morning, Saturday, after Annie left, I volunteered to help Alex walk the dog.
“That’s sweet of you, Crang,” Alex said.
The dog is an Irish Setter and getting long in the tooth. Alex and Ian had named him Genet. He wags his tail a lot and barks only with extreme provocation.
“Through the park and down to Queen,” Alex said. “It’s the usual route.”
“Don’t change on my account.”
“In honour of the occasion, you can be point man.”
Alex handed me Genet’s leash. He carried a pooper scooper and a small brown paper bag. The three of us crossed Beverley Street and walked into the park. It had plenty of trees in orderly rows and a scattering of heavy green picnic tables.
“How’s the pooch bearing up under Ian’s absence?” I asked.
“He whines at eating time. Only natural, I guess. Ian was the one who opened his little tins and things. And he goes around looking rather puzzled.”
“I took that for his permanent expression.”
“Now that you mention it.…”
Genet was a leisurely walker. No yanking on the leash, no sudden leaps and bounds. He halted now and then to sniff trees and discarded Big Mac boxes, and he squatted to do some business on the grass. Alex went to work with the pooper scooper and the brown paper bag.
“I loathe this part,” he said.
“Because Ian handled the walking detail.”
Alex held the pooper scooper and brown bag at arm’s length. “Speaking of which,” he said, “this is the first time I remember you on one of these doggy excursions.”
“How come I hear suspicion in your voice?”
“Annie put you up to it, didn’t she?”
“Up to what?” Playing dumb was all the technique I could muster.
“To talking me out of my intentions.”
“Sort of.”
Near one of the picnic tables, an elderly Asian gent and a middle-aged white lady wearing what might have been jammies were going through a sequence of slowmo tai chi moves. Step up, deflect, parry.
“I don’t want you involved,” Alex said. “Not just you. I don’t want anyone involved apart from myself.”
“Annie thinks I have talent in the field.”
“No doubt you do. But I’m doing splendidly for a novice.”
“You don’t have the guy’s name.”
Alex stopped and looked at me. “Ah, but I know the place.”
“So you were saying last night.”
“And I’ve narrowed the field.”
“Of what? Suspects?”
Alex nodded.
“Since last night you’ve done this?” I said.
Alex had what might pass for a sly expression. “I have my contacts, Crang, and I’ll say no more, so don’t press me, please.”
The three of us walked out of the park’s south entrance. We kept going to Queen Street and turned west. Alex stuffed the brown bag into a city litter bin.
“A stop at Pages if you don’t mind,” he said.
“I don’t.”
Alex took Genet’s leash and wound it around the last rung of a bicycle stand on the sidewalk. Pages is a bookstore with a nice range of magazines and a small specialty in books about jazz. I bought Mel Tormé’s autobiography in paperback. Alex loaded up on magazines. Mother Jones. Forbes. This Magazine. New Republic.
“Magazine-wise,” I said, “you just defined eclectic.”
“All they ever have on the plane is last week’s Time,” Alex said. We were back on the street.
“You going away?”
“After lunch,” Alex said. “Bound to be strange down there without Ian.”
“Yeah,” I said. Alex and Ian had a cottage in Key West a couple of blocks from the old Hemingway house. “How long do you figure you’ll be gone?”
“Whatever it takes to think and plot. A few days.” Alex shifted the parcel of magazines under his arm. “Feel like some caffeine?”
“What about Genet?”
“Don’t fret about him. He adores the passing parade.”
Genet was resting his rear end on the sidewalk. His head swung back and forth to take in the street action.
Alex and I went into the café next door to Pages. I nabbed a window table. Alex lined up at the counter and brought back two cappuccinos. I waited for mine to cool. Alex stirred his in an abstracted way.
I tried a little prompting. “Anything more you want to get off your chest?” I asked Alex.
“Perhaps something in the nature of enlightenment.”
“Swell. I could stand some of that.”
“Gaëtan Dugas,” Alex said. “Does that name signify anything to you?”
“Who is he? One of your new suspects?”
“Gaëtan Dugas’s story is about AIDS.” Alex had a schoolmarm air. “About AIDS but very early on, 1980, in that general period. You see, the first people doctors spotted with this new awful virus, what turned out to be AIDS, dozens of them seemed to have one thing in common. Amazing bit of research when one dwells on it, but some medical detectives worked out that these earliest victims had all had sex with one man. Or that they’d had sex with someone else who had sex with this man.”
“What’s-his-name Dugas?”
“Gaëtan Dugas. The Typhoid Marvin of AIDS.”
“He spread it? Single-handedly spread it?”
“Damn near.” Alex kept nodding. “What Dugas had specifically was Kaposi’s sarcoma —”
“Right,” I interrupted. “Same disease Rock Hudson died of. Or maybe not died of, but he caught it.”
“Oh, Crang, you straights are so predictable. Mention AIDS and Rock Hudson can’t be far behind.”
“But I’m right about Rock and Kaposi’s sarcoma?”
“Yes, yes. But more key to my sad little tale is that Gaëtan Dugas was afflicted, too. The Kaposi’s sarcoma
