A Time for Secrets (13 page)

“What time is dinner?” he asked.

“Dinner? I haven’t even had breakfast. Let’s worry about dinner later.” Harker was ominously silent. I craned my neck so I could look at him. “What?” I asked.

“You weren’t planning to tell me, were you?”

“Tell you what?”

“About dinner with Brian and Ross.”

“We’re having dinner with Brian and Ross?”

Harker nodded. I wondered for a moment if I was going senile. This was the second time I’d forgotten plans with Brian and Ross. Of course, the fact that Johnnie Walker was present for most of my conversations with Ross might have something to do with that.

“You didn’t know about this?” he asked.

“How did you know about it?”

“Brian called me. He made a special point of inviting me personally since I haven’t spent much time with your friends. It sounded like you’d already been invited.”

Maybe I hadn’t actually been invited. Maybe I had more brain cells than I thought.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked Harker.

“I was waiting for you to say something.”

“Why would I not tell you? Did you think I was going to make some excuse and go have dinner with my friends alone?” To be fair, it wouldn’t have been completely out of character.

“I thought you might be waiting to see how I felt, and if I didn’t feel good you wouldn’t say anything so I didn’t have to feel bad about our not going.”

Okay, I might have pulled something like that, too.

“But I feel great,” Harker said, “so let’s go.”

I called Brian and found out that he wanted us over around six o’clock.

“Should I bring anything?” I asked.

“A bottle of red wine maybe,” Brian suggested.

“Carlo Rossi?”

“Sure,” Brian said, “that would be fine.”

He’d completely missed that I was teasing him. I didn’t know much about wine, but I knew better than to bring a cheap jug wine to a dinner party. I figured we’d stop by Treasure Island on the way and pick up a medium priced burgundy.

All afternoon I felt a little nervous about the evening and wasn’t sure why. Finally, I figured out that when I was with Daniel, we spent time with his friends but never mine. I didn’t have any friends I was out to, so it was kind of hard to introduce them to my boyfriend. I was thirty-four years old and this was the first time I’d be bringing a boyfriend to a dinner with friends. It felt uncomfortably normal.

Brian lived in a condominium he’d bought with money he’d inherited when his mother died of cancer. It had taken him quite a while to start spending it, something that probably had to do with the fact that he’d nearly been murdered over the inheritance. It was nice to see him finally enjoy the money.

The complex was on Aldine, red brick, and just a few buildings in from Lake Shore Drive. The first time I saw the sprawling apartment was at a housewarming party; there
had been
a lot of people but not much in the way of furniture.

Now the place was full of furniture, something I noticed as soon as Harker and I walked in. Brian had chosen well. He’d bought simple, classic pieces that would stand the test of time. I couldn’t be bothered to decorate a room myself, but I knew when someone had done it well.

“Place looks nice,” I said, handing him a fifteen-dollar bottle of wine that Harker and I had splurged on.

“Thanks,” Brian said. “Half of this is my mother’s stuff. I finally had it pulled out of storage and re-upholstered.”

Brian went over to a little bar he had set up in the dining room and began opening the bottle of wine we’d brought to pour us glasses. A pleasant, oily smell drifted out from the kitchen. Ross popped out wearing an apron he’d appropriated from The French Bakery.

“You’re cooking?” I asked, a little surprised.

“Fried chicken. My mama’s recipe,” he said with a phony Southern accent.

“Is your mother from the South?” I asked. Ross was from Normal, Illinois.

“South Bronx,” he replied with a shrug. “You caught me. Recipe’s from a cookbook.”

Brian came over with the wine for Harker and, though I’d expected wine too, a scotch on the rocks in a crystal glass for me. We went into the living room. Ross and I lit up cigarettes while Brian put an annoying Bette Midler record that I’d heard a few too many times on his expensive stereo. A minute later, after only a few puffs on his cigarette, Ross bounced up to go into the kitchen.

“So, are you working on any good cases?” Brian asked sociably.

“No,” I said. “It’s pretty quiet.”

“Except for the double murder you’re working,” Harker contradicted. To Brian he said, “He won’t tell me anything about it.”

“A client hired me to find a friend of his. I did. Shortly afterward they were both murdered. I figure my job’s done.”

“They were both killed execution style,” Harker said.

“How did you know that?” I asked. Of course, the murders had been in the papers, but that information had not.

“Connors,” Harker said, then added for Brian’s benefit, “My former partner.”

“What does execution style mean, exactly?” Brian asked.

“Professional,” Harker said.

I decided to be more specific. “The killer forces the victim onto his knees, gets behind him and shoots him in the back of the head, usually with a small caliber pistol like a twenty-two. A twenty-two has a number of advantages. It doesn’t make all that much noise and usually the bullet just bounces around inside the skull so there’s not much blood. It’s kind of a no-muss, no-fuss approach to murder.”

Brian paled a bit but
didn
’
t lose
interest. “So by professional do you mean mafia?”

“Usually, but in this case there’s no reason to think that,” Harker explained. He’d obviously had a rather long talk with Connors, possibly more than one. “Someone might have
hired
a professional, though.”

“Or someone knew how to make it look like a professional killing,” I said.

That piqued Harker’s interest. “That’s an interesting way to look at it.” Then to Brian, “There were no signs of forced entry. The police think they each knew the killer, which makes a contract killing less likely. So, if it was someone they knew who wanted it to look like a professional killing…”

“It would have to be someone familiar with how professional killings are done,” I said.

“And someone they both knew.”

“Which lets me out,” Brian said and laughed nervously.

“Except it doesn’t have to be someone they knew,” I said, and then, even as I was thinking it, added, “It only has to be someone they’d let in without a struggle. Like a police officer.”

Harker gave me an icy stare. “You think a cop did the killings?”

“I don’t think anything yet. I do think they’d have let a policeman in without a struggle or an ambulance driver, for that matter. A Mormon missionary. Any number of people they didn’t actually know.”

“You have information, don’t you?” Harker said.

“I told you, I’m not investigating this,” I said with an edge to my voice.

“He always sounds defensive when he’s lying to me,” Harker told Brian.

I wanted to take him over my knee and spank him. Luckily for him, Ross came in and told us it was time for dinner. We meandered over to the dining room. The table was set for five, which I hadn’t noticed before. Ross began bringing out the food—a platter of nicely browned chicken, a bowl of mashed potatoes, a plate of biscuits. Brian called down the hallway for his roommate Robert to come and eat.

We were dishing out the food when Brian’s freeloading roommate finally slunk into the room. Robert Hadley was a scrawny guy with a prominent Adam’s apple. Brian introduced us, though I’d met him before, and we all said hello. Robert did not. Brian asked how he was feeling, and he didn’t respond to that either. He simply filled up his plate and left the room. It was creepy.

When he was gone, Ross said to Brian, “You shouldn’t be so nice.”

“Why shouldn’t I be nice?”

“Because it’s obviously pissing him off. Be rude to him. It’ll make him happier.”

Ross probably had a point, but I doubted Brian would be able to follow through.

The meal was delicious, and Ross, returning to his more usual role as bartender, opened another bottle of wine. And then another. We talked about an actor who’d recently gotten chopped to bits by a helicopter, how awful the heat had been for the last few days, and what a crappy president Reagan was. The election was a long way off, but it seemed unlikely he’d be around for a second term.

Harker tried to steer the conversation back to the murders, but I managed to derail him by complimenting Brian’s music selection, which led to him putting on the even more annoying soundtrack to
The Rose.
I grinned and bore it.

There was chocolate cake for dessert and then coffee with brandy. I was stuffed and drowsy when Ross jumped up and said we should go out. Before I could demure, Harker agreed.

About twenty minutes later, we stumbled out of a cab in front of Sidetrack. We were right around the corner from my apartment. We didn’t really have to cab it from Aldine, except, of course, we were drunk so, yeah, we did have to cab it. The front of Sidetrack had been redone when the bar opened and was now almost entirely one glass brick wall with a door on one side. We made it through the door and found ourselves in a long, skinny bar. Televisions lined the inside of the glass brick wall. Each of the televisions played the same music video. It was Blondie singing “Rapture.” I’m not sure I’d ever seen a music video before. I’d heard of MTV, but Harker and I didn’t have cable. In fact, I wasn’t even sure our neighborhood had been wired yet. I think they were concentrating on the suburbs, figuring people out there watched more television.

We stood transfixed by the videos for a few minutes. Blondie turned into Rod Stewart singing, “Tonight’s the Night.” I couldn’t tell you why the videos so captured our attention. To be honest, they were half musical performance, half amateur movie. In other words, not all that interesting. Finally, Ross offered to buy a round of drinks. Brian asked for a light beer, I asked for a Johnnie Walker, and Harker ordered a Beefeater and tonic.

After Ross headed up to the bar, Brian turned to Harker and said, “Are you sure you should be having hard alcohol? I mean, my roommate won’t even touch beer. Keeps buying vitamins and talking about becoming a vegetarian, not that he’ll admit what’s going on. He keeps saying he’s got Epstein-Barr.”

Harker’s face went pale. He looked over at me, his eyes angry. “Thanks, Nick,” he said and walked out of the bar.

Brian and I stood there, dead air between us.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Oh shit. You should have said something.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.” I turned on my heel and rushed out of the bar. Out on Halsted, the air was still thick with humidity. It was probably in the eighties and would be most of the night. I saw Harker turning the corner onto Roscoe. I hurried and caught up to him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“How long did you keep my secret, Nick? Did you make it a whole week? Or did you call Brian up the day after we saw the doctor?”

“I didn’t tell Brian, I told Ross. I didn’t think… I shouldn’t have told anyone. It was wrong.”

“But you did. Why? Why did you do that?”

I wanted to tell him that secrets are lonely and that I
was
tired of being lonely, but that sounded pathetic even in my head. Instead, I said, “I did it because I’m an asshole. Is that what you want to hear? That I’m an asshole? Well, I am. Big fucking surprise.”

“Actually Nick, it is a surprise. A big fucking surprise.”

And with that, he turned and walked away from me. I could have followed, but I didn’t. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see Harker for the next few hours, which would have been fine if he wasn’t walking back to my apartment. I could sit in my car, but that didn’t sound too interesting. I could go back to Sidetrack, but, to be honest, I wasn’t in the mood for company.

Big Nell’s was just down the street. Brian liked to hang out there, but I figured since they’d just gotten a drink at Sidetrack they’d be there for at least a little while. And if they did show up at Big Nell’s I might be ready to talk to another human being. Brian probably thought I was mad at him, and I was. I probably hadn’t told Ross that Harker’s illness was a secret, so it wasn’t fair to be angry, but who sa
id
life
wa
s always fair? Shit, who sa
id
life
wa
s ever fair?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I’ve been told that Big Nell’s
wa
s the kind of gay bar you f
ou
nd in most American small towns. It ha
d
paneling halfway up the wall, poorly chosen wallpaper, and green indoor-outdoor carpeting. Being a native Chicagoan, I c
ould
n’t tell you much about gay bars in small towns, but I c
ould
tell you that Big Nell’s
wa
s pretty tacky.

There
was
a bar, a couple of maple tables, a juke box, dart board, and three TVs hung from the ceiling showing porno movies. The clientele rotate
d
with different types of people showing up at different times. Often, the place
wa
s filled with twinkie types, boys who look
ed
like Brian: young, blond, and vaguely feminine, the kind of boys who end
ed
up in porno movies set in Southern California. That night, though, an older, blue-collar set had taken over the bar.

The bartender wore a plaid flannel shirt with pearl snaps and the arms ripped off. He hadn’t bothered with most of the snaps. He had a nice chest with a line of dark hair running up the center. I guess I was concentrating a little too hard on his build, because he had to ask me what I wanted twice. I ordered a Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks.

I didn’t need the drink. I was reeling a little from the wine and brandy and scotch I’d had with dinner. While I waited for my drink I smoked a cigarette and stared up at the TV. It took a little while to realize I’d fucked the guy being fucked—not just because I was drunk; they were doing insert shot after insert shot. All I could really see was a dick going into an ass over and over again. When they cut out to a wider shot, I saw that the bottom was Skip Manners
,
a young man I’d “met” on a case the year before. I glanced around the bar. I figured no one else in the place had screwed a porno star and that made me stupidly happy. I was that drunk.