Hate Crime

by William Bernhardt

  He did, at long last, manage to deliver the Big O. He would’ve preferred to hear her cry out in ecstacy, but her wide-eyed, stunned expression was almost as gratifying. When at last he rested, flopping down onto the bed, she left. He was to give her ten minutes-presumably so she could dress without being seen-then let himself out. Which he did.

  Talk about your noblesse oblige-the lady even left him a tip. A five-dollar bill tossed casually on his clothes.

  Five dollars? He started to get very worried about what was in that envelope. Breaking away from tradition, he ripped it open right then and there.

  Fifty dollars? Fifty frigging dollars? That was half of what he understood was the minimum. What was going on here? He works for more than an hour delivering her first taste of sexual pleasure and she stiffs him?

  Goddamn it! He shoved the money into his pocket. He was going to have a talk with the boss. He felt certain he’d never find the woman; she was probably showering all traces of him off herself, assisted by six handmaidens and a eunuch or two. His share of the fifty dollars wouldn’t get him jack. And he’d wasted his whole day. He was tempted to grab some damn antique on his way out, but he knew that would only get him in worse trouble, perhaps thrown in jail. Or with this lady’s connections, maybe he’d just be executed on the spot.

  Damn!

  He threw himself out the front door, slamming it behind him.

  And found himself staring at a smiling face. And a deadly weapon.

  Charlie jumped three feet into the air. He fell back, clutching his chest, moving as far away as possible.

  “I know what you are,” said the man holding the electric hedge cutter.

  The gardener, Charlie said, trying to calm himself. Not the one he was running from. Just the gardener.

  “If you came to talk to the missus, she’s busy. Try again later.”

  The big man with the stubbled face continued to leer.

  “I know what you are. I know what you did. I see you, through the big window outside the greenhouse.”

  “There are laws against that sort of thing, pal.” He tried to push past the man, without success.

  “Whore,” the man said, placing a finger on Charlie’s chest. “That’s what you are.”

  “Look, if I scream, your mistress will come running, and you’ll be-”

  “Cheap piece of ass.” Before Charlie knew what was happening, the man had slapped his hand against Charlie’s crotch and squeezed. “Get me some of that.”

  “Leave me alone!” he said, futilely trying to push the man away.

  “What you want? Money? You already got paid. Now deliver.” He squeezed all the harder. “I can hurt you, boy. Better if you cooperate.”

  “Go-to-hell!” Charlie brought his fists up under the man’s chin and ran, ran as fast as he could manage in his too-tight jeans. He was almost a mile away before he checked to see if the gardener was following him.

  He was alone.

  Jesus Christ, what a day. And for what? Fifty frigging dollars? Fifty-five, technically.

  He ran his hands through his hair, trying to catch his breath. The sudden shock had reminded him of how vulnerable he was. This was life and death, and he wasn’t talking about the sex pervert gardener, either. He knew he was being hunted, just like a fox at an English country house. He could run and run and run, but eventually, like all foxes, he would be caught. His only chance was to get himself out of the race.

  Before it was too late. Like it was for Manny. And Tony Barovick.

  19

  “Who are we?” shouted the man at the front of the small auditorium.

  “We are the Minutemen,” came the thunderous response.

  “What is our job?”

  “To sound the alarm.”

  “Where is the danger?”

  “Here, now, all around us.”

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  “We will fight!”

  Loving rubbed his weary brow. This had been going on for half an hour, and he’d had about as much of it as he could take.

  He’d read somewhere-maybe in a Reader’s Digest article in a dentist’s office-that insanity could be contagious, and he supposed it must be true. And he was enduring this for what-this case? Not exactly his favorite. He’d almost been proud of the Skipper when he’d declined to take on Johnny Christensen. It certainly looked like the sort of loser Ben would jump at. But he’d said no, and Loving realized they’d dodged a major-league bullet. Until Christina caught it and inserted it in their collective hearts.

  He was sure there was some reason why he should care whether the pig who’d beat the hell out of that poor college kid got the death penalty or not, but he was having a hard time figuring out what it was. He didn’t know where a kid like that could come from-so full of hate, so ready to act on it, at the expense of others. But now that he’d sat through this Christian Minutemen crap, he was beginning to think it was a miracle there weren’t more like him.

  As near as Loving could tell, the Christian Minutemen were the product of some sort of weird crossbreeding experiment between the Promise Keepers and the Moral Majority. All of the members appeared to be men, most of them young, most of them from a lower tax bracket, or with roots in one. His kind of people, Loving would normally think, but after listening to some of the drivel he’d had to put up with since he’d showed up at the YMCA tonight, he wasn’t so sure. He gathered that the organization normally encompassed a wide variety of social and political issues, but tonight, not too surprisingly, the only topic was homosexuality.

  “They sayyyyy that it’s just a different lifestyle,” the speaker on the stage intoned, with all the fervor of a Baptist preacher which, as it turned out, he was. “They sayyyyy they can’t help themselves. That’s just the way they are. They have no choice. But do we believe they have no choice?”

  “No, sir!” the crowd shouted back.

  “That’s right. Our Savior blessed each of us with the right to choose. Since the serpent came into the Garden of Eden, our Lord has given us the chance to choose between a life of sin or a life of Godliness. God does not create sinners. Sinners create sinners.”

  “A-men!”

  “Amen, indeed, brothers. Make no mistake about it, permissive homosexuality is the last and greatest portent of the end of civilization as we know it. It brought down ancient Greece. It brought down Rome, the greatest empire the world had ever seen. And it will bring down this great nation as well-if we let it. Are we going to let it?”

  “No, sir!”

  He paced back and forth across the stage, working the crowd, acting as a conduit for the energy bubbling up in the room.”I’m glad to hear it, my brethren. Because the time for action has come. This is the day when we must all stand up and be counted. This is the day when we must all be willing to fight!”

  In a notebook hidden in his lap, Loving made notes. He recognized several of the men in attendance as members of Johnny Christensen’s fraternity, Beta Theta Whatever. That didn’t surprise him. He knew there was a close relationship between the two; that was what had brought him here tonight. Apparently the frat president was high in the Minutemen hierarchy, and there were links at the national level as well.

  One of the frat boys, a shortish, sandy-haired kid named Gary Scholes, caught Loving’s interest. Not just because he belonged to the club. And not just because Loving knew the kid’s name was on the prosecutor’s witness list, although that was certainly a point of interest. But mostly because he looked as if he really didn’t want to be here. Most of the others were eating it up, chanting back, playing the parts of true believers. But not Scholes. He was much more sedate. Something was bothering him.

  And Loving really wanted to know what that was.

  Less than ten minutes later, he saw Scholes make an unobtrusive exit. Loving decided to follow. He was happy to have an excuse to escape this chanting. And he had a hunch there was a lot more cheese down Gary Scholes’s tunnel.

  Loving was n
ot surprised to learn that ANGER-the militant gay rights group-held its meetings in the parish hall at St. Crispin’s. He had been told this Episcopal church was generally considered one of the most liberal in the greater Chicago area. What did surprise him was that he had trailed Gary Scholes all the way from the Christian Minutemen meeting to this one.

  It only took about two seconds to realize that this was a group that would probably not have been welcome at the YMCA. ANGER was well named, because Loving had rarely seen so much of it packed together in one room. Good thing he didn’t subscribe to any of the stereotypes of gay men as weak and effeminate, because this visit would’ve seriously disillusioned him. Most of these hotheads were ready to start a revolution-World War III, if necessary.

  Loving wandered around the room, making small talk, drawing people out, starting conversations on any topic other than the one he wanted to know about. In his experience, conversations like these-he liked to call them “unofficial interrogations”-went better if the subjects had no suspicions that he was interested in a delicate subject. So he tried to find a neutral topic that they were comfortable with, maybe even eager to talk about-their children, last night’s ball game, their dog. Dogs were best. If he could get people talking about their dogs, he could own them.

  As the meeting was called to order, everyone took a seat in the folding chairs arranged in the center of the room. The arrangement was deliberately nonhierarchal. The chairs were placed in a circle; leadership was all but invisible.

  Scholes was sitting next to a stout Latino named Jesus Menendez who, according to the scuttlebutt Loving had managed to gather, was thought to have been the best friend of Paul Allen Metheny-the man who had stolen the bailiff’s gun and shot Brett Mathers.

  “If we let this happen once, it’ll recur a thousand times,” one of the men in attendance said.

  “They’ve hit us-hard,” said Menendez, who Loving thought was the leader. “We have to strike back. Not just against the friends and family and lawyers. Against the hatemongers themselves!”

  This sort of dialogue continued for a good long while. There was a time, it occurred to Loving, when sitting in a room with three dozen guys, all of whom were probably gay, might’ve bothered him. But he liked to think he was past that. He didn’t much care what people did with each other anymore, as long as they didn’t hurt anyone. He tried to stay out of people’s business, and hoped others would show him the same courtesy. Problem was-sometimes they didn’t.

  “This your first time?” asked a young black man sitting behind him.

  “Yeah,” Loving said. “I’m the newbie.”

  “Don’t let it get to you. These boys talk tough, but they’re all pussycats deep down.”

  Well, that was a relief. Because at the moment, Menendez was talking about burning down the courthouse in the event a not-guilty verdict was rendered in favor of Johnny Christensen.

  “Listen to me,” the black man said, addressing the group.

  “Hey!” Menendez shouted, hushing the crowd. “Roger wants to talk.”

  “Many of you know me,” he continued. “I knew Tony Barovick. Well. Closely.” The room fell silent. “And I can tell you this. Tony would not have approved of violence of any sort. Tony loved everyone-even those who didn’t return the affection. He would never have condoned shooting defendants in the courtroom or targeting their lawyers or burning down courthouses.”

  “We’re not doin’ it for him,” someone growled.

  “You’re doing it in his name,” Roger shot back. Loving was impressed at how articulate he was, how well he managed to keep cool under fire. “You’re shaping his memory, his legacy. Don’t make it a nasty one. Don’t let it be tainted by the same kind of ugliness that took my Tony away.” Roger scanned the room, almost daring them to defy him. “Tony was not a perfect person. There were times when… we had our problems. Who doesn’t? But I know this-Tony believed in love. He thought love could change the world.” He paused again, giving his words time to breathe. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we gave that a chance?”

  After the meeting was adjourned, Loving made a beeline toward Gary Scholes, catching him just outside the church doors. He was talking to Jesus Menendez. As soon as they concluded their conversation, he shouted, “Hey, wait up!”

  Scholes stopped. “Do I know you?”

  “Nah. I-” Thinking… thinking… “I just recognized your face. You’re a Beta, aren’t you?”

  His eyes narrowed. “And you know this because?…”

  Loving put on his best aw-shucks expression and dug his hands into his pockets. Given his size and profound west Oklahoma accent, it usually sufficed to assure the other party he was a hopeless dullard who couldn’t possibly be a threat. “Geez… this is embarrassing. Since I got laid off, I’ve been… kind of a Court TV junkie. Watch it all day long. I’ve been especially caught up in the Tony Barovick coverage. You knew Johnny Christensen, didn’t you?”

  Scholes frowned. “Yes. A little.”

  Loving acted as eager as a lonely puppy. “Really! Tell me about him. What’s he like?”

  “I should get back to my room…”

  “Aw c’mon. Just a little somethin’.”

  Scholes seemed torn. “Well… he isn’t the monster the media is trying to make him. But he’s got a lot of issues.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Yeah. But he’s way above his quota. He’s been-” Scholes must’ve thought better of it, because he stopped himself midsentence.

  “Were you with him… that night?”

  “Yeah. After.”

  “Did you know what he did?”

  “Couldn’t help. He bragged about it for damn near an hour.”

  “And you heard?”

  “Yeah. I also heard him-” He stopped, then turned back toward the parking lot. “Look-I gotta go.”

  “I gotta thousand more-” But it was too late. Scholes was out of there.

  Heard him say what? Loving wondered. And why was he at this meeting in the first place? And why was a supposedly loyal fraternity brother so quick to diss his brother? Something strange was going on here. Loving didn’t know what it was. But he intended to find out. If he had to hear about every dog in the Windy City.

  20

  JOURNAL OF TONY BAROVICK

  My first real job was waiting tables at a bar called the Black Dahlia in the ritzy Waffle Park area. First I took drink orders, then I tended bar, then I became the night manager, which meant I did both and then some, only more so. There was a reason I rose through the ranks so fast, even though I was taking classes part-time. I loved it. Everything about it. The freedom of being on my own, making a decent living. The exhilarating nightlife. The chance to hang out with people of all kinds, all walks, even people my father might not approve of. For the first time, I felt as if I’d left the artificial worlds of school and family and church and found something real.

  This was not a gay bar, but everyone who worked there knew I was gay. I never made any big announcement or anything, but for once, I didn’t try to hide it either. I don’t know why, exactly-the time just seemed right. No one minded. The boss was a big old gruff macho guy, but he didn’t care. Every now and again he’d make some remark about “managers who were light in the loafers,” but I didn’t sense any malice in it. At least it wasn’t an obsession with him. And it certainly didn’t prevent him from treating me well. I worked for several months, till I moved on to Remote Control. It was comfortable. Most of the time.

  We started to attract more of the biker traffic that frequented the suburbs. I’m not talking Hell’s Angels, at least not most of the time. This was yuppie biker stuff-doctors and lawyers in midlife crises, tooling around on absurdly expensive, perfectly polished Harleys and wearing designer leather jackets. Despite their education and relative affluence, some of them could be harsh, especially when they left the wives and girlfriends at home and it was just big alpha males gathered around the table, all of them jockeying to prove that de
spite his age and the spare tire around his gut, he was the biggest stud puppy of them all.

  “I bet you’re desperate to suck my dick, aren’t you?” one of them said to me one evening when I came to take their order. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing was necessary, as it turned out, because they all started laughing so hard-and checking their friends to make sure they were laughing, too. At home that night, I thought of a thousand brilliant comebacks, but when it happened, I was too stunned to speak. I was still transfixed when he added, “If I catch you looking at me like that again, I’ll stuff your balls in your mouth. If you have any.”

  Objectively, I realized the jerk was only revealing his own insecurities, but it hurt all the same. Just when you think you’re safe, you’re not. Just when you think people accept you for what you are, they don’t. How long would I be hated for being the way I was born? For being the way God made me?

  “I had a buddy down at the penitentiary who hit a fag with his hog doing ninety miles an hour. Know what he got?”

  “Eight to ten?”

  “No. The Congressional Medal.”

  Bad as they were, I’d take them any day over the holy rollers who sometimes wandered into the bar. Sometimes it was just kids on a church outing; sometimes it was a group determined to save my soul. It was to be expected-what with politicians talking about “waging war against the homosexual agenda” and preachers teaching from the pulpit that “the acceptance of homosexuality is the sign of the Beast.”

  Imagine standing there with your little pad, asking if you can take their order, only to hear, “Did you know that studies have proven that homosexuality can be cured?”

  “It’s not a disease,” I said weakly.