A Dangerous Man

Robert Cramer: I have a theory, but you’ll have to buy my new book when it comes out. I don’t claim to know the truth, but I think when The Man Who Got His Due is released it will answer pretty much all the key questions about Thompson’s crimes.

SF Giants Fan: I was asking about Alaska because I heard that his folks had moved to Oregon. That’s not all that far from Alaska. Maybe that’s where he really is. MagickBulletMan: where did you hear that, SF? SF Giants Fan: On another site.

MagickBulletMan: Which one?

:

:

:

MagickBulletMan: SF?

SF Giants Fan: sorry. I think it was Danny Lester’s site.

MagickBulletMan: Danny Lester sucks! Ru one of his goons?

SF Giants Fan: No I just went to his site.

MagickBulletMan: Danny Lester floods other sites with links to his. He lies all the time. and he’s notorious for logging onto sites under assumed identities. Ru Danny Lester?

SF Giants Fan: No.

MagickBulletMan: Robert, I think SF is Danny Lester. I think he’s here trying to find out where Henry’s parents are so he can harass them like he did right after Las Vegas.

Robert Cramer: OK, just settle down, MBM. SF, are you associated with Danny Lester?

SF Giants Fan: No.

Robert Cramer: Well, you’ve never been on my site before and you’re asking about Thompson’s parents. Danny Lester is known to have made a habit of tracking down those poor people to harass them about Thompson’s whereabouts.

SF Giants Fan: I am not Danny fucking Lester.

Robert Cramer: I’ll take your word for that. But I would prefer that there were no swearing on this site. And just to be on the safe side I’m going to declare Thompson’s parents as an off limits topic for the rest of this session.

MagickBulletMan: Good idea, Robert.

USER SF GIANTS FAN HAS LOGGED OFF

And so it goes.

I haven’t read Robert Cramer’s The Man Who Came Back and I can pretty much guarantee I won’t be reading The Man Who Got His Due. I can guarantee these things because I did read his first book about me, The Man Who Got Away. Once around the block with that shit was more than enough. It was apparently also more than enough to put him on an equal footing with Sandy Candy and Danny Lester as an acknowledged Henry Thompson expert. I guess I was lucky to hit his site on a day when he was doing a live chat, but it doesn’t feel that way.

I look out the window. It’s getting dark. I’ve been sitting in this place on Twelfth Street for hours, setting up free e-mail accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo and using them to create screen identities at various Henry Thompson chat sites. But there’s only so much traffic on the sites. Most of them are devoted to posts, and it takes far too long to generate responses to my questions. And the freaks on these sites, my fan base, are cliquey as hell. They chat, post, and e-mail to each other constantly, but newcomers aren’t made to feel overly welcome. It’s not as if I lack for Henry Thompson trivia knowledge to prove my devotion to the topic at hand, but just getting anyone to acknowledge you is a challenge. I spend two hours slowly creeping my way into a chat on www.therealhenrythompson.com, but when I try to get any actual information about my folks I’m shut down.

I put my fingers on the keyboard. They’re shaking. Hours of sitting here, staring at the screen and drinking coffee have fried me out. I need to take a walk.

I log off and go to the counter. The NYU student at the register checks how long I’ve been on and rings me up. I hand her some money. She looks up as she’s handing me my change.

– Nice hat.

I put my hand on my head. I took off the sunglasses and put my jacket on over my wife-beater, but I’m still wearing the I NY hat.

– You want it?

– No. I was being sarcastic.

– Your loss.

I walk outside and drop the hat in a garbage can.

It really is her loss. A hat like this, worn by Henry Thompson? She could sell it on eBay to one of those assholes for a few hundred easy.

I WALK UP Seventh Avenue.

Adam and Martin won’t get on a plane for Oregon right away. They don’t know what I’ll do. They’ll want to find me before I can tell David anything. They’ll want to protect their aunt.

I walk out of the West Village and into Chelsea.

David won’t do anything right away, either. He’ll wait for my next move. He knows the thing I’m most likely to do is come walking in just like he wants. But I know him, too. I know he likes to talk about the bottom line, about the expense of revenge. But I’ve seen the bodies; men and women killed to send a message. I’ve broken bones for his spite.

I walk out of Chelsea and into Midtown.

The cops. I can walk into a precinct house and turn myself in. But it will take time. Time before I can get anyone to listen about the danger my parents are in. Time before anyone who can do something about it appears. And then for how long? For how long do the police protect them?

No.

David has to die. Adam has to die. Martin has to die. Branko has to die.

But first I’ll take another shot at the Internet. See if I can find someone with a phone number. See if I can talk to them. God, I don’t want to talk to them.

I’m standing on the corner of Forty-second and Seventh. The southern edge of Times Square. I look down toward Eighth Ave., the block they used to call the Deuce. When I first came to the City, it was lined with titty bars and porn shops. It had already been cleaned up a lot when I left, but now it looks like a giant mall. Movie theaters, a McDonald’s, Chili’s, a Hello Kitty store. And a huge Internet cafe. I stand there staring at it, and a guy in a bright orange poncho forces a piece of cardboard into my hand and walks on. I look at the card.

It’s an advertisement for Legz Diamond, one of the old Midtown strip clubs. I look at the guy who gave it to me. He walks down the street, pulling the cards from the kangaroo pocket in his poncho and handing them to the men streaming past on the sidewalk, ignoring the women. Well, at least that hasn’t changed. I start down the block headed for the Internet place, flicking the card’s edge against my thigh as I walk.

I guess it’s a good thing, all this renovation, all this cleanup. But I miss the old city. I miss that feel. The character. I look at the card again. At least they haven’t cleaned it up entirely. At least there are still strippers.

Strippers.

At least there are still strippers.

Oh, God, there are still strippers.

PRIVATE EYES IS a strip club. Being a strip club, it is just like all other strip clubs. I pay my twenty-dollar cover, get my hand stamped, pay eight bucks for a soda, and take a seat at the bar. I am the only patron at the bar. Just me, a scantily clad bartender and scantily clad cocktail waitresses picking up drinks. I’m alone at the bar because of Rudy Giuliani.

While he was still mayor, Rudy got a public decency law passed that targeted strip bars and porn shops. The