One Dead Drag Queen (4 page)

“He’s unconscious. They’re working on him.”

There was a much smaller explosion. I looked. It was a van from one of the television stations. No one had moved it from the path of the approaching fire. Its gas tank had exploded. A crowd of rescue workers and several camera crews from other television stations rushed past us toward the new calamity. Those of us gathered around this ambulance were jostled for several moments.

Then a low voice close to my ear said, “You’re next, faggot.”

I whirled around. A throng of passersby were frantically rushing through the confusion, and any one of them could have said that. Even if I caught up to the group of people the voice had come from, I could never pick out which person had said it.

I heard one of the paramedics say into a phone, “We’ll be arriving at your location in four minutes.” The ambulance engine started. They began to close the rear doors. I forgot
thoughts of chasing whoever it was. I knew I wanted to stay with Tom.

“I’m his lover,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

No one objected or stood in my way. I hopped in. I scrunched down next to the stretcher. I held Tom’s hand and watched him breathe. The paramedic monitored devices. No one spoke for the short trip to St. Michael’s Hospital, just north of Division Street on Racine. I knew they’d be rushing him away as soon as we pulled up.

As we slowed to a stop, I said, “I love you, Tom.” I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I needed to say it.

Ambulances jammed the entrance to the trauma center. We parked in the middle of the street. They hurried Tom into the hospital. Inside the emergency room, paramedics, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff were in a frenzy of activity.

Before I settled down to a bout of worrying that would make Tom proud, I called his mom and dad. His mom’s a brick, but I knew the news shook her. It would anybody. They would drive in from the far suburbs as quickly as possible.

Half an hour later Gloria Dellios joined me on the blue plastic chairs in the waiting room.

“No word,” I said.

She shook her head. “It’s ghastly. The count is up to twenty confirmed dead. Two of them were in the clinic. They weren’t able to find everyone before the fire got to the building. I’m afraid the toll will go much higher.”

I tried to think of something comforting to say. I like to think of myself as innately courteous. I may not always say the right thing, but at least I don’t usually say something stupid. I couldn’t think of a thing.

Over an hour later Brandon Kearn walked up without a camera crew in tow. The entire back of his blazer was in shreds. A bandage covered his right hand. He had stitches on his right ear and in the middle of a newly shaved spot on the back of his head. The rest of his hair, which often looked cemented in place, was wildly askew and covered in dust and dotted with blood. He sat down next to me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’ve got a few superficial cuts that some kind of tech person stitched up. My ears stopped ringing only a little while ago. Between emergencies a doctor glanced at me. He said I’m fine. I feel okay.”

“You waiting here for someone?”

“Is this an interview?”

“I’m a little too tired and a little too personally involved to get into a professional mode right now. My boss told me to get medical attention and go home. He sounded pissed. I guess I was supposed to keep the cameras rolling instead of trying to help. I gave one live interview while I was bleeding. I think I hate reporters. Not a good attitude, I’m afraid, for somebody who’s in the profession. I’m done for the night and might get fired.”

“For helping people? No boss is that nuts. You’ll be on all the talk shows as the reporter hero.”

“Being a hero isn’t quite what I expected it to be. Messier, dirtier, uglier, and meaner. Setting off another bomb to explode when the rescue workers are present is insanely cruel.”

“The whole thing is total madness,” Dellios said. “Too much hate. That’s what’s wrong with society.”

Kearn nodded at her. “Who are you?”

“Gloria Dellios, the head administrator at the Human Services Clinic.”

“I should probably try and interview you for background,” Kearn said.

“Not now.”

“No, later. Hell of a thing to happen.”

Dellios said, “Unfortunately, anyone who works in a women’s clinic has to be ready for this kind of thing, although nobody’s been through something this massive. No matter how many tragedies anybody has been through, I don’t think they’d be prepared for this. I’m sure I’ll be here all night until I know how all my people are.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“I’m one of the lucky ones. It isn’t a burden.” Dellios touched my arm. “The few times I met Tom, he was always humorous and friendly. He made jokes about working in the basement, hidden away from the clients.”

I said, “Maybe that’s what saved his life.”

Kearn said, “I know about your lover from the news coverage of you coming out. Why was he working at the clinic?”

“Is that really important for you to know right this instant?”

Kearn seemed to revive a little. “I’ve always been curious about why you decided to—”

I cut him off. “No interview.”

“Sorry,” Kearn said.

“How come you were on WBBM?” I asked. “I thought you worked for MCT.”

“I do. I was the first reporter on the scene. The feed went to any local station that wanted to pick it up. For a while CNN was using it.”

“How’d you know I was there?” I asked.

“One of the camera guys noticed you. Why?”

“I was wondering how you picked me out of so many in the chaos.”

“You’re one of the most recognizable faces in Chicago. If you turned out to be a hero or a great camera shot, you’d be a big story. Picture Michael Jordan rescuing a baby from a burning building. It’d make the front page of every paper on the planet. It wasn’t odd that you were singled out.”

“I guess not.”

Kearn patted my shoulder and said, “I hope your lover makes it.” After I thanked him, he got up and left.

I had no concept of how much time I needed to let pass before requesting or demanding information. Brief lulls in the emergency room were followed by bouts of frantic action. When it finally seemed that the lulls were more prevalent, I hunted for the right person to talk to. When I finally found the doctor who had treated Tom, I asked the most basic question: “Is he going to live?”

The doctor said, “He has no life-threatening injuries that we are aware of at this time. We’ll know more after we can do more tests.”

Back in the waiting room, I stood in a corner. Dellios was off talking to other relatives of victims. All of the chairs in the waiting room were filled. People stood in clumps all the way up and down the halls. Most waited in muffled silence. One youngster about ten kept asking, “Is Daddy going to die?” Mercifully, he finally fell asleep, but not soon enough.

I shut my eyes. For the first time, the images I’d seen flooded my memory. The one of a cop screaming in agony and clutching at the place where his left leg used to be came back more clearly than I ever want a memory to come back. I hurried to the washroom and puked. When I finished barfing my guts out, I washed my face. When my stomach was under control, I returned to the waiting room.

The next thing I remember is Tom’s parents, siblings, nephews, and nieces beginning to gather. The traffic coming into the Loop had been totally snarled. With so much emergency equipment, the number of streets blocked off, and the gawkers trying to get to the tragedy, it took them nearly two hours to make the normally fifty-minute drive.

I love his family. His mom and dad treat us the same as his straight brothers and sister and their in-laws, but at the moment, I didn’t want to talk much to anyone. When big emotions come, lots of times I close down. Some of that comes from my upbringing, some from my profession. Shutting out all distractions is an important skill for a major league pitcher. Early in my relationship with Tom, my retreating inside myself caused some problems. If we had a fight, instead of discussing things, I’d shut myself in. That hurt both of us. Now, although sometimes it takes me a while, I can be open and vulnerable with him. But I often still have the problem with others.

I gave his family what little information I had, that he was being monitored closely and was not in immediate danger of dying.

I was annoyed at the presence of so many people, particularly the ones under ten. I enjoy Tom’s nephews and nieces, especially the younger ones. I probably have a better time with them than he does. He might be a teacher, but he only deals with high school kids. Throw him in a barrel of kids below the age of ten, and he’s pretty lost. The younger they are, the worse Tom handles them. Right now, however, I wanted them all to be silent and go away. Hushed waiting made more sense to me, and I’d rather have been alone. At one point his four-year-old nephew, Josh, tugged on my hand and asked to be picked up and held. He rested his head against my shoulder and said, “Don’t be sad, Uncle Scott.
Uncle Tom is going to be okay. He promised to take me to the zoo next week. He always keeps his promises.”

I held him close. I wanted the comfort and simplicity of beliefs and promises in a child’s world. In minutes he fell asleep. I wished I could find comfort and sleep so easily.

4

By three in the morning all those under eighteen years of age had been packed off for home. Tom’s mom and dad, older brother, and I kept vigil.

When I looked up about quarter after four, I saw Ken McCutcheon, the owner of the security firm I had hired for protection when I made pubic appearances. He had a cup of coffee in his hand. He stood unobtrusively in the hallway leading to the waiting room. He saw my look and nodded at me.

I strolled over. McCutcheon looked like a college wrestler in the 160-pound class. Golden blond hair, muscles perfectly sculpted, eyes intensely blue, stance always casual. He was dressed simply—a long-sleeve, white dress shirt, a dark blue tie, faded blue jeans, no belt, white socks, and running shoes. Today he also wore an unzipped black leather jacket. He spoke in a soft tenor voice. He rarely smiled.

McCutcheon was always armed, but never obviously so. When I was hunting for a guard, several friends had highly
recommended him and his firm. Frankly, I thought he was too pretty and too young to be effective, but he had proved his worth to me when he’d handled a potential raving loony.

This one guy had showed up at three straight appearances. He always sat as close to the podium as possible. He kept his shirtsleeves rolled up so anyone who glanced at him could see the swastika tattooed on his massive right biceps. He would stare fixedly at me throughout the event. I swear I never saw him blink. He had horror-movie eyes—you could see the white entirely around the washed-out-blue iris. I would have found it almost clownish if I hadn’t been so spooked. He never asked questions or talked to anyone else. The first time I noticed him, he gave me the creeps. The second time he showed up, I also saw him afterward in the parking lot. He was walking toward my car. That’s when I hired McCutcheon. When the guy showed up for the third time, McCutcheon cornered him in the parking lot next to my car. I was too far away to hear what was said, but after that, whoever he was, he stayed away.