War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (47 page)

“I can’t tell you who I’m working for, but I can tell you I’m not with the police.
I’m actually from Chicago, and this is part of a larger case.”

“Well, of course.
You Midwestern folks do know about police misconduct now, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

He reached back, tugged on his hair, making sure the ponytail was in place.
Then he rested his elbows on the step and looked out over the neighborhood as if it were his domain.

“Were you here for the riots?” he asked.

“Last Friday?”

He nodded, not looking at me.
The light manner with which he had greeted me was gone.

“No,” I said.

“You know anything about them?”

“A little,” I said, “but honestly, last Friday I was in New Haven.
What I know about the riots, I learned when I got to New York.”

“Well, avoid the
Voice
coverage.
I never expected them to be homophobic, but there they were
,
‘Full Moon Over the Stonewall’ like we all were influenced by the tides.”
He shook his head.
“Let me give it to you short and sweet: Judy’s funeral was Friday
afternoon
—”

“Judy?”

“Judy Garland, sweetie.
You are hopelessly out of it, aren’t you?” He smiled at me sideways, but he didn’t take his gaze off the street.

“Judy Garland,” I repeated, not sure what I was listening to.

“Her funeral was an
event
,” he said.
“They say the city hadn’t seen anything like it since Valentino died.
It was a mob scene, right, Delores?”

One of the women who had been sitting a few steps down, looked up, nodded, and then said, “You bet, babe.”

Her voice was much deeper than mine. I realized that I was looking at a man in excellent drag.

“A bunch of us went down to the Stonewall that night to drown our sorrows,” McCleary was saying.
“It’s the Friday night spot, very popular, and last Friday it was the busiest I’d ever seen it.
The party had just gotten started when the police raided us.”

“We didn’t have a warning,” the man named Delores said.
I was having trouble putting that voice with the beautifully made-up face I saw before me.
“Usually, the folks at the Stonewall knew a raid was coming. There’s rumors the place is mob-owned or at least makes protection payments, so usually someone knows in advance.”

“But this time, no one did,” McCleary said, “and I don’t know, I think it was just the last straw after one very shitty day.
Instead of the police busting heads, we busted heads.”

“Felt damn good,” Delores said.

“Until they started giving back,” McCleary said.
“I was in the wrong place.
I took off, and Rufio followed me—”

“Rufio?”

“He’s a patrolman with the Sixth.
He’s had it out for me from the beginning.”

“You did kiss him on the lips, doll,” Delores said.

McCleary grinned.
“He is deliciously cute.”

My cheeks grew warm.
“When was that?”

“Oh, hell, months ago?
I don’t know.
He was hassling us, and I told him that he was too pretty to worry about a little nooky.
That upset him, and —” McCleary gave me that sideways glance again.
“—sometimes it’s so much fun to make you straight boys nervous.”

The flush had worked its way deep into my skin.
I was right.
He had been playing with me. “So this Rufio followed you.”

“Ye-up,” McCleary said.
“I was running off home, like a good little camper, and he told me to stop.
I knew the way the tide was turning that if I stopped he had me alone in an alley.
He was going to beat the crap out of me.”

The fun flirtatious tone was gone from McCleary’s voice.
So was any hint of femininity.

“I was frightened, I truly was, and I knew that I was going to pay for messing with him.
I just didn’t realize how much.” McCleary turned slightly so that he faced me.
“Rufio told me to stop again, and when I didn’t, he shot me.
I fell forward — it wasn’t like it hurt.
It didn’t.
But it felt like someone had hit me with a two-by-four right in the leg.
I tried to move, and that’s when I felt the blood.
He was coming toward me, and I hadn’t been that scared in my life. Truly.”

“Wait until you hear this.” Delores turned, wrapped his arms around his legs, and listened to the rest of the story as if it were being told for his benefit.

“I was near a subway entrance.
I flung myself down the stairs, literally flung, because I couldn’t really walk.
I rolled down, then crawled across the platform, pulled myself up in time to see Rufio hurrying down the stairs.
A train was just about to leave, but some of the kind passengers held the door for me.
I got on, and the doors closed, leaving him
behind
.
They — the passengers — were good Samaritans. They asked no questions, got me to a hospital, and there I had to deal with more police, who of course didn’t believe me.
I was briefly arrested for taking part in the ‘Queer Riot’ as the papers are calling it, but the charges were dropped because no one can prove I did anything.
And of course, everyone straight is saying I was shot by someone queer.”

“Of course,” Delores said, shaking his head.

“But I wasn’t.
It was Rufio. The bastard actually came to my hospital bed to see if I was all right.
I screamed for the nurse and threw a bedpan at him.” McCleary smiled.
“A full bedpan.”

“They had to keep Vic there for a couple of days,” Delores said.
“He picked up something from those stairs.
The wound was pretty infected.”

“Delores has been helping me since I got home,” McCleary said.

“I told him he missed the best part.
The riots went on for a couple of nights, and that’s when we realized how strong we are. There’s going to be a march.” Delores reached up and touched my hand. It took all of my
resolve
not to pull away. “If you want to come out in support, you’re more than welcome.
We’re hoping it’ll be next weekend, but there’ll be flyers.”

“I may not be in town next weekend,” I said, feeling slightly light-headed.
The others I’d seen had mentioned McCleary’s sexual preference, but I had actually thought it was tough talk — the way that people insulted each other when they didn’t really like each other.

“I’m sure there’ll be other marches,” Delores said, and stretched out on the steps, looking up at me.

“So,” I said to McCleary. “This had nothing to do with the War at Home Brigade?”

He raised his eyebrows at me.
“You’re actually using that name?”

I shrugged.

“I think it’s pretentious and silly, and has nothing to do with antiwar protesting, only with violence and mayhem.” McCleary shook his head. “You know, sometimes being an activist gets you in the worst situations.”

“Are you referring to Friday or to the War at Home Brigade
?
”

“Stop it,” McCleary said. “Call them those violent motherfuckers or something else, but don’t honor them with their own self-selected self-aggrandizing moniker.”

“All right,” I said, smiling.
I was beginning to like him.
“Do you know Daniel Kirkland?”

McCleary put
the back of his
hand to his forehead like a
thirties
serial heroine.
“For my sins.”

“And did you belong to a group that he ran, a group that proclaimed itself against the Vietnam war?”

“I belonged to an offshoot group of the SDS, run by Joel Grossman and Ned Jones,” McCleary said. “We all met at Columbia, but I stuck with it even after I graduated.
We were doing some good work.
Mostly draft counseling and community education, but a few protests — we made all the big ones.”

“Draft counseling?” I asked.

“Telling people how to legally avoid.
Not everyone wants to flee to Canada, you know.”

I nodded.
“Is this a free service?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” McCleary said. “We couldn’t very well hang out a shingle and tell people ‘Hello! Draft Dodgers United Over Here!’ now, could we?”

“But people found you,” I said.

“People still find us.
A number of us have continued the work, now that Ned’s dropped out and Joel’s too sick.”
He blinked at me. “Is that why you’re here? Because Ned got hit with some random bullet in Central Park and Joel was attacked by one of those Robert-Moses-Destroy-the-City construction crazies?”

“Is that who shot him?”

McCleary shrugged. “I’d always assumed.
And that’s what the police said. Do you think it was someone else?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said.
“I thought so when I started. You know that June
D’Amato
got shot on Friday.”

“Good Lord, Junie?” McCleary dropped all pretense.
“Is she all right?”

“I really don’t have a lot of information,” I said. “She’s at St. Vincent’s, but I’m not family, so they don’t tell me much.
She’s been in a coma since the shooting happened.”

“God, Junie.” McCleary shook his head.
“How’s Danny taking this?”

“Daniel?” I asked.
“Why?”

McCleary looked at me like I had just asked the stupidest question he’d ever heard.
“Because he’s really got a thing for her.
They hang off each other.”

“June?” I asked.
“What about Rhondelle?”

“Ah, you didn’t know,” McCleary said.

“Know what?”

McCleary nodded, almost as if he were having a conversation with himself.
“They haven’t given you the speech.”

“What speech?”

“The one about property and ownership and how it affects relationships and how everything should
flow
, man, and how you know, you do what you
feel
,
man
, and if it’s right, then it’s right, and all that garbage.”

I frowned at him.
He was being sarcastic and judgmental, and I hadn’t expected it of him.
“You’re saying that their relationship is somehow open?”

“I’m saying that Daniel has the right to sleep with whomever he wants. Theoretically, Junie and Rhondelle do
,
too, but the girls never seem to take advantage of it.
Besides, Danny spent most of his time with June, at least what I saw, and only kept Rhondelle around because she was useful.”

“Because of the row house,” I said.

“Because she’s his chemist,” McCleary said.

I stared at him.
The confusion had lifted, but I didn’t trust my feeling of clarity.
“Chemist? You mean she makes the drugs he’s been giving away?”

I’d only heard he did that in New Haven.
Was he doing it here
,
too? Was that where they got their money?
Was he dealing?

“That, and the other thing,” McCleary said.

“The other thing,” I said, feeling slow again.

“She’s in charge of the big bang, brother,” McCleary said. “She knows more about how to make things go boom than anyone I’ve ever met.
She’s brilliant.”

“I thought Daniel was the scientist.”

“Maybe he is,” McCleary said, “but Rhondelle’s Madam Fucking Curie.”

I sucked in a breath.
I hadn’t seen Rhondelle as anything but a victim.

Both Daniel and Rhondelle had played on my assumptions.
Again, I had underestimated someone.

“Joel said you found some dynamite in Rhondelle’s refrigerator,” I said.

“He what?” Now it was McCleary’s turn to look shocked.

“He said that—”

“I know what you said he said.” McCleary made a small up
-
and
-
down movement with his right hand, signaling that we should be quiet.
I had no idea how anyone except Delores could hear us.
“We never found anything at Rhondi’s.”

Then I underst
ood
.
Joel had said that they saw dynamite in “Daniel’s girlfriend’s apartment.”
Not
the
row house.
It was at June’s, not Rhondelle’s.