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Authors: Richard Stevenson
Tags: gay mystery
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suspect.”
“Same here. Not a murder suspect anyway. What other prints have you ID-ed?”
“Just building personnel. And both of them have alibis. I’m sure Eddie Wenske’s prints are among those our techies picked up, but his prints are not on record, him not having served his country in the manner you and I went ahead and did.”
“What about Channel Six? Any leads there? Stories Kim was working on? People he made mad?”
“There’s a slew of people Kim pissed off, but most of them are city councilmen and municipal employees and pizzeria owners with dirty kitchens. Detective Fuller and a couple of other officers are checking them out. Another thing about Kim that interests me is, he’s had a lot of boyfriends, it turns out, and some of them don’t like him anymore. Folks at Channel Nine in Providence, where Kim used to work, say he has a history of breaking up with boyfriends in a kind of nasty way. The station used to get calls sometimes from gay guys calling Bryan an asshole and worse names, and one guy saying, tell Bryan I want my Elton John CDs back and weird crap like that.”
I said, “Did Gummer tell you about the third diner?”
“The what?”
“I guess he didn’t. He mentioned it to me in passing. I was to meet Kim at the Westin at seven, but Gummer said Kim told him that someone else was coming to Kim’s apartment at six to accompany him to the dinner meeting. I knew nothing about this. I don’t know who the diner was or what became of him. Was he scared off, or what? It would be useful to know, I think.”
“Or,” Davis said, “did this person know that Kim was going to be killed and stayed away? Or did he arrive early, and was let in, and stabbed Kim himself?”
“Or was this man also killed? Were there any other murders in Boston yesterday?”
Davis was quiet for a moment. “No. None reported. But maybe the body was disposed of, and so far no one has reported anybody missing. That’s always a possibility.”
“This man, whoever he was,” I said, “may have been going to talk to me about Eddie Wenske’s disappearance. Why else would Kim have invited him to the dinner meeting with me? So maybe he’s somehow knowledgeable of, or involved in, the Wenske situation.”
“We don’t know,” Davis said, “what has become of Wenske, or even if he’s dead or alive. Maybe Wenske is alive, and he was going to be your third dinner companion. Or maybe he’s alive and he came back from wherever he was and he killed Kim.”
“Yeah, well. Not that, I don’t think.”
“They had their ups and downs, everybody says. Is there any violence in Wenske’s history?”
“No. Everybody says he’s a sweetheart of a guy. You’re way off on that one.”
“Probably. Though your line of work, Strachey, is enough like mine for you to know that even the nicest people sometimes have a dark side. Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER NINE
The Boston city narc I should talk to about Eddie Wenske, Davis told me, was a detective named Lewis Kelsey. He was out of the office for the day, but I made an appointment for Tuesday morning. He was supposedly up to speed on both the Wenske missing-person case and any possible link between Wenske’s disappearance and Weed Wars , as well as Wenske’s Globe reporting on the pot wholesalers.
Meanwhile, the media-book question was wide open—I knew literally nothing about the project Wenske was deep into when he vanished—so I decided to rectify my ignorance. I took a cab to Logan airport, making some calls on the way, and then rode the Delta Shuttle to LaGuardia. The flight was fast and smooth, and I was in midtown Manhattan by eleven.
Luke Pearlman had a cubby hole of an office on the seventh floor at 30 Rock, no windows, just air freshener and a lot of electronics. Pearlman was small and sprightly, with sunken dark eyes and more hair on the back of his hands than on his head, and he talked a mile a minute.
“Oh, God, I was stunned when I heard about Bryan
“Same here. Not a murder suspect anyway. What other prints have you ID-ed?”
“Just building personnel. And both of them have alibis. I’m sure Eddie Wenske’s prints are among those our techies picked up, but his prints are not on record, him not having served his country in the manner you and I went ahead and did.”
“What about Channel Six? Any leads there? Stories Kim was working on? People he made mad?”
“There’s a slew of people Kim pissed off, but most of them are city councilmen and municipal employees and pizzeria owners with dirty kitchens. Detective Fuller and a couple of other officers are checking them out. Another thing about Kim that interests me is, he’s had a lot of boyfriends, it turns out, and some of them don’t like him anymore. Folks at Channel Nine in Providence, where Kim used to work, say he has a history of breaking up with boyfriends in a kind of nasty way. The station used to get calls sometimes from gay guys calling Bryan an asshole and worse names, and one guy saying, tell Bryan I want my Elton John CDs back and weird crap like that.”
I said, “Did Gummer tell you about the third diner?”
“The what?”
“I guess he didn’t. He mentioned it to me in passing. I was to meet Kim at the Westin at seven, but Gummer said Kim told him that someone else was coming to Kim’s apartment at six to accompany him to the dinner meeting. I knew nothing about this. I don’t know who the diner was or what became of him. Was he scared off, or what? It would be useful to know, I think.”
“Or,” Davis said, “did this person know that Kim was going to be killed and stayed away? Or did he arrive early, and was let in, and stabbed Kim himself?”
“Or was this man also killed? Were there any other murders in Boston yesterday?”
Davis was quiet for a moment. “No. None reported. But maybe the body was disposed of, and so far no one has reported anybody missing. That’s always a possibility.”
“This man, whoever he was,” I said, “may have been going to talk to me about Eddie Wenske’s disappearance. Why else would Kim have invited him to the dinner meeting with me? So maybe he’s somehow knowledgeable of, or involved in, the Wenske situation.”
“We don’t know,” Davis said, “what has become of Wenske, or even if he’s dead or alive. Maybe Wenske is alive, and he was going to be your third dinner companion. Or maybe he’s alive and he came back from wherever he was and he killed Kim.”
“Yeah, well. Not that, I don’t think.”
“They had their ups and downs, everybody says. Is there any violence in Wenske’s history?”
“No. Everybody says he’s a sweetheart of a guy. You’re way off on that one.”
“Probably. Though your line of work, Strachey, is enough like mine for you to know that even the nicest people sometimes have a dark side. Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER NINE
The Boston city narc I should talk to about Eddie Wenske, Davis told me, was a detective named Lewis Kelsey. He was out of the office for the day, but I made an appointment for Tuesday morning. He was supposedly up to speed on both the Wenske missing-person case and any possible link between Wenske’s disappearance and Weed Wars , as well as Wenske’s Globe reporting on the pot wholesalers.
Meanwhile, the media-book question was wide open—I knew literally nothing about the project Wenske was deep into when he vanished—so I decided to rectify my ignorance. I took a cab to Logan airport, making some calls on the way, and then rode the Delta Shuttle to LaGuardia. The flight was fast and smooth, and I was in midtown Manhattan by eleven.
Luke Pearlman had a cubby hole of an office on the seventh floor at 30 Rock, no windows, just air freshener and a lot of electronics. Pearlman was small and sprightly, with sunken dark eyes and more hair on the back of his hands than on his head, and he talked a mile a minute.
“Oh, God, I was stunned when I heard about Bryan
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