The Dream Ender (6 page)

And at the very end of the hall was a door marked “Private.”

Brewer unhooked a set of keys from his belt and did an expert rosary through them as we approached, finding the right one and inserting it into the lock in one seamless motion. He opened the door and reached in with one hand to turn on the lights. I noticed it was pretty much a carbon copy of just about every bar office I’d ever been in—small, cluttered, one entire wall lined with stacked cases of booze and beer. The obligatory desk, chair, and locked file cabinet. Beside the file cabinet, three cases of vodka sat atop a black cast-iron safe, and crammed into the narrow space between it and the crate-lined wall were two collapsed folding chairs.

Brewer pulled one out and set it up for me beside his desk then took his own seat. I handed him the envelope with the contract, and he in turn gave me a manila folder from one corner of his desk.

We each studied our materials independently. The manila folder contained three sheets of yellow lined notebook paper. The first listed the names of five bartenders fired in the past four months—a pretty hefty turnover rate, I thought, but then realized that on busy weekends there were sometimes as many as three bartenders on duty at the same time. I also knew bartending tended to be a high-turnover occupation.

One of the five was canned for either coming in late or not showing up for work at all, two had been tapping the till, one was caught several times shortchanging customers—especially the drunk ones—and one had gotten in an argument with Brewer and threatened to punch him, not the wisest of career moves. He thoughtfully supplied addresses and phone numbers for all five men.

The second sheet was labeled “86’d,” beneath which were four more names together with the dates or approximate dates they were kicked out and the reason. Only two had first and last names, the others just a first name. No addresses or phone numbers given. The reasons ranged from a history of being drunk and belligerent to stealing a billfold one of the patrons had left on the bar to pissing in the hallway when there was a line for the bathrooms.

But it was the third sheet which got to me. There were fifteen names on it—fifteen!—divided into two categories: “Dead” (nine names), and “Sick” (six names). And those were just the ones he knew about. Jeezus!

I became aware Brewer was watching me.

“That’s not for publication,” he said, indicating the sheet I was looking at.

“I understand.” I was sure every bar owner in the city had lost customers to AIDS, but fifteen? Even for a bar as busy as the Male Call was—or used to be—fifteen was a sobering number. There were phone numbers for fewer than a third of them.

I put the sheets back in the folder. Brewer signed and handed me the contract, and I co-signed both copies, returning one to him.

“I haven’t had a chance to start the list on where the rumors are coming from,” he said, “but I clued Andy, who’s behind the bar tonight, to start paying attention and asking questions and will tell the other bartenders when I see them.”

“I appreciate it,” I said, putting the signed contract in with the notebook sheets, then got up from my chair. “I’ll get started on this tomorrow.” I extended my hand.

He got up, too, shook my hand and reached over to open the door.

“If you have any questions, give me a call,” he said.

I picked up my beer and edged past him. “Likewise,” I said and he nodded.

I went down the hall to the main room, drained my beer, set the bottle on the bar and left.

Chapter 6

First thing Tuesday morning, after my coffee/newspaper/crossword puzzle ritual, I checked the phone book for the names on Brewer’s list of the Male Call’s dead and ailing customers. While I really hated to bother anyone so deeply affected by the situation, I thought they, or if the phones of the dead were still in service, any lovers or roommates might be able to give me some information. I was able to find numbers for a little more than half of them and wrote them down beside the names.

Waiting until about ten thirty, I called Brewer to see if he had any idea where his fired bartenders might be working currently. I had their phone numbers, but thought it might be a good idea to try to drop in on them where they worked now.

“Val works days at the Spike—I’m sure a lot of the rumors come from there and from him. The guy’s an asshole, and I’m not surprised Pete Reardon would have hired him. Ted Murray’s at the Tool Shed. Scotty was at Daddy-O’s last I heard, but that was his second job since he left the Male Call; no idea if he’s still there. Ray’s at Venture. I haven’t heard anything at all about Clayton—I think he may have left town. God knows he ripped me off for enough to afford to go first class.”

I took notes on everything he said, finding it interesting that one of the fired bartenders was now working at Venture, which was managed by our friend Mario, Bob Allen’s partner. I had been planning to call Bob and Mario later anyway.

“Did you know any of the guys on the…the other list…well enough to know anything about them? Lovers? Friends? Where, other than the Male Call, they hung out?”

There was a slight pause. “I probably knew most of them, or at least knew who they were. But there were only a couple I knew really well. Stu Elliot had been a friend for years. His best buddy, Mark, still comes in frequently. I can put you in touch with him if you’d like. John Ellysse was one of the roughest, toughest studs I ever knew. Nobody messed with John. I don’t think he went anywhere else. He didn’t have time. What hardly anybody but me knew was that he lived with and took care of his sister, who has Down syndrome. She was his life.” He paused again, longer this time, then said, “Christ! What a fucking waste!”

I could clearly hear the bitterness and anger in his voice.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he continued. “If I ever found out that somebody was actually going around deliberately giving AIDS to other guys, I swear to God I’d kill him myself!”

*

I waited until I was sure Mario and Bob would be up then called. Bob answered, and from the faint sound of a lawnmower in the background I assumed he was at the kitchen phone by an open window.

“Got the farmhands out on the south forty, I hear,” I said.

“Hey,” Bob replied, “he’s younger than I am. Besides, he needs the exercise. I get all I need doing dishes. To what do we owe the honor of a midweek daytime call?”

“Two things,” I said. “I’ve been hired to look into the source of these rumors about somebody deliberately spreading AIDS, and I need your and Mario’s help.”

“Sure!” He didn’t ask who had hired me, but I hadn’t expected him to. Bob never pushed. “These rumors are everywhere,” he continued, “and they’re making everyone even more skittish than they already were. It’s hurt all our businesses, but I understand it’s been really hard on the Male Call. What do you need?”

“I need to know everything I can about who’s spreading the rumor and where they heard it. I’m going to try to track it backwards to see if it points to anyone in particular. Could you and Jimmy…”—Bob’s fulltime bartender at Ramon’s—“…make some sort of list for me? I know it’s a lot to ask, but there’s a lot on the line here. If it’s just a rumor, I want to know who started it, and if it’s not a rumor, somebody’s got to find and stop this guy.”

“Of course, we’ll help,” Bob said, “but if there is somebody deliberately spreading AIDS, there really isn’t very much anybody can do about it. It isn’t a crime—that I know of.”

He was right. Deliberately kill someone with a gun and there’s no question you’ll face a murder charge. Deliberately kill someone by giving them AIDS and…Gee, fella, that wasn’t a nice thing to do. Possibly some civil suit or other could be filed, but I wasn’t sure what the basis would be, or who would file it—the victim often didn’t live long enough to go through the suing process.

“I’m not sure what can be done about it,” I admitted. “But people have to know the truth. There’s very little of it around these days, and these rumors are hurting everybody.”

Bob sighed. “I agree. It was bad enough when we had to live in fear of the police. Now we have to be afraid of one another.”

I no longer heard the sound of the lawnmower in the background, and a moment later there was the creak of a spring as, I assumed, the screen door to the kitchen opened.

“Is Mario handy?” I asked. “I’ve got a question for him.”

“Sure,” Bob said. “He just walked in. Here he is.” I heard a lowered-voiced, “Dick wants to talk to you,” followed by Mario’s, “Hi, Dick. What’s up?”

“Bob can fill you in on most of it, but I wanted to ask you something about one of your bartenders—guy named Ray.”

“Ray Croft? What do you want to know?”

“Do you know where he worked before he came to Venture?”

“He last worked at the Male Call,” he said. “Why?”

I really didn’t like the idea of maybe getting someone into trouble, but I was curious as to what reason Ray may have given for leaving the Male Call.

“Did he say why he left?” I asked.

“Yeah, he told me he’d threatened to punch out the owner and got canned. Brewer’s got a reputation for being really tough on his employees, so while I can’t approve of what Ray did, I can understand it. But I’d been in there a couple of times while he was on duty and he’s a damned good bartender, so when he came to Venture, I hired him. We get along fine.”

“Have you heard Ray badmouthing either Brewer or the Male Call—or linking the rumors of someone spreading AIDS to the Male Call?”

“Not that I’ve heard. I always tell our bartenders they’re there to listen not to talk. But now that I think of it, what Bob said at brunch is true—a lot of the rumors do seem to involve the Male Call. Care to tell me what’s going on?”

“I explained it to Bob, but I’ve been hired to track down the source of these rumors and find out if there’s any truth behind them. He can fill you in on what I need.”

Like Bob, Mario didn’t ask who hired me, but I don’t think he had to.

“I’ll be glad to do whatever I can,” he said.

We talked for a few more minutes then said our good-byes and hung up.

I made a list of other bar owners, managers, and bartenders I knew well enough to ask for help and decided to devote a night to making the rounds to talk to them. I figured maybe Jonathan and I could make a night of it and also made a note to call Craig Richmond to see if he might be available to watch Joshua either Friday or Saturday night.

And so the day passed in lists and notes and planning just how best to go about my investigation.

*

My list of bars, of course, included Hughie’s, a hustler bar close to my office and for a while a regular afterwork hangout, not because of the hustlers but for the fact they serve dark beer on tap—and in frosted mugs, no less. It was at Hughie’s I had met Jonathan.

I seldom went to Hughie’s anymore, now that I had a reason to go right home from work, plus I knew Jonathan didn’t want to be reminded, even by proxy, of his brief hustler days.

While Hughie’s and the Male Call didn’t have much of a crossover clientele, I knew that there wasn’t much in this town going on that Bud, Hughie’s perennial bartender, didn’t know about. So, I left the office an hour early and walked the two blocks to the bar.

I hadn’t been there in a couple of months, and while the interior had not changed by so much as a replaced burned-out lightbulb, I sensed…something different…and for some reason, that felt very, very strange. Hughie’s never changed. Never. I always thought of it as a time warp. Hughie’s today was Hughie’s five years ago and Hughie’s five years from now. Different and Hughie’s didn’t belong in the same sentence.

One of the things I noticed as I walked to the bar—Bud had, as usual, seen me enter and reached into the cooler for a frosted mug—was that it was a little after four yet there was practically no one in the place. Usually, the hustlers started drifting in between three and four o’clock, anticipating the arrival of johns as soon as the offices started closing. Now, there were only two guys I could have spotted as hustlers from a block away and two or three regulars—the same guys who had been there the last time I was, sitting on the same stools.

Bud had my beer waiting when I reached the bar, and I dug a bill out of my pocket to hand him.

“How’s it goin’, Bud?” I asked, as I did every single time I came into the place.

“Pretty good, Dick. You?”

“Pretty good. Really busy, but otherwise pretty good.” I looked around the bar. “Where is everybody?”

He shrugged. “Business is off lately,” he said, and he didn’t have to explain why.

“I wanted to ask you about that,” I said. “You got a minute to talk?”

He slowly looked up and down the bar. “What do you think?”

I grinned.

“So, what do you want to know?” he asked, putting both hands on the bar.

“What do you know about these rumors of somebody deliberately infecting other guys?”

“I’ve heard stories,” he said noncommittally.

“Any specifics? People? Places?”

He lowered his head, thought a minute, then looked back up at me.

“You know how rumors are,” he said. “They’re all over hell, and they can be damned bad for business. The hustlers don’t talk about it—at least when the johns can hear. It’s bad for business. A lot of the johns who come in here, they’re straight, but even they’re becoming aware of AIDS and they’re getting skittish. And the minute they hear one story about somebody handing out AIDS like breath mints, they’re gone.

“You never hear definite names, though, which is typical with rumors. There’s hints that it’s this one or it’s that one.”