The Lure (45 page)

“It still sounds too vague.”

“As soon as Mr. X is killed, his territory will be bought up again, by some contact of Loomis’s in a city agency. They’ll condemn the properties, then sell them in a rigged auction to Gee’s friends. Loomis assured Gee that this contact of his was already partially paid off.”

“He said that?”

“You want to read what I took down?”

“No. Later. Did they mention amounts of money?”

“Absolutely. I have all the figures on paper. Loomis was to get five percent of the final price. They estimated that Redfern’s gay businesses—clubs, discos, baths, bars—were worth about ten or twelve million dollars. They couldn’t touch his private holdings.”

“Five percent of that is a lot of money,” Noel said. He now understood why Loomis was so hell-bent on eliminating Mr. X. If it were true. “Loomis told me himself that organized crime had dropped out of gay businesses because they weren’t so profitable,” he argued.

“Maybe so. They are profitable now. And now they want them back.”

And Eric’s dream would be destroyed, Noel thought. Eric’s dream of an economic/political power base that would unify gays against those who’d always exploited them: the mob, the police.

“Then Loomis was lying to me all along about those men being murdered,” Noel said, recalling the Fisherman’s impressive first visit.

“He wasn’t lying. They were killed. Buddy thought Whisper eliminated them in an attempt to scare this Mr. X out of all of his businesses out of the city. But he wasn’t scared. And that’s when Loomis tried to work out a scheme where he would pin all the deaths on Mr. X, who was closely associated with all of the victims. Evidently in the middle of that scheme he discovered these AIN control plans, and decided that would be the most efficient method of eliminating Mr. X.”

“We need real proof of this deal,” Noel said.

“The next meeting is in two days in a Horn and Hardart cafeteria on Fifty-seventh Street. Loomis and Gee will meet as though by accident, have lunch, and discuss it.”

“How do we get near them, how do we get proof?” Noel asked. He still had to convince himself all she had told him was true.

“Buddy bought this a few days ago,” Priscilla said, going to a kitchen cabinet and taking out a portable cassette recorder the size of a small transistor radio. “To tape their next conversation. He became obsessed with what Loomis was doing, Noel. He felt sorry for you, but it was more than that. He didn’t want his children to grow up in a world where it is possible to use people as you are being used.”

Noel inspected the recorder, read the directions, then tried out the demo tape with the recorder under the table. It was fine inside a quiet kitchen. But there would be a great deal of background noise in a large, public restaurant. How could they get close enough to tape the two men there?

“Buddy thought I could do that,” Priscilla said. “We planned to have me go to that meeting to tape them. But I don’t know who Loomis is.”

“I’ll have to be there, too,” Noel said. “Hidden.”

After discussing it, Priscilla declared she would go, with her baby, not only to disarm suspicion, but to provide a hiding place for the recorder close enough to the men’s voices, in the baby’s lightweight, folding stroller.

She would carry parcels with her, as though shopping, speak only with a heavy Spanish accent, if possible seem to not understand English at all. Noel would check out the cafeteria beforehand to get more ideas about placement, possible problems and solutions. He and Mrs. Vega would meet the following day near the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, as though by chance, and go over any remaining details in their plan.

“After you’ve taped the conversation,” he said, “give me the tapes, then take your baby and go to Puerto Rico, to your great-aunt.”

“But you will need me to tell…” she protested.

“If all this is true, then none of us is safe, you or your baby.”

“It is true!” she protested again. “Safe from Loomis, you mean?”

“From Loomis, yes,” he said, admiring her courage, her resolve to avenge her husband, “but you said it yourself, Mrs. Vega, I’m an unaimed weapon. You may not even be safe from me now.”

She looked at him, but she didn’t argue the point.

What Priscilla told Noel numbed him. He knew that if he began to think about its implications—as had happened before—that he would begin to split apart into two people. As predicted. With no assurance the split would come back together again, as it had before. But then, wasn’t he imperfectly programmed? If it were true. Which it appeared to be. If imperfect. Whatever that really meant. If it didn’t mean everything. Which was where the splitting began again. Stop it! he warned himself.

He hailed a cab going down West End Avenue, jumped in as it swerved to the curb, and immediately began making conversation with the driver in order to shut off the inner dialogue—what did he think of the traffic and the best way to get to the East Thirties from where they were, the decline of a local rock music station, varieties of drug down trips. It was bizarre but effective therapy. Noel tipped him a dollar and went up to his apartment, calmer.

It didn’t last long.

I’m a human time-bomb, he said to himself as he unlocked the door. Then he rushed to the phone to dial Mirella. He didn’t know what he would say to her, but just to hear a voice from his old life would help. Or had that last time with her, the time he had screwed that up, been controlled, too?

She wasn’t home. He didn’t leave a message.

He still wanted to talk to someone, decided on Redfern. Just to hear his voice, to prove to himself it couldn’t be true.

Okku answered. There were voices in the background. He must be on the main floor. After a grunt or two, Okku was gone, and Alana answered. “Eric is busy right now,” she said.

“Sounds like a party.”

“You are feeling better?”

“Fine. You? What’s going on there? A party?”

“No. Cal and Geoff and Rick and a few other people are here. They are getting together about the reopening party at Window Wall. Are you coming?”

“I don’t know,” he said, then wondered whether she was asking about the party or the town house. “If they’re working, I’ll just be in the way.”

They hadn’t talked alone, it seemed, for such a long time. He wanted to apologize: for the last time, when she’d run out of the dining room, and for his behavior to her out at Fire Island. To say, sorry, but I’m a human time-bomb and what if I’m pointed at you? He couldn’t say that. Not even if it were true. And he wouldn’t know that for sure until he heard Loomis say it.

“Eric said to ask you over,” she said simply.

“What about you? Don’t you want to see me, too?”

He could picture her talking to him. She was probably in the library, her legs thrown over the low arm of the big, tufted-leather chair, her hair hanging half in front of her, as she dandled it while talking.

“Every time I see you something bad happens. You get hurt. I get hurt. Eric becomes more convinced of his…whatever it is.”

“Come on now, it’s not all that bad,” he said.

“It is!”

“When did I hurt you?”

“Yesterday. The time before. On the beach. I am tired of crying over someone, Noel. There! I’ve said it. That’s what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?”

Part of him, yes. “Tm coming uptown right now.”

“No. Exactly because of that, you ought to stay away from me. From Eric, too. Go away, Noel. Go somewhere very far for a very long time.”

“Then you come here, tonight. Stay with me.”

“That only ties it tighter.”

What she was saying was true. Except the part about Eric. Even if Noel did nothing, went away, Eric would still be in trouble. “I’m coming. Tell Eric.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said. She didn’t sound pleased.

They were all in the big living room—Geoff Malchuck, Rick, Cal, Jimmy DiNadio, “Marge”—sitting around the coffee table, which was spread with plans, sketches, diagrams, swatches of fabrics and carpets, pads full of graduated colors. When he entered, everyone seemed to be talking at once between tokes of marijuana and sips of wine.

Chaffee spoke first. “Congratulate me. I’m a husband.”

“We’re living together now,” Jimmy said quickly. “It’s very
shared,
if you know what I mean.”

“No, it’s not. It’s more open,” Rick said.

“Open? What do you call open?”

“I call going to the Tubs together on buddy nights open.”

“That’s
your
definition of open.”

Before the developing argument could get fully under way, Noel congratulated them, drank a toast, then sat down next to Eric, who made a space next to himself for Noel and immediately held up an artist’s rendering.

It took Noel a moment or so to realize he was being asked to look at something concerning the party. More. He was being publicly asked to contribute: following his ouster from this very group not long ago, he was now reinstated, asked to evaluate something that concerned all of them. He took the drawing, held it, aware he was blushing.

“What’s wrong?” Eric asked, baffled. “Don’t you like it?”

“I like everything but the mirrors,” Cal said.

“I don’t know,” Noel said. “I’m not even sure I know what it’s supposed to represent.” He knew this minute of acceptance, no matter how momentary, was a gift from Eric.

“It’s the main part of Window Wall, decorated for the reopening party,”

“Marge” said, “Put on your glasses, honey. You’re among sisters here; we won’t tell on you.”

“The mirrors are all angled twice, on hinges,” Eric said, leaning over the rendering. He continued to point out the features they had already agreed upon, with comments from the others, until Noel fell by degrees out of embarrassment and into a more useful frame of mind.

The party was going to be the largest and wildest ever held at the Window Wall. During the summer the membership had been culled: laggards weeded out, newcomers who’d been frequent guests invited to join. For this party only, a celebrity list was made up; and enough talk had already gone around in society columns for it to be chic to be invited. Movie stars, top fashion designers, performing artists, various younger society figures all had been calling the club for invitations. They would all converge there on Labor Day Weekend, because socially they couldn’t afford not to come.

“But there’ll be twenty members for every one of them,” Eric said “Everyone will be a star. The professionals will just melt in with the rest. They’ll talk about it for months afterward,” he went on, “because it will have been the most intense, interesting, the brightest moment of their careers.”

It was Eric’s ideal made manifest in a single party. No wonder the planning was so complex.

There were to be multiple, silent film screens, projecting five different films around the main ballroom. Hanging from above on chain pulleys would be small, hexagonal mirrored rooms, which could be opened or closed. Performers—including some of the club’s more outrageously dressed members—would use those lifts. Plants were out. But Jimmy DiNadio knew where they could get a few dozen tube-metal sculptures that looked like strange trees. Cal’s lover, who was to do the lighting, had already shown how he was going to light the club—noncomplementary, contrasting colors. He gave Noel a fast demonstration from a portable light unit in the living room.

“Too bad we don’t have a pool in there,” Cal’s lover said. “On water this would be the
only
weirdness.”

It was then that Noel noticed Alana wasn’t present.

“She and Veena are doing a shooting together tomorrow for
Vogue,
” Eric explained. “They have to be up early, so she decided to stay at Veena’s tonight.”

That might be so, but it wasn’t the whole reason, Noel knew. She hadn’t wanted to see him. Damn! Just when they could have…could have what? Gotten closer? Made love? Pipe dreams. Bullshit! Not included in Loomis’s programming. He was supposed to be chaste, solitary. But he wasn’t solitary now. Far from it; he felt a useful member of this very special, very elite group. That proved nothing. Only that the programming was imperfect. As he knew already. The split was happening again.

He realized he was being stared at by Geoff Malchuck. Not for the first time tonight. Not for the first time any day. He’d known Geoff had the hots for him since they’d first met. Geoff had never hidden it. Maybe they could get something on tonight. That would prove the programming was just a damn lying piece of paper.

Noel had just decided that, yes, he would leave with Geoff or get Geoff to stay over, when Malchuck stood up, looked at his watch, and said it was time for him to go to Clouds, the club he managed. They’d had some trouble a few nights before.

Without asking, Noel knew that he’d remain at the club until morning. That eliminated Geoff.

The others decided they had things to do also. There was a general getting up, a finishing of drinks and conversations.

“Anyone staying for dinner?” Eric asked. Usually someone said yes. Tonight everyone had plans. Everyone but Noel.

Noel was at the elevators, where they all seemed to be, talking to Rick and Cal about some details of traffic patterns for the coming party, when he saw Geoff take Eric’s arm and gesture for him to move away from the others. They discussed something Noel couldn’t hear, speaking low, rapidly. Then Geoff and the others left.