by David Stukas
Monette didn’t know what to say. “Thank you, I suppose.”
Our stylish gentleman reached up and raised Monette’s hand high in a triumphant gesture to show off the outfit to its fullest. “Ladies and gentlemen, izn’t it spectacularrrrr?” he exclaimed, rolling the last few r’s that made him sound like Eartha Kitt riding in a car with no shocks.
You wouldn’t believe it, but a good fifty people standing nearby burst into applause. I even heard a bravo from the crowd. I pull an incredible practical joke on Monette, and she ends up as belle of the ball.
The count introduced himself to no one, but plenty of people came up to him, despite his mask. These people were all smiles and kisses, but the moment they discovered they were talking to Count Siegfreid von Schmidt, their personalities changed—and not for the better.
A man with huge muscles dressed as some sort of strongman started begging the count to give him more money. “If you don’t, they will take away my furniture, Siegfreid!’ he pleaded. The count waved him aside.
Two men started a fistfight over the count—well, technically it was a catfight/slapfest. As the two of them were led away by the security guards who appeared from nowhere, they continued to slap and accuse each other in French and English of pushing the other aside in an attempt to sink their claws into the count.
One guy, after finding out I was the count’s new lover, even muttered what had to be some German expletives before walking away. I knew very little German, but I certainly knew what scheisskopf (shithead) meant. It was the first German word I learned, since it was so handy.
“He’s just jealous,” the count said. “Many of these people have been my boyfriend—or want to be. And you, dear Robert, have come along and taken their place! They want a life of leisure and material things, and you have come in and brushed them aside and ruined their plans!” The count laughed.
I was the only one who wasn’t laughing.
People were soon flocking around Monette, trying to ascertain who she was and where she came from. The count, from time to time, acted as interpreter for Monette, who spoke little of any dialect except English and a little south Boston. I couldn’t understand everything Siegfreid said, but Monette was clearly having a field day, telling the crowd unbelievable whoppers. She claimed she was raised in Fiji by natives after her mother, a newspaper heiress named Rainbow, had flown there in a single-engine Cessna stunt plane to avoid a jealous husband, an outlaw cowboy named Pecos Sam. Her completely over-the-top fabricated history wouldn’t have stood a chance in the U.S., but it went over like gangbusters with a crowd that had long ago lost touch with reality.
When she was done spinning her story, she stopped to give the count a kiss on the cheek, but an inebriated guest bumped into Siegfreid and knocked the mask from his face. The count hurriedly picked up his mask and replaced it, saying, “This is a masquerade party, and we mustn’t have people know our real identity! It would take away all the fun!”
Monette pulled me aside for a second and muttered into my ear.
“My god, Siegfreid is handsome! I got a good look at his face for the first time and he is just stunning. The green eyes, the square jaw, the perfect complexion, and topped off by that gorgeous blond hair!”
“Natural blond, too!” I added, about to unleash a dirty secret. “Unlike Michael, who dyes his black.”
“You mean unlike the natural gray-red-blonde that just walked by? Sorry, I couldn’t let that one go by. Did you see that? His hairdresser obviously is a vicious queen extracting revenge for lousy tips.”
Just then, the lights went down and the crowd oohed and aahed, knowing the festivities were about to begin. The ballroom fell silent as a curtain at one end of the football-field-sized ballroom parted and twenty or thirty practically nude men strode out with long, brass trumpets in hand. On cue, they raised their trumpets and issued a blast of notes that would raise the dead. You could feel the excitement in the crowd that expected that something big was going to happen. The trumpeters stepped aside and, to the tune of the latest thumping German trance music, Mad Queen Ludwig rode into view in a gilded carriage pulled by a team of eighteen nude men dressed as horses, complete with feathered bridles, wedge shoes designed to look like horse hooves, and horse tails stuck in their bare asses (held in by God knows what). It had the decadence of the court of Louis the XIV and the flamboyance of a Liberace Vegas act. Siegfreid and Roy would have been jealous. You couldn’t see Ludwig himself, because he was obscured by a curtain in the carriage. The only part of him visible was a lilting hand waving a lace handkerchief back and forth.
The carriage was pulled up a specially prepared stairway at one end of the ballroom and circled the wrap-around balcony several times to the wild cheers and clapping of the revelers below. Eventually, the carriage stopped at the top of the stairs at the other end of the ballroom and a man clad in scanty livery rushed to open the door and bow to the famous passenger.
The crowd was now shouting so loudly I thought my eardrums were going to collapse. Finally, Mad Queen Ludwig emerged from the carriage in a magnificent rendition of a royal gown from Elizabethan times. The dress was covered with what must have been hundreds of pearls and brocade work that no doubt made several seamstresses go blind from the intricate stitching. And there, on top of it all, was the head of Mad Queen Ludwig, rising up from a cloud of ironed lace and powdered white like the Virgin Queen herself. He stood there for what seemed an eternity, waving royally to the crowd that roared like a gay freight train.
Just as the crowd’s insane cheering seemed about to shatter every mirror in the palace, Ludwig slowly rose into the air and began swinging in a large circle over his guests below, still waving like, well, a queen. Even though the wire that supported him was clearly visible, no one in the crowd seemed to mind. People around me looked up into the heavens as if they were witnessing the Second Coming, albeit with pearls. And I had to admit to myself it was the most outrageous and decadent event I had ever seen—and probably ever will. So much better than a bunch of sissies tweaked on coke or crystal, throwing attitude and bumping into you at a Manhattan nightclub.
Ludwig eventually floated down into his adoring crowds, signifying his fifteen minutes of fame had ended and it was time for the floodgate of cocktails to open and the dancing to begin.
While Monette continued to be the chicest thing this side of Mercury, I was about as welcome as a yeast infection at a NOW convention. Michael, despite a string of bad dates, was bumping into scores of men he had slept with and was looking for some repeat performances. Here I was at the most fashionable party in the world, yet I just wanted to go home. The count, seeing the look of desperation on my face, looked and me and said, “I know what would make you happy!” as he looked down at his crotch.
“Another cocktail would be helpful,” I suggested. The count, by the way, seemed to have had quite a few already, and I have to say this was the first time I had ever seen him tipsy.
He grabbed me by my reluctant hand and dragged me to the second floor, where he found a linen closet and pulled me inside. He began to kiss me ravenously, then covered his mouth and exclaimed, “Excuse me, Robert, but I am not feeling well. I have to run downstairs to the bathroom!” He flung the door to the closet open and left me there with my pants undone.
When Siegfreid failed to return after twenty minutes, I went to search for him. I descended the stairs and made for the bathroom, thinking if he had to barf, hopefully he would have made it to the toilet. I approached the men’s room conveniently placed off the main ballroom and was about to enter when Mad Queen Ludwig barreled past me like Anna Nicole Smith in search of another boob job. His face was beet red and he was waving his arms around wildly, screaming and holding his throat. Since Ludwig’s only method of communication seemed to be screaming or shrieking, no one paid any attention at first. But when he continued screaming, then began to collapse like a glacier plunging in slow motion into the Gulf of Alaska, I knew something wasn’t right. I hesitated
about going in by myself, but since there were so many people at the ball, I felt it was safe enough to enter.
I left Ludwig as someone was holding his head, trying to get a martini down his gullet, and crept slowly into the lavatory. When I rounded a corner, I saw the body of the count lying with his head in a toilet and a rather large knife in his back. The next thing I remember was the room spinning around and myself falling to the floor, but not before I thought enough to cushion my head and face from the hard marble. My boyfriend was obviously dead, but one had to be practical in matters like this. After all, you had to protect the porcelain.
11
Someone Killed His Boyfriend. Now When’s Breakfast?
When I came to, I was surrounded by a dozen people. Closest to me was Monette, who was holding my hand, patting it as if that was going to wake me up. Actually, I was hoping for another sour-apple martini. In every movie I’ve ever seen, they always revived people with alcohol and it always seemed to do the trick.
“Robert? Robert? C’mon now,” Monette pleaded. “Come out of it, sweetie. Don’t leave me on my own in a country where I can’t speak a word of German. C’mon now!”
I came to immediately when Monette squeezed my hand so hard I was sure she was going to extract oil from it.
“Robert, c‘mon, Robert!” I could now hear her saying through gritted teeth. “I have no idea what’s going on, but it doesn’t look good. Everyone’s standing around me covering their mouths in horror and pointing to you accusingly. C’mon, Robert,” she implored.
“What happened?” I asked. “I was having sex with the count upstairs ... he left me and didn’t return. I remember coming down to look for the count because he was pretty drunk at the time ... and then I went into the lavatory and ... something about the count having a knife in his back.”
“That pretty much sums it up. Robert, I hate to break it to you, but it looks like the count had an accident.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, he seems to have fallen on a knife. It’s sticking in his back.”
“Fallen?” I asked, completely confused.
“Well, sort of fell backward on a knife someone was holding. He’s dead, I’m afraid. Oh, and he’s slumped over with his head in a toilet.”
Monette, never one for dwelling on unpleasant details, subscribed to the theory that it was best to break shocking news to people quickly. In other words, if you hit someone in the face with a shovel quickly enough, they won’t really notice it. For example, if someone phoned Monette with the bad news that your aunt was found crushed under a semi filled with kumquats, Monette would interrupt you during dinner at a Mexican restaurant by saying, “I’ve got to tell you your aunt is now guacamole on Interstate 10 outside Phoenix. Sorry. Now, could you pass me the salsa?”
Having told me the shocking news, she stood there waiting for a reaction from me. A sudden bursting into tears? Tearing my clothes, screaming, “Why? Why?”
But the weirdest thing happened. I didn’t cry, yell uncontrollably, or pitch myself off a building roof. Being raised in a family where emotions were roundly suppressed and denied, I took the devastating news rather well. That, coupled with the fact my whole relationship with the count was an unreal fantasy, made his untimely death seem strangely unreal, too. And, in all honesty, the thought that I was probably a very wealthy man did cross my mind a few hundred times.
“Could you help me stand up, Monette? Where’s Michael?”
“I haven’t seen him all night,” Monette replied. “He was hot after some guy covered with scary tattoos and disappeared with him an hour ago.”
There was a commotion in the crowd that surrounded me, which parted to admit a large, bear-like man with a red face followed by a band of serious-looking men in green uniforms with the word polizei embroidered on them. I still knew very little German, but even a redneck who thought that the Grand Ol’ Opry in Tennessee was every bit as good as the Cologne cathedral could guess why they were here—and interested in talking to me. I decided to stand up.
The policemen dressed in green uniforms were actually quite gorgeous, especially their leader. His close-cropped hair, stern square jaw, and ice-blue eyes gave him the look of a hawk in human form. The bear-like man introduced himself as Herr Taucher, homicide.
“I am told you were one of the first to find the body of the count,” Herr Taucher said in fairly good English. “Could you tell me what has happened?”
Before I could get a word out of my mouth, Michael magically appeared from nowhere and stood next to the cropped-hair commander, latching on to him faster than an alien attaching itself to Sigourney Weaver.
“My name is Michael Stark, and I’m sure I can be very helpful to you, Officer—no matter what you’re looking for,” Michael purred.
I sat there, speechless. Michael was just being Michael. He was trying to pick up a polizei official while I was up to my lederhosen in trouble.
“There you are, Robert—or should I call you Oral Roberts?” he said, looking around at the polizei with a sly smile. “Did you get picked up by the German vice squad?” he laughed. “I’m not surprised, what with you puffing on the count’s pink panatela upstairs in that linen closet.”
“Michael,” I tried to say, but was cut off.
“I can’t imagine you having sex with Count von Schmidt in that closet—in fact, I can’t imagine you having sex, period—but I guess all those years of celibacy must have turned you into a regular horny toad.”
“Michael, I . . .”
“Relax, Robert. I won’t tell your friends here you’ve been such a sex maniac ever since you started dating the count that you probably scared the bejeezus out of him—which is why I saw him come tearing out of that closet around an hour ago faster than Jerry Falwell leaving a whorehouse with a TV news crew in hot pursuit.”
Monette felt it was already too late to speak up, but she did anyway. “Michael, the police are investigating an incident involving the count.”
“It’s not about all those expensive gifts that the count gave you, is it? Are they stolen? Or is it that phony will where he gives everything to Robert?”
“Michael, please shut up,” I said.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Robert. These guys can’t speak English, so they’re not going to understand any of this!”
Herr Taucher, who had been scribbling wildly during Michael’s verbal diarrhea attack, leaned toward Michael. “How do you spell ‘panatela’?”
Michael, slowly realizing he had been digging me into some sort of unspecified trouble, uttered a simple “oops,” then continued without a care. “So what trouble is the count in?” he asked.
Monette decided to act as my spokesperson for the time being. “Michael,” she reported, “the count is kind of dead.”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“I meant to say he’s dead. With a knife in his back!”
“Wow!” Michael exclaimed while whistling. “You mean, like ...”
“Yes, like really not-breathing-and-bleeding-all-over-the-floor kind of dead! That’s why the police—who, by the way, can speak and understand English—are standing here asking questions.”
“Jesus! Last year I got framed for the murder of my boyfriend, and now this! I guess it’s your turn now, Robert,” he said, chuckling a bit. I looked at Michael’s face and could see it light up, indicating he thought he was about to let loose a revelation equal to the discovery that the earth revolves around the sun. “If the count is dead, then you’re a very wealthy man! His will made you his only beneficiary! Congratulations, Robert! You aren’t poor anymore!”
I knew then and there that, no matter how dangerous it would have been to open the door of the count’s chartered jet in flight from Monte Carlo and push Michael out over the Alps, it was something I just should’ve done and asked questions later.
“Thank you, Michael, your testimony is just what I needed. Just hand me a blindfold and let me listen for the crack of the rifles.”
“Robert, remember, I’m on your side. I’ll get you out of prison, don’t you worry. I know what I’m doing. I’ve talked my way out of more speeding tickets than you can imagine.”
“Talked your way out of speeding tickets?” I asked incredulously. “I’m sure you used your mouth for something, but it wasn’t talking that got you out of a jam. Getting back to the subject, I didn’t really think I was going to prison. But thank you for putting that thought in my mind. Now,” I said, looking at Herr Taucher, “whatever I can do to help, please ask.”
And he did. I told him the complete story of how I met Siegfreid in New York, our whirlwind affair, the gifts, and I even managed to spill some of the sexual encounters, since they might have relevance in this investigation. The only thing I left out of our sexual escapades was the incident in Berlin where the count pulled out a horse saddle and requested he ride me. No need to tell Herr Taucher that one. (Not even you, dear reader, will know whether I consented.)
Taucher conferred with Herr Bear and his buddies, then barked some orders to the polizei that were streaming into the ballroom that I didn’t quite understand. Herr Taucher then walked over to one of the stairways and mounted a few steps. He shouted to the crowds first in German, then in English, French, and Italian that he wanted everyone to stay put until they were pulled into groups and questioned by the polizei. You could hear the murmur from the crowd that plainly said that they weren’t exactly pleased with being held against their will—and without drugs.
“I know this all looks pretty bad, Robert,” Monette said, trying to put a better spin on the situation, “but some good came out of this whole mess.”