Capital Treasures

Picking up his private phone, Hardesty was able to see that Toby had arrived in Antwerp. The message was terse and Toby hadn't signed off with his usual sexy-words, but he'd called. He wasn't ghosting Hardesty—at least not yet.

Hardesty patted Jose on the bare butt, showered and dressed quickly, and set off for what he hoped would be a quick and satisfactory resolution—at least for most of those involved—of this budding underworld war.

* * * *

Later that evening, Police Chief Boyd Bartlett called a special war council of all of his top officers. Hardesty wasn't invited, but Captain Crane was there and was allowed to keep his cellphone open at the back of the room to record what was said to convey quickly back to Hardesty. Bartlett sat Deputy Police Chief Jackson Davis immediately to his right at the table on the raised dais, facing the room and the other senior officers. As Bartlett spoke, he shuffled papers off to his right for Davis, and only Davis, to see. These included full details of the Davis-supported Peter Trace raid plans on DuCard's warehouse the next day, including the "take no prisons" intent, plus photos from the Alexander Hotel party the previous night that Davis had attended. Some of the photos had been supplied by Jose Garcia, although Davis wouldn't be able to figure out who took those—his attention was devoted to his own pleasures rather than the waiters standing by the wall. Others were from the disguised security cameras set up in the hotel rooms by the Alexander Hotel. The hotel manager had amicably turned these over to Hardesty in an already-established "scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours" arrangement.

For the room, Bartlett disclosed details he'd learned of the turf war raid—more than enough for Davis to get the message—without including the role that Jackson Davis would have had in the raid. The police chief said his goal was to prevent a turf war, not to clean out all of the vice in the city. He knew that would be an impossible task. He just wanted it controlled and for everyone to be physically safe. Then he performed a nifty end run around Davis by there and then assigning him personally to intervene in the Trace operation's plans. Davis wouldn't be a protector of the raid; he was to be a preventer of the raid.

Later the Vice unit research clerk would be a bit regretful that he'd done all of the study on where openings were at Deputy Chief Davis's level around the country and having found the perfect spot in Juneau, Alaska. Davis had decided to retire immediately and move back to Kansas City instead of trying to stay in the system. The cops at the party, Ernie and Tyrone, had been tracked down from their identification in the party photos and had sung like birds in linking Davis to Peter Trace directly to the policy chief in exchange for being left quietly to leave the force rather than be dragged through Internal Affairs and prosecution.

As soon as Hardesty was apprised of the completion of Bartlett's action, he put the other half of the plan into operation. Laying it all out to both Peter Trace and Andre DuCard by phone, he arranged a meeting with both of them at Justine's that evening. They both showed up. Hardesty arrived early, bringing Jose Garcia, and getting him settled in at Justine's male brothel and out of sight when Trace and DuCard arrived.

The meeting, which included Justine, who had laid the proper ground work, went well. DuCard was moving his operation out of Dupont Circle, leaving Trace king of the hill there, to the fairly new National Harbor hotel and casino development east of the city, along the Potomac, on the northern bank of the river nearly across from the old city of Alexandria. This area was Washington, D.C.'s. mini version of Las Vegas. As yet, it hadn't built up its natural share of vices, and male prostitution was open for establishment. The move was fine with DuCard. It took his services upscale and mainly indoors and it avoided the need to displace an existing stable and turf possession. It was fine with Peter Trace too. It got upstart competition out of town, as the National Harbor was not a central fixture of the District. And Trace didn't have to risk the muscle to maintain his position.

"National Harbor is out of my jurisdiction," Hardest said to Andre DuCard, "but I strongly suggest that you stick to prostitution and drop the idea of following up with robberies. If I've heard of this going on there, I'll get involved."

"Yes, I understand," DuCard answered. "Can you tell me about Petrocelli? I gave him to the cops. Will he be let out on bail or somethin'?"

"Why?" Hardesty said. "You don't plan on whacking him if he gets back out on the street before his trial for beating Susie Win to death, do you?"

"Something needs to happen to him."

"It will, Andre. It will. It will all be quiet, though. We're keeping everything about Susie Win as quiet as possible. If rumors of the real Susie Win get out into the public, there will be only so many places that rumor could have come from. You won't like how you're squeezed to decide if it came from you."

Again, DuCard voiced the "I understand" response and Hardesty thought the man was smart enough to understand and act accordingly.

After the meeting, Hardesty declared Justine a Capital Treasure for helping to avoid a bloody turf war and Justine, in turn, declared Hardesty an understanding treasure of the rent-boys and offered him the services of his pick of brothel men, an X-frame, and a whip. Keyed up by the tension of the case and absence of and concern for Toby Drake, Hardesty accepted and took full advantage of the offer.

* * * *

Hardesty didn't get back to the Crystal City apartment until quite late that night. He was exhausted, but satiated and ready to sleep the sleep of the dead for a day and a half before returning to work and, assuredly, to a whole new set of cases requiring his special talents, understanding, and unusual touch. And he'd left a newly minted rent-boy at Justine's trained to a light taste of the X-frame and whip and a more demanding feel of a Grade A cock.

Just inside the door, he saw a small suitcase he knew to be Toby's that hadn't been there when he'd last left the apartment. Had Toby come back to him, or had Paul from down the hall returned a suitcase of Toby's that Toby had taken there when Hardesty initially made temporary arrangements for Toby to be hidden beyond the touch of Andre DuCard's thugs.

Hardesty was afraid to know which it was. Avoiding a possibility that he now knew would rock his world, he went, first, to the refrigerator for a beer and drank that off quickly while preparing to learn what was up. He turned on the monitor of the bed in Toby's room. He couldn't tell, but he didn't think there was anyone—let alone two—men in the bed. He just couldn't be sure, though. He had to be sure. He slowly approached Toby's room and looked inside. No Toby in the bed. No Toby in the bathroom. Toby wasn't there.

But if everything was OK between him and Toby, would Toby have come to his own bed to sleep upon returning from Europe? Or would he be in Hardesty's bed.

Yes, if everything was good between them, that's where Toby would be.

Hardesty approached his own bedroom in an extreme state of tension and anticipation. As much as he'd been worried about it, he hadn't fully appreciated to this point just how important Toby was to him—how much a treasure the young man was—and how important that everything be good between them.

Chapter Five: Blood Diamonds

It was a long haul to Antwerp from the Baltimore-Washington international airport, necessitating crazy routes, three flights, and three long layovers, but at least Toby Drake would be traveling in business-class comfort—on the flights, at least. Since he was going on business, laid on more to have him out of Washington, D.C., for a week, the high-end male escort agency he worked for was making him work those long layovers. Airflight layover hookups with rent-boys were becoming the "new thing" for well-heeled men who wanted their pleasures to be there and gone and not lingering in the same town they lived in.

The flights themselves, or at least the first one, gave Toby plenty of time to think over why he had to take this trip and why he'd reacted to his Vice cop roommate's grabbing of control over him in a way that was strange to him as well as anyone else.

Toby lived in a strange situation. Even he could see that. He was a high-end, young, blond, movie-star handsome male whore escorting only the richest men to events of their choice and then laying down for them and opening his legs to them—for big fees. He'd been doing that since he was nineteen. He was nearly twenty-five. In his time in the business he had taken it rough and had come to liking it that way. For the past five years, he'd been living in a high-rise Alexandria, Virginia, apartment across the National Airport Runways and the Potomac River from the monument section of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital, with Hardesty, a Vice unit detective in the Washington, D.C., police department.

Hardesty was an anomaly in his profession because he was a captive of the rough sex gay vice he was charged to police. In doing so he protected the rent-boys he policed as much as he fought to keep vice down. What he fought to do first was to keep everyone safe in practicing their sexual vices, and in doing so he'd remained a straight-arrow, honest-broker cop, if a highly unorthodox one.

It, still, was unusual that he lived with a younger male escort in an apartment where the two were lovers, practicing rough fetish, but also an apartment that Toby Drake used as a place of business. Despite the craziness of this, it had worked for over five years. That it had worked was primarily because Hardesty tolerated Toby's business and, while giving the younger man a modicum of protection, had left Toby to make his own decisions and to live his life as he wished.

They now had a problem. Although they had been building up to it anyway, Toby had come under threat connected with a case that Hardesty was working and Hardesty had gone all commander on Toby, telling him what he was going to do and where he was going to hide while Hardesty closed the case and took the younger man out of danger. Hardesty had been overbearing and had gone beyond their living agreement and that hadn't set well with Toby, although Toby had given in to the older man in arrangements that included this international assignment from his escort agency.

Toby had to think about the situation and whether it was time for him to make a change in his living—and sexual privilege—arrangements with Hardesty. In connection with the assignment waiting for him in Antwerp, Belgium, he'd been offered an interview to move to a very exclusive escort agency in Paris. The interview was to be conducted after he'd finished in Antwerp. Choices were open to Toby. They were all hard and momentous choices, though. The airplane flights would give him an opportunity to mull them. He'd already started thinking about them as Hardesty drove him in the early hours of a Wednesday morning to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. It was only after Hardesty had left him off at the departures terminal and driven away that Toby realized he had been short and distant with Hardesty on their parting.

Perhaps, he thought, he'd already started the process of separation. Five years with someone was a long time. It was almost long enough to think of it as a permanent arrangement. But they both had gone into the connection agreeing that it would not be a permanent arrangement.

The flight to Chicago on American Airlines, to make the connection to a flight to Stockholm, gave Toby plenty of time to think. He had been contemplating having much longer to think, though, and that didn't materialize. Making the most of the money clients had to outlay for this trip, a hookup had been set up for Toby for the seven-hour layover at Chicago's O'Hara airport.

The meet at 11:30 in the morning was at the Gaslight Club in the Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport hotel, the only hotel inside the terminal area of the airport. They were meeting for lunch. Toby, going by his professional name, Todd, had no illusions about why they were meeting in a hotel restaurant. He wouldn't need to be at the gate, with an hour to spare, for the SAS flight to Stockholm until 3:00 p.m.

Sten Sund, standing in the entrance doorway to the Gaslight Club, recognized Toby first in scanning the room. Toby had been looking at the entrance, expecting the client to appear, but he could be excused for letting his eyes drift right over Sund. This was an airport. Sund was wearing an SAS flight crew uniform. He was a senior airplane pilot. He recognized Toby first because he'd been shown photos of the young man via the Internet when he was setting up an encounter.

He arrested Toby's gaze and nodded. Toby smiled, pleased enough when he realized who was the client. It was clear now why the meeting could be here in a hotel in an airport. Nifty, he thought. We'd have our fuck and then both fly out of here. No strings or entanglements.

Sund indicated to the hostess that he saw his party and came to the table. Toby stood. "I assume you are Todd?" Sund asked, giving the young, slender blond an appreciative look.

"Yes," Toby said. He indeed was Todd for meetings like this. The man was a couple of inches taller than he was and maybe twice Toby's age. The age sat well on him. He was solidly built, but not fat. He probably had to be in reasonable trim to be flying a commercial jetliner. He was gray haired, but this too sat on him well. He had a close-cropped beard and just the hint of a mustache. He looked quite dapper in his flight uniform.

"I'm Renard," he said. "May I sit?"

"Certainly, please do," Toby said, knowing the man's name wasn't really Renard.

"But not for long," the airline pilot said. "May I order you a drink?"

"That would be nice." It didn't take much of a signal from the captain for a waitress to arrive. The senior-pilot flight suit had that effect in an airport. Toby only momentarily wondered where they were going to do this, before having thought it would be at a hotel away from the airport and thus rather quick. It was obvious now it would be right here in the airport Hilton.

The man was very direct. "I have a room here at the Hilton in the terminal. When does your flight leave?"

"I would like to be at the gate by 3:00." Toby wanted to have plenty of time in place before his flight left.

"It's almost twelve. I will have you for two and a half hours, right?"

"Yes."

"And you'll take cock for two hours? Your listing said you were athletic and experienced in rough sex."

"Yes. Whatever you wish," Toby said. The man was certainly good looking, but he didn't look like a man who could go for two hours or would be cruel. In this, Toby was wrong.

The man took a bottle of pills out of his jacket pocket and popped three. Toby recognized the bottle. He knew that "Renard" would be rock hard within fifteen minutes and that he'd still be hard when Toby caught his flight.

"I'm paying for bareback," the man said.

"Yes, I understand that. You have a doctor's certificate to show me? Here's mine."

Sund had and showed the certificate, dated earlier in the day. They were clear for what he wanted—what he was paying for.

Athleticism and endurance were the watchwords of the next two and a half hours. "Renard's" specialty was positions. Toby didn't mind being balled by him—he turned out to be very fit for his age and slightly hirsute, his chest and pubic hair more Scandinavian blond than the gray on his head. He obviously was a Swede, which went with flying for SAS, and he was big boned, especially the one between his thighs and especially because that was pill enhanced.

He was strong, his muscles bulging as he fucked Toby in a position the young man knew to be called the Flying Dutchman, "Renard" standing, crouching to hold himself in balance, and Toby cantilevered out over the carpet of the hotel room in front of the man, his legs hooked on the man's hips, streaming behind "Renard's" body, the man grasping Toby's wrists, arching Toby's torso back sharply, and the man pulling the younger man on and off the cock.

Toby made sure that he was putty in the man's hands and completely surrendered to the positions the airline pilot wanted to put him in. The man taxed his flexibility, making Toby do the splits across the foot of the bed, facing the headboard and leaning forward, supporting his weight on the palms of his hands pressed into the mattress, as "Renard" covered him from behind and fucked him.

The finale after they each had come once and "Renard" wanted them both to come again, had the man sitting on the foot of the bed, with Toby's ankles on his shoulders, facing down, and the young man's body streaming down to the floor, Toby's cheek to the carpet and his palms pressed to the floor, while, gripping the young man's hips, the airline pilot pulled his channel on and off the cock. For the final blast, though, they were in a classic missionary position, Toby on his back, his knees hooked on "Renard's" hips and the older man hovering over him, capturing Toby's eyes with his, and fucking him slow and deep, while Toby stroked himself off, arching his back and moaning as "Renard" released again and again deep inside his channel. The older man was hard as a rock to the end.

Professional rent-boy that Toby was, he was able to make a man forget that he was fucking a professional. Toby could act everything from the virgin to the firecracker wanton, according to the mood he sensed in the client. This one obviously wanted the long-time and athletic partner coupling.

"Renard" showered and dressed before Toby and left him a hefty tip. He obviously had enjoyed the athletic workout and Toby couldn't say he hadn't as well.

Their day was completely over then but it ended with "Renard" being surprised. When he and the rest of his flight crew showed up at their gate at 3:15 for the 4:00 p.m. SAS flight from Chicago to Stockholm, the flight captain saw that Toby was sitting in the waiting area, ready to take the same flight. By now Toby had pretty much figured out, from what the pilot said about his regular flying routes, that "Renard" would be flying him again for several hours—if not as intimately as he had done earlier in the afternoon.

* * * *

The sex had been exhausting for Toby even if he was used to taking a cock three or four times a day. Partly thanks to the drug he took, the airplane pilot had been able to fly him nonstop. So, he was dozing when, after they'd gotten up in the air from Chicago, a flight attendant handed him a glass of brandy. From the way she was presenting it, he knew it was the good stuff and, although drinks were free in business class, he was being served first.

"Compliments of Captain Sund," she said, almost in a whisper, "and this note." The note contained the name "Sten Sund, Stockholm based," and an international telephone number. The flight attendant winked at him before moving off. So, "Renard" was really Sten Sund. And Sten Sund had enjoyed their afternoon session in the O'Hare Hilton.

"I like these too." The voice was a rich baritone. It came from the window seat beside Toby. Toby and he had exchanged pleasantries when the man had to make Toby stand to get into his seat, but they hadn't had a conversation. The man was gorgeous—maybe in his late thirties, Mediterranean sultry features, black, curly hair gathered in a bun at the back of his head, a closely trimmed black beard and mustache—the perpetual five-o'clock shadow look. He had hazel eyes and a tight, muscular body. His white T-shirt was gauzy enough to reveal that his hard-bodied torso was covered in tattoos. They ran down his arms, as well. He was all man, and Toby thought he recognized him from somewhere, but couldn't place it.