"Hard to say," I lied, having a good idea of what was going to happen. Which was too bad, because McWhirter's notion of a national coming-out day as the first event of a week-long gay national strike seemed to me a wonderful piece of whimsy-which, if it ever somehow actually happened, could make a real difference in the way American homosexuals were thought of and treated.
McWhirter, I'd read in the gay papers, envisioned gay air traffic controllers, executives, busboys, priests, construction workers, doctors, data analysts, White House staffers, Congressmen, newsboys, waitresses, housewives, firemen, FBI agents-the whole lot of us suddenly declaring ourselves and walking off our jobs and letting the straight majority try to keep the country running on their own for a week. It was a bold, wacky, irresistible idea.
But a lot of people were resisting the GNS anyway. The big national gay organizations estimated
— correctly, I guessed-that too few people would participate and the thing would end up an embarrassment to the movement. This was also a self-fulfilling prophecy: McWhirter was receiving no financial support from the big outfits. His waspish personality was said to be putting off a number of would-be supporters too. Another good idea done in by its originator's poor social skills.
The gay press was covering McWhirter's campaign sporadically and offering wistful and qualifiedly encouraging editorials. Notice by the straight press had been even more fitful, and the tone of the few stories printed or broadcast had ranged from the tittering to the maliciously bug-eyed.
Albany would not, I thought, be the place where the GNS campaign took off. Of the sixteen people likely to show up at the Gay Community Center that night to hear McWhirter's plea for support, three would tiptoe upstairs midway in the presentation and play Monopoly. Of the six who would sign on at the end of McWhirter's description of how we would shut the country 12 down for a week, three would be full-time recipients of public assistance. The outlook in Albany was not promising.
"Well," Greco said, putting the best face on it, "even if we don't do terribly well at the center tonight, we'll be leafleting the bars afterwards. I remember when I lived here that on Friday nights the bars are full of state workers. Imagine what it would be like if all the gay people in the South Mall walked out for a week. What a glorious mess that would be!"
"Right. The state bureaucracy would become sluggish and disorganized."
He stopped by the back door of the house and looked at me uncertainly, examined my face, then suddenly shook with bright laughter. "Well," he said, "you know what I mean." He laughed again, and his hand came up and gently brushed my cheek, a gesture as natural and uncomplicated for Greco as a happy child's reaching out spontaneously to touch a sibling. Greco, waiflike and vulnerable, was not a type I usually went for. But on the other hand… Maybe it was the heat.
Inside the big pine-paneled kitchen of the farmhouse, Dot Fisher was slumped against a doorjamb and speaking wearily into a wall phone. One hand pressed the receiver hard against her ear under a short, damp thicket of frizzy gray-black hair, and the other arm rested on the little crockpot of a belly that protruded from her otherwise wiry frame. Wet half-moons stained the sides of the white cotton sleeveless shift she wore, and her long, sun-reddened face, deeply etched with age and the things she knew, was screwed up now in a grimace of barely controlled frustration, and gleamed with sweat. She forced a distracted smile in our direction and waggled a finger urgently at the refrigerator.
Greco and I helped ourselves to the iced mint tea and sat at a cherrywood table by the window overlooking the farm pond while Dot finished up her conversation. "Well, not at all. Thank you for your time," she told whoever was at the other end of the line-a reporter, it sounded like and then collapsed in a chair across from us, where she began to fan her face with a Burpee seed catalog.
"Oh, what a day this has been!" she croaked. "And this heat! Good heavens, the least these awful people could have done was wait until October to… to do whatever they're trying to do to us.
Speaking of which- I suppose you're Donald Strachey, aren't you? Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot from Millpond." Her look was not friendly.
"Yes, ma'am. We met last year around this time. Under similarly depressing circumstances."
"Mm-hmm." She examined me coolly. "Depressing is certainly the word for it. And confusing," she added pointedly.
"I really think Don is going to be helpful," Greco put in, grinning a little zanily. "He cares a lot about you, Dot, and he can work twenty-four hours a day to find out what's going on and put a stop to it. I mean, you know, the police will go through the motions and all, but to have an experienced private investigator on your side, even if he's employed by- Well, it can't hurt, can it? If you're going to stay here and not give in-"
"What do you mean, if I'm going to stay and not give in?"
Greco shrugged, grinned tentatively. "Naturally I meant since you're not going to give in."
"You'd better mean it."
I said, "I'm glad to see how determined you are, Mrs. Fisher. Most people in your position would have locked up the house and booked passage on a three-month cruise through the Norwegian fjords. Or sold out to Millpond and headed for Fort Lauderdale. And I know you know how formidable an outfit Millpond can be. Treacherous even. You've got lot of guts."
"You really needn't explain the obvious to me, young man," she said evenly. "And don't waste 13 your breath trying to flatter me either." Her brown eyes had softened, though, and she looked as if something had suddenly struck her funny and she was trying hard not to smile. "And I might add, you'd better not let Edith hear you say that word, Mr. Strachey-"
"Don."
"Well, Don," she said, "however brief your visit on Moon Road might turn out to be, you're going to have to remember that Edith cannot stand that word."
"Which word? Fjords? Fort Lauderdale?"
"Oh, no!" She found a way to laugh now, shakily, despite herself. "No, no. Peter, you say it."
"Guts," Greco whispered. "Edith hates the word 'guts.' She also, unfortunately, can't stand the word 'rot.'"
"One time a whole lot of years ago," Dot said, looking relieved to be distracted for the moment,
"Edie and I were at a teachers' convention in Buffalo, and I mentioned during dinner that I thought the wine tasted like rotgut. Well, Edie just stood right up and marched out of the room!
Oh what a brouhaha that was between us. I haven't said either word in front of her since that evening, and that's been twenty years ago if it's a day."
Greco and I laughed, but Dot's mood had shifted abruptly back, and she was watching me levelly again, somberly. "Now then," she said. "Let's do get to the point of all this, Mr. Strachey-Don.
You're not exactly in my home on a social call, are you? Crane Trefusis phoned earlier and told Peter that he was sending you over to help us out. That struck me as extremely peculiar. Is that correct? That you are working for Millpond?"
"It is. On this case, yes."
"Mm-hmm. Well. You know, I'll bet, just what my opinion of Crane Trefusis is, don't you? That he's a… a crock of rotgut." She shot a quick look down the hallway again.
"He mentioned it. Or words to that effect."
"However," she went on, watching me even more closely now, "I called up a mutual friend of yours and mine this afternoon, Lew Morton, and Lew told me emphatically that I could trust you.
He said even if you were being paid by Millpond you'd be a good man to have helping us out, and that you would know what you were doing. I didn't like the sound of that, but I trust Lew's judgment about people. So, Mister-Private-Eye-with-the Morals-of-Rhett-Butler-and the mustache-tell me then. Do you know what you're doing?"
I said, "No."
Greco laughed and Dot looked startled.
"All right then," she said, reassured slightly by Greco's good humor. "Let me put it this way. Do you plan to figure out what you're doing?"
"That's the plan," I said.
"And you're on our side in this great war w
ith Millpond?"
"Absolutely. Trefusis is paying me to catch the vandals. We can both imagine what his motives are in hiring me instead of someone else, but forget that. I'll just do the job, and after that I bow out."
She considered this carefully for a long moment, then said, "And you understand that I am not selling this house under any circumstances?" Her face was set now, her dark eyes bright with emotion.
I said, "That's clear by now."
"Oh, all right then." She sighed, the apprehension about me fading but the fear still in her eyes.
"In fact, thank you. Yes, thank you very much. I'm a tough old bird, any of my former students will tell you quick enough. Yes, I've always been a very strong person. But I'm frightened. Today 14
I'm just scared to death. And I just want you to… I just hope you can help get us out of this… this phantasmagoria!"
"That's what I want to do."
"It has not been pleasant. Oh, no, not pleasant. First today it was those asinine words on the barn.
And then this infernal nonsense arrived."
She picked up the Burpee seed catalog she'd used as a fan, slid an envelope from between the pages, and handed it to me. I opened it, lifted out the single sheet of paper by a corner, flipped it open, and read: "You're next. You got three days. Saturday you die!"
It was hard to tell whether the printing had been done by the same hand responsible for the carriage house graffiti, which had been hurriedly and sloppily spray-painted. There were similarities in the way the Y's and G's slanted, but an expert would come up with a more reliable opinion than mine. Maybe the police would provide a graphologist and fingerprint person. I knew they did that sometimes.
I asked Dot to describe one more time the events of the past eighteen hours. She groaned, decided she'd better have a Schlitz, brought me and Greco each a can too, then sped through it.
Dot and Edith had gone to bed at eleven-thirty the night before, watched Nightline, then slept soundly with the air conditioner running. They were not awakened by any sounds during the night. At seven in the morning Dot went out to pick up the Times Union from the roadside box and saw the graffiti. She informed Edith, who promptly went back to bed with a headache. Dot phoned the police, who arrived around eight-thirty.
At eight-fifty the two patrolmen departed, having expressed sympathy and stated that a police detective would arrive later in the morning. None had. At nine-forty-five, Dot, frustrated and
"hopping mad," phoned Crane Trefusis and told him what she thought of "his cruel prank."
Trefusis denied all. He sent a PR lackey out to the house to recoil in horror and further plead Millpond's innocence, and a photographer to record the crime on film. These were the pictures I'd seen.
McWhirter and Greco arrived from New York City around eleven in their car, the old green Fiat I'd seen in the driveway alongside Dot's Ford Fiesta. McWhirter went straight for the phone book and began calling newspapers and radio and TV stations. A Millpond paint crew showed up at noon. Dot would have let them do the job, but McWhirter explained that none of the television people had arrived yet-"You get more air time with a good visual," he correctly pointed out-so the Millpond crew was sent away.
Trefusis called back in the early afternoon-probably just after he'd phoned me-and told Peter I might be showing up to help out. Dot refused to speak with Trefusis. At three, the threatening letter was discovered in the mailbox. Dot phoned the Albany Police Department once again and was promised assistance. As yet, none was forthcoming. A television news crew showed up an hour or so later, and soon after that I arrived.
"Fenton wasn't too happy to see Don," Peter told Dot. "He's convinced Don must be a spy or something for Millpond. Part of the pressure they're putting on you."
"That's understandable," I said. "Trefusis is one of Albany's most accomplished sneaks. I would have been just as suspicious of me myself."
"Fenton heard all about that Crane Trefusis from me," Dot said, getting the same nauseated look on her face that Trefusis's name tended to inspire in a lot of people, as if a dog under the table had silently farted. "Someday I'll tell you stories about that man that will just curl your hair!"
I looked over at Greco's curly hair and wondered if he'd already heard them. For the second time in an hour I wanted to reach over and take his head very carefully in my hands.
A door opened somewhere in the front reaches of the house, and a warbly nasal voice, like a flute with a piece of straw stuck in it, wafted down the hallway. "Dor-o-thy? Are you back there, Doro-thy?"
"Yes, we're back here, hon. In the kitchen."
A short plump woman in a floral print dress ambled into the room. She had an abstracted, vaguely wounded look, as if preoccupied with a deep pain that had begun a long time ago, or maybe her feet hurt. Her prominent jaw was set like a pink Maginot Line, and she had snow white hair done in a beauty parlor wave. She smelled of lilac water, face powder, and old bureau drawers. Through white plastic-framed glasses, her cool blue eyes gave me a weary baleful look. I was another sign of the trouble.
"Edith, this is Mr. Strachey," Dot said loudly. "He's a detective."
Edith squinted at me, looking lost, as I stood up.
"He's a detective, Edie. A detective-Donald Strachey."
"H. P. Lovecraft? Why, I thought he was dead!"
"Strachey. Donald Strachey, Edie. A detective who's going to catch the people who wrote on the barn!"
"Yes, yes, someone wrote on the barn, you already told me about that, Dorothy. I know all about that. Has anyone watered the peonies, Dorothy? This weather… my word!"
"Fenton and Peter watered them a little while ago, hon."
"The petunias in the window box look about ready to expire. And, my stars, I know just how they feel. Are you a gardener, Archie?"
She seemed to be addressing me. I said, "No, I'm not, Mrs. Stout. When I was a boy in New Jersey I once caused a single onion to sprout for my Cub Scout agrarian badge, but that's about the extent of it."
"We tried brussels sprouts too one year," Edith said sadly. "But the coons filched them."
"Oh. Sorry."
Something crossed her mind and, suddenly alert, she gave me the fish-eye. "I suppose you're one of Dorothy's gay-lib friends. Is that it? March up and down the street, make a commotion, get us all into this trouble?"
"I guess I am," I said. "But I don't think I'll march today, Mrs. Stout. Not in this weather."
"That is not what I meant," she said, glaring, "and you know it." She sniffed and gave Dot a why-do-you-do-this-to-me look. "I guess I'll just wander out and rest my feet by the pond for a spell. You young people enjoy yourselves. Are you coming out, Dorothy?"
"After a bit, hon. When it cools down a bit we can go for a stroll. And I think I'll take a quick dip in the pond later."
"Oh, that would be lovely," Edith said, forgetting the trouble again. "I'll fix some cucumber sandwiches and lemonade. This weather! My land, when will we get some relief!"
When Edith had gone, Dot smiled weakly. "Edie's hearing isn't what it once was. I guess you could tell. And, yes, she's fretful too, and forgetful and… every once in a while, thank the Lord, Edith is cheery and sweet and sharp as a tack. Just the way she used to be. But, oh dear, the years certainly are taking their toll. Not that that isn't to be expected. Edith's seven years older than I am, Don, did you know that? Edie will be seventy-six next month."
I wanted to say she didn't seem it, but she did. Older, in fact. Edith appeared sturdy enough, her health generally sound. But her mind was on its way out, well ahead of the rest of her. I wondered who this would happen to first-Timmy or me?
The telephone rang, and Dot sprang up to answer it. She was as light on her feet as Edith was heavy, as alert as Edith was vague and uncertain.
As Dot listened to the caller, I watched the color drain from her face. Abruptly, she slammed the receiver down. The blood returned to her cheeks and neck in a rush as she looked at me, stricken, and said, "Now they
're phoning us with their horrible threats! Now this is the absolute limit!" end user
4
Tomorrow you die! was what the voice on the phone had said in a harsh whisper. Dot wasn't certain whether it had been a man or a woman speaking.
I summoned McWhirter and Greco, who had just finished up the paint-over job.
"I'm calling the police again," McWhirter said, livid, and grabbed up the phone.
I said, "Good idea."
Dot sat down and shakily drank from her can of beer. While McWhirter explained to the police desk officer how he was an unwitting agent of heterosexist oppression, I asked Dot about the other families who lived on Moon Road, the ones on Crane Trefusis's list of suspects.
"I do feel sorry for them," she said, trying hard to smile and focus on something other than her fear. "We don't see much of one another, of course, but both the Deems and Wilsons seem like awfully nice people-or at least Kay Wilson does-and I do wish there was some way for them to get their money without my having to sell out to those thieves from Millpond."
She sipped at the beer, glanced once at the phone, which suddenly had become a menacing object for her, then made herself go on.
"Kay Wilson used to come up and draw water from our spring and we'd chat, but she hasn't been by since last month, when I told her we definitely weren't going to sell. And Joey Deem doesn't come by to mow the lawn anymore. It's upsetting. And I feel terribly guilty sometimes, but… really. This is my home. I suppose I could pick up and start over. But after thirty-eight years in one place… well, it's hard to tell where this house ends and I begin. It would be like cutting off an arm and a leg.
"And Edith! Oh, my. She's been with me since her Bert died in sixty-eight, and what a trial it would be for her to pull up stakes. A trial for both of us. I'd probably try to drag her off to Laguna Beach or P-town, or some other reservation for old dykes, and, oh, Lord, she'd just be fit to be tied! In case you didn't notice," she added with a little laugh, "Edith's a conservative and I'm a liberal."
On the other hand,death ds-2 Page 3
