The detectives had to call in the Fire Department to break into Stewart Pierce’s apartment, because his parents lived in Moab, Utah, and the police had been unable to locate anyone locally who might have had a set of keys. The mother said she’d been leaving messages for her son and his roommate for three days, to no avail, and as far as the Pierces knew, the super, an inexplicably nasty man who lived off-premises, never had a key to both locks. Hawk confirmed that, of course. No use expending the effort and ruining a sturdy, steel fire-door if there was a master key lying around. It was curious about the roommate, though. If he’d checked his messages even once over the thirty-six hours the police were required to wait before breaking into a private apartment, he could have spared himself the cost of a new door.
It was obvious the mother didn’t approve of the roommate. She told Hawk she had never met the young man but had always felt he was somewhat shifty and unreliable. Her son seemed quite attached to him, however, so she kept silent. She admitted she would rather Stewart had any roommate, even one she didn’t care for, if he was going to live in New York, but this Alejandro person had not returned any of her increasingly frantic calls. She was certain he had not delivered any of her urgent messages to Stewart. Something was terribly wrong; her son was very devoted, an angel, really, who would have called home immediately if he could. He would never have wanted his parents to worry about him like this. She would never understand why artists had to live in New York.
Hawk spoke to Mrs. Pierce for about forty-five minutes on the telephone. He’d encouraged her not to come to New York just yet, promising to go over to the apartment to see if he could find anything out. He heard a male voice in the background as she talked, presumably Mr. Pierce, but Stewart’s father had never gotten on the phone.
Attached. It was a strange word to use, Hawk thought. But then, maybe people spoke like that in Utah. Whatever the case, it was clear the mother was the worrier here. And in crisis. Hawk knew the type: an isolated, fearful, lonely woman who idolized her only child, had probably done everything for him, even ironed his undershorts, slavishly and without thanks, convinced he was destined for great things. She claimed he was an extraordinary painter, the next Van Gogh. Compulsive, co-dependent, the boy’s mother was now going slowly crazy because her pampered prince had left her, moved two-thousand miles away. It seemed from their conversation like the classic case of a parent who, after smothering her child with too much love, was suffering a nervous breakdown at having lost the single purpose of her life.
Perhaps Stewart Pierce just wanted a few days of quiet, and this was an attempt to loosen the apron strings. That was one of the reasons Hawk had suggested she wait in Moab. He was glad she had listened to him, for he doubted she could have survived the horror of seeing her twenty-year old son hanging naked in a closet.
He had not been dead very long, a few days at most, as the odor of decomposition had not yet superseded the powerful fumes of fresh paint, which glistened, still wet, in some places. An air- conditioner blasted at full power from the bedroom, filling the rooms with frigid air, keeping the body cold while drying the paint.
As they stepped inside the apartment, the detectives were struck speechless. It was completely empty of furniture, but more astonishingly, every inch of every wall, ceiling and window had been painted over in rich, vibrant hues of blue, rust, purple and brown to depict a glorious, sprawling scene of the wild American west, replete with mountains, desert brush and giant rock formations in the distance. It was as if they had been instantly transported to the Grand Canyon at dusk, the sun dipping below the horizon on the westernmost wall, and the sky gradually darkening in the east in the hallway leading to the bedroom.
Gerard whistled in amazement, turning slowly in a circle. He followed as Hawk walked down the hall to the bedroom, staring in wonder at the cliffs painted on each side, creating the illusion of being at the bottom of an enormous, dry, ancient riverbed. In the bedroom, large by Brooklyn standards, a green nylon sleeping bag lay spread-out neatly in the middle of the floor, a lone traveler’s bedroll unfurled in the heart of the desert, in view of the vague, purple shadow of the distant Rocky Mountains. The closet door was missing, and Stewart’s body hung from a steel bar running across the top of the door frame, facing into the room. Nick came in behind Gerard, donned his gloves, and immediately began to examine the body, checking the kid’s hands for wounds or torn nails under the dried paint. But Hawk could not stop staring at the walls. The ceiling was a deep, midnight blue; its track lights painted over to look like tiny, bright stars shining in the night sky. This was the last sight Stewart had looked upon before he died. It was magnificent.
The three detectives went through the apartment slowly, methodically, looking for evidence that it was anything but a suicide. They found nothing. There was very little to examine, as all the furniture, clothes, linens, lamps, papers and appliances that were part of daily life had been removed. Hawk wondered how Stewart had managed it. It was extremely difficult to get rid of everything. Two rooms in the apartment had not been included in the artist’s final opus: the bathroom at the end of the hallway and the tiny kitchen. But, apart from a ladder folded in the shower and a few paint cans and brushes arranged neatly on last week’s newspaper on the kitchen floor, there was nothing left to give them any clues as to what had happened here and why.
Finally, Nick came out of the closet looking triumphant. In a groove between the shelf and the wall he had found a strip of photographs taken in one of those curtained booths that still existed only in amusement parks and passport offices. There were four photos of a white boy with straw-colored hair and light blue eyes sitting next to a handsome Filipino boy with black hair and eyes and very white teeth. In the bottom photo, the boys were kissing, their mouths open, tongues curled around each other’s. Stewart’s eyes were closed. Alejandro’s eyes were looking sideways, wickedly, into the camera.
Hawk studied Stewart’s face in the photos. He looked young and reckless, his smile too wide, his deep-set eyes almost feverish. He appeared to be high on something and Hawk suspected, from all he’d heard and hadn’t heard from the mother, that it was the fear – and possibly the thrill – of exposure that caused him to look so taut and wound up. Hawk was one hundred percent sure Stewart’s mother had no idea her son was gay.
Nick looked under the sleeping bag, careful to replace it in the exact same position; he pulled at the boards in the closet floor, searching in vain for the pornography he was certain was hidden somewhere near the body. He believed Stewart’s death was the result of autoerotic asphyxia – a tragic, often fatal, hazard of that favored method of masturbation among young gay men.
“Not only is there no porn, there’s no semen or other excretions,” Nick muttered, discouraged at not finding anything substantial to support his conclusion.
“So, the Asian kid must’ve come in, seen his boyfriend hanging around like an old coat, cleaned up everything and dumped it in the incinerator before getting the fuck out of Dodge,” Gerard offered.
“Would you start cleaning the house if you came home and found your boyfriend hanging in the closet?” Nick asked. Gerard was looking at him with eyebrows raised and a knowing smile on his lips.
“Well, I wouldn’t.”
“But?”
“But maybe I would if I was a homo.”
Nick pursed his lips in disapproval. “You’re saying that because gays like to clean things?”
“No, you asshole, what do you think I am? I’m saying that if I was trying to hide something, like that I was queer, I would clean up any evidence I could.”
“Or if you killed him and wanted to cover it up,” Nick added.
“Or if he died while we were doing something kinky and I felt guilty or was scared I was gonna be blamed.”
“Yeah.”
The conversation petered out as they got caught up again in the strangeness and beauty of the painted scenes. After what seemed like a very long time, Nick looked at Hawk, who’d been silently studying the room the whole time they’d been there. “Well, what’s your theory?”
“Not accidental. Not sexual, either.”
“So, why’s he naked?”
“Maybe he’s making a point.”
“What is it?”
“Maybe he’s trying to put everything back to its natural state, even himself. I don’t know.” But he did know.
Once, during a break from a special, assigned detail guarding the Turkish ambassador to the UN, Hawk had wandered into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. He’d looked around, confounded by the rapturous expressions on people’s faces as they stood in front of priceless paintings that evoked no feeling in him whatsoever. A tour-guide was speaking to a group gathered before a collection of landscapes. Not sure if he was allowed to listen in, Hawk relied on his skills as a detective to appear as unobtrusive as possible. The tour-guide was describing a study that had been conducted among American children of various ethnicities, including Indian kids who’d been brought up on reservations in the Midwest. The researchers told the kids to draw a picture of themselves. The black and white urban kids invariably put themselves in the middle of the paper, flanked on each side by parents, siblings, flowers and houses, all the same size or smaller than the central human figure. The Indian children drew pictures of mountains, trees, water, rocks, and always off-center, tiny relative to their surroundings, they drew themselves. Part of the background; never the main event.
Stewart Pierce had painted nearly every inch of the apartment, transforming the dark, dingy rooms into a breathtaking tribute to the vitality and splendor of nature, yet he had left himself unclothed, unadorned. Perhaps he was declaring that the real Stewart, a human body like any other, not defined by clothes or sexuality, was leaving the world as he’d arrived: naked and alone. Maybe he needed to prove that he’d occupied his own modest place in the world. Or maybe he meant to show that his life and death were no less or more significant than the stunted cactus or sprawling desert painted on the walls. He could be saying a lot of things. But no one would ever know.
Hawk said nothing more.
Nick was peering closely at the wall in one of the corners, where a very real-looking, large, black spider was painted in a funnel-shaped web. Suddenly, it appeared to move, making Nick jump back. “Man, this is some sick shit. Cool, but sick. What are you gonna tell the mom?”
“As little as possible. Nothing about this,” Hawk said, still holding the strip of photographs in the hand that swept through the air, indicating the painted room and the naked body. “Right now, I’m just going to tell her he’s dead, that it’s likely a suicide and that we don’t know much. Then, I’m going to hunt down Alejandro.”
* * * * *
It took several hours to discover Alejandro’s full name and contact information. It took almost another hour to make contact with him, by phone, in Tokyo. When Hawk hung up the phone, after instructing Alejandro to stay put and make sure he was available if NYPD needed to talk to him again, Nick shook his head.
“He didn’t seem too broken up about it when you told him his boyfriend was dead,” Nick said.
“No, he didn’t,” Hawk mused. “And he was pretty evasive when I asked about the one-way ticket to Japan.”
“Yeah. Man, that was some cold shit he was saying about the kid, too. Those queens can be nasty as shit. But, I hate to say it, it didn’t sound like he was covering up. Most people act nicer when they’ve done something terrible, but this asshole didn’t fake concern or anything like that. I’m sure he doesn’t even suspect we’re looking at him for murder.”
Hawk picked up the car keys. “Let’s go talk to his boss.”
“Aw, fuck.”
“What?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a gay bar.” Nick made a sour face.
Hawk threw a long arm around Nick’s neck and puckered his lips, making kissing noises next to Nick’s ear. “I’ll just tell everyone you’re spoken for, and what a good partner you are… in bed,” Hawk lisped. Nick twisted out of Hawk’s grasp and, with a limp-wristed slap to Hawk’s wrist, pranced to the door.
“You dirty bird,” he complained in a high falsetto. “You make me feel so cheap.”
Hawk tilted his head to the side, squinting as he examined Nick from head to toe. In his dark blue suit, Nick looked like a movie-star cop, complete with white, shiny teeth and sparkly blue eyes. Hawk could see why Nick got propositioned all the time, by both women and men, and although he put on a big act, Hawk knew Nick wasn’t really homophobic. The pretense was a long standing joke. In fact, Nick was very good-natured about all of it.
Hawk flashed one of his rare smiles.
“You better have a damn good reason for smiling at me like that, you pervert,” Nick warned.
“I was just thinking, you are pretty cheap, buddy. I wouldn’t pay more than twen – - “ Hawk ducked as Nick threw Sergeant Williams’ plastic flowerpot with the fake flowers at him. It crashed to the floor and broke into pieces. The two men looked at it for a moment, considering whether to pick it up and try to put it back together, ultimately deciding not to.
Nick looked accusingly at Hawk. “You shouldn’t have ducked.”
Hawk laughed.
As they went down the stairs to where Gerard was waiting, Nick muttered, “You better not grab my ass like you did last time.”
“If your ass gets grabbed, you better hope it’s me.”
They kept up the banter all the way into Manhattan. The bar was on Eighth Avenue in the heart of the theatre district. Gerard stayed outside to finish his cigarette. The moment Hawk and Nick walked into the Blazing Pistols, all eyes – except those belonging to the Hispanic busboys – turned to them. The waiters were overtly, flamboyantly gay, and as most of them fixed bold, admiring glances on Nick, Hawk’s face settled into its hard, expressionless planes. It wasn’t that Hawk wasn’t attractive, at 6’4”, lean and fit as a panther, with his short-cropped, red hair and slate-colored eyes. His chiseled cheeks and jaw, slim, straight nose and thin lips were undeniably masculine, but Nick had the kind of pretty face that immediately drew the average eye. Hawk was never jealous of the attention his partner received. In fact, he used Nick’s natural magnetism as an opportunity to study people surreptitiously.
“I think you should handle this part of the investigation,” Hawk said. “All the potential witnesses look like they’re dying to talk to you.”
“Don’t you dare disappear on one of your usual explorations. In fact, gimme the car keys.”
Hawk frowned in mock hurt. “You don’t trust me?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“You sound like my wife.”
Nick did not allow his surprise at this revelation to register. Even after all these years, Hawk rarely mentioned his private life. He answered smoothly, “Yeah, but I hope you actually listen to me.”
“Don’t worry, Grasshopper. I’ve got your back… side.” Hawk grinned lasciviously.
Just then, a striking, model-thin, androgynous blond male approached them and said, “Hi, I’m Theo, your host for the evening. Will it be two for dinner?” Before Nick could respond, Gerard came up behind them. Without missing a beat, Theo clapped his hands delightedly and added, “Oh, a threesome!”
“No,” Nick frowned, trying to look stern. Flashing his badge, he said, “We’re here on business.”
Theo’s glance slid briefly over to Hawk whose face remained impassive, his opaque eyes revealing nothing. Looking back at Nick and fluttering his eyelashes coyly, Theo said, “How can I help, Officers?”
“We’re detectives,” Nick corrected.
“Oh, my bad,” Theo said, pressing a finger to his cheek like Shirley Temple.
“Do you know a guy named Alejandro?”
“Oh, yes,” he gushed. “Black hair, Spanish eyes, gor-geous body?”
Nick was about to say that he wouldn’t know about that kind of characterization, and would Theo mind sticking to relevant, helpful, heterosexual details, but Hawk intervened.
“Yep, that’s the one.”
“Sure,” Theo answered, his gaze drawn once again to Hawk’s sharply angled face. Now, with a closer look into those slate eyes, his interest peaked. “What do you want to know?”
Hawk waited a beat for Nick to jump in, but when he didn’t, Hawk asked, “How well do you know him?”
“Oh, quite well. He’s been working here for about a year and a half, I guess, since he moved to New York from West Virginia, or Tennessee, or one of those “Deliverance” places, though he lies like a dog and pretends he came directly off the white sands of Ibiza. Works four nights a week, lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend.”
“Sounds like you do know him well.”
“I should; we dated for about three months, when Al first started working here. I’ve gone through most of these guys. I like to show them the ropes and chains when they first get to the big city, if you know what I mean,” Theo bragged, unaware or unconcerned how cliché his theatrics appeared to these hard, seasoned detectives from Brooklyn. Hawk and Nick exchanged a nearly imperceptible glance. Pros at extracting information from unwilling subjects, here there was nothing to do but sit back and raise their eyebrows encouragingly from time to time; this strange, gossipy, flighty creature just kept talking. Theo reminded Hawk of Tinkerbell from the Peter Pan movie he’d been duty-bound to sit through at least a hundred times in his role as a father to daughters. He had an urge to laugh.
Nick asked if Theo knew anything about Alejandro’s boyfriend.
“Oh yeah, he’s been here a bunch of times. I think he’s an ex-Mormon or something. But, anyway, he’s not out, so he pretends he’s one of Al’s straight friends, casually stopping by like he was in the neighborhood or something. Meanwhile, Al told everyone everything about him, including how good he is at suck- -“ Nick’s scowl made Theo giggle. “Well, anyway, we all act like we don’t know anything, but we laugh about it in the back. To tell the truth, we all thought Al was ridiculous for getting involved with that uptight little Quaker-oat, but Al is all about the sex, and whatever the kid is hiding from the rest of us sure must be tight and sweet at home.”
Hawk felt the revulsion rolling off Gerard like fumes. He heard Nick clearing his throat, and felt his own face redden, though he didn’t know why. He and Nick had been in much more embarrassing situations than this, God knew. There was the time they had responded to a domestic dispute and found the victim holding her bleeding crotch, screaming at them to find the piece of flesh her girlfriend had bitten off. Nick had found it near the radiator, but refused to pick it up, even with gloves. The most he would do was point it out to the EMTs when they arrived. Even now he was defensive if anyone brought it up. But Hawk prided himself on his reputation for being cool and imperturbable, even in the weirdest situations. His reaction now upset him.
Theo chirped like a delighted cricket; he was having a grand time at their expense. “Ruffled your feathers, have I, Red?” Theo said, far too perceptively.
Hawk silently reproached himself. His reflexive discomfort with such overt homosexuality was a secret weakness of which he was deeply ashamed. It brought up all his unpleasant memories of Gordon Hayes, that kid from high school whom all the jocks had ostracized for four years because he was so obviously gay. Gordon refused to participate in any school sports, and although everybody knew it was because he was afraid to shower with the other boys, he acted as if it was because he was too smart to associate with the stupid jocks. That provoked enormous hostility in his classmates, and it became almost a rite of passage among the athletes to devise ways of publicly humiliating him. Though Hawk never actively participated in the bullying, he also never intervened on Gordon’s behalf. Cowards annoyed him and he believed that if Gordon would have stood up for himself, just once, it would all have passed over.
On their senior trip, a terrible thing happened. The hockey players managed to get Gordon to the back of the bus, trapping him there with their large bodies and gear. Keith, the ringleader, an unapologetic homophobe whom Hawk had known and hung out with since fourth grade, taunted Gordon cruelly and without mercy. Perhaps if Gordon had put up a fight, Keith would have been satisfied with just a few licks, or Hawk or someone else would have put a stop to it, but Gordon just cried and struggled, weakly, and that incited his tormentor to ever greater heights. The other guys were shouting, laughing loudly, playing along, mostly because they were just happy to be in their senior year, nearly free, and on a co-ed class trip to Boston where they hoped to get laid, drunk and discovered. Hawk, sitting a couple of seats away, heard Keith threatening to teach Gordon a lesson if Gordon didn’t admit to being a faggot and secretly wanting to suck Keith’s dick all these years. Gordon was hysterical, thrashing like a fish in the bottom of the boat. Finally, commanding the others to hold Gordon down, Keith opened his pants and shoved his penis in Gordon’s face, screaming obscenities at him. Then, before anyone really understood what was happening, Keith urinated on Gordon’s face. The guys groaned with disgust and shoved Gordon away from them before they got piss all over their hands and clothes. To this day Hawk wondered how he had let it happen, had let it continue, without a single objection. He was not afraid of Keith as some of the others were. Keith considered Hawk one of his best friends, had confided his deepest secrets and insecurities to Hawk throughout the years. It would have been a simple matter of pushing Keith off Gordon, checking him as he’d done a thousand times in practice. But he had done nothing.
Gordon was removed from the bus and taken away by ambulance an hour later when one of the teachers discovered him under a seat in a totally catatonic state. He never returned to school. On the morning of graduation, he hanged himself in his parents’ basement. There was no one at the ceremony to receive his academic achievement awards or applaud when the principal announced that Gordon had been accepted to Harvard on a full scholarship. His family moved away at the end of the summer.
No one had ever been called in or questioned about what had happened on that bus, and there were never any consequences. Eventually, like everything else about high school, Gordon Hayes faded into the distant past, all but forgotten. Except for those rare moments when Hawk remembered him and then the memory shook him so profoundly, he was transported, altered, derailed, sometimes for hours at a time.
“Oh, shit!”
Hawk’s dark reverie was interrupted by Gerard’s expletive. The country western music had been cranked up to full volume and the bartender and two waiters, wearing wife-beaters, skin-tight jeans, cowboy boots and big Stetson hats, climbed onto the bar and started dancing provocatively. The detectives stared, horrified, fascinated, unable to look away. They were good dancers, but so… effeminate. They flexed their sculpted arms and wiggled their muscular buttocks, undulating their hips and scrunching up their faces as if in the throes of ecstasy. Hawk was embarrassed by their crudeness, but as always, his face showed none of his thoughts. A quick glance over at Gerard revealed a clenched jaw, green pallor and beads of sweat on his forehead. Nick’s face was utterly impassive. Hawk was surprised; for once, he could not tell what his partner was thinking.
Turning back to Theo, Hawk tried to act normal. “Did Al discuss other things about his relationship?”
“Like what?”
“Like – - “
“I hate to interrupt you, Red, but you have gorgeous eyelashes.” A tiny smile played around Theo’s lips, making it impossible to tell if he was flirting or being sarcastic.
Hawk blushed again, automatically. It was hardly the first time he’d been propositioned by a man, but this was the most blatant overture. More of an onslaught, really. Momentarily thrown off course, Hawk forgot what he was going to say. Nick chimed in smoothly, “He gets that a lot. What we’re asking is, did Alejandro discuss with you whether he and his boyfriend fought a lot or whether they were going to break up?”
“Well, Stew – that’s the boyfriend – isn’t too happy that Al’s planning to go to Tokyo to look for modeling work. He wants him to stay in New York. Although now I think he wants Al to take him with him to Japan. I can tell you right now, Al does not want him there. For Al, it just isn’t as serious. Stew probably feels rejected… Al is totally selfish. Not real boyfriend material.”
“This may be a little awkward – well, maybe not for you,” Nick said dryly, “but, is Al into autoerotic asphyxiation?” Hawk was impressed by the ease with which Nick slid into this line of questioning. It was as if, suddenly, a different person had inhabited his partner’s body.
“Oh, Al is into everything: bondage, pain, et cetera. But I think Stew is too scared – or too religious – to risk most of that stuff. He’s afraid to buy gay porn, for Chrissakes. I don’t know why he thinks anyone gives a shit, but as I said, he’s not out and closet homos do weird things. I was never one myself. Can you tell?” Theo placed a fluttery hand on Nick’s lapel and laughed outright. To Hawk’s surprise, Nick didn’t even flinch as Theo leaned in very closely and said in a low, sultry voice, “So Detective, can I buy you a drink?”
“Sorry, on duty.”
Leaning in even further to what seemed an alarming proximity to Nick’s mouth, Theo whispered theatrically, “How about your handsome friend? I think he likes me.”
Nick bowed his head conspiratorially, and said, “He might be a little shy…”
It was only because Nick had been working with Hawk for so many years that he was able to tell that his partner was, at this very moment, envisioning slicing him up into little pieces behind his cold, unamused eyes. However, Nick felt no remorse in enjoying himself at Hawk’s expense. He smiled sweetly at Theo and, throwing up both hands, exclaimed, “Straight men!”
“I know!” Theo retorted, knowingly.
Someone called Theo’s name. “Well, gotta go. Is there anything else you guys need from me?” As the detectives shook their heads, Theo said, “Hey! It never occurred to me; why are you asking all this? Is Alejandro in trouble?”
Nick answered, “No, no, nothing like that.” Hawk stared at him. He was glad that Nick hadn’t told Theo that Stewart was dead. He just never expected Nick to be that sensitive. Hawk hated to think that these busy bees would all be gossiping and laughing in the back about the tragedy of a lonely boy’s suicide. “But can you ask the manager to come over, please?”
“I’ll go get him. See you later, honey,” Theo said, winking at Nick as he sashayed across the room, which was starting to get crowded.
Hawk and Nick turned to find Gerard sitting at the bar, watching baseball on one of the large, overhanging screens. “Hey, they still like some normal guy things, I guess,” he said, taking a sip of one of the three beers the bartender had solicitously placed on the bar, unordered. Hoping there would be no more spontaneous dancing while they were at the bar, Hawk sat down and pushed the beer away. Nick followed suit. Gerard rolled his eyes at their sanctimonious rejection of a free beer, but said nothing. If the Dynamic Duo wanted to pretend all of a sudden that they never drank on the job, that was their bullshit.
Hawk casually surveyed the saloon. He was acutely aware of the many interested stares they were attracting, which was certainly different from the way people usually reacted when they realized the police were in a room. Before quickly averting his eyes, he noticed a man sitting alone a few seats down from them, drinking something pink. The guy was striking looking, with a craggy, masculine face like the Marlboro Man and sharp, bright, deep-set blue eyes. He was remarkably well-dressed, and Hawk was sure his clothes were very expensive. He seemed very dignified, but then, suddenly, he called out something vulgar to the young, flirtatious bartender.
Hawk turned away as the two men continued their loud exchange, disturbed less by the crass content than the aggression in its delivery. He viewed this vicious substitution for courting as a form of domestic abuse, and knew it was not limited to drunk, angry homosexuals. Beside him, Gerard hissed his disapproval. Hawk and Nick looked at him.
“I don’t care if the entire world wants to pretend that this is all fine and dandy,” he said, “but man, I swear I’ll disown my kid if he turns out gay.”
“Bullshit,” Nick scoffed.
“No, I’m not kidding. I don’t think I could take it. Look at all this. I’m sorry, but it’s fucking disgusting. I don’t care about when I’m on the job – it doesn’t affect me one bit – but I won’t have this shit in my house, in my real life. It’s perverted, that’s what it is, like we’re living in fucking Sodom and Gomorra. Don’t tell me you don’t think the same thing, in the privacy of your own home,” Gerard said, turning to Hawk.
Hawk thought it over for a minute before shrugging. “What are you going to do?”
“Man, you always say that! What kind of bullshit answer is that?!”
“There is no answer. It’s out of your control. There’s nothing for you to do or not do,” Hawk said quietly.
“Yeah, well, you’re wrong, there is an answer in this case: I don’t have to tolerate it on my own turf. People can get all sanctimonious, but I’m not afraid to admit that I’d be ashamed if my kid acted like this. Even if I couldn’t see it, just knowing he was acting like this with his friends would make me sick.”
“So, what’s your kid now, ten,” Nick asked wryly. “In five years you’re just gonna disown him if he comes to you and says, ‘Hey Dad, I’m really sorry, but I like boys’?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Because the alternative is having to choke down my Christmas dinner with a bunch of freaks like this weirdo, Tip-oh, Tee-oh, whatever his name is, who make inappropriate comments just to get a reaction out of people, shoving their sexuality down your throat till you wanna throw up from it. I mean, who acts like that? Fags! No one else acts like that. Women don’t even act like that, and the homos are supposed to be copying them. Like I said, I don’t care who or what you’re fucking, but why do I have to have it in my face twenty-four-seven, with their high, fake voices and nasty attitude, like if you don’t embrace ‘em, you must hate gays, and then you’re a redneck, homophobic, motherfucking bigot ‘cause you don’t want to have to be thinking about what they’re sticking their dicks into every minute of the day?!”
Nick said darkly, “Ah, so maybe it’s a good thing Stewart Pierce killed himself, because who needs another talented artist in the world if he’s going to offend his parents at Christmas dinner?”
“Oh fuck that. It’s always the parents’ fault, isn’t it? It’s their fault the kid is gay in the first place and then it’s their fault he kills himself. How self-indulgent. You don’t see kids hanging themselves for their art in fucking Africa where they’re so miserable, they have good reason to want to off themselves.”
“Yeah? Well, Van Gogh chopped his ear off and then shot himself. How self-indulgent of him,” Nick retorted.
Just then, the manager approached with a friendly smile, but when he saw the detectives’ closed, brooding faces, he slowed his step. New York cops. Such macho bastards. These three fit the stereotype to a T.
As soon as Hawk confirmed the dates that Alejandro had given him over the phone, they left the bar and drove back to Brooklyn.
Driving past the Port Authority, Hawk was pensive. Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t been paying attention, but gradually he became aware of Nick and Gerard’s quiet conversation.
“… close it as a suicide.”
“Yeah. Too bad. I woulda liked to charge that asshole boyfriend of his,” Nick responded.
“If he wasn’t out already, we could out him,” Gerard said. “In Texas!”
“Or Montana,” Nick added.
Catching Hawk’s glance in the rearview mirror, Gerard asked, “You decide what you’re gonna tell the parents?”
“I’m going to tell them their kid committed suicide.”
“You gonna tell ‘em about the apartment?”
“I don’t know. I have to think about it some more.”
“What about the boyfriend?”
“No. None of the gay stuff. They don’t need that on top of what their lives are going to be like now and forever more.”
“You don’t think they’re gonna find out? That someone’s gonna slip up and tell ‘em? I mean, how do you hide something like that? That’s the whole reason he killed himself.”
Hawk was upset, but he buried it so expertly, only Nick, who knew him better than anyone, could detect his true feelings beneath the quiet words. “He didn’t kill himself because he was gay. He killed himself because he was sad, and lonely, and scared. And hopeless. Maybe he felt all those things because he believed he had to hide what he was, but look at Theo and all those other guys. You don’t kill yourself just because you’re gay. Or self-indulgent. That’s too simplistic. Anyway, if his parents couldn’t tell up till now that their kid was a homosexual, no one needs to tell them. They’ve spent all these years denying what’s obvious to everyone else, why not let them keep their lie intact? The kid, too. He died with his secret. We should let him have some dignity in death.”
A heavy silence settled upon them as they drove down to the Battery. Nick had never seen Hawk like this. On the rare occasion, Hawk got into a bad mood; usually it was only noticeable to Nick and it always passed pretty quickly. Nick never brought it up, and Hawk wasn’t the type to invite casual conversation about his home life. Besides, who didn’t sometimes have a fight with the wife, or money worries, or whatever else bothered a guy from time to time? And he knew how Hawk was when he couldn’t solve a case. But this was different. There was a darkness, a density, about Hawk now that seemed impenetrable. He was like a stranger, sitting there, and Nick was startled to think how little anybody actually knew about his partner. Nick would, without question or hesitation, walk through fire or run into a gang shootout with him, but it was disturbing to realize that, aside from the joking or scoffing at political candidates or griping about the bosses, he had no idea what Hawk really thought about stuff. He knew about Hawk’s childhood, that his father had been stabbed to death when he was a kid, and that the killer had never been convicted for it. There was a stepfather, too, at one time, but Nick didn’t know if he was still alive or if Hawk had gotten along with him. He knew what school Hawk went to, what sports he played. He’d even met Hawk’s wife and kids a bunch of times, as Hawk had met his. But tonight’s conversation with Gerard seemed to have stirred something up in Hawk that made Nick uneasy. Well, there was only one way Nick knew to handle situations that made him uncomfortable.
As Hawk turned onto the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving Manhattan, with all its jaded, seditious souls and dark magic behind, Nick said, “Wow.”
Hawk glanced over and was startled to see his partner sitting nearly sideways in the passenger seat, staring back at him in a way that indicated he’d been watching Hawk for some time. “What?”
“That was maybe the most words I’ve ever heard you say at one time.” Nick narrowed his eyes and looked at Hawk suspiciously. “You don’t think Theo rubbed off on you, do you?”
“He wanted to rub himself off on you, pretty boy.” In a high falsetto, Hawk mimicked, “’Oh, those awful straight men!’ ‘Oh, Honey, I know!’”
“’You have such pretty eyelashes, Red’,” Nick retorted. “You’re just so handsome. Why don’t you let me suck on your big, red – -‘ Ow! Fuck it! You’re driving, you bastard. You’re gonna get us all killed!”
* * * * * * *
Hawk’s conversation with the Pierces had lasted approximately five minutes, with Hawk doing most of the talking. They had no questions, they would call him if they needed anything. They would fly in tomorrow afternoon to pick up their son’s body.
He finished the paperwork around 1:00 a.m. He was tired, but too restless to go home. He looked to see if there was anybody around who felt like going for a beer, but only Laverne and Ronnie were there and he was not interested in hanging out with either of them.
In the car, Hawk searched for a good radio station, but everything sounded brash, loud, discordant. He turned off the noise and waited at the red light before making the turn onto the expressway. And then it came, descending on him like a tidal wave, threatening to break his neck, or drown him with its infinite weight.
The light turned green, but he didn’t notice it. A car honked behind him, two, but still, he didn’t move. Finally, the irate drivers screeched past him, shouting epithets, leaning furiously on their horns. The light changed to red again. Green. Red. The darkness had come, and Hawk could no more drive on than he could fly.
In a dream, he looked left, towards Manhattan. He could go to her. No, even in his blackest mood, even though he knew that she, of all people, would understand and could make him feel better, he would not go there, not ever again.
He was sinking. He could not stay here. With some part of his brain, he knew he had to get out of the car, and fast, before he did something stupid, irreparable. Deep down, in the void that was consuming him, crushed beneath the burden of Gordon Hayes and Stewart Pierce and all the nameless ghosts that came slinking out of the secret cave of horrors, Hawk knew he needed to go somewhere, that he couldn’t stay at this intersection all night, but he didn’t know where he could go.
And then, finally, he did know. He made a U-turn, ignoring the light which was red again. He drove past the precinct, the projects, and parked in front of the dark apartment house. He climbed the stairs in silence, pulled the yellow crime scene tape away from the door and went inside. The lock had been broken earlier, but the chain was intact and now he chained it from the inside. He walked down the hall in the dark, oblivious to the fumes which had diminished somewhat as the paint continued to dry. He stepped into the bedroom and turned on the stars. He moved the sleeping bag to one side and lay down, fully-clothed, on the floor in the center of the room. Several hours passed before he curled onto his side. Only then did Hawk close his eyes against the distant Rocky Mountains, and slept and did not dream.