Political Abuse

It was just too bad that Jacob got in the way of a bullet. He was a good, rough-fuck lay and he had promise as someone who could help Hardesty out in the long run with some of his kinkier position ideas and restraint combinations. He'd clearly been a major player, though, and had been up to his neck in the prostitution ring. And he clearly had been a liability to someone.

But at least the detective had pleasantly gotten his rocks off several times in a stretch of the day--if you didn't count the snitch he'd knocked about and plowed in a cheap hotel earlier in the day. And he'd gotten off his favorite way, manhandling some little guy who couldn't get enough of the pain and the big stretch of a monster cock. Jacob had worked valiantly to handle what Hardesty had put in him. He had wanted to be able to claim he'd taken a bull elephant.

Hardesty would have regretted the loss more if he'd gotten more information and had put a protection promise into place. Jacob had been coy with him, so, other than how close Hardesty had come to being offed himself, it pretty much was a wash in the world of guilty feelings.

* * * *

Hardesty remained at the Alto Towers apartment until 10:00 in the morning. His current Homicide Vice partner, a woman, Carrie Evans, a statuesque and buxom redhead, who was susceptible to the same vice Hardesty was, but with women, came in with the forensics crew. She was a straightforward, no-nonsense detective, who had the public interest at heart but who believed what they didn't know didn't hurt them. So far Hardesty had gotten along with her just fine. His usual partner was off on prolonged undercover operations on the other side of the country.

"You aren't wearing gloves," she said as soon as she came in and first saw Hardesty, who was following the forensic crew around wondering what he might have forgotten to clean up. "Is there meaning to that?" she asked.

Always perceptive and straight to the point was Carrie Evans.

"I found the body," Hardesty answered. "I had an appointment to meet with Goldstein at 7:30 this morning."

"Which means what in going around this apartment without gloves on post crime? Should we be talking about this in another room?"

"Maybe we should go out into the corridor," Hardesty said.

When they got out there, she fired from the hip again. "Were you inside this apartment before, Hardesty? Are you leaving more prints to cover up prints they may find here? You want to make sure you have a reason for your prints to be found?"

"I told them that I searched the apartment when I arrived--that I wanted to be sure the murderer wasn't still here."

"And they bought that?" It was clear she wasn't buying it. It was equally clear, though, that having gotten the gist of his problem.

"So far, and I think they will if we keep our voices down."

"So, you were here before? Isn't this the guy who was blowing the whistle on a congressional prostitution ring? Were you fucking this guy right before he was murdered?"

"Which of those questions would you like me to answer?"

"All of them." She laughed, which came out in a robust honk. Everything about the woman was robust. They played this game often, but, in the end, they didn't hold out with each other. That's what kept the partnership solid. Plus, they'd been together long enough to know that the other cut some corners but they were always focused on getting the perp--the right perpetrator.

"Yes, the victim was one of the accusers in the Jim Zeller case--the primary one. I was on Ted Colver's TV show last night with him."

"I caught the TV show," she said. "You should have worn a suit. You make the unit look like thugs. What you wore didn't fit well. Not yours, I assume."

"I was called in at the last minute. I was in my working clothes. I'm not sure I even own a suit."

"I wouldn't be surprised if you don't. So, after the TV show, you were with this guy last night. Here? And you were just lucky that the shooter didn't realize you were in the apartment?"

"He needed a ride. I drove him home."

"And you came in. And you gave him a ride? Both before and after you came in? You drove him home, in more ways than one?"

"He knew more than he'd been telling. He pretty much hinted that to Ted Colver last evening. He more than hinted it to me and wanted to exchange information for sex. I needed to try to find out what that was."

"So, you were here last night and you fucked him, and your prints are all over him and his bedroom."

"Something like that."

"And you actually found him before 7:30 this morning."

"I was in the bedroom when he was popped at the door. I didn't see who did it. I didn't hear a gunshot. I was asleep on the bed. The shooter must have used a silencer. It wasn't a casual hit."

"But it wasn't you who did it."

"Nope. And I didn't get the information I wanted. He told me he'd say more, but he was dead before he got around to it. He told me he'd written a list and put it in his nightstand. It was just a list of restaurants he liked. He lied to me."

"Any leads?"

"Maybe. One or two. I'll check them out."

"And you'll let me know when you need a partner?"

"I thought you and Sophie were off for a frolic in Florida tomorrow."

"I am, but they have cell phone reception in Florida."

"Good to know."

"And if you need me, I'll be here, at your side."

"Even better to know. Thanks, Carrie." Then the two, having reached a comfortable accommodation, moved back into the apartment. Carrie looked around the place.

"He doesn't live alone, does he? But he was set up to sleep alone most of the time. There's a second bedroom and it certainly isn't his taste. There's a roommate?"

"Yeah," Hardesty said. "He told me there was a Zach somebody who also was a Senate page. Both from rich families. Goldstein's family bought this apartment and Zach's family was paying a high rent for his share. Zach's off somewhere for the weekend."

"He's going to have quite a surprise when he gets back," Carrie said.

"Yeah, including me," Hardesty said. "He's one of the leads I want to follow. If he's a Senate page, he might know as much about the prostitution ring as Goldstein did. And he certainly knows some of what Goldstein was using the apartment for. Did you see how this place is equipped? This is a regular sex shop. It's like that this Zach guy was doing everything that Goldstein was--that sex for pay was more than covering the rent here."

"You mean you didn't bring in the hanging cuffs, the X frame in the closet, and the other sex toys to aid you in your interview with the victim last night?"

"I took what I brought in with me when I left," Hardesty answered.

"So forensics won't find any used rubbers around in wastebaskets here?"

"If they do, they aren't mine." Hardesty gave her a level stare. And then, as she held his stare, he said, "I took mine out with me and tossed them safely."

"There were others?"

"Yes, but I couldn't distinguish them from mine."

"Because they were all Trojan Magnums?" she asked, giving a honking laugh.

"I didn't check. Chances were great they had nothing to do with the shooting, though."

"You sure you want to handle this alone for a few days?" Carrie asked.

"You and Sophie have a ball in Florida. I'll have something for us to work on together when you get back."

She nodded her head. They understood each other. She knew he'd been straight with her--that he was going to be all along and that they were just bantering to get there--and she knew she wasn't going to be cut out of this investigation. From there, they worked efficiently as the forensics crew wrapped up the crime scene.

"You look bushed," she said as the big hand on the kitchen clock in the apartment was moving to the ten position. "We have all the notes we need. At least let me file the report, which you can see after getting some shuteye. That will keep your name from being at the top of the page. Then I can go off to Florida feeling I've been useful until I can get back from paradise."

"Sounds good," Hardesty answered, as he got up from the dining table and moved toward the door. "And go ahead and put the six used rubbers you found in the roommate's wastebasket in the report--and the toys you found in his room. I didn't go in there other than to make sure it was clear." What that did was let her know he hadn't fucked the roommate in this apartment too. " And it suggests that this Zach is a player too," he added.

"Roger that, Kimasabe," Carrie responded as she started filling in the crime scene report in the laptop she'd arrived with. Her parting shot was, "The condoms in the roommate's room weren't Magnum XLs, so I knew they weren't yours anyway."

Hardesty snorted. "Got that right."

* * * *

He got home, across the Potomac, in Alexandria, Virginia, in twenty minutes from upper Wisconsin Avenue. It was a Sunday, or it would have taken at least twice that long. Washington, D.C., police officers were supposed to live where they worked, in the District, and Hardesty could technically say he did, as he had inherited a small, one-story rambler in Northwest Washington that he still kept as a hidey hole. But he didn't functionally live there. He lived across the Potomac, in Crystal City, an Alexandria urban enclave to the east of the Pentagon and stretching along the runways of National Airport, which had been renamed Reagan Airport in recent years and had been refurbished rather than replaced with high-end real estate. The airport took up some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but as it was almost in sight of the Capitol building and could still get a senator or representative on a takeoff runaway for his or her home district in an hour, the airport was still there.

Weary, Hardesty let himself into the fifteenth-floor Crystal City apartment, which had spectacular views from all rooms across the Ronald Reagan Airport runways to the national memorials and the Mall. He was happy to see that the warning light by the door wasn't on. He needed some down time at home. His apartment mate and lover, Toby Drake, was working a private party somewhere over on the Chesapeake Bay for the weekend, but he could be coming back today, and there always was a chance he'd bring a client back with him for an even more private party here at the apartment.

It hadn't been Hardesty's decision to move across the river. Housing was expensive, to be sure, in D.C., but the small fifties-style rambler in the Northwest section he had inherited had done him well for a decade. But he couldn't argue with the view from here. It was a splashy apartment, which was the impression it was supposed to give and the service it was meant to provide. Hardesty couldn't look down his nose at Jacob Goldstein and Zach Taylor living in a luxury apartment meant as a rent-boy sex nest. He was doing so as well.

The apartment had two large bedrooms, each with its own bath, the one off the showcase bedroom more luxurious than the one off Hardesty's bedroom, and a living-dining-kitchen great room sheathed on two sides by plate glass windows with an extraordinary view. He hadn't picked out the furniture used throughout most of the apartment either. It was all chrome and white leather, the leather so that it would be easy to wipe down. He'd never feel like this was home, but he was weary enough this morning after the night and earlier morning he'd had not to care about that. It was all part of an effort to keep his life together and not lose Toby, his roommate and also a high-end male escort who was his lover.

If the warning light had been on, he'd have known that Toby was entertaining a client and that he should find someplace else to crash. Luckily, there was an old maid of a guy, Paul, down the hall in a smaller apartment who would be happy to take him in on short notice for the night in exchange for a cuddle and a quick fuck, although they both preferred to be sharing a young guy, who Paul often already had in bed, than doing each other.

The apartment was part of Toby's escort service set up, with neither Hardesty nor Toby paying the whole fare. The service paid more than half the rent, but you could bet that the money came out of Toby's earnings. Except when he was an escort, he was Todd, not Toby. That's how Hardesty had first met him, as Todd, and it was the name under which he'd first fucked and fallen for him.

Even as Todd, though, he was Hardesty's ideal match--still young, at twenty-five, but looking five years younger: small, blond, fun to be with, movie-star handsome, with a channel that fit Hardesty's shaft like a glove, and fine with Hardesty's style that could get rough when he was unleashed. Todd was accustomed to demanding fetish sex partners. The two of them had been together for four years--if both of them having a separate, active fuck life could be considered "together." It was as close as Hardesty could demand, though, and there always was hope for something closer. Inevitably, Todd would age out of the escort business, and Hardesty hoped to be there then to begin a new phase of their relationship. He would age out of the life of a Vice cop who could get whatever he wanted however he wanted in the not-too-far-distant future himself.

Hardesty was coming out of the shower wearing just a towel when he heard the slight buzzing and saw the flashing red light next to the door out into the living area that signaled that Toby, now in his professional name mode, had returned and wasn't alone--that he was working. Hardesty turned off the low-sound alarm and moved to the panoramic eyehole in the door that gave him a sweeping view of the living area. Toby and his john couldn't be seen in the living area, so Hardesty went to his peephole into Toby's bedroom. They were there, but were out of sight, in Toby's sex-toy closet. Toby was being worked, probably on the X-frame from the moans and groans he was making--but he didn't seem to be in much distress.

It wasn't just the opportunity for voyeurism that brought Hardesty to the peephole, although he readily admitted that he liked watching Toby being fucked by another man, if the man was presentable and was doing a good job of it. Watching Toby performing with another man revved up Hardesty to fuck Toby himself. A lot of this came from the sophisticated techniques Toby used with clients. He used them with Hardesty too, but it's different in being able to watch how they were being employed rather than experiencing them being employed on you.

Hardesty watched primarily because Toby had said that it made him feel safe that Hardesty would, unbeknownst to clients, who had no idea Hardesty lived there too, monitor the living room entertainment, which could become risky and demanding. Toby only took clients to the second, larger and more plushily furnished bedroom if he felt completely safe with them--and when the coupling included the apparatuses that were stored in Toby's walk-in closed. When he wasn't being topped by a client in the main bedroom, he slept in the other bedroom with Hardesty.

Hardesty reached the door in time to catch the client, who Hardesty did a double take in seeing, as he recognized him, with his trousers off. The tall, slim, older gentleman with gray hair and a dignified bearing even with his pants off, was perched on a bar stool at the living room side of the kitchen island, and Toby, small, blond, and strikingly handsome, was knelt on the carpet in front of him, giving the older guy a blow job. The older guy was sipping from a glass that appeared to have scotch and ice in it.

If Hardesty remembered rightly, the ice was only in the drink because this was only noon and on a Sunday, and it would appear unseemly for the man to be seen drinking his scotch neat this early in the day--or on a Sunday. He came from a traditionally dry state well-known for its illegal moonshine.

The man turned slightly on the bar stool, and Toby, kneeling in front of him with his arms embracing the man's thighs and his hands on the man's sides moved with him. Hardesty could see Toby's back then and the red welts on them. He drew in his breath and fought the urge to explode from the room and strike out at the man for having whipped Toby, something he went ballistic when he saw another man had done to Toby, even though his own demons had led him to do much the same to Toby and others. He had no reason to conclude that this was the same man who had recently whipped Toby, though, so he dulled his senses. If Toby needed help, he'd signal for it. If not, he was just doing what he did in his profession. If truth be told, seeing the welts increased Hardesty's own arousal.

One thing was for sure. Toby had had a taxing weekend, a weekend that continued.

As Hardesty watched, the tall man, nearly a foot taller than the diminutive Toby, stood up from the bar stool and said something to Toby that Hardesty couldn't hear. They had discussed having the living room wired for sound that he could monitor in the bedroom, but they hadn't gotten around to putting in a system yet. Toby stood off from the man and slowly stripped off the red stain bikini pouch he was wearing, with the older man watching him and finishing his disrobing as well.

Hardesty sucked in air and felt himself going harder. Seeing his lover completely naked always had that effect on him. The older man wasn't that bad looking for his age either, and he had the added interest of being hung and erect.

The man fucked Toby on a large leather ottoman directly in Hardesty's line of vision. What Hardesty could see was the crouched-over figure of the older man from behind, his buttocks clutching and releasing as he fucked Toby. All Hardesty could see of Toby were his perfectly formed legs raised and athletically spread beyond the torso of the older man, who gripped Toby's ankles, splitting the younger man's legs as wide as possible while he fucked him in a missionary position.

Toby was mouthing off about how expertly the older man was fucking him in the standard arousal language rent-boys all over the world used to make their johns feel adequate to the task. For the decibel level Toby was reaching with this performance, Hardesty didn't need a listening system. He imagined that Toby was being fucked well, though, as the older man set up a pistoning pace and was arching his torso back and making a good bit of "I'm having a ball balling you" noise himself. Hardesty had seen what the man was swinging, so if he'd gotten all of that inside Toby, he was sure Toby was giving the client his money's worth.

Hardesty unknotted his towel and started stroking himself off as he was watching. He loved watching Toby getting a good fucking from a client.

Half way through the fuck, the john turned Toby, fucking him from behind now, with Toby belly down on the ottoman. Toby's legs were spread behind him and they were bouncing and his fists on his flung-forward arms were balling and unballing to the rhythm of the older guy's relentless and fast-paced thrust. Toby was finished off with an explosive jerking of them both, and Toby escorted the man back into the other bedroom and, presumably, to the bathroom there so that he could shower.

Toby came back out in a silk dressing gown, gathered up the man's clothes, and returned to the other bedroom. Then nada for a good fifteen minutes. Hardesty had stopped stroking himself when the client had ejaculated at the ottoman. He stood there, waiting for the men to come back to the living room. Fifteen minutes was a bit long without any observable action. Hardesty went over to the adjoining wall between the bedrooms and again took up a position at the peephole there, with a view of the master bedroom bed. The older man was on the bed, on his back, and Toby, naked again, was riding his cock in a cowboy.

So, he was an important client, one that Toby was keeping very happy. And Toby was servicing him in the bedroom, so he must be safe. Hardesty went to the bed, stretched out, and dozed. He wasn't asleep yet, though, when he heard the door to the outside corridor close.