A Fight and a Lesson
I didn’t understand what David was talking about, but I didn’t want to argue with him in the open. I hurried us both back to the car. Out of habit, I got in the driver’s side and David got in the passenger side. We clicked the doors shut and put the windows up. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
David pointed back toward the alley and shouted at me with his full, deep voice. “THAT’S TED! HE’S ALIVE AND SUCKING STAN’S COCK!”
I didn’t believe David’s assertion. I argued with him. “He can’t be. That can’t be Ted. Ted is dead. I saw his pictures.”
David shouted at me again. “The man in that house is Ted Danton! I don’t care about any pictures you saw or didn’t see! The tattoo of Woody Woodpecker on his hip proves it!” David held his hand out again. “Give me your gun.” He demanded. “I’m going into that house to drag Ted out. I’ll take him to the prison and trade him for Larry.”
My mind raced with the implications of what David said. I didn’t understand how it could be true. I thought hard to reason it out. I didn’t like what I came up with. My reasoning went like this: ‘there’s a faceless corpse in the morgue. The corpse had Ted’s wallet in its pocket. I don’t know how it got there, but there it must have been. The physical description on the driver’s license in that wallet must have matched the corpse closely enough that the cops didn’t bother to investigate any further.’
The licenses issued by the state of Pennsylvania only showed height, weight, hair color, and eye color. There had been talk about putting photos on licenses, but that hadn’t happened yet. Even if there was a photo, the corpse had no face, so it wouldn’t have mattered. The cops could only go by what they had. They had a medium height, small boned, redheaded corpse of a young man and they had a license which matched.
As for Ted, he was a stranger in town and he was also very young. He was likely too young to have a police record or to have been fingerprinted. Even if he got in trouble while he was drifting, most police stations in small places prefer to run troublesome drifters out of town rather than bother with the paperwork and the cost of arresting and holding them.
All of those circumstances meant the cops had assumed their red-headed corpse was Ted, but they had no real proof. I realized with a terrible, sinking feeling that if there was no proof the corpse was Ted, there was also no proof the living man was Ted.
If we did what David wanted, if we dragged Ted from the house at the end of the alley and brought him to the police, we couldn’t prove the man we brought was Theodore Danton. I could call witnesses. I could get Hank Kellerman and Beth and Nate Holbrooke to testify. I could try to get Ted’s lovers to testify to the tattoo, but his lovers wouldn’t want to expose their relationship with Ted. They would be especially hesitant because same-sex relationships were illegal in Pennsylvania, as they were in most other states.
The other trouble with testimony is it can be refuted. I reasoned that if Ted was hiding, and it seemed he was, he probably had help to hide. The same help had likely planted Ted’s wallet on the dead man, and would also likely testify that the living man was someone else entirely. If the police didn’t want to investigate the claims, we had no way to force them.
They typically investigated only when there was some doubt or question to the identity of a corpse. In this case, the cops seemed to have no question. For us to find Ted alive seemed like a big step, but it was potentially a step onto a land mine.
Questions flashed through my mind. ‘If Ted is alive, who is the dead man? Why was the dead man killed and set up to look like Ted? Is Ted hiding from something? If so, what? How does Stan fit into the mystery? Is Stan helping Ted to hide, or is he merely an opportunist taking advantage of the situation?’
David got tired of waiting for me to finish my thinking. He reached into my unbuttoned jacket and tried to take my revolver from my shoulder holster. I fought with him, and we struggled. I tried to push David’s hands away, but I was at a disadvantage. David was much stronger than me, and my burned left hand was useless. David pushed me against the car door with one hand and searched my clothes with the other.
I tried to fight against the arm which held me pinned, but David’s arm was as solid as an iron bar. I pounded on it with my right fist, but my pounding made no impression. David’s other hand found the straps of my shoulder holster and followed them to my gun. He took the gun from me and snapped the cylinder open to check the load.
When David released me to focus on the gun, I made a grab for the weapon. David fended me off. He snapped the cylinder home and pointed my gun at me. “DON’T!” He said as he threatened me with my own gun.
I froze. As many times as it’s happened, I’ve never gotten used to having a gun pointed at me. Being in that situation always stopped all my emotions and cleared my head. I did as David ordered. I stopped fighting. I also raised my hands to show surrender.
David held the gun on me and glared in my face. “I’m going down there to get Ted. If you try to stop me, I’ll shoot you. No one is more important to me than my children, not even you, Law.”
David reached behind his back to feel for the handle of the car door. I knew I had to stop him before he got out. I uttered the one fact I hoped would do it. “It won’t save Larry.” I blurted.
David paused. “What are you talking about?” He asked suspiciously like I might try to trick him.
I rushed to make my point. “If that really is Ted down there, and you go and bring him to the cops, it won’t matter. There’s still a corpse in the morgue. Someone killed whoever that is. Just because the corpse isn’t Ted doesn’t mean Larry didn’t kill it. If Ted is alive, that’s a big step in the right direction, but we have to be careful. We have to handle this right or the whole thing will blow up in your face.”
David didn’t want to believe me. “Bull!” He growled.
I tried to reason with David. “I’m telling you the truth. Let’s say you do what you want. Let’s say you bring Ted in. How will you prove he’s Ted? You’re a distraught father. The cops would have no reason to believe you. Ted won’t be any help. He’ll likely lie and say he’s someone else and he’s never seen you before in his life. He’ll say you grabbed him off the street. You won’t be able to prove otherwise. Will you?”
David lowered his eyes from mine. He muttered to the gun in his right hand. “I didn’t think of that.” He admitted.
“You have to let me help you.” I argued. “I used to do this for a living. I was good at it. You’re out of your depth, David. If you go off half-cocked, you’ll only make things worse for yourself and for Larry.”
David’s whole body sagged. The rage left him. What replaced the anger was defeated sadness. He let the gun drop from his hand to swing on his finger by the trigger guard. David held the gun up to offer it to me, butt first. I accepted it and put the weapon back in its holster.
With the threat of being shot done with, I got mad. I called David to get his attention. When he raised his head, I aimed carefully and punched his left eye with my right fist.
“OW!” David cried as he put his hand to his eye. “What was that for?” He demanded.
“You pointed a gun at me, David.” I explained calmly, now that my own anger was spent. “That’s not something I take lightly. You threatened my life. You’ve got a lot of God-damned nerve to point a gun at me. You came here out of the blue, you asked for my help, and I gave it to you. So far, your presence has threatened my well-being, my sanity, and my relationship with my husband. I could deal with all that. I have been dealing with it. Now, you just threatened my life. If not for Larry, I’d put you out of my husband’s car and leave you here to fend for yourself.”
David broke into my speech to try to deflect blame from himself. “I wouldn’t have shot you. I just needed your gun.”
I tried to explain where David was wrong. “How far were you willing to go with your charade of not shooting me? Would you have cocked the gun? What if it had a light action? What if I carried a round under the hammer? What if it went off?
“You obviously know your way around guns. You probably have a handgun to shoot snakes or rabbits or whatever eats your crops. You’re also probably smart enough not to load six rounds in a six-shot revolver because carrying a round under the hammer is dangerous. What if I decided the extra shot was worth the risk? You could have killed me just by bumping the hammer. You either didn’t consider any of those things, or if you did, you didn’t care. You saw what you wanted, and you tried to take it.”
David tried to apologize. “I didn’t mean…”
I cut him off. I didn’t want to hear his ‘I’m sorry’ bullshit. “Yes, you did mean. That’s why I punched your eye. That eye should bruise up nicely. You’ll have a shiner for a week or more. Every time you look in the mirror, your black eye will remind you why you don’t EVER point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to kill them.”
David objected again. My speech wounded his pride. He tried to make himself seem like a harder man than he was. “Maybe I thought I was ready to kill you.”
I shook my head at the windshield. “Don’t take killing lightly, my friend. It’s not something you can take back. I should know. When I was in The Great War, I killed twenty-seven men that I know of. Several of them, I killed up close with a bayonet. During my twenty-five years as a cop and a detective, I killed another twelve, thirteen depending on how you count. Of those, I shot eleven, I hit one on the head with a liquor bottle, and one died after I beat him up. I don’t like killing, but if I decide the choice is between my life or someone else’s, my choice will always be to protect myself and to hell with the other guy.”
A very small, fearful version of David’s voice asked a nervous question about one of the things I’d said. “You beat a man to death?”
I turned to look David full in the face so I could tell him a part of his own story he never knew. “Back in 1929, four men attacked a friend of mine for being queer like me. They beat him until he had to be hospitalized. When I saw what those men did to my friend, I knew that my friend could no longer stay in the city, because he didn’t belong here.
“I gave my friend five-thousand-dollars and a train ticket to Montana to get him out of the city. Once he was gone, I hunted the men who beat him and gave their violence back to them. I beat each one of them until they had to be hospitalized. While one of the men was in the hospital, he got an infection and died. I didn’t beat him to death, but the man died because of what I did to him.”
I righted myself in the car seat and stared through the windshield into the dark. I tried to rub my face but when my burned hand touched my cheek, the pain brought tears to my eyes. I swore and lowered my hands to my lap.
David stared at the side of my face. I felt his gaze on me for a long time. Eventually he spoke. “You beat those men for me?” He asked. “You killed one of them for me…because of me?”
I guessed the grim reality of the actions I’d taken bothered David’s delicate sensibilities. I didn’t want him to feel responsible for what I’d done, but I wanted him to understand. I corrected David’s misconception first. “I didn’t kill the man. I beat him and he died. There’s a difference. Before you let the facts upset you, ask yourself if that man, or if any of those men would have given a shit if you had died. They left you unconscious in the fucking gutter. They treated you worse than I would treat a dog. They did it because to them, you weren’t even human. You were a fag.
“I didn’t beat them for you or because of you. I beat those men for me. I beat them for all of us. I beat them because they deserved a beating. Too often hateful men destroy what is pure and beautiful and no one punishes them for it. I punished those four, and I don’t feel one shred of regret for any of it, not even for the man who died.”
David shook his head at me. “That’s monstrous.” He accused.
I shrugged at the windshield. “Maybe. Maybe I’m a monster. Remember one thing, my old friend, you came to me because you knew I could help you. If I’m a monster, I’m the monster you need. Remember something else too. In the span of my lifetime, this country has fought two world wars. We also had a Prohibition and a Depression. If I’m a monster, then so is everyone who ever carried a rifle for their country or carried a handgun and a badge. I’m not the outlier, David, you are.”
David righted himself in the seat to face the windshield. We sat in silence while he thought about what I’d said to him. I looked at my burned left hand. It hurt like hell and several spots on my palm had started to blister. I wished I had some butter to soothe the burn. I wished I was at home with Walt. He would have put butter on my hand and wrapped it in a bandage. My husband would have taken care of my pain and worried about me until I felt better. I missed my husband.
David was beautiful and exciting, but I longed for Walt. The burn on my hand, and the care I wished I had for it, filled me with fresh regret over the indiscretion I’d had with David. I could pretend that what we’d done happened twenty years ago, but it hadn’t. It happened a few hours earlier, and I was a married man, not some horny kid.
I should have honored my commitment to Walt, no matter how upset I was with him. The ring on my left hand demanded I do exactly that. The ring was supposed to represent an unending commitment. It didn’t allow for cheating as long as the argument between us was big enough. “Fuck.” I muttered to myself. “How the hell am I going to make this right?”
“I apologize.” David said after my muttering. “I let my emotions get the better of me. I’m sorry I pointed a gun at you. I’m sorry I called you a monster. I hope you can forgive me.”
“We’ll see.” I replied. “We’ll see.”
I thought of Walt again and wondered if he would be able to forgive me. I hoped so.
