Gumshoe Gorilla (43 page)

We broke up around noon, everyone scurrying off in separate directions. Jen headed over to the Hyatt, to start early surveillance. Her job was to read the employees' name tags, and forward a list to Linda. Linda, in turn, would check the employee backgrounds for anything out of the ordinary. Skye had a writer's meeting, and Charles was going off to the gym to try and work off some of his stress. Eddie would be sitting tight, trying to stay out of trouble.

And me? I was heading home to get some long overdue sleep. Or at least that was the plan. First I had to stop for lunch. Can't sleep when you're hungry, right? And then there was the kitten. It hadn't eaten all morning, and now it wasn't showing any interest in lunch, either. I tried to feed him, but he just turned his face away from the dropper. Maybe the carton of cat's milk had gone bad. Which meant that I had to make another trip down to the pet store for another carton of the stuff. Which the runt also turned up his nose at.

Well, I guess he'd eat when he got hungry. I finished the drive home, and the two of us stumbled up the front steps and into my apartment. Well, I guess I did most of the stumbling, and he was just along for the ride, but you know what I mean. I fixed up a little shoe box for him to sleep in, and tucked him in with a hand towel to keep him warm. And then I peeled off my clothes and collapsed onto bed. I mumbled something to Sherwin about waking me in time for tonight's stakeout, and then closed my eyes and waited for sleep to overtake me.

And waited. And waited.

And waited. I seemed to have hit one of those weird states where I was just too damn tired to fall asleep. My brain was spinning its wheels. Trying to make sense out of two cases that were trying their darndest not to make any sense. Eddie's blackmailer, and his nonsensical demands. Vince, and his mysterious plans for Daniel.

Why send Eddie to hotel rooms? Who benefits?

The folder, with reports on boys from the camps. Why?

Hotels in Atlanta, New York, DC, Richmond. What's the pattern?

The camp, and its echoes of unwanted children.

Look in the hall, order room service, watch TV, mess up the bed.

A poster of a soccer player, fading on a cabin wall.

Look in the hall, don't order food, don't watch TV, sleep on the floor.

Records for children, buried where they can never be found.

Hotels, dates. What connects them all?

Montague, his dead wife, and his abandoned son.

Eddie smiling, unbuttoning his shirt.

Razors cutting flesh. Blood running down a torso. Warm and salty.

A tablet of Bliss, balanced on his tongue.

A taste of pleasure? Or a taste of pain?

Purple light. Masked men dancing with a woman.

Bliss tablets under Vince's bed, the dark specks of heroin.

The black couch. Charles and the woman, red light playing on their bodies.

Who is Vince? What is he running from?

Eddie lowering the Russian blond down onto the bed.

A snake that swallows its tail.

The paparazzi, stalking Charles through the streets.

Birds that talk poetry.

Five identical boys. Interchangeable cogs for the publicity machine.

The unlived in emptiness of Vince's apartment.

Boys, made in a factory, like shoes or bars of soap.

Daniel, kicking a soccer ball, smiling.

A mouth rising from the asphalt

A prick of the finger at the doctor's office.

Skye saying we were recommended by a Gorilla in a dream

My first job for the agency. A fat old man who talked all the way through it.

A fox, a turtle, a snake.

The time I lived out of my car for a week, when I was between apartments...

...

My car.

My car.

My car.

My mind fixed on that last idea for some reason, and wouldn't let go of it.

The week I lived out of my car. I'd been in a roommate situation that the escort agency had set up, living with a couple other boys who worked for them. There was a personality conflict, and things went south real fast. I wound up living out of my car for a few days, while I looked for a new place. Showering at the gym. Driving around with everything I owned in the backseat. Everything I owned. All my stuff...

My tired brain finally made the connection. Vince had only moved to Atlanta a few months ago. The apartment was new. But the car wasn't. It was a 2031, maybe older. I'd bet anything that Vince had driven it straight out of his old life and into his new one. Vince had a history with that car. And history tends to litter.

I jumped out of bed... Ok, actually I just crawled over to the edge of it and fished my palmtop out of my jeans pocket. A quick trip out to the spytech website confirmed that the tracer I'd put on Vince's car was still working. He was parked in the lot behind Daniel's apartment. I pulled on my clothes.

On the drive over, I put in a call to Daniel. I wanted to find out if he was home before I went breaking into his boyfriend's car in broad daylight.

"Hello?"

"Hey Daniel, it's Drew. What are you up to?"

"It's Saturday, the sun is shining, where do you think I am?"

"Out in Piedmont park, looking at shirtless men?"

"Good guess, but no. I'm up at The River's Edge, looking at
naked
men."

"Oh. Vince with you?"

"You betcha. Working on his tan. And I must say that the view is very nice. You want to come join us?"

"No thanks, I burn easy. You free later tonight?"

"Um... let me check... Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"I've got a job I could use you on. Just some hotel surveillance stuff. You interested?"

I hated to use the same excuse for calling twice in a row, but I was too tired to think of anything new. And besides, Daniel might be helpful on this. He spends a lot of time in hotels, might spot something out of the ordinary. And... well, I wanted to see him. Just to see that he was OK with my own eyes.

"Sure. Who we diggin' up dirt on now?" he asked.

"I'll explain later. Just meet me at my office around six-thirty. OK?"

"Got it. Sure I can't talk you into coming out for some sun? "

"Nah, I've got stuff to do. I'll see you later.

"OK. Bye."

"Bye."

I hung up, and pulled into the parking lot behind Daniel's apartment. Vince's car was near the end of the lot, parked up against the wall. Duh. If I'd been paying attention, I would have noticed the Florida plates before. I got out, walked over to it, and looked inside. I was in luck. There were old drink bottles, a McDonald's wrapper, and a road map lying on the floor of the back seat. Slobs are a detective's best friend.

I took a quick look at the apartments. Lotta windows facing this parking lot. I thought about waiting till dark, but I was gonna be busy with Skye's case then, and I didn't want to wait too long on this. I decided that I was just gonna have to be lucky this time, rather than smart. After all the crap I've put up with this week, the universe owed me a break. I got my tools out and broke into the Vince's car, using my body to block as many sight lines as I could. If anybody had seen me do it, I'd find out when the police pulled up.

I tossed the car methodically, starting with the backseat floorboards. I found the drink bottles and the wrapper that I'd already spotted. A couple of dollar coins. A map of Atlanta. No big help there.

Next I pulled up the backseat cushions and had a look at what had collected underneath. Three more dollar coins. A condom wrapper. A single gold hoop earring. And four of those little red and white peppermint candies that restaurants give out with the check. I'll bet there's not a car in America that doesn't have a few of those tucked under its seats.

I moved on to the front. I peeled back the floor mat on the driver's side, and found sand. Apparently the car had been to a beach sometime in its long history. I pulled up the seat cushion and found more sand and one of those old analog house keys. I pocketed it, on the odd chance that it might be important.

I moved onto the glove box. A roadmap for the east coast. The car's owner manual. A receipt for a lube job in January of 2030. A street map of Orlando. A street map of Miami. An old lollipop, grape. And the vehicle's registration.

Bingo.

It was a Florida registration, made out to one "Vincent Price". Cute. Vincent had probably picked his own name, like Daniel had. Still, at least this name had a paper trail attached to it, which meant that I could start tracking down some of Vince's mysterious past. I kept digging.

A pocket knife. A pack of hand wipes. An old package of pretzels. A pistachio shell. And that was it.

I stuffed everything back into the glove box in about the same order that it had come out, and then checked the floor on the passenger side. More sand, and a corroded nine volt battery. I looked around for other places where something might collect, and spotted the ashtray. I pulled it open.

Apparently, smoking was one of the few vices that Vince did not indulge in. But he had found another use for the space. In the empty tray was a small plastic bag and a black box about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. I recognized the latter as a spy camera, one of the cheap models that you can get at any mall. I turned it on, downloaded the memory to my palmtop, and took a quick look at the contents.

Now, I don't have a weak stomach. And it's not that I haven't seen Daniel in compromising positions before. Hell, I've paid him to set up some of those compromising positions. But there was something about the combination of sex and blood that really disturbed me. Daniel lying on his stomach. A row of cuts in his back. I recognized the other man in the photos as Montague. I flipped through the pictures quickly. There were nearly thirty of them, and they didn't get any tamer.

I put the camera back and examined the plastic bag. Inside, there were three strands of blond hair. Well, almost blond hair. Someone's dark roots were showing. I also noticed that the roots on all three were intact, which meant that they could be used for a DNA fingerprint.

Or a paternity test.

It sort of hit me all at once. I didn't have the whole picture yet, but the pieces were starting to come together. I replaced the bag, closed the ashtray, and popped the trunk. I forced myself to do a thorough search of it, just to be complete, but my mind was racing ahead.

Somehow, Vincent had figured out that Daniel was Montague's son. Now he had a DNA sample from Daniel to prove it, and pictures of the two of them having sex. This wasn't some heir finding scheme. It was blackmail. Again. It must be in fashion this year or something.

But how? How could Vince possibly have connected Daniel and Montague? I'd tried to go looking for Daniel's parents, and hit a brick wall. The records were sealed, and there were just too many camp kids to run around doing individual DNA tests. So how had Vince pulled it off?

And more importantly, why? Why go to all the trouble to track down Montague's son? For blackmail, it was overkill. Montague was a straight laced lawyer with a wife and kids. Pictures of him having kinky gay vampiric sex with anyone would have been enough to put the squeeze on him. So why do all that work to throw in the incest angle, too? It was like using a SAM missile to go duck hunting.

No, this wasn't just about money. It had to be personal. You don't do something like this to a person unless you really want to fuck up his life.

I finished my inventory of the trunk. More sand, a beach chair, some antifreeze, and an empty bottle of suntan lotion. No problem. I already had more than enough to work on. I locked up Vince's car, went back to my own, and then headed for my office.

Somewhere along the line, Vincent and Montague had crossed paths before, and Vincent was still nursing a colossal grudge about it. A grudge that Montague obviously didn't know about, or he wouldn't have been inviting such a dangerous guy to his parties.

It was time to found out who Vince really was.