An hour later the band had swung into its second set of wild rock and roll from the late fifties and early sixties, and I needed a break. I eased out to stop in the washroom. The closest one was jammed. We’d made sure there was another, more private one for the use of the bridal party. It was behind the dais, up several sets of stairs, and down a hallway. This bathroom had only one urinal and one stall. The place was crammed with multisized, ornate, bronze sculptures. It had blue-green tile walls and was topped off with the odd flourish of a lavender porcelain urinal. Standing there pissing, I was just barely able to hear the sound of the band. As I zipped up, I heard a soft moan. I looked around. Nothing. Another soft moan. I looked under the stall partition. I saw a foot resting at an odd angle. For the foot to be in that position the person sitting on the commode would have to be a contortionist. This wasn’t good. The trickle of blood I noticed next was alarming.
The stall door wouldn’t open. I called out. No answer. Blood was rapidly spreading. I knelt down to get a better view under the partition. I saw the back of whoever it was, leaning against the door. I couldn’t fit under the stall walls. I took the fortuitously rectangular trash can, toppled it on its side, stood on it, and looked into the stall from above.
I recognized Ethan. He reached up a hand and whispered, “Help me.”
I whipped out my cell phone, dialed 911, and then hotel security.
I gripped the top of the partition with both hands and pulled myself up. The bottom of my dress shoes, bought for the occasion, were slippery, so I had to scramble for a foothold. As I looked down from above, I could see even more blood, but no specific damage or wound. Ethan’s eyes followed my every movement. With one leg over the top, I sort of hopped/fell over. I heard my pants rip. I ignored them. As quickly and carefully as I could, I eased myself down the other side of the partition. I slipped the last few feet. I teetered for a moment and almost fell on Ethan. My left leg rested for a few seconds on the rim of the toilet and then began to slide off. I slipped and landed with one hand on Ethan’s knee and the other on the floor. My face was near his.
I repositioned myself on my knees next to the top half of his body. Even though the stall was wheelchair accessible, the space was still cramped. He was bent nearly double. “Help me,” he gasped again. This time his voice was weaker. He raised his hand. I held it.
I said, “Help is on the way. Who did this?”
Ethan tried to lift his head. This movement showed me the results of what must have been one massive impact or numerous vicious blows. The entire right, rear side of Ethan’s skull had been shattered. Bits of bone mixed with hair and blood as I cradled him in my arms.
I didn’t even think about the blood soaking into my tux as I held him. All the hurt and pain he had brought into my life were out of my waking memory. I was holding the boy I’d loved those many years ago. Ethan breathed deeply several times, then said, “I love you, Mike.” His eyes lost their focus. Seconds later he closed them. He stopped breathing.
He never answered my question.
I moved the body so I could open the stall door and laid him flat. Hotel security arrived just as I began CPR. The paramedics appeared before I had time to wonder where they were, but nothing anyone could do helped. Ethan was dead.
I had no notion who Mike might be. Whatever Ethan had wanted to talk to me about earlier would remain unsaid forever.
As the paramedics tried desperate measures, I stood in the background. I could still see the inside of the stall. I saw blood on the tank, the bolt on the door, the toilet-paper holder, and the side of the bowl. The porcelain commode was cracked. The metal paper-holder was bent. I couldn’t imagine any way he could have fallen and hurt himself this severely. Obviously, someone must have taken his head and repeatedly bashed it against the various protrusions in the stall. Most of the blood was on the floor.
Sometime in there the thought flashed through my head that Scott and I were going to miss our plane. We had first-class reservations on an overnight flight to Paris. I also remember thinking this wasn’t the usual kind of thing that goes wrong at a wedding. I’d imagined the food running out or maybe my fly being open during the ceremony or possible fights among various factions of relatives—mostly his, if truth be told. Who knew how his fairly prejudiced crowd of relatives would respond to this Northern liberality? Of course, there was always the random chance that any reveler, liberal or conservative, straight or gay, might cause a scene. I’d even pictured the protesters gathered outside the hotel making a mad rush to crash the party, with valiant faggots holding off the invading hordes. Okay, that was kind of silly, but I certainly hadn’t imagined what I was witnessing.
Early on, I asked one of the assembled security people to get Scott. He and I stood in the hall outside the washroom and talked.
“We’ll have to cancel the rest of the party,” I said.
He nodded. “You found him. You’ll be a suspect.”
“I know.”
“And you knew him.”
“Intimately.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “The first guy I ever loved is dead. I wonder how many people keep in contact with their first love or know where they are after so many years.”
“The breakup was a long time ago.”
“It’s still a painful memory.”
He put his arm around my shoulder. “I know. I’m sorry.”
After watching cops busily working to and fro for a few minutes, Scott said, “I don’t remember his name on the invitation list.”
“It wasn’t. He came with his mom and dad. In the reception line, he told me he needed to talk to me. I wonder if it was guilt from years before that he wanted to expiate, or if he was in some kind of trouble.”
“I love it when you say
expiate
,”Scott said. “I get all goosebumpy.”
“I’ll swallow a thesaurus just for you.”
“If he was in trouble, wouldn’t he have talked first to someone in his immediate family or even to one of his ex-wives?”
“Why would he confide in an ex-wife?” I asked.
“If they were close? If he was in trouble, why you and not them?”
Scott had a point. Why me? I said, “I wonder if he just happened to be in town or if he deliberately planned to come to the wedding all along.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s not important. I’m going to have to tell his parents.”
“Do you want the police to do that?”
“No. I think it would be better for me or maybe my parents to be the ones to break the news.”
Uniformed Chicago police officers had entered the corridor and cordoned off the area. I noted that a few small storage closets were between the reception and the washroom, but no possible exits. My mother showed up. She’s got that built-in “mom” radar for when things go wrong. I explained the situation to her. They sent my older brother to his hotel room to get me a pair of pants. The rip in the tux from crawling over the partition extended from the top of my left butt cheek to behind the knee. The tux pants and coat were bloodsoaked. The shirt had miraculously escaped with nary a fleck. In light of the death, I wasn’t all that concerned with my appearance. My mother pointed out the extent of the blood on my clothes and said changing was the sensible thing to do. When I thought about Ethan’s blood drying on me, I got a chill. As I thought of being caked in blood while talking to people at the soon-to-be-halted reception, I realized that while changing wasn’t essential, it was sensible. Plus, I really didn’t want my underwear in full view of any passerby for the rest of the night. My brother and his family were staying for the weekend in the hotel. He brought me a pair of his jeans, which were a trifle too big. I wound up wearing the tux shirt, bow tie, and faded jeans, a little odd, but serviceable. Before I changed, I washed Ethan’s blood off my hands.
I was questioned. The cops told me not to leave. I told them I’d be with the guests from the reception. I wasn’t going anywhere.
I returned to the head table. You don’t keep partying when there’s been a death. I wouldn’t miss seeing the all-dragqueen rock band. I could do without the finale of the evening, a balloon and confetti drop. I would never get to see how they pulled off the indoor fireworks without burning down the place. Scott assured me it could be done. I’ll never know. Probably for the best.
First, we took Ethan’s parents aside. The hotel provided a quiet suite for the family. Scott and I left my mother and father with Ethan’s parents. My mom and dad had volunteered to break the news to them, and it made sense for someone from their own peer group to tell them the awful news. I’m not sure anyone is good at making such a tragic and unexpected announcement, but my mom has great comforting abilities. In the face of the hugest of calamities, she’s the one in the family you can count on to remain calm.
While Ethan’s parents were being told, we stopped the music and dancing. I made the announcement to the crowd. The cops informed them that they would all have to be interviewed.
If the killer was an invited guest, he or she was probably still present. Leaving at the height of the festivities might have looked suspicious. Of course, a random stranger could have come in the back way to that washroom, then left the same way. It was open and easily accessible from the rest of the hotel. Looking at the milling mob, I thought, counting the hired help, we had nearly two thousand suspects.
My lawyer was at the reception. Todd Bristol stuck reasonably close to my side. Uniformed cops and detectives began taking statements. We’d promised them the guest lists and names and addresses of everyone who was invited. Even for the Chicago police department, this many people to interview takes a lot of time. Our security guards would have a checklist of everyone who’d actually showed up for them to cross-reference. Despite the bevy of cops present, the interviews took quite some time. In the end many of the guests simply gave their names and addresses and would be talked to later. We left when they stopped the interviews.
Outside in the cold, crisp October night, we found a small crowd of reporters gathered near the entrance to the hotel. With as much good grace as we could summon, we put them off until later. The protesters had long since disappeared.
It was a little after eleven. Next to our limousine in the parking garage, the chauffeur was talking to a man I didn’t recognize. I figured it was some clever reporter who had gotten to our driver. We didn’t use anywhere near as much security as we once did. The chauffeur was supposed to keep unwanted intruders away. The stranger looked to be in his middle twenties. He wore a black leather jacket open over a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans, running shoes, and white socks. His brush-cut, blond hair was cut off a quarter inch from the scalp. He had gray, very aware eyes.
As we approached, the blond took a card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me and said, “I’m Jack Miller, a private investigator. I need to discuss Ethan Gahain with you.” My mask of politeness in the face of strangers remained rigidly in place. Such reserve is necessary even for those on the fringe of celebrity such as myself. The vast majority of people who gawk at the barely-to-truly famous were at least aware enough not to be intrusive. However, there were always those determined to go too far; the kind of people blind to their arrogance, immune to self-awareness and their impact on others. Guarding against the truly demented was vitally necessary. In addition we needed to feel as if we still had some control of our lives. Coolness to all is necessary because it is impossible to predict which ones might be the out-and-out crazies who might wish us harm.
“Andrew,” I said to the driver, “what’s he doing here?”
“Don’t blame him,” Miller said.
I said, “Who else is there to blame?” Although Andrew had originally simply been scheduled to drive us to the airport, the limousine service trained them to know better.
Scott said, “Make an appointment.”
Miller said, “I might know why Mr. Gahain was murdered.”
That stopped us.
“Why haven’t you talked to the police?” I asked.
“Unlike Lestrade and countless other bumbling, clueless, and inept police officers, the Chicago cops don’t seem to have learned the wisdom of consulting their wise and kindly local private investigator.”
I was tempted to smile at this truism. I was too tired.
Miller said, “I don’t work for the police. They saw my private investigator ID and told me to go away. They didn’t seem interested in what I knew. I’m not sure if what I know is connected to the murder. I’m not sure if what my client wanted to know might or should become public knowledge because of the murder. My client’s goal did not include publicity.”
I asked, “Who was your client?”
“Ethan Gahain hired me to find Cormac Macintire, son of Cecil Macintire.”
Cecil Macintire, a right-wing radio screamer, was more hated and vilified among gay people than Dr. Laura. He freely used the phrase
fag-pedophile
when referring to gay people on the air. He claimed a rise in child molestations in recent years had led to an increase in gay people. Besides the error in the basic statistics, the theory itself was full of shit. His most bizarre statement was his implication that a male adult reading any of the Harry Potter books was at least effeminate, probably acting gender-inappropriately, and was most likely a pedophile and gay. Macintire was single-handedly attempting to turn ignorance into bliss, following directly in the footsteps of the Pope.
“Why did Ethan hire you to find Cormac?” I asked.
“Because he was missing?”
I said, “I am truly not in the mood for smart-ass answers. I figured he was missing. Why was Ethan concerned about him being missing?”
“They were business partners. He was supposed to deliver some work to Mr. Gahain. He didn’t. He missed several other appointments this week. Even if he spontaneously decided to leave on a vacation, he didn’t take his toothbrush or his shaving gear. Two empty suitcases were in the back of his closet.”
“What kind of business were Ethan and Cormac in?”
“At first Mr. Gahain told me it was an Internet computer operation doing Web site designs. He didn’t give me a lot of details. At the time it didn’t seem necessary. There were no other coworkers to talk to. At least that’s what Mr. Gahain told me when he hired me.”
Scott said, “I thought Ethan was a college PE coach.”
Miller said, “It’s not illegal to try to supplement your income. I visited their company’s Web site. It seemed pretty innocuous, advertising their services for Web site design. Nothing on it suggested a reason for his disappearance.”
“Was Cormac married?” I asked.
“Yep, with two little kids,” Miller answered. “His wife was at least as concerned as Mr. Gahain, but she had no more answers than he did.”
Scott asked, “Why didn’t she hire somebody?”
“She was going to, but Mr. Gahain beat her to it. She did call the police. They filed a report.”
“Maybe his fascist father had something to do with Cormac going missing,” I suggested.
“I haven’t been able to establish much of a connection between father and son.”
Scott said, “Cecil Macintire holds himself up as a paragon of familial virtue.”
Miller said, “I don’t care if he does, unless it has something to do with helping find Cormac. Neither Cecil Macintire nor his people were very forthcoming. I got the impression there was some kind of estrangement.”
“You no longer have a client,” I said. “What’s the point in talking to us? Do you have any reason to believe Cormac was involved in Ethan’s death?”
“The whole case doesn’t add up. I don’t like one dead client with one missing business partner. My client may be deceased, but I feel an obligation to myself to find out what the hell is going on. Early this morning I uncovered some data in St. Louis that I needed to talk to Mr. Gahain about.”
“At the wedding?” Scott asked.
“Mr. Gahain sounded desperate to find Macintire. He was spending a lot of money and demanding very quick answers. The new data I found might have led to the missing man. I hurried up from St. Louis. I was going to push hard to get some clear answers. I found out Mr. Gahain was here to attend a wedding. I almost decided to wait until tomorrow, but I thought I’d give it a shot. By the time I got here, he was already dead. My police contact confirmed what his fourth wife told me, that you grew up together and that he came to town specifically to talk to you. You may have information I need.”
“We haven’t been close for many years,” I said. “He may have come to talk to me, but he died before he could tell me anything.”
Miller said, “Close or not, there had to be a reason he chose you.”
Miller motioned us away from the limo. “I’m trying to be discreet. The man is dead. I don’t want to ruin a reputation. I was hired to find Cormac. What I found out was that Mr. Gahain lied to me. They had an Internet business all right. Two of them. The one he told me about and another, a pornographic Internet operation. I don’t like being lied to or misled by a client.”
“How did you find this out?” I asked.
“A guy named Josh Durst, who was connected to both Ethan and Cormac. He thought I was coming to audition for some pictures. I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. He seemed eager to talk and I let him.”
Scott said, “There’s always rumors that the mob controls a lot of pornography.”
“I don’t know whether or not his murder or the pornography was mob-connected. I certainly didn’t find any of the usual signs of illegality: drugs, fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, and until tonight, no violence of any kind.”
“Exactly how long had Cormac been missing?” Scott asked.
“Ethan Gahain last saw him four days ago. He hired me two days ago.”
“Did Cormac have a reputation for unexplained disappearances?” I asked.
“No. He had a reputation as dull, boring, and ordinary.”
“You said pornography,” Scott said. “That’s a wide range of possible stuff. What exactly are we talking about here?”
“Photographs. Videos. DVDs. CDs. Lots of pictures of athletes in locker rooms, male athletes in various states of undress, some naked, showering, pissing. Videos and photos that looked like they were taken with hidden cameras, most likely without the consent of those involved.”
“Naked guys?” Scott said. “With all those marriages you’d think he’d be straight.”
“You don’t have to be gay to make gay porn,” Miller observed.
“Yeah, but I bet it helps,” I said. “He had at least one fling with a guy, me.”
Miller didn’t comment on this bit of information. He said, “I was supposed to find Cormac. What I found was evidence of a sophisticated pornography ring. Mr. Gahain may not have overtly lied to me, but he concealed the nature of their business.”
“What difference would it make if you knew what business they were in?” Scott asked. “What if they were carpet salesmen?”
“Whether or not producing or acting in porn is illegal, there’s an aura of inherent danger. You’ve got possible illegalities connected with it. Either of those could be significant. Everything connected to a missing person has to be checked thoroughly because you don’t know which bit will lead you to them. That’s a huge chunk of a mutual relationship to leave out. I was pretty pissed as I drove up here. I do not like clients who lie.”
I knew it was very true that Ethan was a concealer from way back.
Miller was saying, “I haven’t found evidence that they produced and financed full-length pornographic movies. They seemed to be more distributors of productions they made themselves. My understanding is the pictures were taken at a large number of venues around the country over quite a number of years. Before I left, I confirmed that at the time some of the videos were made, Mr. Gahain was in those cities at those venues.”
I asked, “How many venues and how many years?”
“I’ve only seen a few pictures, but some of those look like they go back to when Ethan was in college.”
“How big an operation was it?” I asked.
“I wasn’t able to pin it down exactly.”
I asked, “Five bucks or five million bucks?”
“Certainly thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. I’m not sure. They had the Web site and a few ads in porn magazines. I only had time to check a few of the ads connected to Mr. Gahain and Cormac Macintire. As far as I have been able to determine, they placed only a very limited number of very specific ads. I haven’t found any of the people in the porn. There’s lots of those ads for specific fetishes and odd quirks in the back of some magazines. I tried tracking down athletes in the few pictures I saw. I had no luck.”
Scott asked, “What’s the big deal now? If there were pornpicture problems, are you saying someone in them may have killed Ethan?”
“It’s possible.”
I said, “I still think you should tell all this to the police.”
Miller said, “I’m sure you wouldn’t want your friend’s reputation sullied. I’m hoping we could be of help to each other.”
Scott asked, “How do we know you didn’t have a reason to kill Ethan, or that you are who you say you are? Business cards are easy to make.”
Miller held out his PI license and said, “You’re a little late asking for proofs. Just so I’m very clear here, I don’t do dead. The state frowns on it. They take away your private eye license for that kind of thing. I am not a hired killer. With rare exceptions, gunmen such as you’re probably imagining don’t exist much outside the grimmer Hollywood movies.”
“I wasn’t imagining much of anything,” Scott said.
“Look,” I said. “We’re both tired. I’m not willing to stand out here all night and discuss this.” I looked at Scott. He nodded. “We’ll check out your credentials and get back to you.”
Miller could do little but acquiesce and leave.