The Lure (37 page)

The first envelope he opened was the monthly paycheck from Whisper, sent to him through the Social Work Research Agency in Albany. Tearing it at one end, he reminded himself that he’d have to call the Fisherman before depositing this and doing other errands today.

But here was something new. Between the check and the statement he usually received were several pieces of blank, grainy, onionskin paper. No, not all blank. On one was scrawled: “Call on the loops from O
UTSIDE
your apartment!”

“Lure here,” he said into the pay phone across the street from his building.

“One moment, please,” the motherly operator answered. When she returned to the line, she said, “You are to go fishing this afternoon, if you are able to.”

Wasn’t that an emergency signal? Yes, but for what?

“I’m able to,” he said, hoping it meant he was free.

“Fine.” She named a movie theater on Broadway. “There’s a three o’clock show. Exactly three thirty in booth number two from the entry of the men’s lavatory. Do you have that?”

He had copied the message. “Anything else?”

“That’s all I have, darling.”

“What’s the movie?”

“And have a good day,” she parroted before they disconnected.

The film playing that afternoon was a James Bond spoof—but so diverting, Noel had to keep checking his watch to be certain he wouldn’t miss the meeting with Loomis. The third time he looked it was three thirty-two.

The men’s lounge was on a lower level, to the left of the central staircase. Inside was an anteroom with built-in benches, a water fountain, and grooming-aid dispensing machines. Beyond was the marble-walled bathroom itself, ringing with a cold silence as he entered. No one at the line of wall urinals. Two rows of toilet booths. Oh, fine, he thought, she hadn’t told him that over the loop. What was it she had said, exactly? Booth number two from the door. That had to be in the first row. But wouldn’t the old detective go to the back row for more privacy? Sure enough, the only booth with a closed door was the second from the right in the back row.

Noel slipped into the booth next to it, and sat down. There wasn’t a sound from his neighbor. He coughed. Still nothing. These old toilets were roomy, with dividing walls that dropped to within six inches of the floor. He’d have to get on his hands and knees to see who was within, if there was someone inside: the booth might merely be closed by the management, out of order. Should he knock? Surely if the Fisherman were next door he’d have heard Noel come in. Had he forgotten to tell Noel some recognition code? Fuck Loomis and all these spy games!

Suddenly there was a cough from the next booth. It didn’t sound as though it came from a young man.

Noel leaned back in the seat as far as possible to where the wall dividers did not quite meet the back wall, leaving a half-inch space. Carefully, loudly, he cleared his throat.

No response.

What the hell was Loomis up to?

Noel coughed again, louder. When that didn’t elicit any response, he finally said hello.

For a second or two there was silence. Then he heard a sudden barrage of noises—the rapid rolling of the toilet paper roll, the violent flushing of the toilet and what sounded like a buckle swinging to hit the wall divider. The last sound was the metallic crack of the booth door as it opened, then slammed shut. The man in the toilet was gone.

Noel had to know for certain it wasn’t Loomis playing games. When he walked out there was only one other person, a heavy-set, middle-aged black man washing his hands at the sink. Noel stopped to stare at him, and the man finished washing his hands, hastily dried them on some paper towels, and looking either annoyed or frightened or both, scurried out.

Before the anteroom door slammed shut, another hand was on it, coming in. The short, ambling figure of the Fisherman replaced the black man.

“I said to wait in the booth,” were Loomis’s first words. “What are you doing here?”

“The guy who just left was in your booth. This wasn’t such a bright idea, Loomis.”

“Shh!” the Fisherman said.

“No one else is here.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. He thought I was looking for a little tearoom trade.”

“For a little what?”

“Action,” Noel spelled it out. “Sex, here.”

“Oh! Let’s get into the booths before someone else comes in.” Loomis had already headed for the back row.

“Why can’t we talk here? There are only about twelve people in the whole theater. It’s safe, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t,” Loomis said, opening the booth door. “Get inside.”

“This isn’t number two. It’s number three,” Noel protested, but went in anyway, as Loomis had disappeared into his toilet and shut the door.

He heard a soft metal clank, then saw a panel of the wall divider with the toilet paper dispenser shake a bit, and jerkily slide to one side.

“Goddamn!” Noel said. “It’s an honest-to-God glory hole.”

“Speak low,” Loomis said. “Stinks in here.”

“It was your idea. I thought I’d never see a real glory hole. Who found it?”

“An operative,” Loomis replied, all business. Through the rectangular space Noel could see him hunched over, as though looking at the floor.

“Naturally.”

“Let’s not waste time, Lure. We have some important business.”

“Am I going to have to meet you here every time we talk?”

“Didn’t you get those pieces of paper?”

“Sure did.”

“We’ll communicate that way. Write your message. Roll it up into a ball, wrap it in tinfoil or plastic wrap, and drop it outside the wall of the town house. Someone will pass by three times a day to retrieve it.”

Was it Noel’s imagination or did the Fisherman look different somehow? “Why all the sudden precautions?”

“Trouble. Bad trouble. I think Mr. X is onto one of our operatives. You know what that means. We can’t take any chances.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Your friend Vega.”

“How? They never see each other. Buddy is downtown in the bar.”

“Vega’s been snooping around. Fooling around. Evidently word has gotten to Mr. X. If he doesn’t already know, he will soon.”

“What kind of snooping around?” Noel asked. He didn’t think Loomis would admit how much Vega had found out about the way in which Whisper operatives had been chosen. Still, there was no telling what the Fisherman would tell him, or why.

“Details are unnecessary. They’re classified, anyway. But I do have a pretty good word that Mr. X knows something.”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything about it, but who am I?” Noel said. There was something about Loomis that Noel hadn’t noticed before, but he still couldn’t say precisely what.

“Who’s this new man in the house?”

“Bill McWhitter. Bodyguard. Masseur. Sex toy at the moment. He’s super in defensive arts. Very, very strong. Almost threw the cook off the parapet at the villa. Some experience as a hit man out on the Coast. Small time, but deadly. I get the impression he’d kill me for the way I brush my teeth, without a thought. Doesn’t like me.”

Loomis seemed to be nodding off. No, merely thinking; he suddenly asked, “He’s taken your place, then?”

“Hardly. They do fuck, which I never did with Eric. On your recommendation, remember? They are together a lot. Alana says it won’t last.”

“What else do you know about this economic council front?”

That was out of left field. Noel had to think how to answer.

“They were all out in some Midwest town a few weeks ago. Then last week Eric got a call that really pleased him. They’d gotten a few antidiscrimination laws passed. I could get you the details.”

“Where in the Midwest?”

“Kansas. Minnesota. Another state, too.”

Noel had specified this, to show Loomis there was nothing illegal involved in what Redfern’s group was doing, and to show that it wasn’t, as Loomis called it, a front, but instead a moneyed, respectable legislative lobby group.

“And nothing else?” the Fisherman asked, unimpressed.

“Nothing but the rush home last night. It seems your men were too visible. I even saw them follow me from the villa during the day.” That was a lie, but it would help dig into Loomis’s mind how stupid he’d been about it.

“It’s a bad spot to observe,” was all he replied.

“He’s jammed the phone out there, too; he told me.”

“We’re working on countering that. So far nothing works.”

“Well, you’re getting him real paranoid. Lay low for a while, will you? It’s getting hot in there.”

“It’s not just us. It’s Vega you ought to blame. He’s the one making trouble.”

“Why? What’s he doing?”

“I told you already,” Loomis said indignantly. “He’s fooling around. Now let’s get back to business. I want a message from you every two days at least while you’re in the town house. Early morning and late evening are best. My men will be least noticeable then. Report anything and everything. And continue to be careful. I don’t mind if he is getting scared. The more frightened, the sooner he’ll make a real slip and that’s when we go in and nab him.”

He had a few dozen more dos and don’ts. Noel only half listened, still trying to assess what it was that he couldn’t pin down about Loomis’s appearance today. The features were more prominent; perhaps he had lost weight. His lips seemed to sneer as he spoke, and the words to explode out of him with a cold anger as though they tasted bad in his mouth. He made his points with a finger poking through the wall slot. Noel was reminded of an old Alsatian dog that had belonged to some friends of his and Monica’s when they were teenagers. It had gone from being an amiable enough creature to one that would attack any living thing smaller than itself, even leaping into the air to catch low-flying sparrows. Finally, it had turned on its master and had to be killed. An autopsy had shown extreme hardening in the arteries of its brain.

Someone else came into the bathroom to use the urinal. Loomis gingerly closed the panel between him and Noel, then flushed the toilet and left the booth. Noel waited until both men had left, then went upstairs and watched the rest of the film. But he couldn’t get that Alsatian out of his mind all day.

“Fire Island?” Noel was astonished. “But we just got back from the Hamptons.”

“Fire Island Pines,” Alana said. They were just finishing breakfast on the backyard terrace. Eric and McWhitter had gone inside. “Eric has a wonderful house on the bay,” she elaborated. “We’re flying out this afternoon.”

“He’ll feel safer there than he does here?”

“Much safer. We know almost everyone.”

“I never knew he had a place there.”

“The club managers have been using it. Cal. Geoff Malchuck. Rick and Jimmy. We may have an army at times. You must go and pack. We are on a one o’clock plane.”

“But with so many other people around, won’t that be just more opportunities for Eric to be…well, you know, the way he’s been lately with us?”

“One is always safer in a crowd, no?” she asked, answering herself. She seemed so unflappable Noel wondered if the decision had been hers. “There will be parties, dinners, old friends to see, the beach, sailing. He won’t have time to think about bad things. He’ll be too distracted,” she said with glee. “I’ll like it, too.”

Then it was her idea! Noel didn’t mind. It was hotter every day, the air more polluted and close in the city. And it would provide necessary information for his book—a more difficult and distant project to him every day lately. Then, too, he wasn’t sure about Whisper. Something had changed.

“You’re sure he’ll feel safer there?” Noel asked.

“I will!” she said, laughing, rising from the table, kissing his cheek lightly, and running inside to finish her own packing.

Almost from that moment on, Noel felt he had lost the control he had so carefully built up within himself in the weeks since Randy’s death in the back room of Le Pissoir.

Not because during the two weeks on Fire Island he lost contact with Loomis and Whisper. It was a relief at first from what he considered a dangerous means of communication. Since meeting Loomis in the movie theater bathroom, he’d been uneasy about the Fisherman, about the entire operation. It was true that he hadn’t found a minute between Alana’s announcement at breakfast and the time the Silver Cloud drove off to the East River Basin where the two seaplanes Eric had chartered for them were waiting, engines revving, to write a message. Loomis would find out soon enough where they were going.

It was too large and public a caravan to escape even the sleepiest Whisper observer.

No, that wasn’t the problem. It was Fire Island itself, or at least the two predominantly gay communities: Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove, where Redfern and his friends lived and played. After a respite of several weeks, Noel was thrown directly into the center of the country’s most openly, flagrantly gay few square miles, two days before the season’s biggest holiday—the Fourth of July weekend. The Pines was a hotbed of precisely those sexual pressures and questions he’d put aside so quickly, and he wasn’t allowed to forget it for a single second. Every step he took was watched—not by spies or operatives—but by gay men on the make, cruising him, touching him, coming up to him and talking as though they’d known each other for years, hissing at him as they passed on the beach and boardwalk, making low-voiced obscene invitations, talking loudly to each other about him so he could hear, asking him for the time, though he never wore a watch out there, for a light, though he wasn’t smoking, for his phone number, for a variety of sexual activities, some of which he’d never even classified as sexual. Nothing he did, wore, or said helped. The baggiest clothes he could hunt up in the house were of no use. Being rude only brought more invitations to brutalize the infatuated pleaders. Being quiet and aloof became difficult when it brought responses like, “Who does she think she is?” and, “Get off the act, honey, we know all about you,” which infuriated Noel even more. What had pleased him at the Grip and on Christopher Street only a few months ago freaked him utterly; for the first time in his life he wished he were crippled, hunchbacked, deformed, ugly.