McKain's Dilemma Read online

  "Here we go." I looked up and saw Runnells's party on the monitor. Music was playing loudly in the background, and someone was holding the camera shakily but not so shakily that I couldn't make out Runnells and Townes standing together laughing.

  "And now," said the Runnells on the screen, cigarette in mouth, "the man who was responsible for this whole fucking wonderful blow-out, the world-famous situational environmentalist . . . did I say that right? Christopher Townes!"

  Townes waved none too crisply at the camera. "Hello hello," he called in a British accent.

  "Is that his dialect?" I asked Runnells.

  "No. Listen."

  "Oi would just loik to thank," Townes went on in a verifiably phony Cockney dialect, "moi foin benefactor 'ere, Lord of the Manor, gentleman, scholar, and philanthropist, moi friend, Carlie!"

  "That," said the live Runnells, "was Chris's idea of Cary Grant."

  The tape went on a bit longer with more of the same. Both men seemed a bit drunk and possibly on drugs as well, but it gave me an opportunity to see a speaking and moving Christopher Townes, a help in any missing persons case.

  Runnells turned the tape off. "Anything else you need?"

  "No. If I have any questions I'll call you."

  "Would you want your fee now?"

  "A deposit, if you like. I charge three-fifty a day plus expenses."

  "That's fine. Would a week's worth be sufficient?"

  "Sure."

  He stepped into the hall and called for Eshleman, who came and wrote me a check for $2450, which I put into my wallet. I thanked Eshleman and Runnells, and they walked me outside. Eshleman didn't seem to be watching me as much as he was Runnells. It was a proprietary look, not without affection, a look that would have seemed more likely coming from Runnells, and I wondered if I'd been told the truth about their relationship, especially in the light of Eshleman writing the check. Eshleman didn't strike me as the type I'd have let change a dollar for me. He reminded me of a big dumb mutt that looked friendly and lovable until you tried to pet it, or you pissed off its master, and then look out.

  But I didn't have to worry, did I? I wasn't going to piss off Carlton Runnells, I was going to help him, if I could.

  At least that's what I thought.

  Chapter 3

  I tell Ev things, I always have. She's been my best friend, and we've had few secrets from each other over the years. I don't know how other investigators do it, but sometimes I've just got to talk a case out with someone. Al Canelli always talked to me when he had the agency, but I've never felt that close to any of my infrequently hired assistants. So I talk to Ev. We're so close it's like talking into my pillow in the night. And it's that safe too. Ev is no Lucy Ricardo who goes running to the Mertzes every time Ricky tells her a secret. She knows the importance of keeping one's mouth shut. I'm no Catholic, so she's my priest.

  When I got home, naturally she was curious, so that evening after Carlie (our Carlie) was in bed, I told her everything I knew about Runnells and his problem. It didn't surprise her or shock her, and I hadn't expected it to. I told her, unnecessarily, not to say anything to anyone. She said she wouldn't, and I believed her.

  I dug out the Lancaster to New York train schedule, and decided I'd take the 3:33 P.M. the next day, which was Sunday. That would put me in the city at seven o'clock, time enough to have dinner with Tom and Jay, his roommate—or lifemate, as Carlton Runnells had rather romantically referred to it. I called the Algonquin and tried to make a reservation, but they were booked, as I'd suspected. Then I called Tom's number. Jay answered, and told me they'd be happy to have me crash at their place for a few nights. I promised him some good dinners at the restaurant of their choice, and rang off.

  The next day we did the Sunday school and church thing with Carlie, went home, watched the Three Stooges together, and that afternoon the ladies took me to the station. I tried to read James's The Wings of the Dove on the train, but found it impossible, and was soon rocking in that half doze that train rides always induce in me. Before I knew it we were pulling into Penn Station and I was rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

  I cabbed up to Central Park West between 75th and 76th, dropped off my bag at Tom and Jay's, and took them out to a Chinese restaurant. They're both slightly older than me, in their early forties, and both had been in New York for twenty years or so. I figured them to know the ropes.

  "I'm looking for someone this trip," I told them. "My client . . ."

  "Who shall remain nameless," Tom threw in.

  "Yeah. He's worried that this person might be in some trouble. Something along the S and M line."

  "He gay?" Jay asked.

  I nodded. "I don't know if it'll come to this, but I was wondering if you might give me some clues where to start."

  "You mean," Tom said, "in the S and M community?"

  I nodded again.

  Tom looked at me a bit sadly. "Mac, asking us that is kind of like if we'd come to your house and ask you and Ev who we could see in Lancaster to do a little water sports. We're not into that scene, never have been."

  I felt like an asshole. "Tom, you know I didn't mean anything . . ."

  He waved a chopstick at me. "Yeah, yeah, it's all right. I know where the neighborhoods are, everyone knows that much. A lot of it's gone underground lately. AIDS has scared the shit out of people. Everybody's tightening up."

  "Everybody's tightening up everything," Jay smiled.

  "Maybe in the long run it'll do some good," Tom said.

  "Don't be self-hateful." Jay told him.

  "I'm not self-hateful, I'm whore-hateful. I just don't see why gays have to be any more promiscuous than straights."

  Jay grinned. "It's the genes, don'tcha know."

  "Prick," Tom laughed, and turned back to me. "Look, Mac, if you need to poke around in the leather places, we can point the way. But don't expect us to provide you with any company, okay?"

  "Fair enough. Another question, with no aspersions attached?"

  "Shoot."

  "You know anything about this sex-slave business?"

  Jay nodded. "In the movies. Al Pacino in patent leather pumps. Cruising. Hot stuff."

  "It happens, I guess," Tom agreed. "But people are slaves because they want to be. I don't think anybody holds anyone else against their will. Why bother, when there are people who want to be tied up and whipped?" He pronged a shrimp with the point of his chopstick. "You realize, Mac, that you're a really shitty dinner-table conversationalist this trip. Just because you're paying the bill doesn't give you the right to ruin our appetites."

  He was right. We talked about movies for the rest of the meal.

  The next morning I waited until ten-thirty and called Environments, Incorporated, Christopher Townes's company. A woman with a very sexy voice answered the phone, and I told her I was interested in throwing a party with one of Mr. Townes's creations as the centerpiece. She told me that Mr. Townes was out of town, but that if I liked I could consult with one of his associates. I said that my wife had really had her heart set on Townes himself doing it, but I was informed that that would be impossible at the present time. I politely declined her offer to transfer me to an associate, thanked her, and hung up.

  Next I looked up Christopher Townes's name in the Manhattan telephone directory. It wasn't there. Then I looked up Ben Arkassian's. It was. It never failed—find the friend, find the man. I decided to go to the address—also in the east eighties, probably close to the office—rather than call. Ben Arkassian could always hang up the phone, but he couldn't hang me up. I hoped.

  The building where Townes and Arkassian lived was, except for the garbage bags out front, scrubbed and elegant, as was the doorman, a remnant of more gracious times, replete with gold braid and a sneer that would wither lead. I gave him a fake name and said that I wanted to see Ben Arkassian. He looked at me as though I'd just belched onions, and pushed a button on his switchboard. After a twenty-count I heard a tinny voice on the speaker. "A Mr. Harris t
o see you, sir," the doorman announced in a voice the timbre of a '37 Chevy gearshift.

  Again the tinny voice rattled out something unintelligible to me. Evidently the doorman understood it. "Your business?" he asked me.

  "Christopher Townes," I told him. He looked at me oddly, predictably enough, and repeated the words into the contraption. The speaker rattled again, and the doorman shut it off, turned his sharp, red eyes on me once more, and said, "Eleven C."

  Taking this cryptic remark as my cue to enter, I grandly swept past him across the lobby to the elevator, which was self-service, I noticed somewhat smugly.

  Eleven C was at the end of the hall. I had no sooner knocked than the door opened, and I found myself looking up into the eyes of a black man several inches taller than myself. He sported a short natural and a beard trimmed deeply enough to reveal badly pockmarked cheeks. A stark white dashiki covered all six and a half feet of him. He didn't look happy.

  "Harris?"

  I nodded. "Ben Arkassian?" I said uncertainly.

  "Yeah." He smiled the smile of a man who knows he's bigger than you are. "My daddy was Armenian. He liked dark women, okay?"

  I shrugged. "Okay."

  "Come on in."

  I came. The living room was large and white and dazzling, as a result of the windows completely spanning one wall. The park was visible below. Arkassian sat on a massive white sofa, his right hand directly above a cushion crack. I suspected that he had a handgun stuffed down it, and that made me a little nervous. Hell, I was already intimidated by the man's size. He didn't need a gun to scare me as well. He may have thought I was carrying, but I wasn't. I make it a point not to carry a weapon, although I have several—a .38 Police Special, a small .22 with a short barrel that fits into a small-of-the-back holster I've never used, and a big fat Army-issue .45 I've never even fired. I don't much like guns. It's always seemed to me that if you carry a gun it's going to get used, and for an investigator that's one of the biggest pains in the ass imaginable. It didn't, however, seem to bother Ben Arkassian, who was running his finger almost obscenely up and down the crack in the sofa, as though he was just dying to pull out the machinery and give me a good scare.

  "Want some coffee?" he asked me. The perfect host.

  "No thanks."

  "What do you want then?"

  "I want to know where Christopher Townes is."

  "Why?"

  "I want him to create a situational environment for me."

  "You must want that pretty bad."

  I cocked my head. "Why do you say that?"

  "Coming here. Instead of the office."

  I explained that I had called the office and that they had given me a runaround. I don't think he believed me.

  "I'm really not involved in Chris's business," he said coolly. "So I'm afraid I can't help you."

  "If you could just tell me where I could reach him . . ."

  "He's up at the Cape. Got a little cabin in Provincetown he goes to when he gets too hassled." He smiled thinly. "He's been pretty hassled lately."

  "Does the cabin have a phone?"

  "Afraid not."

  "Well, do you expect him back soon?"

  "Who knows? He could stay away for weeks, even months." The smile disappeared, and Arkassian gave me a steely glare. "Years."

  "My party's sooner than that," I said.

  "Then you're out of luck. And I'm out of time." He stood up. It was like a tree growing very fast. "You ought to talk to one of the associates. They're good."

  "Maybe I will. Thanks."

  He walked me to the door and I stepped through it. "Do me a favor," he said. "Next time, call."

  "Well, I was in the neighborhood, and . . ."

  He shut the door in my face, and I couldn't blame him. But I didn't call because I wanted to see Ben Arkassian, and I wanted to see the apartment. I frankly hadn't expected to be admitted, and the very fact that I was made me start to wonder.

  Why had Arkassian let me up in the first place? Why hadn't he just had the doorman ask me what the hell I wanted with Chris Townes, and then tell me to go away? But Townes's name had opened the door right away. I'm damned if I'd let someone in my place on so little. And what was the business of making love to the sofa cushion? I was positive that Arkassian had a piece down there. But why? Did he play that little trick on all prospective clients of his roomie, or was he just notably edgy today?

  I didn't get it. But there was one thing that I felt fairly sure of, and that was that Ben Arkassian knew where Townes was and hadn't told me. Not that I blamed him for that either. All the time I was there he'd treated me like there was something I knew that I wasn't saying, and I don't think he bought my line for a minute. That was okay. I didn't care whether he did or not. If he was nervous, and he knew where Townes was, he'd probably try and contact him somehow. I couldn't tap any phones, but I could keep an eye on Arkassian.

  I went into a coffee shop diagonally across the street from the apartment building and had lunch, then started to order coffee. I had a lot of coffee. From noon to four, except for a short break to drain my bladder, I watched the front door of the apartment, then paid my bill and went outside. I strolled around the street for a while in the vicinity of the place until it started to get dark, then went around the corner to the park side, crossed the street, and looked up at the eleventh floor. The lights were on in the apartment I guessed was Arkassian's. I sat on a bench for an hour, looking up most of the time, but the lights didn't change. I went back to the coffee shop and had some dinner in a window seat, then returned to my bench again. Finally at eleven o'clock the apartment lights went out, and I went around the corner to the front door and waited ten minutes, but Ben Arkassian didn't show. Just on the chance that he'd try a little trick, I waited another hour. The coffee shop was closed, so I just stood around. At midnight I found a phone booth and dialed Arkassian's number. He picked it up after two rings and grunted "Yeah?" into it.

  "Heh, Jose?" I grunted back in a nasal, Spanish accent.

  "Fuck, man . . ." Arkassian responded graciously, and slammed the receiver back in the cradle. I wasn't stupid. I had my ear far away. He had sounded sleepy and pissed, the correct response of a man awakened by an asshole.

  I hung up and went back to Tom and Jay's. It had been a long day, if not a fun one.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning I decided not to be Sam Spade, and to do what I probably should have done in the first place. Tom and Jay made a terrific breakfast of eggs, ham, and real New York City bagels, then went off to work, leaving me to watch I Love Lucy until I thought I could reach Eddie Reilly at work. Eddie was a NYPD detective whose specialty was stolen motor vehicles. I'd met him on a domestic case two years before when the wife of my current client stole her husband's Porsche to drive to New York to meet her boyfriend. Eddie and I had hit it off quickly. He was an ex-Philadelphian and a confirmed Phillies fanatic, as was I, and we both liked bad movies. It was friendship at first conversation.

  When I called the precinct, they told me it was Eddie's day off, so I dialed his home and his wife answered. She put him on, and I told him I needed to have him call the phone company office that handled East 85th Street and get me clearance to go through their records. Ten minutes later he called back with the address and told me to ask for a Mr. Lindeman. I thanked him and promised to buy him lunch the next day.

  Mr. Lindeman gave me what I needed, which were the last three months of toll slips for Ben Arkassian's phone. There were a lot of long-distance calls to places all over the country, but what interested me most were several third-party calls dialed from a New York City number that was neither Arkassian's apartment nor Townes's office. If Townes was incommunicado in the city, it was only natural for him to charge his calls to his own number.

  I jotted it down and then checked it in the cross-reference book, and found the number to be in an apartment in the East Village, in a little side street off of Houston. I scribbled down the address and apartment number,
thanked Mr. Lindeman, and took a cab down to where I thought my boy might be. I toyed with the idea of calling, but decided against it. I doubted if I could recognize Townes's voice by a simple "hello," and if he was hiding from something or someone, the suspicion that he had been found could be enough to make him relocate.

  The neighborhood was surprisingly shoddy for someone with Townes's income to be living in. Flanking the place on one side was a head shop (I didn't know they still existed—the one in Lancaster folded years ago), and on the other side was a back-issue magazine store with a bargain bin out front. The smell of mildew hit me hard as I walked past it. The door of Townes's building had a pane of mesh glass that had been broken years before, from the looks of the dust embedded in the cracks. I opened it and stepped into the alcove. It smelled of urine and old beer. There were eight mailboxes, all of which had tattered and stained name cards except for 3A, the apartment from which the calls had been charged. I overcame the temptation to ring the buzzer, and went back out on the street.

  This time there was no coffee shop where I could await my prey. Across the street was a laundry and dry cleaners to whom I would not have entrusted my foulest underwear, next to that a sex-aids shop with a fine assortment of zippered leather face masks in the window ("40% OFF!"), and finally a martial-arts studio that used to be a movie theatre—a marquee that formerly boasted of Garbo and Gable now read DEFEND YOURSELF—KIM'S KARATE. Had I lived in the neighborhood, I would have given Kim a call. I had no doubt I would see more action there in a week than I had in my four years as an investigator in sleepy little Lancaster.