My next call was in another rich neighbourhood—before long I'd felt like I'd have a full catalogue of the city's prosperous hideaways that I'd wandered through like a roving imposter. This one was wrapped around a sickly ribbon of the river that wove through the quiet inner suburbs of the city; there were modern townhouses and gated mini-mansions set along the uneven slopes as I wound my car through the slim braids of asphalt carved into the greenery. I found the address for Gene Randolph.
The house was small by the standards of its surroundings, but it was still something I'd never be within a moon's grasp of with my savings. It was all glass and steel and concrete, a little slit of sleek modernity cut between an Italianate and a Victorian on either side. I buzzed the box at the front driveway gate.
After a few moments, a voice said, 'I'm not speaking to reporters.'
'I'm not a reporter,' I said.
'Well...I can't speak to anyone, then.'
'I'd like to have a word with you about Sebastian Abbott, just for a few moments.'
There was an electronic silence, before the gate finally broke and I went up the drive toward the house The front door drew open as I approached it.
'You're Gene Randolph?' I said.
He looked at me and nodded slowly. He had a good, slim build that was dressed-down in a sporty white dress shirt and long slacks. His hair had been undersold to me: it was a deep and florid shade of titian red, swept back and well-ordered. There was a spray of freckles under the ridges of his eyes and a coloured fullness to his lips.
He was a young man, too, as young as Cameron Zehringer Jr, and easily as wealthy.
'What are you?' he said as I came to the front step.
'An investigator.'
'There've been so many leeching reporters lately. Just trying to be careful.'
'What happened?'
He started to open his mouth, but stopped himself. 'If you don't know, then I probably shouldn't say anything. I don't want to say any more stupid shit than I already have.'
He stepped away and let me inside. I followed him into the den, which was arranged in a sparse sketch of low white cotton sofas and glass coffee tables.
'Is it related to Sebastian, the trouble with the reporters?' I said.
Gene Randolph himself reclined across one of the sofas and shut his eyes. 'No,' he exhaled. 'It's just... Who are you, again?'
'A private investigator. My name is Holden Burke.'
'And you're looking for Seb?'
I nodded. 'I understand that you've been seeing him for a while.'
But Gene wasn't paying full attention to me. He released a slow breath and opened his eyes again. 'I wondered if he'd ever get in trouble,' he said quietly.
I came further into the room. 'Why's that?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'Just the way he was.'
'And which way was that?'
'Like a broken mirror. I could never get a read on him. Always so mysterious, so icy, weird... Then he ran off so suddenly, just left me without a word and I don't know why. But I guess I'm not surprised.'
'He ran off on you too?'
Gene looked at me and smiled bleakly. 'The same thing?'
I sat on a footstool opposite him and dropped my head. 'He was with another guy not too long ago. The same thing. Up and left without a word. Guy hired me to find him.'
Gene laughed without sound or humour. 'Maybe I should've hired you first, if I gave enough of a shit about someone ghosting me like that.'
I rubbed the back of my neck and turned away, trying to figure a way to breach my next line of inquiry. 'Your relationship with Sebastian,' I said, 'by the information I've been told already, it seems as if he was...'
I couldn't think of a polite euphemism. Gene was looking coolly at me. I looked back at him.
'He might have been with you at the same time as this other man, down at his place in Pillar Bay,' I said.
'Keeping us both on the line? Never crossing paths?'
'Seems that way,' I said.
Gene sat up, put his elbows on his knees, and crossed his eyes in thought. 'I know it's nothing to call in the brigades about,' he said simply. 'Just a couple of guys caught up moving too fast. We weren't in love, or anything, so I know I shouldn't care about that. If he had another guy, he had another guy, simple as that. But...I don't know, I guess I wouldn't be so curious about Seb if he didn't split right after that whole fucking thing that happened with dad—'
He caught his words and melted back into the sofa. Then it made sense to me.
'Don Randolph?' I said.
Gene sat back and sighed.
'He's your father?'
'I won't say anything about it. Everything I've said has already been twisted by those vultures.'
I nodded, and didn't expect him to. The Don Randolph story was one that was already old news, even if it only broke about a week and a half ago. He was a senior politician in state government, and it was the standard fare that had come out about him: an exposé on decades of affairs, bribes, collusions, political intimidations. The entire career-sinking works.
I cleared my throat. 'It's no business of mine what happened to your father,' I said. 'Not if it has nothing to do with Sebastian Abbott.'
'It doesn't.' Gene Randolph had a hard look, but it was brief, and it soon drifted away. 'But he did leave right after that—maybe he didn't like the attention it was gonna bring.' Gene stood up and put his hands in his pockets and wandered out of the room, toward the back patio.
I followed him. 'How long were you with him?' I asked.
Gene shrugged a little, but didn't turn back to me. 'About a month or two, maybe. I wasn't really keeping track.'
'Was that a long time for you?'
'I guess. Not really. No, it wasn't.'
'What kind of a relationship was it, just casual?'
'I have no idea what kind,' Gene said. 'Sebastian kept changing it, kept running toward me then running away.'
'Did you never knew about his personal life, anything about his background?'
He shook his head. 'He never let me in. Do you know about his background? You're the investigator.'
'I found his parents—two pretty nasty things. If I had to take a guess, I'd say he came from a pretty barbed home life. Then he ran away from home at seventeen, was registered as a missing person, but never turned up. Until now.'
Gene looked across at the cold yard of short-cut grass, under the pastel light of the setting sun. He smiled a little, but grimly. 'My dad bought me this place,' he said. 'He wanted me to go into politics too. I told him no. I said politics rots your soul, turns you into a shell of a person obsessed with power and money. I guess I was right, huh?'
He walked outside and sat on one of the white chairs at the edge of the yard. I sat in the other. 'Did Sebastian ever come here?'
He nodded. 'Sometimes. But mostly we went to his little rented place at the Bay. He liked the beach and the wind and the smell of the ocean, all that stuff.'
'I've been there. It is a nice place.'
'How long have you been working this?'
'Since this morning.'
He laughed a little. 'You must be a good detective.'
'The good detectives live in movies. I just do my job.'
'Running around in the sex lives of rich little queer boys, it sounds like. Who was the other one Seb was tangled with? He was rich too?'
'The son of a publishing tycoon,' I said.
Gene smiled grimly. 'God, he has a type, doesn't he?'
'Did you ever feel like Sebastian was exploiting you in any way?'
'Like some kind of gold digger? I have no idea. I don't think so—but I'm not very perceptive. What're you going to do after this?'
'I don't know,' I said, 'if I can't find anything more on where he might have run off to. You don't have any more information about where he could've gone, what he might be doing?'
'He could've found some other gullible bait to hook on to by now,' Gene said. 'That seems to be his forté from the sounds of it. Professional slut.'
'Well, I should thank you for your time, then, Gene.'
I stood and he walked me through the door, and back through the house. His head was hung in dim thought the whole way, until he rose at the front door and said, 'His parents—what were they like? I was just curious.'
'Just the standard,' I said. 'Class-A bogan homophobes with personalities like buckets of mud. From the sounds of it they got along with their little Sebastian like a car crash.'
'Figures,' he said. 'I guess it's no wonder he turned out the way he did. Did they help you at all?'
'A little,' I said. I leant against the frame of the front door and looked at him. 'They told me that the day their son ran away, he jumped into the passenger seat of a big car that was waiting for him outside.'
'A car?'
I nodded. 'They gave me this as well, since no one else I've spoken to seems to have a picture of him.'
I unfolded the picture from my pocket and handed it to Gene. He took it and studied it closely, an odd look falling over his face. When he looked back up at me, his expression was one of cautious doubt. 'Are you sure you met his parents?' he said.
I nodded. 'The parents of some missing person named Sebastian William Abbott, at least. Why?'
Gene looked at the photo again with uncertainty, then shook his head. 'This isn't Sebastian,' he said.
I stood straighter. 'Are you sure? It's from a couple of years ago, remember.'
'This is not the person I was with for two months. The face is completely different. You sure you're searching for the right person?'
'The name is right, and so is the age...'
I took the picture back and looked at it again. Someone named Sebastian Abbott looked back at me with a flat and ghostly glare.