Authors: marshall thornton
Ross rolled over and slipped his hand between my legs, cupping my dick in his palm.
* * *
“Jealous, hopefully.”
“So, this isn’t about me.”
Ross kissed me and said, “Only marginally.”
When we got out of the shower, he said, “I’m going with you. I want to hear what Bernie has to say. I want to catch whoever did this.”
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“Shouldn’t you be looking for a job?”
“I can do that tomorrow.”
I didn’t want a partner. I wanted time by myself so I could think things through, but it seemed there wasn’t a way to get rid of Ross. I liked him. In fact, I liked him a lot. I even liked having him around. But not when I was working.
As we drove out to the Kennedy heading to the south side, Ross told me what he thought of Brian. “He’s a nice kid. Very sexy. But I don’t think he’s for you.”
“I think he figured that out last night.”
“Oh? Something happened?” When I didn’t answer, he guessed. “He wasn’t there when I woke up. I suppose that means something, doesn’t it?”
“Congratulations, you’re a detective,” I said dryly.
The Kennedy turned into the Dan Ryan, and we took that all the way down to The University of Chicago. The campus was enormous, and we found the parking structure with some difficulty.
Worse, there were several hospitals that made up the Medical Center. The buildings come from various architectural periods, and their placement follows no obvious logic. We weren’t even sure what the name of the hospital was, so we were reduced to asking people where they kept the burn patients.
After almost a half an hour, we stumbled upon an information desk and found out we, coincidentally, were in the right spot. The volunteer looked up Bernie’s name and sent us to the fifth floor. Hospitals are uncomfortable places, they’re all linoleum and poorly chosen pastel colors; everything was designed to be easily cleaned, which only left me feeling that the whole place was covered with a thick, slimy film of soap.
Walking into Bernie’s room, the first thing I noticed was the dour-looking kid sitting next to the bed. In his early twenties, he was good looking, or at least he would have been if he’d smiled.
There was something a little hulking about him, and I had the feeling he’d slouch when he stood up. His hands were over-large, as were his feet. He seemed uncomfortable and awkward in his body, as though he’d had a growth spurt just last summer.
I turned and looked at Bernie. He was sitting up in bed. His head was bandaged, as was more than half his face, his neck, and his left arm down to his wrist. Some of the exposed skin showed angry and pink, as though he’d gotten a bad sunburn. The eye I could see was hazy with pain medication.
He tried to smile when he saw us. “Hey, thanks for coming by.” He turned to the guy sitting next to his bed. “Edward, this is Nick and Ross.”
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“Bernie,” I said, then waited for him to actually look at me. “Davey asked me to look into the fire. I’m gonna need to ask some questions.”
“I don’t know if he’s ready yet,” Edward said.
“Do you feel up to it, Bernie?”
“I don’t remember much,” Bernie said. “I’m sorry.”
I turned to Edward and said, “I wonder if we could talk alone.”
“No,” said Bernie. “I need Edward.”
I didn’t like it, but what could I do? Throw the guy out the window?
“Why were you still in the bar?”
Edward answered for him. “We’d had a fight. He was spending the night in the storeroom.”
Bernie didn’t look at me, but he nodded agreement as Edward spoke.
“You finished your shift, and the bar closed. What happened next?” I’d left the question as open as I could so that Edward would have difficulty answering for Bernie.
“I... um, I did my side work. Got a blanket outta the office...” He paused, struggling with the pain medication. “... my coat. I got my coat. Went to the storeroom. Put some boxes together. I rolled up my coat up for a pillow.”
“Then what?” I asked.
He looked for a moment like he didn’t understand the question. But he continued, “I slept. Later, I heard noise and everything was on fire.”
“What was the fight about?”
“What fight? There was no -- ”
“It was my fault,” Edward said. “It was stupid. You know, who cleans the kitchen, who does the laundry. That kind of fight.” He sighed heavily. It was a terrible thing to think about, that a fight about chores had led to permanent disfigurement.
I looked back at Bernie. “So, you have no idea who started the fire.”
He shook his head a little, but it caused him pain. “No,” he said.
“A couple of the stools got knocked over before the fire started. Do you have any idea why?”
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Bernie was quiet for a long time. He didn’t look at any of us. “To be honest, I don’t remember very much of what happened. I went to sleep, and everything between then and Sunday afternoon is kind of gone.”
Pain and trauma were good time erasers, but twelve hours seemed like a lot. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. I was out of questions, but we stayed a while longer. Ross and Bernie were friends. It would have been awkward to leave when the questions ran out.
“Are the drugs good?” Ross asked.
“Demerol,” Bernie said.
“Cool.”
Ross offered to bring anything Bernie wanted the next time he came, but Bernie said, “Edward gets me everything. He takes good care of me.”
Ross and I walked out of the room and headed toward the elevator. On our way, we walked by a waiting room. As we did, a kid about twenty-five stuck his head out and said, “Excuse me, are you Ross?”
Ross turned and nodded.
“I’m Larry. Is Edward still in there with him?”
Ross nodded.
“Shit. I haven’t been able to see Bernie at all. How is he? Does he look okay?”
“You should probably go home,” Ross told him. Larry turned and went back to his seat in the waiting room.
When we got to the elevator, I asked Ross, “So, who’s Larry?”
“The reason Bernie was fighting with Edward.”
“I should talk to Edward again. Where does he live?”
“Shit, I should know that,” Ross said. “Bernie used to live up in Evanston, but then he moved in with Edward. I don’t remember if he told me where.”
“Find out for me.”
* * *
Ross had to check in with his boyfriend, so I had the evening free. I decided I’d get a feeling for the Surfside Neighborhood Association by taking in their meeting. They met in the fellowship room of a large, Gothic-looking church on LaSalle near the south end of Lincoln Park. Nearly two dozen people, mostly white, though some black, sat on uncomfortable, metal folding chairs.
Waiting for things to start, I felt like Ava Gardner. Well, not Ava herself, but a character she played in a Sunday afternoon movie Daniel had made me watch. She played a singer on a riverboat who, though she was really black, passed for white. All hell broke loose when people found out the truth. People noticed that I was new. But I passed, so they gave me pleasant smiles, assuming that I was an upset heterosexual just like them, there to run fags out of the neighborhood. I worried that one of the older women might chat me up, eventually pulling out a photo of some unfortunate single daughter or niece in need of a husband. The meeting began, so I was spared.
John Bradford was a red-faced man about my own age with a scraggly beard, aviator glasses, and a potbelly. He was dressed in a three-piece suit. The look didn’t fit. He seemed like a teenager playing at being adult. He stood behind a table and began the meeting briskly. A secretary sat next to him taking notes. The meeting had an obvious structure. He began by discussing the business of the previous meeting in which it had apparently been decided they would begin a letter-writing campaign to their local alderman. He stopped partway through and said, “As I’m sure most of you know, we’ve been given a tremendous opportunity to rid our neighborhood of this unpleasant annoyance.”
The group erupted into sudden applause. Weakly, I applauded with them. I wondered if I was applauding a twist of fate or the actual arsonist sitting somewhere in the room.
“Therefore,” Bradford continued, “we should reconsider the thrust of our letter-writing campaign, as well other actions we planned to take in the next six months. Politicians hate to shut down successful businesses, especially when that business makes the right contributions.
But it’s a much simpler thing to keep a business from opening at all.”
When he finished his statement, he opened the floor for discussion of steps that could be taken to prevent the reopening of Paradise Isle. What I found most disturbing about the discussion was its civility. No one used the terms faggot or queer or even pervert. Instead, they talked about negative influence on the neighborhood, sound pollution, damage to property values; the closest they came to being offensive was when one older woman stood up and began to talk about morality.
Her insistence that they deserved to win because they had the moral high ground was shot out of the water a few minutes later when a young, preppy type stood up and suggested, “In order to rebuild, they’re going to need permits and building inspections and fire inspections and who knows what else. Isn’t there a way we can influence whether the permits are given or the inspections passed?”
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Immediately, Bradford whispered something to the secretary and she stopped taking notes. He stood quietly a moment, measuring his words. “That’s always a possibility, though I’m not sure we have the necessary funds for that kind of... influence.”
Quickly, they realized they didn’t have the funds to “influence persuasively” and began to discuss fundraising opportunities. Bake sales and car washes were suggested. The idea of baking cookies so you could out-bribe a business you didn’t care for made me miss the open, in-your-face hatred of people like my uncle Jack. Somehow it seemed more honest.
I got up and waited outside. In the cold, I leaned against my car across the street from the church.
About four cigarettes later, the meeting broke up and people began to trickle out of the old church. It was odd that I hadn’t interviewed any of them the morning after the fire. Presumably some of them lived in The Shore. I wondered for a moment if they’d had a meeting in which they’d discussed ways to “remove” Paradise Isle from their neighborhood, and then, after the successful removal, had all met for breakfast to celebrate.
Finally, John Bradford came out. The secretary was with him, and the two were speaking softly to each other. I crossed the street and called out his name. He stared at me blankly.
“I’m Nick Nowak, I’m a private investigator looking in to the Paradise Isle fire.”
“And you snuck into our meeting.”
“Your flier said it was open to all.”
“You live in the neighborhood?”
“No, but -- ”
“Then it wasn’t open to you. Please don’t come back.” He turned on his heel and began to walk away.
I followed. “I’d like to ask you some questions about your group.” He hooked his arm in the secretary’s elbow and picked up his speed, practically dragging the woman along with him. “Do you think anyone in your group is capable of arson?”
Ignoring me, he continued to run-walk down the icy street. I hoped the two might slip and give me an opportunity to question them.
“Mr. Bradford, is anyone in your group unstable or prone to violence?”
They turned a corner and stopped in front of a beat-up maroon Chevy Malibu. Bradford fumbled with his keys.
“Come on,” I implored. “Someone got hurt, hurt pretty bad. Do you really think that’s okay?”
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He turned on me, his face so red it seemed to pulse. “If you ever come to another of our meetings, I’m going to call the cops.” Then, shockingly, he spit on me. It hit me on the chest. I suppose it could have been a lot worse, but still I took a disgusted step back. Bradford got into his car and leaned over to unlock the passenger side. They closed up the doors, and he started the car.
As he was about to pull away, I stepped forward and kicked a dent into his door. He turned and stared at me for a moment, then pulled out of the spot and drove away.
* * *
Something was funky with Bernie and his boyfriend, but I didn’t know what. It might have just been that they didn’t want to talk about their personal life. Given the complicated relationship they had going, it wasn’t hard to figure out why they chose to lie. I had to admit, I’d be uncomfortable discussing my relationships -- even without their being part of a criminal investigation.
John Bradford was now highest on my list of suspects. I told Davey about Bradford’s performance the night before. I also mentioned the group’s plan to out-bribe him when it came time to rebuild. He nodded, unsurprised. I doubted it was the first time he’d met that kind of resistance.
I wished I had more to implicate Bradford beyond his dislike of the bar and his bizarre behavior when I tried to talk to him. Neither were things I could take to the arson squad and get a decent hearing.
“He’s never threatened you directly, has he? Sent you letters? Anything?”
“Once in awhile we get letters from freaks, but they don’t sign them. Maybe they’re from him. I don’t know.”
“Do you still have the letters?”
“Huh? Oh, no,” he scoffed. “Why would I want to keep them?”
Davey was a wreck. All through lunch he’d been distracted and had difficulty following the things I was saying. I began to wonder if he’d taken something, or rather a little too much something, but then I thought, “No, the club is his life and it’s gone for now. Someone took it away.” The poor guy was lost.