Drag Queen in the Court of Death (17 page)

The apartment was large and dim. The young man led me to the back and into a room with half-closed wooden shutters at the windows. The air felt stale and old, as if it hadn't changed for many years. One wall was lined with books and a faded tapestry hung on another. The place was crammed with beautiful pieces, most from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Under the window was a gleaming Jacobean oak chest, and a great candelabra that looked as if it must have come from an old church stood on the floor beside it.

It took a minute for my eyes to pick out the still figure of an old man sitting in a high-backed wing chair, the kind you rarely see nowadays. He looked a bit like a gnome as he rose to his feet shakily to greet me. His long face was animated and smiling, his dark eyes bright with interest behind the heavy lenses. He was almost completely bald, and his ears stood out high on his head, making him look even more gnomelike. He was short, but he still held himself well, in spite of the stoop that forced his head forward slightly.

"How do you do," he said, extending his hand. I felt a slight tremor, but his clasp was firm. "This is Max, my grandnephew. He's visiting for a month."

"My name is Michael Dunn-Barton."
"Yes, yes. Sit, sit." He sank back into his chair and arranged his obviously expensive cream-colored jacket to the best advantage. "Max, bring us some Tio Pepe. You like dry sherry? The best. Or we have Malaga wine, and the sweet cream sherry for the faint of heart, as you say."

I opted for the manly Tio Pepe, and Max sauntered off sulkily on his errand.
"And bring biscuits," Carlos called after him. "He has not been well brought up," he confided to me. "Jem tells me you are looking for someone you think I might know. You have a picture, yes? Show me, please."
He spoke quickly, with only a slight accent, but I had to concentrate to follow him, as he seemed to have trouble with his false teeth and spittle flew freely as he talked. That explained the white handkerchief he held in his left hand.
I took out the pictures and handed them to him. He pulled his thick glasses down on his nose and, tipping his head back, peered at them for a long time. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he looked at me, his eyes looked bigger, a little lost without the defense of the lenses.
"Jem said he thinks one of the boys is Haven," he said. "Misha loved that boy. I thought he might come to Misha's funeral, you know. A lot of them did, but not Haven. It was a great comfort to see them again, yes, though I confess not to recognizing some. There are so many gone, yes, all the golden boys." He gazed into the dimness, the pictures forgotten in his hand. After a few moments, I cleared my throat.
"Do you recognize the blond one in the picture?" I asked.
He looked at me, startled, as if he had forgotten my existence; then he put the glasses back on and looked again. He looked up suddenly, an impish grin on his wrinkled face. "They called me Uncle Bunny," he said.
Max ambled in with two sherry glasses on a silver tray. An untidy pile of biscotti rested on a paper serviette beside the bottle of Tio Pepe. Carlos looked at the biscuits, shook his head, and shrugged.
When we both had our sherry and the boy had left, I said, "Do you recognize the photo? His name was Ronnie Lipinsky."
"He is dead, yes?"
"Yes."
Carlos sighed. "So many gone, and here I am still.
Ay, que pena.
" He dipped a biscotti into his sherry and sucked on it.
"Ronnie Lipinsky?" I said.
"Patience is a virtue, they say." He leaned back in his chair and grinned at me, his head on one side. "What are you looking for?"
I had prepared for this, had tried to hone the thing to a few sentences. "We were lovers many years ago; then we lost touch. Last year we met again, and when he died last month, he named me executor of his estate. I find a lot of blanks in his life, blanks I'm trying to fill in, just for my own information."
"Surely it is not necessary to go back so many years? Let the dead rest in peace."
"It's the living I'm concerned with," I snapped.
"You know what curiosity did, yes?" He hunched forward and handed the photos back.
I thought of the skeleton in Ronnie's trunk, of the shoe box full of money, the notebook with all the careful entries, Uncle Bunny's name on the front. "I've come a long way," I said. "I missed so much of his life."
He sighed and looked off into space for a moment. I was afraid he was drifting off again when he knocked back the rest of his sherry and struggled out of the chair. "
Bueno,
" he said. "Ronnie Lipinsky." He stood a moment, getting his balance, then tottered off to a door I hadn't noticed before behind a velvet hanging and disappeared. I wondered if this was a bathroom, or if Carlos had some letters from Ronnie stashed away somewhere. Maybe he had a whole file of correspondence from the Bunny Boys back there. I finished the sherry. My friendly feelings for Carlos had turned to annoyance. He was manipulative. He was irritating. But he did remember Ronnie, the Ronnie I never knew. In my innocence, I had always assumed I was his first man, just as he was mine. Perhaps that's what was so galling.
The draperies shivered and swayed as Carlos pushed his way back into the sitting room, a dusty folder in his hands. He coughed and wiped his mouth with the handkerchief he was still clutching. Dust streaked across his chin.
"Ronnie, I remember," he said, sinking down into the chair opposite me. "You know, most of the boys, they used nicknames all the time, but not Ronnie. I liked that. He came to some of the parties. What a great little dancer he was!" He smiled.
"These were the parties you had above the store?"
"We had a sort of club, back then. People paid a membership fee to be on the invitation list. It was a way to finance things and keep it private, so the police would leave us alone, which they did for quite a while." He picked up his sherry glass, looked surprised to find it empty. I filled it.
"Thank you. Ronnie was a great subject too. He loved the camera."
"The camera?"
He opened the slim file and eight-by-ten glossies spilled out, the negatives underneath in a plastic sleeve. Ronnie danced nude across the black-and-white paper, his hair flying, eyes sparkling and bright with life. His slim legs pirouetted, arms flung joyously in the air. The light danced with the shadows over his body. In every photo, his pubic hair was shaved.
"Christ," I muttered.
"He was a pretty one," Carlos went on, his hands touching the pictures. I stifled the urge to grab them away from him.
"Who was the photographer?" I asked.
"Me. It was a sort of hobby for me for a long time. And with Ronnie, it came in handy."
"How so?"
Carlos sighed. "
Bueno
, I tell you that Ronnie was the only boy who really surprised me. He caught me completely off guard, as you say, yes?"
I waited, my eyes still glued to the photos spilling across the folder.
"He ran off one night after a session with a member of our club. The man complained that he was not ... cooperative, and that was when I found out the guy was into some rough sex. He was banned from our list after that, but meanwhile, Ronnie ran. And yes, he took eight thousand of my dollars with him."
"Christ," I said again. "Did you try to get it back?"
"Haven knew where he went, I'm sure of it, but he wouldn't tell. So I made the money back selling the pictures. It all worked out fine in the end. And Ronnie met you, yes?"
I poured myself another sherry, drank it in silence, listening to the muted roar of the city outside.
"You said most of the boys used nicknames," I said thoughtfully. "What about Haven? Was that a nickname?"
"Oh yes." He thought for a few moments. "Yes," he said, "I remember now because we spoke Spanish together. His name was Rey Montana."
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For days afterward my mind held back the sweet stale scent of Carlos's opulent apartment, releasing it suddenly and without warning at odd times. I would be in my room at home, just before going to bed and the smell would be with me, as strong and powerful as if I had just arrived in the sitting room behind the German rapster. Or I was talking to Rose in her office at the university, and there it was, that unmistakable odor of time and history—Ronnie's secret history, now part of mine, after all these years. Once even in the garage, as I was getting out of the car. Each time I stopped, thrown a little off my stride as if by a physical jolt to the system.

There was a power in that room in New York City, in the image of the old man, his eyes tiny points of inquisitiveness behind the thick lenses, leaning forward in his chair. His long hands, spotted with age, touched and caressed the folder on his lap as he talked. Just as I was about to leave, he said, "Did you love him very much?"

"I never really loved anyone else," I said, turning to look at him. His question and my response were equally surprising.

He swayed, one hand on the curve of the wing chair. "Take them," he said, holding out the folder. "I do not need them now. I have many memories of my other golden boys. This one is yours."

So I took the folder and brought the pictures and the negatives back home to Toronto and felt like crying when I thought of them. Then, a few days later, I got up at three a.m., went downstairs, burned the photos in the fireplace, and buried the ashes in the garden.

The next day, I wrapped up the old shoe box with Ronnie's horde of US dollars inside and addressed it to Debra. Inside I put a note:
I know you'll know what to do with this. Don't ask, don't tell.
I thought for a while and decided not to sign it. She would know who it was from. I was clear on one thing. Ronnie had earned the eight thousand. The rest of it I wasn't going to worry about. His parents could use it.

Ryan slid into and out of my bed. It was curious how I no longer minded. The sex was still welcome, but I was relieved when the boy himself left. Sometimes I heard him creep out the front door afterward, heading out to the bars and afterhours clubs I had no interest in. Sometimes he went back to his own room to smoke up, carefully leaving the window open, thinking this made the smell invisible. Once I thought I heard voices out in the garden and looked out to see Julie in a big T-shirt and nothing else, arguing with Ryan in hard whispers. Ryan shrugged, but he looked worried. I went back to bed. It was time to simplify my life.

Since coming back from New York, I had not gone to see Logan. He had called twice, then stopped. I knew I would have to make up my mind about him soon: what I would say, what I wouldn't say. I didn't want him to think I was abandoning him, as so many of his friends had, but I found myself wanting to protect Ronnie from his probing. Logan had called Ronnie a fake. What would he call him now if he knew the real story?

On Tuesday, the garden was finished. The nursery guys had planted the last of the flowers and miniature trees; the water garden guys had connected the last of the pipes and started the water flowing from the top of the rock garden on one corner, down the small waterfall into the pool beneath. The water lilies had taken hold, and the fish were swimming lazily in their own pool close to the house. The white gravel sparkled, the air was fragrant with the scent of lily of the valley that spread along in the shadows near the house. Logan's the one I had spent hours with talking over the plans, but it was Jaym I thought of first. Jaym, who had been here twice already, slipping in and out without fuss, down to the basement to get a start on the brewing project. But I took a few instant pictures of the garden, from different angles, picked up the bag from the Avery Hall gift shop, and went to see Logan.

It was cooler today, and the apartment seemed fresher. Someone had been in recently and cleaned and dusted. There were no flowers in sight. Logan met me at the door at the top of the stairs, leaning heavily on his silver cane, one shoulder hunched up as if to balance himself in some peculiar way.

"You're back," he said. His eyes were hooded, and I couldn't read his expression.
"I'd forgotten how hellishly hot it gets in New York in August," I said,
"I hear you," he said. He turned and lurched to the padded chair, which was now moved to the window. The bed was farther back against the wall. The grand piano took up the rest of the space.
"You've been housecleaning," I said, sitting down opposite him.
"I hired someone. Ellen was driving me nuts with her solicitousness. In the end, all that sympathy is draining."
"You look good," I said.
"Michael, you're getting old. Your eyesight's going."
I handed him the bag and he opened it, taking out the silk scarf with the piano keys all up and down its length. "Nice," he said. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. I thought you could wear it on your first gig."
Logan didn't answer. He leaned back in his chair carefully and closed his eyes. "How did it go?" he asked.
I leaned back too and stretched out my legs, crossing them at the ankle. "I found the store," I said. "The owner is dead, but there was one guy there who had been at the store in the '60s." I went on to tell him about Jem recognizing Haven.
"And then?" Hogan asked.
I paused and looked out the window at the shifting play of sun and shadow in the leaves.
Logan opened his eyes. "It's not a game anymore, is it?"
"It never was, for me," I said.
"No, I suppose not. You want a drink? You know where it is."
"Thanks." I got up and went to the kitchen, where I poured a weak vodka and tonic for me and got a bottle of water out of the fridge for Logan. When I was sitting down again, I took a drink and sat for a moment considering the glass.
"The only question is this," Logan said, steepling his scarred hands and looking at me over the fingertips. "What has changed because of what you have found out?"
"You're very good at this," I said.
"I'm not emotionally involved," he pointed out.
I pulled out the picture of Ronnie and Haven and showed it to him. "Remember this? I found out who the other boy is. He went by the name of Haven then, but his real name was Rey Montana."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as my old man used to say. No wonder you look right knackered."
"You've been watching too much Brit TV," I said.
Logan took a drink from his bottle of water. He looked at me, started to speak, then looked away.
"Don't hold back now," I said.
"Most murders are committed by people who know the victim," Logan said. "This new information makes it more understandable."
"Yeah. Ronnie killed a friend. Much more understandable."
"Shut up and listen. Friends know things about each other. Maybe Rey was going to reveal something about Ronnie that he wanted to keep secret. He was reinventing himself back then. You've found that out already. Maybe Rey was going to spill the beans."
I didn't say anything. Logan hadn't come up with anything new to me.
"Are you going to tell the police?"
I snapped my eyes back to him. "What's the point?" "Right. Let sleeping pigs lie."
"Up the revolution." I finished my drink. I could feel Logan watching me. "I sent the money to Debra," I said.
"Good idea."
I felt his interest, his curiosity, his sharp intellect held back by concern for me and I appreciated it. "I've finished the garden," I said abruptly. I pulled out the photos and showed him.
"Fish and everything," he said, studying them. "You know, Ilse of the SS says I can start on the stairs tomorrow."
"Just let me know when you're ready, and we'll plan a visitation," I said, smiling. I stood up.
"Michael, let it go," he said.
I paused at the top of the stairs, the faint smell of medications suddenly swept aside by the memory of that closed, sweet smell of Carlos's apartment, where my mind would forever see Ronnie at seventeen, dancing naked in the shadows. And I knew I couldn't let it go. I had never really let it go, and now I had to follow to the end, no matter what the price.
I picked up some wild birdseed at the corner store and walked home. Lew was just getting out of his white Jag as I came to my house.
"You can't park there now," I said.
"Watch me. Have you seen the
Rainbow Rag
?" He was dressed in full office drag, wing tips, pinstripes and all. He was carrying an expensive briefcase. A pile of files spilled across the front seat of his car.
"What are you doing here this time of day?" I led the way into the dim coolness of the house and offered him a drink.
"Perrier, if you have it."
I got him a Perrier and mixed myself another weak vodka and tonic. We went out to the garden and sat down. Lew made some appropriate comments about the new look of the place, then pulled a glossy magazine out of his briefcase and flourished it in the air. "Hot off the press," he said. "Have you seen it yet? Check out page twelve."
The
Rainbow Rag
was the slickest and most widely read of the Toronto gay magazines. The ads alone were worth the price. I rarely looked at it, but knew that it was popular. I turned to page twelve. portrait of a dead queen, by Julie Kates. Several pictures of Ronnie were scattered through it, and one of Ronnie and me outside the school. A quote caught my eye: "We light the candles and Michael reads aloud to me from the
Just So Stories
in his classy voice and calls me O Best Beloved. I play him Janis Joplin records and the Rolling Stones. I love him so much, sometimes I can't breathe." There was only one place she could have gotten that. I was stunned.
"Sorry, honey, I thought you should know. I was sure you had no idea, am I right?"
"That bitch!" I thought of the box of memories carelessly shoved onto the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the living room. I thought of the last time I reached for the diary and didn't find it, thought I'd left it in the bedroom, then forgot about it.
"Looks like you've got some housecleaning to do," he said, getting to his feet. "Look, I hate to hit and run, but I'm due in a meeting in twenty minutes. Can't keep the felons waiting, you know." He paused, kissed me quickly, and rushed out the door to his illegally parked car. No wonder Julie had been lying low lately. And here I thought she was having an affair with Ryan. I thought I was so aware of what was going on around me. How wrong I was! Again.
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