Chapter One

Many a tale's been told of the men who moil for gold in the land of the midnight sun. But I'm a private investigator; the only buried gold I see is in people's teeth, and where I come from, a "moil" is a guy who does circumcisions.

Last Monday night, I sat cold and uncomfortable, scrunched in the front seat of Bruno's black Buick Riviera. ("Official Staff Car of La Cosa Nostra," he would say, with a piranha grin.) Bruno occupied most of the seat. The springs twanged like out-of-tune guitar strings as he slowly shifted his vast body to a less anguished position. We were just out of range of the cone of light projected by a streetlamp, and his movement in the murky dark reminded me of H. P. Lovecraft's tales of nameless horrors from the bowels of the galaxy slouching through the New England night.

It was the first really cold night of the autumn, and the windows in the big car were steamed. We could have been two teenagers doing underwear inspection for all anyone outside the car knew. Bruno cleaned off a slim area of the windshield every couple of minutes to peer through.

Bruno's large hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. I wondered if he could crush the wheel to polymer dust with a quick squeeze. Not three hours before I had heard him caressing, and there is no better word, Thelonious Monk's "Ruby, My Dear" from the keyboard of a Yamaha grand piano. His long, tapered fingers moved on the keys like ghostly spiders, as the gorgeous love song's melody rode on a string of legato phrases. I remember thinking how these hands looked like they had never done a lick of work. And, in any conventional sense of the words, they had not.

He was capable of lifting grown men with one of these hands, and extinguishing them with rattlesnake suddenness. Yet I would trust him with my life, or any life precious to me.

We were doing a job for a friend for short bread. Just a few bucks for beer and maybe some mussels marinara at Luna's. But it probably wouldn't take more than a night, two at most. And the guy was an old pal, one Weezil Furnham.

Weezil was my homeboy. He himself was capable of wreaking serious harm on another human being, having been a Green Beret in 'Nam, and a mercenary for a few years thereafter. His letters from exotic places had brightened my life, as he fought and screwed his way around the world. It was only recently that he returned to The Apple to inform his friends that he was gay, HIV-positive, and was devoting the time he had remaining to teaching dance with his lover, a Cambodian named Lam. It was then that I realized that Weezil's letters had never been gender-specific about those with whom he danced the horizontal mambo. My straight-male gestalt had done that.

Weezil told me that a couple of gang wannabes were hanging around outside a bar, the Eagle's Den, in the east thirties, and hassling, annoying, and lately hitting men entering or leaving the premises. No, not hitting on them.

The vermin apparently believed that bashing a few queers would establish their bona fides with their social betters. Weezil himself had renounced violence in renouncing his old life, and asked me if I could help. When he offered me money, I opted for the food and beer. I called in Bruno as my consultant, and we devised a simple but elegant plan. Hence our vigil in the frigid Buick, staking out the aforementioned.

Around about midnight, three burly young men sidled to within a few yards of the entrance to the bar. Like a half-sleeping crocodile, Bruno opened one eye to survey the scene. The rag squeaked on the frosty windshield as he cleared a spot. Groups like this had hovered around and entered the bar on several occasions, but Bruno's preternaturally tweaked instincts caused him to take more than casual notice. He raised a small pair of binoculars to his eyes, and then gently touched my sleeve.

"Lenny, you awake?" he whispered.

"Yo. Whaddaya got?"

"Dose t'ree dudes off to the left. Got shaved heads under dem baseball caps."

"Yeah? So?"

He shifted forward slightly and squinted through the glasses.

"Big one in the back got a gang tattoo on his neck. You can just see it over his collar."

I stretched and yawned, at least partially from nerves.

"Ready?" I asked.

He nodded, and slowly opened the driver's side door after flipping off the overhead light. Making as little noise or movement as possible, we exited the car, staying outside the area lit by the streetlight.

Bruno touched my shoulder. I looked over at his vastness, draped in black like some King Kong ninja. He made a gesture with his head, and a small motion with his hand. I nodded. Then, he was gone, as though 6'5" of bone, sinew, and muscle had suddenly been transformed into vapor and risen silently into the gloomy sky. I hunched my shoulders and began walking toward the bar.

I crossed the street and headed for the bar entrance. One of the toughs said in a quiet voice, "Hey, you a faggot?"

I stopped, and turned toward them. They were in shadow, and it was difficult to distinguish who was speaking.

"Why? You need a date for the prom?" New Yorkers like to answer questions with other questions.

Snickers from one of them. The voice said, "You a fuckin' wise guy?"

I said, "You sure ask a lot of stupid questions."

They began to move toward me. I backed up a step or two, and they spread out across the sidewalk, still moving toward me. I reached into my pocket for my French blackjack, a gift from Weezil. It was a bag of lead buckshot attached to a spring-steel handle, and all covered in chic black leather. Very snazzy. I continued to back up slowly.

Meanwhile, they were arraying themselves in dog-pack formation, with two closing in on my flanks, while the top dog hung back for the kill. The galoots on either side of me began to reach for me, a kind of stupid blood lust visible on their faces even in the dim light. The guy in the middle gave me a little smile and hummed a tuneless dirge.

I short-circuited their strategy by rushing the middle guy and performing rhinoplasty on him with the sap. He howled in surprise and pain, and raised his hands to his nose, which was running rills of blood. With his hands up to his face, I was free to gut-punch him.

His buddies froze in place, like in a game of Statues, but recovered themselves and were about to step in, when the one on the left suddenly seemed to be doing a dive. Actually, Bruno had grabbed him by the ankles from behind and flipped him over on his face, which made a sickening crunch on the sidewalk. Bruno then stepped over the prostrate lug toward the last guy, to my right, who by this time had gone chalk-white, and pissed in his camouflage pants.

When my victim saw Bruno perform, he forgot his smashed hooter and took off down the street, screaming like a goosed banshee. Bruno grabbed the remaining kid and threw him against the corner of the brick building the bar was in. The brick's sharp edge opened the back of the lug's head, and blood began trickling down his neck.

I stepped over to him. "Listen, scumwad, one of your friends is trying to set a land speed record for the Jersey swamps, and this one here," I gestured at the unmoving form on the sidewalk, "is gonna look like a Pekingese the rest of his life. I don't know what your problem is, and I don't give a shit. Stay away from this bar, and every other bar like it. If I catch you fag-bashing once more, I'll turn you over to my friend here to be his sex slave."

Bruno leered, licked his lips, and cracked his enormous knuckles. The kid's eyes rolled back in his head. I thought he was going to faint. I grabbed his lapel and brandished the blackjack.

"Now get this garbage off the street and get outta here! Capisce?"

He hesitated for an instant. "Bruno," I said, "maybe he's like one of those eight balls, and you gotta turn him upside down to get an answer."

Bruno lunged forward. The punk shrieked. He picked up his buddy and tried to run, half-dragging and half-carrying him, until they were out of sight. There was blood and pieces of several teeth on the sidewalk where his buddy's face used to be.

"Hey, Bruno, wanna get a beer?"

We walked inside, and the whole bar, maybe a hundred guys and a few women, gave us a standing ovation.

Weezil walked up.

"You were great! We got the whole thing on video."

Bruno smiled slightly and drawled, "I hope youse got my good side." He threw us a profile.

The bar closed officially at two a.m. At about three-thirty, the Official Barbara Bush Drag Contest commenced: nine or ten middle-aged men wearing white fright wigs and pearls, sashaying across the floor in their Sophie Tucker-sized evening gowns, and doing variations on the "rhymes-with-witch" theme. One of them even had a passable stand-in for Millie. A male, natch. The music was "Don't Worry--Be Happy."

We were there until about seven-thirty that morning, drinking, singing songs, and sampling bizarre chemicals and herbs smuggled in from foreign jungles. I haven't had so much fun since I was a hippie. Bruno and I considered the job paid in full.

Good old Bruno. Once only a sometime presence in my life, he had become an unofficial associate and as much a friend as he was capable of. He's the one that clued me in on the vulnerability of the nose in dealing with an opponent who wishes to do you harm. Every trick he ever showed me has worked in a hairy situation.

This doesn't have much to do with what comes next. Well, a little. But it was fun, and I hadn't been having much lately. It was the early autumn of my discontent, made glorious summer, however briefly, by this son of New York. Which is why my week is worth talking about.

Quite a week it was. Seismic rumblings in my personal life, and my love life; a visit from a living baseball card with a heartbreaking story; and death in the Northwest. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Suffice it to say that a few days after the incident at the Eagle's Den bar, I was on a plane for Portland, Oregon, and trying to sort it all out. Don't forget the Dramamine.

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