The Last Manly Man

by Sparkle Hayter

  “You like her,” I sang to Jason.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said. “She’s older than you, not as old as me, but still …”

  “Don’t say anything to her about it!”

  “I won’t.”

  After I cleared Jason through security, signed in as Theda Bara, I led him the long way to the Special Reports offices, avoiding the newsroom where my style of dress was sure to draw comments. My friend Louis Levin was on the sked as the supervising producer, and Louis would be sure to stop me, and talk to Jason, and maybe get suspicious. This was bad because, even though Louis was my friend, he also ran the rumor file, Radio Free Babylon, which floated around our companywide computer system.

  “Don’t move any furniture in there,” I said, waving Jason into Special Reports. “Do you want some coffee or something?”

  “Do you have herbal tea?” he asked.

  “I think so. There’s the kitchenette. Help yourself. I’ll be in that office there, cuing up some tapes.”

  Jason came into my office with a cup of herbal tea for me, a thoughtful gesture, though I’d just as soon drink a cup of boiled peat moss.

  “Let’s go over the suspects again,” Jason said.

  “Alana DeWitt, she has bucks, she’s insane, and she’s nasty. But according to Keyes she’s a bonobo supporter. Dr. Budd Nukker. Know him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s definitely into weird science, but geared toward longevity. I’ve heard of monkey glands being used before as youth potion, and sheep placentas and stuff. But these days, he hardly leaves his treadmill. Then we have Gill Morton. He has labs and they probably do or have done animal testing on their cleaning products.”

  “Yes, they do,” Jason verified. “He has a pharmaceutical company.”

  “Why would he have to employ a bunch of black sheep scientists? He has teams of legit scientists working for him.”

  “Right, I see your point. So, what else do we have to do?” Jason asked.

  “Mislead the Investigative Reports Unit. They’ve been sniffing around the Luc Bondir story. We start with them, then we mislead the rest of the news media, too, somehow. Once they get wind of this ‘man dead for fifteen years’ business, they’re sure to be on it like flies on manure.”

  “I can help with that,” Jason said.

  “How?”

  “Send someone to them with a cooked-up story, lead them astray.”

  “Investigative are gung ho on tobacco stories. Maybe you can lead them to believe Luc Bondir is connected to the tobacco industry.”

  “Or the Cali Cartel,” Jason offered.

  “Too dangerous. We don’t want to get them killed. Tobacco is safer.”

  “I can do that. I know some anti-tobacco people who can get me some legit-looking information,” Jason said.

  “Let Solange and Reb harass tobacco lobbyists, keep them all out of worse trouble. Two birds, one stone,” I said, probably a bad choice of words with an animal rights nut. “Breast implants are good too—Solange has gone after them a lot. But be careful. Reb Ryan used to work in U.S. Army intelligence before he went into news, it’s hard to slip anything by him. Unless you’re wearing that dress and all tarted up the way you are. He’s a raging heterosexual. He’d probably think you were a woman and fancy you.”

  “We’ll do tobacco with them, maybe use breast implants on a couple of other media outlets.”

  “Misinformation is nothing new to you, huh? Have you done that before?” I asked, suspicious.

  “Sometimes, to cover our tracks on an operation. Had to lead some mercenaries astray in South America recently, because they had a contract out on me.…”

  “Were you people behind that mad cow beef hoax last year?”

  “No!”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear. That was cruel. I know those guys though.…”

  “The guys behind the mad cow beef hoax?”

  “Yeah. They’re not with the Organization. Why?”

  “I’m the reporter who put that story on the air. It just about killed my career.”

  “Oh. That explains a lot. Like, why you hate animal rights people.”

  “I don’t hate you. So you know those assholes behind that hoax, huh? You know where to find them?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I might need you to do me a favor if and when this bonobo business is resolved.”

  “Did that hoax get you to stop eating beef?”

  “No, I still eat it once in a while. I just don’t eat ground beef,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Two things, one involving a run-in I had with mobsters. Long story. That put me off burgers for a couple of months and then …”

  “Then?”

  “Well, have you noticed how few homeless there are in the city these days? Where did they go? Did they all suddenly get self-esteem, jobs, and apartments? Until I have answers, it seems wise to avoid all ground meat products. Call me paranoid …”

  “I wouldn’t call that paranoid,” Jason said.

  “No, you wouldn’t. Were you always a vegetarian animal lover?”

  “I used to eat meat.”

  “What made you stop?”

  “In high school, I was dating a vegetarian and she got me into it.…”

  “Oh yeah. That’s how my Uncle Fred became a Mormon.”

  “I met Dewey because of a girl too.”

  Dewey and Jason had met freshman year at college because they were in love with the same girl, Marcia, who worked with PETA on campus. Jason joined PETA to get close to her. Dewey, it turned out, had done the same thing. Neither of them got Marcia, but Dewey and Jason became fast friends.

  “You’ve done a lot on account of girls.”

  “I bet you’ve done a lot on account of boys,” he said.

  “Touché,” I said. “Would you eat meat if it didn’t involve killing an animal?”

  “How—”

  “Nanotechnology. It’s amazing. One day they might send little tiny machines into your arteries to Roto-Rooter out the fat blocks, and microscopic machines could also be used to assemble beef molecules, for example, from raw materials like carbon and whatever, and then assemble the beef molecules into whole steaks.”

  “It’s playing God,” Jason said.

  “What about cloning? It seems like that would be a boon to endangered species.…”

  “We’re against all genetic engineering.”

  “What about the scientists who are trying to find a way to put the gene that makes a snake lose its skin into fur-bearing mammals. See? No more trapping? People could just follow the animals around picking up their molted pelts, and everyone could wear fur in winter without guilt.”

  “Monster making, playing God,” Jason said.

  The phone rang. It was Belinda, one of my call-girl connections. She knew a Charlotte who fit my description, a woman who worked with the Sterling Escort Service. When I called, Charlotte was out on a job. The dispatcher didn’t want to take my number and was suspicious of my attempts to book her later that evening. This was a job for a man.

  “Jason, I need you to do me a favor,” I said.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Jason said as we looked for a cab to take us to the Plaza Hotel to meet a hooker named Charlotte. I picked the Plaza because I had a date with Gus there later and this way, perhaps, I could make my date.

  “What’s the big deal, Jason?”

  “I just hired a hooker. That’s not a big deal with you?”

  “Jason, I want to talk to this woman. She wouldn’t talk to me, so I had to use you. It’s not like you’re going to have sex with her,” I said.

  Ironically, the cabbie who took us over to the Plaza Hotel thought we were hookers. “You going to meet a john?” he said.

  I’m old enough that I would probably be flattered by the idea that I could make a living on my back, if I wasn’t a feminist.

  Our eyes me
t briefly in the rearview mirror and then I looked away. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I didn’t answer, while Jason giggled nervously.

  “Didn’t I see you on Channel Thirty-five?” the cabbie asked, looking at me. Channel 35 is a leased-access cable channel that shows escort agency commercials and sex-oriented programming like Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue talk show. (In addition to lots of porn, the superhumanly unsexy Goldstein does annual London theater reviews, in which he offers such erudite and memorable criticisms as “That actress was so ugly I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick!”)

  “I’m a journalist, and my girlfriend here is a model,” I said, gesturing to Jason.

  “Oh sure,” the cabbie said.

  The cab smelled vaguely of previous occupants and their sins—a trace of Giorgio, a vague hint of vomit, and someone had broken a city bylaw by puffing on a cigar in this cab sometime in the last twenty-four hours. I swear I’m not making this up: My sense of smell is heightened when I’m ovulating—if not my sense of smell, then certainly my imagination. I rolled down a window and smelled the outside city for a while.

  When we stopped at the hotel, the cabbie turned around and looked me up and down. “I was right! I recognize you. I’ve seen you on Channel Thirty-five, in one of those escort commercials, old commercial too, from the eighties.”

  “Have it your own way,” I said.

  When we got out of the cab, we looked both ways to make sure there were no thugs around. Jason, his hand on his thigh, followed me into the Plaza. I paid for the room, leaving one card-key at the desk for Charlotte, and we went upstairs to wait.

  “You seem very natural in women’s clothes, Jason, if you don’t mind me saying so,” I said, parking my tired old bones on one of the double beds, while Jason staked out the other.

  “Lots of practice. For my gender studies thesis in college, I dressed as a woman once a week and wrote about how differently people treated me, good and bad.”

  “Yeah, what did you find?”

  “There are advantages and disadvantages,” he said. “People are quicker to help you, especially men, but men look at you differently. Like you’re prey. People expect more and less from you. You’re not expected to be as strong, but you’re expected to be gentler, nicer. You get talked down to a lot too. What surprised me was how much more patronizing or rude other women were toward me when I was dressed as a woman. And how few people, men or women, could tell I was a man.”

  “You’re small-boned and have fine features, it works for you. But you’re starting to get a five o’clock shadow.”

  There was a knock on the door. Charlotte was punctual. Jason and I looked at each other.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  When I opened the door and the woman saw me, she said, “I must have made a mistake.”

  “No mistake,” I said, yanking her into the room.

  “Oh wait,” she said, looking first at me then at Jason in drag. “I don’t do lesbian stuff.”

  “You’re not here for sex,” I said. “My name is Robin Hudson. I want to talk to you about Luc Bondir. You may know him as Frenchie.…”

  “No way. I don’t want to be mixed up in this,” she said, turning to go. I blocked her way.

  Jason had his gun out. Charlotte whipped out a gun of her own.

  “Put the guns away,” I said. “Look, Charlotte, we won’t involve you in this. Just answer some questions. Lives are at stake.”

  “You wearing a wire?”

  “No.”

  “Prove it. Strip down to your underwear. Do it, or I’m not talking.”

  Jason and I looked at each other.

  “We’d better do it,” I said.

  When we were down to our underthings and panty hose, Charlotte picked up our clothes and threw them into a corner.

  “You’re a guy,” she said to Jason, and, indeed, in his underwear he made a distinctly male impression.

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatever. Cool. Is there a key for that minibar?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Here. Help yourself,” I said.

  “Frenchie was a client,” she said, opening a mini bottle of vodka and downing it straight. “I saw him once a week at least, when he came into the city for the weekend. He sometimes spent the whole night with me, so I knew he had some bucks.”

  “Who did he work for?”

  “I don’t know. Some asshole he had to work for, for some reason. I think it had to do with immigration. That’s all I knew. By the time he got to talking about his problems, I was drunk, I wasn’t listening too close.”

  “What problems?” I asked.

  “You know, he talked about his problems a lot, but not real specifically. He was a real depressive, Frenchie. I know he was a scientist, and for some reason he couldn’t go back to France. He hated his boss. He had limited freedom, had to work almost all the time.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Sunday night. He was with his buddy Huf. We were going to get a girl for Huf, but Huf was agitated, just wanted to walk around, said he’d meet Frenchie in the morning.”

  “Huf?”

  “Frenchie called him Huf, or Harris sometimes.”

  Hufnagel.

  “What did Huf look like?”

  “Tall guy, older, brown hair, wore a hat. Clung to that hat like it was made of gold.”

  “I bet that’s the man in the hat,” I said. “Was he a scientist too?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. He worked with Frenchie.”

  “Anything different about Frenchie that night?” Jason interjected.

  “Well, he had great drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “This stuff you inhale. Not like coke. You don’t snort it. You just smell it for a few minutes. It was kind of like ecstasy. I mean, it made you feel good, but it wasn’t heavy like X. It crept up on you. Wish I could get more. It made things so pleasant. Will this be cash or credit card?” she asked.

  I handed her my Visa, wondering how I was going to expense three hundred dollars an hour for a hooker.

  “You look familiar,” she said to me. “Did we used to work together?”

  “Where have you worked?” I asked.

  “Platinum Escorts, Very Best Escorts, A-One Escorts.…”

  “No.”

  “I coulda sworn,” she said.

  Just before she walked out the door, she turned to me and said, “You know, I think Frenchie called that drug something like Adam.”

  “Atom?”

  “Adam, like, Adam and Eve.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As soon as she shut the door, Jason and I looked at each other and said, at the same time, “Adam!”

  “A drug. An illicit drug. Made from bonobo ape glands or something,” I theorized.

  “No, it would have to be some kind of secretion, otherwise they’d have to keep replenishing the supply of bonobos,” Jason said.

  “You have access to a computer?” I asked Jason as we dressed. I did not put the scarf and hat back on.

  “A safe one? Yeah.”

  “And the Internet?”

  “Of course.”

  “Find out what you can about Harris Hufnagel, print it out, and I’ll beep you later so we can meet and go over it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have a date,” I said. “Where will you go?”

  “The hospice. I can use a computer there, and I’ll be close to Dewey.”

  “Okay. Beep me if it’s urgent,” I said.

  Before I went downstairs to the Oak Room to meet Gus, I brushed my hair, touched up my makeup, and psyched myself out of work mode and into sex mode. It was hard; I was a tad distracted. But—carpe diem—who knew when Gus would be back this way again. Successful men didn’t have to sacrifice sexual release for work, even if they were married and in the middle of a crisis. Why should I?

  Just thinking about him gave me a dangerous ache, the kind you have to suppress when yo
u’re nonmonogamous and having a casual relationship, so you don’t get your heart broken. Suppress, and channel those feelings into pure lust. Gus was just a “chapter in the memoirs” for me, as I was for him, that was understood. You don’t expect it to last forever, you just see it as a great experience to be had with a great person, set entirely in a fictional present, until that theoretical True Love comes along.

  I was running a bit late, and Gus was already waiting for me in the Oak Room. He looked nice, dressed up in a nice suit as befits a newlywed, his brown hair neatly combed in an earnest, Sunday school way. He was such a boy in so many ways, though he was only a few years younger than me. It was endearing.

  There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket by the table and two glasses. When Gus saw me coming, he stood, pulled out my chair, and gave me the Look.

  “Is this your bride?” The waiter beamed, pouring the champagne.

  “Yes, this is Lola,” said Gus. We kissed, and I sat down.

  “I’ve heard all about you,” the waiter said. “It’s very romantic, meeting on a mountain-climbing expedition in Peru.”

  “Uh, yes, isn’t it?”

  “And him carrying you down the mountain to a hospital after you succumbed to altitude sickness.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s my hero!” I said. The lies weren’t disconcerting, but the waiter’s demeanor was. Almost everyone in New York had become surprisingly friendly, even trusting, and I still wasn’t used to it.

  “Enjoy your stay at the Plaza. And I hope your mother is better soon,” the waiter said. “It’s amazing she can still play the piano.”

  “What’s wrong with my mother?” I asked Gus after the waiter was out of earshot. The truth is, my mother is a schizophrenic whose key delusion is that she is an heir to the British throne, but she manages quite well when she’s taking her medication. She doesn’t play piano. In any event, I had never told Gus this because it was the truth.

  “She got her arm caught in a combine on the wheat farm she runs,” he said. “Now she has a hook for a hand. Naturally, this has affected her playing the piano every Saturday night at the over-sixties single dance, but last week she played the dance for the first time since losing her arm.”

  “How?”

  “She taught herself to play the left-handed parts with her foot. Those extraordinarily long toes of hers came in handy. She plays with her right hand and her left foot.”