Tongue tied

Chapter 4

"Long time, no see," Barner said. "Looks like you're not twenty-six anymore, Strachey."

"Thank you."

"But you're as sexy as ever. How do you do it?"

"Ingest lots of grease, put off going to the gym, not too much bed rest."

"Funny, I try some of that. But for me it doesn't work so well."

"You can't do slovenliness halfheartedly, Lyle. You've got to give it your all."

He laughed, a little nervously, and glanced at the door to make sure, I guessed, that it was shut tight and no one had overheard this exchange. Jeris had let us use his office for a private confab following Detective Barner's official tour of the tear gas-attack area.

It had been nearly sixteen years since I'd last laid eyes on Barner, and he hadn't aged as badly as apparently he thought he had. Beefy, with powerful shoulders and arms, a broad mug, and big sad brown eyes, Barner had what was once called a "man's man" way about him that still had its potent appeal. I'd had a couple of sexual encounters with Barner in the early eighties, back when Timothy Callahan and I had already gotten serious with each other but the angel of monogamy had not yet appeared before us, at least not to me.

Barner had been interested in me at the time, and for me there was the sinful thrill that came with Barner's vague resemblance to my high-school football coach. But his essentially morose nature, as well as his terror of being outed as an Albany gay cop, was a source of tension between us. And anyway Timmy was arguing for a more conventional straight-and-narrow relationship between us, both out of a well-founded fear of AIDS and because it was his moral ideal; he had always been both selective and definite in what he retained during his early years with the nuns of Poughkeepsie, as well as in his later years at Georgetown, where the free flow of ideas was revered by the Jesuits there and where on every classroom wall hung a crucifix.

In an attempt to integrate his divided selves, and partly at my urging, Barner had headed for San Francisco in the mid-eighties; it was easier out there for cops to be unclos-eted.

But instead I'd heard he'd married a divorcee with six kids. That hadn't worked either, I was not bowled over to learn later. And the rumor I'd picked up in the mid-nineties, that Barner was back east with the NYPD, was now confirmed.

I said, "I thought once you'd cut the cord with Mother Albany and discovered the moist charms of life in the Bay area, I'd never see you again. Or that if I did, you'd have flowers in your hair."

"I had to come back east because my ma's not well,"

Barner said simply.

"Sorry to hear it. Your mother's here in the city?"

"No, Albany."

"But no back-to-your-roots for you?" "It wouldn't work."

"I guess not. Albany city government is no longer stuck in the nineteen-thirties. It hasn't been since the eighties. But the Neanderthals have managed to retain the law-enforcement and criminal-justice portfolios. I can't see an out gay cop fitting in comfortably. Although I'd love to see some ballsy young gay guy break the mold."

Barner said coldly, "That's right, Strachey. You'd like to see somebody else stand up and take a pounding. But you never stood up yourself, did you?" "Become a cop, you mean?" "It's a hell of a lot harder than what you do, and it's more important."

"When it's done right, which it rarely is, that's true. But I don't fit into institutions very well, as is documented in the archives of the Pentagon."

"Then maybe you should keep your fucking mouth shut about cops being out."

I said, "I take it you're not."

He shook his head.

"And it's gnawing at you?"

"No, you're gnawing at me, that's all."

"Lyle, I haven't knowingly been within a couple of thousand miles of you for over fifteen years, for chrissakes." Deja vu was setting in. This sounded like a repeat of half the conversations I'd ever had with Barner.

"That's right, Strachey. You haven't spoken to me for sixteen years. And as soon as you do, you start right in again."

"Are you in a relationship?" I asked.

He hesitated. "Yes. Kind of one."

"A cop?"

"Yeah."

"Ah-ha."

"He's out."

"Oh-ho."

Barner's look softened, and he said, "I'm totally wacko nuts about Dave, and I'm afraid I'm going to lose him. He's in the Gay Officers Action League. He wants me out too, so we can do that political stuff together. But he's treated like crap by three-quarters of the officers in the precinct, and he can hardly do his job. I love my job, I'm good at it, and I don't want to get up every day and have to wade through that shit while I'm just trying to go out and be an effective police officer."

I said, "Dave is a hero. The only people marching in gay-pride parades who get as many cheers from the crowd as P-FLAG does are the out gay cops."

Barner flushed and looked at me hard. "There are other ways of being a hero. Some people might say trying your damnedest twelve hours a day to protect the public from the half a million or so sociopaths and violent nutcases loose on the streets of this city-and instead of being thanked for it getting called racists and out-of-control assholes-is being a hero too. That's how I'm a hero, when I feel like one, and a hell of a lot of other good cops are heroes like that too. So you tell me, Strachey.

What's wrong with that kind of being a hero?"

This was an argument that I knew tripped off the tongues of racist, corrupt and sadistically depraved cops as casually as it did among cops for whom it was essentially true. I was reasonably certain that Barner was one of the latter, and I said, "I respect you and what you do, Lyle. I remember what a fine cop you were in Albany-you bailed my ass out with that maniac who chewed my ear off in the Millpond case and I'll bet you're an even better cop now. I wasn't putting you down. I was only suggesting that you've got a real prize of a boyfriend."

Now Barner looked thoughtful, and said, "Are you still with that Irish kid?"

Timmy would love this. "Timothy Callahan, yes. But if that's who you're thinking of, he was an adult sixteen years ago, and he's even more of one now."

"I figured it would last."

"We've had our ups and downs. But we're in it for the long haul. Our differences drive us both nuts sometimes, but we complete each other in an interestingly asymmetrical way. Plus, we still get each other's pulses racing somewhat more often than you might think. It's definitely a marriage made in purgatory, as all the best ones are. Somebody once accused us of being the Ozzie and Harriet of gay Albany, and Timmy took it as a compliment."

Barner seemed to mull this over; then he said, "I'd like you to meet Dave."

"I'd like to. Is he a detective too?"

"Patrolman."

"I see. How old?"

"Twenty-six. He's mature."

"And has mature tastes, which is even better."

"He's a hunk, Strachey."

"That's no handicap either."

"In some ways I wish I could be more like him. But I can't."

"Does he expect you to become more like him?"

Barner thought this over. "He'd definitely prefer it," he said after a moment. "But he knows I'm set in my ways. He knows it, but he doesn't accept it. That's the problem, if you see what I mean. I don't know how long he's gonna stick around."

"It's as tricky as anything," I said. "A couple can be out, or a couple can be in. But when one person's in and the other person's out, the picture can get a little too abstract-expressionistic for most people to handle. I hope you can figure out a way to make it work, if you both want to."

"It might. Dave likes me. He thinks I'm a good cop, and smart-and hot."

"That was my impression."

Barner said, "The thing that gets to me is, he sees other guys sometimes."

"Oh. And you don't?"

"Nah."

"That is definitely another complication." "Yeah." "Hmm."

"We spend most of our time together when we're off duty. So these other guys mostly they're not an issue."

"What do you like to do together, you and Dave? I mean generally speaking."

"Watch Yankee games, have a beer, go out for a nice meal, get it on. You know."

I said, "I take it you're not out with anybody except your close friends?"

"Correct."

"And not these bozos here at the radio station? I shouldn't address you as

'Detective Mary Mary Quite Contrary' in the presence of the J-Bird?"

"Jesus!"

"How did you end up detective in charge of the FFF case? Luck of the draw?"

Barner allowed himself a sly little grin. "I requested it. I remembered the Blount case in seventy-nine, and that you had FFF connections. I thought I might be able to bring you into it."

"And here I am, although not for long, I think. The J-Bird and his gang of boneheads are not people I want to work for. If this were North Korea and my family were starving, I'd have to think it over. Thankfully, that's not the case. Sorry to crap out on you, but I think I'm about to head back north."

Barner looked puzzled. "You don't want to take money from these people? You think these people's money is dirtier than anybody else's? You're pretty fucking idealistic for somebody your age, Strachey. You need to get out in the big bad world more often.

You must have been stuck up in Albany a little too long."

"Lyle, it's not my ideals I'm afraid of losing, it's my breakfast. And my temper."

"Uh-huh."

"It's been awhile since I've had to restrain myself from decking a client."

Barner laughed. "Jesus, Strachey, I know caterers who put up with more obnoxious clients than Plankton and Jerry Jeris. Why don't you hang in for a few days anyway?

Take the J-Bird's money, and find out what you can about the old FFF. It'll be interesting, and it'll make my life easier. Do it as a favor to me. I don't want to come right out and say that you owe me one. But if you keep this up, I might have to." He looked at me and waited.

I felt my pleasant postlunch train ride back to Albany begin to slip away. Barner had once saved my neck, if not my ear, in a case involving the two elderly lesbians who were now Timmy's and my neighbors on Crow Street. A developer trying to drive them out of their semirural home near Albany had set in motion a plot that led to a violent confrontation with two murderous goons and a vicious dog, and it was Barner who had arrived on the scene accompanied by Timmy with milliseconds to spare.

Was I indebted to Barner? There were those who would say so, yes.

I said, "Lyle, I really don't know how helpful I can be. It's hard to imagine that these neo-FFFers have any connection with the old FFF. The bunch that operated back in the sixties and seventies were ideological, but they were also hardheaded realists with attainable goals. Mostly rescuing the wrongly imprisoned from private mental institutions. This new gang is flaky as hell. Using intimidation to rid the airwaves of homophobia? It's a sweet impulse, but apparently these people are not familiar with the statutes on assault, or on extortion-or with the United States Constitution. Or with the realities of the American marketplace, either."

"They appear to be different people, that's true," Barner said. "But it can't be coincidence that they're calling themselves the Forces of Free Faggotry."

"They could have read about the old FFF. It's written about in some of the histories of the movement. Have you tried tracking down any of the old FFFers on your own? All you have to do is go into a bookstore or public library, find a good history of the modern gay movement, check the index for the FFF, get some names of people, and then locate them through your usual Orwellian technological means."

Barner's face tightened. "Yeah, I could have done that," he said. "I could even have figured out on my own that I could have done that. But I didn't do that."

"I see."

"Why didn't I do it that way? Why have I used the more roundabout method of bringing you into the case to track down the FFF?"

"Right. Why?"

"Because," Barner said, "I thought it would be nice to reconnect with you. That's one reason."

"Uh-huh."

"The other reason is," Barner said, his color rising again, "I don't go into gay bookstores. I don't go anywhere near the gay section in Barnes and Noble. I don't go anywhere near the gay sections in libraries. Get the picture?"

"Lyle, this is worse than I thought."

"I'm fucked up. I know."

"Are you out with Dave? Have you confessed to your boyfriend that you're a homosexual?"

Barner laughed ruefully. "Anyway, he can tell."

"Why didn't you ask Dave to help you find a book with the FFF in it? He sounds like the kind of man who might stride into a bookshop and brazenly make a purchase. Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare for America come true."

"I could have asked Dave for help," Barner said. "But to tell you the truth, I just didn't feel like getting something started."

"Right. So you arranged for me to drag my ass a hundred and fifty miles down the Hudson Valley, at the J-Bird's expense, just because you preferred not to have an argument with your boyfriend?"

"No, it's not just that."

"What else is it?"

"You'll be able to talk to the FFF people. They'll trust you. Even if they aren't the same people as back in the seventies and they don't know you from David Dinkins, you'll know how to get them to talk to you. They won't trust me, and they won't talk to me, because I'm a cop."

"This is possible."

"And like I said, the other reason I wanted to bring you into this was, I wanted to see you again. For one thing, I wanted to find out if you were the same smug pain in the ass you were sixteen years ago."

"And was I?"

"You're worse," Barner said. "I'm almost sorry I even mentioned your name to the J-Bird and his people."

"Almost sorry, but not quite?"

"You got it."

"Jeez, Lyle. What else is new? The more things change with you and me, the more they stay the same."

He watched me, poker-faced. He apparently was taking as much satisfaction from the love-hate-or to put it more precisely, like-dislike-games we were playing as he had when we observed the same awkward rituals sixteen years earlier. He said, "Anyway, Strachey, you're gonna love these FFFers once you smoke them out. They're obviously a bunch of punk anarchists, and deep in your heart, that's you. It wouldn't surprise me if you brought them in and then you joined up with them."

"Lyle, you've nailed me again. I'm both a control freak and an anarchist."

"Think about it," he said.

"And when the J-Bird puts the FFF on his show, I'll be right there on the radio with them, promoting all my inconsistent causes and tendencies. Strachey the radical Presbyterian with J-Bird the broadcast postmodernist."

Barner said, "Don't believe that crap about the J-Bird putting the FFF on the air.

He'll never do it. He wants to get them in here, and then he'll hire some goons to beat the shit out of them. That's how postmodern Plankton is. Anyway, after the tear-gas attack there's no way these people can avoid being charged."

"They can't be charged if they choose to deny doing the tear-gas attack and there's no good forensic or other evidence tying them to it. Is there any?"

"Not yet."

"As for the J-Bird's putting them on the air, listen to his show sometime. What Jeris is telling me is plausible. Plankton respects aggressive, and he respects nasty. He gets these people into his studio, and nobody will change anybody's mind. But they'll all hit it off famously in their twisted way. I think these guys might mean what they say about putting the FFFers on the show. At least in that regard, I think the J-Bird can probably be trusted."

Looking skeptical, Barner was about to reply when the door to Jeris's office opened and the J-Bird stuck his head in. "Hey, you two gumshoes want to meet a real, live FFFer?"

"That's the plan," I said.

"Then get your wide-load butts out here. One just walked in the door."