“How about a beer? It’s hot again.”
He went to the kitchen and came back with a Schlitz for me, a glass of water and a white pill for himself. A church key was on the end table, and he opened the bottle.
“This is a treat,” I said.
He sat on the plastic chair, popped the white, and washed it down. Then he lit another cigarette.
“You know where he is,” I said. “Don’t you?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I don’t know where Billy is. I wish I did. Maybe I’d go there. Though I guess I wouldn’t.”
“But you know he’s not in Albany.”
“Billy’s somewhere a long way from here. I know that. I lent him the money.”
“The morning it happened?”
“Early in the morning. He came over here.” He gave me a hard, questioning look. “You know, I don’t even know you, do I? How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t know. It’s a risk you’re taking. You strike me as someone who takes risks.”
He laughed sourly. “Yeah. I do. Look-if-if I tell you what I know-will you give Billy something from me when you find him?”
“Sure.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“And you won’t tell the police?”
“I will not.”
He sighed. “Okay,” he said, working up to it, shifting, putting his feet on the floor. “Okay.” He sucked on the cigarette. “This is what happened. As far as I know, this is what happened. I don’t know all of what happened, right?”
He waited.
“Right,” I said. “Just what you know.”
“Okay. Okay, then. Well-around six that morning Billy came and banged on my door. I almost didn’t wake up-I’d had a busy night.” He gave me a look, and I acknowledged it. “Anyway, I let him in, and I could tell he was nervous and scared. He said-he said somebody had stabbed the guy he went home with-some new guy he met out at Trucky’s-and the guy was dead. That he’d felt his pulse and he was sure the guy was dead.”
“Billy saw the stabbing?”
“No. He didn’t say that. But I guess he didn’t see it, because he didn’t know who had done it.”
“A threesome. Maybe they’d picked up a third guy on the way to Kleckner’s place.”
“Billy didn’t mention that. I don’t think he would’ve, anyway. Billy’s pretty straight in a lot of ways.”
“How could he not see it happen if he was there?”
“Well, he must’ve-I don’t know. Maybe he’d gone out.”
“At five in the morning? And then come back?”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. What else did he say? Try to remember his words.”
“He just said, ‘Steve is dead, the poor guy is dead, and they’re going to think I did it.’ He said,
‘They’re going to try to lock me up.’ He said that about a hundred times, I think. ‘Shit, they’re gonna lock me up and throw away the key! They’re gonna zap me good!’ Billy was really freaking out, and by that time I was starting to feel pretty freaky, too.”
“Had Billy been locked up before?”
“I think so. I don’t know. He would never talk about it. Whatever it was.”
“So he came here and said these things. What happened then?”
“He wanted me to lend him money.”
“What for?”
“Well, for plane fare, what else?” A sharp, hyped-up tone now-the dexie had reached his bloodstream.
“Did you lend it?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“All I had. Almost two-forty.”
‘Two hundred forty dollars? You keep a good bit of cash around.”
“I deal. Grass, some hash, pills. And I hustle.” He waited for me to react; I didn’t.
“Where was Billy planning on flying to?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He said he had friends who he knew would help him, but they wouldn’t want anybody to know where they were.”
“What else did he say about them? These friends.”
“That’s all.”
“What happened next?”
“I drove Billy to New York. He asked me to.”
“New York City?”
“La Guardia. He was afraid he might see somebody he knew at the Albany airport. We stopped over at his place first and he brought a suitcase.”
“What kind of car do you have? Describe it.” I thought I believed him, but any kind of verification of his story wasn’t going to hurt.
“I don’t have a car. A guy I know lets me use his sometimes.”
“At that time of day?”
“If I ask, this guy helps me out. He likes me. Do you?”
“Sure. I like you. Who’s the owner of the car?”
Zimka rolled his big, drugged eyes. “You’ve heard of him. But I’m sure he’d prefer I didn’t mention his name.” He giggled.
“So you picked up the car.”
“I called my friend first and then I walked over and got the car-this guy’s place is right over by the park on Willett-and then we picked up Billy’s suitcase and drove out to the Thruway.”
“What did you talk about during the ride down?”
“Us. We talked about us.”
“You and Billy.”
“Yeah. Me and Billy. I told him how I felt about him. For the first time I told him how much he meant to me.”
“Was he surprised?”
“Shit, no. He knew. Nobody could experience what I’ve experienced with Billy and the other person not know. There’s sex, and then there is-mak-ing lov-v-v-ve.” He impersonated Marlene Dietrich.
“In my experience it’s not always that clear-cut,” I said. “Are you saying that in bed you were making love and Billy was just getting it off?”
He grinned inanely. “I’m not going to tell you about that. It’s humiliating. It’s none of your business. When are you leaving?”
“Soon. How long have you known Billy, Frank?”
“Three years. Three years next month. November fourteenth.” His cigarette had burned itself out; an inch of ash fell onto his pant leg and lay there. “I met him over at the Terminal one night,”
Zimka said. “He cruised me. And I really thought that night that he liked me. That he liked me.”
“But he really-didn’t?”
“It’s too complicated. I’m not going to talk about this anymore. Not to you. You’re about to leave.
It’s too bad it’ll never work with Billy and me. Really too bad. He’s been great for me. Billy opened up a lot of positive things inside me I never knew were there. It’s too bad. I can be a really fabulous person. Are you leaving now?”
“I’m sure you can be. I’ll leave soon. What happened in New York?”
“New York?”
“At the airport. La Guardia.”
“I dropped him off.”
“What time?”
“Nine. Or nine-fifteen.”
“You didn’t go in with him?”
“He wouldn’t let me. He said he’d send me the money, he thanked me, he gave me a little brotherly kiss. And then he-took off!” He imitated an airplane.
“You drove back to Albany then?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Fucking Billy took every cent I had! I had no money for gas or tolls coming back.” He giggled.
“So what I did was, I stopped in Scarsdale and called a guy I knew. Scared the royal blue shit out of him, too. He met me at a gas station and says, ‘Nice to see you, Frank,’ tosses me fifty, and took off in his BMW like I’m diseased. He’s one of my admirers. He likes me.”
Every life tells a story. “How old are you, Frank?”
“How old do you think?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Twenty-six. My face looks fifty.”
“I would have said thirty, or thirty-five. Still, maybe you should be lo
oking into a somewhat more restful line of work.”
“I’m a chemist,” he said. “I graduated RPI cum laude.”
“Why don’t you work as a chemist, then? Or at something else in the sciences, or whatever, that you might be good at? Why not try it-maybe just something part-time to start out?”
His eyes were like baby spotlights now. He said, “I think I’ll get a job as the president of MIT!”
He laughed idiotically.
I drank my beer. I asked Zimka whether he’d had any odd phone calls recently in which the caller didn’t speak but just listened, or whether anyone had tried within the past week to break into his apartment. He looked at me as if I’d asked him if his hair were on fire, then giggled. I asked him if he knew who Chris was, and he summoned up the clarity of mind to say no. I asked him if he knew who Eddie was, and this caused another fit of uncontrolled hilarity. Finally I asked Zimka if the police had been in touch-his number was written on Billy Blount’s phone book. He said yes, but he’d told them he was the Queen of the Netherlands and they hadn’t returned.
I thanked him, gave him my card, and asked him to get in touch with me if he heard from Billy Blount or if the money Billy had borrowed was returned in any manner. He asked me to stop by on Monday to pick up something he said he’d have for Billy, and I said I would.
I shook his hand and left. He may or may not have noticed my going.
6
At Timmy’s I checked my service while he made mashed potatoes to go with the roast chicken. He used a real masher, and I admired his domestic skills.
At my place I boiled the potatoes, put them in a Price Chopper freezer bag, and beat them with a hammer wrapped in a towel.
There were two messages, one from a former client who owed me three hundred dollars. He said,
“The check is in the mail.” The other message was from Brigit: “Books will be found on front lawn after noon Sunday.”
I asked, “What’s the weather forecast?”
“Showers or drizzle later tonight,” Timmy said. “It’s supposed to clear late tomorrow and get cold again.”
“Crap.”
Brigit’s new husband and his four daughters were moving into our old place in Latham, and they needed the room where I had my books stored. The Rabbit wasn’t going to do the job, and Timmy drove a little Chevy Vega.
I said, “Brigit means business about the books. We’ll either have to make six trips or rent a U-haul.”
“We?”
“Would you help me move the books, please?”
“Yes.”
“She says noon tomorrow, then she chucks them out. She’s a sweetheart.”
“Right, you’ve been so busy for the past month.” He dropped a brick of frozen peas into a saucepan.
I said, “The heart has its reasons.”
“For not picking up a load of books?”
“Don’t confuse the issue. Brigit hasn’t been nice.”
“It’s a diabolical retribution-books.”
“One does what one can.”
“It’s the final break. That’s why you’ve been putting it off. This is really the end and you won’t face it.” He took the chicken out of the oven and set it on the trivet on the table.
“Not true. The final break was three years ago. In a courtroom with portraits of two Livingstons, a Clinton, and a Fish.” I began hacking away at the chicken with a bread knife. Timmy winced.
“Why don’t you let me do that? You carve the mashed potatoes.” I went looking for a serving spoon. “The final final break,” Timmy said, “will come when Brigit smiles warmly and shakes your hand and says, ‘Heck, Don, at least we had seven wonderful years. I understand and sympathize and there’ll be no hard feelings on my part.’ That’s the final break you’re waiting for, except it’s not going to happen.”
“I can’t find a spoon.”
“Middle drawer.”
“How come I keep getting mixed up with people who devote their lives to explaining me to me?
Brigit did that. It’s a powerful force to constantly contend with.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum.”
“Like the poet said, fuck you. Anyway, I make my way in the world. I understand enough of what’s going on. I do all right.”
“That you do.”
“You don’t make it easier.”
“Of course I do.”
I said, “You’re right. You do. Let’s eat.”***
Over dinner I told Timmy about my two visits with Billy Blount’s friends and what I’d found out about Blount. “It turns out he’s not so morbidly attached to the duke and duchess as I thought he was. That’s just how they see it-or want others to see it. In fact, he seems reasonably stable and in control of his life. And sufficiently resourceful that he knew just where to go when trouble happened. He went somewhere you can fly to for two hundred forty bucks.”
That could be just about anywhere these days. You can get to London for under a hundred and fifty.”
“Not from La Guardia. That’d be JFK. I’ve got to find somebody who can check passenger manifests. Deslonde says Blount once had friends on the West Coast. He could be out there.”
“Maybe he flew under another name. It’s easy.”
“Could be. He was thinking.”
The cops could check. Are you going to tell them?”
“Later. In due course. Are there more rolls?”
“In the oven.”
The people who know Blount best speak well of him. Everybody says he’s likable and fun to be around, though a bit verbose and dogmatic. But he’s got no real hangups that get to people, and certainly no violent streak. He does have some private grief he keeps inside-an irrational, or possibly entirely rational, fear of being shut in or locked up. Something that happened to him once. Huey and Mark and Frank Zimka all mentioned it. I’ll have to check that out with the Blounts. It would explain his panic to get away, even if he hadn’t committed the murder.”
“Or even if he had.”
“Yeah. There’s that.”
“He didn’t tell Zimka anything about how it happened?”
“Not much. Either that, or Zimka is holding something back-or even making the whole story up. This is possible; Zimka’s brain couldn’t have survived its owner’s life unscathed. Zimka may lie as naturally as he blinks. Anyway, for what it’s worth, Blount was there, Zimka said, but he didn’t actually see the stabbing or the person who did it.”
“He was in the bathroom. Had to piss.”
“How long does that take?”
“Or brush his teeth.”
“When you used to trick, did you carry a toothbrush?”
“That was too long ago. I don’t remember. How about you?” He looked up at me from his plate and then down again.
“And another thing is, I can’t figure out Blount’s connection with Zimka. His other friends, so far, are nice wholesome folks. Like Deslonde, for instance.”
“Right,” Timmy said. “Like Mark.”
“I liked Huey and Mark and saw what Blount saw in them. Zimka, on the other hand, is badly screwed up-not entirely lacking in the decenter instincts, but he’s a slave to some unholy habits, and when he’s down off his pills, his outlook on human life is decidedly gloomy. Why did Blount hang around a guy like that? There’s a side to Billy Blount I don’t understand yet.”
“Money. You said the guy had ready cash. Blount used him.”
“For what? Blount had no expensive habits. None that I know of.” I looked at my empty plate.
“Coffee?”
“Yeah, I guess. And the knife attack on Huey what’s-his-name last night. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with Blount or the Kleckner killing, but still-have you ever heard of a white burglar operating in Arbor Hill?”
“That might be a first.”
“Mm. It might.”
“So. What’s next?”
“There’s a guy by the name of Chris I have to check out. And there’s a woma
n Blount evidently was close to. Huey saw them together once.”
“Ahh, a mystery woman. In an evening gown and black cape? Maybe it was Megan Marshak.”
“In a VW bug. That’s all I know about her. This one might slip through my ordinarily ubiquitous dragnet.”
“Oh, I doubt that. You know, you’re going to an awful lot of trouble to find Billy Blount, when the fact is, everybody who knows him well is convinced he’s not a killer. If Blount didn’t do it, shouldn’t you be giving some thought to who did?”
“I’m doing that.”
“Ideas?”
“None worth mentioning. Not yet.”
Timmy got up and started clearing the table. “What are we doing tonight? Working or playing?”
“Let’s make the regular stops and see what turns up.”
When we left the Terminal at nine forty-five, a light rain was falling. I went back in and called U-Haul on the pay phone and reserved a van for eleven-thirty the next morning. Then I called Brigit and told her to expect us around eleven fifty-nine.
We made our way up Central, paying the usual Saturday-night calls, and drove out to Trucky’s just after midnight.
It was another good crowd. A sign by the door said five percent of the take that night was being donated to the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Gay Alliance, and a good number of the local gay pols and organizers were on hand, self-consciously clutching their draughts and trying to blend in with the looser, more blase types who were always readier to roll with whatever life shoved at them.
When we went in, Bonnie Pointer’s “Heaven Must Have Sent You” was on, and whenever she growled “Sex-x-xyyy,” the younger, less inhibited dancers yelped and shouted. I wondered what Norman Podhoretz would have made of it.
Truckman himself was at the door, tipsy and unkempt in green work pants and an old gray sweat shirt. He pulled me aside and asked me if I’d found Blount. I said not yet, that it might take awhile.
“Well, you keep at it,” Truckman said, looking grim and nervous, “because the goddamn cops aren’t going to do a thing.”
“You mean because the victim was gay?”
“You’ve been around, Don. You know.”
“Times have changed a little-”
“What?” He leaned closer in order to hear. The DJ segued from Bonnie Pointer into Nightlife Unlimited’s “Disco Choo-choo.”
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