“It’s very common for TV’s or s.m.’s to have a special apartment for their celebrations. Trick pads. The way some married guys have apartments to meet their girlfriends.”
“Okay. Where does he keep his clothes, the drag clothes?”
“Most guys would keep them at home. If they’re married and the wife doesn’t know, they’d keep them someplace where she wouldn’t be apt to look—the toolchest, the workshop, maybe even a safe.”
“But if he lives in a Manhattan apartment, how does he get across town without being noticed?”
“Is he rich?”
“Very.”
“Hire a limo.”
“Then the elevator man knows. The doorman knows.”
“He changes into drag in the limo. The driver’s in on it. That happens a lot. There are special limo services. He could even stash the drag with the limo company.”
“But it’s fancy drag, he wants it to look good. A real woman wouldn’t dress in a limo, make herself up in the back seat—would this guy?”
“Either you don’t know the things some women do in limos, or you don’t know what state-of-the-art limos are like. They have Jacuzzis. Beds. Mirrors.”
“But say these games and videotapes—say the s.m. in them is really rough. Maybe someone’s even been killed.”
Henning’s eye flicked up and fixed on Cardozo. “We both know that happens.”
“This guy doesn’t want anyone to know he does drag—not anyone on the outside, certainly not a limo driver. He doesn’t want anything showing that connects to that side of his life.”
“Then if he’s smart he changes in the place where they make the films. But there are no rules. A lot of guys aren’t realistic in this one area. They don’t want to be found out, but they take asshole risks. Maybe that’s part of the unconscious thrill. You see Manhattan publishers, bankers, lawyers, guys with two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year salaries, walking past the doorman in leather. Leather, for Christ’s sake. They gotta be crazy if they think they’re leading a double life, but they do it.”
“But drag?”
“Drag—no. They don’t go past the doorman in drag. Not the older generation. Not if it’s secret. If it weren’t for the wife, I’d say your friend takes the drag with him in a suitcase. But married, I don’t know what he tells her—he’s going to Chicago on business for six hours? Unless the wife isn’t around much, or they lead separate lives, like she has a lover or she’s always out Thursdays at the opera.”
“What about keeping the drag in the secret apartment?”
“Frankly, Lieutenant, I know more about leather than drag. But if we’re talking high drag, the gear is very expensive—it runs a few thousand dollars. And the people that do these things, the drugs, the games—they’re not the kind you’d trust with something you valued. So unless this secret apartment was his own place, no one else coming and going, I don’t think he’d keep the drag there. Also, how does it get cleaned and repaired, who takes care of all that? There’s a lot of logistics to drag, a lot more than to leather.”
“You don’t know any guys who have this kind of profile?”
“Making snuff films in drag?”
“You might have heard something.”
“Sure, you hear things, but take it with a grain of salt.”
Henning started to speak, hesitated, worked his lip.
“Okay, I’ve heard of somebody, he does drag, and he’s in a situation where it would wreck his life, his friendships, his career, everything, if it ever came out.”
Cardozo flashed that Henning was talking about a cop. Not himself, but another cop. A member of the Gay Caucus.
“It’s a compulsion, a need. And he needs a place where he can act out and it can’t be at home, because at home he drinks Bud with the boys, watches ballgames. A coworker could open a closet and see Scarlett O’Hara’s ballgown and blow the whole thing. So what’s he going to do? We know what rents are, who can afford one apartment, let alone a secret pad? So he shares with some other TV’s, who are not exactly reliable people. I don’t mean in general, but these particular TV’s are dips. So he keeps a locker in the pad. It’s a secure locker, you could put jewels in it. Dynamite couldn’t get into it.”
Cardozo flashed that Henning was talking about his lover. “Kind of like keeping your own bottle of liquor at an after-hours club?”
Henning nodded. “Right.”
48
“I NEED TO GET INTO Lewis Monserat’s Franklin Street loft,” Cardozo said.
“But he lives on Madison,” Babe said.
“His playpen is on Franklin.”
A hesitation came over the phone line. “Has he done anything wrong?”
“I’ll know after I search. Can you keep him busy two hours?”
“He’s showing a new artist at his gallery this Wednesday evening, he’ll have to be there at least three hours.”
“Are you going?”
“I can.”
“Is Duncan Canfield going?”
“Do you want him to go?”
“Him and Count Leopold and Countess Vicki.”
“The count and countess never miss an opening of Lew’s. And I can ask Dunk to take me.”
“Be your most—what’s the word they use in gossip columns?—captivating. Make sure they all stay.”
At 8 P.M. three men in the brown uniforms of the United Parcel Service approached the doorway of number 432 Franklin Street. Two were empty-handed and the third carried a large carton marked SONY TRINITRON.
The tallest of the delivery men glanced both ways along the street. The thin crowds of early evening had begun milling up the block on Hudson Street, but except for the three UPS men, Franklin was deserted.
The shortest of the delivery men removed a plastic card from his wallet and worked it into the crack between the inner door and the metal jamb. A moment later the door swung free.
Babe’s eye played across the crowd.
The Monserat Gallery was full of guests, and more were arriving by the minute. Handsome women in smart gowns, men in tuxes who were obviously going on to other events mingled with young and not-so-young people in jeans and T-shirts and flouncy gypsy skirts with peasant tops.
For those who couldn’t brave the crush to the elaborate buffet tables, waiters circulated with drinks and food. Deftly placed speakers pumped discreet post-punk energized trance music into the party.
“Lew!” Babe waved.
Lew Monserat had a little slow smile for her as they drew toward one another, and he kissed her on each cheek.
He was elegantly dressed in a blue blazer, vellum-colored shirt, ecru flannels, but his face was gaunt, his eyes exhausted, and he moved with a sort of stoop.
“It’s been so long,” Babe said.
“We haven’t talked in eight years—can you believe it?”
“Well, I know how to fix that.” Babe took his arm. “Tell me about your new artist and introduce me to everyone.”
Waldo Flores’s assbones ached from sitting on the hard wooden chair, and he had a crimp in his neck from leaning forward to listen for a click that never came.
But this time there was a click. It was so faint he couldn’t tell at first whether he had heard it or just wished it.
He slid a steel piece between the rods and pressured it slowly clockwise.
The lock made a friendly sound as the bolt slid back.
An hour of pain dropped off his shoulders and he swung the door open.
Cardozo found the light switch and flicked it. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
It startled Waldo to see Richard Nixon wearing a Frederick’s of Hollywood black lace panty-bra with the crotch cut out. The mask was that realistic.
Mickey and Minnie Mouse and the other cartoon character masks looked real in their own way, but it was a different way, not shocking, just ugly with the black lingerie and black leather dangling on hangers beneath them.
But Nixon and John Wayne, those were shocks.
Cardozo bent down at the bottom shelf in the closet, pulled out a videocassette, and studied it. The neatly hand-lettered label read FUN ‘N’ GAMES HALLOWEEN 7.