Death trick

4

I was up by ten. Timmy snored like a mastodon while I ran four eggs and a pint of orange juice through the blender. I showered, found some of my clothes among Timmy's clean laundry, left a note, and drove over to Ontario Street. My job was to find Billy Blount, but it wasn't going to hurt if I learned more about the sort of man he'd been attracted to. In fact, I guessed there were even better reasons for looking into Steve Kleckner's life, but I didn't know yet what they were.

Stanley Loggins, in green chinos and a lavender T-shirt, was pixielike, with bright pink eyes and buck teeth. His lover, Angelo, was big and beer-bellied and had hands like hair-covered coal shovels. They sat side by side on an old brown sofa with antimacassars marching up and down its back and arms, a Woolworth's Mary-with-a-bleeding-heart hung on the wall above.

Angelo eyed me suspiciously and swigged from a quart bottle of Price Chopper creme soda while Stanley told me about Steve Kleckner.

"Yeah, we roomed together for two years," Loggins said, his girlish voice cracking like an adolescent's. "Until I met Angelo, and then Steve moved down to Hudson Avenue. Jesus, if I hadn't met Angelo, maybe Steven would still be here in this place- alive!" His little eyes bugged out.

Angelo said, "Fuck that shit!"

"Angelo, I wasn't accusing you, for chrissakes, now come off it!"

"Daaaaa!"

I said, "Tell me about Steve."

"Oh, he was such a nice boy, rea-l-l-ly nice. Very into music and all. Music was his way of life like Patti LaBelle, ya know? I just can't believe it that Steven is-that he doesn't even exist anymore. Last week he was here, and this week he's just- gone. I never knew anybody who died before. Except my stepfather, and he was such an asshole." Angelo looked away in disgust.

"Were you and Steve good friends?"

"Oh, yeah, Steven and I were very tight. I mean, we lived together and went out and all. Till I met this ol' grump here. Mister stay-at-home. But Steven and I still kept in touch, gabbed on the phone and all. Steven usually called on Monday and we'd yackety-yack about the weekend. He'd tell me all the dirt that went on and all, who's doing who. God, I can't believe he's never going to call again, I just can't believe it. Gives me the creeps. Iggghhh!" He shivered.

"Who were Steve's other friends?"

"Oh, the jocks, I guess. He hung around mostly with the jocks. Steven was very into music, ya know?"

"I know. What about Billy Blount? Do you have any reason to believe he and Steve had known each other before the night Steve died?"

Loggins looked away. "No. Steven always told me about all his hot tricks. No. He would of said." He glared back at me as if

I were somehow responsible for what had happened to his friend. "Ya know, I don't even know who this Blount asshole is!"

"Right. I've yet to meet Blount myself. What about Steve's love life? Did he ever have a lover?"

Loggins screwed up his face. "Sa-a-yyy-can I ask you something personal?"

"Sure."

"Are you gay?"

Angelo watched me, ready to pounce if I didn't come up with the right answer. Except I wasn't sure what the right answer was. I said, "I wouldn't have been run out of Blooms-bury Square,"

Angelo's lips moved as he repeated this to himself.

Loggins tittered and said, "Well, personally I've never been to San Francisco, but I get your message."

I said, "Who were the men in Steve Kleckner's life that he talked about?"

"How much time have you got, about a day?" He tittered again. "No, I'm just kidding. Really.

Steven played around some, like we all do-I mean used to do." He squeezed Angelo's thigh; Angelo smirked lewdly. "Steven never got into anything heavy, though. Not like Angelo and I.

He went mostly for one-nighters, ya know? No hassles and all. Except that gets so-o-o tired after a while, right, Angie?" Angelo belched theatrically. Loggins said, "Do you have a lover, Donald?"

"Yes, I do. His name is Timmy."

"Well, I hope he's like Angelo."

"Thank you. What about Mike Truckman? I heard he and Steve were involved at one time."

"Yeah, Steven and Mike were getting it on for a while, right after Steven started working out there. But that was ages ago. Two years ago, it must have been. It didn't work out. Mike was too old for Steven. I kept telling him that. Steven liked to have a good time, dance and go out and all, but Mike's idea of partying was to sit home and get sloshed and then grope around and fall asleep. The pits, Steven said. And Mike was so-o-o jealous. Steven couldn't even look cross-eyed at another guy without Mike having a conniption fit. Steve broke it off finally, but they stayed tight, even what with Mike boozing it up more and more and starting to fool around with whores. Really sleazy lays, Steven said they were. Even still, Steven really loved Mike, I think. But more like a father. He looked up to him and all. Used to, anyway."

"Used to?"

"Yeah. It was sad. Something bad happened. A bummer."

"What was it?"

"I don't know. Steven wouldn't tell me. Just that it was something incredibly tacky that Mike did.

About three weeks ago. It really got Steven down, whatever it was."

"Steve didn't say anything about what it was? Nothing at all?"

"Steven said he'd tell me about it sometime, and I know he would've, but-but-oh, God! — poor Steven!" It had caught up with him. He shuddered once, lowered his head, and began to tremble.

Angelo pulled Loggins against his chest, looked at me, and said, "Fuck this shit!"

I waited until Loggins had recovered and gulped down some of the creme soda Angelo shoved at him. I said, "Just one last thing. What about Steve's family? Was he in touch with them?"

"No-" He snuffled. "They were on the outs." Angelo pulled a Valle's Steak House napkin from his back pocket, and Loggins blew his nose in it. "Steven's folks live over in some hick place in Rensselaer. Last Christmas Steven told his sister he was gay, and she told his mom, and his mom asked him if it was true, and Steven said yes, and you know what Steven's mom said? She started screaming and she says, 'Oh, please, Steven, please don't have an operation! Please don't have an operation!' And then his dad came home and threw him out. He had to thumb back to Albany, and it took him three rides to get back here. He never did figure out what his mom meant by don't get an operation. Sex change, I guess. Who the fuck knows."

Angelo said, "He shouldna told his sister. Bitch! Never tell a woman nothin'!"

"Oh, Angelo, you're such a sexist asshole! Quit being such a fucking pig, would you pu-leez!"

"Daaaaa!"

At one I put four Price Chopper frozen waffles in Timmy's toaster oven. He handed me his old Boy Scout hatchet and said he'd pass. I said, "Fuck this shit," and ate an apple. Timmy said he'd do dinner at seven and had to spend the afternoon at the laundromat.

I drove over to Morton. Summer was back, and the air was hazy and sweet. High mackerel clouds swam across the sky over the South Mall, recently renamed the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in memory of the man who had caused the great granite bureaucratic space station on the Hudson to happen. Back at the apartment the heat, inexplicably, was on. Hurlbut must have forgotten his golf bag and come back. I opened all the windows.

I checked my service-no calls-then dialed the number for Chris. There was no answer. Frank didn't answer either, but I reached Billy Blount's other friend, Huey, and told him I was looking for Billy. He said he doubted he could help but that I could drop by around three. His voice sounded familiar.

I did sit-ups and push-ups, jogged around Lincoln Park for half an hour, then showered, put on jeans and a sweat shirt, and drove back up Delaware. Huey lived on Orange Street, between Central and Clinton, in one of Albany's two mainly black neighborhoods. As I climbed the front-porch stairs of the small frame house with its three or four tiny apartments, I knew I'd been there before.

"I thought I rec-a-nized that sexy voice," he said. "How you been, baby?" A smile spread across his shiny dark face, and his eyes were bright with sly pleasure. He had on a vermilion tank top and cutoff shorts and was barefooted. He'd told me during the night I'd spent with him a year or so back that his tight, neat, muscular body was "the finest in Albany." He'd said it with delighted satisfaction and no trace of embarrassment, and for all I knew, which was a good bit, he might have been right.

In Huey's living room I sat on the old, worn, boxy couch with little strands of silver running through the black upholstery. I said, "Your voice sounded familiar, too, except I could have sworn the voice belonged to a guy I once knew named Philip Green."

He threw his head back and laughed. "Did I call myself that? Yea-hhh, well. You know how it is, baby."

I knew. "I'd hoped I'd run into you again," I said loudly.

He turned down the volume on Disco 101-M's "Pop Music" was on-and sat on the chair that matched the couch. He smoothed out a fresh white bandage that was wrapped around his exceedingly well developed upper arm and said, "That would have been sweet. We sure had a real good time, as I remember, Ronald."

"Donald."

Laughing, he leaned over and squeezed my ankle. "Can I get chu somethin' to drink? A Coke or a glass of wine or somethin'- Dahn-ald?"

"You can. A Coke."

He went into the kitchenette. There was no evidence that anyone other than Huey was staying in the apartment. I could see into the small, windowless bedroom. The bed was made. The clothes piled atop the old dresser beside it looked like garments Huey could get away with wearing, but not Billy Blount.

"Too bad this ain't a social visit, Donald." He handed me a Coke in a Holiday Inn glass. "Even if you are a cop." He sat down and looked at me.

I said, "I'm a private detective," and showed him my license.

"No shit." He examined the card carefully. "How you become one of these dudes? Take a test?"

He handed it back.

"You have to have three years' experience as a police, army, or agency investigator, pass an exam, and hock the family jewels to get licensed and bonded."

"Must be in-ter-estin'. You been a cop?" His smile was strained.

"Army intelligence."

"Ooooo, a spy! That sexy."

"That was a while ago. Now I'm on my own and I'm looking for Billy Blount."

"Yeah. You said." He lit a Marlboro. "How come you lookin' round my place, Donald? I don't truck wit no desss-per-ah-does."

"Your name was written on Billy's phone book."

"Yeah. Sergeant Bowman come around, too. Asshole come out here a hell of a lot quicker than the cops who come last night. Took them suckers half an hour to show up after I called, and meanwhile I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig. Some sumbitch busted in here to rip me off, and when I caught him, he cut me. See that?" He raised the bandaged arm. "Eight stitches! Guess I was lucky, though. Coulda been ninety-two. This is what you call your high-crime neighborhood, Donald."

"It was a burglar who cut you?"

"Yeah, I know about the routine. First the dude calls to see if I'm home. This one called twice last night. I answer the phone and there's no one sayin' anything and he hangs up. Checkin' to see if I'm home, which I am, with a friend I run into earlier over at the Terminal. Then around two in the mornin' my friend leaves and I guess this dude's watchin' the house, see, and thinks it's me goin' out, and he comes in that winda there. I was just goin' to sleep and I hear this fucker and I get up and I'm gonna jam his nose right up into his brain, see-I do martial arts, right? — except the guy's got a knife and he cuts me and it's so dark he's back out the winda-head first, I think

— before I can kick his balls up his ass. There'd a been lights on, they'd of carried that dude outa here on a stretcher. Anyways, I think he ain't comin' back. Not if he don't want his neck busted off."

"Did you get any kind of look at him?"

"Too dark. Average-size guy, and I'm pretty sure white with light hair. But I doubt I'd rec-a-nize him on the street. Guess I better get the lock fixed on that winda. Been meanin' to for six months."

"Yeah, you should. Look, I might be way off base, but-how do you know this was a burglar?"

A bewildered look. "I don't get chu, Donald."

"Well-it's like this. You know that Steve Kleckner was stabbed in his apartment in the middle of the night just a week ago. The people who know him don't think Billy Blount committed the murder, and it's possible-do you see what I'm saying?"

He blinked, and I could see the icy tremor run through him. He said, "Nah. Nah, no way. That bad stuff go on all the time around here, Donald. Shee-it. Nah. I don't believe it was the freak who done that murder. This was just some shit-ass dude after my stereo. I didn't even know that Kleckner boy. Had nothin' to do wif his friends or anything."

"But you know Billy Blount. The, uh, intruder-he didn't look like Billy, did he?"

He gave me a cold, hard look and said, "No. Billy I'd know. I know Billy."

"Sure. You would. And you're right; there's probably no connection. But you'll get that lock fixed, right?"

"Sure, Donald. If it'll put your mind at ease." He grinned. "Wouldn't want chu to worry about ol'

Huey unless you was gonna be here to worry 'bout me in person and we could cheer us bofe up.

Ain't that right, baby?"

"Just get the lock fixed," I said, ambivalence swelling like a doughy lump in my lower abdomen.

"Knowing that you're safe will cheer me up enough for now."

He chuckled.

I said, "Fill me in on Sergeant Bowman's visit. What did you tell him?"

His eyes narrowed, and I could see the perspiration forming on his forehead. "I told him, 'Yassuh, no suh, yassuh, no suh.'" He laughed quietly. "Motherfucker called me some nasty names." He dragged deeply on his cigarette.

I said, "I'll meet Bowman on Monday. He sounds like a treat. I take it Billy hasn't been in touch."

"Unh-unh. I wisht he did. I could help him out."

"How?"

"Hide him out wif some friends of mine."

I said, "It's obvious you're among the many who don't think Billy did it-killed Steve Kleckner."

He contained his impatience with my belaboring what was plainly absurd to him. "No. Not do a thing like that. Not Billy. Now, what else do you want to know, Donald. Just don't ask me no more questions that might make me mad. Okay, baby?"

"Then tell me what you know about Billy. If he didn't do it, I want to help get him out of this. But I'm going to have to find him first."

Huey slouched in his chair and fingered the bandage on his arm. "Billy's a sweet man, that's what. One of the sweetest men I've had the pleasure to meet around Albany. Present company excepted." He leered pleasantly. "We've had some very enjoyable times together, Billy and me."

"Did you go out together much?"

"Sometimes we'd go dancin'. At the Bung Cellar, or Trucky's if we could get a ride. Mostly we'd just hang around his place, or he'd come over here. Just listenin' to music, and smokin', and lovin'-that's what we bofe liked mostly. A sweet, nice man."

"When did you last see Billy?"

"'Bout a week before the thing happened. Spent the night right there on that couch you're sittin' on. He gets up Sunday mornin', says so long, and that's the last I seen him. I was about to call him when I seen on TV what'd happened."

Billy Blount the sofa fetishist. "Is this a hide-a-bed?"

"Yeah, folds out. Billy couldn't stand my bedroom. No windows. Freaked him out. Made him all antsy. I figgered maybe he'd done time wunst, but when I axed him he said unh-unh. Wouldn't of figgered, anyways. Billy went to college. I done ten months at Albany County Jail myself-told Billy about it and it made him mopey. Made me mopey, too, baby! I was seventeen. Breakin' and enterin'. And I'll tell you, Donald, I ain't gone back in. Them places fulla booty bandits! Me, I like to pick and choose. I'da choosed Billy any day. A sweet man, Billy."

I asked him where he and Billy had met.

He chuckled. "Where did you and me meet, my man?"

The great outdoors. "Who are his other friends in Albany? Anybody he might go to or get in touch with?"

He looked a little hurt with the idea Blount might have closer, more relied-upon friends. He shrugged. "Maybe some guy name-uh Mark who rode us out to Trucky's coupla times. White dude wif whiskers. And Frank somebody. I never seen that one-I think Billy mostly just bought dope from him. Got some for me wunst when my dealer was busted.

"And then there was this chick, I think, too. We run into this chick up at McDonald's on Central one night, and Billy goes out to the parkin' lot for about an hour, it seemed like. I seen 'em outside in her little V-dubya buggy. I got pissed and tired of waitin' and went out and stood, and then Billy come along. Says she's the finest woman he knows and if things was different he'd marry her. How about that, huh?"

"What was her name? Do you remember?"

"He didn't say. Just called her his lifeboat, or lifesaver, or somethin'. Billy's a trip. I'da never figgered he went for women, but you never know. I've even been known to indulge myself every now and again, though naturally I try to keep it under control. How about yourself, Donald?" He grinned.

I said, "These days, half the human race is enough for me. Though, I have a lover now."

"Ahh, that's nice, Donald. Truly. I had a lover wunst. Melvin. He was my true, true love. We was together for five bee-yoo-tee-ful years. Lotta good times-till the Lord called Melvin away."

"Oh, no. He died?"

"Shee-it, no. Become a preacher. Took Jesus as his lover. And I just couldn't compete with that man, baby! Melvin's out in Buffalo now savin' black folks' souls. Oh, he still pays me a visit from tahm-tew-tahm. Just on very special o-kay-zham." He laughed and shook his head at something that went beyond Melvin.

I said, "What about Chris? Did Billy ever mention a guy named Chris?"

Huey lit another Marlboro. "No. That one don't ring a bell. Who's Chris?"

"I don't know yet. The name was written on Billy's phone book. How about Eddie? This would be someone Billy knew once that he'd be happy about running into again."

He shook his head. "No. No Eddie I can think of. Don't know who that would be. Billy had folks, of course. That's who you workin' for, right?"

"Yes."

"They wasn't close. It's good they helpin' the boy now he needs a helpin' hand. I'm glad."

"Did Billy ever talk about them?"

"Nothin' much. 'Cept they carried on like the wrath o' the Lord about him bein' a ho-mo-sex-ual."

"We all have parents. Mine don't know. They've let it be known they'd rather not."

He dragged on his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. "My folks don't much mind-or don't let on, anyways. I got a gay uncle who's a big shot at Grace Baptist down home in Philly.

My brothers is straight. They don't hassle me. I been lucky, I guess." He looked at me and smiled. "Say, get chu another Coke? Some wine? A smoke?"

It would have been nice to linger with Huey-for about forty-eight hours. Disco 101 was playing Earth, Wind and Fire's "The Way of the World."

I said, "No. Thanks. I'm working. Another time."

He said, "Mmm-hmmm. Another time. You got it, baby."

I gave him my business card. "Call me if you hear anything, right? And get that lock fixed."

"You're on. You find Billy and bring him back, hear? You want to get in touch, I'm at Burgess Machine Shop-I'm a welder-and nights you'll find me out and around."

I got up to leave.

"Huey, one more question. Tell me if it's too personal. Ready? Here it comes. What's your last name?"

His face lit up, and he came over and hugged me. "Brownlee. Hubert Brownlee. Think you can remember it?"

I said, "Until I get to the car. Then I'll write it down."

We kissed for a minute or two, and then I maneuvered my way down the stairs like a drunk, made it to the Rabbit, got out my pad, and wrote: "Huey Redmond." But it didn't look right.