The Dirt Peddler (3 page)

“Mr. Hardesty, this is Tony T. Tunderew…”

Gee, thanks for putting the middle initial in there, Tony,
I thought.
I wouldn't have had a clue which Tony Tunderew this was without it.

“…my secretary just told me you'd called.”

Your secretary. Sure, Tony.

“Glen O'Banyon tells me you're having some sort of problem.”

He gave a dramatic sigh. “I'll tell you, Mr. Hardesty, since
Dirty Little Minds
first hit the
NY Times
Best Sellers list…”

Just in case I didn't know,
I thought.

“…I've had nothing but problems. Fame is a hard taskmaster.”

Okay, so now that we've firmly established the fact that you're famous
and
a pompous ass, can we get on with it?
my mind asked.

“So which particular problem can I help you with?” I asked, although of course I already knew. I just wanted to see how he'd handle it.

There was a slight pause and the sound of throat clearing.

“Well, I can't go into it on the phone. We should really get together to discuss it. And I like to get the measure of the people I deal with before committing myself to anything.”

Hooo, boy! Like
he's
doing
me
a favor!

“Of course. Why don't I come by your office and…”

“Uh, no. Why don't we meet for lunch today? At the Brambles, say?”

The Brambles was a caviar and truffles restaurant located in the main building of the Birchwood Country Club—the city's most exclusive. The Brambles deigned to accept reservations from non-country-club members, as long as they were rich and famous. However, it did have its own entrance to keep any non-Birchwood members from getting too close to the real members. I sincerely doubted that Tunderew was a member of the country club, but I knew damned well he'd like me to
think
he was.

“Well, that's very nice of you, Mr. Tunderew, but I've got a pretty full schedule today, and the Brambles is quite a distance. Could we make it at Michael's?”

I could have, of course, just suggested he come by my office, but I suspected that he preferred to be out among his adoring public. Michael's was one of the oldest restaurants in the city: good food, not cheap but not in the Brambles' price range by any means. It was quite popular with the business set, so I figured Tunderew wouldn't consider it too far beneath him.

There was another slight pause and then, “Yes, Michael's will be fine. I'll call for a table. Twelve or twelve thirty?”

“Twelve thirty will be fine. I'll look forward to it.”

“Fine. I'm sure you won't have any trouble spotting me. I look exactly like the photo on the dust jacket of my book.”

I did not want to burst his little bubble by admitting I'd never so much as picked up a copy of
Dirty Little Minds
and so hadn't a clue what he might look like. Well, there was a bookstore two doors down from Michael's, which I'm sure he knew. I'd take a quick run in there and check. And I was mildly bemused by the fact that he didn't ask how he might be able to spot me. I'm sure he didn't care.

*

Michael's was within walking distance of my office, so thanks largely to a blustery wind at my back all the way, I made it in plenty of time to go into the bookstore to see if I could find a copy of
Dirty Little Minds
. Since fully one half of an entire display window was stacked with them, that didn't prove to be much of a problem. I went in, idly picked a copy off the nearest table, and turned it over. Tony T. Tunderew turned out to be a rather handsome man who for some inexplicable reason reminded me of a used-Mercedes dealer or an unctuous maître d'. He was wearing a bulky-knit turtleneck sweater of the type favored by Cape Cod fishermen and famous authors, leaning against some sort of rough-wood wall, staring intently into the camera, his arms folded across his chest.

I laid the book carefully back on the pile and left.

I paused briefly, upon catching a glimpse of myself in a window, to quickly run a comb through my hair so I didn't look quite so much like I'd just stuck my finger in a light socket. When I entered the restaurant, I made a quick look around the crowd—Michael's always did a good business and it was, after all, the lunch hour—but no sign of Tunderew. I noted there were two tables—one toward the far wall and one in the center of the large front window, with small “Reserved” cards, and I was pretty sure I knew that if Tunderew had called for reservations, which one was for him.

A moment later the door opened and a dapper-looking Tony T. Tunderew entered, wearing a neat blue blazer over a smoke-grey turtleneck sweater. He looked as though he had just gotten out of the barber's chair, and despite the gale-force winds didn't have a hair out of place. I hate people like that.

He didn't even look at me as he headed toward the door to the dining room, until I said, “Mr. Tunderew?”

His eyes immediately went from my face to my hands, apparently to see if I was an adoring fan carrying a copy of his book. Seeing that I wasn't, he must have made the connection, because he said, “Mr. Hardesty?”

We shook hands and exchanged the usual requisite greetings as a waiter came up with two menus.

“Mr. Tunderew's table, please,” Tunderew said, and the waiter smiled, nodded, and gestured us into the room. We followed him to—where else?—the table in front of the window.

“I'll have a vodka Gibson,” Tunderew said as soon as we were seated and as the waiter was handing us the menus. “Three onions,” he added, and the waiter nodded again, then looked at me.

“Whiskey sour.” I figured if we were into slightly obscure drinks, I'd go along.

After ascertaining that we would wait a few minutes before ordering, the waiter went off to get our drinks.

“So exactly how might I be able to help you?” I didn't see much point in wasting time.

Tunderew tugged at the collar of his turtleneck with an index finger, then reached for his glass of water.

“I'm being blackmailed,” he said after taking a sip of water and replacing his glass on the table.

I tried to look as if I hadn't known all along. “Any idea who?”

He looked at me with mild disdain. “I know exactly who.”

That rather caught me by surprise, since O'Banyon hadn't mentioned that part—if Tunderew had even told him.

The waiter arrived with our drinks and asked if we were ready to order. We asked for more time, and he left.

“And exactly what does the blackmailer think he has against you?”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Totally circumstantial bullshit.”

Somehow I doubted that. “If you know who it is, have you confronted him…or her?”

Tunderew shook his head strongly from side to side. “
Oooh, no!
I'm not going near that little piece of shit! I don't want to give him an ounce of encouragement!”

Well, that was all pretty cryptic, I thought. “May I ask why?”

“Because I can't afford a scandal, no matter how ridiculous, of course.”

“And this particular scandal might involve…?”

His look changed to one of total disgust. “My being a faggot.”

Chapter 2

I couldn't resist the temptation.

“And are you?” I asked, taking an oddly perverse delight in watching him turn beet red.

“Of course not!” he spat, a fate-worse-than-death look of revulsion on his face.

“Then on exactly what is he basing the blackmail? And how did you find out about it?”

We both took a healthy swallow of our drinks while he regained his composure. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, which he slid across the table to me. I took it and opened it. There was a single sheet of paper inside with the typed words: “Check #2501 is worth a hell of a lot more than $375. Say, $10,000? Cash. POB 324, 1815 Mercer Blvd. By the 15th.”

I returned it to the envelope and slid it back across the table to him.

“And exactly why might Check #2501 be worth more than $375? What was the $375 for?”

He stared at me for a long moment, slowly rotating his glass with his thumb and middle finger. Finally, he took in a deep breath and said, “There was this faggot who worked at Craylaw and Collier in the research department…Larry Fletcher…a real pansy….”

Well, now,
there's
a word that went out of fashion somewhere around 1927
, I thought, in a not very successful attempt to remain calmly objective.

The waiter returned to the table and we broke off the conversation long enough to look quickly at the menu and order. Actually, I didn't really have to look. Michael's was one of the few places in town that served a Monte Cristo sandwich, complete with a powdered sugar top and mint jelly on the side, and I ordered it every time I had occasion to come in. And while our conversation thus far had pretty much taken my appetite away, I wasn't about to deny myself a Monte Cristo.

Tunderew watched the waiter depart, then resumed his story. “Anyway, this little Nurse Nancy took a real shine to me, always hanging around, always asking if there was something he could do for me—well, I sure as hell could figure out what that little fudge-packer had in mind.”

Where in hell does he come up with this stuff?
my mind asked casually, as an alternative to my reaching across the table and ripping his lungs out.

Apparently mistaking my silence for intense interest, he kept right on.

“I had a pretty high-pressure position at C&C, so I let him do some little look-up things for me. He was in faggot heaven! All I had to do was ask, and he was right there. I used to get a kick out of giving him a best-buddy smile or maybe a little wink—especially when I knew that he might have to bend company policy to get what I wanted. He'd practically cream his jeans. I even had him running errands for me during his lunch hour. Made my life a lot easier, that's for sure.” He gave a little self-satisfied chuckle. “We had enough faggots at C&C to open an interior decorating studio—I've heard that old man Collier was a little light in the loafers himself, and liked to hire his own kind.”

Oh,
please
let's punch him! Can we?
several of my little mind-voices said eagerly.

“You still haven't told me just how the check enters into it.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know that old saying that no good deed goes unpunished?”

“I've heard it.”

“Well, I go out of my way to help somebody—some little fruit, no less—and it comes back to bite me on the ass!”

He had my full attention. “You wrote a check to Mr. Fletcher?”

He pulled his head back quickly as if ducking something I'd just thrown at him.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asked, rhetorically. “I wouldn't be caught dead writing a check to some little faggot!”

Well, you're going to be writing one soon to a not-so-little faggot if I'm crazy enough to take this case,
I thought.

He gave a dramatic sigh and continued. “Okay, it's like this. I told you that I had him do some little research projects for me on the side—nothing important, just stuff I didn't have time to do myself. Granted, as I said, some of them involved looking into places he shouldn't have been looking, but…anyway, he comes to me one day and tells me he has to quit work and move back home to Bumfuck, Arizona or someplace. Seems some other faggot he was living with threw a hissy-fit and told him he had to move, and he'd found a place, but he didn't have the money for the deposit. So I gave it to him—strictly a loan! I realize now, though, that it was just the first step in his little extortion scheme. But I guess I was just too naive to recognize it at the time.”

Naive. Uh huh.

“As I say, I wasn't stupid enough to make it out to him. I made it to the apartment building's management company. Still, it wouldn't take much to link the two things together if anybody wanted to—and I know damned well there are people out there who'd love nothing better. Well, that's what I get for being a nice guy.”

I was glad I wasn't in the process of taking a sip of coffee or I'd probably have choked on it.

“Anyway,” he continued, oblivious to the small wisps of steam curling up from my ears, “he apparently took my generosity as a sign of true love, and I could tell from the looks I started getting from some of the other office fruits that little Larry was telling his girlfriends stories about me. That did it. The week before I quit myself, I saw to it that little Larry got his faggot ass fired.”

“Which brings us to what you expect me to do about all this. If you're so sure it's Mr. Fletcher, you could just go down to the post office and wait to catch him opening the box.”

“For one thing, it's not a post office box. It's one of those commercial places where they just forward mail on to somewhere else. They told me I'd need a court order before they could reveal who took out the box, but they didn't have to. As I told you I know who it is.”

The waiter arrived with our food, and it's a tribute to Michael's chefs that I was able to override my loss of appetite. We waited until the waiter had left and we'd picked up our forks to begin eating.

“So what exactly would you like me to do?” I asked finally.

Tunderew snorted in disgust. “I just want you to let him know he's not going to get away with it. All I know is that I sure as hell am not going to start showing up in the tabloids as a queer! I've got a reputation to protect!”

Oh, I'm sure you've got a reputation,
my mind agreed.
But why in the world would you want to protect it?

I'd concentrated on trying to eat while he talked, partly as another form of distracting my urge to get up and walk out, after first shoving his three-onion vodka Gibson up his ass.