Gossip (35 page)

Nick was right though. Nobody over thirty actually read the
Voice
anymore, although the cover alone had an effect. Older people in my building stopped to ask me about the case and wish me luck. Out on the street, strangers absent-mindedly nodded, knowing they’d seen me somewhere, a friend of a friend or perhaps a waiter. Others did recognize me, but walked on, smiling to themselves. New Yorkers can spot a face from the news without needing to stop and speak to it; the sighting alone makes them feel in touch with the world.

“I hated it,” said Nancy over the phone. “Really hated it. So glib and condescending.”

“It could have been worse,” I claimed. “But you see? I never told her about you. She didn’t even find out who paid my bail.”

“That was a relief, but no surprise. Journalists don’t investigate anymore. They just write up their assumptions.”

Still, she was pleased her secret was safe or she wouldn’t have wanted to come to New York for the fund-raiser.

“I owe you, Ralph. It’ll be almost as strange for me as for you, but I should be there. To smooth the cognitive dissonance.”

Since she was coming to town, she agreed to meet with Diaz. “Let me get it over with,” she grumbled. She would go to his office when her shuttle got in at noon, then come by my place afterward.

I took that Monday off. I woke up anxious, shaky, queasy, yet focused all my fears on whether anyone would even come tonight. I didn’t worry for my sake but for Nick’s and all the work he’d put into this. I stayed home that morning, looking for a poem to read tonight, something short and strong. Nothing seemed appropriate. Yeats and Auden were at their best when damning public life, hearts of stone and low, dishonest decades. I decided to be selfless with my moment and say simply, “Words fail me. Except thank you. It’s good to know that I am not alone in this.” For good or ill, I was not alone.

Diaz called after lunch. “I have good news and sticky news. They’ve agreed to hear our motion to eliminate. Which means we get to hear this tape and learn just how damaging it is. More important, I can confront the DA and see what else she’s got. I hate to admit it, but your friend’s artsy article expedited the process. The hearing’s Wednesday morning, which isn’t much notice but I can get down to D.C. if you can.”

“Sure. That’s not so sticky.”

“That’s not the sticky news. What’s sticky is that I just met with Wenceslas. She’s reluctant to appear in court.”

“Why?”

“She wouldn’t be explicit. She said only that things could come out that would hurt her, and possibly weaken our case.”

“Nancy won’t testify?”

“She didn’t refuse. But I need to know exactly what might come out before I put her on the stand. You have to assure her that whatever she tells me will remain in strict confidence, whatever she’s afraid of.”

I already knew. It was that damn footnote, which I’d never mentioned to Diaz. I was annoyed that Nancy could still be frightened by an idle rumor with so much else at stake, but assumed I’d easily be able to put her fears about Diaz to rest.

I waited for Nancy to come to the apartment. When she hadn’t shown up by three, I left a note on the door and walked to the West Village. She had a key. I had cabin fever. I needed some air and thought I should check in with Nick.

It was a fine June day outside, warm and sunny and green, Washington Square full of sunbathers, the sidewalks full of teenagers and street people, none of whom read the
Voice.

Nick answered the door with papers in his hand, on his way out with a last-minute fax to the local media. I told him about the hearing.

“Great. Maybe the press will cover it.”

“No, it’s a closed hearing.”

“Oh. But it’ll be good for your case,” he said, admitting that was important too. “I got to run. Peter’s home if you want to hang out until I get back. How you doing? Excited about tonight?” He raced down the hall without waiting for an answer.

I walked through their apartment. The sliding glass door to the terrace was wide open; I saw Peter’s long bony feet and big-jointed knees on a mat in the sun. I stepped heavily to let him know I was coming. The legs didn’t move.

He lay on his back in a gray sleep mask and sky blue bikini briefs. His elongated hands, like a second pair of feet, were folded over his tummy, the one place where he could gain weight. His lips were parted, his sandy skin pinking. His birdcage chest rose and fell with its knot of gauze and tubing in the center. He looked heartbreakingly frail against the sea of tar-paper roofs and high-rise mesas beyond the parapet, a conical roof like a slate dunce cap directly across the street.

My first time on their terrace this year, I remembered last spring when Peter and I had sat out here together by their dwarf lemon tree, talking and daydreaming While a sunset turned the clouds into pure Maxfield Parrish, our pocket Eden lifted high above the grumble and bleat of traffic by the roar of something gloriously bombastic, a Strauss waltz or the auto-da-fé scene from
Don Carlo,
on the stereo inside. Those purposeless hours seemed like paradise lost now.

I rapped the plate glass behind me.

“What!” He jolted up, yanked down the mask with one hand and covered himself with the other, not his crotch but his catheter. He remained startled even when he saw who it was. “Damn it, Ralph. Give me heart failure, why don’t you?” He grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it over his head. “What’re you doing here?”

“Sorry. Nick let me in. You called in sick today?”

“No. I called in well. Wanted to lie in the sun and burn myself clean. So if you’ll excuse me—” He adjusted the mask over his eyes and stretched out again, his T-shirt like a chemise.

“Isn’t that bad for your immune system?”

“Fuck it. I wanted some sun today.”

I cautiously stepped out. “So. You coming tonight?”

His hands tapped the mat by his hips. “I haven’t decided.”

I badly missed his company today; I needed to confront his chill. “What’s been eating you, Peter? Why’re you so cool to me?”

“Not cool. Bored. I’m bored with the Ralph Eckhart Show.”

“Not as bored as I am.”

“You’re not bored. You’re high on it. High and oblivious,” he grumbled in his blindfold. “Now I can’t walk the streets without seeing your puppy dog face on the
Voice.
‘Please take me to your heart. Please, please, please.’”

His bitterness threw me; he was not bored but angry. “Why’re you pissed? What have I done?”

“Not a damn thing. Forget it.” He snorted at himself for saying too much. “I have no emotion left for other people anymore. I’ve got my health and treatments and energy levels to think about. Let me sleep. Go talk to Nick.”

“Nick’s gone out.”

“Yeah?” His hands tapped the mat again. “Shit.” He slowly sat up, peeling the mask to his neck to peer into the apartment. When he saw that we were alone, he drew his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked for a moment.

“Did Nick ever fuck you?”

“No!”

“Too bad. He’s a real good fucker.”

Was that what this was about? “Peter. That was years ago. You can’t be jealous of that. Nick’s interested in me as a cause, a case. Not me.”

“You’re right. Absolutely. He’s not interested in you. Forget it. You’re the last person I should be striking at.”

It was ridiculous to argue the personal today, but I did. “If I love anybody, I love you. I feel closer to you than I ever did to Nick.”

“Love, love, love. What a load of horseshit,” he grumbled. “I love you like a brother, Ralph. Or did. I can’t love anyone anymore. Nick says he loves me and what he does is all for love. Even when it’s unlovable.” He cut his eyes at me. “He did fuck you, you know.”

“No. I’d remember. Believe me.” But I knew he was talking about something else.

“Didn’t you ever wonder how the FBI knew you were in D.C. the night of the murder?”

“Yeah, but—we figured they saw me on a security camera in Union Station or the Metro.”

“Uh-uh.” He took a deep breath. “Nick. I told him. The night after we saw the obit. He knew something was up. He met the guy once, remember? So I went ahead and told him, thinking there was no harm in saying how ironical it was that harmless old Ralph happened to be in town for his boyfriend’s murder.”

I stepped backward, trying to see his lowered face. I stumbled against the tub of the lemon tree.

“So it’s my fault too,” he muttered. “But I had no idea. None. I didn’t know until he told me two weeks ago that he picked up the phone that very night and told his contact, Lovelace.”

“With the FBI? Nick works for the FBI?”

“He wouldn’t call it that. He’s an informer. Now and then. When he wants them to know something. He says he’s using
them,
and I guess he is.”

“No. I can’t believe that. Nick’s not a spy.” My mind stopped at that. It seemed such a cheap, implausible fiction.

Peter looked up, his cheeks sucked in. “Believe it. I’ve known that part all along. When there’s a zap he wants them to cover or an action he wants them to know won’t turn violent, he calls Lovelace, his own private hot line. He throws them a red herring now and then, but he usually tells them the truth.”

My fear jumped ahead.
“He
thinks I killed Bill?”

“No. He assumes you didn’t.”

“Then why—?”

“He thought you’d make a good symbol,” Peter sneered. “A cause celeb. A poor lamb falsely accused. And to help it along, he called his media contacts in D.C. and told them the FBI was bringing O’Connor’s killer down from New York.”

I looked out at the sea of roofs, the traffic glittering like metallic blood down Seventh Avenue. The high beveled box of St. Vincent’s Hospital stood uptown like a huge brick engine block. The terrace vibrated with the tremble of a subway train under the street, thirteen stories below.

“So Nick did fuck you, Ralph. And yeah, I’ve hated you ever since I found out. Because you let yourself be fucked, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”

I was surrounded by open space, thrown into it. I was falling yet did not fall.

The white curtains in the sliding glass door suddenly blew over the terrace like a pair of hands, and sank down again when the door to the hall banged shut.

Peter fumbled at his mask, then let it hang and just sat there, waiting. “We’re out here,” he shouted.

Nick came to the sliding door. “Oh good. You didn’t go. I’ve got a minute before I run out again, Ralph. Did you want to discuss what you’re going to say tonight?”

I couldn’t speak, could only stare at him, trying to see in his familiar eyes and black thatch mustache the complete stranger who’d thrown me into outer space.

“He knows,” said Peter, squinting up at Nick. “I told him.”

His mustache tightened around his mouth. He put his hands on his hips, looking deeply disappointed with Peter. “You couldn’t wait? You had to flush it from your conscience today?”

“So it’s true,” I whispered.
“You
did it?”

He frowned at me, annoyed. “No. I gave it a push. That’s all. I was going to tell you, Ralph. Once you were in the clear. When we could laugh about the fast one we pulled on the media.”

“You told the FBI I did it?”

“No, I told them only that you were down there. The rest happened on its own.”

“Except for your calls to the press,” said Peter.

“All right. That too.” He stepped out on the terrace, hands still on his hips, keeping Peter between us. “Just a couple took the bait, although they turned out to be enough.”

“But why?” I demanded. “I don’t see what you gained.”

“A commotion. A noise. A way of getting us back in the news.” He lost patience with my failure to understand. “I thought it’d be over by the next day. You’d be released, charges dropped, we’d get a minute of attention and a poster boy. Or something. I didn’t know how far we could go. But we’d get
something.
I never guessed the media would drop a gay story as unclean even with a political murder attached. Or that the murder charges wouldn’t be thrown out in twenty-four hours. I never dreamed there was anything that made you a suspect, Ralph.” The words poured out while he paced and turned; he’d been preparing these words for some time. “Look, if I could set anyone up, I’d have set myself up. I make a more convincing killer. A better story too. Desperate activist with sick lover murders gay right-winger? But circumstances only gave me you.”

“The papers got the idea I was an AIDS activist from you?”

“It was the one way I could make the connection.”

“You threw me in the shit without knowing what’d happen?”

“It was a gamble, but it looked promising.”

“You were gambling with me, Nick. Remember me?” I cried. “Your friend!”

“I had no choice. I could only respond to what was already happening. I’m sorry that the something was you, Ralph, but there you have it.”

“But if I go to prison, it’ll be your fault.”

“You won’t go to prison.”

I hadn’t believed I would either, but anything seemed possible now. “What makes you so sure? You were wrong about the rest of it.”

“Because you didn’t kill him.”

“Do you know who did?”

“I don’t. Sorry. All I know is that the feds have washed their hands of the case. The DA has nothing except possible motive and the fact you were in town. But a million people were in town that night. There’s no hard evidence, nothing to put you at the scene of the crime. You’ll drag through court for a while. But you won’t be convicted.”

I didn’t believe him, yet I couldn’t dwell on what that did to my future. “Who else knows about this?”

“Nobody. Not even Maura. I wouldn’t have told Peter except he was digging and riding me about why I busted my ass for you. I thought he was afraid I was in love with you,” he said with a derisive snort. “But no, he thought I was doing it out of bad conscience. That I knew who did it or maybe even did it myself. If you can believe that.”

“I can,” I said. “I believe you capable of anything now.”

“Well, I didn’t. But I had to tell him what I did do and explain why I did it. And how it was my concern for him that made me so desperate I could—”