by Dorien Grey
Table of Contents
Copyright
The Bar Watcher
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
The Bar Watcher: A Dick Hardesty Mystery
By Dorien Grey
Copyright 2015 by Dorien Grey
Cover Copyright 2015 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 2001 and 2009.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental
Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing
A World Ago: A Navy Man’s Letters Home (1954-1956)
Short Circuits: A Life in Blogs (Volume 1)
The Butcher’s Son
The Ninth Man
www.untreedreads.com
The Bar Watcher
A Dick Hardesty Mystery
Dorien Grey
Chapter 1
One of the reasons I became a private investigator was because I like solving puzzles, and every case is like working a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. Of course, the bulk of any private investigator’s cases are like the puzzles for kids you see on the little table in dentists’ waiting rooms—five pieces and there’s the bunny.
But every now and then you get one that is more like one of those 1,500-piece reproductions of a Bosch or Breughel painting—a real challenge. They drive me crazy sometimes, but when I finally put the last couple of pieces together, there’s a sense of satisfaction that’s hard to describe, or match.
Almost always, the people you’re looking for are right there in the picture, although you don’t recognize them until the puzzle’s completed. And from time to time, the picture you think you’re working on isn’t the one you end up seeing.
Now, take the case of the bar watcher…
*
I was in what I refer to now as my “slut phase.” My monogamous five-year relationship with Chris had broken up some time before, and I decided it was about time I let the other guys spend their time looking for Mr. Right—I’d concentrate on Mr. Right Now. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t whittle a notch in the bedpost after every trick, or I’d have ended up sleeping on a mound of wood shavings.
When I wasn’t pursuing research for a book I thought about writing on “101 Fun Things to Do With a Penis,” I was actually making some progress in that part of my life that didn’t involve lying down. I’d obtained my private investigator’s license late the year before, and was struggling to make ends meet.
Business was beginning to improve, though slowly, thanks to a solid working relationship I had with members of the local gay Bar Guild, for whom I’d done a couple of favors prior to taking out my license. Referrals from Guild members were, in fact, the source of much of my business. That there weren’t exactly a lot of gay private investigators to choose from also helped, I’m sure.
I’d rented a small office in one of the city’s older commercial buildings, with an address far more impressive than the building itself. If I’d started out with any illusions that being a private investigator might be a pretty exciting job, reality kicked me in the ass in short order. Lots and lots of checking on possibly (and too often definitely) wandering lovers, one or two incidences of blackmail, a case of embezzlement involving the business manager of a gay resort—that sort of thing—and lots of sitting around waiting for the next client.
Oh, yeah…and I’d given up smoking. Cold turkey. That was a hell of a lot harder than any case I’d had, or was likely ever to have.
So, I was relieved when the phone rang just as I was trying to figure out a ten-letter word for “reclusive or brutish person” in the paper’s crossword puzzle (don’t bother—it’s “troglodyte”).
“Hardesty Investigations,” I said, in my professional, half-octave-lower-than-normal voice.
“Hardesty, this is Barry Comstock. Jay Mason of the Bar Guild referred you to me.”
“Well, thanks for calling, Mr. Comstock,” I said, making a mental note to thank Jay as well. “How can I help you?”
“I own Rage…you’re familiar with it?”
Rage was the city’s hottest bathhouse. I knew it.
“Of course,” I said, then waited for him to continue.
“We’ve got ourselves a problem, and while I think it’s a bunch of bullshit, they tell me you might be able to help resolve it.”
“Is it anything you can mention on the phone, or…?” I asked.
“No, definitely not.”
“I understand,” I said, but of course, I didn’t. “Did you want to come to my office?”
“No, you come over here. I’ve got a business to run, and I can’t just be taking off.”
Like I wasn’t busy. Well, okay, I wasn’t, but I didn’t like his “busier than thou” attitude.
“No problem,” I said. “I can be there in about an hour, if that would be all right. I have a client coming in a little later this afternoon.” I lied, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Good,” he said. “I don’t see your name on our members list, but I might have missed it.”
Actually, he hadn’t—I wasn’t a member. Baths are fine, but they’re not my thing. I like to have a few words come out of my mouth before putting something in, and the baths aren’t exactly the place guys go for complex conversations like “Hi. My name’s…”
“I know how to find it,” I said. “I’ll see you in an hour, then.”
He hung up without a word.
Though I’d never met Barry Comstock, I’d seen him at a distance a couple of times in the trendier bars and discos, always accompanied by two or three different good-looking guys he seemed to enjoy treating like dirt. He had a reputation as a wheeler-dealer in the rapidly growing gay business community. A former porn star, he’d opened Rage about eight months earlier. He was noted for having a monumental schlong, and an ego to match. I’d seen some of his movies—I think I still have a copy of one of his better ones, Comstock’s Load.
He was also rumored to have the first nickel he ever made, so I imagined he would not be calling on me unless it was something pretty important.
*
Rage was located about half a block off Beech, the main thoroughfare of what local gays were beginning, in sort of an homage to San Francisco’s Castro District, to refer to as The Central, an area of predominantly gay stores, bars and restaurants. Rage had no ground floor windows, just a dark-blue canopy with “Rage” in white script over a matching blue entry door. Just as I reached for the handle,
the door swung open, and a drop-dead gorgeous hunk exited with his gym bag and a satisfied smile. Our eyes locked for a moment, and he gave me a broad wink.
“Have fun,” he said.
Before I had a chance to reconsider my opinion of baths, I was inside the small lobby. A blond Adonis stood behind the registration window wearing a “Rage” T-shirt so tight I thought at first it had been spray-painted on his bare chest. Yeah, I thought, maybe I should reconsider…
“Your card?” the blond said.
“I’m not a member,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment with Barry Comstock. The name’s Hardesty.”
The blond picked up a phone out of sight below the window, said something I couldn’t hear then hung up and nodded toward the only door leading to the interior.
“First door to your left,” he said, and pressed an unseen buzzer that opened the door.
“Thanks,” I said, and passed through it into a short hallway.
The first door on the left was marked “Private,” and I knocked.
“Come in,” a voice said, and I did.
The room was large and windowless, paneled in what appeared to be dark oak. It apparently couldn’t decide whether its function was to impress or to be a working office, and therefore didn’t quite fit either category. There were several small framed photos on one wall of Comstock with various celebrities, a large painting of a nude male torso—undoubtedly Comstock himself—on a side wall next to a door, a couple file cabinets, a worktable with a copy machine and a typewriter, a couple of comfortable and expensive leather chairs and a large, equally expensive desk, behind which sat Barry Comstock, slitting open a stack of mail with a wicked-looking letter opener. I mentioned that Comstock had been a porn star, but it was obvious he was no longer in his twenties—or, despite valiant effort on his part, even his thirties. His face had that stretched-too-tight look that indicated a plastic surgeon’s handiwork. In some odd way, he was rather like the room itself. He’d have been considerably more attractive if he’d just left himself alone.
He didn’t get up, so I deliberately walked over to the desk and extended my hand, which he had to put down the letter opener and lean forward to take.
“Dick Hardesty, Mr. Comstock.” I said. “What can I do for you?”
He motioned me to a chair and resumed opening the mail, shifting his glance back and forth between it and me.
“We’ve had some…well, what my partners consider to be threats. I think they’re bullshit, but they insisted I look into it. Frankly, I don’t have the time, which is why I called you.”
“What kind of threats?”
He finished the mail, set the opener aside again, and leaned back in his chair.
“We’ve been getting bitch letters since we opened. Most of them have tapered off lately.”
“What kind of bitch letters?”
Comstock gave a slight sneer. “About our membership policy,” he said.
“And your membership policy is…?” Actually, I had a pretty good idea from what I’d been hearing on the street, but I wanted to hear him spell it out.
He looked at me with a mixture of disdain and surprise.
“Which is that this is a place where hot young guys come to meet other hot young guys. We don’t let fats or old farts in. If you’re fat, or bald, or old, or ugly you can go someplace else.”
So much for my buying stock in the Barry Comstock School of Charm. This guy was really starting to piss me off.
“So, what made this letter different…and did you keep it?” I asked.
“Nah,” Comstock said with a shrug. “I pitch them all. But I remembered this one—it came in maybe four, five months ago—because the asshole made it up to look like a ransom note. You know, all cut-out words pasted together. It said if we didn’t change our membership policy we’d be hearing from him again. Fuckin’ blackmail’s what it boils down to, pure and simple. And I’m not the kind of guy you want to try to blackmail.”
He unconsciously hunched his shoulders forward as if flexing his muscles. We sat silent for a moment, until I said, “And I gather you did hear from him again?”
Comstock gave a contemptuous snort and reached into the bottom drawer of his desk, pulling out what appeared to be a shoebox.
“This came in the mail, addressed to me.”
He pushed it across the desk, and I leaned forward to take it. The box had no marking of any kind, and I lifted the lid to find it stuffed with tissue paper. Moving that aside, I found a 3x5 card on which someone had pasted a panel from what I assume was a comic book. It was a picture of a fireball over which was the word “BOOM!”
On the other side, words cut from various sources, in assorted sizes and typefaces, said, “Last chance. Everyone plays or YOU pay.” Kind of melodramatic, I thought, but it made its point.
I put the card back, closed the lid and pushed the box across the desk.
“Did you save the wrapper it came in?”
“What the fuck for? I’ve got enough garbage around here as it is.”
If he was too stupid to entertain the idea that a return address or postmark might have come in handy, I wasn’t about to spell it out for him.
“It’s probably just somebody with a grudge and an active imagination,” I said. “But you never know—this guy could be serious. I guess you didn’t consider contacting the police?”
Comstock shook his head scornfully. “Are you out of your fucking mind? I let the cops come in here scaring off the customers, and I might as well shut the place down. I told you it’s fucking blackmail. And I told you I don’t pay blackmail.”
Yeah, I heard you the first time, and I wasn’t impressed then, either.
Though I didn’t say anything, it struck me that for anyone out to settle a grievance, real or imagined, with Rage, it would only take a couple of “concerned citizen” or “they’re selling drugs” calls to the cops to effectively shut the place down. The police would love any excuse for a raid, and no gay man in his right mind would willingly put himself in a gay bathhouse that was subject to frequent raids. Obviously, something else was going on here.
“Exactly who determines who gets in and who doesn’t?” I asked.
Comstock leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk, one hand wrapped around the other lightly clenched fist.
“I’m the boss. I decide. The deskmen are told in no uncertain terms who gets in and who doesn’t. They do the sorting out,” he said. “If there’s any doubt, they buzz me. But usually, it’s pretty cut-and-dried. Ugly’s ugly, fat’s fat, old’s old.”
“And how do they handle it when an undesirable comes in?” I used the word undesirable deliberately.
“The ones we want as members are given membership cards to fill out. The others are told memberships are closed.”
“And if somebody is filling out a membership card when an undesirable comes in?” I asked. “Or worse, if somebody’s getting the ‘closed membership’ spiel and somebody worthy of belonging comes in?”
“Same thing. They get the message pretty fast. And you can cut the fucking sarcasm. I’m running a business here, not a bleeding hearts social club. There are lots of other baths around. Let the creeps go there.”
That’s it, Comstock. You’re definitely off my Christmas card list.
He stared at me. “Well, do you want the job or not?”
“I can certainly try,” I said, “but you realize there aren’t any guarantees.”
I told him my rates, and he leaned quickly back in his chair as if a cobra had suddenly appeared on his desk.
“That’s pretty damned steep for no guarantees,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though. You do a little preliminary checking around first—you know, in exchange for a year’s membership, say—then we can talk about officially hiring you when you have a better idea of whether you think you can find the guy.”
Now it was my turn to see the imaginary cobra, but I didn’t move a muscle. I wanted to tell this sorry excu
se for a cheap bastard what he could do with his year’s membership, but I managed to keep my cool.
“Sorry, my rates aren’t negotiable. Why don’t you think this over for a day or so,” I said, getting up from my chair, “and if you decide to hire me, give me a call.”
I wondered whether I should offer to shake hands with this walking prick or not. I was surprised when he also got up and extended his hand.
“I’ll let you know,” he said as we shook hands.
Then he sat back down in his chair, and I turned and left the room.
“Rage” was a good name for the place, I decided.
*
On my way back to the office, although I tried to concentrate on other things, my mind kept going back to Comstock and Rage. There’s a definite difference between having a big prick and being one, but in Comstock’s case, he qualified on both. Rage’s membership policy was, without a doubt, reprehensible and insulting to anyone who didn’t meet his standards of what was or was not “hot.” I could well imagine the humiliation and…well, yes, rage…anyone so blatantly refused entry to the bath might feel. Perhaps whoever sent the letter and the box was overreacting just a little, but then again, if it had happened to me….
But, hey, I’m okay. I got offered a full year’s membership! Big fucking deal. I wondered whether it ever occurred to the guys who got in how the guys who didn’t must feel?
Okay, Hardesty, take your heart off your sleeve and put it back in your chest, now.
*
On my way home after work, I stopped in at Bob Allen’s bar, Ramón’s, for their happy hour, to see if I could talk to Bob. I wanted to find out a little more about Barry Comstock and his “partners,” and Bob was in as good a position to know as anyone.
I didn’t see him around, but Jimmy the bartender was at the far end of the bar signing for a beer delivery from a guy whose talents were definitely wasted pushing handtrucks full of beer all over town. He stood about 6′3″ and wore a short-sleeved uniform shirt. I’ve seen oak trees with trunks smaller around than that guy’s biceps. And when he turned in my direction, I saw that the rest of him matched. Short-cropped hair, a nice, square jaw, a huge expanse of chest with perfectly curved pecs the shirt couldn’t hide, a V-shaped torso and a bulge down the left leg of his pants that ran halfway to his knees. Definitely my kind of guy.