Extenuating Circumstances (14 page)

"I told you -I can't help you. Now, are you gonna order something or what?"

"Draft beer," I said.

He drew a glass of beer from the tap and smacked it down in front of me. The knowing smile had disappeared and with it the condescending chumminess in his voice. "Find some other house to haunt. Okay? The rest of us are trying to have a good time."

He threw a bar towel over his shoulder and swaggered off.

Even though the room was noisy, a definite silence settled over my spot at the bar. I sighted an empty table and took myself and the glass of beer over to it.

I'd been sitting there a few minutes, watching the beer go flat and trying to brace myself for a trip to the Ramrod, when a guy in a wheelchair rolled up to the table. He was wearing a pea-green fatigue jacket with an Airborne emblem on the right sleeve. Without the braces on his legs he would have been a dead ringer for David Bowie, right down to the funny off-color teeth and the nasty lesbian good looks. He seemed angry, but then being a homosexual vet in a wheelchair would have ruined my day too.

"I heard you at the bar," he said truculently.

I gave him an amused look. "Did somebody appoint you spokesman?"

"Don't get smart, Ethel," he said, pointing a bony finger at me.

"The name's Harry."

"Mine's Vin," he said, wheeling a little closer to the table. "Not that it means a shit."

"What can I do for you, Vin?"

He eyed my glass of beer. "You were looking for conversation, and I could use a drink."

I started to laugh. I guess I hadn't figured on deadbeats cadging freebies in a queer bar. For some reason it made the place seem more human.

"What's so fucking funny?" Vin said in his angry voice.

"Nothing." I swallowed the last of my laughter and pushed the beer glass over to him. "It's been sitting there awhile, but if you want it, take it."

He picked up the glass and drank the beer down in one slug.

"Thanks," he said, just as truculently as he'd said everything else. He dropped the glass back on the table.

I pointed at the emblem on his coat sleeve. "You were Airborne?"

He nodded. "I ain't proud of it. I got caught in the draft and couldn't get 4-effed. Imagine that?"

"Why do you wear the jacket, then?"

Vin shrugged. "I just don't want to look like everyone else in this shithole." He gazed around the room and curled his lip. "Bunch of yuppie faggots."

"If you don't like the company, why come here?"

"'Cause I'm a faggot too," he said, turning back to me. "If they didn't have so many goddamn stairs to get down, I'd cruise the Ramrod. It's a helluva lot more fun over there."

"How's that?"

"It's more real, that's all. None of this genteel shit." Vin gave me a knowing look that was a long way from the bartender's chummy smirk. I didn't know what to make of it until he told me.

"If you're into rough trade, that's the place to be."

"What makes you think I'm into rough trade?"

"You were asking about Tommy T., weren't you?" he said cagily.

"You know him?"

The guy balked. "I could use another drink."

I took a twenty out of my wallet and laid it on the tabletop. "Buy yourself a couple."

"Don't mind if I do." He slapped at the table like a snake striking at the glass of its cage. The twenty-dollar bill disappeared in his palm.

"Sure I know Tommy," Vin said, pocketing the money. "I use him myself once in a while."
He smiled as unattractively as I've ever seen a man smile.

"Where could I find him?" I asked.

"Like I said, Ramrod's your best bet. This place ... it's good for a laugh once in a while. But it's just a Girl Scout troop. Everybody playing patty-cake and showing off their fucking new clothes. Ramrod's a hustler's bar. That's where you get your hot action. And Tommy T. . . . well, he's as hot as they get. At least around this town."

"You wouldn't happen to know a guy named Coates, would you?"

"That fat pig." He threw his hand at me disgustedly.

"Yeah, I know him."

"I heard he and Tommy were pretty tight." "Tommy just uses the pig's pad, that's all." Vin straightened up in the wheelchair. "The T's got better taste than Lester Coates."

"You know where Coates lives? In case I can't find Tommy at the Ramrod?"

"Deco Apartments. Number 425. But don't touch nothing. The stink stays on your hands all day."

I stared at him for a moment -at his nasty lesbian face. "You didn't know Ira Lessing, did you?"

He thought about it for a second. "I seen the name in the papers. The guy that got offed by Terry Carnova, right? The guy you mentioned at the bar."

I nodded. "You ever see him in here with Tommy?"

He shook his head. "Never saw the guy, period. But that don't mean he didn't cruise the bars. Knowing Tommy, he'd more likely be over at the Rod, anyway. That's probably where he picked up Terry, too, the poor fucker."

"Terry was into S and M?"

"Not really. He didn't have the right temperament for the job. Tommy T., he's a cold-blooded cat. Ice cold. But Terry . . . he ain't decided what he is. Hell, I saw him the night your pal got hacked, running around here acting all pissy and tough."

"On the night of the Fourth?"

"About seven o'clock. Shooting his mouth off how it was going to be a big night for him 'cause it was his big-deal birthday. Bragging on how he was going to make a monumental score."

"What kind of score?"

"T's and B's. Christ, he was already loaded. You could see it in his eyes. When everybody got tired of hearing his mouth he went on over to the Rod. Least that's where he said he was going. That's the last time I saw him, till I spotted his picture in the papers. Guess he scored all right. That friend of yours, Lessing, just picked the wrong boy on the wrong night."

On that note I pushed away from the table.

"Going over to the Ramrod, huh?" Vin said with a touch of disappointment, as if he'd seen the evening developing in a different way.

I nodded.

"It figures. All the good ones go to the Rod." He started to wheel himself away, then turned back to me. "Talk to the bartender -Raymond. Tell him the kind of action you're looking for and tell him Vinnie sent you. You'll be all right."

It's hard to believe, but I actually said, "Thanks."
 
 

20

The Ramrod was located in the basement of the Lincoln Hotel, three blocks northeast of the Underground. You had to go down a flight of steps off Walnut to get to it -which is what Vinnie had complained about. The walls were stucco instead of flock; the leather trim on the furnishings was red instead of black. Outside of that the setup was identical: elevated dance floor, laser lights, booths, and a mahogany bar. The difference was in the clientèle, but it took me awhile to see it.
The clothes were the same -lots of expensive suits and ties, lots of silk shirts and tight pants. The table talk was just as loud, the dancing just as frenetic. But as I sat at the bar, waiting for the bartender to work his way up to me, it dawned on me that, for the most part, there were really only two kinds of people at the Ramrod -middle-aged men and boys in their late teens or early twenties. The boys stood side by side at the bar or strutted together on the dance floor; the men sat at the booths and ogled them. It was exactly like a strip joint -a meat rack, with the boys playing the parts of the B-girls.

Some of the kids were weight-lifter types, steroid freaks with doughboy faces and upper arms that looked like bagged grapefruit. Some of them were thin and nervous, with wiry frames and the mean eyes of speed freaks. A few of them looked all-American as hell, as if they'd just stepped off Wheaties boxes. They all dressed alike, in muscle shirts and sprayed-on pants. They all moved alike, self-consciously, deliberately, as if each one knew he was being watched.

The older men were just as self-conscious -and just as much of a piece. Their suits were tailored, their hair tinted and razor-cut. They wore gold rings, watches, jewelry-anything to make them seem prosperous. They'd affected the look of successful executives, even though half of them probably managed at drive-in restaurants, or kept the books tidy at Blue Cross, or cooked up soap at United American. But no amount of money or flash could disguise the fact that they were buyers in a sellers' market. Their appetites showed through the table talk, the jewelry, the tailored clothes. It gave their eyes the desperate, driven look of obsession.

For all I knew I was staring at a roomful of Ira Lessings. A roomful of Terry Carnovas and Tommy T.'s. The thought was unsettling enough to make me turn back to the bar.

The bartender was standing there waiting for me to order. From the frown on his face, he'd been standing there for a while. There was nothing affable or chummy about this one. In fact, he looked like a piano player in a whorehouse. Thin, flat face. Bee-stung lips. Frog eyes. Pencil mustache. Greasy black hair combed straight back, as if he'd just slid out from under a Chevy. He was probably no more than forty, but he was definitely on his third or fourth lifetime.

"Can I get you?" he said in a weary voice.

"Scotch, straight up."

He poured the drink and set it down on the bar in front of me. I gave him a five.

"Are you Raymond?" I asked.

"I'm Raymond," he said, as if, in Vinnie's words, it didn't mean a shit.

"A guy named Vinnie told me to talk to you."

He still didn't look interested. "Yeah?"

"I'm looking for someone. Tommy T. Vinnie said you'd know where I could find him."

"Tommy hasn't been around all night."

I got another twenty out of my wallet and laid it on the bar.

Raymond smiled dully. "I ain't Tommy."

"I just want a few answers."

He smoothed the twenty out with his right hand, like he was ironing a shirt. "You could try across the street, at the Deco. Sometimes Tommy crashes with a cat who lives there, name of Les Coates."

"I heard that." I studied his face for a second. He still hadn't picked up the twenty. "You ever see him in here with a man named Lessing?"

Raymond laughed -a little blip of a laugh, like a scratch on a record. "You're a reporter, aren't you?"

"Sort of. How'd you know?"

"You're either a reporter or a cop, and I already talked to the cops. Besides, it's been ten years since anyone around here give me a twenty-dollar tip."

"Did you see Tommy T. in here on the night of the Fourth of July?" I asked.

"Saw him and Terry both. Right over there." He pointed to the dance floor. "They left about ten-thirty.

One after the other, maybe five minutes apart."

"Was this guy Coates with them?"

Raymond shook his head. "Nope. He wasn't here."

"Did Tommy say where he was going?"

"Nope."

"Did either of them come back in later on?"

He shook his head again. "That's the last I saw of them that night."

"How about Lessing? You still haven't told me if you saw him here."

"I'm still thinking about it," the bartender said. "What's to think about? Either you saw him here or you didn't."

"That's big news, huh? If I saw him?"

"It's news."

Raymond put his forefinger on the twenty and began to swivel it around on the polished wood bar. "You know what I don't like about you reporters? You feed on pain."

I laughed out loud. "What do you call this?" I pointed to the hustlers lining the bar.

Raymond looked up at me, still swiveling the bill. "That's not the kind of pain I'm talking about. Besides, we ain't all Tommy T."

He looked back down at the twenty. "Say a guy is basically decent. Good citizen, good provider. Churchgoer, all that. Only he has a kink, a bend. Maybe his old man give him the habit -caught him jerking off and kicked the shit out of him. Tied him down in bed and waited for him to get a hard-on, then scalded him with hot water every night for a year. It happens. Whatever the story, the guy's got a bend that don't straighten out. For the rest of his life it don't straighten out. He goes to shrinks, to whores, to bars. He gets married, has kids. He tries hard as he can to be like everybody else. But he can't be, 'cause of that kink. One night he just can't pretend it ain't there anymore. So he goes out and finds somebody like Tommy T. And maybe that scares him straight for a while. Maybe
it don't. Maybe he picks the wrong dude and gets iced."

He pushed the twenty away from him and it fluttered off the bar to the floor. "And that's when somebody like you comes along with a twenty-dollar bill."

Raymond walked down the bar.

"That's it?" I called to him.

"That's it," he said over his shoulder.
 

It was fully dark when I left the Ramrod. I could have stayed awhile longer, looking for somebody like Vinnie -some barfly desperate for a drink. But I didn't have the stomach for it. I wanted out -back in the real world. Even at that I felt like I was coming out of a porno theater, as if the color on the street was too lurid, the light too intense, the third dimension one dimension too many. Everything looked fat and ripe and repulsive. I knew it was because of the way things had gone with Raymond -because of the way the night had gone up until then, and the way it was bound to go thereafter.