The Burning Plain

by Michael Nava

  “What happened?” I asked a white-haired woman in a quilted bathrobe.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was in bed reading and then all hell broke loose. Sirens, lights. I’ve been standing here for a half hour. So far the only thing that’s come out of the house are the dogs.”

  “The dogs? Where are they?”

  “There,” she said pointing. The delicate greyhounds lay lifelessly on the sidewalk. “I guess he killed them. Isn’t that strange? But I still don’t understand why …”

  She stopped mid-sentence as a couple of burly paramedics emerged from Donati’s house and hoisted a stretcher into the ambulance, a sheet drawn over a small body.

  I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t face my empty house. I kept seeing the frail corpses of Donati’s dogs laid out on the sidewalk. A bizarre, sad touch. Did he kill them to protect them from the pound or was he afraid, at the last minute, to meet the darkness alone? I drove around in circles for an hour before I found myself pulling up to Serena Dance’s darkened townhouse in Santa Monica. I walked to the door, carrying Donati’s affidavits. I hesitated, but then a dog yapped from within, startling me out of my uncertainty. I pressed the bell. The dog yapped even more frantically. Lights, footsteps. I felt a presence on the other side of the door peering at me from the peephole. Slowly, the door opened. Serena was wearing a pink chenille bathrobe over sky-blue flannel pajamas. She was stuffing a handgun into her pocket.

  “Henry? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Donati confessed,” I said. “He left an affidavit describing the murders and implicating Asuras.”

  “Left?” she repeated, groggily. “Did he run?”

  “No,” I said. “He killed himself.”

  “Get in here,” she said, yanking me across the threshold. She looked up and down the street, closed the door and dead-bolted it. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee. When did Donati … ?”

  “A couple of hours ago. He sent me off on a wild-goose chase to get these and while I was gone, he killed himself.”

  She gave me a long, assessing look. “You’re not going to blame yourself for this,” she announced.

  “I could’ve stopped him.”

  She sat me down at the kitchen table and said, “Start at the beginning.”

  After I related the events of the evening, we opened the envelope addressed to me and found the original of Donati’s affidavit. It contained a complete confession, filled with details he could only have known about by having been present when they occurred. The last page was signed under penalty of perjury, and notarized.

  “This is powerful stuff,” she said.

  “Enough to get the DA off his ass?”

  She poured the last of the coffee into her cup. “Didn’t you remind me that the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice to a felony isn’t admissible against the principal if that’s the only evidence?”

  “Donati’s affidavit is a roadmap to corroborating evidence.”

  “I’m not talking law now,” she said, “but politics. The DA’s been burned once before. He’s not going to jump back into the fire.”

  “What more does he need? Asuras’s confession?”

  “Works for me,” she said.

  “Are you seriously telling me that, even with Donati’s confession, the DA won’t reopen the murder investigations?”

  “Not without giving Asuras a chance to respond,” she said. “And you know what he’s going to say. He’ll lay it on Donati and Travis. Both conveniently dead.”

  “That’s not plausible.”

  “Isn’t it, Henry? Two crazy gays go on a murder spree and then one of them knocks the other one off before he kills himself.”

  “Why would they blame Asuras?”

  “Revenge? Insanity? It doesn’t matter. The fact that Donati killed himself reflects badly on his credibility.”

  “Nick also left a copy of the affidavit for the chief of police,” I said. “We can go to LAPD and bypass your boss.”

  “LAPD doesn’t indict, the DA does,” she said. “The first thing the chief’s going to do is call Jack. Look, if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that LA’s a company town and the name of the company is Hollywood. No politician wants to antagonize the movie people and the chief’s as much a politician as the DA.”

  “What are we supposed to do, Serena? Burn the affidavits and walk away from this?”

  “Of course not,” she said impatiently. She stared out the window where the darkness had begun to lighten. There was a shuffle of footsteps and then a discreet cough at the door. We both looked up.

  “Honey,” Donna said, her face knotted with worry. “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

  “Excuse me, Henry,” Serena said. She and Donna went into the living room, had a whispered conversation, and then Serena returned alone.

  “Donna must think I’m the houseguest from hell.”

  “No, it’s not you,” she said. “We’ve been getting some strange calls.”

  “Hate calls?”

  “Threats,” she said, “but not exactly threats. A stranger calls and tells us he followed Jesse home from school.”

  “Is that why you’re toting a gun?”

  “I wouldn’t think twice about using it.”

  “Who’s making the calls?”

  “They started after I had Asuras arrested.”

  I nodded. “He tapped my phone, he’s had me followed.”

  “Donna’s taking Jesse out of school. They’re going to Denver for a few days, to stay with her sister.”

  “They have to come back, eventually. The only way to protect them is to stop Asuras.” I tapped the affidavit. “What are we going to do with this?”

  “There’s only one other prosecutor who might be interested and has concurrent jurisdiction over LA,” she said. “The state Attorney General.”

  “Lundlin? He’s a fascist. He owes his political existence to the Christian right.”

  “That’s why he’ll go after Asuras,” she argued. “He has no constituency in Hollywood and nothing to lose by alienating the Industry. His supporters will love it. Plus, he won’t have to rely on LAPD because he has his own investigators.”

  “‘Merchants of cultural rot,’” I said, quoting one of the AG’s recent characterizations of the leaders of Hollywood. “He wants to be Governor. The publicity from this case will win him the primary.”

  “The only other possibility is going to the feds, and there’s been no violation of federal law. Besides, Asuras was co-chairman of Clinton’s California campaign.”

  “And a regular guest in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

  “It’s the AG or nothing.”

  “But Serena,” I said, “he’s the Devil.”

  “I’m sure he says the same thing about gays and lesbians.”

  “That presents another problem. How do we get access to him?”

  “He’s a politician, Henry. There are limits to his principles.”

  We agreed she would fly to Sacramento on Monday morning and present the AG with the copy of the affidavit intended for the DA, while I kept the original and the second copy locked up in my safe deposit box at the bank. I drove home at dawn and fell asleep in my clothes on the couch. I was awakened by a call from Phil Wise, who was flying in the next day, Sunday, for a last-minute strategy session. He gave me his flight information. I showered, changed clothes and went out to get the paper. Jim Kwan was coming down the steps to my front door.

  “Hey, Henry,” he said. “I saw your car in the driveway.”

  “Hey, Jim.” I stooped to collect the paper. “What’s up?”

  “Were you home last night?” he asked.

  “Why, did I break curfew?”

  He smiled mechanically. “There was a car parked outside your house at around midnight,” he said. “Looked like someone was waiting for you.”

  “An old Rolls?”

  “That’s the one,” he said. He handed me a scrap of paper
from his back pocket. “I wrote down the license plate.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “How long did he wait for me?”

  “The car was still there when Letterman was over. You in some trouble, Henry?”

  “Come in for a second,” I said.

  Inside, I gave him the second sealed copy of Donati’s affidavit.

  “What’s this, Henry?”

  “If something should happen to me, I want you to get this to Sergeant Odell at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station,” I said. “I’ll write his name down.”

  “I’ll remember,” Kwan said. “Odell, West Hollywood sheriff’s station.”

  “Tell him the original is in my safe-deposit box at the Great Western on Sunset and Crescent Heights.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He grinned nervously. “You got me worried, man.”

  “I’m a little worried myself, Kwan.”

  I dead-bolted the door after Kwan left and glanced through the Times. On the front page of the Metro section, beneath the fold, was a picture of Donati in black-tie beside a story captioned: Studio Exec Apparent Suicide. I was reading the story when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said, my eyes falling on the words “overdose,” “barbiturates.” The Marilyn Monroe exit. That surprised me. I would’ve figured Nick for a gun or a noose.

  “It’s Richie, Henry. We have a problem.”

  I folded the paper. “What kind of problem?”

  “Rod’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  I’m trying to keep the line open in case he calls,” Richie said. “Can you come over?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Richie was frightened and defensive, so I tried to tread gently. “What happened, Richie?”

  “He’d been cooped up in the apartment since you brought him over,” he replied. We were in the bedroom. Every few seconds he’d glance at the phone, as if willing Rod to call. “He’s a sweetheart, Henry, but we had a little bit of a generation gap. I mean, he didn’t know Susan Hayward from Rita Hayworth, and I can only watch My Own Private Idaho so many times before Keanu Reeves’s bad acting begins to torture me. He was really antsy this morning. I asked him what he wanted to do most and he said he wanted to have his ear pierced. So I dropped him off at the Gauntlet …”

  “The Gauntlet?” I said. “That’s on Santa Monica?”

  “Yeah, the purple building across from Twenty-Four Hour Fitness.”

  “Okay, so you dropped him off. Then what?”

  “I had to run down to Fred Segal’s. I told him I would be back in a half hour and I’d take him to lunch. He was supposed to wait for me out front if he finished before I returned.”

  “He wasn’t there when you came back?”

  “I ran a little late,” Richie said.

  “How late?”

  “I don’t know,” he whined. “Twenty, forty minutes.”

  “Richie! You were supposed to watch him.”

  “It’s hard to take care of someone who doesn’t want to be around you.”

  “Were you and he having a conflict?”

  “How do I know, he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Okay, let’s get back to what happened this morning. What did you do when he wasn’t there?”

  “I went into the Gauntlet. The girl at the counter said he’d left a long time ago.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Alone.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “I thought he might’ve walked down the street into Boystown,” Richie said. “I searched the bars, the coffeehouses, the bookstores. I didn’t find him.”

  “How much money did he have on him?”

  “I gave him a fifty.”

  “Did you have a fight with him?”

  “I told you, I talked, he watched cable.”

  “So he would have no reason to run away?”

  “He was bored. He wanted an adventure.”

  “He may be getting more than he bargained for.”

  “What do you mean, Henry?”

  I told him about Donati. He left the room, then returned with the paper folded to the Metro story. “Unbelievable.”

  “Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary lately?” I asked him. “Strangers around the building, funny noises on your phone?”

  He looked up from the paper. “There are people in and out of here all the time. Why?”

  “Asuras has had me followed. Serena’s son, too. Nick said my phone was tapped. Someone broke in the other night. Am I being totally paranoid?”

  “Duke had Alex’s car blown up,” he reminded me. “How hard would it be to have you watched?”

  “Or you,” I said.

  “You think he took Rod?”

  “Unless he ran away, it’s a good possibility.”

  Richie paced to the window. “Maybe he did take off.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told him I had AIDS,” he replied. “I had to. He caught me taking my meds. After that, he kept his distance, like he was afraid he could catch it from me by being in the same room. He’s not just naive, Henry. He’s still halfway in the closet.”

  “I know he’s struggling with being gay, but he’s come this far.”

  “He probably thought once he got this far, the struggle would be over. Instead, he ends up with a scary old queen.” Unconsciously, he touched his bruised neck. “A fag Norma Desmond. I didn’t mean to become a stereotype, Henry.”

  “There’s no time for this, now,” I said, gently. “Not with Rod out there.”

  He nodded. “You should go home. If he’s going to call anyone, he’ll call you.”

  “I have my pager. I can wait here.”

  Richie struck a pose. “I vant to be alone.” He touched my hand. “I’ll be all right. Go home. If he calls you, tell him …”

  “Tell him what, Richie?”

  “Tell him not to feel so much contempt for what he doesn’t understand.”

  I went home to wait, though I wasn’t sure for what. There were no messages on my answering machine and, when I asked Jim Kwan about it, no reports of large, black cars idling in my driveway while I was gone. Nick’s note was on the dining table, warning me not to underestimate Asuras. I had been convinced Asuras had abducted Rod, but after talking to Richie I wasn’t so sure. Whatever Rod thought of Richie, it was unimaginable to me that he would return to his parents. But where else would he have gone? He knew Phil Wise was flying in tomorrow for the hearing on Monday. My best hope was that he’d run off to clear his head. I didn’t want to consider the alternative. Asuras. When I remembered what he was capable of, it made me frantic for the boy’s safety.

  At half-past nine, the phone rang. I grabbed for it.

  “Henry?”

  My heart sank. “Asuras.”

  “I have something of yours. Would you like it back?”

  “In one piece.”

  He chuckled. “It’s in perfectly good condition. Untouched.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  There was a long pause. “We’ll see. You have something to trade? A document?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Nick was not a computer whiz. He never really got the hang of delete. There were bits and pieces of a document left in his hard drive that was of particular interest to me. The document wasn’t in his office or at his house. He sent you off to the airport last night, so I have to assume it was there.”

  “I want to talk to Rod.”

  “There’s a bathhouse out in the Valley called the Bull Dog Baths,” he said. “Be there at twelve-thirty, with the document. Don’t try to copy it, because I’ll be watching you. Your friend will pay for your mistakes.”

  He hung up. I put the phone down. He wasn’t omniscient after all. He didn’t know that Nick had already made copies or that I had left one with Serena. A copy would be easier to challenge in court, harder to authenticate, and t
hat might affect the AG’s willingness to jump into the case. Serena and I could deal with that later. The important thing was getting Rod back. Untouched. I remembered Asuras’s “We’ll see,” and it sent a chill through me. There was nothing to do now but wait. So I waited.

  The Bull Dog Baths was located in a business park deep in the Valley. It looked like a warehouse from the outside and the owners had thoughtfully provided a wheelchair-access ramp up to the door of mirrored glass. Inside was a small anteroom, where an attendant sat behind a window at a booth, like a ticket-seller at a movie theater. I paid my twelve dollars, checked my wallet, but not the envelope I was carrying, and was given in exchange, the key to a locker and a towel. The attendant buzzed me through a door into the locker room. My one excursion to a bathhouse had been twenty years ago. In memory, at least, far from being a den of debauchery, it was about as alluring as a bowling alley with its bright lights and loud music, and as erotic as a Boy Scout circle jerk.

  The Bull Dog was pretty much as I expected: a big, brightly lit room with rows of lockers on one side and communal showers on the other. A muscular black man was slowly soaping himself in the shower for the benefit of passersby. A Latino boy emerged from the lockers wearing a thin gold chain around his neck and nothing else. A slow sexy smile spread across his face. I looked at my key. I found my locker. This was as far as Asuras’s instructions had gone, and while I assumed someone would turn up to give me further instructions, I had no idea who or when. A slow parade of men passed between the lockers and the showers, some glancing my way, most not. By the time some of them had passed a second, then third time, it was obvious I couldn’t just stand there. I inspected the towel I’d been given. It seemed about the size of a postage stamp. I quickly undressed and tied the towel around my waist. Taking the envelope, I set off.

  Adjacent to the locker room was a room with a sauna and a hot tub. From there, a ramp led upstairs to two rows of cubicles facing each other across a narrow hall. The doors of the cubicles were numbered. An open door to number 10 revealed a mattress on a platform where a large bearded man lay on his stomach. Loud dance music filled the space. The hallway was dark, but not so dark as to prevent the dozen or so men who paced the hall from peering into each other’s faces as they passed. Some smiled cheerfully while others scowled, lust being a barometer of temperament. I searched their faces, looking not for assent but recognition. I passed the Latino boy again, now decently clad in his towel, and he whispered, “Oh, papi.” I didn’t think this was the sign from Asuras, so regretfully I moved on.