One Dead Drag Queen

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  “Why not?”

  “To me sex implies a relationship. I don’t want a commitment. I want to do what I want when I want.”

  “But you come whenever we call.”

  “But that’s my job. It’s what I want to do.” He resumed his narrative. “I joined the service out of high school. I was in the military police. I proved valuable and was recruited into a special branch for covert activities.”

  “The CIA?”

  “Not officially.”

  “Were you in Bosnia?” I asked. “Did you attack that gay guy?”

  “I beat the crap out of him because he was about to be assassinated, and I couldn’t stop the crowd that was going to kill him. By the time I incapacitated the simple twit, there were a lot of MPs and an American army ambulance on hand. It saved his life.”

  “Who wanted to kill him?”

  “Some Serbs he’d seen killing women and children. They are not nice people.”

  “You were forced to beat him up?” I hoped I sounded as incredulous as I felt.

  “Were you there?”

  “No.”

  “I can tell you this. If I wanted to kill him, he’d be dead. You’re asking me for my story. I’m telling you. If you choose to doubt it, I don’t much care. I told you I didn’t think it would help. You know something about me. How has that helped you be less threatened?”

  “Maybe it means for a little while I’ll be less inclined to think you’re one of the people out to get us.”

  “Fine.”

  Scott asked, “Have you ever been a member of any militia group?”

  “Nope.”

  We sat in silence for several moments. McCutcheon asked, “Where do you want to go?”

  “Borini and Faslo,” Scott said. “Let’s see if they have something for us.”

  We drove to the Sears Tower. Borini was in and agreed to see us. I was introduced. McCutcheon waited in the hall.

  I began, “I was surprised when my partner told me he had hired your firm. My understanding is you’ve had a discrimination suit filed against you by a gay man you fired.”

  “The case was brought and dismissed. The person in question was an incompetent nitwit. That’s why he was fired.”

  “You mind if we talk to him?”

  “You can find his name in the court transcript so it’s public knowledge so I don’t mind giving it to you.”

  “Are you homophobic?”

  “We took Mr. Carpenter’s case.”

  “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Do you want to know what we’ve found out?”

  “You’ve got something?” Scott asked.

  “A little. A description. All the employees of the hospital check out as nonthreatening. Only one of them said he noticed someone who might have been suspicious. He saw a male in his early twenties who could have simply been visiting someone. He described a smooth-complexioned guy who wore a cap without any logo, a red blazer, and black tennis shoes. The employee saw this person coming out of your lover’s room. You had so many visitors, it was hard to tell who belonged and who didn’t. They need to get a better control on that place.”

  Scott said, “I don’t remember anybody dressed like that.”

  “I think that lead is about all you’re going to get.”

  And that’s all we got. We left. I didn’t remind Scott about wasting his money on a wild-goose chase since that’s what we were on ourselves.

  Outside, I said, “We need to find out more about who died in the explosion. Do we try Kearn or Pulver?”

  Scott shrugged. “Maybe Kearn.”

  We stopped at the hospital to see Alan Redpath, Alvana’s son. He was still unconscious. He looked to be hooked up to more machines than he had been before. I found Alvana’s brother, Oliver, a man I’d met on several occasions. He was younger than she, but a throwback to the sixties. Normally he wore tie-dyed T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans. Today his long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He wore clothes that actually looked as if they’d been laundered recently. He’d bathed and put on deodorant, two activities often lacking in his hygiene.

  “What’s the prognosis?” I asked.

  “They don’t know,” he said. “No one knows. I’m frightened.”

  We comforted him as best we could. Alvana’s parents were dead. Her brother was her closest living relative. Alvana had been artificially inseminated. She never wanted to be hassled by the father of her child or have any interference from him in the way she reared the boy.

  On the way back to the penthouse, we picked up Scott’s car. Back home, I called the service to check our messages. We had one from Myrtle Mae. The computer voice gave the time and date of the message, a half hour earlier. The cryptic note from the voice mail said, “I hate having to go through these damn machines. I don’t know why you can’t give your number out to people you trust. This is so annoying. I need to talk to you. The police want to question me again.” After a thump or bump in the background, he said, “Oh, well, do you have access to the videotapes from the television coverage? Do you know anyone who could get them? I’ve got to get those tapes. Don’t trust anyone! Don’t bother to call. No matter what time you get this, come over immediately.”

  I had Scott listen to the message.

  “He’s hysterical about something,” Scott said. “Sounds like normal Myrtle Mae behavior to me. He gets blitheringly emotional about something that turns out to be inaccurate if not totally untrue. When he gets hyper, we’re all supposed to dance to his tune. I wonder what he told the police. He wanted a butch one to interview him. Maybe he’s in love and needs us to witness their wedding ceremony.”

  “I think it sounded important. I think we should go over there.” Despite Myrtle Mae’s message, I tried to call him. No one answered.

  Scott called McCutcheon’s number and arranged for one of the guards to accompany us.

  Scott grumbled for most of the trip to Myrtle Mae’s. “It’s not going to be important. It’s going to be melodramatic, gossipy, and silly. He’s going to be condescending and insufferable.”

  “Try to hold back,” I said. “Maybe you can get in touch with how you really feel.”

  “I hate him.”

  “You could give it a rest.” I was a little fed up with Scott’s antagonism toward Myrtle Mae. I was a little sharper with him than I intended. Instead of responding, he remained silent the rest of the way.

  21

  I genuinely liked Myrtle Mae. I get as frustrated as Scott does about the inordinate amount of press coverage drag queens get, but I don’t care if people want to wear drag, three-piece business suits, or run through the streets naked. I want to know if they are kindly, friendly, and can get the job done. I also don’t care if gay or straight people run to the current crop of movies featuring high drag. Scott refuses to go to any of them. The point isn’t who has the most friends who do drag. I enjoyed Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I hated The Birdcage. Neither the producers, actors, nor director had called to get my opinion of any of them. Early in our relationship Scott and I attended a drag show at the Baton Show Lounge. Scott sure looked as if he had a great time at that famed venue. I know I did.

  Myrtle Mae was a good person. He wasn’t some lonely old queen, applying makeup in a tawdry, ill-lit back room of some seedy dive on Division Street. He was a vital human being with a great many friends who had made a lot of difference in the lives of gay people in Chicago. He had more gay pride than a closetful of prim and proper, gray-suited A-gays. It also didn’t hurt that he had a stock portfolio most people would have to win the lottery to match.

  I’d been to his place frequently for meetings, but more often to take care of his plants and the cats whenever he took a vacation. When you entered his condominium on Lincoln Park West, you expected gay gothic. What you got was floor-to-ceiling dark mahogany in the foyer, living room, and dining room. He had two or three pieces of antique furniture, an elegant love seat with a Shaker chair at each end. An immen
se teak dining-room table dominated the vast space in front of a window that looked out over Lincoln Park to the lake. Each wall had one perfectly lit watercolor of a pastoral, Midwestern farm scene. The bedroom looked like something thrown out from the worst excesses of the harem sets of an Arabian Nights horror movie. The mess was unshakable by anything less than a magnitude-eight earthquake. In the public areas he had a housekeeper in once a week to eliminate any possible clutter. He owned the entire fourth floor. As large as his building was, there were only five tenants, one per floor. His place was worth at least three-quarters of a million.

  Outside his building on Lincoln Park West, we met Brandon Kearn. He looked as dapper and handsome as ever.

  “How come you’re here?” I asked.

  “I got a rumor that a guy in this building, Bryce Bennet, was going to be questioned by the police a second time.”

  So Kearn was after Myrtle Mae too.

  “We told the cops he’d been in the Fattatuchis’ deli earlier that night. He was supposed to be interviewed.”

  “I don’t think he knew anything,” Scott added. “He had an overrated sense of his own importance. He’s the type who gets hysterical over rumors. When they don’t turn out to be true, he doesn’t apologize. He just goes on to the next fatuous rumor.”

  Kearn said, “I heard he was going to be taken down to the station.”

  “He was a suspect?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I got the rumor. My sources say he’s not in any police station in the city. I hurried down here in the hopes of catching up with him before they got him.”

  “The cops would be here waiting for him, wouldn’t they?” Scott asked. “If they think he knows something, they’d come get him pretty quick.”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go up and see.”

  We dialed his number from the phone down in the lobby. No one answered.

  “We can’t just break in,” Kearn said.

  “I have a key,” I said.

  “Why do you have a key?” Kearn asked.

  I explained about taking care of the plants and cats. I unlocked the door and we took the elevator up to the fourth floor. We entered the apartment. It was amazingly still. One of the cats rubbed up against Scott’s leg. Kids and critters take to him. Half the time when I would come to feed the cats, they’d hiss at me. Frankly, I’m not all that good with plants either. I suspect they’d complain about me if they could.

  I detected a faint odor of a gun’s having been fired. “Don’t touch anything,” I whispered. I led the way as we stepped into the living room. Everything was as pristinely neat as ever. We carefully checked the den, library, and kitchen. The opera Carmen was just finishing on the CD player. As usual Myrtle Mae had stuffed his one-hundred-slot CD player full. It was on number seventeen. This was no guarantee of how long he’d been home. He started in random places and often programmed it to play random selections.

  In his bedroom we found one of the cats crouched on the bed. He was warily watching the body on the floor.

  One ghastly smear of blood covered the rug behind Myrtle Mae’s head. Another drenched the side of the bedspread. One entry hole gaped in his forehead and another just above his left ear.

  We all stood there and stared. The cat jumped off the bed and scooted out of the room. Myrtle Mae wore a long-sleeve, white shirt, dark blue tie, and bright yellow, baggy boxer shorts over a pair of panty hose. Myrtle Mae might want to appear outwardly butch to the cops, but he’d wear his panty hose underneath as a statement of rebellion.

  “My God,” Scott said.

  Kearn turned nearly white. “That’s one dead drag queen.”

  We waited in the downstairs hallway for the cops to arrive.

  “What’s the story on this guy?” Kearn asked as we waited.

  I gave him a brief outline of Myrtle Mae’s life.

  “He doesn’t sound dangerous,” Kearn said as we watched a blue and white cop car turn the corner from Fullerton onto the Parkway.

  Just before the cops entered the building, Scott said, “I didn’t like him, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

  Of course, we were questioned. When we mentioned the phone calls, connections were quickly made to the bombing. Kearn used his cell phone to call the station with the news. He also said he’d check his source to see if he knew any more.

  While he called, Jantoro, the detective, showed up. After he questioned us, I asked, “Had he talked to the police about the bombing?”

  “All I know is that he was in the deli, and he gave them the news about a woman named Susan Clancey.”

  “How is she connected to the explosion?”

  “I don’t know. He was pretty vague about how he found out about her visit.”

  “He knew everybody in town who was any kind of activist. He has for years. Did he mention anything about the videotapes of the rescue efforts?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “He said something about them in the message he left us. Can we find the person who knew they were taking him down and ask why?”

  “Maybe,” Jantoro said. “What was the deal with the videotapes?”

  “I don’t know. He could have been being mysterious or he could have known something.”

  Jantoro said, “All the television stations voluntarily gave their tapes to the police. People have been going over them for several days. Nobody reported anything suspicious. I’ll have to give them a call.”

  “Maybe he was overdramatizing his role,” Scott suggested. “He did that a lot, or maybe he just wanted to be on television.”

  “He had a big ego,” I said, “but he wouldn’t lie.”

  Kearn rejoined us. “I found a second source on the Clancey rumor. Did you know she was at a convention in Madison last weekend? Not too far to drive down for the afternoon.”

  Jantoro said, “We’ll contact the organizers to see if she was actually present the entire time.”

  “Myrtle Mae had dinner at Fattatuchi’s Deli,” Scott said, “but the first time we talked he told me he didn’t know anything.”

  I said, “Maybe it was one of those deals where he didn’t know that he knew something. Or he saw something that cost him his life.”

  “Or it was random urban violence,” Scott said. “Or a relative who wanted to inherit his money.”

  “Which are also possible,” I said. “He had a companion of sorts, a John Werner.”

  “We’ll try to contact him,” Jantoro said.

  I used Scott’s cell phone to call the operator to get Werner’s number. He didn’t answer.

  Interviews finished, for several minutes we watched nothing happen outside of Myrtle Mae’s building. The guard from McCutcheon’s firm, a man with a goatee, stood next to our car, which was illegally parked fifty feet away.

  Scott asked, “Are you okay? You’ve been friends a long time.”

  “I’ll miss his humor. His imitations of both Mayor Daleys were classic bits of humor. His impersonation of Republicans in the U.S. House was beyond hysterical.”

  Myrtle Mae’s death was another emotional bombshell that added to my sense of physical disorientation. I needed time to sort out the horrors that had happened, but I didn’t feel I had that luxury at that moment.

  I asked Kearn, “Could we get access to the videotapes from the scene of the explosion?”

  “Sure, but I was planning to talk to Lyle Gibson, the leader of the protesters. He’s finally agreed to an interview. He’s insisted it be off camera. Do you two want to come along? We can get the tapes afterward if you want.”

  I eagerly accepted. “On the way I’d like to check on John Werner.”

  There was no answer at his condo across from North Pier. The doorman said he’d gone out several hours before.

  22

  Scott and I drove with Kearn. Our guard followed us in his car.

  I said, “We have two names of protesters who might be dangerous, Edward Eggleston and Omega Collins.”

  “I’ve got their
names in a list of the protesters. What did you find out about them?”

  I told him. When I finished, Kearn said, “I’ll put their names on the top of the list to interview.”

  We were on the Dan Ryan Expressway going south. I said, “I’ve heard about Gibson, but I’ve never met him.”

  “You must have seen him outside the clinic.”

  “I always entered by the back way.”

  “Big, bald fella. He always dresses in black, head to toe. He called a press conference earlier today. He claimed he was in mourning for the children who died in the explosion. He has a congregation in Park Forest in the south suburbs. I’ve been looking up his background. We’ve got a big file on him at the station. He worked hard at making sure his was an integrated church years before the demographics of his congregation began to change.”

  “How’d he get involved in the protests?”

  “It seems to have been a gradual thing. His parents were in mainstream Protestant religions. Gibson attended several theology schools. Nothing enormously radical in any of them. How or why he changed to radicalism is unclear. Besides leading the protests, he’s opened his home to the itinerant demonstrators on the traveling antiabortion circuit.”

  “Would he harbor a killer?”

  “That has never been proven. Several years ago a suspect in one of the earlier clinic killings was reported in the Chicago area. I would find it hard to believe that the killer was being hidden in Chicago and not have contact with Gibson.”

  “It sounds like these itinerant protesters leach off the poor and ignorant.”

  “There’s a long history of kindness to travelers in the true Christian tradition. The movement isn’t fueled by a lot of money. These folks help each other. In a lot of ways it’s very communal in a sort of sixties, hippie way.”