The Ninth Man (15 page)

Elers stared at me for another moment or two then went back to his sorting, apparently appeased.

“I never heard of any of them,” he said. “If Clete knew them, it must have been a long time ago.”

“There were a couple of other names,” I said.

He didn’t even look up this time.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Arnold Klein, Bobby McDermott…”

Now he did look up, briefly.

“Yeah. I know Bobby McDermott. I was sort of seeing him when I first met Clete. That was a long time ago; I haven’t seen Bobby in years.” He returned to his laundry.

Bingo!
I felt just a tad giddy.

“How about…” Jesus, I had to think of his first name…I don’t think I ever used it! My mind flashed to the driver’s license I’d seen in his wallet. Kyle Bernard Rholfing. Kyle! “…Kyle Rholfing?”

Elers looked up again.

“Bleached-blond nelly queen? Real pain in the ass?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I know him too. Not very well, though, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

I didn’t tell him there was little chance of their ever becoming better acquainted now. I was surprised to find my mouth was dry.

“How did you know Rholfing?” I managed to ask, hoping he couldn’t hear my heart pounding.

He turned to put several pair of folded shorts into the bureau behind him.

“I think he lived on those fucking stairs,” he said, over his shoulder. “Every time I’d go over to see Bobby, there Kyle’d be either going up or coming down. He tried to put the make on me so many times I finally took to walking up the back way just to avoid him.

“That’s how I met Clete, as a matter of fact. He was coming down the stairs one day when I was going up. He was probably trying to avoid Kyle, too.”

Fireworks went off in my head.

“McDermott, Rholfing, and Barker all lived in the same building!” I said.

“Yeah,” Elers said, looking at me as if I weren’t quite bright.

Of course! Rholfing had said that! (
Bobby and I lived in the same building.
) And he’d said something else…what in hell was it? It didn’t register at the time…

There was this absolutely terrible affair in the building…

Why in hell hadn’t I made that connection before? Maybe that was what my brain and gut had been trying to tell me all those times!

“And Gene Harriman, Arnold Klein, Alan Rogers, and Arthur Granger lived there, too!” I was still talking more to myself than to Elers, but he had no way of knowing that, so it’s no wonder he probably thought I was a little strange.

“I couldn’t say,” he responded, still looking at me as he put a shirt on a hanger. “I didn’t go there all that often, and I never met anybody else who lived there.”

“Something happened in that building about that same time,” I said, directing myself to Elers this time. “Did you know anything about it? Did either Bobby or Clete…or Kyle, for that matter…say anything to you about it?”

He looked puzzled.

“No, not that I recall. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. It was pretty serious, I gather. Are you sure Clete never mentioned it in all the time you two were together?”

Elers hung up the last of his shirts and began sorting through the socks again, looking for mates.

“Huh-uh. Never.”

Now it was my turn to look puzzled.

“Strange,” I said.

He gave a small shrug without looking up from the pile of socks.

“Not so,” he said. “Like I told you, Clete wasn’t much on talking.”

“But then Bobby or Rhol…Kyle—” I began, but Elers cut me off.

“Like I said, I met Clete while I was seeing Bobby. Actually, Bobby and me were just fuck-buddies, and when I started hanging around with Clete, he wanted me to stop seeing Bobby. I told him okay, but Bobby and me kept getting together now and then on the side.

“Well, then I got the clap from Bobby and gave it to Clete, and the shit really hit the fan. I stopped seeing Bobby for good, then, and Clete told me to go fuck myself. We didn’t see each other for nearly five months, and when we finally got together for good, we agreed we’d never even mention the past.

“And we didn’t. Whatever you’re talking about must have happened in those months when I lost track of Bobby and Clete. I haven’t seen Kyle since. He’s probably still haunting stairways.”

If only you knew!
I thought.

“Where was the building?” I asked. “Do you remember the address?”

Gathering up the paired socks—three mismatched singles still lay on the bed—he put them into a bureau drawer.

“Can’t remember it exactly,” he said. “But it’s on Hutchins, near Elk. You can’t miss it—it’s narrow, four stories, looks like an old New York brownstone.”

He picked up the unmatched socks, inspecting them as if he were looking for clues as to the whereabouts of their mates. Then, with a shrug, he tossed them into the open drawer with the rest and closed it. Gesturing for me to follow, he led the way into the living room and motioned me to a chair.

I sat down, and he perched on the edge of the couch, leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands folded.

“What else can I tell you?” he asked.

“I was just curious,” I said, hoping I wasn’t opening a can of worms, “how Clete died, exactly. What did the police say?”

Elers sighed and stared at his hands.

“They didn’t, in so many words, but I gather they suspected a drug overdose.”

“Was he into drugs?”

He stared at the floor a moment before answering.

“I thought he was done with that shit,” he said. “He’d had a problem with it before we got together, I knew, but I would have sworn he was clean since we got together. I don’t know why in the hell he’d go back to it—everything was going pretty well between us, and I can’t imagine he’d deliberately fuck it up by doing something so stupid. I was so goddamn mad at him for killing himself like that. I guess I still am.”

“I’m sorry if I’m treading on sensitive ground,” I said.

With a half-smile, Elers brought his eyes back in my general direction.

“No, that’s okay,” he said. “It’s probably good to talk about it. I guess I’ve been trying too hard to forget. That’s how come I went on this camping trip—to get away, sort of. Well, now I’m back and I’ve got to get on with my life.”

“You’ll do okay.” I sensed it was time for me to leave, and I got up from the chair. “One more thing before I go. Is there anything more you can tell me about the building or the people who lived there?”

Apparently relieved to be off the subject of his lover’s death, Elers leaned back on the couch and thought for a moment.

“Not much,” he said finally. “You know the area—it’s a gay ghetto. Clete’s building was all gay, of course. It’s small for the neighborhood, sort of sandwiched in between two bigger buildings. A real nice place. I’m sure I must have at least seen some of the other guys who lived there—I vaguely recall a couple—but I never officially met any of them. Probably wouldn’t recognize them if I were to see them again.”

I refrained from telling him it was very unlikely he would ever see seven of the building’s tenants again.

“How many apartments were in the building—any idea?” I asked.

“Like I said, it’s a small building. There were only two apartments on the floor Clete lived on, so I imagine there’d be a total of eight.”

Eight apartments, seven deaths! The jigsaw puzzle was suddenly turning into a picture.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t mean to push on this thing, but it’s really very important. Can you remember anything else at all about the building or the guys who lived there?” I had an out-of-left-field thought. “Does the name ‘B. Kano’ mean anything at all to you?”

Elers ran his hand under his chin, as if checking his beard.

“God,” he said, “it’s been a long time. Kano, you say? Kano…Kano—that does ring a bell, somehow. Let me think a second…”

I waited. Elers thought, his fingers moving back and forth across his chin.

Suddenly, his eyes brightened.

“Yeah! There was this real good-looking kid lived in one of the ground-floor apartments. He had this little terrier about the size of a dime—real cute little thing, if you like terriers. It used to sit in the window all the time.
His
name was Kano.”

“The kid’s?” I asked.

“No, the terrier’s. The dog’s name was Big Kano. The kid was out walking him one day when I was coming in, and I asked what the dog’s name was, and he said it was Big Kano. I remember because here’s this Munchkin dog with a name you’d expect on a great Dane.”

The pieces were falling into place almost audibly.

“What else do you remember about the kid?” I asked, hoping my excitement wasn’t showing.

Elers shook his head.

“Not much. He was a real beauty, like I said, but real shy. Always friendly and polite, but he never volunteered any information.”

“Did he live alone?” I asked.

“I don’t know; I never saw him with anyone. On the one hand, I can’t imagine him not having guys crawling all over him, but on the other, he was so damned shy…”

“Can you describe him?”

Eler’s eyes wandered off, following his thoughts.

“Let’s see…about five-ten, slender, medium-brown hair, mid-twenties, I’d say. Sexy—you know. He didn’t flaunt it; I don’t think he even knew it. Oh, yeah…and ice-blue eyes. You don’t see many brown-haired guys with eyes like that.”

Okay, that ruled out Arnold Klein—Sibalitch had described him as being short and dark. Alan Rogers’s self-portrait didn’t match the description. McDermott, Rholfing, and Barker were automatically out, since Elers knew them.

That left Arthur Granger and Sibalitch’s lover Gene Harriman. Granger had been forty, and even if the years had been especially kind, from what Martin Bell had told me I couldn’t picture him being the guy Elers described.

Still, you never know. I’d have to check it out with Bell or Sibalitch—or better yet, with Tim, who’d seen all the bodies.

“Hello?” Elers’ voice jolted me back to reality, and I realized I must have just been standing there staring off into space. I gave him an embarrassed grin.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Guess I got a little distracted.”

“No problem,” Elers said.

“I know it’s tough for you, but could you tell me just how and where you found Clete’s body? It
was
you who found him, wasn’t it?”

He stared at me for a moment without speaking. Then: “Yeah, I found him. He was in the bathroom, apparently just ready to get into the shower…the water was running.” He gave a little snort and shook his head. “Funny,” he said, “Clete always dug sex in the shower. Ironic he should die there.”

I felt a twinge in the pit of my stomach that could not be described as “funny.”

“I don’t suppose you found anything near the body to indicate what he’d taken—no syringes, needles, anything like that.”

Elers shook his head.

“No. How did you know that?”

“Just a guess.”

“He must have got it somewhere outside then come home to clean up.”

“Did Clete keep a photo album?” I asked, not wanting to get Elers to thinking too much about the obvious flaws in that scenario.

His face registered his surprise.

“Hey, that’s wild!” he said. “Why did you ask that?”

“Just curious,” I lied again. “Why?”

“Clete didn’t have an album,” Elers said. “He kept a bunch of photos in an old shoebox. He must have been going through them just before he went in to shower, because the box was sitting on the bed.”

“Do you know if he had any pictures taken while he lived in that building?”

He gave a quick, palms-up gesture with his hands.

“I dunno, he might have. You want me to look?”

“Would you?” My gut told me that if Barker had had any photos from that period, they wouldn’t be in the box now. But…

Elers got up and went back into the bedroom. He returned a moment later with a shoebox and motioned me into the kitchen.

“Let’s look at ’em in here,” he said. “We can use the table.”

Primitive cultures believe that photographs capture the soul; I’ve always considered them to be what William Blake called “spots of time”—the tiniest fragments of a life, suspended for as long as the photo exists. Spread on the table in front of us were fragments of Cletus Barker’s life—people and things and places long gone or altered or changed, now, but still parts of him.

Some of the fragments Elers was able to identify; most of them he could not. There were, as I expected, no photos of the period, the place, or the people who most concerned me.

Elers had picked up a photo of the two of them in happier times, and was staring at it, his face sad.

“I just wish I’d been here,” he said. “Maybe I could have done something…”

“I doubt it,” I said sincerely. “It would have happened anyway, I’m sure. Out of curiosity, though, where were you when he…when it happened?”

Elers placed the photo back in the shoebox and began gathering the other photos to return them to the box, also.

“At work,” he said. “Clete and I work for the same construction company, but on different projects. He had a day of vacation coming, so he took it that day—said he wasn’t feeling well—and when I got home, he was dead.”

One last hunch.

“Did Clete by any chance mention—within, say, a week or so before he died—running into one of the old gang from the apartment building?”

Elers shook his head.

“Huh-uh. Why?”

“No reason.” Actually, I was almost certain Clete Barker
had
run into someone from his past, and that he’d died as a result of it.

I got up from the table.

“I’d better get going,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Elers, and I hope you won’t mind if I call you if any other specific questions come up.”

He rose and walked me to the door.

“Sure,” he said. “Any time.”

We shook hands, and I walked out into the glaring sunlight. It was going to be another hot day.

*

The exact address was 2012 Hutchins, and it was
exactly as Elers
had described it. It sat just far enough back from the street to have a small front yard edged with a neatly trimmed low hedge. A gray-haired man in walking shorts and a short-sleeved green shirt was washing windows on the ground-floor level to the left of the centered entry door.