'Not quite everybody,' I said. 'I talked to dozens of people today and not one of them told me that.
Most of them didn't tell me a thing.'
'What were you doing?'
'Looking for our friend. I found a hotel where he spent a month after he got out of prison.'
'Where?'
'A flop in the West Nineties. The Benjamin Davis, but I don't think you'd know it.'
'Would I want to?'
'Probably not. Our sketch is good, I managed to establish that much, and it may be the most important thing I learned today.'
'Did you get the original back?'
'You still want it, huh?'
'Of course I do. What are you doing tonight? Do you want to bring it over?'
'I've got some more legwork to do.'
'And I bet you give great leg, don't you?'
'And I want to get to a meeting,' I said. 'I'll call later, if it's not too late. And maybe I'll come by, if you feel like late company.'
'Good,' she said. 'And Matt? That was sweet.'
'For me, too.'
'Did you used to be such a romantic? Well, I just wanted you to know I appreciate it.'
I put the phone down and turned the sound up. The game was well into the fourth quarter, so I'd evidently been asleep for a while. It was no contest at this stage, but I watched the rest of it anyway, then went out to get something to eat.
I took a batch of copies of Motley's likeness and an inch-thick stack of business cards, and after I ate I went on downtown. I worked the SRO hotels and rooming houses inChelsea , then walked on down to the Village. I timed things so I could catch a meeting in a storefront onPerry Street . There were about seventy people jammed into a room that would have held half that number comfortably, and the seats were all spoken for by the time I got there. There was standing room only, and precious little of that. The meeting was lively, though, and I got a seat when the place thinned out at the break.
The meeting broke at ten and I made the rounds of some of the leather bars, Boots and Saddles on Christopher, the Chuckwagon onGreenwich , and a couple of lowdown riverfront joints onWest Street .
The gay bars catering to the S & M crowd had always had a murky ambience, but now in the Age of AIDS I found their atmosphere particularly unsettling. Part of this, I suppose, came from the perception that a large proportion of the men I saw, looking so gracefully casual in denim and cowhide, smoking their Marlboros and nursing their Coors, were walking time bombs, infected with the virus and odds-on to come down with the disease within months or years. Armed with this knowledge, or perhaps disarmed by it, it was all too easy for me to see the skull beneath the skin.
I was there on a hunch, and a thin one at that. The day Motley surprised us at Elaine's apartment, the first time I'd seen him, he'd been togged out like some sort of urban cowboy, all the way down to his metal-tipped boots. This was a long way from making him a leather queen, I had to admit, but I didn't have any trouble picturing him in those bars, leaning sinuously against something, those long strong fingers curled around a beer bottle, those flat cold eyes staring, measuring, challenging. As far as I knew, women were Motley's victims, but I couldn't be sure how discriminating he was in that particular regard. If he didn't care whether his partners were alive or dead, how important could their gender be to him?
So I showed his likeness around and asked the questions that went with it. Two bartenders thought Motley looked familiar, although neither could ID him for certain. At one of theWest Street dives, they had a dress code on weekends; you had to be wearing denim or leather, and a bouncer wearing both stopped me in my suit and pointed to the sign explaining the policy.
I suppose it's fair play. Look at all the people in jeans and bomber jackets who don't get to have a drink at the Plaza. 'It's not a social call,'
I told him. I showed him Motley's picture and asked if he knew him.
'What's he done?'
'He hurt some people.'
'We get our share of rough trade.'
'This is rougher than you'd want.'
'Let me see that,' he said, raising his sunglasses, bringing the sketch up to his eyes for a closer look.
'Oh, yes,' he said.
'You know him?'
'I've seen him. You wouldn't call him a frequent flier, but I've got a bitching memory for faces. Among other body parts.'
'How many times has he been here?'
'I don't know. Four times? Five times? First time I saw him must have been around Labor Day. Maybe a little earlier than that. And he's been here, oh, four times since. Now he could come in early in the day and I wouldn't know it, because I don't start until nine o'clock.'
