37
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.
