Death trick

13

I stopped for gas and reached Harold Snyder from a pay phone. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and he said, "Fuck off, dear," and hung up.

I drove over to his place on South Lake Avenue. I went in a side entrance of the old frame house and knocked on the second-floor door that had Snyder's name painted on it with what looked like shiny red nail polish.

The door opened and a movie star stood there in a filmy negligee and boxer shorts.

I said, "I'm Donald Strachey. I'm persistent."

"Did I tell you to fuck off, or did I tell you to fuck off? Hey?"

She stamped her foot and made an indignant flouncy movement with her shoulders and hips. I'd always found effeminate men unappealing, but once when I'd made a crack to Brigit about "that faggy guy over there," she'd replied, "Faggy is as faggy does." Which missed the point by a mile but still left an impression on me. I tried to become more tolerant.

"If you're interested in having Steve Kleckner's killer caught," I said, "you'll want to talk to me.

And what happened to Steve could happen to someone else if the killer isn't found. Another gorgeous man lowered forever into the cold, cold ground. Help me make that not happen."

She looked interestedly at my face for a moment, and then at my crotch, and then at my face again. "What are you, anyway, doll-face? You're mu-u-uch too cute to be an Albany cop, but you did say you were a detective. You said that on the phone. Explain yourself, luv."

"I'm a private detective." I showed her the card. I half-closed one eye like Bogey and said out of the side of my mouth, "I work alone, sweet-haht."

She gave me what I took to be a Lauren Bacall look. "Well, you do look a little like Robert Mitchum. You should have mentioned that when you called, hon, it might have made a difference. Even if you didn't, it might not be too late for us." She gave me a sultry look with no apparent humorous intent, though it still appeared to have been learned from Carol Burnett.

I said, "You got a cold beer? It's warming up again."

"H-well! I just don't know if I should have a man in my apartment who's drinking. Who knows what might happen?"

"I wasn't going to drink it, I just wanted to hold it in my left armpit. I'm naturally hot-blooded."

I thought: "A smile played about her sensuous slash of mouth." A smile played about her sensuous slash of mouth. She said, "Do-o-o come in."

I went in and she shut the door. I sat on the divan across from a plaster model of an Academy Award Oscar painted gold. She brought an open bottle of Valu Pack beer from the kitchen and seated herself beside me.

I said, "I hear you cared a lot about Steve Kleckner." I took a swig of beer.

She reached over and felt my cock through my khakis. The damn fool thing stiffened.

She said, "I could go for you, Donald."

I said, "The day after Steve was killed, you told people out at Trucky's you'd known something bad was going to happen to him. How did you know that?"

"Let's not talk about that," she said, and her mouth went wetly over my ear.

"No, let's. It's, uh-important."

She continued to massage me, and I found myself shifting so she could get a better grip on it. A spot appeared on my damn cream-colored pants. I said, "Do you know-anyone who-who owns an-an Olds-"

"Oooo, Donnie-it's like a Molson's bottle!"

"Look, Harold-"

"Sondra."

"— Sondra. Look-I have an appointment in half an hour. If we could just talk, now, then maybe another time-"

"Gaw-w-w-d, you're fantastic! I've seen you around, Donnie, at Trucky's and here and there, but I never dreamed you'd go for a woman like me. I figured you were like all the other pansies in this candy-ass town-that you liked men, and you were just another faggot. There are so many of them these days. It can get so very lonely for a woman like me. With so few real men around."

She was working at my belt buckle.

"Look," I lied, "I really do have an appointment at three." Our hands fought over the belt buckle.

"What about-tonight? Are you busy tonight?"

"Now, baby, now! You know you want me!"

She was panting and squirming against me. Underneath it all, she was slim and hard and muscular-male. She was getting to me fast. I yanked myself free and stood up. She fell back against the arm of the couch, the erection in her shorts poking up through the front of the negligee.

She looked at me contemptuously and snorted, "You're queer, aren't you?"

I said, "The thing is, it can't happen for us just now, Sondra. That's the truth. Not this afternoon.

But don't despair-I'm bisexual."

She made a little-girl look. "Tonight then, baby? You said tonight. I heard you say tonight."

"Yes," I said. "Tonight."

"What time?"

"Eight. Around eight." I'd figure a way out.

She sat up, crossed her legs, and lit a pale green Gauloise. "All right then, Donald. I've learned to be patient. I know that men have their male things they must do. Holding sales conferences, splitting wood, jerking each other off in the shower-all that pigshit. While we women sit around watching the soaps and causing static on the police radios with our defective vibrators. But it's okay. We will survive. I can wait for the ERA. I can even wait until eight o'clock tonight-for you. Hunk." She blew me a kiss.

I remained standing and said, "Tonight's social, but now's business. Look, you really have to answer a few questions for me, Sondra. Like, why had Steve been so depressed, and whether or not Mike Truckman had anything to do with it Don't you understand why I have to know these things?"

She let herself relax-or tense up-into being Harold Snyder just a bit, and said, "Yes. I do. But I don't believe there's any connection between Steve getting killed and anything else that happened. I really don't, Donnie."

"Between what else that happened and Steve getting killed?"

She sat with her back stiff, the hand with the cigarette resting on the crossed knee, like Gloria Graham in The Big Heat. She said, "That part did have something to do with Mike. What Steve was freaked out about, I mean. Steve saw something. I saw it, too, darling. But, that's-there was no connection. No, I don't think so." She grimaced, remembering it.

I said, "I'm as eager as anyone in Albany to show that Mike had nothing to do with the killing.

You can help me do that by telling me what you know. It'll be between us, Sondra. Just something to clear the air. If that's what needs to be done."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "if a woman isn't loyal, then what is she?" She gave me a Greer Garson look. God.

I said, "A life was taken. Another life could be taken. The life of a man."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm terribly sorry. You have your job to do, Donald. I understand. Now you must try to understand me. And you will in time. But-does this mean-?" She sat poised.

I wasn't about to get roughed up by this one. "No," I said. "I'll be here. How could I not? Eight o'clock, then."

She stood end walked over to me. One arm came up around the back of my neck, like Grace Kelly's arm around Cary Grant's neck in To Catch A Thief.

"Till tonight, then, darling."

"Till tonight."

Our tonsils met.

As I headed down Washington Avenue, I ran the standard list through my mind: 1. It's been a long day, and I'm worn out. I'm really very sorry.

2. I drank too much tonight, it'll never work.

3. I think I've got clap.

4. I'm too nervous-this is only my second time.

5. Oh, God, I just can't do this to my lover!

6. I'm into scat, what are you into?

At seven-thirty I'd phone Harold, pick from the list at random, ask for a rain check, and that would be that. Except I did have to have a talk with Harold. Maybe what she knew about Mike Truckman was unconnected to the Kleckner killing, but I was beginning to have a sickening feeling about Truckman's involvement in all of this, and I had to find out everything I could, as fast as I could. Maybe I'd look Harold up out at Trucky's and we could talk in a public place.

Sure. I'd work it that way. Wednesday night. I relaxed.

I found the landlady for Steve Kleckner's Hudson Avenue apartment in her own first-floor-front quarters. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with blue eyes, a pretty mouth, and a small white goatee. I introduced myself as Lieutenant Ronald Firbank, an associate of Sergeant Bowman's, and she agreed to let me into Kleckner's basement apartment. She said his rent had been paid through the end of the week and that she was waiting for his relatives from Rensselaer County to pick up his belongings so she could clean the place up before the new tenant arrived on Monday. The apartment, she said, was as it had been on the night of the murder, "except for what those other policemens took away."

The woman led me outside the turn-of-the-century three-story brick building and into a narrow alleyway just off the street. We went down three cement steps into an alcove, and she unlocked the old wooden door with a skeleton key. A second door, leading from a bare passageway into the apartment itself, was opened with a key fitting into a newer Yale lock. She said, I'm not gone in there no more till I hafta," and left me alone.

The living room had an old greenish rug over the concrete floor, a thirties-style brown velveteen overstuffed couch, two easy chairs, a black and white Philco TV resting on a vinyl-covered hassock, a large expensive Technics sound system on a wooden table, and about a thousand records, all disco, on big metal shelves against a wall. The room had been fairly recently painted a pale mauve. Dim light came from two windows that began at ground level halfway up the wall facing the alleyway.

A doorway to the right led into a tiny, windowless kitchen. The refrigerator contained a can of V-8 and a half-dozen eggs, nothing more. I checked the counter drawers and found some five-and-dime silverware. The one sharp knife was an ivory-colored, plastic-handled paring knife.

I went through a second doorway at the back of the living room and entered the small bedroom.

A double bed sat in the corner, its veneer headboard against the rear wall, its left side next to a wall with a ground-level window. The bedding had been removed and I could see the big dark blotch on the mattress. I crawled onto the bed, raised the yellowing window shade, and lifted the sash; its weights clanged down inside their casing and the sash went up easily. I breathed in the fresh air from the alleyway. I groped around between the bed and the wall and pulled up the adjustable window screen that probably would have been in use on the night of the killing.

Access to the bathroom was through a door on the bedroom's right wall. I looked inside, then went back to the living room, took Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" from the record shelves and placed it on the turntable. I waited for the amplifier to warm up, then played the record at high volume. A second set of speakers fed the sound into the bedroom.

I went back to the bathroom, closed the door securely, turned on the shower in the metal stall, and stuck my head inside. I stayed out of the direct line of spray but still got a wet face from the ricochet. I listened. I could hear an occasional bass note and, just barely, a distant thump-thump-thump. But I had to work at it. Mass carnage could have taken place in the bedroom outside and I might or might not have heard it.

I shut off the shower, dried my face with a towel on the rack by the little sink, then went out to stop the music.

The landlady was standing in the doorway. "That stuff gives me a headache," she said. "The new guy, I gottim from the deaf school. I figger, they can't hear, they won't play no loud music. I hadda do it, see. That stuff gives me a headache."

Back at the office, I called Ned Bowman. I said, "You've got the murder weapon. What kind of a knife was it? The papers just said 'kitchen.'"

"First you tell me what you're doing, Strachey. Account for your activities for the past six hours.

Then I might bend the rules a bit and reveal official police information. Remember, I said might."

"Jesus, you know what gay life is like, Ned. It's constantly a lot of raunchy stuff you really wouldn't want to hear about. Like, I spent the earlier part of the afternoon getting fondled by a drag queen who thinks she's Rita Hayworth. That kind of craziness. You want to hear more?"

"Strachey, your credibility with me is just about zilch! I'm seriously thinking of cutting you off.

Or maybe arranging for you to have a wee licensing problem. How would you go for that?"

I said, "St, Louis."

"Tell me more."

"So far, that's all I know. Check St. Louis. St. Louis, Missouri."

A dribble of sweat ran down my ribs. I'd checked the St. Louis number on Chris Porterfield's business phone bill and reached another travel agency.

"I'll check it out," he said. "I'll have to alert the St. Louis department to watch for the Hertz car from Wyoming. It'll take time."

Right, it would. I said, "The knife, then. Please describe it."

He said, "A carving knife. Wooden haft. Long, thin, stainless-steel blade. Fourteen inches end to end. Sheffield."

"That sounds expensive. Kleckner's other kitchenware is junk. Do you think Blount carried a carving knife with him that night? In a violin case?"

A pause. "I concede that there exist certain questions relating to the alledged murder weapon. All that'll be cleared up once I've had the opportunity to chat with William Blount. Of that, Strachey, I am certain."

"I don't think Blount would have had a knife like that either," I said. "One of the disadvantages of being young and gay, Ned, is that you don't get any wedding presents. People with Sheffield cutlery are well off, or married, or both. Also, you still haven't explained how someone else's prints were on the knife, not Blount's. You're heading the wrong way, Ned, admit it."

"I'll admit no such thing. In fact, if you want to know the truth of it-not that truth is anything you'd care that much about-the truth of it is, I'm now working out a theory that Blount had an accomplice-the guy who busted into Blount's apartment and made off with his phone book."

"Guy?"

"We went out to Blount's place and found a witness to the break-in you reported. A woman on the first floor let somebody in the front door behind her around eleven o'clock Friday night and a bit later heard the door get busted in. Ten minutes after that she sees the guy out her window getting into a gold-colored car. Ring a bell with you?"

Friday night. The night I'd been in Blount's apartment around seven, answered the phone, and heard the caller wait and then hang up. I said, "A gold-colored car? Nope, haven't run across that one. How come the woman didn't report the break-in?'

"She-well, she did."

"Let me guess-"

"Fuck you, Strachey."

I said, "A patrolman checked it out, wrote it up on some forms, and you weren't told. Right?"

"I retire in six years, two months, and twenty-six days. In the big picture that's not a long time.

It'll pass. Time flies when you're having fun."

"Describe the man-the lock smasher."

"It's blurry. Twenties, light hair, light blue sweater. Carried a gym bag of some kind, probably with the tools in it. Big, new gold-colored car. Keep an eye out among your fag friends, will you?"

It could very well have been Zimka, though he struck me less as a gym-bag type than a paper-bag type. I said, "I'll be on the lookout. He's probably one of us. The light blue sweater is a code.

It means he's into ice cubes."

"Ice cubes? Kee-rist!"

"You don't want to hear it, Ned. It's pretty kinky. Real Krafft-Ebing."

"Kinky, you call it! You people draw some pretty fine distinctions."

"It's a way of life," I said. "Just another way of life." He muttered something. "I'll be in touch, Ned. You too, okay?"

"Sure, I will."

He hung up, still muttering.

I called PBS in New York, got the name of its Denver affiliate, KRNA, Channel Six, then phoned out there and asked what programs the station had run on Monday night. I was told the Paul Robeson special had been on from eight to ten, local time, and at ten o'clock Monty Python came on. That would have been midnight, eastern time. Just right.

I phoned American Airlines in Albany and made a reservation for a 9:50 A.M. flight on Thursday, changing at O'Hare for a Continental flight to Denver.

I looked up Huey Brownlee's place of employment in my notes, then called Burgess's Machine Shop. The woman who answered put me on hold; a male voice came on the line, then I listened to five minutes of roaring and grinding sounds before Huey answered.

"Donald, my man, how's it shakin'?"

"Huey, I've got a funny question."

"You want a funny answer to it or a see-ree-yus answer, baby?"

"It's serious. I haven't found Billy Blount yet, but I'm getting close to him, and meanwhile I'm trying to verify something. Did Billy always take a shower after sex?"

He laughed. "At first, I kinda took it personal. I never knowed anybody to do that-except for this married dude from Selkirk who used to drop by wunst and a while. Damn Billy'd spend ten minutes in there washin' me off him, even when he slept over. I kidded him, and he said it was just a habit he always had, so I gave it no mind after a while. Why you want to know that?"

"Because Billy told someone that he was in Steve Kleckner's shower at the time of the killing. It makes sense."

"I'd believe that. Spic 'n' Span Billy."

"Thanks, Huey, you've helped me a lot. Hey, one thing- did you get that window lock fixed?"

"Sposed to be fixed today, Donald. Landlady said she'd see to it."

"And you haven't gotten any more weird phone calls?"

"I wouldn't know, baby. I ain't been home the last coupla nights. Don't ask me where I was,

'cause I ain't sure I could tell ya. Rotterdam, it might of been. Anyways, I'll be back home tonight

— if you'd like to drop by for coffee."

I could see him leering wholesomely. "Well, to tell you the truth-a small part of it, anyway I've got to work tonight. Look, now, you be careful. And let me know if you get any more of those crazy phone calls. Somebody who might be mixed up in the Kleckner killing has got hold of Billy's phone book with your number on it, and someone else whose name is on the book has been getting crank calls, too."

"Don't worry about ol' Huey, Donald. Asshole come after me again and he gonna be carried outta my place in one of them puke-green trash bags."

"Right. Just-be loose."

"Always, sweetheart. All-ways.''

I called Timmy's office and caught him just about to leave for the day.

"I'm not going to be at the alliance meeting tonight," I said, "but I've got Truckman's check. And tomorrow I'll have another one for the fund. From an anonymous donor."

"Great; we're going for four thousand. How're you doing? Are you working tonight?"

I'd made a decision without knowing I'd made it. I said, "Tonight I'm going to do something immoral."

"Oh? Immoral by what standards?"

As a teenager, he'd considered becoming a Jesuit. I knew why. "Immoral by just about anybody's standards," I said. "Believe me."

"Then don't do it."

"I've already decided."

"That's sound thinking. Charles Manson should have used that one. 'But, your honor, we'd already decided.'"

I said, "Don't make it worse."

"Ahh, now I'm an accomplice. Will it be fun, our immorality tonight?"

"I'm going to hang up now, Timmy."

"Don, the predestinationist. My mother once warned me about getting mixed up with Presbyterians. See you around, lover."

"Yeah, bye."

I wondered if there was a patron saint for the sarcastic.