Gumshoe Gorilla (46 page)

"Well, it's not one of my better ploys, I'll admit."

Eddie emptied his pockets onto the counter. He started to unzip his jeans, and then looked up.

And caught me staring at him. What can I say? I am only human.

He stared back at me for a second or two, and I thought I'd embarrassed him. At least, until he struck a pose and started flexing.

"Cute," I said.

I felt my face turning red.

"Hey, you started it. Is this what you were hoping for?"

He danced around, doing a little striptease out of his jeans and down to his boxers. And then he shot me a smile that raised my body temperature by about four degrees.

"Now you're just being cruel."

"Sorry," he said, dropping the act. "I kind of get off on the attention."

"I noticed."

He tossed the jeans in the sink with the shirt, and added a little shampoo to the mix. Then he came back and curled up on the bed.

"So, what were we talking about?"

"I... um...."

I was still staring at him.

"Aren't you gonna put some clothes on?" I finally asked.

"No. I always sleep in my boxers. Don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

"But what?"

"But I'm not as distracting as you are."

He smiled at that. And then he stretched. I found myself looking at his stomach, and realizing that I could count each individual muscle in it. My eyes wandered up his torso to his chest, his shoulders. When they reached his face, Eddie smiled. It was the nicest thing about him.

"You're being a tease," I said.

He shrugged.

"It's one of my flaws."

He kept smiling. I felt my face burning a shade redder.

"Um... we were talking about... about..."

I caught my eyes starting to wander south down Eddie's body again. I managed to peel them away and forced myself to stare at the wall until my head cleared enough to talk.

"I'm sorry," I said, laughing a little. "I can't carry on a conversation like this."

"That's OK," Eddie said. "We don't have to talk."

My eyes wandered back over to him. He stared back at me.

"Aren't you supposed to be straight?" I finally asked.

Eddie shrugged again.

"Do you really want to make an issue of it?"

Hm. He had a point.

"Ballroom two was being used for a wedding reception," Grey went on, reading off the notes on her palmtop. "I chatted up a few of the guests. The groom works for a pharmaceutical company as a sales rep, pushing over the counter acne creams. Here, I've got a free sample he gave me. The bride owns a business that makes fake plants-- you know, plastic trees and flowers for office buildings. Neither of them has any connection to LA or the Rockland Brothers that I could ferret out. Oh, but the cake was good."

She stopped reading and looked at me. I shrugged. It sure didn't suggest a motive for blackmail to me. I swallowed another slug of mediocre coffee, and noticed the little slogan printed on the cup.

Lesson #14: Opposite's attract, but they also annihilate.

Great. Like I need philosophy at this hour of the morning.

We were sitting in the Hagel's Bagels across the street from the hotel. We'd spent all night watching the Hyatt, and hadn't seen any sign of our blackmailer or his mysterious reason for choosing this hotel. So I'd suggested that we grab some breakfast and go over our notes together, in case anything jumped out at us on a second look.

"Anything else?" I asked.

Grey glanced over her notes.

"Just one more thing. A guy at the bar who got drunk and started singing a Gilbert and Sullivan tune."

"Really? Which one?"

"
I am little Buttercup
."

"Was he any good?"

"No. Anyway, one of the bellboys had to help him up to his room. I followed them onto the elevator and watched them get off on the nineteenth floor. That was a little after two in the morning."

Again, the incident did nothing to suggest why the blackmailer would be interested in this hotel. I swallowed another mouthful of coffee. There were three possibilities. Either the blackmailer really was picking the hotels at random. Or the reason was so subtle that we couldn't see it. Or we were looking right at it and just couldn't recognize it.

Across from me, blondie was starting on his fourth bagel.

"Excuse me," I said. "But how can you eat that much and still be around four percent body fat?"

"Oh, I get a lot of exercise," he said with a wink.

I'll bet.

"Well, exercise your mouth for a while. What did you manage to dig up last night?"

He wiped the cream cheese off his lips, and pulled out his palm top.

"OK. Let's see. A little after ten, I noticed a cute guy in an army uniform who came into the lobby and sat down. About 6'2", blond hair, brown eyes. He kept checking his watch, like he was waiting for someone, but he left twenty minutes later without talking to anybody."

The kid looked up hopefully, as if expecting me to pounce on the detail as the key to the whole mystery.

"Sorry, doesn't mean anything to me. Next."

He read down through the rest of his notes. Cute guys who came into the lobby. Cute guys who were loitering around the parking deck. Cute guys hanging out at the bar. There was a definite pattern to the things that he took notice of. If I ever had to stakeout a ruthless band of male models, I'd know exactly who to turn to.

"And then around three in the morning I started a conversation with Dimitri, the assistant concierge," blondie went on. "Nice guy. Mid twenties, curly black hair. Pisces. Oh, and I've got his home phone number, in case that's important. Anyway, he kind of took a shine to me, and I chatted him up for an hour about everything that was going on in the building. First off, there was a bachelorette party up on the twenty-first floor. They had a stripper come in, with a cowboy hat and boots and a lasso. And there was some sort of Arab Sheik staying in one of the big suites up top. Dimitri said he was from an island somewhere... oh, here's the name, 'Bahrain'. There was also some big shot from the Baptist News Network who was here with a couple of body guards. You know, black suits, bulges under the armpits where they carry their pistols. Very MIBS. Apparently, this Baptist guy has been staying here a lot lately. Then there was a professional wrestler named..."

"Wait a minute," Grey stopped him. "The Baptist guy. You said he stays here a lot?"

"Yeah," blondie said, glancing back at his notes. "According to Dimitri, the guy works down the street at the Liberty Media Tower. He stays here whenever he's working late, or has to be in early the next morning. Saves him the hour drive out to Marietta and back."

Grey closed her eyes, and seemed to be meditating or something.

"Does that mean something to you?" I prodded her.

"Not exactly," she said, opening her eyes. "I was just thinking. Eddie's been ordered to this hotel five times now, right? So whatever is special about this place, it must be something that happens on a repeating basis. Like a customer who stays here frequently, or something like that."

I turned back to Daniel.

"Do you have the exact dates that this suit from BNN stayed here?"

"No. I don't. But Dimitri says that the guy has practically moved in lately. Trouble at work or something."

"And did you happen to get this Baptist guy's name?"

"Yeah." Blondie paged through his notes. "Trent Reed."

Now that was interesting.

Grey noticed my reaction.

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"We met a couple of times, back when I was working for Justin. Reed is Stonewall's number two man at BNN. He's been getting a lot of press lately. They've been having trouble with..."

I stopped. News. About Reed. I was missing something. I took another sip of coffee and tried to focus.

Reed had been all over the news lately, and not just on his own network. He'd been doing the talk show circuit, debating Calvin Walker, the Christian Alliance spokesman. He'd done some print interviews. He'd been booed off the stage at Freedom University...

That was it. Two weeks ago. He'd gone to Freedom University to give a speech, filling in for Stonewall. The student body had booed him off the stage. I remember seeing the footage on the news. A couple reporters described it as a "riot".

And Freedom University is less than an hour away from Richmond.

"Give me a minute," I said.

I didn't want to say anything until I was sure. I grabbed my palmtop and pulled up the story from the newsite archives. Sure enough, Reed was at Freedom University the same day that Eddie had been ordered to stay in Richmond.

"Got it," I announced. "I've found a connection."

After that, it all started to fall together. I explained what I was thinking, and the three of us pulled up the news stories about Reed for the last month, tracing his movements. The night that Eddie was ordered to New York, Reed was there taping a talk show. And the two nights that Eddie was ordered to DC, Reed was there on political business for Stonewall.

"Wow," Grey said when we were done. "That's it. It has to be. We've got him."

"So this is the guy who's doing the blackmail?" Daniel asked. "But why? I mean... He's doing all this just to have Eddie sleeping in the same building with him? Weird way to get your kicks."

"I agree," I said. "And it doesn't seem like Reed. I've only met him a couple of times, but I'm pretty sure that he's straight."

"How can you tell?" Daniel asked.

I glanced down at my breasts.

"Oh."

"Hold it!" Grey said, snapping her fingers. "I've got it. I've really got it!"