Keep your mind on the job, he could hear Grace say. Brad's eyes lit on a paperweight on Hayden's desk, an ugly obelisk with a starfish embedded at its center. He reached over and picked it up.
"That was a present from an admirer on my fortieth birthday," Hayden said. "The late Andy Warhol threw a party in my honor."
"Sounds like a great time."
"The only thing that marred it was the music. He was going through a lesbian phase at the time and hired all women singers. It was one depressing wailer after another..."
Rosengarten shuddered.
"But why are we talking about this, Mr. O'Shaughnessy? What would make this night memorable for you? A blowjob from James Dean? Montgomery Clift in a sling? These things can be arranged. A little makeup, the right wardrobe and lighting, and presto! You can have anyone you've ever wanted. With muscles, even."
"Now that you mention it, I've always wanted to be lassoed by the Marlborough Man," Brad murmured, his gaze traveling down Rosengarten's chest.
Hayden's face feigned disbelief. "Why would you want me, with all those strapping young lads downstairs?" He made a deprecating gesture. "I know I may seem a little rough on them at times, but they're like family to me. Suffer the children," he intoned, piously.
"Some kids like it rough," Brad said with a wink. "And a few of us even enjoy a little 'suffering' now and then."
Come on, Brad was thinking. Show me how far you would go.
"In fact, Mr. Rosengarten," he continued, "I think you and I might share similar tastes. Certain dark tastes for forbidden things."
He was staring right into Hayden's crystal blue eyes. He could feel the man's breath on his shoulder. Okay, so sometimes I have to do more than keep just my mind on the job, Brad told himself. Grace might not approve, but Grace didn't have to know everything.
Hayden smiled and leaned back on the desk as though considering something. That's when they heard the first gunshot.
14
The dining room was in chaos as they entered. Ichabod stood by the doorway, hands on his hips, looking furious. Most of the guests were huddled beneath the dinner table except for the old-looking young man who sat wreathed in cigarette smoke, gazing absently into the distance. The porn star, oblivious to everything, was onstage in the throws of preorgasmic fury.
On the far side of the room a body lay on the floor. It was the man with the snake bracelet. Brad was about to rush over when a second shot tore into the ceiling.
"The chandeliers!" shrieked the irate Ichabod, as a chunk of ceiling fell onto the table and smashed a pot of exotic blooms. "My orchids!"
In the midst of the pandemonium stood Senator Freeman, smirking and waving a Colt .45 over his head.
"What's going on here?" Hayden bellowed.
"I was just saying I had a rod that could rival that gentleman's on stage any time," said the garrulous Texan with a laugh.
"He tried to kill me!" exclaimed the tiny man cowering on the floor.
"This here Yankee faggot called me a closet case," the senator replied. "And I told him my private life is none of his business, but that subterfuge and trickery is how everything works in these here Yewnited States of America."
"He doesn't deserve to call himself a gay man," moaned the elf. The ghost of self-esteem had raised its head, and it had taken a geriatric gnome to do it.
"Partner, that's the last thing I'd be calling myself!" the senator said, roaring with laughter until his face turned red and he began to wheeze.
"Careful, Senator," Hayden warned, "or they'll be saying you laughed yourself to death in a gay whorehouse."
The elf shook his fist. "I didn't spend my life fighting for respect so this baboon could make a mockery of it!"
"Hold your fire, gentlemen," Hayden spoke up. "This is a private resort, not a public battlefield." He turned to one of the young servers. "Claudio, take our friend here..." he said, indicating the man lying on the floor, "And cheer him up a little."
They waited as the older man hobbled out of the room on the arm of the younger. "When I was your age," they heard him say, "I was just as good-looking as you are now..."
Rosengarten turned to his guests. "That's the end of our scheduled entertainment, gentlemen," he announced, as though the shoot-out had been part of a floor show.
Within seconds, a bevy of young beauties swarmed into the room.
"Choose the object of your pleasure and feel free to retire to any area of the house." With a meaningful look to Brad, he added, "Except for my upper en-suite offices, of course."
Rosengarten nodded to his bodyguards, who followed him out of the room. Brad was wondering whether to run after them when he felt an arm slide around his waist. He turned to see Quentin smiling at him.
"Shall we?" the boy asked.
Brad allowed himself to be escorted back to his room. Inside, Quentin locked the door and looked at him invitingly. Brad's eyes played over the boy's body. A little physical recreation wouldn't hurt, he mused. Surely Grace wouldn't object. After all, she was paying for his night of pleasure. Perhaps, Brad thought, he might even learn a little about the mysterious Mr. Rosengarten at the same time.
"Shall we start with a massage?" Quentin asked as he untied the sash on Brad's robe and let it slip to the floor.
The boy wasn't much of a masseur, but he managed to offer in pain what he lacked in skill.
"Do you like working here?" Brad asked.
"It's a great place," Quentin replied, jabbing his fingers deep into Brad's muscles. "I get to meet some very interesting people."
"Are they always this excitable?"
Quentin laughed. "Not really. It's pretty laid back for the most part. Usually the yahoos are made to check their guns at the door."
The boy was chatty and well versed in Ice House gossip. According to Quentin, his boss was well nigh fifty-seven years old, despite his remarkable physique. In the '70s, Rosengarten had been king of New York's disco scene when legends like Grace Jones and Margaux Hemingway strutted with the hoi polloi. He'd made a killing selling cocaine to the danceteria owners, who passed it on to their best customers. That explained the birthday bash thrown by Warhol, Brad realized.
A decade later, when most of his friends and colleagues were dying along with disco, Rosengarten was just hitting his stride, opening clubs of his own and financing drug cartels under the auspices of some powerful political allies. And thus his open-door policy with the likes of Senator Freeman, Bradford surmised. One hand scratches the other, and indulges both.
In the '90s, Rosengarten had invested heavily in e-commerce in an attempt at legitimacy, but just as he was about to retire the market plummeted. Fortunes went bust and reputations dissolved in a mire of bankruptcies and lawsuits. By then the feds were onto him. He abandoned his former life, took what money remained and sought refuge on the seventy-mile stretch of cape just south of Boston. There, he started over. Provincetown had seen plenty in its day, but it had never seen the likes of Mr. Hayden Rosengarten, entrepreneur. And it seemed it would never forget him, either.
So that was the story of the man behind the mask, Brad mused. He was little more than a self-made drug dealer—it'd been pretty much the same story ever since Prohibition and the rise of bootleggers. But what of Ross, a good-time boy who only wanted a place to earn a little cash and have some fun? Had his murder been someone's sick fantasy purchased for a price? All of this must add up to something, Brad felt, but he wasn't sure just what that might be.
"Who's the tall skinny guy at the door?" he asked.
"That's Mr. Jones. As long as you don't mess with his flowers, you're fine."
Brad pictured the reams of delicate orchids throughout the house. The Martha Stewart touch, he thought. Every brothel needed one.
Quentin stood with his crotch tantalizingly close to Bradford's face. "How's that?" he asked.
"Looks pretty good from here."
Quentin grinned. "I meant the massage."
"Damage done," Brad said with a w
ink.
"Time for the main event." Quentin pulled his shirt overhead and dropped it onto the floor.
Brad's eyes were fixed on the snake tattoo on the boy's left pectoral. "Tell me," he said. "Did you know a guy named Ross who worked here?"
"I don't think so." Nothing in Quentin's expression said he wasn't telling the truth. "But then again, I've only been here a couple of weeks. I might not have met everyone. What does he look like?"
Brad described Ross. The boy's blue eyes brightened.
"The guy who died!" he said. "Yeah, I knew him. Everybody knew him. But he went by 'Brad' in here."
Bradford almost choked. "Do you know how he died?"
"Too many drugs," Quentin said sadly, as though seeing his own eventual fate.
He smiled again and dropped his shorts to the floor. Brad's jaw dropped along with them when he saw the formidable erection rearing before him. His eyes followed a thin trail of hair up Quentin's belly to his chest and the other phallic symbol neatly tattooed there. The deadly and the tempting.
"Was Ross your favorite?" Quentin said. "Let's see if I can please you like he did."
A half hour later, Bradford raised himself up off the bed. The boy had fallen asleep beside him. Brad shook his shoulder. Quentin stirred and stretched his arms overhead.
"How'd I do?" he asked.
"You were spectacular," Brad said as he dressed.
Quentin reached for his shorts and handed Brad a business card. "I also do private massages," he said with a wink.
A real entrepreneur, Brad thought, as he pocketed the card. "By the way, do you know if anyone disliked Ross—uh, Brad?" he asked casually.
There was no reply. Brad looked over to Quentin, whose face had taken on a curious look.
"Goodbye, Mr. Fairfax," a familiar-sounding voice said from behind.
The last thing Brad felt was a whack! across the back of his head as the lights went out.
15
He was having the dream again, the one with the blue-haired alien, only this time he was falling from a great height while the alien radiated calming waves toward him.
Brad landed with a thud as an incredible pain split his skull. He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back in semidarkness. Where was he? He tried to think through the pain to the night before. Had he tricked with someone? The last time he'd felt this way he'd met a muscleman named Chet. They'd mixed poppers with champagne, and the result had been disastrous.
His hand crept out from beneath the blankets and felt around. He was alone in a bed—that much was clear. It was starting to come back to him now. He was in Provincetown. He'd come because... oh, shit! He'd come to bury Ross. It returned to him in a flash. But where had he been the night before?
He tried to turn, but the pain made him cry out. It wasn't a dream! He slowly willed himself to roll onto his side. He could just make out that he was lying on a low-slung pallet in a dimly lit room. But where?
There was someone else in the room. A figure wearing a baseball cap sat on the floor in a full-fledged lotus, arms raised at his sides and palms turned upward, as though supplicating the gods.
"Where am I?" Brad murmured.
"In my room at a Provincetown guesthouse."
"Why am I here?"
Zach opened his eyes and fixed them on Bradford. "That's a really good question."
"Should you answer it or do I not want to know?"
"I rescued you."
"Uh-huh," Brad said. "Go on."
Zach lowered his arms and stood in a single effortless motion. "Let me get you some painkillers," he said, making his way out of the room.
He returned with three tablets and a glass of water. "Extra strength," he said, handing them over.
Brad took the tablets and swallowed, aware he was breaking training protocol by accepting drugs—even of the pharmaceutical sort—from someone he didn't know. Or barely knew.
"I was passing the dunes on my bike around one o'clock last night when a car went racing by," Zach said. "I had to swerve into the ditch to avoid getting hit. Man, you guys were traveling!"
Brad handed back the empty glass. "Thanks," he mumbled.
"Someone opened the passenger door and you tumbled out. Luckily, you hit a sand drift when you fell. They left you lying there and took off down the interstate. If another car had come along it would've run right over you."
Images rushed kaleidoscopically past: a mysterious guesthouse out by the dunes, a belladonna hedge, himself posing as Sebastian O'Shaughnessy, the lavish food and drink, fabulous orchids, a gun-toting senator, the megastar and all the others. There was also his brief flirtation with the guesthouse owner, Hayden Rosengarten, and a young man named Quentin who'd answered all his questions but one. Oh, yes! And before that, a cowgirl named Big Ruby had saved him from being run over. Then finally, he recalled hearing his real name being spoken before he could turn around. There'd been something familiar about the voice...!
It was all beginning to make sense. Someone had pieced together the reason for his visit to the guesthouse and knocked him unconscious. Obviously, that someone knew who he was and why he'd gone there. He was lucky to be alive.
"I've been sending you healing energy," Zach said. "Do you know anything about Reiki?"
"Sure," Brad said. "I know about Reiki. Thanks, uh..."
"It's..."
"Zach—I know," he said. "I don't forget things twice."
Brad raised the sheet and gazed at his naked body beneath it. He looked back at Zach.
"I didn't molest you!" Zach said defensively.
"I was looking for bruises. Really." Bradford could just make out Zach's face under the brim of his cap. "What time is it?"
"Almost one in the afternoon. You've been out for more than eleven hours."
"Whoa!" he said. "Well, thanks for all that. I'd better be going."
He tried to raise himself off the pallet, but a searing pain brought him right back down.
"You'd better take it easy," Zach said. "You're severely bruised, but at least nothing's broken."
"You're a doctor?"
"I told you, I'm a healer. A psychic healer. I did an energy scan of your body."
"You did a what?"
"An energy scan," Zach said, holding up his hands as if in evidence. "I heal with the energy in my hands."
Brad shook his head in disbelief.
Zach knelt beside him. "When I scanned you I sensed you'd been hit on the back of the head. It could have been from your fall, but it felt like it was from a metal bar," he said.
Zach reached out and gently touched the back of Bradford's head where the pain was most intense. Brad recalled the powerful whack! that had put the lights out for the evening. Zach ran his fingers down Brad's chest to a rib on his left side.
"There's another sore spot here," he told him. "But as I said, it's just a bad bruise, not a break."
Zach pressed lightly on the spot and Brad winced.
"Ow!" Brad looked up. "Are you for real?"
Zach nodded. "I see these things as colors. Whenever I see green, there's healing going on. In this case, it's an ugly greenish yellow, which indicates severe bruising. If I saw red it would tell me there'd been a break or at least a fracture, but I didn't see anything like that."
"What planet are you from?"
"Neptune, actually," Zach replied with a straight face.
"You're an alien?" said Brad skeptically.
"No more than anyone else," Zach answered matter-of-factly. "I was born on Earth, but I spent time in the energy fields of Neptune and Jupiter between incarnations. That's why I understand healing in this lifetime."
Brad looked away and shook his head. "I'm sorry, but this is totally weird."
Zach shrugged. "I'm a Buddhist. I believe in reincarnation. We've both been around many times. I've known you before. You made me miserable in another lifetime, too."
"What do you mean, 'too'?"
Brad tried to raise himself again. Zach placed a palm on Br
ad's forehead, ignoring his question.
"But this time you're going to have an opportunity to make it up to me. Just relax and try to connect with my energy," he said, raising his other hand in the air.
Zach closed his eyes and appeared to be concentrating on something. Brad lay back, not knowing what else to do. He sensed his forehead heating up to the point where it felt feverish.
Zach opened his eyes. "Do you feel that?" he asked.
"Wow!" Brad said. "You can do that at will?"
"I told you," said Zach. "I'm a psychic healer."
"It's very cool!"
Zach looked perplexed. "It should feel hot," he said, withdrawing the hand and examining it. "Usually this is my hot hand."
"No, I meant it's a cool talent." "Oh!"
"I've heard of such things. Where I work they talk about it, but I've never actually experienced it."
"I thought you worked for IBM."
"Oh, that...!" Brad shrugged. "That was last year. I've moved on since then."
Brad tried to recall who he'd said he was lately. He'd claimed he was a travel writer to someone on the beach. Then he told Perry the barkeep that he was an inventor. And Cinder thought he was a golf pro. Given the size of Provincetown, he'd better keep his stories straight and remember who thought he was what.
"Actually, I'm a golf instructor at the moment," he said. "Athletes are always into the latest healing methods."
He watched Zach's face for signs of disbelief.
"You change careers pretty fast," Zach said simply.
"It's hard to keep up with me."
"Is that why you were ejected from a car doing fifty miles an hour last night?"
"I think someone was trying to keep me away from the competition."
"Looks like your competition plays rough," Zach said with a laugh. He bent forward and his cap fell off. He reached for it and looked up to find Bradford staring at him in astonishment.
"Oh, boy!" Brad exclaimed. The curly hair tumbling out from under Zach's cap was blue. "You are an alien!"
"It's just dyed. I told you, I'm an earthling like you, only I know where my soul's traveled between incarnations."
P'town Murders: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery Page 9
