Chapter 33 - History.

Despite all my finely-honed research skills, I had been unable to find out any more about what happened to Billy or Jay after Alma’s death. 

I’d spent the rest of Saturday afternoon at the library, going so far as to enlist the Research Librarian’s help in digging up something more on the participants of the Triangle Building Love Mystery, but neither of us found much. Billy’s entire life history came down to nothing more than that one line in his obituary about him being an avid traveler and ‘sportsman’ who never married. Jay Frick got a few sundry newspaper mentions over the years for working on his family’s business endeavors, but despite all the other members of the Frick clan being prominent in the society news of the era, those sources were mostly silent as to Jay. The Librarian found Jay’s obituary, dated January 13, 1911, but that item only vaguely recited Jay’s family connections, referred to him as a widower, and attributed his death to an automobile accident. For that matter, there wasn’t even much more that my librarian friend could find on Andrew Peebles. Peebles did return to Pittsburgh in 1887 to complete construction on the First Lutheran Church, which was consecrated a year later. But after that, there were no further records related to Peebles or any subsequent architectural projects. Peebles died in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1919 - presumably as one of the millions of casualties of the flu pandemic that ravaged the country at that time. There was no indication that any of the three had further contact after the events that tore them apart in 1885/1886.

After several hours of digging, it seemed I had exhausted all avenues of research except one. While scanning through some digitized copies of the University of Pittsburgh’s archives of Henry Clay Frick’s US Steel Business Records, I came across one reference to ‘family records’ that had been bequeathed to Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Club Alumnus Committee. It was a tenuous lead at best, but seeing as it was the only remaining avenue my inquisitive self had, I figured it was worth looking into. If there was any hope at all of uncovering the ending to the saga of Billy and Jay, it might be hidden in those fabled personal records.  

So, hopes high, I walked the few blocks over from the downtown library to the Club. I was in luck that the guy manning the reception desk recognized me so I didn’t have to go through the whole song and dance about being the son of a member, etc. But that’s where my luck ended. When I explained how I wanted to look at the Frick records, I was referred to the Club’s General Manager. Of course, it being late on a Saturday afternoon, the General Manager wasn’t available, but the receptionist did call down one of the assistant managers for me to speak with. This guy, however, wasn’t inclined to be helpful at all. Spencer - that was his pretentious name, can you believe it - told me that all the Frick Archives were considered private and I’d be required to get permission from one of the members of the Frick family before I’d be allowed to look at them. All my attempts to cajole Spencer into breaking that rule were rebuffed. He was very obviously NOT gay, and my attempt to flirt with him just made him even more intractible. The asshole wouldn’t even tell me who to contact or how to get ahold of them to get the permission I’d need. And when I got a little pissy about the stonewalling, Spencer told me I needed to leave, and if I didn’t he would be reporting my behavior to my father. Basically, it was a dead end delivered with an insult.

I left the club even more frustrated than before. It was infuriating to think that those records were just sitting there inside the building, and that the answers to my questions about what happened to Billy, Jay and the rest were probably waiting for me in those dusty old papers, but that some snooty, officious little prick was keeping me from them. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of moods when I returned to my Eggy’s Tower a few minutes later. Brian didn’t even need to hear the story as to why there was a storm cloud hovering over my head; he just laughed at me, got up from his desk, closed his laptop, and took me into his arms for a consolatory hug. And before I knew what was happening, he had led me to his bed and was fucking the frustration out of me. 

I could really get used to this supportive lover thing.

Afterwards, the angry all burned away by the happy post-sex endorphins, I related my research results to my bedmate. Wisely, Egbert just let me vent for a bit. “. . . I’m sure I could find what I needed pretty quickly if I could just get in there. I bet the records are kept in that basement storage room full of boxes of historical shit - the one Daphne and I found. Maybe I could go back through the tunnels . . .”

“No! I don’t want you fucking around in those damn tunnels, Sunshine!” Brian insisted immediately. “We don’t know that they’re safe.”

“They’ve held up this long, I’m sure it’s fine . . .” 

“NO! Damn it, Justin! I just . . . I can’t deal with the thought of you down there in the dark with all that rubble having fallen off the walls. And if you’re right, and nobody’s been down there in decades, you can’t be sure they’re safe. I don’t want you going down there again. Especially not alone,” Brian implored, rolling over while he spoke so that he was lying on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his body and pinning me with his stare at the same time. “Please, Sunshine. Promise me you won’t go back down there. Please?”

Shit. What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t just blow off all his worries without feeling super guilty. And he did have a point - I hadn’t even told him about the couple of sections that looked like they’d had minor cave-ins because I worried about how much it would scare him - but even I knew it probably wasn’t smart to push my luck by hanging out in 100+ year old tunnels. Still, I didn’t want to give up on solving the Triangle Building Love Mystery - and I knew I wouldn’t be able to just forget about it. 

“There’s got to be some other way you can get into the Club to get those records, right?” Brian persisted, trying to persuade me to stay out of the tunnels by finding an alternative. 

“Maybe,” I relented a bit. “If I could just find an excuse for being at the Club, I could maybe find a way to sneak downstairs and take a peek. But short of asking my father to take me with him to the next Pittsburgh Business Alliance cocktail party, I don’t know how. And, of course, that would mean I’d have to actually spend some time with my father . . .” I finished with a shudder at that unwholesome prospect.

“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Brian assured me.

And then he grabbed another one of the flavored condoms, squirmed down under the covers, rolled it down my all-of-a-sudden-interested-dick, and did this thing with his tongue that distracted me from thoughts of going anywhere for a long, long time.

After a glorious weekend - spent almost exclusively in my Egbert’s bed - I reluctantly dragged myself back to school for classes on Monday morning. It was probably a good thing that I was forced to leave the Triangle Building, though, because both me and my ass were exhausted. It seemed like, not only did my new lover not need any sleep, but he had an almost non-existent refractory period, which meant I had been kept quite busy all weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but I was going to have to learn to restrain Eggy a bit or he was gonna literally fuck me into an early grave. 

So it was understandable that I was walking a little stiffly when I straggled into the cafeteria at lunchtime, right? Was it really necessary for my friends to greet me with a round of uproarious laughter at my expense? Great friends, huh?

“Damn, Taylor, you look like shit warmed over,” Peter greeted me as he moved a stack of books aside to make a space for me at the table. “What the hell happened to you last weekend?”

“You mean ‘who’ happened to him,” Zeboria teased. “I know well-fucked when I see it, and mmhmm this boy has been fucked good and proper.”

“Ohhhh. Poor baby. Need me to go get you a pillow from the lounge for your ass?” Raphael asked, pretending to care about my tender nether regions by patting at my rear. 

“Fuck off,” I growled at all of them, plunking my bag down next to the chair and setting my lunch on the table before gingerly - very gingerly - sitting down myself. Why were these fucking chairs so damn hard anyway?

“Usually you’re in a better mood after you get laid,” Peter commented while shaking his head at me. “What’s putting that perpetual look of constipation on your face, my friend??”

“Yeah, well . . . I’ve never taken on such a BIG project before,” I replied, giving a little waggle of my eyebrows at the word ‘big’ to make the joke work.

The roar of laughter around me caused several heads at neighboring tables to turn our way. 

“Oooo! Do tell, Taylor! How BIG was it?” Raphe asked, leaning in expectantly. “Are we talking jumbo sausage style or was it more like a sad little chipolata?”

“Definitely more of a jumbo sausage!” I replied boastfully. “But it’s not just the size, it’s the . . . enthusiasm . . . I swear he wouldn’t let me out of the damn bed all weekend. I had to practically beg for time off to eat. And I can still feel him inside me now,” I felt myself blushing slightly, which was totally unlike me, but Brian brought out this softer side of me. 

That comment earned me another round of heckling and teasing as they all took additional potshots. It was all good natured, of course. We always gave each other shit about our love lives. It’s what friends do. It had just been a long time since I’d personally had anything good to offer, so they were laying it on thick. 

“You’re all just jealous because I got some and you didn’t,” I snarked right back at them all as soon as they ran out of comments. “Shit, when was the last time any of YOU losers actually saw any action?”

“I don’t know about the rest of these derps, but I got me some this weekend too,” Z bragged with a superior tilt of his head.

“Yeah, but poking your schlong into that goony little fiddler doesn’t count,” Raphael replied. He really didn’t like Ethan. In fact, he disliked him so much he refused to call ‘The Fiddler’ by his name. “That needy hole’s been around so much you could land a 747 in there. Seriously though, Z, I don’t get what you see in the dead ting.”

“Hey, Ethan’s not that bad,” Zeboria protested, although not all that strenuously, I noted. 

“Not as long as you keep him too busy to talk or play that freaking violin,” Peter added equitably. “I swear, one time I let him talk me into listening to him play and I thought for a second he was strangling a cat with his bow.”

Zeboria snorted a little laugh despite himself. “Which is why I waited till AFTER I fucked him before I told him that I couldn’t possibly go hear him play next Friday,” Z explained with a sly look. “He’s been begging me to go with him to this fancy social club he’s playing at on Friday - trying to talk up the free food and open bar - but I don’t think so.”

“Good call! I know you’re easy, Z, but at least you’re not THAT easy. It’s nice to think it takes more than a skank offering free food to get you into bed,” Raphe gave him shit and I laughed along. 

But while I was laughing, I was also thinking. I remembered Ethan talking about playing at the Duquesne Club’s Founders’ Day Gala and how I’d made fun of him for wanting to go to such a snooze-fest. But . . . It would make a great excuse to get me into the Club and, with everybody busy listening to the entertainment and rushing around to take care of the inevitable hordes of partygoers, it should be easy enough for me to sneak down to the basement to do my research. The only snag being that I’d have to cozy up to Ethan and convince him to take me as his ‘date’ for the night. Ugh!

Remind me again, how much did I really want to find out the ending to Billy’s story?

“How do I look?” Ethan asked for about the thousandth time, tugging on his perpetually crooked bow tie and fishing for another compliment.

“You look the same as the last time you asked,” I replied, failing at my attempts to rein in my natural snark. Then I reminded myself not to blow my cover as Ethan’s ‘date’ for the night. “You look fine, Ethan. Don’t worry. I’m sure nobody’s going to be paying that much attention to how you’re dressed anyway. It’s your music they care about, right?”

“Right,” Ethan agreed, smiling at me appreciatively. “Alright. Wish me luck. Here I go!” 

Before I could stop him, Ethan leaned in and kissed me right on the lips. I was too surprised to do anything so I just stood there acting like a statue. It wasn’t till Ethan headed for the stage set up at the end of the ballroom, giving a little backward wave in my direction as he went, that I shook myself, wiped the taste of him off my lips, and started to move off in the opposite direction. I might have had to pretend to be Ethan’s date for the evening in order to get into the Club, but there was no way I was sticking around to listen to him play. My acting skills weren’t THAT good. No way could I stand to listen to him without getting physically sick to my stomach, and that would definitely blow everything. 

I’d been right, though, that the Staff at the Club would be running so ragged doing Gala things that security would be a little lax. Both the Doorman and the Club’s Social Secretary were busy greeting guests and checking invitations at the front entrance, with their minions busy showing guests to their tables or helping at the coat check, so the reception desk was empty. I hovered in the hallway for a minute or two, dodging waiters carrying trays full of drinks, until I saw my opening, and then dashed down the hallway leading to the back staircase. Hopefully nobody had seen my escape, or if they had, they’d be too busy to care. I didn’t pass anyone between the front lobby and the door to the basement records room, so I figured I was good to go. 

I was thrilled to discover that the door to the storage room wasn’t locked - that would have significantly slowed me down and if I’d risked picking the lock I might have been caught - allowing me to just duck quietly inside. I switched on the lights and locked the door behind me in the hopes of preventing my discovery. The room looked the same as it had the day Daphne and I had broken in through the tunnel door. The tricky part, however, was finding the records I was looking for amid all those racks of boxes. 

It took me about five minutes till I found a row of boxes that seemed to correspond to the right decade and another ten minutes of pulling off box tops, rifling through piles of ancient papers and books and ledgers, till I found the Frick records. I’d almost missed them since they were segregated into four modern-looking accordion folio files, which threw me off. Luckily I’d spotted the name ‘Frick’ on the small self-adhesive label that had been affixed to the front of ‘Volume One’. But the minute I opened that first file, I knew I’d hit paydirt. 

The files were full of all sorts of personal memorabilia. Frick had kept copious family records. In the first folio there were personal letters, photos, yellowed newspaper clippings, even some old club newsletters, all sorted in chronological order. The second folio had what appeared to be legal documents, deeds of trust, marriage licences and birth and death records. The third and fourth folios even had actual journals. Jackpot!

I went back to the first folio, starting with the front slot of the accordion, and discovered that someone had prepared an index of the contents of all four files. Hallelujah! That would make my searches eminently easier. Using that index, I quickly sorted through the dross and found some highly enlightening documents. 

First I located several newspaper clippings detailing poor Alma’s demise. They didn’t reveal much more than what Billy’s journal had already told us, though. The incident where Alma had publicly accused her husband Jay of sodomy seemed to have been just as big a scandal as you’d assume. There were mentions of it in three different Pittsburgh papers, along with one smaller mention in a society rag from New York City. Then, a week later, there were new articles detailing the circumstances of poor Alma’s death and stirring up the rumors surrounding Jay and ‘his alleged partner in debauchery, the young Mr. William C. Carnegie’ The final article I came across ended with a concluding line stating that Jay Frick was expected to relocate to New York following his wife’s funeral to take up a position working in his brother’s offices there. I snapped pictures of several of these clippings with my phone, so I could read them thoroughly at a later time, and then I moved on. 

Next I pulled out a sheaf of what appeared to be handwritten minutes from the meetings of the Duquesne Club Commerce Committee. I scanned through them until I came to several entries dated around the fall of 1886. Aha! This was the good stuff! 

I was so excited by what I’d found I just had to tell somebody, so I pulled out my phone again and tapped at the screen till I had Eggy on Facetime with me. “I think I found it, Brian! See! All our answers!” I crowed, holding up the committee minutes and flapping them in front of the camera.

Brian laughed at me and my enthusiasm. “I can’t see a fucking thing if you’re going to wave that shit around like that, Brat.” I rolled my eyes at him but I was too excited to really be annoyed by him. “So . . . what did you find? What happened to your Billy?”

“Just as we suspected - he got sent away!” I pointed to the page of minutes I’d been reading through. “See here. The Commerce Committee here at the club held a special meeting in late October of 1886. It says that Thomas Carnegie, Billy’s father, was taken ill in September - right about the time of the uproar over Billy being involved in Alma Frick’s death - and had finally succumbed to his illness as of October 19th. The minutes note that Billy would not be able to assume his father’s position because he had been sent away to ‘scout potential business opportunities in the Western Territories’.”

“Damn! That sucks for old Thomas. What a drama queen though; he’d rather die than acknowledge his son was a fag? Whatever,” Brian came to about the same conclusion I had. “Personally, though, I think Billy got off with a pretty good deal. He got to escape the family and head out west where he was allowed to do his whole ‘Sportsman and Traveller’ thing. I’m sure he was happier out there than being under the disapproving eyes of his family.”

“Yeah, but it explains why nothing more was heard about him. If he was shipped off to the wilds of the ‘Western Territories’ back in 1886, it’s not surprising that he never turned up in any of the social listings in Pittsburgh or New York,” I concluded as I continued to read through the rest of the Committee minutes. “Oh, hey, here’s a note about Peebles too . . . ‘Mr. Andrew Carnegie motioned that the contract formerly extended to Mr. Andrew Peebles for construction of the new Clubhouse be discontinued, citing the architect’s abject moral turpitude and Mr. Peebles’ involvement in the late unpleasantness associated with the death of Mrs. Alma Frick. The motion was seconded by Mr. Brock-Hampton. After discussion, the matter was put to a vote and the motion carried unanimously.’”

“Poor S.O.B. They fucking blackballed him,” Brian surmised. “No wonder Peebles didn’t get any more work in Pittsburgh. And what happened to Alma wasn’t even his fault. If Billy hadn’t fucked Andrew over for a fling with Jay, they all would have been fine. Still closeted, but fine.”

“Yeah, I agree. It totally sucks for Peebles,” I concurred, finishing with the Committee Meeting notes and putting them back in the file. “Basically, everyone involved was fucked over. Did I ever mention how fucking happy I am not to have lived back then? Shit, it’s hard enough being gay nowadays. I can’t even imagine dealing with the crap these guys had to go through . . .”

Eggy agreed with me. We continued to chat about the harsh treatment the 1886 boys had suffered as I sifted through more of the records. I found a few more tidbits here and there, mostly dealing with Jay’s work in the New York Offices of H.C. Frick & Company, and later, once the two families had formally merged their businesses, for the Carnegie Steel Company. 

I’d just begun to dig through some personal correspondence I found in the back of the file, when I came across one more brief mention of Jay. It was a letter to Henry Clay from none other than Andrew Carnegie dated August, 1892. I skipped over most of the parts that dealt with business stuff - including a lengthy discussion of something called the ‘Homestead Strike’ - finding a more personal discussion at the conclusion of the letter.

“Listen to this,” I announced and read the rest of the passage aloud to Brian. “‘I am disappointed and dismayed at your handling of this matter, Frick. I know we’ve had our share of difficulties over the years, but we have always managed to put on a united front. Even with that business with your Mary Ann brother and my nephew, which was messy as hell, we were able to work together to quash the ensuing scandal for our two families and have since managed to keep the little catamites separated. However, I can not condone your reckless practices with regard to our current business interests. If you are incapable of handling matters better, I will have you banished along with your degenerate brother to the bowels of the New York office . . .”

I hadn’t had time to finish reading the passage before I heard voices out in the corridor and then someone began to rattle at the doorknob. I looked at the clock on my phone and realized I’d been down here far longer than I’d planned. Shit. I hastily began to stuff the documents I’d pulled out back into the file, intending to try and hide my mischief as best as I could, but hadn’t managed to clean it all up when the door to the storage room literally crashed open.

I turned to look and discovered that whoever wanted in hadn’t bothered to find a key to the door; they’d apparently just kicked it in, as evidenced by the splintering and cracking of the wood around the door jamb. But the force with which the door had been rammed had backfired and the door had immediately swung closed again after it crashed into the wall behind. Which gave me just enough time to spin around so I was looking at the entryway face-on when the invaders came all the way in.

“There you are! What the hell are you doing down here, skulking in the damn basement?” a drunken and visibly angry Craig Taylor screamed at me.