The Burning Plain

by Michael Nava

  “He’s trying to turn his case into a discussion of homophobia the same way Simpson turned his case into a referendum on race. I guess it’s not surprising. They have the same lawyers.”

  Serena switched the TV off. “Why not go the whole nine yards, then, and stick around for the trial?”

  “Because, unlike Simpson, Duke couldn’t count on any sympathetic jurors. I mean, he is right about how hard it is for gay people to get a fair hearing from the cops and the courts. You know that better than anyone.”

  She picked up her beer. “Yeah,” she said, “and I also happen to know that there are death squads in Brazil that routinely murder gay men. Quite an improvement over the old US of A.”

  “He can’t be extradited,” I reminded her. “I think that was the attraction.”

  “So we’re going to have to listen for the rest of our lives about how Duke Asuras, who murdered four gay men, was driven into exile by homophobia.”

  “Chalk it up to life’s little ironies.”

  Six months after he fled California, Asuras was appointed special assistant to the minister of culture in Brazil for the express purpose of encouraging movies to be filmed in that country. His old friend, the director Cheryl Cordet, immediately announced that she would make her next movie in São Paulo as a gesture of solidarity with Asuras.

  Duke Asuras was beaten to death in a Rio de Janeiro hotel by a hustler whom he’d picked up at the beach. The hustler was ultimately convicted of Asuras’s murder but, owing to Brazil’s extremely lenient sentencing laws, served a total of eight months. In handing down the sentence, the judge observed that the deceased was a homosexual and therefore at least as culpable for his own death as his killer.

  Asuras’s body was eventually returned to Hollywood and interred at the Westwood cemetery, where his neighbors included Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote. His memorial service was canceled when it became clear that no one of any prominence in the Industry intended to show up for it.

  One morning a few days after New Year’s, my phone rang as I was working in my office. I picked it up.

  “Hello, Henry?”

  The voice was familiar, but it took me a moment to place it, because I had not expected to hear it again. “Rod?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Rod Morse.” He sounded older, almost adult.

  “Where are you? How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Really good.” He paused. “I’m calling to Christian witness you, Henry.”

  “To what?”

  “I’m calling to tell you that homosexuality is not part of God’s plan and to beg you to turn from your sinful ways and receive Jesus in your life.”

  “Is this a joke, Rod?”

  “I’m deadly serious,” he replied. “You could be a good man if you would open your heart to Jesus.”

  “What happened to you, Rod? Did your parents send you to the Foster Institute?”

  “What happened to me is that I surrendered myself to Jesus,” he said. “You can, too. Henry, in I Corinthians 6, Paul tells us that no homosexual will possess the kingdom of God.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Rod. The word ‘homosexual’ didn’t even exist until the nineteenth century.”

  “And in Leviticus,” he continued, gathering steam.

  “Stop, Rod. I know all the passages, I know what they say, I know how they’re used and I’m not impressed. Did you hear Asuras was killed in Brazil?”

  There was a pause. “I read about it,” he said, grudgingly, then added, “The wages of sin are death.”

  “I’ll admit he did a lot of evil and there was a certain poetic justice to his death,” I said.

  “You do believe in evil,” Rod said, triumphantly.

  “Not the kind you’re thinking about,” I said. “Not Christian evil. That’s more of a political category than a moral one, but yes, after Duke Asuras, I definitely believe in evil.”

  “Homosexuality is evil,” he said. “It’s an abomination condemned by God. He sent the plague of AIDS as a judgment on your lifestyle.”

  In my appointment book was a plane ticket to San Francisco where, on Sunday, I would be attending a memorial service for Grant Hancock.

  “Someday, when you realize what you’ve just said, you won’t be able to forgive yourself.”

  “I meant it.”

  “You can’t run away from yourself forever,” I said. “You can’t hide in someone’s Bible for the rest of your life.”

  “It’s not someone’s Bible,” he corrected me. “It’s the word of God.”

  “It’s a book written by human beings about a God they imagined and any God that any human can imagine is imperfect. Don’t look for God in the sky, Rod. Look at what’s inside of you.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Henry, because you’re going to hell.”

  “Hell’s not a place, Rod, it’s something people do to each other.”

  “I’ll pray for you.”

  “All right,” I said, “but hang on to my number because someday you may want to call me again. When you stop running.”

  He hung up.

  That afternoon, I made my weekly visit to Josh’s grave. I walked up the steps of the Court of Remembrance, past the tomb of Bette Davis to the Columbarium of Radiant Destiny. As I approached the grave, I saw a woman in late middle age, her back to me, running her fingers across the raised surface of the lettering on the marker.

  “Selma?”

  She turned. It was Josh’s mother.

  “Hello, Henry,” she said. Her heart-shaped face was careworn and showed signs of recent tears, though it was dry now.

  “Is this your first time here?”

  “I’ve been coming since we got your letter telling us where to find Josh,” she said. “I thought we would probably run into each other.” She turned back to the plaque and read, “‘Little friend.’ What is that?”

  “An endearment.”

  “I see,” she said. “Did you have to put it here?”

  “I’ll leave you,” I said. I gave her the rose I’d brought. “Will you put this in the vase?”

  She took it, looked at me, seemed to thaw a little. “I don’t mean to run you off, Henry.”

  “I’ll come back later,” I said. “I’m usually here on Tuesdays, around this time.”

  She nodded. “I’ll try to remember.”

  “Goodbye, Selma.”

  But she had already turned away from me again and was replacing the wilted rose in the vase by Josh’s marker with the fresh one.

  I got into the car and started down the long, winding drive out of the cemetery. A fleet of trailers and trucks turned into the front gate. I pulled over and let them pass, equipment trucks, caterers, performers’ trailers, a caravan that could mean only one thing: someone was making a movie.

  Acknowledgments

  I WANT TO THANK the following people: Katherine V. Forrest, for her sage advice and valued friendship; Charlotte Sheedy, agent and advocate; Neil Nyren, conscientious editor; Paul Reidinger, for the free lunches and long conversation about this craft of writing; Rob Miller, Dan Edelman, the people at Paramount, for movie and legal lore (and if I got it wrong, my apologies); Phyllis Burke, for her book Gender Shock (a crucial work); and of course the Daughters of Darkness, who kept me company.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Henry Rios Mysteries

  1.

  THE WALLS OF THE COURTROOM OF THE COURT OF APPEAL on the third floor in the Ronald Reagan State Office Building were paneled in gray-green marble the color of money while the justices’ dais and the benches in the gallery were gleaming wood that had been stained the deep, coagulated red called oxblood; the same red as the tasseled loafers of the big-firm lawyers who regularly practiced in this venue. The $350-an-hour crowd were set apart not only by their shoes but also by their haircuts, which appeared to be the result of a microscopic process by which every hair was, in fact, individually cut. Needless to say, these lawyers were in civil practice. We in the criminal bar
were incapable of the insouciance that seems to be issued with platinum credit cards and corner offices. We tended to be solitary creatures, easily identifiable by our bulging files, tattered briefcases, hair in need of cutting, suits in need of pressing and attitudes of weary cynicism. The deputy attorneys general who filed down from their offices on the fifth floor to represent the state in criminal matters were mostly kids a few years out of law school who produced earnest, moot-court-style briefs but with the law largely on their side; in the defense bar, we joked that they could have submitted photocopied pages from the phone book and still won. They slouched into the courtroom in off-the-rack suits, carrying cheap leather briefcases stamped with the Great Seal of the State of California: a woman warrior clad in a Princess Xena breastplate pointing at San Francisco Bay and presumably exclaiming the state’s motto, Eureka! I have found it. She represented the mythical Queen Calafia, whom Spanish explorers believed had ruled over the race of Amazons in the land that now bore her name. Perhaps, I thought, studying the Great Seal on the wall above the dais, she was actually pointing to Oakland, home to a large lesbian population, including my sister, Elena, and her partner.

  I wasn’t usually so dyspeptic this early in the day, but I had the world’s worst heartburn, undoubtedly the result of a breakfast that had consisted of four cups of coffee, a bagel that was half-burned and half-frozen—I really needed a new toaster—and a handful of vitamins. The bitter aftertaste of the pills lingered at the back of my throat. Also, now that I noticed it, my right arm was throbbing. Great. When I was a teenager, I’d suffered through growing pains; at forty-nine, I was suffering through growing-old pains.

  The young deputy A.G. beside me pored over his notes and muttered to himself, as if he were about to argue before the United States Supreme Court rather than a three-judge panel—two white-haired white men, one graying black lady—of the intermediate state appellate court. His knee knocked nervously against mine and I glanced at him. He was a handsome boy with that luminous skin of the young, as if a lantern were burning just beneath the flesh.

  “’Scuse me,” he murmured without looking up.

  “Your first appearance?” I asked.

  Now he looked. His eyes were like cornflowers. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Don’t be too anxious,” I said. “They’ve already written the opinion in your case.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “Oral argument’s mostly for show. It’s hardly worth bothering to show up.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m a criminal defense lawyer,” I said. “Tilting at windmills is my specialty.”

  He smiled civilly, then returned to his notes.

  “We will hear People versus Guerra,” the presiding justice said.

  I pulled myself out of the chair and made my way to counsel table. The young A.G. beside me also stood up.

  “You’re Mr. Rios?” he said as we headed to counsel table.

  “None other,” I replied.

  He held open the gate that separated the gallery from the well of the court where counsel tables were located, and said, “Great brief. I had to pull an all-nighter to finish my reply.”

  I remembered his brief had had the whiff of midnight oil. “Thanks. You did a good job, too.”

  I set my file on my side of the table, and was gripped by a wave of nausea so intense I was sure I was going to vomit, but the moment passed.

  “Counsel?”

  I looked up at the presiding justice, Dahlgren, who was not much older than me and quite possibly a year or two younger.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

  “Your appearance, please.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I grunted. “Henry Rios for defendant and appellant Anthony Guerra.”

  “Mr. Rios,” the lady judge, Justice Harkness, spoke. “Are you all right? You went white as a ghost a second ago.”

  “Heartburn, Justice Harkness. I’ll be fine with a little water.” I poured a glass from the carafe on the table. My hand was shaking.

  “Tom Donovan for the respondent, the People,” the A.G. was saying.

  “Mr. Rios, if you’re ready,” Dahlgren said.

  “Yes,” I replied, and went to the podium. The justices regarded me dubiously. “Not to be impertinent, but I can see from Your Honors’ faces that you’re less than thrilled with another Three Strikes case on your docket.”

  Harkness permitted herself a smile, but Dahlgren said, “It’s fair to say, counsel, that you’re not the first lawyer to argue that Three Strikes is cruel and unusual punishment, so maybe we can cut this short. Every appellate court that’s considered the issue has held that sending repeat felons to prison for life upon conviction of their third felony does not violate either state or federal constitutional proscriptions against cruel and unusual punishment. What’s your pitch?”

  “My pitch, Your Honor,” I said “is that this law is an abomination. In this case, it’s sending my client to prison for the rest of his life because he got into a tussle with a security guard in the parking lot of a supermarket from which he had stolen a case of infant formula for his eight-month-old daughter.”

  Justice Harkness leaned forward. “He was convicted of robbery,” she said. “The law doesn’t distinguish between stealing diamonds and stealing baby food, Mr. Rios, where the theft is accomplished by force or fear.”

  “He committed robbery only in the narrowest sense of the statute because he bumped the security guard with a shopping cart. Technically, that’s force, but come on, this is L.A., where people shoot each other for parking spaces.”

  Justice Harkness shook her head. “The security guard was a woman who was five inches shorter and forty pounds lighter than your client.”

  “Your Honor, with all due respect, she was asked on cross-examination if she was afraid, and she said no. There was no fear and the force was minimal. The Three Strikes law doesn’t distinguish between stealing diamonds and stealing baby food, which is why this court must.”

  The third justice, Rogan, said, “I agree.”

  “You do?” The surprise was so evident in my voice that the lawyers in the gallery burst into laughter. But it wasn’t surprise they had heard; it was the shooting pains in my arm and the waves of nausea that continued to sweep through me.

  “I do,” Rogan said when the laughter subsided. “But Mr. Rios, Three Strikes doesn’t just punish the current felony, it also punishes defendants for past serious felony convictions. Your client has a record as long as Pinocchio’s nose.”

  “But only two convictions are qualifying strikes,” I said, “and those were insignificant burglaries…”

  “Insignificant by what standard?” Harkness asked.

  “They were nonviolent, the losses were small, my client pled.” I saw a flash of lights and then groaned as someone with very cold hands squeezed my heart.

  I heard the alarm injustice Harkness’s voice when she said, “Mr. Rios, are you sure you’re all right?”

  I gasped, “If I could just have another minute.”

  Dahlgren said, “Actually, counsel, your time has expired.”

  I keeled over.

  I didn’t completely lose consciousness until I reached the emergency room. I had this vision of myself as a very small boy—maybe three or four—holding a seashell to my ear to hear the ocean, but instead of a gentle reverberation, I heard a thunderous swell of water rising from a black depth. Terrified, I dropped the shell, but the roaring did not stop and I began to wail. Slowly I turned around and found myself standing at the edge of an ocean shimmering with light. Like shifting plates of glass reflecting the sun, the movement of light mesmerized me. I stopped crying and my terror evaporated. I felt a dim but widening awareness that if I stepped into the tide, everything would be all right, and it seemed to me at some point the water ceased to be water and revealed itself instead to be a brilliant sentience that called to me with such benevolence I rushed toward it. When my foot touched the li
ght, I felt a kind of ecstasy, but then someone hooked her arms beneath my armpits and dragged me away. I looked up and saw my sister, Elena, as she had been at eight or nine. Her grave dark eyes communicated love and terror. I tried to struggle out of her grip to run back into the light. “No, m’ijito,” she said, holding me against her body “No es tu tiempo.” Then a male voice shouted, “He’s back,” and an excruciating sensation roiled though my body that left me gasping with pain. I groaned my sister’s name.

  I woke up in the middle of the night in a narrow bed, groggy, disoriented and scared. Across the foot of the bed, a window looked out on the nurse’s station, from which light filtered into the room. I was pinned to the bed by tubes, lines and catheters and felt more specimen than human. In the darkness, a chair squeaked and I realized with a start there was someone else in the room. Laboriously, I turned my head toward the noise. When I saw who it was, I was sure I was either dead or crazy.

  “Mom?”

  The woman inclined her face toward the light. “No, Henry, it’s Elena.”

  Only her voice persuaded me my mother had not risen from the grave. My mother, though born in California, was the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Spanish was her natal language and she spoke English with a slight but unmistakable Mexican accent. My sister, Elena, spoke in the educated tones of her profession—she was a professor of English at a small private college near Oakland. Her hair was the same dense black shot through with white as our mother’s had been. At fifty-five, her face was worn to the same grave lines, with the same smooth olive darkness of skin, and her eyes were the same unrevealing black. She leaned forward and the resemblance ended. Elena was thin, whereas our mother’s body was a mound of flesh that only seemed soft until you touched it and discovered its laborer’s strength.

  Elena touched her palm to my forehead as if she was taking my temperature. “How are you feeling?”

  “Where am I?”

  “The hospital. The intensive care unit. Do you remember that you had a heart attack?”

  “I remember the judge wouldn’t let me finish my argument.” Her presence confused me—who had told her I was in the hospital? When I tried to express my bewilderment, it came out with unintended harshness. “What are you doing here?”