The Ninth Man Read online

  “Necrophilia,” I whispered, and Tim leaned against the door, laughing, and closed it. I could hear the chain being released. Then the door opened again, wider this time, and Tim’s head and bare shoulders appeared from behind it.

  “Come on in,” he laughed. He apparently had just gotten out of the shower and was wearing nothing but a towel and an ear-to-ear grin. He closed the door behind me and refastened the chain.

  “There’s a drag queen two doors down who’s always coming by for a cup of Vaseline or something every time he knows I’m home,” Tim said, still smiling. “Actually, he’s just hot for m’bod.”

  “Well, he’ll just have to take a number and stand in line like everybody else,” I said, grabbing him in a bear hug and lifting him off the floor. Tim threw his arms around my neck and returned the hug; then, his eyes grew wide, and he got that little-boy look that always made me melt.

  “To paraphrase my good friend Mae West,” he said, staring directly into my eyes with the tip of his nose pressed against mine, “is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

  “Damn,” I said, still holding him off the floor, “and I wanted it to be a surprise.” I opened my mouth wide and, with a loud hiss, clamped my lips wetly on the base of his neck at the shoulder, applying a slow pressure with my teeth.

  Tim struggled to get away.

  “You give me a hickey, you bastard, and your ass is grass.”

  I set him down and held him at arm’s length, noticing with pleasure that I’d found his “On” button.

  “You want to talk now, or later?” he asked.

  “Later,” I said, unfastening his towel and letting it drop to the floor. Tim might have the face and body of a teenager, but, as the song says, “Little David was small, but, oh, my!”

  We made our way to the bedroom and Tim sprawled on the bed on his stomach, facing me and watching me as I stood just inside the door and undressed. It was all part of the ritual we followed on those occasions—too rare, I realized as I watched him watching me. When we got together, neither of us wasted much time in idle chitchat.

  As I took off my pants and shorts, Tim’s face slowly broke into that wicked-little-kid grin and, when I stood there fully naked, he slowly crooked his index finger at me. As I walked over to the bed, straight toward him, he opened his mouth and slowly extended his tongue. Bull’s-eye!

  *

  “Cigarette?” he asked, leaning across me for an ashtray on the night stand.

  “Gave ’em up,” I said, smugly.

  “You? Liggett and Myers’ best friend?” He paused to light up. “I’m proud of you. Really. It’s a filthy habit.” He blew a long stream of smoke into my face.

  “You little…” I said, lunging out to tickle him under the arm, which always drove him up the wall. He shrieked and rolled away from me, almost falling off the bed in the process.

  “Don’t! Please! I’ll be good! Honest!” he gasped between arias of laughter and frantic flailing trying to fend off my insistent tickling. Finally, fearful that the neighbors might be considering calling the police, I stopped.

  Tim lay limp, catching his breath. He took a long drag from his cigarette, which had somehow come through the struggle unscathed, and carefully blew the smoke away from me. After a minute, he plumped up his pillow and scooted himself up on the bed, his back against the headboard.

  “Okay, so let’s talk,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About whatever it was you called me about,” he said with a grin.

  I duplicated his pillow-plumping and hoisted myself up beside him.

  “You know I hate to mix business with pleasure, but…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. So, ‘but’ what?”

  “Your office had a case recently—you probably don’t remember it with all those stiffs you have coming and going. Mostly going. But this one was kind of different. Young guy named Bobby McDermott; twenty-seven.”

  Tim muttered something under his breath—it sounded like “Fuck!”—and stared into the ashtray balanced on his stomach.

  “What?” I asked.

  He turned his head and looked at me strangely, his eyes searching my face. He said nothing.

  I felt a twinge of guilt.

  “Hey, Tim, I’m sorry. I know I don’t have any right to butt into your business…”

  He shrugged and relaxed a little.

  “It’s okay,” he said, finally. “Yeah, I remember Bobby McDermott. What about him?”

  “The police apparently indicated to his lover that he killed himself. Probably poison. His lover swears he was murdered.”

  Tim stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray, staring at it and continuing to tamp it long after it was out.

  “What makes him think that?”

  Patience was never one of my greater virtues, and obviously Tim knew something he wasn’t too eager to share with me.

  “Come on, Tim! The guy’s twenty-seven. Healthy as a horse—hung like one, too, I understand. No apparent problems—unless you count the lover, but that’s another story. Apparently the only thing he was addicted to is sex, and I’ve never heard of anyone fucking themselves to death, have you?”

  He shrugged, avoiding my eyes.

  “And then the cops ask the lover what he knows about poisons. That strikes me as more than a little strange; they don’t ask about drugs, but poisons.”

  Tim pursed his lips, thought a moment, then turned to me with a deep sigh.

  “Well,” he said, shaking his head, “somebody was bound to catch on, sooner or later.”

  “Catch on to what?” I asked, with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “First of all, he didn’t die of drugs; it was poison. Cyanide, to be exact. Apparently inhaled. Secondly, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t suicide.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Apart from the fact that cyanide is a pretty esoteric way for anybody to commit suicide, how would someone like McDermott manage to get hold of it? It’s not impossible to come by, but it’s not exactly a household product.

  “But what really blows a hole in the suicide theory—and a little detail that the cops apparently chose to overlook—is that from what I understand, there was absolutely nothing in the room to indicate how he managed to inhale cyanide. No bottles, vials, inhalers, rags, nothing.”

  “Weird,” I said, the butterflies still there.

  “It gets weirder when you consider that Bobby McDermott wasn’t the first case we’ve had like it in the past couple weeks. He’s the sixth one.”

  Chapter 2

  It took a second to sink in. Suddenly, I wanted a cigarette more than anything in the world.

  “What do you mean, he’s the sixth one?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  Tim flopped over on his stomach and bunched his pillow under his chest, supporting himself on his elbows and looking at me direct and hard. I could almost see his mind working, sending flashes of thought through his eyes.

  “Look, Dick, I like you, and I think you’re the kind of guy who can be trusted. But to be honest we don’t really know each other all that well, and I could get in one hell of a lot of trouble and maybe even lose my job for divulging confidential information. I just don’t know if it’s worth it.”

  I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, I understand, Tim. But six people? Something’s going on, and I think six people’s lives are worth a hell of a lot.”

  “Well, there’s this, too: it’s not just six people; it’s six guys, and from what I know, six gay guys,” Tim said. “And of course you’re right. But they’ve managed to keep the whole thing quiet so far—either the media hasn’t caught wind of it yet, or they’re being asked to keep a lid on it to prevent another Freeway Strangler or Trashbag Murders circus.”

  “How long a period did you say we’re we talking about?” I asked.

  “Two months.”

  “And how do you
know they were all gay?”

  “Six single men in their late 20s on up? Only one of them was identified by a blood relative—a father who made the identification but refused to accept the body because he said his son had died years ago. Two of them had admitted lovers—one, McDermott’s, an obvious fag, the other a guy I’d talked to in the bars—three were identified by ‘roommates’ I’ll bet my bottom dollar are ‘our people,’ and one by a friend who went into hysterics and said a lot of things he shouldn’t have.”

  “And all of them were killed by cyanide?”

  Tim nodded. “Cyanide, prussic acid, the same thing. All inhaled, with an extremely high concentration of residue in one nostril, and in a circle the size of a dime on one thumb. Give you any clue?”

  “Poppers?” I said. “They thought they were taking a hit of amyl nitrate and it was cyanide instead? Jesus!”

  Just about every gay I knew used amyl for a quick high; especially on the dance floor and during sex. One sniff and the top of your head sort of goes off. Cyanide in an amyl bottle or an inhaler!

  “Yep,” Tim said. “One deep whiff, and it’s all over! About one minute, maximum. And considering the victim is inhaling deeply through just one nostril, it doesn’t take much; just 300 parts of hydrogen cyanide per million parts of air, and you’re gone.”

  “And what are the police doing about all this?”

  Before answering, he reached across me to pick up a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray from the night stand.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” he said, rolling over onto his back and putting the ashtray on his chest. “Their first theory apparently was that somebody’d poisoned a batch of poppers, and that whoever was unlucky enough to get a contaminated bottle ended up randomly dead. In case you hadn’t noticed they’ve yanked all the amyl out of the gay baths, bookstores and head shops—they haven’t found anything, of course, but I don’t think they care much; it just gives them another excuse to harass gay businesses.”

  “Just performing a public service,” I said, managing a weak grin.

  Tim snorted. “The poisoned-batch-and-random-death theory wasn’t valid from the beginning, anyway.”

  “Because…?” I prompted.

  “First, because amyl’s sort of a social thing—not many guys use it when they’re alone. Secondly, because since no amyl bottles were found at any of the scenes, somebody had to have taken them. And can you imagine any random group of guys watching their partners take a hit of amyl, drop dead, and then having the presence of mind to just pick up the bottle and leave without saying anything to anyone?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Nope,” he repeated.

  We laid there in silence for a moment while my mind sifted through everything Tim had said. Finally, he tamped his cigarette out in the ashtray on his chest and reached past me again to return the ashtray to the night stand.

  “You know,” he continued as though he’d never stopped talking, “the ironic thing about the cyanide-laced amyl theory is that amyl nitrate is actually an antidote for cyanide. A lot of cyanide in a little amyl might kill somebody, but probably not instantly; and from all evidence we have, these six guys went immediately. So I’d say somebody—one person—emptied and cleaned an amyl bottle and filled it with a pure hydrogen cyanide. Probably used sulfuric acid as the dissolving agent.”

  I thought a moment then theorized: “So, we’re looking for a chemist.”

  He stuck out his tongue just far enough to pick a small piece of tobacco from it and shook his head.

  “Not necessarily. All somebody would really need is a basic knowledge of chemistry, a little cyanide, and some sulfuric acid.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “A little cyanide, aisle four at your local supermarket.”

  “You’d be surprised how common cyanide is,” Tim said. “It’s got a lot of industrial applications. It can be toxic, but not necessarily lethal when handled properly.

  “As for what else the police might be doing, they’re not exactly sharing much information. We’ve done our best to convince them that it’s unlikely anyone is poisoning batches of amyl nitrate, so I think they’re slowly swinging to the ‘serial killer’ scenario. They’ll probably like that one once they settle on it; it’s a lot easier than trying to find out what all these guys have in common.”

  “Maybe they don’t,” I said. “Maybe it is a serial killer—though I’ve got a gut feeling it isn’t.” I shook my head. “I still can’t understand why, no matter how it happened, nobody outside your office and the cops know about it?”

  “Lots of reasons, I suppose,” Tim said. “‘Ongoing investigation.’ ‘Avoid panic.’ You name it. Now, of course, if you had six dead heterosexuals all killed by something as exotic as cyanide and all in the space of two months, they’d be calling out the guard. Families screaming bloody murder—no pun intended, the police out to polish up the department’s image—it’s all over the news.

  “But six gay men in a city this size—six gays who apparently have nothing whatever in common except being gay and dead…” He paused and shook his head slowly. “They don’t look alike, they aren’t all the same age, they don’t all work together, and as far as we can tell, don’t even know the same people. For all intents and purposes, these are just six isolated, unrelated deaths.”

  “But the death certificates have to list the cause of death,” I said. “Surely some of the families must have made inquiries.”

  “Sure they did. As individual families from all over the country making individual inquiries about individual deaths in which the death certificate shows the cause of death to be ‘respiratory arrest.’ That could mean almost anything.

  “Plus, they haven’t the foggiest idea that there have been similar deaths. They’re assured the police are ‘investigating,’ and if that doesn’t satisfy them, they’re given not-so-subtle reference to how unstable and prone to suicide and random violence faggots are ‘known’ to be. And what’s a family who lives in Sheep-dip, Montana, going to do about it except grieve? Not much, I can tell you.”

  “And the gays—the lovers and friends who don’t know there have been other victims—don’t want to make waves,” I finished his reasoning.

  He nodded.

  “Except one,” I added.

  “The word’s gone around to the privileged few in the office who know about the whole thing that the first person to start making waves about this will be very sorry, indeed. And since it isn’t exactly the world’s best kept secret that I’m gay, everybody has their beady little eyes cocked in my direction.” He sighed. “So now you know, and I’m going to have to trust you not to get me in trouble. Pregnant, maybe, but not in trouble.”

  I pulled him to me and gave him a long hug.

  “Trust me, kid,” I said, feeling—and, I’m afraid, sounding—very much like Humphrey Bogart.

  A low, rumbling growl made Tim jump.

  “Suppertime,” he said, grinning sheepishly and patting his stomach. “Can you stay for dinner? I’ve got some homemade lasagna in the freezer.”

  “How can I resist?” I said. “I’m free for the night. Or at least reasonable.”

  “You’re welcome to stay over,” he said, making a little let-your-fingers-do-the-walking movement over my chest, letting his index finger trip over my right nipple, his hand falling into the space between my arm and chest.

  “Invitation gratefully accepted,” I said, drawing him closer.

  But my romantic intentions were interrupted by another bed-shaking stomach rumble—from me, this time.

  “Saved by the bell,” Tim laughed, moving quickly out of my arms and off the bed. “Let’s eat.”

  *

  The next morning, over coffee, I asked Tim if he would do me one more favor. He gave me his wide-eyed-shock look.

  “Don’t you Scorpios ever get enough?”

  I grinned. “As a matter of fact, no. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

  “The deaths,” he said.<
br />
  “Afraid so. As long as I’m being paid to find out who killed Bobby McDermott, I don’t have much choice but to follow every mud-rut path until I find the highway. Could you get me whatever you can on the other five guys? Next of kin, lovers, addresses, anything that might help?”

  “You’re going to tackle the whole thing on your own?”

  “God, I hope not. But I think we agree there’s probably just one guy out there responsible for all six deaths; and as I said last night, whether or not he’s targeting specific people or if he’s just picking up tricks at random is something somebody has to find out. Will you help?”

  Tim got up from the table to pour himself another cup of coffee. He returned to the table and sat down again before answering.

  “Why not? So I lose my job? So I get a lifetime supply of parking tickets? So the cops see to it that I’m shot while resisting arrest for jaywalking? Sure, I’ll help you. But just remember that everybody’s watching me like a hawk. I don’t know how much information I can get to you.”

  “Anything will help. And I’ll owe you.”

  Tim’s eyes took on a devilish glint.

  “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  *

  “Why, of course I have a picture of Bobby.” The voice was as irritatingly nelly over the phone as it was in person.

  “That’s fine, Mr. Rholfing,” I said, before he had a chance to say anything else. “Why don’t I drop by in about an hour to pick it up?”

  There was a pause, during which I swore I could hear the wheels spinning around in his marceled little head.

  “Why, of course,” he said, finally, in a voice so coy I could almost see his eyelashes flutter. “But you’ll have to excuse the way I look—I just got up a few minutes ago, and the apartment is a mess. But I’ll fix us some coffee, and…have you had breakfast?” Aha! The subtle hook.

  “Yes, thanks—my lover and I just finished eating.” I winked at Tim, who appeared around the corner of the bathroom door just long enough to give me the finger.

  “Oh…you have a lover.” His voice went flat, as though someone had just slammed the oven door on his soufflé.