Fino laughed. “Eddie? Dark side? Come on. What gave her that idea?”

“She said Eddie’s sister Marilyn stayed with him for a while last year. He’d go off somewhere late at night and sometimes tell her he’d be at the Globe, and then she’d find out he hadn’t been here at all. And when she tried to bring it up with him, he’d shrug it off or just clam up.”

“I met Marilyn. A nice woman who’d had a bad divorce, Eddie told me. Yeah, she has friends in the newsroom that I’m sure she talks to. But it’s hard for me to imagine any secrets Eddie had that weren’t work-related. I would bet he was researching something.”

“I take it you know about the book he was working on about gay media.”

“Sure. It sounded interesting, though not anything I knew anything about. But it fueled his sense of outrage as much as anything I’d ever seen. I faked a certain amount of enthusiasm about the project, which Eddie of course saw through and kidded me about. But with him, what he saw as the corruption of the whole idea of gay liberation was something he took very personally. He was hell-bent on exposing what he believed was a kind of betrayal of gay social progress in the country. I certainly hope it wasn’t any of that that led to whatever happened to him. Jesus, wouldn’t that be ironic?”

“Yeah, or to his way of thinking, not ironic at all.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Bryan Kim’s body must have been discovered around the time I was checking in at the Westin. I figured that out later. At the time, just before four Saturday afternoon, I lay down in my room and checked my BlackBerry, and there was no message from Bryan, who I’d spoken to briefly the day before. It was at seven, when he didn’t meet me in the lobby for our dinner date, that I guessed something had gone wrong. I called his cell at seven thirty-five, and another man answered.

“Bryan Kim’s phone.”

“May I speak with Bryan? This is Don Strachey.”

“Bryan can’t come to the phone.”

“Okay.”

“What’s your relationship with Bryan, Don?”

“I was to meet him for dinner at seven. He didn’t show up. What’s yours?”

“My what?”

“Relationship with Bryan.”

“I’m investigating his… I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Are you a friend of his?”

“New acquaintance.”

“Bryan is deceased.”

“Oh.”

“Were you dating Bryan?”

“No. Were you?”

“I’m a police detective, Lieutenant Marsden Davis. I’d like to speak with you if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure. What happened to Bryan?”

“I believe he was a victim of foul play.”

“He was killed?”

“He was stabbed multiple times and he’s dead, so you do the math.”

Davis arrived at the Westin within fifteen minutes. He had a second cop in tow, and we went up to my room. Davis was a small skinny black man of indeterminate age in a leather jacket. He had a shaved head, inquisitive eyes and large teeth. The younger guy was white and bulky and appeared armed under his windbreaker. He said his name was Detective James Fuller.

“Where was Kim’s body found?” I said. “Who found him?”

“In his apartment in the South End. So, how do you know Kim? You said you were an acquaintance.”

“I’d never actually met him before, just talked on the phone.”

“This was your first date?”

“It sounds as if you know Kim was gay, and so do I, but this wasn’t that kind of date. I was going to interview him.” I showed Davis my PI license and told him I had been hired by the missing man’s mother to find out what had happened to Eddie Wenske, Bryan Kim’s sometime boyfriend.

Davis took all this in. “You work out of Albany?”

“It’s Wenske’s home town. His mother lives near there.”

“I know about Wenske. The dude’s got balls. He still hasn’t been located?”

“No. It’s been close to two months.”

“He majorly pissed off the weed industry.”

“So I hear.”

“I’d be surprised if you ever find him. I mean, some bones and bits of flesh could surface eventually. Sorry to have to be the bearer of that type of information.”

“Kim and Wenske had been a couple for a while, and they were working at getting back together when Wenske disappeared. I’m wondering naturally if the disappearance and the murder are connected.”

“Wonder away, Donald. I may join you.”

Now Fuller spoke up. “Everybody knew Kim was gay.”

Davis nodded. “That’s true, James.”

“He was always in the gay parade. Channel Six put it on at eleven.”

Ignoring this, Davis said to me, “When did you talk to Kim on the phone?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I got his cell number from Susan Wenske, Eddie’s mother. He couldn’t talk then, but he seemed eager to meet with me. My impression was, the guy felt a little guilty over his role in his and Eddie’s rocky relationship, and he wanted to unburden himself. My hope of course was to come up with some actual leads.”

I was seated on the edge of the bed, Fuller was on the desk chair, and Davis had remained standing in front of the big window with the Back Bay skyline lit up behind him.

Davis said, “Do you know Elvis Gummer?”

“Gummer? No.”

“He found the body.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s Kim’s neighbor. He had a date to meet Kim at four in his apartment to pick up a recipe for ginger cheesecake. That’s what he told us.”

“Uh huh.”

“I guess that’s a gay thing.”

“It is. I’m gay, and my boyfriend Timothy and I constantly exchange recipes with our neighbors.”

Detective Fuller was hunched over and peering down at the Westin’s avocado green carpeting.

“Elvis Gummer,” Davis said, “lives two floors down and had a key to Kim’s apartment. When Kim didn’t answer the door, Gummer let himself in, thinking his friend had run down to the corner or something. He found Kim on the living room floor seriously cut and not breathing, and he called nine-one-one. A patrolman arrived at four-oh-nine, and paramedics a minute later, but Kim did not respond to their efforts to get him up and running. Way too much blood loss, it looked like.”

“You said Gummer let himself in. Was the door locked?”

“Locked but not double-bolted. The perpetrator had pulled the door shut when he left and it locked automatically. No evidence of forced entry, so it looks like Kim had buzzed somebody into the building and allowed the individual to enter into his apartment.”

“What about the neighbors? Did anyone see or hear anything?”

“The couple underneath Kim weren’t home. They showed up after we did. Nobody else in the building noticed anything that got their attention.”

“Any forensics yet?”

“No. The team has Kim’s cell and they’re checking it. Where were you this afternoon, Don?”

“Driving to Boston from Albany on Interstate 90 and then conducting an interview at The Boston Globe with a former colleague of Wenske’s there.” I gave Davis Aldo Fino’s name and number, and he wrote them down.

“Pick up any leads on Wenske?”

“Not really. The Globe people think it’s the pot thing, too.”

“Did Kim’s name come up?”

“Sure, as Wenske’s sometime boyfriend. That’s all.”

“When you talked to Kim on the phone yesterday, how did he sound?”

“He sounded upset over Wenske being missing and anxious to talk about it.”

“Did he talk about anything else?”

“No, but he was busy and we didn’t chat. He was at work, he said, and was working on a story for six o’clock.”

“What was the story?”

“He didn’t say. Channel Six can tell you.”

“I know that. I won’t have to look for them, they’ll find me. They’re at the precinct right now, alongside those handsome gents and foxy ladies from the other channels, looking for me. So I should probably go over there and turn myself into media meat. Donald, is there anything else you want to tell me that you think might be helpful to this investigation?”