"With role models like Oscar Wilde, what can you expect? If only Eleanor Roosevelt had come out." I handed him my business card. "If Billy gets in touch, do him a favor and contact me before you call the cops. They've been in, right?" He nodded. "Just give me a day's head start and then do what you think you have to."

"Well, um—I'll have to think about that. I don't want to get in any trouble. You know?"

"I know."

He inserted the card in a plastic sleeve in his wallet. "Say, where do you think Billy might be hiding?"

"I've no idea."

"I suppose he might be with some other homosexuals, wouldn't you say? They tend to stick together."

"Many do."

"Maybe Billy went to San Francisco."

"Could be. To seek sanctuary with the Mother Church."

Elvin John burst into laughter. "Oh, that's rich! The Mother Church! Like it was the Catholic religion, ha! ha! That really cracks me up! Is that what they call fag humor?"

"Yup."

I had a bowl of chowder and a grilled cheese at Friendly's, made a note to check out Huey and Eddie, then called Timmy from the pay phone. He'd just gotten in and said he had a frozen pizza in the oven, and why didn't I come over?

I said, "The homosexual gourmet at work. A sizable discretionary income, the leisure time to refine one's tastes and skills—it's a good life."

"Right, and I suppose you're calling from Elmo's—no, it's the dinner hour—Wendy's."

"Friendly's."

"You going out?"

"Around nine. Should I pick you up?"

"Yes, and I want to dance. I'm keyed up. I spent the afternoon with a roomful of Democratic county chairmen."

"How about Trucky's? You won't run into too many county chairmen out there. Only two that I know of. Anyway, I have to go there."

"Sure. You have to?"

"Business. The Blounts called. I'm on the case. To find their son."

"I knew it. I'm involved with a man with a reputation."

"They did mention that I had credentials the Pinkerton Agency couldn't necessarily come up with."

"But I thought you knew a couple of Pinkerton guys who—"

"Closet cases. Think of the business Pinkerton must be losing."

"Two, three cases a decade at least. Do you have any idea where the Blounts' son is?"

"No."

"He did it, though, right?"

"The police think so. I haven't formed an opinion. The only thing I know for sure is that it'd be hard growing up in the Blount household without thoughts of homicide at least passing through your mind."

I drove back into the city through the Friday evening commuter traffic. Billy Blount's apartment was on the third floor of a white brick Dutch colonial building on Madison near

New Scotland. It was almost directly across the park from his parents' house.

The front door to the building was locked. I stood in the cold and peered through the heavy glass at the mailboxes in the entryway. One said "H. Pickering." A middle-aged man in a topcoat and knit cap came up the steps and inserted a key in the door. I followed him in and said, "Excuse me, isn't this Helen Pickering's place?"

Two bushy eyebrows went up. "Harry Pickering. I'm Harry Pickering. No other Pickerings live here. What do you want?"

I said, "I'm collecting for the Steve Rubell Defense Fund. Would you care to donate?"

A look of alarm. "You'd better leave, mister."

He shoved the door shut behind me and went up the stairs, glancing back once menacingly. I went and stood at the curb. Ten minutes later a woman in a trench coat and a pretty Indian silk scarf trudged up the stone steps with a bag of groceries. I tagged along.

"This Harry Pickering's place?"

"I think so," she said.

"You should get to know him. One of the sweetest guys you'll ever meet."

She smiled and entered a first-floor apartment, and I walked to the third. Blount's name was printed on a card on the door of 3-A. I went through the lock with a lobster pick that had been a wedding gift from Brigit's cousins Brad and Bootsy, and went in.

The living room, which looked out on Madison and the park, had off-white walls that were bare except for a big poster of the 1969 gay-pride march that had a lot of raised fists and looked like an ad for Levi Strauss. There was a daybed with a faded floral print coverlet and a couple of scruffy easy chairs. A bent coat hanger had replaced the antenna on a battered old black-and-white TV set. The newer, more expensive stereo amplifier and turntable sat on a board resting on cinder blocks, the speakers on either end. The two hundred or so records lined up on the floor between more cinder blocks were mostly disco, with some baroque ensemble stuff—Corelli, Telemann, Bach. No Judy Garland. The post-Stonewall generation.

The fake walnut bookshelves contained a row of old poli-sci textbooks, some fiction paperbacks—Catch-22; Man's Fate; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, other good modern stuff—and a collection of current gay literature: Katz's Gay American History; Out of the Closets and into the Streets; Loving Someone Gay; others. There was a nongay fifteen-year-old assortment of radical opinion: Cleaver, Jackson, Sol Alinsky, various antiwar writers, and a dusty hardback copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth with a bookmark stuck a third of the way into it. He'd tried. He also probably had some politically aware friends who'd come of age in the sixties, making them close to my age.

The small kitchen was clean and appeared to have been little used. The old Frigidaire contained only an egg carton with two eggs, a bottle of Price Chopper ketchup, a pint of plain yogurt, three bottles of Valu Pack beer, and a plastic bag with enough grass left in it for maybe one joint. Another gay gourmand for Edmund White to visit

The bedroom, in the rear, was furnished with a mattress on a box spring; the bed was unmade. On the floor beside the bed lay a copy of the August 27 Advocate, a half-full popper, a telephone, and a phone book. Four first names and numbers had been handwritten on the back cover of the phone book. I copied them down: Huey, Chris, Frank, Mark. Huey again. But no Eddie.

A single bureau was cluttered on top with coins, ball-point pens, old copies of the capital-district gay guide. No personal papers of any kind, not even an unpaid bill. Albany's finest had been there.

The dresser had three drawers. The top one was filled with summer clothing: tank tops, T-shirts, shorts, jeans. The bottom drawers were nearly empty, except for one ratty crew-neck sweater with a dirty collar and a pair of new corduroys with the price tag still stapled on—wrong size, lost the receipt.

The bathroom, a high-ceilinged pit with a dim light bulb about a mile up, had two racks clotted with dirty bath towels and appeared to be missing three items: toothbrush, toothpaste, razor. When Billy Blount disappeared, he'd had his wits about him and probably knew where he was heading: to a wintery place where the population observed habits of oral hygiene and

good grooming. This meant that I would not be searching for Billy Blount among the Ik people, which was a start

I switched off all the lights and was about to depart when Billy's phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, "Blount residence." No one spoke. I was aware, though, of a presence at the other end of the line. I said, "I'm Donald Strachey and I'm trying to locate Billy Blount for his parents, who want to help him. Who's this?" No response. Then, after a time, there came a sort of choked sound, and the line went dead.