A Time for Secrets (7 page)

I rang the bell and waited. Then I rang it again. I was pretty sure Vernon wasn’t home when a tubby little man in his early fifties opened the door. He had wisps of dyed brown hair around his ears and hazy blue eyes. He wore a nice pair of slacks and a pressed white shirt. A pair of thin, blue-striped suspenders kept his waistband well above his navel. He looked like an insurance salesman, not at all like the social-climbing hairdresser to the elite I’d been expecting. And nothing like Ronald Meek. This guy blended. He fit. No one would notice Vernon; no one would
not
notice Ronald.

“You’re Vernon Taber?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Holding out my card, I said, “My name’s Nick Nowak. I’m a private detective.”

“Oh my,” he said.

“Relax. It’s nothing to worry about. An old friend of yours wants to see you again.” Reluctantly, he took my business card just as I realized it had my old phone number on it. I hadn’t gotten cards made with my new phone number, yet. I dug through my pockets for a pen and then reached for the card. “You know what, I need to change the number on that. I moved.”

Dumbly, he handed it back to me.

“Who’s looking for me?”

“Ronald Meek.”

“Ronald? Really?”

Well, at least I knew I was in the right place. Except I still felt like I wasn’t. Vernon wasn’t what I was expecting. I’d been expecting someone as flamboyant as Ronald. Apart from an obvious interest in cleanliness, Vernon could have been one of my father’s poker buddies. It felt wrong. Birds of a feather flock together, right?

I crossed out the number on the card and jotted down the new one. Offering the card back to him, I said, “I have a message from Ronald.”

His brow wrinkled, and he said, “Perhaps you’d better come in.” Vernon took a step aside so I could enter the apartment. I stepped into a small foyer
that
led into another hallway. To my right was a small living room with a neat corduroy sofa and a couple of captain’s chairs. On a side table was the picture of Vernon as a much younger man with Eartha Kitt that George had mentioned. In the photo Vernon was an attractive, happy young man wearing a two-toned jacket and a printed shirt open at the collar, just like in the stories I’d heard, except he seemed, and even looked, very different from the man standing next to me.

Beyond the living room was a dining room, which he’d turned into a makeshift hair salon. Illegal, of course, but easy enough to operate if the prices were right. He led me into the living room and I took out a pack of Marlboros.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said, indicating a crystal ashtray on the table. I lit up.

“Basically, Ronald would like to see you,” I explained. “He’d like to talk over old times.”

“He would?” Vernon said, “but what does that mean?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know,” I said. There were questions I wanted to ask, like what exactly was his relationship with Ronald Meek, but technically I’d done my job. The only thing left I needed to do was get Vernon’s answer.

“So, are you willing to see Ronald?”

He gave me a worried look. “It’s been such a long time. I thought all that was over. I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t think it was over.”

“If you don’t want to see him, then I won’t tell him where you are.”

Meek had said that, but I couldn’t be sure he’d actually meant it. I really had no idea what Meek would do if Vernon didn’t want to see him. While I waited for Vernon’s answer, I wondered idly if they’d ever accidentally crossed paths and simply not known each other. Had they ridden the train at the same time? Checked out one after the other at the Jewel? Just missed each other at Big Nell’s happy hour?

“I’m sorry,” Vernon said. “I don’t want to see him. It’s been such a long time, and I just can’t bring all that up again.”

“You’re sure? Ronald has spent a lot of money to find you.”

“He shouldn’t have done that.”

I hadn’t fully trusted Meek’s story. Obviously, there was more to the relationship than he’d let on. From the look on Vernon’s face, the breakup had been rough.

I stubbed out my cigarette and stood. “I’ll tell Ronald. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“And you won’t give him my address?”

“No, I won’t. Keep my card though. If you change your mind, just call me and I’ll put you in touch with Ronald.”

He seemed to consider that a moment. “No, no I won’t change my mind.”

I said “Good night” and walked out of the apartment. As I left I puzzled over the idea of Meek and Vernon together. I couldn’t imagine the two of them as a couple, even for a short fling, but then there was that picture of Vernon with Eartha Kitt. Vernon Taber had changed a lot in twenty-some years. In the nineteen fifties, he and Meek might have been perfect for each other, and who am I to say who belongs together and who doesn’t. If someone took an inventory of my sexual history there might be a choice or two that wouldn’t make much sense. One thing I was sure of: if Vernon and Meek ever met again there wouldn’t be much of a spark.

Suddenly, I realized I was standing on Cornelia, right in the spot where Daniel and I had been bashed. I looked up at the window Ronald had thrown potatoes out of. A shiver shook my shoulders, and I took another walk around the block.

I missed the way I felt about life before Daniel and I were bashed. In a way, I missed being in the closet. I knew that was plain stupid, but I had loved being a police officer, being on the job. And I
had
loved going home to Daniel. I knew I’d been foolish to think that I could keep them separate, that I could hold on to both of them. But that’s what I’d thought, what I’d believed. I believed anything was possible. I didn’t believe that anymore, and I missed believing it.

I walked into the courtyard and rang Meek’s doorbell. He buzzed me in, and I climbed the two flights of stairs to his apartment. He stood in his doorway, holding his kimono closed with one hand. It looked like the same kimono he’d worn the night we almost met.

“Goodness, I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. “How does that old song go? If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake?”

“I found your friend.”

“Oh, well do come in then.”

He stepped back and I walked into the living room. The room was cluttered, the furniture old. I guessed that he’d been there a long time and the rent was cheap. There were pictures of people all over the place, black-and-whites, faded color snaps from the seventies, candid shots in frames, friends I supposed. I didn’t see Vernon in any of them, but there were other rooms.

Meek liked to read the tabloids. The room had stacks of them piled here and there; movie star gossip and alien sightings, fad diets and reactionary politics. I sat down next to a stack of
National Enquirers
and got to the point.

“I’m sorry, but Vernon has decided he doesn’t want to see you.”

His face fell and he wrapped the kimono around his middle as though it had suddenly gotten very cold. “All right. If you could just write down his address, I guess that will be it.”

“That wasn’t our deal. You said if he didn’t want to see you then you didn’t need to know that.”

“I paid you to find him. I don’t see what’s wrong with you telling me where he is.”

“I left my card. If he changes his mind he’ll call me.”

“You’re not going to give me the address.”

“I already told you. That wasn’t our deal.”

“Then I want you to go back. Convince him to see me.”

“He won’t change his mind.”

“Make him.”

I sat back in the chair. It smelled like a decade of dust. I pulled out my Marlboros and fired one up, being careful not to ignite the stack of newsprint next to me. Meek pushed a tin souvenir ashtray down the coffee table.

“There’s something not right about this,” I said slowly. “You wait all this time to find the guy and now all of a sudden it’s the most important thing in the world to you? Doesn’t make sense.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t…” he said softly, staring at the dirty rug.

“You know you would have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d just written down his last name in your journal. After I found out Vernon’s last name it turned out he’s listed in the phone book.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I wrote things in my journal, things I could have been arrested for. I couldn’t put people’s names in there. If the police had gotten hold of it…well, a lot of people would have gone to jail.”

“Are you telling me that once upon a time you were popular?”

“That would be the nice word for it, yes.” He smiled for a moment, then said, “I’m dying you know. That’s why I want to see Vernon.”

My heart dropped a couple of beats, and for a moment all I could think was that he had GRID like Harker, but then I came to my senses.

“That’s a lie. You’re not dying. Or at least not any faster than anyone else. You’re just trying to trick me.”

He looked at me evenly for a moment and then told me to get out. I did. I figured the whole thing was finished, and as I walked the few blocks back to my apartment I gave some thought to finding a steady client or two, a company like Palmer/Peterson, needing services on a regular basis. I couldn’t survive on clients like Ronald Meek and, if I was honest with myself, didn’t want to if I could. I decided I’d take a look around my neighborhood with employment in mind and see what I came up with. It was almost four. I could have gone to my new office and gotten things organized, but I wanted to check on Harker, see just how mad at me he was.

As I walked into my courtyard, I heard a man’s laughter coming out of my apartment. The windows were open but obscured by the overgrown flowers the management had planted back in May. I couldn’t see into my living room without being very conspicuous. The laughter had not been Harker’s, and I wanted to know whose it was.

I let myself in, then hurried down the hallway, through the spare room to find myself standing in the living room with Harker and a complete stranger. He was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four. He was thin, almost slight. His close-cropped hair was almost black and his eyes nearly as dark. He wore a butter yellow alligator shirt with its collar turned up, khaki shorts, and a beat-up pair of mahogany colored penny loafers without socks. He also wore a smile on his face, a big one.

Harker smiled right back.

“Nick,” Harker said, “this is Christian Baylor. He’s just started at the
Daily Herald
.”

I scowled at him and asked, “Are you selling classified advertising?”

He giggled nervously.

“He’s researching the Bughouse Slasher,” Harker said.

“I’m doing an article for
Chicago
Magazine. In three months it will be a year since anyone’s heard from the Bughouse Slasher.”

“No one hears from the Slasher. People just die.”

He blushed.

“So, do you work for the
Daily Herald
or
Chicago
Magazine?” I asked. “I’m confused.”

“I’m a freelancer. I’ve worked for both.”

The way he said it made me think that if he’d worked for either it was as an office boy and not as a reporter. He was awfully young, with a youthful flush of pink still in his cheeks.

“Did you talk to Connors?” I asked. Connors was Harker’s old partner. The Bughouse Slasher was an open investigation, and he might not be happy about us talking about it.

“He’s the one who suggested I talk to Detective Harker.”

“I told you to call me Bert,” Harker said in a friendly voice that pissed me off. “Nick’s the one you should talk to though. He’s actually seen the Slasher. He even managed to get himself stabbed.”

Christian looked at me like I was a comic book hero. “I’d love to talk to you, if you have the time.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. I’ve got some work to do in the bedroom.”

Harker gaped at me as I walked out of the room.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“You’re jealous,” Harker said with a smirk when he opened the bedroom door. That Christian kid had finally left, and Harker had come into the bedroom. I’d been lying there in the dim light for what seemed like a couple of hours trying not to think about my run-in with the Slasher. I had a one-inch scar on the back of my right shoulder, which I could feel if I looked for it. I was glad the scar wasn’t on the front side of my shoulder. If I saw it every day when I looked into the mirror I’d be thinking about the Slasher a whole lot more.

“I’m not jealous,” I said. That was a bald-faced lie, of course. I hadn’t seen Harker that happy in months, and anyone who could do that for him, anyone who wasn’t me, was gonna tick me off at least a little bit.

“Yeah? What kind of work have you been doing in here?”

There was nothing in the bedroom related to work, so he had me there.

“Some times I just like to think about my cases.”

He laughed and said, “Christian’s just writing a story, that’s all.”

“Good. Keep it that way,” I said.

He smiled, pleased as punch. “Thank you, Nick.”

“For what?”

“For being jealous. You made my day.”

I wanted to deny that I was jealous again, but that seemed kind of cruel since he was so freaking happy. “Think whatever you want,” I said.

“You should talk to Christian, though. I know he’s just a kid, but he seems bright. He asks interesting questions.”

I stayed silent and Harker stayed in the doorway. The light from the living room made him look like he was glowing.

“How’s your case?” he asked.

“Over. I found the guy.”

“Good for you.”

We were silent.

“Do you think it’s healthy? Getting so involved with the Bughouse Slasher case.” I was a little late asking the question. He’d been digging into the case for months, reconstructing his murder book from memory.

“It gives me something to do.” He leaned his head to make sure I was looking right into his blue eyes and said, “When the doctor was examining me, after you left the room, I asked him if it was possible GRID is related to sex.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I sat up in bed. “You mean, like a venereal disease?”

“Yes.”