"It's unfortunate," he mused. "But it's no one's fault. Not you, not I. A tragic, tragic accident.
None of us is to blame."
I told him about Jerry Deem. He went white.
I said, "You knew."
"That's absurd!" he blurted, with no conviction whatever.
"Your pal Murchison, a Millpond partner and chief supplier of construction materials for Millpond projects, mentioned to you in June that he had an accountant with his hand in the till and the authorities were going to have to be called in. When you found out the financial sleight-of-hand artist was the one and only Jerry Deem, you suggested to Murchison that there were other ways of handling it. In fact, you insisted on it. You offered Murchison Dale Overdorf."
His cheek twitched.
"You didn't want to unleash Overdorf on Dot Fisher directly," I said. "You knew how stubborn she was and how much public sympathy would be aroused by the beating of an old lady. If it ever somehow got traced back to you, Millpond would suffer bad PR, bad enough maybe to fatally unravel the deals you had with the planning boards and environmental agencies. But Jerry Deem was another matter, wasn't he?"
Twitch, twitch.
"You could put all the pressure you wanted on Deem without having to worry about his blowing the whistle, and then hope that he would come up with the means, of whatever gruesome sort, for persuading Dot to sell. It nearly worked. Deem, by way of his alternating threats and promises to his family, inadvertently, or advertently, triggered his son Joey into menacing Dot with the graffiti and threatening letters and phone calls. And by Deem's holding out lurid promises of vast wealth to Duane Andrus as soon as Dot Fisher folded and Deem sold his property to you, the kidnapping and death of Peter Greco were set in motion."
His jaw was so tight I thought it might shatter if I touched it. But I'd decided to deal with Trefusis's jaw later, whenever my head stopped throbbing.
"You didn't count, of course, on matters becoming quite so messy as they did," I said. "When you brought me in, the only sacrificial lamb in all of this was supposed to have been Joey Deem. You must have guessed that he was the graffiti artist, and I was to nab him and earn Millpond's goodwill from Dot, who would gratefully relent and sell out, and Joey Deem would get a slap on the wrist as a juvenile offender.
"Except, you blew it, Crane. There was a side of Jerry Deem's life you didn't know about. You didn't check him out well enough and find out just how damaged and volatile a human being you were lighting a fuse under. Deem was more canny and driven in his efforts to cover up certain of his ongoing socially embarrassing affairs than you'll ever dream of being. You found out he was unstable and vulnerable, but not how unstable he was, and that he was beholden to people who were absolutely batty. Murderously so, as it happened. You fucked up, Crane. Royally. As befits your position in what passes for aristocracy in Albany."
He studied me for a long moment, his face frozen in white rage. Then he spoke. "You're going to the D.A. with this bullshit story?"
"Yep."
A tight little grin. "It'll be laughed out of court. I'll deny it. Murchison will deny there'd ever been an embezzlement. Deem will be certified insane. The judge will chastise you and your faggot friends for wasting the taxpayers' money."
"Could be," I said, getting up. "But you'll get your name in the papers, Crane. Every day for six months. You and your company. So, if you're going to build a shopping mall on the Christian Brothers' land, you'd better do it in the next forty minutes."
He twitched some more as I walked out.
Marlene Compton chirped, "Have a nice day."
In the ways that counted, I did.
EPILOGUE Crane Trefusis survived five months in Albany before being dismissed by Millpond and fleeing to Wichita, his wife's hometown, where he became manager of a J. C. Penney's store.
Just before his departure, I walked into La Briquet and knocked him across his table into a chocolate walnut souffle being served to the speaker of the New York State Assembly. Trefusis's jaw collided with a silver bowl and shattered. He pressed charges. I was fined five hundred dollars, put on six months' probation, and just barely kept my license. Bowman loved it.
As a result of the outrage generated by Peter Greco's death, Fenton McWhirter signed up eleven additional men and women for the gay national strike before moving up to Burlington, Vermont, for a recruiting effort there. Greco was cremated and his remains carried across the nation in McWhirter's backpack, and later scattered over the Pacific, like Harvey Milk's. At a memorial service in the Albany Gay Community Center, Dot Fisher talked about Peter's resiliently gentle ways; Edith was at her side, though she'd worn a veil over her face while entering the building.
No shopping mall was built on Moon Road. A small commercial establishment did, however, spring up at the corner of Moon and Central. On Labor Day weekend I stopped at the spot, where Dot Fisher and Kay Wilson were helping Heather Deem run a refreshment stand. The sign read, MOON ROAD PLAZA ASSOCIATES — KOOL-AID 25 CENTS.
One unseasonably warm September night, Timmy and I put Lyle Barner on a bus for San Francisco, armed with a citation of merit for his role in the capture of the Andruses. I heard later that he was living in Daly City, California, and was married to a forty-six-year-old divorced woman with six children-though this might have been gossip spread by Ned Bowman hoping that it would reach me and set an example. If so, it was an example I did not consider following.
Three days after Lyle left town, Timmy and I joined Dot and Edith for a feast of roast duck and Dot's famous elderberry cheesecake to celebrate Edith's seventy-sixth birthday. Afterwards, on the way back to the apartment, Timmy said, "Dot and Edith are quite a pair. All that love, devotion, emotional simplicity, repose. It leaves an impression."
"On me too."
"That's us, thirty years from now," he said. "With luck."
"It's what I want," I made myself say.
We were heading across Washington Park, which smelled moist and hot and alive.
"In the meantime," Timmy said, "why don't you swing down by the lake? Maybe we can pick up a couple of humpy SUNY students and take them over to our place for a wild foursome."
I swerved, straightened out, then glanced over at him to see if he was grinning and shaking with mirth. He was. As we continued on across the park and out onto Madison, I glanced at him a couple more times.
"Just testing you," he said brightly.
I said, "I'll bet," taking a quick look back toward the park, and he laughed again.
It was going to be a stimulating thirty years.