boystown

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries

TOP SHELF

An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers

PO Box 2545

Round Rock, TX 78680

Copyright 2009 by Marshall Thornton

Cover illustration by Alessia Brio

Published with permission

ISBN: 978-1-60370-852-4, 1-60370-852-9

www.torquerepress.com

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.

First Torquere Press Printing: November 2009

Printed in the USA

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BOYSTOWN:

Three Nick Nowak Mysteries

By Marshall Thornton

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Thanks

While I actually lived in Chicago during the early eighties, memory plays tricks on all of us, and more research was necessary than I’d expected when I began this series. The Internet is, of course, an amazing resource and I consulted many historical sites. I would like to single out Sukie de La Croix who has written about gay Chicago history for several publications, and Chicago Gay History whose website features remarkable videos of gay Chicagoans.

I would also like to thank my readers, editors, and memory checkers: Danielle Wolff, Miles Ketchum, Joan Martinelli, Ellen Sue Feinberg, Robin Sinclair, and Vincent Diamond, as well as everyone at Torquere Press.

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Little Boy Burned - 50

Little Boy Fallen - 97

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Like most guys, I’m a sucker for easy sex and a fast buck. Unlike most guys, I should know better.

The call came in a few minutes after three on a Tuesday afternoon. I rent a small office in a soon-to-be-demolished granite and marble building located at the south end of the Loop. There’s just room enough for a desk, a metal file cabinet, a chair for a client, and a dead corn plant I keep meaning to throw out. That particular day there wasn’t anything on the radio except reporters droning on about the inauguration. It seemed a little odd that none of them complained that our country was now going to be run by a guy who once co-starred with a chimp. Not that I had anything against the Gipper. I just wasn’t convinced I wanted his finger on the button. I turned the radio down and picked up the phone.

“Is this Nick Nowak?” the voice on the other end asked. It was some guy, trying not to sound as nervous as he obviously was.

“Sure is,” I replied. I reached into my desk to pull out my cigarettes. Then I remembered I’d quit at New Year’s. A decision I’d regretted every day since.

“The private investigator?” the guy asked.

“Yeah, the private investigator.” I wondered how many other varieties of Nick Nowak he thought were out there. “What can I do for you?”

The line crackled for a beat. Then he said, “I need you to find someone for me.”

I looked out my eighth story window, watched as a couple flakes of snow drifted down to LaSalle Street, and waited for the guy to tell me who it was he wanted me to find. He didn’t.

Great. This was gonna be like pulling teeth.

“Let’s start with you,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Walt... Paddington. Walt Paddington.”

“Well, Walt, why don’t you come down to my office and we’ll talk about this person you want me to find.”

“I can’t do that.”

“What? You’re the shy type?”

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“I’m downstate. Carbondale.” At least it was a logical excuse. Carbondale is at one end of the state, Chicago at the other. It’s quite a hike.

“Who do you want me to find?”

“My... my friend.”

I waited. I was beginning to feel like the dentist who kept an office down the hall. “Come on, Walt, you’re gonna need to be a little more specific.”

“His name is Brian Peerson. He’s just twenty-one. Very sweet. He’s been gone almost a year.”

“And you just now decided to look for him?”

“I thought I’d stop missing him, but I didn’t.” There was real shame in his voice, though for what I couldn’t be sure. “I just need to find him. The sooner the better.”

The situation was getting clearer. Walt sounded older; maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but he sounded it. And it made sense; an older, small-town guy wants to find his twinkie boyfriend who’s run off to the big city. Willing to pay a private investigator to do it. Yeah, I got the picture.

There was just one problem.

“Why me?” I asked.

“What?” I could almost hear him jump.

“I said ‘why me.’ How’d you come to find me?”

“Yellow Pages.”

“I don’t think so.” I had an ad in the Yellow Pages, all right. It said “Nick Nowak, Private Investigator.” It gave my license number and listed a couple of things I specialize in.

Background checks. Security. Skip trace. What it didn’t say was, “Big Old Fag ready to find your missing boyfriend.” It was no coincidence Paddington had called me.

I waited. Finally he said, “You were recommended.”

“By?”

“I’d rather not say.”

I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. Part of me wanted to give him the brush off, but business had been slow since the holidays. I told him to send some pictures of the kid, a written physical description, former addresses, Social Security number if he had it, an explanation of why he thought the kid was in Chicago, anything else he thought might help, and exactly double my normal retainer.

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I figured I’d never hear from the guy again.

* * *

None of them talk to me. Not since an unfortunate incident resulted in my abrupt departure from the department.

The rest of that week I spent doing background checks for Peterson-Palmer Investments, a brokerage firm that throws work my way. They like anyone with access to actual cash accounts to be felony-free, living under their right name, and not a drunk, a druggie, or an inveterate gambler. It can be tedious work, but it keeps a roof over my head. Well, part of the roof, anyway.

It took some doing, but I found a decent jazz station on the radio. This was a relief since all the other stations were now blathering about the hostages being released. For some reason they all kept giving the credit to the Gipper, even though he hadn’t even been president an hour when it happened. To me, it seemed more like the camel jockeys just wanted to stick it to the peanut farmer and it didn’t have a whole lot to do with the skill of the incoming commander in chief.

That Thursday I popped down to Oak Street on the way home from my office. Hunched between the elegant boutiques is a bar called The Loading Zone where they run a well-attended happy hour every afternoon. Below street level, the place was smoky and already crowded when I walked in.

I wore a thin wool overcoat that was too light for a Chicago winter, so I compensated with a corduroy blazer and flannel shirt underneath. The outfit was a little formal for a gay bar, but it allowed my holster and the 9mm Sig Sauer it held to go unnoticed. Some people might not find it necessary to walk around with a gun tucked under their arm. They’re lucky.

I checked the overcoat and wandered over to the bar to order a Miller and a shot of tequila. I’m six-foot three, weigh a steady two-ten, and in a personal ad I might have the nerve to put VGL --

after about three beers. I’m thirty-two, and I still get my fair share of attention at places like The Loading Zone. I visit the Y a couple times a week, but I’m not what you’d call muscular, just fit.

My dark hair gets curly if I let it grow too long, so I keep it short. My moustache makes me look a little like a clone, but the fact that my 501s aren’t two sizes too small takes me out of the running.

I downed the shot and was halfway through my beer when I noticed a kid in the crowd staring at me. I stared back. He was short and thick, the kind of guy who would have made a good wrestler in high school -- if he wasn’t so busy flitting around the drama club. His hair was sand-colored and flopped lazily over one blue eye. He wore a tight thermal undershirt that had been dyed a bright turquoise. His designer jeans had been mercilessly tailored to show off his thick thighs and
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his perky, round ass. When I walked over, his name turned out to be Bobby. Bobby Something-or-Other. The bar was loud, and I didn’t exactly pick up his last name. Not that I cared.

As he flamboyantly smoked one extra long cigarette after another, Bobby told me he worked at the Chicago Apparel Center in a showroom for ladies' accessories: scarves, belts, and handbags.

He was devoted to Jane Olivor, Barbara Cook, and Bette Midler. He’d studied theater in college and heard that Chicago was a great theater town, but no one would give him a break. I guess there weren’t a lot of parts for guys who smoked like Bette Davis. Mostly, I just watched that cigarette, debating whether to bum one.

On Saturdays, he took an acting class that cost him a small fortune. A New York director would put the half dozen budding actors on stage and tell them to do whatever they liked as long as they

‘inhabited’ the space. Then he’d make sarcastic comments about what the actors had done until they were quivering emotional wrecks.

He accused Bobby of masturbating on stage.

“Were you?” I asked.

“He probably would have liked that.” Bobby laughed and added, “Maybe I’ll try it next week.”

He launched into a discussion of his favorite actresses, most of whom were dead or close to it.

Also a writer he adored and I’d never heard of, James Kirkwood. And, when his drink was empty, how much he liked Long Island Iced Teas. I bought him one, and later another.

Finally, after he’d given me far more information about himself than I actually wanted, he agreed to go home with me. When we got outside the bar, the temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees and hovered just above life threatening. There was no way I was going to stand at a bus station or drag my ass over to the El, so I hailed us a cab.

It was a Checker. I like Checker cabs. They feel like the real thing. The Chevy Impalas and Ford LTDs floating around the city didn’t do it for me. I told the driver to head up to my apartment on Roscoe near Halsted. On the way, Bobby told me the most intimate secrets of his three roommates. In the more than two hours I’d been with him, he’d asked me only three questions.

What was my name? What did I do for a living? And was I a top? So far this was my favorite thing about Bobby. Well, if you didn’t count the fact that he slipped his hand into my lap as the driver pulled out onto Lake Shore Drive.

My apartment is what’s called a garden apartment, which is what landlords name a basement after they fix it up and put it up for rent. The windows sit level with the sidewalk, and I get a good view of people from the waist down. From the layout, it’s clear it wasn’t supposed to be an apartment at all. You walk into the building’s foyer and next to the mailboxes is my front door.

Once you open that, you’re in a ten or twelve-foot hallway, then down a couple of steps into a funky little room that is six feet by six feet. It would have made a nice little reading area with a chair and lamp, I suppose. But I’m not inclined that way.

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From there you go into a normal-sized room with a window, but no closet and no actual door.

It’s a junk room. There are a couple boxes full of stuff I don’t want to look at; a box full of high school memorabilia, pay stubs from every job I ever had, all my check registers, a bike with a flat tire I never got fixed. Bobby gave the room a sniff and then charged on to the rest of the apartment.