Capital Treasures

Chapter Four: End Run

Hardesty didn’t have much time to think about Toby being gone for two days, as he put his nose to the grindstone. To keep Glen Whitehall no more than grumbling at being kept at arms’ length on the Win case and all else that was involved with that, Hardesty pulled a full load with Glen on their normal Vice workload. Larry, the research assistant, was kept happy with the support work on that and delighted with the few requests for help on the special project. He was particularly happy with the latter, as a research assistant from Internal Affairs showed up to do some of the checking Larry was cleared to do—searching in the backgrounds of other policemen—and the clerk turned out to be a kindred spirit of Larry’s. They spent considerable time giggling with each other and sharing worshipful looks at and whispering about Hardesty as he moved around the unit.

A significant amount of time was spent in Hardesty holing up with his boss, Captain Crane, in the latter’s office, and all eyes in the unit swiveled with interest, surprise, and speculation, when the police department chief, Boyd Bartlett, himself, appeared and went into the huddle with Crane and Hardesty in Crane’s office.

“Why here?” a detective asked Glen while both of them were keeping a watch on the Bartlett-Crane-Hardesty meeting in the fishbowl that was the captain’s office. “Bartlett isn’t the ‘visit the troops in their tents’ kind of guy. Why are they meeting and why here rather than on the top floor?”

“Beats me,” Glen answered. “I’m not in the loop on whatever is going on in this. Go make nice-nice with Larry. He’s more involved in it than I am.”

The visiting detective scrunched up his nose, not wanting to even think about what was needed to squeeze information out of the limp-wristed gay unit research clerk. “You’re his partner. You ain’t bein’ included in whatever this is?”

“Nope.”

“And you ain’t reaming Hardesty on freezing you out?”

“Nope. He’s always been straight with me. If there’s something I should know, he’ll tell me.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe, Ernie. Get off my back.” In fact, Whitehall was pretty sure why they were meeting down here and not topside. He had more than an inkling that there was someone on topside they didn’t want to know they were meeting at all. This being the case, Whitehall could understand—and appreciate—why maybe Hardesty was keeping him out of the loop. The loop might just get anyone messing with it into a heap of hot water.

Late that afternoon Hardesty drove up into the northwest middle-class section, to his small brick rambler, to check on how Jose Garcia was doing in seclusion. He stopped and got pizza. He found that Garcia was OK, but was keyed up and antsy. He’d been watching porn all day and he was good to go. He was particularly good to go with Hardesty. After dinner, as Hardesty was cleaning up the dishes, Garcia withdrew to the master bedroom, which Hardesty kept to himself. Garcia had slept in the second, smaller bedroom.

“What’s this and what do you do with it?” Garcia asked, padding down the hall, back to the dining table, with a thick, black leather strap with handles on either end draped over his arm.

Hardesty laughed. “That’s my signature bully device. It’s called a plow belt. You’ve been wanting it from the time you’d eaten enough pizza to be thinking of other delights. You want to see how it works?”

Indeed, Jose wanted to see how it worked. Hardesty didn’t tell him. He showed him, after guiding him back to the master bedroom, sexing him up as they both stripped, each helping the other, and had done some lip and hands-on work.

Standing in the middle of the room after the rent-boy had knelt before Hardesty and sucked the man’s cock throbbing hard, both men naked, Jose, at Hardesty’s command, gripped the cop’s buttocks, pulling their pelvises in, their cocks pressed together. Hardesty gripped the rent-boy’s buttocks and raised him up, Jose panting and groaning as his channel was set down on the cop’s hard erection.

“Oh, shit. Oh, fuck,” Jose whimpered as he was skewered on the thick, throbbing cock.

Hardesty had a grip on one of the plow belt handles. He whipped the leather belt strip around the small of Jose’s back and caught the other handle in his other hand. Pulling up on the leather strip, he tipped Jose backward, the small of the young man’s back supported by the leather strip.

Hardesty barked, “Put your ankles on my shoulders.” When Jose had done so, Hardesty set his legs in a balancing crouch and used the strength of his hands on the plow belt to raise and lower the body of the smaller rent boy in a deep fuck. Jose arched his chest back, his head dangling down and his hands palming the carpet on the floor behind him, and panted and moaned as Hardesty’s long, thick cock worked him in the core.

Hardesty stayed the night, not having any reason to go back to an empty apartment in Alexandria, and gave Jose all the attention he could handle.

The next morning found Jose purring in the master bedroom bed, and Hardesty back at work in police headquarters, drinking one cup of coffee after the other to try to make up for a near sleepless night. Jose was good at being what he was—a submissive rent-boy who gave tops a good time.

The Vice cop put in a full day’s work, agreeing to take in a dinner and a cruise in the local nightclubs with Glen Whitehall that evening to let off steam and clear his mind of the delicate and intricate planning he, Police Chief Bartlett, and Captain Crane were trying to set up. This was all scotched, though, while he and Whitehall were at dinner, when he got a phone call from the accommodating former policewoman neighbor of his in Northwest Washington.

“I’m sorry, Hardesty,” she said. “I came over to your place with some dinner to give the guy you have there, but he was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. The place was dark, like he’d left before it got dark. His suitcase and clothes are still here, but there’s no one in the house. I thought maybe he’d gone for a walk, but it’s been an hour and he hasn’t come back.”

“Shit,” Hardesty exclaimed. “I told him not to leave the house. Thanks for calling me, Hannah.” It wasn’t her fault. He hadn’t asked her to babysit Jose close, and he’d assumed he’d left the guy so satisfied that he’d be mellow for at least a day. Hardesty thought then of the burner phone arrangement he made with the rent-boy and he felt in his jacket pocket for the extra phone.

“Shit,” he said again. He was in a restaurant and he must have left the phone on the desk in the Vice bullpen.

* * * *

The venue was four large hotel rooms in the Alexander Hotel, a gay-friendly hotel on Massachusetts Avenue above Dupont Circle, which had a wide range of accommodations to cover the needs of one-timers bringing a rent-boy from off the street up to U.S. senators and big-time lobbyists whose pleasures required plush surroundings. In this case the surroundings went to the plush. A hallway on the fifth floor of the five-floor hotel where four rooms and the hallway, with a kitchenette at the end, could be—and tonight were—closed off to uninvited visitors. The walls of these rooms had extra insulation, as this was the hotel’s premier party space.

Some twenty men were in attendance. The principals were five men at a conference table in one of the rooms, sitting around, smoking and drinking, playing poker and making plans. Three of the men were high flyers in the underworld of vice, coming into Washington, D.C., to help Peter Trace defend and solidify his mostly on-the-street rent-boy operation centered on Dupont Circle. The other two men were locals: Peter Trace himself and his City Hall supporter, Deputy District Police Chief Jackson Davis.

Eight men present were Trace’s muscle, here not only to make sure the principals could dicker and dick in peace but also, enjoying their perks for loyalty to Trace, receiving party attention themselves. This was done in loose rotation, four thugs on guard and four thugs fucking the rent-boys present.

There were seven rent-boys from Trace’s stable there, also working in rotation. Two were serving drinks, munchies, and drugs from out of the kitchen while five were busy being pawed and riding cocks. Jose Garcia, who had been summoned by phone he’d turned on, counter to what he’d been told not to do, without Trace’s schedulers realizing he’d already gone over to the enemy, was one of the rent-boys now acting as server. Taking a great risk, Jose was walking around the room, only wearing red silk briefs, wielding a tray of drinks and goodies, a towel over his arm, and the burner cellphone Hardesty had given him hidden under the tray, snapping off photos of those at the party, showing what they were doing at the party—and in whose company they were doing it. Each time he went back to the kitchen to replenish the tray, he fired off groups of photos to Hardesty’s burner phone.

Two of the rent-boys, Lan and Detrick, were at the table, Lan, a small, slender Thai, hanging onto Jackson Davis, and Detrick was being pawed by one of the visiting gangsters, who Jose labeled as Gangster B in his mind because he hadn’t been told any of their names. Gangster B was the youngest and most fit of the three, and Jose hoped that’s who he would go with if his turn came around. It was Gangster A, appearing to be the most powerful of the three, who was large and like a big polar bear in figure, who was eyeing Jose with lust, though.

Not all of the guards were Trace’s men. Two of them were in some semblance of cop uniforms—blue trousers, with fully loaded equipment belts, and blue shirts, unbuttoned down to the navel. They obviously had come with Jackson Davis and were being rewarded by him with a night on the town. Two rent-boys, Lionel and Stefan, were on beds in separate rooms, being fucked by two of the guards, but the fifth rent-boy, Victor, was on the king-sized bed in the same room where the principals were playing poker and negotiating what Jose gathered was a raid on someone.

The cops, Ernie, a short, solid, almost pudgy smart-mouthed white guy who was going bald, was working Victor in tandem with Tyrone, a big black bull of a man, who moved slower, both in action and in mental capacity to Ernie and who obviously was the junior partner of the two. They had manhandled Victor into the room with his wrists handcuffed behind him like they were making an arrest and hustled him over to the bed. Jose got the impression that this scene was meant for the entertainment of the men at the conference table as well as the two cops, as the five men sitting there threw furtive glances at the bed while the cops played with and fucked the rent-boy.

And quite a show it was.

The two cops took the cuffs off long enough to strip Victor’s satin briefs off, leaving him naked, but they recuffed him behind his back and put him on his knees on the bed, his chest pressed into the thin mattress. Tyrone mounted him from above and behind and fucked him in a doggie. The big black shaft reached deep into his softness and continued fucking until he had breeded him.

When the big black bull was done opening Victor up and grabbing the first use, they put the rent-boy on his back on the bed and recuffed him, arms over his head, to the iron rail on top. He was forced to turn his head and clean Tyrone’s cock with his mouth. Ernie sat beside the captive’s calves and ran his hands over the young man’s legs and belly. The white cop was going to fuck him too. That was a given.

The white cop moved Victor’s legs to where they were spread and bent, feet on the surface of the bed. All five guys at the table were looking closely. Davis and Gangster B were fondling their own rent-boys as they waited. Jose watched from across the room, too, snapping off photos as he could without being noticed.

Passive and submissive, the young rent-boy let his body be manipulated into the position Ernie wanted it. Ernie played with the young man’s cock and balls, as Victor panted and Tyrone worked on getting as much cock into the young man’s mouth as he could. Victor gasped and, pulling his mouth off Tyrone’s cock, cried out and arched his back as Ernie pushed the end of the Billy club he’d taken off his utility belt and greased up into the young man’s ass and fucked him with it. The saving grace was that Tyrone had just reamed Victor’s channel gaping open with his shaft, which rivaled the Billy club in circumference. Also, Ernie didn’t try to get too much of the club inside the rent-boy’s passage. Ernie continued club-fucking the young man, rocking Victor’s pelvis up and down with the strength of the club and beating off Victor’s cock, until the young man came.

After Victor had taken the Billy club it seemed almost ho hum when Ernie and Tyrone got him between them for the big finish of a rocking double penetration fuck.

The finishing of Victor seemed to break the spell. Gangster A was up from the table, as was Jackson Davis, practically carrying the small Thai, Lan, toward the bed, as Ernie and Tyrone dragged a semiconscious Victor off the bed and started readjusting their clothing to go on duty for their turn at that. Jose didn’t have time to move away from where he stood inside the door to the room before Gangster A, the polar bear guy, was up from the table and approaching him.

Jose and the other rent-boys weren’t there to say no to either the five principals or any of the thuggish guards. Gangster A led him into one of the other rooms, not currently occupied. Jose was barely able to slide the cellphone between the mattress and bedsprings before Gangster A had pulled his briefs off, sent him down onto his back on the bed with slaps across his face, first one way and then the other. The man grabbed a pillow, stuffing it under Jose’s lower back and bent and spread Jose’s legs, making it quite obvious he was to leave them in the position Gangster A put them in. Jose lay there, stung and panting from the brutality of the slaps and the evident cruel intent of the man as Gangster A stood over the foot of the bed, between Jose’s spread legs, and slowly stripped his clothes off, his eyes, full of lust and a cruel smile, holding Jose’s. The man was heavily, but he also was muscular. His chest showed pockmarks of shootings he had survived. His erection was huge, jutting out in an upcurve. He came down between Jose’s spread knees, thrusting forward and up as he did so. Jose cried out in pain and surprised. Penetration was immediate and deep; the pumping commenced quickly.

He fucked the shit out of the rent-boy.

When Jose was able to make it back into the main party room, the conference at the table had broken up. He’d learned enough from what he’d seen already, though, to know that they were planning an armed raid on Andre DuCard’s warehouse headquarters near the D.C. Armory two nights hence, with Jackson Davis making sure that police units couldn’t get there until after everyone in the warehouse had been wiped out. The DuCard attempt to muscle in on the Trace Dupont Circle territory was going to be met directly and definitively.

The men at the table had dispersed, each taking a rent-boy for his own use. Jose was being returned by Gangster A but the more appealing Gangster B was waiting for his turn with him. The exchange took long enough that Jose saw that Jackson Davis had the small Thai, Lan, on the king-sized bed, Lan on his back but held in place by a strangling embrace from the big black chief cop. Jackson’s right hand was freed from the hold, because he was engaging in one of his favorite sexual activities. The hand was inside the small Thai’s ass up to the wrist. Davis was fist fucking Lan, and the small Thai was screaming bloody murder.

Davis obviously wouldn’t want the Thai rent-boy to be responding in any other way.

Gangster B took Jose back to the room where Gangster A had fucked him. This fuck was more enjoyable for Jose and, after Gangster B, had been satisfied and left, Jose was able to retrieve his cellphone from under the mattress. He was back in the kitchen and had concealed the cellphone in the inner lining of the trousers he had hanging in the closet there, when he was surprised by a gruff voice from behind him at the kitchen door.

“Hey. What are you doing there? I think you and me need to have a little talk.”

It was Ernie, the short, solid cop. He was holding his Billy club in one hand and patting it on the palm of his other hand.

Across town, Hardesty was just getting back to police headquarters and hurrying into the Vice unit, where the nightshift was working under subdued lighting. The burner phone was there on his desk, where he’d left it. The first call from Jose informed him that Jose had been called in by Peter Trace’s scheduler to take a party at the Alexander Hotel. Jose didn’t think he could reveal he'd left Trace’s stable yet and he was anxious to collect more information for Hardesty, so he was taking the party. He asked that Hardesty pick him up outside JR’s Bar and Grill, near Dupont Circle, at 9:00 the next morning.

What downloaded after that from the phone made Hardesty’s eyes bug out. Jose had caught so much—good shots of the principals, at the table and in action, including Davis with Trace; the cops Earnie and Tyrone; and audio of the plan to raid DuCard’s warehouse in two days.

After recovering from what a treasure trove this was—definitely a Capital treasure—he called Captain Crane. After setting up a meeting with him and the police chief, Boyd Bartlett, Hardesty sent the photos of the three gangster visitors to Larry for identification and the photos of Ernie and Tyrone off to the Internal Affairs researcher for IDying.

He was worried about Jose. He couldn’t call him for fear the phone would ring under threatening circumstances and put Jose in danger. For the same reason he couldn’t take the chance to go to the Alexander Hotel to see if the party was still going on and Jose was OK. He’d just have to pray that the rent-boy would be waiting for him outside JR’s Bar and Grill the next morning.

He and the Alexander Hotel had a mutual-benefit arrangement, so he could find out more about the party the next day as well.

* * * *

Hardesty was up after a rare night of sleeping alone, having not gotten much sleep because of worrying about both if Jose Garcia was still safe and whether Toby made it to Antwerp OK and what he was thinking. Jose had sent a terse message on the burner phone during the night that he’d gotten out of the Alexander Hotel OK, but Hardesty wouldn’t assume that message really was from Jose until he saw the young rent-boy in the flesh. Toby hadn’t messaged his safe arrival in Antwerp yet. Hardesty kept checking his work phone to see if the researchers had come up with identifications from the photos Jose sent from the party yet, but there wasn’t anything. Captain Crane hadn’t responded to the information Hardesty sent in the early hours of the morning either.

Of course, it was only 7:30 in the morning when Hardesty checked his work phone. He knew Crane and Larry and colleague probably hadn’t even seen his messages yet. Jose had said to pick him up off the street near JR’s Bar and Grill near Dupont Circle at 9:00. Hardest was cruising the circle area at 8:30 without spotting Jose anywhere. At 9:15 he was still cruising without a Jose sighting and was beginning to panic. A couple of minutes afterward, on a cruise by the front door of the gay nightclub, though, Jose came out of JR’s and flagged him down.

“Felix was opening the club, saw me standing out here, and invited me to wait inside,” Jose said, when he slid into the passenger seat. “I thought it was safer to be inside.”

“You thought right,” Hardesty said. “I was worried sick. I told you to stay put at the house—that it was too dangerous for you to be in contact with the Trace stable again.”

“But you’re glad I did, aren’t you? I got some good stuff last night that helps you, didn’t I?” The rent-boy was grinning, very proud of himself.

“That you did. You’re a genuine treasure, Jose.”

“I bet you’re really grateful, aren’t you?”

“Are you angling for another session with the plow belt?”

“Gee a real bruiser with a big cock and you can read minds too.” Jose was still grinning.

“I’ll take you back to the house, we’ll fool around with the belt and maybe the sling, and then I want you to stay where I put you.”

Hardesty put the rent-boy on the plow belt back at the brick rambler in the northwest section of the District. Leaving the young man humming and purring on the master bedroom bed, Hardesty checked his messages on his work phone again. Both Captain Crane and the researchers had reported in. Hardesty was to call Crane from downstairs at police headquarters as soon as he got there. They were taking a ride and Hardesty needn’t bother coming up to the unit first. Hardesty was going to be able to see Police Chief Boyd Bartlett’s stately home near the Washington Cathedral. Larry and the Internal Affairs researcher had been able to identify the men, respectively—Larry the out-of-town gangsters and the Internal Affairs clerk the two mostly uniformed cops—in the photos Jose had sent. At some point, Ernie and Tyrone were going to be in big trouble.

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Something needs to happen to him.”

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued.