I definitely wanted to talk with Reardon, but I preferred to see what other people had to say first. I looked at my watch and decided I had time before the end of the day to run over to the Spike. I mainly wanted to talk to Val right now. If Reardon happened to be there, too, I’d play it by ear.
Like the Male Call, the Spike was on Arnwood, though at the opposite end of the strip of gay bars. I left the office around three and headed over. I was counting on the fact there wouldn’t be much of a crowd at that time of day, and I was right. There were maybe four guys in the place, including the bartender, who if I had seen him on the street I would have easily pegged as a bartender in a leather bar—black skin-tight T-shirt over a solid body, a rugged, heavily pockmarked face, close-cropped black hair, overtly butch. In this town’s leather bars, image may not be everything, but it beats whatever comes in second by a mile.
He looked up from putting a case of beer in the cooler under the bar as I approached.
“What’ll it be?” he asked, eschewing such fruity preambles as “Hi.”
“A Bud,” I said, and he nodded, reaching back into the cooler.
I handed him a bill and my card, which he glanced at only cursorily.
“You’re Val, right?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You got a minute to talk?” I asked.
He looked at me suspiciously. “About what?”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said, indicating my card with a nod of my head, “and I’m looking into the rumors about someone deliberately spreading AIDS.”
“I don’t repeat rumors,” he said.
“I wasn’t saying you did,” I replied. “But you hear them, and I’d like to know if you’ve heard any specific names mentioned, either people or places. I know you’re sharp enough to be able to tell which stories have some truth in them and which are just made up.”
“Why did you come to me?” he asked, suspicious.
I didn’t want him to make any connection between me and Brewer.
“Because I understand you worked at the Male Call and you probably have a better idea than most guys of what was going on over there.”
He seemed to relax a bit. “Yeah,” he said finally, “maybe I did. And they’re a lot more than just rumors.”
“How do you know?”
He glanced up and down the bar to see if anyone needed attention, and seeing they didn’t, he leaned forward, putting both forearms on the bar. I automatically moved forward on my stool.
“Too many guys from the Male Call getting sick. That’s why I left.”
Actually, I knew he left because Brewer fired him for tapping the till.
“Yeah, well, a lot of guys are getting sick,” I said. “I’ll wager every bar in town’s been affected by it.”
He nodded. “Sure. There’s been a couple I know of from here—but they all used to go to the Male Call, too, and I’ll be willing to bet that’s where they got it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” I said. “Do you have any proof?”
“Well, I got a buddy came to visit me from San Francisco four months or so ago. I was workin’ the Male Call, and he came down while I was on duty. The rumors were already starting, so I warned him against goin’ into the back room. One night he decided to go to the baths and said he’d made it with a guy he recognized from the Male Call, although the guy didn’t recognize him.
“Anyway, Bart said the guy was really hot but a little weird. For one thing, he wouldn’t wear a condom, and for another, as soon as they got in the room and before the guy took his towel off, he unscrewed the light bulb so the room was totally dark. Bart thought it was pretty strange that a guy that butch wouldn’t want to be seen totally naked.
“Anyway, he told me that when they were through and he was leavin’ the room, the guy puts his towel back on and says to him, ‘I gave you a little somethin’ to remember me by.’ Bart thought the guy was just referring to the screwing. He didn’t think much of it until last week, when he called to tell me he’s got it. He said he realized the minute he found out that’s what the guy in the bath meant.”
It occurred to me that if his friend lived in San Francisco, it was just as likely, if not more so, that he contracted it there. But I decided just to hear Val out.
“I don’t suppose he got the guy’s name,” I said. “The one from the bath?”
He looked at me as though I were not quite bright, and he was right—baths are not a place for exchanging names.
“He didn’t have to. When he described him and said the guy wouldn’t use a rubber, I knew who it was.”
“So, who was it?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.
“Cal Hysong. You know him?”
“I know of him,” I said. “Did you say anything to Carl Brewer? He might want to know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t owe him shit.”
I shrugged. “No, you don’t. But if it is Cal, what about all the guys he might be passing it on to?”
“That’s not my problem. If they’re dumb enough to have sex with somebody who won’t use a rubber, they’ve only got themselves to blame. Even Bart. Problem is, Cal’s so fucking butch most guys’d throw safety out the window to get him into bed. Cal’s the boss—he says, you do, and you don’t argue or he’ll drop you like a hot rock and get the next guy in line.”
“But in order for someone to pass it on, they have to have it themselves,” I said. “You think Cal’s got it, then?”
He paused, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “Well, he looks okay,” he admitted. “But what about that—what was her name? Typhoid Mary? She didn’t look sick, but she killed a lot of people.”
He had a point.
“And you haven’t spoken to Cal about it personally, I assume?” I asked.
He looked at me and shook his head slowly. “Are you fucking crazy? You say somethin’ he doesn’t want to hear, he’ll kick your ass from here to next Tuesday without blinking!”
“But you’re sure it’s him?”
“All I’m saying is he’d better watch his ass. Anybody who brags about handing out AIDS won’t have to worry about dyin’ of it—somebody’s gonna see to it he never lives that long.”
A guy at the far end of the bar signaled for a drink, and Val pushed away from the bar and moved off toward the waiting customer.
*
Since Jonathan wanted to stop on his way home from work to register for his final semester at Grant Tech, I’d volunteered to pick Joshua up from day care; I made it just in time. Several of the parents were arriving as I did, and we exchanged smiles and hellos as we walked up onto the porch to begin collecting our various kids, who ranged in age from two to five years.
I thought again of just how lucky we were to have found the place. The Bronson sisters, Bonnie and Estelle, who owned and operated Happy Day Day Care, were former schoolteachers who, being lesbians themselves, wanted to start a day care specifically for the children of gay and lesbian parents.
Since Happy Day was right on Jonathan’s way home from work, he normally picked Joshua up. Whenever I did the honors Joshua and I engaged in a little ritual involving me giving him a piggyback ride to the car.
“I’m tall,” he proclaimed from his lofty perch on my back.
“Yeah, and you’re getting heavy, too,” I said. “How about next time you carry me?”
“Sure!” he said, undaunted.
*
Just before dinner, Mario called to say the guy he’d mentioned to me—Allen somebody—had been in for Happy Hour, and Mario had given him my work number. The guy had said he’d call.
Not having heard anything from him by half-past ten Thursday morning, I took out the list of the Male Call’s fired bartenders. I dialed the number Brewer had given me for the first name on the list, Ted Murray. No answer and no machine. I figured if he was working at another bar, he might still be sleeping, so I made a note to call later.
Even though I’d put Daddy-O’s on our Friday bar tour, I decided that as long as I was on the phone, I’d try to give Scotty DeVose a call and maybe be able to substitute another bar on Friday. However, I got a “the number you have reached is no longer in service” message, and information had no new number for him. I knew Daddy-O’s didn’t open until around four, so made a note to call there when I got home to see if Scotty was still around.
I’d already talked to Val and planned to talk to Ray Croft during our bar rounds on Friday. The last name on the list was Clayton Poole, the one Brewer thought might have left town. His number, too, was disconnected, and again, information didn’t have a new number for him.
I took an early lunch then tried Ted Murray’s number again. I was in luck.
“Yeah?” a voice said after the third ring.
“Ted Murray?” I asked.
“Yeah? Who’s this?”
“My name’s Dick Hardesty,” I said, “and I’m a private investigator. I understand you worked at the Male Call.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So, I’m checking with everyone I can locate from the Male Call about these rumors of someone from there deliberately spreading AIDS. Bartenders hear everything, and I wondered what you might have heard.”
“Hell, you know rumors. I normally just ignore ’em, but this one’s coming out of the woodwork. I’m at the Tool Shed now, and I’m still hearing ’em.”
“Any specifics?”
“Like I said, you know rumors—they’re pretty short on specifics. But they all involve the Male Call.”
“Any idea why?”
“You’ve been there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, you know it’s almost a glorified bath house for all the sex that went on there before they closed the back room. You remember how dark that back room was? Two lousy little twenty-five-watt light bulbs, plus any light that might come in when the doors opened.”
I didn’t tell him I’d never actually been in the back room, but I did remember the dark hallway and thought that even opening the door all the way wouldn’t have let in much additional light.
“Well, somebody was always unscrewing the two bulbs so the room would be pitch black—everything’s done by feel, if you know what I mean. There might be ten, fifteen guys in there at any one time. Not knowing who you’re with adds to the mystery, I guess. Carl always threw a shit fit when that happened—fire laws say every room has to have some sort of illumination.
“Anyway, I started hearing stories from guys who’d been in the back room when all the lights were out saying that someone was going around screwing guys in the pitch dark, then whispering, ‘And now you’re dead,’ after he’d finished.”
“And nobody wondered what he meant by that?” I asked.
“Who knows why anybody says anything?”
“Any idea who it was?”
“Hard to tell in the dark, other than that the guy was really big. The Male Call’s got a lot of really big guys as regulars, and a lot of them were in and out of the room. But I’ll bet you anything it was Cal Hysong.”
I was beginning to suspect that might be a fairly safe bet. But whether it was Hysong or not, if what Murray said was true it would clinch both the rumors of someone deliberately spreading AIDS and the tie-in to the Male Call. I couldn’t be sure Val wasn’t just saying it to get back at Brewer for firing him, but it could be a significant piece of the puzzle and I wasn’t about to let go of it.
We talked for another minute or two, then I thanked him for his help and we hung up.
A few minutes later, the phone rang.
“Hardesty Investgations,” I said after the third ring.
“Yes. This is Allen Gilford calling. The manager at Venture gave me your number and asked me to call. I understand you have some questions about my friend Jesse’s death.”
“That I do,” I said, “and I really appreciate your calling. I understand your friend…Jesse…told you he thought someone had deliberately given him AIDS?”
There was a pause, followed by a sigh. “Yes.” Another pause. “I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. How could anyone do something like that? But Jesse said it was true, and he’s dead and…”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said, and I truly was. “But can you tell me everything you remember about what he said? Did he get the guy’s name? A description? Where did they meet? Anything at all you can tell me will help.”
“Jesse and I had been friends since high school,” he began, “and he was always fascinated by butch men—leather men, in particular. But though he wasn’t at all feminine, he never went to leather bars because he thought he wouldn’t fit in. One night he went to the Tool Shed—it’s as close to being a leather bar as he felt comfortable going to—and met this guy. Jesse said he couldn’t believe his luck. He said the guy was the butchest guy he’d ever seen.”
Another pause and sigh, then, “Jesse wasn’t stupid. He was always very careful. Ever since AIDS came along, he always insisted his partners use protection. But when they got to Jesse’s place, this guy insisted Jesse turn all the lights out before they got undressed—and then he refused to wear a condom. ‘You want to get fucked with plastic, go get yourself a dildo,’ he said.
“Jesse knew better! He did! But here’s this guy who represented every sexual fantasy he’d ever had and…well, he let him. And then—” He stopped talking, and I gave him time to recover himself. “And then as the guy was leaving he stopped at the door and turned around and said ‘How does it feel to be a dead man?’ And then he left, and Jesse didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but it scared the shit out of him.”
There was another long silence before he continued. “He called me immediately, and I did my best to reassure him the guy probably didn’t mean anything, but two months later, Jesse developed Karposi’s sarcoma, and then he got pneumonia and he was dead within six weeks. Six weeks! That guy knew he had AIDS and that he’d given it to Jesse! How could anybody do that to another human being? I just pray that guy is dead now, too, and burning in hell!”