by Dorien Grey
In a way, I was relieved. “No one said anything, then?”
“Nope. No one said anything. All day. Not a word. Literally. A couple of the guys I know pretty well managed to get in a quick nod when they thought no one else was looking, but other than that, I might as well have been invisible. You could have hung a side of beef in the squad room when I first walked in, it was so cold in there. But fuck ’em. I should have expected it.”
He opened the door to his apartment and we went in.
“Like some coffee? Or I can get you something a little stronger?”
“Coffee’s fine. It’s a little early in the day for the hard stuff.”
I followed him into the kitchen while he went through the water-and-filter-and-grounds routine and flipped the coffeemaker’s “On” switch. I sat at the kitchen table while he got out the cups, and we waited while the machine talked to itself in soft burps and bubblings and hissing sounds.
He seemed in fairly good spirits, but I instinctively realized he didn’t feel much like talking about his day, so we didn’t. I mentioned my thinking of Bart Giacomino, and wondered if the name was familiar to him.
“Sure,” he said, somewhat surprised. “Bart’s Joey’s older brother. I didn’t know you knew him. Not much love lost between them, from what I understand. Joe Senior always played his kids off against each other—his way of toughening them up. It didn’t work so well for Bart as it did with Joey. I heard that it was Joey who told his old man that Bart was gay. Joe Senior all but kicked Bart out of the family, which of course raised Joey several rungs up the ladder. For most families, blood’s thicker than water: For the Giacominos, power’s thicker than blood. And now to find out that little Joey’s in the same league with his brother…I’d imagine Joey would do just about anything to keep that little secret shut away. If his old man—not to mention his wife—ever found out about it….” He paused and looked at me. “You’re sure Jonathan is somewhere safe?”
“As safe as he can be. I thought of sending him away, out of the city or out of the state, but if Chief Black might be able to use him to somehow hold Cochran at bay….”
Tom gave a small smile and shook his head. “This is one fucked-up mess, isn’t it?”
Truer words, I thought.
The phone rang and I noticed a quick flash of anxiety cross Tom’s face. He excused himself and went to the answer. I could read his tension in his body language.
“Hello?” Then, almost imperceptibly but definitely, I could see him relax. “Oh, hi, dad,” he said. “How did it go today?… Sure, I’m fine…. It was okay; they put me on a desk for a while, but…uh, yeah…sure…uh, well, I think Lisa’s going to play cards with some girlfriends tonight, but…well, sure. What time?…okay, that’ll be great. Sure. I’ll see you then, then. ’Bye.”
He hung up the phone and came back to sit down. “Dad wants to come by tonight; maybe I’ll be able to find out what’s been happening with the talks.”
As if you didn’t have enough going on in your own life right now! I thought.
“Great. Give him my regards.”
The phone rang again, and he got back up to answer. “Hel…” he started to say, then immediately hung up.
“Wrong numb…?” I began, then saw the answer in his face.
He didn’t say a word, but came back and sat down. The phone rang again.
“Let the machine get it.”
“You know, you might want to consider changing your number.”
He shook his head and got up again to get our coffee. “What good would that do? I have to have my number listed with the department in case of emergency; I could change it every day and someone would still get it.”
That told me again that Tom believed the calls were from his fellow officers.
I stayed at Tom’s until Lisa got home around 5:30, then headed home.
*
After I left Tom’s, I walked back to my place to pick up my car, and headed for Ramón’s to kill a couple birds with one stone. I hoped Bob would be there so I could broach the subject of his and Mario’s being the second stop in Jonathan’s little underground railway journey. And I hadn’t been to a happy hour in awhile.
Jimmy was tending bar, and it was a little quiet. I nodded to a couple of the regulars as I took a seat and Jimmy came over to take my order.
“Manhattan night or Old Fashioned night?” he asked, putting a napkin on the bar in front of me.
“Well, if you can ever come up with an Old Manhattan, I think we can save a lot of speculation. But Old Fashioned for now, I think.” We exchanged grins, and as he turned to start making the drink I said: “Bob’s not around?”
Without turning back to me, Jimmy gestured with his head. “He’s in the office.”
“Thanks.” I waited until I had my drink, fished a bill out of my billfold to cover it, and gave it to Jimmy before picking up my glass and napkin and walking to the back of the bar. I knocked at the office door.
“Come on in.”
Bob was seated at his desk in the small office, but turned in his chair and grinned as he saw me.
“Hi, Dick. Grab a chair.”
I reached behind the door for the folding chair he always kept there and set it up at the corner of his desk.
“You’ve been pretty scarce lately.”
“Last Wednesday, for the group,” I said by way of weak defense.
He nodded. “I know, you’re a busy guy. How is your friend Tom doing?”
I sighed and put my drink down on the edge of his desk, out of his way.
“Rough and getting rougher.”
Bob just shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”
“Yeah. But Tom’s one tough customer. He’s not going to give one inch to those homophobes on the force. He knows he’s going to lose his job over this as soon as things calm down, but he won’t go without a fight.”
“Well, the community’s behind him one hundred percent; you know that.”
“I know. And so does Tom. We’ll just have to see how this plays out.” I took a sip of my drink and replaced it on the desk, making sure the napkin was still dry before doing so. “Which brings me around about to asking you for one huge favor.”
Bob raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. “Shoot.”
I told him about Jonathan, about Giacomino, about Giacomino’s ties with Deputy Chief Cochran, and the fact that Cochran’s boys were looking for Jonathan.
“He’s with Tim and Phil now, but I can’t impose on them forever…” I caught myself and gave Bob a sheepish grin, then added the obvious: “…so here I am to impose on you. Do you suppose….”
Bob didn’t bat an eye. “Of course! And this might work out really well, if the kid’s willing to earn his keep.”
“No doubt about that,” I said, telling him about his eagerness to help out at Haven House, and his bartending for Phil and Tim’s party, which Bob and Mario had missed because both had to work.
“Well, the house closes tomorrow. Our lease doesn’t expire until the end of this month, so we’ve got plenty of time to start moving things over and getting things started over there. If the kid would be willing to help us out however we need him to, we could sure use him.”
“Do you want to check with Mario first?”
Bob shook his head. “Nah…I can’t imagine that he’d have any objections at all. Like I say, we can sure use the help.”
“Great! God, Bob, what would I do without you?”
“Look in the dictionary under ‘Friends,’” he said with a smile. “It’ll be a little spartan over there the first few days, but we can move a bed and some kitchen stuff over tomorrow, if he’s willing.”
“I’m sure he will be. And again, thanks…and thank Mario too!”
We talked for a few more minutes then, realizing he had work to do, I excused myself, thanked him again, told him I’d call him during the day tomorrow to iron out the final details.
I talked for awhile with Jimmy, ig
nored my crotch’s trying to call my attention to a guy standing against the wall, finished my drink, and went to the pay phone to call Tim and Phil, hoping I wouldn’t be catching them in the middle of dinner.
Tim answered, and I asked if I might stop by for just a few minutes.
“Sure. Have you had dinner yet? You’re welcome to join us.”
“Well, no I haven’t, but I really don’t want to im…”
“No problem. Oscar’s making a meatloaf that barely fit in the oven. We’ll be having meatloaf for a week or two. Come on over.”
My stomach voiced its opinion with a small growl. “Okay, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Can I pick up anything?”
“Nah, we have everything we need.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in about ten minutes.”
*
Jonathan, it turned out, was a damned good cook. The meatloaf was delicious, and he’d made some sort of garlic-glazed new potatoes. He explained that his mom had been sick a lot when he was younger, and that he’d been largely responsible for cooking for the family.
“Better watch it, Jonathan,” Phil teased. “Some guy’s going to want to carry you off, lock you in the kitchen, and keep you barefoot and pregnant.”
Jonathan blushed and shot a quick lowered-head glance in my direction that, I could tell, was not missed by either Tim or Phil. I felt Phil’s foot nudge mine under the table, and I looked up to see him trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.
Sigh.
I told them of Bob’s offer and, lest Jonathan feel like he was just excess baggage being passed from hand to hand, I stressed that they really needed help with their move.
Both Phil and Tim expressed regret at his leaving, saying that Jonathan was welcome to stay as long as he wanted, but we all knew that it was time they got their own life back—or, rather, given the short time they’d been together, got it started.
I’d noticed, too, during the course of the evening, that without the aid of makeup, Jonathan’s wounds were still visible, though now only barely so. And having some sort of stability in his life for the first time since he’d arrived in town was obviously good for him. He didn’t look quite so skinny as when I’d first met him, and it seemed somehow that he had gotten even more attractive.
Hardesty!! my mind-voice warned, sternly.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I reluctantly replied.
He had been relatively quiet throughout dinner, but while Phil and Tim cleared off the table, Tim suggested Jonathan show me the new fish they’d gotten with my gift certificate, and Jonathan segued unconsciously into his puppy-dog chatterbox mode, pointing out not only the newest addition to the aquarium—a large, thin silver creature with two large black circles on either side of its body, looking like either portholes on a submarine or the eyes on that ubiquitous yellow “happy face”, and which Jonathan had named George—but gave me the names of all the other fish in the tank, which ones bullied the others, which one ate the most, etc. I took a really odd delight in the fact that his enthusiasm was truly genuine. That they all had names and what he swore to be individual characteristics was important to him, and he wanted to share it with me.
I explained to him before I left that I probably wouldn’t be able to spend much time with him because of everything that was going on, but that he’d like Bob and Mario and that Tim and Phil would keep a close eye on him, too. He said he understood, and that he’d be fine. I hoped he was right.
“I’ll miss the fish, though,” he said.
*
Glen O’Banyon had returned my call to tell me basically what Tom had told me about Bart Giacomino’s relationship with his family in general and his little brother Joey in particular. “Bart’s not the brightest star in the heavens,” O’Banyon said, “and I’m afraid his ego far outdistances his abilities. He could even be called ‘shady.’ But he’s always lacked the ‘vicious’ gene that Joey inherited from his father. So if you think you can use your knowledge of Bart in any way to try to anticipate what Joey might be up to, just take everything you know about Bart and add ‘pathological’ and you’ll be on the right track.”
I tried to call Tom several times in the following days, and stopped by a couple times after work. Lisa was usually there, and I could tell Tom didn’t want to talk much in front of her, so we all tried to pretend everything was just fine. The labor negotiations were, according to Tom’s dad, pretty much at a standstill, and apparently it might be dawning on Joey that he didn’t have much of a clue what was going to happen next. The union’s strike fund, which was paying the workers a small portion of their regular wages, was not a bottomless pit. Something had to give, and the only thing Joey knew was that it wasn’t going to be him.
It wasn’t until Friday morning—Tom’s day off—when I stopped over on my way to the office after I knew Lisa had left for work, that I found out what had really been happening at work—or, I suspected, only a small part of it. Getting Tom to talk about it was like pulling teeth, but I could tell it was getting to him and he needed to be able to talk to someone. Lisa would have been more than willing to listen, but he was protective of her and didn’t want to worry her more than she already was.
On Tuesday, Tom had left work to find all four tires on his car flattened. He began parking in the underground garage at Warman Park and walking the two blocks to work.
Wednesday, as he went to change out of his uniform, he found an apple on the bench in front of his locker, with a note: “A fruit for the fruit.”
Though he had very little contact during the work day with his fellow officers, and a few of them still managed, when they thought they weren’t being observed, to say a few words to him, the hostility level from those in Deputy Chief Cochran’s camp was rising steadily—unquestionably with Cochran’s tacit support and probably even encouragement—and they intimidated the others. No one ever said anything openly to Tom’s face, but he was aware he was always being watched, and frequently, after passing a group of fellow cops in the hall, would hear someone say “faggot” or “queer!” He never turned around. And he never responded, never reacted. He refused to give them what they wanted: a physical fight that could lead to his dismissal.
His home phone rang almost continuously.
On Thursday when he got to work, he was called on the carpet by one of Deputy Chief Cochran’s upper-echelon cronies: “Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone?” he demanded. “Either nobody answers or the damned line’s busy. I was looking for an important file in that mess you’ve made down there and couldn’t find it. If you spent less time talking to your…friends…and more time thinking about your duties, you’d be better off. The next time I call, I expect to get through!” The fact that he hadn’t left a message himself made it pretty clear that it was a set-up, of course, to make sure Tom answered the phone every time it rang and could be subjected to the verbal abuse.
Thursday night, when he opened his locker, glitter powder poured out—someone had painstakingly poured it through the small ventilation slots on the locker door, and slipped in a note: “Fairy Dust.” Everything in his locker was covered in it. A bunch of the other officers also changing clothes didn’t see the note, but their laughter made it clear they knew about it. Tom just picked up his clothes and left, still wearing his uniform.
As I say, these are only the things I managed to pry out of him. I suspected they were just the tip of the iceberg, and while my admiration for him was already boundless, I was heartsick that I couldn’t do anything to help him. He never volunteered any information: He just took the abuse and said nothing. I urged him to go to Lieutenant Richman, but he refused. I was tempted to talk to Richman myself but realized that I couldn’t. This was Tom’s fight and I had no right to interfere, much as I might want to.
The phone, once he stopped leaving it to the machine to pick up, rang constantly and each time, Tom would simply lift up the receiver, listen for an instant—sometimes I could hear shouting from the phone even as far away as I was from
it—and then hang up, his face expressionless.
*
Phil had taken Jonathan over to Bob and Mario’s new house on Tuesday night, where the four of them set up a bed and unpacked some basic supplies to tide Jonathan over. Bob, to whom I talked after he and Mario had gotten back to their apartment, said they both thought, as I had thought of Mario when Bob first met him, that Jonathan was “a keeper.” In addition to his tattered old backpack, Jonathan had brought with him a cardboard box with clothes Tim had given him, insisting he’d “gotten too fat” to wear them (not true, of course), a small portable TV from Phil’s old apartment, a good-sized glass bowl, and a large plastic bag filled with water and two small goldfish which Phil and Tim had gotten him as a going away present. Jonathan had duly named the goldfish “Tim” and “Phil.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: What would the world be like without friends?
*
When I arrived at the office after leaving Tom’s on Friday morning, I had a message waiting. Two words: “The fountain?”
I was sitting on one of the marble benches circling the fountain in the center of Warman Park at exactly noon. I’d stopped at the diner in my building for a couple sandwiches, a couple orders of coleslaw, and two large Cokes to go. I imagined that Richman was giving up his lunch hour and might appreciate something to keep body and soul together.
At ten after, I saw him approaching. I got up from the bench, motioned toward one of the picnic tables, and met him there. He seemed happy to see I’d brought some food.
“I was debating on whether to stop and grab something from one of those hot dog carts, but didn’t want to take the time,” he said, watching me open the bag and remove the contents.
“Ham salad or tuna?” I asked, pushing one of the Styrofoam cups of coleslaw across the table to him.
“Surprise me.” I reached into the bag and grabbed the first sandwich I came to.
“So how’s Tom Brady holding up?” he asked, as he removed the plastic lid from his Coke and unwrapped his sandwich (the tuna).