Death trick

12

I drove out Western. Dlsco 101 was playing the Village People's "Sleazy." I switched over to WGY and wound down with some Tommy Dorsey-way down, too far. Public radio had on a Villa-Lobos guitar piece, and I stayed with it on the drive out to Trucky's.

Truckman put out a light buffet every day from twelve to two-for $1.95 you could fill up on water-soaked starches and poisoned cold cuts. It was popular and drew a mainly straight crowd from SUNY and from the State Office Campus.

I ate macaroni salad and salami with yellow mustard on a day-old bun. I looked for Mike Truckman but didn't see him around. The dance floor was roped off and the juke box was playing something of the Bee Gees'. I went back to the disc jockey's booth and saw a DJ I'd met a few times at parties. He was inside, sorting through records and listening to something on his headset. I opened the door and went in.

Niles Jameson was a small, skinny black man with a full Afro and a big nimbus of black fuzz all around his placid, delicate face. He wore black pants and a black T-shirt and looked like a dark balloon on a dark string. He glanced my way as I came in and shoved the headset off one ear as he went on examining a stack of new records.

"Hi. I forget your name." He had a big, resonant voice, like a radio DJ's.

"Don Strachey. We've met at Orrin Bell's. I was there the night the guy from Tulsa went through Orrin's waterbed with his spurs."

He looked at me and smiled. "Niagara Falls."

"The people downstairs thought so."

"Wet."

He flipped a record off the turntable and, using the palms of his hands like fingers, popped it into its jacket. "You're the detective, right? Superfly."

"Something like that." I looked at the records he was going through. "What's new that's good?"

"The Pablo Cruise is nice. And an Isley Brothers that's gonna knock your socks off." He put another record on and moved his body to the sound in his ear.

I always felt like Barbara Walters in these situations. I said, "Is disco going to last?"

He said, "Is dancing?" He was young. But I nodded knowingly.

I said, "Have you taken Steve Kleckner's place?"

"Some nights," he said. "I free-lance."

"Where abouts?"

"Parties, college dances, a straight club in Watervliet. Whoever'll hire me."

"You knew Kleckner, didn't you?"

He changed records. "Yeah. I knew Steve. He set me up with Truckman. The DJs all help each other out, mostly. There's a couple of turkeys, but not too many. Steve was a good man. I liked Steve."

"I heard he was depressed about something the couple of weeks before he was killed. Do you have any idea why that might have been?"

He flipped the record on the turntable over with his palms and set the needle back on it. "Nope. I don't."

"I don't think Billy Blount killed him," I said. I'm trying to find out who did. Steve was popular, I know. But it looks as if somebody didn't like him. Who didn't?"

He pushed the headset down around his neck and looked at me now. "I know the Blount dude's friends all think he's innocent," Jameson said. "And maybe that's so. But if Blount didn't do it, I can't help you out, brother. I wish I could. People liked Steve, and we all miss the hell out of him.

I mean, yeah, Steve was a little bit loose and sometimes he probably went home with people he shouldn't have. And shit, maybe he ran into somebody once, some crazy fuck who wasn't playing with a full deck, somebody who couldn't stand anybody gay being as cool and together as Steve was-I've met that type-or maybe somebody who didn't dig the records he played, or didn't like the way he kissed. Shit, I've met a few weird people. They're around. But not that weird." He gazed down at the spinning turntable and shook his head in disgust.

Through the big window overlooking the empty dance floor, I saw Mike Truckman come in a side door and head up towards the bar.

I said to Jameson, "Were you here the night it happened?"

"I was over doing a party in Schenectady." He pulled the headset over one ear again and moved the turntable arm to the second cut of the record that was on. "I heard the next night when I came in. From the cleaning lady. She was having the jimjam fits. Carried on like the crazy bitch she is."

"You mean Harold?"

He nodded. "You know Harold?"

"I've seen her-him-her around."

"A trip, isn't she?"

Harold was the sometime drag queen who cleaned up after closing each night at Trucky's. She had the look of a forties movie queen and the meanest, foulest mouth in Albany County. Her shrill anger, as she pointed out to anyone who would listen, resulted from the twist of fate that had made her a cleaning lady instead of a star. She claimed that if she had been born in 1926 instead of 1956, her life would have been very different. And it might have been. With peace of mind, or enough Valium in her, Harold could have been some other studio's answer to Rita Hayworth, or at least Virginia Mayo.

Jameson said, "I'd seen Harold freak out before, but nothing like that day. I mean, it really got to her. Fact, she said she'd seen it coming. She knew something bad was coming down with Steve.

She started screaming and throwing things around, and finally Mike had to hustle her out of here.

Mike was sauced up even more than usual, and we were all down, and Harold was just making it worse."

"Mike has a bad drinking problem, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, especially since summer it's gotten worse. It's a shame. Mike's a good man. Floyd the doorman is pretty much running the place now."

"Does Mike have blackouts? When he can't remember where he's been and what he's done?"

"Could be. I wouldn't know about that."

"What's Harold the cleaning lady's last name?"

"Snyder."

"Where does she live?"

"Pine Hill somewhere. Floyd's not here, but Mike could tell you, if you catch him sober. You gonna visit Harold?" He raised his eyebrows and grinned.

"I think so," I said.

"You watch out now. That bitch is man-crazy. Came in here one night after closing and wanted to do me on that stool over there."

"I'll be careful," I said. "Well chat through her keyhole."

"Yeah, well, don't get too close or she'll do you right through the keyhole." He started to change the record, then looked back at me. "No offense."

I said, "I'm reasonably secure."

"I'll bet you are."

Games. I liked them once in a while, though not so much just after lunch.

I left Jameson and went looking for Mike Truckman. I found him in his office going through invoices and looking as if the papers in front of him were atrocity reports from Amnesty International. Alongside the papers were a glass and bottle.

"Don, hey Don, nice to see you. How you making out with the Blount kid? Have a drink."

I slid up onto the Molson's crates. "I've got some ideas," I said. "Another week or so and I think I'll have him back here."

"Oh, yeah? Where's he at?"

"West of Utica."

"Syracuse?"

"Farther. Meanwhile I still don't think Blount did it. I'm working on who did. Any more ideas since I saw you last?"

He stuck his lips out and slowly shook his head. The puffed flesh around his eyes was the color of dirty snow, and his hair stuck out in yellow-white clumps. One hand lay on his telephone, as if he might need to grasp it for leverage or support. The telephone gave half a ring before the hand snatched it up.

"Trucky's-Well, hello, a friend of yours is here right this minute!" He looked at me and mouthed Timmy's name. "Sure thing, Tim, I'll tell him-mm-hmmm-mm-hmmm-Right- Oh, yes

— Swell-Oh sure, oh sure, as always-A hundred. No, two hundred. Who do I make it out to?

— Sure thing, Tim, I'll send the check along with Don here-Right-Okay, kid, see ya, then."

He hung up. "Your pal Timothy says to tell you he'll be at the alliance meeting tonight. They're setting up a legal-defense fund for the people arrested at the Rat's Nest. Nordstrum is handling his own suit, but the alliance is going to help the customers who were busted-for 'buggery' or whatever the fuck it was. Here-." He scrawled out a check. "Things are tight right now, but not so tight I can't help fight a fucking-over like this one. As always." He raised a glass and saluted.

I folded the check and put it in my wallet. "Did Timmy mention whether the other bar owners are helping out?"

"He didn't say. He probably called me first so he could let those other tight-asses know I gave.

For what that'll be worth.

You and I know, Don, don't we? They're only out for themselves. Even the gay bastards especially the gay owners. They're so goddamn chintzy they won't part with a nickel unless they can figure a way to get a dime back on it. I don't know whether they see the movement as competition or what. But they're killing themselves. It'll all come back on them."

"I doubt that," I said. "Eighty percent of the homosexuals in this country would patronize Anita Bryant's place if she had a hot dance floor and sold drinks two-for-one on Friday night. Ten years ago ninety percent would have, but there's still enough indifference around to feed any amount of greed. It's changing a little, but we're still a minority. Face it, Mike."

He nodded. "I have. I know. Do I know."

"You're a rare one, though, Mike, and there are people who appreciate it. You'd better know that, too. You're a-a credit to your sexual orientation."

He tried to laugh, but it wasn't in him. I felt for him and didn't want to bring up what I knew I had to. I said, "Mike- this is hard, but-I'm sort of going through a process of elimination. I'm hard-headed and thorough, you must have heard that, and I've got a thing about making lists and crossing things off. Or, to put it in the more positive light that's appropriate in your case, I'm trying to establish alibis for the night of the murder for all the people Steve Kleckner knew best.

I know you and Steve had an affair once and that you were-well, sort of jealous of Steve's other men." He froze. I said, "For the sake of my obsessive neatness, then, just tell me where you went that night after you left here at four."

He stared at me through his alcoholic haze, stricken, and for an instant I thought he was going to cry. My inclination was to keep rambling on in the same convoluted vein, but I knew it would only come out worse. Not that it mattered. His hurt altered into anger, and he said-croaked the words out, "I wouldn't have believed it! After everything I've done-"

That irritated me. "Mike," I said, "that's beside the point- in a thing like this. Just rattle it off and that'll be the end of it. Really-"

"Fuck you, Strachey!"

"Look, Mike, you know I'm discreet to the point of-"

"I said fuck you, Strachey!"

"Mike, if you were with someone underaged, or whatever the hell it might have been-"

He looked at me with ferocious scorn and-I was sure of it-with fear.

"Okay," I said. "It's okay, Mike. Look-we'll talk again. After you've given some thought to what I'm trying to do. One request, though. I want to talk to Harold the cleaning lady. Could you give me her address?"

He didn't move. "You've hurt me deeply, Don. Please leave." Tears ran down his cheeks.

"Yeah. Okay." I stood up. "One last thing, Mike. Do you know anyone who owns a late-model gold-colored Olds Toronado?"

I watched his expression, but it didn't change. He just sat there, the tears rolling down his face and dripping onto his invoices.

I asked him if he'd been with Frank Zimka that night. He flinched when I said the name, but still he didn't move.

I said, "Okay, friend," and left him.

I got Harold the cleaning lady's address from one of the bartenders and drove back down Western into town. I kept the radio off, and I wanted a cigarette.