Capital Treasures

Theirs was a corner apartment with floor-to-ceiling glass on two sides. Facing the river and the Washington Tidal Basin backed by the monuments, including the phallic Washington Monument obelisk, were, from left-to-right, facing the airport and river, Hardesty's smaller bedroom, with bath, a section opening to the living area, giving it a view of Washington, which the men used as their dining room, and then Toby's larger bedroom and bath. In front of those was one long living area, with a kitchen in front of Hardesty's bedroom, separated from the living area by a kitchen island. The opposite wall was glass, facing down river to the east, with sliding doors onto a balcony.

All of the furniture in the living area and Toby's bedroom was sleek and modern—chrome-trimmed and covered with easily mopped-down white leather. Everything was set up for action. All the surfaces were easily cleaned and a lot of the action was performed on a huge ottoman raised to the most advantageous angle needed.

Toby's bedroom was the master bedroom of the two-bedroom luxury apartment with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall glass overlooking the Ronald Reagan airport runways and the Potomac River and tidal basin beyond, centered on the phallic tower of the Washington Monument. On occasion, Toby did business in this bedroom, riding a client's cock on the massive king-sized bed that appeared to be suspended over the power center of the country and that came with every sexual aid one could possibly imagine needing. The bedroom was a temple to sexual pleasure for the wheeler-dealers of Washington.

Only Hardesty's bedroom was outfitted for cozy comfort, but Toby's clients never saw that room. But Hardesty's bedroom also was the safety center, outfitted with monitors showing what was going on in every area of the apartment and in the outside corridor in front of the entry door. When he knew Toby would be entertaining in the apartment, he stayed at home, in his bedroom. The monitors gave him assurance that nothing threatening was going on in the apartment. He didn't watch for titillation, although he didn't shy away from enjoying the action. There was very little a client might think to put Toby through sexually that he himself didn't do with the young man.

On this day, as they shared a rare meal, the two shared what was on their schedule. As they talked, Hardesty's schedule was redone. He received a call from Larry, the unit clerk for Vice at the Washington police department, telling him that the new deputy police department head, Jackson Davis, wanted Hardesty to come in to the office and attend him in his office.

"Thanks, Larry. Coming in now. I have something I want to discuss with Davis too."

"Jackson Davis?" Toby asked when Hardesty clicked off.

"Yep, the new deputy police chief."

"Be careful of him, Hardesty. He has a cruel streak in him that disturbs me."

"He didn't take you any different than I do, Toby, and you seemed to be enjoying yourself."

"I did under those conditions. But I had the feeling I wouldn't want to be alone with him, and there was something in the way he fucked that was different than it was with you. As cruel as he was, I got the feeling that he was holding back because it wasn't just him and me. I feel safe with you and that you are seeing to it that my needs and wants are taken care of too. Davis gave me the feeling it was all about him and that there were no limits to him getting what he wanted."

"I've gotten an inkling of that as well. I'll watch out for me—and you too," Hardesty said.

"And that's a big reason I stay with you," Toby said. "You completely satisfy me, but you protect me too."

* * * *

"We have a high-level and sensitive burglary case I want you to take up."

"I don't think the Robbery squad would appreciate that much, chief," Hardesty said. "Like I told you at your pool party, I do Vice. We're pretty strictly compartmentalized on the D.C. force. Cops here don't like other cops getting into their business."

Hardesty had come into police headquarters on Indiana Avenue, in the thick of downtown Washington, D.C., and had gone straight to the office of the new deputy police chief, Jackson Davis. The top cop had him brought into his inner office immediately.

"You know who Stan Rimsky is, don't you?" Davis said, ignoring Hardesty's demur.

"The legendary baseball shortstop?"

"The same. He's an assistant general manager of the Nationals baseball franchise here in D.C. now. He's had some valuable baseball memorabilia stolen. Most important is a signed baseball by Walter Johnson, probably the best baseball pitcher there ever was."

"I'm not sure why that changes the Robbery unit's jurisdiction," Hardesty said.

"Does the name Shawn Baker tickle your recent memory?" Davis asked, leaning across his desk and speaking in a low voice. His eyes were boring into Hardesty's face.

There was a brief pause and then Hardesty said, "The Louisiana half-breed rent-boy at your pool party?"

"Yes, one of the two rent-boys Andre DuCard pimps who your boyfriend brought to the party."

"On your instructions on what kind of guy you wanted, right?" Hardesty didn't want Toby brought into any of this—into anything involving the police department.

"Yes. But the point is that Shawn Baker's fingerprints were found all over the trophy room the baseball items were stolen from. And Rimsky tells me in confidence that Baker wasn't in that room. He was just in the living room, bathroom, and bedroom."

"The bedroom?" Hardesty said. "So, the sensitivity here is that Rimsky—and the powers that be—don't want the public to know that the legendary shortstop is entertaining rent-boys in his bedroom. That's how you figure the case goes to Vice rather than Robbery?"

"That's Rimsky's worry, yes. Mine is a bit different. I told you at the pool party that I wanted you to investigate the operations in the city by that new pimp, Andre DuCard, and do what you can to snuffle it out. He's brought all of his boys in from out of town, so they're a tight group with few connections outside of their stable. I told you that the operations went beyond prostitution—that I'm sure they include high-level burglary, like in this case. That's why I want you to take this case. I want DuCard quickly and quietly suppressed. You get the case not only because it's Vice related and because you're good, but also because you're up to your neck in networking here and in the prostitution game. I'm relying on you coming along with me here—being on my team, on this and in the future."

The two men's gazes locked and Hardesty did some quick calculating before nodding his head.

"Here are the files on the case so far. They are just between you and me at this point, and I want to keep them that way."

"Has this Shawn Baker been brought in? What does he have to say for himself?"

"They tried to find him before the files got to my desk. They didn't find him as of the time I took them off the case. It's your job to find Baker, to squeeze him, and to put him into the process with as little incriminating going to Rimsky as possible. This is a political town. I know the department has ways of handling this. I know you've used those means before, so you know what to do. As few as possible should know about this."

"I have a partner, Glen Whitehall. We don't cut the other one out on anything. If I tried with this, it would be spotlighted, not suppressed."

"You'll vouch for him?"

"We've only been together for a year, but he's stuck with me in everything so far, and it hasn't all been by the book. I can't cut him out of this completely. He'd notice and make noise that would be heard beyond. And I'd need research support too. Our unit clerk, Larry, he's—"

"I hear he's hot for your cock and you control him with it."

"He's loyal and watches out for me, yes."

"But you fuck him as a reward for special research support."

"Yes."

"OK, those two, with limited in the know. No others. Not Crane, either, your captain. I've already told him you have a close-hold assignment that involves someone important in town, and I hear he takes orders and stays in line. From my discussions with him, I understand he also knows about your own vice and is good with that as long as you get results for the unit."

And I wonder if Crane knows about your vices too, Hardesty thought.

"So, just those knowing anything and only what they need to know, which doesn't include my interest in the DuCard operations. Rimsky is expecting a visit from you. Just you. He lives over by the baseball stadium in the Southwest Waterfront section. So, off you go. You can have direct access to me whenever you need it. Don't fuck this up. That would be bad for both of us."

As Hardesty got to the office door, Davis added something. "If other cases crop up like this, they go automatically to you too. So, it will be in your interest to wrap this up quickly. I want DuCard off the streets and out of D.C. as soon as possible. I'm not fussy about what condition he's in when he leaves."

As Hardesty returned to the Vice unit bullpen, he was wondering why Davis was so interested in DuCard's operation in particular. He assumed that he'd find out eventually, and, in that, he was, of course correct.

Glen Whitehall was sitting at his desk, one that faced and abutted Hardesty's in the Vice unit bull pen. As he entered the unit, Hardesty gathered up Larry at the desk by the front door and asked him to conference with him and Whitehall. Larry, a slender, good-looking but diffident young man with a decided air of effeminacy about him, didn't ask questions. He'd follow Hardesty anywhere—and, in fact, when he'd done a particularly useful favor for the hunky detective, he'd followed Hardesty to one of the bunk rooms provided to give some double-duty exhausted cops a bit of shuteye, with the window of the door to the corridor blocked out, and had let Hardesty rough fuck him. He begged Hardesty to rough fuck him. With an eye to the young man's delicacy, Hardesty didn't rough fuck him too bad, but he did fuck him to keep him on the team.

Passing Captain Crane's glass-walled office, the unit chief's and Hardesty's eyes met and Crane nodded. They both understood how close hold this special assignment was to be. The captain maybe hadn't been told by Davis what the specific case was, but he had eyes and ears around the building. He didn't have to be told. Crane was a straight arrow, but he'd maintained position in the department by not making waves. He valued and trusted Hardesty to do right in the end, so there would be no problems in that area.

The problem was that Hardesty didn't like the smell of Davis's interest in all of this and he most definitely had not appreciated Davis trying to get insurance blackmail on him. But this would just have to work its way out, and until it was a whole lot clearer to Hardesty what was going on, how political it was, and whose oxen were being threatened, Hardesty would hang loose and follow the leads. One thing Davis did understand as new as he was to Washington and the police department was that this was a political town. Nothing was more important than knowing whose ox was being gored.

Whitehall wouldn't be a problem. They been together long enough and through enough together for Hardesty to have complete confidence in his sidekick. Whitehall was a strapping, young, athletic all-American-looking blond, who stood in contrast to Hardesty's "been through the ringer" forty-year-old scruffy—but sexy—thuggish look. Still, it obviously was Hardesty who was the senior partner. The two actually worked out well together, making the most of their contrasts, which included them both being prisoners of the sexual vices that they encountered in their work. Whereas Hardesty worked over male prostitutes in his pursuit of keeping them alive and prospering, Whitehall took on the female prostitutes. Together, they knew everything and everyone to know in the red-light district world of Washington, D.C. Whitehall was no less interested than Hardesty was in reaching a just conclusion, but he could take shortcuts, read the political tea leaves, and keep his mouth shut as well as Hardesty did.

In their brief meeting, Hardesty told the other two the minimum they needed to know of what the case was, why they had it, and that it was close hold. Glen and Larry were smart enough to know they weren't being told everything and to understand that Hardesty would tell them all if he had been permitted to do so. He, of course, didn't mention Jackson Davis directly and very definitely didn't allude to the interest being as much in Shawn Baker's connection with Andre DuCard and Davis's interest in DuCard's operations as it was in not publicly embarrassing Stan Rimsky.

"First thing is that I'm going out to the Southwest Waterfront to look at the crime scene and talk with Rimsky." And then, as Whitehall started to rise from his seat, Hardesty added, "And I'm covering that alone. I want you to concentrate on finding Shawn Baker and bringing him in and pinning him down, Whitehall. And I want you, Larry, to give Glen research support on that and to activate the close-hold arrangements in the department for treating a witness or suspect we don't want the world to know about."

Larry was wagging his tail like a puppy just at being included and trusted in this. Glen Whitehall gave Hardesty a questioning look, realizing that there was much more going on here than he was being told about. But he was a good soldier. He'd do his assignment.

* * * *

"When Shawn Baker left the other night, Mr. Rimsky, was it because you had him on this and beat him?" Hardesty was standing in the master bedroom of a brick townhouse on a quiet, tree-lined side street one would never know was just two blocks from the Washington Nationals' baseball stadium between the federal buildings lining the Mall and the Anacostia River. He was standing at the master bedroom's closet door and looking at an X-frame standing against the closet's back wall. Various elements of sexual torture hung off nails on a board on the side wall. This was a normal closet.

The baseball official had let him in, checked his credentials, shown him the damaged glass case in his trophy room on the first floor, and offered Hardesty a drink. Hardesty had made clear that the visit was an informal one laid on especially by the deputy police chief, with the instruction to "do this" with as little public attention to Rimsky as possible. He accepted the drink as a signal that they were off the books in this meeting. When Rimsky went to his kitchen to fetch a couple of beers and Hardesty had seen that the man lived alone and the house showed indications why, the artwork on the walls and table being at least mildly homoerotic, he took Rimsky's absence as an opportunity to go upstairs. He'd opened one of the closet doors in the capacious master bedroom and, not surprisingly, found the movable X-frame and the whips, restraints, and other sexual toys hanging on the closet wall.

"What are you doing? You have no right—?"

"Relax," Hardesty said, taking one of the beers the man was carrying. "I know what these are for and I use them myself. Let me repeat that I was instructed to help you out here with the least fanfare as possible, Mr. Rimsky. Now what is it you really want? Do you want your baseball memorabilia treasures back or do you want it spread all over the press that you rough fuck rent-boys in your house?"

The baseball official, a muscular guy in his early fifties, who was going a bit to the beer belly, was bald, and didn't have the prettiest of faces, just had his eyes bugging out and his mouth flapping with no noise coming out because Hardesty had gone right to the core of the issue and Rimsky knew he'd been caught out without a good explanation.

"Again, I'm not here to judge," Hardesty said. "I'm not unfamiliar with these games myself. I was sent to help smooth this over—to your benefit. When the guys from Robbery were here they took fingerprints at the crime scene, Mr. Rimsky. The prints of a known rent-boy, Shawn Baker, were all over it, including on the signed Joe Cronin bat the thief used to smash the glass case the Walter Johnson baseball and a few other items were taken from. You'll notice it's not the Robbery guys who have come back. It's me. I was sent to help fix this. I'm not here to judge. I know what a St. Andrew's cross X-frame is for and I know what these whips are for. I use them myself. They make me get harder and go longer, just as I bet they do for you. So, if you answer my question honestly, we can get this tied up neatly. What's important here? Getting your stuff back? This doesn't look like a professional job; it looks more like a revenge hit and go. Valuable stuff was taken—but stuff just as valuable was left. You want your stuff back and you don't want your games plastered all over the papers?"

"Yes," Rimsky answered, meekly.

"You had a rent-boy up here that night? Shawn Baker? You hung him on the X-frame, whipped him, and fucked him?"

"He didn't tell me his name."

"You had a rent-boy up here, you hung him on the X-frame, you whipped him, and you fucked him?" Hardesty persisted.

"Yes."

"Had you made clear you were going to use him that way?"

"He didn't ask."

"But he didn't agree to it up front. You just muscled him into it?"

"Yes. He's a rent-boy. I paid him well."

"You hung him on this X-frame and you whipped him and fucked him on it."

"Yes. He got hard; he came."

"But he didn't say he liked it, did he?"

"No."

"He got loose and downstairs and crashed the glass case with the Cronin bat; snatched what he could get, including the Walter Johnson baseball; and ran off, right?"

"Yes."

"So, if I can make the case go away altogether with no one mentioning what you like to do in your bedroom—and with a guy—and you get your stuff back, would you be happy with all of this just going away?"

There was a pause, and then, with a sigh, Rimsky gave a "Yes. I guess I hadn't thought this all through."

"You go on downstairs and enjoy your beer," Hardesty said. "I'll make a few phone calls. And be sure you get a real yes before you do this again."

"You're not going to make me get rid of this stuff?"

"No. And I'm not going to tell you to stop enjoying yourself—just to be very careful you've got a guy who is good with taking it. It's best to go through an escort agency and get up front agreement."

"This was an escort agency."

"But a new one to the city. Not yet down on all the customs here," Hardesty said. "Indulge yourself. Just pay enough to be sure everyone understands what's what."

Visibly relieved, Rimsky took his beer and went downstairs. While he was gone, Hardesty used his cellphone, methodically working to the center of Andre DuCard's pimping operation. Hardesty wanted to make this just go away as much as Jackson Davis wanted to have something on Rimsky he might be able to use later and as much as Rimsky had come to his senses enough to know he didn't want to make waves over this. Hardesty was as concerned for one of the rent-boys in his town as he was for anyone else. Baker had been rash, but if he hadn't agreed to being hung and whipped, Hardesty was on his side.

Rimsky was a sleaze in this, albeit an important-man-in-D.C. sleaze—not because of his fetish, as far as Hardesty was concerned—but because he didn't follow the rules on making a deal to use a young man's body. He was lucky Andre DuCard hadn't sent goons to break his legs. But then, DuCard might be enough of a sleaze in the business to be breaking Shawn Baker's legs too for getting the attention of the police brought into this. And that, in Hardesty's book wasn't justified.

Twenty minutes later he came back downstairs. Rimsky was sitting at his dining room table. He'd finished his beer and moved on another one.