by Michael Nava
“Yeah? Who is this Michael Ruiz? An undercover cop?”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Why are the cops coming down on the vatos?”
“I think you know,” I replied.
He hung up. A moment later, however, he called back. “Come to my office at four-thirty,” he said, then hung up again.
CHAPTER TEN
TOMAS TAUGHT AT CAL State Los Osos in a remote suburb in the San Fernando Valley. The campus had apparently been designed by the same architects the state retained to design its prisons: its buildings were a collection of concrete slabs linked by four-lane sidewalks that crossed yellowing strips of grass. All that kept the place from being completely depressing was the irrepressible energy of its students. From card tables set up outside the student union, decorated with homemade signs, they hawked causes from gay liberation to animal rights, handing out leaflets with boundless optimism. Walking past them made me feel very old.
Ochoa was waiting in his office, a grim little cubicle on the edge of the campus. On the wall was a faded poster calling for the expulsion of the Anglos from California. More recent posters proclaimed support for the PLO and commemorated thirty years of Castro in Cuba. Ochoa was a believer, and though I thought his beliefs were foolish, I had to envy his tenacity.
Floor to ceiling bookshelves were crammed with books in Spanish and English; tomes of history, political science, literature, philosophy, sociology, psychology, law. He regarded me suspiciously from a desk stacked high with papers as I perused his bookshelves.
“You have a lot of books here,” I said, clearing some from the only other chair in the room. “I’m surprised you haven’t come up with better answers.”
“Better answers than what?”
I indicated the yellowing poster calling for a revolution. “Than this.”
“I didn’t ask you here to discuss politics,” he replied. “What are the police after?”
“First you answer my question,” I said. “Where’s Michael Ruiz?”
“He’s not a vato,” he said.
“You know that for sure?”
“He’s a wannabe,” he replied dismissively. “A drug addict.”
“That’s never disqualified anyone from joining a gang.”
“It’s so easy for you to write them off,” he said. “The same way you write off the rest of your heritage.”
“The gangs are not my heritage. What about Michael?”
“He tried to hang with Dogtown, but he didn’t have what it takes. He wasn’t man enough,” he added, pointedly.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked, ignoring him.
“I gave you your information, now it’s your turn. What are the cops after?”
“Peña’s shooting had all the marks of a drive-by,” I said. “The cops think it was gang-related.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re the one who says the gangs are urban revolutionaries. Maybe they finally heard you.”
He scowled. “Don’t try to implicate me.”
“You’ve done a pretty good job of that yourself,” I said. “Running around giving speeches after Peña was killed. I saw that you nearly incited a riot Saturday night.”
He looked alarmed. “Are the cops after me?”
“I don’t know, Tomas, but I wouldn’t be giving any more speeches if I were you.”
“Jesus, I come up for tenure this year. What should I do, Rios?”
I got up, enjoying his discomfort. “Whatever Che Guevara would have done.”
When I got to my car, the phone was ringing. It was Emma. She told me that Edith Rosen had called and said it was urgent that I get to SafeHouse. I thanked her and tried to call SafeHouse, but got a busy signal, and began the drive back into town.
“Is Edith Rosen here?” I asked the skinny kid with the shaved head loitering in the foyer at SafeHouse.
“No, man, the cops took her,” he said.
“Where?”
He looked at me vacantly and shrugged. “Down to cop-land, man.”
“What about Chuck Sweeny?”
“He went with her,” the kid said, then lost interest and wandered off.
It took me a half-dozen calls to locate them at Parker Center, police headquarters downtown. Chuck Sweeney was waiting for me when I entered the building.
“We tried to call you before we came down here,” he said, after I’d explained my purpose to the cop at the front desk.
“Just tell me what’s going on.”
“The police came to the house and wanted to talk to Edith. I told them that the presence of the police made some of the residents uncomfortable, so they suggested we come down here.”
“Suggested, huh?”
“We want to cooperate, Henry,” he said, with unblinkingly candid blue eyes. “We’re good citizens.”
“Who is this ‘we’?” I asked him.
“People like you and me,” he said, “recovering drunks, recovering addicts.”
“Edith is neither,” I pointed out. “She’s a psychotherapist attempting to protect her client.”
“It’s a form of dishonesty,” he replied. “If she knows something, she should tell it. A man’s been murdered.”
“And you’ve already convicted Michael Ruiz for the crime, haven’t you, Chuck. Haven’t you heard of the presumption of innocence?”
He smiled his P.R. smile and said, “Sure, that’s what criminals hide behind when they get caught.”
The cop at the desk told me I could go back to where Edith was being questioned, and handed me a visitor’s badge to wear. A second cop appeared to take me.
“Are you coming?” I asked Sweeny.
“I’m sure she’s in good hands,” he said, and I last saw him heading toward the door. As I made my way through the labyrinth of the station, it seemed to me very likely that Sweeny had intentionally engineered Edith’s visit here to assist the cop’s intimidation of her. The man’s duplicity appeared bottomless.
Edith was sitting beside a gray metal desk sipping coffee from a paper cup. My old friend, Detective Laverty, was at the desk, shirtsleeves rolled and tie at half-mast. Merrill had his back against the wall. They looked up at me when I entered. I positioned myself behind Edith’s chair.
Laverty acknowledged me with a bland, “Mr. Rios.”
“Everything OK, Edith?” I asked.
She looked up at me, her face was impassive but her eyes were furious. “I’d like to go.”
I looked at the detectives and said, “I see no reason why you shouldn’t.”
“Just a minute,” Laverty said. “We believe Miss Rosen has material information about Senator Peña’s death. We’d like her to cooperate.”
“I told them that anything I know about Gus is protected by the therapist-patient privilege,” she told me.
Laverty said, “This isn’t about Peña, it’s about one of her other clients, a kid named Michael Ruiz.”
“The privilege would still apply,” I said.
“This guy is a suspect in the Peña killing,” Laverty said.
“You’ll have to get your leads somewhere else,” I replied.
Laverty droned, “We could hold her as a material witness.”
“Detective, there is absolutely nothing in any statute in this state that allows the police to hold a citizen just because they think she knows something about a crime. So unless you have the proof to charge her with something, we’re leaving.”
“You ever hear of Penal Code section 148?” he asked.
“Resisting arrest?” I replied, “Please.”
“It also covers obstructing a police investigation,” he said.
“That’s hardly the situation we have here. This woman is a psychotherapist. She has every right to refuse to answer any question that, in her judgment, violates the privilege. All you’re doing is trying to bully her.”
Merrill shifted his weight against the partition, and said, “She came down here on her own
.”
“So what?” I snapped. “You think this is sacred ground? You think the laws stop applying once you cross the threshold? Come on, Edith, let’s go.”
She stood up. “Thank you for the coffee,” she told Merrill.
Laverty looked at her, then at me, and said, pleasantly, “Just follow the blue line along the floor. It’ll take you out, and thank you for your time, Miss Rosen.”
When we got outside, she took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Thank you, Henry, I was actually getting pretty nervous in there.”
“Did you come with Chuck Sweeny?” I asked. When she nodded, I said, “He’s gone. I’ll give you a lift back to the house.”
We started toward my car, which I’d parked in front of the federal building across the street from Parker Center. A couple of blocks away, lights blazed from the tower of City Hall. The smell of urine hung in the air. With the politicians and bureaucrats gone for the night, the homeless roamed the grounds of the government buildings looking for a safe place to bed down.
When we got to my car, I asked, “How do they know about Michael?”
“Chuck,” she replied sourly. “You were right. They came back to the house and went straight to him. He must’ve told them that Michael had threatened Gus. Then they came to me and we ended up down here.”
We got into the car. “Have you heard from Michael?”
“Not a word,” she replied.
As I drove past City Hall, I said, “Now that they know about him, they’ll be back, interviewing everyone at the house they think might know something. We’ve got to try to beat them to it.”
“How?”
“Can you think of anyone at the house he might have confided in? Someone who might know where he is?”
She thought for a moment. “He had a roommate, a boy named Lonnie Davis. He was released from the house a couple of days ago. I’ll find out where he’s staying.”
“Good. I’ll talk to him.” We drove on in silence for a few minutes. “Edith, I want you to forget about the privilege for a moment and tell me something. Why did Michael threaten Peña’s life? Was there a particular incident?”
She hesitated.
“Look,” I said, “I seem to be the kid’s lawyer. Tell me so I can help him.”
“It wasn’t just a single incident and it wasn’t just Michael who resented Gus. Henry, how much do you know about the house, about its rules, I mean?”
“Not much,” I conceded.
“When you sign in,” she said, “you agree to stay for three months. Your contact with the outside is strictly controlled. You have to participate in house meetings and group therapy. You’re expected to observe curfews and submit to random drug tests. Everyone has to do it, but not Gus Peña. He stayed less than a month and he basically did whatever he wanted.”
“Why did Gus get to bend the rules?”
“He was chairman of the senate committee that appropriates money to places like SafeHouse,” she said. “Chuck wanted Peña to owe him a favor.” I see.
“Michael didn’t want to be at SafeHouse, and it really made him angry to see Gus flouting rules that he was forced to abide by.”
“That still doesn’t seem like enough provocation to want to kill someone,” I said.
“No, it was Gus’s arrogance that enraged Michael,” she said. “The contempt with which he treated Michael. They really hated each other, and they fought with the kind of rage you only see in families.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LONNIE DAVIS LIVED IN a big pink building in West Hollywood called the Essex House. The tatters of a garden clung to life in the strip of dry earth between the sidewalk and the front wall. A faded green awning sagged over the entrance. I dialed his number on the security phone and a buzzer sounded. I pushed through the iron door into the foyer. It led to a hallway where a picture window framed a paved courtyard. In the center was a swimming pool surrounded by deck chairs. The last of the afternoon sun shone white on the water. It was one of those secret moments when the city reveals its true erotic nature; the light and the water like two skins touching. I stood there in my too-warm suit, a breeze cooling the uncovered surfaces of my body. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a stranger’s room either fencing with him or massaging his memory. I would rather have tossed off my clothes and dived into the water. Instead, I turned away and went down the hall looking for Lonnie Davis’s apartment.
Edith Rosen had called Davis a boy, so I had expected to find someone as young and uncertain as Michael Ruiz. The man at the door, wiry in Levis and a white tank top, was at least thirty. Years of hard living had dug furrows around his eyes and mouth, but his fine-boned face retained vestiges of once-innocent good looks. His blue eyes had the same stillness as the water outside, the same sexual depth. He looked at me as I had not been looked at in a long time.
“Lonnie? I’m Henry Rios.”
“Come in,” he said easily, stepping back.
He lived in a studio apartment, the big, square room unfurnished except for a mattress, a lamp and a portable TV on the floor at the foot of the bed. Two folded up chairs leaned against the wall. The bed was unmade. Balanced on a pile of paperbacks was an ashtray with a couple of cigarette butts in it. The blinds were drawn in the room’s one window, but I could hear splashing in the pool outside.
He unfolded the chairs, planted them in the center of the room and said, “Have a seat. Can I get you a Coke or something?”
“That would be great.”
He disappeared through a doorway, and a door squeaked open. I heard the jangle of ice and glasses. Among the books piled by the bed were the big book of AA, a book on meditation and Swann’s Way with a bookmark stuck about a quarter of the way through.
He came back with two tumblers, saw where I was looking and said, “Textbooks to a new life.”
“Does that include Proust?”
“Here, sit down,” he said, and I heard a twang, something Southern in his voice. “I been carrying that book around for ten years,” he continued. “You see how far I got. They tell me he’s one of the great queer fathers.”
The remark was an invitation for me to reveal myself.
“I tried reading him for that reason, too,” I said, “but I didn’t get as far as you did.” I sipped my Coke. “You were Michael Ruiz’s roommate at SafeHouse.”
“Sure was. You mind if I smoke, Mr. Rios?”
“It’s your house, Lonnie. Call me Henry, OK?”
He went over to the bed, picked up the ashtray and a pack of Merits, came back, lit one. “You want me to take your coat?”
I removed my coat and tossed it onto the bed. “That OK?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “It’s good there.”
“What about Michael, were you friends with him?”
He waved smoke away. “He was friendly enough at first but after I told him I was gay, he kept his distance. I guess he was afraid I would jump him.”
“Was he afraid or was he hoping?”
“Mike was straight. I’m sure of it. Even before I told him about me he talked about a girlfriend.”
“A girlfriend? Do you remember what her name was?”
He tapped ash into the ashtray which he had settled on the chair between his legs. “I don’t remember right offhand. He only mentioned her a couple of times, after he called her. Like I said, that was in the beginning, before he knew about me. After that…” he shrugged.
“This is kind of important.”
He ran stubby fingers through close-cut hair. “Let me think on it.”
“Did he ever say anything to you about Gus Peña?”
“The senator? No. Is this about him getting killed?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Was there anyone else in the house that Michael may have been close to?”
Lonnie smiled gamely, but shook his head, “Sorry, I know I’m not being much help.”
“The girlfriend’s name would help a lot, if you remember.”
“Here,�
�� he said, rising from the chair. “Maybe I wrote it down.” He walked across the room and opened the door to a closet. Back turned to me, he said, “I kept a journal while I was there. Coulda put her name in there.”
He lifted his arms to a shelf, and I studied the muscles moving in his shoulders. The light in the room was changing, deepening. Shadows creased the jumbled sheets on the bed. I got up and went to the window, opening the blinds. Whoever had been swimming in the pool was gone, leaving wet footprints across the pavement and the water churning in its bed. Lonnie came and stood beside me. The notebook in his hands was filled with big, loopy writing.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“The water. You find anything?”
“Give me a minute.” He bent his head over the book, slowly turning the pages. “Boy, was I fucked up,” he said, and kept reading. “Hey, here it is. Her name was Angie.” He pointed to a line in the book. I could make out the names Mike and Angie.
“Is there anything else about her?”
“Let me see. No, just that he said he called her that night.” He closed the book. “Look, I wouldn’t feel right giving this to you, but I’ll finish reading it tonight, see if there’s anything else in it about her.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Hey, you want to go swimming?”
I looked at him, ready to refuse.
“You really look like you need to cool off,” he said. “I’ll loan you a suit.”
“OK,” I said.
The water was as cool as I had imagined; the sky was blue and starless overhead. Lonnie had kept up with me for a couple of laps, then drifted over to the corner from where he watched me. When I’d had enough, I swam over to him.
“When you swim,” he said, “you really swim.”
“It feels good to use my body for a change.”
“I know all about using my body,” he answered. “That’s how I ended up at SafeHouse.”
“What do you mean?”
He hoisted himself up to the ledge of the pool, the water running streams down his thin, hard body. “I came out here from Tennessee to go to school, a long time ago. I was eighteen and pretty and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do in bed. I had a lot of friends.” He pushed wet hair from his forehead. “Thing is, you don’t stay young and pretty forever. It began to take more and more booze to keep up the illusion, not that anybody but me was fooled. The friends drifted off, the party moved on, and I woke up one morning and I was thirty-one, broke and a drunk.” There was rue but no self-pity in any of this. “It was either pop a handful of pills or start over.”