Gossip (28 page)

“Freeman! Mr. Freeman!” The man with the steno pad raced down the hall. “You’re defending the Eckhart case?”

“No.
And there’s no case, no story. So do everyone a big favor and go home.”

The man turned his hungry grin to me; the elevator doors closed before he could speak.

I passed the next hour in my cell, and another hour. I became afraid that they’d changed their minds and I wouldn’t get out today, which felt the same as never getting out. Then keys jingled in the passage. “Eckhart, Ralph. Move it. You made bail.”

Out in the receiving room, a white man in a knit shirt and leather coat lounged against the counter. “You’re Ralph Eckhart? I’m Sammy Greco. Your bail bondsman.”

Half listening while he explained the rules, I got my bag from the cops and eagerly shucked off the coveralls to climb back into my soft, familiar clothes, desperate to become myself again.

Greco said I had to report to him by phone every Friday. He needed my passport. “I don’t get that passport FedExed to me in two days, your ass goes back in the can. You forget to call me just once, you go back in the can. Your friends have bet a lot of money on you, Ralphie, so don’t fuck with me or them. Sign this. And this.” He gave me his card. “Treat my number like it was your family jewels. I make no exceptions, friend. All right. Get out of here. Your ride’s waiting for you outside.”

I found Freeman standing in the hallway.

“I’m parked out back,” he said. “So we can avoid any press that I didn’t give the slip by rescheduling the arraignment.”

Walking with my warm, battered bag in my hand again, I waited to feel the joy of being restored to myself, yet the rough bite of coveralls still haunted my skin. I climbed the stairs toward a door with a small dirty window. I assumed it was raining outside—it had to be raining. The sunlight startled me. The sky was too bright, the day a hallucination.

Light glowed in the speckled sphere of a fruit tree by the parking lot, its fallen blossoms casting a pink shadow on the neon green grass.

Nancy waited on the sidewalk. When she embraced me, my body took a moment to understand it should hug back.

“Oh Ralph. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

I walked with my arm around her waist, pressing her against my hip, breathing the cool, sweet air, hoping touch and smell would give me back to myself. There was too much sky overhead.

When we got in the car, I sat up front with Freeman, Nancy in the back. She clutched and squeezed my shoulder from behind to assure us both that I’d come out in one piece. Trees and buildings spun dizzily around me.

“I’m finished with you,” said Freeman as he drove. “Michael Diaz, an associate in the New York office, will take the case from here. You can regularly meet with him without having to travel. But I don’t see this case getting past a grand jury. It’s been a muck-up from the start. The FBI knew they didn’t have any evidence but were too chickenshit to let you go once you were in custody. So they dumped the whole mess on D.C., where Unsworth, the prosecutor, is covering his ass by bringing charges. Diaz can get them on improper procedure, lack of evidence, violation of rights.”

Listening to Freeman, I realized that this was far from over and any happiness I experienced now was only temporary.

“But damn it, Eckhart. How could you let them gull and con you like that? How could you let this go so far?”

“I was innocent and trusting,” I said. “I’m not innocent anymore.”

We pulled up outside Nancy’s building. I asked when I could return to New York.

“Catch the next train if you like. You’re a free man. Semifree until your next day in court. You can’t leave the country, of course. And you need to let Greco know if you leave New York for any reason. One last word of advice. Let your hair grow. Look normal until this mess is settled.”

“Okay. Well. Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me. Thank my wife and your friend here.”

Nancy and I got out and he drove off. I stood at the curb, looking up at the ornate climb of corniced windows against the clear blue sky. I was reluctant to go indoors, wary of interiors.

“How’re you feeling?” Nancy asked.

“Better. Some.” I winced at her question and my answer.

“Oh Ralph, I’m so sorry this happened to you. You of all people. I really am sorry.”

“You keep saying sorry like it was something you did. You got me out. Nick said he’d protect me and he didn’t do shit.”

“But he did,” she said. “He’s been on the phone since yesterday. He called early Tuesday morning and told me you were with the FBI. Then I saw in the paper that you’d been arrested. I called Nick and I told Kathleen. She called her husband. We’re behind you, Ralph. All of us.”

That was something, I thought. Something. I mechanically followed her up the steps into the lobby. She stroked my arm in the cell-like elevator. A worried crimp remained in her face.

As she unlocked her door, the phone rang. She hurried inside and answered it.

“Yes? Just now. It went fine. Jack got him out. No, on bail. Twenty-five thousand. Yes, he’s here. Just a minute.” She held out the phone. “It’s Kathleen. She needs to talk to you.”

Something as commonplace as a molded plastic receiver felt very odd in my hand. “Hello?”

“Ralph? Kathleen Freeman here.” Her clarinet burr was quick and to the point. “I don’t have time for this nonsense, but I couldn’t walk away in good conscience. I just want you to realize the degree to which I’ve stuck my neck out for you.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, Senator Freeman. But your bail money is safe. I want to see this through to the end.”

“The money’s nothing. If people find out I paid it, however, and my husband’s firm is handling your case, they’re going to think things. But I’m in a no-win situation. They’ll think worse things if they hear I let you hang in the wind. All I ask of you, Ralph, is that you let the law take care of this. I can’t tell you not to talk to the press but I ask that you keep it to a minimum. And say as little as possible about that idiotic book. Except in court, if it goes to court. I don’t want you to perjure yourself. But the
Washington Times
would have a field day with a scenario where you killed that twit to avenge me and Nancy, and that’s why I came to your aid. I’m helping you only so I can sleep at night, and because I gain nothing if I let you hang. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Thank you.”

She was as indifferent to gratitude as her husband. “That’s all I had to say. Give me back to Nancy.”

I passed Nancy the receiver.

“Yes? Yes. I’m sure he does. Did you want me to come in? No, I don’t think I’d be much good either. Thanks. I’d like some time with him. He’s been through a trauma. See you tomorrow.” She hung up and faced me.

“She sounds pissed,” I said.

“We all are. Aren’t you pissed?”

“Yeah. Only I don’t know who to be pissed at.” I tugged my shirt, feeling the ghost creep of jailhouse coveralls again. “I need to take a shower. I’m itchy with the funk of that place.”

“You poor guy. Take a long, hot one. Then we can talk.”

It felt good to undress and wash in private again. The jet of hot water was glorious, as if I hadn’t bathed in months. I thought I could soap away the jail, but it had gotten under my skin, and Nancy’s bathroom had no window. All the old rituals seemed thin and strange. I took out my electric shaver and, remembering what Freeman said, shaved only my face. The man in the mirror looked pale and alien, with sleepless raccoon circles under the squared cage of eyebrows.

When I dressed and came out, Nancy was on the sofa under the window, her shoes off, her feet folded up, gravely waiting.

“I made some tea,” she began.

I took the hot mug and sat at the other end of the sofa, blew at the steam and sipped.

She watched me. “What you said downstairs about me saying sorry too often? You’re right.” She frowned. “Jack told me about your lie to the FBI. When he got my statement saying that you
were
here Friday night. Why didn’t you tell them, Ralph?”

“I didn’t want to involve you. I didn’t think it important.”

“Was it because of the things I said on Friday night?”

I cocked an ear at her, pretending I hadn’t heard right.

“I’m sorry about blowing up at you. I know you meant well. But why didn’t you tell them you were here? You weren’t out to punish yourself or prove yourself or get back at me, were you?”

“That’s crazy.”

“I know it’s crazy. But I can’t understand why else you’d do it. Why did you give in to them? It was a crazy thing to do, Ralph. A masochistic thing. It scares me that you’d want to punish yourself like that. What were you out to prove?”

“Scares me too,” I said. “But I didn’t know. I did it out of ignorance, not masochism.” I was annoyed she thought this was about her. There may have been a grain of her at the start, but it had grown much larger. “You’ve been angry at me before without my flipping out. I didn’t get into that to punish myself or prove anything to you.”

“Okay. Not me then. But I know you, Ralph.” She balled her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry about … him. He was no friend of mine. I know you stopped liking him too. Still, it must’ve been hard hearing he’d been killed. Even before they accused you.”

“It happened too fast for me to feel anything clearly.” I irritably turned away from her, and noticed the front page on the stack of newspapers by the sofa.

“You’ve made yourself into a punching bag, Ralph. Over me or him or
something.
You frighten me. What’s going on in your head?”

“I don’t know!” I said. “But it’s not just me. It’s not just psychology. It’s much bigger.” I snatched up the newspaper.

“Oh that,” she said. “You haven’t seen that.” She snorted. “You won’t find your answer there.”

It lay below the fold of the
Washington Times
front page, three columns wide: “AIDS Activist Arrested in Author Murder.” There was a photo of an armless man with a lowered head, a flare of light on his gritty skull. He hurried through what looked like a mob of reporters, not just six or seven.

“Not a flattering angle,” Nancy scoffed.

I finally understood why Freeman insisted we leave by a back entrance, and what the man with the steno pad had wanted, and what the cameras at the airport had meant. My punishment, self- or state-inflicted, wasn’t private but an enormous public nudity.

“It’s all so-and-so alleges and the police speculate,” said Nancy. “With a quote from Nick.”

The lead read: “The mysterious death of William O’Connor, controversial author of
The Regiment of Women,
took a dramatic turn yesterday with the arrest of a New York man active in gay politics. Ralph Eckhart, 34 …”

There was a rehash of earlier reports about the murder, and a statement by Detective Polk that “Our sources indicate that Eckhart once provided sexual services to O’Connor.” They cited my old arrest at City Hall, which was where they got “activist.” Nicholas Rosi, identified as a spokesperson for ACT UP, told them, “I know Eckhart personally. He’s a quiet, caring man. A lamb, he’s incapable of murder. This charge is either a prejudiced mistake or a calculated frame-up.”

I suffered a quiet chaos reading about this person who was and wasn’t me: annoyance that I was misrepresented, even by Nick; relief that there was so little resemblance; unease over the crude thrill I took in seeing my name on a front page.

The quote from Nick appeared in the continuation inside. Attached to the foot of the article was a single paragraph under the heading “Services for
Times
Contributor.” A memorial for William O’Connor was scheduled for Wednesday, 3
P.M.,
at St. Agatha’s Church in Baltimore, followed by burial in Catonsville Memorial Park.

“Satisfied?” said Nancy. She sighed and added, “Seeing what they do to you in print makes what was done to me look like small potatoes. They make you out to be a radical whore.”

“What day is this?”

“Wednesday.”

I looked at my recently returned watch; it too seemed altered by its hours in jail. I couldn’t believe it was not yet one o’clock. What had been a vague notion became a necessity. “Can I borrow your car?”

“For what?” She glared down at the paper.

“I want to pay my last respects.”

“You can’t, Ralph. That’s nuts. Why?”

“It’s something I need to do right now.” I resented having to explain. The need was simply there, like a desire to breathe, with no concern for how it struck others.

“You’re not thinking straight. You just got out of jail. How will his family feel if the accused murderer shows up?”

“I don’t care about them. This is for me. Hey, I’m an accused murderer. I don’t have to care what anyone feels.” I said it for the sake of argument, but it was true. I was freed from the opinions of other people. Could anyone think worse of me? “I’m fed up with just reading and hearing and being accused of this. I want to say good-bye to the poor bastard. I shared sexual services with him, remember?”

“Send a card. Send flowers.” She gritted her teeth. “What? His murder absolves him and you love him again?” she sneered. “Is that it?”

“What if I do? Why should it matter to you what I feel?” It wasn’t love, but it was something. “Do you feel insulted that I can grieve for someone who wronged you?”

She stared at me, her lips drawn tight, her brow knotted, confused by the anger that poured from both of us.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, damn it. If it’ll give you closure. But I don’t trust you with my car in your state of mind. I’ll drive. I want to be there and make sure you don’t do anything even more cracked.”

T
HE SHIRT AND TIE
that I’d packed for court were worn instead to a funeral. Baltimore was less than an hour away. Nancy asked about jail while she drove. I gave her a dry, cursory account, not wanting to use the experience as an excuse for my strange new temper and obstinacy. We worked to reconnect after our anger, but a nervous, uncertain distance remained.

We found St. Agatha’s, a suburban Catholic chapel behind the highway of strip malls near Bill’s home. A white hearse crowded the parking lot. The service had already begun. The urgency of my need subsided, and I agreed with Nancy that we couldn’t go in. We parked across the street and sat in the car.