A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  Ari hadn’t taken Nick’s hand. He was too busy twisting around in his seat, his eyes scanning the pews across the aisle.

  “What are you looking for?” Nick asked.

  “I wanted to see if the kid was here.” Nick squinted his eyes to extract more information. “The hustler,” Ari whispered, “who swooped in and got his name added to the will right before Freddy died.”

  Nick grunted at his boyfriend’s harsh description, and Ari responded with a roll of his eyes. “You can be so naive, Nick. It happens all the time to old gay men with money. Sadly, they tend to be easy targets. Lonely, no kids, hungry for company. A good-looking guy shows up, plays nurse with benefits for a few months, tends to them, swears love, and walks away with the whole inheritance.”

  “Is that what people think I’m doing with you?” Nick asked only half jokingly.

  Ari prodded Nick’s knee affectionately. “Don’t blame me! I’m just telling you what I heard. I thought he’d be here, but I don’t see him.”

  Nick joined in the search, perusing the rows for any other man under the age of sixty. He was curious what this hustler looked like. As a teenager, Nick feared he would eventually become something like his quietly miserable father, fixing radios in a Dayton basement. Then Nick feared he would turn into a version of his unhappy, Ohio-trapped sister. In New York, he worried he’d end up whispered about like this young man for his behavior around older men. Nick’s entire biography could be summed up by the people he feared he’d become.

  “I’m trying to remember his name,” Ari muttered. “Cord? Cliff? Clay?”

  “Did he get a lot of money?” Nick asked.

  “Well, as you said, Freddy was a van der Haar. I’m sure he had a very nice egg tucked away. Plus, he owned a brownstone in Brooklyn that I know for a fact did go to the kid. That’s got to be worth a couple million by itself.”

  “A couple million,” Nick repeated in astonishment.

  “The kid’s getting too greedy, though. He called the shop about selling some of Freddy’s remaining silver. I’ll take a look at the pieces, but this whole business . . .” Ari shook his head.

  “You don’t think . . .” Nick felt he didn’t need to finish that sentence, but Ari let his question hang there without acknowledging the implication. Gitsy was crying at the podium. She was recounting a story about visiting a hospital in the 1980s with Freddy, sneaking in marijuana and magazines to their sick friends to ease their suffering. Nick cleared his throat and whispered directly into his boyfriend’s ear. “You don’t think that this kid, this hustler, killed Freddy for his inheritance, do you?”

  Ari grinned. Nick’s childish imagination was a constant source of entertainment for him (would Nick ever be forgiven for suspecting that their building’s super was dealing drugs out of the basement laundry room?). Ari shrugged at this particular allegation before waving to an acquaintance across the aisle.

  Nick drove his thumb into Ari’s thigh to recapture his attention. “Answer this question. What did Freddy die of?”

  Another shrug. Ari reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tube of nicotine lozenges. He’d quit smoking a few years before Nick had met him, but he’d saved his lungs only to jeopardize his mouth.

  “Well, let’s see. Freddy was HIV-positive. He had hepatitis B. He was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer. And his kidneys were failing because he was also a raging alcoholic junkie in his seventies. I think all of those conditions were competing to see which one could finish him off first.”

  “And which of those illnesses won?”

  “From what I heard, none of them.”

  The pews burst into applause. The oldest of the old men with the cheapest of walkers was struggling toward the podium. Grimy fluorescent-yellow tennis balls were staked on the walker’s aluminum legs. The thick weft of the carpeting wasn’t helping to smooth the old man’s progress, and Nick instinctively rose to help him.

  Ari grabbed Nick by the forearm and warned, “Don’t. He wouldn’t like that.” Nick sat back down.

  A spotlight was switched on from the rafters and shone its watery halo onto the podium. Several minutes later the old man filled it, clutching the microphone, his face a contusion of shut eyes and invisible lips. Then, as if lit by the sun, the old man changed. When he opened his eyes, he appeared years younger, agile and alert—and even, Nick thought, handsome—as if the only thing he’d ever needed was a stage. The pews roared bawdily in anticipation.

  “Ladies and assholes,” screeched the man’s vinegar voice. “Pricks and punks, you glorious angels of muck and two-dollar virtue.” Laughter scattered around the room. “Get comfortable because I’ve been waiting eighty years to roast this motherfucker, Frederica! When I met her, we were babies fresh out of the clink, only she had the golden last name and I had the golden mouth. We got along, as they say, like two toucans on fire. Who here didn’t cop heroin with Freddy back in ’seventy-three?”

  Oh no, Nick thought. There was no way they would be out of here within the hour. Instead, they would be sitting right here in the third row, hungrier and hotter. He desperately needed to shed his coat. Somehow, post-applause, the other sitters in his row had stolen ground while he had lost the precious extra inches he’d been secretly hoarding. He couldn’t strip off the coat without standing, and that might make him a target of ridicule for the old man at the podium. Nick glanced at Ari, who was watching the one-man vaudeville routine with a giddy smile. Nick nudged him.

  “Hey,” he whispered twice before Ari broke from his spell. “You didn’t say what really killed Freddy.”

  “Oh,” Ari replied with a curt nod. “Some people agree with you. They figure the hustler did him in.”

  “I didn’t say that he—”

  Ari snapped his fingers. “Clay. That’s his name. Clay something. Yeah, most people think that this Clay character killed him to get the money before Freddy could change his mind. That’s just a rumor. I have no idea if it’s true. Officially, Freddy’s death was ruled an overdose.”

  “An overdose?” Nick repeated.

  “Yeah,” Ari said. “But in the end, whether it was drugs, murder, or disease, it comes down to the same thing. We all know what really killed Freddy. He died of New York.”

  Midway through the third speech—the leitmotif of which was Freddy in his gender-fluid Berlin years—Nick whispered to Ari that he needed some air. Crawling from the pew, he scurried down the aisle with his eyes combing the carpet to avoid the glares. He opened the thin door to the vestibule and the heavy red outer door that brought him out to the lower edges of Gramercy Park. His feet crunched the ice and salt on the steps.

  The chill rinsed Nick’s body, running around his neck and knifing up his pant legs. Soon this momentary relief from the stuffiness of the church would become its own form of torture, but for now he appreciated the icy slap on his skin. He swept his hair back so the cold could reach the sweat on his forehead. The radiator heat inside the church had merged with the endless, drowsy rotation of Freddy stories to the point that the past had started to feel like a temperature. Out here in the freezing noon, the cold felt to Nick very much like the future—healthy, invigorating, and a reason for his heart to pump fast.

  The trees in front of the church—magnolias, Nick guessed, long stripped to their twiggy skeletons—were blooming with ice crystals. The church itself was buffered from the unending congestion of Second Avenue by a large rectangular park with a cast-iron gate. A hospital sat on the other side of the avenue, and most of the park’s midday ramblers were nurses or interns, judging from the white or pale-blue legs that descended from their coats. Nick knew he should go back inside before the third speaker finished. A prolonged absence was bound to jeopardize the points he’d scored in sacrificing his Saturday to one of Ari’s obligations.

  Still, Nick allowed himself to rest for a moment on the cement wall by the door. It didn’t seem right for him to be sitting up front in that crowded memorial service. He didn’t get the re
ferences because he hadn’t known the man, and thus every joke, robbed of any tenderness, made him feel like he was laughing at the dead. He bundled his coat collar against his neck and watched the hospital employees circle the dry fountain well. A young couple, an Asian woman and a white man, were passing through the park at a clipped pace, knit hats bobbing in unison, both of them slipping and catching themselves on a patch of ice. Nick pulled out his phone to text Leo—What did you do last night?—hoping to be amused by some raucous escapade that had his friend packed in an Uber in terrible shape at 7:00 a.m. But as Nick scrolled through their text history, he realized he’d been asking Leo this very same question once a week for the past six months. What did you do last night? What did you do last night? He was using Leo as his informant to keep tabs on nocturnal New York. Which bar were you at? Were lots of people there? Nick slid his phone into his pocket. He could scour Leo’s Instagram account later.

  A lone figure cut across the park, rounding the fountain, his breaths streaking white in the cold. When the man crossed the ice patch he didn’t slip or even slow his gait. He was black, only a little shorter than Nick, and had a thin, athletic body with a slightly uneven stride, as if a sleeping pain existed in his right hip that he was trying not to awaken. His hair was short and frizzy, slightly longer on top than on the sides. Earphones dangled on a cord from his waist, reminding Nick of the tasseled tzitzit that Orthodox Jewish men wore under their suits.

  When the young man exited the park, Nick was surprised to see him jogging directly toward the church. He slackened his pace only when he shuffled between two parked cars. Then he stopped and stared hesitantly up at the red door from the sidewalk. There was a movement at his mouth as if he were chewing on his lips. His fists punched the insides of his jacket pockets, and he walked up the stone path, his high-tops kicking up bits of ice. As he paused at the church door right in front of Nick, he took his hands out of his pockets but kept them balled. The skin at the knuckles was cracked.

  Nick straightened up, and the guy glanced down and gave a slight nod. But the crack of a smile, more upper gums than teeth, changed the entire forecast of his face. There was something inviting in that smile, and Nick could feel himself turning red. Luckily, the cold worked as cover. Nick took the opportunity to study the man closely. He was around Nick’s age, probably just a year or two older. He had severe eyes, or rather soft brown eyes under a severe brow. His lips were badly chapped and lined with indents of his teeth. Nick found him sexy in a way that might not show up in a photograph.

  The guy peered into one of the glass panes that bordered the church door. Nick didn’t pin him as a late guest. The crowd inside was far too old, and it was entirely white. Maybe he was the son of one of the gospel singers, waiting for his mother to finish her gig to escort her home. In any case, Nick knew that the young man wouldn’t be able to see into the church from the window. The vestibule doors blocked the view of the service.

  The guy stepped back, and his eyes moved reluctantly down to Nick.

  “Excuse me,” he said in a deep voice, the kind of muscular baritone that teenage boys manufacture to sound like men when they answer the phone, tired of being mistaken for their sisters. “Do you know if the service for Freddy van der Haar is still going on?”

  “Yes, it is,” Nick responded, a touch too soprano. “It’s probably about halfway through.” He reached for the phone in his pocket to check the time but stopped himself. A phone shut down conversation, and Nick was hoping to encourage one, at the very least to delay returning to his seat. “It’s packed in there. Lots of people.”

  “Ah, that’s good,” the guy answered. “I’m glad to hear that.” He kicked his sneaker against the stoop but didn’t reach for the door handle.

  “What I mean is, you’ll have a hard time finding a seat.”

  “Oh, I’m not going in,” he replied. But now he gazed down at Nick with fresh interest. “Do you know if the flowers arrived?”

  “Flowers?”

  “Two huge bouquets. Peonies. Those were Freddy’s favorites. They were supposed to go up by the podium.”

  Nick thought of the empty white pedestals at the altar.

  “Uh-oh. Are you from the florist?”

  The guy laughed at this idea, wrapping his arms around his stomach. For the first time, his hands lost the shape of fists.

  “No, man,” he said, recovering. “I’m not from the florist.”

  Nick was on the verge of stuttering out an apology, but there didn’t seem to be any offense taken. “No,” the young man said with a smile. “I’m a friend of Freddy’s. I just wanted to make sure the flowers arrived and that enough people showed up. Those two bouquets cost a fortune.”

  “I have bad news,” Nick said sheepishly. “I don’t think they arrived.”

  The guy’s expression stiffened. “Are you serious?” When he threw his hands up in frustration, Nick caught a flash of navy boxers and hairless, goose-bumped skin at his waist. “No wonder they didn’t answer when I called. Dammit! Freddy would have wanted those flowers up there.”

  It was difficult for Nick to feel too bereaved about missing flowers, but it clearly meant something to the young man. “I’m sorry,” he said in an attempt at consolation. “It’s still a really nice service. I’m sure Freddy would be happy with it.”

  The guy nodded appreciatively as he coiled the cord of his earphones. Nick caught his gaze and felt a wave of heat and fright, the familiar vertigo of a brief flirtation. Ari always accused Nick of flirting with strangers, of trying to reel them in with shy glances. Maybe Nick did tend to flirt. But when he was trapped with Ari’s intellectual friends from Brown or his silver-haired colleagues in antiques or art, it was all he could fall back on. At twenty-five, Nick’s eyes were wiser than his tongue.

  “You should go in,” Nick encouraged. “You might find a seat.”

  “Nah,” he said with a shake of his head. “This is a service for Freddy’s old friends. They put it together, and it’s for the Freddy they knew. I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “I don’t think you’d be interrupting,” Nick assured him, having no idea whether that would be the case. He was only trying to extend their conversation and get a second hit of vertigo. Yes, Ari was right. Nick did like harmless games of seduction. And once he decided to be seduced, nothing—not even the waning interest of the seducer—could throw him off the chase.

  “You don’t understand,” the young man said. “I know I’d be interrupting. Some of those people aren’t so fond of me.” Nick offered up a look of disbelief. “It’s okay, though. I’ll have my own memorial for Freddy. He wanted to be buried in the Campo Verano in Rome or the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in LA. I couldn’t make either of those happen, so I’ll scatter his ashes in Venice by myself.”

  There was a colossal difference between bearing the responsibility of memorial bouquets and the final resting place of the deceased. Nick had wildly misjudged the relationship of this young man to Freddy van der Haar. He flailed his arms apologetically. He realized he’d just invited one of Freddy’s closest friends inside the church as if Nick were the self-appointed memorial-service bouncer.

  “I’m so stupid. I didn’t mean—”

  But the guy thrust his hand out, thumb to the sky, palm open. Nick took it and gripped down on the soft, warm flesh.

  “I’m Clay Guillory,” the guy said with a smile that exposed his purple gums.

  The hustler, Nick thought, remembering Ari’s words, the one who’d connived his way into the van der Haar inheritance. Nick had pictured a far sketchier figure, a scrawny white kid with bleached hair, a red Florida sunburn, and eye sockets like the heads of dirty spoons. Nick had taken “hustler” to be code for “escort” or “prostitute,” whereas Ari might simply have meant “schemer,” “con artist,” “grifter,” or basically “any young person without money or means who dared to survive in New York these days.”

  In any case, Nick reserved judgment. He himself had never accepted
money for sex. But in his skimming-the-poverty-line college-dorm years, he’d engaged in a few dalliances with wealthy men that were unequivocally transactional in nature. Nick had been treated to expensive meals, to a designer coat, twice to a pair of sneakers, and to several weekends at mansions in Southampton. He was even once given a vintage Rolex for his birthday, which he’d stupidly lost a few weeks later. Nick had never received cash for those dates, but he was rewarded in the things that cash could buy. Was there a difference? To Nick, the answer was yes and no. He had never mentioned those starving years to Ari for fear of his reaction. But as he stared up at Clay Guillory, he wondered if he should be impressed or cautious. Clay was so young to have wheedled a family fortune into his bank account—one of the oldest American fortunes at that.

  Nick decided he was both impressed and cautious. “I’m Nick Brink. Nice to meet you.”

  Clay was the first to pull his hand away and, in the ensuing silence, seemed to be sizing Nick up with patient eyes. “You’re not one of Freddy’s old friends,” he surmised.

  “No. I never met him. I’m here with my boyfriend, Ari Halfon. He runs—”

  “Wickston Antiques,” Clay exclaimed, pulling his jacket’s zipper up to his chin. His smile didn’t change, but the spark behind it seemed to fade. “I’ve been talking to your boyfriend about Freddy’s silver.”

  “Yeah, he mentioned that. I work at Wickston too. I’m an assistant for now, but . . .” Nick stumbled and let the pathetic sentence blow away in the wind.