Knitting Bones (14 page)

“Because I got an e-mail from the Heart Coalition, a copy of the speech Bob gave. Now, whoever picked up that check knew Bob was going to the EGA banquet to accept it. If it wasn’t someone from EGA, it had to have been someone from the Heart Coalition. And it was someone with access to the speech, because this person gave Bob’s speech, or something very close to it. Monday afternoon Bershada told me the parts of the speech she remembers, and they match up perfectly with the text of the speech Bob’s secretary at the Heart Coalition e-mailed me. Bob always got the approval of the charity when he gave a speech, and copies of it got sent around in advance.

“But you know something else? You figured it out without the help of that fat clue of the speech matching. You are turning into a real sleuth. I’m proud of you.”

When Godwin hung up, he did his famous Gene Kelly
Singin’ in the Rain
circle dance around the table in the shop.

T
ONY
was in his little kitchen, heating soup. He was still upset about the cops finding Bob Germaine’s body, though he could not think why that should be. He got these feelings every now and again, like in a bad dream when he was aware of approaching danger before he knew the name or shape of it. He wasn’t always right about the feelings, but more often than not he was glad for the warning.

The soup, Campbell’s Bean with Bacon, a favorite, began to bubble around the edges and emit steam. But Tony turned the heat down a couple of notches; he had lost interest. He hobbled into his living room, where a bar of sunlight from the high window—his was a “garden” apartment, meaning it was in the basement of the building—lay across his couch and coffee table, showing the worn fabric of one and the cigarette burns on the other. Tony was not a smoker, but he had rented the apartment furnished. What wasn’t cheap was shabby, and the couch was both. It was depressing that the beautiful sunlight only highlighted the flaws.

He needed to get out of here.

Not only because he was afraid, but because this place was too depressing.

But where could he go? Madagascar was a quickly fading dream, and he really didn’t want to cast himself on the kindness of his few friends. For one thing, he had very few friends good enough, and kind enough, to take him in.

Maybe this time the feeling of danger was wrong. It had been before. Maybe it was poking at him because he was in a tight place, low on funds and lacking a way to get more. But he’d been in tight places before. In a few weeks the casts would come off, his bruises would fade, and he’d be out there playing his games and sitting pretty. All he had to do was rein in his current panic and wait.

He sighed heavily, and then sighed again, deliberately, an attempt to settle his nerves. He remembered a friend who used to be a stoner, a heavy user of marijuana, who finally quit after a short prison term.

“Don’t need it anymore anyhow,” the friend had said. “I learned how to go to the place marijuana took me all by myself. I just lay back, close my eyes, inhale twice and hold it, and I’m stoned.”

Tony swallowed an imaginary pill and let his head fall back against the couch. He imagined the heaviness, the sweet lethargy, the dimming of awareness only Vicodin could bring. Wow, it was working…

And suddenly he was coughing because the air was filled with smoke and someone was slamming really hard on his door and what was that damn whining buzz and his head was whirling because he couldn’t catch his breath and now someone was in his apartment and had grabbed him and he was too feeble to fight him off, he was going to go to jail.

And then he was outside coughing his lungs out and that nice next-door neighbor was thumping him on the back and saying, “Breathe, man, breathe!” And sirens were howling.

Soon after that, someone was putting a plastic mask over his nose and mouth and he could feel his head clearing. Oxygen, that’s what it was.

His coughing slowed to where he could swallow, and he looked around. It was dark out—so much for the lovely sunbeams—and there seemed to be around fifty cop cars and fire trucks and ambulances all over the street. And he was sitting on the hard, cold metal back end of an ambulance.

“What happened?” he croaked, pulling the mask off his face.

“Waaal,” drawled the paramedic, replacing the mask and holding it there, “it seems you had a fire in your place, and your neighbor knocked down your door and saved your life.”

“A fire?” asked Tony in a voice muffled by the mask.

“Were you by some chance cooking something on your stove?”

Tony hesitated. “Maybe. I—I don’t remember.”

“Well, somebody was, and they went away and left it, and the pot boiled dry and the residue started to burn. The cook—was that you?”

Tony coughed so hard he shook his head. Could he help it if the fellow took that as a no?

“Well, whoever the cook was, he left a potholder on a counter that touches the stove, and it caught fire, and it spread from there. Good thing your smoke detector is loud, that neighbor of yours heard it from out in the hall and broke your door down. You might’ve died in there.”

Tony held out his hands, which showed no signs of burns.

“It’s not the fire that gets most of them,” said the paramedic, taking off Tony’s face mask, “it’s smoke inhalation. Now, take a couple of breaths.”

Tony did, coughing some more, but not that horrible gagging thing he’d been doing earlier.

“You’re going to be fine. No, stay where you are, I hear there’s a representative from the building management company on his way. He wants to talk to you.”

Tony did not doubt that. What he wanted to know was, could he get away before the management creep arrived?

As soon as the ambulance tech walked off, Tony got up and started moving around. Someone had brought out his crutch, so he leaned heavily on it, coughing and exaggerating his look of pain when anyone looked at him, and moving very slowly. Then, when he was sure no one was paying attention, he limped as quickly as he could around a corner and went down a block, to a bar, where one of the few pay phones left in the city lurked in a dim corner. He used it to summon a cab. He rode to a nearby cheap motel and told the truth to the woman behind the counter: his apartment had caught fire and he needed a place to spend the night. Since his clothes were reeking of smoke, she believed him, and since he had a valid credit card on him, she rented him a room.

In the room, which at least was clean, Tony took off his outer clothing and went to bed. Despite his long, if interrupted, nap, and being without his meds, he slept heavily and didn’t wake until six the next morning.

Waking in a place that didn’t smell of him made him realize how dirty he was. But what could he do? He washed his good hand and his face, blew his nose and was amazed at the amount of black stuff that came out. On the other hand, he was pleased to see that most of the swelling around his eyes and cheekbones had gone down. He rinsed his mouth thoroughly, wet his hair and combed it, then sat down with the Yellow Pages to look up Goodwill stores. He couldn’t find one nearby, but since his neighborhood was one of the lower-class ones, there was a DAV—Disabled American Vets—secondhand store a couple of blocks away. But it didn’t open until eleven.

He spent the waiting time by phoning friends, joshing and kidding and gossiping, telling about the fire, but making light of it—the cause, he said, was “some kind of electrical thing, but what do you expect of a place that was wired by Thomas Edison in person?”—before asking if he could crash with them for a couple of nights. But he kept getting turned down, even though this was a real emergency, not just some vague nervous feeling. So now he knew what they really thought of him, the bastards.

Though one of them said something interesting. “There was a good-looking young man asking about you, oh, less than a week ago, I guess—oh, yes, definitely one of us, but I don’t think I’ve seen him before. Got a funny first name: Goddy.”

Tony frowned over that briefly. He didn’t think he knew anyone by that name.

“What does he look like?”

“Kind of a twink, with blond hair, nice blue eyes. Dressed preppy.”

That described an awful lot of young gay men, so Tony shrugged it off and went on collecting turn-downs for places to stay.

Until Marc Nickelby. Marc was an older man, a semiretired antiques dealer. After Tony made light of his fire, but before he could hint-hint about needing a place to stay, Marc complained that he wished he could invite Tony out to lunch, but he had this great opportunity to buy some old Spanish furniture in Mexico, but only if he flew down there right away.

“What, you’re flying all that way just to attend one auction?”

“No, it’s not an auction, it’s a tour of four towns plus a weekend in Mexico City. I’ll be gone a week.”

“A week? Have you got someone to stay in your place, look after it, water your plants, walk your dog?”

“After Fritzy died, I decided I wasn’t going to have another dog,” said Marc. “And our coalition hired a very proactive security company so I don’t have to worry about burglars or other sneaky types.”

“Oh,” said Tony, who then wisely fell silent.

After what seemed eons, there came a sigh. “But I suppose it would be good to have someone in the place, if only to help carry out things if there’s a fire.”

“I wish I’d had someone in my place,” said Tony, but lightly.

“All right. But no parties. Absolutely no parties.”

“Oh, Marc, I’m not up to partying. I just want a quiet place to stay.”

“I really hope that’s true. And if it is, I guess I should count myself lucky that you called. Can you come right away? There’s a three o’clock flight I can catch, if I hustle to the airport by noon.”

“Well, I have some things to do. Is two all right?”

“I’ll leave a key with the building manager and tell him to expect you. Don’t disappoint me while I’m gone, Stoney.”

“I won’t, I swear.” He hung up, lay back on the bed and waved his good arm in the air. He still had it!

Tony checked out of the motel and hobbled the three blocks to the DAV store on Franklin. It was a warehouse sort of place, with an acre of clothing hanging from pipes suspended from the ceiling. It had the odd smell common to all large collections of used clothing, and the people wandering the aisles looked as bleak as survivors of a tornado going through the rubble of their houses. Tony quickly found a long raincoat, a sweater, a pair of big-leg trousers he estimated would go on over the gear holding his leg together, a pair of socks and even some underwear, the last still in its original plastic wrap. He looked longer among the shoes before settling for a pair of suede boots he could shove his good foot into without too much effort.

The one dressing room was occupied by a large family quarreling in Spanish, so Tony couldn’t try anything on, and the indifferent clerk behind the cash register wouldn’t let him buy just one boot. Tony paid cash, put on the coat, and carried the rest of his purchases in a paper bag labeled Cub Foods. He took a cab to Marc’s condo, which was in a luxury high-rise overlooking Lake Calhoun. The building manager sniffed at Tony, and Tony hoped that it was the smoke he detected, not the lack of a bath. “My place caught fire last night,” Tony said. “I’m so grateful to Marc for letting me stay in his place while mine is repaired.”

Marc’s condo was on the ninth floor, facing the lake. Even this time of year, with no sailboats ornamenting the water, and the trees nearly leafless, it was a pretty view. Tony looked out the large window for a couple of minutes, before turning to admire the ambience of the place. It was big, three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a kitchen fit for a chef, a living room large enough to make the baby grand look lonesome. Tony had been here before, but it was still a pleasure just to stand and look, absorbing the peace, feeling the security. Everything was clean and in perfect condition. The walls were cream with dark green molding. The silk drapes were a lighter green and hung in elaborate folds and twists. The furniture was an eclectic mix of periods: nineteenth-century Spanish, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, mid-twentieth-century Modern. There were paintings on the walls, statuary on the tables, silk flowers on the mantel.

The carpet was pale ivory—and though he’d taken his shoes off, Tony saw he’d left traces of his passage on it. He went immediately to the guest bath, shed his clothing, and spent the next hour soaping and rinsing. Marc not only supplied wonderful scented soaps and shampoos for his guests, he had toothpaste—and toothbrushes! Tony nearly wept with gratitude.

Clean at last, he went into the guest bedroom—Marc had done the second spare up as a library—and lay down gingerly on the bed, which was extraordinarily comfortable. He lay there for half an hour, letting the pain fade to a dull roar, then rose and dressed in his new things, which in the ambience of the beautiful bedroom look used and shabby.

He had some better clothing in his closet back home. And he wanted his meds. He especially wanted his meds.

But he didn’t want to encounter his landlord—who was going to change the locks once they realized he was gone for good.

And he was gone for good, right?

Right. Even the thought of going back there to stay made him break out in gooseflesh. But he needed a quick trip, just in and right back out. He went into Marc’s kitchen to find something to eat while he planned how he was going to do that without being seen.

G
ODWIN
walked into the Heart Coalition lobby in downtown Minneapolis. The floor was blue slate tile, the walls shades of gray and blue applied with a sponge. Bright posters of past Heart Coalition campaigns hung on the walls, with lights in the ceiling shining on them. There was a uniformed guard seated at the circular, light wood desk, who looked at him with a smile.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Erskine Morrison,” said Godwin. “My name is Godwin DuLac.”

The guard consulted his computer. “Yes, sir. One minute, please.” He picked up a telephone receiver resting on a complex console and dialed four numbers. He waited a listening while then said, “I have a Mr. DuLac here in the lobby to see Mr. Morrison.” He listened a bit more, then hung up and said, “Here, clip this to your lapel.” Godwin, glad he had worn a sport coat, clipped on a white badge with a red heart and the word
VISITOR
on it. The guard then said to Godwin, “Take the elevator to four. Someone will be waiting for you there.”