But, no, he couldn’t. He wasn’t yet that far past Tom Danzel. Despite doing without since their last encounter, and notwithstanding that he’d had some chances with other guys, nobody had yet tempted him enough to do anything about it.

  And Carl was kind of cute, at best. Not cute enough to take him over that gulf.

  “Thanks,” he said, wanting to let him down gently, “but, it’s kind of a cop rule, no hanky panky with the suspects.”

  Carl’s smile faded. “Cute” went with it. He morphed back into what he’d been before, the kind of weary and uninteresting guy you could walk right past in a bar and hardly notice him at all.

  “And, speaking of cop stuff,” Stanley added quickly, wanting to get off that subject, “what about Donnie? Can you think of anybody I should talk to? Someone who might be able to give me some insights? Where did he live, anyway?”

  “With his Mom. But I don’t know how much she can tell you—if you even catch her sober, which you probably won’t.

  She lives out at the edge of town.”

  “Anybody else?”

  DEADLY WRONG 69

  Carl pondered that for a minute. “There was this therapist he was seeing, Miller, I think his name was, or, Stiller. He’s got an office at one end of the mall. I’m supposed to see him too, soon as Libby gets an appointment made. But I think Donnie was seeing him pretty regular.”

  “What about all those guys Donnie was doing? Can you give me any names?”

  “Hell, that’s easy. Leaf through the phone book over there, pick a name. Any name, just about. You’d be surprised how democratic a hot set of nuts makes a guy. There was even a priest, according to what he told me.”

  “Was there any special guy, though? I mean, one who took advantage of him on a regular basis, or maybe someone Donnie might have favored?”

  He had to think about that for a bit, chewing his lips.

  “There’s a biker, name of Rack. I don’t know if you could say Donnie favored him, exactly, but they had some kind of relationship, I never quite figured out what. Twisted, for sure.

  Love-hate, I guess is what they’d call it. I think Rack was maybe the most regular. For sure he was the meanest, too. “

  He thought about that for a moment. “But, it was funny, it was almost like Donnie liked him the best, you know what I’m saying? Like he had a special thing for the one who treated him the worst. Rack was always taking him behind the restrooms by the lake, or in back of the bar—behind a tree. I heard Rack fucked him one time at the movie theater, in the back row, while the movie was playing. Didn’t seem to matter to him where, or even whether anybody else saw them, and I doubt if he skipped more than a day or two between times. Donnie said he was one of those repeat shooters, could get off two or three times in a row without any problem. Usually knocked Donnie around some, too.”

  “Afterward, I take it.”

  “After, before, in between loads. One time, so bad he broke Donnie’s arm. He’s an all round mean son of a bitch.”

  “Like Donnie’s daddy, maybe?”

  “Maybe. Yeah, probably.”

  “So, where would I find this Rack?”

  70 Victor Banis

  “He hangs out at The Handle Bar, it’s a biker place. But you don’t want to go there.” He looked Stanley up and down. “It’s kind of a rough joint. They see someone come in who’s, well, you know…”

  “A sissy?”

  “No offense. But, like I say, it’s probably not a good idea for you to go there. Not alone, anyway. And I’d go with you, but I’m not old enough. Besides, I don’t think that would make much difference to those guys. I mean, I’m not the kind of guy they’d back off for.”

  Stanley glanced at his watch. “Well, I’m not going there tonight, anyway. I’m hungry, and it’s been a long day. I’ll think about all that tomorrow, at Tara.” He hesitated. He didn’t really know what was expected in this arrangement—meals and drinks and such. Sharing quarters with a stranger was awkward.

  “I saw a little coffee shop a few blocks away. The Wagon Wheel.”

  “It’s pretty good. Their meatloaf is okay. And the pork chops. Stay away from the fish.”

  “I was going to stroll down that way, if you want to join me.”

  “Thanks. I had some pizza just a little while before you got here. That’ll do me and there’s still a piece left if I get hungry later.”

  “Well, then.”

  § § § § §

  Strolling down to the restaurant, Stanley was glad after all that Carl hadn’t come. There were things he needed to think over, and he did that better on his own.

  Like, the big question: what really had happened to Carl’s friend, Donnie? If the accident hadn’t happened the way everyone else believed it had, then—regardless of the Chief’s assurance that murders didn’t really happen here in this little mountain town—someone had definitely committed murder.

  And left Carl holding the bag for it.

  But, how am I supposed to sort that out, he wondered? Knowing no more than he did about Carl, and even less about the victim?

  DEADLY WRONG 71

  He wished momentarily that Tom were with him. Whatever failings Tom had as a boyfriend, he was a first rate detective.

  He quickly squelched those thoughts. There had been a time or two in the past when Tom had shown up at the last minute, like the cavalry, to save Stanley’s bacon. That wasn’t going to happen this time, however.

  And my bacon is just fine, Stanley told himself. Even if it wasn’t exactly sizzling at the moment. He just hadn’t found the right skillet.

  He stopped for a drink at the bar attached to The Wagon Wheel, almost said, as he would have in the Castro, “A Stoli martini.” He glanced at the bartender, a small man with an unkempt beard and dirty tee-shirt, and at the other patrons sitting along the bar, all of them drinking beer. To a man, Budweiser. Out of bottles, too, not a glass to be seen.

  “Vodka, rocks,” Stanley said instead. That at least a bartender couldn’t mess up. God alone knew what this grizzled specimen might do to a martini. The vodka, a label he didn’t recognize, had a kerosene taste. It would be hard to become an alcoholic here, it seemed to him. He made a mental note to check the supermarket and see what brands they carried there.

  This was still California, the vodka capitol of the world; the western world, anyway. Even in Bear Mountain, there must be a premium brand or two. He left the drink half finished and went next door to eat. A baked pork chop, at half what he’d have paid in San Francisco, and pretty good to boot.

  After dinner he strode along the town’s main commercial street. The village of Bear Mountain was self-consciously

  “Alpine.” Stores were made up to look like miniature chalets, with rough hewn logs, railed verandahs, steep-pitched roofs.

  Jolly little men in lederhosen decorated many a sign, looking about to burst into yodel at any moment.

  About midway along the main drag, an enormous ski lodge sat on the far side of the street, away from the lake, and what was obviously a ski slope soared upward beyond the lodge. In winter no doubt the slope was lighted and sheeted in snow, people skiing well into the evening hours, but there was no snow now, and no lights on the slope. Enormous towers 72 Victor Banis

  marched upward into darkness, the cables strung from pole to pole just visible against the sky. Empty gondolas hung from the cables, shuddering and rattling faintly in the breeze.

  Hadn’t he imagined gondolas before, when he was considering the trip? But not of this kind. That had been all about Venice, the canals, handsome gondoliers in bright sashes, singing. It was hard to imagine anyone standing in one of these dangling cars, serenading him. Yowls of terror seemed more likely. Did people really ride up the mountainside in those rickety buckets? Just to slide back down again?

  Even the lodge itself, despite windows aglow, had an air about it of waiting for better times to come, its vast parking lot mostly empty, the music and the stale beer smells drifting from an open door more forlorn than welcoming. A ski resort in summer had an awkward look. Like a beach hunk in off-season raiment that failed to show him at his best.

  Despite the off season, though, a smattering of summer tourists strolled about, in and out of the shops. Stanley walked in and out of a few of them as well, found the usual touristy trinkets, postcards, tee-shirts, even little dolls in lederhosen, though he had yet to see any locals dressed so colorfully. There was the inevitable new-age shop, with its crystals and its patchouli, and, more surprisingly, a tattoo parlor. In the street, a few cars drove slowly by, their occupants presumably looking for places to park or, more likely, something to do. Of night life, the town seemed conspicuously bereft.

  Libby’s gallery was closed, though he saw lights in the rear and in the apartment above, indicating she was there. He paused on the sidewalk outside. She’d said she had some work to do, hadn’t she? He knew that, by all rights, he should ring the bell by the door, tell her that he had changed his mind, that he wasn’t the man for this job.

  It was true, he had solved one murder in San Francisco, but with sheer luck and Tom Danzel’s help. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew perfectly well that he wasn’t a real homicide detective. He had neither the temperament nor the equipment, mental, emotional or physical. He owed it to Libby to tell her that, now, before wasting any more of her time or her hopes.

  DEADLY WRONG 73

  And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking of the boy who had died, despised and ridiculed by the very men who used him for their selfish pleasure and their convenience, cared for by no one but the young man accused of killing him, who probably loved his friend more than either of them had ever grasped.

  Little Donnie McIntosh hadn’t just been murdered, either.

  He had been robbed—of his innocence, of his dignity, of any chance of happiness. Now the authorities wanted to rob him even of justice.

  How could he walk away from that? Because if he did, no one was going to step up to the plate in his wake. Not just one life lost then, but two—because almost certainly Carl Hunter would never recover from the damage of being convicted of Donnie’s death, of having killed his friend.

  He walked on, torn. At the far end of the street, before it turned and became highway again, he found a little church. Not a mission, he knew that the Camino Real hadn’t extended in this direction, up into the mountains, but an old church, nonetheless, and interesting looking.

  In San Francisco, the roughly carved wooden doors would have been locked for security purposes, but when he tried them, these opened with only a faint squeak of protest. He went in.

  The interior was small and Spartan, it’s plain walls freshly whitewashed. Stained glass windows splashed Technicolor puddles across the floor—amber, vermilion, green. The scent of old candles, of incense, hung about the wood and plaster saints that lurked in little niches in the squat columns.

  A feeling of nostalgia descended upon him. At one time he’d attended a church much like this one, and he felt a momentary sense of peace in the silence that hovered as palpably as the potpourri of familiar scents. He paused to look around. Along the wall to the right, candles flickered before an altar to the virgin, and opposite it, a statue of Saint Anthony, with candles of his own, fewer than the virgin’s, but still plentiful. A lot of prayers answered, presumably.

  Rejoice with me, for I have found that which was lost.

  But when he remembered those familiar words, he unexpectedly found himself thinking of what Carl had said 74 Victor Banis

  about Donnie’s abusers: “Even a priest…” The memory brought him up short.

  Had Donnie McIntosh come here, seeking solace, to kneel before the Saint of lost causes? Had he found peace here, however fleetingly? Had his prayers been answered, or had he only found himself delivered over to yet another tormentor?

  Wherever God erects a house of prayer, the Devil always builds a chapel there.

  A carpet of vivid red ran down the center aisle, making him think of a dying boy’s blood pouring into the sand. He followed the crimson path down to the low rail, carved of pine—

  probably locally, he thought. Behind a simple altar, a painting of the ascension served as reredos, brave in its heady use of bright colors to achieve a beatific, if not an altogether artistic, effect.

  Stanley had heard no one come in or disturb the quiet, but someone cleared his throat behind him and he turned to find a priest watching him from a distance—a small man, remarkably young for his snow white hair, with wide set eyes and a thick lips that gave him a sensual appearance when he smiled.

  “Did you wish to make a confession?” His voice had a thick accent. Mexican, Stanley thought, or Spanish.

  “Thank you, no.” Stanley smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid I’m just an intruding tourist.”

  “There are no intruders here,” the priest said, making a sweeping gesture with one hand. “You’re a visitor to Bear Mountain? Perhaps I could give you a tour of our humble church. You were admiring our Saint Anthony. It’s quite a lovely one, is it not? It was, how does one say, un don en Dios.

  Through the auspices, as it were, of a generous worshipper.”

  Stanley listened politely, his smile fixed, but it was Carl’s words, not the priest’s, that rang in his ears. Even a priest… Of course, that might have been an exaggeration, Donnie’s or Carl’s. Or, even if true, there was no reason to suspect it was this particular priest. One read of all those abuses, scandals—

  but that was surely still only a small number of wayward priests when one considered the overall number.

  DEADLY WRONG 75

  Still, the sense of peace that he had felt when he first came in had abandoned him and he found that his earlier disquiet had returned in full force.

  “Perhaps some other time,” he said, starting back up the center aisle. Midway, though, he paused and looked back.

  “Father, to be frank, I’ve come to Bear Mountain to look into the death of a young man. Donnie—Donald McIntosh. Did you know him?”

  “I knew of him.” The smile vanished. A veil seemed to have fallen over the priest’s face—or perhaps that was only a trick of the dim light and the flickering candles. And Stanley’s imagination.

  “Did he come here, to Saint…?” Stanley realized he didn’t even know the name of the church.

  “To Saint Boromeo’s? Perhaps. I can’t really say.”

  “But you never saw him yourself? Never took his confession?”

  “No. I never took his confession. Everyone is welcome here regardless, of course. We are here to offer comfort to the weary, and solace to those who are troubled.”

  Stanley could not help thinking of one who had assuredly been troubled, and who presumably had found no solace here.

  “Good night, Father,” he said, and turning his back on the motionless priest, followed the red carpet to the vestibule. The wooden doors complained again faintly as he went out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Outside, he retraced his steps along the main drag and turned down the street that led to Libby’s cabin. Except for the village, there were no streetlights and no sidewalks along the streets in Bear Mountain. After the brightness of shop lights, the darkness was even thicker here. He kept to the verge, walking carefully. None of the houses he passed showed any signs of life, but a dog growled a brief warning off to his right.

  Headlights came up behind him, lighting his way temporarily, sending his own grotesquely elongated shadow dancing before him. A dark sedan, gray, or maybe deep blue, drove slowly by, and once past him, picked up speed.

  Hadn’t he seen that car before, creeping by just like this as he had come out of one of the shops downtown? He watched the taillights brighten as a foot touched brake pedal, and dim again, disappearing a moment later around a corner.

  He gave his head a shake. He’d been too long in San Francisco, probably. You could get paranoid. More than likely, this was some out-of-towner, looking for a rental address. Or just plain lost. And not at all the same car he’d seen earlier.

  How many dark sedans were there in the world?

  Anyway, why would anyone be tailing him? He’d only gotten into town earlier the same day. Not enough time, surely, to make any enemies. There was the gay thing, of course. Gay bashers could pop up anywhere. No doubt Bear Mountain had its share of them. But the usual thing would have been taunts and jeers out an open window as they drove past. These windows had been closed, the car’s occupants silent.

  He turned up the path to Libby’s cabin, and paused to look again at the street, but no dark sedans reappeared.

  Tom would say his imagination was running away with him.

  Most likely, Tom would be right.

  § § § § §

  78 Victor Banis

  The cabin was dark when he let himself in, the door to Carl’s bedroom closed, no light showing underneath it. He undressed in his own room, but he didn’t feel ready yet for sleep. A search in the closet revealed a man’s oversized terry bathrobe, well worn to the point of tatty—Libby’s, he had no doubt. He couldn’t exactly see her entertaining gentlemen callers. He slipped the robe on and let himself out onto the back deck.

  An owl hooted, scolding, then everything was quiet. A breeze had come up, making miniature wavelets on the lake, the water lapping gently at the rocky shore with little cooing sounds. The scent of the pine trees was cool and pungent of resin. Distant across the lake he could see lights and beyond, darkness against darkness, he could just make out the rounded shoulders of the mountain Libby had called Sugarloaf.

  A rush of wings swooped downward and something squeaked, faintly and briefly. The wings rose upward and vanished into the trees. That owl, no doubt, settling down to enjoy supper.

  On the far shore a car’s beams, so tiny they might have been fireflies, disappeared in and out of blackness as it passed trees, houses, rocky outcroppings. On this side of the lake, to the right and left of where he stood, irregular oblongs of light splashed across the shore from the windows of other houses, but it was all shadow here, the neighboring houses dark.