'Sure thing. And thanks again, Buel.'
'Good talkin' to you.'
I went back to my booth, shoved the plates and cups aside, and laid my head on the table. I slept soundly for five minutes and had very bad dreams. One of them woke me up, and I ordered a fifth cup of coffee.
Oh, Fenton, I thought. Say it isn't so, Fenton. end user
15
Bowman was seated in the driver's seat of his car, which was backed around to the rear of the barn. The young plainclothesman sat at his side. I walked up to the open window and barked, 'Gotcha!'
He gave me his city hall gargoyle look. 'What the fuck you talkin' about, Strachey? Geddada here!' 'Where's McWhirter? He still holding up?' 'Still asleep, far as I know. Mrs. Fisher and her lady friend are upstairs with the air conditioner running. My men won't get into place until after midnight, so as to not disturb the ladies. I've got a man inside the house who'll be there all night to reassure the gals-they still don't know about this army I've got deployed-and to keep McWhirter under control. My only concern is, who's going to keep you under control, Strachey? I do not want you gumming up this operation. You understand that?
You screw this up, and you are kaput in the state of New York. Capeesh?'
'Check, Ned. Capeesh, kaput. Where's the ransom money?'
'Already out there in the mailbox. A man's in the woods across the road keeping an eye on it.'
'I hope he's one of your best.'
He chortled. The underling alongside him chortled too. I walked on into the house.
The kitchen light was on. A uniformed cop sat at the kitchen table gravely considering the Times Union sports section. He looked up. 'Who are you?'
'Inspector Maigret,' I said, and walked on down the hall.
I opened the door to the guest room where McWhirter was staying and went in. I snapped on a table lamp and shut the door. McWhirter did not awaken. He lay atop the flowered sheets, stretched out on his back in a pair of jockey briefs with a frayed waistband. The shorts barely contained a healthy erection. I averted my eyes somewhat.
I rummaged through a canvas traveling bag that lay open on the floor. It contained a pair of Army surplus fatigues, jeans, T-shirts, a reeking sweatshirt, socks, toilet articles. Underneath these was a recent copy of Gay Community News and assorted letters and postcards. I read McWhirter's mail, all of it communications from various contacts around the country, gay organizations or individuals he planned on visiting, or had visited, during the gay national strike campaign. I found no mention in any of this of an untoward or criminal plot.
I opened a beat-up old L. L. Bean backpack that contained more clothing, of a smaller size.
Greco's.
McWhirter stirred. His right arm flopped twice against the sheet. His erection throbbed. I got one too. I looked away and pretended to myself that I was Buffalo Bob Smith. After a moment, McWhirter's breathing, evened out again, as did mine. Above me I could hear the snapping and fretting of TV voices and the distant whirr of an air conditioner.
Under the crumpled clothing in Greco's pack I found a bound volume, Moonbites: Poems by Peter Greco. I read two, and they were Greco: simple-hearted, avid, appealing. Yet the craft and originality just weren't there. It was, as Richard Wilbur had cruelly put it, 'the young passing 69 notes to one another.' Greco was less young than he used to be, and maybe there was other recent more accomplished work. I hoped so. I wished that Greco were a fine poet, the kind that gives you the shakes, turns you upside down in your chair. I feared that he wasn't. I wondered if he knew it. I guessed he would. I wanted to find himactually kidnapped, and not involved in some idiotic scam with McWhirter-and spend some time with him again.
I thought of Timmy. I figured he'd probably end up in some dumb orgy somewhere that night, and the next day enter the priesthood, a dry-cleaning order, no doubt. And I would find Greco, set him free, and run off with him. To Morocco, maybe, where I could do consulting work with Interpol while Peter reclined on a veranda by the sea and wrote-mediocre poetry. That's what I'd do.
I laid my head against the side of the bed where McWhirter slept and realized how utterly bone-weary I was. I yawned, then made myself think startlingly wakeful thoughts. It wasn't hard.
I replaced the poetry book in the backpack and came up with another volume, a hardbound book whose final pages were blank, but which otherwise had been filled in with handwritten dated short paragraphs. It was Greco's journal. A private matter ordinarily, but under the special circumstances I began to read the recent entries.
July 30 — Staying at Mike Calabria's in Providence. Air heavy, hot, suffocating. Mike big, noisy, generous, funny. Fenton heartsick at reception in Rhode Island. Newspaper refers to him as
'Frisco Minority Activist.' What that? Eleven men sign on; $12 raised.
Aug. 2 — New Haven hot, Yalies cool. No students, but two cafeteria workers sign pledge. Stayed with Tom Bittner, here for a year researching colonial anti-gay laws. Great seeing Tom. Cicely still with him; I slept on porch.
Aug. 5 — The Big Apple. Gay men everywhere — and nowhere. Temperature inversion over city produces vomit-green cloud. Could barely breathe. Fenton went unannounced to office of New York Times editor, but…
McWhirter groaned, raised his head, blinked at me. I let the journal fall back into the knapsack.
I said, 'Just the man I want to talk to.'
'What? What the fuck are you doing in here? Where's-? Oh, God.'
'That wasn't Peter's finger in the package. You would have seen that. You said nothing. Why?'
He did a double take, then bridled. 'What the fuck is going on? What time is it?' He grabbed at a wristwatch on the bedside table, glared at it, then wrapped it around the circle of white flesh on his wrist. 'Christ, it's not even eleven yet.'
'You ignored my question.'
He lay back against the headboard and examined me sullenly. Suddenly he snapped, 'Of course I knew it wasn't Peter's finger! Of course I would know that!'
'You didn't mention it to anybody. That strikes me as odd. It gets me to thinking.'
He blinked, looked alarmed. 'Jesus! Do the cops know?'
'Know what, Fenton?'
'The finger-that it wasn't-'
'Where did you get it? I've been wondering. Men's fingers are hard to come by. Not as rare as… hens' teeth. But rare.'
'Where did I get it?'
'Or whoever.'
He sat up with a jerk and Hung his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet stank. I backed away and eased onto a desk chair.
McWhirter's face had reddened. He sputtered, 'I know what you think.'
'What do I think?'
'That I set this up.'
'Why would I think that?'
'Because I-You must have found out that I play the game by rules I didn't make. Rules that I don't like but that somebody else made, and for now they are the rules.'
'Your nose is a little cockeyed. I hadn't noticed it before, but now I do. How come?'
In his confusion, he couldn't help grinning daffily. 'You heard that story? Great. Well, so what?
It's true. Other people had been bloodied by the cops that night, the fucking savages. But those cops had taped over their badge numbers. The one who hit me hadn't. And I had his number.
Simple justice.'
'Simpleminded justice. You became one of them.'
'Ho, Jesus!' He shook his head, looked at me as if I were a bivalve. 'The same old liberal bullshit. You should be a judge, Strachey, or write newspaper editorials.'
