Boystown 7: Bloodlines (7 page)

“That’s part of the history you won’t talk about?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s connected then. The reason Madeline’s parents won’t testify. The anger at the office. Emily Fante. It’s all one thing.”

“Look, it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened with Wes. And it would just make Madeline look bad if it came out.”

“Whatever this is…why didn’t it come out at the trial?”

“Madeline confessed. After that, I don’t think there was much of an investigation.”

“Did the police speak to you?”

“A detective came by after my name was put on Madeline’s witness list. He only asked what I knew about Wes’ affair.”

“And you told him what you told me? That Madeline had mentioned it a few times?”

“No. I didn’t say that. I said I got that
impression
. Madeline never talked about Wes having an affair. Not until…that day. That’s what I told the police.”

“I was brought on after the trial. Could you quickly recap your testimony?”

“Very little of it was allowed. Madeline called me that morning. She suspected that Wes was seeing someone else. That was the first time she’d actually come out and said it. She was upset. She planned to confront him that night.”

“Did she love him?”

Lana was silent.

“I mean, to get that angry about an affair. She had to have strong feelings for him.”

“That’s what’s so odd. I don’t think she did love him. I keep wondering why she didn’t just divorce him. None of this makes sense.”

I was out of questions so I thanked her for the water and left. The sun was almost entirely gone, allowing the temperature to drop. The rain we’d had earlier was turning into a wet, sloppy snow. In the middle of April. Fortunately, I was just around the corner from Brian’s. I turned up my collar, pulled my overcoat tight around me and walked down Lake Shore Drive to Aldine.

When I walked into Brian’s apartment I smelled cooking. Terry sat on the couch playing Atari. There was a stack of schoolbooks on the coffee table. I had the feeling that Brian had put them there to remind the boy to eventually do his homework. It was unlikely that Terry would. Brian came out of the kitchen with a glass of wine in one hand.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, hush puppies.”

“You’re going to town. Special occasion?”

“Actually, Franklin is cooking dinner.”

“Oh, he’s back.”

“He never left,” Brian said with a blush.

“Do you want privacy? I can take Terry out to dinner.” Although the prospect of slogging through another dinner with the boy didn’t appeal.

“No, that’s not necessary.”

“How did you meet this guy?” I said quietly so it couldn’t be heard in the kitchen.

“Big Nell’s. I’ve known him for a while.”

“I see.”

“Come into the kitchen and have a glass of wine with us.”

I followed him through the swinging door into the kitchen. The room was large and square, with new white laminate countertops and sleek cupboards without visible handles. Franklin stood in front of the white electric stove. There were pots on every burner.

“This is Franklin’s mother’s recipe for fried chicken. His family’s originally from Georgia.” The implication being that fried chicken there was better. Personally, I’d have been happier having pizza delivered. “Franklin, you remember Nick.”

“Yes, I do.” Which apparently was supposed to do for hello.

“Nice to see you again,” I lied.
 

“Did you hear that they found the cause of AIDS?” Brian asked, as he handed me a glass of white wine.

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s an infectious agent. A virus.”

“Didn’t you already tell me that?”

“I told you they
thought
it might be a virus. Now they know for sure.”

“Was that in the newspaper?” I read them pretty religiously and I didn’t remember anything about this.

“The report is coming out soon.”

“So it’s still rumors?”

“They want to close down the bathhouses in San Francisco,” Franklin said. “About time if you ask me. I mean, we’ve known for years that kind of behavior caused it. We didn’t have to wait until we knew it was a virus.”

“Well, now that they know things will get better,” Brian said, upbeat. “I mean, you can’t cure something if you don’t know what it is.”

I almost said, “Like they cured the common cold” but I couldn’t. It seemed wrong to be mean to Brian in that particular moment.

“The only smart thing to do is to pair up. Get a boyfriend you can trust and you’ll be fine,” Franklin said, and threw a smile over his shoulder at Brian. I couldn’t help thinking there were all sorts of things wrong with that theory. If a virus caused AIDS, it could easily have traveled from Ross to Brian or from Harker to me to Brian. And those were just the parts of Brian’s sex life that I was aware of. As much as I liked Brian, picking him out as a boyfriend didn’t seem that much safer than having sex with complete strangers…except, of course, for Brian’s new penchant for condoms. Though who really knew if those made a difference.

I could tell from his face that Brian was uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken—probably because he was smart enough to think the same things I did—so it wasn’t surprising when he changed the subject. “Sugar wants to go to the Glory Hole Saturday night. You should come with us, Nick.”

“The Glory Hole?” Franklin said, with acid in his voice. “You didn’t say that before. You just said drinks with Sugar Pilson.”

“There’s a drag queen who does her, Sugar Pills,” Brian explained. “Sugar wants to see her. She’s been after me forever to take her.”

The frown on Franklin’s face said that he’d been excited about drinks with Sugar Pilson but had little interest in Sugar Pills. Just to be annoying I picked that moment to say, “Sure I’ll go. Sounds fun.”

“Why do we always have to be like that?” Franklin asked the air.

“Like what?” Brian wondered.

“Everything’s always about the freaks. Whenever they talk about gays on TV or in the movies it’s always the leather guys or the drag queens or the guys who fuck everything that moves. Some of us are normal, but you’d never know it by the way we’re portrayed.” Franklin clucked as he turned the chicken with a pair of tongues. “It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to expose someone as important as Sugar Pilson to that kind of element.”

“She asked to go,” Brian said. Though I could tell he was a bit cowed.

“I think I need a real drink,” I said and walked back out to the dining room to pour myself a scotch. Brian’s telephone was in the living room. He’d set a comfortable little chair next to the phone stand; after I poured my drink I went and sat down. It was almost eight. Owen Lovejoy, Esquire would probably be at home so I called him there.

While I listened to the phone ring, I said to Terry, “Why don’t you turn that off and do your homework?”

“Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“In ten years when you’re a desperate loser who can’t put a roof over his own head I’ll remind you that you didn’t do your homework.”

I don’t know what he said to that because Owen picked up the phone. “Hey, there are a couple things I need to talk to you about,” I said, not bothering with “hello.”

“Okay.” He seemed a little distracted and I wondered if I’d caught him walking in the door.

“First, why was there a trial? Why wasn’t Madeline offered a deal?”

“They wouldn’t do it. I think the ASA is trying to make a name for himself.”

I absorbed that and went on. “I talked to Madeline’s best friend. There’s something going on that she won’t talk about. But I did find out that it’s all connected. The conflict with her parents. The conflict at her practice. This Emily Fante woman. It’s all one thing. You don’t know what it is, do you?”

“No, I don’t. Could it be something that would help us?” There was a little hint of hope in his voice.

“Lana Shepherd doesn’t think so.”

“We need to be sure.”

“Can you explain that to your client? She’s the one who doesn’t want people talking about it.”

“I have explained it to her.”

He sounded a little testy so I said, “Sorry.”

“Madeline is a difficult person. Which I suppose isn’t uncommon among murderers. Is that all you need?”

“I think so.”

“All right. Keep digging around.”

He seemed about to hang up so I quickly said, “Um, you wouldn’t like a little company.” Things had cooled since I’d moved in with Brian. For most of February and March, I could basically just roll over and be fucking, that made me lax about keeping my weekly date with Owen. Since it looked like Brian was now occupied it might not be a bad thing—

“I have company, dear. Thank you for asking, though,” he said and then hung up.
 

As I put the receiver back in the cradle, I realized the living room was quiet. Terry had turned off the Atari and was doing his homework.

Chapter Six

I did know one reason the task force was hot to get Jimmy. Publicity. For about the last four years the FBI had been running an undercover sting called Operation Greylord. Basically they had a lawyer in their pocket who would bribe judges on tape. Once they got one, they got more, and Cook County judges began to fall like dominos. They’d just gotten their first conviction in March, but Operation Greylord had been in the papers for more than a year. Every agent in every agency was chomping at the bit to make a newsworthy bust. They all wanted to be a modern day Elliot Ness. That was half of what Operation Tea and Crumpets was about. It was also why they’d given it a cute, newspaper-ready name.

The murders they were trying to pin on Jimmy took place in 1972. A low-level member of the Outfit named Shady Perelli and his wife, Josette, were found dead in the trunk of their 1971 Cadillac Eldorado. The car had been parked in front of a Sambo’s in Downer’s Grove for three days. Perelli and his wife were both shot in the back of the head with a small caliber handgun. The murders were professional and there was little in the way of physical evidence. The exact murder scene was never discovered. The murder weapon was never found. There were no witnesses.
 

Murders of this sort often went unsolved, and when they were solved they were solved by someone in the Outfit turning State’s evidence. So the only thing Operation Tea and Crumpets had going for them was an informant who said Jimmy had ordered the murders and some kind of document that referred to them.
 

I had just one problem with that.

The most reliable way to solve a murder connected to the Outfit was to look at who benefited. Murders within the Outfit happened when one Outfit guy wanted to take over another Outfit guy’s territory, or when one Outfit guy was afraid another Outfit guy was about to go State’s evidence. The thing about murdering the Perelli’s was that I couldn’t see how Jimmy benefited. As nearly as I could tell from the files, Perelli wasn’t a threat to Jimmy. And I was pretty sure that in 1972 Jimmy wouldn’t have needed to take Perelli’s territory. The fact that Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten much out of the Perilli murders lent credence to the idea the Feds were attempting to pin the wrong murders on him.

Wednesday I was back in my office ready to work on Jimmy’s case. My plan had been to split my days half and half, but that hadn’t actually worked out. I’d spent the whole previous day on Madeline Levine and now owed Jimmy some time. It was seven-thirty in the morning. I’d left late enough that I was able to buy a fancy gourmet coffee at The Coffee & Tea Exchange. I got a large, which managed to stay almost hot on the walk over to my office and, unsurprisingly, tasted a whole lot better than the coffee from White Hen. The morning was overcast and cold. It was one of those days where it’s humid enough that you wonder if it might be drizzling, and you’re not sure until you wind up soaked.

I had a little trouble focusing on Jimmy’s case. For one thing, I was hungover. For another, I was annoyed. Even though he seemed to have just shown up in Brian’s life, Franklin was taking the kind of ownership that reminded me of someone who’d just gotten the keys to a new car. And worse, he wasn’t the friendly sort who wanted to give all his friends rides. No, he was the sort who wanted to keep the car spotless and to himself.

We were just about finished with dinner and I was halfway through my third scotch when I realized he hadn’t asked me a single question. In fact, he’d been doing a bang up job of not talking to me at all. He talked to Brian. I talked to Brian. We didn’t actually talk to each other.
 

“We should go to the dunes this summer,” Franklin said. I’d heard of them, but never been.

“That sounds like fun,” Brian said.

“What about going back to New York?” I asked. “Are you and Sugar planning another trip?”

“We’re talking about it.”

“New York is a horrible city. Dirty and crime-ridden.” Franklin’s disapproval had the finality of a door closing.

I’d never had a reason to go to New York so I couldn’t defend it. Though I was tempted to anyway. Particularly since you could say the same things about Chicago.
 

“Franklin works at a law firm in the loop,” Brian said as though that explained something. “He’s a paralegal.”

“I see,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Nick works for a law firm, too. He’s an investigator.”

“We have an investigator at our firm. I think he’s an ex-convict,” Franklin said casually. I just smiled at that, though I knew perfectly well the investigator had to be clear of felonies for at least ten years in order to have a license. The point wasn’t that their investigator was an ex-con. The point was Franklin didn’t like me.

Despite the unpleasantness of the conversation, the dinner was actually good. When I finished I went into the living room and hung out on the sofa, which was basically my “room.” Terry had taken his dinner into his bedroom and
Hart to Hart
was on television. The ridiculousness of the show made me giggle a few times. Franklin and Brian cleaned up and I could tell that Franklin was chafed that I wasn’t doing the dishes. But even in the living room I could hear him bossing Brian around, and that wouldn’t have flown with me so I didn’t feel bad. I fell asleep sometime during the local news.