parents, you see. They've become friends of Jane's and mine, and I've given them my word. They are looking after Eddie's best interests, and I can certainly appreciate that. The boy has just moved back to this area and is working hard to establish himself, and his parents are quite insistent that Eddie not be brought into this extremely anxiety- provoking situation of Billy's. It is a separate matter, as I've pointed out, Mr. Strachey, and, I have to insist, an entirely private one. I'm sorry. The answer to your request is no.'
The jogger and the bicyclist walked off together.
I said, 'Eddie just moved back to this area recently? How recently?' I was confused again.
Blount said, 'I simply am not at liberty to discuss Eddie's situation. I'm so sorry.'
'All right, then,' I said. 'I'll do what I can with what I've got. I'll do it the hard way. I'll be in touch, Mr. Blount.'
I left him standing there and walked up State Street.
I picked up the Rabbit on Central and drove down to the Dunn Bridge, across the river, and east on Route 20 toward Massachusetts.
The erratic weather had failed to bring out the colors of the foliage that year, and as I approached the Berkshires, the hills were drab even under the bright sky. When I reached Lenox after an hour's drive, a low cloud cover had slid in, and the place had a desolate November feeling to it, with Thanksgiving still more than a month away.
I got directions at a colonial-style Amoco station and found the Elwell School down the road from Tanglewood, which was shut down for the season, a chain across the gate with the big lions on posts. Like Tanglewood, the Elwell School was a disused turn-of-the-century estate, its monumental-frilly Beaux Arts main building looking like a miniature Grand Central Station. Most of the Berkshire prep schools had gone under in recent years-Cranwell, Foxhollow, the Lenox School-and Elwell had the look of a place clinging to life. A fancy sconce beside the main door rested on the gravel driveway, smashed, and had been replaced on the stone wall above it with a vertical fluorescent tube of the type found beside motel bathroom mirrors. An oval window had been filled in with plywood.
In the headmaster's office, I showed my ID to a pleasant woman in a cardigan sweater and said I was trying to trace the whereabouts of a dear old friend of my client. She led me down a high-ceilinged corridor and unlocked a door which led into a small, windowless room the size of a storage closet. This, she said, was the alumni office. I wouldn't be allowed access to the alumni files, but I was welcome to look through the yearbooks and newsletters. And if I found the man I was looking for, the woman said, the school would forward mail, provided it had a current address on file. She switched on the ceiling light and left me there.
I went through the 1971 yearbook, making a list of all the Edwins and Edwards. There were seven, as well as one Eduardo. Billy Blount was neither pictured nor mentioned as a graduating senior or as an underclassman.
Blount did show up in the 1970 volume, grinning sleepily and a bit warily at the camera-not, however, among the graduating class photos, but on a separate page at the back of the book for seniors who had not completed the school year. There were two other boys as well who had dropped out. One was a Clarence Henchman, of Westfield, New Jersey, who looked as if he were coming down with mononucleosis. The other nongraduating senior was Edwin Storrs, of Loudonville, New York. There was a hurt, frightened look in his' eyes, and his blandly handsome teenage male model's face was that of a relatively fresh and unsullied Frank Zimka.
17
I was back in Albany by five. I considered setting up another quick meeting with the Blounts. Either they had concocted an elaborate lie and had fed it to me coolly and systematically, using their great goofy sense of theater, or their friends the Storrs of Loudonville had lied to them about the present whereabouts and condition of their son Eddie, or there was another explanation that might boldly present itself once I could sit down with Billy Blount, the one figure in the whole cast of characters who knew things the rest of us didn't. I'd be seeing Blount within twenty- four hours, and I decided to forgo another session of drawing-room farce with the senior Blounts and wait until I got to Denver.
I drove out to Timmy's on Delaware and let myself in, then phoned my service to let them know where I was. I'd had one call during the afternoon, from Sergeant Ned Bowman of Albany PD, with the message, 'Not Trailways either, pal. See me.'
I called my own apartment to see if Huey Brownlee had gotten in all right. He said he had and asked if I minded if he invited a friend over. I said I didn't mind. I felt a little spasm of jealousy in my thighs and frontal lobes, but nothing heavy and it didn't last.
Timmy came in just after six. I gave him the two checks, one from Truckman for two hundred and one from Stuart Blount for two thousand.
'Blount is the anonymous donor? Holy mother! Well, you never know.'
I said, 'Make sure he and the missus receive a thank-you note. They're attentive to the social niceties and expect others to respond in kind. Have the alliance mail it to his office.'
'Done. This is terrific. They'll make a great addition to our fat-cat hit list.'
'Mm.'
'Before we go to Trucky's tonight, a bunch of us are dropping by the Rat's Nest. Do you want to come along? Nordstrum needs the business-he's strung out and afraid he's not going to weather this thing financially. We can buy his booze and cheer him up.'
'I don't know-oh, I guess so. That place is liable to grate on my Presbyterian sensibilities.'
He'd been getting a beer from the refrigerator. He stopped and stood there with the refrigerator door open. 'Tell me about your Presbyterian sensibilities,' he said. 'I want to hear this. How do they work? Describe them. First ethical, then esthetic.'
'That's too fine a distinction for me to make. To me it's all one big ball of wax.'
He said, 'That's about it.' He shut the door, popped the tab on his Bud. 'You'll trick people and use people, Don, but when it comes to a little mindless fucking around, where everybody's motives are up front and nothing of emotional consequence gets invested, you put on your big moral floor show for the uplift and edification of the sinners.' A swig of beer and a muttered,
'Damn Protestants.'
'Oh, is that what I just did? I must have missed it. I would have described what I just said as an expression of mildly queasy indifference. Anyway, I haven't seen you trotting out there to Nordstrum's blurry grotto to get your pants pulled down by some inky form with trench mouth and cold hands- somebody's idea of a fun evening in the suburbs. Or have you?'
'Of course not. I might go to hell.'
'Ahhh.'
'But that's not the point. We were talking about you and your bizarre double standard.'
'You mean Harold Snyder. He's what this is all about. That really got to you, didn't it? I'm never going to hear the end of it, never. When you're seventy-seven and I'm seventy-nine-'
'Eighty.'
'— whatever. When we're both tottering on the brink, you're going to be reminding me, aren't you? You'll have it put on my goddamn gravestone: 'Donald Strachey-1939-2009- Once Fucked a Drag Queen.' If you're so worried about poor Harold's ass, go comfort her, take care of her. Put her in a convent, spend the night with her, get her a screen test. You figure it out. You deal with her. Me, I'm sick of thinking about it.'
'Don, it's not Harold's ass I'm concerned about, it's her mind you fucked. She's pathetic and vulnerable, and you used her in an extremely hurtful way. It's the worst thing I know of that you've ever done.'
I said, 'That's not the way it happened. Not exactly.'
'What do you mean?'
I thought about it. I said, 'I'm not telling you. But it's not exactly the way you think it was. I'll tell you about it- Christmas eve.' I didn't know why I said that. He'd remember it, the bastard, and bring it up while we were trimming the tree; he had the memory bank of a Univac 90/60.
He said, 'I'm prepared to take your word for it that the thing you did wasn't as cruel as it seemed
