Hugger Mugger

"You got a partner?"

"Yep."

"What's he do?"

"Ophthalmologist."

"So you're not looking to meet somebody."

"No," Sapp said.

"So what's the difference?"

"It's important if you're gay, to be gay. Especially me, who was straight so long, my, what would I call it, my, ah, constituency is more at ease if I'm identifiably gay."

"And the blond hair does it?"

"It's pretty much all I can do. I still look like something from the World Wrestling Federation. But it's better than nothing."

"Works for me, Blondie," I said. "You know anything about the Clive family that you didn't know last time we talked?"

"They seem to be cleaning house," Sapp said.

"How so?"

"Kicked old Cord out on his ass," Sapp said.

"Stonie divorcing him?"

"Don't know."

"Where's Cord now?"

"In town somewhere. I can find out."

"Be obliged," I said.

Sapp got up and began to work his way through the room, stopping occasionally to talk with someone. I watched the smoke gather up near the ceiling of the low room. It seemed to me on casual observation that gay men smoked more than straight men. But I was probably working with too small a sample. All I could really say was that a number of these gay men smoked more than I did. The ceiling fan turned slowly in the smoke, moving it about in small eddies, doing nothing to dispel it. The jukebox was very loud. I had a brief third-person vision of myself, sitting alone and alien in a gay bar, a thousand miles from home, with the smoke hanging above me, and music I didn't like pounding in my ears.

Sapp came back and sat down.

"Cord's bunking in with his brother-in-law," Sapp said.

He handed me a matchbook.

"I wrote down the address for you."

"Brother-in-law?" I said.

"Yeah, Pud. I guess he got the boot too."

"Pud and Cord?" I said. "Getting the boot makes strange bedfellows."

"I guess it do," Sapp said. "Who's your client?"

I shook my head.

"Never get in trouble keeping your mouth shut," Sapp said.

I nodded. Sapp sipped some of his coffee, holding the cup in both hands, looking over the rim, his gaze moving slowly back and forth across the room.

"You married?" Sapp said.

"Not exactly," I said.

"Separated?"

"Nope. I'm with somebody. But we're not married."

"You love her?"

"More than the spoken word can tell," I said.

"You live together?"

"No."

"You love her, but you're not married and you don't live together. Why not?"

"Seems to work best for us this way."

Sapp shrugged.

"You fool around?" he said.

"No. You?"

"No."

"You think Pud and Cord are a couple," I said, "or just orphans of the storm?"

"Far as I know, neither one of them could make a living on his own," Sapp said. "Now that they don't have the Clive tit to nurse on, I figure they're splitting the rent."

Sapp's slow surveillance of the room stopped and focused. I followed his glance. Three men stood inside the door. Two of them were large, the third was tall, high-shouldered, and ski

The tall ski

Sapp stopped in front of the three men.

" 'Fraid I'm going to have to ask you boys to leave," he said gently.

"Who the fuck are you?" the ski

"My name's Tedy Sapp."

As he spoke Sapp moved slightly closer so that the ski

"Well, we got as much right as anybody else to come in here and have us a couple pops," the guy in the baseball hat said.

"No. Just step back out, gentlemen, same door you came in, there'll be no trouble."

"Trouble," said the guy in the hat. "Who's going to give us trouble? You?"

"Yep," Sapp said. "It'll be me."

He brought his hands up slowly and rubbed them together thoughtfully in front of his chest, the fingertips touching his chin.

"I never met no fag could tell me what to do, pal. I want a drink."

"Not here," Sapp said.

"We getting us a fucking drink or we going to kick a lot of fag ass," the guy in the hat said.

"Not here," Sapp said.

The guy with the hat said, "Fuck you," and tried to push by Sapp. Sapp hit him with the side of his left hand in the throat, and hit the ski

"No trouble," he said.

"None at all," Sapp said.

Tank Top guided his pals out in front of him and the door swung shut behind them. Sapp looked at me and gri

"Pla

"No need," I said. "You have learned well, grasshopper."

THIRTY

I WENT TO see Rudolph Vallone, the lawyer for the Clive estate, who also represented Dolly Hartman. He had a suite of offices upstairs in a Civil War-era brick building next to the courthouse, right on the square in the middle of Lamarr, where he could look out his window at the pyramid of ca

Vallone sat in the biggest of the several offices, at a desk in front of a Palladian window with the best view of the ca

"Nice to see you again, Mr. Spenser. I recall you from the funeral."

I'd met him very perfunctorily. One point for Rudy.

"I was wondering if you could tell me a little about Walter Clive's estate," I said.

"Well, you're direct enough, aren't you."

"You bet," I said.

"In all honesty, Mr. Spenser, I'd need to know a little more about why you're asking, and a little more specifically what you want to know."

"Of course you would," I said. "What would be the point of law school if you didn't."

He smiled.

"I'm representing Dolly Hartman," I said. "I wish to know who benefits from Clive's will."