see you at the funeral.”
“I hardly knew him.”
“It’s the definition of hardly I’m interested in.”
Daryl swivelled away from me and ducked through the Corvette’s door. “I don’t have to take this,” he said. He stuck a key in the ignition.
“Honestly, Daryl,” I said. I had both hands on the top of the open car door. “Would your teammates be happy taking a shower with a guy they know drinks at the Purple Zinnia? That’s after they find out who else drinks there.”
Daryl craned his head to look at me. His face had all the guile of Jiminy Cricket’s.
“I knew somebody like you’d come along sooner or later,” he said.
“Like whom? A blackmailer?”
“What do you want out of me? I’m not as rich as you think.”
“Nothing money can buy, Daryl. All I want from you is a little straight-from-the-shoulder information. I’m trying to save a life.”
Daryl contemplated what I’d said. He probably found it as melodramatic as I did. I glanced around the parking lot. Four or five players had clusters of kids surrounding them.
“This isn’t the place for a chat, Daryl,” I said. “What do you say I get into this slick vehicle of yours and we drive somewhere more private?”
“My apartment’s in Bramalea.” Daryl’s voice sounded flat and morose. “There’s fine, I guess.”
“Suburbs do queasy things to my head, Daryl. Let me choose the locale, something closer in.”
Daryl leaned across the car’s interior and opened the passenger door. I went around the front of the Corvette and levered myself into a bucket seat that matched Daryl’s.
“Out and to the right,” I said.
Daryl did what I told him, but he wore the expression of a little kid being summoned to the principal’s office. We went over to Spadina and a block north to Clarence Square. He parked the car on the square’s south side.
“Who are you, anyway, mister?” Daryl slanted in my direction. I slanted in his. It was tough to face all the way around in the bucket seats. “What’s your name?”
“Crang. I’m a criminal lawyer.”
“Mr. Crang, first off, I want you to know I’ve been saved.”
“So far there’s nothing established you need to be saved from.”
“By my lord, Jesus Christ.”
“Oh, that kind of saving.”
Daryl’s bulging cheeks glowed pink. “Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?” he asked me.
“I know that’s a metaphor, Daryl, and metaphorically speaking, the heart is about filled to capacity.”
The pink in Daryl’s cheeks stayed put. It was his natural colouring, not the flush of fervour.
“Jesus guided me away from the paths of sin,” Daryl said.
“Are we talking business now? Is that sin as in Purple Zinnia?”
“Mr. Crang, I am not a practising homosexual.” Daryl’s voice tripped on the last word. “I was reaching for help, and Jesus took my hand.”
“Hand isn’t the piece of anatomy you need to worry about, Daryl.”
We hoisted ourselves out of the Corvette and walked into the square. It had a collection of spreading maples and some benches that the city had installed. We sat on a bench that faced the line of nice, old Georgian-style buildings on the square’s north side.
“Whose life is it you were talking about saving back in the parking lot?” Daryl asked.
“Maybe yours.”
“Just because I might’ve gone to the Purple Zinnia?”
“Good start, Daryl. Is it a given you’ve had drinks at the Zinnia bar?”
Daryl fingered one of his earlobes with his right hand. “Another fellow on the team took me to that particular bar. The people there were awful nice, and it surely to goodness beat going back to Bramalea by myself. I’m a single person, Mr. Crang, and I didn’t see anything wrong with seeking a little fellowship.”
“Hold up a bit, Daryl. Another Blue Jay is a Purple Zinnia frequenter?”
“Not anymore. He went free agent last spring. St. Louis signed him. Five million over three years.”
“Very impressive, and I’m sure you’ll be in the same bracket any season now, Daryl. But onto the Zinnia, you realized it was a gay spot?”
Daryl’s right hand went back to his earlobe. “I never met any homosexuals back home in Emporia, Mr. Crang,” he said tentatively.
“Understood, Daryl.”
“So, no, I didn’t know at first that those nice men at the Purple Zinnia were homosexuals. And I pass no judgment on them now, Mr. Crang, even though I have learned from my Bible that homosexuality is a grievous sin against human nature. I admit to you here and now that those men, Ian Argyll and the rest, accepted me in friendship, and I felt very comfortable in their company. I did at the time, yes, sir.”
“I take it you haven’t seen much of the Zinnia crowd lately, that’s the implication, Daryl?”
“I have not.”
“When did you withdraw your patronage?”
“Stop going there? When the Yankees were at the SkyDome for a weekend series, the third week of last September.”
“Fixed in your memory, is it, Daryl?”
Daryl started to go for his ear again, stopped, folded both hands in his lap, and leaned closer to me.
“It was that weekend, on the Sunday, I committed to Jesus, Mr. Crang.” Daryl’s tone wasn’t unctuous, but it showed a marked Jerry Falwell influence. “The Yankees were in town, and on the morning before the game, I don’t know what it was, maybe a small and blessed miracle, Mr. Crang, I joined the Christians on our team in the chapel at the SkyDome. I have not looked back since, and sorry as I am to say so, Mr. Crang, I could not reconcile my new faith with the ways of those who befriended me at the Purple Zinnia.”
“It’d put you in a moral pickle, Daryl, I appreciate that.”
“It surely would.”
“In the meantime, though, you’d had a year of socializing with the Zinnia crowd?”
Daryl’s hand made a return visit to his ear. “That is true, and no getting around it.”
“And
