Death by Pride: A Kyle Callahan Mystery

by Mark McNease

  Margaret knew Danny did not like being in business with his mother-in-law. If he owned the building, with the rent and even a line of credit against the equity, he could pay Sally back and have her return to being just Kyle’s mother.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. I can’t take the building with me, you know! And I don’t need some albatross hung around my neck a thousand miles away.”

  “Is that how far Florida is?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “Well, now you’ll have a reason to come.”

  And he would. Margaret was leaving in high summer and already Danny had imagined spending Christmas in Boca Raton. He and Kyle would be learning more about Florida with Margaret moving there than he’d ever wanted to know.

  “Now let’s go over this guest list,” Margaret said.

  “I didn’t bring it with me.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll start a new one, and no one we once felt obligated to invite will be on it. This one’s for us.”

  Margaret went to the kitchen counter, opened a drawer and took out a small writing pad and a pen she kept there for making grocery lists. She came back to the table and sat down.

  “Danny, Kyle,” she said, scribbling their names. “What about that sweet detective friend of yours? Would you like her there?”

  “Yes,” Danny said. “Linda Sikorsky. And she has a wife now, Kirsten.”

  “Oh does she? How lovely.”

  They began going over names then, Danny listing people he truly wanted at Margaret’s going away party, and Margaret adding her own as she wrote the names down.

  The weight of it began to lift slightly for him. He wanted the afternoon to stretch out endlessly, to spend every second he could sitting at Margaret Bowman’s kitchen table, watching her elderly hand write names in a shaky scrawl. He glanced at the envelope. Oh, Margaret, what have you gotten me into? Everything stays the same, he thought, until it all changes.

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  When most people think of the New York City subway they imagine a vast underground labyrinth. Kyle had been no exception, and for his first year living in the city, some thirty years ago, he’d taken buses rather than descend beneath the earth to barrel through tunnels dug a century before. It had reminded him of Poe’s “The Premature Burial.” There was something about being alive down there that had frightened him, until he realized it was a much faster and more efficient way to travel, especially from his then-home in Brooklyn to the various jobs he held in Manhattan.

  Not all the trains that snake around the boroughs are subterranean. The N train, on which Kyle and Linda rode to Astoria, glides under the river past its last stop in Manhattan and emerges in Queens to continue along elevated tracks. Once upon a time you could look out from the train windows and see the World Trade Center before it came tumbling down in a morning of terror. Kyle remembered the days immediately following, when a plume of smoke rose from the hole in the ground that had been the Twin Towers. He couldn’t believe nearly thirteen years had passed since then.

  Kyle and Danny went to Astoria almost every weekend to visit Danny’s parents in their row house on 28th Street. He knew the neighborhood well. He knew the Kaufman Astoria Studios. He knew the Museum of the Moving Image, housed in the same complex. He knew Steinway Street, named after the world famous piano makers. And he knew the Greek feeling of the area, still populated by Greek families who had lived here for generations and who still gave Astoria its flavor. They were mixed now with Iranians, Pakistanis, pockets of other Middle Eastern immigrants, and not a few gay people. Astoria was once known for being both affordable and quite nice, and as Manhattan became ever more expensive and out of reach for the average person, Astoria became a favorite refuge. You could get a large one-bedroom, maybe even a two-bedroom, for what you would pay for a studio in Chelsea. The migration brought higher prices, and Astoria was no longer the hidden gem it once was, but still a very nice place to live just a stone’s throw from Manhattan.

  “I love the skyline,” Linda said, looking out the window as the train eased along the tracks, turning and running parallel to the East Side.

  “Everybody does,” Kyle replied. And it was true. No matter how often he’d thought of leaving New York City, he never stopped being thrilled by the sight of it from a distance. “It may not be the greatest city in the world—don’t tell New York that—but it’s the greatest skyline. It calls to you.”

  Four stops in they pulled into the Broadway station. Broadway is a main artery in Astoria, running east to west. It’s where you’ll find grocery stores, shops, restaurants, real Greek diners, and all the other small businesses that make up a neighborhood. It’s also three blocks from Vincent Campagna’s apartment. Kyle had called and gotten the address from Joseph the doorman. He’d bent the truth and said he wanted to send a food basket to Vinnie (which he would, just not now). Joseph had no reason to suspect anything and had given Kyle the information. He said quite of few of the tenants had been asking. Word spread quickly about the tragedy of Vinnie’s brother.

  They walked east a block, turned and walked another two blocks south, and found themselves in front of a large brown apartment building with six stories. Astoria was full of them. Row houses and apartment buildings made up most of the dwellings here. And Kyle knew from friends who lived here that the apartments tended to be large. The buildings were what’s called “pre-war” and came at a premium price across the river in Manhattan. It meant they were built before World War II, between 1900 and 1940, when space was plentiful and architecture still had a flare. They were also known for being very sturdy, just in case a hurricane decided to stop by.

  “He’s in 4C,” Kyle said. They were standing in front of a buzzer box with dozens of apartment numbers on it, each with a name and button beside it. He buzzed Vincent’s apartment.

  “What if he’s not home?” Linda asked.

  “Joseph told me he was. Apparently he’s the only one from the building Vinnie’s been talking to.”

  Kyle waited a moment, pressed again, and they heard the front door buzzer go off, giving them entrance. Kyle quickly pulled the door open and held it for Linda.

  The entryway was massive, as they often are in these buildings. It appeared large enough to hold fifty people, but it was completely empty except for the mailboxes along one wall. A wide staircase led up to the floors above them, and an old elevator stood along the back, next to an apartment Kyle guessed was the super’s. Almost every apartment building in New York City has a super—the man (for it is inevitably a man), often with his family, who lives in and takes care of the building.

  They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Vinnie had not called down through the intercom to ask who was there and Kyle assumed the building didn’t have one, or didn’t have one that worked.

  They stepped off the elevator and out onto a hallway. Apartment doors lined the walls in both directions. Taking a quick look at the first two, Kyle determined that Vincent Campagna lived three doors down to the right. They walked to the door and knocked.

  Kyle was startled at first by Vinnie’s appearance. He looked like a man who had not slept for two days, which was the case. He was on the short side, about five-five, with dark, almost black hair that had not been washed recently. He also hadn’t shaved, and a thick stubble covered the lower half of his face. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Key West on it, jeans and no shoes or socks.

  “Mr. Callahan,” he said, surprised to see Kyle.

  “Vinnie, please call me Kyle.”

  Vinnie looked at Linda.

  “This is my friend, Detective Linda Sikorsky.”

  Linda was surprised Kyle introduced her that way and guessed he was doing it for a reason.

  “I spoke to the police already,” Vinnie said. “A couple times.”

  “She’s not with the New York City police. She’s visiting Danny and me from New
Jersey. May we come in?”

  “Oh, sure, sure.” Vinnie stepped aside and waved them in. “Don’t mind the mess.”

  What mess, Kyle wondered, as they entered the apartment. Vinnie Campagna was neat and orderly, among his other traits. The apartment was a studio, with a murphy bed folded up into one wall, a small dining table beneath a window, and a comfortable couch and chair in one corner. A television was on but muted, with a news channel playing.

  “I’d offer you something …”

  “No, Vinnie, that’s fine,” said Kyle. “We won’t stay long. Linda just wanted to ask you some questions.”

  I did? Linda thought. She wished Kyle had told her before they got there.

  “Yes, well,” Linda said, improvising as she sat in the chair with Kyle and Vinnie taking the couch. “I was wondering …”

  Kyle saw the hesitation. “She was wondering what you could tell us.”

  “What I could tell you?”

  “About the last time you spoke to Victor.”

  Vinnie thought about it. He didn’t know what difference it would make, since he’d been over these details with the police, but anything that might help find his brother’s killer was worth it.

  “It was Monday,” he said. “I was at home in the afternoon. Vic’s on a dayshift at 230 Park” – that was the apartment building Victor worked at – “and he was off Mondays and Tuesdays. He was excited about our niece’s christening on Saturday. Ah, Christ, that’s been postponed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle said. “But please go on. You spoke Monday?”

  “Yeah, for a few minutes. We talked every day. We were very close.” He stopped a moment, composing himself. “Vic wanted a new suit for the christening and said he was going to look for something nice.”

  Linda had taken her phone out and was making notes on one of its applications.

  “But he was stopping for a drink first,” Vinnie continued. “Said he was meeting a friend at Cargill’s.”

  “What’s Cargill’s?” Linda asked.

  “It’s a bar. A gay bar. On East 58th Street.”

  Kyle knew of the place. It was one of the oldest gay bars on the East Side, and one of the few remaining. Kyle remembered it as a local watering hole that catered to a neighborhood crowd. No go-go dancers, no drag shows. Just booze and companionship.

  “Do you know the name of the friend he was meeting?”

  “No, sorry. Vic was out of the closet, but very … discreet, I guess you’d say. He had boyfriends from time to time but never brought them around. He wasn’t uncomfortable being gay, he just didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere. The gay scene, whatever that is, it wasn’t for him and he was still looking for his place in the world. Now he’ll never find it. But he liked that bar, yeah, something about it.”

  “Did you hear from him after that?” Linda asked.

  “No.”

  “And what time was your conversation?”

  “About three o’clock, sometime in there.”

  Kyle hesitated. He didn’t want to bring up anything that would make Vinnie uncomfortable.

  “Do you know if Vic ever met men online?”

  Vinnie stared at him. “For hookups, you mean?”

  “Or dates. Dinner, a movie, whatever. People meet online all the time.”

  “Is that how you met Mr. Durban?”

  “Danny,” Kyle said. “You can call him Danny. You’re not on duty, Vinnie. And no, I didn’t meet Danny online. We met at an art gallery.”

  Vinnie nodded. “I don’t really know if he met guys online,” he said. “Vic was …”

  “Discreet,” said Linda.

  “Yeah, discreet. I’m sure he did meet men that way. But it’s not the kind of thing he would tell me.”

  “So your phone call on Monday was the last.”

  Vinnie didn’t answer and looked about to cry. He glanced away a moment, not wanting to break down in front of these people.

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “I called him later to make plans for Saturday, we were going together to the christening. But it went to voicemail. Tried texting too but that didn’t get a response. He was known to turn his phone off, especially on his days off. He liked to ‘unplug’ he said, walk around and just look at things, listen to sounds and other people’s conversations. He had his head in the clouds sometimes, that kid. He was my little brother, did I say that? Three years younger.”

  “You didn’t mention it, no,” Linda said. “We’re so sorry, Vinnie.”

  “Thanks.” He took a deep breath. “So I talked to him Monday when he was going to Cargill’s, and never again. Never will, either. You think they’ll catch the guy who did this?”

  Kyle did not answer immediately. He knew the Pride Killer had not been caught for four years before vanishing. “We’re going to try,” he said. Then, very gently, he asked, “Do you have a photograph of Vic?”

  “A picture?”

  “Yes,” Linda said. “So we can ask around, see if anyone remembers seeing him on Monday.”

  “Sure, sure.” Vinnie got up and crossed to a small bookshelf. He had several framed photographs of his family and friends. He took one of his brother, quickly slipped it out of the frame, and brought it back, handing it to Kyle. “It’s a couple years old but this is what he looks like.”

  Kyle took the photograph, glanced at it and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Thank you, Vinnie, thank you very much. I’ll be sure to get this back to you. We’re going to go now, but I really am terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “My loss? Vic’s the one who lost. Lost it all. I just want to find the man who took it.”

  “We’re going to do our best,” said Linda.

  Kyle and Linda rose and thanked Vinnie again for talking with them. Vinnie followed them to the door.

  “He’s not the only one, is he?” Vinnie asked as he opened the door for them.

  Kyle had not wanted to tell Vinnie what he knew of the killer, his elusiveness and success. But Vinnie had spoken to them at the most difficult time of his life and was owed the truth.

  “No, Vinnie, I’m afraid not,” Kyle said. “But we’re trying to make sure there won’t be any more.”

  “Good luck,” Vinnie said as they left the apartment. “You’ll let me know, right? If you find him?”

  Linda turned back and said, “You’ll be the first to know. Then we’ll call the morgue.”

  Kyle was struck by the coldness in her voice, and by the implication in her words. She was prepared to make sure the Pride Killer never claimed another victim. Dead predators can’t hunt.

  They left Vincent Campagna’s building and headed back to the subway. As they climbed the stairs at the station, Linda said, “Where to now?”

  “I could use a drink,” Kyle said. “And I know just the place.”

  The train pulled into the station just as they reached the turnstiles. Kyle used his MetroCard to swipe them through, and together they rushed up the stairs. Even the ten minutes it would take for the next train to arrive was time they did not have to waste.

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  Ed Cargill opened Cargill’s bar when he was just twenty-five and new to New York City. Back then the Upper East Side was an inexpensive part of the city to live in, which could be said of much of Manhattan in the late 1950s. Ed made his way from Dayton, Ohio, as a young gay man looking for a place to belong. He found it in New York. He also found it in the bar that bore his name, and even though he endured police raids and the pervasive discrimination of a society and its police force that thought homosexuality was a mixture of crime and illness, he loved his patrons and he loved his city.

  Cargill’s had weathered the storms and the decades, and though Ed had long since passed on to the Great Gay Bar in Heaven, the establishment he founded still served the locals who had come to know it as their bar. They weren’t all gay, either. Cargill’s was inclusive before inclusivity was in vogue. You can find gay customers there having an after-work cocktail with their stra
ight co-workers, their bisexual co-workers and, increasingly, their transgender co-workers.

  The interior remained understated and comfortable. This was no splashy Chelsea bar. There was no loud music. Ed had installed a jukebox that people still loved putting quarters in, playing records by Janis Joplin and Patsy Cline mixed with current music from the bartenders’ mix-tapes. Cargill’s managed to be a comforting friend without being a throwback. It was run now by Ed’s nephew, himself a man in his 60s who’d made his way to New York when he was just out of college and needed a little coming out of his own. Phil Carter didn’t work at the bar much and wasn’t there when Kyle and Linda arrived, but he’d kept the place in almost exactly the same shape, look and feel his uncle had left it when he took over in 1995.

  “So this is a gay bar,” Linda said as they walked through the door.

  Kyle was surprised. He knew gay life was new to Detective Linda, but he hadn’t imagined she had not visited at least one bar since her coming out a year and a half ago. Then he remembered so much had changed with the advent of the internet. Gay bars were becoming an anachronism, and bars like Cargill’s almost museum pieces.

  “Yes and no,” Kyle said. “There are lots of different kinds of gay bars. Not that I know. Danny and I don’t go to bars and I was never much of a bar person before I met him. This is more like an old neighborhood bar with a more interesting clientele than most.”

  There were only a half dozen people there; it was the middle of the afternoon, and the few customers at the bar (with two at a pool table) were the types who either stopped by for a friendly drink or who never left.

  A tall man in his 40s was behind the bar washing glasses and nodding to patrons who talked to him whether he listened or not. He was dressed in khakis and a green long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up to reveal several tattoos on his forearms.

  “Afternoon,” Kyle said as he and Linda each took a stool.