Everyone's Dead But Us

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  I glanced at the books. Everything was impeccably dusted. I ran my hand over a few of them—a first edition of Sex and by Radcliffe Hall, a signed copy of Sex and I wished I had years to examine this treasure trove instead of seconds. We might be discovered at any moment.

  If we were discovered, we’d certainly hear them opening the door below and have some time to hide the files. We found the bottom of a lectern with a silk cover draped over an out-of-date speaker system. I said, “If we need to, we can hide the papers here.”

  “Where a demented troll after a brief search would find them.”

  “Any better ideas?”

  “Well, no. We can lock the door behind us. Although at least some of the rest of them must have keys.”

  “Most likely.”

  As we spread out the piles of paper we’d ripped off from Dimitri Thasos’s rooms, I said, “You know what’s odd. I don’t remember a lot of tears for Henry Tudor. A bit of shock and the edge of hysteria, but no sadness, no regret, no ‘We’ll miss him.’”

  Scott said, “The rich are trained to hide their emotions better, or nobody liked him, or they’re all in on it.”

  We turned to the papers. Thasos had dossiers on all the current inhabitants of the island. One of his first notes was that the same seven men had spent New Year’s and the week after on the island for the past ten years. One was Tudor, the owner, which made sense; it’s where he lived. The other six were Movado, O’Quinn, Seymour, Fitzgerald, Klimpton, and Deplonte.

  Thasos had written notes.

  They’re the old guard and not to be trusted. Whenever any two of them are here, trips are made to the castle. I can get into the library at times. I love to read, but I am always watched.

  Henry Tudor is not to be trusted. He suspects me. I have no idea how he came to suspect me. I think he’s playing me to see how much of a threat I represent. To keep anyone from getting suspicious, I try very hard to do my staff job here very well. Maybe I’m just feeling guilt. He would need to know who is backing me in this expedition. I think he’s done murder before. He’s been on this island a long time. The timing of disappearances before he owned the island always coincided with his presence on the island. A requirement for inheriting the island— murder, or a ritual, part of which required you to do something to protect the gay heritage? Ritual murders? Or were they trying to protect their asses from being robbed blind of what they have robbed others blind to get? I don’t avoid him. The slightest out-of-character action is grounds for suspicion. The place is too small. Tudor knows everything that happens on this island. You’d think he had hidden cameras in each of the villas. He doesn’t. I checked. At least I think he doesn’t. There are areas in his villa and in the castle to which I have not been able to gain access during my three years here. He is a frightening man. When he’s away from the guests, he is a monster to the staff. And if what I suspect is true, do I want to reveal an evil cabal of gay thieves stretching back for centuries?

  Wayne Craveté is a joke. They make fun of him ceaselessly.

  Tom Mason and Scott Carpenter get laughed at somewhat although they are considered to be studs and very hot. Being that studly with decent money although not old money makes some difference. Funny how they rent the cheapest place on the island. I like them. I believe they are really in love. They spend enough time in their room for any six guests. And they are always holding hands or doing something endearing.

  There were lists of people we didn’t know.

  I have not found any treasure yet. Certainly there is a great deal displayed out in the open. Real Picassos purchased at real auctions and Impressionist paintings up the wazoo. Nothing provably illegal. Nothing definite. If there’s a treasure room of stolen goods, it has to be connected to the castle. I’ve watched and I’ve spied as surreptitiously as possible. It must be the castle. None of the villas hold the same secretive aura as the castle. I’ve even tried digging around that entrance to the old gold mine on the island. It’s a nice little place for trysting, but it’s all solid rock.

  I hate Oser. He is suspicious of everyone and everything. He’s a perfect totalitarian prig and has been around longer than dirt. If it was the ‘30s or ‘40s Conrad Veidt would play his character, who would be having an extremely Nazi day. He is totally dedicated to Henry Tudor.

  Movado is nasty and tricky. Sometimes he’s the most affable of all the guests, but his dictatorial instincts match Oser’s. I keep getting the rumor that Movado does snuff films. I have not found any truth to this although the help avoids him as carefully as they dare. I’ve seen him turn in an instant from warm, fuzzy to bitchy, brutal. Woe to any of the help who crosses him in the slightest. I’ve seen him beat the hell out of one of the locals from Santorini.

  For whatever reason, only certain guests are allowed in the Great Hall of the castle. I’ve tried to document who or what the criterion is for allowing someone in. I believe there is one day a year when new guests are admitted or perhaps there is some kind of initiation, a ritual. None of the servants ever goes there. The rich rarely eat there and if they do, one of them brings the food over from Santorini, and no one is asked to help. I’ve tried sneaking looks through the stained glass windows late at night. I never see all the guests who I saw go into the Great Hall in the Great Hall at the same time. They could be in the bathroom or in the kitchen, but who would be cooking? Nobody ever brings that much food. I have suspicions. It could be a secret gay society with passwords and complex handshakes. It could be friends drinking brandy and smoking cigars. I’ve snuck into the Great Hall several times. Each time around four in the morning long after everyone is gone. I have found nothing suspicious. I took my pencil flashlight. It was difficult to show it in the Great Hall. I tried on moonlit nights. The Great Hall is beautiful at those times. Moonlight streaming through stained glass is wondrous to behold and the stained glass windows are marvels of color. It’s a shame so few get to see the interior at any time. I’m sure there are no secret rooms or passages off the Great Hall. The walls are solid rock. The kitchen revealed nothing. It is just off the Great Hall. The door between them does not creak as it would if it was in an old horror movie. The kitchen looks stunningly unused. I spent even more time there. I could find no secret passages leading from it.

  I have to give an accounting to my contact on Santorini in the next few days. I don’t know how much longer I can report failure. In the years I have been here, I have only suspicions about three paintings and one sculpture that may be copies or the real thing stolen over a century and a half ago. Are these the genuine thing being traded among rich collectors? My employers think the center of a huge illegal operation is here. Whether it is that or small time nefarious trading, you couldn’t prove either one by me.

  None of these people are to be trusted. None of them. Not the help. Not the guests. It is hell working here and keeping this kind of secret. It’s a stark and terrifying place to work and stay. It frightens me.

  The servants are no better than the guests or the owners. The help who come in on the boat every day are cutthroats who I think are mostly straight but who are quite willing to fleece, bamboozle, suck up to, or suck off the wealthy gay men for everything they can get. They’d bend over for a dime or a million dollars. I speak fluent Greek. No one knows I do. I hear the staff belittle everyone on the island from Henry Tudor on down. They are genuinely afraid of Movado when he comes here. They think Movado has spies among the help. They don’t dare retaliate. Rumor is one of them tried to. His family was nearly wiped out in a disaster on Santorini. I have not been able to confirm whether it was a natural or man-made disaster. I hate Movado so I’m not a good judge.

  There was a great deal of charting of coming and goings of various staff members. None of which seemed to indicate criminal activity.

  Scott looked up from his stack of papers. He said, “I don’t know most of these people. We’re looking at just the ones who are currently on the island, right?”

  “Yeah.”


  “I’ve got Blake Klimpton here. Our heroic quarterback has a thing for dildos although I’m not sure what that has to do with murder.”

  I said, “Done in with a dildo?”

  Scott suggested, “Dildoed to death? The deadly dildo?”

  “Dildon’t,” I said. I got a hint of a smile from him for that. I asked, “Why would Thasos keep that kind of information?”

  Scott said, “I think he’s got odd bits about a lot of guys. Maybe every bit on anybody he got bits on. And don’t say bitten to death.”

  “I’m still stuck on dildos.”

  “That is not at all an entertaining picture, and it is, frankly, a painful one.”

  I asked, “Did the island supply dildos?”

  “I didn’t see them in the gift shop,” Scott replied.

  “Not your run of the mill tacky souvenir.”

  “It doesn’t say if Klimpton was the user or the usee, nor does it say how big they were.”

  “Nor do I care,” I said.

  “I can see the sports headlines,” Scott said. “ ‘Star quarterback dildo king,’ pictures at eleven.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a headline I’m looking forward to or dreading. Anything in the report on him that has some connection with murder?”

  Scott was silent. I looked up at him. He was frowning.

  “What?” I asked.

  “According to what this says none of Klimpton’s boy toys ever get back to their homes.”

  He moved the page so I could read it. It listed the names of ten different young men. “Does he have proof?” I asked.

  “Look what it says.”

  There were lists of addresses with all the names with anecdotal records on four of them. These mostly consisted of phone conversations with families back in Eastern Europe, two in Slovakia and two in the Czech Republic. The families had seemed mostly clueless. There were also copies of e-mails he had sent to some of them. I know there are Internet sites and software programs where you can type in text and have it translated into a particular foreign language. He wouldn’t have to be fluent in that many languages. Thasos seemed to have had enough discretion not to blurt out the fact that their sons were selling their bodies to some very high bidders.

  Scott asked, “Does he say Klimpton killed them?”

  “He doesn’t make accusations. It’s more like he’s recording facts like a good investigator.”

  Scott said, “There’re lots of reasons they could be missing. Or maybe they aren’t even missing. Maybe Thasos simply couldn’t find them. How’d he know that they were dead? He was sure they were dead?”

  “That list of ten gives the names of the ones who are supposedly dead. I’d love to talk to the guy when he’s better.”

  “If he gets better,” Scott said.

  “If a murderer knew this kind of thing was out, he’d have a good reason to kill.”

  “Yeah,” Scott said, “but why not come get these lists? If you’re killing the guy because he’s got the information, why not get the information? Better yet, why not destroy the information? And whoever it is didn’t do a very good job of killing the one who was a threat.”

  I said, “Craveté knew who the investigator was. He says Pietro is his source. Maybe the killer doesn’t know Pietro knows. Which brings up another problem. How did Pietro know?”

  Scott shrugged.

  I continued, “Either our killer is having a lot of luck, or it’s a vast conspiracy. I’d love to believe our killer was incompetent, but there are dead bodies floating all around this island.”

  “So to speak,” Scott said. Ever the practical one, he added, “None of the boy toys’ bodies are on this island. Not that we know of. It’d be easy enough to shove them off the castle tower. Klimpton could have branched out and be killing others besides just his paid-for pals. Maybe he and Movado were in the snuff film business together. Maybe Klimpton supplied the boys and Movado supplied the toys.”

  “Dead extras to the idle rich. I’m not ready to believe that yet. Even if they did do that, why kill some of the hired help and Henry Tudor and blow up part of the castle?”

  Scott said, “Our killer is the only one who could have answers for all that. Somebody has reasons for doing all this shit. If Klimpton had a history of killing, he’d be a likely suspect. Who else do we have in these papers?”

  We both resumed looking. Certainly the richest of the elite were represented.

  A few more moments of perusal and Scott said, “I’ve got the scoop on O’Quinn.”

  I said, “How much of this information do we believe? We’ve got no corroboration of any of it. Thasos could be the world’s most fabulous investigator, or he could have been a gossiping fool.”

  Scott said, “Do we have more information than we did before?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “If we need to look the gift horse in the mouth, we can do that later. Right now, I’m enjoying the gift.”

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “Thasos has it written here that O’Quinn’s real reason for spending the last fifteen years in Europe was that he was in love with an artist on the Left Bank in Paris.”

  “It’s that prosaic? What about the whole embarrassing drag queen versus the parents phenomenon?”

  Scott said, “I don’t remember him being anything other than a bit effeminate.” Scott resumed reading. “He’s been coming here for more than twenty years. Since he was eighteen. He has been a business partner of Tudor’s for ten years. O’Quinn was going to inherit because he helped bail out the island. Then there’s a note in the margin which is hard to make out.”

  I studied it. I’d been reading student handwriting for years, and I’m fairly good at deciphering the worst scrawls. I said, “I think it says the island keeps losing money.” I looked at Scott. “With the prices they charge, this place should be swimming in money.”

  “Evidently not.”

  I said, “We’ll never get hold of those kinds of financial records.”

  “Where’s all the money going?” Scott asked.

  I shrugged.

  Scott perused another page, then said, “This says that O’Quinn is going to inherit. Look at what it says.” I gazed over. He said, “It’s Tudor’s will, or a copy at any rate. It’s dated January first, tomorrow. O’Quinn is named as inheritor of the island and a great deal of money.”

  I was still reading the O’Quinn file. “This says he’s the owner of art galleries in Paris, Berlin, London, and Palm Beach. An excellent conduit for illegal artwork if they needed such a thing for getting stolen artwork on or off the Continent. O’Quinn also seems to own a lot of property on several continents. It says here that for a long while he showed his lover’s artwork, mostly sculptures. They broke up in the last six months. The lover was supposed to have come or be coming to the island here for some kind of meeting with O’Quinn. Thasos doesn’t seem to know if it was a reconciliation meeting or a purely business discussion. The meeting never happened. The lover never showed up. It doesn’t say why not.”

  Scott asked, “Does Thasos mean the lover is dead? Maybe came here and was killed?”

  I scanned another document. “According to this, O’Quinn has reported several thefts from his gallery in Paris over the past six years. All of them thefts of works by fairly minor artists.”

  Scott held up an old, weathered document. A five-by-seven Post-it note was attached to the left-hand corner. Scott removed the Post-it note gently and then carefully placed the older document between us. The older document said,

  Yes, we have done evil, but to protect ourselves and our own. They have tortured us, burned us, destroyed us over the years. Maybe we should have done things differently. Were there alternatives? Nobody ever pointed them out to me. Oscar is dead in Paris, and we need to be very afraid. As far as I can tell some of these objects are real. Many have legitimate provenances. There are early documents, some claiming that Alexander was not the only gay conqueror.

  Then in
Thasos’s handwriting on the Post-it note, Sex andSex and

  Scott pointed to the Conqueror claim. “Wishful thinking or legitimate scholarship?”

  “We may never know. I feel sorry for these guys. I don’t know how I’d respond to direct persecution. I was pretty angry and pretty depressed after the last election, but my job wasn’t gone. I didn’t get thrown in jail.”

  Scott said, “There’re more notes.” He shuffled through several sets of papers then said, “Looted Nazi art.”

  “What?” I leaned over.

  “These are notes on Nazi art that made it into private hands.”

  I said, “These people kept stolen art from the Nazis? They collaborated with the Nazis?” Gay people had been persecuted by the Nazis, but were the rich on this island part of that somehow? I felt sick. “Gay people couldn’t have been involved in that.”

  Scott picked out another piece of paper. “Wait. Here. I think this means they were part of retrieving art stolen by the Nazis and getting it back to the rightful owners.”

  I looked carefully. I felt myself begin to breathe.

  “See,” he said, “there’s a list of artworks, lists of where they were recovered from, the dates, most before World War II, some during, and then a short history of the work; I guess that’s the provenance, when they got them, and then how they found the rightful owners.” He pointed. “This last column is for ‘dates returned to rightful owners.’”

  “Is this a document Thasos wrote or one he found made by someone else?”

  “There’s no way to tell.”

  “They didn’t steal anything?”

  “Thasos thinks there was lots of stuff. There’re things from other museums that he represents. See this list here.” He held one out. It had dates and lists of artwork going back to 1905, up to 2003.

  “So,” I said, “they’re high-caliber art thieves with a conscience. How come none of the people who got their art back ever made a fuss or gave them big thank-yous or made a deal about it in the papers? Some kind of headline like noble gay people saved our family heirlooms.”