I found him in his
study on the phone. He saw me and motioned me to sit down.
“Sandy,” he said to
his caller, “you really can do better than Rogers, Stone.”
I recognized this
as the name of a well-known entertainment law firm. Larry put on his patient
face. I could hear his caller’s voice across the room.
“That’s true,”
Larry said, “but I’m not available.” He listened. ‘‘I know you think he walks
on water, Sandy, but the guy’s a one-season sensation. Next year you’ll be
pushing someone else.” He picked up a pen and started to doodle on a legal pad.
“Look,” he said finally, “I’ll think about it, and get back to you. No, I
really will think about it. What? Yeah, he’s right here.” He pushed the mute
button on the phone and said, “It’s Sandy Blenheim. He wants to talk to you.”
“The fat guy at
Fein’s party?”
Larry nodded. “The
one who wants to make you a star.”
Reluctantly, I took
the phone. “Hello, this is Henry Rios.”
“Henry,” Blenheim
said, all oily affability, “You think about my proposal?”
“No, not really. I
haven’t had much time.”
There was a
disappointed silence at his end of the line. “What is it, Henry? The money?”
“Look, Mr. Blenheim
...”
“Sandy.”
“Sandy. I don’t
think this is going to make a good movie.”
“There’s a lot of
kids out there in Jim’s position,” Blenheim said. “Kids in the closet. Kids
getting picked on. This picture could show them there’s a right way to come out
and a wrong way. You know what I’m saying?”
I shot a glance at
Larry. He smiled. “Sure, I understand,” I said. “But this isn’t the right — “ I
searched for the word, “ — vehicle,” I said.
Larry nodded approvingly.
“Come on, you’ve
talked to the kid. You know what’s going through his head. That’s the good
stuff. Like how did he feel when he pulled the trigger—”
I cut him off. “Actually,
he doesn’t remember.”
“What do you mean
he doesn’t remember?”
“Just what I said,”
I replied, “and I’ve really told you more than I should but it’s just so you
know that this isn’t the story you think it is.”
“Maybe if we talked
some more,” he suggested.
“I’m sorry,” I
replied. “It wouldn’t serve any purpose. Do you want to talk to Larry?”
“Yeah, put him back
on.”
I handed the phone
to Larry. “It’s for you.”
“Yes, Sandy,” he
said. I heard the angry buzz of Blenheim’s voice complaining about my
intransigence. Larry broke in and said, “He doesn’t want more money, Sandy. He
wants to try his case in peace.” More angry buzzing. “Well,” Larry said,
shortly, “I think it’s called integrity. You might look it up in the
dictionary.” There was a click on the other end. “If you can spell it,” Larry
added.
“I didn’t mean for
him to get mad at you, too,” I said.
Larry put the phone
down. “Big finishes are a way of life around here. He’ll be over it by
tomorrow.”
“You’re home early.”
He lit a cigarette.
“Yeah. I was having a terrible day — about the two millionth since I passed the
bar, and then it occurred to me, what the hell am I doing?” He smiled and drew
on his cigarette. “I’m not into terrible days anymore.”
“Maybe you should
just quit.”
“And do what, die?”
He looked at me and smirked. “Was that tactless?”
“Yes,” I replied. “A
sure sign you’re getting better.”
“Did you see the
waiter?” Larry asked, putting out his cigarette. I noticed that he had only
smoked it half-way down.
“Yeah.”
“And was he a rabid
queer-baiter?”
“Didn’t seem the
type,” I said, thinking of Josh Mandel’s eyes. “I could be wrong, of course. He
did lie to me.”
“About anything
important?”
“It was about what
he was doing the night Brian was killed,” I replied. “I don’t know yet if that’s
important. On the other hand, I’ve figured out why Jim insists he didn’t kill
Brian Fox.”
“Why?” Larry asked.
“Because they were
lovers.”
“Really?” His eyebrows flicked
upwards.
I told him what I
had learned about Brian Fox’s sexual escapades. A penchant for voyeurism, and
budding pedophilia was of a different order than fumbling in the back seat with
more-or- less willing partners of the same age. Yet how different were these
activities from Jim’s excursions into bathrooms and parks? To me, they revealed
a kind of sexual despair. I could understand that in Jim’s case; he was gay and
his fear drove him underground. But what about Brian Fox? Maybe it didn’t
matter. What was important was that Brian was unusually sensitive to Jim’s
sexual secret. My guess was that what drew Brian to Jim was not antipathy as
much as fascination — one sexual loner’s recognition of another.
“I don’t think
Brian followed Jim out into the parking lot because he wanted to embarrass him,”
I said. “I think he wanted to know for sure whether Jim was gay.”
“Are you saying
Brian was gay, too?” Larry asked.
“God, I hope not.
Let’s just say he was — “
“A pervert?”
“That’ll do for
now.”
“That’s the pot
calling the kettle beige.”
I walked to the
window and looked past the terraced garden to the shimmering lake. “Jury trials
demand a sacrifice,” I said. “And if it’s not going to be Jim, it has to be
Brian.”
“You still haven’t
explained why you think they were lovers.”
“The first thing is
why Brian didn’t tell anyone about Jim.”
“Didn’t he tell
Josh Mandel?”
“But not Jim’s
parents,” I replied. “The obvious reason seemed to be blackmail, but there’s a
limit to how much you can extort from an eighteen-year-old busboy.”
“To how much money,”
Larry said, revelation in his voice.
“Exactly. But the
other thing that might’ve interested Brian was sex. Sex on demand.”
“You think it didn’t
matter to him that it was another guy?”
“A blow job is a
blow job is a blow job.”
“Pace Gertrude
Stein,” Larry murmured and leaned back into his chair. “You said lovers, Henry.
This scenario is not my idea of a romance.”
“Agreed, but then —
what did Auden say — ‘The desires of the heart are as crooked as the corkscrew.’
Josh Mandel described the scene where Jim supposedly threatened to kill Brian.”
I related Josh’s version from that afternoon.
“Puts things in a
different light,” Larry said, extracting a cigarette from his pack of Kents.
“Doesn’t it,” I
agreed. “It sounds like post-coital banter.”
“Who have you been
sleeping with?”
“You know what I
mean.”
Larry lit the Kent.
He blew out a jet of smoke and nodded. “You think some affection developed
between those two.”
“It adds up.”
“So am I to infer
that Jim didn’t kill Brian?” Larry asked, tapping ash into a crystal ashtray.
“No, the evidence
is inescapable. It only explains why he can’t bring himself to admit it. He
didn’t hate Brian.”
“Then why kill him?”
“It was still
blackmail,” I said. “Brian had power over Jim. At some point Jim must have
realized that Brian was using him and would go on using him whether Jim
consented or not.”
“That must’ve been
hard if he cared at all about Brian.”
“And it added to
his guilt about being gay. Being gay meant being a victim.”
Larry put out the
cigarette and rose from behind his desk. “What are you going to do?”
“Go back to Jim.
Let him know that I know.”
“I suppose you have
to,” Larry said, gathering his cigarettes. “You think I shouldn’t?”
Larry shrugged. “He
hasn’t told you because he wanted to keep it a secret. Think of his pride.”
“That’s a luxury he
can’t afford,” I replied.
*****
Jim came out and
sat at the table, focusing on my left ear. His face was slack and tired.
“Were you asleep?”
I asked.
“Who can sleep
around here,” he muttered.
“The tranquilizers
don’t help?”
His shrug
terminated that line of conversation.
“I wanted to talk
to you about Brian.”
“Okay,” he said,
indifferently.
The indifference
stung. “You were lovers,” I said.
He gave me a hard
look. “Guys don’t love each other,” he said.
“But you had sex
with him.”
His face colored
but he didn’t look away. “He wanted it,” he said slowly.
“Did you?”
His narrow fingers
raked his hair.
“Was having sex
with him the price Brian charged for not telling your parents about you?”
He nodded. He
looked at me again, his childishness gone. “Brian always wanted to make it with
me,” he said, knowingly. “He just needed a reason—”
“An excuse, you
mean.”
“ — so he wouldn’t
have to think he was a faggot.”
“How did you feel
about being with him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he
said, out of the side of his mouth. “Sometimes he was a jerk about it.
Sometimes it was — okay.”
“Did you like him?”
“Once when his
parents were gone, we slept at his house,” Jim said. “That was really nice, in
a bed and everything.” “Where did you usually meet Brian for sex?”
“His car,” Jim
said. “The park. The locker room at the restaurant.”
“The wine cellar?”
His eyes showed
fear.
“Was that why he
was there that night?”
“I don’t know why
he was there,” Jim said. His voice trembled.
“But you assumed
that’s why he was there,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
After a moment’s
hesitation he said, “Yeah.”
“Did Brian like you
as much as you liked him?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head
slowly, surprise in his face. “He never stopped calling me a faggot when other
guys were around. Even after we made it. He told Josh Mandel about me.”
“And you still
liked him?” I continued.
“He was different
when we were alone,” Jim said, almost mournfully. He sounded less like the
jilted lover than the slightly oddball child other children avoid; the
mousy-haired boy lingering at the edge of the playing field watching a game he
was never asked to play.
“So,” I said, in a
matter-of-fact voice, “one part of you really liked him and another part of you
hated him because he was using you, Jim. Isn’t that how it was?”
He opened his mouth
but nothing came out. He nodded. “Part of you loved him—” I waited, but he didn’t
react. “And part of you wanted—”
As if continuing a
different conversation, he broke in, “Everything was so fucked up. I was tired.”
I heard the exhaustion pouring out from a deep place. “I wanted to kill — “ “Brian,”
I said.
“Myself,” he
replied. “I wanted to kill myself. Not Brian. I didn’t kill Brian.”
“But Brian’s the
one who’s dead, Jim.”
“No,” he said, his
face closing. “You think I killed him, but I didn’t. I wanted to kill myself.”
“That’s what you
wanted, Jim, but think about it,” I said, quickly. “Wanting to kill anyone
means that there’s violence inside of you. You can’t always control that
violence or direct it the way you planned. It’s like a fire, Jim.”
He was shaking his
head violently, and his body trembled. “No, no, no,” he said. ‘‘It wasn’t me. I
swear it wasn’t.”
“Think back, Jim.
Try to remember that night.”
“I don’t remember,”
he said in a gust.
“You do remember,”
I said. “You have to, Jim.”
His body buckled
and then he started to scream. The guard ran up behind and restrained him,
looking at me with amazement. As quickly as he had started, Jim stopped and
slumped forward. Tears and snot ran down his face. He lifted his face and
looked at me with such hatred that I felt my face burn.
“You’re like
everyone else,” he said. “You want me to say I killed him. To hell with you.”
To the guard he said, “Get me out of here.”
“We have to talk,”
I said.
“No more talking.
You’re not my lawyer anymore.”
He jerked up out of
the chair. The guard looked at me, seeking direction.
“Okay, Jim. I’ll be
back tomorrow.”
“I won’t be here,”
Jim Pears said.
*****
A phone was
ringing.
I opened my eyes
and tumbled out of bed, hurrying to pick the phone up before it woke Larry.
“Hello,” I said,
shaking from the chill.
A drunken male
voice slurred my name.
“Yes, this is
Henry. Who is this?”
“I know who killed
Brian whatshisname,” the voice continued.
I sat down at the
desk. “Who are you?”
“It’s not
important,” he said. “It wasn’t that Pears kid. I’ll tell you that much.”
I was trying to
clear my head and decide whether this was a crank call. I still wasn’t sure.
“Were you at the
bar that night?” I asked.
“Not me. Shit, you
wouldn’t catch me dead in the valley,” he said and chuckled.
“Then how do you
know?”
“I saw you on the
news,” he said. “You’re kinda cute, Henry. You gotta lover?”
“Tell me about Brian
Fox.”
I heard bar noises
in the background and then the line went dead.
I put the phone
down. If it was a crank call, the caller had gone to a lot of trouble to find
me. He would have had to call my office up north to get Larry’s phone number.
Unless he already had it. Josh Mandel? As I tried to reconstruct the voice, the
phone rang again. I picked it up.
“Hello,” I said,
quickly.
“Mr. Rios?” It was
a different voice, also male but not drunk.
“Yeah. Who am I
talking to?”
“This is Deputy
Isbel down at county jail,” he said. “We got a bad situation here with Jim
Pears.”
“What happened?”
“Seems like he
overdosed.”
I stared at my
faint reflection in the black window. “Is he dead?” I watched myself ask.
“No,” the deputy
replied cautiously. “They took him down to county hospital. Thought you’d want
to know.”
“Did you call his
parents?”
“His dad answered,”
the deputy said, grimly. “Thanked me and hung up before I could tell him where
the boy was.”
“I see,” I replied.
“Where’s the hospital if I’m coming from Silver Lake?”
I scrawled the
directions on the back of an envelope and hung up. In the bathroom, I splashed
water on my face, subdued my hair, rinsed my mouth, and dressed. I crept down
the stairs. Just as I was closing the front door behind me, I heard the phone
ring again. By the time I got to it, the caller had hung up.