Cities of the Red Night

I sat down gingerly in a chair with the springs showing. I held the deck in my hand where she could see it. 'You got any pictures of him?'

She looked at me and she looked at the heroin. She rummaged in a drawer, and tossed two pictures onto a coffee table that wobbled. 'Those should be worth something.'

They were. One showed Jerry in drag, and he made a beautiful girl. The other showed him standing up naked with a hard-on. 'Was he gay?'

'Sure. He liked getting fucked by Puerto Ricans and having his picture took.'

'He pay you?'

'Sure, twenty bucks. He kept most of the pictures.'

'Where'd he get the money?'

'I don't know.'

She was lying. I went into my regular spiel. 'Now look, I'm not a cop. I'm a private investigator paid by his family. I'm paid to find him, that's all. He's been missing for two months.' I started to put the heroin back into my pocket and that did it.

'He was pushing C.'

I tossed the deck onto the coffee table. She locked the door behind me.

Later that evening, over a joint, I interviewed a nice young gay couple, who simply adored Jerry.

'Such a sweet boy ...'

'So understanding ...'

'Understanding?'

'About gay people. He even marched with us....'

'And look at the postcard he sent us from Athens.' It was a museum postcard showing the statue of a nude youth found at Kouros. 'Wasn't that cute of him?'

Very cute, I thought.

I interviewed his steady girl friend, who told me he was all mixed up.

'He had to get away from his mother's influence and find himself. We talked it over.'

I interviewed everyone I could find in the address book. I talked to waiters and bartenders all over the SoHo area: Jerry was a nice boy ... polite ... poised ... a bit reserved. None of them had an inkling of his double life as a coke pusher and a homosexual transvestite. I see I am going to need some more heroin on this one. That's easy. I know some narco boys who me a favor. It takes an ounce and a ticket to San Francisco to buy some names from the junky chick.

Seek and you shall find. I nearly found an ice pick in my stomach. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Often it wasn't opened unto me. But I finally found the somebody who: a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican kid named Kiki, very handsome and quite fond of Jerry in his way. Psychic too, and into Macambo magic. He told me Jerry had the mark of death on him.

'What was his source for the coke?'

His face closed over. 'I don't know.'

'Can't blame you for not knowing. May I suggest to you that his source was a federal narc?'

His deadpan went deader. 'I didn't tell you anything.'

'Did he hear voices? Voices giving him orders?'

'I guess he did. He was controlled by something.'

I gave him my card. 'If you ever need anything let me know.'

Mr. Green showed up the next morning with a stack of photos. The questionnaire I had given