In this chapter we meet another of Preston's friends. This friend was particularly close with Pres...or was he? Let's see.
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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
10 Simon
"Simon Zane?" Bea said into the telephone on my desk. "This is Bea Arlott..."
From my swivel chair, I could hear a click over the line and then the dial tone of a broken connection. Bea set the earpiece on the hook and stared at it. "He hung up as soon as I said my name."
I figured the hang-up meant Simon was the best lead we had. We knew he was home, and he didn't want to talk to someone who shared Preston's last name. I didn't know what that meant, but I figured it meant something. It was worth a ten-cent trolley ride to find out. "Sounds promising." I said. "Let's go see the boy." I lit a stale cigar and led the way out of the office.
We rode the trolley up Broad Street to The Broad Street Station by City Hall. There, we changed to the Market Street line and got off at the extremely busy Reading Terminal Market stop. The covered produce market bustled. Bea and I had to wade through the crowd on our way passed.
We skirted the market in the street and made our way along the four short blocks northward to Simon's place. I asked Bea about the troublesome young man once we were clear of the market noise. She surprised me when she explained that she'd never seen Simon, and her brother never spoke of him. Interesting.' I thought. Preston and Simon either didn't have much of a relationship, or Preston was so in love with Simon, he didn't trust himself to mention him as a friend. I wonder which.'
The rooming house that matched Simon's address was a very old and heavily ornamented double-wide rowhome with four bay windows in the front, two up and two down. Inside, nothing of the original house remained. It had been completely gutted and rebuilt into eight tiny apartments, four per floor. The work was done in the cheapest, barest style possible.
Bea and I entered the plain, white lobby and checked the names on the double row of plain, white-painted mailboxes. The box that bore the name `Zane' corresponded to apartment 2D. Bea and I mounted the unfinished wooden stairs to the second floor and found the door that matched the number. The door was in the rear of the house next to the floor's only bathroom. I judged it to be the smallest and the cheapest of the cheap rooms.
I knocked quick and sharp to make my knock sound businesslike. "Telegram, Simon Zane." I blared at the door.
I heard a shuffling sound through the paper-thin door. The sound made me think that someone inside the room had moved, and then stopped. I had a mental image of a young man standing in the middle of the floor while he wondered if he should open the door. He didn't and we heard no more sound.
I planned to give the young man another minute or so to increase the tension. Bea ruined my plans when she tried to persuade Simon without my permission. "Simon, I'm Preston's sister. Please open the door."
Her attempt was met with more silence and that made it my turn again. I tapped the door gently and threatened the white painted wood. "Boy, if you don't open this door, I'll kick it in. If I have to kick it in, the door won't be the only thing that gets kicked. You get me?"
Light, careful steps crossed the floor and paused just inside the door. After another moment's hesitation, the door opened with the creak of unlubricated hinges. What was behind it wasn't what I expected.
Simon Zane was a very thin, medium height man who was built on a small frame. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale complexion. The two most startling things about his appearance were his left eye that was a bruised shiner, and his toenails that were freshly varnished. He still had the little cotton pieces between his toes.
Simon stood forward in the open door to block the entrance with his slight body. He hugged himself and stood on crossed legs. "What...do...you...want?" He asked with a hissing, lisping falsetto voice.
"Let us in." I demanded.
"No." He refused and stepped into the hall. He pulled his room door shut behind him.
I decided I wasn't going to be held hostage in the hallway by the little prick. I crowded in front of Simon, reached passed him and unlatched the door. I shoved it wide and walked directly at the boy. I used my body and relentless advance to force him backward into the room. Bea followed and shut the door behind us.
The room was as plain as the corridor and barely furnished. There was nothing personal in it at all. The only visible sign that someone lived there was the toenail varnish paraphernalia that cluttered a bedside table.
Simon puffed himself up as large as he could, like a threatened bird might plump out its plumage. The technique didn't intimidate me. Afterall, a sparrow is just a sparrow, no matter how plump they might be. "Who do you think you are to push your way in here?" He demanded from the farthest point of the tiny room.
"Just skip it." I growled at him. "Preston Arlott is missing. Have you seen him?"
"Please, Simon." Bea added. She seemed like she had more to say, and might have said it, until I glared her into silence.
Simon resumed the pose he'd had in the hallway and used his right hand and forearm to the elbow to gesture theatrically while the left stayed locked around his body. As he spoke, he emphasized individual words for dramatic effect.
"Your brother and I had a BLINDINGLY passionate fling in college that ended the day your SNOOPING father walked in on us. Preston wouldn't even LOOK at me after that. He BLAMED me. I like that. Blaming me for his HATEFUL father. Late last Friday night, he calls me out of the CLEAR BLUE SKY and asks to see me. I tell him to come right over thinking MAYBE I'd get some of what I'd been missing.
"Sadly, it wasn't to be. He comes over with this tube, a big brown tube. He wants me to keep for him. He says he needs A HUNDRED DOLLARS and wants me to help him DO SOMETHING all day Saturday. He wouldn't talk about anything else even when I practically THREW MYSELF at him. I have a TERRIBLE TEMPER and told him to take himself off if he didn't want to be pleasant. He shouted at me. Can you IMAGINE? Said horrible, VULGAR THINGS. He punched my eye, THE ANIMAL, and left. If you find him, you can KEEP him."
I listened to Simon's monologue. The longer he spoke, the more I hated him. I hadn't liked the sight of him when we first set eyes on the little worm. Since I'd heard him talk, I wanted to punch his other eye for him, and maybe a lot more of his spindly little body. I knew his type, the dramatic, self-serving little fuck that he was.
I didn't like that he alluded to sex with Preston in front of Bea. I also didn't like that he called Preston an animal. I knew if we stayed much longer, I'd flatten the little man for no other reason than general principles. I decided we'd better leave.
"Let's go." I tilted my head at the door and went through it.
Bea followed me out, but she didn't understand why I left. "Why are we leaving already?" She asked on the way down the stairs.
"He's had his say." I grunted as I stomped down the steps. "There's nothing else he can tell us."
I turned deliberate steps toward the Market Street trolley stop and moved faster than my usual wedding march pace. Bea seemed happy to move with purpose, but she objected to the story we'd heard. "That doesn't sound like Pres. He wouldn't hit anyone."
I corrected her. "You don't know that. It sounds like Preston needed to do something on Saturday, something important, and he needed money and help to do it. Everyone he asked turned him down. Simon was his last chance. Sounds like the selfish little fuck only wanted to get his jollies and not help someone he supposedly once loved. I'm betting Preston lost control, slugged Simon, realized what he'd done, and left because he was ashamed. If that had been me instead of Preston, Simon would look like he'd been shoved through a meat grinder."
That explanation seemed to satisfy Bea, or at least it gave her something to think about, because she quieted for a while as we walked. I kept up my pace and stared at the sidewalk until I got that creepy feeling that someone was looking at me. I followed the feeling with my eyes and noticed that Bea stole glances at me several times. She had that pinched expression on her face that people get when they want to ask something, but they don't know how. I got tired of waiting for her to find the nerve. "What?"
She primed her question with a question. "Can I ask you something personal?"
"You can ask." I grunted with no commitment.
"What did you think of Simon?"
I felt my jaw tighten and my teeth clash together when I remembered him. "I thought he was a selfish fuck. Didn't I say that already?"
"Not that way." Bea shook her head. "I mean, did you think he was good looking? Is that what men like?"
A slightly different version of that very question had been leering around the edges of my mind since I laid eyes on Simon. He and Preston were so different. I thought that the two of them together would have been like rugged Gary Cooper lusting after a diminutive and underfed Mickey Rooney. Except in this case Mickey had Shirley Temple's girlish mannerisms. "I wouldn't touch him with...uhm...AHEM." The part of the sentence that I swallowed was, `a ten-foot pole.'
I knew that statement wasn't the answer Bea needed. I clamped my mouth shut to give my brain another moment to reconsider the question. As I did, I reminded myself what year it was and what had changed since the twenties ended.
The roaring twenties had been just that, a time of openness and lax morals. When the Great Depression hit, it was like a punishment for the excesses of the twenties, a hangover after a decade-long indulgence. Most of America reacted to the hard times by returning to Puritan morality, like if they repented their evil ways, God would smile upon them with a return to prosperity. As early as 1931, the openness of the previous decade was a memory.
I wasn't sure how to explain that to Bea without playing the role of Homosexuality 101 professor. I looked at her again like I hoped to read the answer she needed on her face. Bea seemed to plead with me without words. She wanted to understand. I think she needed to understand to preserve her image of her brother. I realized that I wanted to help her preserve that image, and then I wondered why I cared. I surprised myself when I realized I was starting to respect the young woman who trotted at my elbow.
I held onto that kernel of respect and formulated a response to her question. I took a breath and tried to explain what I thought about the relationship between Preston and Simon. "Simon is not my type. He might not have been your brother's type either."
Bea pressed me with a follow up question before I had a chance to finish my statement. "Why would Pres...be with him, if Simon wasn't what he wanted?"
I stopped us on the corner of a busy block, not far from the produce market, and pointed Bea's attention down the street. "Look at all those people. What would happen if you walked down that street and asked every man you saw to take you out tomorrow night? Some would refuse for all kinds of reasons, some would be flattered, and a few, probably more than a few, would agree. Some others would think you were very forward, and would judge you for it, but nothing bad would happen.
"Now, what would happen if Preston went down there and asked all those same men to go out with him? Some would call him names, some would spit in his face, some would try to beat him up. Even if one of them was interested, that person would never say so in public. Maybe Preston was with Simon because a little warmth, some human contact, having someone he could be himself with, was more important to him than finding his perfect match."
My answer seemed to affect Bea physically. She took a large, white handkerchief from her pocket, a very masculine handkerchief, and dabbed her eyes. "I had no idea." She breathed in a small voice that rattled with emotion. "I didn't know it could be that hard. Why would he want to live that way?"
I bristled and pointed my finger in Bea's face. "That's the second time you said that!" I exploded at her. I strode several paces away from my young companion, then I spun on my heels and went back. "This is not a fucking choice!" I boomed and waved my arms wide in a meaningless gesture of frustration. "CHRIST! Don't you think I wish I could help it?"
Bea shrank away from my rant. I also noticed that my shouting had attracted attention. I didn't want any trouble with a nosy Good Samaritan type, so took a few breaths and beckoned for Bea to resume our stroll. She walked on without comment and soon, we reached the trolley stop. I still had more to say and didn't want to do it with an audience on a crowded trolley car. I pointed down Market Street and kept walking. Bea joined me. We'd almost reached City Hall before I was calm enough to express myself without shouting.
I tried again to explain how I felt, and I presume, how Bea's brother felt. "Miss Arlott, I assume you're attracted to men. You didn't choose that. It's just the way you are. Well, I'm attracted to men, and it's just the way I am. Society says that's wrong, that I'm sick, or perverted, or depraved. I don't think I'm any of those things. I'm just a regular person. I want a lot of the same things everyone else wants. The person I want just happens to be the same as me instead of the opposite. Your brother is the same way. Do you understand?"
Bea nodded a shallow little nod. "I think so. Pres was lonely. He wanted love. He needed someone that wouldn't spit in his face. Simon didn't have to be perfect for Pres to spend time with him." She wiped her eyes again and retreated into her thoughts. She wadded the handkerchief between her hands and dragged it from one fist to the next over and over while we walked. I didn't interrupt her contemplation.
"What have we learned?" I asked rhetorically as we found rare seats on the Broad Street trolley. "We learned that Preston took the blueprints, assuming that's what was in the tube Simon mentioned. We know he asked everyone he could for one hundred dollars, but we don't know why. One hundred doesn't get him his degree, so why does he want it?"
Bea crossed her arms and rested her chin on her chest. "I don't know. Maybe he's trying to put together the money he needs by borrowing from everyone."
I rolled that idea around, but it didn't seem right. "I don't think so. If he thought he could do that, why wouldn't he have done it already? My guess is he thought he could turn that hundred into more, but I don't know why he needed that much to start with or how he planned to increase it. Maybe a tip on a horse. If that was it, what did he need help with?"
I thought some more and got nowhere. "Somehow, we need to get a handle on what's driving him. It seems like everything hung on whatever the event was on Saturday. I'm guessing that event was unsuccessful. If it was successful, he would have had no reason to leave his rooming house. Instead, he didn't leave until Sunday. That makes no sense unless he was afraid of something that was going to happen on Monday. But what could that have been?"
We both retreated into our heads. Two stops later, Bea broke into my thoughts with what sounded like a statement made in a vacuum. "That place Simon lives in is horrible. They shouldn't be allowed to build them that way. Those tiny rooms...it must be like living in a closet."
I dismissed her words as meaningless. "Yeah, well, there's a war on. The city is packed. There's no room anywhere. The government controls most of the rental properties and housing for sale." As I said it, I had a thought. I said the same thing again to draw it out. "The government controls the housing." I thought some more and said it again. "The government controls the housing."
Bea stared at me as I repeated myself over and over again. The thought I was nursing finally formed in my mind and came out of my mouth. "Preston left a perfectly good rooming house and went where? If he's hiding, and let's assume he is, he wouldn't want to register himself. With the government controlling the housing, his name and new address, if he could find one, would be on a list. Vacant rooms aren't `ask and have.' It takes weeks, months maybe, to find an open spot. If he's still in this city, he's somewhere on the fringe, a place that wouldn't appear on any list, like a slum."
The trolley stopped at Oregon Avenue and its bell dinged to announce it was ready to move again. I was seized with inspiration and hustled Bea off the trolley just as it started to move. Bea objected that her brother would never live in a slum. I reminded her that desperate times call for desperate measures as I pushed her up the steps of an Oregon Avenue trolley car that was headed west.