“I know he’s dead. I want to know why. I want to know whatever you know about him.”
“No,” he moaned, “no.”
I handed him his broken flashlight, but he flinched, falling back against his car, whimpering. “Go ahead and kill me. I don’t care, I just don’t care anymore. He was the only person I ever loved and he’s dead and I just don’t care anymore.”
I shoved the flashlight into his hands, and he crumpled to the asphalt, wailing and cuddling his flashlight, rocking back and forth. A car full of drunks hissed over the Ripley Avenue bridge and down the ramp above us, fleeing through the night down black and wet streets, heading home or to another gaily lighted bar rife with music and dancing and sweaty women with bright eyes and lips like faded rose petals. As the driver down-shifted, the exhaust belched, the tires snickered across the slick pavement, a girl’s shrill laughter flew out, abandoned like an empty beer can in the skid. The colored lights from the discreet Riverfront sign reflected off the dark asphalt, wavering as the wind sifted the rain, glowing distantly like the lights of a city beneath a black sea. I replaced Crider’s rotor and slammed the hood, listening to his mewling, then squatted beside him, offered him my drink and handkerchief. He sniffled and took both; he snorted into the cloth, sipped at the drink, then asked, “Why do you want to know about Ray and me?”
“His sister is in town—”
“His sister?”
“Right.”
“She’s a nice lady. I was concerned when Ray asked her to stay with us last summer, but she was very nice, never judged us, never complained about—Ray and me—living together. She mothered Ray a bit, you know, and he didn’t like that very much, but she didn’t smother him. Say, why is she in town?”
“She doesn’t believe that Raymond’s death was a suicide—”
“Well, of course it wasn’t,” he interrupted.
“—and she asked me to look into it.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” he asked, wide-eyed again.
“Habit,” I said. “People don’t usually tell me what I want if I tell them what I want.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you think he could have committed suicide?”
“Oh, Ray just wasn’t the type. He had come to terms with his…his predilections. And though he was a wild man sometimes, he had enough sense not to mess around with heroin. That’s what it was, wasn’t it?”
“So I heard.”
“Well, Ray just wouldn’t have. He was happy, in his own way. He thought he was bad, you know, tough, but he wasn’t really. Just shy and quiet, a really sweet boy beneath his wildness.”
“So I keep hearing,” I said, thinking perhaps that I should begin to believe it. He offered me the drink, but I shook my head. “You have a cigarette?” I asked. He shook his head sadly, his eyes shining with trust. He patted me on the leg; we were old buddies now. He told me about his love affair with Raymond Duffy, and it was properly sad, but nothing seemed to have anything to do with those cruel blank eyes I had seen glowering above the beard as Lawrence Reese destroyed the three sawyers, nothing to do with a kid dead on a toilet seat, the nail locked into the fatal vein. Nothing.
“What about friends? Who were his friends?” I asked, stopping Crider before he mourned his lost love into hearts and flowers.
“We didn’t have any friends. We didn’t need them,” he declared proudly.
“What about Lawrence Reese? Or Willy Jones?”
“Who are they?” he asked, gazing into my eyes with absolute innocence.
“Willy Jones is a dead drunk and Lawrence Reese is the world’s largest faggot, complete with leather pants and purple eyeshadow,” I said, not hiding my disgust.
“Oh, I’ve heard of him.”
“Who?”
“The giant glitter queen.”
“From the Duffy kid?”
“Oh, no. Ray wouldn’t have anything to do with trash like that,” he said.
“They were shacked up.”
“I can’t believe that. But then…” He stopped, licked the rain off his lips, shaking his head.
“But then what?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Oh, well, I guess it doesn’t matter. I don’t like to criticize the dead, but Ray did have one problem.”
“What was that?”
“He really was quiet and shy, you have to believe that, but he also wanted to be—an aggressive gay. A mean faggot, as he used to say. He used to stalk around the apartment, flashing his guns—his sister told you about the guns?—and threatening the straight world. He had the idea that he was going to be the last great faggot gunfighter or something—I mean, for God’s sake, whoever heard of a faggot gunfighter in this day and age, and Ray was determined that nobody was ever going to make fun of him for being gay.”
“I thought you said he was happy with his life.”
“Oh, he was. Very happy. Very manic and almost never depressed, except around other people. Sometimes, you know…” He paused.
“Sometimes what?”
“Well, frankly, sometimes he scared me when he was happy. He liked to do that Yul Brynner trick from The Magnificent Seven, you know—draw and pull the trigger of his pistol before you could clap your hands. He had won all sorts of prizes in quick-draw contests, or whatever they’re called, you know—”
“I know,” I said. Crider wasn’t any help at all; his image of the Duffy kid was as confused as mine had become. Maybe it was true love and blindness, the old routine. So I changed directions. “When did you see him last?”
“Several months ago.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, we haven’t talked since—since we split up last summer. We took a vow,” he said, bowing his head. Then he added apologetically, “I’ve got a family. But every time I saw him on campus, it was so hard, you know, not to run over—”
“I know,” I said, patting his shoulder, wondering what warm bed Helen Duffy slept in while I hunkered in the cold rain. “Do you know anybody who might have talked to him lately?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Could you ask around?”
“I guess so. Around the department.”
“I wasn’t exactly thinking about academic friends.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t see those people much anymore, you know.”
I knew, but I didn’t think he wanted to hear about it. I stood up, my old legs quivering under me, and wiped the rain out of my face. I said, “Could I, ah, pay for your jacket?”
“Oh, that’s not necessary.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s not important, you know,” he said, clambering awkwardly to his large feet. He handed me my wet handkerchief and the empty plastic cup. “Not important…”
“I, ah, fixed your car,” I said.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Take care,” I said, remembering his wife’s voice and wishing them a better life than they had had so far, then I climbed into my rig, my wet pants sticking to the seat as I settled behind the wheel.
“So long,” he shouted as I drove away. I glanced back to wave. He was standing hesitantly at the door of his station wagon, staring back toward the bar, like a man who had left something behind. He shut his car door and walked back toward the lighted lobby.
—
I cruised the motels on the east side with no real purpose in mind—just an aimless, habitual shifting about—thinking perhaps I’d find Helen Duffy to tell her not to waste her money. These transient rooms were my haunts. Bribed night clerks and bugged rooms. The muttering plaints of illicit love, the refrain of muffled springs. Startled faces and scurrying bodies frozen in the explosion of the flash. Penises as flaccid as ruined breasts. Then the dull courthouse routine: professional testimony, shamed faces.
Tired of myself, I made one last swing through the Riverfront lot, hoping to see Vonda Kay venturing out into the rain. We could go home, have breakfast, smo
ke a little dope, and sleep comforted by the sound of the creek, the soft brush of the spruce needles, the placid warmth of two old veterans, our nerves ruined in the front lines of love and failure. But she walked out of the bar with another man.
As I drove away, my headlights swept across the line of cars stalled in front of the rooms. Dick’s van was there. The lights of 103 were still on; dark upright figures hovered behind the drapes, measuring the room with strides and outflung arms—shadows that merged, then flew apart. At least I knew her room number now. I drove home to my empty log house, where the creek complained and the spruce needles rattled harshly against my windows.
Seven
By morning the rain had moved on, and at nine o’clock, when I knocked on Helen Duffy’s motel room door, the puddles were retreating before the hot glare of a summer sun, the cool, damp respite destroyed with a vengeance. I was dry again, and Dick’s van was gone.
She came to the door, keeping the safety chain fastened, but she peeped through the open crack as if she didn’t feel safe at all. The same green robe, clutched to her neck, glowed at me, her red hair draped across her shoulders, and the same horde of pink tissues huddled about the carpet. But she was different this time; she didn’t seem to know who I was.
“Remember me?” I said. “I’m the one who loves you.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered. “Can I go back to sleep now? I’ve had rather a long night.”
“Sure,” I said, full of cheer and energy. “I just wanted to be sure I was still working for you before I deposited your checks.”
“I don’t seem to have any other choices.”
“I’ll take that as a vote of confidence. Are you going to stay here?”
“Yes,” she answered, daubing at her galled nose with a scrap of toilet paper. “Why?”
“If you want me to call you, when and if I find out anything, you’d better leave word at the desk.”
“Whatever for?”
“They aren’t very fond of me here.”
“I can imagine that,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was smiling. She blew her nose fiercely. Her face, pillow-wrinkled, and her hair, ruffled by the toils of sleep, hadn’t spent the night cradled by any fond lovers, which is why I felt so good. “Why aren’t they fond of you?”
“This is a classy motel. They don’t want no second-rate peepers or transom-sneakers to bother their guests.” Or breaking down doors and snipping safety chains with bolt cutters to take dirty pictures either.
“I see. All right, I’ll inform them. Have you found out anything yet?”
“I’ve only had one night, but I’m still working on it.”
“Wonderful,” she said again, pursing her soft, tired mouth.
“You look like a woman who needs a good-morning kiss,” I said brightly, but she had already closed the door in my face.
A family of tourists filed past, glancing at me from the corners of sleep-swollen eyes—vacationers escaped from some suburban hell—the leading demon festooned in electric-blue curlers, the imps draped with pistols and leather vests, and the poor devil caught between, sagging toward a lower, more ulcerated circle. And they were no more startled than I was, when the door opened again and a vision of swift red and green slipped out and blessed me with those soft, tired lips, then flew back inside before my arms could encircle her.
“Don’t gawk, Leonard,” the witch growled, but Leonard gawked his heart away.
“Who are those guys, Leonard?” I asked the little boy. But he didn’t know either, so he drew and fired, shooting now but facing years of questions later, his cap pistol flashing with smoke and flame. I clutched my chest, reeled against a parked car, groaning, “Ya got me, Leonard.”
He grinned like little boys should: ear-to-ear toothless gaps. It was probably the high point of his vacation until mother jerked him away, whipping him along behind her like a banner, grunting, “Come on, Leonard.”
“Hey, lady,” I shouted from the sidewalk. “What kind of world is it, when the only fun left for little boys is shooting old men?”
“Drunk,” she hissed at me, then scurried down the sidewalk toward a well-deserved breakfast.
“Fucking-A!” I shouted, laughing. Leonard grinned as he disappeared, and the poor devil tried gamely not to.
I rose, still laughing, the gentle kiss still warm on my mouth, not having to fake my morning cheer anymore. Thirty-nine wasn’t such a bad age, not too late to try a family life again, not too late to begin. So I went to work. Just as if I knew what I was doing.
—
The county coroner, Amos Swift, had been a long-time friend of my father’s, and he owed me four hundred dollars from a poker game so far in the past that neither of us really remembered the circumstances. Amos tried to like me, but he never made any bones about how he felt about my divorce work. I’d never had occasion to ask him a professional question, so I had no idea how he might react. But he owed me money, and if I couldn’t make sense out of the Duffy kid’s life, maybe I could of his death.
“How the hell are you, Milo?” he grumbled happily as I walked into his office. “Say, I haven’t forgotten the markers, lad, but I’m just a little short right now. If you’re strapped, I can let you have some of it, but if you’re not, I can sure make better use of it. Some of us are heading for Reno this weekend, and you know how it is, you can’t win without playing.”
Amos was one of those fat, jolly pathologists, who acted as if violent death was a chance everybody took, as if the song of the bone saw caused him shivers of delight. But he and I both knew that he smoked cigars to keep away the antiseptic stink of the morgue, that he had become county coroner because he preferred to take his chances with the dead rather than the dying. He was a better autopsist than Meriwether County needed or deserved.
“But, lad, if you’re down on your luck, I’ll do my damnedest to come up with some of it, and, hell, I know you’re having hard times but, dammit, it’s hard times everywhere nowadays.”
“Let me have a cigar, Amos,” I said, sitting down, “so I can stand yours.”
He did, but with great reluctance, as if it were money.
“Treat it sweetly, lad, that’s a real Havana. And, say, if you run into Muffin, let him know I’m down to my last two boxes and smoking slow. Don’t know where that boy finds them, and don’t want to know, but it saves me a trip to Canada and maybe a bust. God, this is a sweet berth, lad, and I sure as hell hate to lose it next election for smuggling Communist cigars.”
“I’ll tell him,” I said, starting to bite off the end of the long cigar.
“Goddammit, boy, don’t bite it,” he huffed, handing me his clippers. “Look at that,” he added, waving his fuming cigar at me, the end of it as immaculate as when it had left the wrapper. “Be gentle, dammit. Hate to see a man mangle a good cigar. How much do you need?”
“Don’t worry about the money,” I said, drawing smoke and blowing it toward his relieved face. “I’m here on business.”
“What business could we have, boy? You ain’t dead and I’m already divorced.”
“I’d like some information about an autopsy you did a few weeks ago.”
“Has the inquest been held?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then it’s a matter of public record.”
“I know,” I said. “I looked at the records before I came downstairs, but it didn’t tell me what I want to know. I want to know what you think, not what went into the record.”
“Who was it?”
“A kid named Raymond Duffy. An OD up at the Willomot Bar.”
“I remember,” he said, waving his thick hand through a cloud of smoke. “A clear overdose.”
“Of what?”
“Well, hell, as I remember, everything. Alcohol, barbiturates and heroin.”
“Suicide or accident?”
“Who the hell knows? Some of both. The kid probably tried to settle down while he was waiting for a fix, then got hold of better junk than he w
as used to. We called it accident, but an insurance company would make suicide out of it, and who knows what really happened?”
“No marks of foul play?”
“Depends what you call foul play. He had a recent contusion on his right shoulder, which looked like a hickie, and there was evidence of anal intercourse recently, plus a sore throat.”
“A sore throat?”
“A dose of the clap, Milo. The kid was a fruit.”
“So I hear,” I said. “How long had he been an addict?”
“Just guessing, I’d say around a month. Certainly not much longer.”
“Any other interesting facts?”
“Not that I remember. I can dig up the report, if you want to see it.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Sure. Say, what was that last hand anyway?”
“You tried to run four spades at a pair of sevens.”
“That’s right, kid. I remember now. Dammit, boy, what kind of fool stays in against a broke man, four spades, and a four-hundred-dollar bet?” he asked, pinching his nose.
“You pinch your nose sometimes when you run a bluff, Amos.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” he exclaimed, sitting up and staring at his thumb and index finger. “Who knows about that?”
“Everybody in town, Amos.”
“I’ll just be damned. Thanks, boy, I’ll remember that. By God, you might be as good a player as your old man, and that son of a bitch was so good drunk that I wouldn’t even play with him sober.”
“No sweat,” I said, “he wasn’t ever sober.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
“Besides, he didn’t have to worry about losing money.”
“That’s for sure. Say, boy, don’t forget to tell Muffin about those cigars.”
“Sure,” I said from the door. “Say, one more thing. Why did you have his hair cut and his beard shaved?”
“Wasn’t us, lad. When he came in, he was slicker than a preacher’s kid. Say, Milo, what’s this all about?”
“The sister doesn’t believe the death was either suicide or accident.”
“Well, I’m sorry for her,” Amos said quietly. “Damn sorry. Either she’s blind or crazy.”