"Did you happen to see the TV news this evening, Mrs. Wilson?" I said.
"Nah, I just got home a bit ago. You got the big check with you?" she asked, watching me expectantly and raising her beer can, poised for a toast. "You bring ol' Kay that big, beautiful hunert 'n' eighty grand from Crane?"
"No such luck," I said.
She shrugged and drank anyway. "I didn't s'pose you would. Crane said when the big day came he'd bring it out himself. Hell with it anyway. We ain't gonna get it."
"You seem resigned, Mrs. Wilson."
"Kay. Crane calls me Kay. Yeah, I know we're screwed. Hell with it anyway. Old Dot Fisher, she's not gonna give in. She's one tough old cookie, Dot is."
"She says you used to visit her sometimes."
"Yeah, I know Dot. We got no water pressure here sometimes, so I go down and draw from Dot's spring. She's real nice. I always liked talking to her. I damn near shit a brick-pardon my French, Bob-when I saw on the TV last year Dot was one of those women goes for her own. She never laid a hand on me, I'll say that much for her. Knew she hadn't better try, I s'pose, with Bill around. I ain't been down to her place for a time. Bill's mad at her, so why start trouble when you got enough already." She gulped from the Pabst can and fanned her face with the Enquirer.
"I guess," I said, "you don't know about what's been going on at Dot's place in the past twenty-four hours." I explained about the graffiti and the threats. She listened with big eyes and an open mouth.
"Now that stinks!" she said when I'd finished. "That just makes me want to puke. Now who on God's green earth would want to go ahead and pull a stunt like that?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm a private investigator. "
"A cop?" She looked startled. "You said you worked for Crane."
"I do. I'm a private detective on assignment for… Crane. He asked me, as a matter of fact, to drop by here, Kay, and convey his warmest personal regards to both you and Mr. Wilson. And to ask you and your husband if you had any idea who might be harassing Dot and Mrs. Stout. Crane is disgusted by what happened, and he wants to put a stop to it." I nearly added, "He's paying me ten," but didn't.
"That Crane, he's quite a guy," she said, nodding and wistfully remembering. "Tell him we'll have him over again real soon, soon as ol' Kay gets herself organized. I'm on the two-shift at Annie Lee till Labor Day and when I get home I'm just too pooped to pop. But after Labor Day I can draw unemployment again, and then I'm gonna just lay back and take it easy for a time shoot, I've earned it-and then Bill and I'll start having people in again."
"I'll pass the word. I take it, Kay, there's no one you know who might be mad enough at Dot Fisher to threaten her in any way to try to force her our of the neighborhood. Or is there?"
"Oh, boy," she said, making a face. "Oh, boy. Oh, boy." She nodded at her beer as she considered the possibilities. "Well," she said with a snort, "there's Wilson. Or he was mad, anyways. A month ago Bill was so P.O.'ed with Dot Fisher I was afraid he was gonna march right down there and just slug her one. A couple of times, as a matter of fact, he'd had a few drinks and was really gonna go down there and do it. Just pop her one, show her who's boss. He'd've done it too-used to try the rough stuff on me thirty years ago until my brother Moose hadda set Wilson straight one night. Hasn't laid a finger on me since then, and knows he hadn't better try.
"Anyways, Wilson says he's gonna go down there and pop Dot, he says. Well, I just put a stop to that right then and there. I said, Bill, I'll call the cops on you, you dumb son of a bitch. And I meant it! Even if she deserved it, Dot's an old lady and it wouldn't've been right. Anyways, Bill got over it after a while-finally got it through his thick skull that the old lez wasn't gonna give in, and he just said the hell with it.
"Coulda used the dough, though. I mean, could we ever! But then Bill went off on some other tangent of his a week or so back. Some hotshot idea of his that's gonna make us rich, so he says.
So then he forgot all about Dot and Millpond. Bob, I wish I had a nickel for every time Bill Wilson was gonna make me a rich woman."
"Where does Bill work?" I asked. "What does he do?"
"Presently," she said, popping the tab on the second Pabst she'd brought out, "Bill is employed at the Drexon plant. He's a forklift operator. Bill's the restless type, though, so who knows where he'll be next week. Wilson wants so awful much to get ahead. He asked Crane if Millpond had anything, and Crane said he'd keep an eye open for the right spot for Bill. Crane didn't mention anything about that to you, did he?"
"I'm sorry. He didn't."
She laughed, but not with amusement. "Sure. Well… Bill means well. He's got all that Wilson energy. If he could just learn to apply himself…" She looked away wistfully, then back at me.
"Know what I mean, Bob?"
I nodded knowingly. She watched me, then grunted, knowing I knew that we both knew that Bill Wilson was not, at his age-mid-fifties, I now guessed his wife to be-going to get into the habit of "applying himself." Though I did wonder what Wilson had applied himself to lately that might make the Wilsons rich. And if Crane Trefusis had, in fact, found a "spot" for him that he hadn't mentioned to Kay.
I said, "Were you at home last night, Kay?"
"Sure. Why do you ask that?"
"I thought you or your husband might have heard some unusual traffic after midnight sometime.
I don't suppose you get a lot of cars going back and forth on Moon Road. Was Bill here too?"
She cocked a moist yellow drawing of an eyebrow. "Course, Bill was here. Nah, we didn't hear nothin'. Hey-where'd you think Bill was? He's my husband, iznee? Think he was out foolin' around with some woman who's younger and better-lookin'?"
"I thought maybe he'd worked late."
"I'll bet you did, ha-ha." She gave me a significant look. "The fact is, Bob," she said in a confidential tone, "my husband don't play around no more. And neither do I. At least… not a whole lot." She eyed me ap-praisingly, the pink tip of her tongue protruding from between lightly clamped teeth. Her leg shifted, and the National Enquirer slid to the floor. She said, "Every wunst in a while, Bob, I do meet a man who finds me quite sexy for an older woman. Somethin' like that Joan Collins on Dynasty. And if that man is someone I myself consider to be attractive.
.. we-l-l-l-l…"
I said, "I'm gay."
"Huh?"
"I'm a homophile."
"What kinda file?
"I go for men. Like Dot Fisher goes for women. I'm a homosexual. 'Gay,' we call it. Even if The New York Times won't. Kay, I'm a fruit."
After a confused couple of seconds, it hit her, and she threw her head back and whooped with laughter. "Oh, shoot, ha! ha! Oh, that's a good one kid, ha! ha! Oh, fer- that's the first time any man ever dropped that one on me!"
She laughed and coughed uproariously for a good minute, then gradually settled down and gave me a sweet, understanding look.
"You don't have to say a thing like that about yourself, Bob. Truly. Shoot, I know I'm not as attractive as I used to be." She tried to smile again.
"None of us is," I said, knowing that some people did age beautifully-Timmy would, I could tell already-and that others, like Kay Wilson, peaked in physical allure at the age of thirty, or twenty, or fourteen.
We spent a not entirely relaxed couple of minutes exchanging cliches on aging, and then I took out from my wallet a photo of Timmy and me, arms entwined, at the 1978 gay-pride parade in New York City. She studied it with lips pursed and kept looking up at me to see if I was really the man in the picture. Finally, satisfied that I was, she relaxed suddenly, grinned, and said, "Ho-boy. You're somethin', Bob. Hyo-boy. Wait'll the girls out at the home hear about this one."
Kay brought us both some potato chips, and then I asked her if she had other family members or friends who might be mad enough at Dot Fisher to harass or threaten her Kay used the opportunity to describe her six grown children, none of whom seemed to be likely suspects.
Two of the Wilson offspring
were in Southern California, two lived in Queens, one was a career Army man in Germany, and the youngest, Crystal-Marie, was in a downstate mental hospital.
None had visited Albany recently. As for friends, yes, all of them were sympathetic and put out, Kay said, but she could think of none who'd shown any sign of providing the Wilsons with an un-requested assist in ridding the neighborhood of Dot and Edith.
I thanked her and said I'd return the next day to speak with her husband.
"Sure thing, Bob. Just give us a call first and make sure we're on the premises and ain't stepped out. And you tell Mrs. Fisher I'm real sorry to hear about her trouble. Maybe I'll just traipse down there tomorrow and stick my nose in. And you be sure to say hi to Crane for me, you hear? That Crane, he's quite a guy, quite a guy. And you know, Bob, you're quite a guy, too. Lordy."
I had a quick triple burger at Wendy's. While I ate, I thought a lot about two people: Joey Deem and Bill Wilson.
I headed back down Central through the fuming Friday evening traffic, pulled into Freezer Fresh, and ordered a chocolate cone with sprinkles.
"Joey Deem here tonight? I'd like to talk to him for just a minute."
"Joey? No, he called in sick," I was told by a young black man in a Freezer Fresh paper hat.
"He won't be in at all tonight then?"
"Not if he's sick," the kid said blandly, dipping my cone in a bowl of multicolored specks of dubious digestibility. "Health department wouldn't like it."
From a pay phone I called Dot's place to find out if Lew Morton had arrived. He had, Dot said, 25 as well as a patrolman whom Ned Bowman had left at the house to look after things until Peter Greco got back at midnight. There had been no further threatening letters or phone calls.
I drove on into the city, the sun melting into a gaseous black blanket spread across the sky behind me. As I drove, I thought maybe this whole business was going to be a lot simpler than I had feared it would be. Or maybe, since Crane Trefusis had a hand in it, it wouldn't. On the one hand this, on the other hand that.
5
Word had spread among Albany gays about the incident at Dot Fisher's, and nearly fifty of them who'd seen the six o'clock news showed up at the Gay Community Center to be harangued by Fenton McWhirter. Two hours later, twelve had actually signed up for the gay national strike. Twelve thousand were needed to make an impact locally, but McWhirter took what he could get. Donations for the strike campaign added up to $37.63.
I phoned Dot's house from the center and was told by her that yet another threatening call had been received. "Death to the dykes on Moon Road!" was what the caller had said, then hung up.
Dot and Edith were in the kitchen with Dot's friend Lew Morton seated by the back door and an APD patrolman just outside. Dot sounded shaky but controlled and said she'd be just fine until Peter arrived at midnight to look after things.
At the center, I also picked up a phone message from Timmy. His car had broken down and he'd meet me later, up the avenue, the message said. I thought, For sure.
I looked for Peter Greco, and at ten o'clock I joined him and McWhirter and six other leafleting volunteers as we piled into my car and McWhirter's and headed toward Central Avenue to further signal the revolt.
The sultry streets were alive with sweating crowds, and the bars even hotter and more chaotic, but revolt did not seem imminent. There was a blurry, enervated feeling to the night. I couldn't tell whether this resulted from the suffocating heat or from the simple fact that these were now the eighties, a decade in which, so far, most people, straight and gay, couldn't quite settle on what to do next and so didn't do much of anything at all. It was the fifties all over again, except with Reagan this time, and the New Right, the AIDS epidemic, and the Bomb multiplied ten thousandfold. It was the age of nervously milling around.
The music in the discos that night was no help: cold, sarcastic punk stuff that kept only the dance junkies sporadically on the floor. I'd heard the old funky, sensuous, friendly dance music of the seventies was still alive and well in Manhattan-preserved in West Village private clubs, like family genealogies in a Mormon vault-but on this night Albany didn't even seem to have the energy for nostalgia. The music did seem louder than usual, as if more were better, but the higher volume didn't help either. At Coco-nuts, the ersatz South Seas disco where the Lacoste crowd hung out, even the tropical fish in the aquarium seemed to be clapping little fish hands over their ears.
Nor did Fenton McWhirter's presence anywhere cause enthusiasm to break out. Most people received the flyers and leaflets cordially, then studied them, and you could see their eyebrows shoot up at the point where they got the drift of what the leaflets were asking them to commit themselves to. One person asked McWhirter if he'd lost his marbles, but the rest only thought it.
There was only "incident." At the Watering Hole, McWhirter screwed up the pool shot of a golden-maned, mean-eyed, drugged-up "cowboy"-who could well have been a real one, in town after the drive from Abilene to Schenectady, as he smelled powerfully of the stockyards.
Or, it could have been a new scent, Shitkicker, from the makers of Brut. The cowboy grabbed 26
McWhirter by the scruff of the neck and instructed him to "get your faggot ass outta my way," but I rapidly separated the two, and Greco placated the cowboy with a rum and coke and gamely attempted to recruit him. The cowboy suddenly recognized McWhirter and Greco from the TV news, and Greco's pitch did seem to set some wheels spinning in his mind, but he said his parish priest wouldn't like it and he didn't sign up.
At the Green Room, McWhirter worked the backroom disco while Greco made his way into the smog of beer breath and smoke of the front-room piano bar. I tagged along with Greco into the crowd of alcoholic fifties queens up front, even though the room had always made me uncomfortable. The problem was, I always left with the nagging feeling that I belonged there.
The yellow-haired cowboy from the watering Hole came in just after Greco and I did. He peered around, seemed to decide that he didn't belong there at all, and fled back into the night.
At the piano bar, Greco unexpectedly ran into his old lover of ten years earlier, Tad something-or-other. It seemed to be a night for that. Timmy was still nowhere to be seen.
Greco and Tad were startled to see each other. Their brief conversation was awkward. I didn't listen in, but, trained and inclined to be nosy, I took in what I could by glancing their way from time to time. Tad, who'd been alone at the bar and sullenly preoccupied with a snifter of something warm and murky, grew quickly hostile, and Greco, looking injured and confused, soon retreated.
"An unhappy reunion?" I said.
Greco shrugged, trying to look philosophical, but his dark eyes were bright with hurt.
"You can't go home again," I said, and looked around to see if Timmy had come in the door. He hadn't. "When it's over, it's over. Never apologize, never explain. Never look back, or something might be gaining on you. What are some of the other ones?"
Greco didn't laugh. "Tad asked me for the money back," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. My immediate assumption was that Tad, my age or older, had once "kept" Greco. "All he could talk about," Greco said glumly, "was his lousy three thousand dollars. Of our whole year together, that's the only thing he remembers. God."
"Tad's quite a bookkeeper," I said.
"He never called it a loan then. That's so unfair. It really is. 'Where am I going to get three thousand dollars?' I said. He just said, 'You get it! Before you leave Albany!' It's the only thing he'd talk about. And how his business folded last year and how broke he is these days. Well, jeez.
I'm sorry things aren't going well for Tad, I really am. He deserves better. He was always extremely possessive, but he was also loving, and generous-"
Greco began suddenly to cough and gasp, and said the foul air was bothering him, so we walked out into the oppressive but smokeless night and stood alongside my car.
I said, "Tad took you in when you first came out?"
"Oh,
no," Greco said, laughing lightly and breathing more easily now. "It was nothing like that.
I'd been out since I was fourteen and on my own since I was eighteen. Tad was ten years ago. I was twenty-four then and I'd already had several lovers. Tad must have been the-I don't know — fifteenth or twentieth."
Persons of the New Age. When I was twenty-four I was getting my kicks trying to decipher whether or not Ishmael might actually be getting it on with Queequeg.
"I didn't really settle down," Greco went on blithely, "until the year after that when I met Fenton and realized what I wanted to do with my life and who I wanted to do it with. No, the thing with Tad was… he was in love with me, and he paid to have my first volume of poems printed. I was reluctant. I knew I wasn't as crazy about Tad as he was about me. But I was too excited about 27 seeing my work in print to think straight, and I let him do it. I know it cost him a lot of money, but-God, how can somebody be that bitter after ten years?"
"Right. You'd think in all that time a person's feelings about someone would have gone through a lot of changes. Gotten milder, mellower." I watched for Timmy's yellow Chevette to pull in off Central.
"Oh, jeez, it's time," Greco said, glancing at his watch. "I've gotta get back to the house by midnight and stay with Dot and Edith so their friend can go home. Are you coming out for a while?"
I looked at him, wondering if the invitation was significant in a particular way. Being a not unattentive fellow- fifteen or twenty lovers by age twenty-four-he saw my interest.
"We could go out for a swim in the pond and lie down together under the stars," was what I first thought I heard him say, but what Greco actually said was "We could run off some more leaflets and wait for Fenton to get home. The mimeo machine's in the trunk of the car."
On the other hand,death ds-2 Page 5