by Michael Nava
Everything got very quiet. Peña nodded slowly, as if he’d taken my measure, but I could see he was struggling for a response that wouldn’t make him appear completely hypocritical.
“I guess I’m going to have to get used to that kind of smear,” he said.
“You have a homicide charge hanging over your head, Senator. That’s not a smear, it’s a statement of fact.”
“My personal problems don’t have anything to do with this hearing,” he replied.
“Nor does the fact that I’m a defense lawyer,” I snapped back. “So if you’ll stop imputing my character, I won’t discuss yours.”
With a dismissive shrug, he leaned back into his chair and focused his attention on the ceiling. I finished my statement and left the podium, catching sight of Tomas Ochoa who winked approval. Ignoring him, I headed for the door. I heard someone at my back running toward me. I stopped and turned. It was Peña’s aide. Breathlessly he said, “Senator Peña would like to talk to you for a minute.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, but he’s waiting.”
Curious, I followed the aide back up the aisle and through a door that led to a small anteroom behind the chamber. Peña was slouching against the wall, smoking. When he saw me, he dropped the cigarette, crushed it, and extended his hand with a broad grin.
“Henry,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again.” My expression must have been as blank as my mind at that moment because he added helpfully, “Last year at the MALDEF dinner. You were with Inez Montoya.”
“Of course,” I said, remembering that he had been glad-handing at Councilwoman Montoya’s table.
He wagged a genial finger at me. “You were pretty tough on me out there.”
“You deserved it,” I replied.
He clamped his hand on my shoulder, massaging it with thick fingers. “It’s all a show, Rios. Nothing personal.”
“Under the circumstances, Senator, that’s a remarkably cynical thing for you to say.”
He dug his fingers deeper into my shoulder. “Henry, truce, OK?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Listen, we’ll let the courts decide whether my bill is constitutional. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“No?”
He dropped his hand from my shoulder, lit another cigarette, and with a curt nod dismissed his aide. “I fucked up good in Sacramento, Rios. I killed a man, and I hurt a lot of other people.” His long face took on a distant, pained expression. “I’m still hurting a lot of people. I read that piece about you in the Times, he continued. “You’ve been where I am.”
He referred to a profile that had appeared in the paper a few months earlier which appeared under the caption “Gay crusader fights for the underdog.” The reporter had been thorough in his research, even prevailing upon my sister to describe our bleak childhood, not to mention my own stays at alcohol rehabs over the years, and the fact that my lover was HIV-positive. He seemed to regard these matters as evidence of my saintliness. Reading his piece had made me want to change my name and move to another state.
I said, “The reporter was looking for a hero.”
“I’m looking for a friend,” Peña said. “Someone who knows what it feels like to fail a lot of people who look up to him.”
“I know what it feels like to fail myself,” I replied.
“Yeah, well,” he exhaled a plume of smoke, “that’s the most humiliating part, isn’t it? I made myself into somebody from nothing, Rios, just like you. Sure, I made mistakes along the way, but there wasn’t anyone to tell me how to do it right. But I got most of it right, anyway,” he said, tapping his chest. “Only this thing that happened up there, I don’t understand it.”
“What don’t you understand, Gus?”
“How I got so out of control. I mean, the one thing I know about is control.”
“Control’s an illusion, Gus,” I said. “Being born is like being tossed from a cliff. Grabbing on to the rocks that are falling around you doesn’t keep you from falling. You just fall faster.”
He smiled bleakly. “What’s the difference if you still hit the ground?”
“You can always learn to fly.”
He put his cigarette out on the marble wall behind us. “Is that what you do?”
“I’m still letting go of the rocks myself.”
“You’re a good man, Rios. Can I give you a call sometime?”
“Of course.” I gave him a business card, pausing to write my home number on it.
He examined the card, slipped it into his wallet, and patted me on the back. “Say a prayer for me.”
I watched him slip back into the council chamber, ashamed of the way I had taken him on during the hearing, but not entirely convinced that I hadn’t just been brilliantly manipulated.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS NEARLY NOON when I left City Hall. I found a phone, checked in with my secretary, Emma Austen, and returned calls. When I finished, I still had an hour before a court appearance at the Criminal Courts Building, just across the street from City Hall, so I called home to invite Josh to come and eat lunch with me. All I got was his voice on our answering machine, urging me to leave a message. I hung up.
There had been a time when the course of his day was as familiar to me as mine. Now, I stood there for a moment, wondering where he might be. It was spring break at UCLA, so I knew he wasn’t in class, but beyond that, I could only guess. I began walking to a sandwich shop in the Civic Center mall. It was warm and smoggy. The only sign of spring was the flowering jacarandas, bleeding purple blossoms onto the grimy sidewalks.
On the way to the sandwich shop, I passed a bookstore. Displayed in the windows was a book entitled Vows: How to Make Your Marriage Work. I stopped and read the book jacket, which promised new solutions to old marital problems. What about when one of you has a terminal disease and the other doesn’t? Each time Josh’s T-cell count dropped, I felt him drift further away from me, into his circle of Act Up friends, and his seropositive support group. Josh had become an AIDS guerrilla, impatient with my caution. Just that morning, bickering again over the wisdom of outing closeted gay politicians, he’d snapped, “Spoken like a true neggie,” as if being negative for the virus was a defect of character.
Our arguments were no longer intellectual disagreements. He had adopted an “us vs. them” mentality over AIDS, and the more anxious he felt about his own health, the more strident he became. There might have been less ferocity in our quarrels had we been able to talk about his anxiety, as we once had, but he had decided that even this, or perhaps especially this, was beyond my understanding. I reacted with my own anger at being treated like an enemy by the man with whom I’d shared the last five years of my life.
I went into the bookstore and bought the book, suffering the sales clerk’s sympathetic glance as he stuffed it into a bag. Over a limp ham sandwich I flipped through the chapters. Finding nothing relevant, I buried it in my briefcase and set off to court, the one place where I knew the rules.
I arrived in court a few minutes late. The deputy district attorney, an amiable man named Kelly Miller, who had been chatting with the clerk, said to me, “Your kid’s a no-show, Henry.”
‘My kid’ was a twenty-two-year-old gay man named Jimmy Dee, Deeds on the street, where his deeds were legion. He was a beautiful black boy with a luminous smile, undeniable charm, a four-page rap sheet for hustling and theft, and a romantic attachment to heroin. His last boyfriend, a much older man, had had him arrested for stealing from him to support his habit. After grueling negotiations, I had persuaded the boyfriend, Miller, and the judge to let Deeds plead to trespass on condition that he enter a drug rehab. The purpose of this hearing was for him to submit proof that he’d found a bed somewhere. He was being given a break, a fact that I impressed upon him at every opportunity. When I did, he would turn his klieg light smile on me and say, “I know, Mr. Rios, I know. God put you in my life.”
“He’s not tha
t late,” I said.
“Fifteen minutes late.” Judge Patricia Ryan strode out of her chambers, arranging the bow of her blouse over her judicial robe. She was a patrician black woman with an acute street sense. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this, Henry. I should have had your client led away in manacles.”
Although she was joking, I could tell she was irate.
“The case would have fallen apart without this deal,” I said. “The boyfriend is deeply in the closet. He wouldn’t have testified.”
Miller said, “Your kid copped out, Henry. I could’ve convicted him on his statement.”
“Juries aren’t buying cop-outs from black defendants in LA these days,” I replied.
Judge Ryan said, “Save this, gentlemen. I’m going to issue an arrest warrant.”
“Wait, Judge, will you hold it one day? I’ll go out looking for him.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We’ve given him every opportunity.”
“Let’s give him one more.”
“Mr. Miller?” she asked.
Kelly shrugged, “Why not? I’m sure Henry’s not getting paid for this extra work.”
She took her seat on the bench. “OK. People versus Deeds. The defendant is not in court. I will issue an arrest warrant to be held until tomorrow morning. Good luck, Mr. Rios.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
I called Josh from a phone in the corridor and found him at home. I explained that I was going in search of Deeds and might not be in until late.
“I won’t be here anyway. There’s an Act Up demo at Antonovich’s house,” he said, referring to a particularly reactionary county supervisor.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I can’t tell you everything.”
That solved the mystery of where he had been when I’d called earlier.
“Is this a lawful demonstration, or am I going to be bailing you out of jail?”
Coolly, he replied, “The worst that ever happens is that they hold us overnight.”
“I’d rather you didn’t get arrested.”
“Worried about your image?”
“I’m worried about your health.”
He sniped, “That’s not your problem.”
I took a deep breath. “In that case, Josh, do whatever you want.”
“I will,” he said, and clanged the receiver down.
I hung up and immediately called back, but the line was busy, and stayed busy until I finally gave up.
Eight hours later, I found myself in the company of my investigator, Freeman Vidor, pulling into the parking lot of the Santa Monica Motel in West Hollywood. It was a perfunctory, two-floor stucco building wedged on a small lot just off” the boulevard within walking distance of the gay bars; the kind of place where the vacancy sign was perennially lit.
“Is this it?” Freeman asked.
“Yeah, his last known address.”
We got out of the car and went into the dimly lit office. An Asian woman stood behind the desk watching us apprehensively.
“Yes,” she said.
Freeman produced a mug shot of Deeds and his private investigator’s license. “We’re looking for this kid.”
“Police?” she inquired, holding up his license to the light.
“I’m a private cop,” he said. “This is Mr. Rios, the kid’s lawyer.”
She took stock of me in my sincere blue suit, trying to puzzle it out.
“We’re not here to make any trouble,” I told her. “The boy calls himself Deeds. He has to be in court tomorrow morning.”
We all stood there for a moment while she weighed her options. An air conditioner hummed loudly. Although glossy brochures advertised Gray Line tours and fun at Disneyland from a metal rack on a table in the corner, I doubted whether this place attracted that kind of trade.
“Twenty-three,” she said, wearily. “Don’t kick in the door.”
Deeds’s room was upstairs. I knocked a couple of times, then called him. I tried the door. Locked.
“We’ll have to ask her to let us in,” I said.
“Go admire the view,” Freeman said.
I walked over to the railing and watched the traffic stream up and down the boulevard. A blond in a Jeep cruised by slowly, his cassette player blaring a disco tune from the seventies. Ah, the hunt, I thought, remembering the nights I had stood in San Francisco bars listening to that same song while I ingested a little liquid courage. Or, rather, a lot of liquid courage. Most nights I would stagger out alone and take the train back to school. Once in a while someone would pick me up, or I would pick him up, and I would toil in a stranger’s bed for a few hours, trying to get out of my skin by going through his. I imagined that I was having fun, and sometimes I was, but not nearly often enough.
By the time I had graduated from law school, I was doing my drinking at home. That went on for a decade or so, drinking and working. By the time I sobered up, I was casting a pretty thin shadow, there being not much more to me than a vague alcoholic melancholy and the ability to work sixteen-hour days. I didn’t work that hard anymore, and when I was unhappy, there was usually a reason. I was unhappy now, watching the blond cruise by, wondering with whom Josh was having an affair. The thought had been in the back of my mind for months but only now, as I stood in the sexy airs of Boystown, did it all fall into place: the element of evasion in his behavior which had never been there before, the vagueness about where he was going, and when he would be coming back. I hadn’t lost track of him; he was hiding from me.
“Henry.”
I glanced back at Freeman. He was holding the door open.
We stepped inside to a darkened room. “Deeds,” I called. A sliver of light seeped out from beneath a door at the other end of the room. I went over and knocked. “Jimmy, are you in there?”
When there was no answer, I turned the knob and shoved the door open.
“Oh, shit,” Freeman muttered.
Naked, Jimmy Dee sat sloppily on the toilet, his head tilted back at an angle that would have been really painful had he been alive. A needle was still jammed into his arm. His mouth was open and he stared up at a water stain on the ceiling in the shape of Africa.
I closed the door and said to Freeman, “Go downstairs and call 911.”
After he left, I switched on the light and looked around the room. Deeds’s clothes were in a pile at the foot of the unmade bed. There was a twenty on the nightstand, wages for his last trick, no doubt. On the dresser was a little pile of papers. I examined them and found my card, some phone numbers and an envelope addressed to Judge Ryan with the return address of SafeHouse, the same rehab that Gus Peña had been in. I tucked the envelope into my pocket.
Josh had left the kitchen window open and the room smelled faintly of the anise that grew wild down the side of the hill from our house. He wasn’t there. I poured myself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table with the envelope I’d taken from Deeds’s room. Inside was a letter from Edith Rosen, M.F.C.C., attesting to the fact that Deeds was scheduled to enter SafeHouse the following Monday, three days hence.
“You little shit,” I said aloud, but what I felt was more grief than anger. In my work, I was used to losing, but I thought I’d staked out a tiny victory with Deeds.
But then, I’d always had a weakness for junkies, for their defeated, helpless charm. Of course I knew better. My own fight with the bottle had taught me intimately everything there was to know about addiction. Drunks and junkies all had a big hole in their gut that sucked in panic like Pandora’s box in reverse unless it was already filled by booze or a fix. Eventually, that stopped working, and the panic went out of control until the only thing left was dying. Sometimes, like Deeds, death is what you got and sometimes, like me, you were given a reprieve, but there was no logic about it. Even if you lived, the panic was still there. It only faded when you began see it for what it was, the long drop from darkness to darkness, and you stopped fighting.
At that
moment I could feel the panic elbowing me, tossing up the image of Deeds in that grisly motel bathroom, reminding me of every grisly room through which I had stumbled drunk, so close to dying myself. And when that didn’t get me going, the panic asked, “Where’s Josh?” a sure-fire tactic. I got up from the kitchen table and went into the bedroom, switching on the lamp and stretching out on the bed, still unmade from that morning. A book was half-buried in the covers, the paperback edition of Borrowed Time, Paul Monette’s moving tale of his lover’s death of AIDS. Josh had been reading it.
It was after eleven. The demonstration was certainly over by now.
I sat up and fumbled for the TV remote control, flicking on the set at the foot of the bed. I switched channels until I found some local news, looking for a report about the Act Up demonstration. Instead, I found myself watching Agustin Peña, standing against the backdrop of the city council chamber, his arm draped around his son who gazed at his father with a look that conveyed a history of betrayal. Peña was saying, “My kids have always made me proud, now I want them to be able to say the same thing about me.” Little Peña didn’t seem to be buying it.
Watching them, I thought of my father, and about pride and about betrayal. I shut off the TV, got undressed and into bed, ready for a long night.
“How was the demonstration?” I asked the next morning, pouring myself a cup of coffee as I waited for my bagel to toast. I had been asleep when Josh had come in. Waking beside him, my face against his bare back, I had breathed another man’s smell on his body.
Shaggy-haired and heavy-lidded, he sat at the kitchen table in boxers, mixing an assortment of liquid vitamins into his organic cranberry juice.
He looked up at me. “It was great, Henry. The cops were wearing thick plastic gloves and riot helmets. You could tell they were terrified that one of us might bite them.”
“Anyone get arrested?”
He finished mixing his holistic cocktail. “No, the cops told us that Antonovich wasn’t even in town, so after an hour we split.”
The toaster oven clicked and I retrieved my bagel. Buttering it, I asked, as casually as I could manage, “What did you do then?”