Текст книги "Ice Blues "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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"Sure, but I'll have to make some calls."

Out back in our room, Timmy said, "I know the Beverly Hills Hotel is expensive, but do we have to cut corners this closely?"

"It's not that Michelin recommends this particular motel, but this is the neighborhood we'll be operating from. It's convenient. Al Piatek's address, as listed on his probated will, is not far from here, and so is the address on the Greyhound waybills for the five suitcases. My guess is, that's Joan Lenihan s address." I hauled out the five-pound LA phone book and found J. Lenihan at the address on the waybills. "That's it. We're here. We're getting close to finding out a few things."

"We're getting close to people who know a few things, but how can you be sure they'll tell you what they know?"

"I'm not. But it sure is great to be out of Albany, isn't it?" He gave me a look, then went about emptying his shopping bag and neatly placing its meager contents in a drawer. He had removed his thermal underwear in the airliner's lavatory-when I'd knocked on the door and asked if I could come in and watch how he went about this, he refused me– but we were both overdressed for the seventy-degree temperature, so we walked several blocks up to a slightly tonier neighborhood closer to Beverly Hills, found a men's store and bought chinos and polo shirts. All the shirts had the manufacturer's little logos on the front-small mammals, reptiles, amphibians. I asked for one with an invertebrate, but the clerk said he'd never heard of that company.

Timmy took the car, studied the rental agency's map of Greater Los Angeles, and headed downtown toward the LA County courthouse to further verify the authenticity of Al Piatek's will. Just before noon I walked up into the hills east of Sunset Boulevard to call on the woman I had been told was made of iron but was now prostrate with grief.

The apartment building was a well-preserved relic of ancient Los Angeles, about 1927. It was gray stucco with Spanish colonial grillwork, but it had Elizabethan exposed crossbeams and tile-roofed gables, like some bastard offspring of Queen Isabella and the Duke of Kent. The place was weird but imposing, a sturdy eccentric survivor that said patronize me if you want, but I am beyond the reach of your niggling aesthetic purity. A walkway of small raspberry-colored concrete squares led past a narrow expanse of shadowy green lawn that was clipped nearly to the roots, like a gay haircut in 1978, and up to a high arched entryway with mailboxes and door buzzers. I pressed the button for 5-H, under which the nameplate read

Lenihan – Tesney. She was a nurse, so she might be home. If she worked eight to four, I'd come back at four-thirty.

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Lenihan?"

"No, Mrs. Lenihan is-to whom am I speaking, please?"

"I'm Don Strachey, a friend of Jack's, and I'd like to talk to Mrs. Lenihan about him."

Her mike remained open, but no sound came forth.

I said, "Before he died Jack asked me to help him with a project that was important to him. I'm now attempting to complete the project, but I need help. I'd just like to sit down with her for a few minutes, if I may. I've flown all the way out here from Albany."

More empty static. Then: "Just a minute, please." The tone was hesitant but not hostile. The static clicked off. I checked my watch and it was nearly three minutes before the voice returned. "Joan says it's all right for you to come up. Just for a few minutes." The door buzzed open.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and followed a carpeted high-ceilinged corridor to 5-H, where the door stood open and a woman too young to be Jack Lenihan's mother extended her hand and said, "I'm Gail Tesney, a friend of Joan's. Please come in."

I guessed her age to be forty-one or – two. She was tall and slender in white shorts and a red halter, with small breasts and the type of lithe but firm musculature that suggested her tan came from regular tennis and not from lying by the pool with the latest Cosmo. Her black hair was lustrous even in the half-light and I felt a faint stirring, a kind of nostalgia for something that had never been more than an enforced experiment in social conditioning with me, a vestigial twitch. She had a wide mouth, lively and slightly asym-metrical black eyes, and she looked relieved to see me, as if a burden she had been under finally was going to be shared.

"Sit down, please. Joan worked eleven to seven last night, but she hasn't been sleeping well lately and she's been up for half an hour. This past week has been very hard on her. I'm sure you understand that."

"You mean the past three days, don't you? Mrs. Lenihan learned of Jack's death on Wednesday and today is Friday. Or had there been other bad news too?"

A good bit of the warmth went out of her smile. She said; "Perhaps you and Joan should talk this out."

The room was bright and comfortable in the California way, with white walls and a low orange-and-blue couch, bamboo shades on the ceramic lamps, an assortment of current Book-of-the-Month Club fiction on rosewood shelving and a good stereo setup with an Oscar Peterson LP propped in front of one speaker. An archway on the right led into a formal dining room with a glass-topped steel-tube table and a blond wood sideboard, beside which were stacked five suitcases of identical size, color and design, and which looked new.

Gail Tesney saw me catch sight of the suitcases as she turned toward a doorway leading to the other end of the apartment. She did a quick double take but said nothing and passed out of sight as I seated myself on the couch. The American Journal of Nursing on the end table was addressed to Ms. Gail Tesney, Apartment 5-H, 714 North Scotsmont, which was the apartment I was in.

Muffled voices came from behind a closed door. After several minutes of this I heard a door open-but not close– and Gail Tesney returned. She sat looking tense on a chair facing me and said, "Joan is lying down. She's really not feeling up to talking to anyone about Jack. I'm sorry. I really am. I appreciate that you've come all the way from Albany, and you're disappointed. But-what can I say? I hope you'll understand. Is there some message I can give Joan?"

I said, "Where's the money?"

Her mouth snapped shut and her black eyes flashed, but it wasn't all anger.

She seemed frustrated and unable to make up her mind about something. It was also evident that

I was not the sole cause of Gail Tesney's unsettled conflicting emotions.

Working hard not to glance in the direction of the dining room, she said,

"What money are you referring to, Mr. Strachey?"

I laid it all out for her-them. How Jack's body had been left in my car; the menacing calls from Hankie-mouth and his assumption that I had the money; my tracing Jack's visits to Joan Lenihan in October and again the weekend before he died; Jack's negotiations with the Albany pols; the letter from Jack asking my help and the arrival of five suitcases full of newspapers with Joan Lenihan's return address on them.

I said, "My aim is to recover the two and a half million, deduct a relatively modest sum to cover my fee and expenses as per Jack's instructions, and then carry out his project-provided, of course, that I can verify to my satisfaction that the money was legitimately obtained in the first place.

Who is this Al Piatek anyway?"

Tesney sat poised on the edge of her chair looking stricken throughout my monologue. When I'd finished, she just stared at me. Finally, she said, "I am going to tell you something in confidence."

"All right."

"This is not to be repeated in Albany."

"Is it illegal?"

"Not in California anymore. Texas, I think."

"Then as far as I'm concerned, mum's the word."

"You're gay, aren't you? Jack mentioned that."

"Yes."

"Then you'll understand. Joan and I are lovers."

"I thought you might be. But why the secrecy? This is West Hollywood, where the city hall probably has a statue of Sappho on the roof. Sappho and Montgomery Clift with raised fists."

She wanted to smile but couldn't quite. "Joan and I are in the medical profession, which is not as consistently enlightened as you might think it is, even in California. There are certain administrators closeted dykes themselves in two cases-who would make our lives a lot more difficult if we were as open as we'd like to be. Nothing we could sue over, but a lot of petty meannesses we would prefer to avoid. We saw it happen to another couple once who were so brazen as to kiss each other good-bye one morning in the hospital parking lot."

"I understand that."

"But I am mainly talking about Albany. Joan has her own reasons for not wanting it known that she's a lesbian, and although I don't agree with her that it should matter anymore, I do respect her wishes absolutely. I am asking– insisting-that you do the same."

"I will. But what has that got to do with the problem we're all facing here?"

"You just said it, Mr. Strachey. The problem we're all dealing with here. I want you to understand that any problem of Joan's is my problem too. In fact, Joan wanted to keep me out of this. And I agree that there are some things that each of us has to handle on our own. But this is not one of them. It's too big."

"I agree. Murder is an event that has to command everybody's full attention."

She blanched, then opened her mouth to speak. No words came out and her chin trembled.

I said, "Who do you and Joan think killed Jack?"

"Why-why, one of those politicians. Isn't that obvious? Joan has told me all about what Albany politicians are like. And the horror of it is, they'll probably get away with it. The police will cover it up. It's sickening."

"And Joan is prepared to let that happen by not telling them what she knows?"

With a puzzled shake of the head, she said, "I really don't understand her thinking about that. I just can't get it into my head.

She says she simply doesn't want to have anything to do with Albany-that nothing but disaster could ever come of it. Yet-oh, I don't know. I wish I could understand. I'm trying to understand."

Here was some serious strain on a relationship that I guessed was unaccustomed to it. I said, "Please tell me about Al Piatek."

A sound came from the hallway and we both looked up as Joan Lenihan entered the room. She calmly leaned down and kissed Gail on the cheek, squeezed her hand, then sat on the other end of the couch and gazed at me with pained, resentful eyes.

"You did not have to do this," she said. "None of it. I read the letter Jack wrote to you. You could have turned it over to the police and left Albany until the whole thing blew over. But here you are, aren't you? Big as life and twice as persistent." She slipped a cigarette from the pack on the end table and lit it. "Jack was a true Lenihan in some ways-a brooder, sometimes vindictive, often a little too footloose and fancy-free for his own good. But he was always a superb judge of character."

"Not always," I said. "Someone he trusted killed him."

She didn't flinch, just stared at me with eyes full of suppressed rage, the cigarette poised in the air, smoke curling around the feathery close-cropped hair, which was the color of the smoke. She was sixtyish, small-boned but full-breasted, with a long worn face and a slight overbite. She wore jeans and a brown UCLA sweatshirt and was not so tanned as Gail Tesney, though her slight body gave off an aura of tensile strength. She came across as a woman capable of remarkable feats of work or pleasure, and a woman not to be messed with.

She said, "I'll pay your expenses. But there is no fee, Mr. Strachey. I'm sorry, but your client is dead."

"Who killed him?"

"I don't know. Nothing anyone in Albany does surprises me.

"You think it was one of the politicians he was bargaining with?"

"I suppose."

"But not dope dealers?"

"Jack wasn't doing that anymore. He told me. And he never lied to me. He didn't have to. We were like that."

"His death must be very hard for you to accept."

She blew smoke out the side of her mouth, turned to watch it trail away, and said, "Yes. It is."

"Did Jack know he was in danger? Did you?"

A faint shiver passed through her. "No. No, not that kind of danger."

"In his letter to me, Jack said someone was very angry with him. You said you read the letter before he mailed it. Who was he referring to?"

She sat there seeming to work at manufacturing a careful response in her mind. "Perhaps he meant me," she said.

"Why you?"

"Because I was against this whole business from the very beginning. Jack was like a giddy child with it, and I was the mother telling him it was foolish and irresponsible. There is no way to save Albany. I told him that. The place is rotten to the core, and Jack was wasting his time. There are people in Albany who can kill you just by touching you. The only thing you can do is stay away from them. I know this."

"I take it your own experience there was not a happy one."

A hard look. "Not happy? Don't trivialize what I am telling you, Mr.

Strachey. Yes, I was a young Catholic lesbian on Walter Street married to a drunk, and there was not a day that passed from my twenty-third year to my forty-first year when I did not consider sticking my head in the oven and letting the Lenihans try to explain it to the neighborhood. If it hadn't been for Jack and Corrine-for their needing me, and for the love they gave to me-I would have done it. Except for my children, I detested my life in Albany, and until my husband died I was too weak a person to change it.

But my own experience was my own doing. It was all I knew at the time, and I would have done the same thing in any town. Albany's rottenness is bigger than that."

Tesney was sitting with her chin in hands, listening hard, trying to make sense of what we were hearing, as was I.

I said, "I think I get the drift of what you're saying, but I'm not sure. Can you elaborate?"

She said, "No. I can't. It's not worth it."

"All right. For now, then, who is Al Piatek?"

She blew smoke toward a half-open window where the breeze made the smoke shudder suddenly and vanish. "Albert Piatek was a very sad young man. He should not have died. But he's gone now, and it's better that you let him rest. Can you understand that?"

"That can't be. You know it."

Her look was bitter. "Do I know that? I didn't know I knew that."

"An Albany police detective by the name of Bowman is on his way out here.

He'll want to question you, and he'll be checking on Piatek. It's better that I discover first whatever there is to know. I think you understand that."

Her face reddened and she abruptly stubbed out the cigarette. She stood, her whole body working, uncertain about whether to leave the room or smash a lamp over my head. She left the room suddenly and a door slammed down the hallway.

Gail Tesney sat gazing fiercely at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. She looked over at me after a moment and said, "Please leave now.

Would you mind?"

"I'll have to come back. I'm sorry you're caught in the middle of this."

"It's all right. I choose to be where I am. I'm sick of it, but it's all right."

"The money is in those bags in the dining room, isn't it?"

She quickly shook her head. "No. No, those bags are empty."

"Joan said Jack showed her his letter to me. Five keys were taped to the bottom of it. It is my belief that just before Jack shipped the bags, his mother removed the keys from the letter, opened the bags, took the money, filled the bags with newspapers, locked them, and replaced the keys in the letter. Why?"

"I don't know! I don't know! I don't know! Please-" She snatched a Kleenex out of a box with one hand and gestured toward the door with the other. As I moved toward it, Tesney turned toward me and blurted, "I can only take so much of this. Wait." She went to the bookshelf, pulled down a copy of Michener's Space, and removed a newspaper clipping that had been stuck inside the jacket. This she handed to me and said, "If you can put an end to this damned confusion, please do it. I know I can't. I've tried and I just can't get through to her. You try. I've had just about as much of this insanity as I can take. "

I said, "I guess you know that you might have to take some more," and her look said she knew it.

Outside, I studied the newsclip, an obituary for Albert R. Piatek, Funston Lane, West Hollywood, who had died the previous October 28 "after a long illness."

ELEVEN

Back at the motel I phoned an LA investigator who'd done some work for me, as I had for him, in times gone by. I asked him to use his phone-company contacts to get a list of calls made from Joan Lenihan's number to Albany, New York, over the previous weekend when Jack had been there. It was 2:25 when I called and he said he'd have the list by five o'clock.

I phoned my service in Albany, which had two messages. One was from an unnamed caller with a muffled voice who asked the operator to inform Mr.

Strachey that "you are dead." The other was from my contact at the Department of Motor Vehicles notifying me that the license plate number I'd asked him to track down belonged to a Mrs. Bella Kunkle of North Greenbush, New York, and that she had reported her station wagon stolen from a supermarket parking lot Thursday evening. The theft appeared to have been professionally done.

I consulted a West Hollywood street map in the motel office, then trekked the eight blocks down Sunset to Funston Lane, where I turned right along a narrow residential street lined with small wooden beige bungalows set close together. The tiny houses looked as if they should have had a Lionel train whooshing this way and that way among them. Here and there a lawn sprinkler exhaled a misty spray over a six-foot square of green-bearded earth, though most of the water, having nearly completed its circuitous journey from the Rockies to the Pacific, ran into the gutter and down a grate.

Number 937 Funston Lane had a walkway leading up to a three-by-four-foot side porch with some bougainvillea clinging to a sagging trellis. I rapped on the door, which had a square of window in it with the view inward blocked by a curtain the color of the house. The curtain was shoved aside and a male face peered out at me. The door opened.

"Hi. I already have a set of encyclopedias, you'd have to talk to the owner about aluminum siding, and I already have Jesus in my heart. But thanks anyway."

I said, "How much are you paying for your long-distance calls?"

"I don't make any. Everybody I know lives in West Hollywood. "

"But perhaps one of them will move to Fresno and you'll want to stay in touch. Micky's Phone Company will enable you to do that for just pennies a day."

"Anybody who moved to Fresno voluntarily would not be a person who'd want to hear from me. I wish you all the luck in the world with your phone company, Micky, but right now I'm kind of busy."

He tried to shut the door, but I stuck my foot in it. "I'm Don Strachey, a private investigator from Albany, New York, and I'd like to talk with you about Al Piatek."

Slightly built and a little stoop-shouldered, he wore jeans and a lavender Tshirt with printing across the front that said BORN TO RAISE ORCHIDS. He had a sweetly comic oblong face and droll blue eyes that were just right for the sly chirpiness of his manner, but now his face fell. He blinked a couple of times and recited, "The sky was black with chickens coming home to roost."

"What's that from, Macbeth?"

"Camille, I think. I guess you'd better come in. I'm Kyle Toot."

I entered the miniature house, or houselet.

"Sit wherever you can find a place. No, let's go out to the kitchen."

"Is it nearby?"

We passed through the living roomette, where stacks of paper with printing on them were arranged on the floor, coffee table, couch seat and arms.

"Did Jack Lenihan send you out here, or is he in trouble himself?"

"Both."

"Could I get you anything?"

"Information."

"I'd better have a drink."

I wedged myself into a seat between the Formica table and the south and east walls. Toot: brought out a jug labeled "Grackle Valley Pure Spring Water-no additives, no fad-datives." He poured from the cAntainer into a glass, then replaced the jug in the refrigerator, which had a canister motor atop it, circa 1934. Los AfigeleS, land of antiquities.

"Do you keep gin in there?"

"No, I keep water in there. It's obvious you're from Albany" He squeezed into the seat across from me.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's a town where the consumption of gin from a jug in midafternoon is probably a commonplace."

"It's endemic but not epidemic. And now you're going to tell me that in Los Angeles the ingestion of mind-altering substances is practically unknown,"

"It's known, but not by me. People who want to work can't stay stoned all the time. Unless they're already under contract. I'm not."

"You're an actor?"

"Sometimes. I also cut and staple raffle tickets for a printer. That's the mess in the living room. I get a penny a book, and it's a rich and rewarding life."

"I've heard that acting is chancy."

"Last month it was Uncle Vaniaa at the Harriet and Raymond P. Rathgeber Pavilion, and this month it's raffle tickets, I auditioned for the fool to Charlton Heston's Lear, which is opening in May, but Chuck thought I was too tall. Fools in Elizabethan times were iiever more than four feet tall, he told me, and he wants to keep it authentic. I'm up for the part of Ticky, a new character they're introducing on Love Boat next season, but it'll all depend on how my eye-rolling test came out. You have to be able to roll your eyes up into your skull, down the inside of the back of your head, up your jawbone, and into the sockets again. That's how the writers wrote the character, and the producers have too much integrity to alter the conception. I had sinus problems the day I auditioned, so I don't know how well I did."

"Well, I'll watch for you in case you make it. It's my favorite show except for reruns of Love That Bob."

He laughed and said, "How's crazy Jack Lenihan doing? Has the law caught up with him yet? Now there's an actor."

"He's dead."

Toot went white. "No."

"Yeah."

"What happened to him? Jack was fine in October. He's dead?"

"Jack died on Tuesday. He was murdered." Toot had been nursing his glass of spring water, but now he set it down and stared at me. I said, "How did you know Jack? Are you from Albany?"

"No, I'm from Encino. Who killed him? Why?"

"Those are two things I'm trying to find out. So are the police. An Albany cop by the name of Bowman will probably come by here. It's known that Jack had a connection of some kind with Al Piatek. Everybody wants to know what it was. Did you live with Al here?"

"For a year and a half."

"Lovers?"

He shook his head and shuddered. "No. Thank God, no. We'd tricked once a long time ago, but that was years ago, when he first came out here from Albany. No, Al and I were not lovers. I want to make that clear. As it is, a lot of people won't get within ten feet of me. I seem to run into two types these days, guys who think nothing's changed, that we're still back in '77 and Donna Summer's in her heaven and all's right with the world, and guys who think the plague's waiting for them on the rim of every drinking glass. But you don't get AIDS from sharing the rent. There's just no known instance of it."

I said, "I didn't know."

"Know what?"

"How Al Piatek died."

"Oh well, it lasted eight months, and it was inhuman, grotesque."

"He was here with you?"

"Of course. This was his home."

"You two must have been close."

He shrugged. "No. To tell you the truth, I didn't even like Al very much. His interests were in rock music-he was a recording engineer at Zimmer Studios-and was into the musicians and their dope. I like baroque music and I'm indifferent to most pop stuff, except to dance to. In fact, Al wasn't even here very much until he got sick. Mostly, Al went his way and I went mine."

"But you took care of him through the illness?"

"About half the time he was in the hospital. When he was here, I did what I could. People from the AIDS support group came by, and I helped out. I was able to do it because-well, because I knew it wasn't going to last. That Al wasn't going to last. That's cynical, I know, but it was better I did that than cutting out, don't you think?" I nodded. "I did what I could. Al went back to the church toward the end. I took him to Mass the few times he could get out of bed and walk, and I know it helped. I even pretended to regain my own faith. He seemed to want me to. It was phony as all get-out, but I'm a good actor. I sometimes feel guilty about that-that I demeaned Al by pretending. But the alternatives seemed even worse. I think I did the right thing."

"It's complicated, but I think you did too."

"It's a horrible way to die. You're gay, right?"

"How did you know?"

"Oh, puh-leez, Mary!"

Twenty years earlier my indignation would have known no bounds, but I'd been carried gasping for air along with the times, so I smiled sweetly. I wasn't wearing an earring or hot hankie, however, so I wondered what the devil he meant. I supposed he had some uncanny sixth sense. Or maybe it was the fact that I hadn't flinched when, as he was speaking, he leaned across the table and placed his hand on mine.

I said, "Your palm is sweating."

He withdrew the hand. "I wanted to see if you were who you said you were."

"Are all private investigators from Albany supposed to be gay? So far as I know, I'm it."

"Al told me Jack Lenihan used to deal dope. And the people he was involved with in that were straight. I thought you might be one of them."

"Why?"

"The money. They'd want their money back. They probably killed Jack trying to get it."

"What money is that?"

"The two and a half million Jack Lenihan gave to Al in October and then asked Al to leave to Jack in his will. Jack was laundering his own money.

The story they cooked up was, Janis Joplin had given it to Al when she was stoned one time, and then Al-who was afraid to spend the money and kept it in the trunk of his car-left it to Jack. You didn't know that? I thought that's why you were here."

"I knew Al had left Jack the money. But I didn't know Jack had given it to Al first. That's what I came out here to find out. Where Al had gotten the two and a half million. Jack told Al it was doper's money?"

"No, that was Al's theory. Where else would Jack have gotten it? Jack asked Al to take it and then leave it to him, and Al agreed. Originally it was closer to three and a quarter million, but the estate tax and Al's back income tax plus penalties were something terrific. Jack said he knew he'd lose a lot of it to the tax guys, but that was the price he was willing to pay, he said, to make the cash legitimate. Naturally Al asked Jack where he got the money, but Jack couldn't say. He just kept insisting that what he was doing was not at all immoral, and Al took his word for it. He knew Jack well enough to understand that Jack was sincere, that his word on that score was good. By then, Al had accepted the fact that he was going to die soon, so it gave him something useful to do for an old friend."

"They'd known each other in Albany?"

Toot smiled sadly. "You are in the dark, aren't you? Haven't you spoken with Joan Lenihan? She's here in LA. If you found me, you must have found her."

"Mrs. Lenihan was not overly forthcoming. She's upset about Jack and she's got problems of her own."

Toot looked at me and said, "Al and Jack were lovers in high school. Each was the other's first. The two families didn't know about it-they thought Al and Jack were assembling model airplanes up in the Piateks' attic. What they were really doing was sniffing the glue and fucking each other silly. Al once told me he would remember and fantasize about those hours up there on an old mattress until the day he died. Which I'm sure he did.

"Al said it was never quite as good after those first attic trysts with Jack Lenihan. But it didn't last. One day, while Al was up working on his airplanes' with Jack, the senior Piateks and Al's two younger sisters were killed in a car crash outside Albany. Al was brought to LA to live with his grandparents-who died a couple of years ago-and Al and Jack never saw each other again until Joan Lenihan reunited them last October. Some years ago, Jack had told his mother about his first love, so when she met Al out here she arranged a reunion. She thought it might be therapeutic for Al. You see, when Al first went into the hospital and got the news of a positive diagnosis, Joan Lenihan was his nurse."

"She's obviously a kind and sensitive woman."

"She is, and that's not all she is."

"I know."

"Her humanitarianism is not entirely disinterested. She's protecting the tribe. She's lesbian and her son was gay. She's as aware as anybody that under the best of circumstances it ain't easy being puce, and the present circumstances are far from the best. When the AIDS unit opened up at the hospital, Joan Lenihan was the first nurse to volunteer."

I said, "I think I will have a glass of that stuff. Have you got a beer?"

Toot brought me a Bud from the Frigidaire and said, "I keep it around for tricks."

"Tricks? No."

"Sure. Haven't you heard of safe sex? The AIDS council put out a pornographic pamphlet on minimum-risk sex. It's a real turn-on, and I've got one."

"A pamphlet, eh? Well, here I am in kinky LA"

"Wanna see it? It's in Spanish too, if your English is not too good."

"I'll pass. I loathe safe sex. Safe sex is to erotic communion what the Salisbury steak in a restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike is to food. I do it because it's what there is, but I don't want to think about it any more that I have to." I slugged down some of the beer. Toot's house was cool and the cold beer warmed me up.

With a little smile he said, "I wasn't trying to seduce you. I'm sure you have your professional ethics."

"And my lover in a motel over on Sunset. Whether you were trying to seduce me or not, two or three years ago I would have loved a quick tumble in the sack with you and probably would have initiated it. But that's over.