War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “No,” I said. “I’m a private detective.”

  He turned toward me and grinned. “Well, why didn’t you say so straight off, sugar? Someone finally gonna put up some money so we can get those cops where they live?”

  “You were shot by the police?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I just say that? Or was I merely thinking it? Lord, I forget sometimes. It’s been a long week.” The accent had gotten thicker. It felt like he was putting on some kind of performance for me.

  He set the plate on the stone step beside him and stretched out his legs. The thigh nearest to me had a rectangular bandage, slightly stained with new blood, and a bruise that was flowering outward, one that promised to engulf the entire side of his leg.

  “Is that where you got hit?” I asked, nodding toward his thigh.

  “Hurt like a son of a bitch,” McCleary said. Then his eyes twinkled as he looked up sideways at me. “Well, maybe not like a son of a bitch, but you catch my drift.”

  He was making me uncomfortable, and he was doing it on purpose. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “Why don’t you tell me who you’re working for,” he said.

  “I can’t tell you who I’m working for, but I can tell you I’m not with the police. I’m actually from Chicago, and this is part of a larger case.”

  “Well, of course. You Midwestern folks do know about police misconduct now, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  He reached back, tugged on his hair, making sure the ponytail was in place. Then he rested his elbows on the step and looked out over the neighborhood as if it were his domain.

  “Were you here for the riots?” he asked.

  “Last Friday?”

  He nodded, not looking at me. The light manner with which he had greeted me was gone.

  “No,” I said.

  “You know anything about them?”

  “A little,” I said, “but honestly, last Friday I was in New Haven. What I know about the riots, I learned when I got to New York.”

  “Well, avoid the Voice coverage. I never expected them to be homophobic, but there they were, ‘Full Moon Over the Stonewall’ like we all were influenced by the tides.” He shook his head. “Let me give it to you short and sweet: Judy’s funeral was Friday afternoon—”

  “Judy?”

  “Judy Garland, sweetie. You are hopelessly out of it, aren’t you?” He smiled at me sideways, but he didn’t take his gaze off the street.

  “Judy Garland,” I repeated, not sure what I was listening to.

  “Her funeral was an event,” he said. “They say the city hadn’t seen anything like it since Valentino died. It was a mob scene, right, Delores?”

  One of the women who had been sitting a few steps down, looked up, nodded, and then said, “You bet, babe.”

  Her voice was much deeper than mine. I realized that I was looking at a man in excellent drag.

  “A bunch of us went down to the Stonewall that night to drown our sorrows,” McCleary was saying. “It’s the Friday night spot, very popular, and last Friday it was the busiest I’d ever seen it. The party had just gotten started when the police raided us.”

  “We didn’t have a warning,” the man named Delores said. I was having trouble putting that voice with the beautifully made-up face I saw before me. “Usually, the folks at the Stonewall knew a raid was coming. There’s rumors the place is mob-owned or at least makes protection payments, so usually someone knows in advance.”

  “But this time, no one did,” McCleary said, “and I don’t know, I think it was just the last straw after one very shitty day. Instead of the police busting heads, we busted heads.”

  “Felt damn good,” Delores said.

  “Until they started giving back,” McCleary said. “I was in the wrong place. I took off, and Rufio followed me—”

  “Rufio?”

  “He’s a patrolman with the Sixth. He’s had it out for me from the beginning.”

  “You did kiss him on the lips, doll,” Delores said.

  McCleary grinned. “He is deliciously cute.”

  My cheeks grew warm. “When was that?”

  “Oh, hell, months ago? I don’t know. He was hassling us, and I told him that he was too pretty to worry about a little nooky. That upset him, and —” McCleary gave me that sideways glance again. “—sometimes it’s so much fun to make you straight boys nervous.”

  The flush had worked its way deep into my skin. I was right. He had been playing with me. “So this Rufio followed you.”

  “Ye-up,” McCleary said. “I was running off home, like a good little camper, and he told me to stop. I knew the way the tide was turning that if I stopped he had me alone in an alley. He was going to beat the crap out of me.”

  The fun flirtatious tone was gone from McCleary’s voice. So was any hint of femininity.

  “I was frightened, I truly was, and I knew that I was going to pay for messing with him. I just didn’t realize how much.” McCleary turned slightly so that he faced me. “Rufio told me to stop again, and when I didn’t, he shot me. I fell forward — it wasn’t like it hurt. It didn’t. But it felt like someone had hit me with a two-by-four right in the leg. I tried to move, and that’s when I felt the blood. He was coming toward me, and I hadn’t been that scared in my life. Truly.”

  “Wait until you hear this.” Delores turned, wrapped his arms around his legs, and listened to the rest of the story as if it were being told for his benefit.

  “I was near a subway entrance. I flung myself down the stairs, literally flung, because I couldn’t really walk. I rolled down, then crawled across the platform, pulled myself up in time to see Rufio hurrying down the stairs. A train was just about to leave, but some of the kind passengers held the door for me. I got on, and the doors closed, leaving him behind. They — the passengers — were good Samaritans. They asked no questions, got me to a hospital, and there I had to deal with more police, who of course didn’t believe me. I was briefly arrested for taking part in the ‘Queer Riot’ as the papers are calling it, but the charges were dropped because no one can prove I did anything. And of course, everyone straight is saying I was shot by someone queer.”

  “Of course,” Delores said, shaking his head.

  “But I wasn’t. It was Rufio. The bastard actually came to my hospital bed to see if I was all right. I screamed for the nurse and threw a bedpan at him.” McCleary smiled. “A full bedpan.”

  “They had to keep Vic there for a couple of days,” Delores said. “He picked up something from those stairs. The wound was pretty infected.”

  “Delores has been helping me since I got home,” McCleary said.

  “I told him he missed the best part. The riots went on for a couple of nights, and that’s when we realized how strong we are. There’s going to be a march.” Delores reached up and touched my hand. It took all of my resolve not to pull away. “If you want to come out in support, you’re more than welcome. We’re hoping it’ll be next weekend, but there’ll be flyers.”

  “I may not be in town next weekend,” I said, feeling slightly light-headed. The others I’d seen had mentioned McCleary’s sexual preference, but I had actually thought it was tough talk — the way that people insulted each other when they didn’t really like each other.

  “I’m sure there’ll be other marches,” Delores said, and stretched out on the steps, looking up at me.

  “So,” I said to McCleary. “This had nothing to do with the War at Home Brigade?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re actually using that name?”

  I shrugged.

  “I think it’s pretentious and silly, and has nothing to do with antiwar protesting, only with violence and mayhem.” McCleary shook his head. “You know, sometimes being an activist gets you in the worst situations.”

  “Are you referring to Friday or to the War at Home Brigade?”

  “Stop it,” McCleary said. “Call them those violent motherfu
ckers or something else, but don’t honor them with their own self-selected self-aggrandizing moniker.”

  “All right,” I said, smiling. I was beginning to like him. “Do you know Daniel Kirkland?”

  McCleary put the back of his hand to his forehead like a thirties serial heroine. “For my sins.”

  “And did you belong to a group that he ran, a group that proclaimed itself against the Vietnam war?”

  “I belonged to an offshoot group of the SDS, run by Joel Grossman and Ned Jones,” McCleary said. “We all met at Columbia, but I stuck with it even after I graduated. We were doing some good work. Mostly draft counseling and community education, but a few protests — we made all the big ones.”

  “Draft counseling?” I asked.

  “Telling people how to legally avoid. Not everyone wants to flee to Canada, you know.”

  I nodded. “Is this a free service?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” McCleary said. “We couldn’t very well hang out a shingle and tell people ‘Hello! Draft Dodgers United Over Here!’ now, could we?”

  “But people found you,” I said.

  “People still find us. A number of us have continued the work, now that Ned’s dropped out and Joel’s too sick.” He blinked at me. “Is that why you’re here? Because Ned got hit with some random bullet in Central Park and Joel was attacked by one of those Robert-Moses-Destroy-the-City construction crazies?”

  “Is that who shot him?”

  McCleary shrugged. “I’d always assumed. And that’s what the police said. Do you think it was someone else?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I thought so when I started. You know that June D’Amato got shot on Friday.”

  “Good Lord, Junie?” McCleary dropped all pretense. “Is she all right?”

  “I really don’t have a lot of information,” I said. “She’s at St. Vincent’s, but I’m not family, so they don’t tell me much. She’s been in a coma since the shooting happened.”

  “God, Junie.” McCleary shook his head. “How’s Danny taking this?”

  “Daniel?” I asked. “Why?”

  McCleary looked at me like I had just asked the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “Because he’s really got a thing for her. They hang off each other.”

  “June?” I asked. “What about Rhondelle?”

  “Ah, you didn’t know,” McCleary said.

  “Know what?”

  McCleary nodded, almost as if he were having a conversation with himself. “They haven’t given you the speech.”

  “What speech?”

  “The one about property and ownership and how it affects relationships and how everything should flow, man, and how you know, you do what you feel, man, and if it’s right, then it’s right, and all that garbage.”

  I frowned at him. He was being sarcastic and judgmental, and I hadn’t expected it of him. “You’re saying that their relationship is somehow open?”

  “I’m saying that Daniel has the right to sleep with whomever he wants. Theoretically, Junie and Rhondelle do, too, but the girls never seem to take advantage of it. Besides, Danny spent most of his time with June, at least what I saw, and only kept Rhondelle around because she was useful.”

  “Because of the row house,” I said.

  “Because she’s his chemist,” McCleary said.

  I stared at him. The confusion had lifted, but I didn’t trust my feeling of clarity. “Chemist? You mean she makes the drugs he’s been giving away?”

  I’d only heard he did that in New Haven. Was he doing it here, too? Was that where they got their money? Was he dealing?

  “That, and the other thing,” McCleary said.

  “The other thing,” I said, feeling slow again.

  “She’s in charge of the big bang, brother,” McCleary said. “She knows more about how to make things go boom than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s brilliant.”

  “I thought Daniel was the scientist.”

  “Maybe he is,” McCleary said, “but Rhondelle’s Madam Fucking Curie.”

  I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t seen Rhondelle as anything but a victim.

  Both Daniel and Rhondelle had played on my assumptions. Again, I had underestimated someone.

  “Joel said you found some dynamite in Rhondelle’s refrigerator,” I said.

  “He what?” Now it was McCleary’s turn to look shocked.

  “He said that—”

  “I know what you said he said.” McCleary made a small up-and-down movement with his right hand, signaling that we should be quiet. I had no idea how anyone except Delores could hear us. “We never found anything at Rhondi’s.”

  Then I understood. Joel had said that they saw dynamite in “Daniel’s girlfriend’s apartment.” Not the row house. It was at June’s, not Rhondelle’s.

  “June doesn’t live at the Harlem house, does she?” I asked.

  “She’s got her own place not far from here,” McCleary said. “Or she did. I traded that little tidbit for freedom last Saturday.”

  “You told the police about the dynamite in the refrigerator.”

  “Yep,” McCleary said. “They were happy to hear it, even though when they got there, the entire place’d been cleared out. It gave them enough evidence, though, to keep an eye on Daniel’s little parade.”

  He stopped, then looked at me, his face going very pale.

  “I didn’t lead them to Junie, did I? I didn’t make them shoot her. Jesus, what if it was the police? What if they shot her, like they shot me, and if she dies—”

  “Stop,” I said. “First of all, they would have arrested her if they found anything, not shot her. And secondly, I’m not sure what’s going on. Three of you were no longer friends with Daniel. Maybe June had a falling out with him.”

  “Or maybe Rhondi went all Whatever-Happened-to-Baby-Jane on him and decided to take out everyone who hurt him?” McCleary put the heel of his hands against his forehead. “Oh, this is giving me a sick headache.”

  I hadn’t thought of Rhondelle, but I didn’t believe it. Of course, I was having trouble believing that she was their chemist as well.

  “Or maybe it was all random,” I said. “Your shooting was clearly unrelated. Maybe the others are, too.”

  “It’s a dangerous city,” McCleary said. “But do you think it’s that dangerous? Three people in such a small group getting shot like that?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  I sighed. The party had evolved along the street. Now some people were dancing — men dancing with each other, and the women in the bikinis had their arms around each other’s waists and were swaying with the music.

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” McCleary said to me, very softly. I almost didn’t hear him.

  “The shootings?” I asked. “Yeah—”

  “No,” he said. “Us.”

  He nodded toward the street. Delores had gone down the steps. He had his hand on another man’s neck, resting it there possessively, the way a man would do to a woman.

  “I’m — not comfortable,” I said. “That’s true.”

  “And you probably think it was okay for the cops to bust up a bunch of queers.” The humor had left McCleary’s face.

  “I didn’t say that.” I looked at him. “The police often go overboard, especially in situations they don’t understand.”

  “So you been in a few police riots,” he said.

  “More than my share,” I said.

  “You understand, then, how it is when they go after you for being different.”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure where this part of the conversation was going.

  “I just wanted you to understand,” McCleary said. “As you investigate all this stuff going on. I want you to know the reason I got shot is just because I’m different. That threatens people. You know that.”

  I still felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t breathing very deeply, and I did want to move back up the steps so that I wasn’t sitting so clo
se to McCleary.

  “You and me,” he was saying, “we got a lot in common. We get attacked just for being who we are.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Yes, but I can’t dye my skin. You can change how you live.”

  The look he gave me was both triumphant and sad, as if he knew that an opinion he didn’t like had lurked within me. “You think I can just change? You think I like being called names and being treated this way? You think I do it because I want to?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  He leaned close to me. I remembered what he had said about kissing the cop and hoped he didn’t try it with me.

  “Being gay is as fundamental to who I am as being black is to you,” he said. “And treating me as anything less than fully human is just as much discrimination as treating you the same way. I trust you’ll remember that while you’re looking into the various crimes around here.”

  I didn’t move away, even though I wanted to. “I was brought up to believe something different.”

  His eyes glittered. “And I was brought up to believe that niggers were inferior. I got over my prejudice. When you are gonna get past yours?”

  He tapped me once on the chest, lightly, not quite threateningly. Then he leaned back, and the moment faded.

  “Thanks for telling me about Junie,” he said. “She’s a good girl in the wrong crowd. I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

  And with that, I had been dismissed.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I staggered out of the block party slightly ill. I wasn’t sure whether my light-headedness came from the heat, the information that McCleary had given me, or the discomfort I’d been trying to suppress through the entire meeting. I walked as far from the neighborhood as I could before I found a café that advertised air-conditioning in the window.

  I went inside, ordered a burger, a milkshake, and water. Then I asked the waitress for extra napkins, and I made notes.

  Daniel was tied to all of the victims. But his attachment to June explained why he had panicked so badly when she got shot.

  Had Rhondelle hired the shooter? I didn’t know. It didn’t seem likely, but I had underestimated her from the start.