I thought of Timmy. I figured he'd probably end up in some dumb orgy somewhere that night, and the next day enter the priesthood, a dry-cleaning order, no doubt. And I would find Greco, set him free, and run off with him. To Morocco, maybe, where I could do consulting work with Interpol while Peter reclined on a veranda by the sea and wrote-mediocre poetry. That's what I'd do.
I laid my head against the side of the bed where McWhirter slept and realized how utterly bone-weary I was. I yawned, then made myself think startlingly wakeful thoughts. It wasn't hard.
I replaced the poetry book in the backpack and came up with another volume, a hardbound book whose final pages were blank, but which otherwise had been filled in with handwritten dated short paragraphs. It was Greco's journal. A private matter ordinarily, but under the special circumstances I began to read the recent entries.
July 30 — Staying at Mike Calabria's in Providence. Air heavy, hot, suffocating. Mike big, noisy, generous, funny. Fenton heartsick at reception in Rhode Island. Newspaper refers to him as
"Frisco Minority Activist." What that? Eleven men sign on; $12 raised.
Aug. 2 — New Haven hot, Yalies cool. No students, but two cafeteria workers sign pledge. Stayed with Tom Bittner, here for a year researching colonial anti-gay laws. Great seeing Tom. Cicely still with him; I slept on porch.
Aug. 5 — The Big Apple. Gay men everywhere — and nowhere. Temperature inversion over city produces vomit-green cloud. Could barely breathe. Fenton went unannounced to office of New York Times editor, but…
McWhirter groaned, raised his head, blinked at me. I let the journal fall back into the knapsack.
I said, "Just the man I want to talk to."
"What? What the fuck are you doing in here? Where's-? Oh, God."
"That wasn't Peter's finger in the package. You would have seen that. You said nothing. Why?"
He did a double take, then bridled. "What the fuck is going on? What time is it?" He grabbed at a wristwatch on the bedside table, glared at it, then wrapped it around the circle of white flesh on his wrist. "Christ, it's not even eleven yet."
"You ignored my question."
He lay back against the headboard and examined me sullenly. Suddenly he snapped, "Of course I knew it wasn't Peter's finger! Of course I would know that!"
"You didn't mention it to anybody. That strikes me as odd. It gets me to thinking."
He blinked, looked alarmed. "Jesus! Do the cops know?"
"Know what, Fenton?"
"The finger-that it wasn't-"
"Where did you get it? I've been wondering. Men's fingers are hard to come by. Not as rare as… hens' teeth. But rare."
"Where did I get it?"
"Or whoever."
He sat up with a jerk and Hung his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet stank. I backed away and eased onto a desk chair.
McWhirter's face had reddened. He sputtered, "I know what you think."
"What do I think?"
"That I set this up."
"Why would I think that?"
"Because I-You must have found out that I play the game by rules I didn't make. Rules that I don't like but that somebody else made, and for now they are the rules."
"Your nose is a little cockeyed. I hadn't noticed it before, but now I do. How come?"
In his confusion, he couldn't help grinning daffily. "You heard that story? Great. Well, so what?
It's true. Other people had been bloodied by the cops that night, the fucking savages. But those cops had taped over their badge numbers. The one who hit me hadn't. And I had his number.
Simple justice."
"Simpleminded justice. You became one of them."
"Ho, Jesus!" He shook his head, looked at me as if I were a bivalve. "The same old liberal bullshit. You should be a judge, Strachey, or write newspaper editorials."
I said, "You're digging your own grave."
"What?"
"This so-called kidnapping is right in character for you. You stage the abduction, stir up lots of attention and sympathy for the strike campaign-and collect a hundred grand to finance the rest of the drive. I'll bet Dot Fisher doesn't know about it though, does she? Dot's unconventional, but still a bit old-fashioned in certain inconvenient respects, right?"
He stared at me open-mouthed. "You think that? You think I'd do that to Dot?"
"So, where did the finger come from? Explain."
"Look… I…" He was sweating, fidgeting, balling up little wads of chest hair between his fingers. "Look, it is true that I knew it wasn't Peter's finger in that box. Of course I knew. But the reason I kept my mouth shut about it was not the reason you think. I just thought-I figured that the kidnappers-cops probably-were using the finger to scare us. To scare Dot especially, and impress on all of us just how vicious they could be.
"And since we were already having a hard enough time getting that Bowman asshole to believe us, to take Peter's disappearance seriously, it seemed better if I just… kept my mouth shut. And also-Well, shit, I was afraid somebody like you would have heard about-about my reputation.
And that you'd think Peter and I set the whole thing up. Just like you do now. God, that's the truth!"
"Uh-huh. That's what I thought too, Fenton. At first. When I saw that the finger wasn't Peter's, and knew that you must have known it wasn't, I guessed that you were keeping mum in order to feed Bowman's sense of urgency. But I didn't know so much about you then. Now I do. And I have become skeptical. Highly so."
"How did you know it wasn't Peter's finger?"
"Dunno. Guess I'm just one of those people who once he's seen a finger never forgets it."
"Do the cops know this? What you think?"
"Not yet."
"Don't tell them. Please. It's not true! You'll just put Peter in more danger!"
I said, "Fenton, you're a self-avowed ruthlessly devious liar and con man. All for the larger cause. Wicked means to a just end. Pulling a stunt like this would be right in character for you. It fits the pattern."
"That is not true. You're talking like Bowman now. Use friends like that? Brothers and sisters?
Never!"
"It's not your friends you're using. It's me. Strachey, the Millpond flack. I'm the one who came up with the hundred grand."
"Yes, but-I wouldn't have known it would work out that way, would I? When the ransom note came-and the finger-it was sent to Dot. Obviously by someone who knew that she would be able to get hold of a lot of money from Millpond if she absolutely had to. Somebody so rotten he didn't care at all if Dot lost her home. Do you think I would do that?"
"Nnn. I don't know."
"Or Peter? You've seen what kind of person Peter is. Would he do a thing like that to Dot? Or to anybody?"
"No. I expect not. Unless… unless he didn't know. You could have gotten rid of Peter for a few days on some pretext while you pulled off this elaborate heist to raise money to finance the rest of your bankrupt campaign. Sent him off to do advance work in the next town or something.
And arrange for some other cohorts, up from the city or wherever, to stage the abduction at the Green Room last night."
He peered at me with disgust. "Oh, yes. I have this troupe of actors-McWhirter's Old Vic constantly at my disposal. Sheeeit. And when Peter finds out how I've all of a sudden gotten hold of a hundred thousand dollars? Then what?"
"Nnn. Yeah. Peter would probably give it back."