One Dead Drag Queen (9 page)

Jantoro asked, “Any reports of strangers?”

Smithers said, “There are other people on that floor who have had visitors. We hardly dare intrude on their grief by
asking them to name names. Do you really think a killer would be able to put someone on that floor at that time just to make a threat against another patient?”

“Logistically a nightmare,” Goodman said.

“But Mr. Mason himself had visitors,” Smithers said. “Shouldn’t we have a list of those?”

I said, “Nobody who came to visit Tom would make threats against him.”

“They had the easiest access to his room,” Goodman said. “We should check them out.”

“We can’t have our own family investigated,” Mrs. Mason said. “You need to start with hospital personnel.”

Smithers said, “They will be as resentful of police intrusion as would your family.”

“We need to examine everyone,” Jantoro said.

“The investigation has barely had time to begin,” Goodman said. “We promise to be very unintrusive but very thorough. We’re still checking personnel records for anything out of line.”

I asked, “A killer is going to put that kind of thing on an application?”

“Don’t you do background checks?” Mrs. Mason asked.

Smithers said, “If a madman hasn’t been arrested before, he or she wouldn’t have a record that shows up in such a check.”

Jantoro said, “The police will have to talk to everybody on that floor. We’ll run their names through the police computers and see if anything turns up. In the normal course of events, we wouldn’t think much of a threat like this.”

“Why not?” Mrs. Mason asked.

“Mr. Carpenter has received thousands of threats,” Jantoro said.

“Not this close or this direct,” I said. “In a place hard to
get to. Done like this, it was designed specifically for maximum shock.”

Jantoro continued, “But because of its connection to the bombing, we’re going to give it more than usual consideration. I doubt if it had much to do with the explosions, but it is another anomaly and we’ve got to check it out.”

I said, “I’d like to be there for the interviews of the hospital employees.”

“Impossible,” Jantoro said.

Mrs. Mason said, “I’m incredibly frightened, incredibly angry, and nearly out of my mind with worry about my son. I have a right to—”

I put my hand on her arm and said, “What I really want to do is help. Maybe one of us could just sit in. I’d be very quiet. In the background.”

“You’d be recognized,” Jantoro said. “I assume people on that floor already know who you are. What we’d get is a circus atmosphere. A recognized public figure who just happens to be sitting in on an interrogation could raise all kinds of questions.”

I began a protest, but Jantoro interrupted, “I understand you’re upset, but we’ll handle it. It’s what we’re trained to do. We care as much as you do about solving this.”

I asked, “By
this
, do you mean the bombing or who’s been making these threats?”

“Both,” Jantoro said.

“Shouldn’t there be a police guard on Mr. Mason’s room?” Smithers asked.

I said, “I’ll want somebody from the security firm present at all times.”

McCutcheon nodded. “Oscar’s down there now. I’ll arrange for a twenty-four-hour-a-day rotation.”

“A uniformed police officer might have a strong detrimental effect as well,” Smithers said.

“That won’t be a problem,” Jantoro said. “Although, you do realize, that if someone wanted to murder Mr. Mason, he or she could have killed him when they were placing the note in the drawer.”

“Wouldn’t there have been witnesses?” I asked.

“You’d think there would have been to whoever put the note in,” Jantoro said. “Since no one saw the person place the note in the drawer, I think a possible assumption is there was no witness and if they wanted to kill him, they could have.”

We sat in appalled silence and digested this information. I realized what Jantoro had said was obvious. I should have thought of it.

Mrs. Mason said, “You’re right. I think they wanted to frighten us. They’ve succeeded with me. If they wanted to kill him, they would have.”

Other gay people had paid a higher price for being open than Tom or I had so far. I felt guilt because Tom wouldn’t be in danger if he didn’t know me. Maybe they’d kill him to get at me. Killing someone isn’t always the most vicious revenge—making people suffer a grievous loss for the rest of their life insures getting even to the greatest degree.

My frustration had continued to build. Hiring guards and police protection seemed purely defensive. Between Tom and me, I’m almost always the more cautious one. If there’s a hesitation to be had, I’ll think of it. It’s not that Tom’s particularly hotheaded, it’s just that I’ve usually found that proceeding cautiously is more effective than rushing off blindly. But I was really upset and frustrated. The police wanted me out of their way, but I had to do something to make it seem as if I weren’t simply being overwhelmed by circumstances
beyond my control. I thought several moments, then announced, “I’m hiring a private investigator.”

“You think that will help?” Mrs. Mason asked.

“If I hire someone, I’ll feel like I’m taking positive action. The police don’t want us interfering, but I can still do something.” I looked at McCutcheon.

He said, “I think the police have a lot more chance of finding anything out. They have files, background, computers, and especially personnel who can question people, take notes, write reports, coordinate efforts.” He shrugged. “But you can spend your money any way you want.”

Jantoro said, “Any outside interference will be frowned on.”

“I’m going to do something,” I stated. “You won’t let me be at the interviews. Fine. I’ll hire my own interviewer. I’ll hire an entire goddamn agency if I want to.”

No one denied me my right to be inflexibly stubborn or my right to spend my money in a possibly useless activity. My innate caution had given way to frustration, anger, and fear. Our discussion finished, Mrs. Mason and I returned to Tom’s room.

I was tired. I was working on only three hours of sleep. I felt out of control, unreasonable, and irrationally stubborn. The note had me shaken. Every time I thought about it, I began to tremble. I wasn’t sure whether this was from rage or fear; probably both. Calm in the face of chaos wasn’t new to me, but I was closer to the edge now than I’d ever been while pitching. Throwing baseballs was a job. This was personal.

9

Two hours later I was in the offices of Borini and Faslo, the largest, most sought after, and most prestigious firm of private detectives in the city. Their offices covered the entire twenty-second and twenty-third floors of the Sears Tower.

I’d asked McCutcheon for a recommendation. Like me, he only knew of Borini and Faslo by reputation. They had been on the cover of
Chicago
magazine and had had flattering profiles in the
Sun-Times, Tribune
, and
Daily Herald
. Their first notoriety had come when they’d gotten banner headlines while uncovering dirt in a divorce case between a pro hockey player and his wife, a messy affair involving custody warfare over three kids under the age of six, millions of dollars, a mistress for him, and a gigolo for her.

My fame had gotten us an appointment with Frank Borini and Daniel Faslo late on a Sunday afternoon. Their offices were furnished mostly with gargantuan plants, and strips of chrome outlining every flat surface. It struck me as sort of a rain forest in chains. The only other person I saw was in a
distant office—a man in his twenties typing rapidly.

Borini was slightly over six feet tall and looked to be in his early forties. He combed the remaining strands of his heavily greased hair straight back from his forehead. Faslo was around five-eight. He kept the remaining strands on his nearly bald head cut short in bold assertion of a military-style brush cut. Both wore dark gray suits.

We sat on cherry-colored leather chairs around an oak coffee table. After everyone was comfortable, I said, “I want to hire you to investigate who blew up the block on the North Side and to find out who’s making threats against my lover and me.” I gave them details.

They waited until I finished, then smiled indulgently. “You’re joking,” Borini said.

I didn’t smile. “No.”

Their smiles faded. Faslo asked, “Do you understand the impossibility of a private firm trying such an undertaking?”

“I hire you. You investigate. What’s the problem?”

I saw Faslo biting back another smile. He said, “We are not mini-James Bonds here. We do divorce work and domestic surveillance. We investigate industrial sabotage and computer crimes. We help in numerous extremely complicated court cases. Nobody here carries a gun. We don’t have access to police, FBI, or ATF files. They’re the ones you should go to.”

I reiterated my anxiety about the personal nature of the attacks.

“You’ve told all this to the police?” Faslo asked.

I nodded.

Borini said, “I appreciate your concern and the nature of your involvement, but, really, the official government agencies should be the ones to handle it. We don’t have the resources. We are not an international-terrorist fighting
organization and we don’t want to be. We don’t have exotic lone-wolf detectives with machine guns and a penchant for violence. That’s television, not reality. And what if we got a reputation for hunting terrorists? Then wouldn’t we become targets ourselves? I think so.”

“I will pay you a million dollars—half now and half when you find out who has been making these threats, and a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus if they go to prison.”

That stopped them. Normally, I hate flashing my money around. See, there’s this thing I’ve learned about being fabulously wealthy. People generally pay some kind of attention. Not only am I paid millions as a baseball player, but before the sexual-orientation publicity, I made almost as much money from endorsements as Michael Jordan does. I’ve saved my money and put it in nice conservative, steady moneymaking investments. Basically, I’m still a kid from a rural farm in the South and reasonably shy. I know that might be hard to believe about a famous athlete, but it’s true. For the first few years the money kind of turned my head, but not anymore. The number of those dopey “collectible” figurines I bought years ago in airports around the country is embarrassing. And Tom is good at bringing me back to reality. Nothing like being filthy rich and your boyfriend telling you that your teeth need brushing before making love. But if I’ve got that much money, why shouldn’t I use it at a moment like this?

Faslo asked, “You’re willing to spend that kind of money on just the threats, not the bombing?”

“If the two are connected, both.”

“It’s a lot of money,” Borini said.

“Why didn’t you have someone investigate the threats before?” Faslo asked. “You must have reported it to the police.”

“The police did investigate. They got nothing. I thought there was no more to be done. Now, I want to try you guys.” I sat forward. “Look, I just want to protect myself as much as possible. The security guards are one thing, but that’s mostly defensive. If I hire investigators, I feel like I’m doing something, taking some action.”

“You realize,” Faslo said, “that it is extremely unlikely that we would find out anything that the police haven’t? While I’d hate to pass up a massive fee, really, we are not the ones you should go to.”