d be damned if I could remember his name.

  Luckily, his starched, razor-crease uniform shirt had a nametag: “Sam.”

  He smiled when he saw me and extended his hand across the desk; I had to move forward slightly to take it.

  “Sam,” I said, “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “Only for ten or twelve years.” He grinned. “What can I do for you?”

  I got the definite impression he didn’t remember my name, either, which made me feel a little less guilty.

  “You have a car here belonging to Barry Comstock—brought in a couple days ago with four slashed tires and a slashed top?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s in the other room. We haven’t done anything with it yet—he was killed the night we brought it in, and we’ve been waiting for authorization from the insurance company or somebody representing his estate.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not the guy on that one, but I’ve been asked by Comstock’s attorney to check something out in the car. Would it be possible for me to take a quick look at it? I won’t remove anything—just want to look.”

  Sam frowned. “Gee, I don’t know…buddy…we aren’t supposed to let anybody other than the owners near the cars.”

  “Well, this particular owner won’t be around anytime soon,” I said, reaching into my wallet for O’Banyon’s card. “But maybe this will help.”

  Sam examined the card carefully and, apparently impressed, gave it back to me.

  “Well, sure, I guess we could let you take a look,” he said.

  He stepped out from behind the service desk and motioned for me to follow him, which I did.

  The main shop was vast, and behind a large, closed roll-down door was another only slightly smaller service area. We entered through a smaller door beside it. It was in this area that major bodywork was done on cosmetically disadvantaged cars. In one corner sat—
or rather, given the condition of its tires, squatted—a shiny, brand-new canary-yellow convertible with a badly slashed top.

  I knelt in front of the driver’s side front wheel well. Feeling along the inside of the fender, I found what I was looking for—a small magnetized metal box. I pulled it loose and slid it open. It was empty. I closed the lid and replaced the box under the fender.

  Standing, I reached into my pocket for the newer of the two keys I’d found in the alley and opened the driver’s door. Sliding into the seat, which was a hell of a lot more comfortable than any recliner I’ve ever sat in, I put the key in the ignition. It turned easily, and the car murmured to life. I quickly turned the engine off and got out of the car.

  “Thanks a lot, Sam,” I said.

  “Find what you needed?”

  “Yep. I owe you one,” I said.

  He grinned. “I might just hold you to that.”

  We walked back into the main service area and, with another handshake, I left Sam at the service desk

  *

  My next stop was 1101 Spruce, which was in a gay-gentrified area not too far from downtown. The area had been on a sharp decline for years until gays and lesbians began moving in and restoring the large old homes to their former elegance. What could be bought for a song ten years ago would now require a full-scale opera.

  Comstock’s house was a marvelous old gingerbread confection with scalloped fish-scale molding under the eaves, painted in crimson and cream. There was a small iron-fenced and iron-gated front yard.

  Hoping no one would be home, I pushed open the gate and walked to the small front porch enclosed with delicate filigree railings. Hardly the kind of house I would have associated with Barry Comstock, but one never knows everything about someone.

  To play it safe, I rang the bell, and when there was no response, I took the other key from my pocket and put it in the lock. It worked. Quickly relocking the door without opening it, I went back across the porch, down the short sidewalk, through the iron gate and into the street, closing the gate behind me.