fifties, saddle shoes then penny loafers and Nat “King” Cole. In the right windows the late fifties segued into Elvis and then the Beatles, with strap sandals, then Earth shoes, and acid rock, up to 2 Live Crew, and MC Hammer and in front of these a pair of inflatable Reeboks. A pretty nice window, Figueroa thought, although it would have been nicer–looking if the display hadn't been in such rigid rows.
The old man sat on a bench outside the store, trembling. Like many old men, his face looked like a peach – a three–day growth of soft white beard against an old pink skin. He was dressed in an aged windbreaker. He looked bitterly cold, despite the pleasant weather.
“See if he's hurt. I'll check with the manager,” Norm said. The manager was striding toward the front door already. He wore a white shirt with navy and red sleeve garters and a navy vest and pants.
Suze sat down on the bench. “You okay?” she asked.
“I guess.”
“What's your name, sir?”
“Minton. Raymond Minton.”
“What happened to you, Mr. Minton?”
“Um – was He shook his head as if he wasn't sure.
“How old are you, Mr. Minton?”
“Eighty–seven,” he said with some pride and complete clarity.
“And where do you live?”
“Fassbinder House.”
Something less than a nursing home, more than a residence hotel. Figueroa knew it. Supervised living it was called, for the indigent elderly. About a block and a half west of here. She had been inside with a walkaway a couple of weeks before. It was functional. Minton's head bobbed up and down on a skinny neck. The hair was thin and white on top of his head and hadn't been cut recently. Wisps of it moved in the breeze. The man needed a hat, Suze Figueroa thought. A wool hat. “What happened here?” she said.
“Pushed me down.” He was, sadly, not at all amazed. It had probably happened before.
“How? Where?”
“I was going out of the store. Under that alarm arch thing. One of 'em was just ahead of me. The other one was coming through and gave me a shove. Pushed me right down. Like I was – a door or something like that in his way. Just shoved me away. And then the alarm went off.”
“You fell?”
“Mmm–mm.” He pointed at his knee. The pants leg was roughed and a little blood soaked into the fabric from underneath. Thin blood, Figueroa thought.
“Can you stand on it?”
“Oh sure!” he said and got up to show her. He sat down immediately, a little sheepish at his weakness. But not as if anything was broken, Suze thought with some relief. The hand that lay in his lap was skinned on the palm and the ball of the thumb was bleeding. Caught himself on the hand and knee. Better that than break an elbow. She'd had one of them last week, and he'd screamed so much she could hardly hear the dispatcher to call for an ambulance.
“Wait here, please, Mr. Minton.”
Bennis had got the manager calmed down. It wasn't that the guy was scared. Mr. Stone was angry, bright red in the face.
“Slouching around the store! I gotta keep my eyes on all of 'em at once!” he said. “I hate kids. Punks!”
“I guess mosta your customers are kids, though, huh?” Bennis said.
“Shit! Yeah!”
Bennis sighed; his mild suggestion that the store profited from teenagers had done nothing to honey up Mr. Stone. “So let me get a description.”
“Punks!”
“Yeah, I know. Black punks or white punks?”
“I told you guys that when I called in!”
“Tell me again.”
“White, and by the way – ”
“Height?”
“Medium. Like five ten. One was maybe a little shorter than that.”
“Weight?”
“Skinny. Both of 'em. Brown hair. And skinheads.”
“Skinheads! Really?” Chicago didn't have many skinheads. Yet. Let's keep our fingers crossed, Bennis thought.
“Well, not real skinheads, but their hair was cut right to the scalp up to here,” he said, indicating an inch above the tops of his ears. “I hate that bald haircut they wear.”
“Eye color?”
“Hey! How'm I gonna see a thing like that? Sneaky little monsters keep their eyes squinted anyhow!”
Bennis said, “Clothes?”
“Black leather jackets, running shoes, Levi's. Jackets must've cost more than I make in a week.”
At the clothing description, which narrowed it to maybe eighty percent of the teenagers in the city, Bennis sighed again, loud enough for Stone to hear him and frown.
“Distinguishing features?”
“Ugly bastards. One was pimply. Other one was trying to grow a mustache. Hah! Smirking at me with five hairs on his upper lip!”
Bennis got on the radio and put out the description. Figueroa sidled over to the window displays. She looked at the gap.
“See which way they went?” Bennis asked Stone.
“Nah. Right into the crowd out there and zip!”
“Mr. Minton,” Figueroa said, walking out the door, “did you see which way they went?”
“There.”
Minton pointed south.
“Fled southbound,” Bennis said. “Mr. Stone?”
“Yeah?”
“How many CD's did they have on 'em when they took off?”
“How do I know? Didn't even know there was a problem until the door alarm went off. There's the one missin' outa the window, but probably they loaded up before they boogied. Shit! Anyhow, by the time the alarm goes off they're outa here. Fat lot of good the alarm is. And that old guy's lyin' on the sidewalk. You don't think he's gonna sue us, do ya? The old guy?”
“I wouldn't know, Mr. Stone.”
“Better not. His own fault, gettin' in the way.”
Figueroa strolled around while Bennis told the dispatcher that the teens could have one or more stolen CD's on them.
“Never catch 'em now,” Stone said.
“Took you guys five minutes to get here.”
“Two,” Bennis said. “You called at 3:11. We rolled up at 3:13.”
“Well, it's five minutes now. They could be anywhere.”
Bennis shrugged. Too true.
Outside, Figueroa sat down on the bench next to the old man. “How's that knee now, Mr. Minton?” she said.
“Don't know.” He stretched the leg out. The thin fabric of his worn pants pulled back from the blood–stained knee and he winced. He dragged his pants leg up a few inches with one blue–veined hand, picking the fabric loose from the skin. His shinbone looked sharp above the sagging sock.
“Are you married, Mr. Minton?” Figueroa said.
“Was. Her name was Helen. She's dead.”
“How long have you been living at Fassbinder House?”
“Four years.”
“How do you like it? Pretty Spartan?” For a second she wondered if he'd know what Spartan meant. Or would remember if he had once known. When he answered, she felt as chagrined as if she had been visibly condescending.
“It isn't bad. The food's warm.”
And how basic that was, Figueroa thought.
“Mr. Minton, I guess you and your wife used to dance,” Figueroa said. “To Friml.”
He didn't answer.
“Do they have a CD player at the Fassbinder?”
He didn't answer.
“What do they play on it?”
The old man groaned. “Show tunes,” he said. “Broadway shows. From the Forties and Fifties.”
“I see.”
“Do you? They think – the nice children who run the Fassbinder think – we were young in the Forties and Fifties. They can't imagine anybody being older than that. Young! I was forty–seven in 1950!” He started to laugh, laughed and laughed, showing missing teeth and an old tongue, creased and bluish–pink, laughed until he started to cough. But he caught himself then and quieted.
Figueroa said, “I'll tell the manager it was a mista
ke.”
“Fourteen dollars for one disc!” he said. It could have been fourteen thousand.
“Give it to me, Mr. Minton, and I'll take it back.”
He grabbed her arm in a bony grip. “I wouldn't have said the kids did it. I really wouldn't have. If they hadn't pushed me.”
Bennis said, “How'd you know?”
“With a missing Friml? Kids these days aren't into that.”
“Some could be, Suze my man.”
“The kind wearing that sort of outfit? That kind of haircut?”
“Not likely.”
“Scholarly types maybe. Plus, these kids were out of here by 3:11.”
“So?”
“School's out at 3:30. They were cutting school. These are not your scholars, Bennis. If MC Hammer had been lifted, okay. But Rudolf Friml?”
Bennis nodded. They got back in the squad car.
“He gonna just skate, Figueroa?”
“Yeah, I cut him loose.”
“Um – ”
“Hey, Bennis, you figure he's gonna go on to a life of crime? He's eighty–seven years old.”
“How we gonna put it down?”
“Unfounded.”
“Okay.”
“What's the matter?”
“I saw you buy the CD from Stone. For the old guy.”
“Shit, don't look at me like that. I saved us two hours in the district handling the paper.”
“Figueroa, my man, climb down. You are preaching to the converted. I already called in for fifteen minutes' personal time. I'm gonna buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Why me?”
“I figure it'll take you that long to get over bein' human.”
Ellen Dearmore
pseudonym of Erlene Hubly
(1936–1996)
“The Adventure of the Perpetual Husbands” combines two increasingly popular subgenres: the historical mystery and the lesbian mystery. In her tale of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas joining forces as a detecting duo, Ellen Dearmore evokes a strong sense of place and time; the political and social nuances of Paris and its expatriate American community in the 1920's are clearly reflected, and the presence of Ernest Hemingway as one of the story's focal characters adds authenticity. Dearmore published a second Stein–Toklas detective collaboration, “The Adventure of the
Gioconda Smile,” in which the pair investigate the theft of the Mona Lisa. While the historical mystery, often using actual historical figures as protagonists, has long been a staple of the genre, the lesbian mystery has only recently gained acceptance. Novels with gay male protagonists, such as Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter and George Baxt's Pharoah Love, have appeared from mainstream publishers since the mid–1960's, but most lesbian mysteries have been brought out by small presses, such as Crossing (which published the anthology in which “The Adventure of the Perpetual Husbands” first appeared) or Naiad. Sandra Scoppetone's 1991 novel, Everything You Have Is Mine, featuring lesbian private investigator Lauren Laurano, marked a watershed for the subgenre when it was published by Little, Brown, and Katherine V. Forrest's Los Angeles policewoman, Kate Delafield, has made the transition from small press to mainstream with publication of Liberty Square by Berkley in 1997. Mary Wings' Emma Victor novels, previously published by Crossing in the United States and The Women's Press in England, are also scheduled for mainstream publication.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PERPETUAL HUSBANDS
GERTRUDE STEIN AND ALICE B. TOKLAS
PARIS, FRANCE 1988
It was hard that fall of 1921, I remember, not to get interested in the Landru case. It was all everyone was talking about. “The Bluebeard of Paris,” they were calling Henri Désiré Landru, because he had had so many wives and had murdered them all except one. And of course there were his lovers; all Paris knew of them. I would go into my favorite butcher shop, up on the rue de l'Odeon, and Monsieur Renard would greet me.
“Good morning, Mademoiselle Also–leece,” he would say. “We have some nice tongue today. And what do you think of Landru? Two hundred eighty–three lovers! What a man!
French to be sure!”
I did not like tongue and I did not like Landru and I most certainly did not like all those lovers. So I would say, “Monsieur Renard, the quality of your meat has fallen off since you became interested in the Landru case.”
“Oh, no, Mademoiselle Also–leece,” he would assure me. “I will not allow that!”
But, of course, he did.
All Paris did.
Gertrude was no exception.
Gertrude, of course, loved to read murder mysteries – sometimes as many as three a week. She also liked to think of herself as a detective. “It's the perfect crime,” she said. “He murdered eleven people, and yet not one body has been found! What did he do with the bodies?”
The newspaper Le Monde, I remember, was asking the same question, and offering 5000 francs for the best answer.
“I have never won 5000 francs before,” Gertrude said. “That would take us quite nicely to the south of France next summer. With that much money we could even stay through the fall. It's definitely worth my time.”
So all of Paris went mad over Landru and Gertrude went mad over Landru and then finally, I am sorry to say, I did too. The day I found out about the petite annonce.
Four years earlier, in 1917, the year that Gertrude had bought her first Ford car and learned how to drive, Gertrude and I had been helping out in the war effort. We were working for the American Fund for the French Wounded, delivering hospital supplies to a number of French cities. We were in and out of Paris all that year, first down to Perpignam, then back to Paris, and then on to Nimes. But before we went to Nimes I decided to get rid of the heavy old Smith Premier typewriters that I had been using for years. So I placed a petite annonce in the newspaper. I remember my advertisement quite well.
For Sale: Smith Premier typewriter,
excellent condition. Contact Alice Toklas,
27, rue de Fleurus, 6ence.
It was during the war when people still trusted one another and thought nothing of placing a petite annonce in the newspaper, even mentioning their names and the fact that they were women, although after the war and the Landru case they thought twice about doing such a thing. But I placed my advertisement in the paper and several people came by and inquired about the typewriter. But none of them bought it. One thought it was too heavy and old – which it was – that's why I was trying to get rid of it. Another wanted a French typewriter with the cedilla and the circumflex and the Smith Premier was an English typewriter.
I began to realize that selling this typewriter was going to take some time, and Gertrude and I didn't have much time then. So I withdrew the advertisement, put the Smith Premier back into the closet, and thought no more about it. Until the day four years later when Gertrude reminded me.
“Alice!” Gertrude came into the kitchen one afternoon, early in the case, while I was preparing dinner. She was obviously excited and out of breath and had a newspaper in her hand.
“Listen to this,” she said, opening the newspaper. “It's about Landru.”
“It is by now quite clear that the way this most monstrous of murderers met his victims was through the means of the petite annonce. The unsuspecting woman would place her small classified in the newspaper, sometimes offering for sale items of jewelry or clothing, sometimes pieces of furniture. Answering her advertisement, presenting himself at her door, would be the pleasant, smiling, polite, soft–spoken, always confident Landru, ready to make an offer all the more liberal than the woman was asking, since his intention was to pay in other than cash. And how could these honest, but guileless starved–for–affection, middle–aged women know that this man who had suddenly appeared so innocently on their doorsteps, who was to flatter them and court them and who would marry ten of them, how could they know that it would be he who would take them on the darkest journey of all, to a death more horrible than any of them could imagine?”
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