“Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”
- George Washington
The Chad Party
Dave’s plane touched down in La Guardia on November 9th from Dallas-Ft. Worth. For once he had thrown caution to the winds and flown first class, enjoying the service and pampering. The meal had come in three courses, served on linen. The first course consisted of an appetizer of salmon pate with French bread that smelled and felt so fresh he actually did take a moment to inhale as he let a pat of butter melt on it. That was followed by a salad of vegetables marinated in a savory basil dressing and a veal cutlet so thin and tender it literally melted in his mouth. The cutlet came with the thinnest, crispest asparagus he had ever tasted. A chocolate mouse topped with a piquant raspberry sauce followed along afterwards with a flow of full bodied coffee. As he ate he thought about the events of the last few days.
He had thought the election would be over and, along with the rest of the country, lived in hourly suspense. But now he was not sure if it mattered which of the two candidates won. Either way, it seemed to him that America would be the loser. He yearned fleetingly for a return to the respect and confidence he had felt when he knew that President William Wallace occupied the Oval Office. 1980 seemed like a million years in the past.
He had not been able to discover anything more about George’s death. He had spent one long night in the truck stop where George had been found dead, but the thin whisper of the trees that backed the parking area and the sounds of the highway were his only company. He called Dolly; she sounded sad and a little distant.
Dave was sure someone had killed George, but what had preceded the death evaded both his imagination and the ascertainable facts. He had now put inquiries into the hands of the most highly recommended private detective he could find. He knew the answers must be in the meeting with someone close to Humstead. He was not sorry to have spent the last six weeks rolling around America in a motor home. He had gotten to know some fine people he otherwise would never have met and learned things that provided invaluable insight.
Dave had been forwarding his phone messages to his cell phone so no one was really aware he was away--he had just been busy with the online business he had supposedly started. Most of his communications had been accomplished via the Internet, and he had at first tentatively and then routinely begun e-mailing Lindsey. She possessed a wicked sense of humor and with the first story about her friend Babbs, had begun keeping him apprised on the happenings in the circle of acquaintance they now shared through the Fabituso Society and Republican circles in New York. Lindsey had also fallen into e-mail communication with Nann, a development that struck him as a little frightening since nothing seemed to delight the two of them more than discussing him.
It was in this way that Dave was invited to what later came to be known as The Chad Party, an event that had drawn out a diverse group of people from Conservative to Liberal to politically inert. This last group included members of the New York Literati as well as the Show Business Bunch, a group held in both contempt and envy by all of the former.
Lindsey had invited all of her friends, a large number which now included himself, Nann, and Jim, to attend. Nann was busy with her new job in human resources for a very large company. She and Jim were living near Washington Park, not far from NYU’s dispersed campus. Soon after he got home, the four of them got together for dinner at a place Jim especially liked, a Tibetan restaurant on 3rd Avenue just shy of 32nd. Over drinks and a slow, smooth menu of oncoming courses, the four of them talked. Lindsey and Nann ran the conversation; he and Jim sat back and listened, injecting comments and defenses as necessary. They were men, what could they know?
Dave had started uploading new data and analysis from the road. That helped him keep up, but there was still a lot to do. Money has to be managed, he discovered. He was learning.
He and Lindsey had fallen into an odd not-dating but going out and talking relationship different than he had ever had with any woman. They were friends who ate and did movies together and occasionally spent a couple of hours on the phone, just talking. Dave kept a pad of paper at the ready when they talked by phone because, without even knowing it, Lindsey was supplying him with information he could have gotten no place else. Gossip carries with it information about any individual’s character and this gossip was never going to appear on Page 3.
Dave was not sure how she did it, but Lindsey met everyone. He had read about the theory of six degrees of separation but with Lindsey everyone seemed to be much closer than that. Lindsey also had a good memory for stories she had heard from her mother and shocked Dave down through his shoes with some of the stories she retold about prominent people her mother knew.
One that struck him as more odd, though it amused him, was about the prominent economist Drab Freeport, the son of Melvin Freeport the even more prominent economist who won the Nobel Prize a few years back and who, with his wife, wrote books the public actually read on free-market economics. Lindsey’s mother had taken her along to a Libertarian supper club she ran when Lindsey was a child. Linden thought this would be educational and sat her right next to Drab--so she could soak up some good insights on markets and such interesting issues as Laffer Curves. But that is not what Drab talked about. At first he just ate his dinner, not talking at all. Then they served dessert, vanilla ice cream. Drab proceeded to inform Lindsey that vanilla ice cream was made out of white rats. He was very graphic about the process by which fuzzy little white rodents were converted into this tasty dessert. Horrified, Lindsey let her ice cream start to melt. That was when Drab pounced and ate it, telling Lindsey it should not be permitted to go to waste. Too many little rats had died that it be made. Freeport’s talk had been on the regulatory interventions now subjecting their economy to distortive influences. That had put Lindsey to sleep, she confessed.
This amused Lindsey now; at the time it clearly had not.
Dave was left, again, to wonder about the people one met in politics and policy. It seemed an odd thing to do to a child. Evidently Linden had thought so, too.
It was all the way into December when the Chad Party took place, but Dave had been hearing about the plans for several weeks.
Babbs Bronson was hostessing the party, but some things were all Lindsey. Babbs was doing the greeting, taking coats and stowing them very conventionally in the first bedroom off the hallway. She was bubbly, carrying on an ongoing dialogue with her new boy friend (who had taken over servicing the bar), with Lindsey, and with arriving and arrived guests.
The food was laid out in the office area off of the living room. A Greek amphora, unusual because it was decorated, immediately struck Dave. It was sitting upright in a basin of sand on the shelf on the far wall. Dave walked over and looked at it closely. The painting on it was faded but amazingly it was unbroken. The study was an open, spacious place filled with other fascinating art work as well. Babbs had some discernment. No one else was paying attention to anything but the food.
In the center of the table were two cakes that no one but Lindsey would have made. One was a perfect representation of a butterfly ballot with tiny chads dangling and the other one, chocolate cake and vanilla frosting, was decorated with a chorus of dancing chads with tiny feet and shoes and cheesy grins. Dave was amazed at the detail; the shoes even had tiny laces.
Lindsey had been hard at work finishing up the tiny quiches when he walked in to Babbs apartment, located on the Upper West Side. It was a huge old apartment still under rent control located in a very upscale building with hot and cold running doormen.
Dave thought he would be early, but there were already a hoard of journalists from the Post clustered around the drinks table and grazing over the buffet. Lindsey had hardly placed the quiches when one paunchy journalist Dave recognized from the Republican Convention inhaled six or eight of them.
Nann and Jim had not arrived and Lindsey, rejecting any assistance, was involved in the kitchen with some simmering dumplings, so Dave sat down next to an older man who was sucking on an unlit pipe. The man sat up a bit. He had very grey hair, still bushy, and disordered eyebrows standing at attention over dancing brown eyes.
“Dave Elder,” Dave reached forward to grasp the man’s gnarled hand.
“Lancelot O’Hara” the man smiled. “I thought you must be Dave.”
Dave blushed down into his roots, recognizing the name of one of Lindsey’s friends he had not yet met. But he had heard about him.
Lancelot O’Hara was something of a legend in New York and in Sag Harbor. The genial septuagenarian had done everything there was to do and enjoyed himself largely, according to those who knew him. His exploits, as reported by Lindsey, nearly defied belief. No less than seven best sellers had been written at what he lovingly, if ironically, referred to as his compound in Sag Harbor. Of course, he had not written any of the books himself. In his apartment in Manhattan an owl that had figured prominently in the still ongoing TV filming of Saturday Night Alive perched in threatening if dusty splendor atop a book shelf. Lindsey had described it, along with the other bits of memorabilia that cluttered the comfortable abode at the corner that abutted the Washington Arch.
Lancelot had also worked in Army intelligence during the period after the Korean War and before Vietnam when the CIA was assembling itself as an institution within American government. As they settled down into conversation, Dave asked about Lance’s life in Hong Kong. Lance, always delighted to have an attentive audience, told him.
The CIA was still wet behind the ears when Lance experienced the depth and breadth of their little games in Hong Kong and other places where he served around the world. Lance’s words always came with a thread of dry sarcasm. Dave had been doing research on all of the intelligence arms of the U.S. and foreign governments as an adjunct of his larger inquiries, but was immediately fascinated by the stories and insight provided by the former professor and intelligence officer.
It was really all a game to them, Lance said, smiling a little as if seeing it all again.
“You could really imagine them leaping out of the covers of a James Bond novel,” Lance said, patting just the tips of his fingers together as they rested lightly on his lap, the pipe put aside for the moment. “That was how they saw themselves, cold warriors clutching cold steel, doing battle against great difficulties and danger; always victorious, naturally.” The old man sat up a little, leaning forward towards Dave, who was listening, his attention riveted.
“Of course, it was not true. They wanted there to be danger and drama but for the most part they created it themselves. More like Cowboys and Indians than anything else. Oh, excuse me. Now a days we should say the Bad Group of Misguided but ultimately repairable misanthropes against the Group who are resonate with the Force. Does that work better?” Lance smiled. It was a charming smile and Dave responded immediately, laughing.
“I am not addicted to political correctness,” Dave smiled. “What happened?”
Still smiling, Lance went on to explain that America had not had an intelligence arm before World War II and so when the CIA made its debut under Wild Bill Donovan, they were very much affected by the individuals who were on the scene. Most of these had been second or third stringers from three colleges, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
Dave frowned. “What do you mean by second and third stringers?”
“My dear boy, it worked like this,” said Lance. “First the Corporations would swing through and do the cherry picking, taking the best and the brightest off to corporate-style careers. Then some went on to law school, of course, and we knew those would be showing up in politics. Then the residue would be sucked into the great machine of intelligence and into the inner workings of the CIA.” Lance looked at Dave.
“That really is how it was done, you know.”
Dave’s look of enlightenment made no further words necessary. Lance continued.
“To them it really was James Bond. I remember one time in Hong Kong. The word came down from on high that we had a need to do interviews with refugees then passing through Hong Kong from China. You might not know that the Chinese government; it did this kind of thing; decided that everyone who was not Chinese, meaning that they had lived there for only three generations, had to leave. Immediately. So in Hong Kong there was this steadily growing flood of people, families hauling everything they could carry, on their way to somewhere. Obviously, they were not going ‘home’ they hadn’t any home! But the United Nations Refugee Program helped them with resettlement. Many went to Australia but they ended up everywhere. So, Intelligence from on high mandated that we do exit interviews so that we could get a kind of eye into China, which was closed then. My idea was that we settle them down for a hot meal and just ask questions but you did have to find them. They went through the exit process pretty quickly. The CIA went into a huddle, comparing notes and difficulties. They issued estimates of time requirements, started several conspiracies and sent agents into Red China. I went down to the Counsel’s office and asked for the list and their addresses. The Counsel just gave it to me. No problem.
Lance went on to itemize similar approaches by the CIA to a variety of Intelligence inquiries. These included the amount of airplane fuel available at any given time, a fact the State Department decided it needed and asked the CIA to provide. The request was passed along to him while the CIA went through their usual drill. State really wanted the information quickly for some reason. Lance had gotten the figures by simply requesting it from each of the five airlines that then flew in to Hong Kong. Four airlines had given it to him over the phone. The fifth he had gotten by calling the airport authority and asking for the total amount held by all airlines and deducting the other four amounts. Simple.
Dave shook his head. It was hard to comprehend the kind of mind that would see complexities and conspiracies everywhere. Then he thought about the image of James Bond. He had seen some of the movies on late night TV. Now he realized why they seemed so fantastical and unreal. They were; but they were also founded on the author’s perception of the CIA.
From where Dave was sitting he could see the front door. Just as he was about to ask some more questions Nann and Jim appeared, shedding coats. Lindsey caromed out of the kitchen and hugged Nann. Their hair merged for just a moment in a long shining glaze of gold. Then they came over in a clump to fetch him. Shaking hands with Lance, he promised to come by some time for a visit. Lance looked from Lindsey to Dave and sighed deeply.
The cake was wonderful, rich, creamy and moist. Lindsey had made the frosting with real butter. Dave had three pieces, passing up the quiche.
Lindsey made a point of introducing Nann and Jim to most of her friends, but Dave was introduced as a friend of theirs. Lindsey was nervous when Nann and Jim arrived, he could feel that. Why, he wondered. Except for Babbs, she knew more people in the room than anyone else.
A solid fraction of those present were familiars from the Fabituso Society. Also present were liberals and a respectable selection of literati from the political opposition in New York. The two groups in some cases eyed each other as if staring over a vast divide; but some of them actually talked.
Dave took Nann and Jim over to meet Lance, who was delighted to flirt lightly with Nann; the old man had told Dave he had a strong preference for blonds, too. While the three of them were sitting there next to the long, low windows that let in the noise and sights from the City, Lance shared yet another astonishing story.
This was the story of Dixon’s Clock.
Vice President Dixon had made a trip to Taiwan to visit the U.S. recognized Republic of China presided over by Chiang Kai-shek. As was his usual practice, the Vice President sent along an appropriate memento of the event afterwards. In this case what he deemed appropriate was a rather ponderous table clock with a brass plate inscribed with the date of the visit and his name.
Lance might have lived on in complete ignorance of the clock’s existence but it was conveyed to the President of China from the Office of the Vice President by being entrusted to the care of an airline pilot who handed it off in turn to another pilot who presumably was to have delivered it to the embassy in Taiwan. But it never arrived.
Lance, as the Officer in charge of Intelligence, therefore received a call from the frantic Office of the Vice President. This launched him into action. He had his driver take him forthwith to the airport with his translator. There, the small contingent interrogated the staff and were pointed to the very elderly Chinese man who cleaned out the planes after they had emptied.
The Chinese man listened carefully to the inquiries of the translator and at some point in the dialogue a look of comprehension lighted his face. He then led the group to a packing crate correctly addressed to the Embassy. It was sitting on a shelf just inside the baggage claim area.
Lance took it straight to the Embassy for appropriate handling. Pausing at this point, Lance told the listeners that a CIA mission had been launched to find the package and had determined that it had been stolen as part of a covert mission to disrupt American Chinese relations. So officially the clock had never arrived. Lance hoped it actually worked.
Everyone laughed except Dave. His inquiries into the CIA had made him wonder if this last joke were actually true.
The television had been droning on in the background when Tough Talk, billed as The Cutting Edge of Political Commentary, came on. Someone turned up the volume amid a mixed reaction from the crowd. The subject was the Florida variety of chads.
Commentators proceeded to argue vociferously over the still unfolding drama. The pundits were in full cry, giving their opinions about everything under the sun as they continued to weave in opinion with a smattering of fact. Franklin Leadpart went on about the latest efforts by Vice President Armstrong Fore to have votes counted with or without chads. The Branch camp reacted vociferously to the speech by Vice President Fore, opining on with exactly the same well-honed phrases they had used the last time they were asked. All of the nuances of these various revelations were then discussed again by commentators Ralph Gibbons, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Dale Sorenson, a Republican from South Carolina.
Dave watched. Some of those in the room glanced at the set and talked over the cacophony. Some of these began moving towards the back of the room, away from the set or disappearing into the hall ways and adjacent rooms. Others began glancing at the screen, their attention wandering from those around them. Soon there were two groups of people. Interesting.
Lindsey had told Dave over coffee the week before that Babbs had a new boy friend. She had rolled her eyes a little when she mentioned it. The long and involved adventures of Babbs had become a continuing saga that Dave followed with trepidation and interest.
Babbs new boyfriend, Gregory Linderheim, was up from his home in Florida to spend time on business in New York. Gregs, as Babbs called him, was a financial planner. From what Lindsey had said that brisk afternoon as she sat snugly smiling at him in the Starbucks at 45th & Park Avenue as curls of paper whipped by outside carried in the wind that was also penetrating good Republican cloth coats on the sidewalk, Gregs would most likely prove to be a serial murderer. Babbs track record was one long and continuous disaster, not just for her but for everyone to whom she became attached. In odd moments like this Lindsey filled him in on the History of Babbs. This proved to be an astonishing collation of stories, all of which contained elements of both the tragic and the absurd.
Two years ago Babbs had been engaged to a man, Darrel Larson, who seemed like just the right guy. He had given her a gorgeous diamond ring that had belonged to his mother. Then he had borrowed money from her after moving in and grazing through her other assets. Babbs, perhaps blown into indiscretion by the size of the diamond, had written him a check without accompanying the transaction with paperwork. Later that month he had demanded the ring back and gone his way, moving out with accomplished efficiency and taking some of Babb’s choice collector items with him.
To top it off, not a week after Babbs came home to find he had left the FBI called on her. They wanted to look over anything Darrel might have left behind. Then they demanded to see her phone bills. Darrel, warm and wonderful guy that he was, had been fingered by a friend of his caught up in the Chapman murder case. The friend had offered to finger some of his ‘associates’ in an extortion ring in return for leniency. Darrel was, of course, one of those friends.
Before Dave could even completely experience sympathy for Babbs, Lindsey went on to the next chapter in the story. That was Babbs and the nice guy who escaped. Babbs was still stalking him when he could be located. He moved frequently. This insight was followed by a series of other stories. After a while he lost count and Lindsey changed subjects.
He was very glad he had not become better acquainted with the woman, although he had been struck by the real excellence of her work in film when he viewed her short subject on the Rumanian victims of the Holocaust. This had also provided him with an amazing insight into the use of political pressure, disinformation and the overwhelming power of silence.
Dave had begun to look at the edges of the story on the Holocaust as a part of his background research. It was not his story and his grandfather had left Germany in large part because he disapproved of the German government and Adolph Hitler. He had been taught that the Rumanians had cooperated with Hitler. Now he is hearing that Rumanians were actually the first inhabitants of Auschwitz. Babbs, always out of the box and gutsy along with being slightly or very crazy, had snuck a photographer into the Holocaust Museum in Rumania to photograph the evidence, which was convincing.
Killing people was just wrong; lying about the facts was sick. Dave could not imagine why such evidence would have been suppressed by the same people who had so many reasons to understand the pain of persecution, especially when their own persecutions had been allowed to go unacknowledged for so long. He made a note to himself to look into it. He would find other avenues of inquiry that did not include Babbs. Looking across the table at Lindsey, chatting and sipping on her Latte Grande, Dave realized that she had a way of cutting to the point of a story, making it memorable and funny even when it was tragic if viewed in another light.
Walking home through the dimness of early evening, hedged around with the noise of the City he wondered about Babbs. He had been impressed by the tape she had showed at the Chad Party of Alexander Fore, now vice president. On the tape Babbs had sounded so sane and the vice president came off as a space nut. Dave had briefly wondered if it was faked but he had made some calls and the vice president had done the interview back in 1986.
The interview wandered a bit but that was not the fault of the interviewer. Alexander Fore had things to say and he worked hard at saying them. Babbs had designed the interview to get Fore’s reaction to a politically correct project launched by a group of Russian and Midwestern women who were knitting Caps for Peace. The group had been moved to do this because they felt that since all women knit, at least in Russia and the Midwest, it would bring them together and help them produce more caps.
Fore had grazed through the caps without showing much interest. Then he had taken the bit in his teeth and turned the monologue towards the existence of extraterrestrials (he believed), Area 51(there needed to be a Congressional inquiry), the secrecy of the government and American’s right to know. Babbs was well informed on issues of caps and knitting but woefully behind the times of Fore’s chosen interest of the moment.
The reaction of the watchers had been mixed. The Republicans had laughed and the staunch Democrats had groaned.
Babbs had finally turned the TV off when all possibilities for anything political had been exhausted. By then Lindsey was again in the kitchen cleaning up. Dave wandered in to see if he could help. He could tell she was upset but did not know what to say. Nann and Jim had left soon after the Fore tape. Nann had said she could only take so much excitement. Nann had hugged Lindsey tight and said something to her, too low for Dave to hear. Lindsey had looked as if she might cry.
Dave took a pile of platters out of Lindsey’s hands and put them into the suds. Taking off his coat he threw it over the kitchen chair and dug in. Lindsey went out to fetch more dirty dishes. The two of them worked together, not talking more than necessary to do the job. The party was finally winding down. Gregs was putting stoppers in the bottles. Babbs had thrown herself down on the couch, flinging her shoes in different directions and proclaiming her complete exhaustion. Lindsey had taken over the sink as he wiped dishes. When she turned around he could see she had been crying.
“Oh, my eyes. It must be the soap.” Lindsey wiped her hand across her face, leaving a trail of subs in its wake. “Thanks, Dave. I really, really appreciate you helping out. I think I should head home now. I’m really tired.” Her face tried really hard to smile but it did not work. She hugged him tight for just an instant.
Then Dave was looking at the closed door, himself inside with Babbs and Gregs; Lindsey gone. This was not how he had wanted the evening to end.
Saving the world and romance had not seemed like mutually exclusive activities when Dave started. After the Republican Convention, the idea of him and Lindsey as a couple had taken hold; he had fallen in love. Now he realized that although they talked frequently, there were many subjects that were never broached. Did he know this woman? He had thought he did. He knew what moved her to tears of admiration. He knew about her ideals. Was that enough? Who was Lindsey Smithson, really?
Dave felt slightly guilty. He had promised to visit Lance, but now he felt as if he were visiting under false pretenses. Yes, he was charmed by the old man; he wanted to explore Lance’s fascinating past and hear stories. But he also wanted to find out about Lindsey. Going to her friends seemed sneaky somehow.
He and Lance met at the Waverly, a rather well known old diner near Washington Square. The place had been around forever, going through several generations of regulars, among them James Dean, who had eaten in the very reasonable eatery while he was living in New York and attending the Actor’s Studio.
Dave saw Lance, already seated at a back booth, when he walked in. Sliding over the worn, mustard colored seat he greeted the old man. Dave was nervous. He hoped it did not show.
After they ordered (hamburgers all around; Dave had a milk shake, Lance coffee), talk turned to the Chad Party and the continuing drama in Florida. Lance had heard from Babbs about her adventures in the Orange State and, forgetting for a moment the real reason he had sought Lance out, Dave listened with growing amazement to yet another Babbs story.
It seems that Babbs had decided to avoid more annoying drama about the Chads by heading down to Florida in the wake of her new honey. Arriving in West Palm Beach airport, she headed to baggage claim to get her sturdy but unexceptionally large black roller bag. Bag in hand, she headed out and immediately saw Gregs waiting for her in his Black convertible Mercedes. Just before they got on the freeway Babbs told Gregs to pull over. She needed her make-up bag and it was in the suitcase. Gregs had tossed the bag into the back seat of the car. Babbs unzipped the case to find a voting machine. This was definitely not her bag.
Both Lance and Lindsey received calls from Babbs right then and there. What was she supposed to do with the voting machine? Was it legal to import the machines to Florida now? Babbs had gone through the bag and knew it was owned by a Democrat. Lindsey called Tom Dicks. He referred them to a Republican functionary in Florida and other authorities were drawn in.
Then Babbs started to think about getting her own bag back.
For the next two days Babbs yelled at the increasingly hostile people at Unity Airline. They told her she should have checked the tag; she told them she wanted her bag. Finally an exchange was arranged and Babbs had her stuff, including the make-up bag. Every person in Florida was being asked about their opinion on the chads and the election. They asked Babbs, too, in a restaurant where she and Gregs were taking a break from the Drama of the Black Bag. But no one asked her if she knew about a lost voting machine, so naturally she made no comment.
Every news show had featured coverage of the crowds of Young Republicans protesting and interviews of Jentry Collingsworth, suddenly vocal on the issue of the First Amendment and the right to protest. It was a circus. Constant barrages of charges from Republicans that the media was owned and controlled by the Left had become routine for Dave. He trusted no one completely; a fact checked three ways was a fact he could trust.
Dave and Lance lingered over dessert; Dave ordered coffee. Lance’s stories were all told with the same dry wit, but sometimes it was obvious that the story was a put on, served up for the sake of humor.
Certainly this was true with his story about his service in the European Theatre during the last days of the Third Reich. Sitting there sipping his coffee, Lance described the growing concern of the OSS that German civilians be informed about the hazards that they faced. Dave waited. Lance had slowed the narrative, drawing out each word. His assignment, he said, was to lead a detachment to parachute behind enemy lines and carefully place flyers on the proper procedures and protocols under the doormats of the citizens of Berlin. They had accomplished this feat in complete secrecy as ordered. And so the heroic mission remained secret to this day. They had made their way back through enemy lines to meet their own troops after an arduous couple of weeks of leafleting carried out in the dead of night. The special agent who had carried the printing press received a doubly special award from the President, but he had only received the singularly special award. He was very glad not to have had to carry the printing press.
Lance told this story without even a nuance of a smile. Dave did not have to check that story out. That one could not possibly be true.
Dave enjoyed his session on the continuing stories of Babbs. Hearing these from Lance provided a stereo viewpoint that was entirely consistent with what Lindsey told. He had now heard the stories from two separate parties and it did not appear that any exaggerations were being retailed. But he had not for a moment forgotten the real reason he had called Lance. Later, he realized he should have asked Lindsey directly but he had not been able to bring himself to do that.
The story also provided the opening he had been looking for. Lance confirmed that Lindsey had been in a relationship with Tom Dicks. It had been going on for some time but, as far as he knew, was now over. When Dave said goodbye to Lance on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, he felt as if someone had dug out his heart with a spoon. It was Lindsey who had loaned him the Robin Hood movies that provided the image. That seemed fitting somehow.
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