Gossip (30 page)

Elaine closed the door and became timid, respectful. “I just wanted to ask about your, um, future here.”

I repeated what I’d told Peter and Alec. I suspected that she wanted to fire me, but, instead of my usual courtesy, I was nastily flippant. “You uncomfortable having a suspected murderer in shipping and receiving?”

“No, no, no. I
presume
you’re innocent. I was just wondering if I should start looking for a replacement. And if reporters would still be coming by. If you don’t mind, I’m making Robert acting manager on Sundays. The insurance company, you understand. Until this is wrapped up.”

“Of course.” I assured her I would not let a murder charge get in the way of my duties. I was amazingly indifferent to it all, my future here, my boss’s fear of me, the absurdity of dealing with such things at a time like this.

When I came out, Peter was waiting with Alec.

“She said I could stay.”

Peter rolled his eyes and laughed. “You never know. I better get back to my post. But we can talk at lunch.” He petted my shoulder and went upstairs.

Alone with unopened boxes and a giddily admiring assistant, I struggled to remember what was important about my work here.

The phone rang. It was Nick. He welcomed me back, asked how I was and told me again not to despair.

“A lamb, huh?” I quoted his quote at him.

“I’m sorry, Ralph. About my bum advice that going along was the best solution. I had no idea how deep you were in this.”

“I didn’t do it because of you. I’d already decided to do it.” I disliked his presumption that this was all his doing.

“But we can turn this around,” he said. “Can you meet after work? We need to keep the ball rolling while it has momentum.”

“The key is to keep people talking. You have to stay in the public eye, Ralph. So they can’t disappear your case.”

“Homophobia,” said Maura Morris. “It means silence too.”

“You got coverage only because it was a slow news day,” Nick added. “But people don’t like reading about gays, even when they kill each other. The tabs have already dropped the story.”

“If you were a woman, they’d run it forever,” said Maura. “But fags don’t sell papers.”

“The
Times
never touched it. But Maura’s pitched an article to the
Voice.”

“And they want it,” she said. “What with that misogynistic book, police homophobia and the sleeping-with-the-enemy angle, you’re good copy.”

We met in Nick and Peter’s living room that night, sitting in a circle under the cozy pools of light on their ceiling. The curtains blew lightly at the door to the terrace; I’d asked that the door be cracked open. I sat low in an armchair, Maura on a stool to my left. Her red hair in a bowl cut so short it seemed to have been done with a saucer, she looked like a radical berry in wire-rims. Nick hunched forward on the edge of the sofa to my right, elbows on his knees. Peter was folded in the far corner of the sofa, saying little, watching his lover with admiration, even love. Here was Nick at his best: public, capable, decisive.

I was moved that Nick wanted to do so much, yet I already knew that this wasn’t just about me.

“I propose a fund-raiser,” he said. “To help with legal costs but also to get attention. Both for you, Ralph, and for everything your case represents. Because it’s part of something much bigger. Media apathy, the right wing’s war against gays and women, the demonization of AIDS activism. They don’t know they’ve demonized a dead horse, but a story about a falsely accused man might flog that horse back to life.”

“I was never much of an activist,” I pointed out.

“But it’s how they perceive you. And reality is nine parts perception here.”

“You want to use the lamb,” I said tartly.

He didn’t take offense. “Yes. It begins with you, Ralph, but doesn’t have to end there. You can be a cause celeb”—he didn’t even attempt the French. “I don’t know how far we can go, if we can break into big media, but it’s worth pushing for all it’s worth.”

“There’s a chance the charge will be dropped,” I warned him.

“All the better. We get the benefits of a martyr and none of the blood.”

“Baaa,” went Peter, then frowned, unsure what the joke might mean here.

But the truth was I craved to be used. I wanted my anger, suspicion and helplessness to be harnessed to something large and impersonal.

“What about O’Connor?” I asked. “What if we include his name with mine. He’s a victim with blood.”

“No,” said Nick. “His name will turn too many people off.”

“You’ll put women off,” said Maura. “I doubt it’ll get any Log Cabin types in our camp. If we wanted them.”

“You don’t want me even mentioning Bill?”

“You can say anything you like,” said Nick. “But we can’t put him front and center.”

It made sense. And I could control our link, without feeling that I was handcuffed to a corpse. I wanted to be finished with Bill.

The doorman phoned from downstairs. “Send him up,” said Nick. “Your lawyer.”

Nick had suggested I invite Michael Diaz tonight. I hadn’t met him myself yet. He’d sounded cold on the phone, unhappy with the idea of first meeting me with others present. He was having dinner in the neighborhood, however, and said he might drop by.

“Nick Rosi,” said Nick at the door. “Thanks for coming.”

He strolled into the room, a tall, thirty-something black man in a turtleneck sweater. He had a tight, close beard of black moss. He checked out the apartment and people, just as we were checking him out.

“You’re Mr. Eckhart,” he said and shook my hand. He had a large, soft hand, and guarded, heavy-lidded eyes. Latin American or Caribbean, there was no trace of family tree in his accent. After what I’d thought and felt in jail, it seemed fitting that I have a black defender.

“Have a seat, Mike. Can I offer you coffee, beer?”

“Thank you, no. I can only stay a minute.” He took Nick’s spot on the sofa. “What’s going on here, Mr. Eckhart? Who are these people?”

“My friends. We’re discussing strategy.”

“That’s my job. You should see me before you talk with anyone.”

“Which was why we wanted you here,” said Nick. “We’re talking extralegal action.” He described the proposed fundraiser, Maura’s contacts at the
Voice
—although not that she wrote for them—and the need for publicity.

Diaz listened with his legs coolly crossed, a finger pressed over his lips. In contrast to the noisily confident Freeman, he seemed a quiet, careful, worried man.

“Interesting,” he murmured when Nick finished. “However.” He turned to me. “If you go public, Mr. Eckhart, you
might
embarrass the prosecution into dropping charges, if their case has no floor. On the other hand, if they think they have something, you risk forcing them to trial.”

“But it’s already public,” said Nick. “The front page of the
Post?
They might be done with it but there’re others. I didn’t tell you yet, Ralph, but I got a call today from a writer with
American Truths.
He wanted to know about you, your sex life, politics, friends. I told him to shove it, but they’re planning to run something. We can’t let them call the shots.”

“I’m not saying you can’t do it,” Diaz quickly added. “I just want to point out that it’s not without risk.”

“Have you spoken with Senator Freeman?” I asked. She wanted me to avoid the media; I wondered if she had influenced Diaz.

“No. I know she paid your bail but she’s not paying my fee. I have no contact with her. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Nick jumped back in. “I don’t trust the silence-is-golden approach. Ralph needs to be as loud and visible as possible.”

“Nick has an agenda that goes beyond me,” I said. “I’m part of a bigger cause.” I wanted Diaz to know that I wasn’t Nick’s stooge either.

“You are,” said Nick. “But your welfare is part of that cause. I wouldn’t pursue this at your expense.”

Peter got up and quietly left the room, stooping to make himself invisible.

“My job is to keep you out of jail,” said Diaz. “Simply that. Maybe a publicity campaign will help, but stories in the news have a way of developing a life of their own that nobody can control. If you can even get them born.”

“Exactly,” said Nick. “Nothing may come of it, but it’s worth a shot.”

Diaz studied Nick, then Maura, then me. He let out a sigh and stood up. “Nothing further I can say at this point. I need to meet with you alone, Mr. Eckhart, and get a clearer idea what kind of case we have. I recommend that you hold off on the media. But the decision is yours. We’ll set a meeting later this week. Good night all.”

Nick escorted him out and returned.

“Legalistic wimp,” sneered Maura. “I hate how the law turns men of color into hairsplitters. Some of the women too.”

“He’s only looking out for his client,” argued Nick. “He might be right, Ralph. But if we take a wait-and-see on this, we lose media momentum. What do you think?”

The decision remained mine. I wondered if Peter had left to protest the risk Nick wanted me to take. I remembered my vague obligation to Senator Freeman. An excuse to do nothing, I resented it, rebelled against it. The chance to use my personal situation for something larger made the risk attractive, necessary. “Let’s do it,” I said.

Nick didn’t break into a triumphant grin, but accepted my choice with a grave nod. “This’ll consume time, energy and emotion, you know. It’s a commitment.”

“I know.” But I did not feel trapped in a bad decision. I felt strengthened by it, as if it were the right one. “I’m in.”

“Good then. Very good.” He continued to nod, then got down to business. He asked me to get him the names of the reporters on my answering machine, none of whom ever called back. Maura set a day for a first interview. They swapped the names of people who might prove useful.

“Ralph!” Peter shouted from the bedroom. “Come back here. You might want to see this.”

Of course. It was the hour of the computer. Peter had walked out only because it was time to commune with his digital spooks.

I found, him sitting at his monitor. He leaned back so I could read the lines racing up the top of the split white screen.

“He did it. You just know he did it.”

“Lie with dogs, get up with fleas.”

“He looked like those French women whose heads got shaved for sleeping with Nazis.”

“Just what we need. A killer queer.”

Sentences crowded in and scrolled up like the music roll in a player piano, judging me, condemning me, reinventing me.

Shanghai Lily attempted to mitigate their criticism. “I doubt we’ve gotten the full story, darlings. Put yourself in the poor boy’s shoes.”

Delayed responses to previous remarks continued—“Why do killer homos get all the attention?”—before someone replied, “No way, Shang. Did you see his eyes?”

“Not his shoes I want to be in. Sexy killer.”

“I bet the right hired him and he’s not even gay.”

“Or Hillary hired him. What if Hillary had that guy killed for his book?”

There was no moral rage, no emotion at all. These weren’t real judgments, just idle notions pulled out of thin air. “It’s all make-believe,” I said. “Why do they want to do that?”

“It’s fun,” said Peter. “They get to be clever and cynical. And righteous. Virtual virtue. They don’t know the killer is their own Sergeant Rock.”

“We’re not telling them,” I said. I wanted them to stew in their ignorance.

“Of course. But it’ll die away in a day or two.”

“Or get serious?” I offered.

“No. It’ll fade once Nick and Maura and you give them facts and spoil their fantasies. Or they’ll get tired of you. Like Tanya Harding, that Kennedy cousin and the rest of them.”

“Fools’ names and fools’ faces,” I muttered, such a quaint, old-fashioned sentiment. I gave up my anonymity by agreeing to Nick’s campaign, but I’d already become what every twentieth-century person yearned to be, public property. I was neither thrilled nor disgusted. I took a cold, belligerent satisfaction in being changed into something so new and various.

That night when I walked home, however, nobody on the street looked twice at me. The figure in the public unconscious had not yet spilled into physical space.

M
Y ME NOW HAD PURPOSE
, meaning, an overload of meaning. I expected my days to be all being and no thinking. Yet the mind is frighteningly flexible. Given enough time, it can accept wars and plagues and even murder charges as everyday realities.

I had my first meeting with Diaz the following Monday in the firm’s New York offices, downtown near Federal Plaza. It was hard to believe that my arrest had been only a week ago today. The waiting room looked impressive, all suede and mahogany, a host of brass nameplates on the door. Alone with me in his office, with a window with a partial view and a Yale law degree on the wall, in a tapered blue suit that he wore like a second skin, Diaz was as smooth and detached as he’d been the other night, poker-faced, although his manner suggested a brainier game, bridge or chess. His stillness was like the careful repose of a large man who doesn’t want to frighten children.

He began by asking about my meeting with the FBI, to learn what their evidence might be. “Believe it or not, Mr. Eckhart, you know more about this case than anyone else.”

He’d received a copy of the police file, an intimidating thickness of papers all bearing my name. The only relevant documents, he explained, were my statement, the crime report, my booking sheet and an illegible computer printout with my City Hall arrest. The crime report suggested no unidentified fingerprints, hairs or blood had been discovered at the scene. No murder weapon had been found either, although a trace of blood on the wall indicated that the decedent had hit it during a struggle. A list of stolen property included a Sony Trinitron television, the Powerbook, a CD player, assorted male jewelry from Jeb Weiss’s room and, presumably to carry most of it, Weiss’s Louis Vuitton suitcase. Nothing had been recovered. Lovelace and Pruitt had lied about that. I asked if we could get them on misleading me.

“That’s the least of the procedural infirmities here. It sounds like they violated your rights repeatedly in this so-called chat. But we have only your word against theirs. Which is why they didn’t tape the session.”