“Then, what did it have to do with?” I probed, suddenly driven to launch an interrogation of my own.
“Oh, nothing…” He kept on staring, bug-eyed, at the field of flowers beneath his feet. “Really. It was nothing at all.”
“The cops don’t usually give somebody the third degree over nothing,” I pressed, hoping to provoke a revealing reaction.
“What dream world have you been living in?” he cried, shifting his gaze from the floor to my face, then rolling his protruding eyes up toward the ceiling. “They do it all the time, honey. You just don’t hear about it so much. It’s their dirty little secret, and they usually manage to keep it out of the papers.”
“He’s right, Paige,” Abby said, sitting down and lighting a cigarette. “Not all Manhattan detectives are as swell as your man Dan. Especially the ones who work down here in the Village. A lot of them don’t dig the free thinkers and artistic types who live in this area. They think a groovy, far-out cat with a beard is nothing but a mangy dog.”
“That’s a fact!” Sinclair crowed, nodding at Abby in grateful agreement. “And they drag us off to the pound every chance they get.”
“Oh? Do you consider yourself a groovy, far-out cat?” I asked him. “You sure don’t have a beard.”
“No, but I have other… um… eccentricities.” He was staring down at the floor again. “And the police do treat me like a dog. I’ve been hauled off to the pound more than once.”
Look, I wasn’t a total dope. I had already figured out that Mr. Willard Sinclair was a homosexual. If the yellow silk kimono and pink-flowered rug hadn’t convinced me, then the ruffled throw pillows on the purple couch-not to mention the fringed shades on all the living room lamps-surely would have done the trick. (See what an observant sleuth I am?)
And I wasn’t totally in the dark about the way the police treated homosexuals, either. I had written a story on the subject for
Daring Detective, so I knew that popular homosexual hangouts, and even private parties, were frequently raided, and that these raids generally resulted in numerous arrests. I also knew that many of the detainees had suffered brutal beatings while in police custody.
Homosexuality was illegal, and some of the city’s more “manly” law officers considered it the world’s most heinous crime. And they felt it was their solemn duty (though others might call it their pleasure) to prosecute (or rather, persecute) the criminals. I was not, I should tell you, in accordance with either the law or the so-called public servants who delighted in carrying it out. As a matter of fact, I found the whole situation abhorrent.
So, in an effort to spare Mr. Sinclair any further discomfort or embarrassment about his forbidden sexual preferences, I quickly dropped my line of questioning about his previous dealings with the police, and switched my focus to the subject that interested me the most: his relationship with Gray Gordon.
“Tell me, Mr. Sinclair,” I began, “how well did you know your next door neighbor?”
“Call me Willy,” he said. “My friends all call me Willy.”
I didn’t know that I was-or was ever going to be-his friend, but I was glad to be offered the use of his first name. It would make it so much easier for me to pry into his personal life. “Willy it is!” I chirped, giving him an earnest smile. (Okay, so it wasn’t a really earnest earnest smile, but it was the best I could do considering the fact that I’d only just met the man a couple of hours ago and was now trying to figure out if he was a throat-slashing, chest-stabbing, gut-ripping killer.)
“So tell me, Willy,” I cooed, “were you and Gray good friends? Had you known each other long?”
“Not very,” he said, standing slumped in the middle of the room, shoulders sagging toward the floor. “Gray moved into the building two years ago, but we never became close friends. He was so busy going to acting school, freelancing as a model, and bussing tables at Stewart’s Cafeteria, that he didn’t have time for me. Then after he became an understudy, I hardly saw him at all. I longed for a deeper, more intimate bond, but I knew it would never happen. He was a young, strapping, gorgeous Greek god, and I was a flabby old frog. And there isn’t a kiss in the world that could turn me into a prince.”
Willy flopped down in a chair across the room and covered his face with his hands. He looked so wretched and pathetic, I felt drawn to comfort him in some way. Pat him on the back. Massage his sloping shoulders. Uplift his sunken ego with heaps of flattery. But such gestures were out of the question, of course. Willy’s unrequited passion for Gray might have been the motive for the murder! How could I, in good conscience, try to bolster the self-image of a possible slasher? (And besides-as much as it discomfits me to disclose it-he really did look like a frog.)
“Oy vey!” Abby cried out, jumping up from the couch again. “It’s hot as fire in here! If I don’t get some air, I’m gonna die! I need some lunch, too. C’mon, Paige, let’s go. Flannagan said it was okay for us to leave.”
I was hot, but I wasn’t hungry. The bloody scene next door had murdered my appetite. And there were still tons of questions I wanted to ask Willy. “Gosh, I don’t know, Ab,” I said, piercing her with a pointed stare. “I think I’d like to stay for a while and-”
“Yeah, what’s your hurry?” Willy broke in, wringing his hands again. He stood up and walked over to Abby, a pleading look in his protruding eyes. “I’ll fix you a nice lunch,” he said. “I made a lovely batch of chicken salad this morning. And a pitcher of iced tea. With fresh mint.” He clearly didn’t want us to leave.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Abby said, ignoring both Willy’s and my respective appeals. “No offense, pal, but we’ve got to blast off before Flannagan comes back. Otherwise we’ll get stuck here for the rest of the day.”
Abby’s warning hit home. Suddenly I was in a hurry to blast off, too. I felt uneasy about leaving Willy to face the intolerant-possibly abusive-authorities alone, but I couldn’t afford to get caught up in Flannagan’s afternoon inquisition. I simply couldn’t spare the time. I had my own investigation to conduct.
Chapter 6
ABBY AND I WALKED HOME IN TOTAL silence and as fast as we possibly could. The blood on our knees, shins, and shoes had dried, but the crusty streaks were still very much in evidence-both to the people on the street and to our own horrified senses. We couldn’t wait to shower and change our clothes.
“Come over as soon as you’re finished,” Abby said, as we each opened the door to our own apartment and stepped inside. “We’ll go get something to eat.”
“Okay,” I said, quickly shutting my door and locking it, hoping to keep the demons at bay. It was a wasted effort. The demons crawled in under the door, followed me upstairs to the bathroom, and sat on the edge of the bathtub while I tore off my gory, sweaty clothes and dropped them in a pile on the floor. Then the nasty little devils got into the shower with me and haunted me with horrible visions as I scrubbed Gray’s blood off my legs and watched it swirl in a bright red whirlpool down the drain.
Poor Gray, poor Gray, poor Gray, I repeated to myself like a mantra. Poor, poor Gray. Last night he was on top of the world; today he’s gone from the world altogether. Is there any more fickle fate, I wondered, than to be dealt the lowest blow at the moment of your highest glory?
After I finished my shower and dried myself off, I put on another pair of capris, a different halter top, and my white ballerina flats. Then I gathered up the clothes on the bathroom floor and carried them downstairs, thinking I’d throw them in the garbage. I never wanted to see them-much less wear them-again.
But as I was about to toss the clothes in the trash, I changed my mind and stuffed them into a brown paper shopping bag instead. Then I set the bag on the floor of my coat closet and kicked it deep into the darkest corner. Maybe some of the blood on my sandals and capris had been shed by the killer instead of Gray. (There had, after all, been a whole lot of slashing going on!) Maybe Flannagan would want to run tests on the bloodstains. If two different blood types were d
iscovered-either at the scene or on Abby’s or my clothes-then the police would have at least one true, indisputable clue to the killer’s identity. I decided I would take the bag of bloody clothes to Flannagan tomorrow.
Feeling much more alert and responsible than I’d felt all morning, I closed the closet door, grabbed my white leather clutch bag off the kitchen table, and hurried next door to Abby’s.
“Let’s go!” she said, lunging out onto the tiny landing between our apartments before I’d even had a chance to knock. “I’m so hungry I could eat a moose. Do they serve moose at Chock Full?”
“Sure,” I said, chuckling. “They make a great moose-burger. But you won’t be having one today since that’s not where we’re going.”
“Oh, really?” she said, leading the way down the stairs to the street, long black ponytail swaying with every step. “Then where are we going? To Twenty-One? El Morocco? The Copa?” She was trying to act gay and chipper, but I could tell from the catch in her voice she was still feeling as sad and shaky as I was.
“None of the above,” I said, as we exited the building and came together on the sidewalk. “We’re going to Stewart’s Cafeteria, on Christopher near Seventh. We passed it twice today. Looked like a nice place to eat.” I turned and began walking down Bleecker toward Seventh Avenue.
Abby caught up with me and followed alongside, face screwed up in a crabby frown. “Why the hell do you want to go there?!” she squawked. “The food is lousy. Mostly steam-table stuff. And you have to stand in line and get it yourself.”
“How do you know? Have you been there before?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“But if the food’s so bad, why did you go so often?”
“I didn’t go there to eat, silly. I was just looking for models.”
“What?!” Now I was the one who was squawking. (Just when you think you know everything there is to know about her, Abby pulls another squirming rabbit out of her hat.) “Looking for models?!” I cried, tossing my hands up in wild confusion. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Enough with the dramatics, Paige. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.” We came to a stop at Seventh Avenue and stood waiting for the light to change. “I’ll explain everything when we get there,” she said. “It’s too hot to talk while we’re walking. And the cafeteria’s right across the street.”
As rabidly curious as I was, I didn’t try to argue with her. When Abby set her mind to something, it was carved in stone. And besides-it really was too hot to walk and talk at the same time.
THE LIGHT CHANGED AND WE CROSSED over Seventh to Christopher. Stewart’s was right around the corner and the double entry doors were propped wide open. My heart sank at the sight. The gaping portal could mean only one thing: no air-conditioning. And if Abby was right about the steam tables, it was probably hotter inside the restaurant than out.
Yep. The indoor temperature was at least five degrees higher. And the air was so moist and heavy you could barely breathe-which turned out to be a good thing since the sickening smell of fried fish was overpowering. The ceiling fans were going full speed, but their only effect was to move the hot, greasy air from one spot to another. As a result, the place was practically empty. Except for a skinny middle-aged man sitting at a table near the windows, and the hairy, husky man behind the food counter, and two sweaty young busboys in wilted white uniforms, Abby and I were the only ones there.
Abby headed straight for the food service area and grabbed a brown plastic tray from the stack at the end of the counter. Then she began to move down the food line, asking the husky server for a slab of this, and two scoops of that, and a heap of that stuff over there. You’d have thought she was a starving longshoreman, the way she was piling it on. When she finished making her selections, the mound of grub on her plate was as high as the Matterhorn.
The sights and smells at the food counter-particularly the slimy display of boiled beef and the repulsive odor rising from a pan of steamed trout-were making me nauseous. I took a small roll, a puny portion of the fruit salad Jell-O mold, and a glass of iced tea.
“Okay, out with it,” I said, as soon as we were seated at a front table near the row of large windows and the open doors. “Whatever gave you the yo-yo idea to come here looking for models? Are they running an agency in the kitchen?”
“No, silly,” Abby said, digging into her meatloaf and mashed. “Ith juth tha a lop of goop loofing ghys ang hout ear and-”
“Stop! I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Can’t you swallow before you speak?!” My patience was wearing a little thin.
Abby gulped and gave me a goofy grin. “Sorry, babe, but my mooseloaf is calling.” She took another bite and gobbled it down. Then she looked up and said, “What I was trying to tell you was that a lot of really good-looking guys hang out here at Stewart’s, and some of them are only too happy to do a little modeling for me. Sometimes they’ll even do it for free. And that’s a whole lot less than the twenty-five bucks an hour the agency charges. And that’s why I come here looking for models. Get what I mean, Jean?” She shoveled a fresh load of mashed potatoes into her mouth.
“No! I don’t get it at all. What’s so special about this crummy place? Why do good-looking guys like to hang out here?”
Abby swallowed her spuds and widened her eyes in surprise. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?” I urged.
“About Stewart’s,” she said.
“What about Stewart’s?” I begged.
“I can’t believe you don’t know,” she said. “I thought everybody knew about Stewart’s.”
“Well,
I don’t!” I shrieked. My patience wasn’t wearing thin anymore. It was officially worn-out.
“Shhhh! Keep your voice down. You’re making a scene.”
“You’re making me make a scene! And if you don’t tell me everything you know about this place right now, I’m going to jump on the table and hoot like a monkey!”
“Do monkeys hoot? I always thought of them as screechers, not-”
“Abby!!”
“Okay, okay!” she finally relented, leaning forward and lowering her voice to a whisper. “Here’s the dirt, Bert: Stew-art’s Cafeteria is known in these parts as Queer Central Station. You dig my meaning? It’s where all the fairies meet and greet. See the fellow sitting at that table over there, staring out the window? He’s probably a queer looking for company. And see the sidewalk right outside this row of windows? They call it the chicken run. That’s where all the chickens strut up and down and back and forth, flouncing their feathers and flexing their muscles, angling for potential… um… boyfriends. Or, in some cases, modeling jobs.”
“Chickens?”
“Yeah,”Abby said, smiling. “You never heard that term before? It’s what the older homosexuals call the younger, more attractive ones. The chickens are the handsomest, most well-built, most sexy guys of all. A lot of them live in the Village and a whole flock of them live right here on Christopher Street. They’re always prancing by these windows on their way to and from one place or another.
“On normal days,” she went on, “there’s a constant parade out there. And all these chairs and tables here, right inside the windows? They’re like the bleachers. On normal days they’re packed with enthusiastic… uh… spectators.”
“What do you mean by normal days?”
“I mean days when it isn’t over a hundred goddamn degrees in the shade. And when it’s not the Fourth of July weekend. The bleachers and the runway are deserted today because every homo who has two nickels to rub together is out on Fire Island. And all the others are tucked away at home, sitting naked in front of the fan and soaking their feet in ice water.”
Or being grilled about a murder by a hotheaded homicide detective, I brooded, thinking of Willy.
Abby started chowing down again. “So, what’s your excuse?” she asked between mouthfuls. “Why did you want to come here? You certainly aren’t in the
market for a homosexual lover. Or a male model. And don’t give me that crap about how it looked like a nice place to eat, either. Because it doesn’t. And it isn’t. The food stinks to high heaven,” she said, forking a huge pile of gray string beans into her mouth.
I nibbled on my roll and took a sip of iced tea. “It was something Willy said,” I told her. “He mentioned that Gray had been bussing tables here. I thought I’d check the place out and see if that was true.”
“It was true all right.
I could have told you that. Jeez, Paige, why didn’t you just ask me? I would have given you the dope, and then we wouldn’t have had to come here to eat!” She took another bite of meatloaf and chomped it eagerly.
“So you knew that Gray worked here?”
“Of course I did. This is where I met him. I was about to start working on a new illustration, and I needed a new model, so I came here to check out the chicken run. But then I saw Gray clearing the tables, and I really dug the way he looked, so I skipped the whole sidewalk show and asked him to pose for me. I had just landed a cover assignment from
Real Men magazine.”
“So what did he say? Did he accept?”
“In a flash.”
“When did this happen?”
“Oh, a couple of years ago. Right after Gray moved from Brooklyn to the Village. Both of his parents were killed in a car accident, so he packed up his meager belongings and moved to the city to start a new life-to pursue the acting career his parents had never approved of. He was working as a busboy just to pay the rent while he took acting lessons and went on auditions. When I offered him ten dollars to pose for me, he pounced on it like a hungry tomcat.”
“Ten dollars an hour? Wasn’t that a little high for somebody with no modeling experience?”
“Well, yeah, but Gray was so gorgeous he was worth it.” Her eyes lit up and her lips curled into a sinful smile. “He was worth it in other ways, too.”
Murder on a Hot Tin Roof Page 5