“I said times are changing-partly because of guys like you, Mike. And anyway, as far as anyone knows, this is the first gay murder in Albany. Its novelty must have piqued a certain amount of curiosity among our jaded constabulary.”
“Have you been in touch with the cops?” He leaned even closer to hear my answer to this, and I could smell the bourbon on his breath.
“Monday-I’ll be seeing Sergeant Bowman on Monday. Do you know him? He’s the one in charge.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not that one.”
“The thing is,” I said, “even when I find Blount-I’m not so sure he’s the one who did it.”
Timmy came from the bar, handed me a draught, and stood listening.
Truckman glared at me, swayed boozily, and said, “Oh, he did it, the little asshole! And you just better catch up with the little sonovabitch before he does it again. The cops aren’t gonna do it.
You can’t trust the fucking cops.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”
Truckman looked at me a moment longer. Behind the cold gray of his eyes there was anger, and hurt and, I thought, a kind of pleading. Then, abruptly, he turned and went back to the door to resume his lookout for minors, riffraff, and straight couples from Delmar in search of wickedness.
We started for the dance floor.
Timmy said, “I think you’re right. Mike knows more about this than he’s telling.”
“He acts that way. Though guilty appearances are often deceiving. I do know he’s been less than forthcoming on the subject of his relationship with Steve Kleckner.”
“Should I say it?”
“Yes.”
“I hate to.”
“Say it.”
“Where was Mike that night?”
“Here.”
“Till when?”
“Four, at least.”
“And what time did the-thing happen?”
The killing. It was a killing. It happened around five-thirty.”
“You could look into that.”
“I could.”
We passed some people we knew from the Gay Alliance and stopped to talk-shout. Taka Boom’s “Night Dancin’” came on. The guys from the alliance told us some friends of theirs had arrived at Trucky’s from the Rat’s Nest and reported that it had just been raided again by the Bergenfield police. This time it was violations of the building code. Jim Nordstrum, the owner, had lost his temper and started screaming about the US Constitution. It hadn’t helped. They’d gotten him for disturbing the peace. The alliance was considering joining Nordstrum in a court case-though with a certain reluctance owing to the bad press the alliance would get by affiliating itself with an establishment of the Rat’s Nest’s rather too special ambiance.
Timmy, a sometime Catholic who was pretty consistently repelled by the darker side of gay life
��� just being homosexual was decadent enough for his Irish sensibilities-nevertheless volunteered to help set up a legal defense fund if the alliance chose to go ahead. The pols said the organization was divided over the matter but would decide soon. Timmy said he’d stay in touch.
We made it back to the dance floor and danced for eight or ten songs, then decided to break after Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough.” For the moment we’d had enough.
Back at the bar I said, “When I was twenty-five, one of the things I wanted most in life was to go to bed with Paul McCartney, who was around twenty-one. Now I’m forty, and one of the things I want most in life is to go to bed with Michael Jackson, who’s around twenty-one. What does this mean?”
Timmy said, “There won’t always be youth, but there will always be youths.”
We drank our beer. The DJ was playing Peter Brown’s “Crank It Up.”
“Hi there, big guy, you come here often?” A deep voice from behind me. Apprehensive, I turned.
Phil Jerrold was laughing silently. Mark Deslonde was with him.
“Thanks,” Deslonde said, doing his smile-and-tilted-head thing. “He was where you said he’d be last night.”
I said, “Donald Strachey-Private Investigations-Discreet Introductions.”
“Actually, we’d met,” Phil said, smiling a little goofily.
Timmy said, “Maybe you’ll run into each other again sometime. And each of you certainly hopes so.”
They both grinned, Phil with his squint, Deslonde with his whiskers and angles. Timmy was right; they were looking very couple-y.
Timmy, in the two-and-a-half years I’d known him, had threatened at least once a month to compose a song that started: “I fell in love-in Washington Park/With a man who’d remarked on the weather,” but he’d never gotten around to finishing it. I knew the moment was once again upon us.
Timmy said, “I’m going to write a song someday that starts���”
I sang along, and Phil, who’d heard it too, joined in.
“The trouble is,” Timmy said then, “nothing apt rhymes with weather.”
Phil said, “Feather.”
I suggested, “Tether.”
Deslonde said, “How about ‘sweatshirt?”
We looked at him. We all laughed together, except for Deslonde, who looked embarrassed and said, “I majored in business.”
Later, as we were about to leave, Deslonde asked me whether I’d made any progress in locating Billy Blount. Phil and Timmy went back to the dance floor for one last spasm, and Deslonde and I stepped out into the cool quiet under Trucky’s portico.
I said, “No, but I’ve got a couple of ideas. Do you know about a woman in Billy’s life? Someone he might be fairly close to?”
“He never mentioned any,” Deslonde said. “If there is one, it’d probably be platonic. Billy told me he knew he was gay when he was sixteen, and that he’s never had any sexual interest in women at all. He said a shrink his parents once sent him to kept talking about his ‘confused sexual identity,’ but Billy said it was the shrink who was confused, that the guy couldn’t understand plain English.”
“Our mental-health establishment at work,” I said. “Mob rule under the guise of science.”
“I went to a sane one once. He was okay. Pretty cool, in fact, and smart. Where did you hear about the woman?” “From Huey what’s-his-name. He’s seen them together.” “What about Frank Zimka? Did he know anything? Creepy, isn’t he?”
“Frank has his problems. But, yes, he was helpful.” “He must have talked to Billy not long before it happened. He was out here that night.”
“Here? Zimka was out here the night of the murder?” “I saw him in the parking lot around one when Phil and I were leaving-that was the night Phil and I met.” The head thing again. I loved it. “Zimka was sitting in the car parked beside mine,” Deslonde said, “with the window rolled up.
I figured he had the air conditioner on; it was a hot night. I said ‘Hi, Frank,’ and he just stared at me like he was spaced out. Which he probably was-I think he frequently uses his own product.
Although he did look quite a bit less wasted that night than he usually does. He didn’t tell you he was out here?”
What Zimka had told me was, when Billy arrived at six A.M., Zimka was asleep and had had “a busy night.” That was all.
I said, “He was vague about it.” “Yeah, he would be.” “Was he alone in the car?” “He was.
Maybe he was waiting for someone.” “Describe what you remember about the car.” “Seventy-nine Olds Toronado. Gold finish, new white side-walls. I’m not sure whether it was a standard or diesel V8. I didn’t look under the hood.” “You know cars.”
“Sears Automotive Center wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Timmy and Phil came out. Phil and Mark Deslonde soon left, and I told Timmy I’d just be a minute. I approached Mike Truckman, then changed my mind-I’d try to catch him sober on Monday-and went to the bar. I asked each of the bartenders if he knew Frank Zimka, and when I described Zimka, each said he knew who Zimka was. I then asked whether a
nyone had seen Zimka with either Billy Blount or Steve Kleckner on the night of the murder, and each said no, he didn’t think Zimka had even been in Trucky’s that night.
At three-fifteen Timmy and I drove back to his place through a cool drizzle, made love with a furious intensity that was reminiscent of the night after the night we first met, and set the alarm for ten.
7
Out of the house, through the breezeway, into the garage where the rental van with the fickle transmission was parked, we hauled books-me, Timmy, Brigit, the new hubby, the four daughters. Hugh Bigelow was a big, friendly sheepdog of a man who had been a widower for a year and did something in an office for the State of New York. Timmy said he thought he’d seen Bigelow in the elevator of his building at the Mall. The daughters, aged three through eight, were chubby, round-eyed and earnest, and they worked with an unchildlike, methodical determination as they moved the residue of me out of their new home.
When we’d nearly finished, Brigit beckoned me into the kitchen and said, “Thank you for doing this.” She’d had her hair cut short and looked like Delphine Seyrig in a blond wig.
“Ultimatums work with me,” I said. “I can be successfully menaced.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she snapped. “I never gave you an ultimatum.”
Christ, she’d pulled me aside to pick a fight. Or had I done it?
I said, “I guess you’re just too forebearing for your own good.” I grinned and tried to sound lighthearted, jocular.
“It was because I’m kind. And naive.”
“Could I have some of that coffee?”
She poured a cup. I sat at the Formica counter. She stood.
“Would you really have tossed the books out in the rain? It may freeze tonight. Booksickles.”
She tried to keep from smiling. She succeeded. “How are you doing?” she said.
“Well. Quite well. I like my life.”
“Good. I like mine. For a long time I didn’t.”
I slurped at the coffee, trying to keep it from burning my lips. “He seems like a nice guy,” I said.
“Hugh.”
“He is. You’d like him.” She poured herself some coffee. “He’s sweet, and funny.”
“He’s a bureaucrat, right?”
“Hugh’s an inspector for the Public Service Commission.” She eased onto the stool across from me. “Hugh really enjoys his work and he thinks its terribly important. Which it is, of course.
Hugh doesn’t become excessively wrapped up in bis job, though. He’s extremely easygoing.”
“He seems to be. You must be devoted to him-he doesn’t exactly come unencumbered.”
“Oh, I love the girls. Well, most of the time.” Now she smiled a bit. “It’s a big adjustment to make. But I’m doing it.”
“Will you keep teaching?”
“I think so. There’s a baby-sitter the girls are used to. I’m not sure yet.”
“Are you planning on having any of your own?”
Timmy staggered past the doorway balancing three boxes of books one atop the other. Brigit glanced at him as he went by and said to me, “I don’t know yet. Are you?”
She knew it was a dumb thing to say, and she flushed as she said it. But she’d pulled the old trigger. She had not liked being a victim of my self-deception, and during the last years of our marriage, the malicious humor that was part of what had drawn us together in the first place had hardened into cruelty on both our parts. I hadn’t liked being a victim of my self-deception either, and I often took it out on Brigit, who dished it right back. And-now here we were, in character to the awful end.
I sipped my coffee and said, “There’s an equality, a symmetry about Timmy’s and my sexual relationship. It has balance. In seven years you never fucked me once.”
She tightened like a fist. “Yes. And you must have fucked me twelve or fifteen times.” She smiled, tight-lipped, the flesh around her lower jaw quivering.
Sex. It isn’t everything in a relationship. But it’s plenty.
Hugh Bigelow came into the kitchen panting. “Whew. Jesus. Whew. Done.” He tried to mop his forehead with the sleeve of his Orion windbreaker, but it just smeared the droplets around.
“Thanks for all your help, Hugh,” I said. “That was twenty-two years’ worth of books. Dinesen to Didion to Don Clark.”
“Whew-oh-anytime, anytime.”
Brigit and I glanced at each other quickly, then looked back at Hugh’s big, nodding, wet face.
Timmy came in, and Hugh asked us to stay for peanut-butter-and-Fluff sandwiches. We thanked him but said we’d made other plans.
In the garage I said, “Goodbye, Brigit,” and she said, “Goodbye, Don,” like two stockbrokers who had just ended a business lunch. My impulse was to shake hands, but I knew mine were trembling.
Through a steady rain we drove out to the Gateway Diner on Central and had bacon and eggs.
We didn’t say much. I knew what Timmy was thinking but was too sensitive, and canny, to say out loud.
I said, “I suppose this would be a good time for me to move over to your place, now that we’ve got that van. Except the goddamn thing is full of books.”
Timmy, ever the rational man, winning another war over his Irish soul, looked at me and said nothing.
We put half the books in my apartment-the stacked boxes took up an entire wall-and carried the other half down to the storage alcove in the basement of Timmy’s building.
We showered together at his place, and one thing led to another.
At six we showered again, separately, and while Timmy made coffee, I dialed the number for Chris.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice. Young, pleasant, a bit tentative.
“May I speak with Chris, please?”
“Oh-Chris isn’t in just now. May I take a message?”
Discretion was indicated. “Yes, would you please have him call Donald Strachey at this number?” I gave my service number. “When do you expect him?”
A pause. “Who is this?” A real edge to the voice now.
“Uh-Donald Strachey. Chris may not recognize the name, but if you’ll just tell him that I-”
The receiver was slammed down.
“What did I say?”
Timmy set a mug of coffee beside me. “What happened?”
“A woman-she hung up. It was something I said.”
“It was something you are. Somebody’s wife hung up on me once, too.”
I decided to do what I’d planned on doing on Monday and should have done the day before. I said, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. I’m going over to the office. How about putting this brownish wet stuff you gave me back in the pot?”
“Will you want food?”
“Nothing much. Eggs or whatever.”
“We had eggs for lunch.”
“Then whatever.”
I drove over to Central through a slicing cold wind under low, black, flying clouds. In the office I got out my directory of Albany phone numbers listed numerically. There it was. The Chris number was listed beside the name of Christine Porterfield. Of course.
I copied down the address on Lancaster Street and called Timmy.
“Chris is a woman. The woman I spoke with got pissed off when I referred to Chris as ‘he.’
They’re lesbians. It was as if a strange woman called you up and said, ‘Is Don there, when will she be in?’ I want to go over there now and apologize-and probably learn something about Billy Blount. How about you going along? It should help if she knows I’m gay.”
“Should I suck your cock while we’re there?”
“A knowing glance or two should do it. I’ll pick you up.”
“I’ve got two frozen meat pies in the oven.” “Take them out and set them under a warm radiator.
You’ll hardly notice the difference it makes.”
We pulled in behind a dark green VW Beetle in front of Chris Porterfield’s Lancaster Street address. I wrote down the bug’s license number.
The old Greek Renaissance town house looked warm and serene with its crusty yellow brick and brown shutters. The young maples growing from neat squares of earth at the edge of the sidewalk still held most of their dead leaves, some of which exploded into the gusts of wind as we walked up the steps. The brass lamps on either side of the front door had flickering flame-shaped light bulbs. Early American Niagara Mohawk Electric.
I pressed the button and could hear the bing-bong inside.
“Maybe the woman you spoke to was Christine’s mother,” Timmy said. “Or her grandmother.”
“Too young.”
“Or her daughter.”
“No. It all fits. Chris is the woman-friend Huey Brownlee saw Billy Blount with, and the woman of delicate sensibilities who answered the phone is Chris’s lover. You’ll see.”
“You once told me that it’s only in novels that things all fit. Real life tends toward implausibility.”
“Not always. Which is exactly my point.”
“That’s quite a logical progression. You should run for the State Assembly.”
Two brown eyes appeared in the little window in the door. The door opened the three inches its lock chain would allow.
The middle third of a face said, “Yes?”
“I’m Donald Strachey, I’m a private detective, and I want to apologize for my call a while ago. I only had Chris’s first name, and since I knew only that someone named Chris was a friend of Billy Blount’s, I assumed it was a man. That was unintelligent and presumptuous of me. Are you a friend of Chris’s?”
She stared out at me as if I were selling aluminum siding. She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you say you’re a detective?” Her voice was flutey and pretty and apprehensive, and her face was dark and smooth, with maybe some Mayan in it.
I’m private.” I hiked out my card and held it up to the crack. “This is my associate, Timothy Callahan.” Timmy edged into range and showed his Irish teeth. “I’ve been hired by someone to help Billy Blount. But I’ve got to find him first. Could we talk?”
She hesitated. We didn’t look the way detectives were supposed to look. I had on jeans, a flannel shirt, and a down vest. Timmy, who wore a Brooks Brothers suit to his job at the State Senate Minority Leader’s office during the week, looked as if he’d just stepped off a B-29 after a run to Bremerhaven.
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