A Strand of Truth

For R.L.B.

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

You hear a lot of stories in my business. Everyone wants to talk. Psychologists say people only open their mouths to speak if they need something, and if that’s so, then a lot of people need to have their stories heard. At least it seems that way to me.

It wasn’t always like this. When I first started out, I couldn’t get people to say a word. But then again, I was using a spotlight and intimidation tactics, but I can’t really talk about that. It was a government investigative position, let’s just put it that way. I happen to come from a powerful family, and some well-placed relatives grudgingly put my name up for an opening. I say grudgingly because I didn’t fit the bill of the usual type of guy who gets that sort of job. I’m a bit, well, flamboyant, at least around the edges. But everyone there at the bureau got along with me well enough; I’m punctual, personable, and impeccably dressed, but most importantly, I’m intelligent. And in that line of work, it pays to be very, very smart. Nobody could deny me that. They might’ve had a few uncharitable names to call me behind my back, but I had a string of academic credentials that were pretty hard to top. That and a squeaky-clean record meant I never felt beholden, even if I did get some elite-family endorsements.

And so I worked there for a while but eventually, even I could tell the problem wasn’t anybody else’s unjustified homophobic discomfort or justified resentment at my inherited connections, but something about the structure of the job itself that just wasn’t fitting my abilities. I’m no hard-boiled agent. Hell, half the time I would’ve rather done shadow puppets in those rooms to entertain the suspect instead of leading interrogations that invariably went nowhere.

Then one day, one of my boss’ higher-ups called me in. I’ll be honest: I felt pretty intimidated. Generally, my boss would’ve given me a heads-up for something like that, and he didn’t, so I worried. However, he was very cordial and we chatted happily about this and that, so after a few minutes, I realized that whatever his objective was, it probably wasn’t to fire me.

He reminded me of that old phrase, you know, the one about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. He said I wasn’t very good at being the vinegary type—a point upon which I immediately agreed—and he told me they’d been trying to think of alternate ways of using me, particularly ones in which I could use my sunny side to its best advantage. I’ll never forget the question he asked me next: Who do people willingly talk to?

I cast around in my thoughts. Becoming a priest was out. But as it so happened, that afternoon I’d gone for a haircut, and that’s when it hit me: a hair stylist. Although I’m somewhat reserved, partly by nature and partly because of my line of work, even I felt comfortable talking openly about a lot of things with the guy who did my hair at the salon.

Of course, my answer turned out to be right. As the higher-up explained, the bureau had arranged for me to work undercover as a hair stylist. Sounds crazy, but it was actually a brilliant plan. It began with the necessary training, in which I was immediately enrolled. As I mentioned, I’m smart and I’m a fast learner. I managed the course in record time and even learned how to cut hair with a straight razor from an old Italian gentleman who was a master at it. So few people know how to do that these days; it was a valuable skill to acquire. Hairdressing wasn’t exactly what I’d call my niche, but I enjoyed it, and everyone was happy to accept the openly gay guy. I had more female friends than you can imagine while I was at school.

So, with my new identity and my ivy-league credentials now officially replaced by the fabricated history of having had a few failed years at a mediocre community college, I was able to get work at an upscale unisex salon in a location in Chicago where I might come in contact with the type of people who might have the kind of information we wanted. It was up to me to get them talking. It was a lot easier than you’d think.

I quickly discovered that everyone trusts a hairdresser. Criminals couldn’t wait to talk about their mad exploits, or discuss dreams of what they wanted to do with their ill-gotten gains. It was pathetically sloppy of them, I’ll say that. I could’ve been . . . well, I was, and they found that out the hard way. Of course, they never knew it was me who informed on them, but just the same, I didn’t feel any remorse for what I was doing. If these people were dumb enough to talk, they deserved what they got.

Our success rate skyrocketed, and suddenly everyone really seemed to appreciate me for the first time. Christ, talk about everyone loving a stereotype. Maybe that’s just me being bitter that I couldn’t be successful sitting behind a desk wearing a custom-made suit, but put a hairbrush in one hand and a can of hairspray in the other, and suddenly I’m the star of the team. Oh well; no use dwelling on such things.

The point is that the setup worked magnificently, and year by year, I got better and better at it. It was fun in a way, and pretty low-stress. I worked mostly with women who were jovial, and a few other gay men who were usually okay. Sometimes the women were a bit mentally unbalanced and occasionally the men were pompous, but overall, no worse than any other working environment, I’d have to say.

But it was the customers who fascinated me. I admit I started out being totally bored by working on anyone who wasn’t a target. It meant hearing useless information; things I couldn’t bring back to my superiors that wouldn’t help solve any outstanding cases or prevent any crimes. For about a year, I felt that way, but then the stories started to click, if that makes any sense. Especially if it was a longtime customer, it became kind of like a soap-opera. I couldn’t wait to hear the next installment the next time they came for a trim or to have their roots done.

It was sort of a side-bonus of the work, getting an intimate description of real-life stories as told by the participants (or witnesses, as the case may be; just as many people talk about their friends and relatives as they do about themselves).

There are so many tales, I wouldn’t even know where to begin recounting them: lost loves, strange coincidences, heartwarming stories, and vicious acts that would make your blood run cold. And all of it all the more moving because it wasn’t something an author or screenwriter had cooked up, but something completely real. It’s true what they say about truth being stranger than fiction, believe me. 

But then one day, something happened that set me on the path of the strangest and most astonishing thing that had ever occurred in my life. And if it’s okay with you, as ironic as this may sound, I need to talk about it.

CHAPTER 2

I had this customer. He was about forty-five, fairly well-dressed, seemed like a bright guy, and he really didn’t say much at first. I mean, he was congenial and all, but he didn’t strike me as an extrovert. This is pretty typical with straight guys. They aren’t quite sure how to take you—like if they’re too friendly you’ll assume it’s a cue to start hitting on them, but if they’re too quiet, they think you think they’re in the closet or something, so they try to strike a balance by being distantly pleasant. A lot of plastic smiling, and all that.

But there’s only so much you can say about the weather, and the more our dialogue developed over the months, the more he became at ease with me. It’s amazing how you can read people after you’ve had a thousand strangers sitting in a chair underneath you. Frankly, I think I developed better interrogation skills in the beauty shop than I ever did working for the government. Not that I was ever blunt—you do it all subtly: And how did that make you feel? Now is this your first wife or your second wife we’re talking about? I imagine in that income bracket there isn’t anything you can’t afford, and so on.

The guy eventually told me he was a genealogist. He worked for some large organization and basically researched people’s family trees. Sounded like a perfect job for an introvert. Also, oddly enough, he didn’t seem to have any family of his own, so maybe researching about everyone else’s relatives made him feel he was part of the great forest of human genealogy, lingering somewhere in an immense grove of other people’s family trees. He was often quite a bit more well-versed about people’s ancestors than they ever would be. A lot of times when he gave them information, they didn’t care. They weren’t really all that interested in their great-grandmother’s brief stint as a European opera singer or their great-great-grandfather’s twin brother who died at birth. (I could only imagine what he would’ve discovered if he ever got his hands on my real last name. Then again, when you come from a family like mine, you’ve been thoroughly briefed on who you are, going back at least ten generations. But still, his jaw would’ve dropped if he ever knew who was really cutting his hair. I’m an important person. Not so important that I have a