File Under Dead

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “The more I think and talk about it, the less pleasant it becomes.”

  He nodded. Walter Truby was the kind of guy who kept his hair longer on top to try and cover an expanding bald spot. At least his head was still attached to the rest of him. He said, “Your lover’s that baseball player. Everybody thinks that is so hot. Everybody is so envious and jealous. I hope I’m not giving offense.”

  I muttered, “It’s okay.”

  He wasn’t the first man or woman to say this to me, my sister having been among the first women. To me, Scott’s looks were kind of like frosting on a cake. I presume we were like most successful relationships: it was the depths within that made the difference. An all-frosting diet would probably be a bad thing—although it might depend on how much chocolate was in it.

  “We were hoping when you volunteered that we’d be able to get some big donations from him.” I had no intention of discussing anything to do with cash at this moment, but I was a little startled at his willingness to be that honest.

  I said, “I’m worried about Lee.”

  Truby turned a little red. “I’m sorry for being crass. This has been an awful day. Charley Fitch is dead. Lee’s been arrested. This is so awful.”

  I mumbled agreement.

  He ran his hands across his balding pate as if to check how many hairs were left at the moment. He continued, “What’s the board going to do? Are the members of the board going to be held responsible for all this? I didn’t join the board to get involved in this kind of thing.”

  “Responsible for the murder? Responsible for the arrest? Responsible for how rude Charley Fitch was?”

  “Just everything. I’ve never had the slightest connection to a murder. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. Now my name is going to be in the paper. I’m involved with this horrible mess. That’s terrible. This isn’t the way it is supposed to be.”

  Once again I was struck by the lack of sorrow over Charley Fitch being dead.

  I said, “Times like this are tough.”

  “How can you be so calm? You found that thing.”

  “I’m worried about Lee right now. I haven’t had time to worry about myself. I will.”

  “Do you think Lee did it?”

  “No. I’ve known him since he was in high school. He’s a good man.”

  “I was told you were friends. He’s the best counselor at the clinic. Kids have faith in him. The board knows what a hard worker he is. We wish they all were like him.”

  “It’s not really my business,” I said, “and it’s an awful time, but I’ve heard all kinds of nasty things about Charley, not just today but ever since I volunteered. Why didn’t the board get rid of him?”

  “I never referred to him as ‘Snarly Bitch.’ I’d heard the nickname. I thought it was odious. The board wasn’t happy about it.” He took a deep breath. “We didn’t get rid of him because we thought he was doing a good job.” He shrugged. “It was also a matter of cash. Pure and simple—he had lots of it. And he had a lot of the people intimidated. He’s been involved in the community for ages, and he founded the damn clinic. He knows powerful people. The wealthiest bar owners support him. Charley was out there working before most of us dared to come out of the closet. People who didn’t have to deal with him as their boss respected him. People he sucked up to liked him. You should have seen him at fundraisers. He knew how to work a crowd. He was charm personified. If he had malcontents working at the clinic, there were other jobs they could get.”

  “I had heard he sucked up to big donors.”

  “You say that as if it was a bad thing. How was he supposed to act toward big donors? I wouldn’t want him to act any differently. How did he treat you?”

  “Pretty okay. Even when I went and talked to him about his style of management, he wasn’t all that hostile.”

  “Money. He knew you and your lover might be a source of big bucks. We all know your lover supports lots of gay causes. Charley might have thought he could at least latch onto your lover as a draw for a fundraiser. We heard about when you went in to talk to him representing the employees. Even though you didn’t work at the clinic often, people trusted you. That kind of word gets around. It’s valuable to have someone like that on the staff.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him I didn’t think it was a matter of trust that I was the spokesperson. It was more like enlightened self-interest on the part of the other staffers. If I was the one sticking my neck out, the rest of them didn’t have to.

  I said, “I was just trying to help out.”

  “I don’t know why the people he worked for couldn’t get along with him better.”

  “Pardon?”

  “People on the staff just never seemed to get the idea. This is a service-based organization with a limited budget. Everyone has to pitch in. Charley did the best he could with a bunch of prima donnas.”

  “They thought he was a jerk.”

  “Not all of them, and the board didn’t see it that way, most of the time.”

  “Besides disliking the boss, the employees were always at each other’s throats. How could the board not see that? Do you mean they did see him as an asshole some of the time?”

  “The board seldom heard about any dissent. Remember, we got all our reports from him. The employees never brought their complaints directly to us. Charley would report that everything was fine. We might have heard rumors. Every organization has problems. He was a boss. All bosses get criticized. None of them are perfect. If every boss with a discontented employee was fired, there’d be no bosses.”

  “I’ve worked with a lot of administrators. Charley seemed to deserve the employees’ dislike more than most. He seemed to create a lot of his own problems.”

  “I wish employee relations were the only problems Charley had.” He glanced around nervously. “There were big problems at the clinic.”

  “What was wrong?”

  Truby sighed. “I wish you were willing to take on the job as temporary director. It would put a known face on the organization. A neutral face, one that hasn’t been caught up in intracommunity fights. You’d have to be aware of these things if you did. I realize you turned down our request, but maybe if you saw how vital it was to the community. I’m so worried. The board would like to make you the next director. I know right this minute might be a terrible time to talk about this, but we’ve got to look out for the clinic’s future, the lives of these kids. Maybe it’s crass to bring it up now, but your lover is rich. Your presence might make a big difference.”

  “I can’t imagine taking the job.”

  “Will you at least listen? I don’t know who to turn to.”

  “I won’t make any promises.”

  “I can say this much. It was money. It always comes down to money. You’ve heard about the scandals with gay fundraising on both coasts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ve had somebody investigating here. We had a ringer on the staff. We were trying to find out what was going on.”

  “Why not investigate the rumors about him being a lousy boss?”

  “Him having poor people skills wasn’t our problem. Money being missing would be.”

  “Charley was raiding the till?” Were they looking for the same money as Smith? Should I tell him about the other investigation? I wasn’t sure which of these people to trust, or if I owed much loyalty to any of them.

  “Charley might have been raiding the till. Money was disappearing. We’d ordered an independent audit.”

  “Who was doing that?”

  “One of the volunteers. I can’t give you his name.”

  “Who else knew about this?”

  “Only the board and our mole in the organization. Charley didn’t even know about him. The board is ultimately responsible for financial management. I’ve been saying for years that the board had to be more hands-on in watching how funds were managed, both income and expenditures. I’ve also thought we should gear ourselves so we’d be less dependent
on one major source of funding. Too late for that now. Charley dealt with all the money. He knew every aspect of the operation.”

  “Is anyone really that indispensable?”

  “He might have been, but his money wasn’t. I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t know about mismanagement. And if he knew, then there may be criminal charges to be filed. Do they file charges against dead people?” He shrugged. “The heart of the matter is nobody on the board was willing to go to jail or get our butts sued because of financial mismanagement. The local gay press had gotten a whiff of something wrong, despite our strongest efforts to keep a lid on it. They had sent someone sniffing around. It was one of the volunteers. Charley knew about that. He watched the volunteers carefully, but neither he nor anyone else could figure out who it was. A few of the other board members thought it might have been you.”

  Or maybe Charley Fitch did find out who one or the other of the investigators was and confronted him, a confrontation that had gone horribly wrong.

  I said, “I’ve never worked for the gay papers. Since Charley used so much of his own money, maybe he was simply taking from himself. Then again, why would he have to steal? He could just give less of his money.”

  “It wasn’t his money. It was his family’s. There could be a huge scandal. This death makes questionable finances more awful. The killing is going to harm the clinic. It can’t help but generate negative publicity. And it was a terrible way to die. Who would do such a killing? And in that awful way? Can you imagine carrying a head around?”

  “No.” Not since the last performance I’d seen of Macbeth in Stratford, Ontario, had I even thought about carrying a head around. It’s not the kind of image that comes readily to mind: mom, apple pie, Disney, severed head—doesn’t have the down-home kind of ring to it you’d hope for. I said, “But nobody had any proof?”

  “We didn’t have any. We never found out which of the volunteers was from the gay paper.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him that I knew who it was and that I had talked to him not more than a few hours before. I felt only a small pang of guilt for not adding my knowledge to his.

  He was saying, “We get so many volunteers from the community. Sloan Hastern was in charge of that part of the operation. He wasn’t as cooperative with the board as he should have been. Charley was eager to get someone new in that position. No, our spy was auditing the accounts at odd moments when he could get a chance.”

  “Was he there last night?” I asked.

  “I presume so. He was supposed to gauge his schedule carefully. That’s what was taking the investigation so long. Charley sometimes worked ten-and twelve-hour days, and when he wasn’t around that Irene Kang person hovered like a vulture. The best times for him to look were when they had those staff meetings. He knew he’d have time then.”

  “Was your guy there last night?” This time I added impatience and insistence to my tone.

  Truby hesitated then said, “I talked to him. He says he didn’t see or hear anything. I thought mentioning his presence would look suspicious to the police. We don’t want them to know there was any kind of scandal.”

  Obviously he didn’t want to give me the name. So much for trust. I said, “The police will want to know if he found something wrong with the books or even saw or heard anything. They’ve got to be told if he was there. I’m not sure it’s a very good idea to try and conceal evidence from the police. Do you really think you’re going to be able to keep that kind of thing from them?” I knew I was a hypocrite after a fashion on this. I hadn’t told about Abdel and Max being there.

  “Public knowledge of an unofficial audit will make the whole clinic look bad. We can’t afford that.”

  “Don’t you think having someone horribly murdered makes the operation look bad?”

  “Well sure, I suppose, but not in the same way. I mean one person killed someone. Even if they worked for the clinic, it’s one person. I’m sure the auditor wouldn’t have committed murder.”

  “How are you so sure?” I asked.

  “I’ve known him for years. He’s a good friend.”

  “Friends can do some pretty awful stuff.”

  “He didn’t. You believe in Lee’s innocence. I trust the auditor.”

  “Why did the auditor have to be a volunteer as well?”

  Truby said, “If he ever got caught, he might be able to make a plausible excuse for being around.”

  “Why not just tell Charley there was going to be an audit? Why the extra secrecy?”

  “Every time any member of the board ever suggested the slightest change to Charley, he’d go nuts. It wasn’t worth the hassle. Plus, we’re not a public company. If we found out something embarrassing, we could keep it quiet.”

  “You’re not really a private company. You solicit donations from the public. People want to know what’s happening to their money.”

  Truby said, “I know. And we give excellent quarterly statements. It’s the best we can do.”

  “Maybe someone on the board tipped off Charley that he was being investigated.”

  “I’ve thought about that. I’m afraid it’s possible. We had a tremendous fight about whether we should permit the audit. We never took a formal vote. We couldn’t have anyway. He was at all the meetings and his sister is on the board.”

  “Some of you were trying to cover your asses.”

  “Yes. My personal lawyer was insistent that something had to be done. On the other hand nobody wanted to offend Charley. Even with us he could be short-tempered.”

  “Then why didn’t you fire his rude ass?”

  “We couldn’t. We just couldn’t. He could just pull his family’s funding. That would take care of that. Plus, he has a lot of supporters on the board. I wasn’t about to go against them. Some of them are my friends. I’ve known these people for years, but Charley worked with some of them for more than three decades. It’s all terribly incestuous. Those activists from the Sixties and Seventies are now in positions of power in organizations. They aren’t about to let anything threaten that.”

  “Doesn’t anybody just believe in doing a good job, doing the right thing?”

  “They all have such different definitions of what the right thing is.”

  I said, “At some point in an organization, someone’s got to take responsibility.”

  “We were trying to. The board was concerned. After that embarrassment on News Forum, several of us tried to get the board to at least discuss Charley’s behavior. Frankly, I thought that blow-up with Billy Karek would cost Charley at least some of his support. I was wrong. People saw him as a put-upon martyr. His supporters rallied around him and donations poured in. Nothing ever seemed to touch that man.”

  “That chair almost did.”

  “Maybe it would have helped.” He shook his head. “No one thought death would happen. But it has.” He sighed. “I wonder if the police have talked to Karek.”

  I said, “I’m sure they will. If they didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the incident, I’m sure someone would have told all about it when they asked if Charley had any enemies.”

  “It’s just that he had so many.”

  “What was the deal with him and Karek?”

  “Charley feuded with all the homocons. Not just those in town, but around the country as well.”

  “Who else in town?” I asked.

  “Gosh, I’m not sure. I knew both him and Karek. I run with the political left and right. I try not to take sides. I try to get along with everybody.”

  “What is Karek like?”

  “He has far fewer rough edges than Charley. He went to Yale for his college degree. He liked to let people know he graduated summa cum laude. Hell, I graduated from Harvard, but Karek felt the need to mention his academic credentials.”

  “Where’d Charley graduate from?”

  “He didn’t. He always felt people were looking down on him for that.”

  I said, “Maybe he resented those people who did grad
uate. Maybe that’s why he was rude to them.”

  “I couldn’t tell you about that.”

  “Can you get me an introduction to Karek?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’d like to talk to him about Charley, get some background, see who else had personal animosities toward him.”

  “I don’t think Karek was angry at Charley. I could be wrong. I think their fights were political, not personal.”

  Sure sounded personal to me.

  I asked, “Did you know teens were using the basement as a hangout?”

  “What! Really?”

  “Yep.”

  Truby shook his head. “We could get sued for that, too.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Truby said, “If they were unsupervised, and something happened, it might be negligence. What if somebody got pregnant?”

  “It’s a gay clinic,” I said.

  “Or diseases?”

  “You don’t teach safe sex?”

  “These are horny teenagers.”

  I knew the type. I said, “It strikes me as more breaking and entering than the responsibility of the board.”

  “That’s mostly what the responsibility of the board seemed to be, to worry about whether some action or another would get us sued. Or some lack of action getting us into hot water. Dealing with gay teens is a dicey business in the first place. Everybody is always suspicious that you’re ‘recruiting’ or ‘endorsing the homosexual lifestyle’ or molesting them. Half the time it seemed like the board was running from one fear to another. I wish I hadn’t gotten involved.” The plaint of every single person who I knew who’d ever volunteered for a gay group. If mismanagement and confusion or lack of focus on the part of the organization didn’t do the volunteer in, then attending a few meetings did.

  He slapped his hands on his thighs. “I can’t stay any longer. When you know what’s happened to Lee, will you give me a call?”

  I didn’t want to be this guy’s messenger boy, but I couldn’t think of a way to gracefully refuse. I said, “Depending on what his lawyer says, I’ll do my best. You might want to try and contact him yourself.” And I wanted him to help me get in touch with Karek. “And you’ll give Karek a call?”