Death trick

5

I reached Frank Zimka from a pay phone on Central. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and he said, "I can't talk to you," and hung up.

I tried Chris again. No answer.

Frank Zimka's address was in the phone book, so I drove over to his place on Lexington.

Zimka's name was taped to the mailbox of the basement apartment in an old brown shingled building. To get to it you had to crouch down and lower yourself into a concrete well under the wooden front steps. I knocked on the door glass, which rattled in its frame. The chipped porcelain doorknob hung from a string coming out of the spindle hole.

The door was slightly cockeyed-or the building around it was-and when Zimka opened it, it scraped across the threshold in jerks.

"Yes?"

His young body was slim and well proportioned in wrinkled khakis and a once-white T-shirt, and he looked at me suspiciously out of a haggard, peculiarly aged face. His eyes and curly hair were of an indeterminate color, as if something had caused the hue to weaken and fade out. The bone structure of his face was that of a classically handsome young man, but the lines of age were already set, and there was a shadowy tightness around his eyes. He looked like the result of some crazy secret Russian experiment in which a forty-five-year-old head had been grafted to the body of a man twenty years younger.

I said, "I'm Donald Strachey. If you're a true friend of Billy Blount, you'll want to talk to me. I don't believe he's guilty, and I'm going to help him get out of this." It was the first time I'd said this out loud, and when I said it, it sounded right.

Zimka gave me a blinking, blank-eyed look, as if I'd interrupted a restless sleep. "Billy's out of town. I don't know where he is." He started to scrape the door shut, then thought of something.

"Billy's not in jail, is he?"

"He hasn't been found. I hope to find him soon. Can I come in?"

He blinked some more and gazed down at the leaves and debris at our feet. Finally he said, "I'm crashing, but suit yourself."

He turned and went inside, and I followed, dragging the door shut behind us. Mark Deslonde had told me that Zimka dealt dope but not that he used it. Though it figured. I'd get what I could.

We entered a low-ceilinged living room with a gas space heater on a dirty linoleum floor, an old green couch, a discount-store molded-plastic chair with chrome legs, and a lamp with a shiny ceramic panther base on an end table. A tin ashtray was full of white filtered butts. I could see a small kitchen through a doorway, and the place stank mildly of garbage. Through another doorway I could make out an unmade double bed under a dim red light bulb.

Zimka sat on the plastic chair and lit a Kent with a butane lighter. I sat on the couch. I said, "You mentioned that Billy's out of town. How do you know? Has he been in touch?"

He dragged deeply on the cigarette, as if it might contain nourishment. His dazed look came back. "Who did you say you were? Tell me again."

I got out the card. "I'm a private detective, and Billy's parents have hired me to find him. I'm not a cop, and don't judge me by what you might think of the Blounts. I've met some of Billy's friends, and I think I share their opinion that he's innocent. Do you?"

He brought his heel up to the edge of the seat and hugged his leg. He lay his cheek against his knee and said quietly, "I wouldn't care what Billy did."

"I can see that you're very fond of him."

He tensed. "Maybe I am. You really would not understand."

"Would it help if I told you that I'm gay, too?"

"A gay-detective?"

He looked at me as if I'd told him I were a homosexual table lamp.

"I'm sure there are others. I've met two. Generally they don't announce it. It's been changing a little, but law enforcement is not one of the nation's bastions of enlightened social thought."

"That's funny," he said mirthlessly. "A fag real detective. I knew some of the TV detectives were gay." He mentioned a famous television sleuth who had once passed through Albany and caused a sensation at the Bung Cellar when it was still Mary-Mary's. "But he's just an actor," Zimka said glumly, "not a real detective. Actually, I probably should have done that myself. Been an actor. I'm a pretty good one-Billy could tell you about that." A hurt, bitter look.

"It sounds like a complicated relationship you have with Billy. Complicated and very close."

He sat motionless for a long time, blinking and breathing heavily. Then, his voice breaking, just barely audible, he said: "I love him."

He pressed his forehead hard against his knee and shut his eyes tightly. The hand with the cigarette was up next to his ear, and I watched it, afraid his hair might catch fire. The smoke curled up through a shaft of dusty sunlight coming in through a window with plastic sheeting over it.

I said, "Are you and Billy lovers?"

He looked up at me with wet, angry eyes. "That's not what I said. I said I love him."

"Right. I get your meaning. That's hard."

He said, "Yes. It is." He got up and stubbed out the cigarette in the dish full of butts. "You want a white? I could use one."

"How about a beer? It's hot again."

He went to the kitchen and came back with a Schlitz for me, a glass of water and a white pill for himself. A church key was on the end table, and he opened the bottle.

"This is a treat," I said.

He sat on the plastic chair, popped the white, and washed it down. Then he lit another cigarette.

"You know where he is," I said. "Don't you?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "No. I don't know where Billy is. I wish I did. Maybe I'd go there. Though I guess I wouldn't."

"But you know he's not in Albany."

"Billy's somewhere a long way from here. I know that. I lent him the money."

"The morning it happened?"

"Early in the morning. He came over here." He gave me a hard, questioning look. "You know, I don't even know you, do I? How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't know. It's a risk you're taking. You strike me as someone who takes risks."

He laughed sourly. "Yeah. I do. Look-if-if I tell you what I know-will you give Billy something from me when you find him?"

"Sure."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"And you won't tell the police?"

"I will not."

He sighed. "Okay," he said, working up to it, shifting, putting his feet on the floor. "Okay." He sucked on the cigarette. "This is what happened. As far as I know, this is what happened. I don't know all of what happened, right?"

He waited.

"Right," I said. "Just what you know."

"Okay. Okay, then. Well-around six that morning Billy came and banged on my door. I almost didn't wake up-I'd had a busy night." He gave me a look, and I acknowledged it. "Anyway, I let him in, and I could tell he was nervous and scared. He said-he said somebody had stabbed the guy he went home with-some new guy he met out at Trucky's-and the guy was dead. That he'd felt his pulse and he was sure the guy was dead."

"Billy saw the stabbing?"

"No. He didn't say that. But I guess he didn't see it, because he didn't know who had done it."

"A threesome. Maybe they'd picked up a third guy on the way to Kleckner's place."

"Billy didn't mention that. I don't think he would've, anyway. Billy's pretty straight in a lot of ways."

"How could he not see it happen if he was there?"

"Well, he must've-I don't know. Maybe he'd gone out."

"At five in the morning? And then come back?"

"You don't believe me."

"I believe you. What else did he say? Try to remember his words."

"He just said, 'Steve is dead, the poor guy is dead, and they're going to think I did it.' He said,

'They're going to try to lock me up.' He said that about a hundred times, I think. 'Shit, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key! They're gonna zap me good!' Billy was really freaking out, and by that time I was starting to feel pretty freaky, too."

"Had Billy been locked up before?"

"I think so. I don't know. He would never talk about it. Whatever it was."

"So he came here and said these things. What happened then?"

"He wanted me to lend him money."

"What for?"

"Well, for plane fare, what else?" A sharp, hyped-up tone now-the dexie had reached his bloodstream.

"Did you lend it?"

"Of course."

"How much?"

"All I had. Almost two-forty."

'Two hundred forty dollars? You keep a good bit of cash around."

"I deal. Grass, some hash, pills. And I hustle." He waited for me to react; I didn't.

"Where was Billy planning on flying to?"

"He wouldn't tell me. He said he had friends who he knew would help him, but they wouldn't want anybody to know where they were."

"What else did he say about them? These friends."

"That's all."

"What happened next?"

"I drove Billy to New York. He asked me to."

"New York City?"

"La Guardia. He was afraid he might see somebody he knew at the Albany airport. We stopped over at his place first and he brought a suitcase."

"What kind of car do you have? Describe it." I thought I believed him, but any kind of verification of his story wasn't going to hurt.

"I don't have a car. A guy I know lets me use his sometimes."

"At that time of day?"

"If I ask, this guy helps me out. He likes me. Do you?"

"Sure. I like you. Who's the owner of the car?"

Zimka rolled his big, drugged eyes. "You've heard of him. But I'm sure he'd prefer I didn't mention his name." He giggled.

"So you picked up the car."

"I called my friend first and then I walked over and got the car-this guy's place is right over by the park on Willett-and then we picked up Billy's suitcase and drove out to the Thruway."

"What did you talk about during the ride down?"

"Us. We talked about us."

"You and Billy."

"Yeah. Me and Billy. I told him how I felt about him. For the first time I told him how much he meant to me."

"Was he surprised?"

"Shit, no. He knew. Nobody could experience what I've experienced with Billy and the other person not know. There's sex, and then there is-mak-ing lov-v-v-ve." He impersonated Marlene Dietrich.

"In my experience it's not always that clear-cut," I said. "Are you saying that in bed you were making love and Billy was just getting it off?"

He grinned inanely. "I'm not going to tell you about that. It's humiliating. It's none of your business. When are you leaving?"

"Soon. How long have you known Billy, Frank?"

"Three years. Three years next month. November fourteenth." His cigarette had burned itself out; an inch of ash fell onto his pant leg and lay there. "I met him over at the Terminal one night,"

Zimka said. "He cruised me. And I really thought that night that he liked me. That he liked me."

"But he really-didn't?"

"It's too complicated. I'm not going to talk about this anymore. Not to you. You're about to leave.

It's too bad it'll never work with Billy and me. Really too bad. He's been great for me. Billy opened up a lot of positive things inside me I never knew were there. It's too bad. I can be a really fabulous person. Are you leaving now?"

"I'm sure you can be. I'll leave soon. What happened in New York?"

"New York?"

"At the airport. La Guardia."

"I dropped him off."

"What time?"

"Nine. Or nine-fifteen."

"You didn't go in with him?"

"He wouldn't let me. He said he'd send me the money, he thanked me, he gave me a little brotherly kiss. And then he- took off!" He imitated an airplane.

"You drove back to Albany then?"

"No."

"No?"

"Fucking Billy took every cent I had! I had no money for gas or tolls coming back." He giggled.

"So what I did was, I stopped in Scarsdale and called a guy I knew. Scared the royal blue shit out of him, too. He met me at a gas station and says, 'Nice to see you, Frank,' tosses me fifty, and took off in his BMW like I'm diseased. He's one of my admirers. He likes me."

Every life tells a story. "How old are you, Frank?"

"How old do you think?"

"Twenty-four."

"Twenty-six. My face looks fifty."

"I would have said thirty, or thirty-five. Still, maybe you should be looking into a somewhat more restful line of work."

"I'm a chemist," he said. "I graduated RPI cum laude."

"Why don't you work as a chemist, then? Or at something else in the sciences, or whatever, that you might be good at? Why not try it-maybe just something part-time to start out?"

His eyes were like baby spotlights now. He said, "I think I'll get a job as the president of MIT!"

He laughed idiotically.

I drank my beer. I asked Zimka whether he'd had any odd phone calls recently in which the caller didn't speak but just listened, or whether anyone had tried within the past week to break into his apartment. He looked at me as if I'd asked him if his hair were on fire, then giggled. I asked him if he knew who Chris was, and he summoned up the clarity of mind to say no. I asked him if he knew who Eddie was, and this caused another fit of uncontrolled hilarity. Finally I asked Zimka if the police had been in touch-his number was written on Billy Blount's phone book. He said yes, but he'd told them he was the Queen of the Netherlands and they hadn't returned.

I thanked him, gave him my card, and asked him to get in touch with me if he heard from Billy Blount or if the money Billy had borrowed was returned in any manner. He asked me to stop by on Monday to pick up something he said he'd have for Billy, and I said I would.

I shook his hand and left. He may or may not have noticed my going.