Mary, Queen of Scotch Read online

  Anyway, back at work meant back on my case. And so, I called Arthur.

  “I still don’t think he’s cheating on you,” I said.

  “How can you tell?” he asked, snidely. “Seems you’ve been busy doing other things.”

  “All in the line of duty.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, I’m there to spy on your husband, to potentially catch him doing something he shouldn’t be doing. I’m asking around. I keep getting the same reply: he’s happily married; he loves his husband. He even has a photo of the two of you up on his mirror at work. Did you see?”

  “I saw. Doesn’t prove anything. He doth protest too much, is all.”

  I paused. I ruminated. I pondered and cogitated and a few other New York Times crossword puzzle words, and then I replied, “If I didn’t know any better, Arthur, I’d think you want him to be cheating on you.”

  He paused as well. You could read a whole novel into that pause of his. “I love my husband.”

  I nodded into the phone. “Me thinks someone else is protesting too much.”

  “You don’t know us, son.” He said son like he meant to say son-of-a-bitch.

  “Been on this case for a while now; I think I have a good idea.”

  He laughed. He laughed meanly. I wondered if that was his only laugh. Shame if it was. Made me pity Chad/Lucy all the more. “Barry, you haven’t the first fucking clue.”

  He hung up.

  “Well,” I said into the dial-tone. “At least I tried.”

  I flicked on my Google Home. “Okay, Google, please give me the true name of Auntie Bellum, drag queen at Out-N-Out.” I always said please to Google. When the computers took over the world, I wanted to make sure they liked me. Maybe I’d get an extra food ration that way.

  “Auntie Bellum,” replied Google. “True name is Lester Smithson.”

  “Okay, Google, please give me the arrest record of Lester Smithson, A.K.A. Auntie Bellum.”

  “Lester Smithson, A.K.A. Auntie Bellum, has been arrested for burglary, attempted burglary, drug possession, drug dealing, and extortion.”

  “Okay, Google. First arrest date?”

  “May sixteenth, 1998.”

  “Okay, Google. Most recent arrest date?”

  “September eighth, 2015.”

  I stared at the device. It blinked my way, clearly waiting to do away with us pesky humans. I flipped a finger its way, the middle one. I prayed it couldn’t see me. Then I wondered about what it had told me. Lucy had a long arrest record. Auntie had a long arrest record. Was that mere coincidence? I mean, I knew a lot of gay men, hundreds since I’d come out as a teenager, and, as far as I knew, none of them had had more than a parking ticket, a speeding ticket, maybe a DUI, but none had been in prison. Now I knew two people who had, and both of them worked in the same bar.

  Meaning, just on a whim, I asked Google about all of them, the other six.

  Here’s what I found out:

  Luna Tic, A.K.A. Jessie Jones, had been arrested over the course of eight years for drug possession, prostitution, and arson. Did she make money as a prostitute? Was there a Louis C.K. fetish I was unaware of?

  Pearl Necklace, A.K.A. Tom Nolan, had been arrested for drug dealing, possession of fake identifications, and fraud. If being a bitch was a crime, she would’ve also served for that, I figured. And no time out for good behavior. Mainly because I doubted she had any to spare.

  Bobo Van Ness, A.K.A. Paul Robbins, had been arrested three times for theft and one time for armed robbery. I couldn’t even picture Bobo holding a gun, not even a glue gun. For one, her nails were too long. For two, her name was Bobo. Bobo the armed robberess. Come on! No way!

  Maureen Povich and Connie Hung had both been arrested twice, both times for drug possession and drug dealing. Maybe this was what had brought them together. Some couples collected magnets; some kept similar rap sheets.

  Lastly, and shockingly, Jeff Sears (no relation), A.K.A. my fucking ex-boyfriend, had been arrested for drug dealing before we met and had served six months in prison. FYI, I had no idea. FYI, it never came up in conversation. FYI, Jeff Sears never did drugs while we were together. He never even drank. Jeff Sears was as all-American as you could get. He was the mayonnaise of the condiment section. He wasn’t a drug dealer. Well, of course, he was, but you’d never in a million years believe it. Me, I didn’t believe it. Or at least didn’t want to. Jeff. My Jeff! I was, to use one of those highfalutin words of mine, incredulous.

  And now, now there was no coincidence. Now there was a clear connection. And here I was working with a drag queen band of criminals. I was Butch Cassidy, though far from butch. Bitch Cassidy. It’d make a great drag name, had I not already had a great drag name, on the long-side though it was.

  I was still staring at Google as I thought all this, another thought in the back of my mind worming its way to the front. I dreaded the next question, had no desire to ask it, but the detective in me was trained to uncover the truth. And the truth, as I knew all too well, could hurt like a motherfucker. The truth didn’t set you free; it weighed down on you like a ton of bricks.

  “Okay, Google,” I said, a lone bead of sweat stinging my eyes as a gulp the size of Cleveland—with a fair bit of Detroit thrown in—threatened to clog up my throat. In any case, I asked it about Ray. I asked it if Ray had an arrest record. Previous marriages. If he ever—ugh—registered as a Republican.

  But Ray, thank goodness, was squeaky clean. No arrest record. No marriages. Registered as a Democrat. Phew.

  So, that left only the drag queens. But what did that leave, really? And why did I even care? I was there to find out about Lucy. And not if Lucy sold drugs or stole drugs or cashed bad checks. No, just if Lucy cheated on Arthur. That was it. But what if that it was tied together with all the other crap I’d found, with all those other many, many, too many, arrests? Plus, and this was a big, old plus, what if I was tying myself together with not just a bunch of ex-criminals? No, what if they were all still criminals? And what if the police were watching eight criminals and a ninth joined their ranks, namely moi? Meaning, what was I getting myself into? And could I get myself out of it once I was into it?

  “Now what do I do?” I asked Google.

  Google was silent. Google was busy planning world domination.

  I spotted my purse on the kitchen table.

  I snapped my fingers.

  Maybe, I thought, the purloined key was the key.

  * * * *

  I took the key to the locksmith. It was a small key, round at the top, silver, just a few etches down below, with T1467 printed tinily along the side. It certainly wasn’t a house key or a car key. It could’ve been the key to the drawer I found it in, maybe a spare, since the drawer had been locked. But, hey, it could’ve been the key to Fort Knocks, for all I knew. Fort Knocks being the gym down the street from me.

  The locksmith took the key and plugged the numbers on the side into his computer. He turned his screen my way. An image of a filing cabinet appeared. I recognized it, or at least one that looked just like it.

  “That’ll be twenty bucks,” said the locksmith.

  “I could’ve done that on my own, right?”

  He nodded. “That’ll be twenty bucks.”

  I paid the man. I hoped that when the computers took over, they’d make keys obsolete. That’d teach him.

  I drove to the bar.

  Ray wasn’t working. A lesbian of an indeterminate age was in his stead. She could’ve been thirty. She could’ve been sixty. She had on jeans and a flannel shirt. She had lesbian haircut number three: spiked on top, short on the sides, long in the back. She could’ve been a boy, except she had breasts. Then again, I was a boy who sometimes had breasts, so you never knew. She might not have even been a lesbian, but it takes a gay to know a gay, right? Besides, she clearly looked like a lesbian. Was that misogynistic? Homophobic? Or merely presumptive? In any case, she-who-was-probably-a-lesbian was definitely not Ray, and so I didn�
��t bother to head to the bar.

  I went backstage. I worked there. I had a right to be back there. And yet, I felt guilty being back there. After all, I was up to no good. As a detective, I was sworn to do good. Well, not really. That was more of a me thing, but it did explain things, namely the willies running up my spine. Plus, everyone who worked back there was a hardened criminal, albeit ones in girdles. Which maybe was why they were so hardened, because those girdles are a bitch.

  I looked inside the dressing room. It was the middle of the day, so the place was empty. Besides, the dressing room wasn’t my destination. Just a pit-stop. To make sure I was alone, “Hello?” I said, just in case someone was hiding behind a dress or under a desk. No one answered. I returned Lucy’s key to its hiding place. I was glad to be rid of it.

  I walked outside the dressing room, gently closing the door behind me. “Hello?” I said into the narrow hallway that led to the stage. Again, no one answered.

  I tiptoed a few feet to Auntie’s office. I opened the door. I didn’t need to say hello.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Yes, someone answered. And, yes, that someone was my new boss.

  I walked inside. I stood across from her. Only, she was a him now, Lester. As before, she, now he, looked like Ed Asner, only meaner, just as bald. She, now he, looked scary, or, that is to say, scarier. I mean, he was pretty scary to start with, when he was a she, but now that he was a he, he was even scarier. And, yes, it takes a veritable Masters in Pronoun to be a drag queen.

  I stared his way. Or at least his way and to the right. Mainly because his way and to the right was just where the filing cabinet stood, the same filing cabinet, or at least a close cousin, that the locksmith charged me twenty bucks to see.

  “Again, what the fuck do you want?” I felt more like Mary Tyler Moore than Mary, Queen of Scotch. Like MTM facing her boss after her boss just had a root canal. Or four.

  “Just checking to see how I did last night.”

  He grinned. It came out a sneer. So maybe he sneered. “What, you didn’t get enough adulation last night?” He reached into his jeans and pulled out a wallet. He tossed me a dollar bill. “There. Happy now?”

  He must’ve been a delight in prison, I thought. Very popular in the showers.

  I pocketed the bill. Fuck him. He seemed to like gesture. The sneer almost, sort of, to a certain degree, like maybe one degree, became an almost, sort of grin. In truth, it looked painful to pull off. “I know the crowd liked me.” Well, loved, really, but why quibble? “I just wanted to make sure I measured up. You have a lot of talented girls here. I’m new at this. Any advice?”

  He leaned in. He shook his index finger my way. I, too, leaned in. “Here’s my advice, kid: be good, just don’t be as good as the rest of us. You got three weeks; why alienate the natives?” The pudgy finger got wiggled again. I leaned in closer. “And don’t come back here no more. This is the bear’s den. And guess what?”

  “Don’t poke the bear?”

  He nodded. “Smart, kid.” The grin tried and failed to rise northward. “Though the bear does like a good poking every now and again.” He winked. He gave bad wink. Ray could teach him a thing or six. “You feel like a good poke, kid?”

  I rose, quickly. I’d been poked enough for one day. “Thanks, Auntie. Thanks for hiring me. I like it here.”

  He sat back in his seat. “Yeah, just don’t get too comfortable; Connie is on the mend.”

  I nodded. I hightailed it out of there.

  I was warned never to return to the office.

  The office held the filing cabinet.

  I held the key. Or, at least, I once did. I returned the key, so as not to tip off Lucy. Still, I knew I could pick the lock on the filing cabinet.

  I just didn’t know how I was going to get past the fucking bear.

  * * * *

  Okay, so I figured out how I was going to get past the fucking bear. And, no, it wasn’t a plan I necessarily enjoyed putting into fruition, mainly because I preferred to work alone and mostly because I didn’t enjoy asking him for help. Or her for help. It all depended on how he/she answered his/her door.

  * * * *

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I seem to be getting that response a lot.”

  “You have that effect on people, Barry. Or maybe it’s just me.”

  “Probably just you, Jeff.” Jeff was dressed like a boy. Jeff still lived in the same apartment about fifteen minutes from my house. Jeff answered the door in a tank top and running shorts that left very little to the imagination. FYI, I have a very fertile imagination. Also FYI, it was hard to look up as opposed to down as he stood there scowling at me. Did I mention that Jeff was hung like a Yule log? I did? Well, it bears repeating. Because he was also hung like a bear. Basically, he was hung like anything that was hung. Whales come to mind.

  “I was just going for a jog.”

  I nodded. “I can see that.”

  He smirked. “What with you being a detective and all that.”

  “You don’t have to get nasty.”

  He shrugged. “It’s what I do. It’s what we do.”

  I held out my hand. “Truce?”

  He stared at the proffered appendage. He blinked. He sighed. He took my hand in his. Flesh met flesh and a million tingles shot through my arm and went boing dead center at my crotch. “Temporary ceasefire. For now.” He released my hand. “You can borrow a pair of shorts. Hurry. I have to be at work in an hour.”

  “I hate jogging.”

  Again, he shrugged as he let me in. “And I hate you, but what can you do?”

  I laughed. I walked inside. Place hadn’t changed. We hadn’t changed. I, of course, had changed, but only into a similarly revealing tank top and running shorts. Jeff watched me change. Jeff, in fact, pulled my shorts open and stared at my dangling willie for a few seconds. “I missed it,” he explained. “That part of you and I always got along.”

  I pulled his shorts open and stared at his dangling willie for a few seconds. And a few seconds more. Because there was so much to stare at. “I think somewhere there’s a bull elephant missing his prick.”

  He grinned, gave me a peck on the lips, and then led me outside.

  The jogging commenced.

  To repeat: I hate jogging. But the means justified the ends. Oh, and Jeff also had one mighty fine end, which bounced prettily in those barely containing shorts of his.

  “Why are you here, Barry?” he asked as we rounded a corner. “And why are you doing drag, all of a sudden? And why are you doing drag at the same bar I do drag at?”

  I nodded. I sucked in some air. I hated jogging because I wasn’t very good at it. I was fit, but not from cardio. I had weights at home. I had a yoga pad I did sit-ups on. Men needed to stop running around the time we killed the last Mastodon. “I have a question for you, too, Jeff.” I stopped jogging. He also stopped and stood there, arms akimbo, barely at a loss of breath.

  “Well?”

  I was huffing as I puffed. “Hold on a sec. Lungs hurt.” I raised a hold on a second finger his way. A second later, plus thirty or so more, I blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell me about your arrest record?”

  His eyes went a little wide. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Instead, he took a seat on the curb. I joined him there. Our legs touched, the hairs on his tickling the hairs on mine. Short men seemed to have muscular thighs and thick calves. Jeff was no exception. I stared at them as I waited for an answer.

  “I was…I was embarrassed.” He turned his face my way. He had beautiful hazel eyes that sparkled in the sunlight. “I needed the money, Barry. My dad needed surgery. Business wasn’t great. There was a recession. The jewelry trade gets hit hard during a recession. I knew a guy who knew a guy. I was on the road a lot. It was easy money.”

  “Until it wasn’t.”

  He nodded. “I got busted. Six months in prison.” His head hung a little lower. “It
was really bad, Barry. Scary shit, bad shit. Only reason I kept my job was because the boss knew my father, knew why I did what I did. Still, I carry it around with me like a scar.” He touched his chest. He touched his head. “Like I was in a war. Like I can’t forget.” He sighed. “So I didn’t tell you. I don’t like to talk about it. It hurts to talk about it.”

  I leaned in and kissed him. He kissed me back. It was just a soft kiss between two exes. “I’m sorry,” I said when our lips parted. “I wish I could’ve been there to help.”

  He grinned. “I hate it when you’re nice.”

  “Luckily, it doesn’t happen all that often.” We sat there staring at each other a moment longer. “Can I rip the Band-aid off completely now?”

  “You asked me the question because of this case you’re on, right?” I nodded. He sighed. “Okay, rip away then.”

  “All the girls,” I said. “All of them are ex-cons.”

  Again, his eyes went a little wide. “You’re a better detective than I gave you credit for, Barry.”

  Which was both a compliment and not a compliment. I took it as the former. Glass half full and all that shit. “What’s the connection, Jeff?”

  He rubbed his knee against mine. The two seemed to have a sort of reunion together, like old friends meeting up after a long time apart. Which is exactly what this was. “We all met in prison. They separate the gays out. We were on the same ward. We did drag shows for the other inmates. It helped pass the time. Gave the whole thing a sort of normalcy, if that makes any sense.” I nodded. It did make sense, brought some of his real life into what must have been a terribly surreal one. “When Lester started the drag show, he contacted us. That was that. It’s a great show. They’re all so talented. It’s as if that whole awful time in prison had a purpose.”

  I nodded. Maybe it did have a purpose. But maybe that purpose was now a bad one. Something in my gut was telling me that. There was something up, and not just my dick, for a change.