Early Graves (11 page)

“Only one of Eddie’s little playmates fits that description,” Stein said, and tapped cigarette ash into a cut-glass olive dish. “And he fits it perfectly. Yes, I met him. I didn’t like him. He was one of those I made Eddie’s life hell about. Trash. He had no sense of fitness, Eddie didn’t. Or self-preservation, either—mine or his. I fed, sheltered, clothed him, gave him all the pocket money he wanted. But that punk brought cocaine here. To my apartment. Making me responsible. I could be arrested, I could lose my career. I’d told Eddie to be happy—but no drugs, all right? Then I walk in and find the two of them hunched over that table, snorting up the stuff with cocktail straws. I took a deep breath”—Stein acted this out now—“and blew it all over the room. I grabbed Rapunzel by the hair, dragged him to the door, and literally”—Stein raised a foot in scuffed tan suede—“kicked him out.”

Dave grinned. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

“I don’t look it,” Stein said, “but I’m strong. Slight, as they say, but wiry. You want his name, don’t you?”

“If you please.” Dave nodded.

“Let’s see. It’s been some time.” Stein frowned and blinked at the shadowy ceiling. “Muir-Mure something. No. No. Damn.” He jumped up out of the chair and paced, scowling, snapping his fingers. He stopped and gazed out one of the narrow rainy windows for a moment. He turned back, smiling. “Of course. Moorcock. How could I forget a name like that? I thought when Eddie spoke of him, ‘Demure cock,’ and wondered what the shy thing would look like.” He came back to his chair and sat down happily and drank off the rest of his whiskey. “First name? Michael, of course. God, how original people are, naming children. Pity I’m gay. I wouldn’t give a child a hopeless first name like Michael. When there’s one in every house on the block already? I’d read the entire
Dictionary of National Biography
through for a name before I’d saddle my child with Michael.”

“The original was an archangel,” Dave said.

“Guardian of the Jews,” Stein said. “I know. Well, not this one. I’m not surprised he killed six people.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Dave said. “But I’d like to ask him. Where will I find him?”

Stein got out of his chair. “Eddie kept an address book.” He had his own glass in his hand, and he took Dave’s. He went off to the towering cabinet again. “Of course,” he called across the vastness of the gloomy room, “he didn’t list all his tricks in it. That would have required seven stout volumes.” Glass chimed again. “But he confessed to me that Demure Cock had held a fascination for him for weeks—until I broke them up.” Stein moved to another corner of the room. Hollow rattlings suggested he’d opened and closed a drawer. When he brought the new drinks, a leather-bound book was tucked under his arm. He set Dave’s drink down, and handed him the book. Dave took out his reading glasses, found the
M
listings in the book—the handwriting was studied, a schoolboy try at Italic calligraphy—and there was
Mike Moorcock
and a telephone number. He closed the book, put the glasses away.

“Excuse an indelicate question,” he said. “You don’t have to answer it. But didn’t you know about AIDS when Eddie was chasing around, tricking with strangers? Didn’t you worry that he might get it, that you might?”

“I warned Eddie. What else could I do? As for me?” Stein gave a laugh. “Oh, my dear. I only do safe sex. I never knew there was any other kind until I was almost thirty—can you believe it? Once or twice I tried to oblige with the variations, but it didn’t take.” His smile was sad and wry. “That must explain why I was so satisfying as a lover to poor Eddie.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Dave peered into the shadows. “May I use your phone?”

Stein brought it to him, set it on the table, left the room. The phone was a fancy contraption of ebony and gilt. He laid the receiver aside and with his good hand turned a silent gold and ivory dial to reach Ray Lollard. An old friend in a powerful job at Pacific Bell, Ray queened it in a handsome restored mansion of turrets and stained glass on Adams Boulevard. In a refurbished stable building behind the house, he kept a wild-haired, antic young potter named Kovaks. They made an odd couple. Ray and Dave had met in high school, and still saw each other now and then. And Ray always matched up scrappy telephone numbers with addresses and names when Dave needed him to. Now, receiver in his good hand, Dave got Moorcock’s address from him.

“What’s it about?” he asked. And Dave told him of the knifing deaths of five young men with AIDS in the past three weeks, and of his finding of Drew Dodge’s body under his oak tree. Lollard drew a shocked breath. “Dave, no. Let the police handle it. It’s too dangerous. You’ll end up in the hospital again.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already been in the hospital and out. Someone like Moorcock jumped me in the dark and tried to run a knife into my heart—like the others. Luckily, he only cut my shoulder.”

“Dave,” Lollard wailed, “when are you going to realize you are no longer a young man? What are you planning now—to go confront this creature in his den?”

“Don’t worry,” Dave said. “I’ll have the police right behind me. I can’t seem to shake them.”

“And a good thing too,” Lollard said strictly. “You need somebody looking out for you. You’ve taken leave of your senses. When can we have dinner?”

“When you stop dieting,” Dave said.

“Oh, that’s over with. I fell from grace months ago.”

“Good,” Dave said. “When I’m through with this case, I’ll ring you. I’ll have a bucket of raw meat to toss to Kovaks, too. Fresh, juicy bones. You tell him.”

“He’d pace his cage all night. You be careful, now. I don’t want that phone call to come from the morgue.”

“I’ll be careful,” Dave said, and placed the overwrought receiver back on its hooks. He got to his feet, put on the Irish hat. Stein came back into the room. “Thank you,” Dave told him. “I’ll go see if I can find Moorcock.”

Stein frowned. “Shouldn’t you leave it to the police?”

“I don’t want to waste their time.” Dave fumbled, trying to get the coat across his shoulders. Stein helped him. Dave said, “After all, there’s more than one stringy child with long hair running the streets at night, cruising, hustling, peddling drugs, peddling disease.” The coat felt secure now. He moved toward the door. “I’m grateful for your help.”

“I’m grateful you came.” Stein walked with him and opened the door. “It was good to talk to someone human.”

Dave stopped in the doorway and looked at him. “I went into mourning once, long ago. The man I’d lived with for twenty-two years died of cancer. Shutting myself away only made it worse. It didn’t begin to get better until I went back to work.”

Stein pushed the heavy glasses up on his nose and used his woebegone smile again. “Thank you.” He shook Dave’s hand. “Maybe I’ll try that.”

N
OVELLO STREET CLIMBED STEEPLY NORTH FROM FRANKLIN AVENUE, EAST OF VINE.
It was lined on both sides by white stucco apartment buildings. Golden rays of slanted sunlight shone on the west-facing fronts now. The rain clouds had torn apart so that there could be a sunset. What Dave glimpsed of it between buildings and through the high, sagging strands of power and telephone lines was gaudy. The blacktop of the street was still wet. So was the canted gray concrete of the sidewalks.

The address he wanted marked a two-story motel. Its flaking painted sign read
HAVEN HOUSE
and, in smaller letters
Youth Outreach of Our Savior’s Church Hollywood.
On the sidewalk below the sign, a lanky young woman used a roller to try to paint out graffiti—
FAGS CAUSE AIDS KILL ALL FAGS
. The lettering was ragged and very black. The white paint the woman used wasn’t covering it well.

Dave eased the Jaguar into a space at the curb. It took only two tries. He was getting good with just one arm. He pushed coins into a bent meter, and walked down to the woman. She wore a navy blue watch cap, gray turtleneck, blue windbreaker jacket, black jeans, white tennis shoes. She tipped paint from a pail into a pan and, when Dave stopped beside her, straightened and smiled ruefully.

“This is the fifth time in two weeks,” she said. “It isn’t hatred, not really. It’s fear.”

“Those two keep close company,” Dave said. The woman dipped the roller in the pan of paint, rolled it a little there, lifted it and swiped again at the angry words. “In the end, I’ll just sandblast. But that’s expensive. We have to stretch a meager budget very, very thin, as things are. I’ll wait till the panic dies down.”

“That could take years,” Dave said.

“They’re working on cures,” she said.

“Right. One of them kills the virus, but it’s toxic to the bone marrow. You have to have your blood replaced every three weeks. AIDS doesn’t kill you—anemia does.”

“It takes forever for paint to dry in this weather,” she said, and rested the roller in the pan, its long handle against the wall. “You’re talking about AZT. But they’ve got others.”

“One of them’s a dandy,” Dave said. “It kills the T-cells while it kills the retrovirus. There’s no hope in that, Sister.”

“Jan Crofoot.” She worked up another smile and held out a painty hand. Dave shook it. “But it’s not sister. We’re Protestants. Rome is still nervous about homosexuality. We got over that in the sixties. It caused an awful ruckus, but charity won out in the end.” She touched the wall where the spray-painted message still showed through. She rubbed the ends of her fingers with her thumb. Her mouth twitched. “Not all Protestants, of course. Our denomination, and a few others. No, no.” She laughed sadly and shook her head. “Not the evangelicals. Talk about hatred. How that bunch can hate. It’s ignorance, you know. Just ignorance.”

“You’re a charitable lady,” Dave said.

“It comes with the territory. What can I do for you?”

Dave told her his name and showed her his license. He told her about Drew Dodge and about the boy who had knifed him. “It may have been Michael Moorcock. I traced him to this address because he called your phone number his.”

Jan Crofoot was in the middle of a stroke with the roller. She stopped and frowned at Dave. “Recently? You mean in the midst of these terrible stabbings?”

“Maybe at the end of them,” Dave said. “I hope so.”

“No, I mean, did he give this number recently? Because that makes no sense. He left here”—she hesitated, muddling the roller in the paint pan again—“how long ago? Surely it’s been months.”

“Do you keep records?” Dave said.

She looked up and down the street. It was deserted. She stood the roller in the pan again, handle angled against the wall. “Come inside,” she said, and led the way. The former motel was L-shaped, the long side at the right angles to the street, the short side at the far end of the lot. Where cars used to park stood tents—olive drab, from some Army surplus store. There was also a green- and white-striped canvas marquee, the kind set up for garden parties on tubular framework. From the fringed, scalloped edges of the roof hung sheets of clear plastic, of green plastic trash bags sliced to double their width, fixed with safety pins, clothespins, staples. Within, Dave glimpsed sleeping bags, backpacks, strewn clothing, and huddled young people.

“The units are filled to overflowing.” Crofoot waved a hand at the encampment. “The police and health people don’t like this. They make us dismantle it every now and then, but we put it up again as soon as they’re out of sight. They can’t be everyplace.” She used a pair of keys in a pair of locks to open a door marked
OFFICE
.

“Don’t they fine you?” Dave said. “Don’t the fines stretch that budget even thinner?”

“Then we call on friends.” Crofoot moved through random stacks of cartons, some of them with open flaps, files inside, unsorted papers. Some cartons came from grocery warehouses, canned chili, canned hash, sardines. Loaves of bread in white wrappers were dumped in a corner, sacks of onions, potatoes, oranges. A stem of bananas lay on the desk Crofoot now edged behind. The shut-up room air smelled of bananas. She lifted the stem with an effortful grunt and held it for a grimacing moment, to say, “Care for a banana?” Dave shook his head, and she lowered the stem to the floor, out of sight. “We call on friends who drive expensive imported cars.” Her smile at Dave was sly. “They always come through in emergencies.” Her laugh was self-conscious. She rubbed her hands, sat down, pulled toward a double file box of three-by-five cards. “Now, let’s see—Michael Moorcock. He may still be in the active file”—the paint-stained fingers riffled through the cards—“because office help is catch-as-catch-can.”

“What about the boys out there?” Dave said.

“Ah, well, there are drawbacks to that,” Crofoot said. “Most of them can barely read. Alphabetical order—what’s that? And then they’re—some of them—shall we say, a little short on probity. For sneaky reasons, cards are apt to be misplaced, lost, let’s say, forever.”

“Who do you get?” Dave looked toward the door.

“Street boys, sometimes on drugs, sometimes robbed and beaten and exploited in various ways because they’re gay or country-dumb or scared and lost and hungry. Not just kids—men sometimes. Early on, things were coed, but all kinds of trouble arose from that. You can imagine.”

“I can imagine all kinds of trouble arising from this,” Dave said. “What about weapons, knives, guns, what about drugs and violence and coercion and the rest? You don’t make good little Christians out of them all?”

“We don’t even try. We feed them, give them a place to sleep, a place to shower. We get them medical attention at clinics and hospitals when they need it. Drug counseling. Therapy if the problems are mental or emotional. We hunt up their parents if they’re very young. We try to protect them from exploitation on the streets, and from the arbitrariness of the law, if we think it will leave them worse off instead of better.”

“We?” Dave said. “I hope you’ve got a lot of help.”

Crofoot smiled wearily. “I confess—it’s mostly me.”

“But they’re not all gay?” Dave said.

“Oh, by no means. Ah, here we are.” She pulled a card from the little wooden drawer. “Michael Moorcock.” She blinked at the card a moment, shook her head, held the card out to Dave. “Gone, left no forwarding.”