The Burning Plain (17 page)

I was exhausted and my body ached. Inez had covered all the angles and she was right about everything. The case would be complicated and difficult even if Odell cooperated and if he didn’t, I could forget about it. If Inez bailed, I faced the further difficulty of finding a lawyer who would work on at least partial contingency. Unless I represented myself, but I was a criminal lawyer, not a civil one, and I would be over my head from day one.

“You said you cut a deal with the sheriff,” I said, wearily. “What kind of deal?”

She perked up. “He agrees to issue a statement completely exonerating you from any suspicion in the West Hollywood murders and apologizing for the leak to the press. He also agrees to launch an internal investigation into whether anyone in his department was involved in your abduction, and if they were, he’ll turn their names over to the District Attorney for prosecution. Finally, he agrees to a cash settlement. A hundred thousand dollars.”

I laughed incredulously. “He denies any responsibility, but he’s willing to buy me off.”

“He denies legal responsibility,” she said. “But he knows he’s got a problem with his people out in the desert, so he accepts moral responsibility.”

“Accepting moral responsibility is the last refuge of politicians. It’s meaningless,” I said. “Plus, Inez, how does he propose to get the board of supervisors to approve a hundred thousand dollar settlement on a claim that doesn’t officially exist?”

“That’s his worry,” she said. She licked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Deal?”

“What’s his quid pro quo?”

“We keep our mouths shut.”

“About the settlement or what happened out there in the desert?”

“Both,” she said. I looked at her. She met my eyes and gazed back at me. There was a lot of history in that back and forth. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, Henry. It’s in everyone’s best interest.”

“Does this buy the sheriff’s neutrality in the mayor’s race or his endorsement?”

Her face slowly darkened and she pulled herself up from the table.

“That’s it. You go tilt at your fucking windmills alone.”

“No, wait,” I said, laying a restraining hand on her arm. “Don’t leave, Inez. I’m sorry. I’m not in the best frame of mind.”

“I know what happened to you out there,” she said, “but you have to be reasonable.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I should be reasonable. A messy case like this could eat up the next five years of my life. Ruin my practice, bankrupt me. Drive me crazy. I just hate that Gaitan will get away with humiliating me.”

“That’s playground thinking.”

“I can taste his hatred in the back of my throat.”

“Maybe you’re tasting your own,” she said. “What do you care? He’s an asshole.”

“It was guys like Gaitan who expelled me from
la raza
for being gay.”

“You let them,” she said. “They tried to run me out because I’m a tough broad. I fought back. So could you.”

“It’s too late,” I said. “I don’t belong anymore. I don’t want to belong.”

“So you’re happy with this life?” she said, gesturing toward my empty house. “Your boyfriend’s ashes on the fireplace. Dusty dishes in the kitchen. Wake up, Henry. Josh is dead, not you.”

“You are a tough broad,” I said, smiling. “Why aren’t you a lesbian?”

“
Diosito mio
, I get so sick of you men sometimes, I wish I was a dyke,” she replied. “What can I say? I like boys. Do I have to tell you why?”

“Make the deal,” I said. “We’ll split the money.”

“You need it more than I do.”

“Please, leave me with a shred of male dignity.”

She kissed my forehead maternally. “I’ll take care of it. You get better. ’Bye,
m’ijo
.”

I SAT ON
the deck for a long time after Inez left. Letting Alex Amerian into my life had brought me one disaster after another, and I should have been relieved that it was finally over. But I wasn’t. There was a man out there venting his hatred for people like me on the bodies of young men. Some of those entrusted to find him shared his hatred for his victims. It was hard to say from whom the rest of us had the most to fear.

A
T THE END
of July came a series of breathtakingly beautiful days. Desert winds swept the air clean and the light had a purity and intensity reminiscent of an earlier time, when the city was still half orange grove and street cars shuttled back and forth between downtown and the ocean. The San Gabriel mountains, seldom visible between May and December, appeared so suddenly it was as though they were advancing on us like a herd of ancient behemoths. The shiny leaves of the ficus trees were an even glossier green, the throats of the cawing bird of paradise a deeper purple, and the white walls of the stuccoed city blazingly bright. At Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills the light ricocheted off the marble surfaces of the Courts of Remembrance and the air smelled of cut grass, eucalyptus and roses. I sat in the Columbarium of Radiant Destiny, on the bench where Amiga Slade had shared her tea with me, and contemplated the brass marker that recorded Josh’s name and dates and beneath them the words BELOVED SON & BROTHER and, beneath that, LITTLE FRIEND. There were fresh flowers in the vase beside the marker, white carnations. They weren’t from me. I wondered who, among his friends, had come to visit. Who among them was still alive? After I had interred his ashes, I’d gone through his address book and sent out notes to let his friends know where he could be found. They were still coming back to me, marked “Deceased.” I’d written his parents, too, and half-expected them to return the letter unread. I was glad they hadn’t. Glad for Josh. I still hadn’t forgiven them. But sitting there in the shade, I remembered that Grant had told me heaven was nothing more than a world where everyone forgave everyone else, and my anger thawed, for a moment.

I got up to go. On my way to my car, I saw a fresh burial mound and wondered whether the police had ever released Alex’s body or those of the other victims of the killer the media had briefly christened the Invisible Man. Briefly, because since Tom Jellicoe’s murder almost a month earlier there had been no others and the story had faded from public attention. My involvement had ended with the sheriff’s statement that I was not nor had I ever been a suspect and apologizing for any misimpression. Privately, I agreed not to sue the department and accepted the settlement Inez had negotiated. Up to the last moment, I’d considered backing out of the agreement and going ahead with a lawsuit. Part of me still very much wanted vengeance, especially against Gaitan, but I knew Inez was right about my chances of prevailing in an action against the department, so I reluctantly let it drop. When I signed the release, Inez reminded me that the sheriff was conducting an investigation of my kidnapping, but I could’ve predicted the result and I was not surprised when a letter came from county counsel exonerating the department. Other than that, my last contact with anyone in the department had been with Odell, who told me off the record that the investigation had been cursory, as if I hadn’t already guessed that. I paused for a second at the mound of drying dirt that covered the new grave. Now that the murders had apparently stopped, the cops would have no incentive for solving them, and the case would be as dead as whoever lay here. And anyway what were three more unsolved murders in this city, where each year hundreds were killed? It was like a war out there, and in war you didn’t stop to count every casualty, much less determine the cause of every death. In war, the bottom line was who was winning. The cops knew it wasn’t them. Violence was escalating in the city, rising like the temperature in a kettle on a low flame, so gradually and inexorably that before we knew what was happening we’d all be boiled alive.

A couple of days later, the weather reverted to its usual summer pattern of smog and heat. I was working at my desk when the phone rang. When I picked it up a woman said, officiously, “Please hold for Mr. Nick Donati.” I didn’t know any Mr. Nick Donati, so I hung up.

A moment later, the phone rang again. This time when I picked it up a deep, authoritative male voice asked, “Mr. Rios? Did you just hang up on my secretary?”

“Are you Mr. Nick Donati?”

“That’s me,” he said.

“Then, yes, I did hang up on your secretary.”

“Why did you do that?” he asked, with apparently genuine curiosity.

“Because I’ve never heard of you.”

His chuckle, like his speaking voice, was too deep to be natural. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rios. In my business, you never pick up the phone and just call someone, because no one wants to deal with you if you actually have time for them.”

“What is your business, Mr. Donati?”

“Nick,” he said. “I’m the head of the legal department at Parnassus Studio. We have a problem here involving one of our people and I thought you could help us out with it.”

“A legal problem?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not an entertainment lawyer. I’m in criminal defense.”

“I know that,” he assured me.

“What happened? One of your actors get picked up for driving under the influence?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said. “You know about the Invisible Man murders in West Hollywood.” It wasn’t a question.

“What about them?”

“The police suspect one of our people of being the killer.”

The screen of my computer went momentarily blank and then tropical fish drifted across it. “An employee?”

“Yes,” he said. “His name is Bob Travis. He works on a TV show called
Nights in Blue
.”

“
Nights in Blue
,” I said. “The cop show?”

“Yeah, the studio coproduces and it’s filmed on the lot. We get a lot of cooperation from LAPD and the sheriff’s department. That’s what’s so ironic about this situation.”

“Why do the police suspect Mr. Travis?”

“I didn’t call you at random,” he said. “I know the police questioned you about the murders and I watched your press conference. Your lawyer, Ms. Montoya, claimed the police were going after you because they were biased against gays. Bob Travis is gay and I believe something similar may be happening here.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’d really prefer to discuss this face to face.”

“Customarily, Nick,” I said, “it’s the suspect who calls the lawyer.”

“There’s potential studio involvement,” he said.

“So who’s the client here?”

“The studio wants to hire you to represent Bob. You’ve already dealt with these people once, on your own behalf. We’d like you to deal with them on his. And ours.”

“These people?”

“The sheriffs,” he said. “Detective Gaitan.”

I let this sink in. “Gaitan’s still on the case?”

“He seems to be in charge of it,” Donati said. “He’s kind of a tough customer, but you probably know that.”

“When do you and Mr. Travis want to meet?”

“This afternoon? Around four? I’m sure you know where we are. Just come to the front gate and give the guard your name.”

“I’ll be there.”

Parnassus studio was not only Hollywood’s oldest studio, it was the only one actually located there, occupying four square blocks on La Brea between Beverly and Melrose. Like a medieval fortress, it was enclosed by a high wall. Nothing was visible from the street but a water tower emblazoned with the studio’s logo, a mountain crowned with a laurel wreath representing Mount Parnassus, which, in Greek mythology, was the abode of the Muses. This was the studio that Duke Asuras headed and which Richie claimed was in danger of being sold to Reverend Longstreet, the anti-gay crusader. As I pulled up to the famous front gate, a replica of Hadrian’s Arch—which was Roman, not Greek, but this was Hollywood—and gave my name to the female guard who consulted a list, handed me a map and waved me through, I wasn’t thinking about Asuras or Longstreet. All I was thinking was that fate had handed me another chance to tangle with Gaitan. I pulled into a parking lot and got out expecting to see extras parading around in costume, but the only other people around were two Japanese businessmen hunched over a map, conversing in Japanese.

The parking lot was enclosed by two- or three-story stucco buildings painted beige with brown trim. Looming in the distance were enormous barnlike structures. I consulted my map and found the administration building where Donati’s office was located. My path led me across a perfectly trimmed patch of grass where perfect flowers grew in identically proportioned flower beds reminiscent of the grounds at Forest Lawn. The surrounding buildings were in an architectural style that combined the sleek lines of Art Deco with the baroque ornamentation of Spanish Colonial. I stopped to examine an exhibit case that held shelves of Academy Awards. Some went back to the early thirties, for best movie or best actor or director. All of them bore the inscription on their base:
DUPLICATE FOR STUDIO USE
. I walked on, unnoticed by the men and women in suits who came in and out of the buildings, briskly purposeful, their eyes hidden behind Oliver Peoples sunglasses. The administration building was newer than its neighbors. Inside was a vast lobby, the walls of which were faced in brown marble and bare except for a dozen framed movie posters. The stainless steel walls of the elevator I took to Donati’s office on the fourth floor made me think of an autopsy table.

Nick Donati sat at a big desk in a double-breasted charcoal suit that, upon closer inspection, sported the subtlest of pinstripes. I hadn’t spent all that time around Richie without picking up a thing or two about fashion, so I was pretty sure the suit was Armani and had cost at least a grand. I felt pretty dowdy by comparison in my old olive drab Brooks Brothers sack suit. Donati’s dark hair was crisply barbered and threaded with gray and his light blue eyes were searching and intelligent in a bony, handsome face. I judged him to be about my age. As his secretary ushered me into his office, he flashed a flawlessly white smile and came around his desk, hand extended. Then the shock. He was child-sized, no more than five foot three, even in his discreetly lifted loafers. On the slender column of his neck, his big head was like an unwieldy monument. He stopped about a foot and half away from me, grasped my large hand in his delicate one and squeezed firmly. Later it occurred to me that the reason he’d stopped short was because, had he come any closer, instead of discreetly tilting his head forward to meet my eyes, he would’ve had to look up at me. It also occurred to me that he was not aware of doing this, that it was second nature to him.