Kill Your Darlings (12 page)

I tried calling the number of Jerome Kane’s friend, Troy. I got an answering machine, a very masculine voice saying, “This is Troy, I’m not able to respond at the moment, but please leave a message at the tone.” Behind the voice, an instrumental version of the theme from the movie
Arthur
was playing; I didn’t leave a message—I hung up when I was between the moon and New York City, actually.

I needed to talk to Gorman. I had blown it, sort of, down in the dealers’ room; I should’ve played like all was forgiven between ol’ Gregg and me, so I could sneak up on him with some hard questions, not the least of which was, Where the hell were
you
last night when Roscoe died, Gorman?

Now I had to wait for a better time and place, ideally somewhere I could get Gorman alone.

What I wanted to do now was talk to Roscoe’s son, Jerome, but he and Troy were out.

So I slept for a while; not long.

Because less than ten minutes later someone started knocking on my door, and when I went to answer it, I found on my doorstep a tall, thin, tanly handsome man in his forties, his hair stark white in a short, stylish cut, wearing a beige suit with a light blue open-collar shirt and one slender, elegant gold chain looping gently down across a hairless chest.

The face was familiar, though I’d never met this man.

The face was Roscoe Kane’s.

Or at least it was Roscoe Kane’s face before time and booze and gravity had got to it and basset-houndized it. The china-blue eyes were exactly Roscoe’s.

A tapered hand extended itself and I took it, shook it; a firm handshake.

“Sorry we have to meet under such tragic circumstances, Mr. Mallory,” he said, in a manner that seemed to me to be feigning more sorrow than he really felt. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” I said. “Troy’s friend.”

We sat one table away from the table I’d shared with his father in the bar the night before. A few familiar faces were around—Tom Sardini and Peter Christian were nearby, part of a large party of writers, a few of whom I knew, but I didn’t have to know each of ’em to tell they were writers—lots of beards and longish hair and glasses and slightly off-kilter clothing; we were a recognizable breed. I lacked the beard and mustache, but there’d been a time, back when Woodstock wasn’t just a character in
Peanuts
, when I’d had facial fur, too. The vaguely unconventional look of the mystery writers my age echoed, however faintly, the left wing stand so many of us took in those Kent State days. Some of us voted straight Republican now (not me, but some of us did), yet the generation we were part of lingered in our appearance. We tended to look like assistant professors on small college campuses—the sort who never get elected department chairman, and only grudgingly, via tenure, achieve full professorship.

Anyway, Tom and Pete waved at me to join them, and I waved and smiled no, as nicely as possible, and turned my attention to Jerome Kane.

Jerome wasn’t Woodstock generation; he was of that vague, Eisenhower/Howdy Doody generation that was just young enough to miss out on Korea and just old enough to avoid Vietnam. A conservative era; a safe era. But an era that produced
its share of misfits—misfits, at least, by the standards of that day. Today, in the hip ’80s, we don’t consider homosexuals misfits—do we, Mr. Falwell?

I wasn’t a born-again Christian, but I didn’t like Jerome Kane, anyway. He’d been soft-spokenly polite in the elevator; his manners were impeccable, his manner graceful, not exactly effeminate. Any residue of bigotry against gays I might feel was not—I didn’t think—a part of my instinctive dislike for him. Dislike? Too strong a word. Resentment. I resented this man.

Why?

“I envy you,” he said. Suddenly.

We’d ordered drinks—he ordered Scotch and tonic, like his father, and I opted for a Coke, avoiding liquor to keep my head clear, seeking caffeine to keep me revved up. But we’d sat silently, waiting for the drinks to arrive; I had questions for him, but he’d called this meeting, so to speak, so I wanted him to speak first. I’d let him have the lead till it struck my fancy to take it from him.

Now, suddenly, he envied me.

“Why?” I said.

“You knew my father in a way I never could. Never will.”

“Your father and I weren’t really all that close.”

The drinks came. A pretty barmaid even bustier than the one the night before gave me a generous view as she deposited the drinks on the table. I smiled at the barmaid and she smiled politely, and then I realized I was overcompensating, and felt foolish. I was sitting at a table with a homosexual and I felt compelled to assert my heterosexuality.

The china-blue eyes smiled. “Attractive young lady.”

“You noticed, did you?”

“I’m gay, not blind. And how do you know I don’t appreciate the fairer sex, from time to time? Haven’t you heard of bisexuals, in Iowa?”

“No, but I’ve heard of them in California.”

“
Touché
. As I was saying.”

“What
were
you saying?”

“You don’t like me, do you, Mr. Mallory?”

“That isn’t what you were saying.”

“It’s what you’ve been saying.”

“I don’t remember saying much of anything.”

“That’s precisely how you said it.”

“Spare me the California mellow-speak, would you?”

“Is that what you call it in Iowa?”

“Actually, we call it bullshit. I’m just being polite.”

“Ah, yes. Contempt is so often expressed by mock-civility.”

I sipped my Coke. “Go to hell, Jerome.”

Lids half hid the china-blue eyes. “I’m interested. What is it about me you dislike so? My sexual preferences wouldn’t matter much to you, I’m guessing.”

“That’s right.”

“What is it, then?”

I looked for a fast answer; any smart-ass remark to lob the ball back to him. But I couldn’t find one.

And he just sat there staring at me with his father’s eyes coming out of that tan face, the subdued lights in the place catching his droopy gold chain and tossing it at me.

Finally I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I don’t like you. You seem decent enough. I think I maybe... resent your lack of appreciation of your father, for who he is... was.”

“Is that all?”

“Well. I think you pose, a little...”

“Don’t
you
? Don’t you confuse yourself a bit with that sensitive latterday Philip Marlowe you portray in your books?”

“No. I know where fiction ends and reality begins.”

“Oh, really? And where is that?”

“Somewhere east of San Francisco.”

A smile crinkled one corner of his mouth and both his eyes. “Now you sound like a latter-day Gat Garson.”

That made me smile. I’d have to be careful or I’d start liking this guy.

“You’ve read your father’s books?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, I have. I most certainly have. Very witty. Of their kind, the very best there is. My father was an underrated, underappreciated artist. One day he’ll be rediscovered. Perhaps his death will spark a revival. That would be the only fortunate consequence of his passing.”

Damnit. I
was
starting to like this guy.

“I’ve even read one of
your
books,” he said. “I liked it, rather. I can see why my father might be proud of his student.”

“You said you envied me,” I said, a little embarrassed by his flattery, “for being close to your father. I wasn’t. He had a wall up he never quite let me get behind.”

Jerome nodded. “I think that was true even of his wives—with the possible exception of Evelyn the Grotesque.”

When he spoke her name he might have been sucking a lemon. I must’ve shown in my face my surprise at the depth of his bitterness, because he went on to answer a question I never asked.

“Evelyn stole my father from my mother. It’s that simple. To me, she’s a thief, and, in a roundabout way, a murderess. But she understood Roscoe Kane. She could relate to him on his own level—trade off-color, wise-guy cracks with him like a
drag queen Gat Garson. And, of course, she drank with him. They were boozers together. That can create an enormous bond, you know. It’s a club you can’t resign from.”

“He eventually left her.”

Jerome shrugged. “They both went on the wagon. They both periodically fell off, in years to come; but for a while there, they were sober. It’s a terrible thing to sober up and look at the person you’ve been married to when that person has simultaneously sobered up and is looking at the person she is married to, too. Neither one recognizes the sober version, and, well, the rest is history.”

“And history is Mae Kane.”

His smile turned up at both corners now. “Bless her greedy little heart. She was my mother’s unintentional avenger. She was Evelyn’s karma come home to roost. Those years of drinking turned pleasantly plump Evelyn into a barrel with legs, remember. And Mae was—and is—an attractive woman, to say the least. You’ve noticed?”

I rubbed my forehead. “I have noticed.”

“Mae stole Evelyn away from my father, just as Evelyn had stolen him from my mother. My father always had a weakness for a bosomy babe, as Gat might say. Perhaps his lechery is what put me off the girls, that and being a momma’s boy... the old cliché about being raised by your mommy, being your mommy’s bestest friend, all of that was true in my case. Till she died.”

“I, uh... never really heard the circumstances of your mother’s death. Roscoe never got into it. That was one of the things he kept behind that wall I couldn’t get back of.”

“Guilt was back there, too,” Jerome said. “Guilt’s another thing he had back of that wall of his. He blamed himself. But I don’t know that he was to blame, much. It was ten years after he left her that she killed herself.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I didn’t know... I’m sorry...”

“Your condolences are noted, and appreciated,” Jerome said, “if a few decades late. My mother, Winifred Kane, killed herself with a gun my father had given her to protect herself with. One of those Gat Garson guns he had half a dozen of.”

I swallowed. “A long-barreled .38.”

“Yes.” Jerome smiled. “The kind my father posed with on his book covers.”

I felt suddenly cold. “That’s a piece of information I could’ve lived without.”

“One might say the same for my mother. Oh, young lady?”

He stopped the barmaid for another Scotch and tonic. I asked for another Coke—but I had her put some bourbon in with it, this time.

“Jerome, I’m sorry to ask this...”

“Ask, ask.”

“Why... why did your mother take her life? Did—did she leave a note...? What had been going on that—”

Jerome shrugged elaborately. “I was a teen-ager, all wrapped up in my own pubescent angst. I had little time to notice my mother’s troubles. Oh, we were close. Very close. But she wore a mask, for me. A mother mask. The woman beneath was never fully revealed to me. What made her tick is a mystery even Gat Garson could not solve. I do know she had what might be euphemistically referred to as ‘mental problems.’ She was diagnosed schizophrenic, and was in and out of institutions where she had countless shock treatments, back while she and my father were married. My father admitted to me that his heavy drinking began in those days. And I can understand why the prospect of, shall we say, joining with the mentally stable Evelyn was an irresistible one. Besides, she had bigger titties than Mother.”

The bitterness under the poised, Noel Coward exterior was cracking through. I’d known he was largely a pose; but I hadn’t understood the nature of the pose. I hadn’t guessed how sad and angry the real man, behind Jerome Kane’s wall, really was.

I sipped the bourbon and Coke. Let the intense moment subside.

Then I said, “You saw your father last night.”

He nodded. “For supper. We ate at an Italian place on the North Side, Augustino’s, a favorite of his. Quite good. But, then, you saw him, too, didn’t you? Right before he died? That’s why I wanted to see you, Mallory. I wanted to ask you about that final meeting with him....”

“I’ll make you a deal. We’ll get to my story after I hear yours.”

“You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine? Why not. We’re all brothers under the skin. I have seen my father rarely these past twenty years. He took me for a month each summer when I was growing up. But when I moved to San Francisco, after dropping out of college, and he began to get a sense of... my lifestyle... our contact became, well, infrequent.”

“Roscoe never could accept that you’re gay, could he?”

Jerome nodded, looking into the smoky-colored drink. “Quite right. Why, exactly, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps he saw it as a rejection of him. Gat Garson was an idealized version of himself, you know—oh, Gat was a put-on, a spoof, but still... Gat
was
macho, and in not a wholly satirical way. Gat Garson was a genuine tough guy, just like Mike Hammer or James Bond. And my father was macho himself, a brawler, particularly in the verbal sense. And, like Gat, he was a womanizer. He loved those blondes with the big boobies—or he did in the early days. I’ve sensed, the few times I was with him in recent years, a declining
interest in honey-haired darlings, his lechery fading to but a passing mammary. Speaking of which—miss?”

He asked for a third Scotch and tonic; I kept nibbling at my bourbon and Coke.

Then he went on. “Anyway, my father may have looked upon my life-style as a conscious rejection of everything he stood for, as a man. And of course it wasn’t.” He laughed, raucously. “It was a
subconscious
rejection.” He laughed again, but softly. “I did feel a conscious bitterness about my mother’s death. I did blame him, at least partially. But I didn’t want him out of my life. He was the only parent I had left. I would’ve liked for him to accept me. That, I would’ve liked very much.”

The third Scotch and tonic came, and he started right in on it.

I said, “I think your father was proud of what you’ve achieved.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Possibly you’re right. I sensed, or hoped I sensed, he was pleased with what I’d accomplished, proud of my fashion designs being shown in major cities here and in Europe, of my name having gained a certain recognizability of its own, of my financial success,
especially
my financial success. For a Depression child like Roscoe Kane, money is the major measure.”