I will spare you those hours while I vacillated in my will. I can only say that it was near to midnight before I had conquered my terror sufficiently to begin the voyage in my mind, and so was ready, in my imagination at least, to leave the house, enter the car and set out over the reaches of a highway whose wind-whipped leaves were at this hour like an onslaught of spirits. Yet, with each detail of this journey foreseen, composing the trip in my thoughts before it was ever undertaken, I now found at the center of my terror the calm of composition itself. So I was finally armed to set out, and was at the door and ready to step into the real air of the night when the knock resounded again, just as powerfully as a hammer on my tomb.
Some interruptions are too profound to disturb your composure. One’s limbs do not have to shake as one encounters the hangman. I pulled the bolt and drew open the door.
Regency stepped in. For the first moment, seeing the strain upon his face and the bright light of anger in his eyes, I had the idea he was there to arrest me. He stood in the foyer and stared at the furniture in the living room and shook his head from side to side, but for so long that I finally comprehended he was revolving his neck against the grind of his own tension.
“I’m not here for a drink, buddy,” he said at last.
“Well, you can have one.”
“Later. We talk first.” He poked the light of his angry eyes into mine, and then in surprise—for I do not think he had ever seen me showing such resolve—he looked away. He could not know for what I had just prepared.
“Are you,” I asked, “working on Sunday?”
“You haven’t been down to the West End today, have you?”
I shook my head.
“You don’t know what’s going on?”
“No.”
“Every cop in town was at The Widow’s Walk. Every cop in town.” He looked past me. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
I did. I didn’t. I made some gesture to indicate as much.
He sat down.
“Look, Madden,” he said, “I know you lead a very busy life, but maybe you can recollect receiving a phone call this morning from Merwyn Finney.”
“The proprietor of The Widow’s Walk?”
“You eat there all the time but you don’t know his name?”
“Hey,” I said, “don’t break my chops.”
“All right,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down, too?”
“Because I’m ready to go out.”
“Finney called about a car, correct?”
“Is it still there?”
“You told Merwyn Finney,” Alvin Luther now said, “that you couldn’t remember the name of the woman who was with Pangborn.”
“I still can’t. Is it important?”
“Probably not. Unless she’s his wife.”
“I don’t think she was.”
“Well, good. You’re a shrewd judge of people.”
“I’m not smart enough to guess what’s going on now.”
“Oh, I could tell you,” he said, “but I don’t want to slant your opinion.” He looked into my eyes again. “What’s your make on Pangborn?”
“Corporate lawyer. Sharp. On tour with a blonde lady.”
“Anything wrong with him?”
“Just not likable.”
“Why?”
“Cause I wanted to get somewhere with Jessica and he was in the way.” I stopped. There was much to be said for Regency as a cop. Pressure came off him and it was constant. Soon, you made a mistake. “Oh,” I said, “that’s her name. It just came to me. Jessica.”
He wrote it down. “Her last name?”
“Still blank. She may never have told me.”
“What was she like?”
“Society lady. Southern California society, I’d say. No real class. Just money.”
“But you liked her?”
“I had the feeling she’d carry on in the closet like a porny star.” I said this to shock him. It succeeded more than I had expected.
“I don’t approve of pornies,” he said. “I don’t go to them. I wouldn’t mind slaughtering five or ten of those porny stars, though.”
“That’s what I like about law enforcement,” I answered. “Put a killer in uniform and he can’t kill anymore.”
He cocked his head. “Cheap hippie philosophy,” he said.
“You could never stand up to a discussion,” I told him. “Your brain is full of minefields.”
“Maybe so,” he said slyly, and winked. “Let’s move back to Pangborn. Would you say he was unstable?”
“Not particularly. I’m tempted to say not at all.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“Did he impress you in any way as a swish?”
“He might wash his hands after making love, but, no, I would not call him a swish.”
“Was he in love with Jessica?”
“I’d say he liked her for what she could offer, and was getting a little fatigued. She may have been too much of a woman for him.”
“You don’t think he was in love with her uncontrollably?”
I was about to say, “Not my impression,” when I decided to ask, “What do you mean by ‘uncontrollably’?”
“I’d say it’s loving somebody to the point where you’re not in command of your actions.”
Somewhere in my mind a mean calculation came forth. I said, “Alvin, what are you leading to? Did Pangborn kill her?”
“I don’t know,” said Regency. “Nobody has seen her.”
“Well, where is he?”
“Merwyn Finney called this afternoon and asked if the car could be removed from his lot. But it was legally parked in the first place. So I told him we’d have to put a warning on the windshield. This afternoon I was making a turn around town and thought I’d take a look. It didn’t add up right to me. Sometimes you see an empty buggy that’s all wrong. So I tried the trunk. It was unlocked. Pangborn was inside.”
“Murdered?”
“Interesting you say that,” said Regency. “No, my friend, he was a suicide.”
“How?”
“He put himself in the trunk and closed it. Then he laid himself under a blanket, stuck a pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”
“Let’s have a drink,” I said.
“Yeah.”
His eyes were fixed with fury. “Very strange business,” he said.
I could not help myself. A. L. Regency had his powers. “Are you sure it’s suicide?” I asked, although I could see no advantage to myself in the question.
Worse. Our eyes met clearly with that lack of concealment which is palpable: both people are remembering the same sight. I was seeing blood on the passenger seat of my car.
He kept the silence before he said, “There’s no doubt it’s suicide. The powder marks are all over his mouth and palate. Unless someone drugged him first”—Regency took out his notebook and set down a few words—“only I don’t see how you can ram a gun into someone’s mouth, shoot him, and then rearrange his body without betraying yourself on the blood spill. The dispersal of blood on the floor and side of the trunk is wholly consistent with suicide.” He nodded. “But I don’t,” he said, “have a high opinion of your acumen. You read Pangborn all wrong.”
“I certainly didn’t see him as a suicide.”
“Forget that. He’s a degenerate faggot. Madden, you don’t even have a clue who’s really in the closet.”
Now he looked about the living room as if to count the doors and classify the furniture. Nor was it comfortable to see the place through his eyes. Most of the furniture had been chosen by Patty and her taste was flouncy and full of Tampa Beach money—that is, white furniture and splashy hues in the cushions and the draperies and the throw rugs, loads of flowers on the fabrics, many barstools in puffy leatherette—pink, lemon-lime, orange and ivory for her boudoir and her drawing room—quite a candystripe for Provincetown in winter. Will it give some idea of my state if I admit that most days my moo
d did not rise to the differences between the hues in Nissen’s house and mine?
Regency studied our furniture. “Degenerate faggot” was still smoking on his lips.
I could not leave it there. “What makes you so certain Pangborn was homosexual?”
“I wouldn’t term it that. I’d call him gay.” How the word offended him. “They ought to spell it ‘Kaposi’s syndrome.’ ” He drew a letter from his pocket. “Call themselves gay and go around infecting one another systematically. They’re laying in a plague.”
“Well, all right,” I said. “Count your plagues. I’ll count mine.” He was that opinionated it would have given me combative pleasure to argue—nuclear pollution for your side, herpes for mine—but not now.
“Look what’s in this envelope,” he said. “Was Pangborn gay or was he gay? Just read it!”
“Are you certain he wrote it?”
“I checked the handwriting against his address book. He wrote the letter, all right. About a month ago. It’s dated. But he never sent it. I guess he made the mistake of rereading it. That’s enough to put the barrel right in your throat and blow it out.”
“Who was he writing to?”
“Oh, you know faggots. They’re so intimate with each other, they don’t bother with names. Just chat away soul to soul. Maybe at the end they’ll deign to use your name once. That’s so the flower who receives the epistle will know the dirt is in the right pot.” He went off on his whinny.
I read the letter. It was in strong purple-blue ink, a firm round hand:
I’ve just dipped into your volume of verse. I know so little about the fullest appreciation of poetry and classical music, but I know what I like. I like symphonies to rise up from the private parts. I like Sibelius and Schubert and Saint-Saëns and all the esses, yes, yes, yes. I know I like your poems because I’m tempted to write you back and make you twitch, bitch. I know you hate my vulgar side, but let us never forget, Lonnie’s a guttersnipe and had to stretch a little to marry his chain-store heiress. Who’s bringing the chains?
I liked your poem “Spent” because it made me feel for you. There you were, tight as a tick, nervous about yourself, as always, locked up so terribly, well, you were serving time, after all, and I was out in Nam patrolling the China seas. Do you know the sunsets there? You speak so beautifully of the rainbow that comes before your eyes after you are “Spent” but I lived those rainbows. How vividly your lines bring to mind the lush sex-ridden months I spent in Saigon, yes, sweetheart, spent! You write about those heavies surrounding you and tell this reader: “I feel they have fires inside, well-stoked fires glowing through their hide, heating the summer air.” Well, kiddo, that’s not true only for your heavy criminal types. I have had the same thoughts about many a sailor I knew. Many a fire I’ve warmed my hands and face by. You almost cracked up denying yourself what you want, but then, you’re a gentleman. Of sorts. But I sought and I found. I seduced indiscriminately, playing the male slut. I fed like a clown’s pig from the oversize bottle with the long rubber nipple. No crack-ups for Lonnie, thank you. He’s wise enough to get the most out of his queer blood.
How much you missed in those China seas. I remember black-eyed Carmine coming to the quonset hut door near Danang and calling softly, ‘Lonnie, baby, come on out!’ I remember the tall thin blond lad from Beaumont, Texas, who brought me his letters to his wife. She was leaving him and I had to read the letter, I was his censor, and how he lingered at the edge of Officer’s Country as it grew dark, and I love the way he kept talking about the chicken ranch until I just reached over and fondled him and he spread out and relaxed, and, lovey, he wasn’t about to ask for anything more for his chicken ranch until the next night when he’d prowl about Officer’s Country until it was dark again and I who was hungry could satisfy his hunger. And I remember the lovely lad from Ypsilanti named Thorne and the taste of love-impregnated sherry within his lips, those lovely eyes, the quietness of him and the tender, halting poor sixth-grade grammar of the sweet letter he wrote me the day I was leaving the ship, and he came up on the bridge to give it to me.
Or the signalman from Marion, Illinois, who sent me his first amorous advance in semaphore, not knowing I could keep up with the great speed at which he sent it: “Hey, honey, how about you and me in my boat tonight?” And my answer, “What time, honey?” I can still see the look of surprise on his face. And the glorious scent of him—sweat and Aqua Velva.
How much your poem brings back. Those were the glory days. No legal briefs. No scions of society—don’t take it personally—to suck up to. Just Admirals and grunts. What a pity you’ve never known a Marine. Or a Green Beret. They’re green, sweetie, but don’t fire until you see the pink of their privates! I haven’t had the leisure to think of these things in ages, but now I will. Your poems bring it back. I think of the Chief Hospital Corpsman I met in the Blue Elephant on Saigon Boulevard and later I remember the room I took him to in some half-gutted hotel and the glorious gushing forth of him until he caught me to drink a little himself because he had to slake the great thirst his pouring out had given him. And he looked for my name in my hat so he could see me again though I didn’t want that and told him so. Burying my nose in his sack and the frenzied smell of it knocking all sense out of my head all over again.
Yes, they had fires in them that warmed the sensuous air. Legions of great, begging, dripping pricks, angry red as the wattles of a turkey gobbler, lovely, lovely glorious days, while you languished in Reading Gaol, poor Wardley, fighting a nervous collapse because you wouldn’t do what your heart cried out for you to do.
Maybe I better read no more of your fine poems. You see how mean they make me. Never reject a friend as dear as me, or watch out, you’ll lose me forever. But then, you have!!! This time it’s not a boy from the Air Force just in for the weekend, nor am I being oh so discreet with a gay churchman who’s awfully hot to be indiscreet, no, I have the surprise of all time, Wardley. I’m with a blonde creature. Do you think me awfully drunk? I am.
Never fear. This woman looks as feminine as Lana Turner, but maybe she ain’t, not altogether. Maybe she’s had a sex change. Do you believe it? One of our mutual friends saw her with me, and had the crust to say she was so gorgeous she had to be a lie. Has she once been a be, they asked. Well, bad news for all of you, I said, she hasn’t. It’s an honest-to-god real woman, fuck-face! That’s what I said to our mutual friend. In fact, it’s the first woman I’ve had since I got to marry my heiress with her dime-store chains. So I know chains. I’ve been in them for years. Let me tell you, Wardley, it’s heaven to be out of them. It’s as carnal with this new woman as it used to be on Saigon Boulevard, pure carnal rut-copulating-fucking-sucking heaven for a faggot—should I say exfaggot?—like me. What intoxication to cross the great divide. Wardley, I’m a man to this woman. She says there has never been a better. Baby, it has kicked off personal energies you wouldn’t believe. High is high, but I am maniacally high. If someone tried to take my blonde lady away, I would kill.
See what I mean? High! But why get you upset? You’ve been down this road, haven’t you, Wardley? Lived with your blonde beauty too. Well, no hard feelings. Ex-roommates of the heart we may be, but let us remain dear old friends. This is God’s gift to women, your own Lonnie.
P.S. Have you ever seen the commercial for the electric razor named—–. I leave the name blank because I daren’t tell you which one. I represent them, after all. But you know which one. Look for it on TV. There’s a 21-year-old boy—Mr. Body!—shaving himself and looking as pleased as concupiscence-in-cream all the while he’s doing it. Know the secret? He told me. He thinks of this electric razor as looking just like a nice fat cock. He thinks of his boyfriend rubbing that fat pretty penis all over his face. The ad men are slain by how wonderful this commercial turns out. Oh, well, I’m high on hetero, and have to say goodbye to all that.
P.P.S. I know the 21-year-old well. Believe it or not, he’s the son of my blonde lady. In fact, I’m the boyfriend
he’s thinking of. Don’t you think he’s a little jealous now of Mom and me?
P.P.P.S. All this is top-secret ultra-confidential.
I handed the letter back. I think we both made an effort not to look into each other’s eyes, but they met nonetheless. Truth, they caromed off each other like magnets bearing the same pole. Homosexuality was sitting between Regency and me as palpably as the sweat you breathe when violence is next to two people.
“ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” said Regency. He put the letter back in his breast pocket and breathed heavily. “I’d like to kill those faggots,” he said. “Every last one of them.”
“Have another drink.”
“There is corruption in this letter,” he said, patting his breast, “that leaves a taste no drink is going to wash.”
“I’m not the one to give the speech,” I said, “but have you ever asked yourself whether you should be Chief of Police?”
“Why say that?” he asked. At once, all of him was on guard.
“You ought to know. You’ve been here. In summer, this town has a huge homosexual contingent. As long as the Portuguese desire their money, you will have to accept their habits.”
“It may interest you to know I’m not the Acting Police Chief anymore.”
“As of when?”
“As of this afternoon. When I read that letter. Look, I’m just a country boy. Know what I know of Saigon Boulevard? Two whores a night for ten nights, that’s all.”
“Come on.”
“I saw a lot of fine men get killed. I don’t know any Green Berets with pink privates. It’s good Pangborn is dead. I’d have done it myself.”
You could believe him. The air was this side of the gap from lightning.
“Did you resign formally?” I asked.
He put out his hands as if to hold off all questions. “I don’t want to get into it. I was never supposed to become Chief of Police. The Portugee under me is actually running the job.”