Kings Don't Mean A Thing

Flashback, three months. A man parks his car on 21st Street near the Dorchester and waddles toward Spruce—woozy, been drinking since noon. He is humming Brazil. It is always Brazil. Not the Aurora Miranda Brazil but the Ritchie Brothers'. " 'We stood beneath an amber mo-o-on.' "

As usual near midnight, the activity has just begun on this Philadelphia street. The man warily surveys the new autumn crop. Tank tops of summer have been replaced with checkered shirts and work boots. Young men decked out as construction workers who have never seen a crane. It used to be glitter. Glitter and be gay. Now it's swagger and be butch. Beneath that pierced ear, behind that strut lies the soul of a hairdresser, he thinks. These are not his kind of men. None of this is him.

He is different. Swings both ways. Certainly, absolutely, not one of them. Dabbling in perversity, playing ticktacktoe in the nether world is one thing. Being like them is something he would never admit to himself.

"Are you all right?" asks a Paul Bunyan dress-alike.

John Knight opens his eyes. He nods his head. The inquisitor stands close, puts his arm to Knight's elbow but is shrugged away.

"I'm OK," he answers.

"Just being friendly," says the stranger.

"I'm all right. Just need another drink."

Down Spruce. More of them. A parade. Who are they? Where do they come from? Near the Warwick Hotel, he cuts off a side street and enters the 247 Bar. Cowboys, leathermen, telephone repairmen, ditchdiggers—only by night. By day, copywriters, space salesmen, bookkeepers, shoe clerks. He stays for a double, then splits.

At 15th and Spruce, lined up like cloned derivations of Joan Blondell in a Busby Berkeley production number, are several boys, some of them pretty, if you can see through the acne. They are the youths of the evening and the Warner brothers would turn over in their graves.

He eyes the chorus line. He says hello to one of the kids with whom he had once tricked. The kid breaks from his frozen-pose position, smiles, his teeth in need of a good orthodontist.

"What's up?" the kid asks.

"I'm horny as hell," Knight replies.

The kid stares at Knight's lower lip and suggests they go somewhere. Knight rejects the idea.

"I've got a friend," says the kid. "Someone new to the street. I can fix you up with him, and if it works, you pay me thirty dollars. Pay nothing to him. If it doesn't, pay me ten dollars. No hassle."

"Sounds good."

Slowly, the two men walk the four blocks, past the Allegro, where the established Philadelphia homosexual carouses, past Roscoe's, where the liberated homosexual adjourns after his gay-activist meeting. They stop at the Hasty-Tasty Deli. Signs on the window announce a gay dance, a dog lost, a roommate wanted. Inside, the cashier and the grocery clerk talk in "get you, honey" lingo. The customers are friendly and the place is brightly lighted. People actually can see what they're eating—and each other.

The kid sees his friend at the rear table.

"Felix," he says, "this is John."

Felix offers his hand. It is a long hand and he drops it into John's the way a haberdasher would slip a tie into a gift box.

John sits down. He asks Felix if he'd like another coffee. He orders three.

Felix is quiet, the kid chatty, John sulky.

Felix whispers, "Is this guy drunk?"

The kid replies, "No, he's high; he's usually that way." He turns to John. "Do you like Felix?"

John nods.

"So it's a deal?"

"It's a deal. Here."

John pulls a couple of 20s from his pocket and asks the kid to take care of all the negotiations and keep the change.

Five minutes later, a sullen Felix Melendez and an impatient John Knight leave Hasty-Tasty for Knight's $1050-a-month apartment in the Dorchester on Rittenhouse Square.

If we are to believe what Melendez later told the kid, "Nothing happened. We smoked a joint, then that guy John fell asleep. I stayed the night and he cooked me breakfast."

•

Early on the morning of December 11, 1975, the telephone rings at the house where I'm staying in Provincetown. I've asked my New York answering service to be cautious about routing the Provincetown number, to give it out only in case of emergency.

The call is from Tom Morgan, editor of The Village Voice. No apologies, no how-are-yous. Straightaway, he asks, "Have you been following this John Knight business?" I don't know what he's talking about. After all, I'm on vacation, enjoying the off-season quiet of P'town, walking the sandy beaches, retiring early, and who the hell is John Knight? I tell Morgan that I haven't seen a paper or heard a radio since leaving New York.

"Never mind," he says. "In a nutshell, the heir to the largest newspaper chain in the country got himself killed on Sunday. It looks like a homosexual thing, perhaps a ritualistic killing. It's got all the earmarks of a great story: money, power, the works. They haven't caught the killer yet. Can you get your ass on a plane to Philadelphia and check it out?"

I hem and haw. On vacation. Away from my regular beat: the Voice column, the murder stories, coverage of the gaylib scene. Don't know a thing about John Knight. Don't know Philadelphia. But Morgan is a con man with an irresistible manner. Flattery works on writers. And this writer doesn't ordinarily ponder whether that flattery is false or sincere.

Two hours later, I'm on one of those six-passenger shuttle jobs, flying south of the Provincetown sunset, and by nine P.M., I'm in the City of Brotherly Love, where the streets are painted red, white and blue in preparation for the Bicentennial; and the closest thing to beach and sand is a poster at the Eastern Airlines terminal advertising a winter vacation in Miami.

Philadelphia. Former home of Princess Grace. Site of the Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart comedy. Mayor Frank Rizzo. The Philadelphia Flyers. The Liberty Bell. Marian Anderson and Joseph Kallinger. The town that rolls up its lawns at six P.M. and closes shop on Sundays.

I check into the Warwick, a sedate hostelry two blocks from the Dorchester apartment where Knight lived and died. Room service brings up a Jack Daniel's, a ham and cheese on rye, plus the latest Inquirer, Bulletin and News. As expected, Knight's demise is emblazoned on the front pages. Each of the dailies has an exclusive story. The News, where he worked as an editor, plays up the "regular Joe" angle. Paul Janensch, Knight's managing editor, is quoted as saying, "He loved the newspaper business and all aspects of it.... He was a hard-working guy who took instructions well."

Murder victims are usually painted as saints and one reads the gushy postmortem prose with a certain amount of cynicism. Yet there seems to be a holding back in the copy, as if the papers are trying to soft-pedal Knight's homosexuality, as if they don't want to deal with it unless they are forced to, as if it isn't kosher to bring someone out of the closet after death, especially if that someone happens to be a budding Citizen Kane. But between the lines are hints that Knight's gayness was the key to his murder. Allusions to a "secret life," a search through Philadelphia's underground for possible suspects, run through the reports. There are also rumors about diaries detailing his sizzling sex life.

Having digested the papers, I leave the hotel, hail a cab and journey to police headquarters.

Christmas is just around the corner. At Homicide, holiday tackiness covers the walls. A blue Christmas tree with silver bulbs, silver tinsel and angel's hair stands next to an American flag, and next to that stands Chief Inspector Joseph Golden, in charge of detectives on the Knight case. My timing is perfect. Golden is just about to announce the identity of the Knight killers at a press conference. I'm (continued on page 196) Kings (continued from page 160) ushered into a room where perhaps a dozen reporters wait at the ready. Golden solemnly nods at the group and places himself behind a desk. A potted poinsettia droops directly over his head. He looks like a bruised angel with a scarlet halo.

A fellow officer begins the conference by passing photographs of the three suspects to each of the newsmen. "Just a few minutes ago," Golden says, "we obtained warrants charging each of these persons with murder, three counts of robbery, attempted murder, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. The warrants are based on evidence obtained during the police investigation." Golden describes each of the suspects. His information is sparse:

Felix Melendez, aged 20, 5'9", 135 pounds, slender build, green eyes, shoulder-length hair, light complexion, birthmark on the outer right thigh and scar on abdomen.

Salvatore Soli, aged 37, 5'4", 128 pounds, slender build, brown eyes, dark brown hair, mustache, dark complexion, track marks on both arms, tattoos on right forearm of two hearts and a dove and the words Mom and Dad. Tattoos on the left upper arm of a cross, a heart and a rose.

Steven Maleno, aged 25, 5'9", slender, muscular, dark hair, olive complexion, track marks, married.

Golden maintains that robbery was the motive in the case. He doesn't comment on whether or not the men are involved in drug traffic or had homosexual involvements. Nor does he talk about a relationship between any of the men and Knight. "All three are dangerous," he admits. "All three come from South Philadelphia."

Even with my fragmentary knowledge of the city, that last reference to South Philly says something about the suspects. Mayor Rizzo hails from South Philly. He's the former cop, the big hero and the idol of the community, the local boy who made good. They love it when he returns in a limousine and waves to them. Family honor is big there, too. People protect their relatives. Call someone's sister a whore and you'll find your head bashed in. No big deal is made of the Mafia. It supports the community. Better the Mafia than the liberal politicians is the feeling.

Homosexuality in South Philadelphia means drag queens. They're spottable. They wear their gayness on the outside and they're accepted as freaks of nature. The toughs protect them. They banter with them. "Hey, sweetie, who's your date for tonight? Wanna give me a blow job?"

"It's not big enough, honey, I want a real man."

A man who is homosexual but dresses like everyone else and passes is a threat. If a member of a South Philadelphia gang is suddenly discovered hanging out with a homosexual for reasons other than hustling, procuring or beating the daylights out of him, his contemporaries most likely rough him up and banish him forever from the paternal breast. Naturally, the Church doesn't like fairies. They're an abomination. It's right there in the Bible. Check Leviticus. In South Philadelphia, machismo is all.

It is late. It's been a long day. It is as if Provincetown has never happened. I return to the Warwick, and sleep.

•

The murder had taken place Sunday morning, December 7, 1975. The evening had started innocently enough with a dinner party at La Truffe, which Knight himself had hosted. His guests were Mr. and Mrs. Janensch and Dr. and Mrs. John McKinnon.

If there was a purpose to the occasion, it was to celebrate the McKinnons' visit to Philadelphia. McKinnon and Knight had been roommates at Harvard in the late Sixties and had kept in touch through the years. In fact, Knight was best man at the McKinnons' wedding, but the McKinnons had not visited Knight since he moved to Philadelphia more than a year before. They had planned to stay the weekend as his house guests, to be shown around the city by him, to generally have a whiz-bang time.

Earlier that day, they had checked into Knight's apartment, rested, seen a bit of the town, had a couple of cocktails, then ambled off to La Truffe. Dinner consisted of four pheasants, which Knight had shot in South Dakota a couple of months before and which the restaurant had prepared especially for him and his guests.

As usual, there was plenty to drink, and Knight played the debonair host as he suggested the best Scotch before dinner, rare wines with each course and cordials to climax the gourmet meal. Conversation was light, sometimes sparkling; no one got drunk; giddy, perhaps, but in full control.

At 12:20 A.M., the Janensches said good night, leaving Knight and the McKinnons free to return to his apartment.

Once home, Dr. McKinnon and Knight drank brandy and reminisced about the old days—and Rosemary McKinnon dozed off on her husband's lap. Shortly after one A.M., the phone rang. Knight answered, spoke to the caller softly but with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. The doctor overheard part of the conversation. He heard Knight say, "I can't see you tonight. I've got house guests."

When Knight hung up the phone, he explained casually to McKinnon that the call was from a procurer who set him up with girls. It was an explanation that needn't have been made, and one that embarrassed the rather proper doctor.

About three A.M., the phone rang again. Knight was more abrupt with the caller this time. After hanging up, he suggested that the McKinnons retire to the guest room.

McKinnon speculated that Knight might be having a girl come by. He and his wife bade their chum good night—both men were quite smashed by then—and shuffled off to bed.

At four A.M., the doorbell rang. Knight answered: It was the phone caller. Knight explained he couldn't let him in, but the caller made a ruckus in the hallway, pleading, "I love you, John. I must see you."

Eventually, Knight opened the door. The man pushed past him. The man was Felix Melendez, accompanied by Steven Maleno and Salvatore Soli.

They forced Knight to his bedroom. Even with his paunch, Knight was as strong as an ox and didn't give in easily. Still, he was tipsy. His targets were not easily discernible. They overpowered him. One of them knocked his head against a Ming vase. Once he was down, they used belts and ropes and socks to tie his legs together and bind his hands behind his back. They gagged his mouth with his best silk neckties.

Then they ransacked the apartment. In the guest room, they discovered the McKinnons. Rosemary McKinnon was ordered naked from the bed. The doctor was unbudgeable. Too many drinks—he was out like a light. The men did not force him to awaken. Instead, Soli made Mrs. McKinnon walk through the apartment, open desk drawers and assist him in the search for valuables. She remembers that Soli had a hand gun and that Melendez roamed the apartment with a harpoon gun and a scuba-diving knife. When she and Soli reached Knight's bedroom, she saw her host lying face down in the corner. He was not moving.

Ninety minutes into the chaos, the doorbell rang. It was the Dorchester's night attendant, who had come to report that a neighbor was complaining that she couldn't sleep due to the noise. Melendez told the attendant that he was Knight's brother-in-law and that the two were practicing karate. The attendant (continued on page 224) Kings (continued from page 197) suggested that they practice during the day.

The call frightened Maleno and Soli and they decided to flee with the goods they had collected. They tied up Mrs. McKinnon and placed her under a living-room sofa. Melendez was left in the apartment. He was extremely nervous, pacing, muttering to himself. Each time he saw Mrs. McKinnon in her prone position, he danced an imperfect gavotte, wheeling and turning, unsure of the next step to take. Finally, Mrs. McKinnon persuaded him to untie her. As soon as he did, she ran to the guest room, grabbed one of her host's hunting rifles, woke her husband, gave the rifle to him and hurriedly but lucidly explained what had happened. The explanation was more sobering than 40 cups of black coffee. The doctor rushed into Knight's bedroom. Knight seemed to be dead. The doctor gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As he leaned back from his efforts, he saw Melendez standing on Knight's bed. "I didn't do it, I didn't do it," Melendez screamed. He was holding the gun and the knife. McKinnon wrestled with him, but Melendez eased his way out of the doctor's strangle hold and fled the apartment.

Meanwhile, Rosemary McKinnon, now discreetly covered by a robe, had escaped to the outside hallway, where she waited for an elevator to take her to the main lobby and safety. Just as the elevator stopped, Melendez leaped into the car with her. They tussled. He nicked her under the breast with the knife. At the third floor, the elevator came to a halt and Mrs. McKinnon ran out and down the fire escape. By the time the police arrived, Melendez had vanished.

•

The phone call that gets me out of bed on Friday, December 12, comes from Dennis Rubini, who teaches a course in alternative lifestyles at a Philadelphia university. Rubini has been president of Philadelphia's Gay Activist Alliance and is active in a sadomasochistic "consciousness-raising" group. He asks if I have seen the morning papers. One of the suspects, he reports, has surrendered. He doesn't know which one.

"I hope the cops will stop hassling us now," Rubini grumbles—us meaning the homosexual population of Philadelphia.

He goes on to complain that he himself was picked up by the police because he resembled a sketch of one of the wanted men.

"They took me to Homicide. One of the detectives noticed a bulge in my pocket and thought it might be a gun. Instead, he found a copy of Larry Townsend's The Leatherman's Handbook, a manual on sadism and masochism. The officer said, 'Oh, my daughter's interested in leather handiwork, too,' and handed the book back to me.

"Then the cops fingerprinted me, photographed me and subjected me to a polygraph test. They wanted to know if I had ever engaged in 'abnormal sex.'

"I asked them what they meant by abnormal sex. I said, 'My definition of abnormal or society's definition?' They were stumped. They let it fly. Anyway, I passed the polygraph and they very politely thanked me for my time and trouble."

•

The man who surrendered was Steven Maleno. The night before (after Inspector Golden released the suspect's name to the press), Maleno telephoned police. Shortly after, he met a team of detectives in Center City and was taken to Homicide. Later, his wife appeared. She said she had been separated from the trigger-tempered Maleno for the past several months. She tried to see him at Homicide but was told she couldn't. She told reporters that her husband was an unemployed sheet-metal worker.

•

At the arraignment room of police headquarters, a cop warns a United Press photographer that he is not to take photos inside the courtroom. Nevertheless, the photographer hunches near an elevator, four yards away from a gate that separates free men from confined. I stand near the photographer, hoping to get a glimpse of Maleno as he enters the courtroom.

After a short wait, the elevator door opens. Flashes pop, momentarily blinding the accused. He squints, lowers his eyes to the floor. Two burly officers guard him—bookends on each side. A reporter, who obviously has seen The Front Page too many times, gets close and blurts, "Did you kill John Knight?" Maleno and bookends keep moving.

In the courtroom, the judge asks Maleno if he has an attorney, then tells the prisoner that he will be held without bail.

Maleno looks as if he's been hit by a bulldozer. He is clad in a raincoat that's been through hurricanes. Tan slacks in need of pressing peek out from the bottom of the coat. The unshaven face of a street-wise punk sticks out from the top.

"Sign this document," says the judge.

"I can't," snaps Maleno, eying his handcuffs.

An officer removes the manacles and Maleno signs the paper. On his way out, the full press brigade follows and flashbulbs snap as if the queen mother were visiting town. But this time Maleno stares straight ahead.

"Who killed John Knight?" asks the Hildy Johnson type.

"Go fuck yourself," spits Maleno as the elevator door slams in the reporter's face.

Outside the arraignment room, with Maleno's invective still hanging in the air, word filters out to the press that Melendez, too, is dead. His bullet-ridden body has been found near the site of a boy-scout reservation in Camden.

Melendez and Knight: the hustler and the heir. The day before, I hadn't heard of either of them, much less of the McKinnons, Maleno and Soli. Suddenly, I find the Knight case the focal point of my life.

That evening, I check the four-star specials at the Warwick's newsstand. Melendez' face is splattered all over the pages, "Knight suspect shot to death: Body found in Jersey." For some strange reason, an old song recorded by Lee Wiley rings through my head:

Love laughs at a king,Kings don't mean a thing,On the street of dreams.

•

Monday, December 15. The Philadelphia News and Inquirer building is within walking distance of City Hall, my geographical point of reference in the city of brotherly turmoil. On the editorial floor of the News, a police radio blares and ten phones ring at once. "There's no one in the sports department," grumbles a reporter to one of the phone receivers. Then she yells, "Who are you waiting for?"

"Paul Janensch," I answer.

"In there." She points to an office.

Janensch is in his mid-30s. He looks like he loves the great indoors: That gray-pink pallor that comes from too much time spent under fluorescent lighting is a color common to editors. Horn-rimmed glasses are perched on the bridge of his nose. He leans back in his swivel chair, hands behind his head, and snaps that he has already said probably all there is to say about his last supper with Knight at La Truffe. "Have you read our coverage?"

I answer, "Every last word of it."

"Well, then, anything I tell you is redundant. The meal was one of the most pleasant I've had in a long lime. It lasted four hours. John selected the wines. The wine tab alone came to a hundred and fourteen dollars. The McKinnons were good company."

Did Janensch have any idea of Knight's sexual orientation?

"You mean did I suspect that John was gay? No, I didn't. There was never a thought in my mind about John's being homosexual—that night or ever. I've worked closely with him. On two occasions, I had bumped into him socially—each time with a different woman. I always saw him with people from the straight world. Everybody who knew John thought he was totally straight. We were utterly amazed at these revelations."

All along, Knight kept a low profile at the News. Had Janensch been unaware of the family connection, he suspects he'd still have spotted money. Not that Knight was throwing it around—he wasn't ostentatious—but often the working rich are twice as conscientious as the working middle class. They have to prove that they deserve their jobs in spite of their inherited status.

"John often worked fourteen-hour shifts. If a big story came his way, he kept his cool. He could handle it."

His nose for news, in Janensch's opinion, could eventually have made him the bona fide successor to Granddad Knight (John's father had died in World War Two combat two weeks before his son's birth) despite nepotism. Like the old man, John's views didn't particularly follow a straight line. He was for abortion, but also for capital punishment. He was against the Vietnam war but conservative on fiscal matters. As far as the gay issue is concerned, journalistically, he kept away from it. "The paper has not come out against gay rights," says Janensch, "but we have an active invisible gay life here in Philadelphia, one that is not especially kinky. And we are sympathetic to the demands of these gay groups. We offer them maximum opportunity to tell their side of the story.

"This gay-movement stuff wasn't John's territory to cover. It wasn't an issue. However, I think if John's grandfather discovered his tendencies, he'd certainly be upset, but I doubt if he'd do anything drastic. He'd probably want to help John and send him to a psychoanalyst."

I leave Janensch's office wondering why I didn't tell him I'm gay. Why shouldn't he know it? Or is what I do in bed irrelevant in matters outside? Perhaps a homosexual's skin should be a different color. Lavender for immediate identification. Would it have changed matters any had Janensch and his co-workers known about Knight? Does the sound of money in conjunction with clout and power negate one's sexual orientation? Do intelligence, a low profile and playing it cool make one acceptable? What if Knight were lavender? Knight's life—and death—is getting to me.

That afternoon, I meet Jim Kennedy at the Hasty-Tasty. Kennedy calls himself "a gay street priest who ministers to hustlers." His ministry is in the Northern Liberty area, where he lives with five young men on a $2000 grant from the city drug program.

Kennedy knew Melendez slightly. Sometimes he'd bump into him and Knight eating breakfast at the Hasty-Tasty, "but to say I knew Felix real well would be a lie. Everybody's saying that: It's like right after Martin Luther King's assassination, everyone swore he knew King."

Nevertheless, Kennedy has theories. He maintains that you must understand about class differences in order to understand the phenomenon of hustlers. The majority are working class. They come from broken homes and their feelings have been brutalized.

"Felix was typical of the gang that works the street. He came from a Pentecostal background and the church is anti-gay. Felix had a multiple number of oppressions working against him: religion, sexual orientation, class and his Puerto Rican minority status."

Oppression makes curious bedfellows, and it seemed only logical that fate would bring Melendez together with Knight.

Knight sought out the street kid, the outcast, the sexual heathen, the earth child whose universe was entirely different from his. With Knight, sex was always a matter of cultural collision. "Diametrically opposed" was a figure of speech that could elicit a hard-on. He could never sever the umbilical cord that bound him to a patriarchal society. Cut it and there was the possibility of Grandpa's cutting him off. To go visibly against it would be to go against everything he was ever taught in all those fancy schools. For Knight to accept what he was meant that he might not be accepted by the hierarchy who expected greatness of him. Greatness meant strength. Strength meant masculinity. Masculinity meant heterosexuality. Heterosexuality meant façade. Maintain façade for the world to see. Cheat in the dark abyss of the soul. Cheat in a dimly lighted back yard.

Of course, there's no telling what might have been had Knight played in another yard. Impossible to surmise whether he'd meet his heart's desire on the Main Line or if he'd find a Felix Melendez on Society Hill.

The truth is, when you're rich and bothered and restless, a hustler is easier to cope with than a sit-down dinner for six. And with the help of a few select gay publications, anyone can dial a whore.

Hustlers who advertise in The Advocate (the largest gay publication in the country) are like visiting nurses. Many are college kids who need the bucks to get them through school. Others are actors and dancers who can't hold steady jobs because they need time for auditions. Still others are lazy and find whoring a way to pay the rent. And there are others with great bodies who love sex, perform well and figure they might as well cash in on their hobby. They sit at home, wait for the phone to ring and charge the going rate. Most male models are gay and claim to be "versatile." Modeling is a way of meeting interesting men they wouldn't ordinarily meet, A good model is not bothered by the age, weight, height or kinky demands of his client. He is honest: a veritable boy scout.

The street hustler has a tougher time of it. There's no telephone, no way of screening the crazies, no way of spotting Lily Law in plain clothes. The pay is bad. A kid can freeze his ass off on a winter night and go home with ten dollars for a blow job. Generally, street hustlers are sexually passive. And they're younger than the house models. Pill popping and heroin are part of the scene.

Melendez was the classic street hustler, Knight the classic John. Though opposites on the socioeconomic scale, they shared the same patriarchal burden. And little by little, Felix had fallen in love with his John.

•

Through the years, stories have been written comparing the elder Knight to Joseph Kennedy. Although tragedy followed Knight all his life the way tire tracks follow a Cadillac down a muddy road, durability is his middle name. Still, he carries an eraser in his head and can obliterate the past at will. But first he has to know it all.

Knight has just returned to his office at the Akron Beacon Journal—the first newspaper in his chain and still his home base—and getting through to him on the phone is easy. A secretary answers and suggests that I tell her what the call is about. "He's busy now," she says. "I'll tell him."

An hour later, Knight phones back. His opening words are, "I'm gun-shy.

"I've talked to Newsweek and Time and have been misquoted," he continues. "To discuss my relationship with my grandson is still painful."

Nevertheless, he states that young John was an excellent newsman. "No doubt about that." And that he knows his grandson was liked both personally and professionally. Had he lived, his career would have been a brilliant one.

"We had a close relationship, John and I—a close and warm relationship. We understood each other and were on the best of terms. There were no differences. Never any differences. And I have no self-recrimination about any of what has happened.

"Alter John's death, I spent three days in solitary at Massachusetts General Hospital, thinking over every aspect of his life as it applied to me. There is nothing that I would have done differently. No changes I'd have made."

I ask if he'll see me, if only to reminisce about his grandson's life, as opposed to the circumstances surrounding his death.

"Reviewing our relationship would be very painful," he repeats. "I'm afraid not."

In the late spring of 1976, I phone him again. But once again, he refuses to be interviewed at any length.

"Let me just reiterate that stories about my late grandson's wealth are greatly exaggerated. Officially, he was not the heir. That had been reported erroneously. John held some stock, which I gave to him, but we're a corporation and a man has to earn his own way in the business."

Despite Grandpa's protest, unofficially there was never any doubt that John was the heir or that he was being groomed as the next Citizen Knight. Had his abilities swayed toward the business end of journalism, he'd have been shipped off to Miami, because The Miami Herald is the best school for learning the corporate aspects of journalism. Since signs of printer's ink had flowed through his veins, the master plan had been to send young John to Detroit after his graduation from Harvard. There, the corporation could find out if he was a good reporter. At The Detroit Free Press, he'd have to produce. He could also learn the ropes, from paper routing to advertising. Once schooled, he would be transferred to Philadelphia, where the two Knight-Ridder papers are the best training grounds for an executive editor or would-be publisher.

Acquaintances who knew both Johns claim that the family ties were extraordinarily strong. Grandfather Knight took the role of father almost from the moment John was born, leaving his mother a sort of subordinate figure who went along with decisions regarding the master plan. Grandfather was responsible for sending John away from home to school when he was moderately young, for putting a bug in his ear about Oxford and Harvard.

A pessimist would think that the burden of tradition would drive a kid up a wall, but John III adored, coddled and feared his grandfather. "He genuflected each time he talked about the old man," says a newspaper chum, "but I think he had a deep penetrating anger and hate toward him. He was desperately afraid of his grandfather. He was afraid of doing wrong, afraid of his wrath and displeasure." Patricide was the name of the game. Or, to be exact, grandpatricide.

Ironically, most people who know the elder Knight claim he would not have been vindictive had John confessed his homosexual feelings. If young John had a reasonable adult relationship with another man, it's unlikely that Grandfather would have hit the ceiling. But John was fucking with street kids. Boy or girl kids, the situation was a flammable one. Too much was at stake. A scandal of the chicken-hawk sort could affect the corporation and John III's future role in the empire. No way would Granddad approve.

•

December 14. They've seized Salvatore Soli in Miami. I think if I were Soli, I'd have fled to Miami, too. The weather is chilly in Philly. Frigid. I read Soli's story and decide to call my parents at their condominium near Palm Beach. They beg me to visit them, get a little sunburn, swim in the pool. They want to know what I'm up to. I ask if there has been anything about Soli's capture in the Florida papers. My father tells me he's heard about the tsimmes. He suggests that I move from my dump in Manhattan. If I can't afford the rent in a good high-rise, he'll help me out.

Parents, commitments, obligations, umbilical cords that are tough to sever even after the grown son leaves home. Do orphans and bastards have it easier?

Soli, with all of his philandering, with his arrest record and track marks, was still closer to his mother than Camden is to Philly. Momma Soli would hear from her son every day, no matter where he was. He hadn't called since the Knight murder. What could be more natural than for Antoinette Soli to go on television and plead, "Salvi, please come home or get in touch with me. Let me know you're all right. You may be dead like that boy Felix Melendez."

Through the magic of the media, Mrs. Soli reminds her son that she is critically ill, having suffered a massive heart attack less than a year before. "The operation was unsuccessful." she weeps. "They don't expect me to live more than a year."

At Chock Full o' Nuts, where I wait for a friend to meet me, Mrs. Soli's anguished face leaps out from the pages of the News. A hooker on the next stool reads the article with relish.

"He should be in a mental institution," she says to the counterwoman. "The aggravation he's giving his poor mother."

She puts down her News. "I wonder if they're giving a reward," she says to no one in particular. She orders another coffee. "Light."

Two of her cohorts enter the place. One is a Katy Jurado look-alike who glances at Soli's picture.

"He looks familiar. Cute," she says.

"Just caught," says the first hooker. "I think they're giving a reward."

"Forget the reward. I'd do it with him for nothing. Wouldn't you?" She looks at me.

"No," I answer. "Not for nothing." I make a mental note to check the mirror to see if my skin has turned lavender.

•

As it happened, there was no reward. Soli was turned in by a woman in Miami he had taken up with—an 18-year-old blonde "burlesque dancer ' who ratted to protect herself. By the time the whole story of Soli's and Maleno's actions after the murder finally was pieced together from trials, news accounts and personal interviews, it read like a James M. Cain novel. What started out as a simple rip-off ended up as a sordid melodrama starring smalltime characters in an out-of-control plot. The melodrama also featured the murder of Felix Melendez.

After fleeing Knight's apartment, Soli and Maleno checked into a motel in New Jersey. They summoned Melendez, demanding to know why he had run amuck in Knight's apartment.

"Why did you kill John Knight? Why the Christ did you kill him?" Sal shrieked. "I ought to kill you now. Did you stab that McKinnon broad, too? You did, didn't you? What the fuck happened?"

Felix was panic-stricken. He had just told Sal that he knew nothing. He had tried to act cool, but he was like a schoolboy caught by his teacher in a lie. The way out was to 'fess up.

"She tried to escape," Felix explained. "I was leaving John's apartment and she was in the hall, hollering. She grabbed me. I stabbed her. I was scared."

"Don't tell us lies," screamed Maleno. "What happened? Why did you stab that woman?"

Felix rasped, "I'm telling the truth. I stabbed her in the elevator and cut her hand. It wasn't like I was trying to kill her. I was scared. That's the truth."

Steve and Sal continued to interrogate. They battered Felix with queries and accusations and refused to accept any of his answers. Crazy with anger, Steve then took a butcher knife and sliced Felix' head. Blood gushed. It trickled down his face, onto his coat, onto the couch. But Felix held in the pain, fearing that the slightest provocation would start Maleno off again.

Finally, Sal and Steve shut themselves into the kitchenette area. "What are we going to do about Felix?" demanded Steve. "We can't trust him. He knows too much. What should we do? Leave the country? Leave the state? Keep running?"

The men decided that the logical move would be to flee. But first they watched the 11-P.M. television newscast. Though not named, Soli, Melendez and Maleno were described, down to the track marks on Soli's arm, courtesy of Rosemary McKinnon's amazing memory. It was another twinge of pain in the ongoing nightmare for all of them.

Toward midnight, they left the motel. After a couple of hours of driving, they reached a deserted area near Camden. Eventually, they stopped at a dead end. Steve said, "We've got to bury this shit," and he and Felix got out of the car. They headed toward a wooded area. Steve carried a bag containing coats, dungarees, shirts and shoes that they had worn when they ripped off Knight's apartment, as well as blood-soaked towels from Felix' head wound. Both Steve and Felix started digging a hole in which to dispose of the stuff. But Steve started again. "Why did you kill that man?"

He pulled a gun from the waist of his pants. And fired point-blank at Felix' face. Felix fell. Leaning over him, Steve fired two more shots.

Hurriedly, he took the bag with the garments and returned to the car. Less than a mile away, he dumped the clothing into a suburban garbage can. Then he dismantled the gun and, piece by piece, tossed it out the car window. Particles of the weapon became part of the New Jersey landscape.

Fearing that he'd become part of the landscape himself, Soli decided to split from Maleno. Maleno returned to Philadelphia. Three days later, he surrendered. Soli drove to Miami. He dyed his hair strawberry blond, cut off his mustache and took up with a blonde bombshell. The bombshell turned him in.

•

"Women? Sure. He dated a few, but no one heavily. Many of his dates worked at the paper."

The speaker is Ladd Neuman, Knight's editor at The Detroit Free Press. He's talking about the straight side of Knight's sex life.

"Did they come back the morning after and discuss John's prowess?" I ask.

"No," replies Neuman. "He dated them like friends, which is to say that he'd take them out to a show and that's it. John's women were two types: the Detroit Free Press kind, who were safe acquaintances, and the women he didn't know and would screw around with. Those he called foxes or foxy chicks. He'd brag about how great they were. 'She had a hell of a body' or 'She was good in bed.' "

Did John ever say what he did in bed? Neuman's face grows pensive, as if he's trying to reconstruct a scene that happened a million or so years ago. Finally, he lights on the scene and remarks that John was never specific as to whether his taste ran to oral or anal or self-abuse or S/M or fetishism or whatever, but there was a woman who worked in the mayor's office, who once said something.

"This was a real likable girl," recalls Neuman. "She was a free-spirited woman who was nicknamed Miss Zipper because of a zipper dress she had that came off easily. When I knew her, she was making it with someone at the bureau and driving him out of his mind. She'd talk very freely about her sex life, too. Well, one day she came in and said she was 'freaked out.' I asked why. 'Well,' she said, 'I made it with John last night.' And I said, 'You did? What about your other friend?' She answered, 'Actually, John's a better fuck than my other friend.' I then asked if she was going back for more. 'No,' she said, 'because I sort of fell like one of his possessions. I got freaked out by being shown everything in his apartment, from his stereo to his etchings.'

"Because of that kind of feedback, I never suspected John had a homosexual street life. I just thought he was kind of stuck on himself. I assumed he wasn't letting women get close to him because of his money, but I remember thinking that it's still odd. Why didn't he ever have a good, heavy, long-term romance going? What the hell was he afraid of? Was he hurt in the past? Every now and then, he'd mention some girl in London whom he claimed he was pining for. That girl, he said, had gotten herself married to someone else.

"Now, if you sit and talk with some of the Free Press reporters, they'll tell you, 'I thought maybe John was gay because he dressed too macho or something like that. Shit. I knew John better than anybody in Detroit, and I didn't know his secret. In fact, the one or two times that I had any reason to suspect anything, I kicked those reasons off because John was coming on so strong with the foxy-chick rap. He'd constantly barrage me in a kind of locker-room way about the newest girl in town.

"One night, we went to what was Detroit's rowdiest, raunchiest topless go-go joint, the Golddiggers Lounge. We drank ourselves blind and closed the place. John kept trying to put the make on one of the waitresses. She wouldn't go along with it. So we finally left the bar, and John spotted this same waitress outside and took off after her. I figured he was going to get himself in trouble, because you don't run up to someone in the street in Detroit at two-thirty in the morning, no matter who you are.

"John talked to her like a Dutch uncle. She was really dynamite—not too bright—and the next thing I knew, she was walking back to John's car. Later, I asked him how he finally managed, after having failed to entice the waitress in the bar. He said he told her he had a great record collection and a terrific stereo."

•

Knight's secret diaries have been held by the police since his murder and my chances of learning what's in them have been slim until I make the right connection.

The detective suggests that I stay away from headquarters. He asks where I'm calling from. I tell him I'm at a phone booth near the Troc Burlesque Theater. I also tell him who my contact is. He says he's been waiting for my call. I know this is as close as I'm going to get to Knight's diaries.

An hour later, he pulls up and beckons me into his car. Cramped in the back seat is a dog of unspecified breed, probably a bastard relative of the family that carries whiskey to lost skiers in the Alps. The animal is either on Valium or three steps from death. It hardly moves. The detective calls it Ruth. Definitely not watchdog material.

Ruth and I have something in common: Neither of us stirs as the detective drives us to an area of Philadelphia completely alien to me. He pulls to a stop, pats Ruth's head and says, "We won't be long, girl." The detective and I enter a restaurant decorated in early Sigmund Romberg. We take a corner booth.

"Let's talk about the diaries," I say.

"Let's look at the menu first," he says.

We order Scotch straight and settle for Wiener schnitzel. The drink takes a long time in coming.

"What, specifically, do you want to know?"

" Everything. Were the entries daily?"

"Daily for maybe a one- or two-week period. Then Knight would stop for three. Then there'd be Saturday, Sunday, Monday—that kind of thing. Some of the entries were short. Like, 'Start working more.' 'Start straightening things out.' Most of them were about feelings. He'd write about sex, reacting positively to a good sexual encounter with a woman. That would make him happy. But then he'd write about a homosexual experience and he'd write with obviously more...."

"Soul-searching?" I offer.

"No. Not soul-searching. If he had a really terrific homosexual experience, he'd describe it in much more glowing kinds of enjoyment terms. The description of heterosexual relationships that were successful, I guess, made him proud, or bootstrapped him into a sense of 'I'm on the right road now.' And yet the homosexual experiences were more fulfilling to him from the standpoint of emotions."

"Were they strictly blow jobs, pardon the expression?"

The detective laughs. "The expression is pardoned," he says. "In polite circles, we call it fellatio. No. Not strictly blow jobs at all, though blow jobs seemed to be, according to Knight's entries, the most titillating experience of all."

"Done to him?"

"No. That he did."

"Fascinating."

"Yeah. Fellatio that he did."

"Did Knight discuss his homosexuality at length in the diaries?"

"He talked about homosexual experiences and how euphoric he had been in a particular homosexual encounter, but he wouldn't say that homosexuality itself was terrific. It was a disease that one overcame, rather than accept as part of one's make-up. I know for people like you it's fine, but for this poor guy, it was death. It is fine with you, isn't it?"

"It's fine with me."

"When he was drunk, he'd often go out to Rittenhouse Square or Spruce Street and pick up some kid. He'd wake up the next morning and give the guy a hundred dollars and tell him to get lost. Melendez was never fully accepting of that from the start. He didn't like the idea of being rejected that way. Melendez tried to make contact with him. Basically, John didn't want to have anything to do with him. In his sober or lucid moments, John was ashamed of Melendez. That offended the kid. I'm not saying that that motivated Melendez to intentionally go out and get Knight. But if you accept the proposition that Melendez killed Knight, it explains the rage that would instill in Melendez the urge to kill."

"You were in Knight's apartment. You worked on the case," I say. "Since they won't be bringing it up in court, can you tell me exactly what was found in Knight's foot locker?"

"About three hundred dollars' worth of pornographic books and commercial movies, the eight-millimeter variety. None of it was homemade, in the sense that it was filmed by Knight. It was the stuff you buy in pornographic shops. A lot of hard-core pornographic books, most of them homosexual. Somewhat ironically, some old childhood books. The kind of books that a kid has when he's ten. And the diaries."

"Any toys?"

"Some were found, but not in the foot locker. They were found in suitcases piled up next to the door. It looked like somebody intended to haul the sex toys out of there as part of the loot. In one of the suitcases was a couple of double-ended dildos. No leather or whips or handcuffs or cat-o'-nine-tails.

"Different people lake different views about Knight's apartment. I maintain that you could visit his place and never know that it was the home of a homosexual. Maybe I'm not sophisticated enough to know."

"Get off it. You're too sophisticated."

"Thanks. Other people have said you could tell it was a homosexual's quarters from the artwork. There was a Japanese print in one of the bathrooms—an explicit sexual scene. Some detectives concluded, from the painting, that the guy liked men. I remember going through the apartment with a couple of cops and they were examining the ceiling very closely to check if there had ever been a mirror on it. It tickled the hell out of me. Totally unrealistic. Sure, there were mirrors in the gymnasium where he worked out—but what does that tell? One of our men thought he might have another pad somewhere. A 'trick' apartment. No such thing.

"Knight's apartment got a good thorough overhaul. After sifting through his possessions, I realized that there was no damn underwear, anywhere. I said, 'Wait a minute. This is not real.' Then we found out that most of Knight's stuff was at the laundry."

"He did wear underwear?"

"Yeah." He grins. "Doesn't everybody? Do you?"

I don't answer. "Do you?"

He doesn't answer, either, but I can see he does.

•

Knight's last rites took place at the Striffler-Hamby Mortuary in Columbus, Georgia, his home town. Columbus' native son was eulogized as a "young man blessed by birth, circumstances and family. A young man with God-given gifts." The minister explained that "there is a sense of unreality, that this man's passing is a bad dream. But it is reality. And our first thought is, Why? I can't answer. I can only comfort."

In the vestibule, police made copies of the 500 or so signatures in the chapel guest book. After the service, mourners went by car to Parkhill Cemetery nearby. Knight's grandfather remained in his automobile. His widowed mother, Dorothy, stood silently as the coffin was lowered. A local television-news team filmed the rites from a hilly point overlooking the gravesite. A wire-service photographer moved among the mourners below.

•

In Philadelphia, plans are made to bury Melendez. Three days after Knight is laid to rest, a service is held for Felix at the Pullo Funeral Home in South Philadelphia.

The crowd there is small. No TV cameras, no media monitors visible outside the parlor, despite the fact that this is the most publicized murder case in Philadelphia history. I nod solemnly at the pomaded mortician's aide at the door. He gestures for me to sign the guest book. I don't—instead, I find a seat near the back of the parlor.

The mourners are mostly young girls in miniskirts, craggy-faced mommas, babies and teenage boys with long eyelashes and Philadelphia Flyers jackets. They occupy 20 rows of bridge chairs, which come to a halt a yard from the casket.

Sobbing everywhere. A young girl whimpers and a baby cries and another girl cries and another. Who are they? Friends of Felix'?

They make me feel out of place and I am out of place, conspicuous to myself because I shouldn't be here; somewhat guilt-ridden because I am here. Interesting that I should feel this way among Melendez' acquaintances. Interesting that I can move comfortably, snug in the fact that I'm doing my professional duty, among Knight's peers.

I notice a plainclothesman from police headquarters. He notices me, too, but he averts his eyes from mine. Another intruder. Thank the Lord.

The place soon fills to capacity. From where I sit, it's difficult to see Melendez' death face in the open coffin. There is a line of 15 people waiting to get a view. One of the viewers is a repeater. I get in line.

Moving to the coffin is a slow process. Once there, the procedure is to look at the body for as long as you want, then get back to your seat or leave the parlor. Most of the viewers sneak a quick glance. One viewer gazes and prays for what seems an hour. The line in back of me is long.

My turn. The coffin is plushed up with white satin. Melendez clad in a tan summer suit. Long and lanky. Tie tied in a tight Windsor knot. Hands folded across his chest. Hair slicked back. The cosmetician has done a remarkable job of hiding whatever damage the bullet wounds had done to his countenance. Felix looks like a waxwork of Rudolph Valentino. He sports a half-smile. Or is it a silent snicker?

Enough. My eyes shift to his shoes. Cheap, with those tiny ventilation air holes. Heels in A-1 condition. Big feet. No sign of socks.

Below his feet rests a pretty heart-shaped bouquet of white gladioli. Tied to the bouquet is a card. The card reads, Daddy. That's all. Daddy.

The gladioli and the Daddy card are buried with Felix.

"In South Philadelphia, homosexuality means drag queens."

Steve Maleno pleaded guilty to the murders of John Knight and Felix Melendez. Salvatore Soli pleaded innocent to both murders, stood trial in Philadelphia and Camden and was found guilty of first-degree murder on both counts. Both Soli and Maleno are serving life sentences.