On the Other Hand, Death

14

I tracked down Mel Glempt at his apartment on Ontario Street. He repeated to me what he had told me on the phone earlier in the day, that he had been leaving the Green Room just before midnight and saw a tall man in a policeman's uniform mug and deftly blindfold a smallish fellow, and then quickly shove him into the back seat of a large dark-colored car, which immediately sped away heading west. Glempt said that in the dimly lit parking lot he had not gotten a look at the cop's face, nor at the person in the driver's seat. Glempt came up with no additional details. He said he had told his story to two police detectives who had come by, and that they had been "polite."

On out Central, I pulled into Freezer Fresh and asked a pale, long-haired kid with bad skin if Joey Deem was on that night. The kid blinked, took a step sideways, and said, "I'm him."

"You kidnap anybody?"

This time he stepped back and looked at me as if I were batty. "What?"

"I didn't think so. But let's try another one. Did you paint rude slogans on Dot Fisher's barn?"

He took another step back and banged into the nozzle of the chocolate glop machine. His eyes darted about to see who might be overhearing our exchange. A line was forming behind me. The kid's mouth opened in an attempt to form words.

"How about the threatening phone calls and the 'you-will-die' letter? Those yours too?"

"I don't know what you mean," he blurted, his mind trying to get a message through to his lower body to settle down, quit spasming.

"You want a new transmission for the T-bird in your front yard. It'll take you two years of busting your ass at this place to save enough money to pay for one. Your dad told you he'd buy you one if Dot Fisher sold out to Millpond and he could sell his property too. Mrs. Fisher was uncooperative and you decided to urge her in your unmannerly way to cooperate. Have I got it right?"

Deem stood there white-faced and bug-eyed, dumb with fright. A round-headed man with beads 63 of sweat on his brow hove into view. "What's the problem?"

"This kid says you don't have any guanabana," I said. "What kind of ice cream stand you running here, mister, you can't offer a customer who's sweaty and pooped an icy, refreshing nice big scoop of guanabana-flavored non-dairy food product?"

"What? What kind?"

"It's okay, Jose. No sweat, Chet. Albany isn't Merida or San Juan, even though it sure as hell feels like it tonight. I know when I'm diddled, so forget the guanabana. You got any Bingo-bango-bongo-I'm-so-happy-in-the-Congo ice?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Zat so? Well, it's not as if I'm being thrown out of the Savoy Grill, I suppose."

The queue behind me three-stepped neatly to the side as I turned and made my way back to the car.

"Say-hey, Crane! You owe me ten for locating the graffiti artist."

But now what?

Both Deem cars were gone, so I parked up the road and walked back to their house in the semi-darkness. I didn't find what I wanted in the garbage cans, so I grabbed a tire iron and pried open the trunk of the T-bird. There was the red spray paint. This was circumstantial, but Joey Deem seemed so shaky that he'd tell all once Ned Bowman dropped by, said boo, and asked for a sample of the kid's handwriting. Lacking a satchel of foam pellets, I tossed the can in the back of my car.

The tension at Dot Fisher's place had dissipated into a prickly listlessness. Bowman's unmarked car sat in the driveway by the barn, where the fresh white paint glistened stickily in the wet heat.

The red graffiti still showed through; another coat of white was going to be needed. A young sergeant in a sweatshirt and baseball cap sat in the passenger seat listening to the staticky jabbering of the police radio, to which he occasionally jabbered back. Above the house, stars were popping out across a blackening sky.

Dot was at the sink furiously scouring a pot as I went inside. Bowman gave me thumbs up.

I said, "What's that for?"

"We're set," he said, and winked.

Dot suggested I help myself to the mint tea, which I did.

"Where's McWhirter?"

"Asleep. Assaulting a police officer can wear you out."

"Maybe I'll do the same. Sleep, I mean. First things first."

He sniffed, tried to look surly.

I said, "Your people visited Mel Glempt. I saw him too. He struck me as a reliable witness."

"So I'm told. Except the man he saw was no police officer. I've looked into that. We're exploring other possibilities."

"Uh-huh. Maybe it was a bus driver. Has Timmy called?"

"Timmy?"

"Timothy J. Callahan. My great and good friend."

"No. You think I'm running a dating service around here, Strachey? Doing social work among the perverts?"

"I just asked if he'd phoned, Ned. Anyway, I'd never accuse the Albany Police Department of social work. Or even, in a good many cases, police work."

"Yeah, well, if you and all your fruitcake pals would Dot slammed down her pot and wheeled toward Bowman. "Officer Bowman," she said, looking 64 gaunt, overheated, deeply exasperated. "Officer Bowman, please. I realize you are helping us, and I do appreciate your being here and doing everything you can for us and for poor Peter. But, really! I must ask you not to make anti-homosexual remarks in my home. You have a right to your opinions. But sometimes you really can be such an extremely rude man!"

Bowman apparently had not in recent years been called "rude" by a grandmother scouring a pot.

He stood there for a moment looking uncharacteristically helpless, his mouth frozen in a little O.

I said, "Actually, rudeness is one of Detective Bowman's finer points, Dot. Don't knock it entirely. He has a foul mouth, but he's no hypocrite. There's a genuineness to his malice that some of us find intermittently refreshing in a city government full of burnt-out phonies."

Bowman glowered but just shifted about nervously. He would have liked to issue me a couple of obscene threats but didn't want to be called rude again by an old lady bent over a kitchen sink.

"Sorry, ma'am," he muttered to Dot. "When I talk like that, I certainly don't mean you, or your… or Mrs. Stout."

"I don't care who you mean. That talk is discourteous and insensitive and unbecoming of a public servant. Also, I might add, it betrays a narrowmindedness that is certainly discouraging to behold in this day and age. So much of the time, Mr. Bowman, you just seem to be so… so… full of baloney!"

I would have phrased it a little differently, but probably to less good effect.

Bowman actually blushed. "Well, I have to admit, Mrs. Fisher, that I'm… still learning." He was crimson now, looking as if he feared Dot might have him write "No More Fag Jokes" five hundred times on the blackboard.

"We're all still learning," Dot said. "And I congratulate you on being big enough to admit it."

Bowman relaxed a little, no longer worried that he might get sent to the principal's office.

The phone rang. Bowman, relieved, lunged for it. "Let me get that!"

Dot glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

"For you, Strachey. It's your- It's Mr. Callahan." He handed me the sweat-drenched receiver.

"I found out about Wilson," Timmy said.

"This line is not private," I told him quickly. "I'll call you back in fifteen minutes. Where are you?"

"At the… you know. On Delaware."

"Fifteen minutes."

I hung up and asked Bowman to accompany me outside. We stood under a pear tree and I told him about Joey Deem.

"I figured that," he said. "One of my men stopped by the Deem place earlier, and the kid took off with a friend when my man arrived. Out the back door, zip-zip. The kid's mother was defensive when asked about her boy's state of mind and activities, but in due course she allowed as how her son might conceivably be capable of criminal matters on a limited scale. We'll pay the lad a visit tomorrow morning and squeeze him. He'll own up."

"I don't doubt it, Ned. Not with irresistible you conducting the interview. Or have you mellowed after getting roughed up in there by Mrs. Fisher? 'Rude.' That's the word, all right. Dot put her finger on it."

His little eyes narrowed like those of the Ned Bowman I'd known five minutes earlier. "Don't you push my face in it, Strachey, I'm warning you! I've got a list and you're at the head of it.

Sure, I'll lay off the informal talk when I'm around Mrs. Fisher from now on. Hell, I've got nothing against two broads doing it, even a couple of old dames like those two. I'm broad-minded.

I've never disapproved of that. In fact, the idea of it has always kind of turned me on. But two 65 men? That is sicko stuff, Strachey, and you'll never convince me otherwise."

Bowman the Bunny Hutch philosophe.

"Glad to hear you talk that way again, Ned. You had me worried for a minute. I was afraid word of your newly benign outlook might get around and your career in Albany city government would be jeopardized."

"Thanks for the sentiment."

"Tell me, are all those bushes out there in the dark full of your guys?"

"They will be by midnight. The go team is gathering now in my office."

"I'll be behind a bush too. You might want to alert your people. Just how crowded is it going to get out there?"

"Crowded enough. If they drop off the Greco guy, twenty men will be on top of them in nothing flat. If they just snatch the ransom and take off, there'll be unmarked radio cars doing relays a block behind them till they get where they're going. Just to be on the safe side, we've got a homing transmitter sewn into the bottom of the money case. When they get to where they've got Greco, we'll move in fast. They'll never know what hit 'em."

"Sounds close to being foolproof. It'd better be. Here's the rest of the cash."

I tugged Trefusis's envelope out of my back pocket and shoved it toward Bowman. He grinned.

I drove over to Central and went into a Grandma's Pie Shop. Grandma wasn't there that night, but the cashier, a comely grandson whom I'd seen around, directed me to a pay phone. I dialed the apartment.

"Hello?" His voice was scratchy, distant.

"It's me. I love you."

"Don't be manipulative. I'm in no mood for it. This will be a non-personal conversation. I obtained the information you requested regarding William Wilson."

"I apologize. Really. It'll rarely happen again. Hardly ever. Not often at all."

"Do you want this information or don't you?"

"Once every three months, about. That'd be it. And only in other cities. Never in Albany or any contiguous municipality. Doesn't that sound reasonable? Short of storing my nuts in a jar of vinegar, which you would keep locked in your desk drawer, that's the best I can do. I think you'll have to agree that it's fair, given certain chemical imbalances in my frontal lobe. So. Are we friends again? Lovers, at least?"

Cutesy sniveling got me nowhere. He didn't even pause. "Here is what I have learned. Are you listening?"

"Sure. Yeah. I'm listening."

"I talked to Gary Moyes out at the Drexon Company. The word is, Bill Wilson runs the plant baseball pool. Except there's some scam going on and nobody ever seems to collect any winnings. They're all 'reinvested' in the following week's pool-which is not the way the players understood the pool would operate. There's a lot of grumbling, and Wilson's time may be running out.

"Moyes guesses that as soon as one of the more impatient employees comes up a winner, Wilson will either have to pay everybody off or suffer dire consequences. If he's getting rich in a small way, it looks as if he'll need every dime of it for a new set of teeth and maybe a neck brace.

Wilson definitely is in bad trouble, or soon will be."

"Nnn. Yeah. That explains Wilson's bragging to his wife about soon making her a rich woman, I guess. But it also looks as if he's in need of even more cash and must be fairly desperate to come up with it. This might lead Wilson to behave irrationally, criminally. Unless he's got all the pool 66 money stashed somewhere, which he might. He doesn't appear to be spending it on anything or anybody at home. Can you check his bank records and the plant credit union?"

"On a Saturday night? Neither of us has those kinds of contacts."

"Yeah. Crap. It looks as if we're back to square one with Wilson. Not that I'm all that much interested in him anymore. Maybe Bowman will come up with something on him. His guys are checking too."

"I have now fulfilled my obligation to you. Goodbye."

"Hey wait. I want to talk to you! We've really got to sort things out. You know and I know that we've got too much going for us to let-"

"I just want to say one last thing to you, Don. Listen to this. Listen carefully. I was thumbing through your Proust a while ago and came upon a line that jumped right out at me. It seemed so apt, so perfect. It was Swann talking to Odette, but it could as easily have been me to you. He says to her, Swann says, 'You are a formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself.' How about that? 'A formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself"

He waited.

I said, "Yeah. How about that? Quite a phrasemaker, Proust. The man was a genius, no doubt about it."

"He summed you up in fourteen words. Goodbye."

"Actually, it's probably less harsh in the original French, andHello? Timmy? Hello?"

With a phone company click he was gone.

"A formless water." I'd done it.

I ate a slice of pie, got change for a dollar from grandson, went back and piled some dimes by the phone. I dialed the apartment. No answer. I dialed my service. No messages.

Later. For sure.

Back in my booth I went over the Trefusis-Greco-McWhirter-Deem-Wilson-Fisher situation in my mind yet again. I had my coffee cup refilled twice. My head buzzed with heat, fatigue, and caffeine, and I swiped at flies that weren't there. One dropped into my coffee cup.

I couldn't figure any of it out. I still was nagged by the idea that I had not picked up on something crucial, but I didn't know what. I had been preoccupied, and that had been my fault, mostly.

I remembered my meeting with Lyle Barner. I got out my address book, went back to the phone, and made a credit card call to San Francisco. It was nine-thirty-five in Albany, three hours earlier in California. He'd probably be home.

"Yyyyeh-lo."

"Hi, Buel. Don Strachey. You sound chipper enough."

"Don, you old faggot pissant! Son of a bee! You in town, I hope?"

"Albany. Grandma's Pie Shop on Central. We shared a Bavarian cream here once."

"Ah, so we did. And if my rapidly deteriorating memory serves me, the pie that night was the least of it."

"If Grandma had known."

"Well, shithouse mouse! If this doesn't beat all! An old trick calls me up from three thousand miles away six years later, when last Tuesday's passes me on the street today and looks right through me. Son of a bee."

"You sound as if you're in good shape, Buel. Still out there organizing the masses for the socialist judgment day?"

"Oh, yeah. In a manner of speaking, I am. To tell you the truth, Don, I am now actually gainfully 67 employed. Can you believe that? I work at an S and L."

"You into that too? When I knew you, your sexual tastes were more or less conventional."

"That's a savings and loan. Hercules S and L. It's all gay. No more rude tellers and huffy loan officers for the brothers and sisters. It's a new day, Don. I love it. And we're growing like crazy.

B of A's gonna have to either come out of the closet or move to Kansas."

"B of A, what's that? Belle of Amherst? Basket of apples? What?"

"Bank of America. Owns half the city, and the suburbs all the way to Denver. But not for long.

Hercules is flexing its mighty muscle."

"I can't wait to see your logo."

"So, how you doing back there in Depressoville? How's Timmy?"

"Oh, Timmy's fine, fine. The reason I called was I know a gay cop here who needs to make a move. Is San Francisco still recruiting among the brethren?"

"In a small, halfhearted way, yes. You want a name? I'll get you one if you want to hang on."

I said I did. He came back on the line a minute later with a name and phone number. I wrote them down.

"Thanks, Buel. This might help. As you can guess, the revolution has not yet reached the Albany Police Department. Speaking of which, one of your city's most notorious troublemakers is with us in Albany this weekend. Do you know Fenton McWhirter?"

"Oh, sure. Everybody knows Fenton. We worked together on the first Harvey Milk campaign.

Fenton rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I always thought he was okay. There's nobody more dedicated to the movement, that's for sure. And, I suppose, nobody more ruthless. Fenton can be counted on to make some noise at least, one way or another."

"Ruthless? How so?"

"Oh, let's see. Let me count the ways. Do you remember the story that went around about how Harvey had a brick thrown through his own window to get more press attention and public support? I happen to know that Harvey didn't do it at all. He might have known about it, but it was Fenton's idea, and Fenton tossed the brick. And it worked."

"Is that so?"

"Another time ol' Fenton got pissed off at some cop who'd roughed him up a little at a street demonstration but didn't leave any marks to speak of. Fenton went out and found some deranged hustler over on Turk Street and paid him ten bucks to break Fenton's nose with a pipe. Then he tried to pin it on the cop. Naturally it didn't stick though. You can hardly get them on the real stuff. Say, is Fenton back there recruiting for his famous gay national strike?"

"He's trying. But he's having his troubles."

"The last I heard, he and his lover-what's-his-name-were thinking of calling the whole campaign off. Fenton's so wacky that none of the fat cats will bankroll the drive, and he's practically flat out, I hear. No dough for rallies, nothing. It's too bad, in a way. Fenton has all of Harvey's cosmic idealism, but none of his personality or political savvy. We're still making headway, Don, but it's just not the same anymore, without the heroes."

"Yeah. That's true. You know, Buel, this is some fascinating information you've given me."

"Fascinating? How so?"

"Well, I've run into Fenton a number of times in the last thirty-six hours. And now I have this whole new perspective on the man. It's… fascinating. Depressing too. Look, Buel, I have to run. Gotta see a man about a finger."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Take care now, Don. See you at Christmastime, maybe, if I get back there to visit 68 the folks."

"Sure thing. And thanks again, Buel."

"Good talkin' to you."

I went back to my booth, shoved the plates and cups aside, and laid my head on the table. I slept soundly for five minutes and had very bad dreams. One of them woke me up, and I ordered a fifth cup of coffee.

Oh, Fenton, I thought. Say it isn't so, Fenton. end user