Missing (8 page)

He crossed his bony hand in his lap and stared at me
with his thousand-mile eyes.

"You can go now," he said. "I’m
tired of this conversation."

I went back down the drive to where I’d parked the
Pinto, got in, and sat there for a time, thinking about Del
Cavanaugh, his cattiness, his bitterness, his misery. The image of
his illness was horrible and depressing. It had depressed me, and I
didn’t know or like him. For Greenleaf it had probably been an
ordeal. He feared the disease that Cavanaugh was dying from,
according to Cindy Dorn. Whether that fear in combination with what
it had done to his ex-lover was enough to untrack him, I didn’t
know. I was certain that Cavanaugh was capable of playing upon that
fear and the guilt that it inspired—and probably had. Cavanaugh’s
own interpretation of Greenleaf ’s motives didn’t impress me. He
had blamed the suicide on Greenleaf ’s choice of lifestyle, which
was tantamount to blaming it on his decision to forsake Cavanaugh and
live as a straight with Cindy Dorn. It was a savage, self-serving
judgment, especially considering the fate that Cavanaugh’s own
lifestyle had brought him to. Moreover, if it was as simple as
that—if Greenleaf had killed himself because he was a homosexual
trying to be something that he wasn’t—then I didn’t see any
difference between Cavanaugh’s reasoning and that of the cops: just
another fag suicide.

At least, I’d confirmed the fact that Greenleaf had
paid the man a visit for the first time in years, possibly on the
same day he had dropped out of his ordinary routine into the limbo
that led to the Washington Hotel. Since the visit with Del Cavanaugh
had followed hard upon the company Greenleaf had had the previous
night, it was reasonable to suspect that whomever he’d sat on his
porch drinking with, late Wednesday night, was the mutual friend that
Cavanaugh said had told him about Del’s illness. Which pretty much
left me where I’d started. Looking for the man who drank Scotch.

I didn’t have the stomach to go back into that
garden and ask Cavanaugh for a name, so I started up the car and
headed downtown, to where I should have gone in the first place, Ira
Sullivan’s law offices in the Dixie Terminal.
 

9

IRA Sullivan’s office was on the tenth floor of the
Dixie, on the south side of the building, facing the river. Through
the large fan-topped windows in the anteroom, I could see the stadium
and, beyond it, coal barges cutting downriver in a swath of foam. The
anteroom was antiseptic white. White carpet, furniture. The only
color in the place came from the view through the window and the few
delicate watercolors posted on the walls.

Sullivan’s secretary, a goggle-eyed woman with
blotchy skin and a taffy pull of bright red hair, asked my name,
buzzed Sullivan, then spent the next few minutes chatting me up while
we waited for Sullivan to come out of his office.

"He’s been in a funk all week," she told
me, pecking desultorily at a computer console. "A good friend of
his died, and he took it very hard."

"That’s why I’ve come to talk to him."

"You knew Mr. Greenleaf?" the woman said,
arching an eyebrow with surprise, as if, to be honest, I didn’t
look the type.

"I didn’t know him. I’m working for a friend
of his, Cindy Dorn."

Removing a pair of headphones from her ears and
draping them like a choker around her neck, the woman leaned
conspiratorially across her desk. "Mr. Sullivan really saved Mr.
Greenleaf ’s bacon a few years ago. He had big problems. Big,"
the woman said, dividing her hands for emphasis.

"I heard he was charged with solicitation."

"You didn’t hear the half of it. They were
ready to throw away the key until Mr. Sullivan stepped in." The
woman cocked an elbow on her desk and rested her chin on it,
gesturing with her free hand just as if we were cutting recipes
across the kitchen table. "You know I’m not a bleeding heart.
But I will tell you for a fact that it is a crying shame the way the
police department and the district attorney’s office harass certain
people."

As she said this, Ira Sullivan popped his swart face
around the corner, making the woman jump. "What’re you
gossiping about, Cherie?"

Flushing pink, the woman replaced the dictation
headphones on her ears and began typing a mile a minute.

Sullivan clucked his tongue ruefully. "You’re
a shameless washerwoman, you know that?" The secretary pretended
not to hear him. I’d forgotten how tall and ungainly the man was.
Even in a blue pinstripe he looked weird and wroth, with his
down-turned mouth and upturned hair and electrified eyes.

"Mr. Stoner, let’s go on back to my office,"
he said to me.

Turning to the secretary, he added: "See if you
can manage to hold my calls and your tongue till I buzz you."

The woman nodded without looking up from her computer
screen.

"Look, I want you to understand something,"
Sullivan said, once we got out of Cherie’s earshot. "If I’d
had any idea that Mason’s disappearance would turn out so
tragically—well, there’s not a thing I wouldn’t have done to
help him. Not a thing. I want Cindy to know that, too. I tried to
tell her at the funeral, but I don’t know if she took my meaning.
We were all plenty distraught. After what that man went through, to
end up like he did, where he did." He shook his head sadly.

Sullivan’s office was at the end of the hall, a
large posh room, painted white like the reception area and accented
with modern canvases framed in brass. The one that took up the wall
above his liver-shaped desk was an O’Keeffe flower. Unlike most law
offices there were no bookshelves filled with case law. Just the big
canvases and, of course, the spectacular view through the picture
window.

Sullivan waited a moment—to let the luxe room work
on me—before sitting down behind his desk. "I don’t do much
court work anymore," he said, in case I’d missed the point.
"Just corporate stuff and a few favors for my friends."

I sat down across from him on an overstuffed chair
that gave beneath me like a down pillow. "I understand that you
represented Mason Greenleaf at one time."

Sullivan cocked his head and stared. "Before we
get into this, I’d like to know what your interest is in this
tragedy."

"Cindy’s dissatisfied with the police
investigation of Mason’s death. She feels they’ve done a cursory
job."

Sullivan laughed. "Our police department doing a
cursory job? Now, how is that possible? It isn’t as if Mason was a
nigger." He leaned back in his chair. "What would you say
he was, Mr. Stoner?"

He wanted me to use the word fag. Since he figured I
was thinking it, he wanted me to say it.
"Mason’s
bisexuality probably was a factor in the investigation," I
admitted.

"How could that be in this great land of ours‘?"
Sullivan said sarcastically. "The home of the brave?"

I wasn’t in the mood for a civics lesson from Ira
Sullivan. "We can weep about the state of society all day if you
want to. Or we can try to figure out why Mason Greenleaf killed
himself."

"You don’t think there’s a connection, huh?"
Sullivan said with a snort of disgust.

"I’m sure there is. But there are also
specific reasons for what happened. The man disappeared for five days
for no apparent reason, and then, drunk and injured, ended his life
in a rat trap hotel room. It was a miserable finish."

Sullivan looked away, out the blue window. He didn’t
say anything for quite a time, and when he iinally spoke, his voice
was heavy with emotion. "A man can take comfort in knowing who
he is, Mr. Stoner—even if he is despised for it. Mason was not
blessed with such understanding. He walked a line that no one can
walk for long. People try, of course. Lock themselves in unhappy
marriages or pointless relationships. But sooner or later what you
are comes back to haunt you."

"You’re saying he wasn’t happy with Cindy
Dorn?"

"No," he said, still staring out the
window. "I’m saying he wasn’t happy."

Given what had happened in the Washington Hotel,
there was no disputing his point, although I had the sure feeling
that, like Del Cavanaugh, Ira Sullivan was one of those men who
wasn’t content unless everyone else in the world came down with it,
too. If he had it in his power, he would sow doubt like a plague.

"You asked me before, if I’d ever represented
him as a lawyer," Sullivan went on. "The answer is yes. Six
years ago when he was arrested."

"For soliciting."

"That was the charge," the man said,
looking back at me. "The actual crime, if you want to call it
that, was somewhat more complex. Mason took a personal interest in
one of his students. And the boy, who was eighteen years old at the
time, returned his affection. In spite of the fact that there was no
physical contact between them at any time, the boy’s father brought
charges of solicitation and indecent carriage."

"The charges were dropped?"

"Not dropped, but substantially reduced. Mason
was ordered into mandatory counseling. It would have been much worse
if the police department had prevailed upon the boy to testify. But,
of course, there was nothing to testify about. They had never been
intimate. They had only been friends. The sole evidence in the case
was some letters Mason had written, expressing his compassion for the
young man, who was then having a hard time in his life. The father
found them and assumed the worst. Mason’s real crime was showing
bad judgment. In spite of a massive letter-writing campaign, which I
helped organize, the  Cincinnati School Board disciplined him.
Which is why he ended up teaching at a private school. Although it is
highly unlikely that he would have gotten that job had he not been a
friend of the headmaster. His reputation was very close to ruined."

The way Sullivan explained it, the incident sounded a
lot more damaging than the ugly contretemps that Cindy had dismissed
as vicious, antigay prejudice.

"Mason was living with Del Cavanaugh at this
time?"

Sullivan nodded. "Yes. Which was another thing
that went against him. The fact that he was then living openly as a
homosexual did not play well in court. Del’s own attitude didn’t
help, either.

He took the position that there would have been
nothing wrong if Mace had been carrying on with the boy, who was no
longer technically a minor. Unfortunately, he took the position
publicly, in front of a TV crew." Sullivan shook his head.
"Del’s asinine like that. He had other problems, too. But he
also had guts. And that’s always something to admire in this world.
His relationship with Mason ended soon after the trial, and I always
thought it was partly because Del felt that Mason hadn’t stuck up
for himself more strongly. Frankly, a number of us felt that way,
given the ridiculousness of the trumped-up charge. It was just
another fag witchhunt, Himsier than most. But later on, it became
obvious to me that Mason simply didn’t have it in him to defend
himself."

"Why was that?" I asked.

Sullivan locked his hands together on the desktop.
"Who can say why? Each of us handles the burden of his identity
in a different way. Mason’s way was to be kind and hope for the
best."

"I talked to Del Cavanaugh this morning. Mason
went to visit him during the week before he killed himself."

Sullivan chewed his lip. "Seeing Del in the
shape he’s in would have been hard for Mason to take."

"I’m sure it rocked him," I said grimly.

"You know Mason had a phobia about AIDS?"

"Cindy told me he was anxious about it."

"This went beyond anxious. When he was with Del,
he had his blood tested every two or three weeks. Terry Mulhane was
Mason’s internist. Maybe you should check with him to see if . . .
there was some recent problem."

The thought had occurred to me. So had the
consequences it might hold for Cindy Dorn—and possibly for me. Like
everyone else in the world, I was wary of AIDS. I wasn’t phobic
about it, as Mason Greenleaf had been. But after a decade of plague
and propaganda, it was there now, in the back of my mind, this
unsettling, invasive fear that changed everything.

"Cindy says she practiced safe sex and their
last blood tests were negative," I said, trying not to sound
defensive.

But Sullivan wasn’t buying it. "That must be a
great relief to you," he said. "I would still check with
Terry Mulhane. I would also talk to the staff at Nine Mile to see if
things were going smoothly on his job."

"You have some reason to think that they
weren’t?"

"No. I just know that Mason took his work very
seriously. When the school board finally decided to let him go, he
was so despondent that he threatened to kill himself. Of course, he
got over it."

"He didn’t make a habit of that, did he?
Threatening suicide?"

Sullivan shook his head no. "Mason wasn’t that
unstable. You have to remember that the circumstances of his arrest
were humiliating, and the police were still hounding him in spite of
the fact that the charges had been reduced. Once they get your name,
they can make life quite miserable for a gay man. For a while there
they were dragging Mason into every lineup that involved a charge of
solicitation or molestation. I actually had to secure an injunction
to get them to lay off."