Page 26 of The Happy Month

“I think it’s some kind of word processor from the seventies. These are the tapes it uses,” he said, showing me a box on the floor. “The manual is underneath.”

“So, you think the tapes are like floppy disks?”

“Yeah. I think so. I mean, they can’t hold much.”

“I found some of those in Patrick’s desk.”

From where I stood, I could see that these cassettes were labeled differently: 75-106, 75-223, 75-004. Obviously, the year and then a number for the document or documents. Legal documents. I mean, that made sense, right? But what were the cassettes in Patrick’s desk?

“Have you seen any bags or empty boxes?”

“Um, yeah. It’s not big,” he said, reaching under one of the typewriters and pulling out a yellowing Fred Segal bag.

“Thanks. Matchbooks. Business cards. Anything personal.”

“Got it.”

I started to walk away, and he said, “Hey, thanks for this. It’s fascinating in a creepy way.”

“I should be thanking you, I appreciate the help.”

I walked out of 1018. On the way back to 1020, I looked into 1019 and saw that Ronnie was opening the boxes like I’d asked. “What are you finding?”

“Books.”

“Law books?”

“No. Fiction.”

I stood behind him and looked into the boxes. HermanWouk, Ira Levin, Gore Vidal, John Updike, Christopher Isherwood, Philip Roth. A who’s who of American letters. The male edition. There were women who wrote in the sixties and seventies, but it didn’t look like Patrick read them.

I went back into 1020. After scooping up the matchbooks and business cards and putting them into the Fred Segal bag, I looked the room over and thought this through. There had to be tax information. Bills. Patrick’s library or den or home office seemed to end up in this lockup. His paperwork had to be here. The thing is, I couldn’t find anything remotely like a filing cabinet. There should be nice ones, wooden ones, ones that would have matched his desk. But I didn’t see anything like that.

A few minutes later, I did find another box behind the leather sofa. When I opened it up, I found five accordion files that held Patrick Giles bills from 1990-1994. Success, of a sort.

Right away, I saw that something was wrong. They were neat and organized and recent. The man I’d met the other day would not have been able to keep his records like this just two years ago. What I should have been seeing is decline. I could believe he’d be able to put together a file like this in 1990. But the files would have, should have declined with him. They should have become increasing messy and disorganized. But they weren’t.

I stepped out of the lockup. Ronnie was still looking through boxes of books.

“Hey John, come here a minute.”

I waited for John to come out. When he was standing with Ronnie and me, I said, “You know how when a gay guy dies, his friends go into this apartment or house before hisfamily so they can take out all the porn and sex toys and anything else that might upset his family?”

“Been there, done that,” John said.

“Do you think that’s what we’re looking at here? Someone’s gone through Patrick’s stuff and taken out anything that would tell you he’s gay.”

“Makes sense.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

July 25, 1996

Thursday afternoon

Around lunchtime, John ran out to get us Mexican food at a place nearby. I sat on one of the boxes we’d pulled into the hallway and went through the accordion files starting in 1990. Gas, electric, telephone, long distance (MCI)—Patrick barely made any long-distance calls—American Express, bank statements (Security Pacific), service records for a 1982 Mercedes 300, maintenance on the house which was at 410 N. Faring Road—monthly landscaping bills, trash pickup, air conditioning maintenance, furnace maintenance, plumber (he came a lot) and a pool service.

There were no canceled checks. I checked the other accordion files and found nothing. I took out the bank statements and looked at them closely. They didn’t give any information about who checks were written to, but I could make some guesses. For example, every week or so a checkwas cashed for $60. My guess was that this was a maid who came weekly.