Pre-chapter note: Kent cigarettes were released in 1952 and advertised as the first filter tip cigarette. From 1952 to 1956, the Kent Micronite filters were made from compressed blue asbestos, one of the most carcinogenic types of asbestos.
Resolution
I exited the kitchen and stepped behind the bar to refresh my tonic water. My glass was still full, but too much of the ice had melted for it to taste good. When my eyes made it around the countertop cigar display case, I saw my sister Edie seated at the bar on the customer’s side. She was having a cigarette.
“Lawrence,” she said when I came into view, “I’m not certain I understand this case of yours. Would you explain it to me?”
“Sure, Edith.” I replied.
Edith pursed her full lips in disapproval over my use of her entire first name. Apparently, all the Edwards children, except for Georgie, didn’t much like their first names. Mildred went by Millie, Edith went by Edie, and I went by Law. The trouble with Edith was she insisted on referring to me as ‘Lawrence.’ In order to break her of the habit, I referred to her as ‘Edith.’
Edith got the message and corrected herself. “I’m sorry, Law.” She spoke demurely.
I thanked her for her correction and reciprocated. “I’m sorry too, Edie.”
I dumped out my glass and refilled it with plain tonic. “Not drinking?” Edie asked.
“I’m still trying to give up tobacco.” I explained. “When I drink, staying away from it gets harder.”
Edie glanced at her half-smoked cigarette and shrugged. “I suppose you’re doing the right thing. I don’t imagine they’re very bad for me because I don’t smoke very much, less than a half a pack per day. I hate to give them up, because I find them very soothing. Maybe I’ll switch to filter tips.”
“What are they?” I asked. As I did, I held my glass up as a way to offer to get my sister a drink.
She refused with a shake of her head. “I saw an ad in the Post just the other day.” Edie explained. “I forget which brand, but they’re advertising an asbestos filter on the end of the cigarette to guard your health.”
For about a half-a-second I thought about trying the filter tip cigarettes like my sister suggested, but I dismissed the idea. “Filtered smoke is still smoke.” I said. “Besides, I haven’t had any tobacco for about a month. I think I’ll just be a non-smoker from now on.”
“As you say.” Edie said with another small shrug. “Now about this case of yours.” She prompted.
I nursed some tonic from my glass and explained the case. Edie stopped me just as I reached the climax of the tale, the shootout in Hank Kellerman’s garage. “I think I follow you.” She said. “Larry and Ted were living together but were no longer…uh…together.” Edie’s pale face flushed pink when she mentioned the relationship between the two queer boys. She hadn’t yet adjusted to the idea that such things were done, but she was getting better.
When I was still in the hospital recovering from being shot, Edie had said to me, ‘you’re my brother first and everything else that you are is second.’ I thought her assertion was a touch hypocritical because my family had held themselves apart from me for thirty-five years because of my sexuality, but I didn’t force the issue. I decided a relationship with my siblings was more important than any apology I thought I deserved. All of us agreed that my father was at fault for fracturing our family. Everything which came after my disownment amounted to bad decisions on everyone’s part, including mine.
Edie went on with her summation. “Ted got himself killed and the police blamed Larry. They put Larry in jail and assigned his case to that nice attorney, Alexander Scofield. Mister Scofield wrote a letter to Mister David, Larry’s father, and he came here to help his son. Mister David came to you for your help because he knew you from when he was here before.”
Edie stopped herself and inclined her prematurely grey head toward me. “I don’t understand how he knew where to find you.”
“The library.” I explained. “David kept track of me through the telephone books he ordered from the county library where he lives. Each year, when the new books came out, he would order a copy of the Philadelphia book from the central library in Montana. It was his version of keeping track of me.”
Edie nodded her head in understanding and cast her heavy-lidded, brown eyes towards David. I looked where she did to see that my old friend was in the middle of a smiling conversation with his son and Wiry, the foreman of the excavation crew which Larry had worked on. Larry’s face was bright red, and Wiry was laughing to beat the band. I suspected David had told a story which embarrassed his son. I grinned with my own amusement as I watched Wiry pound the table with his small fist as he laughed.
“How did you meet each other?” Edie asked.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to answer my sister’s question. I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want to shock her. I quickly decided that after almost fifty years of life, if my sister still shocked easily, that was her problem. I decided to be honest. “He was disowned and wound up as a bartender in a whorehouse I used to frequent.”
Edie drew on her cigarette and stubbed it out in a tray on the bar. She blew the smoke out toward the room and eyed me carefully. “A regular…uh…house of ill fame?” She asked. “With women?”
I shook my head. “No, men.”
Edie nodded that she understood and then shook her head. “I’m surprised to hear a place like that operated. How could they remain in business? There aren’t that many…uh…men like you, are there?”
“Many more than you’d think.” I explained. “Most of the men in this room are like me. Me and Walt, Scofield and Jimmy Weaver, Harrison Stiles, Ted and Larry, David. Sunshine is a maybe. Most of us hide what we are. We have to.”
“I didn’t think of that.” Edie admitted. She looked around at the room of revelers. She seemed to want to try to discern the ‘queer’ in the men I mentioned. I don’t know if she saw it or not because she didn’t say. Her eyes fell on David, and she turned her comments to him. “It’s strange to think of that upright, family man as a barman in a house of ill-fame.” Edie said. “Though, I suppose when one finds themselves out of doors with no resources, one does what one must.”
“Yeah, I know.” I said to agree with Edie. “Some people take a job in a whorehouse, and some join the army and go to fight in a war.”
Edie peered at me from a face which apologized before it spoke. “I’m sorry.” She said. “I didn’t mean to…I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Edie blinked her tired-looking brown eyes at me. Suddenly, I felt bad for her because she resembled my father’s side of the family more than my mother’s. Where Millie was petite with the fine features of my mother, Edie looked more like me and Georgie with her heavy-lidded, always-tired eyes and fleshy features. She was a striking woman, though not one which anyone would term as ‘pretty.’
“I’m sorry.” I said to apologize for making a point which didn’t need to be made. “Back when you visited me in the hospital, I told you what happened to me after Dad threw me out. There was no reason to remind you of it now.”
Edie drew a breath and sighed a delicate exhale. She smiled warmly at my apology. “It’s nice to have you back, big brother.” She said. “I missed you more than I realized. I’m sorry none of us ever looked you up. Father told us that you and he had a falling out and you decided to leave, to strike out on your own. After father died, mother always told us to leave you be. ‘He made his choice,’ is what she would say. None of us could have imagined that our father could have been cruel enough to put you out the way he did. As the oldest of the remaining children, I’m ashamed I didn’t insist on hearing your side of the story.”
I opened my mouth to respond to my sister’s kind words but found my mouth was dry. I sipped the fizzy, quinine-laced water from my glass and tried again. “What can you do?” I asked fatalistically. “What’s past is past. You’re here now. I got to meet your husband and your kids. I got to meet Millie’s husband and Georgie’s wife. I’ve got nieces and nephews now. You’ve all met my husband and welcomed him to the family. He’s happy because he always wanted a big family and now he has one. This life isn’t perfect, but it’s all we have. Thanks for being open minded enough to accept me for who I am.”
Edie glanced toward the banquet table. Her eyes settled on Walt as my husband sipped from his fourth highball. I noticed that Walt was frowning in deep concentration over something Alex Scofield was telling him. When I looked closer, I realized that Walt was listening to Scofield, but he wasn’t looking at the small attorney. Walt’s gaze was fixed on David. He stared at my old friend. I don’t know what he saw, but whatever it was made Walt finish what was left of his highball in a gulp. My husband seemed to be building his liquid courage for something. I hoped that ‘something’ wasn’t a confrontation.
As far as I knew, Walt didn’t harbor any jealousy over the indiscretion which David and I had together. Also, since Larry had gotten out of prison, all of David’s focus had been on the repair of his relationship with his son. He hadn’t had time to make advances toward me.
Edie didn’t allow me any time to mull over those concerns. She had more to say about Walt. “He is a wonderful man. Millie said that your Walt nursed you after you were shot. She said he nursed you as carefully as if you were a babe in arms.”
I looked toward my husband again and commented on the care he’d lavished upon me. “He loves me.” I said to explain Walt’s tenderness. “And I love him. We’re good for each other. He looks after me and I look after him. We compliment each other.”
I knew that my sister was still uncomfortable about same sex relationships, so I wasn’t surprised when she avoided remarking on mine. Instead, she changed the subject. “And how are you, since you were shot? Is your stomach alright?”
“To my surprise,” I admitted, “it’s better than it’s been in a long time. Since I was wounded in the war, I’ve had stomach trouble. Since Smug Stanley shot me, I’ve felt much better.”
My admission called to mind the crazy dream I had after I passed out from lack of blood. I could vividly see Peter as he climbed out of my stomach and walked away from me into the ether of my imagination. I wondered if the dream was my mind finally reconciling itself to the circumstances of Peter’s death.
On the other hand, I wondered if maybe what my mind showed me was the ghost of Peter as he finally came to terms with his own death. Perhaps instead of existing as a crawling pain in my guts, he was ready to move onto wherever we go when we die. I didn’t know. The only thing I was sure of, was that since I’d left the hospital, my stomach hadn’t bothered me at all.
“Why did that man shoot you?” Edie asked.
“Yeah,” Georgie blared as he strolled up to the bar, “why did he shoot you? No sense in it. From what you said, there were four of you with guns. He had to know he couldn’t get away with it. Why try?”
Georgie leaned on the bar and plunked down an empty pint glass. His eyes were bright and his jaw slack. My brother had quite a glow on. He didn’t ask for another drink, and I didn’t offer. He did restate his question. “That Stanley person had to know he was going to get shot to pieces. Why not surrender when he had the chance?”
I gave my brother and my sister the only answer I had. “Stan was a smug son-of-a-bitch. He also had a screw loose,” I said and pointed to my right temple, “that’s what the head shrinker who works with the police said, anyway.”
“Head shrinker?” Georgie demanded. “What’s that all about?”
I explained as much as I knew. “The cops have a psychiatrist on staff now. He does profiles for them. A profile is when the psychiatrist listens to stories about how someone acts and uses his expertise to explain why. The shrink said that Stan was a ‘malignant narcissist with delusions of grandeur and latent homosexual tendencies.’ The first part means Stan thought he was smarter and better than everyone around him. The second part means he was a closet queer who couldn’t even admit his queerness to himself.
“In short, Stan liked to use people. He also thought that no one could beat him at anything he did. That’s why he thought he could shoot me and get away with it. That’s also why he was such a bold crook. He never expected anyone to stop him because he thought everyone was stupid but him.”
Georgie looked dubious. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “That’s the biggest load of bull sh…”
Edie scolded Georgie for his obscenity even before he’d finished saying the bad word. “Georgie Allen Edwards!” She shrilled. “Watch your language!”
Georgie was offended that his sister scolded him. He pressed his hands to his chest and objected to Edie. “ME?” He demanded. “You want ME to watch MY language? What about Law? He swears like a drunken sailor!”
Edie dismissed Georgie’s objection with a wave of her hand. “Lawrence has been on his own for a good many years. He hasn’t had the benefit of always being amongst polite people. You have; therefore, you should act like it. Besides, you are a professional man, and you should present yourself in a professional manner.”
“I’m a mortician, Edie.” Georgie said to dampen my sister’s criticism. “I work in a hospital morgue. Who the hell would care if I use a little foul language now and then, the fucking corpses?”
“GEORGIE!” Edie shrilled her righteous indignation. She stood from her stool and confronted our brother. “You watch your mouth, or I’ll slap it from your face!”
Georgie was instantly cowed before Edie. He lowered his head and muttered an apology. “Yes, Edie.”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. The scene which my brother and sister had played out in front of me was incredibly funny because I remembered my parents having a similar fight when I was a kid. The fight was one they’d had more than once. My father was a gruff, bear of a man. He took no nonsense from anyone and in return he gave none out. My mother was timid and kind and very much the peacemaker of the relationship. Deep within the petite woman my mother had been, she had a will made of armor plate.
On the rare occasion when my father would come home from his shop somewhat the worse for drink, his inebriation would prompt him to use his more colorful expressions in front of my mother. My mother usually responded to my father in the exact manner which Edie had just used on Georgie. My father’s reaction would always be the same meek apology which Georgie had just given.
I laughed at Georgie and Edie with the same delight that I’d once enjoyed while I laughed at my parents. The difference between the two incidents was when I’d laughed at my folks, I received the worst beating of my young life as a parental reaction to my hysterics. Georgie could only respond with a sour glare. His glare was meant to be threatening, but it only served to prolong my glee.
I laughed myself breathless and wiped the joyful tears from my face with a bar towel. When I finished with my face, I threw the towel in a heap behind the bar and looked up to see that our little group had two more members. David and Walt had come to see what sparked my fit of laughter.
David had shed his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. The jacket was a new one. One of my first tasks after I was released from the hospital was to see that David purchased a few new suits. I wanted my friend to look truly cosmopolitan instead of like ‘an undertaker from a Randolph Scott western’ as Walt had characterized him. David looked amazing in the new clothes. The tailor had done wonderful work in customizing the suit to hug David’s broad shoulders and taper to his narrow waist.
David and the tailor had gotten into a disagreement over David’s suspenders. The tailor urged David to purchase a new set, something which David refused to do. As a compromise, David agreed to allow the suspenders to be professionally cleaned. The result was a fresh shine on the ancient leather and a sparkle to the gold adjustment slides. I reveled in being able to see the suspenders on David, my gift of infatuation from so long ago. Just like he had when he was a youth, the adult which David had grown into still made the suspenders beautiful by allowing them to enhance his own masculine charms.
David took a seat at the bar next to Edie while Walt remained on his feet with his arms crossed over his deep chest. Walt’s eyes still followed David. I noticed his gaze was as glassy as Georgie’s from the drinks he’d gulped down.
“Everything alright?” I asked my husband over the top of David’s blond head.
Walt startled when I addressed him. He tore his eyes from David’s broad back and looked at me guiltily, like I’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t. “What?” He yelped. “Oh,” he said when his mind caught up with the question I’d asked, “yes, I’m…uh…fine. Just distracted is all.”
Walt’s eyes left mine and returned to David. His staring apparently noticed something which required action. Walt put his hand on David’s left shoulder to get his attention. “Your jacket is going to get all wrinkled if you hold it like that.” Walt advised my friend. “Let me hang it up for you.”
David surrendered his jacket to Walt at the same time Georgie pushed his pint glass toward me. “Gimmie a beer, huh, Law?” Georgie asked.
I accepted Georgie’s glass and suggested an alternate to more beer. “How about a scotch highball?” I said and started to mix the drink without my brother’s permission.
The scotch highball was a drink I’d learned to make for people who already had too much. The drink was an old bartender’s trick. The sharp flavor of the scotch made the drink taste strong even if it was made very weak, and the large amount of water which filled up the rest of the glass helped to sober the patron, or at least it kept them from getting any drunker. I put enough scotch in just to cover the bottom of the glass and filled the rest with soda.
I mixed the drink with my back to Georgie to keep him from seeing the proportions I used. My position behind the bar had my face toward the barback mirror. My eyes landed on Walt’s reflection as he carried David’s jacket toward the coat-check to hang it up. Right before Walt disappeared around the wall which separated the cloakroom from the dining room, he pressed David’s jacket to his face and drew an exaggerated breath through the fabric.
I was shocked by the sight. I’d long known that Walt enjoyed the scent of men. I liked it as well. I was surprised when Walt scented David’s clothes. I wondered if he was attracted to David, or just curious. Those thoughts revolved in my mind like a carousel pony while I finished with Georgie’s drink and passed it to him.
My brother sipped from the glass and smacked his lips in approval. “Nice and strong.” He complimented the drink. “You make a good bartender, brother.” He said.
Edie scowled and looked along her eyes at Georgie. I motioned to catch Edie’s attention and tried to soothe her concern without letting her in on the scheme of the weak drink. “One more won’t hurt him.” I said to my sister.
Edie shrugged like Georgie’s drinking was none of her concern. By the time she did, Walt was back from the cloakroom and anxious to hear the rest of the story I’d been telling. He and David also wanted to know why I’d laughed.
I didn’t want to rekindle the spat between Edie and Georgie, so I ignored the question and answered one they hadn’t asked. “My brother and sister want to know why Smug Stanley shot me.” I explained.
“I’d like to know that too.” A boyish voice said.
I turned to face the voice and saw that Ted, Sunshine, and Larry had approached the bar from the side. The voice I’d heard was Ted’s. He stood near the bar, but seemed poised on the balls of his feet like he was worried I might lash out at him for his role in all that happened. I had no such intentions, but I understood why Ted might think that I did.
Sunshine put his arm around Ted’s waist and pulled their bodies snuggly together. Sunny’s closeness settled Ted. He rocked back to put some weight on his heels and waited for my explanation to continue. I refreshed my tonic water to keep my voice lubricated and settled in to tell the story for all who had gathered.
“Stan shot me because he was nuts.” I explained to open the story. “I assumed he was a little unbalanced from the few displays of temper he subjected me to, but I had no idea he was truly disturbed. The shrink said that those narcissists are prone to dangerous fits of temper. Whenever someone moves in on anything they think of as their exclusive property, they lash out.
“The ones with more control will sometimes do more subtle things, like smashing up the fenders of cars owned by people they don’t like. The ones with less control shoot people. Stan was somewhere in between. Depending on his mood and how angry he was, he might put his hands up, or he might steal a car and drive it into the river.
“I didn’t know any of that at the time. If I had, I would have approached Stan much less casually than I did. I didn’t think he was anything more than a petty crook. The whole point of approaching him wasn’t even to keep him there, it was to trap Ted in a crime so we could have him arrested. We needed the police to identify Ted in order to prove he was alive and that the corpse in the morgue was someone else. Once we were able to prove those things, the prosecutor would have no choice but to drop the murder charge against Larry.”
“Errant Hero,” Alex Scofield called over the heads of the people who were gathered at the bar, “are you taking credit for my strategy?”
“I wouldn’t dare.” I replied. “I’m just telling everyone of your genius.”
Scofield steepled his fingers in front of his mockingly serious face. He approached the bar and stood to the side near the young people. Jimmy Weaver trailed after him and was all smiles and handshakes.
“I thought Stan was incidental.” I said to continue my tale with a larger audience. “I didn’t find out until after he was dead, that Stan was the main criminal in the whole messy situation. I remember I thought Smokey was nuts when he tried to tell me about all the bad stuff Stan had done. Boy, was I surprised to find out that Smokey was a great deal more than half right.”
“I told you!” Smokey crowed as he and the remaining two members of the Newlin Excavation crew took seats at the bar. Wiry took the spot next to David. Next came Pig Pen, and Smokey. Nate and Beth Holbrooke stood behind the three men. Their son, little Nathan, had been left at home in the care of Beth’s mother.
Smokey spat into a ceramic coffee mug and used his tongue to rearrange the wad of tobacco in his cheek. He grinned proudly and winked along the bar at Sunshine to make sure he had his friend’s attention for the ‘I told you so’ he was about to expand upon. “I tried to tell you Stan was connected. I tried to tell you he was a bad man. You didn’t wanna listen and look what happened. You didn’t believe me, and he shot you in the guts.”
I nodded at the proud man and let him have his triumph. I even added to it to make him happy. “Yes, Smoke, I should have paid more attention to what you said.”
Smokey sat even taller on his stool and puffed his chest out like a posturing bird. “Next time you’ll listen when I tell you something.”
“There won’t be a next time!” Walt insisted from his spot behind David. “Law is retired from detective work…for good this time.”
I raised my glass toward Walt like I was making a toast and took a sip. “You heard the man, Smokey. No next time for me.” I put my glass down and rested my hands on the bar to get back to my story. “What I didn’t know when I crossed the street that day a month ago, was that Stan was behind the whole thing. He was the reason for the whole mess. He was a user of people, a car thief, and a murderer. He was also a habitual and probably a compulsive liar.”
“What’s the difference?” Edie asked. “Between the two types of liars, I mean.”
I did my best to define the terms. “A habitual liar does it because he’s used to it. He never hesitates to lie because he does it a lot and is likely good at it. A compulsive liar does it because something in their brain makes them do it.” I could see that my sister didn’t follow my explanation, so I tried again.
“Let’s say you asked both kinds of liars what the weather was like on a rainy day. The habitual liar would tell you it’s raining because the weather makes no difference to him. He wouldn’t bother to lie about something you could so easily verify. A compulsive liar might tell you it’s sunny, or that it’s snowing. You could look out the window and know he’s lying, but he might do it just the same.”
I could see by Edie’s pressed lips and squinted eyes that she still didn’t see the difference between the two, but I was tired of explaining myself. I moved on with my story. “The point is, because Stan had a screw loose, he thought he deserved things, but he shouldn’t have to work to get them. He wanted a fast car, he wanted money, he wanted to be a top racer, he wanted someone to cater to his every whim. He wanted all those things, and he didn’t care who he had to hurt to get them.”
Ted raised a timid hand like he was a student in a classroom. “Is that what it means to be a mal…mal…malignant narcissist?”
“That’s exactly what it means.” I agreed. “And the ‘delusions of grandeur’ part of his sickness comes in with the idea that he was smarter and better than everyone else. He thought he was smart for chopping cars in the shop where he worked because he believed that no one would suspect him of committing a crime right out in the open. It turns out Hank knew all along…”
I snapped my mouth shut and swallowed the rest of my sentence because Hank Kellerman and his wife Marie had walked up to the bar. Kellerman helped his wife onto a stool to my left, next to where Larry stood with Ted and Sunshine. Kellerman sat next to her. He lowered his bulk carefully, like he always did, and waited for me to go on. I tried to apologize for telling everyone the fact that Kellerman knew about Stan’s actions, but the big man wouldn’t have it.
“The truth is the truth, whether I like it or not, Law.” Kellerman said. “I already admitted I was a fool for letting Stan chop cars in my place just because I couldn’t bear to call the police on him. If I would’ve done my duty and reported the crime, I might have saved everyone here a lot of trouble. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
I waited a moment while my sister Millie, and Ted’s father, Theo, and the remaining few people gathered at the bar, then I addressed Kellerman’s mea-culpa. “You can say ‘if only’ all day long about these cases, Hank. Don’t think for a minute that what happened is all your fault, or anyone’s fault. Sometimes, small mistakes pile up and become a great big catastrophe. Thank God we were able to stop this one.”
“Amen.” David agreed.
“Anyway,” I said to get back on track, “it was all Stan. The other two crooks who were arrested with Ted, a pair of brothers known as the Marenco brothers, spilled their guts so they wouldn’t be blamed for Ted’s crimes. They admitted they had been helping Stan chop cars. They even helped him with some of the acts of vandalism Stan did against people who spent too much time with Ted. They didn’t admit to knowing anything about Mel being crushed under his car, but that could have been an accident.”
“NO WAY!” Smokey piped up.
I held a raised hand toward the former smoker. “I’m simply saying it’s possible that Mel or Karloff or whatever you want to call him died the way a lot of people do, by accident with no foul play. The brothers sure as heck aren’t going to admit they knew about a murder and Stan is pushing up daisies. No matter how the man died, he’s dead and as far as the police are concerned, it was an accident.”
Smokey expressed his doubt with a wordless grunt and spat again into his mug. Someone cleared their throat at the other end of the bar. The sound captured my attention away from Smokey and his disbelief.
I looked toward the sound just in time for Ted to make it a second time. I assumed that all the talk of Stan was wearing on the young man’s nerves. His gaze was low, and he leaned heavily into Sunshine. Sunshine noticed the change in Ted’s manner and whispered something into Ted’s ear. Ted’s face pinked with embarrassment over whatever Sunshine said. He brought his face up with a bashful grin on his pretty features. I stopped looking at the two men and started my story again.
“Long story long,” I said, “Stan had been chopping cars to line his pockets for a good long while. He’d recruited the two petty crooks to help because Stan didn’t do anything on his own. When he met Ted, he quickly became infatuated. Stan wanted to get Ted involved in his criminal enterprise, so he made up a yarn about gamblers and money owed to justify his thievery. It was all nonsense, though. There were no gamblers. There couldn’t have been. No one would dare to run a gambling ring based on illegal street races, especially when there are so many legal contests around the country to gamble on.
“Stan was a creative liar. He said what he did to get around the soft side of Ted. Once he did, he saw what a good thing Ted was, and he wanted to keep that good thing. Stan wanted to monopolize all of Ted’s time and attention. He became obsessed. That’s where the ‘latent homosexuality’ comes in. Stan was as queer as I am, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
“According to the shrink, that’s why he didn’t want Ted spending time with anyone else. As long as Stan was able to possess Ted, he could tell himself he was just using him and there was nothing queer about it. The minute Ted was with someone else, that meant Stan was sharing Ted’s favors.
“The sharing is what crossed the line in Stan’s head. The sharing is what made it queer. The trouble for Stan was that Ted didn’t want to be exclusive with anyone. Ted liked to play the field. Because Stan didn’t want to share, he tried threatening the men who Ted spent time with. When that didn’t work, he smashed up their cars. When even that didn’t work, Stan decided to make Ted disappear.”
Wiry spoke up from his place at the bar. “This Stan of yours sounds like he should have been in rubber room up in the Byberry nuthouse.”
I agreed with Wiry. “If not for our gunplay, that’s probably where he would have wound up. His obsession with Ted broke something inside his sick mind. Ted was the thing he wanted but couldn’t have. He couldn’t just kidnap Ted and keep him locked away, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Ted spending time with anyone else. By February 6th, he was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled, ready to explode. That’s when he met poor Craig Whipple, the dead man who everyone thought was Ted.
“Craig is the only real tragedy in this whole mixed-up case. He came down from the ritzy suburb of Villanova, the second or third son of an old money family with deep ties to the construction industry. He was all set to learn the family business from the ground up by working as a surveyor for the new bridge project. Craig had the misfortune of looking a great deal like Ted. On that same day, Friday, February 6th, Craig came down here to get settled and have a look at the project his family’s firm was building.
“The story gets muddled here because Stan is dead and the Marenco brothers want to save their skins. We’ve got to take what they say with a little more than a grain of salt, but not much more. The story of what happened is what the police pieced together from talking to the Marenco Brothers and a bunch of other people, including the head-shrinker.
“Anyway, the younger brother, Mateo Marenco, says Stan was all balled up that Friday. It seems Ted didn’t keep his regular afternoon appointment with Stan for…” I paused my story because I didn’t know how to refer to homosexual sex in the presence of a mixed audience. I kept my language vague and tried to move past the matter quickly.
“Ted didn’t keep their appointment for fun and games between the vacant lots. He wanted to spend some time with Larry. Ted and Larry had been arguing more and more and Ted felt like he was the cause of the disagreements.”
“I was.” Ted interjected. “Larry was sad, and it was all my fault. I should have…”
I raised my hand toward the ginger youth. “There’s no reason to rehash all that now, is there?”
Ted stopped with his mouth open like he wanted to argue. A squeeze from Sunshine closed his mouth. Ted shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Anyway,” I said again, “Ted was trying to make amends with Larry and Stan was boiling mad. Stan was driving around before the races, stewing in his rage, and he ran across Craig Whipple down by the new right-of-way for the bridge. The police head-shrinker says that Craig was a proxy for Ted, or in other words, he was Ted’s stand-in. Stan heaped all of his rage onto Craig. He jumped Craig and threw him in the trunk of the Oldsmobile. Stan probably planned to take his frustrations out on Craig, then dump him back where he found him later on. Tragedy struck because of something wrong with Stan’s car.
“Stan had done work on his car to set it up for racing. An unintended consequence of that work was a hole in the trunk floor which funneled exhaust fumes directly inside. Either Stan didn’t think about the trunk full of fumes, or he didn’t care. Either way, by the time Stan got to the dumping ground where he planned to…” I paused again because the shrink said that Stan likely planned to rape Craig, but I wasn’t going to say that in front of my sisters and Hank Kellerman’s wife. I softened my language again and left my meaning vague.
“By the time Stan opened the trunk, Craig was either dead or nearly dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. This left Stan in a lurch. He was still angry about Ted and now he had a dead man on his hands. He went nuts and beat Craig until he was unrecognizable. He dumped Craig’s body in the vacant lot and went racing. Later, when he saw Ted, Stan’s corrupt brain gave him the idea of how to use the murder to his advantage.
“Stan realized he had a faceless corpse on his hands, a corpse who physically resembled Ted. Stan assumed the police would eventually find Craig’s body and do some kind of investigation. In order to confuse the police, Stan planted Ted’s wallet on the corpse. Because of Ted’s habits, if the police thought the corpse was him, they would have a very long list of possible suspects for the murder.
“Stan also planned to make Ted hideout with him. That would help Stan in two ways. It would give Stan possession of Ted, which is what he wanted anyway, and if the police fingered Stan for the murder, all he had to do was present Ted, alive and well, to confuse them even more.”
My brother had something to say about my story. “Stan was a twisted fuck!” Georgie exclaimed.
Edie spun on her stool to face my brother, but she didn’t say anything. I expect she didn’t want to berate him for his language in front of a crowd.
I kept going because I wanted to finish the story. “Stan told Ted that Ted was wanted by the police and he demanded Ted hand over his wallet. Stan planted the wallet on Craig’s body and took Craig’s identification away with him. We know that because the police found Craig’s wallet in the glove box of Stan’s car.
“To boil it all down is to say that, on Friday, February 6th, Stan’s anger is what set the stage for the fiasco which came after. By the time everyone went to sleep that night, Craig was dead with Ted’s wallet in his pocket, Ted was hiding out with Stan, and Larry was home alone waiting to be arrested. You all know what happened next. The scrap collector found the body and called the police. The cops identified the body as Ted’s and arrested Larry. Scofield accepted the case and wrote a letter to David. David jumped on a train and came to find me.
“I investigated and was very confused until after I had a bullet in my guts and was able to talk to Ted. He told me all the lies which Stan told him. Right before I passed out from blood loss, I realized that Stan was the liar, the cheat, the thief, and the smug son of a bitch who was the root of the whole mixed-up mess.”
I stood back from the bar and dusted my hands off in the air. “Case solved, except it’s never quite that easy. The cops came to Hank Kellerman’s garage and arrested everyone.” I explained. “There was so much confusion that they sent me and Walt to the hospital and hauled everyone else into the station to sort out what they didn’t understand. Mike the bartender from the nameless tavern across from Kellerman’s garage, whose proper name is Michael Murray, had to come in as a witness to explain the events. Alex Scofield slipped away in the confusion, so he couldn’t be accused of meddling in the case, and Mike the honest bartender never brought him up.
“Once the cops sorted the good guys from the criminals, they charged Ted and the two other members of Stan’s car-chopping-crew with grand theft auto, larceny, and a whole host of other things. Ted offered to testify against the others in return for qualified immunity, an offer which the public prosecutor accepted. The other two, the Marenco brothers, hung everything on dead Stanley. It was easy for them to make him the villain because he wasn’t around to defend himself.
“Scofield made a ton of noise about the police fouling up the identity of the corpse and for arresting Larry on basically no evidence. The police and the public prosecutor had to admit they’d been wrong, but it still took them three weeks to process Larry out of the system and release him from prison. Now, here we all are, a week after Larry got out, having a party to celebrate Larry’s release. Tomorrow morning, he and his father will be on the early morning train bound for Montana.”
