The Bar Watcher (25 page)

“I started to notice something when I was managing Silver's Gym. Rumors, mostly. Then some of the regulars who'd been there since I started didn't come in anymore. Any gym has a pretty big member turnover, of course, but…

“There were maybe four or five in my last six months there. I heard a couple of them had died; I don't know what happened to the others—maybe they just dropped out for other reasons. I hope so, but I get the feeling it was more than that.”

“I'm beginning to think you're right,” I said. “And I'm pretty sure whatever it is, is being spread by sex, like clap and syphilis. And that means wherever there's a lot of sex going on—”

“Like Rage.”

“Like Rage,” I repeated. “That list you gave Christophe is the guys who died just this week.”

Hicks was silent for a moment.

“But if we're right that whatever is killing all these guys is sex-related, and Rage is part of it…”

As if on cue, the door opened, and Christophe came back in, looking more than a little unhappy.

“Five of twelve,” he said, “including Jake Hancock.”

Jeezus!
I thought.

“Jeezus!” Hicks said.

Christophe handed the paper back to me with a red X in front of five of the twelve names.

“Do you happen to know if Bart Giacomino is still in town?” I asked, taking the paper and putting it back in my shirt pocket. I thought it was time I had a talk with both Rage's surviving partners.

Christophe had moved to the open door, where he could look through to the reception area in case anyone came in.

“No,” Hicks said, “he left for Hawaii two days after I started. Nothing like jumping in with both feet. I've been spending most of my time since then trying to figure things out and get things in order. Comstock knew every detail of how this place works, but he didn't bother to write anything down.”

“Have you met the other partner?” I asked.

“Glen O'Banyon? Yeah. But just once, after my first interview with Bart. Nice guy.”

“That he is,” I agreed. “I'm kind of curious as to why you took this job, though. I'd imagine it would be more of…” I realized I was painting myself into a corner, since I didn't know exactly what type of arrangement he and Christophe might have, and it was none of my business. But I couldn't stop in mid-sentence, so I went ahead: “…a single guy's job.”

He and Christophe exchanged grins.

“No problem. At Silver's, I was just one of three managers. Here, I'm it. And Glen O'Banyon, in particular, seemed to like the idea that Christophe and I are a couple—monogamous, in case you're wondering.

“And as I said, after Comstock's reputation for dipping his pen in company ink…”

Someone entered the reception area, and Christophe left to sign him in, closing the door as he went. Hicks looked at me.

“About this…whatever it is,” he said. “Do you think there's anything we can do?”

“I think I should talk to O'Banyon first. We'll see what he thinks, and maybe we can figure out a way to stop this thing before it goes any further.” I realized the minute the words left my mouth how utterly naive I was probably being. Any deaths that could be directly linked to Rage were likely just the tip of the iceberg. This wasn't the only place gay guys had sex.

*

Whoa, Hardesty,
I thought on my way back to the office.
You're getting in way over your head here. You're being paid to find Barry Comstock's killer, not to get up to your armpits in something totally unrelated to the case.

Well,
I countered,
this may not be directly related to Comstock's killing, but I'm afraid it's a lot bigger than any murder investigation. And since O'Banyon's and Giacomino's interests are seriously involved in both situations, nothing's written in stone.

By the time I'd returned to the office and picked up the phone to call Glen O'Banyon, I'd pretty much convinced myself I was justified in doing both.

I was put through to Donna, who said O'Banyon had just gotten out of court and was going directly home, but that he would be checking in with her. I asked her to have him call me as soon as he could. About half an hour later, the phone rang.

“Hi, Dick,” he said, sounding pretty chipper for a guy who'd spent his day in court. I gathered it had gone well for him. “What's going on?”

Not wanting to spoil his good mood but also not wanting to beat around the bush, I said, “I think we'd better talk, and probably the sooner the better.”

There was only a slight pause, then: “Well, sure. Would you want to meet me at Hughie's again, say in an hour?”

“I'll be there.”

As soon as I hung up, I felt the old sense of frustration building up again. I was getting nowhere with the Comstock case, but at least I was absolutely certain there was a single human being behind it, and that, sooner or later, I'd find out exactly who. But with whatever it was killing gay men, I felt totally helpless and, although I hated to admit it, hopeless.

Why in the hell was it up to me to try to do anything about it, anyway? I knew damned well I wasn't the only one who was aware something very scary was happening. Where was the health department? Where were the doctors? Where were the gay media, for chrissakes?

And where were the leaders of the gay community? This was our people who were dying. Why wasn't someone out there ringing the fire bells and sounding the alarms?

Well, O'Banyon was a leader of the gay community; he could do something…
something
.

*

I'd forgotten Friday afternoon was a rather busy time for Hughie's—a lot of johns took off from work early on Fridays so they could have a little, uh, companionship before heading off to the suburbs for a weekend of Little League and barbecues with the wife and kids. And the hustlers were out in force, like sharks after chum.

The variety, both in the johns and the hustlers, never ceased to amaze me. The only two major ways to tell them apart at times was by the way they were dressed and their degree of cool. There were some surprisingly young good-looking johns, and some surprisingly unattractive hustlers. Democracy in action.

I was on my second beer, having fended off two johns and one hustler, when O'Banyon came through the door, dressed much like the last time I'd seen him at Hughie's but this time with a Green Bay Packers jersey. If I'd never seen him before and were trying to figure out which side of Hughie's cultural divide he fell on, I'd have opted for the hustlers, despite the fact he was a tad older than the oldest one in the place.

He saw me, nodded, went to the bar for a drink, then came over to join me at one of the few clear areas along the wall. I didn't waste any time in telling him about the twelve obituaries, my discovery that five of the twelve had been members of Rage, and my suspicion that Rage was probably involved, however unwittingly, in spreading the illness.

He sighed, shook his head and turned toward me, leaning against the wall on his left shoulder.

“I got a call from a doctor friend in New York yesterday,” he said. “Whatever it is, it's there…and, I understand, in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Only gays, and only gay men. And it's spreading. Fast.”

“Jeesus!” I said. “And nobody knows what it is? How can that be?”

“Good question,” O'Banyon said, taking a long swallow of his drink. “My friend mentioned something about a kind of cancer called Karposi's sarcoma, which he says is normally seen only in older men from certain areas of the Mediterranean. And pneumocystis, a kind of pneumonia.”

“And it's spread by sex,” I said.

He shrugged. “They don't seem to know yet. He says it might be through using amyl, or…who knows?”

“You've got to close Rage.”

O'Banyon looked at me for a good fifteen seconds, expressionless, before saying, “I can't do that.”

“I'm sorry, Glen, but why in hell not? Guys are dying! And if you don't close Rage, there'll be more.”

Still looking at me, he formed a very small, sad smile, and shook his head again, very slowly.

“Do you have any idea of the financial investment I have in Rage?” he asked. “And even if you're right, and it's spread by sex, do you really think closing Rage would stop it? The members would just go to another bath.”

“Then close all the baths, for chrissake,” I said, realizing immediately that was never going to happen.

“On what grounds? Suspicion? Rumor? And then everyone who goes to baths would just go to the backroom bars, or the tearooms, or the parks,” he said, logically. “Not to mention the financial shockwaves closing the baths would spread throughout the community over and above the losses to the owners. Did you know, for example, that baths provide more than twenty-five percent of advertising revenues for gay newspapers?

“No, after talking with my friend in New York and listening to you just now, I'm afraid we've got something going on here that looks very much like it could be heading out of control, and frankly, it's scaring the shit out of me.”

That was the first time I'd ever heard O'Banyon swear. But it was beginning to scare the shit out of me, too.

“What in the hell can we do?” I asked.

He set his drink on the narrow ledge running the length of the wall, adjusted his baseball cap in an imaginary mirror and picked up his glass again before saying, “Well, I've just been drawing up the papers for a new Gay Businessmen's League, and their first official meeting is next week. I'll bring the subject up to see if they have any ideas. Bart is out of town until the nineteenth, I think—I had a long talk with him the night before he left for Hawaii, by the way.”

I'd been very curious as to whether there had been a confrontation between Rage's two remaining partners on the potential embezzlement issue but hadn't wanted to mention it, since it was, really, none of my business.

“Oh?” I said noncommittally.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we reached a…let's call it an understanding. And you might be interested to know that part of that understanding involved selling Rage.

“When Kimmes determined the exact amount of the financial discrepancies, it was to have been taken out of Bart's half of the proceeds, and I doubt we'll be doing any more business together. Of course, that was our agreement up until this little conversation we're having now. Now?” He drained his glass in one heads-back gulp. “Who knows?”

I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “Lousy timing.”

O'Banyon grinned. “Indeed. But until next week's meeting, what I will do is have Jim Hicks—you met him, didn't you?...” I nodded.

“I'll have him have the staff start handing out condoms when members come through the door. If condoms can help prevent the clap and syphilis, they just might help against this new thing. And I'll have him post signs reminding the members to wear them. Most of them won't, of course. But if it can prevent just one member from getting sick, it'll be worth it.”

*

O'Banyon was right, of course, about the economic loss to the community if the baths were closed—and the fact of the matter was that, even if it was proven whatever this thing was spread through the baths, not very many bath owners would shut their places down voluntarily. They'd have to be forcibly closed by law, and that, after Stonewall, would never be tolerated in a community just beginning to flex its muscles. Maybe, if it could be proven to be spread by sex, it might be another story.

But what if it wasn't spread by sex? I'd read a couple far-out theories that being gay was partly genetic. What if it were something in the genes? Unlikely, but…?

Or if it were poppers? Or something in the lubricants commonly used for sex? I hadn't seen any lesbians' names in the obituaries, just men.

Or how about some sort of fanatical right wing conspiracy? Or even a government plot? A sort of “Final Solution” to the “gay problem”?

Paranoia Alert!
I told myself, and forced myself to take a couple deep breaths.

Face it,
my calmer self observed,
the problem right now is that nobody knows! And until they do know, there's little point in jumping on your horse and riding madly off in all directions.

After leaving Hughie's, I went home, made dinner and watched a little TV before changing clothes to make another round of the bars.
This time
, I told myself,
I'd leave my gonads at home and concentrate on business
. Uh-huh.

*

I worked my way all the way down one side of Arnwood and was making my way up the other—having hit six bars total and settling, after the second, for just a Coke or a tonic-and-lime in each place. I'd seen nothing out of the ordinary and talked to a couple of the bartenders in the quieter places—all of whom were apparently already on Jared's contact list. I was feeling pretty proud of my resolve when I walked into the Cave and spotted a tall, curly-haired redhead leaning up against the jukebox. We made eye contact and exchanged a Mona Lisa smile.