"He did it once standing in Dot's front yard and once standing in the parking lot outside the Green Room. It's a habit Greco has. Touching faces. He's a sweet, affectionate, uninhibited guy.
It's no automatic High Homintern cocktail-party-kiss kind of thing. It's just something he can't help doing. Unconventional, but winning. Not that there's anything calculating in the gesture.
You can't not like him."
"'Like.' Right."
I turned onto Colvin, south into the Pine Hills section of the city. I said, "Now who's not trusting whom?"
He threw his head around, sulked, threw his head around some more. Then he looked over at me in utter amazement. "But… McWhirter must have known!"
"Ah-ha."
"Presumably McWhirter is familiar with his lover's finger."
"A safe assumption."
"But then- Why did he lie? Dot told me McWhirter identified the finger as Greco's."
"Beats me. Before the day is over I'll ask him."
We swung left onto Lincoln.
"And you didn't say anything because…?"
"I figured the news should be broken to the authorities by the loved one. The fact that it wasn't seemed to me a piece of information almost as fascinating as the fact of the finger itself. I think I 55 know why McWhirter didn't speak up. But I'm not sure."
"I'm surprised Bowman didn't doubt his word. Press him on it. Maybe take him downtown for a lineup. 'Mr. McWhirter, is any of these eight fingers that of the man with whom you participate in an un-Godly relationship?'"
"Bowman will rely on the lab people," I said. "And they'll most likely come up with nothing, because I doubt that Greco has ever been fingerprinted. He hasn't been in the armed forces, and he's probably never been arrested. Even in demonstrations that turn messy Greco's not the type cops go after. Anyway, until I've discussed the matter with McWhirter, let's keep mum about it. If Ned knew, he might draw some hasty erroneous conclusions. To the effect, for instance, that this is some kind of scam McWhirter's cooked up."
"Or some hasty correct ones."
"There's that possibility. But I think it's something else."
"What?"
"Let me run it by McWhirter first. It's just a guess. It has to do with McWhirter's frequently justifiable glum outlook on the world."
Timmy sat sweating energetically and drumming his fingers on the dashboard as I turned onto Buchanan. "But if it wasn't Greco's finger," he said after a time, "then whose finger was it?"
"Good question."
Lyle Barner's living room, on the second floor of an old soot brown frame house, was full of dark oversized "Mediterranean-style" furniture with a plastic finish. Ischia via Dow Chemical. The gleaming leviathan of a bar was from the same discount house the couch and chairs had come from, as was the console TV set with an Atari hookup, around which the other furniture had been arranged. A carpet of dust covered everything except the center section of the couch and the midsection of the coffee table in front of it where Barner propped his legs. The only reading matter was the Times Union TV section. The room contained no decorative objects, artwork, or photographs. It was the room of a man with no past he wanted to remember and no future he could bring himself to believe in.
Ignoring Timmy, whom I'd just introduced, Lyle said, "You want a beer? Christ, I hate this fucking weather."
"Thanks, but we'd be blotto after half a can. We haven't slept."
"Uh-huh. Well, I'll have one."
Lyle Barner was a squat, well-muscled man with an incipient beer paunch and a lot of straw-colored hair on his shoulders. Both the mouth and eyes of his nicely arranged big-featured face slanted down at the corners with a kind of ferociously controlled tension, as if he were frozen in a pose for a Mathew Brady daguerreotype. Barner's curly hair was lush and full except for a half-dollar-sized bald spot on top, which I had once had the opportunity to observe for several minutes. He was clad, as he lumbered into the kitchen and then back to us again, in black nylon bikini briefs.
I was seated with Timmy on the couch. Dropping into an easy chair and slinging one leg over the armrest, Lyle looked over at me-only me-and said, "Been a while since I've seen you in the flesh, Strachey. Glad to see you're sexy as ever."
"What did you find out?" I said.
He swigged from the beer can. "You know, Strachey, I haven't had a whole lot of sleep either.
Except I was out protecting the public last night. What were you doing? Out partying as usual, it looks like."
He glanced briefly, dismissively, at Timmy, as if to say, Where'd you pick this up? I'd had some 56 half-formed cockeyed idea that it might be helpful for Lyle Barner to observe two healthy, relaxed gay men more or less at peace with themselves and each other, secure in their loving relationship and in the knowledge that its evident riches were a goal nearly all gay men could aspire to and achieve.
But I was beginning to suspect I'd picked the wrong day for an object lesson of this particular sort, or the wrong couple to employ in it.
Timmy said sourly, "It's hot in here. I think I'll wait in the car. A pleasure meeting you, Lyle." He shot me a look.
Lyle nodded once and continued to watch me carefully while Timmy got up and walked out the door. We listened to his footfall on the staircase. The downstairs door slammed.
"Hey, that one's real cute," Lyle said. "But, tell me, Don. What would your lover think?"
"Your bitterness is unattractive, Lyle. You should work to get rid of it. You might become an attractive man."
He winced and looked away.
I said, "Are you going to help me out or not? A life may depend on it. What did you find out?"
He sat staring at the wall for a long moment, the emotion building in him. Then, still not looking at me, he said, "I'm bitter because.. because nobody will love me." His face contorted and he shut his eyes. He said, "I want somebody to love me." He fought to regain control, then sat not moving, hardly breathing, his muscular left leg spasming crazily.
"Right now, you're not lovable, Lyle. Self-pity is off-putting. Nobody loves a whiner for long."
His voice breaking, he said, "You loved me once."
An old story. I knew it. I said, "We sucked each other's cocks. That's just friendliness. I don't sneer at it, far from it, but most of the time I'd rank it only a notch or two above helping a stranger change a tire. Well, maybe six or eight notches. And yes, I know, it's a whole lot more fun. Plus, you don't have to wash your hands with Fels-Naphtha afterwards. Though, of course, after changing a tire you don't have to brush your teeth. On the one hand this, on the other hand that."
He wasn't about to be humored. He said, "It's as close to love as I've ever come."
"But not as close as you'll ever get."
He snorted.
"You've got to get out of Albany, Lyle. You'll never do it here. Go… west, maybe. In San Francisco they're recruiting gay cops. Go there. You've got a good record. Go to some half-civilized place and quit hating yourself and taking it out on other people. Find out how fine a man you can be, and go be that person for a while. You'll like it. Other people will like it."
"I can't," he said, shaking his head miserably. "I've never been anywhere. I can't."
"I know someone in San Francisco who'll help you. I'll call him."
"No, don't. I'll never do it."
"Of course, it'd be hard. But you owe it to yourself. And to Clyde Boo, from Yank-your-Tank, Arkansas, or whoever, who's out there waiting for you. You'll find that life with Clyde won't be easy either. But it'll be a hell of a lot easier than this."
He stared at the empty wall.
"In the meantime," I said, "you've got to help me out."
He looked over at me now, his eyes wet. "Will you come and lay down with me first?"
"Well, gee, Lyle… gee. Actually, I think Miss Manners would advise against it. I mean, with my lover waiting down in the car and all. I think you have a good bit to learn about timing-about the social graces. I'm pretty sure we'd both feel very, very bad afterwards. Also, these days I'm a 57 bit overextended in that department."