Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

About the time that Robert Duvall was holding a barbecue on the beach, a man came in and sat in the row behind Jason, about five seats to his left. As Wagner boomed on the soundtrack and gunships shredded the early morning village with gunfire and explosives, the light from the screen bathed the face of the man and I could see his profile—smooth cheeks interrupted by a trim goatee, close-cropped dark hair, a stud glinting from his earlobe.

During the Do-Long Bridge sequence, as Martin Sheen and Sam Bottoms crawled through a besieged trench looking for the battalion leader, the man moved four seats to his left.

“Hey, soldier,” Sheen yelled over the mortar fire at a young, scared black kid as flares lit up the sky. “Who’s in command here?”

“Ain’t you?” the kid screamed and the guy with the goatee leaned forward and Jason’s head tilted back.

Whatever he said to Jason was brief, and by the time Martin Sheen left the trench and returned to the boat, the guy was stepping out into the aisle and walking back toward me. He was roughly my height and build, maybe thirty, and very good looking. He wore a dark sport coat over a loose green tank-top, battered jeans, and cowboy boots. When he caught me staring, he blinked and looked down at his feet as they carried him out of the theater.

On screen, Albert Hall asked Sheen, “You find the C.O.?”

“There’s no fucking C.O.,” Sheen said and climbed into the boat as Jason left his seat and walked up the aisle.

I waited a full three minutes, then left my seat as the PT boat floated inexorably toward Kurtz’s compound and Brando’s lunatic improvisations. I stuck my head in the

bathroom to be sure it was empty, then left the theater.

Out on Harvard, I blinked into the sudden glare, then looked both ways for Angie, Jason, or the guy with the goatee. Nothing. I walked up to Beacon, but they weren’t there either. Angie and I long ago agreed that the one separated from the chase was the one who went home without the car. So I hummed “O Sole Mio” until I flagged down a cab and rode it back to the neighborhood.

Jason and the guy with the goatee had met for lunch at the Sunset Grill on Brighton Avenue. Angie photographed them from across the street, and in one shot, the hands of both men had disappeared under the table. My initial assumption was drug deal.

They split the tab and, back out on Brighton Ave., their hands grazed against each other, and they both smiled shyly. The smile on Jason’s face wasn’t one I’d seen in the previous ten days. His usual smile was something of a cocky smirk, a lazy grin, rife with confidence. But this smile was unaffected, with a hint of a gush to it, as if he’d had no time to consider it before it broke across his cheeks.

Angie caught the smile and hand-grazing on film. And my assumption changed.

The guy with the goatee walked up Brighton toward Union Square, while Jason walked back to Bryce.

Angie and I spread her photos on her kitchen table that night and tried to decide what to tell Diandra Warren.

This was one of those points when my responsibility to my client was a bit unclear. I had no reason to think Jason’s apparent bisexuality had anything to do with the threatening calls Diandra had received. And I had no reason, on the other hand, not to tell her about the encounter. Still, I didn’t know if Jason was out of the closet or not, and I wasn’t comfortable outing him, particularly when, in that one photograph, I was looking at a kid who, in all the time I’d observed him, looked purely happy for the one and only time.

“Okay,” Angie said, “I think I have a solution.”

She handed me a photograph of Jason and the guy with the goatee in which both were eating, neither really look-

ing at the other, but instead concentrating on their food.

“He met him,” Angie said, “had lunch, that’s all. We show this to Diandra, along with ones of Jason and his women, ask if she knows this guy, but unless she offers, we don’t bring up the possibility of a romance.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“No,” Diandra said. “I’ve never seen this man before. Who is he?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Eric?”

Eric looked at the photo for a long time, eventually shook his head. “No.” He handed it back to me. “No,” he said again.

Angie said, “Doctor Warren, in over a week, this is all we’ve come up with. Jason’s social circle is pretty limited and until this day, exclusively female.”

She nodded, then tapped the head of Jason’s friend with her finger. “Are they lovers?”

I looked at Angie. She looked at me.

“Come now, Mr. Kenzie, you don’t think I know about Jason’s sexuality? He’s my son.”

“So he’s open about it?” I said.

“Hardly. He’s never spoken to me about it, but I’ve known, I think, since he was a child. And I’ve let him know that I have absolutely no problem with homosexuality or bisexuality or any possible permutation thereof without mentioning the possibility of his own. But I still think he’s either embarrassed or confused by his sexuality.” She tapped the photo again. “Is this man a threat?”

“We don’t have any reason to think so.”

She lit a cigarette, leaned back in her couch and watched me. “So where does that leave us?”

“You’ve received no more threats or photos in the mail?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see that we’re doing much more than wasting your money, Doctor Warren.”

She looked at Eric and he shrugged.

She turned back toward us. “Jason and I are going up to a house we have in New Hampshire for the weekend.

When we come back, would you resume watching Jason for just a few more days, put a mother’s mind at rest?”

“Sure.”

Friday morning Angie called to say Diandra had picked up Jason and left for New Hampshire. I’d watched him all through Thursday evening and nothing had happened. No threats, no suspicious characters lurking outside his dorm, no liaison with the guy with the goatee.

We’d worked our asses off trying to identify the guy with the goatee, but it was as if he’d come from mist and to mist he’d returned. He wasn’t a student or teacher at Bryce. He didn’t work at any of the establishments in a mile radius of campus. We’d even had a cop friend of Angie’s run his face through a computer for a felon match, and come up empty. Since he’d met Jason in the open and their meeting had been more than cordial, there was no reason to consider him a threat, so we decided to keep our eyes open until he popped back up again. Maybe he was from out of state. Maybe he was a mirage.