ones, exactly—at the Male Call at one time or another since then, and they all seemed to be fine.”
I’d reached for a pencil and written down the names Jared had mentioned. I’d try to check on them. “You got phone numbers on any of these guys?”
“Some of them,” he said. “I’ll check my book and get them to you. And maybe Jake’s got some I don’t have.”
We made plans for brunch on Sunday—Jared was coming in to spend the weekend with Jake.
“He’s working his ass off again,” he said, exasperation clear in his voice. “I should stay up here this weekend to get some things done, but I know he’d be working Saturday if I didn’t come down there and keep him from it. These bullheaded Norwegians never learn.”
Chapter 7
Wednesday morning was spent roughly plotting out Friday night’s bar tour and who I hoped to talk to at each stop. There were a couple of places I did not want to take Jonathan—the Male Call and the Spike among them. Okay, I know we just went through that “I’m overprotective” thing, but, damn it, I don’t want to expose him to any situation that could lead to problems.
Actually, I realized, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t trust myself not to slip into my possessive “Me Tarzan. Him Boy. Boy mine!” Scorpio mode if some pseudo-butch number made a pass at him. I’m not particularly proud of it, but it’s there and I have to live with it.
We couldn’t really hit very many bars in one night, anyway. Most started filling up around ten, so I figured we could make it more of an “us two” night out by going to dinner first, which would still let us get to at least one or two of the bars before the bartenders and/or owners got too busy. We’d hit Daddy-O’s, a nice little neighborhood bar where Brewer said DeVose, one of his fired bartenders, worked, then go to Venture—I made a note to call Mario to be sure Ray Croft would be on duty—and move on to Bob Allen’s bar, Ramon’s, to talk to Jimmy, Bob’s primary bartender. Jimmy could be waiting on a customer at one end of the bar and not miss a word of a conversation going on at the other end. Then we’d wrap up the evening at Griff’s, which I saved for last because it was our favorite piano bar.
After I got back from lunch—I just ran downstairs to the diner in the lobby for a grilled ham and cheese, fries, and coffee—I pulled out the list I’d made of the Male Call dead and ill. There are times in this job that I wished to hell I didn’t have to do something, and this was right up there at the top of them.
Luckily, I’d separated the two groups, and while it was the ill who were most likely to give me the information I needed, I hated the idea of having to pry into how they got the disease they knew would undoubtedly kill them and probably soon.
So, I decided to start with those already dead to see if their friends or partners could give me any information at all on how they might have contracted it.
I’ll spare you the details of each and every call. As a matter of fact, I was only able to make three before I had to give up simply because I couldn’t deal with having my guts ripped out by the grief of those the dead left behind. But as for useful information, there were some interesting comments.
Though I knew they were all patrons of the Male Call, I asked if they were regulars at any other bars, or if they had any indication where and how they had contracted it. Three were directly traceable to the Male Call’s back room, and, most telling of all, two mentioned the name of the bar’s “alpha butch,” as Jared had called him—Cal Hysong. Each of the two had considered being screwed by Hysong something of a feather in their cap. Actually, it might have been a nail in their coffin.
But even though Hysong might, indeed, be infected and while it might indicate that the rumors about someone spreading AIDS from the Male Call could have some validity, there was no proof it
I’d reached for a pencil and written down the names Jared had mentioned. I’d try to check on them. “You got phone numbers on any of these guys?”
“Some of them,” he said. “I’ll check my book and get them to you. And maybe Jake’s got some I don’t have.”
We made plans for brunch on Sunday—Jared was coming in to spend the weekend with Jake.
“He’s working his ass off again,” he said, exasperation clear in his voice. “I should stay up here this weekend to get some things done, but I know he’d be working Saturday if I didn’t come down there and keep him from it. These bullheaded Norwegians never learn.”
Chapter 7
Wednesday morning was spent roughly plotting out Friday night’s bar tour and who I hoped to talk to at each stop. There were a couple of places I did not want to take Jonathan—the Male Call and the Spike among them. Okay, I know we just went through that “I’m overprotective” thing, but, damn it, I don’t want to expose him to any situation that could lead to problems.
Actually, I realized, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t trust myself not to slip into my possessive “Me Tarzan. Him Boy. Boy mine!” Scorpio mode if some pseudo-butch number made a pass at him. I’m not particularly proud of it, but it’s there and I have to live with it.
We couldn’t really hit very many bars in one night, anyway. Most started filling up around ten, so I figured we could make it more of an “us two” night out by going to dinner first, which would still let us get to at least one or two of the bars before the bartenders and/or owners got too busy. We’d hit Daddy-O’s, a nice little neighborhood bar where Brewer said DeVose, one of his fired bartenders, worked, then go to Venture—I made a note to call Mario to be sure Ray Croft would be on duty—and move on to Bob Allen’s bar, Ramon’s, to talk to Jimmy, Bob’s primary bartender. Jimmy could be waiting on a customer at one end of the bar and not miss a word of a conversation going on at the other end. Then we’d wrap up the evening at Griff’s, which I saved for last because it was our favorite piano bar.
After I got back from lunch—I just ran downstairs to the diner in the lobby for a grilled ham and cheese, fries, and coffee—I pulled out the list I’d made of the Male Call dead and ill. There are times in this job that I wished to hell I didn’t have to do something, and this was right up there at the top of them.
Luckily, I’d separated the two groups, and while it was the ill who were most likely to give me the information I needed, I hated the idea of having to pry into how they got the disease they knew would undoubtedly kill them and probably soon.
So, I decided to start with those already dead to see if their friends or partners could give me any information at all on how they might have contracted it.
I’ll spare you the details of each and every call. As a matter of fact, I was only able to make three before I had to give up simply because I couldn’t deal with having my guts ripped out by the grief of those the dead left behind. But as for useful information, there were some interesting comments.
Though I knew they were all patrons of the Male Call, I asked if they were regulars at any other bars, or if they had any indication where and how they had contracted it. Three were directly traceable to the Male Call’s back room, and, most telling of all, two mentioned the name of the bar’s “alpha butch,” as Jared had called him—Cal Hysong. Each of the two had considered being screwed by Hysong something of a feather in their cap. Actually, it might have been a nail in their coffin.
But even though Hysong might, indeed, be infected and while it might indicate that the rumors about someone spreading AIDS from the Male Call could have some validity, there was no proof it
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