Every Breath You Take

by Robert Winter

  RANDY WATCHED Zachary out of the corner of his eye. Nice young man. He had a spine and a good heart to worry about Joe that way. Randy understood the arrangement Joe had with Terry about some occasional outside sex—no one they both socialized with and nothing that looked like dating or an attachment. It wasn’t something he’d want, but then, relationships didn’t seem to take for him in any case. If it worked for Joe and Terry, more power to them.

  Zachary clearly meant well, though. Too bad he was the latest in a long line to be hung up on Thomas, but maybe he’d get over the crush and stick around. Thomas could use that.

  Still it surprised Randy that Thomas had told Zachary to ask him for confirmation of his assholery. Not that Randy would hesitate to say it to Thomas’s face, but he didn’t think his friend had ever bothered before to reassure one of his play partners that the problem was with him. Randy got it, though. That business with Rumson had fucked up his world something awful.

  The door to the bar opened, and Randy glanced up and immediately stiffened. Twenty-five years in law enforcement let him recognize a cop as soon she walked in, even wearing plain clothes.

  Her black hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she wore a fitted, gray wool coat paired with dark jeans and boots with thick heels. At a guess she chose the heels to add to her height. She’d be about five foot five in bare feet. Randy covered a smile as he spotted a couple of women on one of the sofas discreetly check her out as she crossed the room to the bar.

  Randy thought quickly. No, his liquor license was up to date, and his permit for the gun he kept beneath the bar in case of trouble was also current. It must be about something else.

  The woman offered a badge as she reached him. “Good evening, sir. I’m Detective Torres, Metropolitan Police Department.” Randy glanced at the MPD badge and then back at her. “Do you have a minute for a few questions?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Detective Torres pulled a photo out of the inside pocket of her jacket and handed it to him. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Randy studied the picture. The face did look familiar—blond hair, hipster beard, and glasses. He was too young and scrawny for Randy’s tastes, but fairly nice-looking. “I think he was in here a few times, maybe,” Randy said after a minute.

  Torres accepted the picture back as she said, “He lived in the neighborhood. We’re looking for information on where he liked to hang out, who he knew.”

  “Knew? Lived?”

  “His name is Brian Gallagher. He was murdered in his apartment about ten days ago.” Torres watched his face carefully, but Randy didn’t fake his surprise.

  “I heard someone was killed, but it didn’t occur to me it might be someone who came in here.”

  “The victim talked to a friend the night he was murdered, and he mentioned that he had just left a bar. Do you think it was this one?”

  “What night was this?” Randy asked. He tried to think. He was usually good with faces, and a crawling sensation began to climb through his gut as his memory worked.

  “Saturday before last. The thirteenth,” Torres told him. “His friend said he came to meet a man but left early and went right home. From her phone log, this would have been about ten p.m.”

  Randy nodded. “Yeah, I remember him now. He came up to the bar to talk to one of my customers and started rubbing up against him. The customer turned him down, and the kid—Brian, you said?—started making a scene and then stormed out.”

  “Do you know the customer’s name?”

  Randy sighed to himself but tried to keep his face neutral. “Yes. It’s Thomas Scarborough. He’s actually an investor in the bar and a friend of mine.”

  Torres wrote notes on a pad. Without looking up, she asked, “Did Mr. Scarborough follow him out?”

  Randy shook his head. “No. He was at the bar quite a while after Brian left. I can give you some other names to corroborate that.”

  Torres flashed a glance up at him. “Ex-cop?” she asked.

  “I was a Secret Service agent until I retired last year. This is my bar.”

  Torres looked around and nodded. “Nice place.” She focused again on Randy. “Did you see anyone else follow Gallagher out?”

  “No, I didn’t notice anything like that. Saturdays are pretty busy, and there were a lot of people coming and going.”

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Scarborough. Can you give me his phone number?”

  “No, but I’ll give him your card if you leave one. He’s at a conference in Tokyo, I think, but he’s due back Sunday.”

  “You know his travel schedule?” Torres asked, her dark eyebrow arched.

  “Like I said, we’re friends,” Randy explained with a shrug. Torres asked his name, and he gave it. As she continued to scribble notes, he tilted his head toward the photo and said, “Papers called it brutal. Gay bashing?”

  Torres considered his question for a moment and then said, “We don’t think so. It appears he was targeted, but the attack was sexual in nature.”

  “Shit. Poor kid.”

  “Yeah. Here’s my card,” Torres said as she slid the small rectangle across the bar. She held the card down with her manicured nails, which were cut short and carried no nail polish. Randy approved the lack of color. It supported the air of gravity Torres cultivated. “I’d like to hear from Mr. Scarborough Monday morning so I don’t need to make another trip over here.” Randy nodded. Torres looked around the room one more time, and then her bootheels clicked lightly across the floor of the bar.

  As Randy slid the business card into his pocket, Zachary came back to the bar with his two new friends. They bought a round, and Zachary asked, “Did I see that woman flash a badge at you?”

  Randy shot him an annoyed look. “You wanna keep it down, kid? Cops are bad for business.”

  “Sorry. Just nosy. Ignore me.”

  Randy grunted and started to turn away, but then he said, “Watch yourself when you leave, okay? Someone was killed in the neighborhood. The police are investigating, but it makes me nervous.”

  “Actually Howard and Steve here want to take me to another bar, so we should be fine.”

  “Good. Stick together until this thing is sorted out.” He rapped his knuckles on the bar twice.

  THE MAN watched his computer monitors in a darkened room. A pair of silver-framed glasses were tossed nearby on the desk. The camera he had hidden beneath the counter that ran along the wall at Mata Hari provided a good view of the bar.

  He replayed the recording from a few hours earlier several times and watched carefully as the woman interviewed the bartender, showed her badge, and offered the photo. From this angle he could make out more of the exchange than he had been able to from inside the bar, where it had seemed prudent to remain at a distance from the officer. Even with no sound capability, the interaction was clear. Someone had connected the bar to that cretin he had punished.

  He would have to be more careful. The man drummed his fingers against his desk. He needed to get additional cameras in place, with more lines of sight. Then he could stop taking the reckless action of entering Mata Hari himself, just to be near. It would be difficult to stay away. But he had to do it until he was ready to lay the traces and draw his Beloved to him.

  The latest excrescence that had dared to go home with his Beloved had been in the bar as well, and was visible on the tape as he talked to the bartender. The rule was clear. If he stayed away from the Beloved, then there would be no need to chastise him. But the man thought this one, this blond boy, would break the rule. He stayed the night with the Beloved, and now he was back in Mata Hari sniffing around for more.

  The man gritted his teeth and thought about different ways to make the creature pay. Then his smile stretched cruelly as he came up with some very pleasant possibilities. If that one did indeed break the rule, then the rule would break him.

  Chapter 5

  ON MONDAY morning Thomas fingered the scrap of paper with the number Randy
had read to him over the phone. He felt reluctant to call the police for any reason after the treatment he was subjected to during the Rumson mess. But Brian Gallagher was dead, and if Thomas could help bring his killer to justice, he would talk to the detective.

  He pressed his intercom. “Anne, can you free up twenty minutes or so this afternoon on my schedule? I need to handle something personal.”

  “Yes, sir,” his secretary responded. After a few moments, she called him back to say she had moved a meeting, so he was free at one thirty.

  At the designated time, Thomas finished eating a chicken salad sandwich at his desk, threw away the wrapper, and closed his office door. He dialed the number Randy had given him and waited.

  “Torres,” he heard a woman say in clipped tones.

  “Detective, my name is Thomas Scarborough. Randy Vaughan at Mata Hari said you want to talk to me about Brian Gallagher.”

  He heard a chair squeak as Torres apparently sat down. “Thank you for calling, Mr. Scarborough. I understand you were in Tokyo?” Her tone was polite and friendly.

  Ah, we’re going to start with pleasantries.

  “That’s right. I spoke at a conference there. I just got back late last night.”

  “I appreciate you calling me quickly, then. So as I’m sure Mr. Vaughan told you, I’m investigating the murder on the thirteenth. How well did you know Mr. Gallagher?” she asked.

  “Well, I don’t really know him. Didn’t know…. I mean, I met him at the bar, we hooked up one time, and that was it.”

  “Is that a common practice for you, to hook up with someone you don’t really know?”

  Thomas bristled. “I don’t see how that’s relevant, but yes, I normally keep my sex life separate from my friends.”

  “No boyfriend?” Torres asked.

  Thomas snapped, “Oh, come on. I didn’t know I was calling in to a morals lecture.”

  “Mr. Scarborough, I couldn’t care less what you do in bed as long as it had nothing to do with Brian Gallagher’s death. But let me rephrase my question. Do you have a boyfriend who might get jealous about your hookups?”

  Thomas gritted his teeth. “No. No boyfriend. No lover, husband, wife, significant other, any of that.”

  “Thank you for that thorough answer.” Thomas could hear a pen scratching as she apparently took notes of their conversation. “Now help me with the timeline, please. When exactly did you meet Gallagher?”

  “It must have been on the sixth, because I think it was exactly a week before I saw him again. We met at Mata Hari that evening, talked for an hour or so, and then I took him home. He left a few hours later, and the next time I talked to him was on the thirteenth.”

  “What did you talk about the night you met?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. It was bar talk,” Thomas said. “He was flirting with me, and I was in the mood. We just exchanged the usual banter until we decided to leave together.”

  “Did he say anything to indicate he was worried? Maybe he had a boyfriend he was cheating on?”

  “No, he didn’t tell me anything like that. He seemed fairly relaxed, and I didn’t get the sense he was nervous or hiding.”

  “Okay. Where did you go when you left the bar?”

  “My apartment.”

  “And…?” Torres prompted.

  “And.” Thomas was exasperated. “We had sex. Is that what you want to know? We had sex. Then he left.”

  “How many times did you have sex?”

  What the fuck?

  “How can that be relevant?”

  “Humor me, Mr. Scarborough. This is a murder investigation, not a talk show. I’m not asking the details of your life for shits and grins.”

  Thomas ran a hand back through his hair and snorted. “Two times. We had sex twice. Then I showed him out about one in the morning.”

  “Impressive. My boyfriend hasn’t managed twice in the same night for about two years.”

  Thomas said drily, “I feel sorry for you, Detective.”

  She chuckled mirthlessly and continued her questions. “Did you exchange phone numbers or addresses with Gallagher?”

  “No. He asked for my number, in fact, and I said that wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Why wasn’t it a good idea?”

  “I don’t hook up with men more than once,” Thomas said. “I don’t like complications.”

  “No boyfriend. No repeats. Interesting.”

  Thomas could hear more scratching of her pen, and it began to bug the shit out of him. He barked into the phone, “Detective Torres, I only have twenty minutes. Is there anything you’d like to ask me about Brian Gallagher, or are you just going to armchair psychoanalyze me?”

  Her tone changed abruptly from friendly to serious. “Did you talk to Gallagher or see him between the time he left your apartment and the evening of the thirteenth?”

  “No, as I already said. And I didn’t expect to see him on the thirteenth either. I was in Mata Hari having a drink, and he came up to me.”

  “What did you talk about on the thirteenth?”

  “He started rubbing my shoulder, and he whispered that he wanted me to, umm, have sex with him again.”

  “I’m a cop. You can say ‘fuck.’ How did you respond?”

  “I was talking to someone else, so I shook his hand off my shoulder, and I said that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “By someone else do you mean another hookup?”

  “Maybe if you got laid more, you wouldn’t be as judgmental about my sex life.”

  “Maybe if you had talked to Gallagher, he’d still be alive.”

  Thomas inhaled sharply. “I’m not appreciating the abuse, Detective. I’ve given you my time, and you chose to waste it on your own personal bullshit. If you have no further relevant questions to ask, then I’m going to hang up now.”

  Torres ignored his fit of pique and continued to ask questions. “Who were you talking to when Gallagher approached you?”

  “A friend. Terry Krasnopoler. We chatted at the bar for about an hour, I think, after Gallagher came and went.”

  “Mr. Vaughan said he made a scene. Gallagher, I mean.”

  “Yes. When I told him we weren’t going to get together again, he asked me to go out with him for dinner, and I said that wasn’t going to happen either. He said some unflattering things about the size and firmness of my penis, grabbed my glass from the bar, and threw what was left of my scotch in my face. Then he slammed down the glass and left.”

  “And what did you do when he threw the drink in your face?”

  “Try not to sound so amused, Detective. It’s unprofessional. Randy gave me a bar towel to dry off my face and shirt, and I kept talking to Terry and to Randy.”

  “All right. When did you leave Mata Hari that night?”

  “It was about eleven. I don’t know exactly, but I was home by eleven thirty because I noticed the clock when I walked in.”

  “Who can confirm you were at the bar until eleven?”

  “Well, Randy, of course. And Terry was there talking for a while, but he left before me. Oh, and Miss Ethel. That’s Ethel Johnson. She plays piano at Mata Hari Tuesday to Saturday. I bought her a drink and chatted with her between sets that evening. I left when she went back to play.”

  “I’d like those names and their contact information to confirm your recollection of the time.”

  “All right,” Thomas said and read to her Terry and Miss Ethel’s full names and phone numbers from the contact app on his phone. “Should I assume I’m a suspect, Detective?” he asked calmly.

  “That’s a loaded word, Mr. Scarborough,” she answered. “You had a public altercation with a man who ended up dead a few hours later. Let’s leave it as person of interest for now.”

  “Let’s,” Thomas agreed caustically. “I had nothing to do with Brian Gallagher’s death, and you’ll note that I didn’t ask for a lawyer to be on the line when we spoke. But I’ll leave you to your investigation.”

  TORRES SA
T back in her chair after Scarborough disconnected the call. He’d confirmed some of the details from her prior interview of Sandra Yu, including that Scarborough and Gallagher had sex two times, Scarborough didn’t give his phone number, and Gallagher approached him without making a prior date. She circled that item in her notes. It meant Scarborough probably didn’t know in advance where Gallagher would be that night.

  She’d call the contacts he gave but felt little doubt they would also check out. On the other hand, Gallagher was likely killed between midnight and three a.m., so Scarborough’s timeline didn’t give him an alibi. Another moment’s thought, though, and she dismissed the point. Scarborough was clearly intelligent, and her quick research indicated he was a lawyer himself. If he were involved, he would likely have been more clever about his cover story.

  She deliberately tried to rile him up with the personal questions, but his answers didn’t set off her bullshit detector. Revenge over a public scene? Unlikely. Scarborough held an important political job. He wouldn’t have that with a flaring temper. Still her instincts told her Gallagher making a scene at the bar and then getting killed a few hours later was not a coincidence. Somehow he drew the wrong attention.

  She needed to do some more work on Thomas Scarborough.

  Chapter 6

  ZACHARY WOKE Sunday morning to the chirp of his cell phone. Blearily he checked the time—only eight thirty. Ugh.

  He didn’t recognize the displayed phone number but connected the call anyway. “’Lo,” he muttered, his mouth half-buried in his pillow.

  “Is this Zachary? I’m sure this was the number you left in your message. Darling, did I wake you?” It took Zachary a moment, but then he recognized the Boston accent.

  “Joe, hi. How are you?” Zachary asked with a yawn.

  “I did wake you. Oh dear. I’ll call back later.”

  “No, this is fine, Joe. I should get up anyway,” Zachary said as he rolled over and stretched in his bed.