The Ninth Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

he took a long drag, blew it out one corner of his mouth slowly, and said, “What happened to Bobby?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
    He took the cigarette out of his mouth and set it in the ashtray in front of him.
    “Thought you said you weren’t a cop?” he said, watching my face closely.
    “I’m not, I’m a private investigator.”
    Cowboy reached out and tamped the cigarette out in the ashtray then looked at me again.
    “What you want to know?”
    “Well, for starters, my name’s Dick—what’s yours?”
    “Tex.”
    “Yeah, I know. But what’s your name?”
    He grinned, and once again I could see him relax—a lot further this time. The thumb came out of the belt, the boot off the rail, and he leaned forward to put both elbows on the bar.
    “Phil,” he said, and gave me a natural smile, showing about 72 of the whitest, evenest teeth I’d ever seen.
    “I like it better than Tex,” I said, returning the smile. “So, how well did you know Bobby?”
    “Not all that well, I guess, but then, how well does anybody know anybody in this business? We made it a couple of times when business was slow, and we turned a couple of tricks together. Mostly, we’d just stand around and bullshit.”
    “Did he come in here often?”
    “I don’t know. Probably not. He had a lover—some possessive little fag from what I hear—who kept him on a pretty short leash. You got a lover?” I could feel his eyes on mine and I looked up from my beer to find I was right. I stared at him for a few seconds, and felt the old electric current flowing between us.
    “Not at the moment. Why’d you ask?”
    He shrugged and grinned.
    “Just wondered.” He peered into his nearly-empty glass. “Be interested in a little action?” he asked, almost shyly.
    Is the pope Catholic? I thought. Damn, why did he have to be a hustler?
    “Sorry, Phil, I don’t pay for it. Besides, we haven’t finished talking about Bobby yet.”
    “I don’t always charge,” he said. “You got someplace we can go…talk?”
    “My office is a couple blocks from here,” I said, feeling myself weakening.
    “Great. I do some of my best talking in offices.” He drained the rest of his beer, put his glass down, and pushed away from the bar with both hands. “Let’s go.”
    I set my beer down without finishing it and followed him out the door.
    *
    By the time I’d closed and locked the office door, Phil had taken his shirt off and tossed it in the general direction of the chair by the window. Taking one look at that flawless, muscled torso I started unbuttoning my shirt, but Phil panthered across the room and stood inches away.
    We did a fast-forward version of undressing, throwing clothes into a general pile in the center of the room. When he finally slipped his shorts down, I swore I’d died and gone to heaven.
    Sliding my own shorts down, Phil gave an appreciative whistle.
    “Not bad!” he said and pushed me back onto the couch.
    Fade to black.
    *
    After what must have been three of the most wonder ful days of my life, we disentangled, and I struggled valiantly to get my head out of the clouds and back to reality.
    “I hate to bring up the subject of business—my business, that is,” I said as I forced myself off the sofa to get a cup of water from the cooler, “but I really need to find out some more about Bobby McDermott.”
    “Sure,” Phil said, grinning and running a big hand over his sweat-beaded chest.
    “When’s the last time you saw him?”
    He rummaged through his Levi’s for cigarettes and matches. Finding them, he tossed the Levi’s back onto the pile of our mixed clothes and lit up. He took a long drag and eased himself back on the sofa.
    “Ummmmm…’bout a week and a half ago, I guess. A Tuesday night. We ran into each other at the Macho.”
    “Did he pick up a trick?”
    “Nope, as a matter of fact, he didn’t. He came in around nine, I guess it was, just for a beer. He was alone but said he was on