The Burning Plain

by Michael Nava

  “‘… evidence connecting RIOS to the first victim the night of the murder was discovered in a search of his home,’” I read into the phone. “‘After the body of the second victim, twenty-six-year-old Jack Baldwin, was found under circumstances similar to the first victim, Rios was again questioned by sheriff’s deputies. The detective in charge of the investigation, Montezuma Gaitan, declined to either confirm or deny that Rios is a suspect in the murders and would only say that the investigation is continuing.’”

  There was an explosive, “That asshole,” from Inez.

  “Gaitan?”

  “Who else?” she said. “His way of retaliating. What time do you get in?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Around one.”

  “Come straight to my office.”

  It seemed to me that everyone on the plane was reading the Times, and even though the piece didn’t carry my picture, inwardly I cringed. I knew only too well that the mere mention of someone’s name in the media in connection with a crime was all the proof of guilt that most people needed. Remembering the tabloid coverage of the second murder by local TV news, I could only imagine what they would do with this new development. The media was like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: first the execution, then the trial. I had images of TV vans lining the street outside my house, and my befuddled neighbors cornered by lacquered-haired reporters demanding, “What kind of man is he?” And it wouldn’t take much research to discover that much of my practice consisted of cases on which I was appointed by the appellate courts on behalf of indigent criminal defendants. I could guess how that would play: public money pays murder suspect to defend other criminals. In fact, it wouldn’t take much research to get a pretty full picture of my life, to discover I was gay or had been treated for alcoholism, exactly the kind of information that could be spun to create a media monster, another Andrew Cunanan. By the time the plane touched down in Los Angeles, I saw my life collapsing around me.

  Chapter 8

  “ALL I KNOW,” Inez explained in her unpacked office, the lights on her phone blinking urgently, “is that in politics, when your opponent goes negative you hit back hard and fast. Same thing here.”

  “I’m not running for anything,” I replied.

  “You’re running for your reputation,” she said. Her phone buzzed. “Let me get this.”

  I went to the windows. A bronze cast to the late-afternoon light gave the city a solemn, funereal look. The smog was so deep it reminded me of the fog I’d watched roll in over Twin Peaks the previous afternoon at Grant’s house. Out over the ocean, the sun inflamed the wispy clouds. The little stucco houses were lined up in neat rows as far as the eye could see, like modest grave markers. An eastbound jet crossed my field of vision and I was filled with the urge to run.

  “That was the sheriff’s PR guy,” Inez said. “They questioned Gaitan. He denies being the leak.”

  I turned back to her. “Duh.”

  “They tried the reporter. She climbed on her First Amendment high horse.” Inez lit a cigarette, using a wooden kitchen match from a box on her desk.

  “I assume that means no retraction.”

  She flicked the match into an ashtray. “The sheriff backs up Gaitan; the paper stands by its story.”

  “The sheriff backs up Gaitan? Gaitan’s a cowboy at best. At worst, he’s dirty.”

  “From your perspective,” she said, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “To the sheriff, he might just be a very zealous cop.”

  “Who hates blacks and gays and plants evidence in drug cases.”

  “All unproven allegations,” she reminded me. When I didn’t answer, she continued, “I know you don’t want to turn this into a media circus, but now that they have your name, they’re going to hound you until you respond. Let’s do it in our way and on our turf.” She smiled. “Trust me, Henry. I know what I’m doing.”

  I looked at her. Years earlier, when we were both young public defenders, she told me the only part of trial she really enjoyed was the summation, when she knew the jurors were transfixed by her every move, hanging on her every word. We were deep in our cups—I was still drinking—and I remember she leaned against me, her heavy, scented hair falling against my cheek, and giggled, “I love it when they watch me. It’s better than sex.”

  “You should consider what effect this might have when you run for mayor,” I said now.

  “I’m only defending an old friend’s reputation from police excess.”

  “An old friend you thought might be a murderer.”

  Her eyes were hard and bright in her expensively madeup face. She crushed her lipsticked cigarette in the ashtray. “In politics it pays to assume the worst about everyone,” she said. “You’re rarely disappointed. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wondering if she would have been so anxious to stand beside me if I had been guilty.

  “Don’t be childish,” she said. “Amerian was a whore. You slept with him. If you consort with lowlifes you’ve got to expect complications.”

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll do it your way. We’ll meet the press.”

  “I do the talking,” she said, reaching for the phone.

  Inez had deployed an associate from the firm to drive past my house. He reported four TV vans parked outside, so I checked into a hotel under a false name, ordered in a pizza and called voice mail. Eighteen messages from friends, colleagues and clients. Most expressed concern, but some had phoned in the same spirit that makes people slow down at the site of a traffic accident. I didn’t return those calls. By the ten o’clock news, KPRA had obtained a picture of me that I got to watch appear on the screen behind the broad shoulders of a male-model anchorman above the caption: SERIAL KILLING SUSPECT. I turned the TV off and worked on my statement for the press conference the next morning. At around one, after a final cheerleading call from Inez, I turned in.

  I woke up an hour later, freezing. The air-conditioning had gone on overdrive. I shut it off and drifted back to sleep, but woke up a second time, drenched in sweat. I opened a window that looked out on a courtyard. The red night sky seemed to pulsate, as if lit by a distant fire. A draught of ocean air rustled through the banana trees and fluttered the still, blue surface of the pool. Anxiety knotted my stomach when I considered the prospect of pleading my story to an audience of skeptical reporters. The feeling was similar to the anxiety I experienced when I told someone I was gay for the first time, never knowing whether the response would be acceptance, repulsion or something in-between, polite and noncommittal. It occurred to me that my empathy for my clients must come from my own half-submerged feeling of being constantly on trial and having to establish my normality over and over in the face of the presumption that gays are freaks or monsters. The irony was that my sympathies were with the freaks and monsters, just as it was with my clients and not the hypocritical good burghers who passed judgment on them. I returned to bed and lay awake staring at the ceiling, where lighter shadows danced across the darker ones. What had the old psychic told me at Forest Lawn when I asked her to predict my future, nothing you can’t survive? Cold comfort at four in the morning.

  The press conference was held in the public meeting room of the shopping center that adjoined Inez’s office building. It had been a slow summer for scandal, and we had a packed house. After associates from Inez’s firm handed out copies of the photos from the deputies’ bathroom at sheriff’s headquarters, she read a statement explaining away the evidence of my connection to Alex’s murder and pointing out that no evidence connected me to Baldwin’s killing. “In fact,” she continued, “because the police had my client under surveillance the night of the second murder, they know beyond any doubt that he is innocent, but they continue to harass and defame him because of a pervasive homophobia in the sheriff’s department personified by the lead detective in the case, Montezuma Gaitan. Because of this bias against homosexuals, the sheriff has ignored the obvious fact that these murders were h
ate crimes. We informed the sheriff some time ago that the first victim, Alex Amerian, was gay bashed, not once, but twice in the months before his murder and …”

  It had been a long time since I’d seen Inez in action and I’d forgotten how good she was at this. She wore an authoritative blue suit and she had tied her hair back in a schoolmarmish bow. Standing beside her, I watched some of the reporters begin to nod agreement as she tore into the sheriff’s department, not even aware they were doing it. I spotted Richie at the back of the room. He gave me a thumbs-up.

  “… will file a malicious prosecution action if the department does not immediately issue a statement that my client is not and never was a suspect in these tragic killings. Furthermore, ladies and gentlemen of the media, now that you are aware of the true facts of this case, I must also warn you that we will take legal action against any news organization that continues to refer to my client as a suspect. And now, Mr. Rios will say a few words.”

  I went to the podium, looked at the sea of hardened, curious faces, and said, “It’s unfortunate that simply by being gay, one can become a suspect in a murder case, but that’s what happened here. There was a time when police didn’t bother to investigate the murders of gay people or, for that matter, blacks or Latinos, because one more or less of us was not considered anything to get excited about. Even today, it still seems that police bigotry plays a bigger role in their investigation of hate crimes against gays than the actual evidence. The sheriff’s department knows by now that I am innocent of these crimes. I call upon the department to exonerate me and give me back my reputation. That’s all.”

  When the press conference was over, there was a rush to the door and, presumably, across town to sheriff’s headquarters. Only Richie remained behind.

  “You were fabulous,” he told Inez. “You had them eating out of your hand.”

  I began to introduce them. Inez said, “I know Richie. His magazine profiled me when I went to DC. You two are friends?”

  “I’m Henry’s imaginary friend,” Richie replied. “The one who slipped him the photos of the little boy’s room at sheriff’s headquarters.”

  “Sorry I didn’t mention the magazine,” I said.

  He brushed it aside. “I’m already working on the press release.”

  “How do you think they’ll play the story?” Inez asked him.

  “Listen, you did for Henry what Johnny Cochran did for O.J.,” he said. “The press will be all over the sheriff with those pictures. By the time they’re finished with him, no one’s going to care or remember that Henry was a suspect.”

  “Unlike O.J. Simpson,” I reminded him, “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “That’s not the point, anymore,” Richie replied.

  The press conference was on Wednesday morning. That afternoon, the sheriff declined comment on Inez’s allegations, but a liberal member of the board of supervisors called for a special commission to investigate them. The story dominated that night’s news broadcasts, with follow-ups the next day, but by the weekend it had gone into suspended animation, as everyone, including me, waited for the next development. I used the time to call my clients and reassure them I was not going to jail for murder. By and large, the cons were more amused than concerned about my situation, because they knew how the cops could be once you made their shit list. They all had stories about rousts and hassles and some of them were even true. Many were more surprised by the news I was gay. A couple demanded another lawyer; one propositioned me.

  A week after the press conference, I called Inez to ask whether she’d heard anything from the sheriff.

  “Nothing,” she said, unworriedly.

  “What do you think is going on?”

  “The sheriff’s an elected official,” she reminded me. “He can’t afford to alienate anyone, that’s why he’s not commenting. My guess is that he’ll lay low and hope all this blows over.”

  “Will the press let him do that?”

  “Until something else happens, there’s no story,” she said. “Even the media doesn’t make things up. Yet.”

  “Where does that leave me?”

  “They’ll never admit any wrongdoing, but I bet you’ve seen the last of Detective Gaitan.”

  “Everyone’s waiting for another murder, aren’t they, Inez?”

  “Just make sure you’re far away when it happens.”

  Late Friday afternoon, there was a knock at the door. I assumed it was a solicitor, but when I looked through the peephole I saw two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and a patrol car pulled into my driveway. I turned around, went to the phone and dialed Inez at home. Her machine picked up. I left a message and answered the door.

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” I asked them.

  One was white, one Latino, but otherwise they could have been twins, six-two or three, square-jawed, crew-cut, pneumatic muscles bulging beneath their uniforms. They weren’t wearing badges.

  “You Henry Rios?” the Latino cop asked.

  “That’s right. Who are you?”

  “We have a warrant for your arrest,” the white one said. He had wet blue eyes, a saint’s eyes.

  “On what charge?”

  “Auto theft,” he said. “Two counts.”

  “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “You see anyone laughing?”

  “Let me see the warrant.”

  The white cop handed me the arrest warrant. The defendant had my name, but according to his birthdate was twenty years younger than me.

  “Wrong Henry Rios,” I said. “If you’ll let me get my driver’s license, I’ll show you …”

  The Latino cop pulled his cuffs from his belt and said, “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Trying to remain calm, I said, “This Henry Rios is twenty-three years old. I’m forty-five. You can see I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

  The white cop grabbed my shoulder, flipped me around and slammed my face against the wall. The other one cuffed me.

  “Turn around.”

  I turned, tasting blood in my mouth. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  The Latino cop grinned and said, “We’re taking you for a ride, counsel.”

  I looked at him and understood immediately what was happening.

  “Gaitan put you up to this.”

  The white cop pushed me down the steps to the patrol car. “Let’s go.”

  We drove out of the city on the 5 North into the vast unincorporated areas of Los Angeles that were the sheriff’s domain. The cops ignored my questions about our destination. An hour out of the city, they turned off the 5 onto the 114, the road into the high desert. Dusk had fallen. The landscape, familiar from thousands of Westerns, was mountainous and austere, the ground covered by low growing vegetation, creosote and burro bush, broken only by solitary Joshua trees. We got off the freeway and headed toward a blur of city lights. We drove down a road as brightly lit as a carnival midway with fast-food restaurants and car dealerships. Drivers in other cars glanced at me and then looked quickly away. The glittering road trailed off to a row of shuttered businesses. It was getting darker. We turned off the main road to a bumpy side street. A splintering sign read: WELCOME TO ROYAL PALMS HOMES. We turned again. Around me the frames of unfinished houses rose against the deep blue desert sky. Abruptly, the car stopped. The Latino cop cut the lights.

  “Where are we?”

  “You’ll find out,” he said.

  The white cop hauled me out of the backseat and pushed me toward one of the houses. The air was cold and dry. There was a stack of four-by-fours on the ground. The wood was old, decaying. The houses had been abandoned. I staggered forward until the cop behind me, the one with the saintly eyes, yanked at the handcuffs and ordered me to stop.

  “Get down on your knees,” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder. His partner had come up beside him. Their faces were lost in the gloom.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I said, get down on your k
nees,” he said, sliding his service revolver out of its holster. A Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic. Standard issue. He laid his finger on the barrel, regulation-style. He only had to slip it onto the trigger and squeeze.

  “What’s the problem, Henry?” the Latino cop said. “Ain’t that where you fags spend most of your time?”

  I spat, “Fuck you” at his smirking face.

  The white cop grabbed the cuffs, kicked my legs out from beneath me and forced me down. He scowled, not from anger but concentration, and lowered his revolver to the level of my eyes. I looked up. His eyes had disappeared into shadow but when he stooped down to murmur, “Face the other way,” I saw them again, mournful still.

  “Don’t do this,” I said.

  “Turn your head,” he said, louder, irritated.

  I turned my face away from him and stared through the doorway of the skeleton house to a purple ridge between two mountains where a quarter moon was rising. I felt the gun gently probe my neck. Cold tears began to drip down my face.

  “Think pretty thoughts,” the Latino cop said.

  I drifted out of myself. I could see us there, a man kneeling before the bones of a house, two big men standing shoulder to shoulder behind him, one with his arm outstretched, the gun grazing the neck of the kneeling man. The bare terrain, the dark mountains, the big sky tumbling around them, the stars as watchful as eyes, as tremulous as souls. The man with the gun lifted it slightly until it pressed against the skull of the kneeling man. The kneeling man screamed, “No!” As his echo died, the man with the gun, instead of shooting, turned his hand and slammed the barrel into the back of the kneeling man’s head.