One Dead Drag Queen

by Zubro, Mark Richard

“Your source in the department couldn’t tell you?”

  “I’m not going to start playing games. I was kind of wondering who told you he was a drag queen.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You used the name Bryce Bennet when you met us outside his apartment, but when we saw the body, you made a crack about him being a drag queen. How did you know that?”

  “I was told at the police station.”

  “But Myrtle Mae wasn’t in drag. Pulver told us he’d shown up in a business suit. No one would have known.”

  “It was general knowledge.”

  “Which you didn’t have. I had to tell you.”

  That’s when Kearn pulled out a gun.

  “Myrtle Mae saw something on the tapes,” I said. “He knew you were guilty of something.”

  “From my contacts with the police, I knew Bryce Bennet was onto something. It wasn’t the tapes, not then. The initial problem was I heard Bennet knew something that had to do with the Fattatuchis’ kid. Maybe Bennet had gotten to him. The Fattatuchi kid was a militia wanna-be. He was suspicious about the truth. He was Thornburg’s contact. He was helping to hide him. We managed to kill both of them. Turns out activists in Chicago were hiding Thornburg.”

  “What did Myrtle Mae know specifically? Why did he have to die?”

  “What did the drag queen know and when did he know it?” Kearn laughed. “Do you really care about one dead drag queen?”

  Thoughts of physically harming the handsome menace flashed through my mind. The gun in his hand was argument enough to prevent the thought from becoming an action. I said, “He was a good friend.”

  “He was a neurotic busybody sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. Sort of like yourself.”

  “Thornburg and Fattatuchi were dead. What was the problem?”

  “We didn’t know who else the Fattatuchi kid might have told. Myrtle Mae’s knowledge probably wouldn’t have led to anything, but we couldn’t be sure.”

  “Did the Fattatuchi kid confide in Myrtle Mae?”

  “I tried to find out. Bennet wouldn’t tell. The possibility that he knew something was a threat to me—he had to die. I knew he was a drag queen because when I showed up to find out what he knew, he conducted the interview as he dressed. He may have been going to wear a business suit to see the cops, but I had to watch him in his dressing room primping more assiduously than an expensive whore.”

  Myrtle Mae loved to chat as he “pulled himself together.” He transacted a lot of gay rights negotiations over his vats of makeup.

  “The guy bragged incessantly that ‘no one is going to pull the chiffon over the eyes of this drag queen.’ ”

  That was one of Myrtle Mae’s favorite twists on a cliché. “You had to get rid of him because he could identify you as the bomber?”

  The gun didn’t waver and nothing loud or dramatic happened. “Pretty much. The son of a bitch was suspicious.”

  “Why do the bombing in the first place?”

  “Two reasons. Braxton Thornburg was ready to turn us in. He was going to try and work a deal with the authorities. He would give evidence of our group if the government would go easy on him.”

  “How do you know he hadn’t already told? If he was negotiating, how come he wasn’t arrested?”

  “His lawyer was negotiating. I have sources. I knew I hadn’t been named yet. I was worried about what he might tell his lawyer. The clinic was conveniently across the alley as a cover for the real crime.”

  “But why kill all those people?”

  “Who would think of a terrorist bombing being used as a cover for a murder of someone who was in the way?”

  “But what did he know about you? What had you done that was illegal?”

  “Other terrorist bombings and shootings. The last two smaller-scale bombs that had been left killed a few people here and there. We did those. The underground network knew that. There is a secret, violent underground network. When rumors surfaced that Thornburg was going to testify, he had to be stopped. We decided we could kill him and make a statement. Nobody would dare betray us again.”

  “There’s an international conspiracy to blow up abortion clinics?”

  “Not so much of a conspiracy as a loosely knit group of people who cooperate with each other. My main camera guy and I were in it together.”

  “How’d you know how to put a bomb together?”

  “Really, who has to know that nowadays? You just connect to the Internet and bippiddy, boppiddy, boo, you’ve got a bomb.”

  “Why did you do so much investigating? Why did you keep getting us involved?”

  “Because I intended to keep being a reporter. My job is a fabulous cover. I had to milk this story for all it was worth. You guys as an interview would have been great. Keeping an eye on what you knew was even better. I doubted if you’d find out anything, but I couldn’t be sure. What was even more perfect, the more I uncovered, the better I could scatter suspicion in every direction.”

  “What was the deal with the tapes?”

  “What Bennet told me, before I killed him, was that he was watching late-night local-television news and saw our report on that protest in the north suburbs. He knew the priest who got hurt. He saw our interview with him. Bennet didn’t think we had time to get back for the bombing. He thought we arrived too soon. That we couldn’t have gotten from the far North Side to the scene in the time it said. The timing display on the tape was supposedly a giveaway. He was wrong. Scott was right. Bennet had screwed it up. Unfortunately, he could alert half the planet to a possible anomaly.”

  “If there was no problem with the tapes, why come back here to get them?”

  “The tough part was, we did have a real problem. Somebody needed extra tapes at the scene. They simply came to our truck and took them. My cameraman left used tapes in what he thought was a secure place, but reporters were desperate that night. Nobody’d ever used that much tape. There were more than a zillion cameras. They took every tape that wasn’t nailed down. Only later did we realize we had made a mistake. See, we’d taped ourselves setting the bomb.”

  “Home movies of the crazed and conscienceless.”

  “When he realized the mistake, it was too late. Our truck had been caught in the secondary explosion. We were a little careless then. We didn’t think the second bomb would be that powerful. We couldn’t find the tape of ourselves. When we couldn’t find it, we believed it had gone up with the van. We figured we were safe. The station made all those copies for you. There are an incredible number of hours of tape of what happened. We discovered a few brief snippets of ourselves on one of the tapes. Most of it had been taped over, but not everything. We destroyed the original. We got the copy from the cops. That’s where I was when I didn’t answer my pager this morning. We still had to get yours. You have that bit. None of them had noticed the oddity. It’s only for a few seconds at the beginning. Shown frame by frame it is off-kilter. It isn’t much, but it could be fatal. Until you offered to come back here, we thought we’d have to kill you both. I thought that would be kind of a shame, because I kind of like you both. Unfortunately, you caught my slip about Bennet.”

  “When we met you outside his building, you’d just killed him.”

  “Yes. I was forced to use one of the oldest tricks in the book. I spotted you trying to find a parking place. Instead of running, I turned around and made it look as if I was just arriving as well.”

  “If Myrtle Mae thought you were the killer, why’d he let you in?”

  “He was suspicious, but he wasn’t sure. He thought he’d get me to slip up. He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was.”

  “Maybe you aren’t either. People know the three of us came here together.”

  “I appreciate your concern about my getting away with this, but you needn’t worry. You’ll be dead.”

  I worried about where Scott was and how I could warn him to stay away, get out, call the police, and rescue us.

  “Why did you set th
e bomb off that night?”

  “Thornburg might be going to cooperate. He also could skip town. We had to act quickly. With that banquet of protesters in town, it was perfect. I figured I could put suspicion on a lot of people. I had a contact at the convention in Wisconsin. When I found out that Clancey was coming to town, I figured this would be a great day to strike.

  “My main problem during the investigation was holding back on the knowledge I had. I couldn’t be seen to know too much too soon. I had to look like I was investigating. You guys actually helped there. It would have been a perfect murder if it hadn’t been for that goddamn drag queen.”

  “Why did you blow up my truck?”

  “That was fortuitous chance. We wanted one more little explosion to round everything off. We wanted to divert suspicion completely. I recognized the truck from an interview I did with Scott from before he came out. I saw you guys drive off in it together. When I saw it in the clinic parking lot, I thought it would be perfect. What greater way to divert suspicion from our real purpose?”

  Scott walked into the room carrying a six-foot-long, two-inch-thick wooden plank on his shoulder. He held it in such a way that Kearn was not in his line of vision.

  “Have you been messing with my tools?”

  I am never to touch Scott’s tools. He told me he’d get me my own set. I promised and promised to put things back exactly where I found them. He told me it was like how I wanted my own newspaper every day. That I didn’t want sections that he’d read through. I know my peccadillo doesn’t make much sense, but neither does his. But it was one of those compromises. And I don’t need tools all that often. And what was the point of hassling each other about something we could both afford?

  Kearn swung his gun in Scott’s direction and commanded, “Put the board down.” He began advancing toward Scott.

  Scott looked at me and knew I hadn’t spoken. He swung the board around to look for the other voice. He caught Kearn in the solar plexus. The reporter doubled over. The gun fired. The bullet thunked into the wood, passed through, and tore a tunnel through the carpet. Scott bashed him one on the head.

  Kearn crumpled to the floor.

  I said, “He’s the bomber.”

  “Kearn? How do you know?”

  “Myrtle Mae was right and wrong.” I explained about the Fattatuchis’ son, the tapes, and Kearn’s excess of knowledge about Myrtle Mae.

  “He killed all those people just to do away with a rival terrorist?”

  “It would have been a perfect murder. His cameraman was also one of the fanatic antiabortionists. They worked together.”

  While waiting for the police, we trussed Kearn up and tied him to a kitchen chair. When he came around, Scott asked, “Don’t you feel guilty about killing all those people?”

  “Guilt? No, I let the good Christians do guilt.”

  Pulver showed up with McCutcheon about twenty minutes later. Jantoro arrived soon after. He brought several beat cops with him.

  We explained everything. Kearn didn’t say a word to the cops. They took him away along with the tapes. I felt incredible relief that all the crap was finally going to be over. We refused to be part of the press conference that was held to announce the capture of the bomber. I’d had enough of that for a lifetime. Scott agreed.

  Before heading out to my place that night, we visited the hospital. In Alan Redpath’s room Oliver was asleep in the chair. I stood next to Alan. Except for an IV connection to his arm, he was no longer hooked up to any machines. I found the nurse and asked her how he was. She said that he was out of danger and would recover. I returned to the room. Scott and a sleepy Oliver were talking softly. I saw Alan open his eyes. He smiled groggily and reached out his arms to me. I picked him up and held him. I hoped he found as much comfort and satisfaction as I did as his small arms reached around my neck and shoulder.

  Over the next few days and weeks several things happened. First, we decided on a simple trip to our cabin in northern Wisconsin as a break for the weekend.

  They investigated for weeks, but Kearn’s vast network of a conspiracy turned up only two more people, besides the cameraman.

  We were talking with Pulver and McCutcheon one night after one of Scott’s appearances. We hadn’t hired a new firm yet.

  Pulver said, “It’s hard to tell with these conspiracy folks. Their numbers get larger the more vivid their imaginations. I think their power and influence is greatly exaggerated.”

  The lawsuit against Borini and Faslo and three baseball team owners they were working for never got to court. Borini and Faslo were bankrupted because of the settlement, but the owners had to pay. We didn’t buy a small country. We did get a minor league franchise in Chicago’s south suburbs. We added the cash from the settlement to what we got in reward for catching the bomber and set up a trust fund for the kids hurt in the blast.

  The day we solved the mystery, we went to my place in the country. Mostly I sat and stared at the flat countryside around my home. I listened to tapes of Judy Collins. Scott worked for a while on another carpentry project.

  That night we lay awake together in my bed in each other’s arms. I listened to the last insects of fall and the soft breeze through the window, which was open to the last warmth of the summer. I still couldn’t fall asleep. I always wanted my life to have made a difference to the world. I know you can only change the little part that is close to you, and even that part not all that often. Perhaps I’ve always thought my life would be justified if I at least added a little kindness to the world. I know most of us are less than a blip in the vast history of the universe, but I think most of us like to think we’ll have some kind of immortality beyond that which is promised but unproved by most major religions.

  I felt Scott’s arms sag and his head lean against mine. His breathing became more regular. If there was to be comfort in the world, this was about as much as I or anybody else would ever get. Love for a good person who in turn loved me.

  I stayed in that position until my arm fell asleep. Then I eased it carefully out from under him. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling trying to think of anything but being blown up. But memories do fade and sleep does come and we do move on, and we are not paralyzed by a universe too unimaginably vast to comprehend.