The Dirt Peddler (4 page)

“Well,” I said after taking time to carefully put a dab of mint jelly on a piece of my Monte Cristo, “if you'll excuse me, I can't see that as really a very solid basis for blackmail. People spread rumors all the time; that doesn't mean they're true.”

“Well
this
one sure as hell isn't,” he said defensively.

Uh huh,
I thought. “I'm curious, though,” I said, “who else might have had access to your checkbook, or who else might have made an association between a check made out to a management company and any relationship, real or imagined, between you and Mr. Fletcher? Seems like quite a leap.”

He looked uncomfortable and shrugged. “Well, I did have to write ‘L. Fletcher Deposit' on the ‘Memo' line of the check.”

Aha!

“It seems to me your wife might have found that a little odd.”

Tunderew laughed briefly. “My wife?” he said, contemptuously. “She's so self-centered I don't even think she knows I'm gone. She wouldn't have the guts even if she had the intelligence, and she's dumber than a lamp post. And my checkbook is
my
checkbook,” he said firmly. “Besides, she has no reason to resort to blackmail. She's getting more than enough alimony to keep her happy. It's that fruit Fletcher.”

That's it, Charlie,
I thought.
One more ‘pansy' or ‘fruit' reference and I'm gone.

“You always keep your checkbook on you?”

Tunderew carefully speared an onion that had fallen from its blue plastic pick to the bottom of the glass before looking up at me.

“No, I keep it in my briefcase, which is usually locked.”

“But not always,” I said, making an obvious assumption. “And you don't have your briefcase with you every minute. Ever leave it lying around open?”

He thought for a moment. “Uh…I had it with me at that little dipshit publisher's one time, and I had it open to put in a galley proof of the book, and…” he pursed his lips “…and I left the office to take a piss, but I remember when I got back it was just where I'd left it. And what in hell reason would Bernadine have to rummage through my checkbook?”

“Did they know at that point that you were planning on dumping them with your second book?”

“No,” he said casually. “I hadn't officially accepted the advance offer yet. I didn't tell them until my agent had everything all sealed up with the new publisher.”

It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that an open briefcase might be somewhat tempting if Bernadine Press knew or suspected he was planning to jump ship…and check #2501 would have been the top check in a new set of twenty-five. Just lifting the cover of the checkbook would have shown it in carbon copy.

I took a long sip of coffee, carefully replacing the cup on the saucer, before speaking.

“Well, to be honest with you, Mr. Tunderew, knowing your aversion to faggots and considering that I am one, I might suggest you could be better served by going to the yellow pages and picking a private investigator with whom you might feel more comfortable.”

I was watching his face for any reaction to my letting him know I was gay myself, but there was none. He didn't bat an eye.

“I'm not stupid, you know.”

Really? You couldn't prove it by me,
I thought.

“Of course I could have contacted a heterosexual private investigator, but the nature of this…issue…would be better addressed by someone more familiar with it on a personal level. I deliberately asked Glen O'Banyon for a reference because I was pretty sure he'd recommend…a fellow traveler,” he said with a small, condescending smile. “I'm a very open-minded and practical man when it comes to my own best interest.”

I said nothing, having earlier decided against mopping the floor with him, but was still debating just getting out of my chair and leaving.

“I appreciate your candor.” I was again vaguely pleased by how calm I sounded. “Not very many bigots have the courage to be so open in a one-to-one, face-to-face situation.”

His smile returned. “Since I doubt we will ever be spending much quality time together, we don't have to like one another, Mr. Hardesty. But I understand that you are both discreet and good at what you do. And for you to turn me down, as I'm sure you've been considering doing, would only prove that you were as bigoted in your own way as you claim I am in mine. As a final incentive, I'm willing to pay half-again your normal rates in an effort to appeal to
your
own practical best interest.”

Well, I hate to admit it, but he had a point or two in there. And it occurred to me that probably the main reason he chose me was because he was so firmly convinced the blackmailer was Fletcher. His paranoia didn't want anyone straight—even a P.I.—to think he was gay. Tunderew may have been positive about Fletcher, but I'd bet the line of people with a good reason to blackmail him would stretch around the block.

“And if, on some very outside chance, it
isn't
Mr. Fletcher?” I asked again.

He just shrugged, removing the little pick with the two remaining onions from his glass. He closed his teeth just past the second onion and pulled the now-empty pick slowly from his mouth, then drained his drink, and dropped the pick back into the empty glass.

“It is. No question. He follows me around to book signings, keeps sending me love letters—I just tear them up without opening them.”

“How do you know they're ‘love letters' if you never open them?”

“I suggest you use your rubber hose on someone else, Mr. Hardesty. Larry Fletcher would be a good choice. Do you want the job or not?”

I knew that if I didn't take it, he would manage to find someone to go after Larry Fletcher and, guilty or not, he didn't deserve to be hounded by some ham-fisted straight P.I. with a Mickey Spillane complex. So while it was still against my better judgment, I found myself saying, “Okay, I'll take the case. I'll bring the contract, including a revision of my rate schedule, to your office—or…” I thought the mention of his office would spark a response and it did, because he broke in immediately.

“We don't need a contract. I just want you to put the fear of God into that little turd.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but I don't take any case without having a signed contract to protect both parties' interest.”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Very well, then. But just mail it to my post office box. I don't want anyone to know of our arrangement, and the post office box is more private. I'll sign it and get it back to you.”

“Fine.” I wondered idly why, if he didn't want to be seen hobnobbing with faggots, we were sitting in the front window of a popular restaurant within two doors of a bookstore promoting his book.

Oblivious to my thoughts, he nodded. “You'll go see him immediately, then? We only have until the fifteenth—that's just two days after I get my next royalty check, and I have far better things to do with the money.”

“The minute I get the signed contract and retainer,” I said as pleasantly as I could. I could see he wasn't too happy about that, but I couldn't care less. A big part of me was just looking for the slightest excuse to tell him to forget it.

*

On the walk back to my office—I'd insisted on paying for my own lunch, and he didn't object—I tried to figure out just why in the hell I had agreed to take this case. I've turned down cases before. Okay, not many, but… Actually, I think it had something to do with his remark about his trusting that I wasn't as much a bigot as he was.

And I was just nosy enough to want to know exactly what Fletcher—if it was Fletcher—
really
had on the guy. A check made out to a rental agency might look a little incriminating, but I couldn't really see it being much of a basis for blackmail. There was more going on here than Tunderew was letting on, and that he apparently thought I was too stupid to figure it out really pissed me off. But Fletcher or not, I suspected Tony T. Tunderew had quite a few skeletons rattling around in his…uh…closet. If it turned out Tunderew was gay, I might seriously consider turning in my membership card and joining a monastery. But I knew full well that being gay is not an automatic nomination for sainthood—straights don't hold a patent on obnoxious jerks.

As soon as I got in the door of the office, I filled out a contract, drew a line through my normal rates and wrote in the new figure above, and increased the amount of my retainer by the same percentage. I really sort of suspected…with no small element of hope in there…that I'd never hear from the guy again.

I checked the business card Tunderew had given me (I now had two, so I pitched the one Glen O'Banyon had given me at Hughie's) for the P.O. Box number he'd written on the back, addressed an envelope, and went out into the hall to drop it in the mail chute beside the elevators.

When I returned to the office, I called Glen's office and left word with Donna that I had met with Mr. Tunderew and would be taking the case.

I determined to put Tunderew out of my head until and unless I got the contract back with a check. But me being me, my mind kept going back to my meeting with the guy, and especially to Larry Fletcher. I was very curious about him for some reason. It was obvious that Tunderew had taken full advantage of the poor guy, though how Fletcher could possibly, as he apparently had done, fall for such an arrogant sonofabitch, I couldn't imagine. Well, some guys like to be treated like doormats. And I was very curious as to exactly what sort of “research” Fletcher was doing for him. That part was fairly easy to figure out:
Dirty Little Minds
just happened to be about a character everyone immediately recognized was based on Governor Keene—and Governor Keene had been a client of Craylaw and Collier. I'd be willing to bet that Tunderew had quit his job the minute he knew his book was sold, to avoid being canned. And he had to get rid of poor Larry Fletcher so there wouldn't be anyone around to verify that Tunderew had been snooping around the company's files. Whether Fletcher was the blackmailer or not, Tunderew was sending me after him as a warning to keep his mouth shut.

*

Jonathan was waiting at the door with my Manhattan—I'd glanced up at our apartment as I walked through the courtyard toward the door and saw him in the window with a spray bottle he used to mist some of the 14,000 plants we'd accumulated from his job at the nursery. Apparently he'd spotted me coming in.

We exchanged grins and a hug, and as always went directly to the couch to sit down. Jonathan already had his Coke on the coffee table.

“I saw Randy today at New Eden,” he said, “and asked him over for dinner. I told him Friday, if that's okay. I would have made it Thursday, but I've got class.”

“Friday's fine. How's the Dinsmores' new house coming along?”

He took a sip of his Coke. “They've already been living there for a couple of months now. We're just finishing up the yard. We just planted the last of the new trees today.” The look on his face told me he had something else to say, but was hesitant to do so for some reason.

“Something else?”

He gave me a quick, small grin.

“Can I take the car to work Friday? That way I can go directly from work out to New Eden to pick up Randy and bring him home. But that means you'd have to take the bus, and…”

As usual, we'd had our free hands resting on each other's thighs, and I gave him a quick squeeze. “You take the bus every day. I think I can manage to do it for one.”

His smile became a broad grin. “Thanks!” His face changed slightly into his “naughty little boy” look.

“Ya wanna play a game before dinner?”

“Sure!”

Jonathan was very much into the “Let's Pretend” brand of eroticism, and he'd gotten me pretty much hooked, too. It added a lot of spice—not that we really needed more—to our sex life. Usually they'd be set off by something specific—picking him up from class might spark an infinite number of variations on “The Hitchhiker,” or just coming home from grocery shopping would lead to a rousing “The Manager and the Stock Boy,” or…well, you get the idea. He always kept me on my toes, that's for sure.

“What do you want to play?” I noticed that my crotch was already responding enthusiastically to the prospect.

Jonathan set his Coke aside, got up, took my Manhattan from my hand and set it on the coffee table, then pulled me up from the couch.

“How about ‘The Hardworking P.I. and the Appreciative Lover'?”

Sounded good to me.

*

I could tell Jonathan was really looking forward to having Randy over for dinner, and I realized with some sense of empathy and maybe a touch of irrational guilt that Jonathan really didn't have any gay friends of his own—all our friends had been my friends first. He hadn't been in town all that long when I met him, and he'd been hustling all that time, so he really hadn't had a chance to make friends. I got the impression that he and Randy hadn't actually been that close, but it was as close as he got. And I suspected that while Jonathan might not realize it himself, he wanted to let someone know how far he had come since that time. He had every reason to be proud of himself.

As for Randy, from what Jonathan had told me of him, his life had been a classic horror story of abuse, abandonment, and neglect. His father had died in prison, and his drug-addict mother walked out on him when he was six. He was placed in the revolving door of the foster care system, where he became a chronic runaway. At thirteen, he ran and never came back. He'd been living on the streets, and hustling ever since. I could not comprehend a life like that. With New Eden, he had the chance for some real stability for the first time in his life.

Jonathan had insisted on buying all the ingredients for dinner himself, including a very large roast. He got up early Friday morning to peel potatoes and carrots, arranging them carefully around the roast in a Dutch oven, then rearranging the refrigerator to make room for it. He'd done all this by the time I got up, and before he left for work instructed me to put it in the oven at 350 degrees the minute I got home. I assured him I'd try to set the table before he arrived.