So my attitude was:
“I give you Freeze. Interview him now and be thorough, because I guarantee he’ll never talk to the press again.” And I was right.
In exchange, we just wanted to know the latest developments, as they happened.
So we went to the Voice offices, into a locked room. Frank recorded the conversation. I started off with a quick rant about Angel and his inherent loathsomeness.
Then Frank asked Freeze a few questions.
Freeze was quiet and spoke in halting, short gulps. No, he didn’t know where Angel was. There was a fight, an argument; Angel left and they never saw him again.
Frank let it go at that, then brought up age-old rumors, about the other dead bodies that Freeze always ended up with; long-forgotten friends who had overdosed here and there, nothing that didn’t happen to all of us, all the time, and very much beside the point.
Frank didn’t grill him very hard. And poor, put-upon Freeze was the very picture of innocence that day. There were no dramatic revelations, no cagey games of cat and mouse. I realized, with a sinking heart, that Frank must have thought it was all just a hoax after all, a club kid publicity stunt, and consequently nothing would come from this.
So all of this was just a pointless exercise in the dispensing of noninformation to the media. We would all become masters in the months to come.
We left after an hour or so of small talk, and as we hailed a taxi, Freeze turned to me and said: “Can you believe all this? Can you believe what’s happened? What we did?”
It was the first time he had addressed the subject to me, and acknowledged my knowledge of it.
“Pretty big stuff, yea,” I said. Well, I mean, what do you say?
“It’s all Michael’s fault, you know. If he had just kept his mouth shut. Oh, I could just kill him.”
That hung in the air for a good minute or so, then we both laughed long and loud—our nerves were frayed.
He came home with me, which meant that I had now inherited him for a week or so.
There was a note on my door from Jenny, telling me to rush over—“URGENT!”
When I got there, she was clearly shaken.
You see:
She was working at Trash & Vaudeville, when she looked up and saw Angel standing there. And she just, “like, you know, freaked out.”
Of course it wasn’t really Angel, it was Angel’s brother, Johnny, a dead ringer. He was handing out fliers: “Has Anybody Seen This Person?” with a scowling picture of Angel, in patent leather and considerable wingspan, and mention of a four-thousand-dollar reward.
Johnny and Jenny talked for hours—well, mostly he cried and Jenny stuttered soothing nonsequiturs.
He gave her his number and said he NEEDED TO TALK TO ME IMMEDIATELY.
Oy.
So I called him.
I had to.
I wished that God would have taken me right there and then. A bolt of lightning perhaps. Or some killer bees would have been nice. Nothing could be as painful as this one phone call.
But he was sweet—so, so sweet. And sad and confused. He loved his brother, well of course he did, and he missed him. He didn’t understand all this club stuff, he didn’t understand his brother’s lifestyle or sexuality, but he loved him, like a brother should and
HE JUST WANTED TO KNOW
Was it true? Was he dead? Did this Michael Alig person or this Freeze know something? Were they involved? Could they help him?
If it was true, he didn’t care about them …
He didn’t want revenge …
“I’m a good person. I have a family. I don’t have time to hate anybody. I don’t want revenge.”
Whoever did whatever to his brother he didn’t care. God will take care of it in the end. It wasn’t his place to extract justice.
“I just want to know. To put him to rest. To grieve. To tell my mother. And to find the body and give it a proper burial.”
That was most important. A consecrated burial.
The family couldn’t go on with their lives until they knew the truth. Until then every day was unendurable. Questions, doubts, hopes, fears. Hand wringing. Every time the phone rang, every time they turned on the news … Was it true? Was he dead?
Please.
Could I help give them some closure?
He started crying.
It was the first honest, heartfelt, outpouring of grief I had heard on Angel’s behalf—and I was paralyzed.
As long as Angel stayed an abstract, and unlikeable, symbol—the murky, misplaced modifier in some far-off subordinate clause—I could digest his death in small bits.
But here was a family who was suffering. A mother had lost a child. A brother lost a brother. But they couldn’t yet grieve.
“I … don’t … know …” I said dully, without emotion, “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.”
But.
Here was a chance. To do something.
So: “Johnny, I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I just can’t. But there is someone who might be able to. His name is Frank Owen and he’s doing a cover story on your brother in the next issue of the Village Voice. Maybe it would help both of you to talk to each other.”
I hung up, after giving him Frank’s phone number, and felt sad and unclean, but slightly better.
Perhaps Johnny’s raw and desperate plea could change the tone of the article, make Frank see it wasn’t just Michael’s usual monkeyshines, and the story would spark an honest-to-God investigation.
(In fact, if Frank were truly convinced the rumors were all true, then maybe HE could tell Johnny that, yes, his brother was dead and that the body was irretrievably gone, and to try to grieve and find the closure they needed WITHOUT the burial.)
I called Frank and left a message asking to meet him again, alone, so we could talk.
Now Jenny and the Junkettes were listening to all of this, and they were slack-jawed.
There he goes, there goes James—manipulating the media, betraying Michael and all to further his own press-hungry agenda. I was Frank’s Deep Throat.
At least that’s what she told people later—that’s what I heard she told people—although that’s a lot of words and a lot of emotion to come out of Jenny at one time.
And this only added weight to the theory that I was the one who started it all with Musto’s blind item. Not true.
It depressed me terribly.
And I truly felt for Johnny. Mind you, I wasn’t about to get carried away with emotion, though. I was not going to help confirm sainthood on some stingy, drug-hoarding bastard. I’m sorry. Johnny was sweet, but all wrong about his brother.
LETS TALK ILL OF THE DEAD, SHALL WE?
Johnny claims that Angel carried a hundred thousand dollars around in a duffel bag—and that he planned to quit dealing drugs to pursue a career in the arts.
Right.
Angel had a hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag. He’s homeless, but he has a hundred thousand smackeroos that he leaves in care of Michael Alig. Even Angel, social-climbing Angel, wouldn’t be that stupid. He has a hundred grand and everyone still hates him. That much money and he still wouldn’t give me a bump!
Think about that, will you?
And the bit about how he was about to retire. How cinematic: “Just one last job. Just one more heist … if I can just make it through the week … Then I can retire and take care of my indigent mudder in Colombia …”
And, of course, he doesn’t make it.
Let’s face it. Drugs are what gave Angel his clout. It had his idol, Michael Alig, jumping through hoops. It got his dick sucked. It let him get away with being the cocky son-of-a-bitch that he was.
He wasn’t going to give that up.
He wasn’t going to go away.
Yea, yea, yea—he was going to be an actor. Or a writer. Or a singer. Yea, yea. So was your grandmother. And just look at her.
I hate to be cynical, but Angel didn’t have a hundred grand, he wasn’t going
away, and he was never going to get out of the vicious cycle of dealing. It was all he had.
When Frank’s article came out, it caused quite a commotion. His interview with Johnny changed the whole direction of the article. His firm belief that a terrible crime had indeed been committed, and his moral outrage at the apparent apathy surrounding it, really put the story on the map. It was lifted out of the realm of “gossip” and given a validity and an urgency it had hitherto lacked. It was now front-page news.
Clubland was all a-twitter. With Michael’s guilt a forgone conclusion, his “friends” began peddling their second-hand stories to Hard Copy and American Journal. Michael was at the dead center of a media maelstrom. Everywhere you looked, every newspaper and magazine, there he was.
And I thought I was sick of him when he was still in town!
Then, one day, the inconceivable happened.
I came home to find none other than Michael Alig himself, drinking a Yoo-Hoo on my stoop. Just as calm and natural as can be! As if he wasn’t plastered over the pages of every newspaper in town, and there weren’t posters for information leading to his whereabouts or arrest on every lamppost in Manhattan.
I hoped against hope that it wasn’t Michael, maybe it was just some crazy doppelgänger … one of those quirky twists of fate that always seems to happen to people like me and Jimmy Stewart. Maybe this green-haired boy, who was now doing a bag of heroin on my stoop, was really Michael’s long-lost twin brother …
I wasn’t about to take any chances, though. I walked right past him, giving him the same curt nod I give to all the strangers doing drugs on my stoop. Then, I tried to make a run for it, a quick dash up to my apartment.
No dice.
“Blaggerty Slog!” he screamed, by way of welcome.
“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
“Oh … you know … slogger blagging … scrod-hopping … seeing Roger … would you like a bump?”
“Wow, Denver must have really changed you—you’ve never offered before! No thanks. Hate the stuff. You know that. I’d just end up carrying a Tupperware bowl full of vomit around with me all day.”
WAIT!
WHAT?!
“I mean, why are you in New York? Are you completely out of your mind?”
“Denver’s boring. The crack there is really expensive. Keoki’s mean. This is where I belong. I figure now is a good time to capitalize on my press and open a new club. Did you see me on American Journal?”
He finally gave me that aneurysm that I’ve been waiting for all these years. I mean, there’s “Old School Thinking,” and then there’s this … a truly breathtaking train of thought, so blissfully self-destructive, so utterly confident in its sheer stupidity, that it actually succeeds on all levels.
“I’m going to call it ‘Honeytrap,’” he continued, “after the Daily News cover story that said Disco 2000 was like a honey trap that lured in young children, and I’m having two thousand jars of honey made up for the invitation …”
“Where’s my Digitalis?” I screamed, as I fell to the ground.
I soon learned the other reason for his return.
And I was livid when I heard about the deal he was cutting with the DEA, to aid them in their bid to incriminate Peter. Just livid. “Trading Gatien’s scalp for Angel’s torso,” as the Voice put it.
We had dinner later that night, and I remained terse and aloof throughout most of the meal. I could barely contain my disgust.
“Michael, darling, pass the pepper—your soylent green is a little bland tonight.”
A tense silence. So I changed the subject:
“I read in the Enquirer today there’s a new fad in Bosnia you might want to get in on. Teenagers collecting noses from the corpses killed in their war-torn homeland. They dry them in the sun to preserve them and string them into necklaces. You didn’t by any chance preserve Angel’s nose, did you?”
More silence. So I kept at it.
“I’m sorry to keep harping on it, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Tell me again—how decomposed was the body when you threw it into the river? And what do you suppose it looks like now? Are there crawdads in the Hudson? Do you think the crawdads have gotten to him by now? What about lampreys? Surely, there are lampreys attached to him, sucking at the gristle. And giant mollusks, leeches …”
“Stop it, James.”
“Are flounder carnivorous by nature? What about smelt? Thousands of tiny smelt just nipping away … Well, he’s probably not even in the river anymore. Ol’ Barnacle Face is probably halfway to Borneo by now …”
“Why are you being so mean to me all of a sudden? You’re my best friend, you’re supposed to help me! You’re supposed to understand me! It’s not like I’m enjoying any of this!”
“Oh?”
Silence.
“You don’t enjoy the ten pages in Details? The daily ‘Michael Sightings’ on ‘Page Six’? The David LaChapelle photo shoot? The BBC video crew following you? Anthony Haden-Guest tripping over himself to include your every quip in his book?”
“NO, I DON’T,” he said emphatically, an obvious lie because I could see he was getting hard just thinking about it all.
“And you don’t think you should be punished in any way for all of this?”
“No. It was an accident. It’s not like I’m ever going to do it again.”
“Got it all out of your system in one shot, huh?”
“Really. It’s not like I’m a menace to society …”
“An annoyance to society, yes.”
“James, I’m serious!”
“So am I.”
Well, let’s just get it out in the open:
“And you don’t feel bad about selling out Peter, PETER, Michael, who has been your best friend, your father, your protector, your benefactor …?”
“I’m just fighting back. And what choice do I have? THIS IS MY LIFE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT. And they made the first offer. I would be stupid not to cooperate.”
“I just think it’s wrong. So wrong. You’re a stool pigeon and that’s the lowest of the low. You ought to hang your head in shame. You LOVED Peter, Michael. You’re guilty, you are covered with guilt! And for you to destroy MORE lives, and knock down everyone around you, and then just walk away from it all with a smile and a ‘skroddle doo’ in your heart … IS WRONG!”
“So you want me to go to prison for life.”
“I don’t think your freedom should come at Peter’s expense. And, yes, I do think you have to somehow pay for what you’ve done. You have to understand the enormity of your actions.”
“You don’t think I understand? You don’t think I don’t think about it every minute of every day? You don’t think I wish to God it never happened? My life is over. It’s never going to be the same again. Look at how I’m living: I’m broke, homeless, nobody will hire me. I can’t afford my heroin habit … I just want to die. I just want to OD and end it all right now.”
He was too emotional for me to point out that his regret wasn’t that Angel was dead, but that his life was in shambles because of it—and that’s a fundamentally different mea culpa.
“I just wish you would have left the country with Rudolf. I just wish you didn’t feel this was your only choice. And how fucked is a system that would overlook a murder …”
“… an accident …”
“… a dead body … in its zealousness to convict a night-club owner. I just don’t get it.”
I had already planned on leaving New York, something I had decided a few months ago. My lease was up in September anyway. I just wouldn’t renew.
I just couldn’t go on living in a city with so little compassion, so little regard for morality. I needed to live someplace that gives a person some dignity and a little respect for his life …
So I was moving to L.A.
Because I was leaving, and felt I owed Michael a generous goodbye, I went on one of his patented club kid jaunts, to a club in Denver for a party that he had set up whe
n he was hiding out there.
Trips with Michael were always excruciating exercises in stress management. This one was beyond comprehension. You have no idea how difficult it was for me …
He forgot to bring enough heroin to last the week. He did it all on the plane going there. That left seven nonstop days and nights of regret.
It began within hours of arrival.
“Help me—I can’t do this! I want to die …”
He was doubled over, strictly for my benefit. The tears were real, but it was the junkie glamour of it all, and the attention it could bring, that was the real motivation.
I tried to be helpful, tossing out a few “poor baby”s and a feeble pat on the head now and again—but, truthfully, I was bored by it. And, Lord knows, empathy is not my strong suit.
“James, really, you have to help me,” he pleaded. “Go downtown and cop some for me—you know I’d do it for you.”
We were in Denver, for God’s sakes, I didn’t even know where “downtown” was, much less the regional copping etiquette. They see a wrinkled old white queen toddling around their alleyways—“Begging your pardon, sirs, but I would be much obliged if I could purchase some horse from you …”
—well, I’m sure I would last all often minutes.
So there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. He yowled and howled and sobbed until there was quite a large crowd of ravers, all clucking and cooing over the poor little monster. He conned fifty dollars out of them, and we were off.
We jumped into a cab.
He directed the van driver to go to the worst corner of the worst part of the city.
“And that would be … where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Look for a lot of niggers.”
Then he leaned his head out of the van and sang, “NIGGER-LA-DA-DOOS! NIGGER-LA-DA-DOOS!”
In the nick of time, I happened to remember that nigger-la-da-doos despise that particular appellation. “Good Lord, Michael. Get your face inside this minute. Must we all die with you? You mean to tell me that we are just going to drive aimlessly around the city looking for random ne’er-do-wells who may or may not be selling heroin?”
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