but Jack couldn't say. He just kept insisting that what he was doing was not at all immoral, and Al took his word for it. He knew Jack well enough to understand that Jack was sincere, that his word on that score was good. By then, Al had accepted the fact that he was going to die soon, so it gave him something useful to do for an old friend.'
'They'd known each other in Albany?'
Toot smiled sadly. 'You are in the dark, aren't you? Haven't you spoken with Joan Lenihan? She's here in LA. If you found me, you must have found her.'
'Mrs. Lenihan was not overly forthcoming. She's upset about Jack and she's got problems of her own.'
Toot looked at me and said, 'Al and Jack were lovers in high school. Each was the other's first. The two families didn't know about it-they thought Al and Jack were assembling model airplanes up in the Piateks' attic. What they were really doing was sniffing the glue and fucking each other silly. Al once told me he would remember and fantasize about those hours up there on an old mattress until the day he died. Which I'm sure he did.
'Al said it was never quite as good after those first attic trysts with Jack Lenihan. But it didn't last. One day, while Al was up working on his airplanes' with Jack, the senior Piateks and Al's two younger sisters were killed in a car crash outside Albany. Al was brought to LA to live with his grandparents-who died a couple of years ago-and Al and Jack never saw each other again until Joan Lenihan reunited them last October. Some years ago, Jack had told his mother about his first love, so when she met Al out here she arranged a reunion. She thought it might be therapeutic for Al. You see, when Al first went into the hospital and got the news of a positive diagnosis, Joan Lenihan was his nurse.'
'She's obviously a kind and sensitive woman.'
'She is, and that's not all she is.'
'I know.'
'Her humanitarianism is not entirely disinterested. She's protecting the tribe. She's lesbian and her son was gay. She's as aware as anybody that under the best of circumstances it ain't easy being puce, and the present circumstances are far from the best. When the AIDS unit opened up at the hospital, Joan Lenihan was the first nurse to volunteer.'
I said, 'I think I will have a glass of that stuff. Have you got a beer?'
Toot brought me a Bud from the Frigidaire and said, 'I keep it around for tricks.'
'Tricks? No.'
'Sure. Haven't you heard of safe sex? The AIDS council put out a pornographic pamphlet on minimum-risk sex. It's a real turn-on, and I've got one.'
'A pamphlet, eh? Well, here I am in kinky LA'
'Wanna see it? It's in Spanish too, if your English is not too good.'
'I'll pass. I loathe safe sex. Safe sex is to erotic communion what the Salisbury steak in a restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike is to food. I do it because it's what there is, but I don't want to think about it any more that I have to.' I slugged down some of the beer. Toot's house was cool and the cold beer warmed me up.
With a little smile he said, 'I wasn't trying to seduce you. I'm sure you have your professional ethics.'
'And my lover in a motel over on Sunset. Whether you were trying to seduce me or not, two or three years ago I would have loved a quick tumble in the sack with you and probably would have initiated it. But that's over.
That life has gone the way of cheap gas and free air for your tires. If the two alternatives to monogamy are death and Salisbury steak, I choose monogamy, even though as I speak the words aloud the sound of them makes me a little dizzy.'
'Actually there's a third alternative,' Toot said with a grin. 'If you're rich, that is. I have an actor friend who made a lot of money several years ago and now he spends every third month in Patagonia.'
'Patagonia? Patagonia in southern Argentina?'
'There is no AIDS in all of Patagonia, and he found some hotel down there where gay cowboys hang out. He says it's terrific, just like in the olden days-'78, back then. Last summer he spent eleven thousand dollars on airfare. He hasn't had sex with anybody in North America since 1981. He saves it all for the gauchos. Or in Patagonia is it penguins?'
'My God.'
'Ernie has Patagonia, but I've at least got my pamphlet. I do what works. I guess you're more of a purist. Like Ernie, except without the cash to act on it.'
'I certainly do envy your wealthy and highly imaginative friend,' I said.
'And I guess I envy you the apparently satisfying erotic existence that your pamphlet has provided you. But I've never been able to do anything halfway. Like Jack Lenihan. Once Jack decided what he wanted to do, he went all the way with it.' While Toot watched me bug-eyed, I described Jack's two-and-a-half-million-dollar political project in Albany. 'Did he tell you about this?' I asked.
Toot's mouth hung open. 'No. No, he didn't. Jesus!'
'Did he tell Al?'
'Not that I know of. No, Al would have told me. Where's the money now?'
'I don't know. Joan Lenihan may have it, I'm not sure. Jack was about to ship the money to me in Albany for safekeeping, but Joan kept him from doing that. She was against the project for reasons that are not at all clear to me. My plan is to find the money, take it and carry out Jack's project for him. Will you help me?'
He swallowed hard. 'Well-maybe. But Jack was killed, you said. Doesn't that probably mean the owners of the money are trying to reclaim it? Maybe they already have.'
'I don't think so. I think it's here in Los Angeles. How well do you know Joan Lenihan? Somebody has to reach her, but it looks as if it's not going to be me.'
'I've met her a few times, but that's all. She wouldn't trust me any more than she'd trust you.'
'Who does she trust?'
'Gail Tesney, her lover.'
'She's been shut out too. She doesn't like it, but she can't seem to do anything about it.'
'Then forget it. If Gail can't get Joan to open up, nobody can.'
'Then Gail will have to do it. She has no choice.'
He peered at me, looking a little queasy. 'You'd interfere in Gail and Joan's relationship just so you might influence an election in some fur-trading outpost in upstate New York?'
I thought about this, then said lamely, evasively, 'It's what Jack Lenihan wanted. It's what he would have wanted me to do.'
Eyeing me evenly, Toot said, 'Maybe in that respect Jack Lenihan was a heartless creep. Did you ever consider that?'
I had to admit that I hadn't. I had been careful not to. Where was Timmy? He was my moral guardian, not this raffle-ticket-stapling Uncle Vanya. I said,
'Why don't you come over to the motel and meet Timmy? Maybe he can make this whole business clearer than I've been able to. Bring your raffle tickets along and a couple of extra staplers. This evening we can have a wild threesome-click-shoosh, click-shoosh. The motel we're staying in can probably even come up with a couple of extra stapling artists. Though I don't know that they'd necessarily be the safe-stapling type.'
'What's the name of the place?'
'The Golden Grapefruit.'
'Oh, that guy can get safe-staplers. He can get you anything you want.'
'He can? Uh-oh.'
Toot followed me into my room at the motel.
'Hi, sake-zy.'
'Who are you?'
'I'm Ramon, and this is my friend Juan. Hey, your friend is very cute too, but I wan chu.'
They were propped up on pillows on the bed watching Sale of the Century.
Ramon was in red briefs, Juan in tiger stripes. Their clothes were heaped on a chair. Toot tried to look bemused.
I said, 'Who let you in here? This is my room.'
Ramon winked. 'We the sexular human boys. We gonna have a good time, sweetheart, you will see. Hey, you
