The Bottle Ghosts Read online

  The music was—surprise?—far too loud for regular conversation to be an option, so Bob and I just stood there, guarding everyone’s drinks. Thank God for the wall ledge or we’d never have managed. I could tell from the way Bob was glancing around, subtly but definitely, that the huge crowd made him nervous. He caught me looking at him and dropped his eyes quickly to the floor and gave a small shrug.

  “I know,” I said, and I did. If I’d been in the Dog Collar that night, as he had, and if I had lost what he had lost….

  When the others hadn’t come back fifteen minutes later, Bob leaned over and said, loudly enough for me to hear: “You think we should call out a search party?”

  That proved to be unnecessary, for at that moment the music faded and the spotlight on the DJ swung over to the curtains, and everybody stopped dancing and started moving toward the stage. The rest of our little group came over to grab their drinks and we all headed to the far corner of the room, where the curtains were moving about, indicating some sort of activity behind them. I noticed that Bob almost unconsciously reached out and grabbed Mario’s hand as if to say, “I’m not going to lose another one.”

  *

  The show was emceed by an androgynous little number in close-cropped hair, black leather pants and a black sleeveless tee shirt with a tattooed bicep. If it was a guy, he was hot as hell. My crotch, which still had a mind of its own, was greatly disappointed to realize it was a woman. Oh, well.

  The first act was a lesbian rock group, “Sappho’s Baby” which was surprisingly good, especially the keyboard player, who had spiked hair about the same color as the steamroller in the front room, but who was one of the best keyboardists I’d ever heard.

  They really got the crowd going, and they were followed by a very cute, all-American boy type stand-up comedian I’d actually seen on one of those comedy club shows on TV. The crowd loved him, partly, I think, because he represented something we were only just now beginning to see: our own people not only right out front, but able to make it openly in a hetero-dominated profession.

  He was followed by a couple of well-known drag queens I’d seen in local clubs over the years, both above average as lip-synch drag queens go, but to be honest, I’ve very seldom gone out of my way to seek out drag shows.

  Sappho’s Baby came back to do another short set, and when we sensed T/T would probably be next, Chris insisted we work our way up as close to the stage as we could possibly get. He led the way in jostling us through the crowd. Jonathan had hooked his hand through the back of my belt so we wouldn’t get separated, and I noticed that Bob still had Mario firmly by the hand.

  Since leaving the city, T/T had been a headliner for New Orleans’ largest drag show and then, from what I’d heard through the grapevine, had gone on the club circuit around the country. He’d worked just about every drag club in the city before he left, and had developed an avid following. So when the MC said: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, dykes and dicks, let’s give a big welcome to the one and only Tondelaya O’Tool!” the crowd went wild.

  Chris let out a piercing whistle, which was fairly well drowned out by the enthusiastic ovation. Rather than stepping out from behind the curtain, T/T made his way from a door to the left of the stage along the floor in front of it to the other side. I imagined people farther back probably couldn’t see too well, but it was classic T/T—Pearl Bailey at her best, greeting her fans. When he reached the other side of the stage, he climbed a set of steps I’d not noticed, and, in total control of the room sauntered to the center of the stage, reached behind the curtain for a microphone, and went immediately into “You Gotta See Momma Every Night,” followed by “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home.”

  No question about it, T/T was a great entertainer. He used his own voice, and he played the audience like a violin. Then, spotting our group, he blew us a big kiss and went into one of his lesser-known truly down-and-dirty shoulder-shaking numbers he used to make a point of singing directly to Chris and me: “The Butcher’s Son” (“I’m not the butcher, I’m the butcher’s son/ but I’ll give you meat until the butcher comes!”) He did it again, which as usual both pleased and embarrassed the shit out of me. Jonathan just looked at me with an expression that made it clear he had no idea of what was going on.

  When his set was over, the crowd wouldn’t let him go until he did his trademark “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” for which he let out all the stops and practically raised the roof off the place. Even the lesbians loved it.

  When T/T finally left the stage—through the curtains, this time—and the MC was able to make herself heard, she announced the sentimental favorite and “star” of the show, Daisy Chane, a home-town boy who’d became a legend on the nation’s drag queen circuit in the days when just being a drag queen took a hell of a lot of guts. If the stand-up comedian represented the community today and where it was headed, Daisy Chane represented the kind of in-your-face courage it took to get us where we are.

  He’d retired several years before to a farm outside of the city with his partner of over forty years, but had been persuaded to come out of retirement for the opening. Chris and I had bought one of his albums when we were together. I think I must still have it somewhere.

  But though Daisy had to be pushing seventy-five, he still had it: he was more Bette Davis than Bette herself, and could out-Marlene Marlene Dietrich. He got a wild, five minute ovation at the end of his act, which was not only richly deserved but a sincere tribute to his career. I’d have said it was a standing ovation, but since nobody was sitting down anyway….

  The performers were called back out for their curtain calls, Sappho’s Baby did a third brief set, the curtains closed, and the spotlight swung back to the end-loader, where the DJ cranked up both his turntables and the volume, and the place transformed immediately from show bar to dance bar.

  I managed to convey, via shouts and signals, that T/T wanted to join us for a drink, and we moved closer to the door through which he had emerged at the start of his number. I figured that would be the most logical place for him to come out, and there was no way he would otherwise have been able to find us in that crowd.

  Jonathan, Chris, Max, and Mario went back out onto the dance floor. They stayed fairly close to the edge of the crowd this time, and I was able to watch Jonathan dance. He was fantastic! I could never move like that in a million years. He danced like he didn’t have a bone in his body. Every move just flowed effortlessly and he was so incredibly sexy I could hardly stand it.

  Down, boy! Down.

  About fifteen minutes later, as Bob and I were watching the others dance, we felt a hand on our shoulders and turned to see T/T—definitely back in his Teddy persona, grinning at us.

  “Why don’t we go up front and get us a drink?” he managed to shout above the music. “I’m more than a tad parched!”

  While he and Bob tried to exchange hugs, I signaled to Jonathan who gathered the rest of our troupe, and we all moved through the crowd to the front, with Teddy making frequent stops to exchange a few words with his fans. Both sets of double doors to the front bar were closed, in an apparent attempt to keep the front section a little quieter. However, with a steady stream of people coming and going through them, the effort was largely futile. We found, when we got there, that the separating wall must have been pretty well insulated, since despite the constant in-and-out flow, the sound level was diminished sufficiently to allow for actual near-normal-level conversation. We refreshed our drinks—Teddy tossing back a double scotch straight at the bar and ordering another to carry with us to a relatively clear spot at the far front corner of the room.

  We had a great time catching up, hearing of Teddy’s adventures and obvious successes. He seemed truly pleased that Bob, Chris, and I had all done well for ourselves as far as partners are concerned, and he was surprised to hear that I’d become a P.I. It was rather odd for me to remember that I hadn’t always been one and had in fact been working for a now blessedly defunct public re
lations firm when we first met.

  “Well, chile! That sounds downright exciting! I can just see you chasin’ after the bad guys, pointin’ a big old gun at ’em, makin’ ’em drop to their knees and beg for mercy…” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and fluttered his hand under his chin as if fanning himself. “Mercy! I think I just might faint!”

  I grinned. “Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but for one thing, I don’t carry a gun. And I wish being a P.I. was half as exciting as everybody thinks it is.”

  “So what are you workin’ on now, darlin’?”

  Jonathan, who had been playing Siamese-Twin-joined-at-the-hip with me since we arrived in the corner, his arm around my waist and his hand partly in my front pocket, said: “Dick’s got a big missing persons case he’s working on.”

  Teddy’s eyebrows raised. “Is that the truth, now? That must be truly fascinatin’. I lost a sister once. Vanished right off the face of the earth.”

  Why did I suddenly not hear the music from the other room? And why was it suddenly very chilly?

  “Really?” I heard myself say. “When and where did this happen?”

  Teddy drained about half his scotch. “Three years last March,” he said. “Right here in town. Name was Charlene. Well, her real name was Charles…Charles Whitaker. We grew up together. She was always a bit of a drinker, and I used to try to tell her not to drink and drive. ‘You’re gonna kill yourself, girl,’ I told her a thousand times. Well, when I moved to New Orleans, we talked just about every single day, but I wasn’t around to look after her. Then one night she called me so hysterical I could hardly understand a word she said. She’d just gotten out of jail. Wouldn’t you know she was comin’ back from a party and she hit another car and killed three people. Charlene didn’t have a scratch. Can you imagine how that child felt? She didn’t do anything but cry practically twenty-four hours a day.

  “There wasn’t really all that much I could do for her long distance, but she was stayin’ with her sister, Mona, and Mona and I finally talked her into seeing a shrink to work it out, and she did—for one whole session. Then a week later I got a call from Mona sayin’ Charlene had just up and disappeared. She thought Charlene had come down to be with me, but she hadn’t. Nobody ever saw or heard from her again.”

  He was silent for a moment and, for a brief instant, I saw a look of sadness on his face like I’d never seen on him before. Then, suddenly aware that he might be disappointing his fans, the old T/T was back.

  “You ask me, I think she felt so bad about what she’d done, she jumped in the river and killed herself. They never found a trace of her. Not a trace.”

  He shook his head. “Ain’t life strange, though?”

  Indeed, my gut said.

  Chapter 6

  While I can’t—or rather, I won’t—say that T/T’s little revelation about the disappearance of his friend Charles Whitaker cast a shadow on the remainder of Chris’ and Max’ visit, I will say that I spent a heck of a lot more time thinking about it than I had any intention of doing.

  Come on, Hardesty! You haven’t just invented the wheel, here: people disappear. Charles Whitaker is hardly the first person in the history of the world to do it: why do you insist on leaping to conclusions?

  It was a nice try, but it didn’t really work.

  Still I was a little pissed at myself for not being able to let it drop at least until Monday when I could check with Marty to see if there was a Charles Whitaker on his list. But Whitaker had disappeared before Qualicare even opened, and it’s quite possible he did exactly what T/T suspected he did: jumped in the river.

  Sure, my mind said. Maybe they all did.

  See what I mean?

  Nonetheless, Sunday was really great. Bob and Mario invited us all over to their new house for brunch, and called Tim and Phil to join us so that Chris and Max could meet them after having heard so much about them via our phone and letter correspondence. Bob and Mario were very generous in going out of their way to point out how much Jonathan had helped them get the house ready before they moved in. Jonathan was mildly embarrassed, but very pleased, as was I for him.

  We had to leave around four o’clock to take Chris and Max to the airport (they’d checked out of the Montero when Jonathan and I went over to get them to take them to Bob and Mario’s).

  As had happened the first time I had taken Chris to the airport for his move to New York, we hit a traffic jam and got to the airport just in time. And again we didn’t have time to park the car and go in with them to say goodbye. It was a really odd sense of deja vu as we stood on the curb at the Passenger Unloading area (having had to get out of the car to open the trunk) and exchanged handshakes and hugs, and I stood there, with Jonathan, and watched Chris, with Max, walk once more into the terminal and disappear. And I wondered yet again why I had to be such a sentimental, romantic slob.

  Jonathan instinctively sensed my mood, I think, for when we got back into the car and drove off, he moved as close to me as he could get and laid his hand on my leg. He didn’t say anything, just smiled.

  A few minutes later, though, he looked at me.

  “Can we?”

  I realized I’d been lost in my own thoughts—a couple of them about Whitaker—and had to pull myself back to reality.

  “Can we what?”

  Jonathan grinned. “Can we go to New York to visit, like Chris and Max asked us to? I think that would really be great!”

  I returned the smile. “Sure. As soon as you get your first vacation at work. But you won’t be able to take Tim and Phil,” I added in mock seriousness and referring to his goldfish.

  “That’s okay. We could ask Mario and Bob to watch them while we’re gone. Or maybe we can send them off to a fish summer camp. They’d like that.”

  “I’m sure they would.” I had a mental image of them waiting eagerly at the bus station with two very tiny suitcases.

  *

  Monday morning, as soon as I’d gotten to the office and put on a pot of coffee, I dialed City Annex and asked for Missing Persons. I didn’t recognize the voice of the guy who answered, and when I asked to speak to Officer Gresham, I was told he wasn’t available at the moment. I left my number and asked if Officer Gresham could call me when he had the chance. I’d no sooner hung up the phone and turned toward the coffee maker when the phone rang.

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Mr. Hardesty, this is John Bradshaw. I’ve just gotten back into town. I assume you’ve heard nothing at all? There was no sign of him when I returned home, no message, no indication that he’d been home at all. Do you think it would help if I were to contact the police again to see if perhaps…”

  I stepped in before he could finish his sentence.

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve been in close touch with the police, and have been working with the Missing Persons Department. They’ve been as helpful as they can be under the circumstances, but they’ve really done about everything they could.”

  “And your investigation…?” I could literally feel his disappointment.

  “I’ve prepared a report of what I’ve done to date, and I’d be happy to go over it with you in person. I do have what I think might be a lead, and I’m pursuing it, but there is no guarantee it will go anywhere. Right now, I just don’t know.”

  “You have no idea on a time-frame, then?”

  “Well, that’s another problem, especially if this lead pans out, as I suspect it might…”

  And here I was again, neatly scotch-taped between a rock and a hard place. If he were to decide to terminate my services—and I really couldn’t blame him under the circumstances (or, rather, the lack of circumstances)—I’d be without a client, without a paycheck, but still with what I was sure were at least four murders which I wouldn’t be able to let go of even if I wanted to. How do I get myself into these things?

  I didn’t want to try to explain everything over the phone.

  “Would it be possible for you to come by my office
after you get off work today? I’ll tell you what I have in mind and you can decide where we should go from there.”

  Again I could sense his disappointment as he said, “Sure, I can do that. I’d just hoped…”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “So did I. But I feel there’s still a pretty good chance of…” I started to say “of finding out what happened to him” but that would probably let him know I thought Jerry Shea was dead: “…of finding some answers.”

  “I’ll see you at four-thirty, then.”

  The receiver had no more than touched the cradle when the phone rang yet again, startling me.

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Dick, it’s Marty. I got your message. How’s it going?”

  Good question.

  “I’m not sure, but I did come across something. Could you check your files and see if you have anything at all on a Charles Whitaker? It would have been just about three years ago—March, I think. You may not even have had him as a Category Twelve, since he was living with his sister and I’d imagine it was her who reported him missing—if he was reported at all.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “The name doesn’t register, but I’ll look it up and get back to you.”

  “Great. I owe you.”

  I could almost hear a grin in his voice. “No problem! This is a great opportunity for me to spread my wings a little, and it can’t hurt my job evaluation.”

  I was glad he saw it that way, and he was very probably right. “Well, thanks again. Talk to you later.”

  *

  As I sat idly scribbling down the names of the missing men, their partners, and everyone involved…nineteen in all (I was including Charles Whitaker, just on a hunch), I wondered about the feasibility of asking Marty if he might be able to run criminal background checks on everyone. But I’d really been stretching my luck with the police. While I wouldn’t have minded crawling into bed with a couple members of the force (Richman and possibly Gresham?) in my single days…