File Under Dead

by Mark Richard Zubro

  Jan said, “I know they’re going to accuse me.” He flipped his feather boa back over his shoulder. He always did that stupid flip with his right hand when he wore the damn things. I thought if he did that too much more often, I’d strangle him with it myself.

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  “The police are talking to everyone. I was at the clinic last night. I wasn’t supposed to be. I told my parents I was going to a friend’s. Which I did. I just didn’t stay long. I need for my parents to trust me.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have done something that would cause them to lose trust in you.”

  “They can’t be fascist and bully me around.”

  “You’re underage. They can make all kinds of decisions about your life. What is it you want?”

  I got the same litany of being on his own I’d heard the first time and almost every other time I’d met him.

  I said, “Why are the police going to accuse you?”

  “I hid in the basement last night until after everyone was gone. I was the last one here. Us kids use the basement as a hangout. A few of us sleep overnight down there when we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  I’d never been in the basement. I asked, “How big is this basement?”

  “It’s kind of spooky. It stretches under all three of the old houses. When they started that renovation they put a lot of old files and stuff in the one farthest from Addison. You can’t even find a place to sit down in there. There’s still tools and crap scattered all around down there. The second one is still mostly dirt floors and cold brick and empty. They renovated the one under this building a few years ago. They only half finished. You can hear stuff when you’re down there.”

  “Does anybody know about the teens using it?”

  “None of the clinic staff people do. A few years ago somebody tried to turn the space down there into a rec room. They put down somebody’s used linoleum. They brought a tatty old couch and a lamp. The bulb burned out months ago. It’s pretty dark, but you get light through one of the basement windows.”

  “Why did you need to hide out?”

  “I needed a place to meet a friend.”

  Jan with a boyfriend? He might be popular, but he’d never shown interest in one person. He was always the loudest one in the middle of a crowd, never quietly holding hands with one boy. His flamboyance and ability to entertain couldn’t hide his inability to relate sensibly on a personal level.

  “Did your friend stay late with you?”

  “No. I stayed awhile after.”

  “By yourself in the dark?”

  “We can’t turn any lights on. I had my laptop computer lid up.”

  I’d dealt with kids long enough as a teacher to at least have some notion when they weren’t telling the truth. I didn’t believe he was with someone. I’d bet all my teacher’s manuals along with the answer keys that he was lying.

  “Who was the friend?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. He’s closeted.”

  “So are most of the kids who come to the clinic, but they aren’t closeted when they’re around here.”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s somebody from school. I promised not to tell.”

  I gave up on pressing for the name. Maybe the police could use his feather boa to torture it out of him or just strangle him and save the rest of us a lot of grief. I asked, “How did everybody get in and out down there without people noticing?”

  “It’s not hard. This place is such a dump. From the areaway on the north side of the building there’s an old entrance. I think maybe they used to bring coal in through a chute. Somebody knocked a few boards loose to widen that entrance.”

  “Who’s somebody?”

  “Different kids. The opening got wider over time. We used to go down there to smoke and stuff. It’s a refuge. A make-out place.”

  “You’re sure none of the staff knew how you were using it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I don’t wear a watch. I don’t like to feel encumbered.”

  “Don’t computers have the time on them?”

  “Mine was always wrong. I shut off that function.”

  “How long does yours work on battery?”

  “I’ve got a good one. It goes for more than three hours.”

  Count on Jan to be on the cutting edge of everything. He certainly thought he was the most trendy thing in the Midwest.

  “Even if you can’t say exactly, can you give me a guess about what time it was?”

  “Not really, but I hadn’t heard footsteps above for a while. You can hear people moving around.”

  I asked, “Can you get upstairs from the basement without a key?”

  “Sure. With or without. But we keep it a big secret about what goes on down there after hours. Which is why I think they’ll suspect me. Anybody could get up from there.”

  “How would they know you were down there?”

  “DNA tests. Fingerprints.”

  “But you were there more than once. So your print could have come on one of your other visits.”

  “Yeah.”

  Unless he told on himself, he might never be found out. Then again, here he was blabbing to me. He was the kind of kid who might as well be wearing a sign saying “Don’t Talk to Me, I’ve Got a Secret.” If he was down there, the police needed to question him.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Nobody’s going to be able to keep that kind of thing secret. Somebody will blab, although I figure that will be you.”

  “I can keep secrets.”

  I asked, “Did you see anyone when you left?”

  “Not in the basement. I left through the alley. You know how dark it is back there. I thought I heard some movement. I couldn’t tell if it was a rat or a person. I called out and looked around.”

  “You could have been mugged.”

  “I didn’t think about that. It may have been a person. Maybe it was the killer. I could have been within feet of him. I wasn’t scared. I know karate.”

  “Outside of the movies, how good is karate against somebody with a weapon?”

  “I can defend myself.”

  I went back to the more important point. “But you’re not sure it was someone?”

  “Not really. I came back here early this morning. I saw Max Bakstein across the street at the Rainbow Café. What was he doing there? If it’s a secret, you don’t have to tell me. Did you talk to him? I thought he was with somebody from school. I wasn’t sure I recognized the other guy. I didn’t see them leave. Did they come here?”

  I had no intention of confiding in Jan. He was the ultimate school gossip. I had no desire to lie to him either.

  I asked, “Where were you?”

  “In the coffee shop. I was waiting for the clinic to open. I can’t start my morning without coffee. I need caffeine.”

  Like the Titanic needed an iceberg.

  “How come you were here so early on a Saturday?” I asked.

  “I had a lot to fix in the library here. There’s a new guy from the north suburbs who volunteered to help in the library. He’s hot. I wanted to get to know him.”

  “You should to talk to the police.”

  “My parents will find out I was here. Can’t you tell the police for me?”

  “No. This is going to have to be you.”

  I realized I was setting up a double standard here. I wasn’t going to rat out Max and Abdel, but then they hadn’t been in the building the night before. They said it was their first time here. They wouldn’t have known about the basement.

  Jan’s words also meant the killer didn’t have to have left through the clinic. He or she could have gotten in or out through the hole the kids had made. I introduced Jan to Todd.

  Todd asked Jan to wait outside. When the door closed, Todd said, “Do you know anybody who isn’t connected with the murder?”
/>   “I could check my address book.” I told him about Max and Abdel.

  “Tell the police,” was his prompt reply.

  “I don’t want to if I don’t have to.”

  “You might not have much choice.”

  I told him about Tajeda and Jan. He said, “You should probably keep a list. One of these folks might have killed him. Maybe the cops could just videotape your life. It might save them a lot of work. Or maybe you could just have every third one who shows up here executed.”

  “People who work in a gay organization, how could that be a bad thing?”

  “Too tempting. Forget I suggested it.”

  6

  After Jan left, the torrent of possible suspects let up. If there were a lot more of these “last people to see him alive,” I’d have to start giving out numbers. I eased into the hall. Police personnel stood in the entrances to parts of the clinic that were off limits. Several people stood in the halls and offices nearby.

  Lee walked up to me. “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “Okay. I told them the truth. I’m not sure that was a great idea, but your lawyer said it was the only idea.” He frowned. “A couple of us are getting together across the street at the Rainbow Café. Why don’t you join us?”

  I wasn’t eager to spend a lot of time with more of these people from the clinic. At the same time, I didn’t relish being alone with my visions of what I’d seen. Through a pane of glass, I saw Jan gesticulating at two uniformed officers. Todd was with him.

  Lee added, “We can compare notes on what the cops said.”

  I agreed to accompany him.

  Outside we walked through a cluster of people, some of whom I recognized from the clinic. The full-time staff was about twenty people. There were at least a hundred part-time volunteers, more if a major project was on hand.

  The Rainbow Café was an institution in the Chicago gay community. Before Unabridged Bookstore opened, the café was one of the few places in the city you could find legitimate gay literature, fiction, and non-fiction. It was now a used bookstore, coffee house, and meeting place for the community. It was a series of storefronts merged into a complex that now took up nearly an entire block. The owner had purchased a corner space and expanded northward numerous times. Each former storefront now had a spacious interior archway connecting it with the others. Every room had tables and couches, and overstuffed chairs clustered in the middle. Tiffany reading lamps, brass fixtures, green plants, and more comfortable seating filled nooks and crannies and quiet corners and cozy alcoves. The interior had a very English pubby feeling, sconces and hanging smoked glass lanterns, everything dark wood: chairs, tables, booths. Upstairs was a variety of meeting rooms, the largest of which, the size of small ballroom, was the proposed venue for the oft-discussed prom. On the sound system, the owner played a mix of classical music and blues. Used books lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. One room was exclusively devoted to mysteries, another to American literature, a third to science fiction, and so on. With all the wood and books and old-world prints on the ends of bookcases, it was a delight of a place to be. There was even a separate room for those who wanted to tap on their laptop keyboards. Early in the afternoon on a Saturday it was crowded.

  Lee and I wound up in the furthest room to the north, the quietest, most removed from the cash register. This room was filled exclusively with theater books: scripts, plays, and numerous editions of complete Shakespeare in hardcover. Several people from the clinic had placed some tables together. I wasn’t in the mood to sit with them, but Lee said, “There isn’t really another free spot.”

  Lee, Tajeda, Ken Wells, David Frouge, and myself were on hand.

  The general consensus of the people present was, Snarly Bitch was rude but we should try not to speak ill of the dead, with the secondary thought, What’s going to happen to our jobs? There was a great deal of discussion about what the police had asked whom. Nobody discussed their whereabouts from when Snarly was last seen to my discovery of the head. I guess everybody just assumed if you were present in the coffee shop, you weren’t a killer.

  For a group that generally didn’t like each other much, at the moment they seemed to be trying to rein in their inherent hostility. No one asked for details about my experience.

  A lot of the job discussion revolved around the possibilities of funding in the future. They figured if they could get cash, the clinic and their jobs might survive. Tajeda said, “Snarly Bitch may have been an asshole, but he was our meal ticket. Say all you want, but he was fantastic at fundraising.”

  Lee Weaver said, “He could suck up to wealthy donors better than anyone I know.”

  Ken Wells said, “He was sweet to them in direct proportion to how rotten he was to us.” Ken was the grievance collector and fairness barometer of the group. He remembered every slight, or possible slight, or what could turn into a slight, or what might be interpreted as a slight if he complained about it to enough people. He was the kind of guy who knew precisely when and exactly who had gotten how many paper clips. He had a degree in accounting and another in social work. His idea of fairness was that everyone should get what was coming to them as it related to Ken Wells. He used fairness as a club and a means to beat up people in an argument, and as a method of getting that which was favorable to him. I could have predicted the words I heard him say: “This just isn’t fair.”

  The second time he repeated it, I asked, “Unfair to whom? You’re not dead.”

  He said, “This clinic could have been something. I was in charge of community outreach. Snarly thought that meant sucking up to donors. What it really means is reaching out to other groups, finding common ground, making common cause. We started that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered domestic abuse program. It was a huge success, but he wouldn’t pursue other programs like it. That was stupid. As it is, we’ve got other gay organizations meeting in many of our rooms for lots of hours and days a week. They pay fees for that. At least that’s something. It gave us an income of sorts. Not much. But Snarly wouldn’t listen to my other plans. Nobody appreciated what I was doing for that clinic. This place could have been better than anything San Francisco or Los Angeles has, but people just don’t realize what it takes to build a real community organization. In connection with this café, we’d have been really something.”

  Tajeda said, “We supported everything you did. We wanted you to succeed.”

  David Frouge, a great bear of a man, said, “Community outreach was not the clinic’s mission.” Frouge was the ‘original intent’ person on the staff. Frouge had been one of the first employees hired by Snarly Bitch years ago. An MBA, he had decided the clinic needed a mission statement. They spent months of committee meetings deciding that since they were a gay youth clinic, their mission statement would be that they would help gay kids. He was one MBA who needed to get a grip. When with Snarly Bitch, Frouge was your basic milquetoast suck-up. More than any of the others, he gave meaning to the term rigid. Everything had to have been done before, and then had to be done the way it had been done before. Under this system, how the first thing ever got done was a mystery to me. I’m not a change-for-the-hell-of-it kind of guy, but if you looked up rigid in the dictionary, you would find a picture of David Frouge. He always wore the same pair of faded blue jeans. In summer he added dark blue T-shirts, in winter dark blue flannel shirts. If he had a redeeming quality, I didn’t know about it, unless you count unswerving loyalty to Snarly Bitch as a virtue. Normally, he wouldn’t have been having coffee with this crowd, but this was not a normal moment. He said, “I know you all think I was this big suck-up, but I got yelled at a lot by Charley, probably more than most of you. Everybody blew problems out of proportion. There was no need for some delegation to meet with Charley about how to handle staff. Even more, I never did see why Mason had to lead the group to talk to Charley.”

  Lee asked, “You approved of the way he dealt with us?”

  “He was the boss. It was his clinic. For all the c
omplaining, if it was really that bad, people could have left.”

  Lee said, “The thing I hated most about him was that fatuous smile.” Nods around the group. “I used to fantasize that the fat end of a baseball bat up his ass might wipe it off his face.”

  Wells said, “He was contrary enough to enjoy that.”

  “You don’t have to be contrary to enjoy that,” Frouge said. A couple of us raised our eyebrows at this comment, but nobody asked questions. I was glad of that.

  Sloan Hastern, Jakalyn Bowman, and Irene Kang, three other employees of the clinic, joined us. Hastern was in charge of volunteers. Bowman was in charge of relations with the press. Kang was the executive assistant. We crowded more closely around the tables.

  Hastern announced, “The cops have got hold of the volunteer list. They’re calling in everybody. Those poor people who just wanted to do a little good in a quiet way are gonna get blasted.”

  “It’s going to take them a hell of a long time,” Wells pointed out. “The volunteers never stayed long.”

  Lee said, “Most of them were teenagers, a notoriously flighty bunch, or adults who weren’t committed to these kids. I was committed to helping them.”

  Frouge interjected, “Charley was, too.”

  Wells said, “He stabbed me in the back all the time.”

  I added, “I’d heard he sabotaged one of your recent fundraisers.”

  “That asshole went behind my back and convinced several big donors to pull out of a major dinner benefit we were having. Yeah, I wanted to kill him at that moment.”