Blood Count. Jack Batten
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yuppies go mad for?”
“Sure,” I chipped in. “Ian was out most nights. Open houses on the weekends. I used to see him dragging in at crazy hours.”
“Well?” Alex had a defensive challenge in his voice. “You see why I believed him about the flu? And how he was too busy to take to his bed?”
“Alex,” Annie said, “nobody could have suspected AIDS, not you, not anybody in your position.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” Alex said, “but I did go through a guilt period. The guilt is one of Ian’s legacies.”
Conversation slacked off. Annie seemed to have checked out of the questioning, at least temporarily.
“Plus the anger,” I said to Alex. “Ian left that behind him.”
“That, too.”
“Maybe you ought to see somebody,” I said. “You know, a professional, a shrink. Get rid of the bad stuff in your head.”
“I’ve a more satisfying therapy planned, don’t you fret about that.”
“Yeah, well, a guy shouldn’t practise psychiatry on himself, especially if he isn’t a psychiatrist.”
“Crang, think of this,” Alex said, leaning forward in his chair and enunciating each word as if he was addressing a slow student. “The swine who gave Ian AIDS.”
“Come again?”
“I’m going to confront him. That’s my notion of therapy.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Ian, in fact, supplied a name that goes with the guy?”
“The murderer.” Alex’s voice had an edge. “Why not call him by what he is and what he did? He murdered Ian.”
I spent some time on my vodka, a pause to give Alex space to simmer down. “I don’t know,” I said, “there’ve been cases of guys who had AIDS, knew they had it, and went ahead and engaged in sex with other people and they got charged. Convictions registered in a couple cases for criminal assault. But murder? No way, Alex.”
“Oh, Crang.” Alex hadn’t simmered down. “Stop sounding like a lawyer.”
“Occupational hazard. I am one.”
“I know that, but can’t you see? I don’t give a flying fuck about the law.”
Sitting on the sofa, I didn’t pick up any vibrations that Annie was intending to return to the fray.
“Listen, Alex,” I said, “back to square one. You got a name for the guy who infected Ian or not?”
“Not.”
“Okay, I’d say it’s game over.”
“I think Ian must have held back on his killer’s name because he read my reaction. He saw how furious I was over everything.”
“Does it matter now?” I raised my hand and wobbled it back and forth. “All that counts is no name, no confrontation.”
“But I’ve got something almost as good,” Alex said.
“Something Ian gave you?”
“Where he met his killer. The very place Ian met him.”
Annie and I exchanged a fast glance.
“Oh, don’t look at each another that way,” Alex said. “I’m not crackers, and I don’t need anybody humouring me.”
“Well, listen to yourself,” I said. “The place Ian met his killer. Even if you should go rooting after the guy, which is pointless right there, destructive really, the place by itself can’t be much help.”
“It can, believe me on that, my friend.”
“What? Some office Ian did business in? One of his open houses? Along those lines?”
“I’m keeping the location to myself, so don’t bother cross-examining.”
“Helping is what I figured on.”
Alex was silent for a couple of moments. “I appreciate that, honestly,” he said. “I appreciate just sitting here with the two of you. But what I’ve got to do, I’ve got to do alone.”
Alex stopped himself.
“Did you hear that?” he said. “I sound like John Bloody Wayne.”
“Even John Wayne had a sidekick,” I said. “Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, or somebody.”
“Crang,” Alex said, “on this, I am alone and very determined.”
Alex got a look on his face that I would have called determined.
“Finding the man who murdered Ian,” he said, “is a rather personal crusade, if you like.”
The room seemed to have become much quieter.
“I’m going to find him,” Alex said. “And when I do, pardon the drama, my dears, I am going to kill the bastard.”
Chapter Two
Annie asked if I was awake.
Alex had gone downstairs around eleven thirty. Annie and I sat up another half hour. We had a final drink and ate some of the bitty Simpsons sandwiches, mostly chopped egg with pimento mixed in. Annie said she didn’t feel like going home. She has a flat on the third floor of a nice old house in Cabbagetown. We went to bed at my place. When she asked if I was awake, the digital clock on the VCR against the far wall of the bedroom read 2:41 a.m.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I thought so. You weren’t making the right noises.”
I rolled over on my back. “What do you mean, noises?” I said. “You implying I snore?”
“More of a whistling sound.”
“Through my nose?”
“Your mouth.”
“That’d be a fantastic feat, if I whistled through my nose. Probably’ve got me on The Gong Show.”
“Crang.”
Annie did a lot of rustling in the bed. She shifted one hundred and eighty degrees so that she faced me. She had my Greenpeace T-shirt on.
“Do you think Alex is serious?” she asked me in the dark. I could feel and smell her breath. It was still sweet. I knew mine would smell rank. All I had to do was lie down and my breath turned sour.
“I go one way, then the other,” I said. “I tell myself it’s an aberration of the temporary sort, what Alex was saying. But I don’t know, the way he sounded, he didn’t seem to be kidding.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Do you think he’s serious?”
“That’s why I’m having trouble getting to sleep.”
“What are you going to do about it?” I asked. “About Alex?”
“Back you up every way I can,” Annie said. “But, honey, you’re the one who’s had experience with this sort of thing.”
“With what sort of thing? A murdered person?”
“That exact sort of thing,” Annie said. She reached over and laid her right hand on my chest. I didn’t have on a Greenpeace T-shirt or anything else.
“Yeah,” I said. “But my experience, the few times I got involved, has always been after the people were already dead. What Alex is talking about, it’s before the fact. I don’t know where I’d start, apart from maybe putting a lock on Alex.”
“That’s okay,” Annie said. She withdrew her hand from my chest