Looks like Law is headed out on the town. I wonder if he'll enjoy his errand. Something tells me he won't. In this chapter, Law runs into an old acquaintance and has a chat with someone he didn't expect to talk to again.
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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
22 The Hidden People
I went around the corner for dinner, then set out. I didn't look forward to my errand. Once upon a time I would have been excited for a night on the town, but no longer. The flagrant opulence of Madam Mitch's funhouse, her Kingdom of Keystone, was long gone. What remained was a poor substitute.
The clubs that existed in the present weren't clubs as I remembered them in the old days. They were little more than places where people like me could gather and be somewhat secure in the knowledge that those around them were the same. There was a basic camaraderie that was supposed to exist between members of the same group of outcasts. I say `supposed to' because I hadn't felt it in a very long time. Sometimes I wondered if I ever had.
Even in the heyday of Madam Mitch's, I'd always felt more or less an outsider among the outsiders. My violent temper and my job with the cops kept me on the fringe. I told myself I was fine with that, but I really wasn't. It was just another excuse I used not to get close to anyone. Thoughts like that, memories of what existed in the past crowded my mind as I plodded my way toward the first club on my mental list. I tried to push the memories away so I could focus on my task.
I reminded myself that the modern places which catered to the queer crowd were more hidden than the speakeasies during Prohibition. Homosexuality itself was in the middle of its own prohibition. The acceptance that we'd enjoyed in the twenties was gone by the early thirties. What remained was seedy and sordid.
The establishments I planned to visit that night were universally small, usually a basement room or converted rowhome. They existed as cruising spots and drug dens. Because of their nature, I no longer frequented them. I found them too depressing. That didn't mean I didn't know where most of them were.
The first spot I tried was of the rowhome variety. I knocked at the front door and went inside. The door opened into a rattrap corridor about the size of a telephone booth. I could get into it, but not out. I had to be let out by a man with his eye in a peephole and his hand on the inside door latch. The rattrap was to protect the people inside from the risk of a sudden police raid.
The vice squad loved busting fag clubs. If their arrest record was low, or they were in the middle of a scandal, they would raid a couple clubs and arrest everyone. The raids made for good press, the heroic vice squad doing good work to help clean up the city, arresting perverts and deviants and taking them off the streets. If they managed to snag a high-class closet case, maybe a society businessman or a politician, that was even better for their reputation. I hated to see those news articles because the story that wasn't told was the one about the lost jobs and ruined lives of the poor people who were arrested.
I waited in the rattrap until the peephole peeper decided that I wasn't a threat. The inside door opened and allowed me into the club. I stepped inside and let my eyes adjust to the smokey, windowless gloom. Inside, much of the original row home remained. Most of the area of the first floor was taken up by a long, dimly lit bar with a couple of regulars propped on stools, drinking beer like they hated it. I didn't go to the second floor, but I suspected it would be partitioned off into several miniscule fuck rooms that rented by the hour. I bought a beer that I didn't drink and showed Preston's photo around. No one recognized it, so I left.
Next on my list was an old Turkish bath on Snyder between 7th and 8th. The place was an ancient tile and porcelain palace that predated widespread indoor plumbing. Once upon a time it was a legitimate bathhouse that served the hygiene needs of the neighborhood around it. Now it survived as damp fuck den.
The patrons liked it because everyone in there was there for the same reason. Introductions didn't even require words. Sex was guaranteed no matter how good or bad one looked. It was easy to have multiple partners in the same evening or even at the same time.
Once upon a time I'd felt lonely enough to partake in a night of debauchery at the baths. I found I didn't enjoy when I had to face myself in the mirror the next morning, so I never went back. I didn't pass any judgement on the people who frequented the baths, it's just that I didn't like the leer the place wore around the edges.
I was always proud to walk into Mitch's for a night of drinking and sex. Mitch's had class. When I went there, I felt like I had class. Mitch's never felt like a whorehouse. It really did feel like a carnival, a magical fantasy kingdom where I was always welcome and never had to be anything except myself. There was an innocence in that place, a spirit of fun that no place I'd been in since had been able to duplicate. The rowhome club and the Turkish bath, neither of them were fun. They were dirty and mean and I hated them for it. I didn't hate the patrons, but I hated the establishments.
Still, I had a job to do, so I shelved my hate and made a tour of the baths. I left my clothes on because I didn't want to send the wrong message and I also didn't want to scare anyone with my mutilated torso. I asked around with Preston's photo. Other than several whistles at the sight of strapping blond Preston, and more propositions than I thought were possible for a middle-aged man in my condition, I struck out at the baths.
I left there and tried two more rowhome style places and one old hotel basement with no luck at any of them. I lingered long enough in the hotel basement to drink a sour beer and look over my environment. I tried to look at it through the eyes of an innocent twenty-two-year-old. What I saw was depressing as hell.
I didn't like what I saw even as a tough, middle-aged, unrepentant fag. When I tried to look through the eyes of a much younger man, of a man who hadn't lived through the horrors of trench warfare, of a man who hadn't spent twenty years in law enforcement, the view was pretty desperate.
The bars and baths I'd been in that night were piss-holes and cesspits, each one seedier and more miserable then the last. They existed as a combination of buildings that should have been condemned, overpriced watered-down drinks, and filthy fuck rooms. All of which were provided by unscrupulous business operators who preyed on a hidden group of people with no other options.
Even more disturbing than the surroundings were the patrons. Many of them were dissipated men, and desperate, confused, lost youth. Some were obviously drug addicts. I decided that Preston would be as out of place among the people I saw that night as sweet Peter had been in the trenches or gentle David was in the city. As I looked at all of them, the sad, lonely men, the misfits of straight society, I actually wondered if homosexuality was a disease like the scientists claimed. I wondered if there was something wrong with us that needed to be treated.
Maybe they'll cure us someday.' I thought as I finished as much of my beer as I could stand to swallow. They're curing everything else. Maybe a vaccine, like for diphtheria. No more disease, no more fags. No one would ever have to go through what I went through. There'd be no more miserable young men separated from their families, no more gentle creatures brutalized by `decency crusaders,' no more dead boys in hotel rooms.'
I left the hotel basement and went on to the seventh place of the night. It was a carbon copy of the first. I looked around and gave up. There's just no way he'd walk into any of these places and stay.' I thought. It's time to stop looking. It's time to take the edge off.'
I sat down, banged the bar, shouted `gin and tonic' at anyone and no one, and bit the end off of a cigar. I spit the cigar end on the floor and lit my smoke with a wooden match from my pocket. I waved the match out and dropped it on the floor. I drew the smoke into my mouth and swirled it around to kill the taste of the foul stink of the air inside the bar.
I was about to bang the bar for service again when a heavy, red-faced man brought my drink in what looked like a clean glass. He stood in front of me and grinned a lop-sided grin in my face. He was my height and could have been any age. He had at least fifty pounds on me and many more hard miles. Burst capillaries crossed his florid face, his eyes were red and bloodshot, and he was missing several of his front teeth. The man's face was the face of a hard, all-day drinker. "Law Edwards," he wheezed, "you still order your drinks the same way."
I stared at the man who obviously knew me. My years as a cop had given me a good memory for faces, and his rang a bell, but it was far off. I looked at the man as he grinned. My mind took the lop-sided smile and filled in the missing teeth. It scraped off the five-day beard, lightened the skin, toned and thinned the face, and erased the gin blossoms. "Hi, Charlie, long time." I said as the once familiar face took shape. I remembered the running joke between us and said the words for old times' sake. "You look like shit."
Charlie laughed a rasping, choking laugh from deep in his rattling chest. He offered his hand, and I shook it. The last time I'd seen Charlie was just before Mitch's closed down in 1931. Back then he'd been shirtless and bulky with hard, toned muscle. Now, he looked like he was standing inside an over-stuffed sack that hung from his shoulders and sloped down until it gathered in at his very low beltline. The sack ended in a sagging roll of flesh around three sides of his front. I could barely believe I was looking at the same man.
Charlie and I swapped insults and caught up for a few minutes before I asked about Preston. "I'm looking for a tall, fit, blond kid."
"Yeah, me too." Charlie said and stuck his liver-colored tongue out in an obscene leer.
Charlie's joke landed just right with me. I laughed hard and long. After the night I'd had, I needed a good laugh. When I finished laughing, I showed Preston's photo to Charlie. "Oh, him." Charlie said without a second glance.
"Yeah," Charlie went on, "he started coming about three months back. He used to come in every Friday and Saturday night and at least a couple times during the week. He'd sit down the end, all by himself, and get loaded on 15 cent drafts. Quiet kid. All I ever heard him say was beer' and I'd like to settle up.' I felt sorry for him and would slip him a free one now and then. He reminded me a little of me at his age. About a week ago, he stopped coming."
I mentally filed away the information Charlie had given me. I figured I'd think about it later. I chatted with my old acquaintance a while longer, long enough to finish my drink and have another. When I finished the second, Charlie offered me a free round for old times' sake, but I refused and fled. I found it too hard to see Charlie that way, old and tired and fat. It was too hard to see the man I'd once lusted after now that he was a burned-out shell of what he'd been. The depth that Charlie had fallen to depressed me even more than I already was, and I was pretty fucking depressed.
Out on the street, I had time to mull over what I'd learned. The image of Preston Arlott was losing focus instead of taking shape. His sister knew him as a fighter, someone who always did the right thing. That didn't mesh with someone who'd been averaging five nights a week getting drunk in a seedy queer hangout.
Then again,' I thought, isolation and sadness will make even pure people roll in the mud.' I decided to give Preston a pass on the queer bar thing. I'd been where he was, and I'd consoled myself through similar means. I felt a little better that Charlie hadn't told me Preston was a bathroom pervert or something like that. I decided not to tell Bea about any of it. I didn't think she could understand. What I'd learned did explain where the money went, but nothing else. A drinking habit like the one Charlie described is an expensive one.
I knew how habits like that could get out of hand. I remembered how quickly I ran through the money I made from Mitch's. After she closed The Kingdom of Keystone, I blew a lot of money on liquor and sex as I chased the feeling I'd had as Mitch's Hero of Law and Order. I spent the last of it to open my ill-fated detective agency.
The night wasn't about me, though, it was about Preston. I kept thinking, pondering what I knew about the young man. The puzzle of Preston Arlott refused to fit together. We had so many pieces, but nothing made sense. I decided my brain was too frazzled to think much more. The hour was late, after midnight, and I was tired. All I wanted was sleep, to lose the shitty day in oblivion, at least for a little while.
As I walked into my neighborhood, I noticed that whatever mechanism which nightly turns on the streetlights had failed or was forgotten. Several blocks around my place were dark and very little light showed through the curtained windows of the quiet, sleeping houses. "Perfect end to a perfect day." I muttered sarcastically to the darkness around me.
I crossed the street toward my office. Just before I passed the lamppost near the curb, I tripped over an empty ashcan that had found its way into the gutter. The stumble altered my course and sent me head-first into the lamppost on the sidewalk. I took the hit right on top of the tender bruise I still had from the edge of the bureau in the slum hotel.
The pain fired my temper. I grabbed the can from the ground and beat it against the lamppost. I irrationally punished the can and the post for hurting me. I swore my anger out loud with each hit.
"GOD...DAMN...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK..."
"WHAT'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?" A deep voice shouted from above.
I looked up to see the silhouette of a man as he leaned far out of an open window. Even though he hadn't turned on any light, I knew the man was Walt. I knew it was him like I knew the shape of his strong upper body as it stood in sharp relief against the lighter shade of the building. I hurled what was left of the can into the street and answered Walt calmly, my rage spent. "I was beating the shit out of an ashcan. I tripped over it in the dark, hit my head on the post, and got mad."
Walt didn't respond. I assumed he needed time to decide whether to laugh at me or ask if I was hurt. Per his character, he decided to be concerned about me instead of poking fun. "Come up and let me look at your head."
I refused his offer in the same manner that I'd refused his every other offer of help or care. "I can't."
Walt was unbothered by my refusal. "Fine, I'll come down."
I went into the office and sat at my desk. Walt came in with his hands full of first aid supplies. He carried gauze and tape, little silver scissors, and a bottle of mercurochrome. He was dressed in light blue pajamas and a dark blue robe that did nothing to hide the broad attractive man inside the clothes. He looked at my head, said he didn't see anything beyond the bruise I already had, and made a teasing comment about needing to check the lamppost for dents.
When he finished fussing over me, he sat in one of the visitors' chairs. To my surprise, he apologized to me over our last meeting. "I'm sorry about last night. Telling you the dead boy didn't matter was cruel."
I accepted Walt's olive branch and offered one of my own. "I'm sorry too." I said with a shame-filled glance at the broken glass that still lay at the foot of my filing cabinets. "I shouldn't have smashed your things."
"Do you want to tell me what happened to him?"
I shook my throbbing head and shrugged. "He was somewhere he didn't belong. That's what killed him, just like a fish out of water or a drowning man. His father pushed him into an impossible situation and now he's dead. I don't know who killed him or even why. The fact that he was young and innocent and queer and living in this slaughterhouse of a city is what killed him."
Walt wanted more information. "What do you mean, `he didn't belong and that's why he died?'"
I tried to explain my philosophy on life and why bad things happen to good people. "Everyone needs to be where they belong. If they're not where they belong, bad things happen. I've seen it, lived it. When I was in the war, I watched a friend as he was destroyed for being where he didn't belong. When I was a cop, I saw another friend brutalized for the same reason."
I felt the bile rise in my throat as I offered my own life as an example to Walt. "Look at me." I said bitterly and thumped my chest with an angry fist. "I've been looking for a place my whole life. I thought I'd belong in a tailor shop. I thought I'd belong in the army. I thought I'd belong on the police force." I shrugged and shook my head again. "I don't belong anywhere."
I lifted my eyes from my desktop just enough to cast them around my office. "I don't even belong here in this miserable office and this miserable apartment and this miserable life...life, fucking waste of life. I'm almost 44 years old and I'm about to be evicted from the closest thing I've ever had to a home and a career, and...and I can't even get up the emotion to care."
I pointed toward the wall that divided the office from my tiny apartment. I told Walt about the blueprints but didn't explain. "Locked in my wardrobe, I have something that could pay the landlord and buy me another month, but a month to do what? Thirty days to fix twenty years of bad choices? I may as well go stand on the railroad tracks."
Walt, ever the optimist, didn't think things could be as bad as I made them sound. He said as much in his bright, pep-talk tone of voice. "It can't be as bad as that. There must be something you can do."
I stared at Walt and wondered where the wellspring of hope came from. He always saw the bright side of any situation, just like I always saw the black one. I never understood how he'd managed to hang onto that attitude of his. I knew that Walt had been kicked around a fair amount in his life. Somehow, the abuse didn't show in his face or in the way he dealt with the world. I just didn't get it. Walt's optimism aside, I didn't see any way forward, either in the investigation, or in my life. I told Walt the unvarnished reality.
"It's even worse. I've been working out of this office for nine years. I have no book of business, no steady income. Every month I wonder where the rent is going to come from. This is all I know how to do but it's useless. No one wants my services. I feel like a fucking sailor lost in the desert. There's no path forward and no place to hide. Even the hunchback had the cathedral, his sanctuary. Where's mine? Where do I belong?"
"People belong where they're loved." Walt said, like it was just that easy.
I dropped my miserable, throbbing head in my hands and covered my face with my palms. "If that's supposed to make me feel better, Walt, it doesn't."
Walt made an attempt at explaining the words that I'd mentally labeled as nonsense. "I'm trying to say, you have it backwards. You've been looking for a where' when you should have been looking for a who.'" Walt shifted his conversation into a story to make his point. "When my father was dying, when the cancer was all through him and he couldn't endure the pain anymore, he went to the hospital for whatever help they could give.
"All they could do was give him morphine. The drug helped for a while, until he got so bad, they had to keep him under until he died. I was with him the last time he was awake. I asked if he wanted to go home, to die in his own bed. He looked to my mother, knitting by the window and he said, `wherever your mother is, that's my home.' I never forgot that. I don't think anyone belongs to a place, or a job, or a group, I think we belong with a person. You could belong with me."
I nearly wept, both over the story of Walt's father and at his renewed offer of his life and love. The depth of feeling Walt's father had for his mother, a devotion that hadn't dimmed from a lifetime of human struggle, was both beautiful and heartrending. I never met Walt's father, but I know he accepted Walt for what Walt was. Their relationship didn't disappear after the confession. I was glad Walt didn't suffer like I had.
None of that could change the fact that my life was a crushing disaster, and I couldn't drag Walt into the wreckage. I raised my head to refuse him again. "I didn't know love like that existed outside of fairy tales. It's a wonderful sentiment. You're a wonderful man and that's why you deserve someone better. I've been hurting you for so long. Now here I am at the very bottom, a middle-aged failure. Get away while you can. Swim away from the sinking ship."
Walt persisted beyond all reason. "What if I think there is no one better than you?"
"Then I recommend you get your head examined. I saw a good doctor yesterday. If I think real hard, I can probably remember her name." I dropped my head back in my hands and felt wretched.
Walt got up and stood near me. "Come on," he said and patted my head with his big, gentle hand, "don't beat yourself up anymore tonight. You'll have all day tomorrow to do that. It's time for bed."
"I don't think I'll ever sleep again." I said into my palms.
Walt seemed to give up. He walked to the street door. I thought he was going to leave, so I looked up to watch him go. Instead of walking out the front door, he locked it and came back to the other end of the room. He opened the door to my apartment and flipped the switch that controlled the office lights. We were left in the dark. I didn't understand what he had planned. I lit a kitchen match on my desk and stared at him through the glare. "What are you doing?"
Walt pointed his eyes into my room, then brought them back to meet mine. "I'm trying to get you to come to bed."