by Michael Nava
“How did they know I was here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe Bligh.”
“He wouldn’t tell them.”
One of the sheriffs pounded the door and called, “Police.”
“Stand back,” I told Zack, as I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
“Zack Bowen?” the sheriff asked.
“No,” McBeth said, squeezing past the two uniformed officers. “That’s not him. Hello, Mr. Rios.”
“Hello, Detective. What’s up?”
“I have an arrest warrant for Zack Bowen,” she said, removing a paper from the pocket of her heavy LAPD jacket. “For the murder of Chris Chandler.”
I glanced at the warrant. “On what evidence?”
“We found the murder weapon in his apartment, along with some bloody clothing.”
“You searched his apartment? When?”
“Late yesterday afternoon,” she said. “Pursuant to a warrant. I’m sure the D.A. will provide you with a copy. Is Mr. Bowen here?”
“Just a minute, Detective. What exactly did you find at his apartment?”
She smiled indulgently. “We found a marble obelisk about a foot high that was given to the judge as an award by a lawyer’s group.” Her smile faded. “There are blood traces on it that match Judge Chandler’s blood type. So does the blood on the clothes. Also, there was a partial thumb print on the obelisk. Bowen’s. Is he here?”
“Zack,” I said, nodding him over.
He looked wildly between me and McBeth, and I could see he was about to bolt, so I reached out and grabbed his arm.
“I didn’t—” he started to say.
“Quiet,” I said. “Everything will be fine.”
The tension went out of his body. I tugged him over to McBeth.
“Zack Bowen, you’re under arrest for the murder of Chris Chandler,” she said, and read him his Miranda rights. When she finished, she asked, “Do you understand the rights I’ve just read to you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t and no one is to speak to him about the case unless I’m present.”
“Deputy,” McBeth said to one of the sheriffs. “Take him up to the cars.”
“Where’s he going?” I asked her.
“We’ll book him in San Bernardino and take him back to L.A. later on today. He’ll be at County by tonight.”
As one of the deputies handcuffed him, I said, “Remember, Zack, you don’t talk to anyone unless I’m with you. I’ll see you back in L.A.”
Dazed, he let the sheriffs lead him up the path to their cars. McBeth said, “I’d like to search the cabin.”
“Not without a warrant,” I said.
“I don’t need one,” she replied. “The search is incident to an arrest.”
“Nice try,” I said, “but we both know that’s bullshit.”
“You shouldn’t object if you don’t have anything to hide.”
“Oh, please,” I said. I stepped outside the cabin and closed the door behind me. “You work fast, Detective. Had you already executed the search warrant when you talked to me at the hospital yesterday? Was that why you were so eager for me to tell you where Zack was?”
“You knew where he was,” she said, starting up the trail to the clearing. I fell in step beside her.
“The question is, how did you find out?”
“You have other things to worry about than how I do my job,” she replied, as we reached the clearing. “By the way, I will get a search warrant for the cabin.”
“I give you my word as an officer of the court that I won’t remove anything.”
A caustic smile flickered across her face. “All the same, I’m going to leave one of the deputies here until I get back.”
Zack was in the back seat of one of the patrol cars. He was crying, the tears running noiselessly down his face. An hour earlier I’d believed him innocent of Chris’s murder, but now the evidence seemed inescapable. The deal I’d made with myself was that I wouldn’t represent Chris’s killer, and yet I was already thinking ahead to Zack’s defense. I wasn’t convinced of his guilt, and although I couldn’t identify the source of my doubts, I trusted them. There was just something too pat about this solution, and the one thing I was certain of was that in things pertaining to Chris Chandler nothing was as it appeared.
I went over to the car and tapped at the window. Zack looked up me with his tear-stained face and managed to roll the window down a bit.
“Here,” I said, handing him my handkerchief. He wiped his face with it.
“Mr. Rios,” he said. “I swear I didn’t do it.”
“We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, Zack,” I said. “You better start calling me Henry.”
When the patrol cars drove off, I noticed the driver of the second one, the one in which McBeth rode, was the same officer who had stopped me the day before for speeding. Kind of a coincidence. I thought about running into McBeth at the hospital. That was a coincidence, too. They seemed to have a way of happening between us.
I bickered about search and seizure law with the deputy whom McBeth had left to secure the cabin until he agreed to let me inside for five minutes to get the rest of my things. Once in, I looked through the bedroom Zack had occupied, but found nothing incriminating. Then I left and drove to a gas station, where I made a couple calls, to Josh, to let him know where I was, and to my investigator, Freeman Vidor, to set up a meeting. When I got back to L.A., my first stop was to see Sam Bligh.
Tommy Callen let me in, wearing even less than he had the day before, a black Speedo. His multihued hair was plastered to his head, giving him an even gaunter look. I again noticed the strange contrast between his young body and wasted, half-handsome face, and wondered if Bligh knew he was a speed freak.
Bligh was in the pool, swimming laps. He dragged himself through the water with short, powerful strokes, pulling his withered legs behind him. When he finished, he clung to the railing at the shallow end while Tommy lowered a wheelchair into the pool on a ramp, settled him in it, and then wheeled him out. Bligh’s chest and belly were covered with a mat of white hair, but he was solid beneath it and his arms were thickly muscled. Tommy helped him with a robe, then he wheeled himself to a patio table set for two.
“Set another place for lunch,” Bligh told Tommy. To me he said, “Find Zack?”
“I wasn’t the only one,” I replied. “The police arrested him this morning for Chris Chandler’s murder.”
Tommy drawled a slow, “Wow.”
“Lunch,” Bligh said sharply.
When he disappeared into the house, I said, “It’s none of my business, but Tommy has the look of a speed freak to me.”
“You’re right,” Bligh said. “It isn’t any of your business. I want to hear about Zack.”
I described the events of the morning and asked him, “Who knew that Zack was at your cabin?”
“No one,” he said. “That was the point.”
“Could Tommy have told someone?”
“Tommy didn’t know. No one knew but me, until I told you. Why does it matter?” he added irritably. “We’ve got more serious problems to think about.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Like the police finding the obelisk at Zack’s apartment.”
“You can’t be sure it’s the same one.”
“McBeth’s description matched Zack’s,” I replied. “Listen, Mr. Bligh, I’m willing to take Zack’s case, but I don’t want to be a patsy. Did Zack kill Chris Chandler?”
He fixed me with his fierce, cold eyes and said, “Zack’s no more capable of murder than you are.”
“Of course, you’re prejudiced,” I said, “because you’re in love with him.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t say I was in love with him, I just said I wanted him back.”
“I would imagine in your case it amounts to the same thing.”
“Zack didn’t kill an
yone,” he said, letting my comment pass. “If he did, he would’ve told me because he knows I’ll protect him.”
“Chris put Zack in his will,” I said.
“Is that supposed to be a motive? Zack doesn’t care about money.”
“He thought Chris was seeing someone else.”
Bligh shrugged. “So?”
“I don’t think Zack’s attitude about being cheated on is as casual as yours.”
Bligh laughed a rumbling laugh. “If jealousy’s the motive, I’m a better suspect than Zack is.”
“The thought did cross my mind,” I said.
“Pretty hard for a cripple to bang someone over the head.”
“Maybe someone did it for you.”
He laughed again. “Who? Tommy? In between fixes? Don’t be stupid, Mr. Rios. My vanity was wounded when Zack left me for Chandler, but I got over it.”
Tommy appeared pushing a trolley laden with food. I took it as my cue to leave.
“Leaving?” Bligh asked.
“I have errands,” I said.
“You wouldn’t take my money yesterday. Will you take it now?”
“Zack won’t take it,” I said. “He’s the client.”
“I see,” Bligh said, smiling bleakly. “Tell me something, do you think a jury would send a cripple to the gas chamber?”
Tommy dropped a glass.
I was almost out the gate when I heard Tommy Callen calling me. I turned around. He came running down the driveway.
“I have to tell you something,” he said, out of breath.
“What is it?”
“I saw Zack the night the guy was killed. The judge.”
“Where?”
“At the restaurant. Azul?” He mispronounced it. “I ate dinner there that night with some friends. Zack waited on us. After he got off work, he came into the bar and had a drink with us before we all split up.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t remember, but I was back here by twelve, so it had to be before then.”
“Okay,” I said. “I knew Zack was working at the restaurant that night, so I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.”
“Because of Sam,” he said. “Sam can’t get around unless I drive him. He didn’t go anywhere that night because I was at the restaurant. Ask Zack.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding. Tommy hadn’t meant to alibi Zack, he was trying to protect Bligh. Was he really so stupid to think Bligh was serious about taking the rap for Chris’s murder?
“Okay?” Tommy said.
“Sam was here,” I said. “What about Zack? Did he tell you he was going to see Chris?”
He shook his head. “He had a drink with us and then he left.”
“Did he seem upset?”
“Zack’s a quiet one,” he replied.
“I got the impression that you and Zack don’t get along,” I said.
“Zack never hurt me,” he drawled, “but he sure did a number on Sam.”
“Sam says he’s over it. Is he?”
“Whatever Sam says,” he answered. “When you see Zack, tell him I said hello.”
15
FROM BLIGH’S HOUSE, I went to the hospital, where Josh was waiting for me to drive him home. First, though, I stopped at the nurse’s station on the fourth floor to play a hunch.
“Excuse me,” I said to the sandy-haired male nurse behind the counter, “I’m looking for someone.”
He smiled and said, “Aren’t we all? Does yours have a name?”
I smiled, and wondered if he just assumed every unattached male who wandered into the AIDS ward was gay.
“I don’t know his name. All I know is that he’s a police officer and he was still here as of yesterday.”
“Lily Law? Here? I don’t think so.”
“He had a visitor yesterday afternoon around this time,” I said. “A very pretty black woman.”
“Her I remember,” he said. “She was wandering the halls like the angel of death. I asked her if I could help her and she was quite snippy. She said she was waiting for someone, but I heard the fuck-off in her voice.” He studied me. “In fact, didn’t I see you talking to her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re sure she wasn’t here to visit a patient?”
“Well, if she was, I hope she didn’t find him.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Josh was sitting in a chair in his room leafing through a magazine. I stood at the doorway and watched him. He wore baggy jeans and a white cotton cable-knit sweater that enclosed him in its bulk and made him seem thinner than ever. His skull was clearly visible in his face. It gave him an agelessness that made it hard to remember he was only twenty-nine years old. He flipped the pages of the magazine slowly, as if with effort. He sighed.
“Josh?”
He smiled at me. “Hey, here’s my boyfriend.”
“Ready to go home?”
He rose from the chair stiffly, the neuropathy slowing his movements, and grabbed his red backpack. “All set.”
“No box of medicines this time?”
“Not this time,” he said, taking my arm. “Buy me some ice cream. I’ve been wanting it all day.”
Of course, no one actually sold ice cream west of La Brea, not in the realm of the physically fit, so we ended up at a frozen yogurt stand on Santa Monica. He stood at the counter, sarcastically reading the minuscule calories per ounce of the ices, fat-free yogurts and tofuttis, while the puzzled counterboy waited for him to make his selection.
“When did they outlaw milk fat?” Josh demanded.
“Beg pardon?” the boy said.
“Don’t torment him, Josh. It’s not his fault.”
“I want a sundae with cappuccino yogurt and extra nuts,” Josh said.
“The fat-free fudge?” the boy asked.
Josh said, “Oy vey iz meir,” in perfect imitation of his father.
We sat on the sidewalk at a white plastic table beneath a pink awning, watching the late-afternoon traffic clog the boulevard. One of the big gyms was across the street, occupying nearly the entire block, and men in Lycra shorts and spaghetti-strap tank tops, hauling huge gym bags, darted among the cars on their way to cardio-funk class.
“What can those guys be carrying that requires such big bags?” I asked Josh.
“Moisturizers,” he replied. He pointed out a pumped-up boy waiting at the corner for the light to change and said, “Remember when I had a body like that?”
“You taught me the names of the muscle groups. I think my favorite was latissimus dorsi. It sounded like the title of a papal encyclical.”
“It seems silly now that I cared about all that,” he said, spooning melted frozen yogurt and non-fat-free fudge into his mouth. “But most things people care about are silly. They don’t think about the ones that matter.”
“Such as?”
“Getting from one breath to the next one. So what happened this morning up in Arrowhead? Did the cops break down the door?”
After I described Zack’s arrest, I said, “McBeth didn’t try to talk to you yesterday after I left, did she?”
“Remind me who she is.”
“The homicide detective. Good-looking black woman. I think she tailed me to the hospital yesterday when I came to see you.”
“Why?” he asked, dipping into the last of his sundae.
“Because she was hoping I would lead her to Zack Bowen,” I said. “Instead, she followed me upstairs and waited for me, then claimed she’d been visiting a friend with AIDS and implied she was a dyke.”
“And she’s not?”
I shook my head. “What she is, is smart. She caught me at a moment when she knew my guard would be down and tried to establish some kind of connection to get me to tell her where Zack was. When I wouldn’t tell her, she had me followed up to Arrowhead.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“No. Duplicitous, but not illegal. It makes me wonder if she’s shaved some other edges in her investigation of
Chris’s murder.”
Josh walked into his apartment, went into the bathroom and threw up. He emerged, wiping his mouth on a washcloth.
“Food never tastes as good coming up as it did going down,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Just a touch of AIDS,” he said, glancing at his answering machine. “Seven messages. That’s all my living friends. Present company excluded.”
“I need to call the jail to see if Zack’s there yet.” I called and was told he had arrived an hour earlier, so I made arrangements to see him. When I finished, I handed the phone to Josh, who’d been writing down his messages. “I’m going down to see Zack, but I’ll be back after that.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. He touched the catheter in his chest. “I’ll just be here infusing chemical substances.”
“What if I want to?”
“Then you can bring a video. I’m in the mood for bad Bette Davis.”
“As if there’s any other kind,” I said.
An hour later, I was sitting in an attorney room at the county jail waiting for Zack, with a fresh pad of paper on the table before me. Through the supposedly soundproof walls I heard the endless clatter of the place, shouts and groans, cell doors being opened and slammed shut, trolleys being rolled down the fetid halls, heavy footsteps, jangling keys and someone whistling “Danny Boy.” The air was thick with the musk of confined and violent men, jailers and inmates alike, an incendiary combination of rage and fear and suffering. Some day a spark would set it off and the explosion would leave the equivalent of a black hole in the moral universe that decreed such places should exist.
A deputy sheriff pulled the door open and brought Zack into the room. He was in an orange jumpsuit, the laces removed from his shoes. He was glad to see me in a way that suggested he hadn’t been sure he ever would again. The deputy sat him down across the table from me and removed his cuffs, then went outside.
He wiped his nose on his sleeve, and in that gesture I saw the street kid he’d once been. It was in his expression, too, a look of defiance that didn’t quite mask the terror in his eyes.
“Where have they got you?” I asked him.
“In with the other queens,” he said, understanding me. “It’s not so bad.”