Here Comes the Corpse

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “He hit his mother?” Scott said. I don’t think his question was prompted by doubt about the veracity of what Rohter had just told us, but by astonishment that it had happened at all.

  “Yep,” Rohter said.

  “There’s got to be a history of violence in the family,” I said. “This can’t be the first incident.” I also figured that the son was simply emulating the father.

  Rohter said, “We checked into the boy’s background. He’s got an older brother who had some trouble with the law.”

  Scott said, “I never heard anything about that.”

  “Father and son got into it about Donny trying to take after his older brother, Darrell. At that moment Mr. Carpenter looked like he was ready to belt the kid a good one. The mother screamed at the two of them. Things calmed down for a while. Then, like I said, the kid clocked his mom and bolted out of here before anyone could stop him. We’d like to see the kid again.”

  Scott said, “He must have been feeling guilt about not doing what he should have done. He could have saved a life. He should have felt guilt.”

  Rohter said, “For whatever reason, he wouldn’t answer the questions. Your nephew was more recalcitrant than the most hardened gangbanger. Maybe the kid had something to do with pornography. He could also be the killer. That would explain his reluctance. Runaway kids often get involved in all kinds of seedy or illegal activities they wouldn’t normally.”

  I said, “He’s hardly been gone long enough to hook up with anything shady. Although, I know deadly can happen in an instant.”

  “Doesn’t take long,” Rohter confirmed. “Maybe this wasn’t his first time running. Maybe he was involved in something before he ran. Pornography—”

  I cut Rohter off. “Nobody has mentioned anywhere that Ethan was connected in any way with child pornography. We found only consensual adult stuff.”

  “Not so consensual if they didn’t know they were being photographed.”

  “We didn’t see any pictures of kids,” I said.

  “But you don’t know there weren’t any?”

  “Did the St. Louis police say they found any?” I countered.

  “No.”

  I’m not sure why it was so important to me that Ethan be thought of as an adult pornographer and not a peddler of kiddie porn. Adult stuff was okay. Kid stuff would be a major stumbling block. Somehow thinking of Ethan as exploiting kids turned my few good memories into something soiled and dirty.

  “Are you close to finding out who killed Ethan?” I sked.

  “I think a kid who hears someone being murdered, but who doesn’t report it, needs to be talked to at great length. I think we should be very suspicious of people who find bodies, especially in two different jurisdictions.”

  I said “Would it have made you feel any better if we found both bodies in the same jurisdiction?”

  I got a frozen silence in response to that crack. I knew I didn’t kill anybody. I doubted if Donny had, but I didn’t know him all that well. I said good-bye to the cop.

  Neither Scott nor I could think of a thing to do about his nephew for the moment. We agreed to stop at the Hotel Chicago later.

  We drove over to Buckingham to see what Ernie Gahain wanted. Ethan’s condo was in a building on the north side of the street almost in the middle of the block between Broadway and Halsted. The brick was pinkish red, the shutters and fixtures bright white. It was three stories high with two condos on each of the first two floors and one penthouse on top. Ethan owned the penthouse. We rang the buzzer. Caroline’s voice asked who it was.

  We took the elevator up. When we entered, Caroline was at the front window looking out on the trees below. Ernie was in his wheelchair. Half the living room ceiling was a skylight. For furniture the room had a pole lamp and nothing else. The windows did not have curtains.

  After greetings I asked, “Did he actually live here?”

  Caroline said, “The bedroom has a little more furniture than this, but not much. About a quarter of the place looks like a movie set.”

  The northeast corner of the penthouse had movie lights, cameras, props, and VHS tapes still in plastic wrap. “It’s a porn studio,” Ernie said. “I came over here because my parents asked me to. They found keys and an address in his luggage.” Ernie handed me a package that had been sitting in his lap. “We found this in a briefcase behind a stack of videos.” It was a twenty-one-inch-by-fifteen-inch manila envelope at least two inches thick.

  Ernie said, “I opened it. It’s pictures of naked men. We heard about what Ethan was doing in St. Louis.”

  “Did you know about the pornography before this?” I asked.

  “No. All I knew was my younger brother was a college coach. I never knew about and most certainly never had anything to do with anything illicit, immoral, or illegal.”

  Caroline nodded. “The Gahains are just devastated by all the news. They aren’t angry at you for uncovering Ethan’s connection to pornography. Rachel said that whatever he was doing would have been discovered somehow. It isn’t your fault he was doing it.”

  “My brother was always a shit to them,” Ernie said. “I’m glad you uncovered it. He was always the sainted younger brother. He was twelve years my junior, but he got more privileges than I ever did and at earlier ages. He always got away with everything.”

  “You’re not kids anymore,” Scott said. “Why still be angry?”

  Ernie glared.

  Caroline said, “You don’t know how difficult it has been for Ernie. He’s covered for Ethan for years.”

  “Covered what?” I asked.

  Ernie said, “When Ethan refused to come home for holidays, anniversaries, or other family celebrations, I was always the one who made excuses for him.”

  “Why?” Scott asked. “He was an adult making decisions. Why did you have to get involved?”

  “I didn’t want my parents hurt.”

  “Weren’t they hurt anyway?” Scott asked.

  “Not in the same way. He never remembered their birthdays. He hasn’t sent them a Christmas present for years.”

  “Is that why you guys didn’t get along?” Scott asked. “Because you felt you had to make excuses for him all these years?”

  “It was his attitude more than anything. He just didn’t seem to give a shit. He didn’t really seem to care for people. He was a user and it extended into his family worst of all. He dropped out of I don’t know how many different colleges before he finally graduated. He’d borrow money and not pay it back. My guess is he used my parents’ money to start his porn empire.”

  Caroline added, “He’s really very hurtful.”

  I knew exactly how hurtful he could be.

  Ernie continued, “As I got each new bit of bad medical news, he seemed to care even less about me. My parents won’t say it, but they always worried about him the most. Now we find out he’s involved in all this porn. It’s like he’s reaching out from beyond the grave to give my parents even more grief.”

  “Porn by itself isn’t illegal,” I said.

  Caroline said, “Let’s not split hairs, Thomas. It’s scandalous. Sure, it wasn’t Mr. and Mrs. Gahain making movies, but it was their kid. Worse, there’s no chance to make it better or talk about it or resolve it.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s to talk about or resolve about this issue that is so different from all the things he hasn’t talked about or resolved for years?”

  “Thomas! People are hurting.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I don’t see what you’re annoyed at me about.”

  Only family members who are extremely annoyed with me call me Thomas. My mother adds my middle name, Peter, when she’s really pissed. Once in a great while, Scott will murmur my full name in the throws of passion, but that’s different.

  “Why don’t you just look inside the package,” Scott said.

  So, I did.

  The top pictures were of Ethan in the throes of passion with himself including a shot of
moments from a rather spectacular orgasm. The next ones were of Cormac Macintire also naked and masturbating. I didn’t recognize anyone in the other photos.

  “Do you know who these people are?” I asked.

  Ernie and Caroline shook their heads.

  “Why did you need to show me these now?” I asked. “Maybe these were just his favorite porn pictures to beat off to.”

  “Keep looking,” Ernie said.

  At the bottom of the pile I found an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven manila envelope. Inside were several pictures of me. There were sports or action photos taken in high school. The last one was of me naked, standing next to a swimming pool.

  “How’d he get that picture?” Caroline asked.

  I said, “I know exactly when this was taken. At Randall Bergeron’s birthday party just before our junior year in high school. Everybody decided to go skinny-dipping. I didn’t know anybody was taking pictures.”

  “You’re not shocked he had these?” Ernie asked.

  “I’m not elated that these might be on the Internet. I can’t believe he’d sell pictures of me naked.”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Scott said.

  “If he did, maybe he was into kiddie porn.”

  “So far yours is the only one with somebody that young, that we know of.”

  I said, “I don’t want him to have been into underage sex pictures. I don’t want to deal with that. Yes, I know I may not have a choice.”

  I riffled through the other pictures in the folder. Most of the pictures seemed quite old. I found a few others of my teammates. The starting quarterback on the football team my senior year had a big smile on his face. He was in full uniform, a football clutched in his left hand, his right hand grasping his hard prick, which was jutting out of the front of his football uniform pants. The background was the shower area of the boys’ locker room at my high school. I showed Scott.

  “The quarterback was gay?” Scott asked.

  “I think he was more of a big goof. He was nineteen our senior year. He’d flunked first grade twice. He never offered to make mad, passionate love to me. He married some college cheerleader after a dismal career at a third-division college. I could see him posing for this. He’d do just about anything if he thought it was funny. What I can’t see is Ethan working up the nerve to ask him to pose for this.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know either of them as well as you thought.”

  “I guess not.”

  Scott said, “Or it was a moment of passionate silliness, which is not a crime.”

  Ernie said, “It is if the silliness goes terribly wrong.”

  I said, “Then it isn’t silliness anymore.”

  “I guess not,” Scott said.

  Ernie held out a white, business-size envelope. “This was inside as well.”

  I took the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper inside. On it was printed a single sentence all in caps: YOU’VE GOT THE PICTURES AND DISCS AND WE WANT THEM.

  Ernie said, “There may or may not have been something illegal about the porn, but there was something dangerous and lethal going on.”

  “There’re no discs?” I asked.

  “We didn’t find any.”

  Scott said, “I hate to belabor the obvious, but there is now no doubt that Ethan was using the pictures for blackmail.”

  I said, “Gotta be. There has to be a reason these pictures were separate from all the rest. I wonder if it’s possible to find out who these people are? Only our former star quarterback is in a uniform with a recognizable logo.”

  Scott said, “Since we’ve got pictures of Cormac, maybe we should take them to his father. After seeing these he might be more willing to open up to us than he was to Miller.”

  “If he even knows anything,” I said.

  “Will it hurt to ask?” Scott inquired.

  From the penthouse Scott called his agent to get him to phone Cecil Macintire’s people. Fame calling to fame to set up a meeting. He would get back to us.

  20

  We had gotten Ethan’s second wife’s address from Jack Miller. She lived in Evanston. We took Sheridan Road. Wife number two lived in a small frame house. Surveying the modest structure, I said, “I don’t think she got as much in her divorce as wife number four did.”

  It turned out she was eager to speak with us. Mabel Gahain Yancey née Bradford introduced us to her husband, Roy Yancey. He wore a hat with a Peterbilt truck logo on the front. He had skinny shoulders and legs and a protruding gut. She was short, slender, blond, freckled, and mean. He was meaner. No burbling about fame here.

  I began, “We’re concerned about who might have wanted to harm Ethan Gahain.”

  She pointed a skinny finger at her chest. “I certainly didn’t want to. I am not a violent person. Why do you care about him now that he’s dead? I don’t imagine any of his ex-wives would care.”

  “I’d have killed him if I had the chance,” Roy Yancey said. “Don’t worry, I have an airtight alibi.”

  Figured.

  Mabel said, “He was an evil man.” So much for not speaking ill of the dead. “I know that isn’t Christian of me.”

  I said, “I heard you’re seeking custody of the children you and he had together.”

  “Of course we were fighting for custody,” Yancey said. “We found out how he was making money.”

  “Why didn’t you have custody in the first place?” Scott asked.

  Mabel said, “I was young, foolish, and stupid. A year ago, I called Dr. Laura. She told me to go do the right thing. I knew what she meant. was supposed to fight for my child.” A three-year-old scampered into the room, saw us, and retreated to Mabel’s side.

  Dr. Laura does have a constitutional right to free speech. She does not have a constitutional right to a television show. Hypocritical bitch.

  Roy Yancey said, “I supported Mabel completely. How could we let the boy stay in that environment?”

  “What environment was that?”

  “A single, gay man is not an appropriate environment to bring up a child.”

  “He was married to his fourth wife up until a couple of months ago.”

  “We know he’s gay,” Mabel said.

  “Yes,” Roy Yancey added, “when we found out about the pornography, that was the last straw.”

  “How did you find out about that?” I asked.

  “That information was difficult to uncover. Christian people are infiltrating the Internet and pornographic sites. We’re going to the addresses or staking out the post office boxes listed and following people back to their homes and offices. We’re alerting neighbors, husbands, wives, and children to the lewd, disgusting, and immoral behavior of their neighbors.”

  I asked, “You’re telling children about pornography?”

  “We have informed child-custody judges and social workers. Anyone connected with a child has no right to be engaged in such activity.”

  I asked, “Is there a lot of hunting down of pornographers or is this right-wing rhetorical excess?”

  “Oh, yes,” Yancey said. “It’s the newest tactic. The group we belong to KID, Keep It Decent, has as a goal to expose every pornographer.”

  Scott said, “Making pornographic movies is not unconstitutional.”

  “It should be,” Yancey snapped. “Look how it’s led to the rise in crime and abortions.”

  He had managed to combine in one statement the three debating gambits I hear the right-wing use: if someone’s making sense, change the subject; get the statistics wrong; or say something totally illogical.

  I said, “The organization has that many members with that much time to find all these folks?”

  “Enough for them to have tracked down my former husband,” Mabel said.

  “Why didn’t you just ask wife number four?” I asked.

  Mabel said, “Once we had the report, she needed to know the kind of man he was. The kind of danger he posed to her children. She laughed at us and called us hicks.”

&nb
sp; “Where are your and Ethan’s children now?”

  “They’re with the third wife. Now that Ethan’s dead we fully expect to get full custody without much quarrel.”

  “Had you made threats recently?” I asked.

  “Threats?” Mabel said. “I don’t call them that. We’d gotten the information almost two weeks ago. We’ve had several meetings with our lawyer. Last Thursday he was served with legal papers, and I visited him. I told him what we knew and what we were going to do. I told him he could kiss his career and his kids good-bye. I had no reason to murder him. He might have had reason to murder me because I was giving him information he didn’t like, but God is on my side. I wasn’t worried.”

  Yancey said, “He was going to lose those kids. He was petrified.”

  We left.

  In the Porsche I asked, “Is that what he wanted to talk to me about? The threats from his second wife? What good would it do to tell me?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t logical,” Scott said. “Maybe he remembered the love and friendship you shared.”

  “It would be like him to forget everything in between.”

  “We’re all guilty of selective memory.”

  “Ethan was the kind of guy who could completely misperceive something that happened.”

  After a few minutes driving in silence, Scott said, “Since we’ve been driving my car, nobody’s tried to break in. Is that significant? Or did whoever it is find we didn’t have anything in Sandburg University’s parking lot?”

  “I don’t know if we should be less worried or not.” I didn’t feel safe yet.

  Getting in to see Cecil Macintire was easier than I thought it would be. When Scott phoned our service, we had a message from his press agent. He had set up a meeting for late that afternoon. We met in Macintire’s luxury building in Evanston. Cecil Macintire’s radio program was the most popular in the country. He was overtly homophobic, barely contained his racism and anti-Semitism, and indulged in every right-wing paranoia panic there was. I had actually spent time listening to his program one summer as I drove to different cities to be with Scott on a road trip. The reason I listened was simple. I hate people who try to ban books, especially those who haven’t read the books they want to ban. I figured it was sort of the same for Cecil Macintire. Certainly I could read about the awful things he said. It was very different listening to him. I no longer had to take anybody’s word for how hateful he was. I knew for myself. I’ve always known that much hatred exists in this world, but at least when it’s not shoved in my face, I can believe that things are getting better. Cecil Macintire sowed hatred, and he made millions doing it.