by Don Travis
Only vaguely familiar with the details of the imbroglio, I hit the back issues of Albuquerque’s daily newspapers to learn more details. The first fact to slap me in the face was that Stone, Hedges, Martinez, et al. represented Harding and his company. And guess who the lead attorney of record was? Delbert David Dahlman, Esquire. But if Del represented Premier, why would Harding try to compromise him? Was his lawyer recommending a course of action the businessman didn’t like? This required a consultation with my client.
The Stone, Hedges receptionist faultlessly recited the names of all eight senior partners in a rapid singsong and then passed me to Del’s personal secretary—or was it executive assistant by then?—where I encountered a problem. The lady, whom I pictured as a skinny, nose-in-the-air, horse-faced puritan, stated in exaggerated back-east nasal tones that Mr. Dahlman was in a deposition and would be unavailable for the next two days. Adopting a tough brusqueness, I informed her this was a matter of vital interest to her boss that required his immediate input. Del obviously had not taken her into his confidence about the blackmail demand, because a sniff of disdain was my reward—although she did condescend to take down my name and number.
I’d short-circuit that stuffy old bag. But dialing Del’s cell phone number proved me wrong. The call went to voice mail. I left a somewhat impatient demand that he call me back and hung up.
That left only one course of action. I phoned Premier and was able to get an appointment that very afternoon.
Prior to the meeting with Harding, I made a host of boring phone calls to fill in some blanks about him. One item of gossip was of particular interest: Harding’s wife was one of several local women who had recently taken a weeklong Caribbean cruise sponsored by a social club—so she was probably out of town when Emilio got together with her husband.
The drive to Premier led me through a South Broadway barrio crammed with mom-and-pop businesses advertising goods and services in either Spanish or English—and sometimes both—before approaching a miles-long industrial corridor. Shortly before the road climbed a hill overlooking the Isleta Indian Reservation, I came to a tangle of corrugated-metal buildings, water and chemical tanks, and other less recognizable equipment. At the rear of the sprawling Premier facility, a large glass and brick edifice was rising from the desert landscape. When completed it would no doubt house the company’s new headquarters. I wondered how the other execs appreciated Welby’s Slaughterhouse as their next-door neighbor to the south.
Harding kept me waiting for ten minutes before an attractive secretary escorted me back to his office. Our meeting reinforced last night’s impression. He was a big man, towering over my six feet by at least four inches. The hair that had appeared silver in the glare of the intruder light retained a touch of the haystack, a faint yellow. Harding’s shoulders and arms were massive. He wore a white silk shirt with sleeves rolled halfway up thick forearms pelted with graying hair. His eyes were an intense blue that no doubt could be grandfatherly kind or mad-dog mean. This executive had clawed his way up through the ranks to the pinnacle of his company. You didn’t fool around with a man like that, but I was about to try. I surreptitiously triggered the small tape recorder hanging on my belt.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Vinson?” His heavy voice matched his stocky build. “It isn’t often I receive a visit from a private investigator.”
“Which is probably the way you like it.”
He failed to rise to the invitation for some old-fashioned joshing.
For an instant I questioned Emilio’s story. This was the quintessential “man’s man” sitting across the broad walnut desk from me. Had the kid latched onto the first car to pass us in the dark on that lonely stretch of road last night? Despite the sudden doubt, I sighed like a man exhausted by life and took the plunge.
“Mr. Harding, I’m here on a delicate matter. We could spar around for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t change my mission, so I’ll just come out and state it.”
“Please do.”
“A few weeks ago, you picked up a hustler named Emilio Prada and took him home with you. During the… build-up, shall we say, he shared some photographs with you. You were intrigued, but not for the reason he thought. You recognized the man with him in the photos and wanted copies of the pictures for your own purposes. He allowed you to print two of the more revealing photos. I need to retrieve them.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sir, if I were not certain of my facts, I wouldn’t be sitting here embarrassing both of us.”
“You admitted your source was a hustler. Why should you take his word over mine?”
“Because he knows what I’d do to him if he lied to me.”
“So he made up a story to get you off his back. I assure you I am a happily married man.”
“I’ve dealt with enough hustlers to know when I’m being hustled. He described you, your Caddy, and your house. He took me there last night.”
“Ah, the car we passed on our way home from a party. That proves nothing, Mr. Vinson.”
“The tiled foyer to your house leads to a large archway flanked by two temple dogs, beyond which lies the living room. Emilio thought they were lions, but then, what does he know? If you turn to the left, you go down a long hallway to the bedrooms. I doubt you took him to the master bedroom you share with your wife. It was a guest room on the ground floor with pink decor. Emilio described it as ‘fairy pink.’ As to more personal matters, you have a thick mat of graying hair on your chest and belly and an appendicitis scar. Your—”
“Enough!” Harding’s face was glowing, although not from embarrassment. “I won’t be blackmailed by some cheap private eye. You try saying those things publicly, and I’ll have your license and see you making licenses of another sort up in Santa Fe.”
“Don’t threaten me with anything short of a shotgun, Mr. Harding. I have no intention of blackmailing you or exposing your secret unless you force me to. All I want are the photographs of Emilio and the man with him. And the negatives.”
“Say it out loud, why don’t you? You want the photographs of Del Dahlman displaying his attributes for the world to see.”
“No, I want the photographs of Del Dahlman engaged in private and personal acts the world wasn’t intended to see. The same private and personal acts you and Emilio undertook in that pink bedroom.”
There was a long silence. “Are there pictures of me? Did the creep sneak a camera into my home?”
“Not to my knowledge. He simply let it be known that some of the pictures had gotten out, and Del wants them back. End of story.”
I tensed as the big man stood suddenly. He was twenty years my senior, but he could put up a hell of a fight if that was the way he decided to go. There was little doubt I could take him, but he’d have all the help he’d need from a hundred employees within seconds. But doing battle was not what he had in mind. Harding walked to a file cabinet, removed a small box, and unlocked it with a key. He took out two snapshots and handed them over. They showed Del and Emilio at their most glorious.
“The rest?”
“That’s all there are. I only printed those two. That little hustler stood right beside me while I developed them.”
“You didn’t make more after he left?”
“How? He took the negatives with him.”
I held up the photos and took a shot in the dark. “You scanned these into your computer, didn’t you?”
Harding flushed but nodded. “Yes.”
“Are they backed up anywhere else?”
The big man dry-washed his face and shook his head before firing up his computer and permitting me to delete the photographs. An expert might be able to retrieve them, but this was the best I could do. Then I faced him squarely.
“The negatives?”
His eyes reflected anger. He brushed his hair with a palm that was halfway curled into a fist. I was about at the end of my run. Pretty soon he was going to remember he was a captain of industry and start actin
g like one. “I already told you your hustler took the negatives with him.”
“Did you share these photos with anyone else?”
“Hell no! Why would I do that?”
“All right. I’ll accept your word on it.”
That snap decision was based on two things: he wouldn’t have scanned the two pictures into Photoshop if he had the negatives, and if he’d printed copies from Photoshop, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Harding sat down behind his desk. “You’ve had your say, and now I’ll have mine. You think you know something about me that could damage my reputation. Do I have to fight you on this?”
“A one-night stand with a male prostitute is not going to hinder your career or destroy your social life. However, if the big world out there learns of your little peccadillo, it won’t be from me.”
He nodded but wasn’t finished. “You’re obviously working for Del. That means the pictures have become a problem for him.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t want them floating around out there. Would you?”
“Should I consider changing law firms?”
“That is something for you and Del to discuss. Of course he might wonder how you obtained the pictures in the first place.”
“Does that mean you aren’t going to tell him?”
“I’ll let him know you had them, but there’s no need to explain how you came by them.”
He didn’t like that but had no control over the matter. I left him tapping his letter opener on the desk blotter, an expression of frustration familiar to me. I switched off the tape recorder as I got into the car.
BACK IN the office, I collected my calls. Nothing from Del. After plopping down behind my desk, I put my feet on top of an open drawer and stared out over the roof of the library toward one of the city’s older neighborhoods. A surprising number of trees towered above the rooftops. Albuquerque’s ubiquitous Siberian elms, with their long, drain-clogging roots, were the lasting and sometimes nettlesome legacy of a long-dead mayor named Tingley.
Harding had not put up much of a fuss over surrendering the pictures. Of course, he may have scanned them into another computer, but that didn’t seem likely. He wanted those pictures out of curiosity or as leverage in case he got crossways with Del in the future. Harding was a man with money, and there seemed little profit in trying to blackmail his own attorney. Even if so inclined, he would have gone after a lot more than $5,000. Something more like the size of Stone, Hedges’s fee to Premier, for example. Unless, of course, he was merely probing Del’s vulnerability. My client could give me a better idea of that supposition should he ever deign to return my calls.
I heard Charlie Weeks, the retired cop who handled my overload cases on an as-needed basis, come through the outside door and greet Hazel. I allowed them a minute to chat before calling him into my office and updating him on Del’s problem. I handed over the list of employees and contract companies of Del’s upscale, high-rise apartment house just off Menaul Boulevard in the Uptown area. He agreed to check out the Royal Crest and proved how sharp he was.
“Okay, I’ll get right on it.” The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, and a twinkle came into his eyes. “And I’ll keep Hazel out of it.”
I paused before speaking. “Good. And thanks.”
“Course, I’ll have to figure a way to phony up the time sheets.”
I broke out laughing. “Charlie, you know we don’t phony up anything. Hazel’s gonna know. But it would help if she knew after the fact.”
He nodded and turned to leave. “Figured.”
I bid the two of them good-bye a few minutes before five o’clock and walked down two flights of stairs, heading for my car. The crush of city, county, state, and federal employees, augmented by those who fed off of them—bankers, lawyers, court reporters, bail bondsmen, and the like—all fleeing Albuquerque’s downtown confines at day’s end was not unlike a big puddle overflowing. Rivulets rushed in all directions, freely at first before slowing to form new puddles until their pent-up energy was released anew. That was northbound traffic at five that afternoon.
Although my timing was wrong by half an hour, my hunch—more accurately, my hope—paid off. The lifeguard was lingering in front of the old Moroccan-style gates of the North Valley Country Club. Dressed in knee-length khaki walking shorts and a form-fitting polo shirt, Paul looked as fetching as I remembered. He brightened when the car pulled to a halt at the curb. After giving me a broad smile, he hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“Hi, Mr. Vinson.”
He had gone to the trouble of learning my name. He pulled the seat belt across his torso—and a fine torso it was too.
“Call me BJ or Vince. The Vince comes from Vinson.”
“What do most people call you?”
“BJ.”
“Okay, then I’ll call you Vince. At least when nobody’s around.”
I smiled to myself. “Where can I drop you?”
He managed a beguiling yet innocent look. “Wherever you’re headed is okay by me.”
Taking another man to the home Del and I had shared stirred up some residual pain, but it was going to happen eventually, so it might as well be with this wholesome, clean-cut guy. And it turned out I was wrong; he was twenty-one and a senior at the University of New Mexico majoring in journalism.
Chapter 4
AFTER DROPPING Paul at his car in the country club employees’ parking lot that evening, I slowly drove to Post Oak Drive. Curiously at peace with my world and myself, I undertook a much longer, transcendent journey over the course of that five-mile drive. I hovered on the cusp of learning something essential about myself—something vague and unformed but vital.
Unlike Del, casual affairs left me physically sated but emotionally lacking. This evening, as I broke a long dry spell with an athletic young man possessed of a great deal of charm, I expected to face a night of self-loathing and despair. Yet, as I turned into my driveway, painting the door to the detached garage with my headlamps, I understood what was struggling to come into the clear light of conscious thought. My body was totally satisfied, and my spirit—my psyche—was well nourished.
I sat in the car for a few minutes musing over the evening and trying to determine exactly why I felt the way I did. Paul was extremely pleasing to the eye, and the sex was spectacular. But that wasn’t enough to explain this afterglow… this euphoria. Was that an overstatement? I shook my head. No. It was appropriate. And sitting there in the darkness, I zeroed in on why. After our incredible union, I noticed no change in his demeanor beyond a subtle relaxing in our club member–club employee status. He was as interested in learning who I was as he was in letting me know who he was. Intelligent. Curious. Respectful. Add that to his physical beauty, and I began to understand my reaction to him. I was smiling broadly as I got out of the Impala. Neither of us had mentioned another assignation, but I damned sure knew one was coming.
Once inside the house, I tried Del’s home phone. He didn’t answer, and his cell was still going to voice mail, so I settled down in my home office to review a particularly nettlesome case file. I normally refused domestic peep work on principle, but occasionally a disgruntled spouse catches me in a weak moment. Sherry DeVine, a woman I’d known since grade school, had slipped in her request at just such a time.
I knew Jerry DeVine, his habits, and his weaknesses, so it was ridiculously easy to gather proof the guy was running around on his wife. Even so, I had dragged my feet delivering the report, mostly because all three people involved were so screwed up it seemed a shame to deprive them of what little pleasure they’d managed to garner in their dreary lives. Sherry’s family money gave her a safety net, but Jerry was hanging in the wind. The gal on whom he’d gambled his meal ticket was even grosser than Sherry, but she must have had something because DeVine met her every Tuesday and Thursday without fail.
I picked up the phone to get that unpleasantness out of the way. Sherry went hysterical in the middle of my verba
l report, but she would probably end up forgiving Jerry and holding the entire affair over his head like the Sword of Damocles for the rest of his miserable life. Sherry and Jerry—a match made in hell. Vowing to never again take another domestic job, I stuffed my report and the supporting videos in my briefcase for Hazel to send out tomorrow, along with an invoice.
After that my mind turned once again to Del Dahlman. It bothered me that he hadn’t returned my calls, but I knew he wasn’t irresponsible, so there had to be a reason. Sooner or later I’d find out what it was, and if I didn’t like his excuse, I’d tell him to take his blackmail demand and stuff it.
I had met Del while I was still a police detective. It was 12 April 2002 at 1415 hours. I had been sequestered in a bland gray police interview room with the bland—and at that moment equally gray—son of a prominent Albuquerque businessman accused of breaking and entering, DWI, speeding, reckless endangerment, and being a general pain in the butt, when this blindingly handsome kid barged in.
“Hold it. My name is Del Dahlman, and I’m this man’s attorney,” he announced.
Convinced this stripling could not possibly be out of law school, I made him haul out three different pieces of ID before he put his foot down. His blond widow’s peak shook with indignation. Or was it nervousness?
“Look, Detective… uh….”
“Vinson. B. J. Vinson.”
“Maybe I ought to examine your credentials. Now, let’s get down to business.”
By then, of course, I knew he was twenty-eight—only two years younger than I was—had memorized his name and address, and noted he was with Stone, Hedges, Martinez, Blah, Blah, Blah, the biggest law firm in the state. Also the one with the longest name. In the cop’s world, he would soon be labeled “one of the Blahs.”
I had worried he’d be a barnburner, but he turned out to be a decent sort. He merely made sure his nincompoop of a client got a fair deal. A month later he represented the suspect in another of my cases, and when our adversarial responsibilities ended, we became close. We moved in together shortly thereafter. He was as fantastic to love as he was to look at.