by Doug Burgess
Her eyes widen, as if I’ve asked her to explain the Holy Trinity or the color mauve. She considers the question for almost a minute. Finally, her lips part.
“All along, I figured—”
The doorbell trills in some dark corner of the house. With a curse Alicia stands, tripping over the table leg. “Wait here,” she orders and disappears down the hall. Billy and I exchange a look.
“This,” he says, “is the moment when we hear a long, drawn out scream and a dull thump in the front hall.”
At any event, we don’t hear either. Instead there is the sound of muted conversation, earnest but normal, moving this way. The door opens, and Alicia returns, flanked by two men in dark gray suits. Both have blond hair cut ruthlessly short and the lithe athletic step of all professional dancers and policemen. The shorter of the two pushes forward and presents his badge for inspection. “Agent Philip Slemp, FBI,” he says, with a slightly Southern drawl. “This is my partner, Agent Watters. You must be Chief Dyer.”
“Yup,” says Billy, looking them both up and down. “What can I do for you?”
“Does Providence know you’ve been interrogating this witness?” Watters demands. His voice is all New Jersey tough.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Billy answers coolly. “What business is it of yours?”
“Plenty,” Watters retorts. “Mrs. Rhinegold is under the protection of the United States government. You had no right to question her without authorization.”
“Who the hell are you to—”
“Please, Chief Dyer,” Slemp interjects, raising a placatory hand. “We are all on the same side. But unfortunately, Mrs. Rhinegold has been compromised. The television news broadcast her whereabouts, so now we must assume the Molinari family are aware as well. We need to protect our witness.”
There is something proprietary in that statement. Billy notices as well. “You’re taking her?”
“To a secure location, yes. If you wish to interview her again, and if your superiors allow it”—Agent Slemp raises his eyebrows delicately—“you may of course do so. Under our supervision.”
“Do I really need to remind you,” Billy says, coldly furious, “that this is a homicide? Possibly even a triple homicide. Your interest in Marcus Rhinegold is of considerably less value than ours.”
Agent Slemp actually smiles. “That may be so, Chief, but it would really be a matter for Providence, wouldn’t it?” From his tone, it’s unclear whether he means the city or the deity.
“I don’t wanna go.” Alicia’s voice is like that of a small child’s, frightened and obstinate. She clutches herself with both arms.
“You have to, Mrs. Rhinegold,” Slemp answers, turning to her. “You are not safe here. It’s a very nice house, I promise.”
“It’s got a pool,” Agent Watters interjects.
“Billy,” I whisper, “is there nothing you can do? She looks terrified.”
He is grim but shakes his head. “She’s their witness,” he whispers back. “She and Marcus were in the protection program. Technically they can move her as often as they want. The Staties will know where she is, at least.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Rhinegold,” Slemp encourages her, “go put a suitcase together. We’ll wait.”
There are a few minutes of awkward silence while Alicia goes to gather her things. The FBI men stand off to one side and stare blankly at the walls, discouraging conversation. Billy punches furiously at his phone. “How the fuck,” he growls, “are we supposed to investigate this case if our star witness ends up in Boise?”
“The Staties must have alerted the FBI about those fertilizer bags,” I muse.
“Sure. And now the FBI wants her all to themselves. They don’t give a shit if she killed Marcus Rhinegold. They don’t care who killed him. They just don’t want her talking to us.”
I can’t disagree, but moved by some obscure protective instinct, I don’t want to leave either. Alicia finally reappears with a pink backpack slung over one shoulder, like a travesty of a coed. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Great!” Watters exclaims. Slemp is already at the door.
“Well,” Alicia says, looking at us, “bye, I guess.”
Still confused and rather woebegone, she lets Watters guide her out to a waiting black Ford. Agent Slemp suddenly notices us again. “Here, Chief,” he says, handing Billy his card, “we’ll be in touch soon.”
“Yes, we will,” Billy concurs.
A moment later they are gone, tires crunching against the gravel. Billy and I stare at each other in the abandoned living room. “Now what?” I ask.
The warrant still dangles limply from Billy’s hand. “Fucked if I know,” he admits. “FBI wouldn’t take her without letting the Staties know, so they must not care.”
“I don’t think she killed Marcus.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Motive and opportunity, every time. Do you really believe she bought all that fertilizer because Marcus told her to?”
I’ve been thinking about that. “No, I don’t believe her either. At the same time, she seems more puzzled by Marcus’s death than anything. What if she bought it intending to kill him, then changed her mind?”
“Oh, come on,” snorts Billy. “What are the odds? One person plans to murder Rhinegold, then another steps in at the last moment? That sort of thing doesn’t happen except in movies.”
“I’m starting to think none of this is real. What now?”
Billy looks around the house, as if asking it. “We could make a search, I guess. I had a look in here after Marcus disappeared, but the Staties yanked jurisdiction before I could see much.”
This seems as good an idea as any. We take it room by room, turning over cushions and flipping through every book on the shelves. But it’s poor sport. The house is nearly bare of furnishings—everything was on the Calliope. A sheaf of blueprints lies on the dining room table, held down with tacks. Marcus had ambitious plans for his new villa. The drafts show a long, low structure with curtains of glass that raise at each end like the wings of a bird taking flight. It’s beautiful and sad. “What’s going to happen to the Armstrong House now?” I ask.
“She’ll sell it. All of Marcus’s accounts were seized, and there’s lawyers to pay. My guess is it’ll go up for auction by the end of the month.”
At least it won’t be destroyed. Eventually we find ourselves on the upstairs balcony by the bedroom where Marcus made his ill-timed advances. I sit down on the cold marble floor, and Billy joins me. The sun is setting, throwing golden light on the bay.
“I keep thinking about that night,” I admit. “What would have happened if I said yes? What did he want from me? Was it just sex, or companionship, or someone to listen to him? Would he have told me why he really came to Little Compton?”
“You talked to him for a while. Did he give any clues…? I mean, how did he seem?”
“Horny.” I thought for a moment. “No, not just that. Frustrated. And deeply, deeply unhappy. But at the same time, there was a strange kind of hopefulness, like he believed things were going to get better and was irritated it was taking so long. I don’t know; I could just be projecting onto him.”
“Why?” Billy asks, leaning closer. “Is that how you feel?”
“I haven’t been hopeful in a long time, Billy.”
“Yeah, Irene told me about losing your job. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not just that.” How can I explain what I barely understand myself? “The whole time I was growing up, I only wanted one thing, and it was the thing I absolutely could not have. Constance and Irene think it’s because my mom died at birth—that somehow if she’d lived, I would’ve had a role model and not wanted to be a boy. But that’s bullshit. I didn’t want to be a boy. I’d have given my soul to not feel my skin crawl every time I put on a skirt. All I really wanted was to feel like I belonged. Imagine
living with that, every day, and not being able to change it.”
“I can’t imagine,” admits Billy.
“But then I left Little Compton and started my transition. If life were a movie, it would have ended there. Getting out, being free, becoming my own person. But life keeps going. And what they don’t tell you is this: every life, however long or short, ends in tragedy.”
“That’s dark.”
“I can’t help that. So I got the thing I always wanted. I became David. But even so, it still feels like I’m hiding. Every time I catch someone looking for the Adam’s apple, or wrinkling their brow because my voice is too high, or trying to see if I’ve got boobs strapped in under my shirt, or a bulge in my crotch—you see, I still don’t belong. I’m like that Aesop story about the bat. Neither bird nor beast. I can’t cut off my wings, and I can’t grow feathers. I’m fucked.”
Billy looks at me for a moment. Suddenly, astonishingly, he begins to laugh.
“Oh, good,” I say, affronted. “I’m glad I could brighten your day.”
“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry! To be honest, I was just imagining you as a bat.” The image is too much for him, and he doubles over, wheezing with mirth.
My leathery wings curl into fists. “Keep laughing and I’ll punch you where it hurts. I know where they are.”
“No…it’s just…” He takes a breath, composes himself. “Can I ask you a question? Like a real question?”
“Sure.”
“Are you attracted to guys or girls?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously? That’s what you want to know?”
“For now, yeah.”
I can’t contain a sigh. “Sexuality doesn’t work like that, Billy. I mean, not for everybody. I’ve had girlfriends and boyfriends.”
“So you’re…bi?”
“Stop trying to slap a label on it. It’s not like I get up each day and match my sexual orientation with a pair of shoes. I was attracted to men when I was dating women, and vice versa. But that doesn’t mean if I’m with a man, I’m just marking time until the next switcheroo.”
Billy frowns like he’s piecing together a complicated algorithm. Finally, he asks, “Why didn’t you say any of this when you left me?”
That stops me cold. “I suppose,” I answer slowly, “because I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it? Maybe it is. I’d been lying to everyone for so long. The truth seemed…unexplainable.”
“So instead you let me think I was part of that lie.”
“No, Billy. Never that. I really did love you. If I didn’t say it then, I’m saying it now.”
He shakes his head sadly. “I wish you had trusted me. But I guess I can understand why you couldn’t. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it. David, do you think people can change…like, really change?”
“You’re asking me that?”
Billy looks unaccountably embarrassed. “I never told you, but all those books you left behind at my place—do you remember?”
“I do.”
“I read them. After you’d gone. All of them, can you believe it? Took forever. Can’t remember most of it, if I’m being honest. But there was one poem that sounded like it was written by a sailor. You know: There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail: there gloom the dark broad seas…”
“Tennyson!” I cry, surprised. “That’s one of my favorites.”
“It’s about a king, right? But he doesn’t really like being king. He wants to get back in his boat and start exploring again. Like, he’s seen the world, but the more of it he sees, the more he wants to see.”
The lines come back at once. “Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades, For ever and forever when I move.”
“It always made me feel a little guilty, that part. I’ve never been much farther than Boston. But I remember the rest because once I read it, I knew that’s what I should have said that night.” He stares out through the French doors at the crimson sky folded over a darkening sea, points to the distant beacon of Sakonnet light and murmurs:
“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Billy’s arms fold around me. He leans his face down. I turn mine up. Suddenly we are close, too close, and there is no stopping the collision. His lips are on mine and I’m thinking, Wow, this is not like I remembered. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing and, if so, if that’s good or bad. But suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore, because I can taste his tongue darting between my lips, coffee and beer and something else, something dark and warm like brandy. This time there is no surrender, no melting into a man’s arms. I take his face in my hands and hold it, claim it. He understands. He doesn’t want to win or conquer. We could be the first two people on Earth, or the last. Skin and bone and muscle and cartilage, hair and teeth and nail, covered with a few random bits of cloth. No titles or genders or assignations. Just two beings exploring each other, taking childish delight in each discovery. This takes some time.
When the camera pans back down, we are both lying on Marcus’s bed, naked, entwined in each other. “I have to believe,” I say into Billy’s ear, “that if Marcus haunts this place, he’d probably approve.”
Billy chuckles. “He’s jealous. So what happens now?”
“Dinner, movie, the usual things, I guess.”
“No, I mean…”
“I know what you mean.” But the truth is, I don’t have any answers either. Billy’s phone trills and rescues us both. He rolls out of bed and rummages through the pile of clothes on the floor. “Chief Dyer,” he answers, unconsciously straightening into something like a salute. “Yes…yes… What? What do you mean? Didn’t you get my text? The FBI came just a few”—he looks at his phone, starts a little— “about an hour ago. Of course I’m sure. Why…?” His voice trails off. The phone continues to nicker in his ear. Billy doesn’t speak, just shakes his head slowly. He hangs up without a word. The black plastic dangles limp from his hand.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
He looks down at me as if surprised to still find me there. “That was Providence. I texted them to find out where the FBI was taking Alicia. They said nobody told them they were taking her anywhere.”
“Huh? How could that be?”
He shrugs. “Maybe they don’t trust us. But it’s still weird not to even let the Staties know.”
More than weird; impossible. “Billy,” I say slowly, “Do you still have that business card?”
He fishes in his pants pocket and retrieves a small square of paper. It looks official enough. Heavy cream-colored card stock with blue piping around the edge and the familiar crest with Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity emblazoned below. And a name: Philip J. Slemp, Special Investigator. The area code is District of Columbia.
“Dial it,” I tell him.
Billy puts it on speaker. We both listen as the phone crackles, rings. I count six before a voice answers sharply:
“Lucky Chen Restaurant! You want pick up or delivery? Hello? Hello?”
Chapter Fourteen
Three weeks later, Alicia is still gone. Totally, completely, irrevocably gone. It’s officially a missing persons case. “Because that sounds better than a body-at-the-bottom-of-the-bay case,” Billy announces sourly.
These days are hard for him. He feels responsible for Alicia, and he’s not alone. While there was no official censure from ab
ove, the fact that the Molinaris were able to kidnap her from right under his nose did not go unremarked. It was, they said in Providence, just the kind of thing a townie cop would do. He has not been removed from the case either, but that’s because the case is considered closed. Alicia murdered Marcus to escape the living hell of their life; the Molinaris removed her to prevent any more details of that life from coming to the surface. Neat, easy, digestible.
“But wrong,” Billy insists. “Wrong a dozen different ways. If she killed Marcus, why did she kill Wally? Or did she? And why hang around here waiting for the police to come? Why not kill him, grab a suitcase full of cash, and run for Mexico?”
I’ve heard these objections before. Billy has talked of little else, and along with my newly acquired status of quasi-boyfriend, I am obliged to hear him out yet again. “I know,” I agree, for the fifth time. “But what can you do? He’s gone, she’s gone, the Calliope is gone, even the Molinaris are gone. What’s left?”
What’s left, I’ve tried to remind him, is the beginning of a very promising romance. His divorce is still ongoing—Debbie’s fighting him for the house, the car, even his old LP collection—but we don’t talk about that. Actually, we don’t talk much at all. It’s a companionable silence, the kind between two people who know each other well enough to enjoy the quiet. Sometimes we take his truck up to Fall River to watch the freighters come in and out, or across the Mount Hope Bridge to Newport for a lobster dinner. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, coming out of the Black Pearl, Billy hears himself called a faggot for the second time.
There are two of them, midthirties, bullet-headed with close-cropped hair and denim jackets. They don’t shout. They just walk by, and one turns to the other and says, “Faggots,” in the same tone of voice he would use to point out an interesting bit of public sculpture. Billy is holding my hand; his fingers clench tight. “Ignore them,” I whisper.
If he hears, he gives no sign. There is a hard gleam in his eye that makes his normally affable features cold as marble. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks dangerous. He begins to follow. I twitter along behind, equal parts horrified and excited. I’ve been called faggot more times than I can count by a wide range of races, ages, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. But one thing is certain: I never had anyone to share my outrage. The sensation is new and strangely pleasant. So it is ironic that while Billy is working himself up into a lather of righteousness, I’m drifting along in his wake in a happy daze. I have a boyfriend! Yay!