High Season (13 page)

Treadway found the A-House after some searching, following the sound of thumping disco music up a dim, narrow street. He guessed he was in the right place because a lot of young men were milling around outside a rambling old New England house that
had two doors facing onto the street. The young men were all smoking cigarettes. Some of them were muscular, and some were small and slender; some were in regular clothes, and some wore sailor suits or cowboy hats or biker gear. A few—and this made Trooper Treadway happy—were even in drag, although their outfits tended more toward sequins or spandex than tweed.

“Hi, sweetie pie,” one of the sailor-suited men called from the porch. “Nice
out
fit. Buy you a drink?”

“No, thank you,” said Trooper Treadway. “I don't drink. But perhaps you could help me.”

The man rubbed the crotch of his white bell-bottoms. “I'll help you if you'll help
me,
” he said.

Several of the men on the porch hooted with delight. Trooper Treadway could feel himself blushing. Was this what had happened to the cross-dressing preacher? This sort of harassment?

He brushed past the man in the sailor suit and opened the door on the left, which had a small sign above it that said
T
HE
V
AULT
in Gothic letters. It was a heavy, leather-trimmed door. Trooper Treadway stepped inside. The room was very dark, lit only with black light and a flickering strobe. Techno dance music pounded at migraine-inducing volume, and gay pornographic videos played on a dozen big screens around the room. There were no transvestites, only burly men dressed in black leather: black leather chaps, vests, harnesses, shorts, thongs—a great deal of variation on a single theme. Twos and threes of them ground at each other on the dance floor while small clusters heaved and writhed together around the room's shadowed periphery.

An enormous black man in chaps and a peaked leather cap was perched on a stool just inside the door. He waggled a no-no finger at Trooper Treadway, who stopped in his tracks.

“You're in the wrong place, honey,” the black man shouted, barely audible above the music's thumping din. “This is a
leather
bar.” He said the words “leather bar” very slowly, as though Treadway might be brain damaged, or from another country.

Treadway smiled. His outfit was almost
too
good: The black man apparently thought he was a woman. “It's all right!” he shouted. “I'm a man!”

The black man rolled his eyes and extended a plate-sized hand in the direction of the dance floor. “Leather,” he shouted, leaving a lot of space between the two syllables. He indicated Trooper Treadway's outfit with his other hand. “
Not
leather.” Then he repeated the process, in case Treadway still hadn't gotten the distinction.

“You mean I can't come in?” Treadway said, nonplussed. It hadn't occurred to him that there might be places in the gay universe where cross-dressers weren't welcome. Who knew the rules were so complicated?

The black doorman spun Trooper Treadway around and propelled him out onto the deck with one big hand between his shoulder blades. “You want the Dance Bar, honey. First door on your left.”

 

In the Dance Bar, the music was even louder than it had been in the Vault, but it was different—happier, somehow. A punchy, disco version of “I Will Survive” thundered from enormous speakers; a DJ stood at the top of a narrow spiral staircase, surrounded by amps and mixers and other complicated-looking gear.

The room was crowded with men and mostly dark. A mirrored disco ball hung from the ceiling, and hundreds of bright dots whirled over the throng of dancers and flickered across the crowds of men waiting for drinks at the bar.

For the first time in his life, Trooper Treadway felt intimidated. The dance floor was packed with gyrating men. They ground against each other in pairs or small pods. Many were shirtless; Trooper Treadway could smell their sweat, the sheer sexual funk
of it hanging in the air like smoke. The music was deafening. A strobe light fired in the dark room, its bright pulse turning the dancers ghostly and mechanical.

He couldn't imagine entering this world, doing what these men did to each other, what some of them appeared to be about to do to each other in the very near future—it was all so
abnormal
. He shook his head; the images flickering inside it were too disturbing.

It was useless, he decided. There was no talking in a place like this, no chance to ask questions. He wasn't blending in all that successfully, either. He felt a dozen pairs of eyes on him, standing primly at the edge of the dance floor, clutching his handbag. He felt trapped there suddenly—the place was getting more crowded by the moment—felt himself about to drown in a writhing, alien sea. A cold sweat rose on his forehead; he hoped his makeup wouldn't run.

He turned to leave, but a colossally muscled man wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, boots, and white Calvin Klein underwear grabbed his arm and spun him around, practically dragging him out to the dance floor. Treadway was alarmed—it was as if he'd walked into an elaborate practical joke, or one of those dreams in which you've forgotten your pants.

“What's your name, honey?” the man yelled into Trooper Treadway's ear. He was grinding his muscular loins against Treadway's thigh; his long-fingered hands squeezed Treadway's buttocks as if they were ripe cantaloupes. The bulge in the man's white briefs was enormous. The man, Trooper Treadway realized, was getting excited.

“I am Trooper Leonard Treadway of the Massachusetts State Police!” Treadway hollered, trying simultaneously to squirm from the man's grasp and make himself heard over the pounding music. “Take your hands off me, or I'll be forced to place you under arrest!”

“What?” the man said, pulling Treadway closer. “I can't hear you!” The strobe light jittered. The music thumped and wailed.

A number of shirtless men who had been dancing together were now pointing at Trooper Treadway and laughing. Treadway reached into his purse for his ID—his service weapon was in there, too, and his handcuffs—but before he could find it, a second man approached and snatched the purse away, tossing it onto a small round table at the edge of the dance floor. Treadway's handcuffs slid from the open purse and fell to the floor.

“Kinky!” the second man shouted into Trooper Treadway's ear, rubbing his private region against Treadway's buttocks. “I like that!” A hand shot up Treadway's skirt—he struggled to push it away, but its owner was incredibly strong. Another hand went down the back of his pantyhose as the first hand squeezed his testicles through the taut nylon, forcing him onto his tiptoes.

“Awk!” said Trooper Treadway, squirming in the tentacled embrace of the two men. Panicked, he heaved with all his might, and the three of them staggered a few steps backward. The man who was grinding his pelvis into Trooper Treadway's buttocks bumped into the table on which his bag lay crumpled, and Treadway's service weapon—a chunky Glock nine millimeter—slid out of the bag and fell to the floor, where it discharged with a flat
crack,
barely audible above the music. The bullet pinged off the frozen margarita machine and blew a large hole in one of the DJ's black metal boxes, halting the music abruptly.

Everyone froze. The smell of cordite hung in the air, sharp and dangerous. For a moment, the silence in the big room was absolute, crystalline. The two men who had been happily groping Trooper Treadway took several steps back. Treadway dove for his gun, retrieved it, scrambled to his feet in the preposterous heels, then dug into his purse, intending to produce his badge and brandish it before him like a crucifix in a den of vampires. He gripped
the badge, but before he removed it from the bag a little red flag popped up in his head—there was a chance he could still escape without further embarrassment, the collegial jeering, the damage to his career that would certainly result if he revealed his identity. He collected his handcuffs, held the gun down at his side, and bolted for the door as the bartender frantically dialed the phone, no doubt calling the local police.

Trooper Treadway kicked off the wobbly pumps when he reached Commercial Street and ran as fast as he could down a dim alley, out onto the town beach, past the backs of restaurants and souvenir shops, then up a quiet side street near his hotel. “Mother
fucker!
” Trooper Treadway gasped, though he was not a man much given to vulgarity. His wig was cockeyed, his pantyhose torn. He had a raging erection.

Months later, Trooper Leonard Treadway would wake up after a darkly erotic dream filled with flashing lights and the shadowy, muscular forms of men. Sweating and aroused, he would lie awake until the clock radio went off at six, unable to sleep for the cloying dough-smell of his wife's body and the occasional sound of her teeth grinding, like a car driving slowly over china plates and cups.

 

On his way home, Coffin drove toward the red glow and column of smoke through the tall wrought-iron gate that separated the Heights from the rest of Provincetown. One of the enormous new trophy houses on top of the hill was spectacularly engulfed in flames. Fire spouted from its doors and windows, and the roof was beginning to burn; big, flaming cinders drifted through the air like demonic kites, threatening to torch the houses next door. The volunteer fire department was there, its two small pumper trucks throbbing, red lights whirling, pathetic streams of water pissing from their hoses. The EMS boys leaned against their ambulance;
the house was an inferno—if anyone was inside, there was nothing they could do.

It had been a gorgeous house, three full stories with banks of floor-to-ceiling windows facing Herring Cove. It had a broad upper deck, which would have been perfect for watching the sun set over the water while sipping a cold drink.

Coffin shut off the rumbling Dodge; it shuddered and clanked for several seconds before it died. He shouldered open the squealing door and climbed out. Two police cars sat at the bottom of the drive, lights flashing. A nervous cluster of neighbors stood in the street. Tony was smoking a cigarette, discussing the Sox and their annual late-season swoon with one of the summer cops. Lola was talking to two middle-aged men: one small, the other large and barrel-chested and wearing a cowboy hat. The fire crackled and popped like a Civil War skirmish.

“Anybody inside?” Coffin said.

“Don't know for sure,” Lola said. “There was a dog barking and whining in there for a while, but it stopped.”

“Crispy critter,” Tony said. He rolled his eyes back in his head, held his curled hands up like begging paws.

Coffin looked at Tony, then at Lola, who was pointedly scribbling in her notebook. He wanted to smack Tony in the head. Instead he said, “Got a cigarette?”

Tony pointed his flashlight at Coffin. “Thought you quit.”

“Just give me a cigarette.”

Tony dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a plastic lighter. He handed Coffin a cigarette and lit it for him.

Coffin took a deep drag. It tasted terrible. He took another.

“Gentlemen say they heard an explosion,” Lola said, pointing her pen at the two men. “Around ten fifteen.”

“Not an
explosion
, exactly,” said the big man. “Sort of a
foomp
.”

“
Foomp?
” said Coffin.

“Yeah,” the man said. He draped a thick arm around the small man's shoulders. “Like when your furnace comes on in the winter? But louder.”

“Did you see anything?” Coffin asked. “Flames? A flash of light?”

“Not till later,” said the small man. “We were out for an after-dinner stroll. On our way back, we saw flames through the downstairs windows. We ran right home and called 911.”

Coffin watched the big house burn for a few minutes. The firefighters were having trouble; they kept slipping and falling on the wet lawn, and one of the trucks was only producing a weak, intermittent spritz. The fire was beautiful, like a great, hungry animal, feasting on joists and windowsills. “Whose house is this?”

Lola looked at her notebook. “Belongs to a Mr. Jason Duarte. Belonged.”

“Any relation to Rocky Duarte? As in Duarte Construction?” Coffin said.

Tony nodded. “He's Rocky's grandkid. Took over the business a couple years ago.”

“Rocky was a nice old guy,” Coffin said. “He used to come around when I was a kid and watch the Celts games with Pop—they didn't have TV.”

“Some house,” Lola said. “The Duartes have done all right for themselves since then.”

“My brother-in-law's a builder,” one of the summer cops said. “Once you get a good line of credit, you can build these big trophy houses, live in them a few years, then sell them for a fortune and build another one.”

“What if the market goes down?” Coffin asked.

“Sicilian foreclosure,” Tony said, nodding at the fire. He shrugged. “But since when does the market go down?”

Coffin flipped his cigarette butt onto the pavement and ground it out with his toe. “I wonder what went
foomp
.”

The house groaned, and a large section of the roof collapsed; a cloud of sparks burst upward into the night sky.

“Anybody call the fire marshal?” Coffin asked.

“I did,” Lola said. “He's on his way up from Barnstable.”

“I'm going home, then,” Coffin said. “Call me if you need me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t's quiet, except for the hiss and clank of the old-fashioned radiators. There's a short hallway with a closet, then a living room. Coffin makes a mental catalog: recliners, green carpet, old console TV. The colors are weirdly intense, as if the whole room is suffused with the green light before a storm.