No Such Thing as a Secret: A Brandy Alexander Mystery (No Such Thing As...A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (19 page)

I was so busy fantasizing about the faceless woman on the other end of the line that I didn’t realize Nick had hung up the phone. He leaned against his desk, watching me, a smile playing at his lips. “You’re looking mighty intense there, angel. Want to share your thoughts?”

“Oh,” I said. My face started to flush and I was really grateful for the low lighting. “I was just thinking about eggplant.” I really did have to stop going with the first thought that popped into my head. Now I was stuck with it.

“Eggplant.”

“Yeah, there are so many ways to prepare it, you know.”

“Really. I didn’t know eggplant was so versatile.”

I couldn’t think how to follow that up, so I just worked my way out of the chair. Nick extended his hand to help me. It was strong and warm and I held it a little longer than necessary. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I took the liberty of checking out that cop friend of yours. Seems like a good guy by all accounts, but he’s been under a lot of stress, lately.”

I stared at him, open-mouthed. “You had him investigated?”

“Look, if we’re going to do this, then we have to do it right. There are a lot of things you may find distasteful, but it’s part of the job. So if you want to bow out, let me know now.” His voice was hard and scary, but I knew he was right.

“No, I understand.”

“I’m sorry. I should have figured you wouldn’t be thrilled with this. I have you pegged as a pretty loyal friend, and I should have known that spying on DiCarlo wouldn’t feel right to you. Oh, and FYI, he had you followed.”

“I know. He told me.”

Now it was Nick’s turn to be surprised. “You two have some weird thing going on?”

“Define ‘weird’.”

Nick threw back his head and laughed. He had a great laugh.

His car was parked around back. It was a nineteen sixty-four hunter green XKE Jaguar, in mint condition. Paulie would absolutely flip out if he saw it. “You actually drive this thing?”

He opened the door for me and I slid into the seat. I reached over and pushed open the driver’s side door for him. “Thanks. Yeah, why not?”

“Because it’s so rare, and beautiful and expensive!”

“Somebody told me it once belonged to George Harrison.”

“And it belonged to a Beatle!”

Nick shrugged. “I really like the car. I would miss not driving it.”
Was this man for real?

On the way over to the club I told him about John’s triumphant return.

“And you still want to track down this murderer?”

“Look, someone tried to kill John. It was just dumb luck that he didn’t. Oh, and by the way, someone tried to kill me too.” It took me ten minutes to get out the entire story. I tried to stay calm and impassive, but by the end my hands were shaking so hard I had to sit on them. “Maybe someone found out that I’d seen the pictures and now they want me dead too.”

“No, this doesn’t sound like a professional job. You said the guy smelled like he’d been drinking, right?” I nodded. “A pro wouldn’t go off to whack someone, tanked on a bottle of rye. This sounds more personal.” Comforting thought.

“What about Raoul?” I asked. “I mean I did accidentally run over his hand.”

“Makes sense. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll check it out.”

Bank Street sits between Market and Vine. It’s a narrow, two block stretch that dead ends into a homeless mission. Bank Street is a magnet for winos, junkies and hard-core sexual deviants, all of whom find whatever they’re in search of, there, in great abundance.

The Leather Factory is located on the northeast corner of Bank and Rose. Its large, neon sign features a rather graphic rendition of the good time to be had inside, if one were drunk, gay and prone to bondage. For people like Johnny and his friends, mainstream, middle class gays, The Leather Factory is a harmless walk on the wild side. But for others, it is a way of life, and occasionally, death.

On the ride over to the club I started to get nervous. I mean here I was sitting in a car with a virtual stranger, on our way to some sleazy S&M porn festival to catch a killer. No one knew where I was except for John, who, until recently, had been dead.

I glanced over at Nick. He drove with his head back against the headrest, one hand lightly holding the gearshift. He seemed very relaxed; not at all concerned about the adventure we were about to embark on. Maybe he was too comfortable. Maybe this was, God forbid, his
element.

Who
was
this guy, anyway? What did I really know about him? Okay, Carla met him through her cousin Benny, and Benny said he was cool. But Benny’s last known job was pounding out license plates for the state of Pennsylvania, so I don’t know how much stock to put into his opinion. Plus, I really couldn’t figure out why he’d agreed to help me. I mean what I could offer him in monetary compensation, he could make in a minute in illegal gun sales to El Salvador, or whatever rebel country he was supposedly in cahoots with. We weren’t blood related, so he wasn’t bound by family guilt to help me, so that just left sexual favors.

Now, the general consensus would probably be that I’m passably cute, but I’m not exactly the stuff wet dreams are made of. So I doubted he was going to all this trouble just to get me into bed. It just didn’t make sense to me, and when I don’t understand something, it makes me really, really nervous. And for the first time since I started this whole idea of “Brandy Alexander, Crime Fighter at Large” I began to think that maybe I was in a little over my head. I bit my lip hard to keep from crying.

Nick reached across the console and I flinched involuntarily. He gave me a quizzical look and popped open the glove compartment. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I guess I’m a little nervous. It’s not every day I get to drive in a car that used to belong to a Beatle.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” He leaned in and extracted a CD and closed the glove compartment again.

I shook my head. I was so damn tired, and all I’d eaten was a bunch of chips and some third rate salsa. Hunger and exhaustion tend to make me embarrassingly honest.

“I’m scared.”

He brought his arm up and gently ruffled my hair. “Good. Like I told you before, you should be. It’ll keep you on your toes.”

What I didn’t tell him was what I was most afraid of was him. I figured he knew that already.

Nick approached the entrance of the club, while I trailed behind like a shy kindergartener hiding behind its mother on the first day of school. The bouncer, an enormous, well-muscled guy in a black tank top, eyed Nick with a mixture of curiosity and lust. Nick nodded his head in greeting. The bouncer moved slightly out of the way to allow Nick to brush past him, and then he turned his attention to me.

“I’ll need to see an I.D., little girl.”

I started to protest, but Nick put an arm around my shoulder and bent down to speak into my ear. “Show the nice man your I.D., honey.”

I elbowed his arm off me and rooted around in my bag until I found my wallet, muttering the whole time about discrimination and whatever other social injustice I could come up with.

“Kids.” Nick shrugged congenially to the bouncer, and they shared a conspiratorial smirk. Seething, I whipped out my California driver’s license. It was taken four years ago, when I truly did look sixteen. The bouncer made a big show of studying my picture, and then he asked me what year I was born. This amused Nick no end. When the bouncer had exhausted all possible ways to humiliate me, he stepped aside and bowed, letting me pass.

“I’m glad you thought it was funny,” I fumed, stuffing my wallet back into my bag.

“He was just doing his job, angel, protecting the innocent.”

“I’m not all that innocent,” I grumbled. “I’ve been around, you know.”

Nick looked at me fondly, the way a father would look at his daughter. Oh crap. He couldn’t be more than thirty- two, only four years older than I am, and paternal feelings were definitely not the kind I wanted to inspire in him. A stab of disappointment stuck me in the gut, and I just wanted to go home. Instead, I pushed forward, swinging my hips in what I hoped was a saucy and seductive fashion. Of course, I ended up tripping over the carpet and knocking into a six foot two transvestite wearing a hot pink leotard.

Nick grabbed me around the waist, steering me toward the bar. “Wait here,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To the men’s room. Wanna come?”

“No thanks,” I smiled weakly.

While Nick was gone, I looked around. It was dark, lit primarily with weird strobe lighting. The music was blaring; some obscure group that must have had its hey day in the disco era. I found it very disorienting. The bartender approached and asked me what I wanted to drink. I ordered a bottled water, not trusting the sanitary condition of the glasses. Nick came back and took the seat next to mine. My cell phone began to ring and I found it at the bottom of my pocketbook. I stuck the phone to one ear and put my finger in the other to block out the noise.

“Hello?”

“It’s Bobby. Where are you?”

“Out.” I was still royally pissed at him for cuffing me.

“I can hear that. Out, where?”

“Why? Last time I checked, I wasn’t under house arrest. Are you planning to come by and handcuff me?” Nick raised an eyebrow at that. I turned away from him and spoke into the phone. “Why are you calling?”

“I found a place for our friend to stay,” he said cryptically.

“Oh.” That was good news for John, but I would miss his company. “That’s great.”

“So, are you out with Fran and Janine?”

“No.”

“Do you really think it was such a great idea for you to go out alone tonight, what with all that’s been going on?”

How dare he lecture me?
I was this short of yelling, “You’re not the boss of me” into the phone.
And
he assumed I was alone!

“Listen, I’ve got to go. My
date’s
waiting for me.” I sneaked a surreptitious look at Nick, but he seemed to be absorbed in his own thoughts.

“Did you say you were on a date?” He didn’t sound pleased. Good.

“I’ll call you when I get home. Gotta go.” And I hung up.

“So, we’re on a date, are we?” Nick flashed me a crooked grin, as I turned bright red.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

I shook my head to dismiss the conversation and leaned over the bar to catch the bartender’s attention. “Bloody Mary, please.”

Nick held up his hand and gestured to make that two. In retrospect, I probably should not have ordered a drink. I did it because I thought it would relax me, and because I was mad at Bobby, and because I felt so young around Nick and I thought I’d feel more grown up with a grown up drink in my hand. All very mature reasons. However, I failed to take into consideration the fact that I hadn’t slept in days, I was drinking on an empty stomach and alcohol makes me uninhibited in ways only my best friends should ever be a witness to. Ah, hindsight. What a wonderful thing. I pulled out the pictures that John had taken and handed them to Nick.

“So, where do we start?”

Half an hour later we struck pay dirt. We had been circling the bar, chatting with the more ostentatious patrons, the ones with the whips and chains and other obvious signs of interest in domination-submission activities. Most of the people were understandably reluctant to talk to two strangers. But then Nick ran across an acquaintance and he paved the way for us by vouching for Nick. He took out the pictures and showed them to a group of men. They passed the photos around, looking intently at each one and clucking sympathy for the fate of Konner Novack.

After a moment, one of the men zeroed in on one particular picture. “I know this guy. He’s a real sick bastard, if you ask me.”

My heart started racing. Finally, we were getting somewhere. “Who is he?” I asked, pointing to the man in the photo, sitting next to Novack.

“Not him,” said the guy. “
Him
.” He pointed to a fuzzy shot of a thin, sandy haired man seated at one of the tables in the background. “He picked up a friend of mine one night, at a club out in Jersey. Beat him senseless. Almost killed him.”

“Did your friend report it to the police?” I asked.

He looked at me with an indulgent smile. “Our lifestyle doesn’t exactly lend itself to complete disclosure. We’re teachers, and if this got out, well, you can see where it might present a problem.”

I tried to picture him in his spiked choke chain and leather chaps discussing the effects of the Industrial Revolution with a class full of ninth graders. “Yeah, I see your point.”

“Did your friend mention a name?” Nick asked.

“No, but if you hang on a minute, I may be able to get one for you.”

Our new buddy punched in some numbers on his cell phone, while Nick and I nursed our drinks. Actually, Nick was nursing. I was guzzling.

A minute later he turned to Nick. “I’ve got a name. Curtis Maitilin.”

Nick reached into his wallet and extracted a business card. It was black with silver printing, and it had “Nicholas Santiago Enterprises” etched on it. I wondered what the enterprises might be.

“You’ve been really helpful. If you or your friend can think of anything else…” He passed the business card to the guy, and bought him and his friends a round of drinks. I was still thirsty and everybody at the bar seemed a lot less intimidating since I’d finished my Bloody Mary, so I ordered another drink too.

Nick and I found a relatively quiet booth and slid into the seats, opposite each other.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the cushion, letting the warmth of the vodka spread throughout my body.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “We finally got a real lead.”

“You done good, Brandy Alexander.” He smiled at me.

“I didn’t do anything.” My voice sounded small and far away. The second drink had worked its way around my brain, and I hoped I didn’t start saying things I’d regret later, like when I had nitrous oxide at the dentist’s and told Dr. Calahan that I loved him.

“You showed up,” Nick said. “That was really brave of you.”

I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was making fun of me, and that feeling that I was going to start bawling my head off came over me again.