Death trick

17

I was back in Albany by five. I considered setting up another quick meeting with the Blounts. Either they had concocted an elaborate lie and had fed it to me coolly and systematically, using their great goofy sense of theater, or their friends the Storrs of Loudonville had lied to them about the present whereabouts and condition of their son Eddie, or there was another explanation that might boldly present itself once I could sit down with Billy Blount, the one figure in the whole cast of characters who knew things the rest of us didn't. I'd be seeing Blount within twenty-four hours, and I decided to forgo another session of drawing-room farce with the senior Blounts and wait until I got to Denver.

I drove out to Timmy's on Delaware and let myself in, then phoned my service to let them know where I was. I'd had one call during the afternoon, from Sergeant Ned Bowman of Albany PD, with the message, "Not Trailways either, pal. See me."

I called my own apartment to see if Huey Brownlee had gotten in all right. He said he had and asked if I minded if he invited a friend over. I said I didn't mind. I felt a little spasm of jealousy in my thighs and frontal lobes, but nothing heavy and it didn't last.

Timmy came in just after six. I gave him the two checks, one from Truckman for two hundred and one from Stuart Blount for two thousand.

"Blount is the anonymous donor? Holy mother! Well, you never know."

I said, "Make sure he and the missus receive a thank-you note. They're attentive to the social niceties and expect others to respond in kind. Have the alliance mail it to his office."

"Done. This is terrific. They'll make a great addition to our fat-cat hit list."

"Mm."

"Before we go to Trucky's tonight, a bunch of us are dropping by the Rat's Nest. Do you want to come along? Nordstrum needs the business-he's strung out and afraid he's not going to weather this thing financially. We can buy his booze and cheer him up."

"I don't know-oh, I guess so. That place is liable to grate on my Presbyterian sensibilities."

He'd been getting a beer from the refrigerator. He stopped and stood there with the refrigerator door open. "Tell me about your Presbyterian sensibilities," he said. "I want to hear this. How do they work? Describe them. First ethical, then esthetic."

"That's too fine a distinction for me to make. To me it's all one big ball of wax."

He said, "That's about it." He shut the door, popped the tab on his Bud. "You'll trick people and use people, Don, but when it comes to a little mindless fucking around, where everybody's motives are up front and nothing of emotional consequence gets invested, you put on your big moral floor show for the uplift and edification of the sinners." A swig of beer and a muttered,

"Damn Protestants."

"Oh, is that what I just did? I must have missed it. I would have described what I just said as an expression of mildly queasy indifference. Anyway, I haven't seen you trotting out there to Nordstrum's blurry grotto to get your pants pulled down by some inky form with trench mouth and cold hands- somebody's idea of a fun evening in the suburbs. Or have you?"

"Of course not. I might go to hell."

"Ahhh."

"But that's not the point. We were talking about you and your bizarre double standard."

"You mean Harold Snyder. He's what this is all about. That really got to you, didn't it? I'm never going to hear the end of it, never. When you're seventy-seven and I'm seventy-nine-"

"Eighty."

"— whatever. When we're both tottering on the brink, you're going to be reminding me, aren't you? You'll have it put on my goddamn gravestone: 'Donald Strachey-1939-2009- Once Fucked a Drag Queen.' If you're so worried about poor Harold's ass, go comfort her, take care of her. Put her in a convent, spend the night with her, get her a screen test. You figure it out. You deal with her. Me, I'm sick of thinking about it."

"Don, it's not Harold's ass I'm concerned about, it's her mind you fucked. She's pathetic and vulnerable, and you used her in an extremely hurtful way. It's the worst thing I know of that you've ever done."

I said, "That's not the way it happened. Not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

I thought about it. I said, "I'm not telling you. But it's not exactly the way you think it was. I'll tell you about it- Christmas eve." I didn't know why I said that. He'd remember it, the bastard, and bring it up while we were trimming the tree; he had the memory bank of a Univac 90/60.

He said, "I'm prepared to take your word for it that the thing you did wasn't as cruel as it seemed

— or as cruel as you seemed to think it was when you got home last night. It's you as much as Harold that I'm concerned about. I like you less when you don't like yourself."

"Timmy-I'll deal with this. I'll have to, I know. But you're not making it easier. You're coming on like Cardinal Cooke, and it's your least appealing side."

That got to him. He made a face and said, "Boy, could I use a shower." He went into the bathroom. Soon I heard the water running, and I decided that I could use one, too.

I'd been to the Rat's Nest once, just after it opened in midsummer. The place had been packed that night, with most of the revelers busy positioning themselves for a better view of the spaced-out nude go-go boy-"Raoul, from Providence, R.I."-as if they'd never seen a male body before. Not much had gone on in the back room that night; there'd been an itchy-tittery who's-going-to-go-first atmosphere that Timmy and I had been even more uncomfortable with than news of the goings-on that got started the following weekend.

Now the mood was different. The dancer-"Tex, from Pittsburgh"-was wearing gym shorts and a tank top, and could have been just another local shaking off some tension on the dance floor on a Wednesday night. During Stephanie Mills's "Put Your Body In It," Tex yawned.

There were only about thirty people in the place when we arrived at ten-fifteen; twenty or so in the main room, another ten in the murky back room, standing around in their jeans, or leather, or preppie outfits, like dummies in a gay wax museum. Timmy went off to the men's room, and I ordered two bottles of Bud from the back-room bartender, who was wearing tight white pants and red suspenders. I asked him if he expected any more trouble from the Bergenfield police, and he said no, Nordstrum's lawyer had said they'd probably have a temporary restraining order by the next morning.

I said, "What about tonight?"

He shrugged.

An odd, deep voice from behind me: "Hi there, lonesome stranger. Buy you a drink?" A deft finger between my buttocks. Oh Christ. I turned.

Timmy, working his eyebrows like Groucho. I pulled his face toward mine, then stopped. "Oh, it's you. They've really gotta put some lights in this place. Never know who you might do in here."

He said, "I'm Biff from Butte. Or, is it Beaut from Biff? Or, Butt from Boeuf. Whoever I am, wanna dance?"

We did, to Ashford and Simpson's "Found a Cure" and then Jackie Moore's "This Time, Baby."

As a third number was starting, the alliance crowd came in and moved in a kind of raggedy undersea school across the dance floor and into the back room. We joined them.

Two of them had just met with Jim Nordstrum, the Rat's Nest owner, and his lawyer, who had assured one and all that right was on their side.

Timmy said, "Fine, but what about Judge Feeney?"

They said the lawyer had been vague about him.

Lionel the truck driver stumbled in, already in his cups. Lionel was a notorious barrel-chested, middle-aged sex maniac in work pants, leather, and a Hopalong Cassidy hat with a Teamsters button stuck on it who ordinarily hung out at the Terminal Bar in the wee hours but somehow had made his way out Western Avenue to what he must have heard was his more natural habitat.

He moved through the dim green light uttering his famous ungrammatical greeting: "Hey, anybody wanna get blowed?"

Timmy said, "Are we supposed to raise our hands, or what?"

He came our way, and there were a few faint-hearted "Hi, Lionels" as people turned away from him. He swayed over and maneuvered himself onto a barstool.

Timmy said, "I think we should arrange a public debate between Lionel and Lewis Lapham. It'd make a terrific fundraiser."

I looked at him. "Who's the cruel one among us now?"

Sheepishly he said, "Yeah. You're right."

I could see his mind working. I said, "Okay, spit it out. Then that's all. What were you thinking?"

He said, "Well then, how about a debate between Lionel and George F. Will?"

"I figured."

A man of around my age in tan pants and a windbreaker got up from the bar and walked past us.

He pushed open the fire door to my right and a uniformed police officer stepped through the opening. He was followed by a man who looked like a fireman wearing an auxiliary policeman's badge, then two others in work boots and army fatigues.

Timmy said, "Oh, look, it's the Village People!"

A second uniformed officer appeared through the doorway from the main room and walked to the bar. Lionel the truck driver turned toward him and glared. The first officer who had entered stood in the center of the room and instructed us to face the walls and place our hands against them high up. His tone was not menacing. It was that of a coach or gym teacher. He clapped his hands a couple of times, and I half-expected him to yell, "Twenty laps!"

The one who frisked me was the plainclothesman, the customer in the windbreaker.

I said, "Am I accused of a crime?"

"Shut up, faggot!"

I concentrated on a spot on the wall in front of my face and thought, don't do it. There's nothing to be gained. Don't do it. Later.

Now I knew.

He yanked out my wallet and had me hold it open to my driver's license while he wrote down my name and address.

Over my shoulder I saw two big men being led away, the bartender and Lionel the truck driver.

Jim Nordstrum came in from the main room and leaned against the bar, watching. The officer in charge glanced his way, then ignored him. When everyone had been frisked and our IDs taken down, the officer announced, "Everybody outta here! Get moving!"

People moved toward the exits as if a bomb had been discovered. No rebellious Stonewall queens, these.

Several of us gathered around my car in the parking lot and watched as other customers hurried to their cars and drove off. Lionel and the red-suspendered bartender were sitting in the backseat of a Bergenfield police department cruiser. The bartender stared straight ahead; Lionel was slapping the side of his head as if he had a bug in his ear. A third man, who'd been carrying a joint in his shirt pocket, we later learned, was hustled into the backseat beside them.

The officer in charge came out; Jim Nordstrum walked beside him, in handcuffs. As the officer opened the door of an unmarked sedan and shoved Nordstrum in, I walked over and: said, "Jim, we'll call your lawyer." He looked at me with blazing eyes and nodded once. The cop, whose badge I could now see read Chief, said to me: "Your pal here attempted to bribe a police officer.

That's a serious offense."

A minute later they were gone. We went inside, and one of the alliance officers phoned Nordstrum's lawyer. We rode back into Albany in charged silence.