by Michael Nava
“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. Unle
ss 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.
11
Jim was still alive at daybreak. His doctor set her breakfast tray on the table in the hospital cafeteria where I had been waiting for her. She took a bite of scrambled eggs and made a face.
“They should make hospital cooks take the Hippocratic oath,” she said. “‘First, do no harm.’ That part.”
I smiled, not too convincingly to judge from her expression. Her face was the color of exhaustion. She turned her attention to her meal, and ate with complete concentration as if taking a test. When she lifted her head, she looked almost relieved to be done with it.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
I smiled again, this time genuinely. No matter how casually a doctor asked, this question always sounded like an accusation to me.
“I’m tired,” I replied.
She nodded understanding^. “Go home.”
“If he’s all right.”
Her narrow, studious face tensed a bit. “I didn’t say that.”
“No,” I agreed, “you didn’t.”
“He’s alive, Henry, but not all right.” She rubbed her eyes. “He was unconscious for a long time, not breathing well. There’s brain damage. How did he get those barbituates in jail?”
“They were prescribed,” I answered. “To relieve anxiety. He must have stockpiled them.”
“If they’d found him five minutes later, he’d be dead.”
“It seems that was his plan.” In my head I heard him telling me that he wouldn’t be at the jail when I returned to see him.
According to the guards who’d brought him into the hospital, one of Jim’s cellmates had been awakened by a gurgling noise. It was Jim, choking on his own vomit.
“You never said what he was in for,” the doctor said.
“Murder,” I replied.
“That little guy?”
“Yes,” I said. He had also told me that he had wanted to kill himself, not Brian. Well, maybe he killed part of himself when he killed Brian. He decided to finish the job. Thanks to me.
She curled her elegant fingers around a chipped coffee mug. “Well, he did manage to do a lot of damage to himself, so I guess murder’s not impossible.”
“Will he live?”
“Parts of him.” She wore a thin gold wedding band. She saw me notice it and said, “You were one of the lawyers on that sodomy case a couple of years back.”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“I recognized your name as soon as you told me. You’re his lawyer, or what?”
“His lawyer,” I said, shaking the grounds at the bottom of my coffee cup.
“No parents?”
“He has parents,” I said, setting the cup down. “They couldn’t be bothered.”
“That’s rough,” she said, blinking the tiredness from her eyes. She studied me. “Was his situation so bad?”
I nodded. “He got backed into a corner. I helped put him there.”
“Working in emergency,” she said, “I see a lot of suicide attempts. The ones who survive, they didn’t mean to succeed.” She pushed her tray away. “The ones who don’t make it — it’s not that they give up, Henry. They fight, but they fight to die. That’s what Jim’s doing. You can murder someone, but you can’t make him kill himself. You understand?”
I studied the pattern of the grounds at the bottom of my cup. “Yes,” I said, lifting my tired eyes to hers.
“Go home,” she said. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”
It was cold and gray outside the hospital. The sun was like a circle of ice, lightening the sky around it. The silvery towers of downtown shimmered through the morning mist. In this weather the palm trees seemed wildly incongruous, like tattered banners of summer.
I had read, years ago, of the Japanese poet who commented upon suicide, “A silent death is an endless word.” Should I read Jim’s attempt to kill himself as a reproach, as release, as an admission of guilt? Of love? I could understand why he did it but I didn’t approve. It was the drama that disturbed me. The most basic rule of survival is to wait things out. It was a rule Jim was too young to have learned. With almost twenty years on him, I knew that the great passions — love, fear, hope, terror — merge with the clutter of the day-to-day, and become part of it. A truer symbol of justice than the blindfolded goddess was a clock.
A clock was ticking in the kitchen of Larry’s house as I let myself in. He was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him. He looked up when I entered.
“I heard your car when you left,” he said. ‘‘That was six hours ago.”
“You’ve been awake since?”
“Off and on,” he replied. “It’s Jim, isn’t it?”
“He tried to kill himself,” I said, sitting down.
In a gray voice, Larry asked, “Is he dead?”
“No. He’s in a coma.”
“How did it happen?”
I explained.
Larry raised the cup to his lips without drinking. The robe he wore fell away, revealing his thin, hairless chest, the skin as mottled as an autumn apple. A few sparse white hairs grew at the base of his neck. His face showed nothing of what he felt but the white hairs trembled.
“How stupid,” he muttered. “What a stupid thing to do.” “He was afraid,” I said.
“Well I know a few things about fear,” Larry snapped. He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he said, “I’m sorry I said that.”
“Who better?”
“No,” he shook his head. “It’s not the same at all. I’ve had my life, but to throw it all away at eighteen…” He lifted his fingers from the table in a gesture of bewilderment.
“If you can’t imagine the future,” I said, “it must not seem like you’re throwing much away.”
Larry nodded. “You’ll have to do something about the trial.”
“I’ll ask for a dismissal.”
“Then what?”
“I suppose he’ll revert to the custody of his parents.”
Larry frowned. “The perfect son at last.”
I went upstairs to get some sleep. As I undressed I remembered the call I received the night before. I called my office and reached my secretary. I asked whether anyone had requested my number in the last day or so.
She went through the telephone log. There had been someone, a man named King who had insisted on getting my number in Los Angeles. The name meant nothing to me. I thanked her and hung up.
I got into the rumpled bed, naked between the cold sheets. Outside, a bird cawed. Inside, there was silence. I closed my eyes and slept a long, black sleep.
Three days later I was back in court. The press was out in full force. Pisano, the D.A., told the court he would not dismiss the charges against Jim Pears as lon
g as Jim remained alive. He put Lillian Fox on the witness stand. She demanded that the prosecution proceed. I informed Judge Ryan that Jim had suffered permanent, catastrophic brain damage and was unlikely ever to revive. I asked the judge to dismiss the charges on her own motion, as the law permitted, in the interests of justice. However, as she had just finished pointing out, those interests were complex.
“Your Honor,” I said, “the medical evidence is that my client is, for all intents and purposes, dead. I don’t see what more could be accomplished by hounding him to the grave.”
Pisano was on his feet. “The medical evidence is not conclusive,” he said.
“It’s as conclusive as it’s going to get,” I snapped. “Jim Pears isn’t going to get much deader, short of driving a stake through his heart.”
“So dramatic,” Pisano said, mockingly.
“You’re just trying to squeeze another headline from this, aren’t you?”
The judge broke in. “Gentlemen, some restraint.”
“Speaking of restraints,” I said, angry now, “my client’s wrist is handcuffed to the railing of his hospital bed. Do the police really think he’s going to rise up and go on a crime spree? This entire hearing is ghoulish. Regardless of what Jim is charged with, what he may or may not have done, we’ve reached a point where simple decency demands that this matter be ended.’’
“Is that true about the handcuffs?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“It’s standard operating procedure,” Pisano put in, in his best bureaucratic drone.
“Even so,” Judge Ryan said to him, “it’s a little gratuitous, counsel, don’t you think?”
“Not at all,” he replied.
“The motion, Judge,” I said, “is pending.”
“Thank you, I’m aware of that,” she replied, sharply. Then, looking down at some papers before her, she said, “This matter is scheduled for trial in four weeks. I will continue it until that date for a status hearing. In the meantime, the defendant’s motion to dismiss is denied without prejudice to renew it at that point. That’s all, gentlemen.” She rose swiftly and departed the bench.
I turned to Pisano. “Think the streets are safer now?” I demanded.