Victor J. Banis

by Deadly Nightshade

  “Gaye, it’s me,” he called.

  There was no answer. He pushed the door open. “Gaye?” he said again.

  The dressing room was empty. Acheson looked around. Either he was genuinely puzzled, Stanley was thinking, or he was a damned good actor.

  “Where’d she go?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know,” Acheson said. “She usually waits here for me, and we go home together.” He took another look around. “Strange,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  Acheson gestured to some clothes hanging on a rod in an alcove: jeans, a pale yellow polo shirt, a khaki windbreaker. “She didn’t take time to change. She never goes out in costume. Out of the club, I mean.”

  Tom had turned to look at a poster on the inside of the door. “Is this him?” he asked.

  Acheson glanced at it. “Yes,” he said, and added, “Her. When she’s dressed, she really does become a woman.”

  “Not completely,” Tom said. “But she looks good, that’s for sure.”

  Stanley came to stand next to Tom, studying the poster with him. He had seen Gaye Dawn perform, months ago, remembered that she was very effective as a woman. The photographer had caught her turning quickly, her long dark hair forming a cloud about a very pretty face, her eyes opened wide as if in surprise to find the camera there.

  “Nice,” Tom said. He could see how a man might get turned on to her. You would never know, from this picture anyway, that this wasn’t a real woman. That surprised him. He’d sort of just assumed they all looked like bad imitations, like Lola, who wouldn’t have fooled him at all. This whole drag thing was a mystery to him.

  She looked like a very pretty woman, in fact, petite, with long dark hair that, when it wasn’t flying around her face, must reach clear down to her butt. Their murderess had long hair like that, from the descriptions they had gotten.

  “I guess she was here all night?” Stanley said, making a question of it.

  “Yes. Well…” Acheson hesitated. “She was here in her dressing room. She doesn’t do the first show, and tonight she skipped the second, said she had a stomach bug. The boss said he didn’t care if she was shitting on stage, she’d do the last show or else. So she did. She wasn’t herself, though. I could see that.”

  “Like she had something on her mind?” Stanley asked.

  “Like she wasn’t herself.”

  “Nobody shares the dressing room?” Tom asked.

  Acheson chuckled. “With Gaye? You don’t know her. You saw when we got here, I had to knock. Even I don’t come in without permission. Gaye is a great performer, but she can be a bitch. If they tried to put someone else in here with her, it would probably result in murder.” Immediately after he’d said it, he looked like he regretted his choice of words.

  Stanley took a look at the dressing table. There was a photo on it, turned face down. He picked it up and turned it over. It was one of the police sketches of Hartman’s murderess. He looked at it, and back at the poster of Gaye. It was hard to say if they were particularly alike—except for that long dark hair.

  The dressing room door opened so suddenly it nearly hit Tom, who was still standing just inside it, looking at Gaye Dawn’s poster.

  “Oh, excuse me.” A pretty young queen in a kind of tatty robe paused in the open doorway, wide eyes taking them in and looking behind her as if for an avenue of escape. “I didn’t know there was anyone here.”

  “Then what brought you in?” Acheson asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you in the habit of barging into Gaye’s dressing room when she’s not here?”

  “In the habit, no. Sometimes.” She clutched her robe closed over her chest, as if afraid they might see too much.

  “And you are?” Stanley asked.

  She fixed a smile on him, seeming relieved to have a simpler question asked, one she couldn’t get into trouble answering. “Lucky,” she said. “Lucky Lulu,” and, when that produced no results, added, with a noticeable dimming of the smile, “First show.” She looked at Stanley’s sling. “What’s that all about? Grope the wrong sailor?”

  “So, what brought you by?” Tom asked.

  This seemed to be another difficult question. She looked around at each of them again, and past Stanley, at the makeup table. “I can’t find my mascara,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d borrow Gaye’s.”

  “Gaye hates for anyone to touch her makeup,” Acheson said in an acid tone. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Well, duh, I thought she wasn’t here. I thought maybe I could borrow it and bring it back before she knew.” She looked again, almost wistfully, at the dressing table, at the drawer, and seemed to think better of her errand. “I guess I’d better not, huh?”

  “Better not,” Acheson agreed.

  The smile returned in megawatts, especially when she flashed it in Tom’s direction. “Well, then,” she said, hesitated a moment longer and raised a hand in a limp wave. “Ta ta.” She closed the door after herself. They all three stared at the door for a moment, as if expecting her to reappear.

  “The door doesn’t lock?” Tom asked. He was kind of uncomfortably aware that if he’d met Miss Lucky somewhere else, in a dark bar, he might never have suspected she was a dragster. He could even imagine himself coming on to her. What a jolt that would have been. He sort of flashed on what a surprise his killer must have been for Gordon Hartman, when he realized the truth. Hey, you’re not a real woman… Christ, I’d have shit my pants.

  Acheson gave his head a shake. “None of them do. Management likes to give the impression they can pop in anytime. It discourages a lot of hanky panky.”

  “But not all of it?” Stanley said.

  Acheson had the good grace to look embarrassed. “We’ve never… not here. Well, one time, a quickie.

  Gaye said it made her too nervous, not knowing when we might get company.”

  They went out into the hall. There were two other dressing rooms with doors closed. Just beyond Gaye’s was an exit to the outside. It opened into an alley.

  “An easy way to get out unnoticed,” Stanley said.

  “Or in,” Tom added.

  “Unnoticed?” Acheson said. “Listen, Gaye doesn’t do anything unnoticed if she can help it.”

  “Just as a matter of curiosity,” Stanley said, “Does she appear under any other names?

  “Gaye?” Acheson shrugged. “She’s been working on another act, she calls herself Bella Donna, but she hasn’t put it on the stage yet.” Tom and Stanley exchanged glances.

  “Ever hear her refer to herself as Tanya?” Stanley asked.

  Acheson thought a moment and shook his head. “No, not that I recall. But we haven’t known one another a long time, either. Just a few months. She was performing long before I came on the scene.”

  “Uh, that night you saw Acheson shot?” Tom said, “You’re sure you didn’t recognize the shooter?”

  Acheson looked wary again. “I already told you. It was nobody I knew.”

  “Could it have been Gaye Dawn?”

  Acheson’s eyes went wide in an unconvincing show of innocent surprise. “Gaye? No way, she was with me, in the apartment. I told you all this. Where did you get that crazy idea? Why would Gaye want to shoot Hartman?”

  Tom left that question unanswered. “So, generally,” he said, “she’s alone here in her dressing room, right?”

  “No one bothers her,” Acheson said. “It’s a house rule.”

  “Except,” Stanley pointed out, “anybody could. Bother her, I mean. That door with no lock,” he gestured toward it.

  “They could,” Acheson conceded. “Only, you don’t know Gaye.”

  “Not well enough,” Tom said, which earned him frowns from both the others.

  “Look,” Acheson said, “You don’t know… well, I said that already, didn’t I? What I was thinking was, see, Gaye had a rough childhood. Or, Gaylord, maybe I should say.” He looked at Stanley. “You know what it’s like. He was little, effeminate, a real
sissy. He grew up in the wrong part of L. A. He must have had the shit beat out of him once a week when he was a teen. It makes you, well, it gives you this veneer, it makes you tough. You have to be, to survive.”

  “I understand,” Stanley said. “Drag queens are the toughest. Everybody knows that.”

  Tom looked surprised by the remark, but he didn’t challenge it. It was just one more of those things he didn’t know.

  When they were getting ready to leave, Tom said to Acheson, in a no-nonsense voice, “Tell Gaye Dawn that we definitely want to talk to her. We can pull her in, if we have to, but she’ll miss a performance. Or, we can do it here, maybe tomorrow night, between shows.”

  “I’m sure she’d prefer here,” Acheson said. “I’ll arrange it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “That long hair,” Tom said when they were in the car. “It matches the description of our perp. And, once he’s dressed up, he’s all alone in the dressing room, with an exit door just outside. He could come and go and no one would be the wiser.”

  “A lot of drag queens go for the long hair,” Stanley said. “It’s a popular look. The Johns like it. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. As far as our case goes, I mean.”

  “Maybe not,” Tom said, “but if our lady strikes again tonight, I’m betting my money on Gaye Dawn. Plus, Acheson said he was tough. You have to be tough to kill somebody, especially in cold blood.”

  Stanley nodded, not really listening. “I was thinking,” he said. “Did you notice Acheson’s still got a case on his wife? Ex-wife.”

  “Can’t say I blame him. Did you get a look at those tits?” He grinned in Stanley’s direction. The grin vanished. “So, what about his boyfriend, the dick chick? I thought he had a hard on for Gaylord?”

  “He does. Some guys, you know, are very conflicted. Especially when they first come out. What I was thinking is, we’ve only got Acheson’s word for what happened to Hartman. He’s the only one who saw the drag queen shoot Hartman.”

  “What about the other witness, Clark? He saw her too.”

  “Running out of the building, with a gun in her hand. And there was a difference, wasn’t there, in the way they remembered the sequence of events? Acheson says he came out of the apartment right away, and Clark says it wasn’t until the drag queen had gone out the other end of the building. I thought at the time that was irrelevant, but maybe not.”

  Tom thought about that for a moment. “If it were the two of them,” he said, trying the idea on as he put it into words, “that would make a kind of sense. They kill this Hartman, they hear this guy coming in…”

  “Their living room window overlooks the street in front. I checked when we were there. Maybe they saw him get out of his car, approach the building. He’s a neighbor, they’d know him, know he was coming home.”

  “So they stage it for his benefit? An unknown drag queen, running off with a gun. You’d just assume she’d shot the guy.” He frowned. “I wonder if this Clark has ever been to The Boom Boom Room.”

  “Meanwhile, Acheson’s safely back inside his apartment, ready to be our star witness. And all she’s got to do is run around the building, come in one of the other entrances.”

  “Only,” Tom said, “what motive would Acheson and Gaye Dawn have for killing the poor bastard?

  Sounded to me like Acheson was a big fan of that baseball bat.”

  “Well, we don’t know what motive anybody had for killing him, do we? Maybe she was jealous? Or, maybe there was just some big send up. A fight. Hartman came on to Gaye, say, or she found out about Acheson’s midnight rendezvous, and the three of them go at it. And Hartman got shot sort of accidentally. It might have happened a few minutes earlier, even. Say, she’s flashing the gun, just to be dramatic, we know she has a temper, and they get into a wrestling match, in the apartment, and boom, Hartman’s dead. So there they are, with a body on the floor, trying to figure out what to do, and they see this Clark coming in, and they decide to put on a show. You know, that would explain the way his body seemed to be arranged on the steps, Hartman’s, I mean, not like he’d been shot and fallen. If he wasn’t shot there, if they just carried him out there from inside the apartment. What do you think?”

  “I think maybe we need to take another look at Acheson’s apartment.”

  A tinny Can-Can sounded from Stanley’s cell phone. He answered it, listened for a minute, and flipped it shut. “Poop,” he said. “My dad’s had a heart incident. I’ve got to go to Petaluma.”

  On an impulse, Tom said, “Want me to take you?”

  Stanley looked surprised at him. “It’s an hour’s drive,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Well, this time of night, forty-five minutes.”

  “I’m not sleepy. And, hey, it would take us twenty just to get back to your place, for your car. Besides, driving can’t be all that easy wearing that.” He glanced at Stanley’s sling. “Unless you’d rather go alone?”

  “No. I just… okay, sure, I appreciate it. I’d be glad for the company, actually.”

  § § § § §

  “He’s awake,” they told Stanley at the desk. “Though he’s been kind of drifting. The meds, you know.”

  “It’s all right to see him?”

  She looked at a chart. “Yes. But only for a minute or two.” She gave Tom a doubtful look. “And only one at a time.”

  “I’m just the designated driver,” Tom said. “Is there someplace I can wait?” He followed her glance at the overheated waiting room, crowded despite the late hour. People standing and sitting, all of them looking like they were in stupors. A couple of vending machines offered soft drinks and coffee. Probably, he thought, equally lukewarm.

  His distaste must have shown on his face. “There’s the garden,” the nurse said. “It’s a little cool, this time of night, but…”

  “Perfect,” Tom said. “You go ahead,” he told Stanley, “don’t worry about me. I’ve got some thinking I want to do anyway.”

  Stanley watched him disappear through the double glass doors that led to the now-dark garden. He had wondered on the drive up, mostly without conversation, what whim had prompted Tom to volunteer to drive him here, but he hadn’t asked. Whatever it had been, he was grateful. Tom’s stolidity, his sometimes taciturn masculinity, had been welcome, had kept him from flying all to pieces, which he would almost certainly have done driving here by himself.

  Looking at the broad shoulders as they faded into the darkness outside, he had an odd thought; for all his sexism and his limited vision, Tom Danzel would be an easy man to fall in love with.

  Which, he told himself, turning away, would be a monumental mistake for a gay man to make. Bad enough, mostly likely, for a woman, but definitely a disaster for a queer. He’d be easy to fall in love with. He wasn’t loveable.

  And that is something that I am never going to experience with the man, Stanley told himself firmly, starting for the elevator. He got out on his father’s floor, bumped his arm, which reminded him of the sling, and paused, looking at it. Maybe it would get him some sympathy from the old man.

  He snorted and yanked the sling off and tossed it into a trash receptacle. He flexed his arm. It was okay, if he was careful.

  § § § § §

  His father was conscious. Stanley realized with a sense of guilt that he had rather been hoping he wouldn’t be. He was propped up in bed, connected to an elaborate array of ominous looking tubes and cables. What appeared to be an entire wall of electronic equipment gave the room an eerie green glow.

  He blinked when Stanley came into the room, seeming to have some difficulty at first recognizing him.

  Stanley could see exactly when the truth dawned on him—followed a split second later by the predictable disappointment. He looked away without a word.

  “Hey, Dad, how are you doing?” Stanley forced a grin and came to stand by the bed. His father closed his eyes.

  “I’m going to sleep,” he said in a petulant voice.

  “Good idea,” St
anley said. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll just stay here for a bit to see that you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need you watching over me.” The eyes remained closed. “You go on home. Or wherever.”

  “Uh, Dad, it’s like, three o’clock in the morning. I just drove up here from San Francisco. I guess I can hang around for a few minutes.” Stanley pulled a chair over by the bed and sat in it.

  The eyes opened then. They were yellowed and blood shot, and stared angrily at Stanley. “I never asked you to come,” his father said. “I’d way rather see your sister. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do know that,” Stanley snapped. “I also know that the reason you don’t see her is because she doesn’t want to see you. That’s why she doesn’t come, you stubborn old fart.”

  His father’s lips tightened. He glared at Stanley in anger, but behind the anger, hurt cowered. He looked away again, staring at the blank whiteness of the wall.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Stanley said. He put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have…”

  “Get the hell out of here.” He shrugged Stanley’s hand off.

  Stanley sat for a moment longer, feeling frustrated and ashamed and wishing he knew how to make things better between them, wishing he could take back what he’d said in anger, but he couldn’t. Words only went one way.

  “Go on, I want to sleep.”

  Stanley sighed and got up, brushing an imaginary fleck of dust off his trousers. “I’ll see you next week,” he said.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Stanley started to reply, and held his words. Maybe by next week his father would have forgotten this whole conversation. It was maddening, the things he remembered, and the things he didn’t.

  Probably he’d remember, Stanley thought, walking away. People always remembered the crud.

  § § § § §

  His father hadn’t always hated him. Surely his memories of his childhood were of a reasonably happy family, father, mother, two beloved children. Everything changed when the mother died, in a car crash. His father had been driving, after probably one too many joints. Theirs had been an era of joints, and quite often, one too many of them.