One Dead Drag Queen (26 page)

“They’re copies,” Kearn said. “I’d rather you didn’t let them out of your hands, but you can keep them for now. I’m certainly building up points here for a possible interview.”

“Yeah, you are,” I agreed. He left.

After he was gone, I sat for half an hour, remote control in hand, and inspected the tapes. I couldn’t figure out what it was Myrtle Mae had seen that he wanted to tell us about.

I found Scott rummaging in the freezer for some ice cream when the phone rang. It was John Werner.

“Have you heard about . . . ,” I began.

“Yes.” John sounded awful. “I could use some company.”

I’d known John almost as long as I had Myrtle Mae. I told him we’d be right over.

I said to Scott, “I’m beat, but it’s only just nine o’clock. Let’s go see Werner.”

Scott said, “I’m sure it won’t take long for the security guard to get here.”

I was annoyed at how rapidly Scott always thought of calling the security firm, but he’s nothing if not consistent. Only Greg Maddox in baseball can put a pitch where he wants it more dependably than Scott. If consistency were a virtue, Scott would be a saint. Of course, if being a slob was a virtue, I’d be a saint. You gotta go with your strengths.

The guard picked us up in ten minutes. Werner lived on Fullerton between Clark and Halsted. There is no parking in that part of town unless you have one of the neighborhood stickers. We finally found a spot in the minuscule Tower Records lot on Beldon and walked over.

Werner’s home was furnished much like Myrtle Mae’s. A few simple but solid antiques. He and I hugged as we entered
the house. He looked as if he’d been crying. We sat near the picture window looking out onto Fullerton. The trees outside had almost completely lost their leaves.

“I can’t believe he’s dead. I never knew anyone so vibrant. We’d known each other for over fifty years. Longer than I knew anyone except my parents and my brother. That’s a long time.”

“Were you ever lovers?” Scott asked.

“Never lovers, not really, but we’ve been dear friends for years. He and I had brunch at the Drake Hotel every Sunday since before the dinosaurs.” John sighed. “We met in high school. We were each other’s first sexual partners. We were both from Watseka, Illinois. If the cornfields could have talked our senior year of high school, what tales they would have to tell. We weren’t run out of town, not literally, but we both fled together.”

“I heard he ran away from home,” I said.

“Numerous times, but his family spent a great deal of money to get him back. He was a rebel from the first I knew him. He was gorgeous back then. Not as effeminate as he put on later, although he was always a little nellie, but he was very pretty. A heartbreaker.”

I asked, “Did he really have all those strange jobs I heard about?”

Werner smiled. “All those and more. He was always willing to take a risk. He was a window washer on high-rise apartment houses. He worked maintenance for a few months on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

I said, “I don’t remember him having much qualification for any of the jobs I heard about.”

“A lot of them didn’t require a lot of skill, but if they did, it didn’t bother him. He would lie if he had to. It was even
better if the job irritated his family. Sometimes the two motivations became pretty entangled. You know he was in the service during the Korean War?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“He always claimed it was in one of those highly secretive branches of the service, some kind of special intelligence unit. He’d always laugh and say if he told me, he’d have to kill me. I never took it seriously.”

“Is the world ready for James Bond disguised as a drag queen?” I asked.

Werner smiled slightly. “He claimed the most daring thing he ever did to defy his parents was to join a Trappist monastery.”

“Why was that so terrible?” Scott asked.

“His family were rock-ribbed, fundamentalist Protestants at a time when and a place where that meant intense hatred for Catholics and the pope. That’s when they cut him off for good. For over forty years he had no contact with his family.”

I thought of the positive relationship I have with my family and the complications we’ve encountered with Scott’s. Compared to Myrtle Mae, we were fairly lucky.

“All those strange jobs were actually very necessary. He had to eat. But even in the most macho of jobs, he was always himself. He was never phony. He also never lasted long in any of them. He just wouldn’t compromise. He had an awful tough exterior. He had to have, but inside he was always a sweetheart, a pussycat, a gentle soul.” John used a tissue to wipe his eyes. “Who would kill him?”

“We want to know that too.”

“The police talked to me. They wanted to know where I was this morning. I spend one day a week volunteering at the Harold Washington Library as a guide. I have everyone who was on a tour today as a witness.”

“Had he had any major fights with anyone?” I asked.

“I have no clue. He’s done a lot of activist things over the years that I thought were risky. I warned him over and over again about taking public stands, but he said someone had to do it. I always asked why he had to be the one making statements to the media and being so visible. He made politicians uncomfortable, but he didn’t care. He was tough. I understand how valuable it is to take a stand, but not to get killed over it.”

“He and I worked for a lot of the same gay rights causes,” I said, “but that’s seldom lethal. There might be a stinging barb on a talk show, but nothing really deadly.”

Scott said, “He claimed he ate at the Fattatuchis’ deli quite often. Is that true?”

“Yes. Thank God he got out in time. Mostly he stayed in of an evening. He was on medicine for high blood pressure and had pills to help lower his cholesterol. He had all the health problems associated with getting older and being a great deal overweight.”

“He never mentioned that,” I said.

“He wouldn’t. He didn’t sleep much anymore. He stayed home and was addicted to overnight news shows. He taped every program that had any connection with gay people.” Again John dabbed at his eyes. “He was just trying to make the world a little better place and somebody killed him.”

I said, “He left us a message about the overnight news. We didn’t know what it meant.”

“He left me one as well.” Werner tapped the play button on his answering machine. Myrtle Mae’s voice came on: “John, did you watch the late news overnight? The coverage of the bombing? I’ve got to get a copy of that. You never watch the news. I’ve got to make some calls. I think I’m onto something.”

“Do you know what that meant?” Werner asked.

“We got the same kind of message. We don’t know either.”

Werner knew absolutely nothing that would help us find Myrtle Mae’s killer. We stayed and offered him sympathy for as long as was comfortable. On the way home I felt miserably depressed. I would miss Myrtle Mae.

Scott prowled around the apartment cleaning. While he is a neatnick almost to a fault, and I am a slob to a fault, he usually confines his cleaning binges to particular times of the day and week. For half an hour I tried to read myself to sleep with indifferent success. I found him scrubbing one of the guest bathrooms.

“Problem?” I asked. “You usually don’t clean at nearly midnight.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just worried about us and danger, and I keep thinking about the scene of the explosion and how close I came to losing you. I’m afraid I’ve begun to worry as much as you do.”

“And that’s bad?”

“You’re so good at worrying for both of us.”

I let it go at his light comment. Something was bugging him, but whatever it was would take time to emerge. I’d sensed it at the hospital. I wished he would just tell me. I didn’t have the energy or desire to push him just then.

I held him close. He put the cleansers and disinfectant away, and we went to bed and cuddled briefly. I felt great comfort in his closeness as I always do, but that good feeling didn’t help me get to sleep. I too remembered the scene and how close my own death had come. I lay awake far into the night trying to shut down my mind.

23

The next morning Angus Thieme’s terrorism contact, Owen Harvey, paged us through the answering service. We returned his call immediately.

“I’ve got an address for Omega Collins. If you want to talk to her, you might give it a try.”

“Has she been named as a suspect?” I asked.

“The police have questioned her several times. I don’t know how significant that is. I can’t go myself. There’s a threat in Iraq again. Nothing will come of it, but I’ve got to go. I tried to call Brandon Kearn to follow this up, but I couldn’t get hold of him this morning.”

“He didn’t answer his pager?”

“Nope. I gotta go. My plane leaves in fifty minutes, and I need to find a cab that can get me to O’Hare on time.”

I thanked him for the tip.

I tried calling Kearn but had no luck. We decided to go see her ourselves. We got our security person and drove over. Omega was staying just across the border from Chicago
in Cicero. We knocked on the door on the south side of a duplex that looked as if it would need teams of builders working for years to get it in livable shape. When we knocked, a tall, skinny teenager with ghastly acne answered the door. I had never seen larger zits on a human being, and that’s saying a lot from someone who teaches high school. I felt sorry for him.

We asked for Omega. His voice squeaked as he called over his shoulder, “Ma, more visitors.”

A woman, thin to the point of emaciation, strode toward us from the interior of the house. She gave us a half smile. She wore a flower-print dress that drooped on her frame. Her skin seemed more gray than pink. Her hair hung to just below her ears as if a large bowl had been hung over her and someone had lopped off all the sides leaving a small space for her facial features.

We introduced ourselves.

“Lyle Gibson said you’d been to see him. He thought you’d find out where I was staying. Although, he said there would be three of you. Would you like to come in?”

We entered. The hardwood floors creaked loudly. Any stain, varnish, or wax had long since worn off them. She led us into a room that was furnished with only simple straight-back chairs. She made no apology or comment about the home or the furnishings. A cross with a grotesquely suffering Christ hung on one wall. The other had a picture of Christ with a glowing red heart on top of his chest and a golden halo surrounding his head.

We sat down. She folded her hands in her lap and gave us a slight smile. “Gentlemen?”

I said, “I know we aren’t the police, but we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“It doesn’t matter to me if you are police or reporters or
lost souls. I am at peace. You may ask whatever you will.”

“Did you blow up the Human Services Clinic?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did you have any part in the bombing at all?”

“No. I don’t believe in violence.”

“You know that violence happens at all the clinics you protest at.”

“Violence happens when people try to kill children. I am not the cause of it. I don’t begin it. I don’t believe in it. Jesus brought a message of love.”

Her voice sounded like a computer-enhanced tin whistle. I was horrified at the lack of emotion.