Missing

by Jonathan Valin

  “That’s the way you see it? Like we’re on different stars?”

  “That’s the way I see it,” I said, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all.

  ******

  That was Thursday. On Friday morning, Cindy Dorn was released from the hospital. I met her at the emergency room, drove her back to the little yellow birdhouse in Finneytown, and dropped her at the door. There were already several cars parked in the driveway—friends come to comfort her and mourn over Mason Greenleaf.

  “I’m dreading going in there,” Cindy said, as she stared glumly at the tiny house. “I mean, I know they loved him, too. But I don’t really want to hear their condolences or display my grief. I just want to sit by myself and be sad.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  Cindy reached out and touched my hand. “I’m getting used to you saying that.”

  “Did you want me to keep looking into this thing? We still don’t know where Mason spent the last week.”

  “I’ve thought about it, and I decided that if he’d wanted me to know where he was, he would have told me. If he took that secret with him when he left, that’s the way it should stay.”

  “The cops will probably have a few more questions.”

  Smiling, she said, “I’ll be fine.” Cindy Dorn leaned toward me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Maybe you’ll stop in sometime? I’ve grown sort of fond of you, Harry Stoner.”

  She opened the car door and walked slowly up the walk, past the hawthorn tree, to her door. As I pulled away, another woman, with blond hair and a long face, came out the door and put her arm around Cindy, guiding her inside.

  ******

  The next day, a gray Saturday afternoon, Mason Greenleaf was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery. His death and the funeral were well publicized in the papers. I didn’t go to the graveside or to the wake that was held at Cindy Dorn’s house following the service. But I thought enough of the woman to call her Saturday night. Someone else answered the phone at her house. I could hear the other mourners murmuring softly in the background. When the girl came on the line, I said the usual things. Sorry about her lover, if I could be of any help. I felt stupid saying them, but she seemed pleased that I had called.

  After I hung up, I went to a bar in Northside, close by the house of an old friend, a free-lance writer. I was hoping he’d be at his usual spot at the bar. He wasn’t there, so I drank for a while on my own, listening to the bar talk and nursing a Scotch. I didn’t want to get drunk, but there didn’t seem to be much else to do. It had been that way for so long that I’d stopped thinking about it, stopped admonishing myself. Night came, and if I didn’t have some sort of surveillance job or if none of the small circle of women that I slept with—Jo Riley, Lauren Sharp, and a few others—were free, I drank.

  You get to a certain age, mid-forties, and it comes to you that this is it, that whatever chance it is that you’ve been waiting for, the woman, the money, the peace of mind, has come and gone without you even noticing, like a hand that was dealt while you were away from the table, that somebody else bet and folded for you, that you never got to play. You feel cheated—most of us do. But the truth is that everything that’s necessary happens to everyone. The trick is showing up. Somewhere in some magazine I thumbed through in some outer office, where I sat waiting for a client to call me in, to find whatever necessary thing it was he thought he’d lost, I read that opportunity used to be pictured as a woman rushing past you, with her hair streaming out in front of her face. If you grab her hair as she approaches, you get a good grip. Once she passes by, there is nothing to hold on to.

  That evening I held on to my glass of Scotch. And I didn’t think about Cindy Dorn, whom I liked well enough to reach out for, but whom I already knew I was going to let pass by and regret.

  The next day, Sunday, I slept in with a hangover. Around two o’clock I made my way into the shower. As I was toweling off, the phone rang. I padded out to the bedroom before the answering machine clicked on, and picked up. It was Jack McCain.

  “We got criminalistics on Greenleaf,” he said.

  “It took you long enough.”

  “There were complications,” McCain said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like for one, his family wasn’t crazy about us doing an autopsy. Have you talked to that bunch?”

  “I missed them.”

  “It was like they just wanted it to go away without any fuss. Anyway, we finally got permission from Greenleaf’s brother. Turned out it was hardly worth the effort. Outside of a few contusions on his face, which he probably got from falling down after taking the overdose, there was nothing unusual. Death was caused by barbiturate poisoning, Seconals and booze. It’ll be ruled a suicide by the coroner.”

  “Have you told the girl?” I asked him.

  “I thought maybe you’d want to. Of course, I’ll be happy to answer any questions she might have.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  “Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “By the way, we still have some of his belongings in the property room. Watch, ring. The girl can pick them up anytime she wants. Just tell her to have the duty sergeant buzz me, and I’ll pass her through.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone ever figured out why he ended up in that hotel?”

  “We have him drinking at a bar called Stacie’s down on lower Fifth Street earlier that night. He had some company, according to the two witnesses.”

  “Christ, don’t tell me,” I said, feeling the ghost of Ira Lessing pass through the room.

  “Yeah, they were fags all right. And a pretty noisy bunch. Maybe he had a lovers’ quarrel with one of ‘em. Anyway, he left alone, sometime around eleven-thirty, and that’s the last anyone saw him, before he started stinking up the hotel room.”

  “You didn’t get the names of his drinking buddies, did you?”

  “I guess we could find out. But it’d mean a helluva lot of leg-work, and with the family just wanting the whole thing to go away and the physical being so cut-and-dry, I doubt if the coroner’ll want to open that can of worms. Guys like Greenleaf kill themselves all the time, Harry. They just get tired of being fags.”

  “This guy was bi,” I said.

  “Same difference,” McCain said. “It’s hard to kid yourself into believing you’re half one thing and half another.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, if it’ll make it easier to break this thing to the girl, you can talk to the IOs who did the interviews at Stacie’s. Segal and Taylor, at Six. They can fill you in on the chain of evidence.”

  I jotted down the names Segal and Taylor as I hung up the phone.

  6

  THE DISTRICT Six station was on a Ludlow Avenue hillside just west of the viaduct, a ranch-style building with a hedge in front and a fenced lot to the side. Immediately below the station house, the smoggy industrial flats of Ivorydale stretch north along the Mill Creek. On a boiling hot afternoon like that Sunday, I could smell the soap stink of lye all the way around to the front of the building, where it mixed with magnolia and the taste of hot tar.

  A semicircular counter inside the station house door divided the lobby off from the squad room. I went up to the counter and asked one of the desk sergeants if I could talk to Detectives Segal or Taylor.

  “Tell them Jack McCain gave me their names. It’s about the Mason Greenleaf suicide.”

  The sergeant pointed me to a bench, and I sat there for a time, listening to the beat cops in the squad room taking names and kissing ass: bad boys and honest cits all treated to the same monotone rhetoric, like a class of slow children practicing arithmetic. Eventually a husky man in a cheap blue suit came up to get me. He had a square, tan, heavily seamed face cleft sharply at the chin, and a mane of white hair streaked with the yellow of old blond.

  “I just got the word from Jack McCain that I’m supposed to give you whatever help you need,” he said, smiling so broadly, I could see the wad of chewing gum at the back of his mouth. He held o
ut his right hand. “Nate Segal.”

  “Harry Stoner.”

  As I shook with him, Segal clapped me on the arm with his other hand, pinching the muscle beneath my sport coat like he was chucking a kid under the chin.

  “I hear you used to be a cop, Harry.”

  I shrugged off his hand. “I was with the DA’s office for a couple of years, before I went private.”

  “Yeah?” he said, chewing his gum vigorously. “Is that good money, private?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s go on back to the office where we can cut through some of this static.”

  I followed him down an aisle that ran past the front desk to a back wall lined with doors: Segal opened one with his name on it and ushered me in—this time without laying a hand on me. There was a small bright window at the back of the room, with an air conditioner rattling in it like a card in a bicycle wheel. A desk and long file took up the left-hand wall. The right had a couple of chairs parked against it and several framed commendations with Segal’s name on them.

  “Have a seat,” the man said, settling in behind the desk. Reaching into his mouth, he pulled out the wad of gum and deposited it in a glass ashtray.

  “I quit smoking last year,” he said, wiping his fingers on his pants leg. “The wife kept hounding me about it. First I couldn’t light up in the bedroom, then it was the living room. Before I knew it, I was out on the porch every time I wanted a butt. It got to be such a hassle, I just said fuck it. Now I’m a sugar junkie.” He patted the paunch that gathered above his belt. “Gained twenty-nine pounds, teeth hurt. It’s like they got it set up so whatever you need to make it through the day is going to kill you. You know?”

  “It’s a tough world,” I said, pulling a chair up across from him.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I asked about the money you make. I got two more years to retirement, and then I gotta find something to do. I was thinking security, maybe. You do any of that?”

  I shook my head. “Just PI work.”

  “What’s that, divorce mostly?”

  I didn’t feel like going into it. “About Greenleaf?”

  “Got it right here.” Segal spun in his chair and opened the long file. “I guess Jack already told you that we didn’t come up with a whole lot,” he said, pulling out a folder and scanning it as he turned back to me. “Greenleaf spent a few hours in a bar called Stacie’s, left alone around eleven-thirty, checked into the Washington a little before midnight. And you know the rest.”

  “How’d you place him at the bar?”

  “His car. He left his Saab in Stacie’s lot. After a couple of days the bar owner got tired of seeing it sit there and called us. We hauled it to the impoundment lot on Gest Street, by the way, so somebody ought to pick it up before they start stripping it for parts.”

  “McCain said Greenleaf was seen with some people at Stacie’s.”

  Nate Segal reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a fresh stick of gum. “Yeah, he had company,” he said, peeling the foil from the stick. “A couple of adult white males, according to the bartender and one of the waiters. For what it’s worth, the bartender said he didn’t recognize any of them, including Greenleaf. All he remembered was that the three of them came in together, ordered a lot of booze, and got shit-faced.”

  I thought about the empty bottle of Chivas in Mason’s condo. “Did he give you a description of Greenleaf’s friends?”

  “The older one was your generic middle-aged GWM. Slacks, sports shirt. Gray hair. Maybe six feet, skinny. The other one was short and blond. A good deal younger than Greenleaf and the gray-haired fag. Late twenties, early thirties maybe. He didn’t drink as much as Greenleaf and the older guy.”

  “Jack said the three of them had words at some point?”

  “Yeah. A lot of loud talk between Greenleaf and the gray-haired guy. Nobody at the bar remembered what about—or claimed not to. The younger guy, the blond, supposedly tried to make peace. But Greenleaf got up and left. The other two stayed in the bar for an hour or so. Waiter said the gray-haired guy was fairly upset. Like close-to-tears upset.” Nate Segal shook his head. “Queers, you know?”

  “You didn’t do any follow-up on these two?”

  “Why?” Segal said, folding the fresh stick of gum into his mouth. “Why jerk some guy out of the closet that don’t want to come forward on his own? I mean, this thing was all over the papers and TV, so there was plenty opportunity to be a good citizen.”

  He had a point. “You said Greenleaf left the bar at eleven-thirty and checked into the hotel at midnight. That leaves half an hour unaccounted for, right?”

  “Right,” he said, working the gum.

  “You don’t have any idea where he went?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Any indication that he had been with someone?”

  “No semen on his clothes or corpse,” Segal said. “Nothing but booze and Seconals in his stomach. No credit cards missing from his wallet. Still had money in his pocket when the coroner carried him out of the hotel. Look, the guy was apparently having a bad enough week that he didn’t go to work or tell his friends where he was staying. He goes to a bar with a couple of fags, gets blasted—blood alcohol of one point four—wanders around for a half hour or so brooding about his life, ends up in a cheapo hotel, and swallows a handful of sleeping pills on top of a bottle of booze. Goodnight, Irene.”

  “McCain said there were some bruises on Greenleaf’s face.”

  “Minor contusions. Nothing like a fight, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Segal stopped chewing the gum and stared at me. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “I’m just looking for a reason why. Something I can tell the family.”

  Segal leaned back in his chair. He was tired of answering questions, and I was tired of asking them. “You got to know we can’t tell you why. People get depressed and kill themselves. For the most part, you never know what the final straw was. Obviously this guy Greenleaf had personal problems, emotional problems. And maybe something did happen to him, in that bar or while he was wandering around drunk—something that just screwed him up even more than he already was. But unless the coroner says otherwise, finding out what it was isn’t our business. We determined the cause of death, made sure there was no crime committed. And after that . . . well, people can spend their lives asking themselves why somebody does himself in.”

  The guy was right. Even though he was trying to make less work for himself, he was still right. Absent a note or a clear chain of evidence, no cop can be expected to explain motive in a suicide. “Okay,” I said, getting up from the chair. “I’ll pass it on to the family.”

  “Understand, I’m not trying to be a hardass,” he said, looking relieved that I was leaving. “If the family has questions I can help with, I’ll be happy to talk to them. But when it comes down to it, they’re the ones who are gonna have to figure this thing out.”

  ******

  There was no question in my mind, as I walked out of the station house back into the heat and stink of soap, that Nate Segal and his partner had done a half-assed investigation of Mason Greenleaf’s suicide. They’d dug up just enough detail to fit with the coroner’s verdict, and that’s all they’d done. The fact that Greenleaf was gay, which to your average cop automatically meant deviant, was a large part of it, although suicides in general aren’t top priorities with police. They’re simply too complex, and often too painful and baffling, to linger over. Although Segal and Taylor had done an unusually superficial job, when it came down to it, there wasn’t any doubt that Greenleaf had taken his own life. And that was where the cops and the coroner were content to leave it. Ultimately, I guessed, the family would be content to leave it there, too. There was too much probable ugliness in the details and, for Cindy Dorn, too much betrayal.

  Once I got to the car I drove straight down Ludlow to a Frisch’s on Spring Grove and phoned Cindy from a stand inside the restaurant lobby. It had been several days since I talked to her, a
nd I couldn’t kid myself that it didn’t feel good to hear her voice when she answered the phone, even though she sounded sad and worn. I told her that McCain had called and asked me to relay the results of the investigation.

  “The coroner is going to bring an official finding of suicide in Mason’s death. Outside of that, there isn’t much new. A few details about the bar in which Mason spent that last night. A lot of questions still unanswered. If you don’t feel up to hearing this, it can wait a day or two.”

  “No,” she said, “I’ve wanted to talk to you anyway. If it hadn’t been for the funeral and the aftermath, I would’ve called you this morning.”

  “Should I come out now?”

  “Wait till tonight. Mason’s brother and sister are at the house right now, and I . . . I just don’t want to deal with this while they’re around.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come about nine.”

  “You promise?” she said in a tiny voice.

  “Sure. You think I’m going to flake out on you?”

  “People do that, you know.”

  “I’ll be there. You can count on it.”

  7

  TWILIGHT WAS just descending over Blue Jay Drive, when I pulled into Cindy’s driveway at nine sharp. She was waiting for me on the front stoop, her chin on her knees and her hands wrapped around the legs of her loose white dress. Even in her brown study she was more than pretty. It had been a while since I’d met a woman who made me feel like she did—just to look at.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said, stirring as I came up the walk.

  “And you,” I said, smiling at her.

  She reached out a hand, and I helped her to her feet. “I’ve had Mason’s brother and sister here all day.”

  “How was that?”

  She shrugged. “They’re nice, rich, stupid people who want to feel bad but don’t know how. Neither one of them has an inkling what Mason’s adult life was like. They cut themselves off from him once they learned he was gay, so the only good memories they have are of him as a child. That’s what they talked about, mostly. What a good swimmer he was. How kind to animals and other children. Actually they were just exercising their nostalgia, remembering themselves as kids, trying to work up a little honest grief. It was depressing and a little revolting, too.” She sighed. “I’m probably being unfair. I’ve been feeling disappointed with people anyway, lately.”