by Rick Copp
“Well . . . take care, Jarrod.” She tried pushing past me.
“Tamara, did you know Willard’s therapist Vito Wilde was murdered?”
She nodded. “How could I not know? It’s been all over the news and the phone’s been ringing off the hook.” Then she rose up erect, her eyes full of judgment and suspicion. “I’ve seen you on the news too. A lot of people are saying you had something to do with it.”
“A lot of people? Or Spiro?”
“Well, it does seem ironic that you were so hell bent on proving Spiro is somehow involved with all the horrible things that have been happening, and now it looks like the evidence points to you.”
“It’s not me and you know it.”
“All I know is, you discovered my son’s body, you were caught breaking into his house, and now you were on the scene when his therapist was murdered.”
“I’m just trying to dig up the truth.”
“And I believed you. I was the one who sent you to Dr. Wilde. I feel responsible. If I hadn’t given you his name, maybe he’d still be alive.”
“Tamara, Vito was convinced that Willard was murdered. He had his own ideas about who he thought did it.”
“Let me guess. He thinks it was Spiro too.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to. I just let it hang there.
“Spiro is a good man, despite what you might think,” she said. “He loves me.”
“Did you know he made a pass at your son before he died?”
She just stood there for a moment, staring at me, stunned that I would even consider making such an inflammatory accusation.
“It’s true,” I said. “Dr. Wilde was helping Willard work through how to deal with it.”
“I’m really getting tired of your fairy tales, Jarrod.”
“You said yourself that when Dr. Wilde called you after the funeral, he told you Willard was dealing with a specific problem in therapy. Well, when I spoke with Dr. Wilde, he told me it was Spiro. He made unwanted advances towards Willard in Palm Springs when you were off at some spa.”
“That’s a lie. A vicious, hurtful lie.”
“It’s the truth.”
“If Spiro did such a thing, then why didn’t Willard tell me?”
“Maybe he was afraid you’d react the way you’re reacting now.”
This stopped her in her tracks. She was fighting back tears now, but she wasn’t going to break down. She didn’t want to give me the satisfaction. “Like I’ve said all along, my son had a lot of emotional problems. And if something happened, and I’m not saying it did, who’s to say it wasn’t Willard who made the advances?”
“Do you honestly believe that Spiro is completely innocent in all this?”
“He’s my husband.”
“Willard was your son.”
“I know where you’re going with this,” she said. “You’ve created this whole scenario where my husband went after my own son, got scared I might find out, and killed him so he couldn’t talk. You’re a fool if you believe that, Jarrod. Spiro may be many things, but he’s not a killer. He’s not capable of it.”
“Vito Wilde was convinced he was capable of it.”
“How would he know? Vito Wilde was treating my son, not Spiro. There was no way he could ever have drawn a conclusion like that.”
“He was going by what your son told him.”
“My son was an actor. And we all know how dramatic actors can be, don’t we, Jarrod?”
“Did you know Willard was HIV positive?”
She flinched. “Yes, I knew.”
We stood there in silence. Tamara dropped her head, took a deep breath, and stared at the sidewalk. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I flipped out when Willard told me, I deserted him, let him deal with it alone.” She looked back up, and her eyes penetrated mine. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Why don’t you tell me the truth then?”
“He was diagnosed years ago, around the time he was twenty-two, twenty-three years old. He never told me. We weren’t speaking at the time. He hadn’t worked in a few years, his SAG insurance had run out, so he had no health coverage. He just ignored the symptoms until he had full blown AIDS.”
“I didn’t know . . .”
“He was near death. I had no clue he was going through any of this. I would’ve helped him financially, paid for everything. He was desperate for medication, but he just couldn’t afford it. Luckily he had this life insurance policy worth about thirty grand. He figured if he sold it, it might provide him with enough cash to buy some meds.”
I knew all about this racket. AIDS victims who were strapped for cash would sell their policies to investors looking for a quick pay out. People would purchase the policy, knowing that AIDS was a fatal disease and the policyholder usually had only a few months to live. It was an easy way to make a fast buck. The investor knew the AIDS patient was going to die soon, so he’d get his money back with a tidy profit in hardly any time at all. It was a ghoulish, reprehensible investment, but dying young men, who were desperate for any kind of financial relief, saw it as a necessity. The only problem was, by the late nineties, advances in AIDS research had come up with the “cocktail,” a combination of pills that held the virus at bay. Now people infected with AIDS were living longer, a lot longer, and these investors weren’t too happy about it. It could potentially be decades before they would be able to cash in and get their money back.
Tamara folded her arms, hugging herself. “By selling the policy, Willard got a healthy chunk of change in his bank account, and was able to finally see a doctor and get on the meds. His condition improved dramatically. It was only months later, when his symptoms subsided and we reconciled, that he finally told me what he had been going through. At that point, I offered to help any way I could.”
“Did you tell Spiro about Willard’s HIV status?”
“No. That was between my son and me.”
“Tamara, do you know which insurance company handled the sale of Willard’s life insurance policy?”
“Grand Future Insurance. Both of us had life insurance policies there.”
“Did Willard happen to mention who handled the sale?”
For the first time, a slight smile crossed Tamara’s face. “Lance Zinni, a real character that one.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He was rather star struck. He remembered watching Willard when he was just a kid. You would have thought he was dealing with Robert DeNiro. He was always tripping over his tongue he was so excited around Willard.”
This was good news. If Lance Zinni was enamored of Willard, then chances were he might remember me too. After all, Willard was never on the cover of TV Guide. I made it twice. I could have been setting myself up for a colossal ego bruising, but my gut feeling told me Lance Zinni would welcome me with open arms. And if I played my cards right, he would tell me who bought Willard Ray Hornsby’s life insurance policy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Baby, don’t even go there!” I said, with all the enthusiasm of a beagle chasing a tennis ball. Lance Zinni threw his head back and howled, nearly falling out of his chair. We weren’t in his office because he didn’t have one. He was at a small cubicle sectioned off from the rest of the employees at Grand Future Insurance, and from what I could gather from my five minutes with Lance, his co-workers preferred it that way.
“Man, that cracked me up when I was a kid! Baby, don’t even go there!” He held his ample gut that jiggled up and down as he bawled with laughter.
I chortled along with Lance, trying hard to ignore the creased, worn pictures of various supermodels that had been torn out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and taped up to the cork wall in Lance’s cubicle. He treated his workspace like a high school locker, which was quite disturbing since I was guessing Lance was in his late thirties. And I was being generous.
As he prattled on, meticulously listing his favorite Go To Your Room! episodes in ch
ronological order, I had a hideous image of him sitting at home late at night, in his underwear, flipping the remote between TV Land and those soft porn movies they show after midnight on Showtime.
When I had called Lance that morning and told him I was interested in buying a life insurance policy, he was polite but distracted. I could only imagine what he was doing. Probably downloading photos of Rebecca Romijn-Stamos on his desktop computer.
When I gave him my name, there was a long pause before Lance asked point blank, “You mean Jarrod ‘Baby, don’t even go there!’ Jarvis?”
“The one and only.”
After that, Lance and I were the best of friends. After briefing him on the current whereabouts of the rest of the cast, Lance eagerly asked me when I could come in to talk about a policy.
“I know you’re a busy man, Lance, so I don’t expect to get in today . . .”
“It just so happens I’ve had a cancellation. How about in a half hour, say ten o’clock?” I could hear him covering the mouthpiece of the phone and barking something to a secretary. I presumed he was ordering her to cancel his ten o’clock. Lance was so anxious to meet me he cleared all his appointments before lunch in case I ran into traffic.
When I got to the Grand Future Insurance Company offices in Sherman Oaks, it was everything I imagined. A small four-room office on the second level of a strip mall. I assumed Tamara bought these policies for herself and her son long before she had figured out a workable way to marry loads of money. The offices were drab, the walls were peeling, and the desks were in desperate need of refinishing. A lethargic, frumpy receptionist, who clutched her Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cup in one hand and chewed her nails on the other, glanced up at me.
“You here to see Lance?”
“Yes. He’s expecting me.”
“Now there’s one hell of an understatement.”
It was official. I liked this receptionist. Just enough sarcasm to warrant the admiration of any quick-witted gay man.
She stopped chewing her nails and picked up the phone. She punched in a number, and a phone rang just a few feet away from her behind a partition. I heard a man’s hurried, excited voice. “Yes?”
The receptionist popped a stick of gum in her mouth. “He’s here.”
A head shot up from behind the partition. It was Lance. And our friendship was born.
Lance decided to break the ice by regaling me with tales of the stars from his childhood he had encountered over the years. Most he met at annual autograph conventions held at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, just off the 101 Hollywood Freeway. Every year, an events organization dredged up long forgotten TV stars from the sixties and seventies and trotted them out on a Saturday for all their fans to see. They propped them up at cardboard tables in a large convention room, and for a fee, you could get a picture of yourself with them, or at least walk away with an autograph. It was the only place you could see a doctor from Emergency chatting it up with a female sweat hog from Welcome Back, Kotter. I had been asked several times over the years to participate, but wisely chose not to attend. I think one afternoon promoting myself as a has been would have sent me down Judy Garland Lane with a fistful of pills, never to return.
I indulged Lance for as long as I could. Finally, when he stopped to catch his breath after a scintillating story about how he once fetched a Diet Pepsi for Kitten from Father Knows Best, I decided it was time to get to the point.
“So what kind of life insurance policies do you offer, Lance?”
“Oh, well, we have a wide range,” he fumbled through some papers on his desk, disappointed I had shifted gears so abruptly. “It depends on what you’re looking for.”
“I’d like to have the same one my friend Willard Ray Hornsby had.”
He lit up. “You knew Willard?”
“Yes. We were old friends.”
“I was so sorry to hear he died. Such a tragedy. He was another one I watched on TV when I was growing up.”
“Let me put on my big surprise face.”
My sarcasm was lost on Lance, but I heard the receptionist chuckling on the other side of the partition. I liked her more every minute.
“I’m not sure I remember exactly the terms of his policy,” Lance said. “His mother bought it a while ago.”
“You don’t have a copy of it anymore?”
“Not in his file. He sold it. Going on a few years now, I think.”
This was it. I was close. I had been remarkably lucky in my past attempts to con information out of people. I prayed my luck wouldn’t run out.
“Do you remember who he sold the policy to?”
“Let me think now . . .” I held my breath as he thought about it. I was at the mercy of Lance Zinni’s mind, and it scared me. “What was her name?”
“It was a woman?”
“It was a married couple, but I dealt with the wife mostly.”
Had this mysterious woman ever guest-starred on Baretta, I’m sure the name would have just rolled right off Lance’s tongue. But alas, she was a non-pro, so to Lance, she was somebody just not worth remembering.
“Nope. Sorry, drawing a blank.”
Now there was a shock. I gave Lance a half-hearted smile. “Wouldn’t there be a record of the sales transaction on your computer?”
“Yes.”
Finally. Some progress.
“But we had a system crash about six months ago. Lost our whole hard drive and most of our old records. We’ve been busy rebuilding the database ever since.”
“Guess this just isn’t my day.”
“Sorry.” Lance seemed genuinely disappointed he couldn’t help me.
I asked for some paperwork to fill out to make my visit appear legitimate. Lance pushed a sheaf of papers in front of me.
“Mrs. Phelan.”
“What?” I said.
Lance shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”
Then I heard the tiny voice again. “Mrs. Phelan.” It was coming from the other side of the partition. I poked my head up over it to see the receptionist, looking back at me, with a grin on her face.
“I remember her. She and her husband used to have both home and auto policies with us. Her name is Gladys Phelan.”
I recognized the name immediately. Gladys was the elderly woman in Los Feliz who denied knowing Willard, or how that ominous birthday card he had received shortly before his death was sent from her computer.
And for this key piece of information, I would’ve married that fabulously deadpan receptionist who had been eavesdropping.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I roared back over the hill on the 101 Freeway, leaving the Valley and returning to Hollywood. I took the Sunset Boulevard exit, which deposited me just on the outskirts of Los Feliz, and made my way back to the small beige one story house on Russell Street where Gladys Phelan resided.
I checked the time on the dashboard digital clock. Jerry Springer was just about to start. Mrs. Phelan wouldn’t want to give me much of her attention if Jerry was on. But this time I was armed with information that she couldn’t just brush off. The old lady had lied to me, and I was through treating her with kid gloves.
After parking right in front of the small house that still had the blue rain tarp on the roof, I marched up to the front door, and gave it three hard raps. There was the faint chatter of the television inside, so I knew she was home. After a minute, I rapped again, and again.
Finally, I heard some movement and the door opened. Gladys still had her hair tied in a bun, still wore her thick granny glasses, and remarkably, still had a tiny glob of peanut butter on the side of her mouth. She held her plate of Ritz crackers and looked up at me.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Phelan, do you remember me, I’m Jarrod Jarvis?”
“Nope. Can’t say that I do.”
“I was here a few days ago. About the online greeting card that came from your computer.”
“I don’t want to buy anything you’re selling.”
>
She tried to close the door, but I managed to insert my foot inside to block it. There wasn’t a trace of fear in her face, just contempt. I was keeping her from Jerry.
“Mrs. Phelan, we need to talk. You lied to me.”
“I don’t remember you at all. Just go away.”
Her demeanor was much nastier than during my first visit. She had thought playing the daffy old lady would satisfy my suspicions that she was somehow not involved in this mess. But now that I was back with a fistful of accusations, she dropped the act and simply said, “Get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
“Good. Let’s do that, shall we? And then you can tell them all about how you sent a threatening greeting card to the man whose life insurance you and your husband bought. And how a few days after it was sent, he turned up dead.”
She stopped trying to slam the door on my foot, and I saw her body heave a big sigh. She knew I was onto something, but she wasn’t about to give me an inch.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” I said. “You and your husband knew Willard Ray Hornsby was HIV positive. You knew he needed money. So you bought his life insurance policy as an investment through Grand Future Insurance. You figured he didn’t have long to live. The disease was fatal. You’d have the cash back plus a tidy profit in no time.”
She dropped her plate of Ritz crackers. The plate didn’t break but the crackers scattered all over the floor. Hearing the plan out loud made it sound even more ghoulish.
Gladys refused to make eye contact with me as I continued. “But you never anticipated the advances in medicine. AIDS is now more of a chronic disease than a fatal one. And Willard’s health improved immeasurably. He wasn’t going anywhere, and you weren’t going to get your money. So you killed him.”
She finally met my gaze. Her eyes were on fire she was so filled with fury. “My husband handled all our business. I never knew what he did with our money.”
“The good folks at Grand Future Insurance say you were the one they dealt with, not your husband. Care to try again?”