“Oh, you don’t know me as well as you think you do, do you, Matthew? I like a bit of chicken now and then, I’ll admit it. God knows it’s not the world’s best-kept secret in the first place. But it’s not just youth that does it for me, you know. It’s corrupt youth.”
“Oh?”
“That luscious air of immature decadence. Young fruit rotting on the vines.”
“You have a lovely way of putting things.”
“Don’t I? But Richard was not like that at all. He had this untouchable innocence. You could be his eighth trick of the night, and you would still feel that you were seducing a virgin. And that, dear boy, is not my scene at all, as the children say.”
He made himself a fresh drink and collected for it out of my change. I still had enough bourbon left. I said, “You said something about the eighth trick of the night. Was he selling himself?”
“No way. He didn’t get the chance to pay for his own drinks, but if he had one drink a night, it was a lot. He wasn’t hustling a buck.”
“Was he running the numbers?”
“No, one partner a night was all he seemed to want. As far as I could tell.”
“And then he stopped coming in here. I wonder why.”
“Maybe he got allergic to the decor.”
“Was there anyone in particular he tended to go home with?”
Ken shook his head. “Never the same friend twice. I would guess that he came around over a period of three weeks, and maybe he paid us fifteen or eighteen visits in all, and I never saw him repeat. That’s not terribly unusual, you know. A lot of people are hung up on variety. Especially the young ones.”
“He started living with Wendy Hanniford around the time he stopped coming here.”
“I gathered he was living with her. I wouldn’t know about the time element.”
“Why would he live with a woman, Ken?”
“I didn’t really know him, Matt. And I’m not a psychiatrist. I had a psychiatrist, but that wasn’t one of the topics we got around to discussing.”
“Why would any homosexual live with a woman?”
“God knows.”
“Seriously, Kenny.”
He drummed the bar with his fingers. “Seriously? All right. He could be bisexual, you know. It’s not exactly unheard of, especially in this day and age. Everybody’s doing it, I understand. Straight types are trying the gay scene on for size. Gay types are making tentative experiments with heterosexuality.” He yawned elaborately. “I’m afraid I’m a hopelessly reactionary old thing myself. One sex is complicated enough for me. Two would be disastrous.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Not really. If I’d known him, Matt. But he was just another pretty face to me.”
“Who knew him?”
“Does anyone know anyone? I suppose whoever took him to bed came closest to knowing him.”
“Who took him to bed?”
“I’m not a scorekeeper, darling. And we’ve had quite the turnover here these past few months. Most of the old crowd has gone off in search of greener pastures. We’re getting a lot of smarmy little leather boys lately.” He frowned at the thought, then remembered that frowning gives you lines and willed his face to return to its normal expression. “I don’t much adore the crew we’ve been attracting lately. Motorcycle boys, S-and-M types. I don’t really want anyone killed in my bar, you know. Most especially my estimable self.”
“Why not do something about it?”
“To be horribly candid, they scare me.”
I finished my drink. “There’s an easy way for you to handle it.”
“Do tell.”
“Go over to the Sixth Precinct and talk to Lieutenant Edward Koehler. Tell him your problem and ask him to raid you a few times.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Think about it. Slip Koehler a couple of bucks. Fifty should do it. He’ll arrange to raid you a few times and give your leather crowd a hard time. There won’t be any charges against you, so it won’t screw you up with the SLA. Your liquor license won’t be in jeopardy. The motorcycle boys are like everybody else. They can’t afford hassles. They’ll find some other house to haunt. Of course your business will fall off for a couple of weeks.”
“It’s off, anyway. The little cunts are all beer drinkers, and they don’t leave tips.”
“So you won’t be losing much. Then in a month or so you’ll start getting the kind of clientele you want.”
“What a devious mind you have, Matthew. I think it might work, at that.”
“It should. And don’t give me too much credit. It’s done all the time.”
“You say fifty dollars should do it?”
“It ought to. It would have when I was on the force, but everything’s been going up lately, even bribery. If Koehler wants more, he’ll let you know about it.”
“I don’t doubt it. Well, it’s not as if I never gave money to New York’s Finest. They come around every Friday to collect, and you wouldn’t believe what Christmas cost me.”
“Yes, I would.”
“But I never gave them money in the hope of anything beyond being allowed to remain in business. I didn’t realize you could ask favors in return.”
“It’s a free-enterprise system.”
“So it seems. I just might try it, and I’ll buy you a drink on the strength of it.”
He poured a generous shot into my glass. I picked it up and eyed him over the top of it. “There’s something else you could do for me,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Ask around a little about Richie Vanderpoel. I know you don’t want to give me any names. That’s reasonable. But see if you can find out what he was like. I’d appreciate it.”
“Don’t expect much.”
“I won’t.”
He ran his fingers through his beautiful blond hair. “Do you really care what he was like, Matt?”
“Yes,” I said. “Evidently I do.”
Maybe it was a reaction to too many visits to bars that were gay in name alone. I’m not sure, but on my way to the subway I stopped at an outdoor phone booth and looked up a number in my notebook. I dropped in a dime and dialed it, and when she answered I said, “Elaine? Matt Scudder.”
“Oh, hi Matt. How’s it going?”
“Not too bad. I was wondering if you felt like company.”
“I’d love to see you. Give me a half hour? I was just getting into the shower.”
“Sure.”
I had coffee and a roll and read the Post. The new mayor was having trouble appointing a deputy mayor. His investigative board kept discovering that his prospective appointees were corrupt in any of several uninteresting ways. There was an obvious answer, and he would probably hit on it sooner or later. He was going to have to get rid of the investigative board.
Some more citizens had killed each other since yesterday’s edition went to press. Two off-duty patrolmen had had a few drinks in a bar in Woodside and shot each other with their service revolvers. One was dead, the other in critical condition. A man and woman who had served ninety days each for child abuse had sued successfully to regain custody of the child from the foster parents who had had the kid for three and a half years. The nude torso of an adolescent boy had been discovered on a tenement roof on East Fifth Street. Someone had carved an X into the chest, presumably the same person who had removed the arms and legs and head.
I left the newspaper on the table and got a cab.
She lived in a good building on Fifty-first between First and Second. The doorman confirmed that I was expected and nodded me toward the elevator. She was waiting at the door for me, wearing royal-blue hip-huggers and a lime-green blouse. She had gold hoop earrings in her ears and she smelled of a rich, musky perfume.