“Thomas! People are hurting.”
“I know that,” I said. “I don’t see what you’re annoyed at me about.”
Only family members who are extremely annoyed with me call me Thomas. My mother adds my middle name, Peter, when she’s really pissed. Once in a great while, Scott will murmur my full name in the throws of passion, but that’s different.
“Why don’t you just look inside the package,” Scott said.
So, I did.
The top pictures were of Ethan in the throes of passion with himself including a shot of moments from a rather spectacular orgasm. The next ones were of Cormac Macintire also naked and masturbating. I didn’t recognize anyone in the other photos.
“Do you know who these people are?” I asked.
Ernie and Caroline shook their heads.
“Why did you need to show me these now?” I asked. “Maybe these were just his favorite porn pictures to beat off to.”
“Keep looking,” Ernie said.
At the bottom of the pile I found an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven manila envelope. Inside were several pictures of me. There were sports or action photos taken in high school. The last one was of me naked, standing next to a swimming pool.
“How’d he get that picture?” Caroline asked.
I said, “I know exactly when this was taken. At Randall Bergeron’s birthday party just before our junior year in high school. Everybody decided to go skinny-dipping. I didn’t know anybody was taking pictures.”
“You’re not shocked he had these?” Ernie asked.
“I’m not elated that these might be on the Internet. I can’t believe he’d sell pictures of me naked.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” Scott said.
“If he did, maybe he was into kiddie porn.”
“So far yours is the only one with somebody that young, that we know of.”
I said, “I don’t want him to have been into underage sex pictures. I don’t want to deal with that. Yes, I know I may not have a choice.”
I riffled through the other pictures in the folder. Most of the pictures seemed quite old. I found a few others of my teammates. The starting quarterback on the football team my senior year had a big smile on his face. He was in full uniform, a football clutched in his left hand, his right hand grasping his hard prick, which was jutting out of the front of his football uniform pants. The background was the shower area of the boys’ locker room at my high school. I showed Scott.
“The quarterback was gay?” Scott asked.
“I think he was more of a big goof. He was nineteen our senior year. He’d flunked first grade twice. He never offered to make mad, passionate love to me. He married some college cheerleader after a dismal career at a third-division college. I could see him posing for this. He’d do just about anything if he thought it was funny. What I can’t see is Ethan working up the nerve to ask him to pose for this.”
“Maybe you didn’t know either of them as well as you thought.”
“I guess not.”
Scott said, “Or it was a moment of passionate silliness, which is not a crime.”
Ernie said, “It is if the silliness goes terribly wrong.”
I said, “Then it isn’t silliness anymore.”
“I guess not,” Scott said.
Ernie held out a white, business-size envelope. “This was inside as well.”
I took the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper inside. On it was printed a single sentence all in caps: YOU’VE GOT THE PICTURES AND DISCS AND WE WANT THEM.
Ernie said, “There may or may not have been something illegal about the porn, but there was something dangerous and lethal going on.”
“There’re no discs?” I asked.
“We didn’t find any.”
Scott said, “I hate to belabor the obvious, but there is now no doubt that Ethan was using the pictures for blackmail.”
I said, “Gotta be. There has to be a reason these pictures were separate from all the rest. I wonder if it’s possible to find out who these people are? Only our former star quarterback is in a uniform with a recognizable logo.”
Scott said, “Since we’ve got pictures of Cormac, maybe we should take them to his father. After seeing these he might be more willing to open up to us than he was to Miller.”
“If he even knows anything,” I said.
“Will it hurt to ask?” Scott inquired.
From the penthouse Scott called his agent to get him to phone Cecil Macintire’s people. Fame calling to fame to set up a meeting. He would get back to us.
We had gotten Ethan’s second wife’s address from Jack Miller. She lived in Evanston. We took Sheridan Road. Wife number two lived in a small frame house. Surveying the modest structure, I said, “I don’t think she got as much in her divorce as wife number four did.”
It turned out she was eager to speak with us. Mabel Gahain Yancey née Bradford introduced us to her husband, Roy Yancey. He wore a hat with a Peterbilt truck logo on the front. He had skinny shoulders and legs and a protruding gut. She was short, slender, blond, freckled, and mean. He was meaner. No burbling about fame here.
I began, “We’re concerned about who might have wanted to harm Ethan Gahain.”
She pointed a skinny finger at her chest. “I certainly didn’t want to. I am not a violent person. Why do you care about him now that he’s dead? I don’t imagine any of his ex-wives would care.”
“I’d have killed him if I had the chance,” Roy Yancey said. “Don’t worry, I have an airtight alibi.”
Figured.
Mabel said, “He was an evil man.” So much for not speaking ill of the dead. “I know that isn’t Christian of me.”
I said, “I heard you’re seeking custody of the children you and he had together.”
“Of course we were fighting for custody,” Yancey said. “We found out how he was making money.”
“Why didn’t you have custody in the first place?” Scott asked.
Mabel said, “I was young, foolish, and stupid. A year ago, I called Dr. Laura. She told me to go do the right thing. I knew what she meant. was supposed to fight for my child.” A three-year-old scampered into the room, saw us, and retreated to Mabel’s side.
Dr. Laura does have a constitutional right to free speech. She does not have a constitutional right to a television show. Hypocritical bitch.
Roy Yancey said, “I supported Mabel completely. How could we let the boy stay in that environment?”
“What environment was that?”
“A single, gay man is not an appropriate environment to bring up a child.”
“He was married to his fourth wife up until a couple of months ago.”
“We know he’s gay,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” Roy Yancey added, “when we found out about the pornography, that was the last straw.”
“How did you find out about that?” I asked.
“That information was difficult to uncover. Christian people are infiltrating the Internet and pornographic sites. We’re going to the addresses or staking out the post office boxes listed and following people back to their homes and offices. We’re alerting neighbors, husbands, wives, and children to the lewd, disgusting, and immoral behavior of their neighbors.”
I asked, “You’re telling children about pornography?”
“We have informed child-custody judges and social workers. Anyone connected with a child has no right to be engaged in such activity.”
I asked, “Is there a lot of hunting down of pornographers or is this right-wing rhetorical excess?”
“Oh, yes,” Yancey said. “It’s the newest tactic. The group we belong to KID, Keep It Decent, has as a goal to expose every pornographer.”
Scott said, “Making pornographic movies is not unconstitutional.”
“It should be,” Yancey snapped. “Look how it’s led to the rise in crime and abortions.”
He had managed to combine in one statement the three debating gambits I hear the right-wing use: if someone’s making sense, change the subject; get the statistics wrong; or say something totally illogical.
I said, “The organization has that many members with that much time to find all these folks?”
“Enough for them to have tracked down my former husband,” Mabel said.
“Why didn’t you just ask wife number four?” I asked.
Mabel said, “Once we had the report, she needed to know the kind of man he was. The kind of danger he posed to her children. She laughed at us and called us hicks.”
“Where are your and Ethan’s children now?”
“They’re with the third wife. Now that Ethan’s dead we fully expect to get full custody without much quarrel.”
“Had you made threats recently?” I asked.
“Threats?” Mabel said. “I don’t call them that. We’d gotten the information almost two weeks ago. We’ve had several meetings with our lawyer. Last Thursday he was served with legal papers, and I visited him. I told him what we knew and what we were going to do. I told him he could kiss his career and his kids good-bye. I had no reason to murder him. He might have had reason to murder me because I was giving him information he didn’t like, but God is on my side. I wasn’t worried.”
Yancey said, “He was going to lose those kids. He was petrified.”
We left.
In the Porsche I asked, “Is that what he wanted to talk to me about? The threats from his second wife? What good would it do to tell me?”
“Maybe it wasn’t logical,” Scott said. “Maybe he remembered the love and friendship you shared.”
“It would be like him to forget everything in between.”
“We’re all guilty of selective memory.”
“Ethan was the kind of guy who could completely misperceive something that happened.”
After a few minutes driving in silence, Scott said, “Since we’ve been driving my car, nobody’s tried to break in. Is that significant? Or did whoever it is find we didn’t have anything in Sandburg University’s parking lot?”
“I don’t know if we should be less worried or not.” I didn’t feel safe yet.
Getting in to see Cecil Macintire was easier than I thought it would be. When Scott phoned our service, we had a message from his press agent. He had set up a meeting for late that afternoon. We met in Macintire’s luxury building in Evanston. Cecil Macintire’s radio program was the most popular in the country. He was overtly homophobic, barely contained his racism and anti-Semitism, and indulged in every right-wing paranoia panic there was. I had actually spent time listening to his program one summer as I drove to different cities to be with Scott on a road trip. The reason I listened was simple. I hate people who try to ban books, especially those who haven’t read the books they want to ban. I figured it was sort of the same for Cecil Macintire. Certainly I could read about the awful things he said. It was very different listening to him. I no longer had to take anybody’s word for how hateful he was. I knew for myself. I’ve always known that much hatred exists in this world, but at least when it’s not shoved in my face, I can believe that things are getting better. Cecil Macintire sowed hatred, and he made millions doing it.
Macintire’s show was a mixture of call-in vilification and extended rants by Macintire himself. There was no pretense of objectivity. If a left-wing caller was put on the air, it was always the most inarticulate or boneheaded representative of such views. And Cecil kept the cutoff button handy. If someone began to get logical or rational with him, they’d be silenced instantly. Of course, I think people who call these talk shows have to be pretty pathetic to begin with. Cecil would often permit an abusive caller to be on the air. I assumed this was done deliberately to set up Macintire as a sympathetic, put-upon victim. Such calls gave him a chance to launch into a wounded tirade. Frankly, sometimes I assumed they were all using a script, with fake callers and Macintire delivering hatred on cue.
As we drove, I reflected that, over the years, a number of the right-wing nuts I’ve run into have had more than their fair share of troubles. While it is certainly not my fault these people had connections to right-wing political views, they did seem to keep dropping dead at my feet with disturbing regularity. If this trend was true, maybe I should think about visiting all the right-wing congregations and conventions around the country. Instead of “typhoid Mary,” I’d be “toxic Tommy.” I could change the course of history by just showing up. A tempting thought, but one not terribly well grounded in reality. Besides, I didn’t want all the right-wing people to die horrible deaths; just plain dying would be plenty good enough.
At the radio station we met in Macintire’s office on the top floor, which had a spectacular view of the Lake Michigan shoreline. His secretary was a blond who might have been out of her teens. If the material from the clothes she was wearing was flattened out and stretched to its limits, it might have made a washcloth. I marvel at the right-wing moralizers who indulge in the hypocrisy of flaunting the sexuality of those near and dear to them or more likely those over whom they exercise control.
Cecil Macintire stood stooped over behind his desk. On the wall behind him were a series of pictures. They looked like candid family photos. One showed Cormac in a pair of Speedo swimming trunks. He was surrounded by Cecil and a number of people I didn’t know. They were at the edge of a swimming pool. Cormac held a trophy high in his right hand. He’d obviously just won something.
Cecil’s hands rested palm down on his desktop. His hair lay flat to his skull. His eyebrows were thicker, fuller, and bulged out farther than many people’s full beards. He gazed at us malevolently.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” I said.
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
I continued, “We know there probably isn’t anything we can say or do to make your loss easier, but we are sympathetic to your pain. We want to find the killer of these two men because of our friend.”
Macintire said, “My child is dead. I just wish there was something I could do. No prayer to my God is going to change the grief I feel.” He sighed deeply. “You asked for this meeting. What is it you want? I need to begin making preparations for my son’s funeral.”
“We know this is a difficult time,” I said. “We just had a few questions. Were you aware that Ethan and your son had been receiving threats lately.”
“The police told me so. My son and I were estranged.”
“We found a picture,” I said. “It’s intense for a parent to see. If you’d like …” I held out the envelope.
He nodded wearily. He only glanced at the picture for an instant, then dropped it as if it were a live coal. He put his face in his hands and moaned. When he finally looked up, he said, “I didn’t want to believe it was true.”
“You had no idea?”
“No. If I had, I would have been furious, but I am not so irrational that I would have him killed or murdered him myself over this. I am not a monster. Before yesterday I didn’t know of or care about Ethan Gahain. I still don’t.”
Macintire’s heavy frame seemed to deflate as he lowered himself into the plush leather chair behind his desk. He rubbed his hands across his face. He whispered, “I did not want my own son to be dead. This is the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Losing a child is devastating. It hurts too much. I don’t expect you to understand. That’s something you and your kind will never understand for which I am grateful.”
Scott said, “I don’t understand how you can go from grief for your son to a diatribe against us in the next instant. I would think the death of a child would pale when compared to politics. Gay people have children.”
“Pah. That’s a sad imitation of what real people do.”
“Gay people aren’t real?” Scott asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“It’s easier for me to make up conspiracy theories than to face my own failures. I’d rather try to believe that liberals tried to kill my son to cause me pain.” Macintire gulped. “I’d rather think about anything else than about the loss of my son. I’d rather have fantasy than reality.” He sighed. “I didn’t kill my son. Tell me why I shouldn’t think you did it? You found both of the bodies.”
“You’re free to think whatever you wish,” I said. “How does hating us help your grief?”
“I’d rather think about hating you than the fact that my son is dead.”
I held any hostile responses in check. His child was dead and I’d rather get answers than trade pointed and probably useless barbs. I asked, “Did you have any contact with your son?”
“No. I did not know he was a pornographer. Nor did I know of any problems he was having nor did I know of any enemies he might have had. I didn’t know enough about my son. I didn’t know how to raise a son. I had no father myself. I had no model to follow. I was lost. I wish we had been closer. I suppose I’m not much different from many fathers that way.”
“Why did you agree to see us?” I asked.
“Because you found his body. Because you saw him. Because I want to know everything about my son. If you actually had useful information, it might let me feel more connected with my son. If I learn more about his life, maybe I’ll feel a little less guilt.”
“Why do you feel guilt?” Scott asked.
“It was the great tragedy of my life to be estranged from him.” Macintire wasn’t ranting, and I didn’t detect a false note in this admission. “We will never be able to reconcile. We have no future. Can you or anyone give me that back?” He shook his head. I saw a tear on his face.