“I’ll be glad to help if I can,” I said. “Would you like to get together and discuss it?”
“Yeah, the sooner the better,” he said. “What’s your schedule?”
“I’ve got something on for this morning,” I said, remembering some papers I had to run by Glen O’Banyon’s office. “But I should be free from noon on.”
“Good. Why don’t you come by here, say, one-thirty?” He gave me his address, and I assured him I’d be there.
With his being the only message on the machine, I settled into my morning routine—fixing a pot of coffee and sitting at my desk to read the paper. I took my time doing the crossword puzzle—in pen, a small concession I make to vanity even though I occasionally have to scratch out one letter or word to squeeze in another—and spent an hour or so doing miscellaneous paperwork.
Around half-past ten I headed to Glen O’Banyon’s office with the material I’d gathered for him for one of his cases. He was, not surprisingly, in court, so I left the packet with the office receptionist with the request she give it to his secretary, Donna.
Since I still had quite a bit of time to kill before going to Brewer’s, I called Evergreen, the nursery where Jonathan worked, to see if he might be available for lunch. Often, he’d be out on some landscaping project, but occasionally he would be working in the nursery yard. I try not to disturb him at work as a rule, but there were exceptions; and his boss didn’t seem to mind as long as he didn’t abuse the privilege.
Luckily, it was a yard day for him, so I arranged to pick him up at eleven thirty.
We’d been together now for—What? Three years?—and especially now, with Joshua, the chance to steal a little private time with him still gave me that hard-to-describe rush you get when you’ve just started dating someone special. Okay, so I’m a marshmallow. Sue me.
Chapter 5
I’d thought the address Brewer gave me sounded familiar and it was—2720 Foster was two blocks south of Arnwood, where many of the city’s gay bars, including the Male Call, were located. The Male Call itself was in the 2700 block of Arnwood. I wish I lived that close to my work.
Though Arnwood was heavily commercial and not by any stretch of the imagination fashionable, Foster was a typical residential street of mostly older single-family homes. Unlike its neighbors, 2720 was surrounded by a thick but neatly trimmed hedge, broken only by a wood-gated front entrance and hedge-lined driveway leading to a single-car garage at the rear of the house.
The front gate was not locked and I saw no sign of a bell, so I just walked through and up to the porch of the story-and-a-half house. The front door was open behind the screen door, and I could hear music coming from somewhere inside. I was looking directly through the living room into a hallway and what I assumed to be the kitchen at the back of the house. I knocked, and a moment later a large backlit form appeared in the hall and moved toward me. As it got closer, I recognized Carl Brewer from the bar.
Tall, shaved-head bald with two large, heavy-looking silver hoop earrings, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties, and some of the mass of his torso had moved south, but he wore tight faded jeans and a black leather vest with no shirt to display his tattooed shoulders.
Opening the screen with his left hand, he extended his right as I entered.
“Thanks for coming,” he said as we shook. “Come on back to the kitchen.”
I followed him through the house, noting that it was a lot neater than our place and obviously masculine without being overpoweringly butch. The kitchen table, I saw as we entered, was covered with newspapers on which some sort of engine was being eviscerated, with a confusing number of screws, bolts, and mysterious assortment of unrecognizable parts scattered around.
“Fixing one of my bikes,” Brewer explained, indicating the table. “Like a beer?” he asked. “Or coffee?”
I noticed a partially filled cup of coffee on one side of the table and a half-f carafe in the coffeemaker on the counter. A small radio beside it was tuned to the Big Bands station, playing Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls.”
“Coffee’d be good,” I said. “Black.”
He gave me a slightly raised eyebrow of what I took as approval then moved to the cupboard above the coffeemaker for another cup.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating one of the large round-topped wooden spindle chairs on my side of the table. I pulled one out and sat down as he filled my cup and refilled his own, returning the carafe and taking his own seat, leaning forward to set my cup in front of me.
Resting both forearms on the table, he said, “So, I’ve got a problem.”
“So I heard,” I said. “It’s getting rough out there.”
He shrugged and took a swallow of his coffee. “No shit.”
I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to get to it at his own pace. Finally, he looked up from his coffee and directly at me.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not stupid. I know this AIDS thing is spread through sex and I know that a lot of my customers don’t come to the Male Call just for the beer. I shut down the back room to cut back on sex in the bar itself and I lost some business because of it, but I can only do so much. I’m not these guys’ mother. If they want to stick a loaded gun in their mouth or up their ass and pull the trigger, I can’t stop them. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, and the only thing I can do about it is try to see they don’t do it in my bar.”
He paused. “Jeezus!” he said. “This whole thing is a fuckin’ disaster! I’ve had the Male Call for twenty years and there’s never been a problem. Guys come in, they meet friends, they drink, they shoot the shit, they use the back room if they want to get their rocks off and then they go home. But now…” He shook his head slowly. “Now these guys are dying! Guys I’ve known for years! That’s not bad enough without me hearing shit about somebody from my bar deliberately spreading AIDS? I can’t believe it!”
We each took another swallow of our coffee before he continued, again prefacing his remarks with a deep sigh.
“Like I said, I’m not stupid. I know that some of my customers must have it without knowing it and that they’re probably passing it on to their tricks. That’s one of the reasons I shut down the back room. I wish to hell there were something more I could do to prevent it, but there isn’t.
“But having AIDS and spreading it accidentally is one thing. Deliberately…” He shook his head disbelievingly. “If I can’t prove who’s behind these rumors and do something about it,” he said after a minute, “I won’t have any customers left. But I’m not about to lose my bar because of gossip that someone from the Male Call is deliberately killing people.”
I took a swallow of coffee. “Which brings me to the question of exactly how you intend to stop the rumors? Spreading rumors isn’t a crime.”
“No, but slander is, and I’ve got the best lawyer in the city, who I’ll bet can find a whole shitload of other grounds to sue the ass off whoever’s responsible.”
Being able to pin a rumor to just one source struck me as a classic case of the needle in the haystack. I was pretty sure the lawyer he was talking about was Glen O’Banyon but didn’t say anything.
“I gather you have an idea of who might be responsible?”
He nodded. “Pete Reardon. No question. But unless I get some proof…”
Reardon and Brewer, I knew, had been bitter business rivals for years. Reardon had spent two years in prison following the firebombing of his bar, the Dog Collar—the deadliest fire in the city’s history—which killed twenty-nine gay men, including a friend of mine. Reardon had been convicted of criminal negligence for violation of safety codes that contributed to the high death toll.
Though the bomber, whose identity was common knowledge in the community, had never gone to trial for reasons too complicated to go into here, Reardon refused to accept that he had acted alone, and always believed Brewer had a hand in it. When he got out of jail, he opened a new leather bar, the Spike, to try to pick up the competition with the Male Call where it had left off.
But the Spike never remotely achieved the popularity of the Dog Collar, probably because Reardon was too closely associated with the disaster. He refused to accept that and blamed Carl Brewer for the bar’s lack of success. So, I had to admit, he would probably be at the top of any list of suspects.
But I also fully knew, as I’m sure Brewer did, that there could be any number of other people who had a real or imagined grudge against the Male Call and/or its owner. The Male Call wasn’t a bar for sissies, and a lot of ultra-butch types tended to bear ultra-butch grudges.
I wasn’t quite sure how to bring up my next point, but as usual when I don’t know how to do something, I just went ahead and jumped in.
“What if it’s true?” I asked. “What if someone from the Male Call is deliberately spreading AIDS?”
“No,” Brewer said emphatically. “I can’t accept that. I won’t. The idea that somebody’s out to ruin me’s one thing. But that anybody from the Male Call could be sick enough—and I don’t mean physically—to deliberately spread AIDS…no, I won’t buy it.”
I could appreciate his position, but I learned long ago not to rule anything or anyone out.
We sat in relative silence, finishing our coffee, until Brewer said, “Well, you think you can help me?”
I drained my cup and pushed it far enough onto the table it couldn’t easily be knocked off.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“That’s all I can expect,” he said. “And if there’s anything you need from me, just let me know.”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” I said. “You and your crew can start making a list. Every time you hear anyone mention the rumor, try to pin down exactly where and from whom they got it. I’ll do the same and check with my connections at some of the other bars. I know they’ve all heard the same story and will be glad to help. We can work backwards from there. It’s a really long shot, but it’s worth taking.”
I thought a minute before adding, “And you might also make me a list of anyone other than Pete Reardon you think might have a grudge against either you or the Male Call. Have you fired anyone lately? Any trouble in the bar?”
“Well,” he said, “the Male Call ain’t exactly nursery school, but it’s not one continual brawl, either. Every now and then a couple of the guys will square off, but it’s usually more show than substance. And I’ve had to fire a couple of bartenders over time, sure. That’s the nature of the bar business. But I can’t think of anybody other than Pete, or any incident that might have given anyone reason to start this kind of shit.”
“Well, if you could get me a list of the guys you’ve fired and anyone you’ve eighty-sixed over the past three or four months before these rumors started, I’d appreciate it. And I’d also like a list of the Male Call’s customers who’ve become sick or died.”
Brewer nodded with each point I made, and I hoped he would remember them all. He’d better—his business future depended on it, not to mention the lives of his customers.
“So,” he said, “we need a contract or something?”
“I’ll write one up and bring it in to the bar tonight around ten, if you’ll be there,” I said.
He nodded. “I’m there every night.”
“Okay,” I said as we stood. “I’ll see you later, then.”
“And I’ll start making up those lists,” he said as we headed for the front door.
*
“I’ll wait up for you,” Jonathan said as I picked up the envelope containing Brewer’s contract and got ready to leave. Joshua was already asleep. “You won’t be gone long, will you?”
“I certainly don’t expect to be.” I’d told him about my meeting with Brewer and everything we’d covered. “But you go on to bed. How long I’ll be depends on whether he wants to go over anything else. And, of course, on whether a couple of those leather guys decide to tie me up and do all sorts of unspeakable things to me.”
“Hey!” He scowled in mock seriousness. “I’m the only one allowed to do unspeakable things to you! Remember that!”
I gave him a big hug and a kiss. “How could I forget?” I said. “But don’t wait up—you’ve got work in the morning.”
He sighed. “Okay. But you be careful.”
I didn’t ask what he thought I should be careful of, but I appreciated his concern and merely smiled. “I promise,” I said and left.
*
Granted, Monday night isn’t typically a busy night for any bar, but I was still surprised when I walked into the Male Call at exactly ten and found no more than ten guys in the place, including the bartender. Normally, there’d have been at least twice that many.
Carl Brewer sat at the far end of the bar talking with a guy in full motorcycle drag—I’d noticed a bike parked by the door. Since there were two or three other customers in regular street clothes, I didn’t feel too out of place as I went to the bar to order a beer. I’d just paid the bartender, a shirtless hunk whose thick forest of chest hair couldn’t hide a magnificent set of pecs, and taken a swig when Brewer looked up and saw me. Saying something to the guy he was talking with, he swung around on his stool and got up to come over to me.
“Punctual, I see,” he said as we shook hands.
“I try to be.”
He gave a nod to indicate the envelope I’d laid on the bar in front of my stool. “Why don’t you bring that into the office. I’ve got a couple of things for you, too.”
I picked up the envelope, and carrying my beer, followed him around the end of the bar and down a long and typically dimly lit hall with a pay phone, a cigarette machine, two side-by-side doors, each marked Restroom—gender specification unnecessary. A pair of closed double doors with a hand-lettered cardboard sign saying “Closed,” I knew from having visited the bathroom when I was last there with Jared, led to the famous (or infamous, depending on where you stood on the prude scale) back room.