Dead and Gone

by William Casey Moreton

  He blacked out for a moment, but it had to have been a short moment, because when he opened his eyes people were just then getting out of their cars to see if he was okay. The pain in his head was intense, and there was blood on his face. It felt like his entire body was broken. He lifted his head, or tried to, but it felt like it was made of lead. He lifted an arm to touch a hand to his face. The blood on his fingers was bright red in the afternoon sun.

  Someone was standing over him speaking frantically into a cell phone. Terry tried to speak, to tell the man to put his phone away, but his words remained lodged in his throat. Sounds spun around him. Lights and colors and the shimmer of daylight appeared to pulse in his peripheral vision. His ears were ringing. He needed to get to his feet and find a way to the airport. There were sirens in the distance.

  He blinked once, then again, and twisted onto his side, and then onto his knees, and his upper body wobbled as he attempted to remain upright.

  “Are you okay?” a voice asked.

  “Help is coming!” shouted another.

  “He ran right out in front of me!” a man’s voice said from nearby. “There was nothing I could do!”

  Terry wasn’t listening to any of it. His brain sent very primitive instructions to his body as his limbs struggled to carry out the requested actions. He staggered like a zombie through the cars that had stopped in the middle of the street, making the journey to the opposite sidewalk one shuddering step at a time.

  There was too much internal damage. He could feel it. Something wasn’t right. The blow to his head had been too much. His brain was swelling. His forward progress stopped. He could sense people approaching. His knees buckled and he slowly sank to the pavement, one arm fully extended as if willing himself onward. There was blood trailing out from one ear. The world appeared to fade into a gauzy grayness.

  His body swayed as his ears filled with staticky sounds and the surrounding imagery blurred. He put a hand out and touched the pavement beneath him. Blood dripped from his nose. Something in his head had short-circuited. He couldn’t even remember his name.

  “Who am I?” he whispered to himself.

  CHAPTER 37

  At seven o’clock I went to the box office at the Broadhurst Theater. I gave my name to the woman behind the glass and she pushed my ticket through the opening at the bottom. Chandler had been true to his word. The show started at eight but I wasn’t worried about the show. My only concern was meeting him downstairs at eight-thirty. He had produced the ticket, now hopefully he wouldn’t freak on me and duck out before I could ask him some questions.

  Time Square was a manic circus as always. I’ve never been a fan. It’s a hard place to function as a normal human being. It’s difficult to walk a straight line without being crushed either by foot traffic or by aggressive New York drivers. The only way to describe the experience is sensory overload.

  I had an hour to kill. There were cops everywhere so I made an effort to keep my head down and blend with the crowds. Hour by hour my memory was being reassembled and I tried to make heads or tails of the details as they fell into place. It was making me nervous.

  I grabbed a bagel down the street from the Broadhurst and watched through the glass as the line formed for the eight o’clock show. I only ate half the bagel and pitched the rest. The line was moving. I watched the theatergoers shuffle along. Some movie star was doing a one-man show and there was a lot of excitement.

  When the last of the stragglers was inside the door, I headed that way. A guy inside tore my ticket and I found my seat. The lights went down and the show started. The celebrity came out onstage and everybody went crazy, especially the women and gay guys. I think I might have seen him in a movie or at least heard of him but who cares? I wasn’t there to gawk at movie stars.

  At the appointed time I made my way down the stairs and followed a sign on the wall to the restrooms. I went in and glanced around. There was only one other guy in there. He wasn’t Chandler. He had at least twenty years and forty pounds on me and the restroom lights glared off his bald head. Both toilet stalls were empty. I loitered at the sinks for a minute until the bald guy was done, then locked myself in the stall furthest from the door, and waited.

  Minutes passed. Then the door opened and closed and I heard the lock turn. Footsteps crossed the restroom floor toward the stalls. Someone entered the stall next to mine and the footsteps stopped.

  “Nick?” a voice asked. I recognized the voice from both the phone and the gay bar.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said. “Thank you for agreeing to this, Chandler.”

  “I only have a few minutes.”

  “I understand.”

  “Why were you looking for me? What do you want to know?”

  “My friend is dead,” I said. “I know that you were with him that night, Chandler, I’ve seen the security video with you on it. I have a screen capture of your face from it. I’d like to find out what really happened to him. The police say it was an accident, but I’m not sure I believe that’s the truth. I’m hoping maybe you know something the police don’t.”

  I waited. I could hear the vibration from the music upstairs. The air in the restroom smelled vaguely of mint. I stood near the laminated wall that separated us. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four inches from me. If you removed the wall we would have probably been staring at each other.

  His voice seemed to recede. “How did you find me?”

  “I’m a smart guy.”

  “Maybe, but how did you know I’d be at the club?”

  I fished the matchbook from Dusk out of my pocket and passed it over the top of the wall to him. He hesitated a moment before plucking it from my fingers.

  “I found that on the kitchen floor of my friend’s apartment. I had never heard of the place and I’m pretty sure my friend wasn’t gay, so let’s just say that my curiosity was piqued enough to decide to drive down and ask a few questions to Perez at the bar.”

  “Perez,” he sighed. “Perez doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Don’t worry about Perez. Because here I am. Here we are. I know you were in Terry’s apartment the night he died. The police found him in the bathtub with a broken neck. Tell me what happened, Chandler.”

  I heard restless movement through the thin wall and saw his shadow drift back and forth.

  “I shouldn’t be here. I’ve got no business talking to you.”

  “Tell me what happened to Terry.”

  “The man I met at the club wasn’t named Terry.”

  “What did he call himself?”

  “Hank.”

  I let that roll around in my head a minute. The name meant nothing to me.

  “How did you meet Hank?” I asked.

  His shadow shifted again.

  “Uh, he was just there. I’ve seen him around. Not a lot, but I recognized him. It was known he was into younger guys like me.”

  I tried to imagine Terry being into any guy. The thought turned my stomach. Terry wasn’t into dudes. That was a safe bet.

  I held up my iPhone with the pic of Terry for him to see again.

  “You’re positive this is the guy?”

  I could feel his eyes studying the small screen.

  “That’s one of them, yeah, sure. But listen, hot stuff, they both looked exactly alike, so I’m just gonna have to say, yeah, that’s the guy from the bar. Yes, that’s Hank.”

  I lowered the cell phone and took a step back, staring at the laminate stall wall like it had whispered a profanity. What had he meant by they both looked exactly alike? I shivered. Gooseflesh spread down my arms.

  “There was more than one?” I said. “There was another man who looked like Hank?”

  “No duh,” he replied with a snort. “Identical twins, honey. Hank was slightly thinner, but other than that they were totally interchangeable.”

  I felt my heart skip a beat. Hank was slightly thinner.

  My mind flashed to the funeral home and Carmen’s co
mment that Terry looked so thin. I had noticed the same thing. I remembered staring at his corpse in the casket, thinking something was off, something just didn’t feel right. The guy in the box just hadn’t looked like Terry.

  I had to keep my cool and dig every detail out of Chandler that I possibly could. He was my only link to what happened that night in Terry’s apartment.

  “Hank approached you at the club?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you went home with him?”

  “Yes.”

  I remembered the timestamp at the bottom of the screen when Chandler and Terry entered the elevator, but I no longer believed that it was Terry he was with. An image of Terry’s brother, Senator Shelby bubbled up into my brain, and I held it there, turning it, adjusting it, trying to make Shelby fit into this situation, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. Shelby was campaigning in California at the moment, insulated by the world of politics and safely away from New York City.

  I was sick of talking through the inch-thick wall. I wanted to see Chandler’s eyes. Because his eyes would tell me if he was lying. I’m very good at seeing through people, or at least always thought I had been. Suddenly, though, given the recent revelations from those in my innermost circle, I was beginning to completely doubt myself.

  “Did he offer you money for sex?” I asked.

  He sighed again. “Of course. That’s how it works in my world with guys his age.”

  “You always do it for money?”

  “Not always, but that’s usually the case with older men.”

  “Terry wasn’t that old.”

  “I didn’t go home with Terry.”

  “OK, whatever, but there was money on the table.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, this apartment Hank took you to, he said it was his place?”

  “He never said that, and I didn’t ask. It turned out to be a sweet spread to party in so I was plenty cool with it.”

  “What happened when you got there?”

  Someone knocked on the door and I realized we had been talking for over ten minutes already. People would be rushing down to take a quick piss but the door was locked. I wasn’t concerned about their bladder problems. They’d just have to suck it up a few more minutes. I tilted my head to glance under the wall. It was obvious from the position of his shadow that he was seated on the toilet. I wanted to know more about Hank.

  “We just partied, man,” he said.

  I really didn’t want to know the party details. For some strange reason I knew this story wasn’t going to be rated PG, and if my ears had to listen to the hard R version, it had better include at least one chick. Unfortunately, there would be no women in this tale.

  “What about the second man? Where was he? How does he fit into the story?”

  “I thought we were alone. I thought it was Hank’s place, at least in the beginning. Then we were fooling around in the kitchen and this other guy walks through and pours himself a drink, and doesn’t even say anything. Just walks right back out. He had Hank’s face. Right then I thought the party might really get crazy. Hank told me to forget about the other guy, that this party was just about me and him.”

  “Were there drugs?”

  “Of course.”

  No surprise.

  “Do you want to know about the sex, Nick?” he asked, and I could almost see the smirk on his face.

  “I’ll pass, but thanks.”

  A wave of applause was audible through the ceiling.

  “You should stay for the show,” Chandler said. “He truly is amazing.”

  “That was Hank the police found in the tub, wasn’t it?” I said.

  He didn’t reply immediately, which was as much of an answer as I needed. When he spoke, his tone was very hushed.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “You called me, Chandler, because this is eating you up. You saw something, and now you can’t get it out of your head. I understand that feeling. That’s called being human. It doesn’t matter how jaded you think you are. Sometimes things hit you hard enough you can’t shake it. I don’t think you did anything wrong, and really, I couldn’t give a crap. Me and you will go our separate ways in a few minutes and soon enough will both forget this conversation ever happened. I genuinely don’t care who did what, but I’d like to know if my friend is dead or alive, and right now it looks as though you are the one person on earth who can tell me the truth.”

  He went quiet. I waited. I could hear him breathing over there. Deep, labored breaths.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he answered. The word slurred from his lips. He had probably been drinking, or might even be high.

  I couldn’t get my brain around it. Who was the third man? A third brother? Impossible. Right?

  Then again, I hadn’t known about Harrison Shelby.

  There was no dismissing the footage on the security video. Chandler had taken the elevator up to Terry’s apartment with someone, and I’d bet on my mother’s grave it was Terry Burgess, yet the video later showed Terry leaving the building and never returning. So who died in the tub?

  “How did it happen?” I pushed.

  I could still hear him breathing, and he seemed to struggle to get words out of his mouth.

  “That night is mostly a blur in my head. I was pretty high.”

  “Come on, Chandler, think.”

  “I’m so tired, Nick,” he said.

  “Just relax and tell me what you can remember.”

  “I was on a sofa with Hank. He was groping me, trying to get my shirt off. The usual. He was drunk and fumbling around. We were laughing, but honestly he was making me kind of sick. I think there might have been something wrong with him. One of his eyes was discolored, kinda yellowish. Maybe he had some kind of liver problem. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days.”

  One thing was for certain: he was not describing Terry Burgess.

  “So after he got my shirt off he went right to work on my jeans, trying to get them unzipped. I was not looking forward to the next few minutes. I just wanted to get it over with, take my money, and get the hell out of there. You have to be careful because sometimes these guys, especially, you know, when they’re drunk or loaded, they can get mean and violent. I needed to wait until he finished his business and passed out, then I could slip right out the door.”

  Chandler’s slurring had increased significantly. He spoke slowly, like he was running out of steam. He almost sounded like he was on the verge of falling asleep.

  “I hate my life,” he said barely above a whisper.

  “Shake it off, man. Everybody has ups and downs.”

  “I’m a disaster. I’m a whore.”

  “You’re just a kid. It gets better, I promise.”

  “I’m not a good person. I should have stopped it. I should have done something. He didn’t have to die. I was right there and I knew something was wrong, but I was scared so I just stayed on the sofa and ignored what was happening.”

  I had to strain to make out the words. He was whispering, like he no longer had the energy to even try.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I heard his body shift slightly on the toilet seat, and heard him swallow like his throat was dry.

  “The other man came in and grabbed Hank. Hank was naked. He had stripped all the way down and was on top of me. The man grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head and dragged him down the hall. A minute later there was a loud thump. I froze. I didn’t know what I should do, so I put on my clothes and stepped into the hallway. Light was coming through a partially closed door. It was a bathroom. I peeked through the opening and could see Hank in the bathtub...”

  Chandler’s words trailed off before he could finish the thought.

  “Where was Terry?” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” The answer seemed obvious: Chandler was not
the kind of person to want to get involved with the police for any reason.

  “I’m…a…cheap…whore…” The whisper had turned gravelly.

  “Are you the one who called nine-one-one?” I pressed.

  No response.

  I heard something fall to the floor with a metallic clatter. I squatted to see what he had dropped. I could see his feet. They were akimbo. The small metal object was a razor blade. It landed flat on the floor six inches out from his right shoe. Then I noticed the droplets of blood dripping slowly but steadily to the freshly mopped parquet tile.

  “Chandler!”

  I opened the door to his stall and found his body reclined on the outdated toilet seat. His eyes were closed and both wrists were slashed open. His face was already going pale.

  “Chandler!”

  The front of his shirt was covered in blood. It was a mess. He must have been working on his wrists the entire time we’d been talking. I shouted for someone to call the police but realized no one could hear me. So I ran and opened the door and shouted again. I carried Chandler up the stairs and stood on the sidewalk, staring at passing traffic as I waited for an ambulance to arrive.

  CHAPTER 38

  I was driving back to the hotel to talk to Carmen, to ask her questions about what she might know about Terry’s family, when Ellen called my cell phone.

  “Have you seen the news?” she asked.

  Traffic was crawling. It was dark and headlights streamed through the dour city streets. I took a deep breath, unwilling to let my mind become overwhelmed. I let the question hang in the air a moment.

  “No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “This is huge, Nick,” she said.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  There was a tremor in her voice when she spoke. “Senator Harrison Shelby is dead.”