“Tell me again what you want me to do,” Freddy asked when I cal ed him one minute after I finished talking with Paul.
“Just be at the bar where I’m going to meet Paul and sit in the back. I don’t want him to see you. Then just… watch. Just to make sure he doesn’t try anything funny.”
“Honey, I’ve seen Paul Harrington,” Freddy said.
“The only funny thing he’d try would be to give you a handjob under the table.”
“No, I think one of the Harrington boys might want to have me hurt.”
“Just because Michael looked like he wanted to eat you alive the other night? And I mean, like Hannibal Lecter wanted to eat Clarice,” Freddy clarified.
“No,” I answered. I told Freddy what happened at the hotel.
“What!” Freddy said. “Are you shitting me?”
“I wish I were.”
“Have you told your cop boyfriend about it?”
“I was about to, but then he dumped me.” I explained what just went down between me and Tony.
“Poor baby,” Freddy said. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
Freddy loved me, but to tel you the truth, he didn’t sound that sorry.
“Thanks, but I real y don’t want to focus on that right now. The point is, we’re not going to get any help from him.”
“Doesn’t sound like. But why are you meeting Paul?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthful y. “I guess I’m curious. He said he wanted to talk to me but he wouldn’t say why. I was just about to give up on the Harringtons when he cal ed. Maybe it’s a sign.”
“‘Wet floor’ is a sign, too, angel. One you’re supposed to avoid. Like the Harringtons.”
“I know, but if I don’t do this, I’l just spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Let me see what he has to say. I’l let him know that the warning I got today worked and that I’m backing off.”
“Are you?”
“I was half an hour ago. Now, I don’t know. Wil you help me?”
“Honey,”
Freddy asked,
“what are you, meshuggana? Of course I’l be there. But listen- how about you cal me on your cel and leave it on the table while you and Paul talk. That way, I can listen, too.”
“You’re a genius,” I told him. “Thanks, Freddy.”
For our meeting, Paul picked a bar wel known as a place where married men of means could meet in a dark and discrete setting. From its mahogany bar to its twenty dol ar martinis, live piano player, and subdued track lighting, Intermission reeked of money and good taste.
Of course, the men who came here were rarely interested in meeting each other. The bar was fil ed with hustlers of the highest order, young men with gym toned bodies, fake tans, and higher educations.
Anyone of lesser quality would be ignored or evicted by the imposing bouncer who sat by the door as imposing and immobile as a Rodin.
I knew boys who worked Intermission. They usual y did very wel. The clientele was wel — off and conducted themselves as gentlemen. I avoided it because it sounded like a meat rack, albeit one with leather seating and stunningly handsome bartenders.
“I figured I’d pick a place you were used to frequenting,” Paul Harrington said, in lieu of “hel o,” as I settled myself into the booth he had chosen, as far back and as dark as it was possible to find.
“Actual y, I’ve never been here before,” I said.
“How about you?”
“Not real y.”
Just then, a waiter who could have been cast as
“handsome col ege student #2” in a soap opera came to our table.
“Good to see you again, sir,” he said to Paul in a deep baritone. “The usual?”
While Paul cringed and ordered, I took my cel phone from my pocket, discretely pressed the speed dial number for Freddy, and put it face down on the table. I saw him at the bar, with his back to us, and his Bluetooth headset firmly planted in his ear. He pressed the “answer” button and nodded. I knew he could hear our conversation. Good.
Studly McWaiter turned to me. “And you, sir?” His voice was respectful, but the look he gave me was condescending.
I ordered a bottled water.
“Very good then.” He turned away, revealing an ass as perfect as the rest of him.
Please Freddy, I thought, don’t get too distracted tonight.
Paul put his hands on the table. “If you don’t mind, I’l be direct.”
“I’d appreciate it,” I said.
“How much?”
Huh? Was this a math problem that I missed the first half of? “How much what?”
“I thought we were going to be direct with each other,” Paul said. “How much do you want?”
Paul looked very handsome tonight in his expensive suit and expertly knotted tie. His light brown hair was swept back in a slickly plastered down helmet not seen since the movie Wall Street, but it looked good on him. He might not have the expansively muscular build of his brother, but his shoulders were wide and his chest was broad.
His light blue eyes were very attractive, but I thought I saw a little redness there, too.
Had he been working late nights? Crying? Or was there stil a little Mace left in them?
There was no way to know-at least not yet. I had to admit, though, Paul Harrington was a man who got better looking the more you saw him. I could total y see how he hooked up with that hot guy at Sexbar.
But stil, ewwww. The fact that he wanted to have sex with me when he thought I had slept with his father was just total y icky.
“This bar is ful of boys you can hire, Paul. I’m not one of them.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Paul grimaced. “I’m talking about buying your silence.”
“My silence?”
“Look, you caught me in a very compromising position,” Paul said. “I assume you’re planning on using that information against me. Just as you used my father to get what you wanted.”
“Paul, I didn’t ‘use’ your father. We were friends.
And I’m not going to blackmail you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Let’s not use the word ‘blackmail,’” Paul said.
“Let’s just say I’d like to reward your discretion.”
The waiter brought our drinks over.
I picked up my bottle. “OK then, how about the drinks are on you? There, you’ve bought my silence.”
Paul looked at me with disbelief. “That’s it?”
“I don’t know who or what you think I am,” I said,
“but I’m not a scam artist and I’m not interested in causing you any trouble. I loved your father too much to hurt his children.”
“You loved my father?”
“Of course, I loved your father. He was a great man.”
Paul’s careful y composed expression of skepticism col apsed. He looked suddenly stricken, as if a great pain had descended upon him. “I loved him, too, you know. I just never
… never…”
He let out a great sob, then immediately brought his hands to his mouth to contain the noise. He wept silently into them.
Two minutes ago, Paul was a cocky son of bitch who was trying to buy me off. Now, he was a sobbing mess. People who have mood swings like that always make me nervous. Was he mental y il?
Paul took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, squinted hard, and wiped his face. He took a few deep breaths and continued.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I told my own father that I loved him? That’s why I was going there that night.”
Randy told me Al en was meeting one of his sons the night of his death. Now, I knew it was Paul.
Another mystery solved. I was good at this detective stuff!
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Freddy giving me a thumbs up.
“I’ve made so many mistakes,” Paul said quietly.
“My own father.” He blinked away more tears.
“Al en told me you hadn’t talked in years,” I said.
“It’s true. But you have to understand what my mother did to me and Michael. She blamed my father bitterly for leaving us. She made it clear we’d be betraying her if we didn’t feel that way, too.
“She always told us that the life he’d ‘chosen’ was destructive and sick. That he picked it over his own children. What we didn’t know was that he was reaching out to us al during our childhood, but my mother wouldn’t let him near us. It wasn’t his homosexuality that wrecked my family, it was her hostility.
“By the time Michael and I were old enough to make our own decisions about contact with our father, we had been brainwashed into seeing him as the enemy. We were just kids, we didn’t know any better.
“She forced us to choose between them, and we chose her.”
I nodded. “But it must have been especial y hard for you,” I said, “what with, you know, liking guys and al.”
Paul reached across the table and grabbed my hands. “You do understand,” he said. “It was hel. I was so confused, my whole life. I knew what I wanted, what I was, but it was the very thing I had been taught ruined my family’s lives. That it was shameful and sick and wrong.
“I hated myself for so long.” More tears rol ed down his cheek. He took his hands from mine and wiped his eyes.
I felt a lump in my throat, too. Even if he were nuts, I felt his pain.
“Is that why your brother does what he does?” I asked. “This whole thing he has about making gay people straight?”
“Michael’s a very complicated man,” Paul said.
“But yes, I’m sure that’s a part of it.”
“Complicated how?” I asked him.
Paul shuddered. “I don’t want to get into that right now.”
I tried a different track. “You were going to see your father the night of his death?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “I was going to tel him about myself. I was going to ask him to forgive me for al those years of neglect. I wanted to explain things.”
“What happened?”
“I’d thought of cal ing my father for years. I never had the courage or the strength. But I started therapy recently, and I was real y starting to see things differently. My mother moved to Florida, and so I didn’t have to hear her constant critiques of my father. And with Michael’s work getting more demanding, I was seeing a lot less of him, too.
“Michael has a lot of influence over me. A lot of control, you might say.”
Again, he gave a little shudder. There was something going on between him and Michael that troubled him.
Or scared him.
“I final y cal ed him the evening of his death. It was so hard. But the moment he heard it was me, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to talk to him. How kind he was, how forgiving. I told him how sorry I was, what an idiot I had been, but he wouldn’t even hear it. He said I was his son and always would be.”
Paul stopped for a moment to compose himself.
“He told me to come right over. I got there as soon as I could. But when I arrived, I saw the body on the ground. I stopped for a moment like the rest of the crowd did. Typical NY rubbernecking. I didn’t know who it was. Not until you arrived. What to hear something funny?”
I nodded.
“When I first saw you, I thought to myself ‘what a cute kid. I wonder if I could bag him?’ Of course, this was before I knew you were sleeping with my father.”
“Listen,” I said, “I never slept with your father.”
Paul tilted his head in disbelief.
“OK, let me just clear this up once and for al.” I told Paul the true story of how Al en and I met. I explained how we became friends. How I loved him like a father, not a lover. How I thought some of the attention and guidance he gave me was because he was denied the opportunity to give it to his own children.
Paul sighed. “That makes me so sad,” he said.
“But I see now that you gave him a lot of happiness.”
He took my hands again. “Thank you for being there when I was too stupid to be a good son.”
“You were tel ing me about the night you went to meet your father.”
“Right. When you said my father’s name, that’s when I knew it was him. I ran away and headed right over to Michael’s house. I told him what happened and total y broke down.
“Michael cal ed Alana, my wife, and she came over. They sat with me for hours. First, they told me that I should never have cal ed my father. That he was an evil man and that I had brought this pain upon myself. Then, they told me this was our father’s ultimate ‘fuck you’to me. That he jumped knowing I was coming over, knowing that I’d see him, just to mess me up even further.”
“And you believed them?”
“You have to understand, Michael has a way with me. Maybe he has it with a lot of people. When he says things, they just make sense. He’s very persuasive.”
I’d seen that for myself at The Center. He had that crowd in the palm of his hand. And later, in the hal way, he almost convinced me to go with him to his office, despite the fact that I was afraid of him.
“The things he told me were the things I had heard my entire life. He made me hate my father again.
That’s why I was so awful at the reading of his wil. I thought he kil ed himself just to hurt me.”
“Paul,” I said gently, “I know you didn’t know him, but I did. I don’t believe that he kil ed himself. Not for a minute.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Paul said. “I’ve been replaying our conversation in my head ever since that night. He was looking forward to seeing me. I know that. Why would he take his own life? Why then, of al times?”
“So, if he didn’t kil himself, what do you think happened?” I was sure now that Michael was the kil er, but I wanted Paul to be the one who said it.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Maybe it was an accident?”
“What kind of accident?”
Paul looked like the child he had been when his father left them. “I don’t know,” he whined. “Maybe he fel.”
“Doing what? Practicing his balance beam on the ledge?”
“I don’t know!” He banged his fist on the table, causing his gin and tonic to soak the cuff of his shirt.
He didn’t seem to notice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Freddy turn around to face us. He started to get up from his stool.
“Everything’s fine,” I said to Paul, but real y to Freddy, who I knew could hear us on his headset.
Freddy nodded and turned back.
Tears came back to Paul’s eyes. “It’s not fine!
Nothing’s fine!”
I thought I’d give it another go. “Paul, what do you think happened to your father?”
“He kil ed him!” Paul’s eyes were wide and bulging, the muscles in his neck strained.
“Who kil ed him?”
“I don’t know.” The whine was back.
“You said ‘he.’”
“I meant ‘whoever.’ Maybe another guy he was seeing.” He gestured around the room. “Or another hustler. I don’t know.”
“No, Paul. He didn’t have anyone else over that night. He was waiting for you.” I told him about what Randy Bostinick had said.
Paul’s face crumpled. He real y did look a child again. He bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he cried. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” He put his hands on his temples and rubbed furiously.
It was as if Paul was cycling through personalities before my eyes. Confident businessman, sorrowful son, petulant teenager, lost child.
But given everything he had gone through in the last few weeks, could I blame him? In a short time he had accepted his own sexual orientation, let go of the hate and anger he’d been indoctrinated with, final y reached out to his father, and then lost him-
Paul Harrington had been through a lot of changes. I regretted that what I was going to say might push him further along the edge.
“Paul,” I said gently. This time, I took his hands. He looked off into space with a steady fixed stare. “Paul.
Look at me.”
His head weighed a hundred pounds. He turned it slowly. His eyes met mine, but they were blank and unfocused.
“Paul: Do you think your brother could have kil ed your father?”
“Michael wouldn’t hurt anyone.” His voice had a hol ow, robotic ring.
“Is that true?” I asked.
“Michael wouldn’t hurt anyone.” The exact same intonation.
“He hurt me, Paul.” I pointed to the bruise on my face. Actual y, I didn’t know for sure that it had been Michael in the hotel room, but I had to break through Paul’s withdrawal.
“Oh Lord,” Paul pul ed his hands from mine and buried his face in them. “He told me never again, never again.”
“Never again?”
“Not another boy.”
“Did he hurt another boy, Paul?”
“He hurt me!” This time, Paul was loud enough that several heads turned. He didn’t notice.
“ H e liked hurting me,”
Paul continued.
“Sometimes it would start as tickling, or wrestling, you know. He told me al brothers did it. But he’d always carry it too far. He’d make me cry, and then make me beg him to stop. The more I’d beg, the more excited he’d get.”
“Excited?”
“Once I saw it,” Paul whispered fiercely. “He was hard. He was hard from hurting me. I was so ashamed!”
“You didn’t do anything to be ashamed of,” I told him.
“I liked it!” he cried. “Don’t you get it? He’d hurt me and I’d like it. I liked the closeness, how strong he was, that I was the one getting his attention. It was so fucking… sick!”
“You were kids,” I said.
Paul winced. “It didn’t stop until he went to col ege.”
Oh.
“Did you have sex?” I asked him.
“No. It wasn’t about sex. Wel, not normal sex. It was about power. And I think Michael always knew I was gay and he was punishing me. And, God help me, I wanted to be punished.”
We sat quietly for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. I looked up to see Freddy once again looking at me.
“Holy shit!” he mouthed.
I wanted to know as much about Michael’s psychology as I could. “Did you ever talk about it with him?”
Paul sat up a little straighten He looked up at me again.
“When he came back for his summer home after his freshman year at col ege. He told me that he had taken psychology courses in school, and that it helped him understand that what we were doing was wrong. That my wanting to be hurt was a sickness, and that he should never have gone along with it.
That he’d never hurt anyone again.
“He made it sound like it al happened because of me. But it was OK, he told me. It was al my father’s fault. Of course I was neurotic. He said he could help me. We’d spend hours in my room. Just talking. He’d learned hypnosis from a professor of his, and he’d put me under. He told me he was freeing me from my self destructive patterns.”
“He’d hypnotize you?”
Paul nodded.
“Did it work?”
“Did it make me straight? Did it make me stop wanting men? No. Did it make me hate myself for what I was feeling? Yes.”
Paul’s face was a portrait of anguish.
I leaned forward. “Paul, I’m so, so sorry that he did that to you. But he’s doing it to other men, too. Every day. That’s what his whole practice is about. He’s using the same techniques he used on you to make hundreds of other men miserable.”
Paul nodded. “I know.”
“It’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“Do you think he’s stil hypnotizing you?” I asked.
“No, we haven’t done that for years.”
“But you said he has a lot of control over you.”
Paul was silent.
“A lot of influence.” I reminded him of his own words.
Paul looked down at the table again.
“Are there ever occasions when you’re with him and you can’t remember what happened? Or there’s missing time?”
Paul gave the tiniest nod. I would have missed it if I weren’t looking so hard.
He didn’t look up. He could have been talking to the table. He said, “And you know what? When that happens, when I think that I’ve just zoned out and I find him staring at me… the look on his face?
“It scares me.”
“Holy mother of Christmas,” Freddy said when I walked back into the bar after having made sure that Paul got safely into his cab. By the time we had finished talking, Paul was a wreck, and I didn’t trust him to make it home in one piece.
“I know,” I agreed.
“That story had everything in it but the bloodhounds snappin’ at his rear end.”
“I know.”
Freddy peered into my eyes. “Are you OK?”
“I think I need to sit down.” It had been a long day.
Freddy got off his stool and steered me into it.
“And maybe a drink.”
Freddy handed me his beer. I downed it in seconds.
Freddy put his arms around me. The hug made me feel better than the beer had.
“That good?”
I nodded. “Thanks. You always seem to know what to do.”
“That’s what sisters are for,” Freddy said.
“Let’s go somewhere a little less creepy.”
This being New York City, the nearest coffee house was eighteen steps away. We sat in comfortable chairs and had some kind of frozen blended coffee chocolate thing with whipped cream and caramel.
We both got the largest possible size.
“So, what do you think?” I asked him.
“I think my headset almost melted in my ear,” he said. “That was a hot story.”
“Freddy!”
“Wel it was,” Freddy said. “The hunky older guy who holds you down and tickles you until you can’t catch your breath? Hel o! You’ve seen that Michael Harrington-you got to admit you could do worse than being straddled by that stal ion.”
I shook my head. “That’s gross. They were brothers.”
“OK,” Freddy admitted. “That part was kind of gross. But stil, Michael Harrington. He’s like Christian Bale in American Psycho. The yummiest sadist in town.”
“Do you think he could have kil ed his father?”
“My guess? He’s capable of anything.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
Just then, a dead-sexy guy in running shorts and tank top came in to order something. Freddy looked at him like a vulture spies a particularly delectable carcass.
“Could you excuse me a second?” Freddy went to the counter right behind the guy. Somehow, he started a conversation with him. I heard them both laughing and I turned away.
Two minutes later, Freddy returned with a scone and the guy’s card.
“What was that al about,” I asked.
“The runner? An old friend of my mother. I was just sending her regards. But back to business: Why do you think Michael is stil hypnotizing his brother?”
“It’s al about domination. That’s what he gets off on. His whole business, his whole life, is based on his fetish for control. Plus, when Paul’s in a trance, who knows what Michael does to him?”
We sat for a moment. Just when I thought Freddy was going to make another al usion to Charlie’s Angels, he surprised me.
“You want to talk about what happened with Tony?”
“Wow,” I said. “Do you know that Paul’s revelations were so shocking that I haven’t thought about Tony al night? Wel, not until you just brought him up, that is. Thanks.”
“Sorry,” Freddy said, looking concerned.
“Naw, it’s al right. I think I’m fine. If there were more time to think about it, maybe I’d be more upset.
Freddy gave me one more sympathetic look. “So, let’s not think about it,” he said, brightly. “Tel me how you left things with Paul when you took him to the cab.”
“Nowhere, real y. I think he felt better after he got al that off his chest, though. He told me he was thinking of coming out to his wife and getting on with his life. He said he thinks that’s what his father would have wanted. He sounded optimistic.”
“So, maybe he’l have a happy ending after al. As opposed to just having a ‘happy ending,’ which I think you probably spoiled for him when you brought the wal s of Jericho down on him at Sex-bar.”
“I suggested he avoid Michael for a while, though.
That guy real y does scare me.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Freddy said. “If Michael is doing crazy shit to his own brother when he’s got him hypnotized, what do you think he’s doing to his clients?”
I got a shiver. “I don’t know,” I answered truthful y.
“I bet it’s nothing good,” Freddy said.
“We have to stop him.”
“I agree. But how?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to figure it out.”