Fidgety silence. Then, “Troy.”
“Troy what?”
“I don’t know his last name. He… oh, Christ!”
“What’s got you so upset, Mr. Exeter?”
“I can’t… if David ever finds out…”
“You and this Troy, is that it?”
“One night, that’s all it was,” Exeter said miserably. “A… one-night stand. David had been away two weeks, a business trip to Hong Kong, I was so lonely… it just happened…”
“When was this?”
“Last month, three or four weeks ago.”
“Where’d you meet Troy? The Dark Spot?”
“Yes.”
“Take him to your apartment?”
“My God, no. We went to his room… Troy’s…”
“Room? A hotel?”
“No, an apartment house not far away.”
“What apartment house? What address?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“I was… I had a lot to drink that night. Somewhere in the neighborhood. Uphill toward Market. I swear that’s all I remember.”
“Is Troy a regular at The Dark Spot?”
“Recently. I saw him there two or three times before that night.”
“With Gene Zalesky?”
“I’m not sure… maybe…”
“How about a redhead with freckles?”
“No, I don’t think so. But he was… popular, you know? Different guys…”
“Promiscuous?”
“Yes. But safe sex, he was smart about that.”
“Is he one of the customers Kenneth Hitchcock flirted with?”
“Well, he liked to sit at the bar.”
“Last time you saw him was when?”
“Not since we… that night.”
“But he does still hang out at The Dark Spot?”
“I don’t know, I suppose so. I’ve only been there once since… the night I was attacked… and Troy wasn’t there then.” Exeter glanced nervously at the wall clock. “I really do have to go. If I’m not there when David comes home, he gets very angry.”
“We’re almost done,” Runyon said. “Does Troy have a car?”
“Car?”
“Did he drive you to the house where he lives?”
“Oh. No, we walked. It wasn’t far.”
“So you don’t know if he owns a car.”
“I’m sorry, no. Why are you asking all these questions about Troy? He couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the bashings.”
Runyon said, “No more than The Dark Spot could,” and let it go at that.
Gene Zalesky wasn’t home. Or if he was, he wasn’t answering his doorbell.
Next stop: The Dark Spot.
Runyon had been to the heart of the Castro, the section between Market and Twentieth Streets, a few times before. Driving and walking both, familiarizing himself with the area and with Joshua’s world. He’d done some background research on the district as well, for the same reasons. Twenty-five years as a gay ghetto, beginning in the pioneering days of gay liberation in the early seventies; the days when dilapidated storefronts and bars and other rough edges were considered a righteous emblem of the oppressed homosexual cause, and almost all the businesses catered to gays and lesbians. The ravages of AIDS had nearly destroyed the Castro in the early nineties. When it began to show signs of life again, it was no longer a closed community; chain stores and upscale boutiques and fast-food outlets and other businesses catering to straights as well as gays elbowed in and slowly changed the face of the neighborhood. Yuppie families moved in, too, buying up and renovating some of the old Victorians. Now rainbow flags flew openly next to American flags, shops dispensing clothing and symbols of gay culture rubbed shoulders with others peddling urban chic and Starbucks coffee and Radio Shack computers, old-fashioned meat- market clubs like The Dark Spot and Queer Heaven stood cheek by jowl with brew pubs and sports bars.
At five-thirty on a week night, the district’s jammed streets and sidewalks were a heterogeneous mix of gays and straights, whites and a variety of ethnics. Young mothers with kids in tow walking next to men in tight leather pants and open leather vests with nothing underneath. Suits and ties, motorcycle jackets bristling with studs and looped with chains. Orange spiked hair and crew cuts. Elaborate tattoos, body piercings, nose rings, nipple rings, and wedding rings. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll coexisting, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently, with family values and the conservative urban lifestyle.
But in essence it remained the seat of Gay Power. The huge rainbow flag that flew permanently at the corner of Market and Castro attested to that. So did the annual Gay Pride Parade that drew thousands from all over the West Coast. So did the big celebration that had taken place there recently, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally struck down the antiquated Texas sodomy law and proclaimed that gay Americans had a constitutional right to private sexual relationships.
None of its ambience had much impact on Runyon as he walked through it. Nor would it have in its early gay-ghetto days. A vice cop he’d known when he was on the Seattle PD had referred to the gay district up there as a “polyglot of perversion,” but he’d never seen it that way. The gay scene, diluted or not, was no different from the straight singles scene-the gay clubs no different, for that matter, from women’s clubs or garden clubs. A little more dangerous late at night, a little more desperate because of the threat of AIDS, but otherwise just people with common interests and outlooks gathering together for companionship, camaraderie, pleasure. Trying to make their lives a little easier, to put a little joy into them. Trying to keep their hurts at bay.
All pleasure was, when you got right down to it, a staving off of pain. The pain of living, the pain of dying. The ones who could manage it were the lucky ones. He wasn’t one of them. There had been no pleasure for him since Colleen died, just the pain. Work was the only thing that dulled the ache, allowed him to go on, and then only for brief periods. Establishing some kind of connection with Joshua might help some, but in the heavy baggage between them there was no room for joy. Understanding, a father-son detente, was the best he could hope for.
So he walked here alone, a misfit among the straights, a misfit among the gays. The proverbial stranger in a strange land. Funny thing was, there was a kind of small, cold comfort in being part of Joshua’s world, his misfit son’s strange land, if only for a little while.
The Dark Spot turned out to be no different from fifty, a hundred other bars he’d visited, gay or straight, on business or otherwise. Blue lights and blue neon so dark it was almost black. Loud music, loud laughter. Men packed along the bar, men dancing, men with their heads together at tables and in dark corners. The few who glanced at him glanced away again immediately. Cop written on his face and the way he moved. Straight cop at that: avoid at all costs.
He stayed just long enough to scan the crowd and satisfy himself that neither Gene Zalesky nor a young, angelic-faced blond nor a redhead with freckles was among them. He spoke to no one. There was nothing for him here alone, no answers to any of his questions. The only way anybody would talk to him in The Dark Spot was if he came with a guide, a member of the fraternity.
Joshua?
Under different circumstances, he could at least ask. But after what Larry Exeter had told him, no. He’d have to find somebody else. Or some other way to get the information he needed.
