The Truth Can Get You Killed Page 6

“Sure. I like money. As for Judge Meade, if he was a closet case, the dancers would have loved him.”

  “Why?”

  “One of the guys said it for all of us, ‘those closet cases may be a pain, but they pay the most money.’ Which is true. Closeted guys tend to pay a lot.”

  “Blackmail?” Fenwick asked.

  Geary laughed. “A prostitute has some honor. Do whores and their clients really even know each other’s real names or care much even if they do? Unless they’re long-term clients or long-term whores? In which case, the relationship is different. Why bust up a steady meal ticket?”

  Turner stuffed the blackmail possibility high on his questions-to-ask list.

  “If it isn’t blackmail, why do they pay more?” Fenwick asked.

  “Stupidity? Desperation? Gratitude? Maybe it’s a sort of blackmail pay-off in their own minds, or a making up for guilt, a way of salving their consciences? You’d have to ask them or someone who’s a prostitute. At Au Naturel, you pay a dollar for at most a few seconds of touching. If you figure out why men go to prostitutes, you could write a book and be famous.”

  “Somebody probably already has,” Fenwick said. “Anybody mention to you if they saw him the rest of the night?”

  “No, but I didn’t ask either. I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you. It was such a crazy night, and he’s not the first politician to be in there.” He paused, then said, “This is big-time news, isn’t it?”

  Turner nodded. “We’d prefer it if you didn’t talk to the press.”

  Fenwick said, “We could become a lot less understanding of your recreational activities if this becomes a front-page headline.”

  “Ian’s a reporter and he knows.”

  Everybody looked at Ian.

  Ian said, “We’ll have to see. Leave Billy out of it. You can deal with me on that.”

  They took down Billy’s address and phone number. After he left Ian said, “What a tangled web we weave.”

  “Why are we quoting Shakespeare?” Fenwick asked.

  Ian said to Turner, “You owe me ten bucks.”

  “Why?”

  “Last night—I didn’t pay the guy.”

  “I don’t see any proof.” Turner explained the bet from the night before to Fenwick. Then he said, “Ben and I were in Au Naturel last night. So was Ian.”

  “So were half the gay people in the city,” Ian said.

  “But most of that half is not investigating this case.”

  “Did either of you see the judge?” Fenwick asked.

  “I didn’t,” Turner said. “I wouldn’t have recognized him if I did.” He pulled the photo of the judge out of his regulation-blue notebook and gazed at it. He shook his head. “The face doesn’t ring a bell. I was more concerned with Ben.”

  “You bring a date to a dancing bar?” Fenwick asked.

  “You mean a bar with dancing men or women?” Ian corrected.”

  “Either.”

  “Why not?” Ian asked.

  “I wouldn’t bring Madge to a place like that. I can picture her hooting as the men put money in some floozy’s crotch.”

  “You wouldn’t take her because she’d laugh, carry on, and make fun,” Turner said.

  “She’d have too damn good of a time,” Fenwick said.

  “It was a place to go and have fun,” Ian said.

  Turner added, “Although it is none of your business, neither Ben nor I put money in any part of anybody’s clothing last night.”

  “I think they’re both too shy,” Ian said. “I’ve been trying to get them over their hang-ups.”

  “Is my being there going to compromise the case?”

  “Don’t see why it should,” Fenwick said, “You didn’t see anything. It was a coincidence, pure and simple.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences and neither do you, Buck.” Turner sighed. “I am more concerned about Ben. I don’t want him involved in an investigation.”

  “I think this blackmail angle has real possibilities,” Fenwick said. “I don’t care what Billy said about the nobility of whores not blackmailing their clients.”

  “I can see the headlines,” Turner said, “notorious homophobe in love nest with male prostitute. We’ll have to keep it in mind.”

  “You guys remember Geary from last night?” Fenwick asked.

  Turner shook his head. Ian nodded.

  “So, now what?” Ian asked.

  “I thank you for the big tip. We find out the name of the owner of the bar. Interview him or her …”

  Ian said, “Owner is Dana Sickles. Has a solid reputation in the community. Supports a lot of good causes. I can try and dig up some information on her for you.”

  “Thanks. We’ll see her and all the employees of the bar, including the dancers.”

  Ian said, “You want to stay on the case because secretly you’re a lech. This way you get to talk to all the guys up close and personal.”

  Turner ignored him and continued, “Then see if anybody else saw him. Don’t figure on a lot of people coming forward to volunteer that they were there last night.”

  It was an odd thing about the gay community. Many of the people who were at the bar last night would say they were openly gay, at least to varying degrees. However, there would be enormous hesitation about coming forward and admitting they were present—especially if something criminal was known to be involved. This was a historical problem in the gay community everywhere, although there had been specific local difficulties over time. Not more than a year ago in Chicago, there had been a negative incident. Every patron of a gay bar, more than fifty, had been ordered by the police to lie on the floor. They were then searched. The police claimed they had evidence that one of the patrons possessed drugs. The ACLU was interested in helping with the case, thinking that the suspected patron could have been searched but not every person in the bar, and that the constitutional rights of all the others had been violated. The difficulty had been in getting any of those who’d been present to come forward and testify. Other than the employees of the bar, only a few brave souls had been willing to speak out. Fear and mistrust of the police among gay people went back much further than just to the Stonewall Inn in New York back in 1969.

  Turner and Fenwick left the newspaper offices.

  In the car Turner said, “Well, that about tears it. How many cops do you know who were at a possible crime scene before it happened? It would add me to the suspect list. If I pursue the case, it’s like I’m trying to let myself off the hook.”

  “We don’t know it’s the crime scene. Did you kill him?”

  “Thanks for asking. No.”

  “Did Ben?”

  “No.”

  “Did Ian?”

  “He’s a little radical, but not nuts. He takes out his anger in the editorials and columns he writes.”

  “So nobody you know did the killing. What’s the problem? Having you on the case might give us important information. In fact it already has.”

  “Gay people, cops, or both could accuse me of selling out.”

  “Or you could just do your job and stop whining.”

  “I am not whining.”

  “You’re coming closer than any time since I’ve known you.”

  “If I ever whine, just pull out your gun and shoot me.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Figured.” Turner looked at his watch. “It’s after five. Why don’t we stop at the bar? We might catch the owner there, or we can find out where she lives. We can start the questioning. At least we’ve got a notion on where Meade was last night.”

  “And blackmail as a possible motive.”

  “Does this clear up the paid-for plane ticket problem?” Turner asked.

  “I dunno,” Fenwick said.

  “If he was a closet case, the whole trip could have been an elaborate deception designed to fool the wife and kiddies.”

  “People are that desperate to hide?”

  “Lots are. He
might have been. If somebody ever outed him after all the grief he’s caused gay people, it could be a major scandal. At the least, his marriage would be in deep trouble, most probably over. Just realizing he was gay could have been enough stress to put him over the edge.”

  “You went through a hell of a lot of stress, but you handled it.”

  “Took a long time, and I was no saint.”

  Turner’s wife had died when Jeff was born. In the months before his second’s son’s birth, Paul had come to accept being gay. He’d come to love his wife as a friend and her death had pained him deeply. He sometimes wondered what would have happened had she lived and had he come out to her. Certainly their marriage would have been over. It was one of the great “what ifs” of his life.

  “I want to check in with Roosevelt and Wilson before we do more questioning,” Turner said.

  “Murder victims need to get organized,” Fenwick said. “A little timetable of their movements would be helpful, or a few more witnesses to the dastardly deeds.”

  “You’re hallucinating again, Buck.”

  Fenwick banged his fist on the dashboard. “Ah, reality. I feel so much better.”

  They called the station. Roosevelt and Wilson’s last known location was on Lincoln Avenue near the coffee shop at the end of Montana Street.

  8

  In the coffee shop, the large picture windows were covered with steam. Patches of ice clung to the corners of the interior of the windows. They found Detectives Roosevelt and Wilson talking to two uniformed cops. Turner and Fenwick pulled over two chairs to sit with them. They were the only patrons. De Paul University, only a block or two away, wasn’t in session, so even brave or demented college students wouldn’t be out on a night like this. The locals knew better. Not even a crazed jogger, numerous ones of whom infested this neighborhood, disturbed the deserted sidewalks outside.

  “What have you got?” Turner asked.

  “Nothing from any of the residents,” an older cop in the best big-gut florid-face tradition of the Chicago Police Department said. “We stopped in as many of the businesses as we could. Not many were open. There’s a gay bar called Au Naturel where we tried to talk to people. There was a little bit of a crowd, but we got no help. Nobody would talk to us. The owner was a little snotty. She called her lawyer while we were there.”

  “Sounds suspicious,” Wilson said.

  “Or a canny gay bar owner being careful,” Turner said.

  “We’ll check it out,” Fenwick said. “Anything else?”

  The uniformed cops shook their heads. They left.

  Turner and Fenwick explained their tip about the judge being in Au Naturel.

  “This Geary guy was sure it was Judge Meade?”

  “Claimed to be,” Fenwick said.

  Roosevelt shook his head. “We’ve got lots of call backs to make. We’re also checking into the possibility of a cab driver having dropped him off, especially if the judge drove all the way in from the airport to here. They’d remember that.”

  “Wife said he liked to use the El,” Turner said.

  “A federal judge?” Roosevelt asked, “In this cold?”

  “The rich get more plebeian,” Wilson said.

  “Where’s his luggage?” Fenwick asked. “I just thought of that.” He explained what they’d learned from Mrs. Meade.

  “He have a ticket or key to one of those luggage lockers at the airport when you went through his pockets?” Wilson asked.

  “Not that we found,” Fenwick said.

  “I don’t think they have those anymore,” Turner said. “I think it was an antiterrorist thing years ago. Mad bombers kept putting bombs in them. You get rid of the lockers, the insane have one less venue to vent their spleen in. I haven’t seen them in any train stations, and I don’t remember them at the airport when I took Brian out there.”

  “So where’s his luggage? Must have taken it out to the airport. Mrs. Meade would have wondered where it was when he left.”

  “In his office?”

  “No, we already looked through it.”

  “Maybe the luggage went to Canada but he didn’t?”

  “We’ll have to find out,” Fenwick said. “Where do we go next?”

  “The testy bar owner,” Turner said. “Let’s find out what the story is there. If her lawyer is still around, it might help.”

  They drove to Au Naturel. Fenwick parked in the bus stop out front and they walked in.

  About ten people slumped on chairs around the front bar. A few watched a football game on a large screen television. Several glanced occasionally at a dancer who had to be at least in his late fifties. The guy was in great shape, but no question he was soon going to be eligible for social security. No one approached him with money to stuff into his bright red thong. Turner saw the dancer yawn. Late night last night for everybody.

  They approached the bar and asked to speak to the owner.

  “Now what?” The bartender said. He was in his midtwenties. He wore faded blue jeans, a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a leather vest.

  They took out their identification and showed him. He picked up the phone and punched two numbers. He turned his head away and spoke into the receiver.

  Turner noted two men get up and sidle past them and out the door. Cop identification in a gay bar was not a good way to get patrons to stick around.

  A woman in her early thirties came out of the back and walked up to them. She was slender, with dark black hair cut short, blue jeans, and a pink and brown sweater that clung to her torso and reached down to her knees.

  “Come with me, please,” she said.

  They followed her into the darkened back room, to a hallway, down this, past the washrooms to an unprepossessing door, which she opened. Her office was small and neat with an electric hurricane lamp on top of a desk with piles of neatly stacked papers. She had a clear plastic phone through which you could see the wires. The walls were painted medium gray. Several tasteful prints of pastoral scenes were framed and hung on each wall. There was a large leather chair behind the modern metallic desk. She motioned for them to sit in the two low-slung leather chairs that faced the desk.

  “You didn’t think you ruined enough of my business with those first cops? You had to come back?”

  “You’re the owner?” Fenwick asked.

  “I’m Dana Sickles. I’m in charge of what little is left of my clientele. We’d have had a good crowd if your uniformed buddies hadn’t been in here harassing my people earlier. I don’t break any laws. I do whatever the local commander from the district says. When Ernie the bartender called back here about you two, I called my lawyer. He’s on his way. Why am I being hassled?”

  “We’re investigating a murder.”

  “Yeah, well so? That’s what the other cops said.”

  “We have reason to believe the victim may have been in your bar.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. Half the planet could have been in here last night. Who would know?”

  “Gentleman named Billy Geary who works for you claims he saw him.”

  “Billy? He shows up on time and is good with the customers. One of the better employees. How’d he know it was him?”

  “He goes to law school during the day.”

  “How does going to law school confer the power of identification?”

  “He attended some of the hearings last year on the gay law in Du Page County.”

  “Good for him. He never bothered to tell me he was going to school, but I get all kinds of different guys here.”

  Fenwick said, “Tell me about the different kinds.”

  She glowered at him. “What does that mean?”

  “Why do they do it? What’s their story?”

  “Why do you need to know this?”

  “Background. Trying to understand the milieu. We’ve got a famous person dead. Knowing why he was in your bar, knowing the nature of those working in the bar, could make a difference.”

  “I don
’t see how.”

  Turner said, “If you could please, Ms. Sickles. We’re cops trying to solve a murder. We don’t want to hassle you. We recognize this is a tremendous inconvenience.”

  She gave him a skeptical look, but began to answer. “The boys work here for any number of reason. Essentially for most of them it’s because they have low self-esteem.”

  Turner expressed his astonishment. “Guys who look good enough to be paid money just for twitching have low self-esteem?”

  She smiled briefly. “You’d think they’d be on top of the world, but think about it. If you felt positive about yourself, would you need to do this?”

  “If I looked that good, I wouldn’t mind showing off my body,” Fenwick said.

  “Maybe for you, but basically these guys need affirmation that they are okay, needed, even loved. Maybe that’s why you’d be willing to do it. Maybe that’s what you need.”

  Fenwick smiled. “I’ll stick to chocolate. That seems to fulfill a lot of my needs.” He showed her the picture of Judge Meade. “You recognize him?”

  “You mean do I know what he looks like, or was he in here last night?”

  “All of the above,” Fenwick said.

  “Nope, to all of the above.”

  “We’ll need to talk to everybody who was working here last night.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “We’d like to do it tonight if at all possible.”

  She glared at them a moment, then said, “I know I don’t have any choice but to cooperate with you, but I’m not happy about this.”

  The door swung open. Turner thought that being muffled in his overcoat, scarf, hat, and gloves made the man seem more rotund and porcine than he probably was.

  “This is my lawyer, Adolf von Steinwehr.”

  “Don’t say anything Dana. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’ll handle it.” He threw off his outer accoutrements. He wore a black business suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. He leaned his butt against the front of the desk almost blocking the view of Dana Sickles behind him. “What’s the problem?” he demanded.

  Turner said, “Nobody is trying to hassle a gay bar. Nobody is trying to shut this place down. We don’t want to arrest anybody connected with the establishment unless they had something to do with the murder of Judge Meade.”