Political Abuse

They both laughed.

As soon as Toby had called Hardesty to tell him that Mills was at Sibley Hospital and might talk about the congressional pimping ring in exchange for protection--and very likely needed protection pronto, Hardesty had gotten the idea to stash the young man at his house in northwest Washington and had asked Paul, the gay friend from across the hall who frequently helped Hardesty and Toby with similar problems to be at their apartment to let Zach Taylor in when he returned.

It turned out Hardesty was being a bit optimistic about that. As he drove back into downtown, he called Crane on the cell to see if they had encountered Taylor. They hadn't, and it looked like the office had been ransacked. Then he called Paul back at the apartment to see if Taylor had returned there. He hadn't.

"Well, shit," Hardesty exclaimed. He should have anticipated that. Taylor had been a scared rabbit; he could have decided to just bolt and to try to stay ahead of the bad guys by himself. Hardesty should have tried to keep a tighter rein on him. But he couldn't be everywhere at once. And it looked like he couldn't keep a step ahead of the bad guys either.

"No worries on this end, though," Paul said. "I'll stick here until you can get back."

"You're a gem, Paul. I owe you."

"You can square it by sending one of your honeys in my direction. You always have them buzzing around you."

"Deal," Hardesty said, laughing. "If Zach Taylor gets there before I do, you can spike him if he's willing. 'Flash him. If he sees what's swinging between your legs, he'll lay right down and beg you for it."

* * * *

When Toby entered the Old Ebbitt Grill restaurant on 15th Street near the White House, Pete Drummond, who was standing by the reservation stand, signaled Toby to follow him--at some distance--and led him to the back to a private booth. Waiting for him there was Ted Colver, the television political commentator.

"Senator Colver," Toby said, surprised. Drummond didn't stop at the booth. Once Drummond had made obvious where Toby was headed, he veered off and went to another table at some distance and sat where he could see the booth Colver and Toby were in but, presumably, couldn't hear what the two said. Although Colver patted the seat next to him, Toby slid into the booth across from the man. "The agency didn't tell me you were the one I was being sent to." Toby used the title "senator," because Colver had been one before he was a political commentator--such was his power in Washington--and once a senator in this town you were always referred to as a senator. The same was true of a governor or a department secretary. You were accorded the title of the highest office you held, unless you preferred another title you'd had.

"That's because the booking wasn't made in my name."

"But the booking was for the night. I didn't--" He stopped there. It wasn't his place to note that Colver was so intense with his demands that the sessions with him were kept of limited duration by the agency, when they were able to control them. They hadn't been able to control them during the previous weekend booking at the Cambridge area retreat as they hadn't known that Colver would be at that party. Toby had been severely taxed by Colver on Friday and wasn't delighted to be seeing him here today--and to know that the agency had made an overnight booking on very short notice. Toby felt his back twinge from the welts that had not fully stopped paining him from his last encounter with the man.

The waiter came by and Colver ordered just drinks and an appetizer for both of them, without asking Toby what he wanted. That was very much like Colver, who was a "complete control" kind of man.

"I have learned since Friday that you have a relationship with the police detective Hardesty," Colver said.

"Yes, we live together," Toby responded. "And, yes, we sleep together."

"That's rather unusual, isn't it?" Colver asked, "A police detective responsible for curbing vice in Washington living and sleeping with a high-class male whore?"

"Hardesty is a complex man," Toby answered, "and we have an unusual relationship. It works, though." He ignored the bald reference to being a whore. He accepted that that was what he was and that some of his clients got off on bold talk about it.

"Do you share your activities with each other--discuss your business one with the other?"

"Not usually. Not unless our businesses intersect, which they sometimes do. But is there a reason why you are interested in my relationship with Hardesty? Were you thinking that I could be an information source on his cases for your television show? There would be nothing there. We don't do that to each other, I'm afraid."

"No, quite the contrary. I am more concerned that you and he might have discussed the party from last weekend--the men who were there with you and anything you might have overheard there--whether you told Hardesty anything about the weekend."

"No, I haven't. I don't tell Hardesty the details of my work. I certainly haven't told him I was with you this weekend and what your interests are, if you were afraid of that. I haven't even seen him enough since I got home from there to have discussed anything. But I'm paid not to talk about clients like you."

"Ah, here are our drinks and appetizers." Colver said, and nothing else along those lines was discussed before they were finished.

"Did you drive here?" Colver asked, as they stood. Pete Drummond stood up from his table across the room as the same time and left the restaurant.

"No, I took the subway."

"Very good. I will leave now. Give me ten minutes before you follow. The car will be idling in front."

Toby expected that they would go to a hotel, and he hoped they would, as there would be a limit what could be done there. Sometimes Colver took him to a private club, though, which specialized in sadomasochism, in which case it had rooms outfitted for what was more in Colver's taste. Toby was surprised, though, that Pete didn't drive them to either of these, but, rather, drove through Georgetown and up river, on MacArthur Road, toward the Potomac Palisades. Toby had been in this area already today, visiting Adrian Mills at Sibley Hospital. Toby didn't have all that much attention to give to where they were going, though, because he was in the backseat with Colver, who had one hand buried in the hair at the back of Toby's head, pulling Toby's head back into the seat and he had Toby unzipped and was beating him off with the other hand, taking time away from that periodically to grab and twist Toby's balls to hear the young man's exclaimed reaction to that. Colver watched Toby's facial expressions very closely, knowing that there was pain there but also, under the surface, a streak of pleasure. He knew that Toby had an appetite for being manhandled.

In the bedroom of Colver's house off MacArthur Boulevard on the Potomac Palisades and overlooking the Potomac River rapids upstream from the city center, Toby was hanging from the wrist restraints on the bed posts at the foot of the bed, while Ted Colver worked up an erection by whipping the young man's back and buttocks. When he was sufficiently hard, Colver saddled up behind Toby, grabbed the young man's hips, thrust up inside his passage, and fucked him hard.

After a respite, Toby was lowered to the bed on his belly, his arms spread and bound to restraints on the headboard pillars, with Pete Drummond's help, his right ankle restrained to the right bedpost at the foot of the bed, and his left leg raised, crossed over his body, and restrained to the right bedpost at the head of the bed. Colver sat behind him and played in the young man's anal opening with various sizes of greased dildos until he was aroused enough to saddle up behind Toby and fuck him himself.

It was one of the milder sessions Toby had had with this client. When Colver had come this time, he leaned over and whispered in Toby's ear, "Now, how about some time in the mountains?"

Toby didn't reply--he couldn't as he had a ball gag in his mouth to spare Colver's neighbors from Toby's commentary on Colver's sex play.

When Colver left to take a shower, Pete Drummond came into the bedroom and untied Toby. He didn't take the gag out, and he untied Toby just to reposition him and retie him. Toby was too exhausted to struggle against him. Toby was put on his back, his wrists retied to the opposite bedposts at the head of the bed, and his legs raised and spread and tied off at the bedposts at the foot of the bed. Drummond climbed up on the bed, pushed his knees under Toby's buttocks, slid his cock in, and began his own share of pumping.

* * * *

Toby wasn't home when Hardesty returned to the apartment. He found the note from Toby that he might be gone on a lost-minute-booked assignment for a few days and that Hardesty wasn't to worry about him. Hardesty always worried about Toby when the young man was on a job and he much preferred knowing where Toby was for these assignments, but he knew if he got nosey or possessive, Toby was likely to leave him. He walked a thin line of worrying about the young man and pushing that worry to the back of his mind because there wasn't anything he could do about it. Toby had always come home. But there could be the day when he didn't and Hardesty would be investigating what had happened to him. In the meantime, the best Hardesty could do was walk that thin line and hope for the best. If push came to shove the escort agency would tell him what the assignment was. They knew who Hardesty was and they wanted to stay on his good side.

Zach Taylor hadn't returned from his search of Jim Zeller's secret office in the Capitol building. The detective and Paul shared a drink and some comments on a new neighbor who had moved in on their hall. He was a cute, small blond, so Hardesty had definite ideas what he'd do with him. But Paul had already been there and done it to him, so they discussed what the young man did well in bed and what he did better, both on and off the bed. They shared a laugh when Paul said the new tenant did tricks, was having his apartment subsidized, and moved here because he knew Hardesty lived on this floor.

"Actually, he does it better on the floor," Paul said. "He's a physical therapist and a yoga expert. At least that's what he says in public what he does." They both laughed.

Tired, Hardesty went to bed after Paul left. He was worried that Toby wasn't there and hadn't told him he had an overnight assignment and he was equally worried that Zach Taylor hadn't returned or called. But he was exhausted and went to sleep without any trouble.

One of his concerns was answered, if not satisfied, when the ringing of his cell phone woke him up. As he reached for the phone, he could see that his concern about Toby wasn't answered, though, as Toby's side of the bed was still unoccupied.

The call was from Crane. "Someone got into the apartment we had taped off--Jacob Goldstein's apartment. And they left a nasty present in Goldstein's closet," Crane said. "Zach Taylor is hanging on the X-frame in the closet. He's dead. He was beaten but the medical examiner says the cause of death was that he'd been strangled and his neck was snapped. There's also evidence he wasn't killed at the apartment."

"Shit," Hardesty exclaimed. He'd know all day that it had been a mistake to let Taylor go off to the Capitol building alone.

Chapter Four: To the Mountain Top

They had taken Zach Taylor down from the X-frame and had him covered with a black cloth, waiting for a gurney, when Hardesty got to the apartment.

"You want to see him?" Lieutenant Crane asked when Hardesty reached the bedroom door.

"I don't think so. I'd like to think of him in life."

Crane raised his eyebrow. "This one too?" he asked. He didn't have to be clearer. He knew how Hardesty interacted with hot young informants and suspects alike. He didn't come down hard on it because Hardesty got results and those he fucked who were still alive didn't complain about it. Unfortunately, this one wasn't alive. But had he managed to be an informant yet? Crane asked the question.

"Yeah, just the once, though," Hardesty answered, as if it made all of the difference in the world. "And he got away before I could find out much of anything useful from him. He was sure that he'd find something at Zeller's office in the Capitol building. You were there, but you say it had been ransacked before you got there? Did you find anything at all we can use?"

"Nada. But I have a couple of men sifting through everything there again. The place was a mess."

"So, you don't think Taylor was offed here?" Hardesty said. "He wasn't bound to the frame and beaten to death?"

"No. I'm sure he was killed in Zeller's office--or beaten so badly there it didn't take much of a push elsewhere. His trousers, with his wallet in them, were at the Capitol building and there was some blood there and signs of a struggle on the desktop."

"Blood?"

"He was beaten and whipped. Enough to raise blood. He'd also been sodomized. The Med Examiner said he'd had sex as recently as when he died. A condom had been used, though. And he wasn't killed on this X-frame in here, I don't think. He was just left here for us to find. His back had been whipped, but he was hung with his back to the frame, and he had been strangled and his neck was broken. We're saying that he wasn't offed here. But about the sex before death?" He gave Hardesty a meaningful look.

"I can't say it wasn't me, Chief. We fucked before he went off to the Capitol building. But I didn't beat him or strangle him. And he was a rent-boy. He'd just come from a weekend of client sex when he came to me. So, the check is likely to find something from any number of men. Me included."

"Well, we'll see what we can do to keep you out of it. Good thing you were straight with me on having been with him. And you didn't get any leads out of him?"

"I still have a lead to check out, and he gave me some names, yes. Too important for me to say them out loud unless I can get corroboration. But I think I know where I can get that. I'll go see him after leaving here."

"Him?"

"Jeremy Brand. I've had a couple of guys, including both Goldstein and Taylor, mention his name as being in the operation in the early days, but having left it. I know where to find him, I think, though."

"Good. By the way, I think we're getting someplace on the Zeller killing at the federal prison. We're zeroing in on a guard with money troubles and an appetite for young men. And we're working on Zeller's lawyers. They claim they don't know who hired them to represent Zeller, but we don't necessarily believe that. I'll let you know if we come up with a name from either of those probes."

"Thanks, Chief."

"I'd like to get this wrapped up before we have any more of these deaths," Crane said. "These guys play nasty, and if our probing goes very far up in the power chain here in D.C., they might move faster in getting the investigation thrown off the rails than we can catch up to them."

"I agree. It's frustrating to ferret out a lead and get it taken away from you under your nose. And I have my own reasons for getting this closed down fast."

"Oh, what's that? You found you had an affection for this Taylor guy?"

"I have an affection for all good-looking, small blond guys, I'm sorry to say. But for one in particular. I'm getting the sinking feeling that Toby is caught up in this somehow. And he didn't come home last night."

"Then I guess you need to shove off and get on with it. I think... hold on, I'm getting a call." Crane pulled out his cell phone and Hardesty could tell from Crane's excitement and his side of the conversation that the cops at the Capitol building had found something in Zeller's office.

"Zeller had a safe hidden there and our guys got into it," the police lieutenant said to Hardesty when he got off the phone. "There's a list of names. Near the top of the list is the name of Ted Colver."

"The TV commentator?" Hardesty asked. "I was just on his program the... well, shit. I was on his program with Jacob Goldstein, who told us off camera that he had more information on this congressional sex ring than he'd revealed so far. He was telling just Colver and me and that night Goldstein was dead. But Colver's a TV guy."

"He was a U.S. senator before that. He would have been in Congress when this ring started off in business. Tell you what. You go ahead and run down your lead, and I'll find out where this Colver guy lives, and we'll pay him a little visit. If he's involved, we can at least rattle his cage and let him know he's in our sights. I'll have the unit look into everyone else mentioned on Zeller's list from the safe."

Crane would quickly find that Ted Colver had a house off MacArthur Boulevard on the Potomac Palisades, and he'd go there. But he'd find no one home. Then he had to go through the red tape to get a warrant to get into the house and check it out. He wisely got that more quickly out of a judge by identifying Colver as a media commentator rather than a former U.S. senator.

* * * *

Later Hardesty was able to identify several mistakes he'd made in this investigation--it hadn't just been that he'd let Zach Taylor go to the Capitol building alone. He also had failed to confiscate Adrian Mills's cell phone when he'd stashed him away in supposed safety in his northwest Washington nondescript brick, 1950s-style rambler--and he'd let Mills know what the address of the house was. He hadn't realized how really dumb Adrian Mills was.

The neighbor had settled Mills after bringing him breakfast and had gone back to her house, when the cell phone rang.

"It's Judge Morton," the man on the connection said. "I need you this weekend. There's a gathering."

"I can't do it. Sorry, Judge," Mills answered. "I've had an accident and am all banged up. Both my arm and one of my calves are in casts."

"We just need your ass," the judge said, with a laugh. "And some of the men might be aroused by a guy all bandaged up. Your hole can still take a cock, can't it? All you have to do is lay there and take it."

"Yes, but I'm really too messed up to--"

"We'll pay you $2,000 for the weekend and we won't make you swing on any trapezes."

Mills desperately needed the money, and that was before he had started mounting up medical bills for this mugging. Lord only knew what that would be and how much of it he could get anyone else to pay. Toby had said the escort service would pay, but who knew if that was true? And Michael Morton was one of his best clients. He could hardly get it up and keep it up and he wasn't rough. Mills desperately needed the money.

Adrian Mills also was dumb as a rock.

When he went out to the car, idling in front of Hardesty's secret house, after giving the judge the address and saying he'd do it, he saw that Morton was in the front passenger seat and there were two other men in the car. Only when the passenger door of the backseat opened and the man came out and manhandled Mills into between them in the backseat did Adrian realize that one of them was Doug Quillen. He had only a split second to see that the driver of the car was one of the thugs who had beaten him up in the zoo parking lot.

He suddenly decided that, no, he didn't really want to do this, but Quillen punched him in the face, dragged him into the car, and had a hypodermic needle out and plunged into Mills's bicep before the bandaged-up man could give any more resistance. He was out like a light.

"Hey, what?" Morton exclaimed. "You didn't have to do that."

"We need to keep him quiet, Judge," Quillen growled. "We don't want to alarm the neighborhood and have someone recognize you, do we? You've done your part. Just sit back and enjoy being part of the club. You haven't seen anything. You'll want to be able to continue saying you haven't seen anything." The car eased away from the curb and drove off.