by Michael Nava
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a card from beneath his leg. I glanced at it. It was the card that Tony Good had given me with his phone number.
“An admirer,” I said.
He inspected the card, tossed it aside and got out of the car. I followed him to the door of the house. He fumbled with some keys and then let us in.
The living and dining rooms were combined into a single space. There was a counter along one wall, revealing the kitchen. A corridor led off from the main room to bedrooms and bathrooms. The place smelled of old fires and the fireplace held the charred remains of the last logs burned in it. The concrete floor was covered by threadbare carpets. A few sticks of old furniture were scattered haphazardly through the room. On the whole, the house was dark, chilly and quiet.
Tom looked at me and grinned. “What do you think?”
“Not exactly what I expected.”
“I like to be comfortable. Rennie’s house is like a museum.”
His nap had sobered him up. I said as much.
“Booze doesn’t have a big effect on me,” he said as if he believed it. “It’s warmer outside.”
We went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a half-full bottle of Chardonnay. He led me outside to a covered patio. Weightlifting equipment was lying here and there, as were pieces of driftwood, sea shells, empty bottles of wine and beer. A bike leaned against a wall next to a battered surfboard and a wetsuit. A jock strap hung from a nail above a pile of firewood. Tom sat down on a canvas chair and invited me to pull up a chair next to him.
“I should get back to L.A.,” I said.
“You can stay for a little while.”
I pulled up a chaise longue and sat. An orange cat appeared at the far end of the yard and watched us.
“That your cat?”
“Only when she’s hungry.” He took a swallow of wine and passed the bottle.
“I don’t drink.”
“Never?”
“I’m an alcoholic.”
Tom grinned at the cat and said, “Isn’t that the point?”
The cat loped across the yard and came to the edge of the patio. She yawned and began to groom herself with quick, fastidious flicks of her tongue. Tom leaned forward, pulled off his blue polo shirt, and then sank back into his chair. His skin was as tawny as the little cat’s fur. Even at rest, his elegant muscles seemed to quiver. He was kin to the little calico licking her paws at the edge of the patio; a great golden cat. He rolled his head toward me, lazily, and sketched the faintest smile at the comers of his lips. I imagine Narcissus had watched that smile form on the surface of a lake.
“It’s quiet here,” I said, to say something. “You come here to think.”
“Thinking’s not what I do best. That’s Sandy’s job. All my brains are in my face.”
“Rennie doesn’t much like Sandy,” I observed.
He smiled distantly. “Sandy’s all right. He knows what I am.”
“And what’s that?”
“A hustler,” he replied. “Like Gaveston. You don’t need brains to be a whore. Just a little luck and good timing.”
“Rennie must see something else in you.”
His face seemed to darken. “She knows, too,” he said, then added, mockingly, “but she forgives me.” He picked up his wine bottle and drank some more. “Poor Rennie,” he muttered. “She brought me out here to shove me in the face of every producer who ever told her that she didn’t have the looks to be a star. I’ve got the looks,” he said, more to the cat than to me.
“She thinks she can turn you into an actor.”
He set the wine bottle between his legs. “Who the hell cares.”
“You did the play.”
“I knew a guy like Edward,” he said, lifting the bottle and drinking. “Someone I met in the joint.” He studied my face and grinned. “Don’t look so surprised, you’re a lawyer — don’t you know an ex-con when you see one?”
“Not always.”
He tossed the empty bottle at the cat. She scampered but it caught her broadside. With a shriek, she hopped into the underbrush.
“I knew this guy,” he continued, “only he wasn’t a king, more like a queen, understand? A real lady.” He laughed. “She was pretty and proud, like Edward.”
“Were you lovers?”
He lurched forward in his chair. “Hell, no. I was just a punk trying not to get raped in the showers.” He looked at me. “That’s another story. But this queen was married to this big white dude.”
“What happened to her?”
“The niggers got her,” he said. “Beat the shit out of her, raped her, just to get back at her old man. She walked around for days like she had a broken bottle up her ass. Her old man didn’t want her anymore. He said she led the niggers on. She never complained, never said anything bad about anyone.” He stroked his chest, fitfully. ‘‘She just bought some pills and went to sleep.”
“Suicide?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me. “Like that kid you were defending. What’s his name, Pears.”
“He wasn’t successful,” I replied.
“That’s a shame,” Tom said. “I’d kill myself before I went back to the joint.”
“What were you in for?”
“Being young and dumb,” he said. “I’m going to get some more wine.” He stood up.
“I’ve got to get back into town,” I said, also standing. “You want a ride?”
“What’s your hurry?” he asked, moving toward me. “You don’t think I brought you out here just to talk?”
He unbuttoned my shirt and laid his hand against my chest. I stepped away. His hand dropped to his side.
“Don’t you want me?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t much like myself afterwards.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
He looked at me and then yawned. “You don’t know what you just turned down.”
“I think I do,” I replied and walked away.
I pulled out of the long, dusty driveway and Tom’s house disappeared behind the screen of trees. I rolled down the windows and the air poured in, blowing the card with Good’s number across the seat to the floor. At the traffic light, I picked up the card and examined the drunken scrawl. There wasn’t much to choose between Tom Zane and Tony Good, I thought, remembering Good’s come-on at the party.
“You’re kinda cute, Henry. You got a lover?”
No, that’s what Josh Mandel said over the telephone the night Jim tried to kill himself. I looked up at the light as it flashed from red to green. That seemed wrong. Even drunk, Josh would never have said something as obvious as that. I crossed the intersection and merged into the traffic on the Coast Highway. And then I remembered something. There had been three calls that night. I had answered two of them. The third caller hung up before I could reach the phone. A car horn blared behind me. I glanced at the speedometer and saw that I had slowed to twenty. But my mind was racing, and, suddenly, I understood.
I stopped at the first phone I could find, which was in a bar called “Land’s End.” The receptionist at the Yellowtail informed me that Josh had called in sick and would give me neither his prognosis nor his home phone number. According to information, his number was unlisted. The cheerful male voice that gave me this data was sympathetic but would also not give me his number. The next call I made was to Freeman Vidor.
“I tried to call you,” Freeman said, after the preliminaries. “That Mandel kid has run off.”
“What do you mean, run off?” I asked, pressing a hand against my ear to drown out the background whine of Tammy Wynette.
“Hey,” Freeman said impatiently. “He’s gone, man.”
“You’re sure?” A thin woman in a halter and blue jeans smiled at me suggestively from her bar stool. I looked away.
“He was going to meet me this morning to tell me about that key,” Freeman said. “He didn’t show. The restaurant
said he called in sick.”
“Yeah, I talked to them.” The halter had moved herself back into my line of vision. She gave me the finger.
“I went over to his place and looked around.”
“You broke in, you mean.”
“Whatever,” Freeman said.
I glanced at my watch. “I want you to meet me at his apartment in about a half-hour.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said, with mock offense.
“There might be a clue to where he’s gone.”
Now, truly offended, Freeman said, “You think I wouldn’t pick up on that?”
“It’s not just what you see,” I said. “It’s what you know.”
“If you think screwing the guy gives you better insight — “ Freeman began.
“I’m sorry, Freeman. I want to look around for myself, okay?”
“It’s your money,” he said, unmollified. “Thirty minutes.”
“Right.”
On my way out, the halter stopped me. She was drunk. Even in the black and red bar light she looked bad. “You talking to your boyfriend, honey?” she sneered.
“That’s about the size of it,” I answered.
19
Driving back from Malibu I got caught in a traffic jam on Sunset just west of UCLA and arrived at Josh’s apartment twenty minutes late. Freeman was leaning over the railing on the second floor landing tipping cigarette ash into a potted plant. When he saw me, he made a show of consulting his Rolex.
“Traffic,” I explained, coming up the stairs.
The door to the apartment was open. “And here I thought you were just being fashionably late.”
“Is anyone home?” I asked, indicating the door.
“Come in and see for yourself,” he said, and led the way. As soon as we stepped in, he disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later he came back with a bottle of beer. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll take notes.”
There was a cigarette butt in the ashtray on the coffee table. Not a Winston, Josh’s brand, but a Merit — what Freeman smoked. Otherwise the living room looked just as it had two nights earlier. Freeman followed me into the bedroom. The bed had been hastily thrown together, a blue blanket slipping to the floor beneath a red comforter, but this looked to be its normal condition. I sat down and examined the contents of the night stand. They consisted of a paperback edition of Siddhartha, fourteen pennies, a pack of matches from the Yellowtail, and an empty water glass smudged with fingerprints, some of them, doubtless, mine.
Freeman picked up the book and said, “I never could get into this.”
“You just weren’t a hippie.”
“Can’t say that I was,” Freeman agreed pleasantly.
I went through the bureau. The sock and underwear drawers were cleaned out but another drawer held a few shirts. A couple of other shirts hung in the closet along with some slacks and a herringbone sports coat.
“He plans to come back,” I said.
“Good sleuthing,” Freeman replied, behind me.
I walked into the bathroom. A moment later I came back out into the bedroom smiling.
“Don’t tell me,” Freeman said. “He’s in the shower just like Bobby Ewing.”
“He took his dirty laundry with him.”
“Huh?”
“His dirty laundry. It was in a hamper in the bathroom. The hamper’s empty.”
Freeman took a slow swallow of beer, brought the bottle down and smiled. “He’s gone home to his mama,” he said.
*****
It was a quiet house on an unremarkable suburban street. I brought my car to a stop and looked at the place. Above it, the enormous, urban sky was darkening as sunset broke apart like colored smoke and drifted upward to where a few stars already shone. The house’s stucco facade was faced with beams of polished wood, giving it a vaguely Elizabethan look. In the yard, a big willow trickled yellow leaves. I got out of my car and walked to the door. A small, dark-haired woman with a face shaped like a heart responded to my knocking.
“Mrs. Mandel?”
“Yes,” she said, her forehead worried.
“Is Josh here?”
“No,” she lied. “Who are you?”
I’m his friend,” I said. “Please, I have to see him.” “Really,” she began, but a hand appeared on the edge of the door above her head and pulled the door back. Josh was wearing his red sweater.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “This is just my friend, Henry.” “Can I talk to you Josh?”
“Come on in,” Josh said.
He led me back to a big, well-lit room that smelled of furniture polish and rosewood. A pot of yellow chrysanthemums matched the blaze in the fireplace. The television was tuned to a football game and there was a bowl of popcorn on the seat of the armchair from which Josh had been watching the game. Mrs. Mandel had followed us into the room.
“Mom, we need to talk alone.”
“Joshua, who is this man?”
“I told you, he’s my friend. He’s here to help me. Right, Henry?”
“Yes.” I looked at Mrs. Mandel. “I’m a lawyer, Mrs. Mandel. I’m working on the Jim Pears case. Are you familiar with it?”
“That was the boy at the restaurant.”
“I’m his lawyer. I need to ask Josh a few questions.”
She looked back and forth at us. “I’ll make you some tea,” she said, decisively.
“Thank you.”
She fluttered out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“She seems nice,” I told Josh.
“She is,” he replied and looked at me stonily. “How did you find me?”
“This is the third house I’ve been to,” I replied. “There are a lot of Mandels in Sherman Oaks.”
He tried not to smile.
“Why didn’t you go meet Freeman?”
“You think I killed Brian, don’t you?”
I drew a deep silent breath and asked, “Did you?”
There was a lot working on Josh’s face. I was relieved to see that most of it was anger. “No,” he snapped.
“I believe you, Josh.”
“To hell with what you believe, Henry.”
It was only when he dropped into an armchair that I realized we’d both been standing. I sat down on the sofa. He stuck his hand into the cushions and brought up a grungy pack of Winstons. He lit one.
“Tell me where you were the night Brian was killed.”
He blew a shaky smoke ring with all the nonchalance of a ten-year-old and said, “I was with someone.”
“Am I supposed to remember all their names?”
“Stop it, Josh. I know you’re not like that.”
“Doug,” he said. “He lives in a split-level condo on King’s Road and he has a hot tub on his deck. We sat in the hot tub and drank a bottle of wine and then he fucked me.” He glared at me.
“Is that the terrible secret you wouldn’t tell me the other night?”
“Don’t talk down to me,” he said, his fingers quivering. “And no, that’s not the terrible secret. Does it really matter to you?” This time I knew the right answer. “Yes,” I said.
He put the cigarette out and all the hardness slipped from his face. “Three months ago I got this little rash at the base of my — penis,” he said. “I panicked. I was sure it was AIDS, so I ran out and took the antibody test. The rash was just a rash — going too long without wearing shorts or something. But the test came back positive.”
“You know that test isn’t completely accurate,” I said, to cover the sudden pounding in my ears. “And anyway it only means you’ve been exposed to the virus, not that you’ll get AIDS.” My heart slowed down. “Half the gay men in California test positive.”
“Did you take the test?” Josh asked, glaring at me.
“Yes.”
“Did you test positive?”
“No,” I said, but added, “There are false negatives, too, Josh.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” h
e snapped.
“I guess not.” I looked at him. “Look, Josh — “
“That’s why I ran away,” he interrupted, “because I didn’t want to have to tell you. Because I didn’t tell you.” He paused. “Before we made love.”
“We didn’t do anything risky,” I replied.
“No,” he said scornfully, “it wasn’t worth it.”
“Jesus, Josh, did you want to infect me?”
He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry, Henry. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Then be quiet and listen to me,” I said.
He reached for his cigarettes.
“And don’t light another one of those.”
He dropped his hand. “Sorry,” he said.
“I’ve been driving all over L.A. looking for you,” I said, “and it wasn’t because I thought you killed Brian. Not really.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I’m thirty-six years old, Josh. You have no idea how old that sounds to me, especially when I wake up in the morning alone.” I paused. This was going to be harder than I thought. “I just have these feelings for you…” And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He looked at me. “I love you, too.”
I nodded. “Then come here.” He rose from his chair and joined me on the couch.
He sniffed. A trickle of snot glistened under his nose. I gave him my handkerchief. He blew his nose gravely.
“I’m so scared,” he whispered, and began to cry.
I pulled him close and held him until I could feel the heat of his body through his sweater. I thought of all the rational things I should say but heard myself tell him, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He pulled away and looked at me, lifting his sleeve and wiping his nose. His eyes searched mine, slowly. I didn’t look away. We both knew that what I’d just said was, on one level, impossible and, therefore, untrue. And yet we both knew I meant it, which made it true on a different level, the one that mattered between us now.