A Time for Secrets (18 page)

“You a cop?”

“No, I’m a private investigator.” I slid one of my corrected cards across the bar. “I’m looking into the death of Bill Maker. Are you Pearl?”

She scrutinized my card for a moment then said, “Yeah, I’m Pearl. Who are you working for?”

“Ronald Meek hired me.”

She chuckled. “Ronnie Meek, haven’t heard that name in a couple decades. How is he?”

“Dead.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “I hope he paid you in advance.”

“You used to go by the name Veatrice LaShell?”

“I sure did. I was the Happy Homemaker on Channel Two every afternoon from three to three-thirty until nineteen sixty-two. I still make a mean Jell-O mold, if you’re ever in need.”

“Tell me about being married to Bill Maker.”

That stopped her. She poured herself a shot of Jack Daniels and threw it back. She put the shot glass carefully into a metal sink under the bar. Then, after a little shrug she said, “Bill Maker was probably the best relationship I ever had. It was a marriage of convenience, of course. We needed to pass. That meant he needed a wife, and I needed a husband. So we played the parts for each other. As marriages go, I think it was better than most.”

One of her other patrons nodded that she needed a new drink. Pearl made it, then came back to me.

“We were always friends. I met him in an acting class. He was the best scene partner I ever had. Took it seriously. I liked that. It didn’t take us long to figure each other out, and when we did, how we could help each other. We were ambitious kids.”

“Who do you think killed him?”

“That’s your idea of investigating? Asking me who killed him?”

“I know who killed him. I’m just wondering if you do.”

That brought her up short. The suspicious look came back and she said, “He picked up the wrong guy, ended up dead in an alley.”

“A bar called The Lair was raided that night, but I think you know that. You never thought there was a connection?”

“There were rumors. It wasn’t a good idea to believe them. It’s still not a good idea.”

“No, it’s not. That’s what got Ronald Meek murdered the other night plus the guy he hired me to find, Vernon Taber.”

For a moment, I thought she might throw me out, but then she said, “Aw, what the fuck. It’s too much, being scared all your life. It’s just too much. What do you need to know?”

“Meek kept a journal. He described the night Bill Maker was beaten to death by the police. There was another person in the squad car with them. Possibly with the initial B. Ronald didn’t use names in his journal.”

“B would be for Bill wouldn’t it?” she said, stating the obvious.

“He used SR for Bill. Space Ranger.”

She smiled, sadly. “That’s cute, I suppose.”

“Can you think of any of Bill’s friend’s who might have been there that night?”

“Well, there was a guy named Larry or Lewis. He was very queeny. Ronny used to tease him by calling him Butch.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling like I’d found my guy. “Lewis Carpinski.” One of the names I’d culled from the newspaper and the police report.

“Yeah, that was probably it.”

“One thing bothers me,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to put this, so I moved forward carefully. “Bill Maker was in the closet. That’s what your marriage was about. But, in Meek’s journal he talks back to the police. He’s almost defiant.”

She smiled. “Yeah, that was Bill. For him, being in the closet was acting. I think he enjoyed it, but he could never resist tipping people off. He wanted people to be impressed by his performance, which couldn’t happen if they didn’t know it was a performance. He liked to provoke.”

I nodded. It made a perverse sort of sense.

“Do you have any idea how I could find Lewis Carpinski?”

“Well, I don’t have his address if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t keep in touch with any of those boys. I do know that he was the treasurer for the Mattachine Society. He quit, though, because of what happened to Bill. I remember him saying at Bill’s funeral, ‘We’re never going to win. They’re never going to accept us.’ And he gave up. Just like that he gave up.”

“What’s the Mattachine Society?”

“A gay rights group. Long before whatever they’re doing now. Long before Gay Liberation there was The Mattachine Society.”

And then I knew where I had to go next.

§ § § §

The Gay and Lesbian Historical Library and Archives did not have a sign. It had an acronym. GLHLA. Located in a narrow storefront at the base of a three-story, yellow brick building, it was not far from the last stop on the Jackson Howard. You could see Evanston when you stood in front of the store.

At four o’clock in the afternoon it was stifling hot. When I walked into the library, a little bell rang to warn whoever was in residence that they had company. It hardly seemed necessary since the place was so small. The first few feet were dedicated to a large table shoved up against the wall with four chairs sitting around it. On the table were recent issues of the local gay rags. Then there were three rows of industrial beige metal shelves holding more books than they were ever meant to. Beyond that, an open area with a couple of beat-up wooden desks and stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes, as well a few stacks of open files. The air-conditioning was piss-poor.

Daniel sat at one of the desks in the open area. He was small, blond, and had a naturally muscular little body. He’d changed his hairstyle to one that was shorter, more cropped and tight around his head. On his left cheek there was a tiny scar that was just a little too big to be crow’s foot. He looked up at me with his sky blue eyes, and I thought my heart might stop.

I forced myself to walk back to him. He stood up, smiled at me and then tried not smile.

“I’m working on a case,” I said quickly. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

His smile got wry. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Actually, it has to do with someone you know, Ronald Meek. Do you remember him? He came to see you in the hospital.”

“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten his name.”

“He was murdered,” I said.

“Last week? That was Ronald? I read about it, but I didn’t put it together.” The picture they’d printed in the
Daily Herald
was twenty years old, so I wasn’t surprised. “That’s terrible. He was nice.”

“The Mattachine Society. Do you know about that?”

“Yes. I know a lot about that. It’s a group that began in Los Angeles in the late forties. The Chicago chapter was founded in the mid-fifties. Not to be confused with Mattachine Midwest which was an entirely different organization begun in the sixties.” He studied me closely for a moment and then said, “That’s probably not what you need to know though, is it?”

“I’m looking for a man named Lewis Carpinski. He was treasurer of the Chicago chapter.”

He walked over to the stack of boxes, moved a couple so he could get to one in the middle, opened it, and began digging through. I watched the back of his neck. It was pink and moist, and I wanted to lean over and—

Turning around, he held out a small stack of printed booklets.
The Mattachine Review
. They were about the size of theater programs, printed on cheap yellowing paper in one-color ink, blue or green usually. They were printed in Los Angeles. I began to leaf through the top issue. Was Carpinski one of the contributors, or would there be a mention of the Chicago chapter somewhere?

“Don’t bother with the articles. They all used pen names. Fear of prosecution.”

“So they probably wouldn’t print the names of the officers, would they?”

“Not their real names, no, but if you can find out what pseudonym he was using, we might be able to find out more about him.”

It looked like I was going to have to spend the rest of the day reading
The Mattachine Review
. I might even have to come back the next morning. Part of me was okay with that. Well, more than okay. But then I had the bright idea to ask, “Where did you get these?”

Daniel walked back over to the desk and opened a file box full of three by five cards, the kind librarians love
d
. He flipped through quickly and said, “Well, this is a coincidence. Those boxes come from Lewis Carpinski himself.”

His voice was stiff, and I wondered if he’d recognized Carpinski’s name and had been trying to keep me there digging through old periodicals just to extend our time together.

“We have all of Carpinski’s papers. There are four more boxes in our storage facility.”

Disappointment flooded me. “So, he’s dead.”

Daniel pretended to consult the file. He
had
been lying. He’d known who Carpinski was all along.

“No, he’s not dead. He’s at Our Lady of Benevolence out in Ravenswood. He has a friend handling his estate. That’s how we got the papers.”

A puzzled look crossed Daniel’s face. “How can he be involved in a murder that happened a few days ago? He’s been in the nursing home for months.”

“I can’t say.”

Actually, I probably could. Ronald was dead and probably no longer concerned about confidentiality. I just thought Daniel would be safer if he didn’t know very much.

Things got quiet. We listened to the hum of the struggling air conditioner. I’d gotten my information. It was time to go, and yet I didn’t move.

“You never returned my call,” Daniel said, quietly.

A few months before, he’d left me a message saying he wanted to start seeing me again, even if I was staying with Harker. I never even considered calling him back.

“That was wrong,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“It got your point across.” He smiled, unhappily.

There wasn’t anything to say but the truth. “Harker has GRID.”

Daniel looked up into my eyes. I felt seen, really seen, in a way I hadn’t in a very long time. He took a step forward and put his arms around me, whispering into my ear, “I’m sorry, Nick. I really am.”

I felt like he’d kicked me in the chest, but I kept breathing anyway. Slowly, carefully, breathing.

When he stepped away, Daniel said, “I wish I could hate you. It would make things so much more…I don’t know, organized. Loving you is such a mess.”

I wanted to kiss him, to pull him into the back and fuck him behind a stack of books. But that would have made things messy, and I think he was asking me not to do that to him.

“I do really love him,” I said.

Daniel flinched, but quickly recovered. “It would be horrible if you didn’t.”

There was a long pause. Finally I said, “This guy, Meek, he kept journals, going back to the thirties. Is that the kind of thing you collect?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “it’s exactly the kind of thing we want.”

I took out my spiral notebook and wrote down Meek’s neighbor’s name and address. “You contact this guy. He was Meek’s neighbor. I don’t know the situation with Meek’s family, but this guy might. If nothing else he can warn you if the family tries to throw the journals away.”

“Thank you.”

“I do actually have one of the journals. 1959. Eventually, I’ll give it to you.”

“Eventually?” he asked.

“Right now it’s evidence. Eventually, it won’t be.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to explain to me what this is about?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He gave me a look that suggested to me he didn’t miss my secretiveness at all. “Well, I should go now,” I said.

Daniel walked me to the door. As he opened it for me he said, “When I think about the three years we were together, it seems so special, so innocent somehow. First loves are like that, I guess. Sometimes I think that’s all there is to us, wanting to get back to something we’ve lost.”

It wasn’t. There was more to it than that, and we both knew it. But looking at it his way might make things easier.

“Maybe you’re right,” I lied.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Our Lady of Benevolence Nursing Center was a low-slung brick building from the sixties taking up half a block on Wilson Avenue a few blocks from the end of the Ravenswood El. Except in the lobby, the windows were high up and close to the ceiling. Probably to keep heating costs down. But I imagined it was also to keep patients from climbing out.

I walked into the lobby and said hello to the Virgin Mary. They had a statue of her set into the wall. She was about seven feet tall and had a stern look on her face. I had the fleeting thought that it was no wonder she’d lost her virginity to the Almighty; no one else would have dared. I nearly crossed myself after thinking it, though. Eight years of catechism classes were hard to forget.

Someone cleared a throat to my right, and I turned to see a little old woman sitting at a small desk. Though she looked like she could be a resident, her pink jacket and nametag told me she was a volunteer.

“I’m here to see Lewis Carpinski,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said, as though she should have guessed. She picked up a phone and carefully dialed two numbers. A few moments later her call was answered, and she said, “There’s a visitor for Lewis Carpinski.” Then she fumbled with the phone as she set it back on the cradle. She smiled at me but didn’t say anything else. Maybe she
is
a resident, I thought.

I waited, and a couple minutes later, a young man in blue scrubs came into the lobby. “You’re here to see Lewis?” he asked brightly.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Follow me,” he said.

His outfit was loose, but his thighs and butt were big enough to press against the cloth as he walked. It was a nice view. The floor was covered in easy to clean linoleum, and the walls had been painted a supposedly soothing pastel. We walked by a dozen doors; I glanced at the sad creatures in each room. Then told myself I was better off staring at the orderly’s ass.

In room 122, Lewis Carpinski had the bed by the window. I was relieved to see that he was in better shape than his roommates, both of whom had tubes running in and out of them. Lewis wore a clean pair of pajamas and a cardigan sweater. Phil Donohue was on a TV attached to the ceiling. Lewis looked to be enjoying the show.

“Lewis, you have a visitor,” the orderly said in an unnecessarily loud voice.

Lewis perked up a little, looked over at me, and said, “Oh you’ve come back. How wonderful.”