We drove to Lafayette University, where Ethan had taught. It was off Interstate 70 just west of the airport. We found the athletic department. The secretary told us the head of the department could see us. Scott’s fame helped open that door. Gay or not, win as many MVP trophies as he has and make as much money, and certain doors will open up to you.
Larry Weiser, the head of the department, was broad-shouldered, at least six feet six, and three hundred pounds. He looked like one of today’s professional-football linemen ten years after retirement. He had black, buzz-cut hair and spoke with a hint of a Canadian accent.
He shook hands enthusiastically and said, “In all the time I’ve been an athlete and a coach, I’ve never met a player at the pro level. This is great. What’s it like playing in the pros?”
Scott’s also heard that question several million times. He’s used to it and doesn’t mind answering, especially if a kid is asking or it will ease someone into talking to us.
Scott said, “You train Olympic athletes here. It’s a lot more like real work than anyone ever imagines. Playing professional sports, I’m sure, is very much like being an Olympic athlete. It helps to have innate gifts, but everybody at that level has extraordinary natural talents. To be the best among those, you’ve got to work your butt off and have a bit of luck. The skill level is higher, but the amount of work and emotional commitment for me isn’t that much different from the sports at the levels you must have played.”
“I’m not talking about the amount of work involved. I’m talking about the name recognition and fame and cash. Except for a select few, Olympic champions’ names are usually quickly forgotten. I guess it’s gotta be different and the same all at once.”
Scott nodded.
I said, “We came to try and find out more about Ethan Gahain. We’re trying to figure out why he died.” I explained about my familial connection with Ethan. I included the part about us being lovers. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat Ethan’s life to a stranger.
Weiser said, “I can’t believe this—him being gay, murder, pornography.” He shook his head. “Ethan was a great guy. I thought he was a great guy. He was one coach who could really motivate a young athlete. We were truly lucky to get him away from Carl Sandburg University. There is so much rivalry between our schools. It was quite a coup. For the size of our programs, they and we send proportionally more athletes to the Olympics than any other colleges.”
Scott asked, “How does a private university afford an Olympic program?”
“We’d never be able to do it without massive donations. The university has been interested in this since the Olympics were held here in St. Louis in 1904. The alumni established a fund back then. Today we have a huge endowment for it plus private donors and public sponsorship. The university gets first-class physical education facilities and a lot more prestige as part of the bargain.”
Scott asked, “Isn’t it a little odd for a well-established, tenured coach such as Ethan to leave his previous university?”
“A little. We were just so glad to get him. He brought four first-class athletes with him. The son of one of their coaches, Shawn Ranklin, switched. The big coup was Barney Natlik joining our program. Everyone is predicting for him to win as many gold medals in the next Olympics as he did in the last. We also got Henry Diamond and Billy McConnel, who almost certainly will qualify for the next games. Ethan has been a dream of a recruiter for the past couple years. Kids and their parents loved him.”
Ethan always was a charmer to anyone he wasn’t done fucking.
Weiser said, “As a coach he was the exact opposite of a Bobby Knight. There were never any emotional outbursts. He could talk to an athlete quietly, sincerely, with maybe just the slightest physical touch, and half an hour later the kid would shave seconds off his best time, or have more stamina, or come closer to or even break a record. I saw that over and over. Ethan was great to work with. Now I find out he’s a perv. How can you take pornographic pictures of guys like that?”
“Money,” Scott said.
“There’s lots of ways to make money,” Weiser said.
“Actually I think it wasn’t illegal,” I said. “At least it wasn’t as of a few years ago when a scandal about taking hidden photos of athletes broke. Ethan’s name was never in the articles I read about it at that time.”
Weiser said, “If it had been, we’d have never hired his ass. No, when I ask why, I guess I mean what motivates him to make money that way? Everybody’s saying he must have been gay. I don’t know if I believe that. He sure didn’t act gay.”
“And how would that be?” Scott asked.
“Sorry,” Weiser said, “you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Scott said.
There are times, such as this moment, when I can tell Scott is irritated with someone. Usually he’s the calmer of the two of us. If we’re finding out information, normally he’s willing to skip the blunders of the unenlightened. Not at the moment, obviously. Weiser must know we were gay. He may not watch talk shows, but that someone involved in sports wouldn’t know Scott was gay would be rare. It’d be as big a sensation if Michael Jordan announced he was gay.
“You know,” Weiser said. “He wasn’t effeminate or any of that crap.”
Before Scott could begin a debate, I asked, “How was he as a colleague?”
“Funny and hardworking. A great sense of humor, but you could count on him to get something done. He was always volunteering to help out with any out-of-town trips.”
“That wasn’t suspicious?” I asked.
“Not until this moment. If somebody had a scheduling conflict, Ethan was always willing to step in. He was always eager to go on overnight trips. Damn. I never dreamed he’d want to go to make pornographic videos. Who would? He was a very committed coach. He really cared about his athletes. Now I know the real reason. It’s disgusting.”
“How many out-of-town trips were there a year?”
“Not as many as at a Big Ten university, but enough. If a kid was good enough to go to a state or national competition, his or her coach usually went. Most of the time the regular coach would accompany the athlete. There were a few exceptions, but Ethan was an assistant for three sports. While we’ve got a great reputation and a great program, still, we’re not a big university. Everybody has to kind of pitch in and help out. He was on the periphery of everything we offered, as is most everybody.”
“Did you know anything about his photo operation?”
“Hell no. What kind of question is that? Besides, I talked to the police earlier. I wasn’t in most of those cities at the times they’re supposed to have made the videos. I’m head of the department. I don’t coach a lot. I don’t get involved in the kids’ lives much anymore. It’s kind of a shame. I miss it.”
“You never heard any of the athletes or coaches talking about pictures or videos?”
“Never.”
“Anybody express any reservations about working with Ethan? Maybe they quit because they didn’t want to work with him? Or quit without any explanation?”
“Not since Ethan’s been here.”
I asked, “Did you ever hear Ethan talk about someone named Michael?”
“We’ve had kids in the program named Michael. At least one or two every year. We’ve got lots of kids in different programs.”
“Anybody that he seemed especially close to?”
“No. The cops asked that.”
“St. Louis cops or Chicago cops?”
“St. Louis.”
If the St. Louis cops knew to ask about Michael, the two jurisdictions had to be communicating.
“Anybody suggest he tried to make it with any of the athletes on out-of-town trips?” I asked.
Weiser said, “I would never have thought of Ethan as the type to try to have sex with one of the athletes he coached. He didn’t invite students to his house, at least not that I knew of. The coaches who do get close to the kids and become involved in their private lives are all very up-front about it. This is the college level. It’s not like high school where they’re underage. Nobody here is going to countenance having sex with the kids, but it’s nowhere near as big a scandal as it would be if they were in high school.”
Scott said, “Are you equating being gay with being a child molester?”
“There isn’t a connection?”
“No,” Scott said. “There isn’t, no matter how many times the right wing tells that lie.”
“Oh.”
“How difficult would it have been to hide all of this from you?”
“Not as hard as it should have been. I never suspected anything. I’m just an average guy. Sure, there are probably gay coaches around, but I don’t know any, or at least they don’t come out to me. I don’t care if a guy is gay or not. I heard there were guys on my football team in college who were gay. Nobody said much about it.”
I asked, “Did you know Cormac Macintire?”
“The other guy who’s dead? Nah. I never heard of him.”
“How about Josh Durst?”
“Josh went to school here a few years back. He worked really hard. He wanted to be a baseball player in the worst way, but finally had to admit he wasn’t going to even make the minor leagues or the Olympic baseball team. Realizing he wasn’t going to the Olympics or into professional baseball was tough on him, but he wasn’t the first we’ve seen who needed to come to that realization. A nice kid, great work habits, lots of self-discipline.”
“We think he might have been working for Ethan and intimately involved in the porn business.”
“What! I just don’t believe this shit. For the past couple years after he graduated, Josh did help a lot with the training here at the college. He was great at giving the guys massages.” Weiser shook his head. “I must be the most naive dope on the planet.”
I asked, “Do you know if Ethan was frightened of anything or worried about something recently?”
“I’m not sure about fear, but for the past few weeks, Ethan talked to me about moving on.”
“Quitting his job here?”
“I don’t know about quitting, but kind of like starting new. He talked about selling his house. He talked about having a big garage sale to get rid of a lot of stuff. He talked about taking real vacations for the first time in his life, which I thought was kind of funny. He always had plenty of money. He could go anywhere he wanted, but he never really let up at work. The only trips I ever knew him to take were with the teams.”
I said, “Maybe he was planning to get rid of all of his porn stuff?”
“Could be. I wouldn’t know.”
“He came to Chicago, supposedly he needed to talk to me. Do you know anything about that?”
“Ethan never mentioned either of your names that I remember. I knew about Scott as a player, but I never watched any shows when he was interviewed. I read the sport pages every day, but that’s about it.”
I said, “If Ethan wanted to talk to me, something must have been going on that was unusual.”
“Maybe it was just old-friends shit. You said you knew him as a kid.”
“Who were the people closest to Ethan here?”
“I think Salvatore Fariniti, the wrestling coach, was probably closest.”
“Is he here today?”
Larry Weiser took us to a group of offices across from a gymnasium. The room had eight cubicles spaced around a room the size of my classroom at the high school. Six-foot-high, felt-covered partitions and cabinets created visual barriers.
Fariniti looked like a wrestler somewhere in the 150- to 160-pound weight class. Weiser left us with him. Fariniti had a black mustache. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that he had thick hair on every exposed bit of flesh except his fingertips and his eyeballs. He must have to shave several times a day. He wore a baggy T-shirt, gold polyester shorts that hung below his knees, white socks, and gym shoes.
Fariniti smiled at us. “Wow! Scott Carpenter. How can you be gay and be so good at sports?”
“A genetic defect,” Scott snapped.
Fariniti’s smile disappeared. “I didn’t mean to give offense. I just don’t know a lot of gay guys. I just know about drag queens.”
“You’ve never wrestled against gay guys?” Scott asked.
“I never hung around with anybody who wasn’t an athlete. Even my wife is a swimmer. Nobody I knew growing up admitted to being gay. I was Missouri state wrestling champion in my weight class when I was in high school. As far as I know, all the guys were straight. Nobody got a hard-on while I was wrestling with them. I went to the national finals in college my junior year. You always hear somebody making fun of wrestlers because we touch other guys. You get a few shrinks who insist we’re gay. You get a few guys from the football team who’ve had a little too much testosterone with their Wheaties and they rag you once in a while.” He held out his hands palm up. “You get used to it real young. You get on with your life. If you’ve got a temper, you fight.”
“Believe me,” Scott said, “there are gay athletes and we have lots of skills. Frankly, I find it hard to believe you don’t know more gay athletes.”