The Damned Don't Die

by Jim Nisbet

  Nobody got hurt. But the other guy was much drunker than Windrow, and tried to punch Windrow out so he could tell the cops his side of the story first, without being interrupted. When the black-and-white got there, the drunk was stretched out in the fragments of his own headlights. Windrow had gotten so much satisfaction out of it, he’d forgotten all about the half-ounce of marijuana in his pocket. Everybody got a free ride downtown.

  That’s a pretty normal story for any night in the big city, but Martin Windrow had been a cop himself at the time, in homicide division. He worked for Bdeniowitz.

  When they got downtown, everybody recognized everybody, except for the drunk, who was lonely and called his lawyer. When the police reporter heard the name of the lawyer, who was known to be very expensive, he sniffed out the name of the client. The drunk turned out to be a famous actor.

  So the squad room was getting to be crowded by the time Bdeniowitz showed up. First he recognized Elsa, because he and Windrow had interrogated her twice the year before.

  Hell, Windrow thought, a guy and girl have to meet somewhere, somehow.

  Bdeniowitz hit the roof. He tried to cover for them for about an hour, then threw them to the wolves.

  When the newspapers were finished, Windrow had lost his job, and the famous drunk was even more famous, though Windrow and Elsa got more ink.

  They kept on living together. Windrow opened a little office and applied for his private ticket, but his first case was at home. All the publicity had attracted an old client of Elsa’s, a rich, childlike psychopath from Los Angeles. He began to call daily.

  He was always drunk, and he didn’t want to talk to Windrow. He never bothered to realize that Windrow existed. He just wanted Elsa. Before it was over, Windrow had foiled a kidnapping and interrupted an attempt to throw acid in Elsa’s face. It stopped when the playboy was murdered by his maid, who shot him with his own gun during a struggle in her bedroom, just as Windrow was buying a ticket to Los Angeles.

  He and Elsa had lasted six months or so beyond that, then she was gone. She’d always worried about the potential threat her past posed to their future, but Windrow hadn’t gone along with that—at first. After he’d lost his job and nearly been killed twice because of it, he wasn’t too sure. And the peeping business was lousy. In that moment of weakness, when his faith wavered, she took off.

  Dallas.

  Don’t leave town.

  He snorted and sipped his coffee. Caffeine raced through his system, and alcohol. The two fought for the air in his blood, like two men fighting desperately over gold in a whitewater raft, heading for the falls …

  Chapter Eleven

  TWO WOMEN WALKED IN THE DOOR AND ORDERED TWO beers. One wore black leather, short hair, and chrome aviator’s sunglasses. The other was slim, younger, wore short hair, tight jeans, and a western-cut blouse, unbuttoned nearly to the waist. Neither wore makeup. They took their beers to a shelf on the wall, near the pool table, and racked a game of nine ball. Windrow turned from the bar to watch them shoot.

  The older woman ran five balls and scratched. The table was an older one, with smooth, level, felt-covered slate, mahogany rails, and woven leather pouches under each pocket so a scratch could be treated as such. She pulled a ball, spotted it, and rolled the cue down the table to her partner. The younger girl sank three balls and masséd the cue ball into the kitchen. Her friend leaned on her cue and sipped beer. There wasn’t a sign to that effect, but Windrow knew that only women were allowed to shoot pool in this bar. Men were tolerated at the counter, whether they drank or not, so long as they didn’t bother the clientele.

  Windrow had turned back to the bar and ordered whiskey with a beer chaser and two aspirin when Hanfield Braddock III walked in the front door.

  Now, here was a character Windrow knew and liked and even admired a little bit. Hanfield Braddock III liked to say, loudly, that he was as queer as a two-dollar bill. In his mind, this afforded him the benefit of a pat cliché that made his sexual status perfectly clear to almost anybody who might be wondering, and at the same time imparted quasilegitimacy to this status by virtue of the recent reissue of that denomination of currency. He referred to this irony as “fiduciary solvency,” or “wet money,” or a “cheap trick.” He wrote a regular column for an established gay newspaper, the Bat, of which he was an original founder. As usual with all of Braddock’s speech, this title had more than one meaning, but the main thrust of the editorial pages was radical advocacy, be it sexual, social, political, or otherwise. Braddock was an activist. He sat on the boards of foundations, committees and small business enterprises. He knew the inside worlds of San Francisco politics and gay nightlife as well as anybody in the city. He knew powerful businessmen and politicians, pimps and lawyers, barflies and ballet stars. He liked to say they all had one thing in common: Somewhere along the line, they’d each gotten bored with the missionary position.

  He waved hello to the two women playing pool and sat down next to Windrow. Calling Connie by name, he ordered a Calistoga and lime for himself and a double Screwing Gumshoe for Windrow, slapping him on the back and taking in his condition at a glance.

  “Say, Marty,” he said, looking over the wire rims of his glasses at the back of Windrow’s head, “looks like you need a good phrenologist. Whad you do, answer an ad in the back of Bat?” Braddock giggled.

  Windrow was sullen. “Think your phrenologist might tell me who gave me the new bump?”

  “No,” he said, “but he’ll tell you what a good lay I am and give you my phone number.”

  “Yeah? Does he pay me or do I pay him?”

  Braddock winked and massaged Windrow’s neck. He hadn’t taken his hand away since he’d slapped Windrow’s back. “I’ll pay both of you,” he said huskily. “What do you say, huh, Marty? It’s early. I haven’t had mine yet today.”

  Windrow squinted through his headache at Braddock’s reflection in the mirror. “Well, Hand, it’s nice to be an object of desire, but, shucks: Fuck off.”

  Braddock turned and yelled back down the bar. “Cancel that double, honey, and bring me amyl nitrite.”

  Connie smiled back at him. She hadn’t given the drink a thought. Braddock turned back to Windrow.

  “Straight ingrate,” he said pleasantly enough. His water and lime arrived. He ignored it, though Windrow turned to watch the bubbles in it. They soothed him, somehow, as they made their way up the sides of the glass, around the ice cubes and the green wedge of lime, to the top.

  “So what’s with you, Marty. Slip in the bathtub?”

  “Got bounced off a case that wasn’t even mine, hit the sidewalk on the way out.”

  “Any interesting legal, social, or moral angles, kinks or precedents?”

  “Oh, lots. Modern divorce, for one. Nobody’s sure, but it’s easy. Easier than figuring it out, I guess.”

  “Listen, Marty. You know what’s wrong with marriage? It’s boring, that’s what. One of my absolutely favorite lovers is the macho type that’s high up in the police department. You know the type …”

  Windrow knew the type. And the story.

  “His marriage was on the rocks until he met me. Now he sees me once a month—or more—and says his marriage has absolutely turned around since he goes both ways.”

  Braddock was getting himself worked up. He sipped his drink. Windrow had crossed his arms on the bar and put his chin on them.

  “You know? I mean, the straightest people are discovering that to be true. They find something lacking in their lives, something missing. They try a little booze, maybe a little pot, a little adultery. Nothing. Then, one night they’re a little high, they meet somebody they like, the moon is full … ‘But that’s queer,’ the good little voice inside them says, ‘that’s homosexual.’ ‘Oh, what the hell,’ the bad voice says. ‘Let’s get down. A little weird sex, dirty sex, filthy sex, maybe some S and M … it can’t hurt.’”

  Braddock took a sip of his water and shrugged. “So they do it. And you know what? T
hey like it. It turns their heads around about things, like sex, and then about certain oppressed groups, and then politics. … And you know, they’re just the straightest people. I mean, they go to work every day, keep a tidy home, don’t drink or smoke, they’re registered to vote—”

  “Aha,” said Windrow.

  “Take this one case I know. He’s an accountant. Just an accountant. Been with the same firm for ten years, got a wife, two kids. One day he just flips out. For ten years it’s been the same old thing with the missus. He’s been cutting out with the girls at the office, sure, but, you know, they’re built the same as momma. So what’s he do?”

  Windrow straightened up. “He calls you, Hanfield,” he said wearily. “You’re in the Yellow Pages, right?”

  Braddock giggled. “Well,” he said coyly. “I may as well be. So sure. He tries other men, he tries the boys, groups, a little flagellation … back to the girls. Presto! He finds out he’s into tying up the girls …”

  Windrow yawned. “So is his old lady into this?”

  “Well, yeah, she’s loose, they’re modern, she gives it a try. Only she doesn’t like it as much as he does, so he still gets around, and that’s okay, cause”—Braddock winked—“he’s quite a hunk, really. And every now and again he has a, uh, how you say …”

  “Regression?”

  Braddock patted Windrow on the shoulder and let his hand linger there, gently massaging Windrow’s shoulder muscle.

  “That’s just the word, Martin. My, but you’re astute.”

  “But how can I be so straight?”

  “Right again.”

  “I hear bells.”

  “Ever heard Big Ben?”

  “That’s enough, Hanfield.”

  Braddock removed his hand. “It’s just a shame …” His voice trailed off.

  Windrow patted Braddock on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Hand. When they get the clone thing together, I’ll get one of me made up just for you.” Windrow took a sip of whiskey. “Right after I get the one that does my job for me.”

  “That’ll be nice,” Braddock said dreamily. “But I was talking about the girl.”

  Windrow raised his beer glass to his lips. “What girl?”

  “Oh, just a girl I knew. A real tragedy. This guy I was telling you about ran around with her for a while. He got her into the scene a little bit, too, I guess. I mean the straight tie-up thing. They were a nice couple, I thought, but they had to be careful. Low profile. They worked in the same office together, someplace where fraternizing”—Braddock giggled—“among the employees wasn’t permitted. Much less tying each other up.”

  A funny feeling overtook Windrow as he set his untasted glass of beer down on the counter in front of him, a feeling as if his nausea might return, a tingling in his sternum.

  “What’s so tragic about that?”

  Braddock waved his hand and picked up his drink. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just that you can’t help thinking that if certain relatively harmless things were more openly permitted, certain relatively horrible things might not happen. It’s hard to tell, though.”

  “What horrible things?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up. This girl, after she and this young man broke up, I guess she had gotten a taste for the scene and got mixed up with the wrong sort of people, looking for a bit more of it. I don’t know. They found her dead. She’d been horribly brutalized and committed suicide on account of it. That’s how it looked, anyway. What a mess.”

  Windrow watched Braddock in the mirror behind the bottles. “What was her name?” he said.

  “Virginia,” said Braddock.

  “Sarapath,” said Windrow.

  “Could be,” said Braddock. “You should know.” Pouring a piece of ice out of his glass into his mouth, he caught Windrow’s eye in the mirror. Windrow exhaled long and hard and sat silently looking at his drink for a long time. Braddock chewed up all the ice in his glass and ordered another for himself and Windrow, then sat patiently, watching the two women play pool in the mirror.

  Finally, Windrow spoke into his drink.

  “What’s this guy’s name?”

  “Sam Driscoll.”

  Windrow pulled the little notebook out of his pocket and consulted it. “He work for P.J. Brodine, Incorporated?”

  Braddock nodded. “The police have already talked to him. They got nothing. After a while, he admitted they’d had an affair, they got that much from her sister. But said they hadn’t seen each other in months, outside of work. He was shocked at what had happened, and took the day off from work. That was yesterday. He was in the Diogenes last night.”

  Windrow put the notebook down on the bar.

  “I’ve been ordered off the case.”

  “Bdeniowitz hates your guts.”

  “Do tell.”

  “But if you have a client …”

  “What client. I was trying to do a girl a favor.”

  “What girl?”

  “The sister, Marilyn. She’s a good kid, been up and down, liked her sister. I like her. But I can’t push against Bdeniowitz.”

  Braddock reached into his pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the counter in front of Windrow.

  “I represent interests who would like to see this case cleared up, no matter what,” he said.

  “What interests?”

  “Well, a sort of informal committee, a community group.” He waved his hand. “The lady who owns this bar is one of them. I’m another. We put up the money, you work for us. I can get you a list of us, if you want.”

  Windrow looked at the hundred. “Your word’s good enough.”

  “By the way,” said Braddock, “my connections at police headquarters are in much better shape than yours. Anything you need to know, just give me time for a few calls. You can reach me here.” He neatly printed his initials and a phone number on Windrow’s pad. He grinned. “Day or night.”

  “Night is when it doesn’t hurt so much, right?”

  “Which?”

  “Nevermind.”

  “He goes to Diogenes every night, after nine.”

  Braddock gave Windrow a brief description of Driscoll.

  “Why the hundred, Hand? What’s in it for you?”

  “Bdeniowitz is okay, Marty, but some of his cohorts on the force and around City Hall, the people who tell him what to do, they don’t like the gay world—they hate us, the queens. The cops could use this case to walk all over our community. They may be narrow-minded, but they’re not stupid. They couldn’t care less, one way or the other, who sleeps with who in this town. But gay people are getting into a lot of political clout in San Francisco, enough so that a lot of straight politicos feel threatened. One way of discrediting an opponent is just as good as another way, to some people. If this case were to erupt into a scandal, good people in our community could be badly hurt for the wrong reasons. A career could be ruined not because of the issues, but because of sexual predilections, or worse, by association.

  “When a gay gets castrated in a back alley in this town, the papers don’t even mention it, even when there’ve been four other cases just like it in a month. But when this nice, straight single girl gets it, she makes page one, and there’s some sexual weirdo out there, ready to do it again. Now, I’m not questioning that the person’s got to be found, but the cops like to act like they think all the butchers are hiding out in the gay scene, and they wouldn’t hesitate to run in all two hundred thousand of the homosexuals in this town if they thought they could get away with it.

  “What we want from you is hard information that might lead to the truth of who did what to whom and why. Another thing, I want an exclusive for the Bat. The paper kicked in for your fees, too. But what I really want is the guy that killed that girl. I met her, you know. She was nice, innocent. If she was into kinky sex I’m sure it was mild, just for fun. I know, I know, I make a lot of noise about the hard stuff, and that’s my business. But this girl was
nice—plain and simple as that. Some creep got ahold of her and violated that, and much more. The guy’s sick. He could probably be helped. He might even want help. See if you can find him before he does it to somebody else.”

  “Deal.” Windrow sipped his drink. “Ever run into anybody carries a sword cane?”

  “Oh, dozens,” Braddock said. “Very chic.”

  “This particular party runs a little magazine, your digest of thrills induced by horror and the macabre, Brandish.”

  “Harry Feyn,” Braddock nodded. “Used to pen one of those stories occasionally myself. Two cents a word, and not just any word, Harry likes to say, or think. Not so much money in it as real estate, at least not for the writer. Feyn makes out very nicely.”

  “How about Herbert Trimble?”

  “The writer? Plays the cello? Sure. He and Feyn are friends.”

  “And his wife?”

  “Wife, too. They’re all friends. Confidentially, sweetie, they had a thing going, you know, a ménage, the works. Extra couples, movies.” Braddock waved his hand. “You should see Harry’s basement. I hear Herbert gave it up, though. Too stiff on Monday morning, he said, but I think it had more to do with his wife’s leaving. She quit the whole scene.”

  “When, this morning?”

  “Oh, no, Marty. Honey Trimble dropped out of sight over a year ago. At least that’s the last time I saw her.”

  Windrow was getting that feeling again, compounded by that other one, the nasty one.

  “A year ago?” he repeated weakly.

  “Yes, about then. In fact they used to drive up from Palo Alto to hang out together at Diogenes. That was the last place I saw her.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Oh, you name it. But generally I’d say medium height, in her forties, brunette, large in the bosom, tinny voice, triangular glasses …”

  “Oh, boy,” said Windrow faintly.

  “Why? You seen her lately?”

  “She filed for divorce.”

  “Really.”

  “But when I met her, it was last night, and she was flashy. She was tall, with a square face, not big at all in the chest, peroxide hair …”