Jonathan Kellerman - Silent Partner

He pushed open a screen door, walked into the house, and let it slam shut. Milo caught it. We entered.

The house was small and unlit, crammed so full of junk there was barely room to walk. We inched our way past stacks of old newspapers, towers of cardboard boxes and raw-wood fruit crates, jumbles of clothing, an upright piano painted with gray primer, three ironing boards bearing a collection of clock radios in various stages of disassembly. The furniture that managed to coexist with the clutter was cheap, dark wood and overstuffed chairs sleeved with antimacassars and doilies. Thrift shop fare.

The floor was pine, trodden gray, splintered in several places by dry rot. A mantel above the bricked-in fireplace bore porcelain figurines, most of them chipped or missing limbs. The clock on the mantel wall said Coca-Cola. It was frozen at seven-fifteen.

“Sit,” said Crotty. He brushed newspapers off an easy chair and sank down. A cloud of dust rose and settled like dew.

Milo and I cleared a sofa with broken springs, created our own dust storm.

Crotty cleared his throat. Milo pulled out his wallet and handed him several bills. The old man counted it, fanned it out, closed his fingers over it. “Okay, let’s make this quick. Belding. Leland, A. Capitalist pig, too much money, no morals, a latent fag.”

I said, “Why do you say that?” and heard Milo groan.

Crotty turned on me. “Because I’m a frigging expert on latency is why, Dr. Psychology. You might have the diploma, but I’ve got the experience.” He grinned and added, “Hands-on experience.”

“Let’s stick to Belding,” said Milo.

Crotty ignored him: “Let me tell you, Curly, one thing I know, it’s latents. For thirty years I frigging lived that trip.”

Milo yawned, closed his eyes.

“ He’s frigging bored,” said Crotty. “If anyone should be listening it’s him. Hell, you’d think someone in his position would seek me out, kneel at my feet and beg for my accumulated wisdom. But no, how do I meet the lump in the first place? Half-dead in the Emergency Room, sweet Rick massaging my heart, bringing me back to life. And then this lump shows up all Dragnet-butch, checking his watch and wanting to know when Rick’s going off-shift. Frigging Beauty and the Beast.”

He turned to Milo, shook one finger. “You were always insensitive. There I was fading away and all you could think of was your cock.”

“Don’t make it sound life-threatening, Ellston. You had an upset stomach. Gas. Too much menudo, not enough fiber.”

“So you say.” To me: “Got your work cut out for you, shrink. That is one big frigging piece of work sitting next to you- take you years just to get through the top layer of denial.”

“Belding,” said Milo. “Or give back the bread.”

“Belding,” repeated Crotty. “A capitalist. Vicious. Because he was a latent. I know what that does to a person.” He got up, looked over a group of boxes on the floor, went down on his knees in front of one of them and pawed through it with both hands.

“Here we go,” said Milo.

Crotty pulled out a brown cloth scrapbook, flipped pages, wiped his forehead, then sat down next to me and pointed.

“There.”

His fingertip rested next to a snapshot of a young man in police uniform. Black-and-white, sawtooth edges, just like the one of Sharon and Shirlee.

The young man wore a police uniform, stood next to a patrol car on a palm-lined street. His features were delicate, almost girlish, his eyes big and round. Innocent. Thick, wavy dark hair parted in the middle, a dimple on his right cheek. A pretty boy- the easily bruised countenance of a young Monty Clift.

“Glom this,” said Crotty and pointed to another photo on the page. Same man in civilian attire, standing next to the Dodge I’d just seen in the driveway. He wore sports clothes and had his arm around the waist of a girl. She wore a halter and shorts, was shapely. Her face had been scratched out with a ballpoint pen.

“I was some piece of beef back then,” said Crotty. He yanked the book away, snapped it shut, and tossed it on the floor.

“Those were taken in ’45. I was just out of Uncle Sam’s Navy, earned ribbons in the Pacific, thought I was God’s gift to women and kept telling myself that those little shipboard episodes with the cook- sweaty Swedish meatball- had been just a bad dream. No matter that doing it with him had felt the way love should feel, and all the frails I nailed had a better time than I did.”

He tapped his chest. “I was as sweet as Mary Pickford but trying to convince myself I was frigging Gary Cooper. So what better job for an overcompensating macho buck than to wear blue and carry a big stick?”

He laughed. “Day I got my discharge papers, I applied to the force. Day I finished the academy I thought I was King Hetero Stud. Being Butch Blue was going to solve all my problems. The brass took one look at me and knew exactly where to send me. Toilet decoy in MacArthur Park till all the local queers made me, then gay-bar detail over in Hollywood. I was great, busted more faggots than any other piece of bait. Got promoted, assigned to Vice, spent the next ten years of my life busting more faggots- busting myself , drinking it off every night. I made detective in record time but was nothing more than a frigging lure- kissed up to so many sad suckers my lips started to callous. Vice loved me. I was their frigging secret weapon, batting my lashes, breaking up private parties up in the hills, rousting raucous black-and-tans out in the colored districts- that gave the other pigs the chance to break some nappy heads.”

He reached over, took hold of my collar, opened his good eye wide. He was sweating and seemed to have gone pale, though in the dim light it was hard to be sure.

“Know the reason I was so frigging good, Curly? ’Cause deep down inside I wasn’t acting Slam, bam, out in the alley, then here come the other Vice pigs with their saps and their sticks. Another meat wagon full of faggots expressed to County Lockup, black-and-blue, puking blood. Once in a while one of them would hang himself in his cell. The Vice boys would say good riddance, less paperwork. I’d laugh the loudest, chug-a-lug the fastest.”

His mustache quivered. “For ten years I was an accessory to the assault and murder of gay men, never stopped to wonder why I was going home each night, puking my own guts out and drinking gin until I could feel my liver sizzling.”

He let go of my collar. Milo was looking the other way, staring off into space.

“I was eating myself up is why,” said Crotty. “Until I took a vacation down south- Tijuana. Crossed the border looking for action, got stoned drunk in a cantina watching a donkey mount a woman, stumbled outside and asked a cabbie to take me to a whorehouse. But the cabbie wasn’t fooled. Drove me to a crappy little place on the outskirts of town. Cardboard walls painted turquoise, chickens outside the door and in. Twenty-four hours later I knew who I was, knew I was trapped. What I didn’t know was how to get out of it.”

He folded and unfolded the money, finally crumpled it in his fist. “No guts for quick suicide, I kept pouring the sauce down. Wasn’t till a year later- February- that opportunity knocked. Someone tipped Vice to a big soiree out on Cahuenga- absinthe drinkers and dancing boys, an all-sweet jazz band, things in drag smoking reefer. I sailed in wearing a boatnecked sailor shirt, red scarf- this frigging scarf. Inside of thirty seconds I’d snagged a fish- good-looking blond kid, Ivy League get-up, rosy cheeks. Took him outside, made sure to unlock the door, let him kiss me, then stood there fighting not to cry as he got beat up. They broke the whole place open, tore the frigging house apart , but I just sat on the sidelines, only got credit for the blond kid’s bust.”