One Dead Drag Queen

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  “Gloria was screened somewhat. I wasn’t. I landed on my head and shoulder. I had a concussion. I was in a hospital myself until this morning.”

  “Gloria better get herself a lawyer,” I said. “She’s going to need one.”

  “I’m not liable. I didn’t plant the bomb.”

  “You’d both better come forward,” I said.

  “Did the caller mention anything that would help the police?” Scott asked.

  “All I can say is that it was a male. Not a kid, but that’s all I know.”

  We left them without learning anything helpful in finding out who did the bombing.

  On the way to the car Scott asked, “You really think they could arrest Gloria Dellios?”

  “Five minutes could have saved a lot of lives.”

  In the car McCutcheon said, “There was just a special bulletin on the radio. Braxton Thornburg died in the explosion.”

  “The Internet rumor was true?” I asked.

  “Must have been.”

  Scott asked, “What was he doing in Chicago?”

  “Hiding in those old buildings across the alley from the clinic. You can talk about being a survivalist in the wilderness, but when it comes right down to it, getting swallowed up in the middle of a large city is probably more effective. The report said he’d cut his hair short and dyed it blond. He no longer had a beard and had lost fifty pounds.”

  “So the conspiracy theorists are right again,” Scott said. “There really was a terrorist cell of sorts nearby.”

  “It was only one guy,” McCutcheon said.

  “Do they think he did the bombing?” I asked.

  “The news report didn’t say. They certainly must be concentrating on him.”

  We stopped to see Alan Redpath. His bed was surrounded with cheery balloons and smiling stuffed animals. The poor kid was in the same position we’d seen him last. The machines showed life. I saw the tiny chest rise and fall. Alvana’s brother nodded and smiled at us. The doctors still weren’t sure if Alan would live. I stepped next to the bed. I touched the little boy’s hair and patted his face. If I believed in prayer, now was when I would utter one.

  24

  In the elevator at the penthouse I said, “I’m going to call all of our sources. We should get all of them together.”

  “Won’t that piss some of them off?” Scott asked.

  “If we got everybody together, maybe we could coordinate efforts. If we pooled information, we might get somewhere or at least get nowhere a lot faster. It would save a lot of driving around aimlessly.”

  “And if we piss some of them off, then we won’t get any help. Some of these people agreed to help us if we were the only ones who know about it.”

  I said, “I think the only one who might be chancy is the detective, Pulver. The rest of them are journalists. I think we should call Borini and Faslo as well. If we get the whole aggregation together, maybe we’ll get something.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’m willing to listen to other suggestions.”

  “I’m willing to listen to all kinds of suggestions, I just don’t happen to think this is a very good one.”

  “So stay away from the meeting.”

  “If they even all decide to show up.”

  “We could just not tell any of them we were inviting the others.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? Do you think this is making sense?”

  Inside the penthouse Scott paced the living room. He seemed unable to sit down. I stood with my back against the unlit fireplace and waited. When he’s restless, it means he wants to talk. I guessed calling our sources wasn’t a great idea, but it was all I had at the moment.

  Scott abruptly stopped moving and said, “I am such a screwup. Everything I did before you woke up has been a disaster. I lost my cool, that was the problem. If I’d been as calm as I should have been, I’d have thought longer.”

  “Aren’t you being a little tough on yourself? At least you tried to do something. Not like Gloria Dellios when she got the bomb threat.”

  He exploded, “How can you get a bomb threat and not evacuate the building? That is madness. How can anybody be involved in that type of thing? And Myrtle Mae thinking he knew something. He probably didn’t. It was probably another one of his hysterical overreactions to a misinterpretation of data. Maybe it killed him. And now you want to call all our sources together. Have you thought about the implications of that? We’ve barely discussed it.”

  “What’s to discuss?”

  “You need to put more thought into what you do. Like with the clinic. You’re lucky your name wasn’t on one of those Internet lists of people working at such places.”

  “I was just a volunteer. I was never paid. No one really knew.”

  “What difference does that make? It was dangerous. What kind of friend asks you to come to work at such a dangerous place?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Look what’s happened all because you can’t pass up the chance to make a statement or help a cause. Somebody’s got a grievance, you’re there with a picket sign. I don’t care about your goddamn causes.”

  “Aren’t you the famous openly gay baseball player, the focal point of a major cause?”

  “It’s not the same. That’s personal and directly effects our well-being. With you, everything that comes along, you’re committed to.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Too much, too often. And look where it’s put you.”

  “The victims are responsible for being attacked? I don’t think so. And you don’t believe that either. You’ve always supported my working in causes before.”

  “It hasn’t gotten you nearly killed.”

  “You’re really angry.”

  “Don’t do that psychobabble crap to me. I don’t need my feelings named, repeated, or analyzed. I know I’m totally pissed.”

  It drives me nuts when something he’s been holding back turns into an explosion. I wish he could tell me before he erupts. I know it is hard to just be open. Nevertheless, I was irritated. “Why couldn’t you talk about this earlier?”

  “Right, in the hospital? You’d just woken up from being unconscious. I’m not sure I could have articulated what I was worried about or angry about. How come you’re so goddamn sure if everyone just told the truth everything would be fine? Nobody, including you, indulges in instant truth every time a thought or a feeling strikes them. I was petrified of losing you.”

  “I’ve been fine for several days.”

  “Don’t you pull that sanctimonious crap with me.”

  “You get to determine what my reactions are?”

  “That’s not what I meant. You know it takes me time to articulate my feelings. I’m doing my best. Right now I’m saying I’m scared. This whole situation is out of control. We run from one useless interview to another. I don’t think we should take any more risks. I think we should just drop this.”

  “You think you’re the only one allowed to take risks? We don’t ask each other for permission.”

  “But we discuss things. You don’t just call up every contact in an investigation and call them here. You’ve got to think about it. Plan it.”

  “How is calling them all here that awful? How could that increase the danger?”

  “If one of them’s a killer, it could be lethal.”

  “They don’t run around toting bombs. And any one of them could have pulled a gun and shot both of us at some point in the last few days. Friends of mine died in that explosion. Alvana’s child is still not out of danger.”

  “Look, I’m too upset to discuss this more right now. If I keep talking, I’ll just want to inflict hurt. I don’t want to do that. I want to still talk about all this, but I need to take a break. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  I stood silently in front of the windows. He grabbed his jacket and walked out. We take breaks when we get to an impasse in arguments. We both have big egos and we’ve learned we nee
d to step back and get perspective.

  I brooded as I watched the sunlight on the buildings below. Finding out who the bomber was seemed more unlikely than ever. Discovering who’d been threatening us seemed only slightly more possible. Thinking about it, I decided my idea of setting ourselves out as bait should be tried. When I’d suggested it to Pulver, I’d gotten shot down. I wanted to put it into operation.

  After about twenty minutes, I began to get restless. Scott was outside without his precious guard. I thought I’d at least check the perimeter of the building. When I got to the ground floor, Scott was nowhere in sight. I hung around by the front door for several minutes. I went back upstairs to call McCutcheon. Scott had just phoned in from the western end of Navy Pier, a mile or so from our building. Instead of calling, I figured I’d go meet him. I decided not to try the car. With the often snarled traffic in the area, it would be quicker to walk.

  I hurried to find him. I watched as carefully as I could for anyone following me. I assumed Scott had used the path we would normally take when we strolled along the lake. I saw nothing suspicious. I crossed under Lake Shore Drive through the underpass at the northeast corner of the 540 North Lake Shore Drive building.

  Two men pushing a baby stroller were my only companions as I hustled through the underpass. I suspected I wasn’t taking much of a chance, but my paranoia was beginning to get the best of me.

  I emerged in Olive Park. People were out on a bright and pleasant October afternoon. The Ferris wheel in the middle of the pier dominated the view in that direction. Lake Point Towers loomed to my right. I hastened through the park. As I was about to cross the street from the park to the pier itself, I thought I saw Morty Hamilton, Scott’s catcher from the team. He was sitting on a bench near the entrance to the pier. He was staring fixedly at the entrance on the south side of the pier. I looked where he was watching. Scott was leaning against the iron fence gazing toward the east.

  I began to hurry toward them, but just then Scott moved away from the gate and began walking toward the east end of the pier. Morty waited a few seconds and began to follow him. He made no move to catch up with Scott. He didn’t look back. He moved cautiously as if to avoid being seen.

  Suspicion was quickly replaced by certainty. I was furious. I slowed down. As long as no immediate danger threatened, I would wait and watch what the son of a bitch did. Morty had been with the team for little more than a year and a half. Scott had enjoyed hanging around with him on the road. I’d never had cause to think of him as anything but a benign goof. Now, of course, the answer seemed obvious. Here was a link to those who had been threatening Scott.

  I lurked twenty-five yards behind Morty. It wasn’t hard to keep hidden. He seldom looked around, and sufficiently large crowds of people were around to make quick dashes to cover unnecessary.

  We passed several of the cruise ships that took short excursions out onto the lake. One of them gave a loud blast on its horn and pulled away as I moved by.

  When Scott got to the end of the pier, he stood there with his head down. The pleasant weather and scenery seemed to hold little interest for him. He looked like a depressed little kid. He shook his head and turned back.

  Morty eased himself into a small declivity in the side of the auditorium building that sits at the end of the pier. His only way back was past me. At that moment Scott called out. I looked at him. He’d spotted me. He hurried forward. Morty tried to melt himself into the brick of the building. I rushed toward where he was. Seeing my direction wasn’t toward him, Scott hesitated. I pointed. Morty’s head swiveled from one to the other of us. His face turned pale.

  Scott and I met in front of Morty. “You came after me,” Scott said to me.

  “I didn’t want the one time you left without a guard to be disastrous. I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.” We hugged briefly, then turned on Morty.

  I said, “He’s been following you.”

  Morty had the grace not to try to lie. “I’m sorry, you guys. I had no choice. I’m sorry. I know it’s been bad, but I did everything I could to make things easier.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Scott asked.

  Morty sat on one of the benches that looked south toward the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. The harbor in between was already half-empty of boats in preparation for the coming winter. The wind blew softly. People barely glanced at us. Scott was in a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. This simple disguise was usually enough to keep him from being recognized. While I had been on some talk shows, he’d been on a million of them and had given far more interviews. The commercials he’d done before he came out had made him almost as familiar a figure as Michael Jordan or Jim Palmer.

  “You guys gotta understand. It’s not my fault.” Morty was short and squat in the old-fashioned tradition of baseball catchers. Sitting on the bench, he looked like a dejected bear. “All I did was follow you and report back. I knew it was just supposed to scare you. They weren’t gonna really hurt you. They told me I was gonna be sent down to the minor leagues. I had to do this. It was the only way I could keep my career going. They promised me a minor league manager’s job. I never even graduated high school. You had everything. I got nothing.”

  “Who told you all this?”

  “A group of the owners decided you were too controversial for baseball. They figured you’d cave under the pressure. They could probably get you out legally, but they didn’t want to look like assholes. They hoped nobody would show up for the games when you pitched. They didn’t count on the crowds, the goodwill you guys developed, and how tough you both were. Getting me as a spy was a perfect setup. Most of the time I knew your schedule. I was just supposed to follow you and report. I felt like a spy in the movies. I also felt lousy.”

  “Which owners?” Scott asked.

  “I wasn’t always sure. Just a few of them, I think. I never met one.”

  “Who’d you work through?”

  “Borini and Faslo.”

  “What!” Scott bunched his fists.

  “They told me they thought you coming to hire them was pretty funny.”

  “I get this week’s ‘stupid’ award. I shouldn’t have hired anybody.”

  “You didn’t know,” I said.

  Morty said, “They have a tap on your phone and a listening device in your living room. That’s why it was so easy to keep track of you guys.”

  It chilled me to realize that our most intimate conversations may have been overheard. My anger increased, but I managed to ask, “How could they have a listening device?”

  “I did it one day when I came over early last season.”

  I said, “You’re responsible for the note in the hospital?”

  He hung his head. “Yeah.”

  “When did you have a chance?” Scott asked.

  “You were talking to a nurse for a few minutes. It only took a couple seconds to put it there.”

  I asked, “Did you or they blow up my truck?”

  “I sure didn’t. They never approved actual physical violence. They never did with me anyway. Maybe a couple of them were hoping somebody would just shoot you. It was more mischief than malice.”

  “Mischief?” I wanted to throttle the blithering dolt. How dare he attempt to minimize what to us had been months of terror? I felt Scott’s hand on my arm. It was an unwelcome calming and soothing gesture. It was also effective. I subsided. I asked Scott, “How can you be so calm? You’ve been betrayed by a friend.”

  “Because I know it’s going to be over.” Scott asked Morty, “Was that you on the street who threatened me at the scene of the explosion?”

  “No. That must have been one of their regular operatives. I had to be ready to go when and where they wanted me. They didn’t use me a lot in the off-season. They called me earlier today. I had to hurry over until one of the regulars could show up. They wouldn’t let me off the hook in the offseason. If I was needed, I had to go. They paid me a lot of money and made a lot of p
romises.”

  Scott asked, “Who tried to run us over on the North Side?”

  “If it was a black Mercedes, it was one of their younger operatives, Lyle, Kyle, something. He gets a kick out of doing mean tricks. I heard him laughing about it. He thought you were funny as you jumped out of the way. I would never have done that.”

  Scott asked, “I’ve been followed all this time and my security people didn’t notice them?”

  “These guys are really good, but I don’t think they meant you any real harm. Nobody was going to shoot you.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “They promised me.” Morty had been talking with his face pointed toward the ground. Now he looked up. Tears formed tiny rivulets on his porcine face. “I’m sorry. Especially about that note in the hospital. I’m really sorry. I had to. I would have been finished in baseball. I swear. You know I’m not that good.”

  “Were you the only one of the team they approached?” Scott asked.

  “No one else ever spoke about it to me. Borini and Faslo never said there was. I had a career and my wife and kids to think about.”

  “What exactly were you supposed to do?” I asked.

  “I was supposed to spy on you, like I was today. My duties were mostly on the team’s road trips. With the explosion and all, it was a natural that I go to the hospital. I wanted to, understand, but they made me bring the note.”

  I asked, “What if you didn’t have a chance to leave the note?”

  “Then I would try something else. God, I feel awful. I feel like such a rat. I’ve never turned on a guy. Never. They put me in such a tough spot. What could I do?”

  “You could have come to me,” Scott said. “I’d have helped.”

  “You couldn’t make me a better player. You couldn’t have saved my career.”

  “Did you have anything to do with the clinic bombing?” I asked.

  “Jesus, God, no!” Morty looked at me in horror. “You don’t think I would do anything like that? Kill all those people? I don’t hate you guys. I for sure don’t care about abortion. I just wanted to play baseball.”