Capital Treasures

Chapter Two

The Problem with Photographs

Toby Drake came to realize that the quite large, elegantly dressed Italian he had been engaged to escort to a Kennedy Center concert, dinner at the Fiola exclusive Italian restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue afterward, and then “whatever” not only had given his real name, Paulo Vincente, but, when he said he was a photographer, he’d failed to mention he was an acclaimed international-reputation photographer of the “beautiful people.” It was a State Department undersecretary who came up to them to chat and to be seen with Vincente as a Washington Post social pages photographer fired off shots who revealed the source of Vincente’s invitation to Andrea Bocelli’s concert at the Kennedy Center that evening. He had been invited by Bocelli himself thanks to a photo spread Vincente had done on the Italian tenor for the Paris Match the previous month and would augment with photos taken during Bocelli’s current U.S. tour.

Although Toby was standing right at Vincente’s elbow, the photographer didn’t introduce him to the State Department official. Toby hadn’t expected that he would. That the diplomat didn’t ask for an introduction, while smiling at Toby as if the young man was in the conversation when he wasn’t, indicated that he jolly well knew what Toby’s function was there.

Toby didn’t realize that it wasn’t just Vincente’s or the U.S. official’s photos the newspaper photographer was taking, with Toby in the center of the shot, if set back at bit, but that they were standing beside Susie Win, the widow of a famous ultraconservative four-star general who had headed up the China Lobby in the States and ruffled feathers in the political sphere by running for president twice and syphoning off a couple of percentage points of the ultraright popular vote. Win was a Chinese movie star and courtesan the general had picked up during an East Asia tour. But she was famous not only for her porcelain beauty and inscrutability, but also for her hostess status in D.C. political circles and her connections to what was left of the imperial and war lord factions that had retreated to Taiwan in the Communist takeover on the mainland. She was particularly notable for her use of her wealth and connections for China Lobby interests. She was one of the concert’s sponsors, which, no doubt, was the reason the newspaper photographer wanted to get her and Vincente in the same photo.

What surprised—and both amused and slightly concerned—Toby, though, was that the ageless Chinese beauty had done the same as Vincente had in terms of who she’d brought to the concert. Susie Win wasn’t as much as an inch over five feet. Her figure was perfect, her breasts firm melons, and she was poured into a vermillion satin strapless evening gown, with cleavage “down to there” and a slit up the side “up to there.” Vying with her perfect porcelain beauty and lustrous black hair artfully crowning her head was the ruby and gold neckless that cascaded across her chest, with matching earrings dangling from her ears and bracelet on the white gloves rising up her arms. She could have her pick of rich and powerful unattached men in Washington as an escort. But she had come with a young, hunky rent-boy. And it wasn’t just anybody in Toby’s experience. By all accounts she must now be pushing sixty, but she easily would pass as forty. She took very, very good care of herself. She’d brought David Liu, the Andre DuCard stable rent-boy Toby had last seen at the deputy police commissioner’s pool party being fucked by Toby’s own roommate, the Vice detective, Hardesty.

Wouldn’t it be something, Toby thought, for the morning Washington Post social pages to feature a photograph of Toby and David standing together, flanked by Vincente and Susie Win? Hardesty and his cohorts at the police department would get a laugh out of that.

As both Vincente and Susie Win were turned away to greet someone else, David Liu leaned over and said, “Can you meet me in the second-floor men’s room before the interval bell is rung?”

In the men’s room, Liu walked the line of cubicles to ensure they were all empty before coming over to Toby, leaning into a urinal.

“That was something at Jackson Davis’s place last week,” he whispered.

“Yes, you did well,” Toby answered. “I told DuCard as much. I’ll be happy to call on your services when I need to bring guys to another party like that.”

“I was scared as shit. It was walking into the lion’s mouth. Did you tell DuCard what the gig was—that it was at Davis’s place—the new police big daddy?”

“No. I was just told to get a couple of willing guys that could take rough and that minorities were preferred. I’m surprised you know who Davis is.”

“He’s the opposition, man.”

“What do you mean? Into the lion’s mouth, did you say?”

“You know DuCard is trying to get established here. You’re with a high-end service, so you don’t know how it is down where Shawn Baker and I work. Next time, if it’s Davis, can you get someone else? My pimp was trying to get in his good graces, but he found there’s something fishy there working against him.”

That was something to mention to Hardesty, Toby thought. “Sure, I can,” he said. “The pay’s the best there is. So DuCard is trying to get established here. Why wouldn’t a high-level police official as a client be the best way to go in that direction? Every whore needs police protection.”

“Davis is already hooked up, man. Didn’t you know that? He’s hooked up with the Peter Trace service, and Trace is trying to keep DuCard from getting in. If you could get me signed with Trace, that’s what I’d like.”

“What’s wrong with DuCard?”

“He’s into this all the wrong ways. I don’t think a boy is going to last long with him.”

“Like?”

“Like the talent is brought in reluctantly and sometimes beaten into shape before. Like there’s stuff going on over and above the tricks—we have to case the joints for possible heist value.”

“You rob the clients?”

“Not directly. But if they take us home, we’re supposed to window shop for someone else DuCard is running—or so I’ve heard. Then later, yeah, we read that those guys have been robbed.”

“Why didn’t you tell Davis this while you were at his house? That’s the quickest way to get switched to him.”

“Standing between those two warring factions—DuCard and Trace—isn’t good life insurance. And I’m not sure how neutral Davis is between those two. I’m told you’re hooked up with that Vice cop, Hardesty. Although he’s as kinky and rough as they come, everyone says he’s straight as can be as a cop. He's also sex on a stick. Maybe you could—”

Someone came into the men’s room at that point, and, with the door to the corridor open, Toby could see that the lights were flashing to pull everyone back to their seats for the second half of the concert.

“Get me something I can show Hardesty on this, and I’ll see what I can do,” Toby whispered. “You have my phone number.”

He let it drop there. He wasn’t going to get involved on the basis of just rumor. He’d gone with the fancy escort agency so he could float above street fights like this. Still, Hardesty might be interested if there was something in this—especially the part that Jackson Davis might not be quite the straight arrow Hardesty thought he was.

Toby returned to Vincente’s side before it was evident that the Italian photographer even knew the young man had been gone. The man had been taken up with conversations, fawnings, and introductions so fully since they’d arrived here in the rented limousine that was included in the escort agency services on the short drive from the legendary Willard Hotel, where Vincente was staying, that Toby hardly thought he hardly needed to be there at all. The man was being fluffed up by others for free. Conversely, his fee was going to be covered regardless of whether the client noticed him at all. Perhaps this would be one of his least taxing assignments. Sometimes that was all the client wanted—eye candy to leave the impression they still could attract it.

After the concert had restarted and Toby and Vincente had resettled in the first-row seats in a dark box, Toby got the realization that this assignment wasn’t going to be a breeze after all. In the darkness and with no one sitting on either side of them at the front of the box, the Italian took one of Toby’s hands and moved it his basket. The man was hard and Toby could tell that he was huge. Toby dutifully traced the cylinder inside the tuxedo trousers and gave it a squeeze and a rub. It engorged even further and Vincente groaned. Toby took them big and even in doubles, but this one was going to be taxing. Was that a thick ring in the cock head? Yes, it was.

Dinner was fine at Fiola. The people at several of the other tables had come from the concert and they—and the restaurant staff—knew Paulo Vincente and fawned over him. As at the concert, Toby was at the man’s side, but the international photographer didn’t introduce him to anyone. Everyone appeared to know what Toby was and why he was with Vincente and not to care—they just wanted to bask in the man’s fame.

On the drive in the rented limousine to the old, staid Willard Hotel, Vincente did pay attention to Toby. They sat close together, and Vincente, a walrus of a man, put an arm around Toby’s shoulder, drew him closer, and they kissed. This was an important junction of the evening. Toby had been engaged to go to the man’s hotel room—and more—if, having been in his company for the evening, that’s what the client wanted. If not, the client would be left off at the hotel, Toby would be delivered to the apartment house in Foggy Bottom that the agency operated out of, and Vincente would get an early night and a smaller bill. Toby’s cut would be even smaller and there would be a notation on his listing card.

“Come up to my room,” Vincente whispered into Toby’s blond curls after they’d come out of the kiss.

So, it was to be a longer night for Toby.

Vincente had added an additional service for Toby to perform in his hotel room. It sounded strange unless and until one took into account that Vincente was a photographer. He showed Toby a portfolio of photos he had that was a special line of male nudes.

“Your face won’t be shown and it will be very artistic,” he’d assured the high-end rent-boy.

There really wasn’t any discussion involved; the man had paid for the service. He was a genius at lighting and posing, though. For the initial shots, most done in the frame of the window or the door to the bathroom or those of the fancy wooden armoire, he had Toby’s face turned away. The young blond was, of course, naked and fully exposed otherwise. For the shots, some of Toby masturbating, on the bed, Toby wore a half-face mask. One issue that Toby thought would be an impediment was that he had a tattoo of a small lizard, a gecko, on his lower belly on the right side. Vincente was a good enough photographer that he managed not to include it in any of the shots—because Toby didn’t want him to.

Vincente worked naked, as well, and he worked himself up in arousal as he moved around, posing Toby and clicking off shots. When he’d caught the young man’s ejaculation, he set the camera aside, mounted the bed, and, exclaiming, without fanfare, “Allarga le gambe, ragazzo—Spread your legs, boy,” mounted Toby, and fucked him. No need for seduction; this was a male whore he’d bought.

The man was huge—both obese and muscular, tall and broad. He was big cocked and his balls hung low. He was a proficient cocksman, though, knowing how to get the easiest and deepest access despite his huge belly. Toby let the man take charge and pose him in the chosen positions of the fuck just as he had done in the photo session.

The young rent-boy spent time on all fours while the man fucked him like a dog, and he spent time stretched out on the man’s body, facing the ceiling, his feet pressed to Vincente’s bent knees and supporting himself suspended above the man by palming the mattress on either side of Vincente’s chest. Vincente wanted to go deep and stay there as Toby panted and groaned and he left the thick ring in his cock head to do his work. Toby felt the punishing rub of the thick and smooth metal of the ring as the cock worked his channel deep.

“Oh fuckin’ shit, you’re huge. Dick me. Dick me hard!” Toby cried out, knowing the man would take that as a compliment from a male whore. The switch from refined speech with a slight hint of an Oxford accent to raw street language was meant to convey that the man had completely disarmed the rent-boy. It worked every time Toby employed it.

“Prendilo, bel ragazzo puttana! Aperto al mio cazzo!” Vincente responded, with Toby only later finding that the man had called him a pretty boy whore and urged him to open up to the cock. The man who had moved in such a stately manner at the concert and at dinner, acting very much in a refined manner, became a rutting bear when he was on top of the much smaller and younger man. He fucked Toby mercilessly like this was his last go at the act in life and as if he owned the young man’s body, which, for these few hours, he did.

Toby finished, the big man being expert at holding off his ejaculation, by riding the man’s cock in the cowboy position, facing Vincente’s feet, grasping the man’s knees, and bouncing up and down on the buried cock. There was nothing refined in this. This was mutual raw need—or so Toby designed it to be taken that way by the client.

Toby earned his fee, the Italian walrus was pleased both with the fuck and the photographic souvenirs he was left with, and Toby did, indeed find himself in a photo standing next to David Liu in the morning’s Washington Post “Lifestyle” section.

The publicity was not all that welcome. Young men of the night were not to be associated that openly in print with their big-spending johns.

For Toby, though, Vincente had been both a surprise and a refreshing experience. And, always eager to learn new phrases in foreign languages, Toby had heard “Ti sto fottendo—I fuck you,” “Allarga le gambe, ragazzo puttana—Spread your legs, boy whore,” and “Aperto al mio cazzo—Take my cock” often enough that night to remember how to pronounce them and to repeat them to Terrence on the escort agency duty desk when he was asked how the assignment had gone.

* * * *

Hardesty was doing his best to make the Thai lad as tight as possible. Lek had whimpered, “Make me feel it.” The detective was doing what he could to comply. Lek had taken him and the deputy police chief, Jackson Davis, together at Davis’s Northwest Washington house backed up to the Fitzgerald Center tennis courts the previous week. He had really been able to open up for a little guy.

Lek’s wrists were restrained at the headboard in Hardesty’s bedroom of the Crystal City, Alexandria, high-rise apartment house beside the Reagan National Airport runways across the Potomac from the national Mall area. The Thai rent-boy was on his back. Straps held his legs together at the ankles, knees, and thighs, and Hardesty, saddled up on the young guy’s ass, had Lek’s ankles hooked on his left shoulder. Hardesty grasped the smaller man’s narrow waist between his hands and pulled Lek’s channel on and off his tightly sheathed cock. There already was a dildo shoved in there with him.

The Vice detective was big cocked. Lek felt it, crying out, “Yes, yes, fuck me, you big brute.” The “big brute” sounded sexy to Hardesty spoken with a Thai accent.

Hardesty was a favorite of the Dupont Circle area street rent-boys. They all said they wanted to take him—to be able to say they’d taken him. They wanted to be able to endure and master the fetishes he used. It enhanced the bundle of tricks they could offer their johns.

Lek took Hardesty now. Hardesty, with some unfinished business with the Thai rent-boy from Davis’s pool party, had been looking for Lek around the Dupont Circle beat for a couple of days. By asking around, the Vice detective learned that someone meeting Lek’s description, in addition to working the streets around Dupont Circle, danced the pole in the back room on the second floor of the Green Lantern Club just off Thomas Circle. Indeed, that was where Hardesty found the Thai rent-boy the previous night. Lek must have known the detective was asking for him, because, from the moment Hardesty entered the room, Lek was dancing just for him. A stagehand came for Hardesty after Lek’s set was over and took him backstage.

A cop’s privilege recognized without the need for words, Hardesty fucked the willowy Thai on the chair in front of the vanity in the small dressing room, Lek still in the silky black slip, black mesh stockings, and red spike high heels he’d worn on the stage and with his ankles on Hardesty’s shoulders and his fists clinched behind Hardesty’s neck.

After the initial fuck and with no resistance to the demand, Hardesty had taken the Thai rent-boy back to the Alexandria apartment, and after rough-playing the male whore, working him over between information sessions, Hardesty got all of the straight answers he could want for any question he asked of Lek. Even after the “tell me what you know” session was over, Hardesty fucked the rent-boy periodically through the night on his bed in positions and with fetishes that both delighted and taxed the young man. This was standard fare for new boys establishing themselves on the Dupont Circle streets, and Hardesty was such a hunk that the rent-boys welcomed it. Lek certainly did.

What had sent Hardesty in search of Lek was having discovered the Thai rent-boy sniffing around in Jackson Davis’s house the day that Davis and he had shared the young man at Davis’s pool. After they’d done so and moved into firing up the barbecue grill, Lek had disappeared. Davis sent Hardesty into the kitchen to rummage around in the refrigerator for more beer. While there, Hardesty had heard a noise deeper in the house and paused outside Davis’s study door and observed Lek snooping around in drawers, on bookshelves, and behind paintings. Lek didn’t see him, but it stuck in Hardesty’s mind what Davis had said about rent-boys being involved in burglary rings and how he wanted Hardesty to help track that down. Could it be that Lek was part of the ring? Davis had said he’d met the little Thai guy at a gay club near Dupont circle. Did he have a pimp? Was he involved in more than prostitution?

Those were the questions that had sent Hardesty looking for this male whore who hadn’t been on his radar before. Sometime between fucks in the night, he got his answers. Lek gave up the information easily, while babbling through the effects of what was churning inside him. By the time he was finished, Hardesty also knew where Lek had come from, how willing he was to be in the business he was in, whether he wanted to get out of it to be something else, and whether his pimp was treating him right. Hardesty fucked them hard but he made sure they wanted to do this and were being treated well.

“You saw me?” Lek asked, shocked, when confronted with having snooped in Jackson Davis’s house. “I didn’t take anything.”

“But why were you snooping around, Lek? How did you get hooked up with the man? Do you know who he is? Did someone send you?”

“Who is he? I was just told to get in his bed and stay close to him. And that didn’t happen. That one day and he sent me away. Andre wasn’t happy about that.”

“Andre? Is Andre DuCard your pimp?”

“Yeah. Andre wanted me to become the big black dude’s lover and then report on what he did. But the black guy is too much into group sex and parties to hook up with just one rent-boy. There’s no way he was going to concentrate on just me and that I was going to be moving into his house with him. All I saw in the house when I was looking were photos of a lot of cops. I wasn’t sorry I didn’t get done what DuCard wanted me to do.”

“That was Jackson Davis,” Hardesty said. “He’s the new deputy police chief of the District. DuCard wanted you to spy on the police department’s front office.”

“Shit. Fuck. Andre got me to approach him in a club where I was dancing and get him to want to fuck me. He invited me to that house party.”

“Shit and fuck is right,” Hardesty said. What he was sorry later that he didn’t ask was what club Lek had met Davis at. It obviously was the Green Lantern, where Lek danced. “Well, don’t worry about it as long as DuCard has let you off the hook of wriggling your way into Davis’s house and bed. Now look here. Do you know what these are?”

“Restraints,” Lek had said, a little smile on his face.

“What I like to do is—”

“Then do it. I heard what you do with guys. They say it’s good training. Do it.”

“And this?”

“It’s a flogger,” Lek whimpered.

“Don’t worry. I won’t raise blood,” Hardesty responded.

Then Hardesty had done it. When, after a bit of mild seasoning with the flogger, he’d filled the bulb of his condom from the position with Lek’s wrists tied off at the headboard and his legs strapped together, ankles on Hardesty’s shoulder, the apartment doorbell rang. Hardesty looked up at the monitor at the wall to see that it was Steve, who he’d asked to come by when he could—they had cameras and elaborate alarm systems on their apartment door as this was where Toby did some of his work, bringing johns to the apartment. That had the danger of attracting not-so-welcome visitors.

“Stay there like that,” Hardesty said, as if Lek could have unbound himself and moved. “I’ve got a visitor to take care of. Then I’ll let you clean up and I’ll take you back on the street—and you’ll forget to tell Andre DuCard about our conversation completely.” The latter was understood not to be just a request.

“Thanks for coming by, Steve, and for doing this for me,” Hardesty said, when he let in his friend, who also, fortuitously, was the photographer who had taken the video of Hardesty and Davis sharing Lek by the pool at Davis’s house. “And, sorry, we’ll have to keep our voices down. The guy in my bed is recovering.” Not only that, but Hardesty knew that Toby had a full evening and night assignment later in the day with a visiting Italian that would go from an Andrea Bocelli concert at the Kennedy Center to “whatever” and was trying to sleep late in his own room. “Did you bring me something?”

“Yes, here are photos I took off the video that only show Davis’s face. I told him the video film was damaged before he put it in the camera so he wasn’t getting anything off it. So, you have all that could be used—and it’s of him.”

“Thanks a million, Steve. It was a miracle that it’s you he got to take the film. He may get something on me, but not with this. I owe you big.”

“Now you’ve got something on him. You don’t owe me anything. I owe everything to you. But only use those photos if you really have to and if he has to be taken down and will be taken down. He’ll know where they came from and that I didn’t give him what he wanted.”

“Understood. Thanks for having my back. Still, I owe you. Are you up for a little Thai?”

“I’m always up for whatever you have on offer,” Steve said, with a grin.

While Steve fucked the bound and quite vocal Thai rent-boy, Lek, on Hardesty’s bed, the detective sat at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee, and went over the status of what Davis had him working on—and perhaps what Davis was trying to hide. This was going to be a complex and delicate case to maneuver in trying to minimize the collateral damage. Why couldn’t people just leave the setup with gay prostitution in the District alone? It had been working to everyone’s benefit.

He went into his bedroom to find that Steve and Lek were being downright chummy. Neither minded when he climbed on board and shared the Thai rent-boy with the photographer.

After Steve left Hardesty thought on how fortuitous this was—that Jackson Davis was so new to the job that he didn’t know that Hardesty had been the one who took Steve out of living in a cardboard box in an alley and helped him get an official photographer’s position in the department. It had only been the next day after the party, that it had dawned on Hardesty that the taking of a video of Davis and him sharing Lek—and maybe the whole setup—was Davis collecting material he could use to control guys in the department. Before now, Hardesty hadn’t had any thought that Davis would do this. Now he wasn’t sure. Getting the film destroyed was good enough. Having his own photos was just gravy, but they’d have to see how that might have to go.

Tucking the photos in the safe under the kitchen island, behind a pile of pots, he moved back into his bedroom, untying the robe he’d shrugged into to open the door for Steve.

“Now, where were we?” he asked, with a smile, to the trussed-up, panting and whimpering Thai rent-boy on his bed. “Or do you not want me to come back to you?”

Lek moaned, but he didn’t say “no.”

* * * *

Shortly before noon, Lek having been released, cleaned up, and sent on his way, Hardesty heard his roommate and lover, Toby Drake, stirring, and he went to the kitchen to start mixing up brunch omelets. Toby did most of the cooking that wasn’t brought in or the two didn’t catch on the fly, but Hardesty knew the young man had had an assignment the previous night and had another on this evening that involved escorting a client to a concert, with dinner and whatever else afterward. This was a big one. Hardesty knew Toby would spend all afternoon being groomed and gymed in preparation for that. The two had been together for more than five years now, and Hardesty had learned well to live with Toby’s lifestyle just as the professional hooker had learned to live with Hardesty being a Vice cop—and one who was quite demanding sexually.

The two couldn’t have been more different as men, as was evident in what they wore to brunch. Hardesty was in droopy athletic shorts and sandals without socks. Toby showed up in an elegant silk robe—and nothing else. Where they were the same was that they were both handsome hunks of their own species.

Not quite twenty-five yet, Toby was perpetually boyish, which was a major aspect of his draw with johns. He looked too young, too innocent, to give a client what he wanted and demanded in both companionship and sex. He was young and wholesome looking but sexy at the same time once he got into the throes of sex. Really, really sexy. His body was boyishly perfect. He was a dyed blond, but artfully so, and took the time to ensure his trimmed pubes were blond as well. The hair was auburn at the roots, with strong blond highlights, but it looked like he’d let it go that way on purpose, like the hair was just frosted. Sometimes he went fully platinum. He had hardware—a small ring in his eyebrow and one in his navel—and a tattoo of a gecko, a small lizard on his lower belly above the right hip. Those who knew him well biblically knew that the gecko covered an erogenous trigger that, when rubbed, sent the young man into sexual overdrive. He wasn’t heavily muscled, but there wasn’t any fat on him either. His stomach was flat and his hips narrow, but his buttocks flared out into perfect bubbles. The face was boyish too, almost pretty. His eyes were hazel.

The two had first met just over five years earlier, when Toby, under the name of Todd, which he still used with johns, was dancing the pole in a gay club, barely old enough to say “yes” and not old enough to be handling liquor in the club. The two had clicked immediately when Hardesty found that the young blond was willing—and able—to take the extreme fetish sex that turned the Vice detective on as well as the nine inches Hardesty was swinging. Hardesty didn’t treat Toby like other Vice cops did. And when Toby had been kidnapped by a sex trafficker, Hardesty had pulled out all stops to save him. The two had been together in a highly unlikely alliance ever since.

Hardesty, in his mid-forties, was a complete contrast to the boyishly handsome Toby. Thanks to his active cop’s life, great genes, and regular work in a gym, Hardesty had a solid, hard body-builder’s physique. The man was toned, exuding an aura of danger, but also of authority and self-confidence. He was sexy, but clearly in a fully masculine, mature way. He was scarred up, revealing that he was an alley-fighter thug and looked the part. Submissive men gravitated to him, going hard just looking at him. He was hung like a god. His age showed in the gray struggling with the black of his buzz cut and in the close-cropped mustache and beard. And he’d had a hard life, as evidenced in rugged features and a nose beaten slightly off kilter. But he was one sexy dude. When adding to that that he was a captive to the extreme fetish vices he policed as a Vice cop and used his body to obtain cooperation in his investigations, he promised to take his young men hard. There were young men who wanted it this way. Toby was one of them. Most men in the business by choice were.

The contrast in the two men showed in the apartment they shared as well. Toby’s slice of the apartment, which was used as his place of business, as needed, was sleek and elegant. Hardesty’s one room, the smaller of two bedrooms, was tacky, thrown together from furniture moved from his parents’ house in the District. But his bed, equipped with restraints, was where they exercised their sexual desires and needs more than any other place in the unit.

The apartment was near the top of a high-rise building among a good many others along the streets paralleling the Potomac River across from the center of the nation’s capital, with the runways of the Ronald Reagan National Airport, there to ensure that members of Congress and members of the administration in power, would have a convenient, quick getaway to their home states, between the line of high-rises and the river.

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.

“You should have your stuff back in a couple of hours,” Hardesty said. “If you don’t have it back by midnight, call me at this number.” He handed the man his card. “Don’t call anyone else. Don’t do anything else. Stay away from the front door and listen for the bell to ring. Wait for a few minutes before coming to the door. Don’t wait too long, though. If the stuff is the treasure you say it is, this isn’t a good neighborhood to have it left outside.”

“The rent-boy. What about—?”

“Nothing about the rent-boy, Mr. Rimsky. You bring him into this, you’re opening yourself up to publicity that will run you out of this town. That’s the special service I’m here to give you—an erasing of it all—with you getting your treasures back. That’s gravy, though. If you don’t get it back, I’m telling you that you still don’t want the rest of it to come out. OK?”

The man hesitated, but then he nodded, recognizing where he stood to lose on all of this. “OK. Who do I call to thank on this?”

“You don’t call anyone, Mr. Rimsky. As far as you and me, it didn’t happen. If someone someday calls you, that’s between you and him—not me. My job is just to take this down to zero. You don’t owe me anything in this. Here, sign these papers, please.”

“What are they?”

“It’s a statement that the treasures have been found and you want to drop the case. We have to get this out of the case system.”

“But the baseball hasn’t been—”

“Chances are very good you’ll get it back. If, not, it makes the lesson all that more memorable. If you don’t get it back, don’t claim insurance on it, though. That will just open everything up again. And, oh, also. Here’s another card. You’ll do better to call this number the next time you get an itch. Use that number there in the corner and you’ll get a discount. Sign these papers, please.”

Rimsky signed.

“The rules here, that I hope you’ve absorbed,” Hardesty said, “is that you made quite clear what the services are you are after. There are guys who will give you this in this town—I know for fact there are—sweet young things, too. But they want to know what it is upfront. And you need to be willing to pay the going rate for it.”

With that, Hardesty went to the door. “Call me if you don’t get your stuff back. Don’t call me if you do.” And then he was gone, knowing his work on this wasn’t done. He needed to track Shawn Baker down and make it all right for the kid as well. Maybe Davis had been right about DuCard’s side operations including theft from the marks, and maybe he wasn’t, but this hadn’t been that.

Davis wouldn’t like that Hardesty didn’t get the goods on DuCard this time, but fuck Davis. He didn’t have to do any of the work and he now had leverage on Rimsky. It would be worth box seats at Washington Nationals’ games at least.

* * * *

The D.C. socialite and China Lobby conservative force in American politics Susie Win bundled her rent-boy escort, David Liu, into the back of her limousine for the five-minute drive to her apartment at the adjacent Watergate Complex after the Kennedy Center Andrea Bocelli concert. They didn’t have far to go, but you can’t really walk between the two complexes on the Potomac River between Washington and Georgetown and Susie’s red spike heels and narrow sheath dress would not have allowed for that anyway.

For Susie the evening was just beginning with the handsome Chinese-American rent-boy from Andre DuCard’s stable, who was nearly a third of her age. After a couple of glasses of champagne and petting on her miles-long white leather sofa facing the Potomac River and a slow stripping off of the young man’s tuxedo, stopping when he was just in his briefs and Susie’s melon-firm breasts had popped out of her dress to be massaged and sucked by Liu, she slipped down between his spread thighs, slipped off his briefs, took command of his cock, and gave him a professional-level blow job.

He carried his tux trousers and jacket over his arm as she guided him into the master bedroom, giving the excuse that he didn’t want to lose access to the condom packets he’d brought. Susie laughed, opening a nightstand drawer to show that she was fully stocked. What he really didn’t want to lose contact with, though, was his smart phone.

Susie went to the dressing table and sat, David standing behind her, cupping and massaging her breasts, as she took off the magnificent ruby and gold necklace and earrings she’d worn to the concert and put them back in the case that had been sitting on the dressing table. She didn’t close the case until she’d gone into the en suite bathroom to prepare for the impending night games, and while she was out of the room, David took photographs on his cellphone of the jewels and of the open safe in the bookshelf next to the dressing table. He sent these off to one of Andre DuCard’s lieutenants.

Coming out of the bathroom, Susie now only wore red satin panties and the red high heels. She was in magnificent condition for her age—for any age, really.

“On the bed, love, on your back,” she cooed, and, slipping his cellphone back into his tux jacket and laying the folded clothes on her dressing table chair, Liu did as bid. Susie slipped off “her” panties and climbed onto the bed on top of the rent-boy’s chest.

“She” was in full erection.

Liu couldn’t help but be surprised at the transition. He’d been told she was a transvestite, something that very few knew, and very few would have believed, but the transformation was startling. She ran her fingers into the hair on his head, gripped hard, put her cock in place, pressed the head of it between Liu’s opening lips, and took command of bobbing his face back and forth on her throat-stroking shaft.

Not long afterward, Liu was arching his back, legs spread and bent, his arms stretched out, his hands clutching at the bedspread, while Susie crouched between his thighs, fucking the rent-boy deep and expertly in the ass in the missionary position that her long-deceased macho general husband had so much enjoyed to the complete ignorance of the world on what the general so much enjoyed in his sex life.

As he returned to the warehouse off East Capital Street near the old RF Kennedy stadium and D.C. armory, where Andre DuCard centered his expansive operations, David Liu saw that a van had pulled into the warehouse and young men were being handed out of the back. It hadn’t been that long ago that David had entered the District and DuCard’s rent-boy stable himself, in his case from Chinatown in New York City. DuCard, coming down from Canada, specialized in a multiethnic menu.

When David saw one of DuCard’s enforcer thugs, Tony, come down the stairs from the office floor above, walk by the van, and strut out onto the street, he sank into the shadows before reporting upstairs to the offices of the boss and fired off a few photos of the arrival of the van and departure of Tony with his cellphone. He didn’t want to mix with Tony; he was a mean one. And he wasn’t gay—in fact, he was a gay basher, valuable to Andre because he didn’t mess with the goods unless and until DuCard told him to—so there was no friendly treatment to be had there.

When David had whispered to Toby Drake earlier in the evening in the Kennedy Center men’s room that he wanted to talk to Drake’s boyfriend, the Vice cop Hardesty, Drake had told him to get some evidence of what he wanted to talk about first. This was David’s chance. He was surprised to see that, after the new rent-boys were offloaded from the van, a rent-boy he’d been on assignment recently with, Shawn Baker, was being loaded into the back of the van. Baker had been beaten and was moving only with help from a couple of DuCard’s thugs. The young man was stripped to the waist and he had been whipped. The welts on his back no longer were whoozing, but they had bled. David had no idea what he’d done to displease DuCard or where he was being taken now, but he took a couple of photos of that as well. He sent them off to Toby before going upstairs.

When he got up to the offices, he found DuCard sitting behind his desk. A couple of the man’s thugs were standing beside him. DuCard smiled at him.

“We got the photos of that woman’s jewelry and where she stashed them. Quite some rocks. You done good, Liu.”

Susie Win wasn’t a woman—not in terms of equipment—David thought, but before he could make sure that DuCard knew that, one of the man’s other thugs and come up behind him and was sticking his hand in Liu’s pocket.

“Hey, what?” David asked in surprise.

The thug came up with Lu’s cellphone. He spoke to DuCard over David’s shoulder, now putting a close hold on the young rent-boy from behind. “I saw this one taking photos of the van loading downstairs, boss. Maybe you want to know about that.”

“Yes, maybe I do,” Andre DuCard said, his smile turning to a frown. “Want to tell me what you are up to, David? Let’s put David in that chair over there, and, Angelo, go back down and tell them to hold the van. I think we might have another outgoing passenger tonight.”

* * * *

The next order of business for Hardesty after leaving Stan Rimsky’s house was to get hold of Shawn Baker, hopefully before Andre DuCard did something regrettable with him. Hardesty couldn’t help but be on the rent-boy’s side in this. He got worked up himself with a little bit of bondage and whipping, but he wouldn’t do it without the guy’s permission. No way. And he wouldn’t mess the boy up. There had been dried blood on that X-frame in Rimsky’s bedroom closet. Hardesty wouldn’t go as far as breaking the skin or raising welts that would show for more than a day. There were guys who wanted more, but Hardesty didn’t want to do anything that would force a guy off the street for very long and endanger his income. Once he got to his unmarked office Impala, he pulled out his cellphone and called Glen Whitehall, who had been sent on the search for Baker. The call went to voicemail.

“Call me. Have you located Baker? If so, sit on him someplace safe. If he’s got any signed baseball junk with him, keep that safe too. And let him know we very likely see his side of the story, whatever the story is he gives you.”

There was nothing to do now other than to join the hunt. DuCard’s street boys mainly congregated around the Dupont Circle area. That Peter Trace’s streetwalkers had already been established there was the crux of this building turf war between the two.

Hardesty drove across the Mall and Federal Triangle area onto M Street and into the northwest section of the city, to Dupont Circle. He roamed around, checking out who was on the street, looking for Shawn Baker—or DuCard himself if he could be so lucky.

A Black SUV passed him as he was slowly cruising, and glancing into the front seat, he thought he got a double impression, although at first glance it didn’t seem a possibility. Upon reflection, though, he could believe it. He didn’t like it, but he could believe it. It would explain a few things. He tailed the car from a distance.

The SUV stopped not far from JR’s Bar and Grill, a Dupont Circle gay bar on North Church between N and Q Streets. It stopped under a light and, when the light changed and it didn’t hot peddle out, Hardesty pulled around it and moved up the street a bit. He was surprised, but not that surprised, to see that Deputy Police Chief Jackson Davis was at the wheel. Hardesty was more than a little surprised, though, to see the Pimp chief, Peter Trace, hop out of the passenger seat, pull the back door open, and muscle a young guy out. He left the guy on the sidewalk, got back in the SUV, and they drove off. The vehicle hadn’t departed, though, before Hardesty was able to get a couple of cellphone photographs of the three men together.

This answered why Davis was down on Andre DuCard. He was in bed with the opposition, Peter Trace—and most likely he had been trying out what Trace had on offer in “scratch my itch and I’ll protect your back” services.

Hardesty’s greatest surprise was that the young guy they’d put back on the street was Jose Garcia, the apparently new rent-boy to the streets who Hardesty had brushed up against earlier and saved from a booking downtown. The guy had shown he wanted it from Hardesty at the time and Hardesty had put that on a back burner. Garcia was new to the streets, and Hardesty put all new rent-boys through their paces. Now, he had an opportunity both to scratch that itch and to get some testimony on the Trace and Davis connection. Except it was Shawn Baker he was down here looking for.

A buzz on his cellphone took care of that.

“Glenn. Thanks for calling back. What do you know on Baker?”

“Nothing much. Nothing good,” Whitehall answered. “I couldn’t find him on the street, but I found out where he was bunking. I got there, but his clothes were gone. I think he’s pulled a runner, or worse. There were some towels there with dried blood on them.”

“I think that was from an earlier encounter—with the guy we’re cleaning up for. So, maybe not worse.”

“Maybe worse still. That’s not all I learned,” Whitehall said. “I nosed further. I think he was escorted away from his digs by a couple of DuCard’s thugs.”

“Ouch. Well, OK, maybe we’re too late on that. I’ll put out the word that we don’t want him hurt. I’ll call DuCard direct. I’ve known him to use muscle but I haven’t heard of him sanctioning any wet work.”

“You want to meet up with me and we’ll go see DuCard together?”

“Not right at the moment. Something’s come up. I’ll contact you later.” Something had, indeed, come up. While Hardesty had been talking with his partner, he’d been watching Jose Garcia leaning against a wall and looking like he was in business, and Hardesty had gone hard.

It was time for that double opportunity—laying a new rent-boy on the street as part of his welcome, checkout, and “here’s how it is to avoid being hassled” routine as well as gathering information of the Trace and Davis connection.

Garcia was a novice to Washington, D.C., but not to the business. Peter Trace had brought him in from the Texas-Mexico border area. They did it rough there. Garcia could receive it rough and he quite clearly wanted it from Hardesty and wanted it as Hardesty liked it best. Hardesty had been thinking of that X-frame and whip in Rimsky’s closet, and Garcia was willing.

The Number Nine gay leather bar on P Street had basement rooms for valued customers. Hardesty most certainly was a valued customer and Garcia, despite only having been in town for a few weeks, was already known there. Both men worked out their lust in the basement of the club, with Garcia bound to an X-frame and Hardesty wielding a whip, mostly playfully with just an occasional shock of possibility, until both were so overcome that Hardesty saddled up to the rent-boy from the rear and fucked him, bound, against the frame.

Neither regretted the encounter, Garcia had obtained a valuable friend on the police department’s Vice unit, and Hardesty had recruited an informer in the Peter Trace organization. Yes, Garcia had just come from being put through his paces by Jackson Davis—more forcefully than Hardesty had applied—and, yes, Davis and Trace had a mutual help “arrangement.”

To be continued.