A Time for Secrets (11 page)

I decided not to answer his question at all. Instead I said, “Your mother doesn’t like me much, but you never tell her to stay away for me.”

“If I did I’d have to tell her never to come,” he pointed out. “And I keep hoping she’ll start to like you.”

That gave me a chuckle. Then I asked, “Do you want to fuck this kid?”

“If things were different, sure I’d love to. But I have no plans to fuck him. What about you? Do you want to fuck him?”

“What? I don’t even like him.” The air was thick for a moment before I said, “Now I’m not sleepy. I’m going back to my office.”

Harker smiled like he’d known that was coming.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I found a few more steamy entries featuring Ronald and SR and skimmed through them. Their relationship continued through March and the beginning of April. On April 7, I found this brief entry:

Truly, I didn’t think it possible, I didn’t think we homophiles could manage it, but it’s true, I’ve fallen in love. I can admit it here, though I wouldn’t dare mention it anywhere else. The gang at The Lair would devour me if they knew. SR is my life. He’s everything. I would do anything for him, and I truly feel that he would do anything for me. We can’t truly be together; I know that. Not in this world. But still a girl can dream.

I wondered who SR was and if he might have anything to do with the two recent murders. Then it hit me, the answer to that was probably on April 22. That was the date Ronald had given me. It also seemed to be around the time Vernon left Chicago for Los Angeles. I flipped forward and found that there was no entry for that date. There was one for the twenty-first, but then there wasn’t another entry until May 15. Ronald had told me a lie when he recited his entry from April 22, but, like good liars everywhere, he’d incorporated part of truth. For instance, he did keep a journal. So, why did he lie like that? I kept reading to see if I could find out.

On May 15, he wrote:

It has been weeks and I’m barely able to think about what happened, no less write it down. Still, I feel like I have to. Someone has to know, even if it’s only the silent pages of this journal.

April 22 was SR’s second wedding anniversary to Vee, and he’d decided to throw a little soiree at The Lair. I’d been excited about it all week. It was quite the lark, of course. Vee was celebrating elsewhere with her own friends. They had that kind of marriage—so I wasn’t the least bit jealous. In fact, I quite like Vee. She’s a real sport.

We were just a bunch of middle-aged boys having a little fun. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that, really I don’t. B was there, so was L and S and V. A fun little group of six. CC had reserved us a table in the back area so we wouldn’t have to bother with the riff-raff that wandered in on a Wednesday night. It was almost like a private party.

Already I was confused. Were Vee and V the same person? They couldn’t be. Vee wasn’t there, and V was part of the party. Which of them was Vernon? I wondered. Was Vee a real woman who had actually been married to SR? She must have been. If Vee was a man, Ronald would have been jealous. I assumed that SR was involved in a marriage of convenience.

It was about eleven-thirty, I think. We had just ordered our fourth round of highballs when the raid began. Johnnie Ray wailed Cry on the jukebox, I’ve always loved that song, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to it again. Suddenly, we were surrounded by half a dozen policemen waving around billy clubs and shouting. I still don’t understand why no one warned us. I’m sure CC pays protection money. I think she mentioned it to me once. The whole thing makes no sense.

I was desperate to find a way to save SR. He couldn’t get caught up in a raid. It would be a disaster, but there was nothing I could do. A policeman had placed himself in front of the bathroom, so I couldn’t push SR in that direction, couldn’t tell him to climb out the window. We were trapped.

Taking a quick glance at SR, he didn’t seem all that upset. In fact, there was a smile on his face. As though he were happy about the whole thing. Which makes no sense. I must have misread his mood. He couldn’t possibly have been—

The jukebox continued to play, some silly Guy Mitchell ditty I think, but the bar was absolutely quiet. In addition to our little group there were another ten men there. Docilely, like cattle being led to the slaughter, we allowed the police to lead us out to the street.

They were terrible: called us names, pushed us when there was no need. Right in front of The Lair for anyone to see was the black paddy wagon. It was cold outside. I’d left my jacket on the back of a chair inside, but I was afraid to ask if I could get it. SR had left his jacket inside as well. Is that why he was so calm? Was his billfold in the jacket? Would he be able to lie about who he was? Is that why he took it all so well?

Oh, why did I let him go to the bar in the first place? He never should have taken a risk like that, but we’d met there, and The Lair seemed safe enough. If anyone exposed you as a patron, then they’d be exposing themselves. Still, I should have made him stop going, should have known something like this could happen to ruin everything for him.

There wasn’t room in the paddy wagon for all of us. Myself, SR, V, and B ended up standing in the street. The tall redheaded officer, who seemed to be in charge, conferred with the others about what to do with us. I had the brief thought we might get lucky, and they’d let us go, but then they led us to a black and white patrol car.

We were crammed into the backseat. I was squeezed between SR and the door; V and B were shoved together behind the driver. The redheaded officer got behind the wheel, and a blond one, who looked like one of Hitler’s storm troopers, rode shotgun. A moment later, the paddy wagon pulled away and we followed.

As we did, I glanced back at The Lair. They’d left the bar unlocked, the front door standing open. I was surprised they didn’t get on their bullhorns and invite the neighbors to loot the place. It certainly seemed to be what they were hoping for.

No one said anything for the first few blocks. The storm trooper turned and glared at us a couple of times. Then he looked over his shoulder and said to SR, “My kid fucking loves you.”

My heart raced. I didn’t think they’d recognized SR, but they had. I wasn’t sure if this would change things, if it would make things worse or not. I was absolutely sure it wouldn’t make things better.

“You’re the kind of perv who likes little kids, aren’t you?” the storm trooper continued.

“Ironically, I can barely stand them,” SR said. Which was true enough, he always complained about having to spend so much time with children.

“I think you’re lying. I think you’re the sort of queer who goes for little boys.”

“Actually, I like really big cocks, most nine-year-olds don’t have them.”

I cringed when SR said that. It wasn’t the kind of thing you said to a Chicago policeman. In fact, it was the worst kind of thing you could say to them. The storm trooper blushed so hard it looked like it hurt.

“Calm down,” the redhead said. “We’re taking care of this.”

“What are you doing?” I whispered to SR. “Tell them you’re sorry.”

He smiled at me, sadly, and said, “No.” Just no.

I stopped reading and wondered what it meant when the storm trooper said, “My kid fucking loves you.” Was SR a teacher, a priest? Why would the officer’s kid know SR? I pushed my confusion aside and read on.

Suddenly, we turned down an alley. The paddy wagon continued without us. We drove until we got to another street. Went down a block, and we were under the El tracks. They stopped the car.

The redhead got out and walked around to my side and flung the door open. He reached over me and pulled SR out of the car, dragging him right over me, forcing me out of the car onto the hard, cold ground.

“Someone needs to teach you a lesson,” he said, and he threw SR up against the back of the car. I tried to get up, but the storm trooper had gotten out of the patrol car and pushed me down again.

The redhead punched SR in the stomach. SR slid to the ground by the back fender. The storm trooper left me alone, going over to whack SR with his nightstick, saying, “Let me at him.” He hit SR again and again with the stick. They both hit him. I froze. I wasn’t able to do a thing. I couldn’t fight back. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was cower on the ground and watch as the man I loved was beaten to death.

In the middle of it all, while they were doing terrible things to him, SR yelled out that he loved me. He yelled, “I love you, Ronnie.” It was the only time he ever said it.

The handwriting had become shaky, and there were a couple of small round water stains on the page, which were possibly twenty-three-year-old tears. I set the journal down.

Ronald had been unable to act. The sight of violence had rendered him helpless, but, years later, he had acted when he saw Daniel and me being attacked. He had saved us. Was there a connection? Had he been saving himself as much as saving us? Had he been compelled to act because he’d been so helpless decades before? I had terrible thought, was Daniel alive because SR had died? Was I?

I promised myself I’d find out who was behind Ronald’s murder. I owed him that much.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Late Saturday morning I went to the Y. I’d been nagging myself to do something about my softening middle, and it was finally time to start. The nearest YMCA was located about six blocks west of my apartment. I could have walked, I suppose. The point was to get some exercise, after all, but I drove anyway.

The four-story building had been built in the late nineteenth century. It was made of red brick and had large windows with small panes, which had been replaced over the years with different types of glass giving the windows an odd checkerboard feel. The gymnasium was on the first floor, above that a floor of offices, then two floors of rooms that young men could rent. Just inside the front door, sitting in a small booth was a grizzled old man who was some kind of Slavic. I’d heard him speak, and he was either Czech or Lithuanian, but not Polish. Polish I understood, though not well. Mostly, I understood when I was being cussed out, and that was about it. The six or eight Polish words I knew well enough to speak were all curse words.

I gave the guy three dollars for my workout and headed down a flight of stairs to the basement where the men’s locker room was located behind a thick black door that said, logically enough, “MEN.”

Inside there were six banks of gray metal lockers with painted wooden benches between them. At the far end were the showers; a large tiled room with about a dozen showerheads spaced at a two-foot distance.

I had to admit, whenever I came to workout at the YMCA the Village People’s song ran through my head. Although, sometimes it segued right into “Macho Man.” The two songs were bouncing back and forth in my head as I undressed and got into my workout clothes. Nothing fancy, just an old pair of shorts from when I was in the academy and a white T-shirt that needed to be bleached. The logo on the shorts had almost completely worn off—I’d helped it along one afternoon with a scrub brush and some Comet. Not that I couldn’t have afforded another pair of shorts; I just happened to find this pair comfortable.

I hadn’t had anything to drink the night before. There was no work at Paradise, so I’d spent a quiet night watching videos with Harker. I was a little tired but thankfully not hungover. My workout was pretty much based on the fitness portion of the police academy exam. Back then, I had been in my early twenties, so I wasn’t in bad shape. I had to run a mile and a half in under fifteen minutes, which for a smoker of any age can be a challenge if it’s not worked up to. The thirty sit-ups in two minutes and the thirty-five pushups in three were less problematic. Then.

On the first floor there was a wooden-floored track making a circle around the open space used for weight training. I walked around it a few times and finally broke into a jog. I probably couldn’t pass the academy exam at this point in life, but given the kinds of things that happened to me, it wasn’t a bad idea to be able to run a couple of blocks should the need arise.

Ross belonged to some kind of neighborhood gym where the serious bodybuilding types went. Most of the clientele was queer, and he’d told me stories about the kind of shenanigans that went on in the steam room. I wondered if I should start going there. This Y didn’t even have a working steam room, much less the kind of clientele who would make twenty minutes in a steam room worthwhile.

I walked into the weight room and was about to get on the floor and do some sit-ups when I saw Detective Haggerty sitting on a weight bench. He wore a stretched out tank top, khaki shorts, and basketball shoes. His skin was a patchy pink, and his belly paunchy. He looked about one meatball sub away from a major coronary. I could tell this was his first visit in a long time. He was attempting to curl two twenty-five pounds weights he had no business even picking up.

“You should probably start out with ten pounders. You’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep trying to work out with those,” I told him after I walked over. I was not an expert; I just happened to have made the same mistake once and knew exactly how much he would hurt the next day.

He ignored me and kept ripping his tendons with the dumbbells.

“What are you doing here, Haggerty?”

Using that as an excuse to put the weights down, he caught his breath and said, “My wife threatened to divorce me if I don’t lose ten pounds.”

Given that he could easily lose forty I figured she was a very tolerant woman.

“Any leads on my client’s murder?” I asked.

He eyed me steadily. “Two fags get popped. I figure it’s a queer thing.”

I could feel my blood pressure rising in my neck, but I decided to play this off like he hadn’t said anything insulting. “That’s an interesting theory. Do you have any evidence?”

“I’m not going to share with you Nowak. You don’t think I’m that stupid, do you?”

“When I found Meek there were no signs of forced entry, so I figure maybe he knew his killer. What about at Taber’s place? Was it the same?”

“Not saying.”