Over My Live Body

by Susan Israel

  “Yet.”

  “That’s right, not yet.”

  “Any other leads?” I ask hopefully.

  “No. Though Mr. Scaccia was stabbed numerous times, I will tell you that the pattern isn’t consistent with what is usual in crimes committed by gays. Of course there are variables. He could have been the target of a gay basher. We don’t know the motive yet, but it wasn’t robbery.” He pauses. “I’m not saying Morgan is a strong suspect right now, but his not wanting to cooperate makes it look like he has something to hide.”

  “I’ll urge him to come,” I say. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “You can do it,” he says. The finality of his tone cautions me that I won’t get clemency if I should fail. “Call me the minute you hear from him. Any time before ten a.m. tomorrow. We’ll set something up.”

  “And if I don’t hear from him by then?”

  “Then you’ll meet me in front of the First, anyway,” he says, “At noon. We’ll ride over to Franklin Street from here. In the meantime, think hard about where Morgan might be, Miss Price, and try to get in touch with him tonight and get him to come along voluntarily. For his own good. After all,” his voice lowers, “if someone out there has a vendetta against gays and knew both of them, he might be a target too.”

  I didn’t consider this angle. Maybe Morgan has all along and didn’t want to tell me so I wouldn’t have any more to worry about than I already do. But if that’s the case, would he be staying with gay friends who would also be targets, who would make him more of a target? I make up my mind to contact everyone who was at the party Saturday night to see if anyone has seen him, if anyone knows where I can find him before the police beat me to it.

  I start with Gary and Abel.

  “Delilah, I still can’t believe it. We’re both in a state of shock here.” Gary’s voice is hushed. “What a freak thing. You’re not safe anywhere. It said on the news that Vittorio was taking out the trash when it happened. The police didn’t tell us anything. Poor Morgan, he’s got to be devastated.”

  “You already talked to the police?”

  “Oh, hours ago. Two plain clothes guys stopped by. They told us Morgan gave them the names of everyone who was at the loft Saturday night, flashed their fancy badges to make it official, and asked questions about who was at the party and how everyone was getting along. All very routine, they said, and then wanted to know where Morgan was, what sex joint they could find him in was what the fat one wanted to know.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Darling, we haven’t seen Morgan or Vittorio since yesterday morning at the Marathon and that’s what we told them.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Yes,” Gary says, “but he didn’t say where he was. We both offered our condolences to him, naturally. We talked a little about why and who, but Morgan really wasn’t up to it. He did tell us we’d probably get visited by the cops, but that they probably weren’t going to bust their asses solving this by any means because he gets it up his.”

  “It sounds to me like they’re trying to solve it,” I say.

  “It sounded to us like they wanted to bust him.”

  If they felt they had a case, they would have booked him last night: they had him and they let him go. I don’t want to get into an argument. You don’t understand, Gary will complain and maybe rightfully too, you’re straight. I try to understand, but I’ll never know firsthand what it’s like to be looked down upon or ostracized or outright attacked because of who I choose to love.

  I could be attacked at any minute by someone who unwisely chose to love me and isn’t getting any back. I want to believe in the system right now.

  “Have Morgan call me if you hear from him again,” I say.

  I don’t make any more phone calls.

  20

  1010 WINS news is brimming over with freshly perked murders all over the city. The badly decomposed body of a female found in the trunk of an abandoned car on West Street. A hit-and-run on East Houston. And across the river, a love triangle that led to a blood bath in Sunnyside. Vittorio’s murder is already old news by this city’s standards. I wonder what happens after that first twenty-four hours after a homicide which are supposedly so crucial for gathering evidence. I wonder if there is some kind of hourglass used to time just how long a detective can be expected to pursue a clunker of a case.

  Vittorio’s murder isn’t even written up on page one, but on page five of the first tabloid I grab at the newsstand in front of the West Fourth Street subway station, even though the more recent murders were discovered too late to make the first edition, just as Vittorio’s body was the night before last. I wonder about priorities. If Vittorio had been straight, someone esteemed, his demise would make page one in bold print; no stone would be left unturned looking for who did this. The last line of the story implores anyone having any information about this crime to call (800) 577-TIPS. All such stories end like this. I wonder if even one person will call in this case, if this really is the end of the line.

  I fold the newspaper and tuck it under my arm as I start to go down the stairs to the subway. I don’t look forward to telling Detective Quick that I haven’t heard from Morgan since yesterday. He’s probably hung over. He’s probably blocked a lot of it out. He’ll come around. He’s responsible.

  I can hear Quick now. Responsible for what, Miss Price?

  I dig in my fanny pack for a MetroCard and swipe it at the turnstile only to find out I need to add more money to it. No back-up in my pockets either. I swing my nylon backpack off my shoulder and yank at the strings until it’s open wide enough for me to get at my wallet without anyone else being able to grab it. I yank out a ten-dollar bill and hand that and the card to the attendant in the booth. Then I whirl around and walk into Curtis

  “Hi,” he says.

  I don’t want to say even this much to him. I start to walk around him. He does a little side step to his left, effectively blocking my path. I try the other way. He slides to his right and gives a little smile of pleasure, like he’s doing the underground shuffle with me. I take a few steps backward and put a hand up like a cop stopping traffic, warning him not to advance.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your friend,” he says gesturing to the paper squeezed under my arm. “It’s terrible to lose a friend. Especially like that. So unexpected. So undeserving. Obviously at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I nod, all the while making a quick study of him, the soiled sweatshirt, the dirty jeans, the same dirty baseball cap. I wonder what color hair he’s hiding under there. I wonder if there’s any hair under there. How the hell does he know Vittorio was my friend?

  “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “I think you’ve done enough,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The flowers were the absolute last straw!”

  “Didn’t you like them?”

  I don’t believe this guy. I take a deep breath and turn around and run up the stairs and around the corner. I drop the newspaper and don’t reach down to get it. I don’t turn around. I run all the way to the station between Broadway and Lafayette clenching my MetroCard in my fist and don’t stop shaking until I come out of the subway station on Canal Street and see nothing but Asian women around me. No sign of Curtis here. As I walk westward, I approach the red metal stairs leading up to the familiar art emporium. I duck inside to look around and pick up my order while I’m at it. A diversionary tactic.

  The line in Pearl Paint is longer than I anticipated, and when I finally get well past the corner of Varick Street, I see Detective Quick standing between the green lanterns at the entrance of the precinct, unhappily looking down at his watch, then up at me as I approach. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

  I feel bad about the bundle of art supplies I’m carrying awkwardly under my arm and at a loss to explain myself. “It was in the neighborhood,” I explain feebly.

  “So you thought, why no
t try to kill two birds with one stone.”

  I leave that stone unturned. I fall in step behind him as he leads me to an unmarked car that is in markedly better condition than the first one I rode in with him. “I was followed,” I tell him when he shuts his door, feeling like a fourth-grader fabricating a tale of why her homework wasn’t done on time.

  Quick looks in his rearview mirror, making sure that nobody is following him as he pulls into traffic.

  “By whom?”

  “The guy who’s been stalking me. I would have been here sooner. I had to take a detour. You know, to get away from him.” I lean into the cushy leather upholstery and take a deep breath. I tell him about the flowers left at my doorstep, the message left at the school, the complaint I filed, glancing over at him to see if he’s buying it. I dig the piece of paper Rubenstein gave me out of my wallet and chant the case number twice like a mantra. “I talked to somebody called Rubenstein.”

  “Marty,” he nods. “I know him.”

  “He said there’s not much anyone can do right now unless Curtis makes some kind of move.”

  “That’s true.”

  Quick hangs a sudden left turn and pulls up on the curb in front of a sign that says NO PARKING EVER in bold red.

  That is, unless you’re part of the blue.

  “He’s already entered my building and accosted me on the street, and I have a creepy feeling that he’s done a lot more just to know all there is to know about me. I wouldn’t call that being stationary.”

  I follow Quick and look up at the building where until Sunday night Morgan and Vittorio happily occupied a loft. Deflated black and orange balloons hang sadly from the rungs of the fire escape. Yellow plastic ribbon that looks like a party streamer sags to the ground. A garbage can heaving its contents on the loading dock blocks our path. Quick steps around the refuse. When I hesitate, he motions for me to follow him. “It’s okay,” he says, luring me away from the scene of the crime. “Come on.”

  He slides the cage door of the service elevator aside for me to enter, follows me in, and pushes the button for the top floor. “I take it you haven’t heard from Morgan since we talked.”

  I shake my head.

  He takes a deep breath. As the elevator ascends toward the roof, I see the very polished tips of black leather shoes tapping the floor impatiently, then an ill-fitting dark gray double-breasted suit, then the cadaverous face of a man who looks so bored that he’s probably been tapping out the hours until he can start collecting his pension. The elevator creaks to a halt. Mr. Bored looks past me. “Already got the super to open up for us,” he says, flapping a folded document that could be the signed statement from Morgan or a bench warrant. It looks like a take-home project for a beginner’s origami class.

  “Royko, you got anything?”

  “Could be.”

  Quick turns to me. “Miss Price, we need a picture of Vittorio, a fairly recent one, to show around. Someone who might not have known him might recognize the person in the photo and be able to tell us something.”

  “Just look places where you think it’s likely you might find what we want,” Royko adds. “Chances are we already looked there. We looked everyplace else.”

  “What makes you think I can find a photo in here if you can’t?”

  “We weren’t just looking for a photo the other night, Miss Price.”

  I lead the way into the loft where just three nights ago I was comfortably curled up on this white leather sofa. Now it might just as well be sheathed in plastic with a DO NOT REMOVE OR SIT ON UNDER PENALTY OF LAW warning tag attached. I cruise by the wall-to-wall paintings and stop at a familiar face. Vittorio. Of course Morgan would have painted him. Did he do it from a photo or did Vittorio pose for him? I reach for the painting. Quick clears his throat. “I don’t think we can use anything quite as big as a canvas when we’re conducting a canvass, Miss Price.” He smiles at the idea of this though, a smile that makes me think of a dress accessory, not something he’d have occasion to wear often. It looks good on him.

  There are paintings of me here too. I forgot about that. Royko gawks at them like a fourteen-year-old flipping through his first issue of Penthouse. Morgan’s so good, so attentive to detail that my face is as identifiable as it would be in a photo. So are other parts of me that I suddenly wish were hidden with a layer of cobalt violet. I cross my arms in front of me. When at last Royko turns to me again, he brush strokes me with his eyes. Quick takes in the paintings too, but with the composure of a man who’s seen other works of art in his lifetime.

  “Morgan may have done that from a photo,” I suggest, diverting attention away from the nudes of me to the portrait of a bare-to-the-chest Vittorio.

  “Keep trying.”

  I wander into the kitchen area, scanning for graven images push-pinned to the cork board or lined up behind some yuppie appliance. My fingers tentatively skim through a mail basket. Royko looks around. He gestures to the wall behind me. “Nice exhibit of cutlery there.”

  I don’t know anything about the knives, can’t recall ever seeing the knives before. There they are stacked in a graduated rack above the butcher block counter, a family tree of cutting tools, and their flash under the fluorescent light seems leering.

  Royko seems to be counting them off on his fingers eeny-meeny-miny style. “Nothing missing here.”

  “Doesn’t seem that way.”

  “Maybe there’s a photo in the bedroom,” I say. The two men stay at the threshold. I hear snatches of their conversation as I rummage through a straw basket on top of the pine dresser, aware that they are aware of me being aware of them.

  “What do you have for me?”

  “This may be nothing, but the neighbor across the street says he heard someone saying ‘Stay away! Stay away!’ or something like that. After ten.”

  “Did he have an accent?”

  “No, that’s the thing, Hat trick, the guy doing the yelling didn’t have no accent.”

  “Any luck, Miss Price?”

  “No.” I shrug haplessly, “Sorry.” It’s just that I’m afraid of what I might find or find out if I look too hard.

  “Damn the fuck who tore out his damn passport photo,” Royko grumbles. “Oops. Sorry.”

  Quick doesn’t say anything, but his body language is telling me that I’m not off the hook. He tilts his head to the left. “Okay, let’s go.” He steps back to let me pass. The sudden brief closeness to him in the threshold makes my skin prickle. I don’t dare look up at him, look at his eyes. I walk ahead of him and Royko, but I hear them tailing close behind. As I pass the wall of paintings again on the way out, I hear a speculative whisper: “You think there’s more there than meets the eye?” No answer. Royko continues, “I’ve never seen nipplesthat big. Sure must’ve been cold.” He chuckles. I’m sure not cold now. My cheeks burn like I’ve got a fever of 104.

  21

  “You could be getting yourself in big trouble if you’re withholding information. Interfering with an investigation is obstruction of justice. If Morgan did something he shouldn’t have in the heat of the moment and it turns out you’ve been protecting him, that’s a felony.” Detective Quick glowers at me as he starts the engine. “You’d have a criminal record. You could go to jail. Do you want that?”

  “If you’re so sure Morgan did something he shouldn’t have, why didn’t you arrest him Sunday? You had him there all night.”

  “Frankly I didn’t feel we had anything solid against him, so we let him go. I told him before he left we’d want to talk to him some more. Now he pulls a vanishing act. It’s not helping his credibility any. It’s also possible Morgan was a witness to the crime, saw it happen and fended off an attack on himself. He might be hiding out because he’s scared. If he’d let us know where he is, we could provide some protection and at the same time have a better shot at catching the killer. In any case, we want to talk to him further.”

  I turn away and wince as the car rolls off the curb with a thud. “I have no
idea where Morgan is.”

  “This was a sham. Offering to come along to offer Morgan moral support while he got us a photo. You probably knew all along that he wouldn’t be coming along for the ride.” He stops short for a light. “Don’t lie to me, Miss Price.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “But not the whole truth. You’re leaving something out. You have to be a pretty good friend of Morgan’s for him to have called you Sunday night. We gave him free access to the phone, but he didn’t try anyone else. Just you.”

  “He trusts me.”

  “And yet you expect me to believe that he won’t tell someone he trusts where he is and that you haven’t heard from him since yesterday? Damn!” Quick blasts his horn at a cabby with a death wish who cuts in front of him. “I’m beginning to not trust you, Miss Price. I’m beginning to think that you come up with one story after the other to cover your ass.” I bite my lip. “How can you expect us to take your complaints seriously when you ditz us around like this while there’s a homicide investigation going on? Level with me, Miss Price. Fill in a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle so maybe we can get a clearer picture.”

  I’m glad I don’t know where Morgan is, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I could never hide the truth from this man. His eyes are focused on the street in front of him. I almost expect them to beam an express lane through the gridlock like lasers.

  “The other night, when you asked me how I would describe Morgan Sunday afternoon, I told you I was too busy to notice. That wasn’t exactly true. I did notice.” I clear my throat. “When Morgan came by to see me after the Marathon, he seemed disturbed. He said Vittorio was being moody and left before the race was over. I said maybe he was just hung over. Everybody had been drinking a lot at the party the night before.” No one more than me. “Maybe there was something he wasn’t telling me or Vittorio wasn’t telling him, but he wasn’t exactly in a murderous rage. I didn’t think anything of it.”