The walls were a soft cream color, and a large brick and tile fireplace was flanked by floor-to-ceiling shelves full of ceramic pottery.
“I collect the stuff,” Turner said, observing Quinn’s interest. “Nineteenth-century American.”
“Impressive,” Quinn said. He noticed that Turner’s clothes were expensive but threadbare, and one of his shirt buttons was missing. Around his scrawny neck was a red paisley ascot.
“Sit down, please,” Turner said. He motioned toward a flowered beige sofa with wooden inserts in its upholstered arms.
Quinn sat and looked around again. “Nice place. I’ve got an old brownstone myself, trying to bring it back.”
“Great ladies, worth preserving,” Turner said.
Quinn’s gaze fell on an antique Victrola record player with a crank and louvered mahogany doors. “You collect old records, too?”
“Not really. Mostly furniture, when I’m not buying pottery. That’s what the Victrola is to me-quality antique furniture, wood with a patina you can’t find on anything new. But she still plays.” Turner did a little old man’s shuffle in leather moccasins, as if dancing to the musical strains of the Victrola. Quinn saw that the moccasins were actually house slippers with fleece linings. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Nope,” Quinn said, “just some answers.”
Turner smiled with yellowed teeth, but his eyes grew brighter. Not Einstein, maybe, but there was an active intelligence behind those eyes.
“Back in the sixties and seventies, you managed Socrates’s Cavern on the West Side,” Quinn said.
“Sure did. I was manager and part owner.” Turner sat down on the edge of a brown wing chair that looked as if it might engulf him if he leaned back. “Listen, the kind of business we were in, I saw a lot of the cops. But we never stepped over the line. Nothing illegal. Consenting adults only. That was something we diligently checked.”
“Ever see any of your old friends from those days?”
“Naw. We were just in business together. Then the business kind of ran its course. Our business, anyway, not the S and M business.” He gave a hapless shrug with narrow shoulders. “Hell, the way it is now, with the Internet and all, everything’s changed.” Caught in another of his sudden mood swings, he waved his arms exuberantly. “S and M’s gone international!”
“Like the House of Pancakes,” Quinn said. “Anything like your club still operating in the city?”
“Oh, you know how it is. Sex clubs are here and there. Always will be. But nothing as big as we were. In some ways, society was lots more open back then.” He squinted at Quinn. “You look old enough to remember.”
“I do remember. Especially that place over on East Fiftyninth that was doing snuff films.”
Turner raised both hands palms out. “None of that in my end of the business. Not for real, anyway.” He shook his head in disgust. “Jesus!” He sat even farther out on the chair’s large cushion so that it looked as if it might flip up and hit him in the back. “Listen, most of this stuff is with, for, and about grown-ups. You follow me? Alternative lifestyles. We Americans like to exercise our freedom to pursue happiness however we want. Long as we don’t get in the way of somebody else’s parade and there’s no kids or animals involved. Free country, thank God!”
“Amen,” Quinn said.
Turner stared at him to see if he might be joking and seemed to decide he wasn’t.
“I’m here to investigate a murder,” Quinn said, “not find out who was whacking who on the ass in your club back when people were wearing Mao jackets.”
“Yet you ask me about the club.”
“Yet I do. The name Philip Wharkin mean anything to you?”
“No… can’t say it does.”
“He was a registered member of Socrates’s Cavern.”
“So were lots of people. Folks you’d never imagine.”
“Somebody-maybe another Philip Wharkin-wrote his name in blood on the bathroom mirror in Millie Graff’s apartment after he killed her.”
“You don’t say? I never read that in the paper.”
“It hasn’t been released to the press.”
“Well, if you want, I’ll keep mum. I was always ready to work with the cops. Hell, you’d be surprised the off- duty cops that came into the club.”
“I doubt that I would,” Quinn said. “But don’t spread the name Philip Wharkin around. What I would like is for you to contact some of the old friends you told me you didn’t have, and ask if they know anything about Millie Graff.”
“If I can locate them, I’ll sure do that. Was Millie a bad girl?”
“Straight as Central Park West, far as we can tell.”
“That don’t mean anything,” Turner said. “People outside the S and M world don’t have a clue.”
“That’s why I want you to ask around inside,” Quinn said. “Find me a clue.”
He stood up from the sofa with some difficulty, understanding why Turner didn’t scoot all the way back in his chair. He gave Turner one of his cards. “Leave a message if I’m not in, okay, Bill?”
“Sure, I will. Cops and me, we were always tight. Fun was what it was all about in those days. A certain kinda fun, anyway.” The frail-looking little man stood up with surprising nimbleness and escorted Quinn to the door. “Listen,” he said, when Quinn’s hand was on the knob. “You’re on this case because of the police commissioner, right?”
“That’s so.”
Turner adjusted his brightly colored ascot as if it might be tightening like a noose. “I mean, he ain’t gonna have my ass if he finds out I’m asking around about this Millie Graff, is he?”
“Not a chance,” Quinn said. “He’s very understanding.” And in a lower yet harder voice: “So am I.”
11
Hogart, Missouri, 1991
Wham! Milt Thompson hit a home run into the left-field upper deck of Busch Stadium in St. Louis and the crowd stood and roared.
So did Roy Brannigan.
Beth Brannigan watched her husband sit back down and guzzle the last of his can of beer as he watched the Cardinals-Pirates ball game on their old console TV. He was slouched on the sagging gray sofa. On the wall behind him was a huge, roughly hewn wooden crucifix that had been created with a chain saw. He’d bought it at a flea market for ten dollars. Beth had seen him pray before it for the Cardinals to win. Jokingly, he pretended, but he didn’t fool her. In Roy Brannigan’s mind, it wasn’t the cardinals in Rome who counted. They couldn’t hit a curve ball.
Beth was a sweet-looking woman with a heart-shaped face and guileless blue eyes. She had a brown fleck in one eye that gave her a kind of intense look that somehow added to her appeal. Her figure was trim and shown to advantage in a red tank top and short Levi’s cutoffs. She was barefoot. Beth had once overheard a man describe her as fetching. She thought that was fitting, the way she fetched for Roy.
Roy’s idea of marriage was based on the Old Testament, and he spun it with his own interpretation. He insisted they attend church every Sunday, as they had this morning. After church they’d have a big meal at home, and Beth would clean up afterward. If the Cardinals were playing a day game, which they seemed to do most Sundays during the season, she’d make sure the kitchen was cleaned up before Roy finished smoking his after-meal cigar out on the porch. She’d have a cold beer waiting when he came back inside to watch the game. Religious though he might be, he had no qualms about Beth working on the Lord’s day.
Nor did religion keep Roy from accumulating a large cache of pornography, of which he thoroughly disapproved. He fancied himself a student and critic of erotica. He would from time to time write reproachful letters to the publishers, excoriating them for publishing such filth. But he bought most of his collection by mail, and often
