Only Make Believe (28 page)

“Don’t you dare let Pierre out,” he called. “Traffic gets worse every day.” Mr. Patt had a split lip. His left arm was in a sling.

I introduced the two men and Bud showed his badge. Mr. Patt picked up the white ball of fur with his good arm and set the toe of his shoe against the bottom of the gate.

“You can’t force me to say a thing. I don’t have any idea who they were. Didn’t ever see their faces. Is that all, officer?”

“It’s not about this weekend,” I said. “Not exactly. That isn’t why Detective Wright is here.”

“We don’t know if you getting hurt is connected to Mr. DiGennaro,” Bud said. “But you might could help me out. Could be some kind of similarity, local men beating up, uh, individuals that was, uh, that are …”

Mr. Patt chucked the dog under its chin. “That are what?” When Bud failed to come up with the right word, he added, “You know I’m really very busy this morning. I’m making cream of wheat for mother.”

The dog licked his hand. “Sweetheart,” Mr. Patt cooed.

An old woman appeared on the porch. Dressed in a cotton house coat and slippers, she leaned over the rail, pointed at Bud and me and shrieked. “Hurt. Haat. Hurt. Haat.” About half her teeth were gone. Her eyes were milk blue.

Bud was wearing a suit, two-tone shoes and wide-brimmed fedora. I’d picked up a baseball cap as I left the hotel.

“She don’t like hats,” Patt said. “People in hats do bad things.”

The old woman pointed again. “Mollie. Killer. Mollie. Killer. Hurt. Haat.”

“So maybe you gentlemen could just move on? Leave us in peace?”

“Hurt. Haat.”

I walked Bud back to the Jeep, rode with him couple of blocks, told him I’d phone as soon as possible, ditched the cap and headed back to Mr. Patt’s.

The yard and porch were empty. I rapped on the gate, the dog flew down the steps yapping and Patt came back outside.

Take the risk,
I told myself.
Use your brains. You’re holding the key to this case, Lieutenant War Hero. You are not alone. Bud’s courage, Asdeck’s influence and the Diva’s blood are behind you. Open up. Risk your balls and your backside.

Patt was not glad to see me. “Hon, I told
you
all I know about the Diva. There was no call to bring the police to my personal residence.”

“This is about somebody getting killed.”

“There’s no law says I have to do house calls at your lovely hotel, you know.” He reached down and scooped up the fretting dog. “I’m doing fine and dandy with my shop, thank you just the same.”

“I’m queer,” I said. “You know that.”

He cocked his head. I figured that meant
Uh huh, so what?

“I’ve got a lover. A male lover. Another man.”

“Lucky you.”

“We can’t live together. You know how it is. But we work together, we’re making a life together.”

“In this town? Better be careful, Hon. Maybe
you
don’t know how it is. Anything else?”

“Our jobs, maybe our lives are on the line. The killing at the hotel? The Diva? I think you can help me.”

Patt kissed the top of the little dog’s head. “I think not. And now I’d really better go back and tend to Mama. Your cop friend upset her.”

“Tell me what happened between you and Albert Fletcher.”

Patt smoothed the dog’s fur. “Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Except I quit reading the Bible.”

He knows what I mean and what I’m asking. I’m halfway there.

“The cop’s my boyfriend,” I said. “The cop in the hat. But he doesn’t speak our language yet. I don’t think he knows about truck drivers and rough stuff. He sure doesn’t know how to ask what I’m asking you. And if we don’t find out who killed Diva, the killer could—what, get away with it? Do it again?”

“That’s your boyfriend’s concern, isn’t it? Look, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. I’m not Dick Tracy. Leave me alone.”

“Bud wants to catch whoever did this as much as I do. Before he goes after somebody else who’s a little different—like me or you—with a baseball bat or carving knife.”

“Funny, they tell me it’s usually the cops who beat up queens. The cops and tough guys like that.”

“Bud’s not
like that
.”

“Lucky you. But I repeat myself.”

“Didn’t you tell me the Diva wasn’t queer? You were sure he wasn’t a queen?”

Patt turned away, set the dog down, turned back and unlatched the gate. “It’s more complicated than that—I think. Come sit on the porch. Mama’s in her room with her radio program. Can I get you coffee? I’m going to make a fresh pot.”

Plump and matronly, Mr. Patt had seemed older than Bud and me at first. Now I realized he was about our age.

He made me promise to keep his name out of the investigation. He swore he’d have left Lee County years ago if it wasn’t for his addled, godforsaken mother. “Mama’s only able to rest in her own house. She was born here, sleeps in the same bed. Came home from her honeymoon after three days. Couldn’t even sleep at the hotel up in Tampa. And now …”

“Al Fletcher,” I said. “Played football.”

He touched the black surgical stitch on his lip. “What do you know about him?”

“Not much. Is he where it started for you?”

“You don’t want my whole life story.”

“Look, I’ve been with a lot of men. Maybe a third of them said they learned about sex at camp, sleepovers or in the scouts. Horny boys in the dark, playing grab ass, experimenting in their pup tents, one thing leads to another. Kid stuff, at least at first, for some of us.”

“Kid stuff?”

“The first time I was ever with another boy was on a Navy ship. We were telling ghost stories.”

“During the war?”

“Yes.”

Patt shook his head. “The war. That’s when it started. There was a beer bar down on Fowler Street with an oleander jungle out back. The gunnery students from Buckingham Air Field used to drink and play pool at that bar. I’ll bet half the student flyers were under twenty-one. Nobody ever checked those boys’ ages. Or mine. I can’t imagine why it wasn’t off limits. Anyway, at night, some of the airmen—and some of the local men and boys—would go out in the backyard and do things with each other in the dark. On moonlight nights, you could see faces and bodies and khaki trousers around their ankles. I saw him out there twice.”

On the Home Front,
nothing’s too good for our boys in uniform.
No sacrifice is too great.

“But he couldn’t see me. His eyesight was so bad—so bad he had to wear special, extra-thick lenses to read. And he was vain. He wouldn’t wear his glasses at the bar, of course.” Patt laughed and sipped his coffee. “I didn’t actually know him. I just knew who he was. I started out three grades behind him.”

I wanted to be sure we were talking about the same man. “This is Albert Fletcher, right?”

Patt smiled and looked away. “In grade school, they called him Four-Eyes Fletcher. But not in high school, not once he started playing football and lifting weights and building up all that muscle.”

“I saw him this week. He’s still real fit.”

“I’ve seen him around town.” Patt’s smile faded. “All the girls thought Four Eyes was just muscle-bound and stupid, like some big stud horse. And yours truly never dreamed he’d give another boy a second glance—ha!
Glance
. He’d have had to put on his specs to do that.”

“So what happened?”

Patt put his good hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought about all this in ages.”

I pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to him. He took it, wiped his eyes, blew his nose and let his hurt and anger out a notch.

“Damn it, we were assigned to the same cabin at church camp the summer I graduated high school. Most of the boys, they weren’t there for Bible study at all. Most of those boys, they were no better than animals. All they did was talk about women and girls and doing it, just all the time, talking about tits and snatches and pricks and cream, saying they’d done this and that to such and such a girl, and she did such and such back.”

Regulation frat-house, wardroom, hunting-camp bullshit. Don’t interrupt.

“After lights out, most of them diddled themselves just about every night. They’d talk dirty and—you know, groan and brag on how good it felt. Albert’s cot was right next to mine. But he could have been across the room. Because of all of them, he was the loudest when he was doing it, even though he never talked dirty. I tried not to peek or even listen. But, you know, I did. I had to.

“On the last evening of camp, Albert and me, we happened to be alone. We were walkin’ back from supper. It wasn’t dark yet but getting there. All of a sudden, he punched my shoulder and laughed—you know, like bullies do, only not mean at all. I stopped and he reached down quick and patted my fanny. I was shocked. I just looked up at him. He said, Can I ask you something? I said sure. He asked me how did I stay so pure, asked why didn’t I ever talk about women and play with myself in the dark like the other guys did. I told him I couldn’t do it in the same room with boys I’d been reading the Bible with all day. Told him I’d be scared to—scared somebody would say something the next morning, tease me, and I’d get too embarrassed. He looked at me hard. Then he whispered he wouldn’t have ever minded if I’d done it next to him. Said nobody was going to embarrass me if he was around.”

Patt fanned himself with the handkerchief. “I couldn’t breathe, you know? Didn’t know what to do. So I said the first thing that popped into my head. Said maybe we can spend time together when we get back to Myers. Said I’d seen him in the oleander jungle out behind the Fowler Street bar. With the Air Corps sergeants from Buckingham Field. Said maybe we could stop going to such a dirty, dangerous place—and just be together.”

And live happily ever after. Jesus, this poor guy had dreams.

“He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, like it was a question, ‘Yeah?’ And he reached down and put one arm around my shoulder. And he put his other hand on my—”

Pat dropped the hanky and waved his good hand, a wounded bird, near his chest. “You know, on my breast. And he squeezed me real hard, pulling me to him that way. Scared me. I panicked. Silly girl. Tried to get away. He wouldn’t let me go. Tore my shirt. Hurt me.”

“Didn’t know his own strength?” I whispered. “Acting like he was in a locker room? Wouldn’t take no for an answer?”

“He reached down below, grabbed my—you know, down here—and squeezed and pulled. I panicked, yelled out for help. Hon, it was my first real case of vapors. I thought he was trying to make me kneel to him. And I surely would have. But he misunderstood—we both did.”

Patt sobbed and pulled a huge breath. “So I spit in his face.”

“Big misunderstanding.”

“Albert hit me, called me filth and a fairy, said he’d never heard about any jungle on Fowler, said somebody ought to call the cops on me and every queer boy and soldier they could round up. Then he pushed me down on the ground and just stood there. He was crying too. Finally he ran off.”

“And you two couldn’t make it up?”

“My jaw was broken. I had to live with wires in my mouth for months. I lied, told the doctor I tripped on a cypress log and fell down. But this here’s what’s worse—I had a real crush on him, well, more than that, Jesus, now I can say it. And it didn’t go away, not for years. Because I’d seen him naked every day at that rotten Bible camp, playing with himself three feet away. And with his trousers open under a big clump of oleander bushes, allowing silly queens in uniform to—you know, take him. And one other time out there in the bushes, he was stark naked except work boots, lying on the ground, in the dirt, with two men sort of holding him down and three or four others standing over him, juicing themselves on him. Like he was the sweetest toilet in the world.”

Tears ran down Patt’s unshaved cheeks. The little dog jumped into his lap and he pulled it close to his chest. “I didn’t start to hate him until the war was over, and the bar shut down and the jungle was bulldozed and paved over for a parking lot. I’ve never loved anybody, really. I mean I can’t. Silly girl. But you know? I can’t. Hurt’s the only thing gets to me now. The only thing I really feel.”

Wartime casualties, they just keep coming. Four Eyes might as well have strangled him, put him out of his misery.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “For what happened. For putting you through this. I didn’t imagine it was so bad.”

“I get by. I have a business to run, good customers, my precious little Pierre. It shouldn’t be long until Mama—” He waved toward the door. “The doctors say Mama won’t last forever. I’m thinking Miami. Or maybe Atlanta.”

I stood up. “You’re a goddamn brave man—sharing all this with me, staying in Myers.”

“I guess I hoped that once Albert got married it would all be OK. I hoped he would never, well, you know, get so mad again.” He shifted the dog to the seat beside him and got to his feet. “Look, I’ve said too much. Albert probably had nothing to do with it.”

“Can you think of anybody else it might be?”

Patt touched his cut lip. “He hurt another boy in the football locker room. Didn’t graduate.”