The Ninth Man

by Dorien Grey

  “How could you tell?”

  “Arthur was very meticulous about certain things,” he said. “His album was full—photos on every page, all neatly arranged chronologically with little captions underneath. Once, long ago, I’d commented on that, and he said he liked to hold on to his past.

  “And yet, when I looked that last time, there were two or three pages in a row with photos missing, and the captions had been scrawled out. That was most unusual, now that I think of it.”

  The sirens in my head were very loud now.

  “Did you happen to keep the album?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. The family demanded they get everything that wasn’t sold. Not very nice people, I’m afraid. They insisted on a complete inventory both before and after the sale, and an exact accounting of every penny.”

  “Do you have any idea of what the missing photos might have been?”

  This time, I didn’t mind the pause. Bell traced the outline of his lower lip with thumb and index finger, opening and closing the gap between them time and again. Finally, he shook his head.

  “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. They were from the period when I was back in Missouri, but that’s all I can say for sure. Probably of people I didn’t know, anyway.”

  A tiny buzz—this one not in my head—signaled the opening of the shop door. Bell rose and smoothed his tie against the front of his shirt with his palm.

  “I’m afraid I have a customer. Is there anything else you’d like to know at the moment?”

  “No,” I answered, also getting up. I reached into my shirt pocket for my card. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Bell.” I handed him the card, which he slipped into his jacket pocket.

  “I’m not quite sure how,” Bell said, motioning for me to precede him from the alcove office. “I’m afraid I rambled far more than I intended.”

  The customer, a paunchy little man in a very expensive-looking jumpsuit, smiled and waved at Bell, who nodded and smiled in return. Walking with me to the door, Bell turned and offered me his hand, once again the efficient businessman. I took it, and just before releasing my hand, his grip tightened momentarily.

  “Tell me, Mr. Hardesty, what have you learned?”

  Once again our eyes locked.

  “Something, Mr. Bell,” I said. “Something very important. I just wish I knew what it was.”

  Chapter 4

  Damn it, why do I always expect things to be easier than they inevitably turn out to be? (Well, what the hell do I expect—a printed program?) I carried on this internal bitch fight all the way downtown and to the front door of the El Cordoba Hotel.

  It was a grimy, narrow building six stories high with a four-story, equally grimy double-faced sign—the kind they always use in detective B-movies to illuminate otherwise-dark street-facing rooms. The recessed entry was littered with torn newspapers, used paper cups, and the assorted windblown trash that adds to any downtown’s charm. In one corner near the door, a small brown paper bag was molded around an empty wine bottle. A real classy joint, the El Cordoba. It was the kind of place where the management’s experience with dead guests was, you could tell, considerably higher than, say, at the Waldorf.

  The lobby furnishings consisted of four overstuffed chairs and a sofa, all bolted to the chipped linoleum tile floor; two artificial palms that had seen better days; and three large blown-up photos of the city taken around 1947. A small glass panel in a closed fire door showed a long, murky corridor with doors set at monotonously regular intervals. An elevator somewhere behind the door whirred and ground noisily on its way up or down.

  The “front desk” was a window with dirty glass that ended about four inches above a small ledge. As I’d halfway expected, no one was in the tiny room behind the window. A badly smudged card taped to the wall to the left of the window and just above a small black button commanded: “Ring Bell.”

  I rang bell.

  A not-unattractive guy of about thirty, wearing a black formfitting T-shirt that looked three sizes too small and with more muscles than anybody has a right to have, appeared from somewhere out of my line of sight. His massive arms, from where they first became visible at the edge of his sleeves down to his wrists, were covered with tattoos.

  You name it, he had it—black leopard with bright red claw-marks; “U.S.M.C.;” “Born to Raise Hell;” the guy was a walking billboard for a tattoo parlor. I could only imagine what lay beneath the T-shirt.

  “Help you?” he asked through the small circle cut in the center of the window.

  “Is the manager here?”

  His eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “The day manager is,” he said, flexing his muscles and expanding his already awesome pecs. “You’re lookin’ at him. What you need?”

  “Some information.”

  He snorted like someone who’d heard that line once or twice before.

  “Library’s three blocks down and to the left.”

  “Yeah, I know, but my card’s expired. I’m looking for some information on one of your guests—”

  “We got lots of guests,” he said impatiently.

  “Yeah, well, this one’s dead. Died here, as a matter of fact. Room four-fourteen. Name was Bobby McDermott.”

  Again the muscle flexing, and I was reminded of a gorilla guarding his home territory.

  “You a cop?” he asked, eyes narrowed. “You’re a cop, you show me your badge.”

  “No, I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator.”

  “You a fag?”

  “Unless that’s an invitation, I can’t see what my sex life has to do with what we’re talking about.”

  “Bobby was a fag,” he said, sounding almost sad. The fact he’d called him “Bobby” wasn’t lost on me.

  “Yeah, I know. So what?” I watched his reaction and saw him loosen up a bit.

  “You don’t care he was a fag?”

  “Look, I wasn’t paying his rent. I don’t give a shit what he did in bed, or with whom.” I let that sink in a minute then said, “You knew Bobby pretty well?”

  He eyed me intently for a few seconds then said, sounding defensive, “Bobby was a good guy.”

  Feeling fairly confident that all the hairpins were by now pretty well dropped, I said, “Yeah, so I understand.

  “Look, I think you and I and Bobby have a lot in common…” I let that one soak in a second, too. “…so whatever you tell me will stay in the family, so to speak. I just want to know a little more about the circumstances of his death. It might really help a lot of people.”

  I reached into my billfold and pulled out a ten, but when I started to push it through the slot at the bottom of the window, he waved it back and shook his head.

  “Bobby was a good guy,” he repeated. “We wasn’t exactly pals, but I helped him out with a room a couple of times, and he…” The hulk of a manager lowered his eyes and actually blushed. “…he helped me out some, too, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew.

  “Was the room in Bobby’s name that night?”

  He shook his head.

  “Huh-uh. Some other guy’s.”

  “Did he and Bobby come in together?”

  “I dunno. I’m the day manager; I get off at six, six-thirty. Bobby, he come in around ten, from what I hear. Night manager’s on then. It was me who found Bobby next morning when I was making my morning check. I didn’t even know he was in the hotel.”

  “Whose name was the room registered in?”

  The hulk retreated to the dark recesses of his mind while his right hand scraped slowly under his nose, exposing the word LOVE tattooed on his knuckles.

  “Kane…? Kearn…? I looked it up, should remember it.” He was talking to himself more than to me. A quick, unconscious flexing of every muscle in his upper torso announced his mind’s return. “I’ll look it up for you. Just a second.”

  He bent over nearly out of sight then straightened back up holding a loose fistful of index cards. Tamping the
m straight on his side of the ledge, he began sorting through them with efficiency.

  “Kano,” he said, stopping at one of the cards. “B. Kano. Baltimore, Maryland.”

  “Can I see it?”

  He shrugged. “Sure,” he said and slid it through the slot.

  Other than the night manager’s almost totally illegible scrawl indicating the room number (414) and the price ($15), the only non-printed words on the registration form were “B. Kano, Baltimore, Maryland” in nondescript block letters.

  “Did the police ask to see this?”

  “Sure, but they didn’t make any big deal of it. Most of the people stay in a dump like this use fake names. ‘B. Kano’s’ got more class than ‘John Smith,’ though.”

  “Yeah,” I said. But I made a mental note of the name “B. Kano” anyway, just in case.

  “What time’s the night manager get in?”

  “’Bout six. But if you’re plannin’ to talk to him about this Kano guy, you can save yourself a trip.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He took the card I’d slid back to him and tapped at the night manager’s scrawl.

  “Ernie drinks a little,” he said. “He’s got real nice handwriting when he’s sober, but I can tell from this shit he was blotto. And when Ernie’s shit-faced, a herd of elephants could come through the door, and he couldn’t tell you what color they were.”

  “Any chance Bobby might have signed in as B. Kano?”

  He shook his head.

  “Could be, but I don’t think so. If Bobby’d wanted a room, he’da set it up with me earlier. Ernie, he’s married and got six kids. He don’t make no freebie arrangements with guys. And on freebies nobody signs no cards.”

  “Did you ever consider becoming a detective?” I asked, only half joking. I was genuinely, if grudgingly, impressed that somebody apparently lived under all those muscles and tattoos.

  He grinned and blushed again but said nothing.

  “I really appreciate your talking with me, uh…” I began before remembering I didn’t know his name.

  “Brad,” he said, still grinning.

  “Brad,” I repeated.

  “Sure thing,” he said, giving me a half-wave, half-salute.

  I returned the gesture and turned to leave.

  “Hey!” Brad called out, and I turned back to the window. “You ever need a room sometime, maybe you an’ me could work somethin’ out.”

  “You got it,” I said, allowing myself a brief flash of erotic fantasy. I gave him another smile and a wave and left.

  *

  At exactly five o’clock, I called Mike Sibalitch. The phone rang eight times before it was answered with a rather breathless “Hello?”

  “Mr. Sibalitch. This is Dick Hardesty; we spoke this morning and you asked me to call at five.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry if I sound a little out of breath,” he said, sounding a little out of breath. “I was out working in the yard, and I was halfway up the hill.”

  “That’s okay. I was hoping you might have a few minutes to talk to me about Gene Harriman. I have to be out that way later this evening, and if you’re going to be home, maybe I could stop by and talk to you first.”

  “Sure. I work eleven to seven, and I leave here about ten. What time did you have in mind?”

  “Well,” I said, doing some quick mental calculations of distance and travel times between Bellwether and Partridge Place, “is seven o’clock okay?”

  “That’ll be fine. You know how to get here?”

  “I’ve got a city map—it shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “Fine,” he acknowledged. “See you then.”

  I had just enough time to stop at the apartment to clean up a little, change my shirt (it was still in the upper 90s, and I’ve never found an antiperspirant that works), and grab a quick bite to eat before heading out again.

  *

  Sibalitch’s house was a comfortable two-story colonial in an area of homes whose resemblance to a Hollywood studio’s back lot was heightened when a kid the spitting image of Beaver Cleaver peddled past me on his bike. Built on a hillside lot, the house sat quite a distance back from the street and slightly above it. A brick sidewalk and stoop led to the paneled front door, which was adorned by a brass lion’s-head knocker.

  Ignoring the bell, I rapped the knocker three times, pleased by the solid, no-nonsense sound.

  The door opened almost immediately, and I got my first look at Mike Sibalitch—tall, slim, with short black hair. His dark-blue short-sleeved sport shirt and white pants accented his Slavic good looks.

  “Mr. Hardesty,” he said, opening the door wide, rather like a soldier shouldering arms. “Come in.”

  I entered the tiled foyer, and he closed the door before extending his hand. His handshake was firm and dry, and even before we stopped shaking, he was guiding me into the living room. We sat in a pair of wing-back chairs flanking the fireplace and facing one another over a glass-topped coffee table.

  “Things have been a madhouse around here since Gene’s death,” he said, taking a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offering me one, which I refused with a no-thanks head shake. “Insurance men, forms, papers; Gene’s brother in for a week from Miami. A real mess.”

  “You seem to be taking it all very well,” I observed.

  Sibalitch shrugged and picked up a lead-crystal lighter from beside a matching ashtray on the coffee table.

  “I don’t have much in the line of choices, do I?”

  “You and Mr. Harriman…Gene…were lovers, I gather?”

  He lit his cigarette, took a long drag, then held it away from him and stared at the glowing end for a moment before releasing the smoke in a slow, deliberate stream.

  “For two years, seven months, and twelve days,” he said. He looked up suddenly and met my eyes. “If that sounds saccharinely romantic, I can assure you it wasn’t meant to be. Ours wasn’t exactly a fairy-tale relationship, but it worked for us.”

  I nodded. “You were the one who found his body?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I came home and found him dead in bed. I thought he was sleeping, at first, but there’s something about being dead that doesn’t allow that illusion to last for long.”

  “Did the police tell you the cause of death?”

  “No,” he said, “I told them.”

  Surprised, I asked, “And that was…?”

  Neither his face nor his voice betrayed the slightest emotion.

  “Natural causes,” he said, as casually and noncommittally as though he were talking about computer circuits. “Gene had a serious case of rheumatic fever as a kid; it did a real number on his heart. He always said he wouldn’t live to see forty.”

  “And what did the cops say?”

  “Nothing. They must have believed me; they got into a huddle and talked among themselves for a few minutes, then they just looked around—to see if anything looked suspicious, I guess. They asked me if he ever used drugs, or if he’d been depressed, stuff like that. I told them no. Then the coroner came to take Gene away, and the cops left. I told them to check with Gene’s doctor.”

  “Did you happen to see the death certificate?”

  “Yeah, Gene’s brother showed it to me. It gave the cause of death as ‘respiratory arrest,’ which is pretty generic. I suppose it’s safe to say that if you stop breathing, you’re dead.” He tamped out the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray and lit up another then sighed. “I guess I was lucky to have Gene as long as I did. Just wish it had been longer, but this sort of thing happens, I guess.”

  I got the impression that he, like Martin Bell, believed what he wanted to believe.

  “Did the police ask you any questions you thought were a little out of the ordinary?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Not really. Other than asking if Gene or I had any access to any kind of poison. That was when I told them about Gene’s heart condition. When they were talking among themselv
es, I heard one say something about dusting for fingerprints—why in hell they’d have to do that I have no idea—but then another one said something I couldn’t hear and that was the end of it.

  “The rest of the time was mostly small talk while we waited for the coroner.”

  “Do you remember any of that?”

  “Well, you have to realize I was really struggling not to fall apart in front of a bunch of cops. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew we were gay, but they didn’t ask, and I wasn’t about to tell them that was my lover lying there. They just asked some general stuff—whether Gene or I knew some guy named Roger, stuff like that.”

  “Do you mean Rogers? Alan Rogers?”

  He looked at me even more strangely, and his eyes narrowed.

  “How did you know his first name? Is something going on that I should know about?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” I assured him, lying through my teeth. “It’s just that there have been several…ah…unusual deaths recently. Alan Rogers was one of them. I suppose they thought Gene might be another one.”

  Sibalitch pursed his lips for a minute then said, “Yeah, that’s probably it. But he wasn’t, of course.”

  Before he could pursue that line of thought any further, I jumped in with a question.

  “Did you by any chance know Alan Rogers?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t. It’s possible Gene might have, but I have no way of knowing.”

  Gene Harriman had been Victim #2. When they couldn’t develop a positive link between Harriman and Alan Rogers, the first victim, the police apparently evolved their random-death theory. Given their lack of any real interest in a bunch of dead “pre-verts,” it would have held up quite well in regard to the subsequent deaths.

  Sibalitch ground his second cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “Exactly what is it you’re investigating, Mr. Hardesty?”

  Since he obviously wanted to believe his lover had died of natural causes, I had no desire to destroy the illusion.

  “I have a client who is trying to locate certain people for reasons a little too complicated and boring to go into,” I lied. “I had reason to believe Gene might have known some of them.”