City Dark(80)

“Oh,” Porter said. He appeared confused, not necessarily shocked, but not fully processing it either. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He paused and looked down, then wrinkled his brow and looked up at her. “I think I understand. Evan Bolds is the man at the bottom of the shaft, isn’t he?”

“That needs to be confirmed,” she said, feeling like she should wink at him. “I can tell you Bolds is a person who’s relevant to the case against Joe DeSantos. That’s really why I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s back up some to your connection with Joe. I have some information on Joe’s backstory, including how he was raised for a while by his uncle. I assume you knew the uncle as well? Mike Carroll?”

“Of course,” Nate said. It was as if the first mention of Joe’s name had brought the whole time period back to him. Now he seemed confident, not dreamy.

“Can you tell me about him?”

“Mike Carroll and I were lovers. I mean . . . there were thousands of men in this town who could have said that about each other in the ’70s, but . . . we were a thing for a while.”

“A couple.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Oh man.” He sighed. “I met Mike in ’76; I remember Rocky came out later that same year. We were both in social work. He was in Staten Island. I was in Chelsea. We met at a city conference. The New Yorker Hotel.”

“Were you dating when the blackout happened the following July? That’s a subject Joe and I discussed before his arrest.”

“We were dating, yes. That was a very strange night. It was how I met the boys, Joe and his older brother. I think he went by Robbie.”

“Robbie is how Joe refers to him,” Zochi said. “I know it was a long time ago. I’m not sure how much detail I need, but what can you tell me about that night?”

“Well, the phones were working. I was in the city with a mutual friend of ours who owned a coffee shop near Port Authority. Mike reached me there. He said he had two nephews in the city who had gotten separated from their mother. The police were telling people to stay off the phone except for emergencies, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions. He said the boys would come to where I was. He asked if I could guide them to Staten Island. About an hour later, they showed up. I remember that Joe had torn his shorts really badly. Poor kid was basically in his underwear.”

Porter smiled for a moment, as if seeing it all again. Zochi could almost picture it herself: jumpy candlelight, two sweaty kids, some guy’s coffee shop with the door propped open. Other than the propped-open door, her vision was spot on.

“Anyway, we went around the corner to see if we could find some shorts for Joe. Things went sideways there. We got into a tight spot with the owner of the store, and . . . well, Robbie got angry and left. I got Joe home, but I didn’t see Robbie again that night.” He looked genuinely troubled at this, as if the event had happened recently and not forty summers ago. “After that, Robbie wasn’t around much, but I saw Joe. Mike brought him into the city a few times. We ice skated in Central Park around Christmas. Mike and I broke up, though, about a year later.”

“And there was no contact after that?”

“No, we needed a clean break.” He shook his head and smiled wistfully. “Mike wouldn’t come out of the closet. I wasn’t a radical, but I was way out compared to a guy like Mike. I lived in Chelsea. I was active in politics. That kind of thing. Mike couldn’t be that way.”

“He was from Staten Island,” Zochi said with a shrug.

“That was a part of it, sure. We all had our reasons in those days. I didn’t judge Mike. I just couldn’t go on that way. He liked the island too. He was provincial that way. He had his delis, his diners. He didn’t want to live in Manhattan. My life was here, and his was there, raising two boys.”

“Did you hear that he had died?”

“I did, but . . . honestly, I couldn’t tell you what year.”

“It was 1985. Joe was a senior in high school.”

“That makes sense,” he said, nodding. “It’s just all a blur.”

“You’ve been through a lot tonight.”

“It’s not that,” he said, appearing defensive for the first time. He seemed to catch himself. “Mike and I broke up about two years before AIDS hit New York. I don’t know how to describe what I—what we—went through next. By 1985, I had lost dozens of friends. Maybe hundreds. I became numb to the news after a while.”

They spoke for a few minutes longer, but Zochi wasn’t grasping much in terms of puzzle pieces fitting together. Evan Bolds was a guy Joe was connected to. Bolds had attacked Nate, whom Joe was also connected to. But why? She needed to think on it, but for the time being she needed to let this poor old guy get some sleep.





CHAPTER 64


Thursday, July 14, 1977

Forty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue

Manhattan

1:15 a.m.

“Cabrito needs some new pants,” the fat man said, looking sideways at Nate. Joe blushed and pulled his shirt down lower. The man’s name was Ricky, and it was his shop. He had given Joe and Robbie each a grape soda.

“I don’t know where we’d find any clothes right now,” Nate said to Ricky. “Do you have anything extra here?”