by Louis Barr
Bullshit. Nothing felt right about Shane Danning—his disappearance, reappearance, disappearance, his abandoned sports car, his alleged compulsive gambling, his sad house, fucking nada. I turned left, took one step into the living room, and stopped.
I suppose I could say Danning liked minimalism and eclectic furnishings. The living room included a love seat Shane could’ve picked up curbside. He had no coffee or end tables, no lamps, and no overhead lights. Kristopher/Kristina Morgotti told me Shane had pawned most of his possessions to support his gambling habit.
She’d also said Shane claimed he’d landed a second, high-paying job. Could’ve fooled me. To his credit, Shane had kept what looked like about a seventy-two-inch flat screen TV mounted above a low slung Italian mahogany cabinet. Disparate and desperate, I thought. I moved along.
In the dining room, two novels, a short stack of magazines, a tablet, and an empty coffee mug topped a card table. A folding aluminum chair had been pushed back from it.
I picked up the tablet and pressed the home button to wake it. Shane had powered it fully off. The scanner wouldn’t recognize my fingerprint to turn it on. I slipped the tablet into my messenger bag.
I briefly considered borrowing Shane’s copy of Pilot Buddies magazine to share with Hope, but I changed my mind. One should never dick-taunt a lesbian ex-cop who’d spent time on the bomb squad.
In the kitchen, mail covered one counter. Flipping through it, I saw what looked like unopened bills, among sales flyers and other junk. In the cabinets, I found three boxes of plastic cutlery, a stack of paper plates, and two ceramic mugs. I unplugged the off-brand coffeemaker, the kind that could melt down with no provocation and possibly set the house on fire. The stained kitchen sinks didn’t hold stacks of dirty dishes—only because he hadn’t much that needed to be washed. In a cupboard were bachelor’s staples of marinara sauce, pasta, and coffee. He’d packed the freezer with Lean Cuisines. Two containers of Greek yogurt and a half gallon of milk, all past their use-by dates, were on the fridge’s top shelf. Bottles of water and soft drinks filled the door’s bottom shelf, but no beer. Danning didn’t appear to have a problem with alcohol.
In the bathroom, damp towels that had been dropped on the cracked linoleum floor gave off the funk of mildew. Danning kept a bottle of designer body wash in the shower. Men’s toiletries lined the counter. He stored little in the medicine chest: razor, shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrush, and aspirin, but no prescription drugs. He didn’t seem to have a problem with pharmaceuticals either.
The house had two bedrooms, one with nothing in it but a herd of dust buffalo. The master bedroom’s full-sized mattress and box springs were stacked on a frame without a headboard. I pulled back a corner of the top sheet and found nothing but clean bedding. A chest of drawers held socks, underwear, and T-shirts.
The bedroom closet included pilot uniforms, designer dress and casual shirts, slacks, and a half dozen pairs of stressed jeans, costing several hundred bucks each. Gifts from Diana, I guessed. Four pairs of uniform and five pairs of casual footwear with nothing stashed in any of them filled the shoe rack. On the upper shelf, I found three empty pieces of designer luggage.
I raked a hand through my hair. For fuck sakes, most college students had more shit crammed into their dorm rooms than Shane Danning had in his entire house.
Heading for the front door, I stopped and retraced my steps to the living room. I knelt and began opening the Italian mahogany cabinet’s doors and drawers. Shane owned about fifty DVDs and a DVD player/recorder. I opened the DVDs and found the appropriate disc in each jewel case.
And he’d kept an old RCA VHS player/recorder and about two dozen videotapes.
Checking the videocassettes, I found no adhesive tape or tape residue, suggesting nothing had been recorded over the movies. I looked inside the videotape boxes.
In the bottom of the Boogie Nights box, I found a flash drive. I took it, along with Shane’s tablet, stepped outside, and locked the door—more key jiggling required.
I headed for Hollywood’s Jugs & Mugs Saloon, the dive in which Shane Danning had last been seen.
Chapter Eleven
Danny Boy
Clint, Tuesday, May 1
At this hour of the morning, the Jugs & Mugs Saloon had one patron: a young man reading at a table near the bar. He wore a UCLA T-shirt that hugged his muscular chest and biceps. He looked sexy as hell in a boyish kind of way—maybe twenty or twenty-one. Shit, make that eighteen or nineteen.
Our eyes met. Standing, he took three steps and placed a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. “Hi, I’m Dan. Do you have time to join me for a drink?”
It wasn’t the most clever pickup line I’d ever heard, but he looked extraordinarily innocent and sincere. I hated to turn him down. Christ, I’d gotten hit on twice today before 1100 hours. I guess I still had a little of it left in me, whatever it might be.
I smiled. “Sorry, I’m working.” I handed him my business card. “In case you ever need a private dick.” Yes, it sounded kind of trampish, but he’d hit on me first.
Dan read my card, then took his hand off my shoulder. He looked at me as if I’d pointed my Glock at his head. He flicked the edge of the card before slipping it into a hip pocket of his tight-fitting jeans. “I’ll give you a call,” Dan said.
I made a beeline for the bar.
“What can I get you?” the bartender said in a baritone voice.
I ordered his best water. He set a twenty-buck bottle of thawed glacier ice on the bar. I pointed at Dan, who had his nose in a book, and asked the barkeep to pour him another.
Dan’s drink of choice was Diet Sprite from the tap, no ice. Watching as the bartender served Dan his fresh soda, I decided he definitely had the looks of an all-American frat boy sans the tendency to drink too much.
Dan held up his fresh drink and smiled his thanks.
I nodded at him, then turned my attention to the tall, barrel-chested bartender. I introduced myself and pulled out my private investigator creds.
The bartender scanned my license but didn’t raise an eyebrow. “Ron Kitson,” he said. “I’m the owner.”
We shook hands.
He leaned closer to me. “I suppose you’re here about Shane Danning.”
“Yes.” I sipped some water, and pulled out my tablet. “Were you working last Wednesday night?”
Kitson nodded without having to think about it. “When you own a bar, you’re working most days and nights.”
“Then you saw Shane Danning in here last Wednesday night.” I’d made it a statement, not a question.
Kitson let his beefcake arms drop to his sides. “I was tending bar, and I served Shane last Wednesday night. He’s a regular. Never causes problems, never gets drunk, and never needs a tab anymore.”
“You used to open a tab for him.”
“The pilots union must’ve gotten crew members decent raises,” Kitson said, chuckling. “I used to carry Shane’s tab for weeks, sometimes months, but not anymore. He always has plenty of cash lately, tips good—a great customer and one helluva nice guy.”
I juxtaposed Kitson’s statements beside the shithole Shane lived in and next to Kristina Morgotti’s claim that Shane asked her for a large loan.
The facts about Danning, as I’d been told, baffled me. Maybe he’d gotten lucky at one of the casinos. Sure, and at any moment pigs could fly out of my ass. Too many things about Danning did not compute, including his alleged compulsive gambling habit.
“You say he has plenty of cash when he comes in here.”
Kitson winked at me. “Shane’s one of those lucky bastards with plenty of cash these days and more than his fair share in the good looks and great body departments. A lot like you.”
The bartender caught my brief look of surprise.
He raised both hands. “I meant that as a compliment, not a come-on.”
“Roger that,” I said. Given Danning’s Hollywood good looks, maybe his alleged second job involved whoring
himself by way of an escort service. “Do you recall how much Danning drank last Wednesday night?”
Kitson wiped the already clean bar with a damp rag. “He drank one beer.”
“He had one beer?”
“You know he’s an airline pilot, and they get surprise urine tests.”
I nodded.
“Shane always stops at one beer. He doesn’t drop by to drink himself stupid.” His chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. “He comes in here huntin’ pussy or pecker. It never takes him long to find either or both.”
“Did he leave with anyone last Wednesday night?”
Kitson shrugged. “I noticed people smiling at him. One couple seemed to capture Shane’s attention. But I’m certain he left here alone shortly before midnight.” He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “Then I had both eyes on an exchange student from Vienna, or so she told me.” Kitson warmed to his topic. “Man, she was fine and jonesin’ for a man of my persuasion.” He shrugged. “Guess there ain’t too many people of color in Austria.”
I put one hand over my mouth, bent, and yawned hugely. I thanked Roy Kitson for his time. Then I finished my twenty-buck bottle of water. “Please get Dan another drink.” I dropped some bills on the bar and smiled bye-bye at Danny boy.
I needed help from my longtime best friend, the man whose grasp of technology ran second to no one’s.
I called Mars Hauser.
Chapter Twelve
Blue Money
Clint, Hauser Security, Tuesday, May 1
I parked in front of Mars Hauser’s two-story, beige stucco office building. Stepping onto the pavement, I let loose with a yawn that went all the way to my toes.
Sporting a designer suit and a bulge under his left arm, a security guard whom I knew only as Alesandro approached me, seemingly from out of nowhere.
“Don’t tell me my Greek magnificence has tuckered you out already,” Alesandro said.
“Yes, your Greek magnificence shit has become tiresome.” Then I yawned again.
“Let’s go, sleepy boy. The big boss man awaits you.”
I followed Alesandro into Hauser Security’s bland building with its bulletproof, signal-defense glass. I knew the way to his office, but Alesandro escorted me.
I entered Mars’s corner office. Alesandro silently closed the door behind me. Marston “Mars” Hauser stood and grinned. Our handshake became an all-out backslapping hug.
Mars and I have been best friends for about fifteen years. We’d been West Point barracks mates all four years due to our broad shoulders, muscular bodies, and heights (his six-five and my six-six), which demanded longer, wider, heavier-duty bunks than those issued to other cadets.
Mars’s loose blond curls, two-day stubble, cut-offs, vintage T-shirts, and flip-flops, which he always kicked off once he was seated at his desk, redefined office casual.
On paper, Mars’s company did business as Hauser Security, but he did not offer his services to corporations or the general public. His classified assignments came through various intelligence agencies, from orders that often originated at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mars and his thirty-member crew used cutting edge technologies to analyze data and to conduct cyber warfare and/or cyber black ops against adversaries of the United States. Outside of the office, Mars Hauser’s hobbies included portrait sketching, paintings in oils, and breeding prize-winning orchids. I saw him as a riddle concealed in secrecy wrapped in contradiction.
I took a seat in the leather chair fronting Mars’s paperless desk and stifled a yawn. My eyes drooped.
I saw Sierra standing beside him.
“I’ve always been fond of Mars. And you know Ian adores him.” She winked at me. “I love his Puckish charisma, and he’s so nice to look at. I bet he’d be fun to come home to.”
What the hell? Sierra and I never had this conversation in the past. I looked at her. You ended two sentences in prepositions. Did you trip and fall into the solecisms circle of hell?
“You’re becoming a regular laugh riot.” She looked straight into my eyes. “Seriously, sweetheart, I think you should make a paradigm shift with your next spouse and take a walk on the dude side.”
This was definitely not a past conversation.
I shook my head at her visage. Mars and I have a bromance going. We love, admire, and respect each other without sex.
“You know relationships needn’t remain linear.”
I wish I hadn’t told Sierra Mars and I used to bonk each other as well as women during our West Point years.
Mars leaned back in his executive chair. “What can I do for you, Moose?”
I snapped out of my daydream and pulled Shane Danning’s tablet from my messenger bag. “I found this powered off, and I know this model is fingerprint protected. Can you crack it?”
Mars chuckled. “Is a frog’s ass watertight?” He ported the tablet, clicked twice, and the wall of programs appeared.
I shook my head. “Hoser, you’ve got magic fingers.”
He handed me Shane Danning’s unlocked tablet. “Do you have anything else you’d like me to get my magic fingers on…or maybe around?”
I didn’t take his flirtatious comments seriously. I handed him Danning’s flash drive. “I found this cleverly hidden. I’m guessing it may need a password.”
He slid the drive into a port and scanned one of the three monitors on his desk.
A couple of keystrokes later, a warning appeared on the monitor. “The following films are intended for adult audiences only. Please store your files accordingly.”
Mars paused it.
“You amaze me.”
“It’s nothing but hacker skullduggery 101.” He grinned. “I suspect we’ve some porn afoot. Or maybe merely ten inches. Do you want to check it out?”
Pornography bored me senseless. But if it was nothing more than fuck films, why had Shane password protected the flash drive and gone out of his way to hide it? My curiosity got the better of me. “Let’s give it a look.” I moved my chair behind Mars’s desk and sat next to him.
The production company’s name, Bicurious Fantasies, appeared on the screen, followed by the film’s title: Ass Bandit I: Lady Poldtranes Unlocked and Sir Knightly’s Big Surprise.
“Shit, this sounds deep,” I said with all due sarcasm.
A medieval bedchamber with blazing torches attached to the stone walls and a suit of armor standing in a corner appeared on the monitor. A buck naked Sir Knightly entered, followed by an almost nude Lady Poldtranes. Her strawberry-blond hair covered her back and ass. Sir Knightly unlocked her chastity belt and let it drop to the floor. They kissed and fell onto the canopied bed.
“I know boob jobs didn’t exist during medieval times,” Mars said, “but what about canopied beds?”
“Hoser,” I said again using Mars’s West Point moniker for Hauser, “it’s porn—you’ll probably see a waterwheel-powered vibrating dildo.” I nudged him. “Hark! Prepare thine self for brilliant dialogue.”
“Suck that cock,” Sir Knightly said. “Finger those hairy balls.”
I yawned. “Why does porn always use ‘that’ and ‘those’ instead of ‘my’ in reference to male genitalia? Is there a spare penis and another pair of balls somewhere in the room?”
Mars chuckled. “Christ, Sir Knightly’s bush hides most of his dick. Maybe he should find a waterwheel-powered electric razor.”
The Ass Bandit, wearing only a black domino mask, made his entrance through the bedchamber’s meurtrier. “Away, thou lily-liver’d, one-inch worm’d boy,” he said to Sir Knightly.
“What?” Mars said.
I nudged Mars. “Holy shit, plagiarized Shakespearean dialogue regarding Sir Knightly’s microdick.”
Ass Bandit locked the chastity belt around Sir Knightly’s face. Then he ripped the sheet and bound Knightly’s hands and feet.
“Oooh, you brute! Rip the sheets!” Mars said.
Ass Bandit kneeled between Lady Poldtranes’s legs. “Oh, thou art fair,
m’lady.”
“Ass Bandit has a porn star’s big dick, but he couldn’t have made Linda Lovelace (JFGI) gag on it,” I said.
It’s only the camera angle and the lighting, I thought, but then I leaned toward the monitor to get a closer look at Ass Bandit’s face. His eyes went from dark brown to blue to violet. I asked Mars to reverse the flash drive fifteen seconds.
He did.
It hadn’t been my imagination. The camera angle, lighting, and the black mask brought out Ass Bandit’s violet eyes—the same color as his mother’s.
Lady Poldtranes’s moaning and screaming reached a crescendo. Then the Ass Bandit went at Sir Knightly hard and for a long time. The brave knight shrieked like a twink.
I asked Mars to fast-forward through Ass Bandit one. The flash drive contained Ass Bandit films two and three, each about thirty minutes long with differing fantasies and gender combinations. We fast-forwarded through those.
Maybe Shane Danning’s gambling losses had made him desperate enough to moonlight as a porn star. I knew this particular adult film producer had a reputation for paying his stars well and always made his actors’ health and safety on the set a priority. Shane Danning’s stardom verified bartender Roy Kitson’s claim that Shane seemed to have plenty of cash these days, not to mention Shane’s assertion to Kristina/Kristopher that he’d landed a second job and could quickly pay back his/her $5000 loan.
But why hadn’t Shane taken the path of least resistance and asked Diana for financial help? I paused. The simple answer was Shane enjoyed having a porn star moonlighting gig. I put the flash drive and tablet back into my messenger bag and thanked Mars for his help.
Mars slid his bare feet into his flip-flops and walked outside with me. Alesandro followed, standing out of hearing range. Mars and I shook hands.
He didn’t let go of my hand. “If there’s anything else I can help you with, anything at all, give me a call.”
I exhaled a laugh. “You might want to think twice before offering your assistance. This case gets stranger by the hour.”