Blood Count, page 4
The Blue Jays were in the middle of a long home stand, playing Minnesota in the SkyDome at one o’clock. Channel nine was carrying the game. I fixed a ham, cheese, and cucumber sandwich, poured a glass of Portuguese red and switched on the TV set in the bedroom.
Top of the second, Blue Jays ahead by a run.
I stuck it out till the bottom of the third, Blue Jays ahead by two. Daryl Snelgrove had a single and a run scored.
I turned off the television and read some of the Mel Tormé autobiography. When I got to the part about Mel’s romance with the very young Ava Gardner, I went back to the ball game.
Top of the eighth, Blue Jays up by four.
I put on a grey tweed jacket over my dark-blue work shirt and jeans and walked down to Queen, east a block to John Street, then south. The SkyDome blocked out most of the view at the foot of John Street. Maybe that’s how it got the name: you couldn’t see the sky for the dome.
At one of the gates, a portly man in an official blue blazer told me that the lot where the players parked their cars was somewhere on the dome’s south side. The man had an attitude that bordered on surly. Probably when a place sells out every game, fifty thousand seats, it doesn’t need to test its employees on a graciousness index.
I found the players’ lot and waited. So did half of Toronto’s under-twelve population. The cars in the lot ran to Mercedes and BMWs and American models with low ground clearance. At around six, two Latin-looking guys came out of a double door into the lot. They wore enough gold chains around their necks to pay off a Caribbean island’s national debt. The kids descended on the two guys. Both kept on the move, expressionless, scrawling fast autographs, headed for an Audi, and drove out of the lot.
Daryl Snelgrove emerged by himself a few minutes later. He was generous with the kids, signing programs, patting heads, flashing the grin. I stood back until he’d worked his way free and had the door to a black Corvette open.
“Pardon me, Daryl,” I said. “Mind if I call you Daryl?”
“That’s the name my dad gave me.” The grin looked good on the lopsided mouth. “You got something you want me to sign on?”
“Conversation is more my preference, Daryl.”
“Oh, yeah? Listen, sir, I got to be getting my supper.”
“At the Purple Zinnia maybe?”
Daryl’s face was too callow to have developed disguises for emotions. At the mention of the Purple Zinnia, his grin fled and his wide eyes got wider.
“No need to panic, Daryl,” I said. “I’m here in everybody’s best interests. That includes yours.”
Daryl’s mouth worked enough to get out a mumble.
“Can we talk, Daryl?” I said. “I’ll do most of it until you get your vocal cords back in gear. It’s about a man named Ian Argyll.”
“He’s dead.” Daryl’s voice was faint.
“Didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“I hardly knew him.”
“It’s the definition of hardly I’m interested in.”
Daryl swivelled away from me and ducked through the Corvette’s door. “I don’t have to take this,” he said. He stuck a key in the ignition.
“Honestly, Daryl,” I said. I had both hands on the top of the open car door. “Would your teammates be happy taking a shower with a guy they know drinks at the Purple Zinnia? That’s after they find out who else drinks there.”
Daryl craned his head to look at me. His face had all the guile of Jiminy Cricket’s.
“I knew somebody like you’d come along sooner or later,” he said.
“Like whom? A blackmailer?”
“What do you want out of me? I’m not as rich as you think.”
“Nothing money can buy, Daryl. All I want from you is a little straight-from-the-shoulder information. I’m trying to save a life.”
Daryl contemplated what I’d said. He probably found it as melodramatic as I did. I glanced around the parking lot. Four or five players had clusters of kids surrounding them.
“This isn’t the place for a chat, Daryl,” I said. “What do you say I get into this slick vehicle of yours and we drive somewhere more private?”
“My apartment’s in Bramalea.” Daryl’s voice sounded flat and morose. “There’s fine, I guess.”
“Suburbs do queasy things to my head, Daryl. Let me choose the locale, something closer in.”
Daryl leaned across the car’s interior and opened the passenger door. I went around the front of the Corvette and levered myself into a bucket seat that matched Daryl’s.
“Out and to the right,” I said.
Daryl did what I told him, but he wore the expression of a little kid being summoned to the principal’s office. We went over to Spadina and a block north to Clarence Square. He parked the car on the square’s south side.
“Who are you, anyway, mister?” Daryl slanted in my direction. I slanted in his. It was tough to face all the way around in the bucket seats. “What’s your name?”
“Crang. I’m a criminal lawyer.”
“Mr. Crang, first off, I want you to know I’ve been saved.”
“So far there’s nothing established you need to be saved from.”
“By my lord, Jesus Christ.”
“Oh, that kind of saving.”
Daryl’s bulging cheeks glowed pink. “Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?” he asked me.
“I know that’s a metaphor, Daryl, and metaphorically speaking, the heart is about filled to capacity.”
The pink in Daryl’s cheeks stayed put. It was his natural colouring, not the flush of fervour.
“Jesus guided me away from the paths of sin,” Daryl said.
“Are we talking business now? Is that sin as in Purple Zinnia?”
“Mr. Crang, I am not a practising homosexual.” Daryl’s voice tripped on the last word. “I was reaching for help, and Jesus took my hand.”
“Hand isn’t the piece of anatomy you need to worry about, Daryl.”
We hoisted ourselves out of the Corvette and walked into the square. It had a collection of spreading maples and some benches that the city had installed. We sat on a bench that faced the line of nice, old Georgian-style buildings on the square’s north side.
“Whose life is it you were talking about saving back in the parking lot?” Daryl asked.
“Maybe yours.”
“Just because I might’ve gone to the Purple Zinnia?”
“Good start, Daryl. Is it a given you’ve had drinks at the Zinnia bar?”
Daryl fingered one of his earlobes with his right hand. “Another fellow on the team took me to that particular bar. The people there were awful nice, and it surely to goodness beat going back to Bramalea by myself. I’m a single person, Mr. Crang, and I didn’t see anything wrong with seeking a little fellowship.”
“Hold up a bit, Daryl. Another Blue Jay is a Purple Zinnia frequenter?”
“Not anymore. He went free agent last spring. St. Louis signed him. Five million over three years.”
“Very impressive, and I’m sure you’ll be in the same bracket any season now, Daryl. But onto the Zinnia, you realized it was a gay spot?”
Daryl’s right hand went back to his earlobe. “I never met any homosexuals back home in Emporia, Mr. Crang,” he said tentatively.
“Understood, Daryl.”
“So, no, I didn’t know at first that those nice men at the Purple Zinnia were homosexuals. And I pass no judgment on them now, Mr. Crang, even though I have learned from my Bible that homosexuality is a grievous sin against human nature. I admit to you here and now that those men, Ian Argyll and the rest, accepted me in friendship, and I felt very comfortable in their company. I did at the time, yes, sir.”
“I take it you haven’t seen much of the Zinnia crowd lately, that’s the implication, Daryl?”
“I have not.”
“When did you withdraw your patronage?”
“Stop going there? When the Yankees were at the SkyDome for a weekend series, the third week of last September.”
“Fixed in your memory, is it, Daryl?”
Daryl started to go for his ear again, stopped, folded both hands in his lap, and leaned closer to me.
“It was that weekend, on the Sunday, I committed to Jesus, Mr. Crang.” Daryl’s tone wasn’t unctuous, but it showed a marked Jerry Falwell influence. “The Yankees were in town, and on the morning before the game, I don’t know what it was, maybe a small and blessed miracle, Mr. Crang, I joined the Christians on our team in the chapel at the SkyDome. I have not looked back since, and sorry as I am to say so, Mr. Crang, I could not reconcile my new faith with the ways of those who befriended me at the Purple Zinnia.”
“It’d put you in a moral pickle, Daryl, I appreciate that.”
“It surely would.”
“In the meantime, though, you’d had a year of socializing with the Zinnia crowd?”
Daryl’s hand made a return visit to his ear. “That is true, and no getting around it.”
“And was Ian Argyll a particular bud of yours?”
“He was a friend of everybody’s.”
“Including yours?”
“Ian was as kind and generous as any man on earth.”
“That’s what might have got him dead, the kindness of a friend.”
“What are you telling me, Mr. Crang?”
“You’re aware of the cause of Ian’s death, Daryl?”
“It was in the death notices in the papers. AIDS. Just terrible.”
“Put it together, Daryl. The way most gay guys get AIDS is from other gay guys.”
“You are saying from somebody else at the Purple Zinnia?”
“Could be.”
Daryl’s lower lip quivered.
“This brings us to the crunch question, Daryl,” I said. “Sorry to be blunt, but did you and Ian, your good and kind friend Ian, did the two of you exchange bodily fluids?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Sex, Daryl. Did you and Ian have sex together?”
“No, sir.” Daryl did everything to register his indignation except stamp his big foot. “We did not do such a thing.”
“You see why I’ve got to ask?”
“Ask me? I don’t see that at all.”
“Because some friend of Ian’s may be walking around with AIDS.”
“It is not myself, Mr. Crang.”
Daryl’s indignation had wound down in a hurry. Again the lower lip was quivering, and he generally looked miserable.
“Ian was a fine gentleman,” Daryl said with a small tremor in his voice.
“Agreed.”
“I truly mourn his passing,” Daryl said. The tremor in his voice was getting close to earthquake status.
“Uh, Daryl, you okay?”
Daryl looked at me. “What do you think, Mr. Crang?”
“Yeah, right.” Daryl’s hangdog expression, the fault in his voice, was beginning to make me feel like a heel. “Tell you what, Daryl, why don’t we reschedule the rest of this chat for a later date? You know, let you get a grip on the emotions, one thing and another?”
“I’d appreciate that, Mr. Crang.”
“Sure.” I patted one of Daryl’s massive shoulders. It felt hot. “You bet.”
I stood up.
“Get back to you later, Daryl.”
Daryl didn’t say anything, and I walked out of the park’s east side without looking back.
Chapter Seven
Bart the Bulge was in the papers, too. Annie found him.
“Where does that rate on the scale of revolting?” she asked me.
Annie was pointing at an ad in the entertainment pages of the Sun. The ad was for a strip club, and it showed a guy billed as Bart the Bulge. He was dressed in a garment not as small as a jockstrap but not as large as a bikini. The guy’s upper body was coated in oil, and the camera had caught him in the act of grinding his pelvis.
“Think he’s got a codpiece under that scrap of cloth?” I said. “Kleenex stuffed in there?”
“It’s disgustingly unnatural.”
“True to his billing, the bulge.”
“That’s something you’ll find out when you visit the club, the authenticity of the bulge.”
“I’ll find out?”
“At this club, where he’s doing whatever he does with whatever’s under the Lilliputian panties.”
“This time out, kiddo, you accompany me,” I said. “And listen, if the panties are Lilliputian, how can what’s under them qualify as a bulge?”
“You actually want to take me to a seedy joint like that?”
“With you in it, the seediness will dissolve.”
According to the ad, Bart the Bulge was appearing at the Club Eroticarama. It had a Yonge Street address, and the number would put it somewhere south of Bloor. The ad promised nonstop strip action from both sexes, but Bart was the feature attraction. Showtimes on the hour from nine to one in the morning.
“We’re about set, Annie,” Lynne Jordan called across the room.
Lynne produces Flicks, Annie’s show. The time was around ten-fifteen Monday night, and we were in the program’s offices over a Mac’s on the Danforth. Flicks doesn’t rate the budget to afford much studio time rental, which means that Lynne and Annie have to scare up their own locales to shoot some of the program’s segments in. Tonight, things were simple; Annie was going to perch on a desk in the office and say the introduction and sign-off for the next night’s show into the camera. A guy named Ron had a sound camera strapped to his shoulder, and he and Lynne had been working out angles and backdrops.
“Face around this way, Annie,” Lynne said, steering Annie by the waist. “So the poster for Daddy Nostalgia peeks into the frame over your shoulder.”
“Peeks?” Ron said. “You want, like, a hint of it?”
“Peeks, hints, whatever. Just so the audience doesn’t get hit over the head with the damned thing.”
“Sure,” Ron said, huddled into his camera.
“What’re you getting?” Lynne asked him. Lynne was a big, middle-aged woman who had a whisky voice and wore dresses that fit like tents. “You showing enough poster so we can see Tavernier’s name on there?”
“I got, lemme see, a Bogarde, I got a Birkin.” Ron was a lanky guy in his mid-twenties, not movie-wise enough to register the names of Dirk Bogarde and Jane Birkin, but strong enough to wield the heavy camera. “What’s the name you want?” he asked Lynne.
“The director, for Chrissake, Bertrand Tavernier.” Lynne’s voice roughened. “You need me to spell it? Starts with T as in tits …”
“Okay, got it,” Ron said, not flapped by Lynne. “Looks nice. Annie in the middle, poster on the left.”
“Like to run down the intro one time first, Annie?” Lynne asked.
“Let’s go ahead, do a take,” Annie answered. “My hair okay?”
“Perfect.”
It was. Annie wore her black hair cut as close as a cap. Not even a hurricane could blow a strand out of place. Her face was shaped in an old-fashioned oval, her figure was petite. She’s a smidge over five foot two and a couple of ounces heavier than 105 pounds. She was wearing a belted grey-brown jacket, matching tailored pants, and a black and white printed blouse. She was also wearing a glorious smile.
“Hi, I’m Annie B. Cooke,” she said into Ron’s camera, “and this is Flicks, the program about movies. Tonight we’re concentrating on directors and on one director in particular …”
Annie talked for about twenty-five seconds. No fluffs, no stumbles.
“A keeper,” Lynne said when Annie finished. “Good by you, Ron?”
“Like it.”
“Stay there, Annie,” Lynne said. “I think the sign-off should be from the same angle, right? Because we’re going to be talking about Tavernier some more.”
Annie said yes and raised her hand to straighten hair that didn’t need straightening.
The sign-off took two takes. Lynne didn’t care for the way Annie’s voice dropped at the end of the first take. The second time, her voice rose, and everybody made sounds of satisfaction. Ron packed off down the stairs with his camera, Lynne settled in at a desk, and Annie and I walked across Danforth Avenue. My car was parked at a meter.
“Only fair you come, too,” I said.
“Couldn’t we talk to him at his house or something?”
“Which name do you figure he’s listed under in the phone book? Bart or Bulge?”
I went around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for Annie. The car was a white Volkswagen Beetle Convertible, eight years old and beginning to develop a slump. I got in the driver’s side.
“Okay,” Annie said inside the car. “You did the Purple Zinnia on your own and the baseball player. I guess I can put up with the club with the silly name.”
“Eroticarama.”
“Isn’t Bart supposed to be a porno star?” Annie asked. “On the word of your source?”
“Malcolm the bartender. There’s a guy, Malcolm, got his eye on the main chance.”
“Bart’s also a stripper? The man is versatile.”
“Guess he favours professions where he can cut down on the overhead.”
“No clothing?”
“Bare essentials.”
I drove across the Bloor Viaduct, down Jarvis, and poked around the side streets south of Bloor until I found a parking space on Isabella. Annie and I walked over to Yonge and went north. The Eroticarama was on the other side of Charles between a discount record store and a Burger King. Annie raised her shoulders in a what-the-hell gesture, and I pushed open the door into the club.
