"You're right," he said. "I want another Blood and Flowers and I want you to help me find it and research it. Preferably some case that hasn't been splashed all over CNN. It doesn't matter if it's closed or not. I want something everybody else overlooked."
I nodded, even though I wasn't sure why he needed me to help him in this endeavor.
"The downside of being a best-selling author is that I can't be the fly on the wall the way I was when I wrote Blood and Flowers. I was a success then, but as I've learned, there's no fame like the fame that comes after someone tries to bash your head in with a tire iron."
I thought his fame had more to do with the fact that his wife shot the guy. I realized we had been together a good two hours and he hadn't mentioned his wife once.
'What?" he asked.
"What does your wife do?"
"She's a nurse. Why?"
"Is she ever around?" I asked.
"We're still together, if that's what you're asking."
"Okay."
An uneasy few seconds passed between us. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
"Horseshit!" I saw realization in his eyes. "Oh, for Christ's sake," he said, dropping his fork.
"You really think I hired you because I wanted to sleep with you?"
"It's a valid concern."
"For you? Why? Because you're so young and impressionable? Please. Strip off all that lycra and leather and you've probably got the shine of an old shoe." He shook his head at his plate.
"Never fear, Lolita. I didn't even try that stuff in college. I can't even see how you—"
"How I what?"
"How you guys . . .do that," he said.
"It starts with a wheelbarrow full of Aveda products and a Fleet Enema," I said. "After that, it's mostly deep breathing."
James Wilton glared at me. The waitress came and asked him how our food was. He didn't acknowledge her, so she left. "You're fired," he whispered.
Chapter 5
Nate Bain called me as soon as I pulled out of James Wilton's front gate. It was two o'clock, and I had strict instructions to be there at nine the next morning, after having discovered and researched several potential candidates for his next true crime masterpiece. Even though Jimmy had warned me off the Daniel Brady story, I agreed to meet Nate at the corner of Santa Monica and San Vicente Boulevard, the same place where Scott Koffler had picked him up.
He was standing on the corner when I got there, watching the sheriff's department helicopter descend out of the clear blue sky as it came in for a landing on the roof of the brown brick substation across the street. Nate was getting his fair share of looks from passersby, but he was too busy watching the helicopters landing, like an ineffectual dictator about to be forcibly removed from his island country.
He wore a light blue polo shirt that had bleach spots on it and a pair of navy running pants with a white side stripe. He had cleaned up well. His face had a moisturized shine to it that almost distracted me from his etched cheekbones. But his eyes were glassy and his face frozen in the first threat of a scowl, and he held himself as if he had just been sucker-punched.
Nate saw me coming, slid his backpack off one shoulder, and unzipped it. I expected him to produce some piece of evidence about his meeting with Daniel Brady and I had already mentally prepared a brief statement about why I couldn't work the story anymore. I was startled when he plucked a blue hardcover book out of his backpack, the words Alcoholics Anonymous on the spine. He pulled an envelope from the book's pages and handed it to me.
I tore the envelope open and removed the greeting card inside. There as a Maxfield Parrish print on the front, and inside Nate had written the words "Thank you" in a chicken scratch that reminded me of the time I wrote my rent check on the morning after a long weekend.
"You didn't have to do this," I said.
"My sponsor says people stay sober by doing estimable acts," he said.
"AA?" I asked.
He nodded and looked at the traffic surging through the intersection.
"That's great, Nate. Who's your sponsor?"
"I can't tell you. It's an anonymous program."
I tucked the card in my pants pocket.
"I've already been to two meetings today," he said quickly. "It's all right, I guess. The speaker at the second meeting, she talked about how she got drunk and shot her husband and how today they're, like, best friends. You've probably heard of her. She was in that—"
"It's an anonymous program, Nate."
"Right," he whispered. "Sorry. My brain . . ."
I smiled. Two Hispanic boys with swollen chests and enormous sunglasses walked by. One of them whistled at Nate, and then once they were several feet past us, the other turned around and cried, "Love your work!"
Nate stared after them with what I assumed was anger. "My sponsor has me on this whole celibacy thing right now," he said in a low voice, and I realized his anger was actually desire.
The fact that anger felt like desire to Nate might have played a role in his little meth problem.
"Try not to bite off more than you can chew," I said. "So I guess the pom's out?"
"No," Nate answered. "He said porn is a job. Just as long as I don't try to convince myself I'm in love with any of my costars."
The logic of this was beyond me. "Thanks for the card."
"I didn't want you to see me like that, Adam."
"You don't want anyone to see you like that. That's why you're getting sober, right?"
He reacted to my parental tone with a wounded look, then said yes unconvincingly.
"Look, I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but I'm kind of speaking from experience here," I said. Forty-eight hours of experience, I thought, but what the hell. "Be proud of yourself.
My mother couldn't do it and she died."
His eyes widened slightly and a line appeared across the bridge of his nose. "Maybe you could come to a meeting with me sometime."
"Maybe," I muttered, even though I knew I wouldn't.
"The guys are hot, Adam. Trust me. They're, like, hot and conscious."
I chuckled, but when I saw that Nate's smile looked almost genuine, I got the sense that he didn't care whether the men in AA were good looking or not. He wanted me to stay sober, which meant he cared for me, in a way that probably felt as new to him as it did to me.
"I'll think about it," I said. "Listen, Nate. I dropped the story. I don't want to go into too much detail, but let's just say I wasn't the man for the job."
His eyes fell to the pavement. "It doesn't matter, Adam," he said. "My sponsor said the same thing you did."
"What did I say?" I asked.
"I don't get thrown out of speeding cars when I'm not tweaking."
He was more willing to let the story go than I was. I wondered if he would revisit it with fresh anger once the reality of sober living began to set in. Nate stepped forward and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.
"Why don't you call me?" I asked him. "Every day. Just to check in." I was thinking of the threat Scott Koffler had made against him, but I thought if I told him about it, I might be endangering his newfound sobriety. He smiled and said sure.
He was about to step in the crosswalk when he turned and called my name. "That number you gave me for Corey doesn't work anymore," he shouted.
I gave him a little wave as if I was grateful for this information, even as I told myself to get rid of it. As soon as I was back in my Jeep, I dialed Corey's cell phone. An automated message informed me that he was no longer a subscriber.
I told myself to let it go. I told myself that he had probably changed services. Then I told myself that if there was even the smallest chance that Corey had left West Hollywood, I had to know for sure. I told myself it might give me the closure I needed.
Corey lived in a salmon-colored duplex that sat in the shadow of a condo high-rise, just a block south of Sunset Boulevard. I had visited his apartment only twice, in his company, so that he could get a change
of clothes before heading back to my place.
His second-floor apartment had a porte cochere that extended over the building's driveway; an exterior stairway led to his front door. There was a small drift of fast food menus on the other side of the wrought iron gate on the first floor. The lone palm tree out front had shed dried fronds across the building's front lawn. The accumulated debris was peculiar. Corey had made my bed so tightly you could bounce a quarter off it. I didn't see his truck anywhere, and I knew it was too big for the small garages in back.
At the Twin Palms Car Wash on Sunset Boulevard, I gave the cashier a description of Corey that left her wide-eyed and winded. She went to get her manager, who told me that Corey worked Saturdays through Thursdays, and they hadn't seen him since Thursday. When I pointed out that this meant Corey had missed four days of work, the guy stiffened as if I had accused him of a crime. Evidently, employees at the Twin Palms Car Wash came and went without fanfare.
I returned to Corey's duplex and rang the doorbell for the downstairs apartment. The guy who answered was in his early thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair and a thin beard. When I expressed my concern about his upstairs neighbor, he asked me to wait while he went to get a key for the apartment. He let me through the wrought iron gate and knocked on Corey's front door.
As we waited, I managed to learn from him that Corey had lived there for only six months and the neighbors rarely saw him. After a few more knocks met by silence, the neighbor unlocked the front door. A foul stench hit us, and I saw my first thought register in the neighbor's eyes: we were about to walk in on a corpse.
I stepped in ahead of him and brought one hand to my nose and mouth. I recognized the smell for what it was: sour milk. I followed the scent down on a long hallway that traversed the depth of the apartment. On the kitchen counter, I found an open container of milk. Corey's wallet and keys rested several feet away. Fear ran its fingernails down my arms, and I felt a sudden tension in my lower back. I wondered if the sour milk stench was masking a more dire stench from somewhere else in the apartment. I called out to Corey and heard a squeak of sneakers behind me. The neighbor stumbled back into the fridge, his eyes wide and his mouth curled in something that looked like a snarl.
"Should I call the police?" he breathed. I told him to stay where he was.
The massive living room had a large fireplace and a hardwood floor. It was the kind of room in the sort of apartment an upwardly mobile gay man would have covered with throw rugs and fine art. Yet the only pieces of furniture in the living room were an overstuffed sofa and an entertainment center.
The bedroom door was halfway open. The gray comforter on the queen-size bed was thrown back as if Corey had awakened several minutes before. A wall of sliding mirrored doors reflected Century City on the near horizon. I pushed back one door; Corey had hung his T-shirts and blue jeans on individual hangers.
The bathroom's black and white tile work had probably raised the rent by a hundred dollars.
Next to the basin sat an open bottle of shaving gel, its cap, and Corey's cell phone. A rumpled towel rested on the tile floor several feet away from the sink. I clearly saw Corey dropping the towel from around his waist as he reached for the cell phone. My heartbeat turned into the kind of pitter-patter most people associate with children's feet.
I was still frozen in the bathroom door when I heard a loud metallic whine outside. I called out to the neighbor. When he responded, I followed the sound of his voice into one of the back bedrooms. It was empty save for a beanbag chair and a desk lamp on the floor next to it, with wine crates stacked as bookshelves, stuffed with paperbacks.
I joined the neighbor at the back window and saw what he was staring at. He had opened a garage door. Corey's Dodge Ram sat inside one of the garages, with barely an inch of clearance on either side.
"He never parks in the garage," the neighbor whispered. "He can barely fit."
After asking the neighbor to stay where he was, I went out the back door in the kitchen and descended a set of steps to another wrought iron gate. I couldn't fit inside the garage to get a good look inside Corey's truck. Coming back upstairs, I turned the inside lock on the wrought iron gate and did the same on the back door in the kitchen. I planned on making a second visit, and I didn't want company.
The neighbor was pouring the spoiled milk into the sink. When he saw me, he dropped the carton and balled his hand to a fist. "Shit," he whispered. "I guess I shouldn't be touching anything."
"How long has it been since you've heard him up here?"
"Hard to say," he answered. "I've barely heard him since he moved in."
"Any visitors recently?"
"No," he answered. "He'd go to work pretty early and then he'd be home only for a while in the afternoon. He's got surround speakers in there. Sometimes I'd hear those, but that's about it.
You going to call the police?"
"Let's give him twenty-four hours," I said.
He looked to the floor. I could tell he was trying to disengage. "Never thought I'd get so freaked out by sour milk."
At the front door, I gave him my cell number and asked him to call me if Corey came back.
He gravely agreed, as if I had enlisted him in a matter of national security.
It was already clear that Corey Howard had been missing for at least four days. I knew of someone who had a rather strange meeting with Corey two weeks earlier and tracked me down to warn me about it.
The gate to the house that Joseph Spinotta built was a ten-foot-high wall of brushed steel that sat at the end of a cul-de-sac just below Mulholland Drive. A door opened in the middle of the gate as soon as I pulled up. The guy who stepped through it looked like Calvin Kleins idea of a cherub. His hair was a cap of sandy blond bristle, and his big blue eyes looked as if they could both use their own pool man. Except for his manly jawline and the serious muscle visible through his white T-shirt, his face gave no evidence that he had ever to shave more than his upper lip.
He offered his hand and introduced himself as Everett. I smiled instead of returning the favor. "You're Adam Murphy," he said with a vague smile. "Billy likes you."
"He does?"
"He says you're angry, and anger is the new integrity. It's a post nine-eleven thing." I laughed, which seemed to please him. The silver bicycle chain around his neck was so shiny it looked as if his mother had polished it with the Thanksgiving silver.
"Is Billy home?" I asked, even though I knew he was. I had called on my way there, without telling him why I wanted to visit, and he'd readily agreed to see me, almost as if he had been waiting for my call.
"He is," Everett answered. Then he tongued his upper lip briefly and gave me a once-over.
"I'll take you to him. But you have to make me a promise first."
I didn't respond.
"Don't do anything to him that you won't do to me. Twice."
"Does your mother know you're hanging out at Billy Hatfill's place?"
A dark cloud passed over his face that made him look a lot older than a teenager. His eyes went heavy and he jutted his lower lip. I had hurt his feelings, and in his world that was a crime.
I followed him through the gate. A set of slate steps descended through terraced beds of cacti and rocks. The house was a one-story U with walls of glass and a flat roof that seemed to hover above the sage-green lawn. It sat in the middle of a miniature plateau that looked as if it had been sandblasted out of the hillside. The Sierra Tower rose at the base of the hill, in fourteen stories of concrete I-beams and glass walls. It was a vertical retirement community for wealthy celebrities who had abandoned their mansions in the hills, and also the lighthouse that marked the western end of the Sunset Strip. A low cloud cover was moving in off the ocean on the western horizon.
Billy's foyer was the size of Jimmy's office, but the only thing in it was a glass-topped dining table that could have seated six, back when it had chairs to go with it. Today it held a vase of Casablanca lilies and the latest issue of Va
nity Fair. The house had rolling dividers made of blond wood instead of doors and silver automatic shades that could be lowered over each wall of glass.
I had never seen the place without at least three hundred other gay men in it, and I was struck by how vast and empty it seemed. Rod Peters had once joked that the house had been designed with only three things in mind: huge parties, group sex, and cocaine. That explained the absence of furniture, the plush sweep of carpet in every room, and a glass surface topping anything that stood still long enough.
Billy called out my name from somewhere in the house's east wing. Everett rested his butt against the back of the sofa and gave me a blank look. I took his casual stance to mean that I was now on my own. I passed through a dining room and into a kitchen with miles of white marble countertop and blond wood cabinets.
Billy sat at a glass plate of a coffee table supported by a giant chrome X. He was flipping through the recent issue of Glitz magazine. His hair was damp and he wore a white T-shirt and gym shorts. He flipped several pages in his magazine without glancing in my direction.
"Everett's pretty interesting."
Billy dropped the cover of his magazine and met my eyes. "Interesting," he repeated, his tone a mocking echo of mine. "I guess he hit on you. That's part of the reason I've decided to take him under my wing. He could use a little grooming, don't you think?"
"What are you grooming him for?" I asked. "A house like this? A man like Joseph?"
He seemed to hear the undertone of disdain in my voice. He gave me a wry smile, but I noticed the flash of anger in his big blue eyes. "I take it that means you think I have something to offer a guy like Everett," he said, giving my little dig a positive spin. "It can be tough for a guy like Everett to make a life for himself out here. Have you ever noticed something about my parties? A few months go by and it's a completely different set of faces. A whole new crop of overly exfoliated, bright-eyed, twenty-something faces."
"The turnover rate is pretty high all over this city," I said.
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