Gravedigger by Joseph Hansen Page A

would we?” He lit a cigarette and raised a hand to bring the waiter back. The odds were awful, but he still wanted to enjoy this. He would have coffee and brandy. Maybe he would act like Trio Foley and devour one of Max’s giant chocolate mousses. “If he was one of those jiggly young women you brought around—the ones who throw pies on television? You’re worse than a prig—you’re a bigot.”
    “Wrong.” Edwards shook his head emphatically. “No way. Why not give your paranoia a rest for a minute and just listen to me?” He was showing anger now, and that pleased Dave. He watched the boy’s sun-browned hand shake as he picked up his stubby glass and drank. “I went through what you’re about to put Cecil through.” He set the glass down, slid the envelope from under the menu, and pushed it at Dave. “Look inside.”
    Dave blinked at him, shrugged, opened the flap, and slid from the envelope eight-by-ten glossy photographs. They were of a naked young man. The top one was. He was slender, his skin was dark, his hair very long, he had no beard or mustache, but it was Miles Edwards. If nothing else showed that, those pale gray eyes did. The waiter came back and looked over Dave’s shoulder. Dave glanced at Edwards, who looked pained if not panicked. Dave slid the first photograph off the stack. The second one involved Edwards with a long-haired blond boy. Naked, and at play on a beach. Not volleyball. Dave looked up at the waiter, young, stocky, his crinkly black hairline low on his forehead. His name was Avram, and he grinned.
    “Don’t stop now,” he said.
    Dave smiled and obliged, turning the photographs over slowly. Some involved two youths, some three, but all featured Edwards. In some, he was alone, but even in these he was sexually active. Dave slid the photographs back into the envelope.
    “Nice prints,” the waiter said. “Good lab work.” Sweat moistened his upper lip. His eyes were large and dark and they pleaded with Edwards.
    “Coffee, please,” Dave said, “and Courvoisier.”
    “And you, sir?” the waiter asked Edwards.
    Edwards was surly, growled, “Wild Turkey,” and handed over his glass. The waiter almost dropped it. He went off, and Edwards said, “I got lost in that world. The man who took those pictures picked me up from a high-school playground. He made me feel special. I lived like a little god. Nothing I could think up he wouldn’t give me, no place in the world he wouldn’t take me—cars, watches, clothes, Jamaica, St. Tropez, Paris, Rome, Tokyo.”
    “If he could just peddle your pictures, right?”
    “It didn’t seem much to ask. He didn’t need the money. He had independent means. Photography was just a hobby. Or maybe not. Maybe only beautiful boys. Anyway, one night when I was asleep, a beautiful boy killed him. On the docks at Marseilles. And there I was, without even a ticket back to the States. I sold the Rolex he’d given me, the camera. I peddled my ass in New York till I nearly froze. Then it was San Francisco, and three successive cases of the clap, and getting locked out of the last ratty room I could get. Then I went back to my family. I was damned lucky they forgave me.”
    “I don’t pick up sailors,” Dave said.
    “But you’re going to die,” Edwards said, “long before he does. You know that. What kind of lies are you telling yourself?”
    “I’ve listened to you,” Dave said. “I don’t want to listen to you anymore, all right?”
    Edwards stood up. “Where’s the men’s room?”
    Dave pointed. “On the way to the kitchen.”
    Edwards went that way. The waiter brought Dave’s coffee and brandy and Edwards’s whiskey. He gazed at Edwards’s empty chair as if his heart would break. Dave told him, “Forget it. He’s going to marry a pretty lady.”
    The waiter’s shoulders slumped. He went away. Dave smoked, finished his coffee, his brandy. Edwards hadn’t come back. Dave checked the men’s room. Empty. He pushed the