Backstab (10 page)

The houses here were built for the city's prosperous Germans—doctors, lawyers, and businessmen—and the brick-and-stone homes were as solid as their owners. European craftsmen had lavished their talents on the interiors. Some houses had hand-carved staircases and ten-foot
stained-glass windows. The one Ralph was working on had rich dark woodwork like black satin. He delighted in the home's odd luxuries: a built-in dining room cabinet with art-glass side panels, a bedroom fireplace with dark green glazed tiles.

“Ralph worked on that house,” I said, pointing to a big redbrick with a white stone porch.

“Where's his truck? Why isn't it parked out front?” asked Lyle.

“One of the neighbors got snippy about him parking it on Utah. She said it lowered property values.”

“Why didn't he tell her to go to hell?”

“He thought she might hire him to rehab her place.”

We turned the corner at Spring and headed for McDonald. It was a pleasant street, but nowhere near as grand. It was lined with plain brick homes and no-nonsense flats. I spotted Lucy, Ralph's truck, immediately. I used to call Lucy his running joke. She did run, too, no matter how hot or cold the weather. But Lucy looked like a refugee from the wrecker. The paint was faded red dotted with gray primer patches. The radio antenna was a bent coat hanger. There was a crack in the windshield and a deep dent in the passenger door. The dented door didn't shut properly, so Ralph had looped a rope around the handle.

Now there seemed to be something else wrong. Lyle saw it first. “What's with the window on the driver's side?” he said. He parked Sherman
and we walked over for a closer look. Someone had broken Lucy's window. Ice-chips of glass glittered on the front seat.

“Damn. They broke into Ralph's truck,” I said. “That's low, robbing a dead man.”

“They didn't get much,” said Lyle. “His radio is still there. Did he keep any money in the truck?”

“Never. He wouldn't even leave his tools in the truck.”

It was hard to tell if the truck had been ransacked. I saw papers scattered all over, but Ralph wasn't too neat. He used Lucy as his office, and kept her filled with order forms, contracts, and receipts that slid off the seat every time he slammed on the brakes. He also used the truck as his Dumpster. In with the office papers were old White Castle hamburger wrappers, Coke cans, and Lee's fried chicken bags. Ralph's truck was a rolling landfill.

An older neighbor was peeping through her blinds at us. I went over and knocked on her door. When she heard what was wrong, she called the police. A squad car arrived quickly, but the two officers were clearly bored. One was fat and black and had a face like a wrinkled brown bag. The other cop was white, and young enough to still have peach fuzz. His radio made staticky sounds until he turned it down. I told them that the truck belonged to a dead man, but they weren't too interested. Ralph had died of asthma. I said I'd check with his mother, but nothing seemed to be missing, not even the radio.
The cops filed a report and told me there was no point in checking for fingerprints—the damp, dirty surfaces wouldn't take them. I didn't know if that was true or they were lazy, but I did know they weren't going to bother. They left. I began brushing glass off the seat.

Lyle spread a large red towel on the seat. “That should protect you from the smaller pieces,” he said. “It's an old gym towel I found in Sherman's trunk.” Sherman's trunk was like a magician's hat—Lyle could pull the most amazing things out of it. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd also produced six colored silk scarves, a white rabbit, and a pair of doves.

I drove the truck, and Lyle followed in Sherman. I was glad he was there. Lucy bucked and shimmied all the way, and twice died at red lights. I knew Ralph's death meant the end of his beloved red truck, too. Only he could make Lucy respond.

Ralph's father took off years ago, but his mother, Billie, lived in an elfin brick house near Hampton. It looked like a Black Forest hideaway: a neat square of yard with a freshly painted white birdbath, a dark door with a rounded top and a little white stone gable. Inside, all four rooms were crammed with friends and family. Some were weeping and hugging, some were laughing and talking, some drinking and arguing.

Ralph's mother sat dazed and dry-eyed at the kitchen table, which was covered with casserole dishes and coffee cakes. I could smell coffee
perking, but most people were drinking cans of Busch or wine coolers, iced in a big metal tub in the kitchen.

A woman with her gray hair in a bun and a neat gray dress stood protectively near Billie like a bodyguard. I'd always thought Ralph's mother looked slender and years younger than her actual age of fifty-nine. Now Billie's slenderness seemed shriveled. Her silky blond hair was like straw and the light was gone from her gray eyes. She had become an old woman overnight.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

She patted me absently, as if I were the neighbor's dog.

“I hate to trouble you further,” I said, “but someone broke into Ralph's truck.”

“Serves 'em right,” Billie said. “He never kept nothin' in there but papers and trash. He even got the radio from a junkyard for ten bucks. My boy was resourceful.” Then she seemed to stare straight ahead, at some place I couldn't see and couldn't go. I left the keys on the table. Her gray bodyguard told me that Ralph would be laid out Saturday and Sunday and buried Monday. I made my way to the living room, where Lyle was in animated conversation with a guy who had a panther tattoo and a biker vest. They were talking about Harleys versus BMW bikes.

Suddenly, I was very tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Lyle walked me to Sherman, and I slept on his shoulder on the drive to his house. I wanted to be with him tonight. He helped me to
his bed and kissed me on the forehead. “Sleep, baby,” he said.

But I couldn't sleep. Now, in Lyle's comfortable bed, I was wide awake and was afraid of the dreams I would have. Lyle wrapped his arms around me protectively. He felt warm and solid, but it didn't help. I didn't feel safe. I kept the lights on, but the dreams came anyway when I finally fell asleep after three.

In my dream, I went up that dusty staircase. I could hear the plaster chunks crunching. I could see my friend Ralph lying on that filthy floor, his hair coated with gray plaster dust so he looked like the old man he'd never be. He was gasping, strangling, for air. His face was the color of slate. He clawed at his chest, as if he could tear it open and let the air in. Blood dripped into the dust from a cut on his forehead. He tried to breathe, but he couldn't. I could hear him wheezing as he fought for air. I could feel his panic and see his frantic, futile efforts.

I woke up, wet with sweat. It was a horrible nightmare. Then I realized this was Ralph's nightmare, too. For him, it had come true.

S
he slithered into the room wearing a black picture hat the size of a wagon wheel and a tight black sheath dress cut in a deep V front and back. Her lips were bee-stung. Her breasts were inflatable. She carried a single red rose and a black leather purse with a gold clasp like my aunt Martha used to have.

I couldn't figure out if she was Blanche Du-Bois in
A Streetcar Named Desire
or Norma Desmond in
Sunset Boulevard
, or some combination of the two. But I did know she was a he. By day, he was a certified public accountant who worked in an office tower in conservative Clayton. By night, he was a female impersonator. Norma Blanche was one of several drag queens who showed up in costume at Ralph's wake to pay tribute to their friend.

The drab little South Side funeral home had never seen such magnificence—or such makeup. I wished some of his friends had worked on
Ralph a bit. He looked awful, even for a dead person. His long hair looked like it had been moussed with Crisco. His slate-gray color showed through too-pink makeup. To give Ralph a more natural color, the funeral home had put tall torch lights with pink bulbs alongside the casket. The lights made Ralph the color of a veal chop in a cheap butcher shop.

His mother, Billie, had tried to make her boy look good for his last public appearance. She'd given the funeral director his favorite outfit, the white pirate shirt, and the black leather vest and pants, and the chains. But whoever dressed him didn't quite know where to hook the chains or how to arrange the leather, and poor Ralph looked uncomfortable instead of unconventional. I hoped if the angels led him into Paradise they'd fix those chains first. It was the only way he'd find eternal rest.

Speaking of uncomfortable, there was Ralph's only other relative, his older brother. Jonathan was a lawyer. He was a Brooks Brothers poster boy—I swear even his stingy little ears were button-down. The only leather on that boy was his tasseled loafers. Jonathan stood next to his wife, Rebecca, a dumpy wide-assed blonde who wore a navy suit with a pussycat bow, a perfect pageboy, and a look of perpetual constipation. Worse, Rebecca had on short white gloves. I'd bet the rent she didn't have them for fashion, but for fear she might catch some disease from Ralph's friends. She didn't have to worry. They didn't want to get near her.

Jonathan and Rebecca stood on the opposite side of the casket, as far away from Billie and Ralph's flamboyant friends as they could get without moving to another viewing room. Jonathan and Rebecca radiated disapproval. This made Ralph's friends edgy, so some of them camped it up, which made Jonathan and Rebecca look down their bony noses even more. Jonathan never forgave Ralph for coming out. He was embarrassed to have a gay brother. He thought Ralph should have shut up and pretended he was straight. Cover-ups didn't bother Jonathan. He'd been pretending to be human for years.

The whole wake was a bad scene. Ralph's mother was so tranqued she could hardly talk. And Bambi, the three-hundred-pound drag queen Ralph loved, who was always conspicuous, was now conspicuous by her absence. She was the one person Ralph would have wanted there, weeping and throwing herself on his coffin. Instead, I suspected Bambi was throwing herself on her hunky muscle man, wearing one of the green outfits Ralph made for her.

A young person's funeral is always awful anyway. The grief is raw because a short life seems so unfinished. Burt's passing was sad, but he had accomplished so much in seventy years. Ralph was only twenty-seven, just getting started in his business. Some of his rehab customers were there, but his gay friends made them uneasy. Ralph's customers stood uncomfortably next to Jonathan and Rebecca and stared at the men in
drag, the men holding hands, and the men with crewcuts and spike earrings.

I went over and stood with Ralph's friends. I didn't really belong, but I felt more at home with them than with Jonathan's button-down pinstripes. That was my parents' world, and I knew it was killingly dull.

I thought the funeral would be just as grim, but it wasn't. The service was conducted at the funeral home. The minister was Gary, a friend of Ralph's. Gary, slender and elongated as a Goya saint, had been ordained by mail for a buck through the Universal Life Church, but he conducted a ceremony that was sweet and sensitive. Gary invited all Ralph's friends to come forward and talk about him. He gently moved us on if we talked too much, so we wouldn't get maudlin.

Jamie read Ralph's favorite passage from
Archy and Mehitabel
, the one where Mehitabel, the worldly old alley cat, tells Archy the cockroach that she has no regrets because she gave her life to her art.

Norma Blanche, in a little black velvet coat-dress and a tiny veiled hat, shyly revealed that Ralph took her to the New Orleans Mardi Gras the year Sinéad O'Connor was on a tear about the Pope and tore up his picture. Ralph won a prize in a Bourbon Street bar for Best Costume. He dressed as the Pope, and tore up pictures of Sinéad O'Connor.

A young married couple, high school teachers from University City, got up and thanked Ralph for doing such a splendid job on their old house.
He fixed the dry-rotted windows, redid the kitchen, stripped their mahogany fireplace by hand, and charged them only what they could afford, which they later found out was well below the going rate.

Next, I got up and walked to the front. It seemed a long trip. I was afraid I'd break down, so I started out talking too fast. “Ralph restored some grand mansions, but he loved the city's small brick bungalows best,” I began. “He always said he could spot a classic city house by these signs: The brick house had gutters and trim painted dark green or white. The bath had a claw-foot tub. The kitchen was the biggest room in the house, and it had a large pantry that smelled good. The husband had a workshop in the basement, where he puttered.

“Ralph had one final test for a classic city house,” I said. “He always said you should step outside and take a deep breath. You should smell a brewery or a bakery. Unless you get the chemical plant first.”

I'd quit in time, and left them laughing. Other friends talked, and a portrait of Ralph emerged, complex, crazy, charming, full of love and friendship. Only Jonathan and Rebecca had nothing to say.

There was a long procession of cars and rehabbers' pickups to the cemetery. At the grave site, Gary, the one-dollar minister, asked us to offer our own silent prayers. Then we sang the Rolling Stones song that has become a funeral favorite since
The Big Chill
, the one about how
you can't always get what you want. Ralph got the send-off he deserved, thanks to Gary.

After the funeral, I went home to my grandparents' house. I was so sad I hurt. I felt like I'd been cut by a knife across my chest: two funerals in one week. Burt was a symbol of my grandparents' vanishing world. Ralph was a good friend. I valued Burt for his seasoned wisdom. I loved Ralph for his outrageousness. The two had one thing in common. They were craftsmen. Burt ran his bar with skill, kindness, and discipline. Ralph rehabbed his houses the same way. He had a real love for the city and a feel for its gently timeworn homes.

I knew I'd miss them for selfish reasons, too. Ralph and Burt were top-notch sources who gave me insider information about the city. Ralph haunted City Hall for his permits and inspections. He knew who was on the take, who did drugs, who did favors, and who honestly tried to help. Burt heard interesting things at his bar. The politicians who drank there treated him like wallpaper when they wanted to talk business. Once or twice a year he'd give me a tip, and it always paid off. I picked up some good scoops from both men. Their deaths were a double loss, personal and professional. And I couldn't get it out of my mind that their deaths were connected, and there was something wrong. I never believed that Burt had died in a robbery. He was too wily for that. And I didn't think Ralph would go anywhere without his inhaler, especially if he
was working in plaster dust. He knew dust was dangerous for an asthmatic.

But I couldn't imagine who would take Ralph's inhaler, or why. No one benefitted by his death. He had less than five hundred dollars in his bank account, and no life insurance. His tight-assed brother Jonathan might have wished him dead, but he wouldn't kill him. It might mess up his suit. It wasn't necessary, anyway. Jonathan lived way out past Ellisville. He rarely saw Ralph.

None of it made sense, and that made me feel worse. I felt guilty as well as sad. I should have returned Ralph's call. Maybe I could have persuaded him to get his inhaler or see his doctor or stay home and rest. Maybe he'd still be alive if I had.

It didn't help that I was still getting letters from the Aryan Avenger. Usually I shrugged off nut mail as one of the hazards of having your picture in the paper. I read it and dropped it in my Weirdo file in the back of my desk drawer. I used to joke with Lyle that if anything happened to me, he should make sure the police checked that drawer. The Aryan Avenger and his lightning-jolted jingles had fattened up the file. He was still writing about Burt's death, and he still thought Burt was Jewish. His latest poem said:

Your JewBurt friend is a disgrace.

His death improves the master race.

If the Avenger was an example of the superior human being, I'd say the gene pool thinned when it got to his great height.

February drifted on. That lousy month never seemed to end. The days reflected the way I felt—cold, gloomy, and gray. Lyle called often. He sent a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day. We went to dinner. We made love. But I was restless and distracted. I would never stay the night at his place in the Central West End. No matter how late or how cold it was, I would get up and go home to my grandparents' place and brood.

Sometimes the hurt would go away for several hours, or even a whole day. Then I'd see Ralph walking by me in a store or Burt sipping coffee in a restaurant. And I'd be so happy, I'd start to go over to him. Then the person would turn my way, and I could see he looked nothing like Burt or he wasn't Ralph, and I'd realize they were gone for good and the hurt would start again.

My writing saved me from sliding into a deep depression. The first sign of recovery was when I did a story about the reopening of an old German restaurant, the Cuckoo Clock. The restaurant had closed in the eighties, and the building had been badly vandalized. For a while, it looked like the old landmark would be torn down for a new gas station. But a local family stepped in to save it. The new owners spent a year restoring the building. I wished them well. The place looked successful now.

I also had a feeling the story would irritate Hadley, although I didn't know why. Sure
enough, he called me into his office the morning after it ran for a little talk. This was a friendlier chat than our last encounter, so I sat on the red velvet Victorian sofa by the Mergenthaler Linotype machine. The sofa felt like it was stuffed with billiard balls. Hadley staked out a carved rosewood side chair with extravagant looping arms. I noticed it had soft down cushions.

Hadley leaned forward, as if he didn't want to miss a word I had to say. His spotted bow tie perched on his collar like a big yellow butterfly. His thinning silver hair fell jauntily over one eye. His pink scalp was a warm rose-petal, so I figured he must be in a good mood. It only turns bright red when he's really angry. Hadley looked intelligent and sincere. He was good at faking both. “You do a good job of covering the city,” Hadley told me. “You have a real feel for St. Louis.”

“I like the city,” I said, slurping up his praise. I could hate myself later for falling for his lines. I was going to enjoy them now.

“I can tell,” he said, and showed some teeth. That passes for a Hadley smile. “But we must not forget that the downtown is St. Louis's front porch. We must remember where the people live. If we forget to cover the city's bedroom and living room, we're neglecting a vital part of our readership.”