“How many other gay major league baseball players do you know who are out of the closet like you are?”
Touché, I thought. Sad but true.
After a moment’s pause Fariniti said, “I guess I was a little insulting. You’re good though. I seen you pitch even after you came out as gay. That took balls.”
I said, “We were wondering if you could give us some information about Ethan Gahain.”
“I don’t know nothing about any of that photography shit. Ethan was fucking nuts to be doing that crap. Taking pictures of naked guys. He must have been gay. Maybe if he was taking pictures of women, it would make sense.”
“How could he keep it secret that he was doing it?” I asked. “You’d think somebody would notice.”
“If they did, they never told me. Ethan was a good guy to work with. He was really funny. He was always willing to help out the kids and the coaches. He was always volunteering to do extra work. He saved my butt a couple times. He took over my coaching duties when my wife almost died after our first baby was born. When I heard he was dead, I was devastated. Then I heard about this porn shit. That pissed me off. How can somebody do that? That’s really sick.”
Scott asked, “You’ve never looked at a porn video?”
“Well, sure.”
“Somebody’s got to make them.”
“Well, yeah, but with women in them.”
Scott said, “It’s all sex, and it’s all money.”
Fariniti said, “I guess it’s more the betrayal of trust that’s the worst.”
“That’s true,” Scott agreed.
I said, “Do you know who he was close to outside the university? Did you ever meet Cormac Macintire?”
“I know the whole story with Cormac. He was a creep. He was always over at Ethan’s house. Cormac was at parties where both of them were at. He was always kind of a sleaze. He was married, but he would try to pick up women. He wasn’t very good at it. You’d notice him getting turned down. Women would clutch on to their husbands when he was around.”
“You mean he was obviously obnoxious or blatantly violent?”
“More just kind of creepy.”
“He wasn’t bad looking,” Scott said.
Fariniti said, “He had bullshit for a personality.”
“But he was interested in women?” I asked.
“I see where you’re going with that. I’m sure Ethan and him were never boyfriends or did any of that dating shit. I’m not sure why they were such good friends. Ethan always seemed to have more class than Macintire. Not that I understood what was going on. I think maybe it was more Cormac had something that Ethan needed rather than a real friendship. I think Cormac was a user.”
I bit my tongue on saying so was Ethan.
“Did you ever meet Ethan’s wives?” I asked.
“I met wife number four a few times. She was nice. I don’t know about the others.”
“Did Cormac’s father ever come around?”
“Not that I know of. Cormac never talked about his dad. I never really thought about a connection until somebody pointed it out to me.”
“Was Ethan close to anyone named Michael?” I explained about his final words.
“We had a few kids with that name. I sure don’t remember Ethan being particularly close to any of them.”
We thanked him for his time and left.
As we walked to the car, I said, “You let your irritation show when those guys were homophobic.”
“I’m not in the mood for a lot of crap. Jocks feeling the need to act superstraight is not new. I hate to criticize, but maybe you didn’t have a really clear picture of Ethan.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always say Ethan was a user, but he sure seemed to go out of his way to help these kids and the adults he worked with.”
“When you are nice to people just to get them to like you or, in this case, just to deceive them, that’s not helpful, that’s a user and someone who has desperate self-esteem needs.”
Scott said, “There’s one thing I don’t get. With all those kids and all those marriages, was Ethan gay or not?”
“I’ve never been able to figure that out. Maybe he thought siring kids proved he was hetero. Maybe he was straight. You certainly couldn’t prove it by me.”
“We found out about the porn, but nobody beyond Josh Durst knows anything. Let’s go back to Chicago. I’ve got to find out what happened to my nephew. I tried calling my mom and dad at the Hotel Chicago to find out what’s going on, but no one answers. We need to get home.”
As we approached the parking lot, we heard a loud car alarm. At first I wondered who’d had the ill luck to have their car broken into or more likely whose alarm accidentally started blasting for whatever reason inanimate objects have for annoying humans. Then we saw a Lafayette University cop car parked perpendicular to ours. We rushed forward. Someone had smashed the rear window of my SUV. Nothing inside the SUV was disturbed. The cops said, and we agreed, that whoever had broken the window was probably frightened away by the noise before they could take anything. I didn’t like the coincidence of our car being the one broken into.
The cops said, “Weren’t you the guys who found the dead body yesterday?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Jerry Berke, the detective, wants to talk to you.”
We called him from the cell phone.
“You guys seen Josh Durst?” he asked.
“Not since last night,” I said.
“We went to his place. It’s been ransacked. We wanted to ask him a few questions.”
“He stayed with Jack Miller last night. He left without telling us where he was going.”
“Odd.”
“I sure thought so.” I figured I might as well agree. Berke could just as easily think we had something to do with Durst’s disappearance.
We went back to the hotel. As far as we could tell, this room had not been tampered with. We checked out, called our lawyer, who called the cops to tell them we were leaving town, and we left.
The only thing I missed from our visit was not having dinner at Tony’s.
Between naps on the way back to Chicago, I listened to the all-news stations. We heard more athletes from Lafayette and Carl Sandburg Universities were holding press conferences and being interviewed. Copies of the tapes of athletes were surfacing. Names of athletes and university identification on the uniforms were easing the spread of who was on and where the tapes had been made. A few of the athletes were smirking and pushing themselves as total studs. Most were taking Barney Natlik’s approach and were pissed and threatening to sue.
I used the SUV’s speakerphone to call Jack Miller. He was still in St. Louis but planning to leave soon. He said, “I didn’t find Josh Durst, but I do have one interesting item. No one can find the model-release paperwork or videos.”
“That’s what the murder was about?” I asked.
“Until they’re found, it’s really suspicious.”
“Would Josh Durst know any of the models they took pictures of?”
“I was planning to ask him that question. It’ll be the first topic of discussion after we find him.”
“Do we know anybody into doing porn?” I asked. “Even more, do we know anybody into porn who we also invited to the wedding?”
“Your mother and I didn’t look over everyone’s job résumé,” Scott said. “We didn’t require biographical submissions to get into the wedding. Nor did we ask for data on their sexual practices.”
“Maybe you should have,” Miller added.
“Whose side are you on?” I asked.
“Nobody’s. I’ll try to find somebody to give us porn information.”
“Did Cormac’s wife know anything?” I asked.
“She was upset, genuinely grieving that he was dead, but, no, she didn’t seem to know anything.”
Scott asked, “Do you know any St. Louis cops who could get us access to what was in that warehouse?”
“Sorry, no.”
After agreeing to keep in touch, I hung up.
We listened to call-in sports shows for as long as we could take it. Talk radio in general may be the stupid leading the stupider, but sports talk radio is the epitome of useless drivel designed to increase the level of moronicness in the universe. Who cares if Joe Nobody thinks the entire Chicago Bears team should be traded for a set of orphan koala bears? What’s the point? And why should these people be encouraged to express their opinions? Far better, they be talked to in soothing voices while being given heavy doses of medication. The hosts and callers were obsessing about the murders and their connection to pornography.
Near Pontiac, Scott turned off the radio. “I need to not listen to that for a while.” He drove in silence for a few miles. The weather was pleasant, sunny. We’d borrowed a piece of clear plastic and some duct tape from the hotel and fixed up a barrier to prevent the wind whistling out the rear window. “Do we know anybody who worked with Ethan at Carl Sandburg?”
“My old high school football coach, Frank Ranklin, is head of the department. I think Ethan helped one or two of the guys from my high school team land jobs. Ethan was always very loyal to those he wasn’t sexually involved with.”
“No bitterness there.”
“Not a bit.”
“Do you want to call Ranklin?”
“He was at the wedding. Remember, he lived in my old neighborhood. I baby-sat for his kids when I was in eighth grade.” I used the cell phone to set up an appointment.
We drove straight to Carl Sandburg University. We arrived just before six. Frank Ranklin had a tiny office near the locker room. Ranklin was a tall, muscular man with hair slightly graying at the temples. He had a deep, sonorous voice. He looked as fit as he did when he was our coach. Back then he worked out for an hour and a half every day. He obviously had not altered his regimen. He sat in his office in black spandex shorts, a gray Carl Sandburg University sweatshirt, white socks, and black-and-silver running shoes. He’d been my coach when our high school had won the state football championship. It had been his first year coaching. Younger teachers sometimes have closer relationships to students. Ranklin was lucky enough to be able to mix closeness with discipline. It didn’t hurt that we won every single game.
Weiser had mentioned Ranklin’s oldest son, Shawn. Besides being an Olympic hopeful, he had several minor athletic-gear endorsement contracts in the offing. The boy had come in eighth in the marathon in the last Olympics. He had every hope of winning a medal in the next.
Coach Ranklin said, “Sorry the wedding didn’t end the way you wanted. The police were around asking questions already.” He pointed to me. “You aren’t going to be a suspect?”
“No. We’re reasonably sure my nephew can provide me with an alibi. He may be able to recognize the killer. If we can figure out who killed these guys, I’ll feel a lot better. We’re trying to uncover more about Ethan’s life. We learned some stuff in St. Louis. We’d like to find out more.”
“Ethan was tremendous. He helped a lot of people. Always went out of his way.”
I asked, “Did you have any inkling about any pornographic activity?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ranklin said. “At the time I had no notion, but you know how you look back and rearrange what happened in light of new information?”
We nodded.
“I’ve been doing that. He always attended almost every sports event he could. Even those he didn’t coach. You’d hardly think he was married with kids. He didn’t seem to take much time for them. Sometimes he’d bring the little ones to sports events he wasn’t coaching, but even that he didn’t do too often. Dedication and overenthusiasm aren’t crimes. He sure fooled everybody.”
“Do you know if he got pictures of your son?” I asked.
“I sure doubt it. Shawn is a marathon runner. As far as we’ve been able to figure, Ethan wasn’t on any of the trips Shawn took. Shawn doesn’t remember him being there.”
“What about these athletes who are planning to hold the big news conference?” I asked. “Are you going to join them?”
“If I’m there, it would look like the university is involved. As an institution, we want to stay as far away from this as possible. We’re afraid of lawsuits ourselves. Personally, I think the kids have got a legitimate beef.”
I asked, “Did he have any fights here at all? Anybody who might wish him harm?”
“No infighting beyond a few petty jealousies. Mostly he kept out of that.”
“Why did he leave?”
“Big push from Lafayette that we couldn’t match. Our programs are similar, but theirs is much older, much better funded. If they’d made me an offer, I’d have been tempted to go. I was likely to be the new head of the department here so they probably believed I wouldn’t have been interested in the first place.”
“If you’re head of the department here, why’d your son go there?”
“Lafayette has the best marathon program in the country. They got Alex Panko, the best marathon coach in the world. And like most kids he wanted to get away from home.”
“Did you know Ethan’s wives?”
“I knew two and three from here. Number four is from St. Louis. I didn’t know her or his first. The ones I met seemed nice enough.”
“Did he cheat on his wives?” I asked.
“I saw him with the women who became wives two and three before he divorced wives one and two.”
I said, “So far I’ve got no indication that any of the wives would want to kill him.”
“There’s one or two guys around from the old days,” Ranklin said. “You should talk to them. Robert Murphy is here part-time. He teaches a couple of night classes.”
Robert had been the star middle linebacker on our championship football team. His college career had ended under a pile of Georgia Tech linemen one rainy Saturday afternoon.
Robert was in his office. “Hey, Tom!” His greeting was effusive. He shook hands with both of us. “I only know you from the talk shows these days. It’s a damn shame about Ethan. I liked him. He wasn’t always the best friend, but he was a good guy.”
“How wasn’t he a best friend?” I asked.
“Well, he was kind of a slut in high school.”
“You’re gay?”
“No, but I heard about how he kept trying to seduce all the guys on the different sports teams.”
“I never heard about this,” I said.
“Everybody thought Ethan was gay. Nobody thought you were. He would try and get the guys on the teams to let him give them blow jobs.”
“He didn’t!”
“Sure. I was told he was successful more than once. Just rumors, I suppose. I figured you knew. You were buddies with him.”
“We were lovers. I thought he was faithful.”
“Well, this would have been during your late sophomore and early junior years. It was probably before you guys were lovers. Were you really lovers with him in high school?”
“I was for my part.” I was still reeling from his news. Ethan had been cheating on me back then. I felt soiled. He was a slut extraordinaire. My anger of old was rekindled anew.
“Sure,” Robert said. “How often he succeeded, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Everybody kind of forgot about it. He got married and I figured it must have been a phase. When I applied for a job here, he put in a good word for me. I was grateful.” 149
“Did you have any notion about all the porn Ethan was into?”
“Not a clue.”
“How about academic infighting?”
“We aren’t like a regular college department. We’ve got real goals that connect with the real world.”
“You didn’t know if he was frightened about anything recently?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
Back in the car I said, “I am stunned.”
“I’m sorry,” Scott said.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m sorry that your memory is no longer what it once was.”
“He fucked his way through high school and probably college. Besides the substitute teacher, he probably fucked half the faculty, half the football team, the coaches, and the opposing players.” I ranted for several more minutes.
After I ran down, Scott said, “There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
“I can be angry for a while longer.”
After a few minutes of silence I took several deep breaths.
Scott said, “We need to decide who we’re going to talk to next.”
“Can we try and talk to Barney Natlik, the Olympic guy?”
“I can call a reporter I know from the
Chicago Tribune.
He might have an in. He’ll want something in return.”
I said, “You can promise him we’ll give him an exclusive interview if we get anything.”
This time in the parking lot we found the plastic from the rear window on the ground along with most of the contents from the interior of the car. The contents of our overnight bags lay scattered over ten square feet. In the light from the interior of the SUV and the headlights of the cops who showed up after we called them, nothing seemed to be missing.
We sat in the car. “Somebody’s looking for something,” I said.
“I’m getting more than a little nervous about this,” Scott said. “We might want to have protection with us.”
“We don’t seem to be the object of the violence. Somebody thinks we have something. Do we?”
“We don’t have anything more with us than when we left Chicago.”
Scott called the reporter and spoke for several minutes. Ten minutes later he called back. After they finished this conversation, Scott said, “They’ve got press conference stuff going on down at the Athletic Center across from Michael Jordan Auditorium tomorrow morning. He can get us in.”