Tajeda continued, “He was frightened about talking to the police. I reassured him. I hope he’s okay. Under all that bluster there’s a very sensitive and lonely boy.”
Wells said, “Snarly kicked him out of the clinic permanently.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Being an obnoxious twit?” Wells said. “I didn’t ask.”
“But he was back today.”
Tajeda said, “Maybe Charley took him back. Charley could do that. He’d turn around a hundred eighty degrees on something, sometimes in the same sentence. That’s why I thought I could talk to him about Lee’s job. Jan was good at sucking up. Maybe he talked to Charley.”
I asked, “Did anyone know kids sometimes used the basement after hours for secret trysts?”
Lee watched me closely. Most of the rest of the people at the table shook their heads except Sloan Hastern. Everybody looked at him. He said, “I knew.”
“How?” Lee said.
“You’re not the only one kids trust.”
Well, thank God they were perky enough to snipe at each other and not just me.
I asked, “Did one of the kids tell you, or did you find it out on your own?”
Hastern said, “The volunteers are the ones who do the cleaning and maintenance around the clinic. I supervise. Several times I noticed messes down there in the mornings when there shouldn’t have been messes. I accused a couple of the clean-up crews of inefficiency. They all denied it. They couldn’t all have been lying. I inspected what was in the messes. It was the usual crap kids might leave behind, fast-food containers, condoms. Once I found a pair of underwear. What really gave it away was a high-school chemistry textbook and paperback Ayn Rand novel. I began making spot checks of the basement the last thing after everyone went home. I tried staying late a few times to catch someone, but I never did. They must have some kind of system of knowing who’s there and who’s not. I always left it neat and pristine. It only took a couple of weeks to figure out. Wasn’t hard. I talked to a few of the kids. A couple even said a few of them had stayed all night. I saw no reason to blab. I told them if they cleaned up after themselves, I wouldn’t check up on them.”
Frouge said, “We could have been sued.”
“Not sued,” Hastern said. “Parents might have been pissed and raised a stink, but not sued.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Tajeda asked.
“Not in my job description.”
Wells said, “You checked the basement after last night’s meeting?”
Hastern said, “Yep. I mentioned it to the cops. My understanding is that, except for the addition of blood and gore, the place was perfectly neat. Did any of you see what it looked like this morning?”
None of them had been permitted in the basement.
“Who cleans up after a murder?” Hastern asked. “I sure as hell am not going to do it. I’m not going to ask any of the kids to do it either.”
Tajeda said, “I’m sure the board will try to hire a service. If they can afford it. If the clinic still exists as an entity to do any cleaning.”
I asked Hastern, “Today, did you talk to any of the kids specifically about being down there?”
“No, should I have?”
Ken Wells said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell anyone about this.”
“Or put a stop to it,” Jakalyn Bowman added.
“It wasn’t my problem.”
Tajeda said, “The clinic could lose its license if the authorities found out we had kids staying overnight. They might think we were somehow letting kids get molested.”
“Why would they think that?” Hastern asked. “We don’t employ any Catholic priests.”
“This isn’t funny,” Wells said. “We’ve been very scrupulous about not allowing anything that even remotely suggests sex among the kids, but especially sex between any of the staff and the kids.”
“More scrupulous than you need to be,” Hastern said.
Lee asked, “What does that mean?”
“We aren’t recruiting,” Hastern said. “That’s bogus bullshit. Why do we have to be so scrupulous, when it’s just bullshit?”
“You’re so fucking naïve,” Wells said.
“Do you think these kids aren’t having sex with each other?” Hastern asked.
I almost left. No matter how much they hated their boss, you’d think they’d express more than passing grief about it. They were bickering as if nothing had happened. Then again, maybe it was easier to bicker than it was to think about violent death. I couldn’t be the only one avoiding unpleasant images.
Irene Kang spoke for the first time. “Maybe it was some kind of anti-gay thing. A bashing gone bad.” Kang was in her mid-twenties. Her title as executive assistant hid the fact that she was little more than a glorified secretary. She had blond hair and as far as I could see, she spent as much time buffing her nails and talking on the phone as she did working. The greatest virtue I had observed her to have was the ability to suck up to Charley Fitch whenever he was around. Once he was out of earshot, she was as nasty as he was when large donors weren’t around.
Ken Wells gave her a contemptuous look. “Gay bashers don’t work that way.”
“How do you know?” Kang asked.
“I’ve been bashed right out on Clark Street,” Wells said. “At seven o’clock at night with people all around. Put me in the hospital. I had to have three operations. I’ve earned my scars. How about you?”
Kang said, “You don’t have to get beaten up to have credentials as a gay activist.”
Wells said, “They don’t come into buildings and hunt people. They find them on the street when they look vulnerable. They’re crimes of opportunity. The Neanderthals that do them haven’t got the brains to do a lot of planning.”
Kang said, “Well, I know Charley Fitch got several phone calls that made him angry yesterday. Maybe somebody was planning to hurt him.”
“Who called?” Wells asked.
“There were several. I heard him raise his voice a number of times.”
“He was always raising his voice,” Lee said.
Kang said, “More than usual with these, I thought.”
“You were listening?” Wells asked.
Kang said, “He leaves his office door open. You know he does. My desk is right there. I don’t deliberately eavesdrop.”
“Anything more specific or different about the most recent ones?” Wells asked.
Kang said, “Not that I noticed.”
“Had there been any threatening phone calls prior to this?” Lee asked.
“There’s always threatening phone calls,” Kang said. “Obscene callers. They don’t usually ask for somebody by name. The loonies usually just call up the clinic and start spouting obscenities or quoting the Bible.”
“Somebody asked for me by name,” Lee said.
“Happened to me last week,” Wells said.
Hastern said, “I got the same thing about a week ago. Asked for me by name.”
Tajeda said, “Me too.”
They’d all been called. I asked Kang, “Do you remember if the person who asked for them sounded the same?”
“We get millions of calls. I can’t be expected to remember the sound of one person’s voice.”
“When did you get the calls exactly?” I asked.
Lee’s had been first, just over two weeks ago. The others had followed on subsequent days. Some came early in the morning, some late in the day.
I said, “You could check the Caller ID and get the numbers.”
“Charley Fitch wouldn’t pay for Caller ID,” Kang said.
Hastern said, “That is so stupid. All you had to do was get the Caller ID, prosecute a few of them, and you’d solve the problem.”
Frouge said, “Charley claimed the idea that we might have Caller ID would be as effective as having it. Actually, he was right. We’ve gotten a lot fewer crank calls since the local phone monopoly added it to their service.”
> “Doesn’t help with people at pay phones or who can block it,” Wells said.
“What did the voice sound like?” I asked.
They all agreed it was male, the only thing so far that they didn’t disagree or bicker about. After that they returned to form. Several thought the voice was disguised. A few didn’t think it was. Some thought he was young, others old. Two found it deep and mellow. Two weren’t really paying attention. Several said it upset them too much to be sure.
Tajeda said, “You’d think we’d be used to that kind of verbal attack. I’m not. I don’t think anybody ever really is.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
Lee said, “Standard anti-gay stuff. Threw the word faggot around a few times. Said we were all going to hell. Said we were child molesters.”
Wells said, “I have no idea what he said. After the first obscenity, I hung up.”
Lee had listened the longest, but the others agreed that the bits that they did hear coincided pretty much with what Lee had heard.
“Does this have any significance connected to the killing?” Lee asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It is odd that they came in so regularly right before Snarly’s death, but there’s lots of possible explanations for that. Doesn’t have to be an ax murderer.”
Lee said, “We should tell the police about them.”
Hastern said, “I’m not going near the cops.” Five years ago he’d reported his abusive lover to the police. They’d laughed at him. He’d made a complaint against the reporting officers to the Chicago Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division. They’d never returned his calls. He’d gotten in touch with the mayor’s liaison to the gay community. She’d given him vague reassurances. The last beating had put Hastern in the hospital. After that Hastern’s lover had abandoned him, tired of the activism, blaming the victim.
They spent the next few minutes bickering about reporting things to the police. I’d just about had it. Through the window, I saw Todd cross the street. I met him near a bookcase filled with lesbian mysteries; the most prominently displayed were multiple copies of Ellen Hart’s and Katherine Forrest’s works. Todd said, “If all gay kids are like that one, I’m going to turn in my ID card.”
“You’ve had the Jan Experience. Maybe we could plant some evidence and have him arrested.”
“No prison has enough feather boas to handle him. I have also been talking with several members of the clinic’s board of directors. They want to talk to you. They need an interim director, someone to take temporary responsibility. They were thinking of asking you. I’m supposed to feel you out.”
“No, thanks. I prefer teaching. Being peripherally involved in a gay organization is a risk to a saint’s patience. Being in charge is an invitation to madness.”
“You won’t talk to them?”
“I’ll talk to anybody. The answer is, no.”
The detectives, Lynn Stafford and Jason Abernathy, entered the coffee shop. They walked directly back to the group in the theater room. Todd and I followed. They stood on either side of Lee.
“Mr. Weaver,” Stafford said, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Charley Fitch.” Lee turned very pale. I listened to the recitation of the Miranda warning in a fog. Mouths were open around the table. When they put the handcuffs on him and began to lead him away, he turned to me and said, “Help me, Mr. Mason.”
The best thing I can say about the next few minutes was that the clinic members present forgot their bickering and carrying on and showed genuine concern. Of course, Wells said, “This isn’t fair.”
The cops ignored him.
Todd said he would go with Lee to the police station.
I said, “I’ll go with.”
“It won’t do you any good. They might let me talk to him. Certainly not anyone else.”
“They can’t have any proof.”
“They must have something. I intend to find out what.”
They left. I had no intention of returning to the other clinic personnel. I stood indecisively for several moments. Jan walked up. He actually bent close and whispered in my ear. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Mason?”
“Things are a little frantic right now, Jan.”
“It’s important. Some of the kids need to talk to someone.”
7
The Rainbow Café was known as a hangout for gay kids. The owner had strict rules. Gay or straight, kids had to have cash to pay for their stuff. They had to show their money before ordering. The only musical devices allowed to be turned on had to have headphones. If another patron could hear the slightest noise from any electronic device, it had to be turned off. Public displays of affection had to be nearly as chaste as at a Catholic high school dance in the Fifties.
The teens were huddled together in a small alcove in the most obscure corner of the café. The owner could observe anyone in these chairs from behind the counter, but they were hidden from the rest of the customers. Jan put his feather boa, laptop, and Ayn Rand book on the table in front of him. The kids sat in a semicircle around me.
They were a disparate lot. Jan and a girl named Brenda Hersch, whom I knew from the clinic, sat with two guys I didn’t know. I was introduced to Cliff Morgan, who was dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt. He was scrawny in a freshman-in-high-school way. The other was Larry Mullen, at least six-foot-five with the build of a college linebacker. Both his letterman’s jacket and a prominently displayed football pin said Bromfield High. Brenda was fifteen or sixteen. She wore a serious frown, jeans, and a bulky sweater.
I asked Jan how his interview with the police went.
“They kept asking me questions. I think they were pretty pissed. The cops called my parents. They were definitely very pissed.”
“Won’t you get in trouble for being here now?” I asked.
“My parents left early this morning to go to Bloomington to visit my brother at Illinois State. They won’t be back for a couple more hours. I’m supposed to be home. If they find out I’m still here, I’ll be grounded until I leave for college.”
Pity the college or university that got an untrammeled Jan after he’d been cooped up for several years.
I said to Jan, “I heard Charley Fitch threw you out of the clinic and told you never to come back.”
Jan said, “Everything at that clinic was distorted and spooky, except for Mr. Weaver.”
“Why’d Mr. Fitch throw you out?”
“I hate to really say much. It can’t have anything to do with this murder.”
“Everything Charley Fitch did in the past is now open to scrutiny. The truth is going to be important. Some of it might hurt some people, but we’ve got to get past all these secrets.”
He looked at his friends. Brenda said, “Just tell him.”
“Okay. Okay. A few days ago, I had some dope with me. It was one joint. Big deal. I was reaching in my pocket for some change for the pop machine. I accidentally dropped the joint. Snarly Bitch went nuts. He carried on as if I’d just torn the heart out of his firstborn child. I was starting to hate the place anyway. I only came back to use the basement.”
This was the first time I’d heard one of the kids use Fitch’s nickname. While it was familiar with the adults, it sounded odd coming from a kid. I refrained from correcting him. Much as it pained me, I wanted the kid talking.
I said, “You told me earlier you came back today to help with the library.”
“Snarly Bitch wasn’t going to be in today. I had a deal going with the librarian. Snarly hadn’t told everybody else to keep me out. He was so lazy. He’d make these big decrees and then forget to tell anyone about them. Half the time he wouldn’t follow through on his threats, or he’d change his mind for the stupidest reasons. He was the most total jerk.”
Brenda added, “And Jan thought one of the guys who just started volunteering to help in the library was totally hot.”
I asked, “If Charley Fitch was that awful, why did you keep coming back?”
/>
Jan said, “He was awful, but it was the only place we had to go. You can’t believe how few places there are for gay kids to hang out. We can’t get into the bars. The owners or bartenders or doormen get hysterical. If you’re cute, older guys try and pick you up on the street. Mostly that’s icky. There’s no place to be with your friends. Most of us can’t hang around the house. Who says, ‘Mom, Dad, my boyfriend and I are going to go upstairs and study.’ Ha! Nobody’s parents are that liberal. The café here is good, but if you want to make out, you’ve got to find somewhere else. They won’t let you sit in here unless you buy something. Most of us can’t afford a lot. Two bucks for a cup of coffee? And we only get one free refill.” Jan punctuated nearly every comment with a flip of his wrist and a touch or pat on the big guy, Larry’s, arm or knee. The teen queen was in full center-of-attention, drag-queen mode. I noted that Larry moved slightly farther away with each physical contact with Jan. Obviously a problem there of some sort.
I turned to the rest of the bunch. I didn’t think they’d come just to hear Jan. “How can I help you?”
The big guy, Larry, said, “We’ve been discussing this for a while. We weren’t gonna say anything, but then we saw Mr. Weaver arrested. That is so unfair. We need him. He’s the best. Kids who go to the clinic are usually pretty closeted. We don’t have a lot of support. I go, but I think most of the guys are way too effeminate. I want to meet normal guys.”
“I’m normal,” Jan said. He smiled into the light as he said this. For the first time I noticed remnants of what might have been pale pink eye shadow. Jan was normal in the same way drought, famine, and disease are normal.
Larry frowned at him. “I don’t know any gay kids who live near me. I can’t come out to the team. The guys say some pretty vicious things about gay kids. I’m pretty big so I don’t think they’d say something openly, but they might do something sneaky, sabotage my car, steal my gym stuff. I just wish the clinic wasn’t so crazy. There’s always something going wrong. That Fitch guy was nuts. He’d come into our meetings and lecture endlessly. I don’t know how he got to be head of a clinic for helping kids. He didn’t have much sense.” The other teens nodded agreement.
File Under Dead Page 6