But Stanley was there, trumping all the other cards in the deck. Tom didn’t know what exactly it was they had, or ever would have, but he knew if he wanted it, he had to work at it. That meant no more chasing women. At least men weren’t a problem for him in that respect. He had never lusted after men, and had been mostly unaware of them lusting after him.
The ropes of love were impossible to break, but they had both learned through bitter experience that they were easily raveled.
AFTER THE wind farms, the desert really did open up, but the increasing presence of billboards touting restaurants, hotels, and gas stations announced that they were nearing Palm Springs. A grandiose RV park proclaimed itself “a retirement community for active adults.”
“Better check in with the locals first thing,” Tom said. At one time, they had both been homicide inspectors with the San Francisco Police Department, where Tom had been something of a legend and Stanley, no way around it, a misfit. Stanley was thirty years old, Tom a tad older—though not enough older to qualify as a “daddy,” a term used fondly in gay circles.
Now they were licensed private detectives. Some police departments were welcoming of private operatives, some were not. Since it was never a good idea to get on the wrong side of a department, checking with the local police was always the first item on Tom’s agenda whenever he came to a strange town. Just in case. They had come because Chris wanted them, and Chris was a friend, but they would have no jurisdiction here, no authority other than what the Palm Springs cops were willing to allow them.
Best-case scenario, they got leave to snoop around, sometimes pretty freely. Worst-case, the cops would shut them down. If it turned out that way, they’d have a couple days’ vacation in the high desert, go back to San Francisco, and leave things up to the locals.
Stanley had gone to the computer and printed out maps for them before they left San Francisco. They exited the freeway on the Gene Autry Trail, skirted the airport, and drove directly to the Palm Springs Police Department—a modern structure, one-story, poured concrete with vertical grooves cascading down its front, and a flat roof. In the parking lot, two pigeons were squabbling over a leftover scrap of doughnut and blinked resentfully at them when Tom drove over their dessert. A couple of fan palms tried hard to give the building some charm, and a sculpture out front showed a policeman helping a fallen comrade.
“Nice touch,” Tom said of the sculpture. “Comrades in arms. I like it.”
Stanley noted that the sculptor had made both the officers hot. Gay artist, he’d bet money. And probably Tom hadn’t even noticed that part of it. Much of Tom was still a mysterious and unexplored continent to him. Stanley loved him, but he totally did not understand him.
Who ever understood anybody, though, beyond the surface stuff? What he knew, knew for certain, was that Tom was there for him. Anybody who wanted to hurt him—and there had been a few of those—would have to come at him through Tom, and Tom made a hell of an effective barrier.
It didn’t hurt either, that Tom was dynamite in the sack. Really dynamite. Stanley didn’t love in quite the same way Tom did, he knew that, but he loved the way Tom’s big stick went boom.
INSIDE THE station, a small blonde woman in a black uniform waited at the front desk behind bulletproof glass. She would have been pretty were it not for a long-ago bout with severe acne that had left her well-modeled face pitted beyond what makeup could disguise.
Trying not to stare at her pockmarked skin, Tom felt a brief pang of sympathy. His once handsome face had been scarred in that crime-related fire, the same fire that had left him with a metal hip.
Much improvement had been made to his face, but he was ever conscious of its damaged state. Oddly, some other people—women, and a lot of gay men—felt it made him more attractive, not less. That wasn’t how he saw himself in the mirror, though. He would have given a lot to have his old face back, but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he’d had to make peace with what the mirror showed him.
He saw the acne blonde register his glance and read it correctly. Feeling guilty, he asked her if they could see whichever detective was working the murder at the Winter Beach Inn. She slanted a measuring look up at him and just behind him at Stanley, a little surprised by the request and obviously trying to decide if she should ask them any questions.
“Have a seat,” she told them, apparently deciding someone else could ask the questions, and disappeared through a door behind her desk.
Since they had been sitting for most of the last few hours, they remained standing instead. In any case, the wait was brief. A short, pudgy man in rumpled trousers and red suspenders appeared within minutes, an unlit cigar in one hand. He looked them over with small eyes that came close to matching the color of his suspenders, sizing them with a professional’s speed and certainty.
“You’re the fellows from San Francisco,” he greeted them.
It was Tom’s turn to be surprised. “As a matter of fact, we are from San Francisco, but….”
“I’m Detective Hammond. Dick Hammond.” He nodded for them to follow him and led them to a small two-desk office at one end of the building. Through the window, Tom could see the parking lot and the Ram. Probably, Detective Hammond had watched them arrive.
The second desk in the room was unmanned at the moment but looked as if it were usually well occupied, its surface strewn with paperwork that was all too familiar to Tom from his time in the San Francisco bureau. Casework detail. Sometimes it felt as if you were drowning in paperwork, like a miracle that anybody ever found time to actually solve murders.
“Sit,” Hammond said, indicating a pair of hard wooden chairs in front of his desk. “Either of you want coffee?” They both shook their heads. “Wise choice,” he said. “It’s like road tar.”
It wasn’t coffee, however, that Stanley smelled on the detective’s breath. Apparently Detective Hammond was partial to Eau de Bourbon. Probably that explained to some degree the red-rimmed eyes—which, nevertheless, managed to look plenty shrewd as he looked over his visitors.
“So, I’m curious, how did you know we were from San Francisco?” Tom asked, taking one of the chairs. Stanley sat beside him.
“These days, just about everybody in town is, seems like. Ah, shit, it’s no big mystery, though. We got a call from San Francisco PD, from homicide. An Inspector….” He paused to open a folder atop his desk and take a quick peek inside. “Inspector Bryce. He called to tell us you’d be stopping by.”
“He did?” Another surprise for Tom. He had worked with Bryce not so long ago in the past when he’d been in homicide detail there. But how had Bryce gotten onto this, he wondered? He hadn’t called him, though if he had thought of it, he’d have considered it a good idea. He and Stanley had no official police connection now, but Bryce could open doors for them. Cops responded to cops.
Stanley answered that question for him. “I called Bryce,” he said, looking a little embarrassed about it. “I asked him to call and put in a good word for us. I thought it might help.”
“Really?” Stanley and Bryce had never been the best of friends. It was no secret that the deeply closeted Bryce had the hots for Tom, a fact that Stanley resented. Which to Tom’s way of thinking made it doubly surprising that Stanley should have called him to ask for assistance and that Bryce should have agreed. Not for the first time, he marveled at Stanley’s ability to get things done.
Ignoring their exchange, Hammond went on. “Anyway, this Bryce, he said you were on your way, and he asked us to, well, to cut you some slack, sort of. You’re not with SFPD, as I understand it.”
“Not anymore,” Stanley said, and quickly added, “We used to be.” Hammond gave him a not-quite-convinced look.
Stanley was used to that. When people, especially police people, looked at him, homicide detective was not generally what they saw. Tom was masculine and burly, with a massive chest and long, heavily muscled arms, and shoulders as wide as a football field. He looked the part of a detec
tive out of some fifties pulp novel. Made most of the fictional tough guys, in fact, look like sissies.
Stanley, by contrast, was little and just shy of effeminate, and even in the often macho world of gay San Francisco—bears and bikers and serious leather drag—he was frequently marginalized. When gay conversations turned to uniforms, as they often did, he liked to say he had an old WAAC outfit from World War II he could don in a pinch. Serious uniform people, and uniform queens could be serious indeed, did not laugh when he said it.
Or, put it another way, Tom was body shirts and denims or camo, with boots. Stanley was cashmere and designer jeans and sneakers. They were mismatched, except according to the law of opposite attraction.
“We have a detective agency now,” Tom said.
Hammond looked a bit unhappy with that. “That’s what your Bryce told me. Private dicks.”
“Yes,” Stanley said, still a bit miffed at that look Hammond had given him, “definitely private.”
Tom leaned forward in a kind of man-to-man gesture. Hammond responded by leaning forward slightly as well. Stanley looked from one to the other and suppressed a titter. Bad boys bonding. Next thing they’d be arm wrestling.
“Look,” Tom said, “here’s the thing. We don’t plan on getting in your way. The gentleman who has the room where this body was found—”
Hammond took another peek at the file folder. “Christopher Rafferty.”
“Right. Chris,” Stanley said. He leaned forward into the conversation. Hammond settled back in his chair. “He’s a friend of ours. He called us about the body and asked us to come down. I guess as much to hold his hand as anything.”
“But to be honest, we would like to poke around a little while we’re here,” Tom said. “Enough to make our friend feel better, anyway. You know, like we’re doing something. If that’s not a problem for you.”
Hammond sighed and put the folder aside on his desk. “No,” he said, a shade reluctantly. “Not a problem, exactly, as long as we all understand this is a police matter. Palm Springs PD is doing the investigation. Anything you learn with your poking around, as you put it, I’ll expect you to turn over to PSPD first thing.”
“Agreed.” Tom gave a shake of his head and added diplomatically, “And most likely, we aren’t going to learn anything your boys don’t already know anyway. I’ve worked both sides of the street. It’s a bunch of bull that private dicks are better at figuring things out than the police. That’s just in the books and movies.”
“Glad to hear you say it,” Hammond said.
“Still, it can’t hurt to have a couple extra pairs of eyes looking things over, can it?”
“Probably not. Are you carrying?”
“I’m not,” Stanley said. He wasn’t fond of firearms. Some while back he’d had to shoot someone—dead. His own brother, as it happened, though for most of his life he hadn’t been aware that he had a brother. Even when he had been with the San Francisco Police Department, he hadn’t liked firearms. Since then, since shooting his brother, he’d had a serious aversion to them.
Tom opened his sport jacket to reveal a shoulder holster.
“Sig Sauer?” Hammond asked. Tom nodded. “You’re licensed?”
Tom dug out his PI license and the permit for the gun and handed them across the desk. Hammond gave them a cursory read and handed them back.
“For the record, Stanley’s licensed too,” Tom said. “And he has a Beretta, but it’s back in San Francisco.”
“Just bear in mind,” Hammond said, “you’re here on private business. The laws apply to you the same as to all other citizens. Act accordingly.” He thought a moment. “And understand, a lot of wealthy people live here. Wealthy, powerful people. They can be funny about their privacy. Be careful whose toes you step on.”
“Got it,” Tom said. Stanley started to say something, but Tom bumped his shoe unobtrusively against Stanley’s, and Stanley bit off his words. When dealing with other police officers, it was generally wiser to let Tom do the talking.
Hammond saw the hesitation and lifted an eyebrow in Stanley’s direction. “You okay with that?”
“Absolutely.” Stanley bobbed his head appropriately. “Not stepping on toes is a specialty of mine.”
“Uh-huh,” Hammond said, in a not-very-convinced tone.
“Can I ask,” Tom said, “have you got any leads on the murder?”
“Well, now, to tell you the absolute truth, we’re not even one hundred percent sure it was a murder.”
Another surprise. “A dead guy dumped in a stranger’s room…?”
“If he was a stranger. Right now, we’re not sure about a lot of things, to be perfectly frank.”
“We know Chris Rafferty. If he says the victim was a stranger, you can take that as a given,” Tom said emphatically. “How did this guy die anyway, if you don’t mind telling us?”
“I don’t mind.” Still, Hammond hesitated as if he might in fact mind. “Snake bite, it seems like,” he said finally.
“Snake bite? Inside a hotel room?”
“Might not have happened there, of course. Somebody gets bitten, they don’t always just keel over on the spot. Generally they don’t. That’s just in the books and movies too. But that was the initial report. You’d be surprised how often snakes show up inside. Scorpions too, or black widows. It goes with the territory. Responding officers said there was evidence of a snake bite, though. Which means, being where we are, it was probably a green Mojave. Ever heard of them?” Tom shook his head. “Meanest rattlesnake there is. Aggressive bastards. Get ’em riled up, they’ll come after you.”
“So you think—” Tom started to say.
Hammond interrupted him. “I expect we’ll know more in a bit.” Hammond’s face was blank, but the pause this time seemed oddly significant. “The body’s over at the county morgue. I doubt they’ve started cutting on it yet.”
Tom thought about that, about the pause. It felt like Hammond was giving him a hint. Something Hammond wanted him to pick up on but couldn’t actually say. “Can we see it?” Tom asked. “The body?”
Hammond nodded, as if Tom had correctly answered some unasked question. “I don’t see why not. Like you said, some extra eyes can’t hurt. The morgue’s in Riverside. I expect if you’re going over there, though, you probably should go pretty quick. That’s if you’re wanting to see anything before they start cutting.”
“Gotcha,” Tom said, standing.
“Sandy out at the desk can draw you a map. Ask for Doc Murphy when you get there, he’s the chief forensic. I’ll call and tell him you’re coming.”
“Thanks.” They started toward the door.
“Oh, Danzel…,” Hammond called after him. Tom paused at the door and looked back. “You got a car phone?”
“I drive a Ram pickup,” Tom said. “That big red one you can see out your window there. They don’t usually come with car phones. Why?”
“Cell?”
“Sure. Both of us.” He waited for Hammond to take it further.
“Just wondered,” Hammond said instead and turned his attention back to his desk. He opened a bottom drawer, looked down into it, and glanced up again at Tom and Stanley—obviously waiting for them to go.
So he could have a nip at the bottle stashed in the desk drawer, Stanley rather supposed.
They were half out the door when Hammond thought of something else. “Just so you know, the doc, Murphy—he’s not the coolest guy in the desert.” He looked significantly from one of them to the other and settled his gaze on Stanley.
Meaning, Stanley thought but did not say, the forensic expert was homophobic.
Well, he’d run into that kind before. And he could dish it out as well as take it, if he had to. But he did wish the straight world could just get over it.
Chapter Four
“WHAT EXACTLY was that all about?” Stanley asked when they were back in Tom’s truck and on the road again.
“About the doctor?”
“No, that part I understood well enough. He was telling us this Doctor Murphy doesn’t like gays. What I’m wondering about is, first, the part about not stepping on toes. That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? I mean, sure you’ve got a lot of funny money here, and people who have lots of that don’t like to be bugged. But I meant, why is he being so agreeable to our looking around, for starters, if he’s worrying about us stepping on the wrong toes? I half expected him to warn us off, but he practically invited us to stick around for the party.”
Tom steered his way around a slow-moving RV. “Um—the way I read it, he’s saying they don’t have much to go on, and there’s something holding him back, somebody in the way, maybe. Those toes he doesn’t want us to step on, only he really does, he just wants to cover his butt. You were with SF long enough to know how the politics work. Everybody wants the detectives to solve the crime, but not if it points fingers in the wrong direction.”
“You wouldn’t think, this being a small town….”
“Same crap everywhere, babe. All of which means, from his point of view, it’s possible that as outsiders, we’ll have better luck at finding stuff out than he will, if only because our hands aren’t tied. It sounds like his are.”
“He smelled like a bourbon distillery, if you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed. I have a notion he’s feeling frustrated, which is good for us, in a way. It means he’s okay with our helping, so long as he gets any credit.”
“And we take any crap. From the toe people.”
“Exactly.”
Stanley thought for a moment. “Okay, why did he ask about a car phone? And cell phones?”
“I’m thinking he’s telling us someone might be monitoring. Us or him. Or both. Car phones, cell phones, they’re radios. Anybody can be listening. My guess is the department is restricted to land phones only for this investigation to avoid leaks, and he wants us to do the same.”
A Deadly Kind of Love Page 2