That makes two of us, I thought. He wrote me a check for a thousand dollars. We shook hands.
I went right to work. Jim, my assistant, was out of town on an industrial-espionage case—he specializes in electronics. So I was on my own. Ordinarily I don't carry iron on an M.P. case, but this one smelled of danger. I put on my snub-nosed 38, in a shoulder holster. Then I unlocked a drawer and put three joints of the best Colombian, laced with hash, into my pocket. Nothing like a joint to break the ice and stir the memory. I also took a deck of heroin. It buys more than money sometimes.
Most of the addresses were in the SoHo area. That meant lofts, and that often means the front door is locked. So I started with an address on Sixth Street.
She opened the door right away, but she kept the chain on. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes running, and she was snuffling, waiting for the Man. She looked at me with hatred.
I smiled. "Expecting someone else?"
"You a cop?"
"No. I'm a private investigator hired by the family to find Jerry Green. You knew him."
"Look, I don't have to talk to you."
"No, you don't have to. But you might want to." I showed her the deck of heroin. She undid the chain.
The place was filthy—dishes stacked in a sink, cockroaches running over them. The bathtub was in the kitchen and hadn't been used for a long time. I sat down gingerly in a chair with the springs showing. I held the deck in my hand where she could see it. "You got any pictures of him?"
She looked at me and she looked at the heroin. She rummaged in a drawer, and tossed two pictures onto a coffee table that wobbled. "Those should be worth something."
They were. One showed Jerry in drag, and he made a beautiful girl. The other showed him standing up naked with a hard-on. "Was he gay?"
"Sure. He liked getting fucked by Puerto Ricans and having his picture took."
"He pay you?"
"Sure, twenty bucks. He kept most of the pictures."
"Where'd he get the money?"
"I don't know."
She was lying. I went into my regular spiel. "Now look, I'm not a cop. I'm a private investigator paid by his family. I'm paid to find him, that's all. He's been missing for two months." I started to put the heroin back into my pocket and that did it.
"He was pushing C."
I tossed the deck onto the coffee table. She locked the door behind me.
Later that evening, over a joint, I interviewed a nice young gay couple, who simply adored Jerry.
"Such a sweet boy ..."
"So understanding ..."
"Understanding?"
"About gay people. He even marched with us...."
"And look at the postcard he sent us from Athens." It was a museum postcard showing the statue of a nude youth found at Kouros. "Wasn't that cute of him?"
Very cute, I thought.
I interviewed his steady girl friend, who told me he was all mixed up.
"He had to get away from his mother's influence and find himself. We talked it over."
I interviewed everyone I could find in the address book. I talked to waiters and bartenders all over the SoHo area: Jerry was a nice boy ... polite ... poised ... a bit reserved. None of them had an inkling of his double life as a coke pusher and a homosexual transvestite. I see I am going to need some more heroin on this one. That's easy. I know some narco boys who me a favor. It takes an ounce and a ticket to San Francisco to buy some names from the junky chick.
Seek and you shall find. I nearly found an ice pick in my stomach. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Often it wasn't opened unto me. But I finally found the somebody who: a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican kid named Kiki, very handsome and quite fond of Jerry in his way. Psychic too, and into Macambo magic. He told me Jerry had the mark of death on him.
"What was his source for the coke?"
His face closed over. "I don't know."
"Can't blame you for not knowing. May I suggest to you that his source was a federal narc?"
His deadpan went deader. "I didn't tell you anything."
"Did he hear voices? Voices giving him orders?"
"I guess he did. He was controlled by something."
I gave him my card. "If you ever need anything let me know."
Mr. Green showed up the next morning with a stack of photos. The questionnaire I had given him had been neatly filled out on a typewriter. He also brought a folio of sketches and a green knitted scarf. The scarf reeked of death.
I glanced at the questionnaire. Born April 18, 1951, in Little America, Wyoming. "Admiral Byrd welcomes you aboard the Deep Freeze Special." I looked through the photos: Jerry as a baby ... Jerry on a horse ... Jerry with a wide sunlit grin holding up a string of trout ... graduation pictures ... Jerry as the Toff in the high school play A Night at the Inn. They all looked exactly as they should look. Like he was playing the part expected of him. There were about fifty recent photos, all looking like Jerry.
Take fifty photos of anyone. There will be some photos where the face is so different you can hardly recognize the subject. I mean most people have many faces. Jerry had one. Don Juan says anyone who always looks like the same person isn't a person. He is a person impersonator.
I looked at Jerry's sketches. Good drawing, no talent. Empty and banal as sunlight. There were also a few poems, so bad I couldn't read them. Needless to say, I didn't tell Mr. Green what I had found out about Jerry's sex and drug habits. I just told him that no one I had talked to had heard from Jerry since his disappearance, and that I was ready to leave for Athens at once if he still wanted to retain me. Money changed hands.
At the Athens Hilton I got Dimitri on the phone and told him I was looking for the Green boy.
"Ah yes ... we have so many of these cases ... our time and resources are limited."
"I understand. But I've got a bad feeling about this one. He had some kinky habits."
"S-M?"
"Sort of ... and underworld connections...." I didn't want to mention C over the phone.
"If I find anything out I'll let you know."
"Thanks. I'm going out to Spetsai tomorrow to have a look around. Be back on Thursday...."
I called Skouras in Spetsai. He's the tourist agent there. He owns or leases villas and rents out apartments during the season. He organizes tours. He owns the discotheque. He is the first man any traveler to Spetsai sees, and the last, since he is also the agent for transport.
"Yes, I know about it. Had a call from Dimitri. Glad to help ay way I can. You need a room?"
"If possible I'd like the room he had."
"You can have any room you want ... the season is over."
For once the hovercraft was working. I was in luck. The hovercraft takes an hour and the boat takes six.
Yes, Skouras remembered Jerry. Jerry arrived with some young people he'd met on the boat—two Germans with rucksacks and a Swedish girl with English boyfriend. They stayed at one of Skouras's villas on the beach—the end villa, where the road curves out along the sea wall. I knew the place. I'd stayed there once three years earlier in 1970.
"Anything special about the others?"
"Nothing. Looked like thousands of other young people who swarm over the islands every summer. They stayed for a week. The others went on to Lesbos. Jerry went back to Athens alone."
Where did they eat? Where did they take coffee? Skouras knew. He knows everything that goes on in Spetsai.
"Go to the discotheque?"
"Every night. The boy Jerry was a good dancer."
"Anybody in the villa now?"
"Just the caretaker and his wife."
He gave me the keys. I noticed a worn copy of The Magus by John Fowles. As soon as anyone walks into his office, Skouras knows whether he should lend him the book. He has his orders. Last time I was there he lent me the book and I read it. Even rode out on a horse to look at the house of the Magus and fell off the horse on the way back. I pointed to the book. "By any chance ..."