First You Fall: A Kevin Connor Mystery (10 page)

“Wel , wel , wel ,” Alana tril ed. “If it isn’t the boy toy and his dusky boyfriend.”

“‘Dusky?’” Freddy asked me. “What is this,
Mandingo?”

Paul put a limp arm around his wife. “Just ignore them, darling. I would never have brought you if I had known you’d have to associate with whores.”

“Hey,” Freddy said,
“I’m
not a whore!” I looked at Paul, then at Alana. He might be good looking, but there was no way he was man enough for a shark like her. Unless he had a twelve-inch dick, there was no way she married him for anything but his money. “Speaking of whores,” I said to her,

“what was it that brought you two crazy kids together?”

Alana’s eyes narrowed and her already thin lips curled under. The veins in her neck stretched taught as guitar strings. “You
trash,”
she hissed at me. “How dare you talk to me that way? Do you have any idea what I do to boys like you?”

I could tel that Alana was used to her imperial manner intimidating folk, but I’m a little gay guy who’s faced bul ies since junior high. This bitch had no idea who she was dealing with.

“You seemed real broken up about Al en’s death,” I said to her. “You, too, Paul. So let me ask you a question: Who do you think kil ed him?”

Alana blinked twice and Paul opened and closed his mouth like a guppy.

“My father’s
suicide
was tragic,” an impossibly deep voice came from behind us. Michael Harrington had returned. He walked over as tal and imposing as a god; his words booming like a pronouncement from the heavens.

“But it was the unavoidable result of a ‘lifestyle’

that he chose for himself. A lifestyle that can lead to nothing but despair and an early grave. A lifestyle that, perhaps, is more accurately cal ed a ‘deathstyle.’”

Freddy looked at him with a mixture of desire and disgust. If there was anything that made him angry, it was a good-looking man who was too horrible a person to be worth fucking. That was nature at its cruelest, and it was not to be borne. “You’re kidding with this shit, right?”

“I don’t know what your relationship with my father was,” Michael said to me, ignoring Freddy as a statue might ignore the pigeon that crapped on it.

“But I’m sure it was tawdry.”

He reached inside his jacket and, for a quick moment, I thought
he’s going for his gun!
But instead, he pul ed out a smal black leather envelope and handed me an expensively printed ivory card with raised lettering: Michael Harrington, founder,
The Center for Creative Empowerment Therapy.

“Perhaps we can talk about it someday.” He looked at me as if he wanted to eat me up, but not in a good way, if you know what I mean. I was reminded of the Big Bad Wolf.

I slipped his card into my pocket and instinctively took a step backwards. “Maybe you can tel me what exactly you were doing that made him ‘especial y sad.’”

“I can assure you,” Michael said, “my father made me infinitely sadder than I ever made him.”

“He must be turning over in his grave to see you stil so bitter,” I said.

Michael’s mouth turned up a little. “There wil be no grave. He’s scheduled for cremation as soon as the coroner releases his body. There wil be no funeral, either. Ashes to ashes …”

“Dusk to dusky,” Freddy finished.

This time it was Alana who harrumphed and Paul chuckled at her discomfort. This did not look like a happy marriage.

Michael looked confused, the first time I saw him shaken. Good going, Freddy.

We al stood and stared for a moment before we were interrupted by a perky looking young woman.

“Oh, look!” she said excitedly, “you al forgot to push the elevator button. No wonder you’ve been waiting so long!” She quickly corrected our oversight.

A moment later the elevator door opened and the Harringtons stepped inside. I started to fol ow, but Freddy held me back.

“We’l wait for the next one,” he said. “The air in there is too fetid.”

“Fuck you,” Alana snapped as the door slowly closed.

“You got yourself a real class act,” Freddy shouted to Paul. But by then, they were gone.

“ I
hated
those people,” Freddy said once we got outside. We both took off our jackets in the oppressive summer heat. “I mean, I expected not to like them, but I
hated
them.”

“Yeah, wel , they were pretty easy to hate,” I answered.

“They al did it, you know. The creepy, fruity one, the sexy but crazy older brother, the hag from Hel , they al did it. It’s like
Murder on the Orient Express.

But the old movie, not the shitty television remake with, God help me, Meredith Baxter Birney. The guys probably knocked Al en out, and that bitch threw him over the balcony.”

Freddy was being ridiculous, but something he said caught my interest. “You thought Paul was fruity?”

“Oh, please,” Freddy said. “Sister was a step away from wearing hot pants at Gay Pride. Definitely a closet case. I mean, Prada shoes? Hel o!”

“I’m sure some straight boys wear designer footwear,” I answered.

“Yeah, but he also couldn’t take his eyes off you, or didn’t you notice?”

“Wel , I caught him looking once, but I thought he was just giving me a dirty look.”

“Oh, they were ‘dirty’ al right.”

I’d have to think about that. “So what about Michael?”

“I don’t know. What was with al that crazy shit anyway? ‘Death-style?’I thought you told me he was running some kind of psychiatric treatment center.

He sounded more like a preacher than a doctor.”

“I thought so, too,” I answered. “But, you know, when people start mixing religion with therapy, they get pretty nutty.”

“I think we better visit that place of his, don’t you?” I put my arm around him. “Why? Do you want his

‘help’?”

Freddy pul ed me closer. “He did say there was stil hope for us.”

“Amen,” I laughed.

“Speaking of ‘us,’” Freddy said, “what was Al en talking about when he said he thought we’d be spending a lot of time together?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“You didn’t tel him we were a couple, did you?”

“No, why would I?”

“Because, that’s not what you want, right?” I was suddenly aware of the size and strength of Freddy’s arm around me. Of his slightly sweaty, musky smel . Of the heat coming off his body on this already hot day.

“Of course not,” I said a little too quickly. “I mean, that’s not what either of us wants, right?”

“Of course not,” Freddy answered hastily. “I mean, why fuck up a good friendship, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Right,” Freddy said.

We were both quiet for a minute.

“Although,” Freddy continued, “now that Al en’s left you a fortune, maybe I
should
marry your ass.”

“I don’t think I’m rich,” I said. “But maybe I can go to graduate school earlier than I thought.”

“And maybe,” Freddy said, “you can stop being such a big whore.”

“Hey,” I said, “it worked for Alana Harrington!”
CHAPTER 7

A Client a Boy Could Fall For

I WALKED FREDDY
to his office and took a cab back to my apartment. I put the air conditioner on high and checked my messages. Just one. “Tony.

Cal me.”

One crisis at a time, I thought. When Tony visited the other night, I did a casual sweep of my porn. With my mother, Snoopy McSnoopy staying over, I had to real y hide it.

I also had to cal the only man who could save me.

I put on my headset and dialed. He answered on the first ring.

“Dad,” I began, “what the hel is going on?”

“Kevin, I have some rough news for you,” he said.

“Are you sitting down?”

“No.” I was, in fact, pul ing dirty magazines out of my dresser.

“Sit down.”

“Dad!”

“Al right, it’s your funeral. So. Your mother. I have to tel you: She’s nuts.”

“That’s your news?”

“She’s real y lost it this time, Kevin. She has it in her mind that I’m making the whoopee with Dottie Kubacki.”

“So I’ve heard.” As I listened to my dad, I piled four
Honchos,
an
Advocate Men,
and my Kristen Bjorn DVD col ection on the floor.

“I mean, Dottie Kubacki? How? Have you seen how large that woman is? Could a person even find her, excuse my French, vagina? Do I look like Jacques Cousteau to you?”

“Wel , why is she upset?” I was under the bed trying to reach an old issue of
Freshmen.

“Why? Who knows where that woman gets her ideas from? Cal those people from that
CSI
show, they can solve a murder based on some toilet paper and a toenail. Maybe they can figure her out.”

“Al right, wel , you have to work this out with Mom.

She can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Dad!”

“Listen, you know how she gets. Give her a week, she’l find something else to be nutty about.”

“A week!” I found an old
Playgirl
in the back of my nightstand.

“Maybe two.”

It takes a lot of drama to be heard in my family.

“I’m going to wind up in the loony bin if she stays here one more night. Do you know what it is to lose a son?”

“Please,” my father asked. “Don’t rush me. I’m just beginning to enjoy losing my wife.”

Before I hung up, I got my dad to promise to cal my mom at work before the day was over. I fil ed a backpack with my lubes and condoms and stuck it as far back as it would go in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

The phone rang. Cal er ID told me it was Tony.

Did I want to pick up? Yes.

“Hey.”

“You didn’t return my cal ,” Tony said.

“I just got in.”

“Where were you?”

“What are you, my keeper?”

“Just concerned.”

“Oh.” That sounded nice coming from him. “I’m fine. You should have tried my cel .” I told him about the reading of Al en’s wil .

“Huh,” Tony said, “they sound like the family from hel .”

“It was pretty grisly.”

“If you go to the funeral, you’l have to see them again,” Tony said.

I told him that there wasn’t even going to be a funeral.

“That’s pretty cold,” Tony said. “I guess they real y did hate him.”

“See?” I asked

“Denying him a funeral isn’t the same as kil ing him, Kevin.”

“I got the feeling they couldn’t wait to cremate him.

Guess he wasn’t dead enough, huh?”

“Yeah, wel , you can’t kil the past.”

“You sound like you’re talking from experience,” I said.

“You ought to know,” Tony answered.

Yeah, I did.

“There were about a mil ion reasons why I wasn’t happy to find my mother in my apartment last night,” I told him. “Want to guess the biggest one?”

“Hey, watch that mouth. I’m at work.”

“Come on over. You can watch my mouth.”

“Enough,” he said in the cop voice I suspected he used in the interrogation room. “Listen, about what you said before …”

“About last night?”

“About trying to solve Al en’s ‘murder.’ Just walk away, Kevin.”

“I’l think about it.”

“Don’t think, do. And stay away from the Harringtons. They sound nuts, and nuts can be dangerous.”

“Then I better stay away from my mother, too.”

“That goes without saying. So, I have a question for you: How much do you think Al en left you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of thousand?”

“Huh. An inheritance. Know what that makes you?”

“Grateful?”

“A suspect.” Tony, sounding glad for once to have the last word, hung up.

I lay down on my couch with a groan. Now I was a murder suspect. Great.

I was tired, stressed, and hungry. I started to think about the day’s events, but that hurt my brain. So, I opted for my own personal form of meditation: Replaying
The Way We Were,
scene by scene, in my head. Fade in: A young, unconventional y attractive Jewish girl hands out flyers at a protest ral y …

Two hours later, I was awakened by the sound of my front door rattling. Someone was trying to get in.

There was enough weirdness and violence in my life lately that I felt even more than my usual New York paranoia. I sat up quickly, becoming aware of both a stiff back and an attractive crust of dried drool on my cheek.

I ran to the door and looked through the peephole.

I could see the top of someone’s head, but he or she was standing too close for me to see who it was. I leaned in closer just as the door swung open and knocked me on my ass.

“Ow!”

“Damn key keeps getting stuck,” my mother greeted me. “You real y should have the super look at it. Never mind, I’l tel him. I want to talk to him about getting another rod instal ed in the closet, anyway. And maybe a nice shower head. One of those that rain on you, you know? What are you doing on the floor?”

I stood up to give her a hug. I didn’t want her living with me, but she was stil my mother. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” She took my face in her hands.

“Sweet boy. What’s that on your face.” She licked her thumb and reached out to swab my cheek.

“Drool,” I said, jumping back. “And keep that thumb to yourself.”

“You always did drool a lot,” she said, coming in and taking off her shoes. “And not just when you were a baby, either. I remember you were in the first grade, and your teacher asked me what we were giving you to drink at home because your chin was always wet and covered in…”

“Enough!” I shouted. “As charming as this trip down memory lane is, can we skip any more stories about my bodily functions?” I fol owed her as she walked into my kitchen.