The Catamite

a private-eye story  
 
Just give me another, okay? You know I’m good for it. And I’ve not driven since three months ago when that cop hauled me in for chasing a punk down a culvert in the Bay.    
   
So anyway, I got the job - a while before the last war - sitting in my car outside Georgie’s place. Georgie’s was a speakeasy just off Main, in a house where the bigwigs went, so as long as you kept your nose clean Eliot Ness and his boys let you be.    
   
I was counting through bills to give to the doorman when a fruity-looking guy walks up in a lime green open-neck and hoochie pants so tight you can see what you shouldn’t.    
   
He leaned on the door and asked if I was a detective. Sometimes, I said, who’d you hear from? He gave me a name and it seemed safe enough, so I asked him his business. He wanted to locate someone he called his “old Okie gal”, an Oklahoma farm girl who’d fled to San Fran when her daddy chucked her out. He showed me a faded photograph of a young woman, no older than twenty, with a rose in her long golden curls. She had a strong jaw and deep-set eyes, could have passed for a sailor in drag, but who was I to judge men’s tastes? I told him to write down everything he knew and see me tomorrow at my office on Main. I’d have her tracked down in a week.    
   
***    
   
The next morning came and I was sleeping off a hangover when my secretary Janice called through. I left my sunglasses on, hoping to hide how ugly I looked. He still seemed fresh enough, the hoochie pants still showing what they shouldn’t as Janice’s disapproving gaze followed them in. ‘Elmer Sachs, PI’ he said, repeating the stencilled legend on my door.    
   
‘At your service, Strange Man in Tight Pants.’    
   
One side of my guest’s mouth curled up in a sardonic gesture at humour. ‘The name’s Whitman’ he said. ‘I run a boutique out on Elmwood Way.’    
   
I whistled. Elmwood was where the rich women shopped, and sometimes the men if they were dressing to impress the street’s female clientele.    
   
He handed me a folded sheet of paper. It told me in neat script that Ada Raymond was the Okie that he sought, that she was 22 years old, 5 ft 5, had no known connections in the city but was seen in the company of a well-dressed Englishman, or English professor (Whitman’s source wasn’t sure which, being perpetually half-cut), at a club called The Promenade. I asked Whitman if he was sweet on her.    
   
‘She’s my sister’ he replied without expression.    
   
‘So it’s not quite true that she had no connections.’    
   
Whitman sighed. ‘Our daddy was rough on both of us’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I lit out first, with a friend from school who has a knack for clothes. I’ve always been good at selling, so between the two of us, we’ve made a good life for ourselves. I thought that Ada would follow me here when she realised how dumb it was to stay, and I got a letter from her saying as much, and where we could meet. But somehow our wires got crossed, and all I know now is that she’s been hanging around this Englishman, or whatever he is.’    
   
When Whitman left I put the paper and photograph in an envelope that would be my case file. I shrugged on my overcoat and set out for The Promenade, but not before a brief word with Janice. ‘You think he’s trouble’ I said.    
   
‘There’s something about him’ she said. ‘Not trouble, per se.’    
   
‘He didn’t give you any funny business, did he?’ Janice laughed. ‘Oh, Elmer’ she said, ‘you can be daft.’    
   
***    
   
The Promenade was empty on that grey afternoon, though a pianist played in the hope that tips would fall from a hole in the roof. I saw an old-timer in threadbare suspenders who looked like he might have been Whitman’s source-on-the-sauce, nursing what both he and the barman would swear was a club soda. Places like this, I supposed, survive on the cops getting a kickback from proceeds. All Prohibition did was increase corruption.    
   
I decided to leave the old-timer alone and consult the barman, a fellow I knew with predator’s eyes, recording everything. I showed him my case file. ‘The Englishman’ he said, ‘I recognise him. Lives in the apartment block near the college. He’s actually from New York but puts on airs. Word is he came here because he got chased out of his last employment for messing with students. You ask me, temptation’s too great to leave a red-blooded man alone with co-eds.’    
   
I tracked down the block that he meant with a little help from public records and a name that he was able to give me. Mr Sherwood Colson. I hung around the college cafes, little bistros that served the students and which were a hotbed of gossip. From a co-ed with thick-rimmed glasses and a twinset-and-pearls, susceptible to flattery, I ascertained that Mr Colson taught Classics and was a cold fish who never socialised or shared a joke with anyone. She laughed and almost spat out her coffee when I asked if he’d ever talked about going to The Promenade. ‘Cold Fish Colson in a jazz joint?’ she sputtered, ‘you’d sooner see me on the cover of a swimsuit magazine.’ I assured her that she’d be a veritable bathing beauty and left to visit this queer professor.    
   
***    
   
The apartment block revolved around a courtyard. Someone had lent the place more class than it deserved by planting a rose garden, while trellises long-choked with weeds divided the windows. My knock at a particular door was answered by a tall and angular, austere-looking bird of prey with thin spectacles. I flashed him my detective licence and stated my business and he ever so slightly stood aside to let me in.    
   
He served me coffee in a china cup. The apartment had little in the way of a personal touch, just a bookcase and some watercolour prints in the den. I noticed a closet at the far end of which was an old-fashioned trunk with studded iron bands.    
   
He shook his head when I showed him the picture of Whitman’s sister and said that he only visited The Promenade because he was writing a report on jazz (“the Black Man’s gospel”) for a conservative magazine. Big Republican, was Cold Fish Colson. He spoke in a clipped and mannered style, though his New York accent shone through in the occasional vowel sound.    
   
I decided to try a risky hand and ask about the rumours as to why he’d left his last employment. ‘I don’t mind telling you’ he said, ‘that it was because of an absurd and disgusting rumour that I’d taken one of the boys as my catamite.’

‘Your what?’    
   
‘A catamite, detective, is a boy kept for perverted sexual practices.’    
   
Before our interview ended I glanced at one of the prints, which I realised was actually of a young woman by a lake, reclining before her reflection in the water.    
   
When I brought what I’d found to Whitman he asked many questions, about the old-fashioned trunk, the paintings, and whether I believed Professor Colson’s claims about either Ada Raymond or the accusation of pederasty. In truth, I was at a loss. If Colson was interested in boys, what would he have wanted with Ada? And if he had seduced Ada, what was the smoke behind the fire that led him to abandon New York? Did his depravity extend to both sexes? He seemed odd certainly, a cold and calculating man who might be lying about everything and nothing at any particular time.    
   
I told Whitman that I planned to secret myself in the courtyard and stake out our highfalutin creep, see if a visit from a PI had spooked him into doing something suspect. Whitman asked what time I would start and we parted for the night. ‘Just make sure you get him’ he said, ‘if you find that he got her.’    
   
***    
   
It was gone midnight when, hidden behind a convenient tree with binoculars in hand like a bird-watcher (if I was lucky; “peeping tom caught in bushes” if not), I saw the light in Colson’s den go on and a second shadow creep up behind him when he twitched the net curtains. I checked the gun at my side and prepared to reluctantly perform some heroics. I hadn’t been expecting a gunfight, but it always pays to come prepared.    
   
When I reached his door I found it unlocked. It let out a gut-wrenching whine as I pushed it open and entered the hall. Two distinct voices came from the den, one seemingly gagged. I kicked aside the door and strode in, gun cocked and ready to kill.    
   
I won’t forget what I saw next. There was Colson on the floor, hogtied, mouthed gagged and one eye blacked. He looked more scared than I’d seen anyone since the last war. To his right and at a distance was the old-fashioned trunk. It was open, and a dead pale hand seemed to reach from within.    
   
It was then that I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head and was rendered unconscious.    
   
***    
   
I awoke with a splitting headache to find my hands and feet bound. ‘I’m sorry about this’ said someone unseen. My blurry vision focused and Whitman was standing there. The hoochie pants were gone and instead, he wore plain denim below a thick black sweater. He appeared to be covered in blood. A second change of clothes was hung from a doorknob and the fireplace crackled. He stripped stark nude and threw his executioner’s robes to the flames.    
   
‘Please don’t scream’ he said. ‘If you do I’ll knock you out again, and I’d like to explain why I did all this.’ My eyes followed him to a bucket of water in which he washed his hands.    
   
‘Where’s Colson?’ I asked.    
   
‘In the trunk. I had some fun with him, as you can see.’ My sleep had been haunted by muffled crying. I’d hoped that it was just my imagination.    
   
‘She wasn’t my sister’ said Whitman as he put on new clothes. ‘Heck, she wasn’t even a she. His name was Adam Raymond and we went to school together, back in Oklahoma. I loved him very much.’    
   
He finished dressing and sat on a chair in front of me. He’d propped me up by the fireplace. ‘He told me once that if he’d just been born a girl he would have turned out okay.’ Tears were starting in Whitman’s eyes. ‘I took him to a fair when we were teenagers, him all dressed up as a girl and people thinking he’s my date, telling us to hurry up and have kids. We got that picture taken, the one I gave you.’ He laughed through the tears, not bitterly. ‘His daddy would have put him in the ground if he’d known.    
   
‘Adam was sensitive, you know? I took care of him and people didn’t think much about it. Didn’t know what we did when no one was looking. We hit upon the idea that I’d buy him some clothes, and dress him up, so if anyone saw us fooling around they’d think he was a streetwalker.’ He wiped his nose with one hand. The tears were flowing now. ‘We figured it out on our own. It’s amazing what you can do if you’ve got half a mind.’ He let out a yelping laugh. ‘You wouldn’t believe how normal it felt, him with his knees pushed up to his chest, in a ratty old wig. The first time we made love… I thought I’d died, it felt so good. I’d been with girls and liked it fine, I guess, but Adam was something else. He had good times written all over him.    
   
‘When I lit out for San Fran I made him promise that he’d follow me once the harvest was ended and he could slip away without his daddy knowing. I’m gonna go to my grave still blaming myself. ‘Cause it’s my fault, you see? He came up here scared and alone, a young man off the bus, two months early. I told him to wait and write to me first but things must have gotten really bad at the farm. He probably thought he’d spend the night here, not having no place else to go, and look for me in the morning. But this animal…’ He spat the last word as he looked at the trunk, the contents of which I didn’t care to see.    
   
He faced me again. ‘I’m not going to hurt you’ he said. ‘I’m going to clean up here and catch a bus out of state. All I ask is that you give me an hour before you scream the place down. I’m banking on you not wanting it to get about that you were bested by a queer, that you'll make something up for the cops. But maybe you judge me too much to let your reputation bother you.’    
   
‘Eh, I don’t judge you’ I said, spitting out a loose tooth. ‘In my line of work, we’re all a little queer.’    
   
He liked that. He smiled and kissed me on the forehead, then tousled my hair like he was older than me, like he knew something about life that I didn’t. Heck, maybe he did.    
   
***    
   
I found out later that he’d set himself up with a Sappho in Vegas, the two of them serving as each other’s beards. And she was quite the bearded lady, running a jazz joint that became a casino, one of the few to hold out against Mafia takeover. They made themselves seem like a pair of normals, as much as they could.    
   
But I happen to know that he always kept a photograph of his old Okie gal, hidden like the catamite was, a secret sliver of the self.    
   
And that’s all I have to say about that. At least until you pour me another.