“Who would Charley’s death benefit most directly?” I asked.
Harley said, “Susanna always voted with him. They managed to control the way this money was spent.”
I asked, “Who had the controlling last one percent?”
Barley said, “A committee of bankers who controlled the trust. They would have had no benefit from Charley’s death. They still collected their fees no matter what happened to us.”
One of the cousins, Mabel Fitch, said, “Charley was a hateful, mean sow.”
“You never said that when he was alive,” Harley said.
“Not to you, maybe, but to others,” Mabel said. “I knew he had to be sucked up to. I for one am glad he’s dead. I can’t wait to start voting without him.”
“Susanna has to be here for any vote to be valid,” Bethina, another cousin said.
“She does?” I asked.
Barley said, “It’s in the by-laws of the trust. Either she or Charley has to be present.”
“How come they got so much power and you others didn’t?”
Harley said, “My father was a fucking moron. He claimed he was bisexual. He liked having a gay and a lesbian kid. He hated the rest of us normal kids.”
I gazed around the table at what he was describing as ‘normal.’ Maybe for the Manson family.
Barley said, “According to my father, they were the most responsible of the kids. He should have just divided it up equally.”
“How come the cousins were in on it?”
Harley said, “More bullshit. He wanted a series of checks and balances on everybody. Hell, we’re only playing with the interest here. Only Barley has anything to do with the company and that doesn’t happen that often. And he doesn’t have access to the profits of the company or the principal of the trust. None of us does.”
“What’s your role with the company?” I asked Barley.
“Basically I’m to keep out of the way of the business managers. I’m just supposed to make sure they don’t make off with the company the way the Enron and WorldCom executives did.”
“Did they try?”
“Our company is sound.”
“Did you all get along with Charley?”
“Hardly,” said Barley.
“Barely,” said Harley.
No smiles. They weren’t trying to be funny.
The cousins reported doing various amounts of sucking up in order to get cash for themselves.
I asked, “Did the police question you about your whereabouts the night of the killing?”
Harley said, “The fascists attempted to corner me. I kept them at bay.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Bethina said, “It means he was drunk out of his mind the way he is every night and didn’t have the capacity to move out of whatever bar he was in.”
None of them had an alibi for all three murders, but each of them claimed to be able to prove they were in someone else’s presence during at least one of the murders. The police would have to be checking up on that.
“Did Charley and Susanna get along?”
“Better than all of us did with the two of them,” Mabel said.
“Fights in Aruba,” Harley said.
“Pardon?”
Harley said, “The yearly family meetings took place in Aruba. Generally for the last half of January. The two of them would fight from beginning to end.”
“I was told they got along.”
Barley said, “Outside of the family that was the front they put up. They fought like mad at the meetings.”
“About what?”
“Money,” Harley said, “and how to spend it.”
“But they lived together.”
Harley said, “It was my father’s old place. Those two inherited it. We didn’t. Those two loved the place. Neither one would let go.”
“They voted together?” I asked.
“On the clinic. Not much else,” Barley said.
“Would she kill him?” I asked.
Silence for several beats. Each reluctantly shook their head. “No,” Harley said. “That would be going too far.”
“Who inherits his money and his voting share?”
“Susanna,” Barley said.
Harley added, “The bitch is going to bust us.”
29
I met Larry and his boyfriend at the Rainbow Café just after three. Larry corralled me at the front door. He said, “What’s happening with Mr. Weaver? Is he okay?”
“He’s out on bail. I talked to him for a while last night. He’s doing as well as can be expected.”
“That’s good. Real good.”
“Where’s your friend?”
“I used the same threats you did, about the police. He really doesn’t want to be here. He’s really embarrassed. He’s really worried someone might see him.”
“Why? Doesn’t he go out to cafés with people?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. But people know you’re gay.”
“But you’re meeting with me.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. It’s just so complicated.”
I said, “Why don’t the three of us sit down together and talk this over?”
“It feels weird, you checking up on me like this.”
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t check everything.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Wayne Jenkins sat at a table in the obscure alcove the kids had sat in when they talked to me on Saturday. Jenkins had immense shoulders, incredibly narrow hips, and legs that he could barely fit under the table. His arms were crossed over his chest. Larry introduced us. “Wayne’s a wide receiver on the team.”
When we shook hands, Jenkins allowed the contact for about a half a second. He had a very soft voice. The first thing he said was, “I’m not gay.”
Not the most auspicious opening.
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Larry said. “You can trust him.”
“I’m not gay,” Jenkins repeated.
I thought I’d try to be reassuring. “I’m not concerned about your sexuality. I just need to check the times that everything happened Friday night.”
“Nothing happened.” He added a sullen look to his minimal response.
“Were you in the basement of the clinic?”
He glanced around the room several times and then leaned close and mumbled inaudibly.
I let the adult exasperation I was feeling into my voice. Not for me the saintly teenager who spouts wisdom. I’ve known few teenage saints and the amount of wisdom I’d heard from them wouldn’t fill a cliché. I said, “Since there was a murder done that night, that makes what happened a bit more than nothing. Where you there at the same time as Larry?”
“Yeah.” He added arms crossed over his chest and clenched fists to his sullen look.
Hostile teenagers. What could be better? My kingdom for a filing cabinet.
I said, “I don’t understand why you’re a hostile teenager.”
“Larry forced me to come here. He said it was either talk to you or the police. I don’t like to be threatened.”
“Why not just come on your own?” I asked. “Did you kill him?”
“This is such shit. I didn’t do anything, and you’re asking me such bullshit.”
“Would you rather it be the police?” I asked.
“I’d rather it be nobody.”
“That’s not an option,” I said.
“Come on, Wayne,” Larry pleaded. “Please, just help out, okay. We can leave and go talk as soon as you’re done.”
“You said I had to be here. I’m not gay. I don’t want to go anywhere and talk.”
“But you were with me. We made…did stuff. I did stuff with you that I never did before with a guy.”
“I’ve got a girlfriend. You wanted to fool around, and I figured what the hell. I wasn’t doing anything. I barely touched you. I was horny.”
“Your dick was hard.”
“I get turned on. So what? I get more turned on with my g
irlfriend.”
I normally don’t sit in on a lover’s quarrel, or more accurately a closet-case maelstrom, but this was murder and these guys might know something.
Larry said, “I thought you were serious about wanting to be with me.”
“I was just having a good time.”
Larry looked like his heart was breaking. I could see tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
“You did touch me. We kissed. When we were done, you said you wanted to see me again. You told me you loved me.”
There’s an oops.
Jenkins blushed. He looked around the café as if secret spies might be ready to swoop in and take him to hetero prison. He leaned forward and whispered, “Would you keep your voice down?” Nobody was sitting within six feet of us. I didn’t think Larry was talking all that loud. The café wasn’t crowded. We were between shelves of nineteenth-century British novels, volumes filled with stories of tawdry love that never did go quite right.
Larry said, “Was that a lie? Huh? Why’d you tell me you loved me? I’ve never said that to anybody before. You said you didn’t either. You said we’d always be together.”
“Hey, come on,” Jenkins said. “Okay. I said that stuff. Okay. Just, kind of, back off, okay? I’m…look, I can’t be gay. Nobody can know any of this stuff. It felt okay being with you. I like you. You’re a nice guy. I got my rocks off. I shouldn’t have said a lot of that stuff.”
“Did you mean any of it?”
“I…yes…no. Hey, why does this have to be so complicated?”
I’d heard enough of their pain. I didn’t hold out the slightest hope for their relationship. Gay guys can be awfully rough on each other’s emotions. Young gay guys often have little practice in dealing with interpersonal emotions. They’ve had no experience in relating to the simplest crushes that happen in the normal course of a heterosexual kid’s life. The gay boy is terrified of revealing himself as gay. Then add the general repression males feel about expressing emotions in this society. Young gay guys are caught in a tough spot.
I said, “I’d like to help you two work this out, but for the moment, I need you to focus on that night. There was a murder. I’d like to get as much information as I can.”
Jenkins shrugged. That teenage shrug. That mixture of hostility and indifference that they develop on their thirteenth birthday. All of us high-school teachers have seen that teenage shrug. We’d be rich beyond our wildest dreams if we got a buck for every shrug we’ve seen. Or if we all kept filing cabinets handy, they’d be full of severed teenage heads.
I said, “Wayne, what did you hear that night?”
“I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“So you were involved,” Larry said. “It did mean something.”
Jenkins exploded. “Okay. I kissed you. I put my tongue in your mouth. I touched your dick and sucked it. You sucked mine. We fucked.” He pointed at me. “Is that what you want to know? Are you some kind of pervert?” No misty eyes bordering on tears here. He was pissed. Good for him. So was I.
I said, “No, to both questions. I’m just trying to find out about the murder and the sequence of events that night. You’re the one who keeps talking about sex and relationships. I’m not the one with the hang-up here.”
Jenkins refolded his arms over his chest.
I said, “Look, you’re both possible witnesses in a murder case. Talking to me might be tough, but it’s going to be easier than talking to the cops. Talking to me does not have to involve your parents. Talking to the police could very well involve them.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jenkins said.
“Mr. Weaver is a good person,” I said. I think I still believed that. “But he’s put you both in a very tough position. Larry’s talked to the police and hasn’t told them this information. Wayne, you’re part of that now.”
“I don’t want to be,” Jenkins said.
“Wants have nothing to do with it.”
“Shit.”
I said, “I’m going to try to help you guys. I don’t want to bring harm to you. Gay kids have it tough enough. Larry, why don’t you give me the sequence of events. Wayne, why don’t you just confirm or correct them as the need arises.”
He glared at me, but he didn’t return the conversation to sex, and he didn’t say no.
I said, “You guys got there about what time?”
“Eight,” Larry said.
Barely a nod from Jenkins.
“First you heard…”
“A woman arguing with a man,” Larry said. “From what I’ve been told that must have been Mr. Fitch with that woman counselor who’s always so nice.”
“Daisy Tajeda?”
“Yeah. Then it was quiet pretty much for a long time. Once in a while I thought I heard people talking. Then about ten thirty we heard male voices shouting. I recognized Mr. Weaver’s voice. I heard him say ‘Charley,’ so I knew the other guy was Mr. Fitch.”
“Is that who you heard?” I asked Jenkins.
“If that’s who he says they were. I don’t know any of these people.”
“You were down there from eight to ten thirty?”
Both boys blushed and mumbled, “Yeah.” Score points for youthful stamina.
“Did you hear them say their names, the same as Larry heard?”
“I heard the names. I’m not sure who was who. If they were talking about themselves or other people.”
“Could you hear them plainly?”
“Yeah,” Larry said. Jenkins nodded.
They gave me the same run-down on the conversation as Lee had. Their version was as close to Lee’s as to be almost verbatim. These two might be in collusion, but I was reasonably certain they were not in collusion with Lee.
“You must have stopped to listen,” I said.
Larry said, “All that yelling kind of destroyed the mood for a little while.”
“Did you hear Mr. Weaver leave?”
“No,” Larry said. “They got softer at times. I don’t know if anybody left or not. Nobody screamed as if they were being attacked. It was kind of quiet, but then we got kind of busy again.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything as you walked down the alley as you left?”
Jenkins said, “You didn’t mention Jan being just outside the café. He was doing that fucking Jack McFarland effeminate bullshit. I hate that. I’m not like that.”
“Nor are you required to be,” I said. I turned to Larry. “Did Jan see you?”
Larry shook his head no. Jenkins confirmed it. “And you heard no sounds in the basement itself?”
Both boys shook their heads. “Did you see Jan when you arrived?”
Both boys said no. Could Jan have seen them and crept back to watch?
I asked, “What time did you get home?
“About twelve,” Jenkins said. Larry nodded. Which didn’t mean either one of them couldn’t have come back.
30
Max and Abdel showed up at four. The foster parents were in their fifties. Tajeda had given me a little background on them. One was a former steel worker with one glass eye and a huge gut. The other was a school teacher with two real eyes and a huge gut. They seemed pleasant enough. Max and Abdel seemed comfortable with them. The two adults left me to talk to the teens alone.
Late on this Monday afternoon the café was becoming crowded. The cold front had passed earlier with a lot of wind but without any storms or rain.
“How are things working out?” I asked.
“Okay for now,” Max said. They held hands. “We had to talk to you.”
“Yeah,” Abdel said. “We think we know something about the murder.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
Abdel said, “That wasn’t the first time my dad was at the clinic.”
“How do you know this?”
“I talked to my sister. She’s got her own cell phone. If I called the house, nobody in my family would have told her I was on the phone. She’s a year older than I am. She hates
the repression she has to live with. She can’t wait to leave. She’s afraid that my brothers might do something to her.”
“Like what?”
“Send her back to Saudi Arabia. She wants to be out on her own. She heard my brothers and my dad talking about me. She didn’t have to sneak around to listen. They treat her like she wasn’t there. My dad said he’d been to the clinic looking for me before.”
“He said he only became suspicious on Saturday.”
“That was a lie. He’s been suspicious for a long time. He’d met Mr. Fitch, the guy who died. I guess they had this big argument.”
“When was this?”
“A week ago.”
“How’d he find out about the clinic?”
“My older brother is the one who started it. He’s always been mean to the point of cruelty. He picks at me about not being tough enough. My brother started a long time ago trying to find out if I was gay. He searched my room before. He found the pamphlet for the clinic a few weeks ago. I’d borrowed Max’s chemistry book. He accidentally left it in there. My brother told my dad.”
“But why would he assume he would find you there?”
“My brother had called the clinic and even gone there once to visit.”
“Maybe he’s gay.”
“Not likely. My brother followed us one of the other times we tried to see you. We didn’t go on a Saturday the first time. We didn’t know that’s when you volunteered. He told my dad where we’d been.”
“Why didn’t either of them confront you before this?”
“My dad wanted to investigate. When my dad went, that Mr. Fitch wouldn’t tell him if we’d been there or not. Fitch talked about confidentiality. My dad was waiting for me to be out of the house this Saturday. He suspected I was lying from the beginning.”
“There’ve been two more killings,” I said. “I think they’re all connected. Did your dad know Jan Aiello or Billy Karek?”
“I never heard of them,” Abdel said. “I don’t see how my dad could have. Maybe he met them when he confronted Mr. Fitch.”
Max said, “I don’t know them.”
I said, “It makes no sense for your dad to be killing these other two. Why would you think he’d kill Charley Fitch?”
“You don’t know my dad,” Abdel said. “If he thought a gay guy was insulting him, he might go crazy. He hates all this modern stuff. He hates that gay people have parades. He helped push a wall over on some gay guys in the Middle East.”
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