Death trick

2

Back on Central I checked my service, which had a one-word message from Brigit: "books." I flipped through my desk calendar, picked a page in mid-December, and wrote: "Brigit- books."

The Times Unions for the past four years were stacked on the floor next to my file cabinet, and I hefted the top unyellowed half-dozen onto my desk. Starting with the Sunday, September 30 edition, I clipped all the stories on the murder of Steven Kleckner, which had been discovered on the morning of the twenty-ninth, and which now, six days later, Stuart and Jane Blount's renegade son stood accused of having committed.

The discovery story rated two columns on page one, a photo of the deceased, and a picture of two detectives standing in front of a house. Kleckner was clean-shaven and done up in a suit jacket and tie-in what looked like a high-school-graduation photo-with a bony, angular face and a big, forced, toothy smile. He had a look of acute discomfort; maybe he'd hated high school, or maybe the photographer had just said, "C'mon, son, smile like your girl friend just said she was ready to go all the way," or maybe his shirt collar was too tight. High-school photos were always hard to read. The police detectives in the other photo looked grave, and one was pointing at a doorknob.

No mention was made in either the caption or the story of the significance of this gesture. I made a note to "ck sig drnb." It was possible the doorknob was simply thought by someone to have been vaguely photogenic and redolent of criminal activity.

Steven Kleckner, aged twenty-four, the main story said, had been discovered stabbed to death in his bed at 7:35 the previous morning by Albany police. The department had received an anonymous call from a man who'd said only: "He's dead-I think Steve is dead," and given the address. Police had been admitted to the basement apartment on lower Hudson Avenue by the landlady, who lived on the first floor of the rundown brick building, one of the few in the neighborhood that hadn't yet been urban-renewed.

A long kitchen knife, its blade blood-soaked, had been found on the floor beside the bed on which the victim lay. There was no sign of a struggle having taken place or of forced entry into the "inexpensively furnished apartment."

Kleckner was identified as a disc jockey at Trucky's Disco on Western Avenue who had come originally from the village of Alps in Rensselaer County. He had lived in Albany for six years and was "a bachelor." The article did not mention that Trucky's was a gay student hangout near the main SUNY campus and that Kleckner was well known and well liked among the regulars there. Twenty years earlier the headline would have been YOUTH SLAIN IN HOMO

LOVENEST, but discretion to the point of uninformativeness had set in at the Hearst papers. Or maybe it was just indifference.

The article did reveal that Kleckner, who had not worked at Trucky's on the fatal early morning but had spent most of the night there dancing and drinking with friends, was last seen leaving the bar around three A.M. "with a male companion."

A small sidebar contained remarks from people who knew

Kleckner back in Alps. His basketball coach said Kleckner was "a nice kid, polite, and kind of shy" who "didn't fool with drugs and didn't date much." The manager of a Glass Lake super-market where Kleckner once bagged groceries called him "sort of bashful" but "reliable and well brought up." Kleckner's older sister, Mrs. Damon Roach, of Dunham Hollow, spoke for the family: "He was just a mixed-up kid, and he didn't deserve a thing like this. It's too late for Steven, but maybe other boys will learn a lesson from it."

A day later, on Monday, October first, the Times Union said police had identified the "male companion" as William Blount, of Madison Avenue, "son of a prominent Albany financier," and were seeking his whereabouts so that he could be questioned. The same article said the medical examiner had estimated the time of Steven Kleckner's death as five-thirty A.M. and had "stated his belief the victim died instantaneously from a single puncture wound to his heart." Also, for the first time, word was out: traces of semen had been found in Kleckner's rectum. No forthright speculation was offered on how the substance had found its way there, but Billy Blount, the murder suspect, was now identified as a "one-time gay activist" who had been chairman of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Gay Alliance Political Action Committee in the early 1970s.

Follow-up stories over the next four days offered no new hard news, except that the DA's office now considered the evidence against Blount to be "conclusive," and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. Blount was being charged with second-degree murder.

The Times Union had not editorialized on the crime; moral inferences, for what they'd be worth, would have to wait. The paper did print a letter to the editor from Hardy Monkman, president of the Gay League Against Unfairness in the Media, taking the paper to task for its "insulting reference to a gay citizen's body" and including a "demand for equal time." Whatever that meant.

The gay movement still had strength in Albany, but occasionally one of its leaders came forth with a public utterance espousing a notion and couched in terms of such sublime daffiness that gay men and women up and down the Hudson Valley cringed with embarrassment or, as might have been the case with Billy Blount, said the hell with it and dropped out.

I slipped the clippings into a file folder which I marked Blount/Kleckner, then called Albany PD and learned that the detective handling the Kleckner murder was out of his office and wouldn't return until Monday.

I drove out Central to the Colonie Center shopping mall. At Macy's I picked out a black lamb's wool sweater and slipped it on under my jacket. I wrote out a check for forty dollars, signed it in a bold hand, and laid it on the counter in front of the bored clerk. He glanced at the check as if he'd seen one before, and then he glanced at me as if he'd seen one before. He looked familiar. I said, "Kevin-Elk Street?"

"My name is Kevin, but I live in Delmar. I don't believe we've met. No-no, I'm sure we haven't."

Like hell. "Sorry," I said. "I had you mixed up with a guy I once knew who'd drawn little valentines all over his buttocks with a ball-point pen. Inside the valentines were the initials of all the men who had visited there. It must have been another Kevin. Sorry. Funny story, though, isn't it?"

"H-yeah, ha ha."

The Music Barn record shop was along the main arcade of the shopping center, across from a long brick-and-blond-wood fountain that tinkled and hissed like an old toilet tank. Bernini in the suburbs. I spoke with the Music Barn clerk and was directed to the back of the store, where I found the manager opening up a carton of Donna Summer "On The Radio" LPs.

"She is that," I said.

"Who? Beg your pardon?"

"On the radio-Donna. Driving out here, I dialed around and picked her up on three stations.

'Dim All the Lights' once and 'No More Tears' twice. My own favorites, though, are 'Bad Girls,'

'Hot Stuff,' and 'Wasted.' Donna always cheers me up."

"She's okay, I guess, but she sure as heck isn't Patti Page." This was said with a straight face, no irony intended. He was losing his hair and looked to be a little older than I was, forty, and I guessed he'd had his good times twenty years ago and wasn't living his life backwards.

"I'm Donald Strachey and I'm a private detective." I showed him the photostat of my license.

"Billy Blount's parents want to help him, and they've hired me to locate him."

He felt around inside his beige V-neck sweater, brought out a pair of glasses with pink plastic rims, and studied the laminated card. "No kidding, a real private eye! Jeez. I'm Elvin John, pleased to meet you," he said and offered his hand. I wanted to say, Hi, Elvin, I'm Nick Jagger, but I supposed he'd heard it before. His moon face and blinky blue eyes showed confusion.

"Billy's parents are helping the police capture him? Golly, I sure don't understand that."

I wasn't certain I did either, but I said, "They think it's best that he turn himself in and then let a good lawyer handle it. They're probably right. Billy can't have much of a life as a fugitive."

"They don't think Billy actually killed that guy, do they?"

"Well-no. I take it you don't either."

Elvin John set down the stack of records and shook his head. "Nope, I don't. Billy's a messed-up guy, I suppose you could say, and he was kind of mad at the world. But actually kill somebody?

I'm no expert, but-holy cow, no. I don't believe it"

"You said Billy's messed up. How so,"

He gestured, and I followed him. We went into an alcove, where John slid onto a metal stool, retrieved a cigar from behind a carton of plastic bags, and unwrapped it. "When I say messed up, I don't mean what you think I mean." He gave me a knowing look and fired up the cigar, which definitely was not Cuban, though still possibly communistic. Albanian, maybe. "I don't know how broad-minded you are," John said, "but I'm tolerant of minorities myself, and I wasn't talking about Billy being a homo or anything like that." He said it with a trace of smugness, a challenge to my liberal sensibilities.

I said, "Good, I'm gay myself."

His pale eyebrows shot up. "Oh yeah? Jeez, you don't look it!"

"Well, you don't look Jewish either."

"I'm not. I'm Lutheran."

"Well then, you don't look Lutheran. You look-Methodist."

"I'm half. My father's a Methodist."

"I can always spot one," I said. "There's something about the way they move."

He gave me a wary look.

I said, "In what way was Billy Blount messed up?"

"Oh, just a little bit paranoid-well, not paranoid, actually-defensive. Always ready with some lip. Always thinking you were going to criticize him."

"Were you?"

"Heck, no. Billy was always a good worker-clean, neat, polite. And always on time, even when he showed up looking a little the worse for wear, which he sometimes did on Monday mornings.

I asked him once when he was looking like an old sleepyhead if he'd had a heavy date the night before, and he said yeah, the date's name was Huey and he was a real hunk. Said it just like it was a woman, except he said 'hunk.' Lord, I didn't know what to say."

"If it had been a woman Billy had gone out with, what would you have said?"

"Oh heck, I dunno. 'Get any?'"

The quaint observances of the straight life. I said, "What was Billy defensive about? What would set him off?"

"Oh, just the one thing, really. The first time he told me he was gay, I won't forget that. I made a crack about a swishy kid who came in-nothing derogatory, you know, just a joke-and Billy really lit into me. He said he was gay and he'd appreciate it if I kept my homophobic thoughts to myself. That's what he called it, 'homophobic'-I'd never heard that word before. I'm from Gloversville, and nobody back home ever uses that word. Anyway, I said I was sorry, but he thought I meant I was sorry he was gay. He started carrying on like I was some kind of Hitler and I started to get mad, but then some customers came in and we dropped it. The subject came up again every once in a while, and to tell you the truth, I was sort of interested in hearing Billy talk.

He's quite a speech-maker. Of course, I didn't always agree with him. He's just too much of a radical. Golly, I don't think most people give a hoot about anybody else's sex life, do they? C'mon now, admit it."

"Some don't," I said. "But you run into a surprising number who consider homosexuals as dangerous as the Boston strangler, but not as wholesome. This can make you edgy. Has Billy been in touch at all during the past week?"

"I've got his paycheck, but he didn't pick it up. He didn't show up Monday morning, and at first I was plenty ticked off. I called his home and he wasn't there, sick or anything. And then my wife called-she'd seen the paper-and she said Billy was wanted for murder. Gee whiz, I just couldn't believe it!"

"And you still don't."

He flicked his cigar ash in a tuna can. "No, not hurt somebody like that. He wouldn't, as far as becoming really violent. Billy's a talker. If he got mad, he'd just make a big wordy speech."

"It runs in his family."

"'Homophobic' Whew."

"Did any of Billy's friends ever come in? I've got to locate some of them. I need names."

"Sometimes there were people he knew, but Billy never introduced any of them. It would have been nice if he had. After all, everybody's welcome here. You know, come to think of it, the one time I saw Billy get really upset, I mean lose control and just go bananas, wasn't with me at all. It was when a guy came in Billy thought he knew, but it turned out to be somebody else. This guy was just going out the door when Billy came out of the back room and saw him and started yelling Eddie! Eddie! and running after the guy. The kid turned around and looked at Billy like he was some kind of weirdo, and when Billy saw it wasn't who he thought it was, he came tearing back here and started cursing and throwing stuff around like he was a little bit nuts. Then he sat down and started shaking like a leaf and said he was sick, so I sent him on home. Billy scared the bejesus out of me that day. I'd never seen him act like that before."

"When did this happen?"

"Maybe six, eight months ago."

"Billy thought it was someone named Eddie? That was the name he called?"

"Yeah, but when I asked him who Eddie was, he said it was none of my effing business. Except he said the word. You know the one."

"Right. But you don't recall any other names of Billy's friends, other than Huey?"

"No, they'd come in sometimes, but I never knew their names. They'd buy the disco stuff. That's what the younger ones go for, you know. I mean the, uh, middle-aged ones, too. I mean- some of them." Elvin John shifted on his stool and took on a confused look.

"What do the elderly ones go for?" I said. "I'll make a note of it for future reference."

His round face tightened. "It sounds to me like you're pulling my leg. In a mean kind of way. You gays are real cynical, aren't you? I've heard that."

"With role models like Oscar Wilde, what can you expect? If only Eleanor Roosevelt had come out." I handed him my business card. "If Billy gets in touch, do him a favor and contact me before you call the cops. They've been in, right?" He nodded. "Just give me a day's head start and then do what you think you have to."

"Well, um-I'll have to think about that. I don't want to get in any trouble. You know?"

"I know."

He inserted the card in a plastic sleeve in his wallet. "Say, where do you think Billy might be hiding?"

"I've no idea."

"I suppose he might be with some other homosexuals, wouldn't you say? They tend to stick together."

"Many do."

"Maybe Billy went to San Francisco."

"Could be. To seek sanctuary with the Mother Church."

Elvin John burst into laughter. "Oh, that's rich! The Mother Church! Like it was the Catholic religion, ha! ha! That really cracks me up! Is that what they call fag humor?"

"Yup."

I had a bowl of chowder and a grilled cheese at Friendly's, made a note to check out Huey and Eddie, then called Timmy from the pay phone. He'd just gotten in and said he had a frozen pizza in the oven, and why didn't I come over?

I said, "The homosexual gourmet at work. A sizable discretionary income, the leisure time to refine one's tastes and skills-it's a good life."

"Right, and I suppose you're calling from Elmo's-no, it's the dinner hour-Wendy's."

"Friendly's."

"You going out?"

"Around nine. Should I pick you up?"

"Yes, and I want to dance. I'm keyed up. I spent the afternoon with a roomful of Democratic county chairmen."

"How about Trucky's? You won't run into too many county chairmen out there. Only two that I know of. Anyway, I have to go there."

"Sure. You have to?"

"Business. The Blounts called. I'm on the case. To find their son."

"I knew it. I'm involved with a man with a reputation."

"They did mention that I had credentials the Pinkerton Agency couldn't necessarily come up with."

"But I thought you knew a couple of Pinkerton guys who-"

"Closet cases. Think of the business Pinkerton must be losing."

"Two, three cases a decade at least. Do you have any idea where the Blounts' son is?"

"No."

"He did it, though, right?"

"The police think so. I haven't formed an opinion. The only thing I know for sure is that it'd be hard growing up in the Blount household without thoughts of homicide at least passing through your mind."

I drove back into the city through the Friday evening commuter traffic. Billy Blount's apartment was on the third floor of a white brick Dutch colonial building on Madison near New Scotland. It was almost directly across the park from his parents' house.

The front door to the building was locked. I stood in the cold and peered through the heavy glass at the mailboxes in the entryway. One said "H. Pickering." A middle-aged man in a topcoat and knit cap came up the steps and inserted a key in the door. I followed him in and said, "Excuse me, isn't this Helen Pickering's place?"

Two bushy eyebrows went up. "Harry Pickering. I'm Harry Pickering. No other Pickerings live here. What do you want?"

I said, "I'm collecting for the Steve Rubell Defense Fund. Would you care to donate?"

A look of alarm. "You'd better leave, mister."

He shoved the door shut behind me and went up the stairs, glancing back once menacingly. I went and stood at the curb. Ten minutes later a woman in a trench coat and a pretty Indian silk scarf trudged up the stone steps with a bag of groceries. I tagged along.

"This Harry Pickering's place?"

"I think so," she said.

"You should get to know him. One of the sweetest guys you'll ever meet."

She smiled and entered a first-floor apartment, and I walked to the third. Blount's name was printed on a card on the door of 3-A. I went through the lock with a lobster pick that had been a wedding gift from Brigit's cousins Brad and Bootsy, and went in.

The living room, which looked out on Madison and the park, had off-white walls that were bare except for a big poster of the 1969 gay-pride march that had a lot of raised fists and looked like an ad for Levi Strauss. There was a daybed with a faded floral print coverlet and a couple of scruffy easy chairs. A bent coat hanger had replaced the antenna on a battered old black-and-white TV set. The newer, more expensive stereo amplifier and turntable sat on a board resting on cinder blocks, the speakers on either end. The two hundred or so records lined up on the floor between more cinder blocks were mostly disco, with some baroque ensemble stuff-Corelli, Telemann, Bach. No Judy Garland. The post-Stonewall generation.

The fake walnut bookshelves contained a row of old poli-sci textbooks, some fiction paperbacks

— Catch-22; Man's Fate; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, other good modern stuff-and a collection of current gay literature: Katz's Gay American History; Out of the Closets and into the Streets; Loving Someone Gay; others. There was a nongay fifteen-year-old assortment of radical opinion: Cleaver, Jackson, Sol Alinsky, various antiwar writers, and a dusty hardback copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth with a bookmark stuck a third of the way into it. He'd tried.

He also probably had some politically aware friends who'd come of age in the sixties, making them close to my age.

The small kitchen was clean and appeared to have been little used. The old Frigidaire contained only an egg carton with two eggs, a bottle of Price Chopper ketchup, a pint of plain yogurt, three bottles of Valu Pack beer, and a plastic bag with enough grass left in it for maybe one joint.

Another gay gourmand for Edmund White to visit

The bedroom, in the rear, was furnished with a mattress on a box spring; the bed was unmade.

On the floor beside the bed lay a copy of the August 27 Advocate, a half-full popper, a telephone, and a phone book. Four first names and numbers had been handwritten on the back cover of the phone book. I copied them down: Huey, Chris, Frank, Mark. Huey again. But no Eddie.

A single bureau was cluttered on top with coins, ball-point pens, old copies of the capital-district gay guide. No personal papers of any kind, not even an unpaid bill. Albany's finest had been there.

The dresser had three drawers. The top one was filled with summer clothing: tank tops, T-shirts, shorts, jeans. The bottom drawers were nearly empty, except for one ratty crew-neck sweater with a dirty collar and a pair of new corduroys with the price tag still stapled on-wrong size, lost the receipt.

The bathroom, a high-ceilinged pit with a dim light bulb about a mile up, had two racks clotted with dirty bath towels and appeared to be missing three items: toothbrush, toothpaste, razor.

When Billy Blount disappeared, he'd had his wits about him and probably knew where he was heading: to a wintery place where the population observed habits of oral hygiene and good grooming. This meant that I would not be searching for Billy Blount among the Ik people, which was a start

I switched off all the lights and was about to depart when Billy's phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, "Blount residence." No one spoke. I was aware, though, of a presence at the other end of the line. I said, "I'm Donald Strachey and I'm trying to locate Billy Blount for his parents, who want to help him. Who's this?" No response. Then, after a time, there came a sort of choked sound, and the line went dead.