“I-well, I don’t know. Chris isn’t here. She’s out.”
“You look familiar,” I said. “Have I seen you in Myrna’s? I drop in there sometimes with friends from the alliance.”
I could sense Timmy looking at me and raising his eyebrows questioningly, as if to say, “Now?”
The woman smiled tentatively. “Yes, I’ve been to Myrna’s. But-you don’t look much like a detective.”
“My Robert Hall suit’s at the cleaners. And I’ve never been big on the Raymond Chandler sort of private-eye high drag.”
She thought about this. She looked as if she were trying to remember if her instructions covered this unusual set of circumstances. I guessed they hadn’t and we’d thrown her off balance.
Finally she said, “All right. I can talk to you, but just for a minute. That’s all. Chris isn’t here.”
She fiddled with the chain, and the door opened.
We sat in a cheerful room lined with white wooden shelves holding clumps of old, handsomely bound books alternating with bright, graceful figurines and pottery from Central America. The wine-colored velvet chairs were deep and soft, and the stereo receiver was tuned to public radio, which had on Purcell’s “Dido.” The woman, thirtyish, and definitely from south of the border, wore olive slacks and a cowl-collared orange turtleneck with a red stone hanging from a silver chain. Her expression was one of vulnerable distraction-the look of a woman who had recently received a crank phone call and now the crank had arrived at her door. She told us her name was Margarita Mayes and that she was Chris Porterfield’s “roommate.”
“Do you know Billy, too?” I asked.
“I’ve met him,” she said, then quickly added, “but I haven’t seen him recently. Not since-oh, August, I think. I have no idea where you could find him.”
I looked for evidence of a male presence in the house but saw none. Frank Zimka had told me Billy Blount had flown to another city, but I now knew Zimka had been less than forthcoming about one matter and could as easily have been untruthful about others.
I said, “Are Chris and Billy good friends? I’ve gotten the impression they’re close.”
She looked at me quizzically. “They’re very close, yes. But how did you know about Chris? Their relationship is-special. They’ve never mixed with each other’s friends, and they’ve sort of saved each other up as a kind of, oh-refuge.” She tensed, regretting she’d used the word.
“A friend of Billy’s saw them together once in Chris’s VW,” I said, “though the friend didn’t know at the time it was Chris, And Chris’s first name and number were written on Billy’s phone book. That’s what led me here.”
“I know,” she said, looking worried. “That’s where the police got it.”
“They’ve been here?”
“Last week. Chris wasn’t here. I said she was on a business trip. We own Here ‘n’ There ‘n’
Everywhere Travel. I told them she was in Mexico setting up Christmas tours.”
“They could check on that with Mexican immigration.” She winced. “I’ll try to find out if they have. Chris is with Billy, isn’t she?”
She said nothing.
I said, “Are they in Albany?”
She sat motionless, barely breathing. The apprehension in her dark eyes made Timmy uncomfortable. He picked up a copy of Travel and Leisure from an end table, peered at the cover, then set it down again. Finally she said, “I think you’d better speak with Chris.”
“I’d like to.”
“But what’s your interest in this? Your connection. You said you wanted to help Billy. Why?
Chris will want to know.”
“His parents hired me to locate him. But my interest goes beyond that. Billy has been charged with murder, and I think he’s probably innocent. Also, Billy is someone whose difficulties in life are ones for which I hold a special sympathy.”
She looked at me, then at Timmy, then back at me. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but-are you gay?”
I glanced at Timmy and caught him looking at me sappily. I said, “Yes, Timmy and I are lovers.”
He started to move toward me, and I thought, Oh Christ, but he swung around and just shifted position in his chair.
Margarita Mayes caught this and smiled. Timmy said, “He’s very straitlaced.”
“Good,” she said. “So am I. I think I’d better have Chris get in touch with you. She’ll call you.
Why don’t you give me your number again.”
I handed her my business card. “Please have her call as soon as she can. There’s a certain urgency in all this, as you can imagine. Have Chris and Billy been friends for a long time?”
“Oh, yes. Ages.”
“College?”
“No. I mean, they met around that time. But at another place.”
“A mental institution?”
She blanched. Timmy stiffened and gave me an indignant look.
“You’d better talk to Chris,” Margarita Mayes said. She stood up. “I don’t know what she wants you to know and what she doesn’t want you to know.” She looked put out and resentful at having been left with a lot of useless, incomplete instructions. “I’ll ask her to call you, and then you two can work it out. I don’t even know if Chris would want me to be talking to you like this.”
“If I could see her, it would be easier.”
“She’ll call you.” She moved toward the open door. “Or I’ll call you.” She was panicking. I’d pushed too hard.
I said, “Impress on her the fact that if Billy is going to come through this, he’ll need a skilled, full-time friend working on his behalf-to clear him, and to find out who the real killer is. The police are harried, overworked, underpaid, generally not too smart, and they can’t be relied on to do that. I can be. But I’m going to need Billy’s help, and first Chris’s.”
She nodded, played with the cowl on her pretty sweater.
“All right. Thank you. We’ll be in touch soon.” She walked quickly to the front door, and we followed.
“Sorry again about the rude phone call,” I said. “It was just a dumb misunderstanding on my part.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I was mixed up, too. I’m half-afraid to pick up the phone these days. I’ve been getting crank calls since yesterday morning, so I’ve been uptight about the phone ringing.”
“You have?”
“Someone calls and then just listens, doesn’t say anything. I can hear the person breathing. But it’ll stop soon, I’m sure. You’d better go now. Chris will be in touch.”
I said, “Do you have a burglar alarm in this house?”
“Yes, as a matter fact we do. Chris set it off accidentally once, and it makes a horrible racket.
Why do you ask that?”
“Well, it’s just that-that’s an MO burglars sometimes use. They’ll call to see if you’re home, and if you’re not home, they may try to bust in and clean you out before you get back. No one’s tried to break in recently, though, right?”
“No. But of course I’ve been home every night.”
“Right. And you’re sure the alarm is working?”
“Yes, that little red light by the door there goes on when it’s activated. I set it every night.”
“Good idea.”
“I like your Ken Edwards Tonala,” Timmy said. “I can see why you wouldn’t want those stolen.
There are some lovely things here.”
“Yes,” she said, “It’s not the Ken Edwards stuff, though, it’s Armando Galvan.”
“Oh. Right. Did you bring them back from Mexico yourself?”
“Yes. We did. Good night now. Chris will be calling you soon, okay?”
The cold wind was rushing in the open door.
We drove down Lancaster, then swung right on Dove. “What was that ‘mental institution’ crap? I thought you’d lost her with that one.”
“I guessed. Blount’s difficult, painful secret. I knew he’d been locked up and hated it, but where? He’d
told Huey Green-Brownlee-that it hadn’t been jail or reform school. Which wouldn’t have been the Blount family’s style, anyway. A little nuttiness, though, would not have been out of character among the Blounts. And Margarita didn’t deny it. She seemed to confirm it.”
“Or maybe he’d been locked in a room a lot as a kid or something. That would have left scars.”
“No. I’ve hit on something else. For what it’s worth.”
“Is all this necessary? All this probing around in Blount’s psyche and his past? It seems like there should be an easier way. It’s not pleasant.”
“I don’t know. I’m finding out what I can. Then I’ll see where it points. A murder charge is not pleasant. Nor a murder.”
We turned onto Madison. Timmy said, “Maybe it points to Mexico.”
“Unlikely. He could get into the country easily enough with just a voter’s card or some other proof of citizenship. But there’d be a record of his entry, and I think he’d have thought of that.
My guess is, he’s in this country. Wherever.”
“If Blount was in a mental institution, I wonder what particular variety of mental problem he had?”
“I was wondering that, too.”
“Margarita was showing the strain of it all. I felt bad for her. And the crazy phone calls can’t be making it easier.”
“Yeah, everybody seems to be getting them these days. Somebody called Blount’s apartment while I was there Friday evening and hung up after a few seconds, and Huey Brownlee got two of the same kind of calls several hours before somebody came through his window with a knife early Saturday morning.”
“So-it’s the full moon. Or something.”
“Yeah. Or something.”
8
On Monday morning I went to the office and checked my service-no calls-and my mail-no check from my “check is in the mail” former client. I made an appointment to meet the Blounts at one, then phoned Margarita Mayes to find out if she’d had a safe, uneventful night. Irritated, she told me she had, and that Chris would be in touch. I explained that patience was not one of my two or three virtues, rung off, then drove down to police headquarters on Arch Street in the Old South End.
Division Two headquarters looked like an Edward Hopper painting of an American police station in the twenties, plain and solemn in the sunlight, with tall windows set in a heavy brick facade and a sign hanging out over the street corner that said POLICE. It sat back to back with and was connected to the newer Albany Police Court building on lower Morton, presumably to facilitate the speedy dispensation of justice or its South End equivalent.
I was directed to a second-floor office, where I found Detective Sergeant Ned Bowman typing out forms on an old Smith-Corona. He had on a black sport coat and brown slacks, and his face, which had the usual human features placed here and there on it, was roughly the color of the institutional green walls around him.
Bowman lost no time in showing me his winning personality. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you,” he said after I’d introduced myself. “You’re the pouf.”
“What ever happened to ‘pervert’?” I said. “I always liked that one better. It had a nice lubricious ring to it. ‘Faggot,’ too, I was comfortable with. The word had a defiant edge that I liked. ‘Fairy’ wasn’t bad-it made us seem weak, which was misleading, but also a bit magical, which was wrong, too, but still okay. ‘Pouf,’ on the other hand, I never went for. It made us sound as if we were about to disappear. Which we aren’t.”
“Don’t count on it,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Billy Blount.”
“So do I. He killed a man.”
“Maybe not. There are other possibilities.”
“Sit down.”
I did.
“Who hired you? Who thinks I’m not capable of delivering Blount?”
“His parents. They thought I’d have access to places and people you wouldn’t.”
“They would be wrong. I know quite a few of your people.”
“Hustlers, drag queens, and bar owners. Your gay horizons are limited.”
“You mean there are more of you? I’ll be goddamned.”
“Don’t you read banners? We are everywhere.”
“Not here. Not yet.”
“Don’t count on it.”
He leaned back in his swivel chair and peered at me. “So. You’ve got Blount waiting outside in a taxi. Found him under your bed. Or in it.”
“He’s not in Albany. I’m reasonably certain.”
“And where would you be reasonably certain he is?”
“I don’t know yet. I want to deal.”
“I won’t need that. But talk to me.”
I said, “I’ll bring him in, and then you and the DA go easy on him until I locate the guilty party.
Just don’t rush it.”
The lumps and openings on his face rearranged themselves randomly. A feeble smile. “There seems to be this opinion rampant in certain quarters that Billy Blount is nothing worse than a wayward lad who could stand a good talking to. Get sent to his room with no supper.”
“The DA?”
“My own opinion is that he’s a fucking screwball who stabbed a man to death. I’ve got evidence, and it’s going to court. If, after he’s found guilty, somebody wants to toodle Blount on out to Attica in a limousine with a full bar, I won’t object. Just so the little creep gets locked away from society for the rest of his natural life. That’s my opinion. That’s my intention.”
“Your evidence is circumstantial. Why do you call him a screwball?”
“He’s taken a human life. Even the life of a queer has worth in God’s eyes. See? I’m a liberal.”
“I hope you’ll come and speak at the next Gay Alliance meeting. You can increase the number of your already-countless gay friends. What evidence have you got that Jay Tarbell won’t have a jury guffawing over? Blount was seen leaving Trucky’s with Kleckner a few hours before it happened. That’s it. Anything could have happened in that time.”
“We’ve got this.” He opened a drawer and held up a reel of tape. ‘“He’s dead-I think Steve is dead.’ It’s Blount’s voice.”
“Who identified it?”
“The Blounts, Mister and missus.”
“Swell, good for them. So many people don’t want to get involved these days.”
“And when we have Blount, we’ll get a voice print and nail it down.”
“The newspapers say you have the weapon. Were there prints?”
“There were.”
“Blount’s?”
He frowned, looked at his reel of tape.
“Ah. So. Whose were they?”
“We don’t know.” He put the tape back in the drawer, slammed it shut. “They’re not on record.”
“Diabolical devil, that Blount. He wore somebody else’s hands that night.”
“What the fuck. He held the knife in a towel, in a handkerchief. Who knows.”
“That sounds awkward. Maybe he brought his mittens along.”
“Screw you, faggot. Whoops-pardon if I got you hot.”
Oi. “And the doorknob. When you got your picture in the paper, you were pointing at Kleckner’s doorknob. A meaningless photogenic gesture, right?”
He laughed.
“You’ve got no case,” I said. “And sooner or later you’re going to have to admit it. Better now than when Jay Tarbell goes to work on you in Judge Feeney’s courtroom. Also, there’s the matter of another psycho out there who could kill again. Why wait?”
He sat for a moment looking thoughtful and a little bewildered. Then: “Tarbell won’t be a problem. Not much, anyway. He’s already been talking to the DA about a deal. That’s not Jay’s style, and I don’t get it. Though if Jay assumes his client’s guilty, who am I to argue?”
The fine hand of the deranged Blounts again. I said, “What sort of deal?”
“Put him in a psycho ward instead of the slammer. I get the impression Feeney’s in on it. My guess is, the
y’ve already got some country club all picked out. Personally, I won’t go for it. Not that my opinion’s been asked.”
An idea came to me that froze my innards. I didn’t say it out loud. Bowman might not have disapproved.
I said, “It’ll be useful to get Billy Blount’s perceptions of these events. That’s what I’m after.”
“We agree on something.”
“You’ve paid a call on Blount’s friend Huey Brownlee. I take it you’re aware somebody came through his window Saturday morning and went after him with a knife.”
“I saw the report. A burglary attempt.”
“It was the second knifing of a gay male in a week’s time. There could be a connection.”
“Sure, and there could be a connection between Watergate and the French and Indian wars.
Relax, Strachey. Those people in that neighborhood slice each other up at the drop of a welfare check. I know. I’ve seen it. This was some junkie after your fag pal’s twelve-hundred-dollar sound system. Believe me.”
“You’re quite the keen social observer, Sergeant.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve also been to see Margarita Mayes.”
“The lez.”
“You found her roommate’s name on Blount’s phone book.”
“Her girl friend. Did we leave that phone book behind in Blount’s apartment? How slovenly.”
“And an eighth of an ounce of grass in the fridge.”
“Blount’s refrigerator was boring. His homicidal proclivities are not. Who let you into that apartment?”
I fed him his line. “The lock fairy.”
“That figures.”
“Is Chris Porterfield in Mexico?”
He looked at me. “I can’t tell you that.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I lied. “Well trade.”
He said, “You go first.”
“All right. The morning of the killing, Blount borrowed money from someone for plane fare.”
“How much?”
“A good bit.”
“Who from?”
“I’ll hold that for a while.”
“Don’t. You’ll be committing a felony.”
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