He asked for a third Scotch and tonic; I kept nibbling at my bourbon and Coke.
Then he went on. “Anyway, my father may have looked upon my life-style as a conscious rejection of everything he stood for, as a man. And of course it wasn’t.” He laughed, raucously. “It was a subconscious rejection.” He laughed again, but softly. “I did feel a conscious bitterness about my mother’s death. I did blame him, at least partially. But I didn’t want him out of my life. He was the only parent I had left. I would’ve liked for him to accept me. That, I would’ve liked very much.”
The third Scotch and tonic came, and he started right in on it.
I said, “I think your father was proud of what you’ve achieved.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Possibly you’re right. I sensed, or hoped I sensed, he was pleased with what I’d accomplished, proud of my fashion designs being shown in major cities here and in Europe, of my name having gained a certain recognizability of its own, of my financial success, especially my financial success. For a Depression child like Roscoe Kane, money is the major measure.”
“You probably got your artistic bent from him.”
“No doubt,” he said. “I didn’t get it from my mother. She had few talents-just her good looks, which started to go on her when her mental problems took hold. But we’ve been down that path before; let’s go elsewhere.”
“What did you and your father talk about?”
“Last night, you mean? We… we made ammends, you might say. I can’t go so far as to say he came right out and accepted me for what I am-admitted he knew I was gay and that he could accept me as such. But he did say something that approximated that; well, two things, actually.”
“What were they?”
He smiled on one side of his face. “First”-and he imitated his father’s gruff voice, to perfection-“Jerome, sex is overrated.”
I smiled. “What was the other thing?”
Jerome shrugged, looked in the drink. “Just that it was nice to have a son.”
I sat and looked into my bourbon and Coke and pretended not to notice him wipe the tear from beneath one china-blue eye.
“He was chatting with Cynthia Crystal,” he said, “when I left him in the lobby around nine-thirty. That was the last time I saw him.”
“Cynthia Crystal?”
“Yes-the author.”
“I know her. How do you know her, Jerome?”
“I don’t-I recognized her from a talk show. Fine writer.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Oddly-when I glanced back, their conversation seemed to have heated up.”
“Really? Were they arguing?”
He thought about that. “I wouldn’t go that far. ‘Having words’ is more like it.”
“How did your father happen to know Cynthia?”
He shrugged, draining the Scotch and tonic. “I don’t know that he did.”
This morning, when I’d spoken to Cynthia, she hadn’t mentioned speaking to Roscoe Kane. From the detached way she’d referred to him, I’d assumed she’d never met the man.
“I know why I envy you,” Jerome said suddenly, softly.
“Why?”
“Not because you were close to him. Nobody, except perhaps Evelyn the Grotesque, was close to him. And then only when they were in their cups….”
Silence.
Then he said: “You were the son he always wanted me to be.”
I tried to bridge the awkwardness gap. “Look-it wasn’t that way… I was just a fan.”
“No. Much more than that. You were a surrogate son. And you had access to him in a way I never did. You pleased him in ways I never could. And I envy you that. I resent you for that.”
There wasn’t anything to say, so I didn’t.
He said, “Now. We had a bargain. You’re to tell me about you and my father, last night.”
“Why, are you suspicious?”
He blinked. “Suspicious?”
“About the circumstances surrounding his death. Is that why you’re asking questions?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said ingenuously. “I just want to know what my father said.”
“What he said?”
He leaned across the table and looked at me with his father’s eyes and the earnestness and trembling lower lip of a child. “About me. Did he mention me? Did he say anything about me?”
I was one of the last to see his father alive; he wanted to know if he’d been in his father’s thoughts….
So I told him Roscoe had mentioned what a wonderful evening he’d had with him, that it was obvious he thought the world of Jerome.
And Jerome sighed, and said thank you, told me I could reach him at Troy’s till he left for the Milwaukee services Monday, and left.
I just sat there for a while, shaking my head.
Then just as I’d gotten up to go, a hand settled on my shoulder and I glanced back.
“Let’s talk, asshole.”
And I punched Gregg Gorman in the stomach.
11
I don’t make a practice of punching people in the stomach, or anywhere else for that matter. Even the likes of Gregg Gorman. I was immediately embarrassed and sorry-even if the feel of my fist sinking into his beer belly had been satisfying, in a mindless, macho, Gat Garson sort of way.
He didn’t go down or anything; he just doubled over. Nobody except that table of Sardini, Christian and a few others had seen it. So the management didn’t come rushing over and throw me out the door on my butt. Nor did a John Wayne-type table-and-chair-smashing brawl break out. Gorman wasn’t the type to retaliate, except verbally-or with a two-by-four while you were asleep.
He held his stomach and breathed hard and then pretended to be hurt worse than he was. The beady eyes under the bushy eyebrows were full of dollar signs as he said, “I’m gonna sue you, Mallory, you little creep.”
“Shouldn’t you call the cops first, and get me charged with assault and battery?”
“Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I will.”
“Better round up your witnesses.”
He glanced over at the table where Sardini and crew sat, smiling, talking, back in their own conversation. “They’re friends of yours,” he said.
“That’s true.”
“Maybe we should just step outside,” he said, puffing himself up like a squat little bear, “and finish this…” And there was a blank space where his favorite term of endearment for me would’ve gone, had he had the nerve to use it again.
I nodded toward the door. “There’s an alley behind the hotel.”
He rubbed a hand over his face; indeterminate flecks drifted down from his goatee-dandruff, food, whatever.
And then he sat down at the table.
I stood looking at him.
He looked up and got a completely false smile going and said, “Maybe I deserved that punch in the belly. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called you that. And maybe I screwed you that time, a little, where your pal Wheeler was concerned. So I’m willing to forgive and forget this little incident. Come on, Mallory-sit down.”
I sat. But I didn’t forgive, or forget.
“You said you wanted to talk,” I said. I wanted to talk to him, too. But I’d let him go first….
He shrugged, elaborately. “I just wanted to straighten you out on some shit.”
Classy guy; a publishing magnate with a real way with words. He used to own used-car lots, and had reportedly made a fortune or two before he somewhat self-indulgently turned to the pursuit of publishing in the mystery field, having been a fan since his teens. I bought his books, but I wouldn’t buy a used car from him.
“What is it you want to straighten me out on, Gorman?”