Third You Die (kevin connor mysteries)

by Scott Sherman

  “Around his ankle.” I finished his sentence. I remembered them from the videos Freddy and I had watched.

  Tony nodded his agreement, and then froze. “Hey, just how well did you know this guy?”

  “I watched a few of his videos.” Tony stiffened behind me. Not in the good way.

  “What, I’m not enough for you?”

  “Research, Tony. For the show.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “So,” I asked him, “what happened to Brent? How did he wind up in the river?”

  “We don’t know. It could have been accidental. Blood tests showed high levels of Ecstasy, Valium, and Viagra. There’s some cutting and bruising, but nothing inconsistent with falling into a river and scraping along the bottom. Maybe he was partying and took a tumble on his way home?”

  “He wasn’t that kind of person.”

  “He was a porn actor, Kevvy.”

  “So? That doesn’t mean he was a drug-abusing sex addict.”

  “It doesn’t make him a model citizen, either.”

  This wouldn’t be the first time we fought about the moral implications of working in the sex industry. Since I was still earning my living as an escort when Tony and I reunited, it wasn’t a theoretical discussion, either. Nor was it one I was in the mood to have again tonight.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

  “Probably a good idea,” Tony agreed. He scooted me off his lap and pulled a slim reporter’s notebook from his pocket. “But let me just get his full name and employer’s contact info from you. Anyone else you know who knew him, too.”

  “Actually, I just got his parents’ number. I was going to call and see if they knew where he was, but I guess I won’t be needing it now.”

  Tony frowned. “Catching the bad guys-that’s why I became I cop, Kevvy. I still love the feeling that comes with bringing justice. But notifying parents that their child’s dead? That part’s tough.”

  I turned around and kissed him. “You’ll be very kind, I know. But there are some things you should know…”

  I filled Tony in on the broad strokes of what I’d learned about Brent’s severed relationship with his parents. I also gave him Charlie’s and Lucas’s numbers. Not as suspects, but as lovers who needed to be notified. I supposed I could have called them, but I figured it’d be better coming from Tony. He knew how to put things like this. I’d follow with my condolences later.

  “Do you need to go now?” I asked when I was done.

  “To work on the case? No, it’ll wait till morning. It’s late. Might as well let his parents have their last good night’s sleep for a while.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “From what I heard, his parents won’t be too broken up about it. They tossed him aside years ago.”

  “Maybe,” Tony said, “but I bet they never stopped hoping he’d change and come back to them.”

  “If they wanted him in their lives, they wouldn’t have kicked him into the streets because of who he was, ” I snapped, the words coming out with more bitterness than I’d intended. “That’s not tough love. That’s hate.”

  Tony knew he’d pushed another button. “I’m not saying they had any right to do what they did,” he said, using his calm-the-horses voice. “I’m just saying that, when you have children, it’s not that easy to stop caring about what happens to them. Even if you try to. If you were a parent, you’d understand.”

  If I were a parent, huh? So much for Rafi Has Two Daddies.

  Who did he think has been spending every other weekend with him and Rafi? Whose apartment was Rafi sleeping in? Who was taking the kid to school? What was I, the nanny? I may have been half-Jewish, but that didn’t make me Fran Drescher.

  Another conversation I didn’t feel like having tonight. More land mines to tiptoe around.

  Was it possible Tony and I just weren’t meant to be?

  Or was I feeling unusually pessimistic having just heard about Brent’s death?

  “Well,” I said, wondering if we could fast-forward to the make-up sex without having to have the fight, “I’m glad you don’t have to run out again. I’ve missed you.” I ducked my head and regarded him through my bangs. My patented do-me look.

  “Besides,” Tony said, ignoring the do-me look for what possibly might have been the first time, “I have to figure out how to ID the vic at the station.”

  “What do you mean?” I pointed at the Advocate. “Just show them this.”

  “And how would I explain that I was looking at porn ads in a gay magazine?” he asked. “Or should I just say my ‘boyfriend’ gave it to me?”

  Wow. Remember that part about not wanting to step on any land mines? Tony just hit one or two with a hammer.

  Boom-fucking-boom.

  Only, the mine wasn’t filled with explosives. It was like one of those flash bombs that police use to incapacitate suspects with blinding light. And in that moment of searing clarity, a truth I’d buried under the darkness of denial was suddenly revealed.

  Tony and I might not make it.

  I knew we had our problems. We’d even separated over them. But I don’t think I ever believed they were insurmountable. A part of me was certain we belonged together. Like a couple that meets cute in a romantic comedy but has to endure all the genre obstacles before they finally reach their happy ending.

  But, right now, I wasn’t feeling the love and I wasn’t having any laughs. Maybe we were less The Main Event and more The Way We Were.

  We might not make it to the final reel.

  It must have shown on my face.

  “What?” Tony asked. He waited.

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  He looked at me being speechless. Another first.

  “Kevvy, I didn’t mean it like that,” he began, assuming I was upset about his ongoing refusal to come out at work. “You know how it is. It’s the New York City Police Department, babe. All the ‘diversity training’ in the world isn’t going to-”

  I stood up. “I’ve heard this before, Tony.”

  Tony rose to meet me. “Babe.” He brushed my hair out of my eyes. “You know I…” He moved in for a kiss. Sure, now the do-me look was kicking in.

  I pushed him away. “I’m just tired, Tone. And sad.”

  “I know. You just found out that a friend of yours passed away, and I’m playing cop with you. That was a douchebag move on my part, Kevvy. You were right. We should have changed the topic half an hour ago. Come here.” He enveloped me in a non-sexual buddy hug.

  I didn’t mean to and I wished I hadn’t, but I started to cry against his strong chest. He just held me, even when I knew he must be uncomfortable, his shirt soaked through with my tears.

  “It’s okay,” he said, “let it out. It’s hard when you lose someone.” He rubbed my back in circular motions.

  I liked Brent. I was sorry to hear what had happened to him. But I wasn’t crying for him.

  It was the increasingly likely prospect that Tony and I could never be together that was breaking my heart.

  Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially sorry for myself, I think in rhyme. Self-indulgent poetry sprung from too many readings of The Bell Jar in high school. Worse, with my ADHD, those couplets often stick in my head, repeating themselves in a torturous, self-inflicted loop.

  So, as I shuddered and sobbed in Tony’s arms, I kept hearing myself think the words I couldn’t tell him.

  It isn’t Brent’s passing that fills me with fears.

  It isn’t his sad fate that brings me to tears.

  It’s losing the man I thought I’d been born for.

  It’s the loss of you, Tony, I weep and I mourn for.

  Later, I thought, I’ll have to write that down. Then burn it.

  As Bette Davis so memorably said in All About Eve, “I detest cheap sentiment.”

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t wallow in it, though.

  37

  Dark Places

  I sat in my office at work
, looking at a long list of people whose calls I needed to return. Every few minutes, I’d pick up the handset, punch in two or three digits (in one notable accomplishment, I even made it past the area code), and then hang up. I was in no mood to talk with anyone.

  A week had passed since I’d identified Brent for Tony. In that time, I’d grown increasingly distant. Not just toward him, toward everyone. I felt detached. Maybe a little depressed. I was irritable, distracted, and not at all my usual self. My best moment in the past seven days was the excitement I felt when I heard a radio commercial for a medicine that promised relief from the exact things that were bothering me: the crankiness, the mood swings, the sleeplessness.

  Then I realized it was for a medication used to treat PMS.

  There wasn’t any progress on Brent’s case. Tony had talked to everyone whose names I’d given him; nothing turned up.

  He told me I was right about one thing, though. Brent’s parents really were hateful creeps.

  Tony and his partner had gone to their house in Queens to break the news to them. Seconds after he got out the words “I’m afraid I have bad news for you,” the father interrupted him with “It was the AIDS, wasn’t it?”

  Tony said that, no, it wasn’t “the AIDS,” and managed, barely, to explain about finding Brent’s body in the river. By then, the mother had run from the room.

  “You’ve upset my wife,” the father said. “I think it best you leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tony said, “but your son is dead and I’d think you’d want-”

  Brent’s father interrupted him. “What I’d want is for you to leave. My son’s been dead to us for years now, detective. We didn’t need you dragging his corpse back into this home.”

  Moments later, Tony and his partner were back in their car.

  “So,” I asked Tony when he told me the story, “are you going to look into them?”

  “For what?”

  “To see if they had anything to do with Brent’s murder,” I said, as if it were obvious. “What kind of a parent reacts like that to their son’s death?”

  “A very, very bad one,” Tony said. “But we have no physical evidence. No motive.”

  “They hated him,” I snapped.

  “If everyone murdered the people they hated, we’d have a lot more rental properties available in the city,” Tony observed. “People kill for money, for sexual jealousy, and, sometimes, for thrills. They don’t kill a kid they threw out of the house years ago who they’ve had no contact with. Besides, given the amount of drugs in Brent’s system, I think the ME is going to rule his death an accident, anyway.”

  “That’s another thing,” I argued. “Brent’s boyfriend Charlie told me Brent never did drugs.”

  “He said the same thing to us,” Tony said.

  “See? So why did he have Valium and Ecstasy in his blood?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony said. “Maybe because he was a porn star party boy on the same drugs that every other club kid is taking these days?”

  “But Charlie said-”

  “Maybe Charlie didn’t know Brent as well as he thinks he did,” Tony cut in. “He didn’t know about that other guy Brent was seeing on the side. Luka?”

  “Lucas.”

  “Right. People keep secrets. They lie. Those guys he made the movies with, the ones from SwordFight, said they weren’t surprised to hear Brent had been stoned at the time of his death. They said they’d heard rumors about his drug use. Of course, they said it would never be allowed on their set”-Tony rolled his eyes-“but it wasn’t uncommon for their ‘actors’ to get high before a shoot.”

  The way Tony said “actors,” the way he disparaged the whole industry as if it was filled with nothing but the worst kind of scum, really pissed me off.

  “And, Kevvy, I gotta tell you: I believe them a lot more than I believe Charlie. We know Brent was cheating on his supposed boyfriend, right? He was found with drugs in his system-drugs that apparently he had a reputation as abusing. He was a flaky, screwed-up kid who had a stupid accident. That kind of thing happens all the time to boys like him.”

  Boys like him. Who were those exactly? Porn stars? Hookers? Pretty little blonds who could be had for the right price?

  Boys like me, then.

  You can see where I’d be feeling distant.

  I waited until after knew Tony had contacted them, and then called Charlie and Lucas.

  Since I couldn’t tell them about my closeted cop boyfriend, I had to pretend I was just following up, and let them tell me what they’d heard. I hated having to lie like that. It forced them both to go into the details about what they knew about Brent’s death, a burden I could have spared them if only I could have been truthful.

  But my pain and frustration were nothing next to theirs. They both wept openly on the phone with me. Neither of them had close friends or family in New York, and for a minute, I wondered if I couldn’t get them together to support each other. Then I realized that probably would be a bad, bad idea.

  Hadn’t Tony listed sexual jealousy as one of the reasons people actually did kill each other? Brent might not have been murdered, but I could see Charlie and Lucas going at each other like two bulls in a small pen.

  I was so angry.

  At Tony, for treating our love like it was a dirty secret and for his cluelessness about how his hostility and bias against people who work in the sex industry might make me feel.

  At Brent, for not being what I thought he was and for breaking the fragile hearts of two sweet guys who loved him.

  At the guys at SwordFight, who, if they knew Brent was using, did nothing to help him. Hell, far as I knew, they encouraged it. The mix of drugs Brent was on was similar to the cocktail Lucas told me he’d use before a shoot. Something to get his mood up (Lucas said he was on crystal meth; Brent had Ecstasy in his system), something to get his cock up, and something to take the edge off (Viagra and Valium for both of them).

  Was that suspicious?

  What were the other two reasons Tony said people killed for?

  Money. Brent made a fair amount, but not enough that I could see someone knocking him off for it. Given his youth and immaturity, I couldn’t imagine he’d saved any, so he would have been worth more alive than dead.

  Thrills. I assumed Tony was referring to people like serial killers. All I knew about them was from movies and TV, but I’d imagine that if there were any signs of a thrill killing, Tony and his team would have found them.

  So, we’re back to sexual jealousy. Given the life Brent led, how attractive he was, and how he used sex to get what he wanted (not that I was throwing stones at that one, mind you), that didn’t seem impossible.

  He’d told Lucas he needed a break from their relationship.

  Was the real reason because he was afraid Charlie’d found out about it? If so, was Charlie capable of killing Brent out of jealousy?

  Or was it the other way around? Maybe Lucas was lying-Brent had made his decision, and he hadn’t chosen Lucas.

  Lucas seemed a little unhinged to begin with. It wasn’t hard to believe that Brent rejecting him a second time would push him over the edge.

  Or, maybe Brent was cheating with a third person?

  Ugh.

  This story could be written any of a hundred ways, but that’s all it was: a story.

  In my heart, I didn’t feel that either Charlie or Lucas seemed capable of killing someone.

  Of course, I’ve been wrong about that kind of thing before.

  But I couldn’t believe they’d hurt Brent. They both loved him.

  Ironically, the only people I knew had hurt Brent were the ones who should have loved him most: his parents. They turned on him like milk left in the sun on a hot summer’s day. Rejecting him for being born as he was and for having the courage to live his life honestly. Of everyone on my list, I think I was most angry with them. If they hadn’t kicked him out of his home, Brent would be alive today.

  His father said Brent had b
een dead to them for years now. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. They may not have thrown him into that river, but their actions set into motion the events that led him there.

  Now that their son really was dead, did they even have the decency to feel remorse?

  I wondered if there was a way to get through to people who could be so heartless.

  Maybe, I thought, remembering something Lucas had given me, there was.

  At least it was worth a try.

  The door to my office swung open. My mother strode in, not having bothered to knock or otherwise signal her entry. That would have implied she recognized a closed door as being a “boundary,” a concept she’s never been able to understand.

  “I’m going,” she announced grandly, throwing her hands in the air like an actress emerging to thunderous applause, “to be a lady of the evening!”

  I wasn’t sure she knew the meaning of that phrase.

  “Say what now?”

  “It’s true,” Andrew said, walking in behind her. They both sat in chairs across from my desk. “We showed the network the rough cut of the footage from Families by Design, along with some background interviews your mother’s been doing, and they were knocked out by it. They want to air it as a prime-time special. They think it’s going to be huge.”

  “Can you imagine?” my mother gushed. “I’m going to have a prime-time TV show! Like Barbara Walters!”

  “It’s great news,” Andrew echoed, “but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sophie. It’s just the one episode.”

  “For now! Wait,” she said, pointing a finger at herself, “till they get a load of this!” She shimmied her shoulders like a burlesque dancer. “Bite me, Diane Sawyer.”

  My mother tended to exaggerate her accomplishments to the point where you had to take them with not just a grain of salt but the full shaker. Still, this was a pretty remarkable achievement.

  “I’m proud of you,” I told her, walking around my desk to give her a hug. She stood for the embrace.

  “I’m proud of me, too,” she agreed. “And this guy.” She motioned toward Andrew. “It was my idea-my brilliant idea, I should say-to go after those bastards at the adoption agency, but he’s the one who made it happen. Come here, producer man.”