“I’d believe that. Spic ‘n’ Span Billy.”
“Thanks, Huey, you’ve helped me a lot. Hey, one thing-did you get that window lock fixed?”
“Sposed to be fixed today, Donald. Landlady said she’d see to it.”
“And you haven’t gotten any more weird phone calls?”
“I wouldn’t know, baby. I ain’t been home the last coupla nights. Don’t ask me where I was,
‘cause I ain’t sure I could tell ya. Rotterdam, it might of been. Anyways, I’ll be back home tonight
��� if you’d like to drop by for coffee.”
I could see him leering wholesomely. “Well, to tell you the truth-a small part of it, anyway I’ve got to work tonight. Look, now, you be careful. And let me know if you get any more of those crazy phone calls. Somebody who might be mixed up in the Kleckner killing has got hold of Billy’s phone book with your number on it, and someone else whose name is on the book has been getting crank calls, too.”
“Don’t worry about ol’ Huey, Donald. Asshole come after me again and he gonna be carried outta my place in one of them puke-green trash bags.”
“Right. Just-be loose.”
“Always, sweetheart. Allways.”
I called Timmy’s office and caught him just about to leave for the day.
“I’m not going to be at the alliance meeting tonight,” I said, “but I’ve got Truckman’s check. And tomorrow I’ll have another one for the fund. From an anonymous donor.”
“Great; we’re going for four thousand. How’re you doing? Are you working tonight?”
I’d made a decision without knowing I’d made it. I said, “Tonight I’m going to do something immoral.”
“Oh? Immoral by what standards?”
As a teenager, he’d considered becoming a Jesuit. I knew why. “Immoral by just about anybody’s standards,” I said. “Believe me.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“I’ve already decided.”
“That’s sound thinking. Charles Manson should have used that one. ‘But, your honor, we’d already decided.’”
I said, “Don’t make it worse.”
“Ahh, now I’m an accomplice. Will it be fun, our immorality tonight?”
“I’m going to hang up now, Timmy.”
“Don, the predestinationist. My mother once warned me about getting mixed up with Presbyterians. See you around, lover.”
“Yeah, bye.”
I wondered if there was a patron saint for the sarcastic.
14
I exercised, jogged around Lincoln Park for half an hour, showered, dressed, and had a bagel and a cup of plain yogurt while I read the Times Union.
I went over my notes on the case and added to them. I left the apartment at five after eight under a starry autumn sky, aiming to arrive at Harold Snyder’s apartment fifteen minutes late for the sake of dramatic tension. Not that his life lacked it.
“Donnie! Donnie, Donnie, Donnie!”
She had on a sheer negligee with a leopard-spot design and panties to match. In the” afternoon she’d worn a cheap, wavy orange wig, but now I witnessed her own hair, honey-colored and longish, a smooth whorl combed down over one eyebrow.
I said, “Sondra, would you mind calling me Don? My mother calls me Donnie.”
She tapped the tip of my nose with her finger and cocked a freshly drawn eyebrow. “Maybe I’ll just call you-Buck.”
“I could be trained to respond to that.”
“Mmmm. I’ll bet you could-Bucky.”
We were on the couch. A lamp with a two-watt lightbulb burned in the corner. The phonograph was playing the soundtrack from The High and the Mighty. She poured me what she called a martini. It was bright red. She lit a Gauloise and we told each other about ourselves.
Sondra described her “tragic childhood,” which did, in fact, sound difficult and ugly: seventeen years in an Adirondacks crossroads called Sneeds Pond, with fundamentalist Baptist parents who kept telling her she was “abnormal” and “not right” and locking her in her room with a Bible, a football, and a photo of John Wayne.
“Did you play football, Buckie?” She examined my thighs and calves.
“In high school,” I said. “And off and on in the army.”
“Ooo, which army? Whose side were you on?”
“Ours. Though I once met Jane Fonda and she said I was making a mistake.”
“Tacky bitch. Where does she get off.”
“History will treat her more kindly than some.”
Having checked out the shape of my legs, she moved on to my chest, a long, smooth hand sliding up under my turtleneck. She said, “Did you see A Bridge Too Far on TV the other night? Liv Ullman was too-aloof. She’s so unwomanly. Sean Connery, though-God, what a man! You could have played him, Bucky.”
I thought, Christ, Sean Connery must be sixty by now. I said, “How old do you think I am, Sondra?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Not bad. You only missed by a year.”
“Thirty-eight?”
“Yup.”
“You have great nipples-for a man.”
Was she a lesbian, too? I’d heard that about some of the famous starlets. She hiked up my shirt and ran her tongue around a nipple. I felt the heart under it begin to pump faster.
“Sondra-look, if we could just talk about some things for ten minutes, then I could be a lot more relaxed and we could really-”
She came up to my face and gave me a hard look. She said, “This is a social visit. You said so. It was your idea, Bucky. You wanna fuck, or you wanna fuck off? Hey?”
What would be would be. I said, “What do you think-sexy?”
She sighed and moved to the other nipple. I pulled her up and we sat kissing and feeling and massaging each other’s legs and arms and backs and fronts while the record changed and the sound track from An Affair to Remember came on. She got my cock out of my pants and mouthed it for a while; I bent forward over her back, reached around, and got hold of hers. I wondered if Kim Novak was built like this.
We ended up on the floor, our garments soon strewn around us, kneeling and facing each other, kissing each other’s faces, she massaging my cock and balls, me with a middle finger working into her warm, prelubricated anus.
“Bucky-baby-baby-Bucky-you’ve found my weakness.”
We stood together and she led me into the bedroom by the finger. She flung the chenille bedspread aside and we fell onto the sheets. I was on top of her and she said, “Wait-more grease.” The romance of the gay life.
She groped my cock with a palmful of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion-I was afraid I was going to come and in order not to I had to think about Eric Severeid-and then I got some of the stuff on my fingers and lubricated her asshole, which opened at my touch like a baby’s mouth.
Her legs came up in the air, as if sprung into their natural position, and I eased myself into her, and felt her working her sphincters like miraculous strong hands. Then we were moving together, she saying ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhhh into my ear, me grunting and sighing, and thinking from time to time of Eric Severeid.
After a long, wonderful time her face convulsed, tears ran down her cheeks, and she began to moan, “Oh, Donnie-Donnie, love me-love me real good, Donnie!” and suddenly it hit me. Oh Christ, I thought-this was no longer Sondra the movie star pumping and humping under me anymore, but this sad, fucked-up human being whispering and sighing and weeping into my ear was in fact the hopeless, unloved boy, now the lost, unlovable man, Harold Snyder of Sneeds Pond, New York.
I was panicking, having second thoughts, trying to decide whether or not I could go through with it, when Harold began to moan, “Ohhhhohhhhh ��� Yes-s-s-Yes-s-s-s-”
I hesitated, stopped, slid it out.
“Oh, don’t stop, Donnie! Donnie!” He was grabbing wildly, trying to find it. I shook my ass around, evading him.
My mouth was at his ear. I said, “First, Harold-you’ve gotta tell me something.”
�
��Donnie-Donnie, what’s the matter? What did I do? You were making me feel so good-so so loved-”
That was it. I collapsed onto him. I wept into his neck-great gulping sobs that made the both of us shake and slide and make slapping sounds in each other’s sweat. He threw his arms around me and held me tightly for a minute, or five, or ten, until the tension was gone and we both lay still.
We lay like that for a long while, breathing together.
I said, “It’s okay, Harold. I’m sorry. I had a cramp.”
He kissed my eyes and stroked my head. “Oh, Donnie-poor Donnie-”
I was hard again. Modern ideas about the human brain to the contrary notwithstanding, I’ve always thought the damn thing had a life of its own.
We began again, taking it slower and easier this time. We’d build, ease off, build again, ease off again, then ride away, up, and up, and up. And, in fact, Harold Snyder-Sondra the cleaning lady, the unrisen star and dirty-mouthed shrew turned out to be, in bed, a strong, sweet, knowing, graceful, warm-hearted homosexual man.
At eleven-fifteen, after a second go-round, Harold smoked a Gauloise, I had a black coffee, and then I drove home.
Timmy had let himself in and was waiting in my apartment. He looked up from the copy of The Nation he was reading.
I said, “How’d the meeting go?”
He said, “Talky, but useful. How’d the immorality go?”
“Not talky, but useful.”
“That’s par.”
“But not entirely lacking in redeeming personal value.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No,” I said. “It’ll wait.” I hung my jacket in the closet. I removed my clothes and tossed them in the corner. “A shower.”
As I went into the bathroom, Timmy got up to pick up my clothes. Not just a sarcastic Jesuit, but a sarcastic Jesuit mother.
When I came back, the lights were out and Timmy was in the bed, his clothes neatly folded beside mine on the big ledge of my bay window. I slipped in beside him in the hazy blue of the streetlight, and we rolled gently together.
I said, “We’re very lucky. You and I.”
“I know,” he said. “We are. Let’s keep it up.”
There was an undertone of apprehension in his voice. There needn’t have been. He should have known that by then, but he didn’t. So I told him.
15
During breakfast the phone rang, Timmy was sitting beside it and answered it.
“It’s Harold,” he said. “I think you’ve made a friend.”
Harold made complimentary and affectionate comments that were good for my ego but not for my conscience. My brief responses were friendly but vague. Then Harold got to the point.
“Donnie, I really shouldn’t be telling you this, and you must never, ever tell Mike I told you. Will you promise me that?”
“I promise.”
“Donnie, I���I really can’t tell you what Steve saw that upset him so much, ‘cause I don’t think you’d believe it. I saw it with my own baby blues, and I could hardly believe it! So if you must, doll, you’ll just have to see for yourself. He doesn’t meet them at the side door anymore, it’s somewhere away from the place. You’ll have to follow him somewhere. Tonight, after closing.
He goes Wednesdays, and either Fridays or Saturdays.”
“Meet who, Harold? Who does Mike meet?”
“You’ll see, baby. You’ll see.”
“Does Mike know that you know this, whatever it is?”
“Ohhh, no-o-o-o, Donnie, and you mustn’t tell him. Mike’s so liquored up and crazy these days he’d fire me, and I might be forced to hit Hollywood and break into the business. And, God, it’s such a debilitating experience out there in these crude times we live in-air pollution, dyke agents, Joan Crawford’s shoes getting sold off like scrap metal. Within ten years I’d marry a degenerate disco franchiser and OD on Baskin-Robbins and heart-attack pills. Donnie, I have to stay in Albany, where I can be me. In a place where a certain amount of class is still respected.
No, I can’t-I cannot afford to lose my job, Donnie. You do understand, don’t you, bunny?”
I said, “I won’t tell him, Harold. But I might want to talk to you again. After tonight.”
Huff, huff. “Well, I should hope you’ll want to speak to me again. Now that we’re lovers. Bye the bye, love-buns, who was that who answered the phone just now?”
“That was my houseboy.”
“Ha, I should have known! You older guys! Is he Filipino?”
“Eskimo.”
“And you told me you weren’t queer!”
“I swing both ways, remember?”
“You’re a flawed masterpiece, Donnie, that’s what you are. But what’s a woman to do?”
“Tell me another thing, Harold. Did Mike know that Steve saw whatever he saw?”
“Yes, it was horrible. Steve confronted Mike the day after-Steve told me-and Mike was sloshed, as usual, and started screaming like a bitch. He even fired poor Steven-but then he changed his mind five minutes later. See, that’s why I’m so scared; Steve was the hot jock, and Mike needed him, and anyways Mike always had a soft spot for Steven even after they broke up.
Me, lovable as I am, I’m just a charwoman to Mike, and I can be replaced by any sleazy slut who walks in the door.”
“Where were you when you saw-it?”
“In the DJ booth with Steve. It was a quarter to five, and Mike thought everyone had left for the night. But I was depressed about one thing or another, and I was hoping Steven might cheer me up-he had once before. But he wouldn’t this time, the little faggot. Anyway, we did get to talking, though-Steven was a dear, dear man-and then we looked out and saw it. We just sat there then, scared half to death, until Mike turned the lights out and left, and we got out with Steve’s key. It really blew our minds, Donnie. The pits, the absolute pits.”
I said, “Thank you, Harold. You’ve done the right thing telling me this. But you mustn’t tell anyone else, okay? And I won’t either.”
“My lips are sealed, lover. Except when I’m with you. Then they are parted.”
“Good. Thank you. One last thing, Harold. Do you know a guy named Frank Zimka? He’s a hustler I think Mike has done business with.”
“I know who he is, yes. He’s weird. I’ve seen him around. Once with Mike.”
“When did you see him with Mike?”
“Last summer once. Or twice maybe. I don’t like him. When Zimka’s down, he’s a real depresso, and when he’s on speed, he gets crazy. I heard one time he bounced a toilet seat off a guy’s head.
Some other whore who’d turned on to Zimka’s trick.”
“A toilet seat? Does he carry one with him, or what?”
“I wouldn’t know the answer to that, sweet thing; I’m only saying what I heard. Donnie-Donnie, I had a wonderful time last night. You made me feel like-like-”
A nat-u-ral wo-man-n-n “-like a human being.”
A wave of dizziness. I’d made a terrible mistake. This was going to be hard-impossible. I said,
“Um. I’m glad.”
“Till the next time, lover.”
“Oh. Right. See you, Harold. Thanks again.”
“It is I who am the one who is grateful.”
“So long, Harold.”
I hung up. Timmy looked up from his Wheat Chex, then down again.
I said, “Shit. I am made of shit.”
“Come on now,” he said. “You have your good points.”
‘Today my one good point is I’m beginning to understand this whole Kleckner-Blount-Zimka-Truckman phantasmagoria. I think.”
“Right. As a detective, you’re sterling silver. It’s only as a human being that you’re made of clay. What do you think you’ve found out?”
I told him. He didn’t finish his breakfast.
Timmy put on some of the clothes he kept in my closet and left for his office. I gathered up my notes, retrieved the two letters for Billy Blount from “I’m Here
Again,” stuffed everything in my canvas tote bag, and drove over to Central.
In the office I made another appointment with the Blounts at one. Low tea on State Street.
I was going over my notes again when Margarita Mayes called.
“Mr. Strachey, I’ve been in touch with Chris.” “She called me too, as you said she would. Thank you.” “I talked to her last night. She said I could tell you she’d be in Albany Saturday night, and would you come for brunch on Sunday? She won’t tell you where Billy is, though; she said I should emphasize that. And if you go to the police, she’ll deny all of these things. Will you come?”
“Well, that’s certainly a lovely invitation. And I’ll let you know-by Friday or so, if that’s all right.”
“That will be fine. Call me at the office. I’m not staying at the house. Someone tried to break in last night, and I’m staying with a friend in Westmere until Chris gets back. There have been so many burglaries lately. It’s really quite frightening.”
“Margarita-let me ask you a question. Have you been getting any more crank phone calls?”
A silence. “How did you know that?”
“Because another of Billy’s friends has gotten them. Describe the calls.”
“There’s nothing to describe. Someone calls, and then listens, and then hangs up. There have been eight or ten.”
“At your office, or just at home?”
“Just at the house. But I’m out of there now.”
“Were you home during the breakin attempt? What happened?”
“I’d been asleep for about an hour,” she said, “when the burglar alarm went off. I thought I heard a banging or thumping noise out behind the house, and I called the police right away. I was just scared to death, and I locked my bedroom door until the police came, in about five or ten minutes. They looked outside and found that our stepladder had been taken off the back porch and propped up under the kitchen window. The policemen helped me put the ladder away and said I was safe with the burglar alarm working and to keep everything locked up and not to worry. It frightened me, though; I could hardly sleep at all last night, and I’m not going back there until Chris is home.”
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