Ethics. Had I had them once? Could I again?
I said, "No, thanks. Timmy-my lover-is probably looking for me, so I guess I'll hang around here. I'll be at home later, so call if there's any problem out at Dot's. Otherwise, I'll be out there first thing in the morning."
"I'm glad you're helping us," he said, smiling. "Even if you're on the payroll of the Great Satan."
His eyes shone with their sweet humor, and I wanted again badly to touch him.
"Better not let the Ayatollah Fenton hear you say that," I said. "He still has this crazy idea that just because I'm a minion of Moloch I'm somehow not to be trusted."
"Trust is something you have to earn with Fenton," Greco said. "But once you've got it, you've got it for keeps."
He grinned again, looking as though he were trying to tell me something useful, and wondering if I'd caught on. Then he brushed my cheek with his hand again, the exasperating little shit, and we both went back inside the bar so that he could find McWhirter and get the car keys.
A few minutes later, I watched Greco head back out to the parking lot, and I rejoined McWhirter and the leafleters. They had signed up two men for the GNS at the Green Room, bringing the grand total for the bar tour to six.
By three-fifteen Timmy still had not shown up. By three-thirty I had befriended, in a narrow but specific way, a slender youngish man named Gordon whose black hair was as curly as Greco's, and whose eyes were as dark, though a good bit dimmer, as was the area behind them. At three-forty we pulled into the deserted parking lot of a Washington Avenue institution of higher learning. At three-fifty-one we pulled out again. He asked if I'd mind dropping him off at the Watering Hole, which wouldn't close for another nine minutes, and I did.
"Catch ya later, Ron," he said.
"For sure, Gordon, for sure."
Then I drove home.
The shower wasn't necessary except for purposes of general sanitation and cooling off. I wouldn't even have had to brush my teeth. Or wash both hands. But still I stayed under the cool-tepid spray for a good, cleansing fifteen minutes.
I settled into an easy chair and lit an imaginary cigarette. I wanted a real one and thought about driving over to Price Chopper to pick up a pack; it had been more than four years since I'd been off the killer weed, but what the hell. No, I'd smoke a joint instead, just something to feel the soothing harshness on my throat.
I rummaged around in the freezer, but all the little foil-wrapped packages I opened contained chicken necks. Timmy, the world's only Irish anal-retentive, saving up for a chicken-neck party or some goddamn thing.
A car pulled into the parking lot down below. Zip, back to the easy chair. I opened Swann's Way and sat there frowning toward it, as if I had been absorbed in the book since the second Eisenhower administration, which, intermittently, I had.
His footfall in the corridor. His hair would be mussed, his shirttail out. Cum on his eyebrow.
Anal hickeys.
His key in the lock.
"So, there you are, you elusive devil!" He laid his jacket on the couch and bent to kiss me. "I've been all up and down the avenue since ten-thirty. Everywhere I went I just missed you. You must have left the Green Room about a minute before I got there. Sorry about the screw-up, but my damn radiator sprung a leak. Seems half the cars in Albany overheated today, so I ended up with a rental car for the weekend. How'd it go tonight?"
He was busily climbing out of his Brooks Brothers work clothes, noticing with horror, of course, the jacket he'd just dropped on the couch, and carrying it to the closet, where he smoothed it out and hung it carefully on a wooden hanger.
"Oh, it didn't go too badly," I said, my finger poised with conspicuous impatience on the line in Swann's Way where I'd left off in the spring of 1977.
"I met McWhirter at the Green Room," he said airily, taking off his pants and clamping them authoritatively into a pants hanger. "He didn't think it had gone all that well. He seemed pretty depressed, in fact. In the bars, only five people signed up for his big national strike. No revolt of the masses on Central Avenue."
"Oh, really? You saw him? He told you that? When I left the Green Room at three-thirty, there were already six signed up."
"Yeah," he said, neatly folding his dirty shirt before placing it in the laundry hamper. "But one guy changed his mind and came back and crossed his name off the list. McWhirter had a few choice words for the poor bastard too. It wasn't nice to see. I felt sorry for both of them."
I said, "Oh."
He slipped out of his briefs. His cock was limp, shrunken, exhausted.
"I'm going to take a quick shower," he said casually. What an act. "And then let's fuck. "
I said, "Wait." My heart was thudding and snapping like my office air conditioner.
He turned in the bedroom doorway to face me. I said, "How did your evening go, anyway? With Boyd-boy. You neglected mentioning that."
"Oh, shit," he said, shaking his head and looking wearily amused by it all. "Boyd is such a flake.
I'll tell you all about it in a minute. Just hold on. Boy, do I stink!"
No doubt. He sped into the bathroom to, I assumed, scrub down his eyebrow.
I read in Swann's Way the words "But, whereas" several times, then reinserted the yellowing bookmark. I waited. When I heard the water stop running, I opened the book and reread, "But, whereas."
"But, whereas."
"But, whereas."
"But, whereas."
Timmy came back, theatrically erect. Quite the athlete, Timmy.
"I love your ass, Donald Strachey," he said in a low voice, and dove at me with the concentrated enthusiasm he generally reserved for a misplaced article of clothing.
I said, "Did you and Boyd-boy do it? You know-'it'?
The famous and ever-popular but-still-controversial-in-some-circles 'it'?"
He halted in midair, hung there briefly, then descended to his dumb, ugly puce shag rug I'd never liked.
In a tight little voice, he said, "No. We did not. Boyd and I did not do… 'it.'"
He stood there hot-eyed, waiting, his mind working, not so extravagantly prepossessing below the waist now, but staring hard at me, as if he had just been fucked-in the metaphorical sense this time. A well-rounded evening for Timmy.
I said, "Just thought I'd ask. When you came in you had some kind of goddamn dried white flaky stuff on your eyebrow."
"On my eyebrow. On my eye brow. Ooops," he said, looking mock-guilty and clamping a hand over one eye. Then the anger surged through him and he spat it at me: "Ooops! Ooops, ooops, ooops."
His face was an inch from mine. I turned away. He was sweating, breathing hard, eyes like blue and white saucers.
He said, "Look at me."
I said nothing.
He said, "One of us doesn't trust one of us."
I could feel myself flushing.
He said, "You are the one who doesn't trust one of us.
I knew what was coming.
He said, "You don't trust the one of us who picked up a SUNY student in Price Chopper in June and was seen doing it by Phil Hopkins." Hopkins, that insufferable busybody. "Which aisle was it, lover? I want to know. I want to find out which are the cruisy aisles at Price Chopper in case I ever start doing again what the mistrustful one of us does now. Which aisle is the hot one? Is it fresh produce? Oral dentifrices? Day-old baked goods?"
I looked into his face now. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. Then I opened it again and croaked out, "The meat department, naturally. In fact-poultry." He tried not to laugh. I tried not to laugh. We laughed.
We lay together on the comfy puce shag rug and shared a joint. Ever the cautious bureaucrat, he'd hidden it in a pint of Haagen-Dazs boysenberry with a false bottom. We ate the Haagen-Dazs too.
"I apologize," I said.
"Mmm."
"It was me I didn't trust. I knew that. Sort of."
"Uh-huh. So, how many have there been? Since June?"
"I thought you never w
anted to know the sordid details."
"A number is not sordid."
That's all he knew. "Since June? Oh… about three."
"Approximately three."
"More or less."
"Uh-huh. More or less."
I said, "Seven."
He sighed, very deeply. "Look, Don," he said. "I don't like it. You know I don't like it. Maybe I shouldn't care. But I care. I'm not a man of the brave new world. You know that. I'm just me, Timothy J. Callahan, an aging kid from St. Mary's parish, Poughkeepsie, and I care.
"But I also know that if you're going to do it, you're going to do it. And apparently you are going to do it. You told me that a long time ago. However," he said, leaning up and looking sadly into my face, "if you're going to do it-and I'm not giving you permission, because you're not a child and I'm not your parent, so I'm not in a position to either give or withhold permission, and as a free adult you're not in a position to ask for it. But, if you are going to do it once in a while, I want to ask two things of you, okay?"
"Ask away."
"One: Don't get herpes or AIDS."
"I promise."
He sighed again. "And, two"-he looked at me wistfully now, with just a lingering trace of bitter resentment-"don't assume, Don, that I'm doing it too."
I said nothing. I couldn't. I knew that it would be so much better for both of us if I changed. And that I wouldn't.
Finally I said, "Gotcha."
"So," he said, going through the motions of relaxing again. "Don't you want to hear about my drink with Boyd?"
"Sure. What was it like?"
"Glorious," he said, grinning. "We went up to his room at the Hilton and fucked the bejesus out of each other."
I slowly turned and studied his face with great care.
"Oh," he said, shrugging. "It didn't mean anything, Don. Hell, it was just for old times' sake. That was all. I mean, it had nothing to do with us."
He couldn't keep a straight face for long-he never could-and when he began to laugh I grabbed him. He'd been ribbing me, the mischievous rascal, I was 93 percent certain.
We were just getting going again, and then, too exhausted to do it, to fall asleep together instead
— when the telephone rang.
I groped onto the end table and snatched down the receiver. "This is Strachey."
"Is Peter with you?"
"Peter? No. Is this… Fenton?"
"Peter's not here. He didn't come home. Where is he?"
"He left the Green Room before midnight, didn't he? In your car. I saw you give him the keys."
"But he's not here!" McWhirter whined, a clear note of fright in his voice. "The cars not here."
"Don't go anywhere. Don't leave Dot and Edith. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
We dressed. As we headed out Central Avenue in my car, I brought Timmy up to date on the day's events at Dot Fisher's. He didn't react much, but he didn't like the sound of any of it.
We pulled into the parking lot at the Green Room. The place was quiet, deserted. One car sat in the far corner of the tarmac lot, McWhirter's old green Fiat. We got out and examined it. The windows were rolled up and the car was empty and locked. The keys were not in the ignition.
As we sped on out Central, dawn broke in a cloudless sky.
6
When Ned Bowman arrived at nine-fifteen
I was still on the phone. I had spent nearly an hour rudely awakening people I remembered seeing at the Green Room the night before, describing Greco and asking if anyone had seen him leave the place, in a car, on foot, alone, accompanied. No one had, though none of the twenty or 31 so men I spoke with was entirely alert and in command of his full faculties at the hour I called.
Detective Lieutenant Ned Bowman, decked out in his customary uniform of white socks, dark sport coat, and clip-on brown tie, greeted Dot formally, exchanged scowls with McWhirter, suffered through an introduction to Timmy-homosexuals not wearing pleated skirts always confused Bowman-then came over to where I stood by the wall phone and whispered, "Hi, faggot."
"Top o' the mornin', Lieutenant. A grand day, isn't it? Be right with you."
I finished up my last phone call-still no luck-and joined the surly assemblage at the kitchen table. Dot hadn't slept well and was red-eyed and shaky. McWhirter, Timmy, and I hadn't slept at all and were beginning to feel the effects of the heat, which was coming back fast. Bowman, who most likely had slept nicely in an air-conditioned lair in Delmar, did his characteristic best to stimulate the conversation.
"So, who's the alleged missing person? This Greco's the little guy I saw hanging around out here yesterday? He's your roommate, Mr. McWhirter?"
"Peter Greco is my lover," McWhirter said in a clenched voice. "Peter Greco has been my friend and lover for nine years. Yes."
"Oh, is that a fact? Uh-huh." Taking his time, Bowman carefully printed something out in his notebook. We sat watching him. Dot picked up her coffee cup, which rattled in its saucer.
"And what is the subject's home address?" Bowman asked next.
"Four-fifty-five Castro," McWhirter said evenly. "San Francisco, California."
Bowman's eyebrows went up, as if he were already onto something. I leaned over far enough to see him write down "455 Fidel Castro St.-Frisco."
"Now then," he said. "Before I drove out here I checked the police blotter and the hospitals and found no record of your roommate's having run afoul of the law or having met with an accident." In fact, I'd run the same checks and come up with the same result.
"So, tell me," Bowman said. "What gives you the idea that your friend is 'missing'? What went on last night, Mr. McWhirter, that put this notion in your head?"
McWhirter shot a look at Dot, who sat rigid and grim-faced. Timmy, witnessing for the first time the storied Ned Bowman in action, was taking it all in with a look of slightly crazed fascination. I got up and exchanged my coffee for a glass of iced tea, which I briefly considered pouring over my head, or Bowman's.
As McWhirter described the events of the night before, Bowman took notes. He interrupted once to mention that he had seen McWhirter on the six o'clock news. "Good luck with your strike, Mr.
McWhirter," he said blandly. "Me, I'm an old union man myself." He glanced over at me, poker-faced, so I could see what he was thinking: This fruit McWhirter's a real laugh and a half.
"… and Peter always lets me know where he's going to be," McWhirter nervously concluded.
"And he would never just leave the car like that. I'm really afraid something's happened to him," he said, shaking his head in frustration. "A lot of people don't like us-don't like me. I've been threatened hundreds of times… and people know… they know how much Peter means to me, how much I mean to him, and-." His voice broke and he turned away, blinking, unable to speak.
Bowman screwed up his face, unsettled by this display of emotion one man could show for another. He stayed quiet for a moment and looked thoughtful. Maybe he'd seen this before. Or maybe he himself had felt something akin to what McWhirter was feeling, once a very long time ago, and had strangled the sensation at birth. Whatever his possibly useful thoughts, he rid himself of them soon enough.
He said, "Mr. McWhirter, has your friend ever gone off with another man? Just for a little fling? Know what I mean? Doesn't he do that every once in a while?"
I let my peripheral vision take in Timmy for a few seconds. His cheek twitched accusingly, but he didn't look my way. Dot harrumphed and did look my way. I shrugged. McWhirter slowly turned toward Bowman, and when I saw his murderous look I glanced around to make sure there was no lethal object within his reach.
Through clenched teeth, McWhirter said, "You would assume that, wouldn't you?"
"Well," Bowman said, unfazed by McWhirter's anger, which Bowman apparently took to be routinely defensive, "I think you have to admit that a lot of your people can't seem to help being.. promiscuous." He glanced at Dot. "I hope you'll pardon my language, Mrs. Fisher."
I sneered at Bow
man but avoided looking at Timmy.
"That's quite all right, Lieutenant," Dot said. "You may say 'promiscuous' in this house. If that's the word you consider to be appropriate."
She gave me a little half-wink, which meant "Just don't say 'rotgut.'"
McWhirter, not easily amused under the best of circumstances, was seething, just barely under control. When Timmy and I arrived at five-thirty, McWhirter had been frantic, unable to stop talking or to stand still, demanding that a posse be organized, the National Guard called up.
Then, following a sudden violent outburst of anger at Greco for having let something happen to himself and "fucking up everything," McWhirter had plunged into a desperate sulk, which lasted for an hour or so, during which he simply sat and stared. Now the rage was back, but with a new target.
"You pathetic ignoramus!" he hissed. "You know nothing about Peter. You know nothing about me. Your bigoted head is so full of homophobic stereotypes and…"
McWhirter made a speech. The gist of it was that gay ways of living were as varied as straight ways of living. Except, he pointed out, those gay men and women who were "sexually active" a group that no longer included himself and Greco, he emphasized-were more relaxed and open and "joyously fulfilled" about it than were straight people who lived the same way. This was hardly the whole truth, or even half of it. But it didn't much matter that McWhirter was fiddling the facts, because Bowman, tapping his pen on the table and whistling under his breath, wasn't listening anyway.
When McWhirter concluded with a rude suggestion as to what Bowman could do with his
"outmoded, mind-slave, cop-think attitudes," Bowman glanced coolly at his watch and said, "I'm due at the first tee at Spruce Valley at noon, Mr. McWhirter. If you provide me with a photo of your roommate, I'll see that the subject is listed as a missing person first thing Monday morning."
McWhirter stood up abruptly and charged out of the room. Ignoring him, Bowman turned to Dot.
"I'm glad to see that you're getting along nicely, Mrs. Fisher, and haven't been troubled by any more vandalism problems or threats. If you want a patrolman to come by periodically during the night to check out your property, just let us know. And believe me, we're going to utilize every resource at our disposal to make an arrest in this case. I'll have a man out here Monday morning to check out the neighbors, and if you don't feel safe in the meantime, it might be a good idea to stay over for a couple of days with a relative or friend. I wouldn't take the threats too seriously, though. It's most likely kids or harmless kooks, and you've gotta roll with it till either it stops or the department makes an arrest."
On the other hand,death ds-2 Page 6
