Mental State, page 15
“I need you to help me, Professor. To help me understand my brother a bit better. We grew apart, I guess.”
“I asked why you came here. To my work. To Atlanta. You’ve done a stupid thing, Agent Johnson. You’ve put us both in terrible peril.” Havens walked over to the door and peered out through the frosted glass window. “You don’t know what we’re up against.”
“I’m a federal agent, Professor.” Royce tapped his fanny pack. “We’ll be okay.” The professor was a bit over-dramatic it seemed.
“You think you can protect us? With, whatever you’ve got in there.” He pointed at Royce’s bag. Havens was rocking back and forth nervously. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Havens was mentally ill.
“You seem like you know more than I do, Professor. Can you bring me up to speed? How did you know Alex? And why are you so afraid?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You can trust me. I’m Alex’s brother. I’m one of the good guys.”
“Even if I can, what’s the point?”
Havens stood there, mouth agape, as the copy machine counted down like the timer in a Bond movie. Eighteen thirty-six, eighteen thirty-five, eighteen thirty-four…
“We were.”
“Were what?”
“Friends. You asked if we were friends. I think Alex may be the best friend I ever had.”
“I…I didn’t know.” Royce felt regret at not knowing. “How’d you guys know each other.”
Havens, now over by the copier, slouched down on the floor, resting his back against the giant machine, still counting, seventeen oh-four, seventeen oh-three, seventeen oh-two…rhythmically spitting out blank page after blank page, doing its job but producing nothing.
“We met at a conference a while back. At first I thought it was just chance. But he came there to find me. We ended up talking for hours.”
Royce raised his eyebrows. He didn’t want to read between the lines, but at this point, anything seemed possible.
“About what?”
“What’s the point, anyway?” Havens sighed and slumped even more. He seemed headed for the standing fetal position. “Everyone in this building is not going to be here in a hundred years. I’m not sure what…”
“Come on,” Royce said with growing exasperation. He didn’t need any ivory-tower existential angst; he had a murderer to catch. “We are here now, trying to do right. This is what we can do.”
“I was quoting Xerxes, the—”
“What?” Royce rolled his eyes.
“They killed him.”
“Who killed him? Xerxes?”
“Alex.”
“Who? Who killed Alex? You’ve got to tell me.” Royce stepped toward him, putting his hands on Havens’s shoulders, and propping him up. Their faces were inches apart. “Who?”
“I don’t know exactly.” He closed his eyes again and shook his head.
“That’s why I’m here. My job is to find out who and bring whoever they are to justice.”
“Your brother had secrets. They haunted him. Did you know that?”
“What secrets? Why are you being so damn coy?” Royce turned and paced to the other side of the small room and back. Ten sixty, ten fifty-nine, ten fifty-eight…
“The story is about…I shouldn’t…I can’t.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll just fly back to South Carolina, fish his ashes out of the marsh, have the boys down at the lab reanimate him, and ask him about the secret that got him killed. Let’s go with that plan.”
“I loved your brother.”
Royce wheeled his head around, shocked at what he was hearing.
“No, not physically. It wasn’t that at all. We were…we were just friends.”
“I see.” He didn’t.
“My wife left me because of him. Did you know that?”
“She mentioned you were separated, but she didn’t…”
“You talked?”
“When I called the house looking for you. We just chatted briefly.”
“Well, she asked me to leave because of what Alex and I were to each other these past months and how messed up I am now as a result of…his loss and all this. And she just thinks, well, she thinks I’ve lost it. That I’m a danger to the kids, to her, and to myself. She actually tried to have me committed. Can you believe it?”
“I believe you, Professor Havens. And, as corny as this sounds, thanks for being such a good friend to my brother.”
Havens began to weep. “I think you should leave. There is nothing we can do.”
Royce moved closer. He put his hand on the professor’s upper arm and squeezed gently.
“That’s what they want you to think. Isn’t it time to stop keeping secrets? Isn’t it time you stop protecting them? The bastards who did this. To us all. Isn’t it time for…” Royce looked around the room, lined with old case books. “…for justice.”
Havens lifted his head up. He wiped his face with both hands.
“It’s time.”
CHAPTER 29
August 1982
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Alex crouched under the pool table, trying to control his breathing. After running at nearly full speed from the starting tree in the yard about two hundred feet away, he was breathing heavy, and this was a sure-fire way to give away his hiding place. He could sense someone else enter the space under the pool table, although at the far side. It was a beautiful nine-foot Brunswick the Captain inherited from his father. Twelve-year-old Alex ignored the other person and hoped for the best.
Soon, there was noise—screaming and running—and Alex could see the beam of light here and there as the seeker’s flashlight searched the backyard. This was two-hand touch, so the ousting of a hider was not the end of the game. Choosing the basement and this spot under the pool table meant evasion was less likely, but so was being found. Everyone made their own choice in the tradeoffs of flashlight tag. Alex was fast for his age, but not fast enough. He chose hiding, not escape.
With the seeker diverted outside, Alex felt the other person under the table move closer to him. They were right next to each other, when he heard a gentle, “Shhhh.” Alex froze. He didn’t know who it was or what they were up to—Who would jeopardize a hiding spot by moving and talking? That was just nuts.
Then Alex felt a hand on his leg. He had a mind to smack it away or ask the person what was up, but he didn’t want to give away their position—I guess it was their position now. He thought the person might just be feeling around in the dark. But then the hand started stroking his thigh and moving up toward his groin.
Over the next thirty years, Alex thought a lot about those minutes under the pool table. During those years, when he was afraid of being gay, or anytime someone jokingly called him a fag, he told himself he was probably thinking it was a girl’s hand that gave him his first erection induced by another person. But there was only one girl playing that night, and, if he were being truthful with himself, he would have admitted he knew how Kimberly smelled—like fruity bubble gum—and that wasn’t Kimberly giving him a hard on.
The truth was it didn’t matter who it was—it felt good, and he didn’t want it to stop. That message was not lost on the person groping him. Within a minute, his hand—Alex was sure it was a he at this point, since they were practically on top of each other—was rubbing his erect penis, which was deformed under his briefs and his tight jeans. Then, with a lurch, the boy was on top of him, kissing him on the mouth. Before Alex knew what hit him, the boy’s tongue was in his mouth, and they were French kissing, or so he was told that’s what that was. It was his first kiss, and man was it a doozy. Alex never imagined his first kiss would be from a boy, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined it might be. In fact, it made him feel quite good, although he never told anyone that and would have denied it if asked. The “pool table incident” got no more graphic than that. The seeker found the hider, everyone came out and gathered at the starting tree, and Alex and Doug pretended that that never happened.
Doug was six years older than Alex. The families were friends too, which meant Doug was around a lot, and he was the kind of kid Alex looked up to. Actually, he was the kind of kid everyone looked up to. He wasn’t tall, like the Johnsons, on the account of his Vietnamese heritage, but he was handsome and muscular, and he had a personality that was winning with the girls in his class. Doug was a stud, the girls would tell you. Alex liked him because he was a deadeye with a bow and arrow, and he knew a lot about medieval history, something that fascinated Alex from a young age. Doug also introduced him to Dungeons & Dragons, and although Alex was never invited to join the regular neighborhood game, which included beer he was told, Alex always admired Doug for teaching him how to play.
Alex thought a lot about that night, and he hoped it would happen again. It didn’t take long. The next time they were alone was a few weeks later in the back room of the store owned by Doug’s father. The Phams moved to America from Vietnam when Doug, then named Duc, was two years old. They came when Saigon fell. Quang Dũng Pham worked three jobs before he saved enough money to buy his own clothing store. Now, some sixteen years later, The Gentleman’s Closet had six locations in the tri-state area. On that particular evening, Alex and his brother were helping the Phams do their quarterly inventory. While the Steelers played on the black and white television on a table in the corner of the store room, Alex sat Indian-style counting pairs of men’s socks and underwear, recording the tallies in a large carbon-paper ledger book. After a while, everyone pitching in from the neighborhood went home, and only Alex, Doug, and Mrs. Pham remained. Alex volunteered to stay to finish up, while the rest of the crew left to celebrate a comeback win over the Broncos.
Alex and Doug sat across from each other, not saying much, other than an occasional remark about the frustrations of their task. But Alex hoped they’d find a way to be alone together. His body ached for it, and as his hands lifted and counted socks, his mind was focused on finding some way to get Mrs. Pham out of the store. When she came back into the storeroom to say she was going out for a few minutes to run an errand, for a moment Alex believed in the power of telepathy.
Seconds after the metal door to the back alley squeaked shut, they were on each other. The kissing this time was even more passionate, and their hands were going places and doing things that were new. Then, Alex felt Doug undo his belt and pull down his pants, revealing a bulge that at first made Alex nervous, but exhilarated at the same time. Doug kissed there gently, then gave him what Alex had heard was called a blow job. When Doug stopped after a few minutes, he took down his own pants expecting Alex do him the favor in return. Doug was much older and, Alex gulped, larger. It was thick and long and hairy. Something about seeing it frightened him that it would go in his mouth. He balked. But Doug put his hand on the back of his head and pulled him forward. Once it began, it wasn’t the worst thing he could imagine, but he saw why they called it a “job.” It was worth it, though; a pretty fair trade, he thought.
But, while Alex merely felt good and ended without a bang, Doug was demanding more. After about the time Doug had spent on him, Alex slowed down his rhythm looking to dismount, so to speak, but Doug used his hands to control the speed, holding Alex’s ears like handle bars on his bicycle. Doug’s moaning got louder and his thrusting more aggressive to the point where Alex felt uncomfortable and like he might get hurt. Then Doug let out a scream, and something wet and salty was in Alex’s mouth. Alex spit it out on the floor, while Doug got up, put on his pants, and walked to the bathroom. Although if you’d asked him then whether it was worth it, Alex would have said it was, the night didn’t go exactly as planned.
Over the next year or so, these rendezvous were a regular event. They each found ways of getting the other alone, and the location or time of day didn’t really matter. They pleased each other or “messed around,” as they came to call it, in the woods, after school in the basement, while their families were downstairs eating dessert, and in the garage behind Mr. Pham’s Porsche 928. Although Alex desired, even craved these meetings, afterward he felt like he did after eating at McDonalds—the during part was great, but he always regretted the choice after the fact. Of course, he went back to both McDonalds and Doug’s body repeatedly.
Like all physical relations among people, this one followed a familiar curve: passion, exploration, experimentation, boredom, and decay. Alex was a full-fledged and happy participant up to the experimentation stage. He was too young or too inexperienced to reach orgasm, so he never needed to go beyond the “basics,” as he called it. But Doug wanted—needed—more. He urged Alex to bend over to accept him, but unlike the oral sex, it was not something Alex was remotely interested in. When it did happen, after many failed efforts, Alex felt as if somehow he’d made a giant mistake.
He’d told Doug no repeatedly, but this just increased Doug’s need and his aggression. Denial was met with desire. The first time it happened, Doug pinned him to the ground with his weight, holding a hand over Alex’s mouth. Alex screamed and bit the fleshy part of his thumb—enough that he tasted Doug’s blood in his mouth as he felt the pain as Doug penetrated him. But Doug would not be denied his want.
It was at about this time that AIDS stories were appearing in the news every night. When Alex heard them, sitting with his parents at dinner, he clenched his butt cheeks with fear. The fears were enough to make him doubt the wisdom of his relationship, it was safe to call it that now, with Doug. They weren’t dating—they did nothing together but have sex of one form or another—and the sex had gone from pleasurable to painful in ways that upset him. Alex cried himself to sleep every night after Doug took him from behind and thrust at him until he came. At night, Alex could feel Doug’s cum inside him, and he wanted more than anything to get it out. When he did sleep, he heard Doug’s grunting and snorting in his nightmares. Alex started looking for excuses for them not to be alone, and when they were, to keep things to the basics. Doug heard him say “yes” but never “no.”
Then, it just kind of ended. They stopped being alone, whether by chance or on purpose, and within a few months, Doug was gone. The Phams sold all The Gentleman’s Closet locations to a local competitor and moved to Miami. Doug went off to Stanford to college. Alex missed him, especially the early days when they were together, when Doug taught him about role-playing board games and when they used to kiss and stroke each other gently. But over the years, the main emotion he felt was fear. Fear and regret. As more and more people died of AIDS, Alex worried that he was a ticking time bomb. Every news story brought him sweaty palms and a dry throat. He calculated the incubation time, imagining how old he’d be when he could stop worrying.
But over time, Alex buried his conflicted thoughts about Doug under layers of history and memory. The pleasure surfaced on occasion, but so too did the pain and the feeling that he had in his entire body as Doug forced himself into him and thrust angrily until he came. Twenty years later, the layers of sediment had obscured the details leaving only the ossified bones of the experience. It was a fossil he lugged around, out of view. But it was excavated when the president announced that his rapist was going to be the next chief justice of the United States.
CHAPTER 30
June 2015
Chicago, Illinois
The For Sale sign in front of Alex’s house had fallen from one of its hinges, so it dangled and twisted in the wind. Royce keyed into the house, which smelled dank and neglected. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. Then he went upstairs in search of the answers Havens told him were there, somewhere. Royce pulled the high-back leather chair tightly into position in front of Alex’s roll-top desk in the library on the third floor. This was Alex’s sacred space, where Havens said the information he needed to catch the killer was hidden.
Royce ran his fingers along the edge of the front of the desk with the care one would stroke a newborn’s fontanel. His grandfather made this desk from wood the Captain cut down in the grove of walnut trees that shaded the pond where they all fished as kids. Those West Virginia trees, shaped by generations of Johnsons, now held Alex’s secret. A secret that got him killed.
He woke the computer from sleep mode and opened an internet browser hoping to find some inspiration. The Google search bar stared at him, but he had investigators’ block. Alex’s bookmarks opened, and he selected Espn.com. The Pirates were losing five to nothing to the Nationals and were likely to miss the playoffs for the first time in a few years.
He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, pushing the chair back to the precipice and feeling the tiny thrill of being about to tip over. Then he spun like a child on a merry-go-round, watching the clutter of his brother’s library blur together like he was in a zoetrope. Maybe the books would animate and reveal a secret, he thought.
Getting up, he looked at the vast collection of books stacked three and four deep, and as many high on every shelf. The collection was disorganized, but Royce sensed there was some logic to it. He stepped into the middle of the room to see what sense he could make of the thousands of volumes.
On the far wall, there were lots of novels and non-fiction. He picked a few of them up and fingered their spines and ratty covers: Animal Farm, Free to Choose, Atlas Shrugged. They were the kind of books that would appeal to a high school or college student like Alex.
Toward the desk, there was a smattering of geology and medical books, then right next to the desk, lots of law. The organization in the disorganization was chronological, kind of. Alex’s youth—Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, National Geographic volumes—were on the far wall, college and law school were in the middle of the room. Then the rise of Claire on the opposite wall, with chemistry and medical books, also chick lit, tons of art books, and a smattering of classics, Jane Austen and the like. Law books, the casebooks Alex researched and taught from, formed the library equivalent of the Berlin Wall. Beyond that wall of uniformly red and black legal casebooks were books about economics and law. A life lived in books.
