Boystown 7: Bloodlines (22 page)

“Some other time then,” I said.

“Yeah, call me when you get a bed.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and put it on the windowsill. I could have gotten up and given him one of mine but I didn’t bother. Less than a minute later he walked out of my apartment.

Chapter Nineteen

I woke up on Sunday morning with a hangover that pulsed and thundered like a Kansas tornado. Not that I’d ever been in a Kansas tornado, but they look pretty bad on the news. A couple of ideas floated around in my head as I took a bath. One was that I needed to get a shower curtain. Another was something that Sugar and Brian were talking about. Drug addicts got AIDS. Why did I think that meant something? Then the word “lesions” popped into my soggy head.
What were lesions exactly?
I wondered. They were blemishes. Sores. Tumors. Ross had lesions on his neck. Red and purple spots. Wes Berkson had lesions on his arm and his ankles. He was a drug addict. Shit. He had Karposi’s Sarcoma. He had AIDS. I got out of the bathtub and threw up into the sink. It didn’t help the pounding in my head one bit.

I brushed the taste of bile out of my mouth and then put on a lot of Polo. I stank of alcohol and knew it. But there was nothing I could do about it. Looking out the window, the sky was hazy and a little foggy. I tried to think where my umbrella was in case it started to rain and realized I had no idea. I finished dressing and left to go find my car. It was parked about half a block down from Brian’s. He was up in his condo asleep with Franklin. I envied them. I wanted to be asleep.

Driving out to Edison Park, I tried to think what it meant that Wes Berkson had AIDS. That was probably the thing he told his wife that caused her to stab him. Except that she killed Jane Weeks earlier that same day. Did Jane have AIDS too? Was she the one who gave it to Wes? Wes must have told Madeline that he was sick. And that Jane was sick.

So if AIDS was the reason then Madeline already knew. She already knew and planned the whole thing. It wasn’t a crime of passion it was the premeditated murder of two people. But why? Why kill people who were going to die anyway?
 

Then I remembered the insurance. Melody had said buying it was Wes’ idea. Not only did she kill a dying man, but his death would have meant—wait, no. Wouldn’t he have had to have a medical exam to get that much insurance? Okay, he might have found some kind of policy that didn’t require an exam but the minute they suspected he knew he had AIDS when he bought the policy they would cancel payment. The insurance was a dead end. The act of a desperate man and not much more. No, what I wanted to figure out was why? Why did Madeline kill two people dying of AIDS?

I pulled up in front of Mrs. Harker’s condo. Really, I just wanted to put my seat back and fall asleep. It was still morning. I could sleep for another hour or two and then go in. Or, I could get this over with, and go home and go back to sleep. I decided on the latter. Mrs. Harker answered my buzz quickly. She opened the door in the midst of putting on her coat. Picking up her purse off a side table, she yelled over her shoulder, “Boy! You come now. Is time.”

“Is time for what?” I asked.

“Is time for church.”

“Oh,” I said, wishing I’d been smart enough to drive around the corner and take that nap. Terry popped up behind Mrs. Harker. He was clean and neatly dressed in a gray suit. I’d never seen it before, so I had to guess that Mrs. Harker had bought it for him.

“Hey,” he said to me.

“Hey,” I said back. “All right. I’ll drive you guys to church.”

“No. Not in ugly car.”

“Okay, you want to take the bus, go ahead. I’ll wait here.”

She shook her head at me and said, “Come.”

Reluctantly, I walked into the condo, which smelled of baking meat, and then followed her into the galley kitchen. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but I knew there was a garage just off the kitchen. I think only the first floor condos had them, while the ones on the second floor were shit out of luck. Inside the garage was Harker’s 1979 Lincoln Versailles. It was a small four-door sedan built on a Granada’s frame and painted a peachy flesh color with the vinyl half roof matching the color perfectly.

“You want me to drive you to church in this?”

Harker had always kept the car up immaculately. Now though, it was dusty and in need of a good polish. It had been sitting there for at least a year and a half. I wasn’t even sure it would start. She took a set of keys out of her coat pocket and held them out to me. “Yes, you take to church. Then you keep. Sell ugly car.”

“Why does she keep saying your car’s ugly? This one’s pretty—”

I raised a hand to stop him. The Versailles was an ugly car and it drove like a waterbed. But, it would draw a lot less attention than the Nova. And, I could sell the Nova and split the money with Mrs. Harker. Well, try to split the money with her. She probably wouldn’t take it, but she might allow me to reimburse her for whatever she spent on Terry.

My stomach flopped when I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. It smelled like stale cigarette smoke and cologne laced with cinnamon. It smelled of Harker. Well, it smelled like the inside of a car, but it also smelled of Harker. I wasn’t sure I was ready to have something of Harker’s, wasn’t sure I was ready to remember him fondly. I was mad at him. I’d been mad at him for a long time. Driving his car everywhere meant I’d have to be on better terms with the memory of him. I put the key in the ignition and turned. The engine whined into life. Mrs. Harker and Terry climbed in and I drove to St. Boniface the Martyr.

Before we walked in, I took Terry by the arm and told Mrs. Harker that I was going to have a cigarette before mass. She frowned at me but went into the church. I don’t know why she hated my smoking so much. Harker smoked. Not as much as I did, and not much at all after he got sick, but still, he’d smoked. I lit up and gave Terry a stern look.

“How are you and Mrs. Harker getting along?”

“She’s a bitch.”

That was hard to deny but I felt like I shouldn’t let him get away with it anyway. “You should be more respectful at your age.”

He shrugged.

“She feeds you. She takes you shopping and buys you shit. She makes sure you do your homework. And she keeps you out of trouble.”

His eyes narrowed. “Have you been spying on us?”

“No. I just know what she’s like. She’s not that bad.”

“She calls me ‘boy.’ I miss Brian.”

“You miss Brian’s computer game.”

“I like Brian.”

“He’s started dating someone, so maybe you need to give him some space.”

“That Franklin asshole?”

“Again, more respect.” But again he’d hit the nail on the head. “I think Franklin’s going to be around for a while. And if he makes Brian happy, that’s cool. Look, I rented an apartment. You can stay with me some of the time.” After I get set up and put a lock on the bedroom door.”
 

“How long do I have to stay with Mrs. Harker?”

“Let me talk to Brian. Maybe we’ll start with you coming into the city for weekends and see how it goes.” That earned me a scowl but nothing worse. I ground out my cigarette on the sidewalk and said, “Come on, we need to go in to mass.”

“I’m not even Catholic.”

“Then why were your parents sending you to Catholic school?”

“Because they hate me.”

I shrugged. “That’s why most people send their kids to Catholic school.”

Mass was mass. Being Easter there was a bit more pomp and ceremony. The high school choir came in and sang something with a lot of Glorias. The Homily was given by Father Dewes, who was an older priest I’d met and liked a lot. In fact, he’d been instrumental in our overseeing Terry’s emancipation. His subject was “The Gift of Christ,” in which he talked about what Christ’s story meant to all of us. How it embodied the promise of rebirth after struggle. How God offered us rebirth again and again in our lives. I thought he did a good job, though some of the older parishioners looked displeased. As a priest, Father Dewes would never be a good fit for those who preferred fire and brimstone and condemnation. After mass we were able to chat with him for a moment. He seemed pleased with the way Terry looked, even though the kid was quiet to the point of rudeness. As we walked to the car, I asked him, “You don’t like Father Dewes?”

“He’s all right, I guess.”

I was beginning to realize that was high praise from a teenager.

“Is good priest. You respect,” Mrs. Harker pronounced. And I nearly cringed having said something similar to Terry twice before mass. I wasn’t used to being so in tune with her.
 

When we got back to the condo, I asked if I could use the phone. I made sure to say that it was for business so Mrs. Harker didn’t have a chance to glower at me. Her phone was in the living room sitting on a special table next to a rocking chair. I went over and dialed Owen’s beeper number. After the prompt, I put in Mrs. Harker’s phone number.

While most of America was having ham with too much pineapple and brown sugar, we had a roast leg of lamb. “Is tradition,” she said as she put it on the table. To my surprise, Terry helped her bring out hard-boiled eggs, sausages, rice, peas with little onions, an amazing loaf of marbled bread, chocolates and fruit.

“Do you need help?” I asked at one point

That earned me a dirty look. “You are guest.”

I thought I was more than a guest, I mean, she did just give me a car. But I decided not to argue the point. Before they sat down she told Terry to get me a beer. He brought out two Czechvars, one for me and one for Mrs. Harker. That was something of a surprise. At Brian’s he barely lifted a finger. At Brian’s he would have tried to have one himself. Something was beginning to dawn on me. She rarely gave me a Czechvar and she rarely drank. When she did it was always some kind of celebration. Sure, it was holiday, but I felt like there was more going on. I’d done something right and Mrs. Harker was thanking me.

The phone rang as we began to fill out plates.

“I’m sure that’s for me,” I said before Mrs. Harker could get up. “I just beeped someone.”

“Beep? What is beep?”

“Terry explain that for me, please. I’ll be two minutes.”

I walked into the living room and picked up the phone.
 

“You rang?” Owen Lovejoy, Esquire said.

“Are you going to say that every time?”

“Why not? People say hello every time they pick up the phone, don’t they?”

“All right. Yes, I rang. Look, I think I know why Madeline killed her husband.”

“You do?”

“Is there any possibility we can see her?”

“You mean today?”

“Are there visiting hours on Sunday?”

“As her attorney I have expanded access, but let me set it up for tomorrow morning.”

“Do you…” Even though we’d been fucking on and off for more than a year, I still felt like I was being nosey. “Are you seeing someone?”

“Yes, I am.”

That annoyed me a little. People seemed to be pairing up. Like all of Boystown was playing a big game of musical chairs, and all I got was a priest who wouldn’t put out and a mobster who didn’t think he was gay. That part of my life was definitely not going well.

“Congratulations,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.

“Thanks. Before we do this though, you’re going to have to give me a hint. Why do you want to see her?”

“Wes Berkson had AIDS. I think Jane Weeks did, too.”

There was silence on the line.

“So Madeline thought they gave it to her and she killed them for it? Is that what you’re thinking?” he guessed.

“Something like that. I’d like to hear what she’s got to say. Maybe I’ve got it completely wrong.”

“All right. Let me see I can make arrangements. I’ll call you back.

Chapter Twenty

I spent another two hours with Mrs. Harker and Terry. Before I left I flipped through her yellow pages and found a place called Mattress World on Touhy near Western. As I drove there in Harker’s Lincoln, I wondered if they’d be open. It was Easter, after all, and a lot of stores were closed. But when I pulled up in front, they were open. So then I wondered if they were Jewish. I knew Jews had Passover to deal with, but I think that, like Easter, moved around. In fact, as I was thinking about it, I remembered a priest saying that the last supper took place as part of Passover. So, Easter had to always fall after Passover. Right?

The store was small. I’d expected a larger place, but Mattress World was one narrow storefront between a cleaners and a pizza place, both of which were closed. The signage in the window promised that I wouldn’t find better prices anywhere else and that “No One Sells 4 Less.” By the time I left the store I figured that other places must have been charging an arm and a leg because I hit my credit card for nearly three hundred dollars. Still, they promised to deliver the mattress on Wednesday morning so I was happy that I only had a few more days of sleeping on the floor.
 

It would have been nice if they’d sold sheets and bedspreads and pillows, but Mattress World was strictly mattresses. I’d have to go to Marshall Fields or Carson Pirie Scott the next day when I was downtown staking out the Federal Building. In the afternoon I’d take a break and walk over to State Street. Thinking about shopping for new sheets made me feel kind of weird. This wasn’t the kind of thing I did on my own. Making a home. It didn’t feel like me; but then again, it felt good. It was a new beginning and I’d needed it.
 

I’d thought that Joseph might be a new beginning, as well. But he wasn’t. It hurt a little, but I had to be honest, given the things I’d been through it was barely a scratch. Which led me to the oddest thought. After losing Harker the way I had, after punishing myself for killing the Bughouse Slasher, there weren’t many things I wouldn’t be able to get through. At least, I hoped that was true.

After picking up a six-pack of Miller and a frozen Celeste pizza at the Jewel, I went home and learned how to use my oven. While it was heating up it emitted a dusty odor that was gone by the time the pizza was finished. I put my Walkman on, turned up the George Benson, sipped my beer, munched my pizza, and watched the light fade away over the lake.