Boystown 7: Bloodlines
Page 10
“Until you learn to stop making passes at grown men.”
“I didn’t make a pass at you. I was just looking.”
“Well it didn’t make me happy to wake up and find you gawking at me like I was your own personal porno flick.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Leave the room. Put a blanket over me. Have some common decency.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Then you won’t mind not seeing me for a few days, will you?”
I pulled out of the parking space and went around the block so I could cut back to Lincoln and start heading northwest. I began a lecture that I hoped would last the entire drive. “Two years, Terry. You just have to wait two years and then you can fuck any guy who’ll have you. You want to fuck old men in two years, have at it. But right now messing around with anyone over eighteen is just a really bad idea. And I don’t mean a bad idea for you; I mean a bad idea for Brian. Brian has gone out on a limb for you and you repay him by climbing into bed with him? Do you have any idea what happens to people who get caught with teenagers? Wait, yes, you do. You know exactly what’s going to happen to Deacon DeCarlo. He’s going to prison. Do you want Brian to go to prison?”
“I didn’t think he’d do anything with me.”
“So why did you have to try?”
“To find out.”
I was quiet for half a dozen blocks, then I said, “Why can’t you leave some things to find out when you turn eighteen?”
“Stop saying eighteen. The age of consent in Illinois is seventeen.”
“How did you find that out?” I asked, hoping to prove him wrong. I really hoped there would be two years before this child was unleashed on the world.
“I went to the library.”
I could already tell parenthood wasn’t for me. The fact that the kid went to the library was terrific. The fact that he went there to find out how soon he could legally have sex was not. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so we didn’t say anything the rest of the ride. When we got to Devon, I turned west and headed out to Edison Park. Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of the yellow brick condos that were now very familiar to me.
“Who lives here?” Terry asked, his voice dripping with suspicion.
“Someone I want you to meet.”
“I’m not staying here if I don’t want to,” Terry said. “I don’t have to. I’m emancipated.”
“As long as you have a place to live you’re emancipated. The minute you’re homeless you’re a ward of the state. You can stay where I put you or you can try foster care,” Actually, he could only be someplace that a judge approved, but since I’d orchestrated his staying with Brian I figured he had an inflated sense of my power, so why not use it? He was silent as we walked into the lobby of Mrs. Harker’s building. I buzzed her condo and a fraction of a second later she came out in an overcoat and carrying a purse. As she opened the outer door so gave me a sly look. “Is Thursday. Why you here?”
“I brought you something,” I said, indicating Terry.
“Is boy.” Her tone suggested she’d rather have something useful, like a head of cabbage.
“Yes. I’m hoping he can stay with you.”
“Oh come on. I don’t want to stay with her.”
“You don’t have a choice at the moment. If you behave you’ll have choices.”
“Wait. He not stay here. Is not place for boy.”
“You did a good job with Harker. Maybe you can help me out with this one.”
She eyed me suspiciously. A compliment that evoked her son. I was pulling out all the stops. She dragged me inside and let the outer door shut, leaving Terry outside.
“Where his parents?”
“They threw him out?”
“Why? Is terrible boy?”
“He’s gay.”
I watched a series of emotions pass over her face. Distaste. We didn’t discuss gay things so I’d crossed a boundary. Sadness. Gay was like Harker. Confusion. She was probably responsible for Harker being in the closet most of his life, but she would never have thrown him out. Anger. Yup, in Eva Harker’s world you do not throw boys out for any reason. “Fine. I will take.”
“Thank you.”
She opened the door and said, “Come, put bag in house. Then we go to church.”
“Oh my God, how long do I have to stay here?” he whined, but he put his backpack into Mrs. Harker’s apartment.
“I’ll be here for Easter Sunday. We’ll talk about it then.”
“Four days, okay.”
“No, not four days. Four days and we’ll talk about it.”
“Is time to go. Must catch bus.”
“Do you want a ride?”
“No. We take bus.”
“Okay.”
I lit a cigarette and watched them walk down the street heading back toward Devon. Terry looked back at me a few times and I could feel him cursing me even from a block away. It was about eight o’clock in the morning and I badly needed breakfast and coffee. I also needed a shower, so I figured it was a bad idea to just grab some breakfast and start my day. I found a Dunkin Donuts on Peterson Avenue, bought a dozen mixed and three coffees, then made my way back to Brian’s.
When I walked into the apartment balancing the tray of take-out coffee it seemed silent at first. Then, after a few moans drifted up my way, I realized there was make-up sex going on in the back. A couple years ago I would have walked back to Brian’s bedroom and offered my assistance with the making up. The fact that I didn’t like Franklin much wouldn’t have stopped me for a moment. Things had changed. Things had changed a lot. I sat down at the dining room table, picked out a coffee, and chose a chocolate cake donut out of the box. I began to contemplate how I should spend my day.
The highest priority for my day was talking to Owen Lovejoy, Esquire. I needed to tell him about Connor’s phone call. But since it had to do with Jimmy’s case, and some very incriminating information about me, we had to meet someplace that wasn’t bugged. Which meant Owen wouldn’t trust the telephone, my office, or even his office. So, how exactly should I set up a meeting with him? I could call him and ask if he wants to fuck, but since someone else was in his bed last time I talked to him he’d likely say no. Not to mention, as horny as I was, I wasn’t sure I was in the mood, if, in addition to the conversation about business, he expected me to follow through.
Of course, if I was going to meet with Owen I should collect my thoughts about the Levine case. He’d ask about that one too. So, where was I? There were still people I needed to talk to. The rest of the Levine family, for one. And of course, I needed to find Emily Fante.
Brian came into the dining room in his briefs. “Hey,” he said when he saw me. “You’re back.”
“I bought donuts and coffee. Coffee’s probably cold.”
He looked through the box for a donut. “Where’s Terry?”
“He’s staying with Mrs. Harker for a few days.”
“Won’t she hate that?”
“If she runs true to form she’ll start complaining about how awful it is in about three days, but when I try to take him back she won’t want to let him go.”
“ He’s going to hate it.” He picked out a jelly donut and bit into it, getting purple jelly all over his chin.
“He doesn’t have a lot of choices.”
Franklin walked into the dining room. He wore just a towel. He wasn’t bad looking. Maybe I’d made a mistake foregoing a three-way I wasn’t invited to. He saw me and blushed. “What’s going on?”
“Nick brought Terry out to Mrs. Harker’s”
“Who’s Mrs. Harker?”
Brian opened his mouth to give a full explanation but then thought better of it. “A friend,” he finally said. “He’s not going to stay there long, right Nick?”
“You can’t let him come back here,” Franklin said.
“Well, he’s not going to like it with Mrs. Harker,” Brian explained. “She’s in her seventies or so
mething. And sort of a bitch.”
“That doesn’t make any difference. It’s not safe if you’re here. I’m surprised a judge let it happen in the first place.”
“Because all gay men want is to have sex with children?” I asked.
“Because that’s what straight people think.”
“And the best way to get them to not think that is to avoid all contact with children?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Franklin said emphatically. He suddenly made me feel like all gay teachers were incredibly brave people.
“I’m not going to abandon Terry,” Brian said. “He needs to learn to behave himself, that’s all. Let’s see what a few days with Mrs. Harker does for him.”
“It might take more than that,” I pointed out. “Franklin, have a donut.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. All that fat.”
“There’s cold coffee, too,” I added.
“Thank you, Nick,” Brian said. “I’m the one who took responsibility for him, you really didn’t have to do anything.”
“I brought him here. That means I did.”
Franklin looked from me to Brian and back again. He didn’t look happy. I got the impression that it wasn’t exactly me he didn’t like; it seemed as though he didn’t like that Brian and I were friends. I also got the impression that Brian might not have completely explained how things were between us. He could have said that I was a friend of his ex who needed a place to stay. That was completely true, but left out so much it was also a lie.
“Well, I need to take a shower if the bathroom is free.”
I gathered my things and went into the bathroom. I gave myself the whole shower to worry about where I should live. I had much bigger problems at the moment so I couldn’t afford to be thinking about it all day. I needed to move. Not just because of Franklin. But because Brian deserved to be able to bring a guy home without having their first conversation be about me. “Yes, I fuck Nick occasionally and I care about him but we both know things are going nowhere,” is a turnoff for a lot of guys. Of course, since there was also someone who wanted to pin a murder on me, and especially since it was a murder I actually committed, finding a new place to live needed to be easy and hassle free.
It was hard to imagine a life where anything was hassle free.
Chapter Eleven
Speaking of hassles, when I arrived at my office a half an hour later, Christian Baylor stood in my doorway. He wore a parka and held an umbrella in one hand. The streets looked as though it had rained overnight, and above us the dark, heavy clouds threatened to let loose again.
“I’m not happy to see you,” I said when I reached him. It was an understatement.
“A policeman came to see me,” he said, following me into the stairwell.
“Yeah, what was his name?”
“Devlin. Harry Devlin. I think he said he was a captain.”
“What did he want?”
“To talk to me about the story I wrote.”
I unlocked my office door and walked in. “Yeah, congratulations on that. I read it. I guess I should have sent you a note or something. It was a stunning piece of journalistic fiction.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me writing about you so I left you out. Big deal.”
“You’re right. I didn’t want you writing about me. I didn’t want you writing about Bert either.”
“I have a right to my own experiences.”
“Half of which you made up.”
He shook his head dismissively. “It doesn’t matter, Nick. It’s in the past. This Captain Devlin…he was scary.”
“But that’s why it does matter. If you hadn’t written the article you wouldn’t be getting visits from scary policemen.”
“He wanted to know who the vigilante was who killed Gorshuk. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“You don’t know anything. I hope you told him that.”
“But I do know something.”
“Yeah, what do you know?”
“I talked to an officer who was there on the scene when they found Gorshuk’s body. They found a gun in the cemetery. They sent the serial number out to be identified, and then a day later the gun disappeared and it was like the report was never requested. The guy who picked it up and turned it in only remembers that it was a Sig Sauer.”
“So what?”
“I know you have a Sig Sauer.”
“Do you?”
“I asked Bert about what kinds of guns cops like. He told me about his Smith and Wesson. Then he mentioned you carried a Sig Sauer.”
“You’re absolutely right. I have the only Sig Sauer in Chicago.”
“I know a lot of people have those guns. But how many of those people would have been in Graceland cemetery the night the Bughouse Slasher died?”
“Is that it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Is that all the information you have?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should go.”
He got a pouty look on his face. “You always hated me. I’ve never understood why.”
“Really? Re-read your article. That might tell you why.”
He tossed his head with a little huff and walked out of my office.
I checked my messages. There were three hang-ups. Sooner or later I was going to have to plunk myself down in my office for at least four or five hours so I could pick up the phone when that person called back. It wasn’t, however, going to be that morning. What I needed to do that morning was talk to Owen Lovejoy, Esquire. I just had to figure out how.
I had no idea how many resources the Feds were devoting to this. I knew there was equipment you could get that you could aim at people in parks and places and pick up at least part of their conversation. Coppola made a movie in the early seventies where they did exactly that. Though, being in the business, it’s hard to imagine a client paying the kind of invoices something like that would generate. Which is part of why I doubted the Feds were doing anything of the sort. The CIA might have that kind of gear to keep an eye on the Russians, but I really didn’t think the FBI could get that kind of expense approved to take down an elderly mobster. Particularly when they didn’t even have a warrant.
I decided to head downtown. The paper bag full of Joseph’s black suit and collar sat on my sofa. I thought about taking it with me and beginning my surveillance after I met with Owen, but I hadn’t shaved. I looked too unkempt to be a priest. I needed to pull myself together, maybe even get a haircut before I began. Interesting that impersonating someone who might have taken a vow of poverty required that I not look shabby.
A half an hour later, I was getting off an elevator and walking into the penthouse offices of Cooke, Babcock and Lackerby. The offices were in a turn-of-the-century nineteen-story building on Jackson. Ironically, the building was two blocks from the Federal building where Operation Tea and Crumpets was housed.
The lobby was traditional “lawyer”: paneled, British prints of horses and hounds, a heavy walnut reception desk. The receptionist was pretty, brunette, and wore a very conservative blouse and skirt. She plucked away at an IBM Selectric doing double duty as a typist. She looked up at me and was about to say something when I put my finger to my mouth. I reached over her desk and grabbed a pad that was sitting there and a pen. She looked at me curiously, a little offended.
On one sheet, I wrote: GIVE THIS TO MR. LOVEJOY. On a second, I wrote: WE NEED TO MEET. I’M IN THE RECEPTION AREA. NICK. When she read the second note she frowned at me. “He might be busy, you know. They usually are.” I wagged a finger in the general direction of his office. She rolled her eyes and walked through the arch that led to the offices.
Standing alone in the reception area, I worried that the task force might have put cameras in the room somewhere but that seemed unlikely. Yeah, the Feds used cameras in some of their cases, like the DeLorean case and the ABSCAM thing, but they always had to have control of the environment. Those stings took place in hotel rooms with technicians in the ne
xt room. They wouldn’t have been able to get cameras into a law firm’s reception area.
God, I thought, I’m getting paranoid .
I also wondered if I needed to find out more about this stuff. The Feds had put a bug into a lawyer’s office and probably tapped their phones. In response, I was planning to dress like a priest and stand in a lobby. I felt like I was behind the eight ball. I knew it wasn’t legal for me to put a bug in the task force offices. In Illinois you couldn’t even record a phone call without both party’s consent. But still, I should at least learn how to check a room for bugs.
The receptionist returned with a surprised look on her face. She didn’t say anything to me, just sat back down at her desk. Then Owen Lovejoy, Esquire came into the lobby wearing a trench coat over his expensive suit. Silently, we walked out of the office and back to the elevator. On the way down, we didn’t say anything, though I imagine it would have been safe. When we got out to Jackson, we walked toward the lake.
“So you’re sure your office is bugged?”
“Yeah, we had a guy come out and check. It’s on the underside of one of my guest chairs. There are also bugs in the offices of Mr. Cooke, Mr. Babcock, Mr. Lackerby, the reception area and the men’s room. They’re very thorough.”
“Why not remove the bugs?”
“We don’t want them to know we know, for one thing. For another they’ll just put them back and try harder next time.”
“Are you sure we can’t get them on that? You want me to look into it?”
“What you’re doing is too important. And it means I control what they know. Jimmy comes down once a week, sits in Mr. Babcock’s office, and they tell each other dirty jokes for an hour.”
“And that doesn’t tell them you know there’s a bug?”
“Mr. Babcock charges three hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Clients get to talk about whatever they want.”
“I can’t believe they pull shit like this,” I said. Part of me wanted the good guys to be good and the bad guys to be bad. It just made life easier.