The Ninth Man (3 page)

“Just performing a public service,” I said, managing a weak grin.

Tim snorted. “The poisoned-batch-and-random-death theory wasn’t valid from the beginning, anyway.”

“Because…?” I prompted.

“First, because amyl’s sort of a social thing—not many guys use it when they’re alone. Secondly, because since no amyl bottles were found at any of the scenes, somebody had to have taken them. And can you imagine any random group of guys watching their partners take a hit of amyl, drop dead, and then having the presence of mind to just pick up the bottle and leave without saying anything to anyone?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Nope,” he repeated.

We laid there in silence for a moment while my mind sifted through everything Tim had said. Finally, he tamped his cigarette out in the ashtray on his chest and reached past me again to return the ashtray to the night stand.

“You know,” he continued as though he’d never stopped talking, “the ironic thing about the cyanide-laced amyl theory is that amyl nitrate is actually an antidote for cyanide. A lot of cyanide in a little amyl might kill somebody, but probably not instantly; and from all evidence we have, these six guys went immediately. So I’d say somebody—one person—emptied and cleaned an amyl bottle and filled it with a pure hydrogen cyanide. Probably used sulfuric acid as the dissolving agent.”

I thought a moment then theorized: “So, we’re looking for a chemist.”

He stuck out his tongue just far enough to pick a small piece of tobacco from it and shook his head.

“Not necessarily. All somebody would really need is a basic knowledge of chemistry, a little cyanide, and some sulfuric acid.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “A little cyanide, aisle four at your local supermarket.”

“You’d be surprised how common cyanide is,” Tim said. “It’s got a lot of industrial applications. It can be toxic, but not necessarily lethal when handled properly.

“As for what else the police might be doing, they’re not exactly sharing much information. We’ve done our best to convince them that it’s unlikely anyone is poisoning batches of amyl nitrate, so I think they’re slowly swinging to the ‘serial killer’ scenario. They’ll probably like that one once they settle on it; it’s a lot easier than trying to find out what all these guys have in common.”

“Maybe they don’t,” I said. “Maybe it
is
a serial killer—though I’ve got a gut feeling it isn’t.” I shook my head. “I still can’t understand why, no matter how it happened, nobody outside your office and the cops know about it?”

“Lots of reasons, I suppose,” Tim said. “‘Ongoing investigation.’ ‘Avoid panic.’ You name it. Now, of course, if you had six dead heterosexuals all killed by something as exotic as cyanide and all in the space of two months, they’d be calling out the guard. Families screaming bloody murder—no pun intended, the police out to polish up the department’s image—it’s all over the news.

“But six gay men in a city this size—six gays who apparently have nothing whatever in common except being gay and dead…” He paused and shook his head slowly. “They don’t look alike, they aren’t all the same age, they don’t all work together, and as far as we can tell, don’t even know the same people. For all intents and purposes, these are just six isolated, unrelated deaths.”

“But the death certificates have to list the cause of death,” I said. “Surely some of the families must have made inquiries.”

“Sure they did. As individual families from all over the country making individual inquiries about individual deaths in which the death certificate shows the cause of death to be ‘respiratory arrest.’ That could mean almost anything.

“Plus, they haven’t the foggiest idea that there have been similar deaths. They’re assured the police are ‘investigating,’ and if that doesn’t satisfy them, they’re given not-so-subtle reference to how unstable and prone to suicide and random violence faggots are ‘known’ to be. And what’s a family who lives in Sheep-dip, Montana, going to do about it except grieve? Not much, I can tell you.”

“And the gays—the lovers and friends who don’t know there have been other victims—don’t want to make waves,” I finished his reasoning.

He nodded.

“Except one,” I added.

“The word’s gone around to the privileged few in the office who know about the whole thing that the first person to start making waves about this will be very sorry, indeed. And since it isn’t exactly the world’s best kept secret that I’m gay, everybody has their beady little eyes cocked in my direction.” He sighed. “So now you know, and I’m going to have to trust you not to get me in trouble. Pregnant, maybe, but not in trouble.”

I pulled him to me and gave him a long hug.

“Trust me, kid,” I said, feeling—and, I’m afraid, sounding—very much like Humphrey Bogart.

A low, rumbling growl made Tim jump.

“Suppertime,” he said, grinning sheepishly and patting his stomach. “Can you stay for dinner? I’ve got some homemade lasagna in the freezer.”

“How can I resist?” I said. “I’m free for the night. Or at least reasonable.”

“You’re welcome to stay over,” he said, making a little let-your-fingers-do-the-walking movement over my chest, letting his index finger trip over my right nipple, his hand falling into the space between my arm and chest.

“Invitation gratefully accepted,” I said, drawing him closer.

But my romantic intentions were interrupted by another bed-shaking stomach rumble—from me, this time.

“Saved by the bell,” Tim laughed, moving quickly out of my arms and off the bed. “Let’s eat.”

*

The next morning, over coffee, I asked Tim if he would
do
me one more favor. He gave me his wide-eyed-shock look.

“Don’t you Scorpios ever get enough?”

I grinned. “As a matter of fact, no. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

“The deaths,” he said.

“Afraid so. As long as I’m being paid to find out who killed Bobby McDermott, I don’t have much choice but to follow every mud-rut path until I find the highway. Could you get me whatever you can on the other five guys? Next of kin, lovers, addresses, anything that might help?”

“You’re going to tackle the whole thing on your own?”

“God, I hope not. But I think we agree there’s probably just one guy out there responsible for all six deaths; and as I said last night, whether or not he’s targeting specific people or if he’s just picking up tricks at random is something somebody has to find out. Will you help?”

Tim got up from the table to pour himself another cup of coffee. He returned to the table and sat down again before answering.

“Why not? So I lose my job? So I get a lifetime supply of parking tickets? So the cops see to it that I’m shot while resisting arrest for jaywalking? Sure, I’ll help you. But just remember that everybody’s watching me like a hawk. I don’t know how much information I can get to you.”

“Anything will help. And I’ll owe you.”

Tim’s eyes took on a devilish glint.

“I’ll remember that,” he said.

*

“
Why, of course I have a picture of Bobby.” The voice was
as irritatingly nelly over the phone as it was in person.

“That’s fine, Mr. Rholfing,” I said, before he had a chance to say anything else. “Why don’t I drop by in about an hour to pick it up?”

There was a pause, during which I swore I could hear the wheels spinning around in his marceled little head.

“Why, of course,” he said, finally, in a voice so coy I could almost see his eyelashes flutter. “But you’ll have to excuse the way I look—I just got up a few minutes ago, and the apartment is a mess. But I’ll fix us some coffee, and…have you had breakfast?” Aha! The subtle hook.

“Yes, thanks—my lover and I just finished eating.” I winked at Tim, who appeared around the corner of the bathroom door just long enough to give me the finger.

“Oh…you have a lover.” His voice went flat, as though someone had just slammed the oven door on his soufflé.

“Okay, then,” I said, deliberately ignoring both his reaction and his comment. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

I hung up, went into the bathroom to say goodbye to Tim and to ask him to call me as soon as he had anything, and left.

*

Rholfing’s apartment was everything I had expected
it to be and more. The style was Early Overdone. Some of his ideas were basically good, but he must have been out to corner the glitter-and-spangle market. Gold lame swag curtains covered every window and door, all pulled back with either velvet or rhinestone ties—and in one or two garish instances, both.

He kept apologizing for the mess the place was in, although as I’d expected, there wasn’t a gnat’s eyebrow out of place. The only hint of overt masculinity in view was a set of barbells inexplicably lying on one side of the foyer.

He ushered me in and sat me down on one end of an overstuffed love seat (guess who intended to use the other side) and, still apologizing, whisked out into the kitchen. I could hear the tinkle of fragile cups and good silver in the few microsecond pauses in his chatter.

An obviously new and exorbitantly expensive art book graced the coffee table; and I was delighted, as I leaned forward to thumb through it, to find several of the pages uncut.

Rholfing swept back into the room a moment later, bumping the kitchen door closed with his rear-end without missing a step. The tea tray, glinting except for a few rather obvious thumb prints, was heaped high with various croissants, muffins, breakfast rolls, and assorted goodies. Obviously, he’d made a record-time sprint to the corner bakery, and I probably would have been flattered that he’d gone to the trouble if I didn’t recognize trick bait when I saw it.

He set the tray on the coffee table, made a little hands-up gesture of pleasure, and settled himself, like a bird onto a nest full of eggs, onto the love seat next to me.

“One lump, or two?” he asked, picking up the tiny sugar tongs with a practiced hand.

“None, thanks,” I said. “I take it black.”

He bravely fought back a slight sneer. With movements that would have done a symphony conductor proud, he poured the coffee. I resisted the temptation to applaud.

“Did you find the photo?” I asked, realizing all the while that I was being more than a little tacky considering the considerable effort he’d gone through to impress me.

“Yes,” he said, not quite able to cover his disdain of my obvious lack of sophistication. “I have it in there.” He gave an offhand wave toward what I assume to have been the bedroom.

“So tell me a little about you and Bobby,” I said, accepting the cup and saucer as gracefully as possible under the circumstances.

Rholfing gave a deep, Weltschmerz sigh, dropped two lumps of sugar and a plip of cream into his coffee and stirred, holding the small spoon between thumb and index finger, pinkie raised.

“What’s to tell?” he said, finally. “I’d known him for years—absolutely years—before we ever got together. We lived in the same building. He had this tacky little place—furnished, you know—and I was living in the penthouse suite with a delightful boy named Herb…something. We’d bump into one another from time to time but never really exchanged…” He gave a puckered-lip smile. “…words. Croissant?”

He offered me the tray; I took what looked like a miniature prune Danish.

“Soooo,” he continued, “then there was this absolutely terrible affair in the building, and I just couldn’t stand to stay there any longer. Herb and I moved our separate ways, and that was the last I saw of Bobby for ages. Another croissant?”

Licking my fingers—to his raised-eyebrow horror—I shook my head.

“Well, I knew he was a whore even then,” Rholfing said, pausing only long enough to take a dainty nibble from something with powdered sugar on it. “But then, about a year ago, while I was ‘between engagements,’ as they say, I ran into him in one of those sleazy bars I always seem to stumble into when I’m bombed out of my mind. He was almost as drunk as I was—which is saying something—and I asked him home.”

Rholfing’s eyes misted over, and he sat quiet for the first full moment since I’d come in.

“I’ll never forget his words,” he resumed, his lower lip quivering ever so slightly. “He looked at me, and he said, ‘I hear you’re a great fuck.’ And I said, ‘You bet your sweet ass, Charlie,’ and we came home together.”

He turned quickly to the side, and I could see him dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief that had, as in my office, suddenly appeared from nowhere. If I’d suspected there was even a trace of sincerity in his actions, I probably would have felt sorry for him. After a second he took a deep breath and straightened up, regally.

“And we were together ever since. Until some sonofabitch killed him.”

I reached for another prune Danish.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea as to who might have done it,” I said, “or why. One of the main problems in cases like this is that a lot of times it’s a trick the victim’s never seen before.”

“Oh, Bobby knew him,” Rholfing said casually, flicking some powdered sugar off his pant leg. “I always knew when he had somebody special. Not regular special, mind you—not one of those little numbers he’d fuck like clockwork for a week or two until he dumped them—or they dumped him.”

He rummaged through the diminishing stack of goodies on the tray until he found the one he was looking for, picked it up daintily, and took a mouse-sized bite before placing it on his saucer beside his still-full coffee cup.

“I should have known that last morning,” he said, ritual completed. “He’d been acting like the cat who ate the canary all the night before, and that morning he had that special look he gets…got…when a big dick was on the horizon. I knew better than to ask. You never had the privilege of seeing Bobby do one of his ‘how-dare-you-accuse-me’ numbers. He was a real bastard but…but…I miss him!”

He suddenly burst into tears and threw himself on me, grabbing me so tightly I thought I’d choke. A little awkwardly, I put my arms around his shoulders and patted him on the back. A wrong move, I immediately knew when, with one arm still locked around my neck, his other hand dropped to my crotch.