Goldenboy (21 page)

The kitchen clock had rattled off a
full minute before I spoke. “Why Paris?”

“Anonymity,” Larry
answered, resting his chin on his hands. “And for treatment, of course. It’s
one of the centers of AIDS research.”

“Then why
anonymity?”

He rubbed a patch
of dry skin at the comer of his mouth. “That’s just my way,” he said. “I’ve
always done things in secret.”

“But you’re out,” I
replied. “You’ve been out for five years.”

He looked at me
with a helpless expression. “Henry,” he said, “you don’t understand. This has
nothing to do with being out. This is about dying.”

“No,” I said, “I
don’t understand. Everyone who loves you is here.”

“In this room,” he
replied, and looked at me. “You’re all there is. Ned is dead. My family...” he
shrugged dismissively. “My dying would be grist for the gossip mill but no one
would really care. I couldn’t stand it, Henry. Not the curiosity-seekers.” His
lips tightened. “Not to be an object lesson. I want some privacy for this. Some
dignity.”

“By crawling back
into the closet to die?”

He winced.

“I’m sorry,” I
said.

“It’s okay. I didn’t
expect you to understand. You’re young and healthy and in love.”

I felt as if I’d
been cursed.

“Don’t go,” I
pleaded.

“I’m afraid I—” The
phone rang. Larry reached around and picked up the receiver. A moment later he
said, “It’s for you.”

I took it from him.
He got up and lit another cigarette.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi, handsome.” It
was Tony Good, returning the message I’d left on his machine.

We made
arrangements to meet that night at ten at a bar in West Hollywood. I got up
from the table and put the phone back. Larry was in his study, going through a
pile of papers. Watching him, it occurred to me that I hardly knew him at all.
It was as if all these years I’d been seeing him in profile and now that he
turned his face to me, it was the face of a stranger.

“I have a million
things to do before I leave,” he said. “Some of them I’m going to ask you to
finish for me once I’m gone.”

“Sure. Of course.”

He sat down behind
his desk. “Don’t take all this so hard.”

“We’re friends,” I
replied.

He didn’t answer
but picked up a folder, flipped through its pages, and withdrew a sheaf of
papers.

“This is a copy of
my will,” he said, handing me the papers. “You’re my executor. Take it, Henry.”

Numbly, I accepted.

*****

Freeman Vidor
stepped into the Gold Coast wearing a pair of hiphuggers, a pink chenille
pullover and about a dozen gold chains. He sauntered toward me, stopping
conversation with each step.

“Jesus,” I said,
when he reached me. “This is a gay bar, not the Twilight Zone.”

Freeman looked
around the bar. There were a lot of Levis and flannel shirts, slacks and
sweaters, even the odd suit, but his was the only chenille sweater to be seen
in the place-*

“Back to R. &
D.,” he said. “Is Good here yet?”

“No, I doubt if he’ll
be here any sooner than eleven,” I replied. “Ten o’clock was just a negotiating
point.”

“How about a drink?”

“Sure. Pink lady,
okay?”

“Screw you,” he
said, and in his deepest voice ordered a boilermaker.

“I want to talk to
Good alone for a while,” I said, when the drink came. “Then you join us.”

“What am I supposed
to do in the meantime?”

I looked at him and
said, “Mingle, honey.”

Tony Good walked in
the door at five minutes past eleven. I watched him stand unsteadily, just
inside the doorway, and swing his head around. I raised my hand and he nodded.
He made his way through the crowded room until he was beside me. He was even
better looking than I remembered. Black hair, blue eyes. Model perfect
features. Only his teeth spoiled the package. They were small, sharp, and
yellow. He climbed up onto the bar stool next to mine and ordered a Long Island
Iced Tea. The bartender started pouring the five different liquors that went
into the drink.

“You’re not
drinking?” Tony asked, indicating the bottle of mineral water in front of me.

“No,” I said. “You
go ahead.” I paid for his drink.

“Here’s looking at
you, kid,” he said in a tired Bogart voice, and knocked off a good third of the
drink in a single swallow. “So,” he said, crumpling a cocktail napkin, “is this
a date or what?”

“You wanted to see
me, Tony.”

He squinted at me
for a second, then said, “You called me, remember?”

I looked away from
him and poured some mineral water in my glass. “Not the first time,” I replied.

He took a sip of
his drink. “You’re cute, Henry, but not cute enough to play games.”

“The first time you
called,” I said. “Back in October. You told me that you knew who killed Brian
Fox.”

Tony had worked his
way down to the bottom of his drink. The bartender, without asking, starting
pouring him another.

“Who the hell is
Brian Fox?” he asked.

“Now you’re playing
games,” I said, looking at him. I flicked my head and Freeman came across the
room until he stood behind Tony. Tony looked over his shoulder and got an
eyeful of pink chenille.

“Jesus, what’s
this?” he asked.

“Don’t ask me to
show my badge,” Freeman said in a low voice. “It’s bad for business.”

Tony looked at
Freeman and then at me. I waited for him to call Freeman’s bluff. Instead, he
picked up his drink, gestured to the bartender and told me, “Pay the man.”

I paid for the
drink. “So who was it, Tony?”

He churned his
drink with a swizzle stick and answered, “Sandy.”

“I want details,” I
said.

“First we gotta
make a deal,” he said. “I tell you what I know but it stays here, between us.
You nail him some other way.” He looked defiantly at Freeman and me.

“Okay,” I said. “Go
ahead.”

“It was back about
a year ago. We were in rehearsals on Edward. I came out back for a smoke and
saw this kid hanging around the parking lot.”

“Fox?” I asked.

He took a swallow
of his drink and nodded. “Yeah, but he didn’t say his name. He was kind of
cute, so I started talking to him. I asked him what he was doing there,
thinking maybe he was a hustler. He goes, ‘I’m waiting for Goldenboy.’“

“Goldenboy?”
Freeman asked.

“That’s what I
said,” Good continued. “He points to Sandy’s Mercedes. He’s got this license
plate on it — “

“It spells out
Goldenboy,” I said.

“You’ve seen it,”
Good said. “He tells me he’s got to talk to Goldenboy, so I go, ‘Don’t you know
his name?’ The kid says ‘Yeah, it’s Sanford Blasenheim.”‘

“Is that Sandy’s
real name?” I asked.

“Does that sound
like a stage name to you?” Tony asked, smiling snidely. “Anyway, I know this
kid doesn’t know Sandy ‘cause no one calls him by his real name.”

Freeman asked, “So
how did Fox know it?”

Tony had finished
the drink and signaled the bartender for a third. “This is thirsty business,”
he said to me.

“How did Fox know?”
I asked.

“He gave me some
bullshit story about breaking into DMV’s computer and running the license
plate,” he said.

I looked at
Freeman. “Is that possible?”

“The kid knew his
computers,” Freeman said, “but that sounds like too much trouble. All’s he had
to do was call DMV and say he was in a hit-and-run with Blenheim’s car and ask
them to run the plate.”

“DMV’s pretty
generous with their information,” I observed.

“They don’t get
paid enough to care,” Freeman replied.

Tony, who had been
listening, broke in, “But how did he know about the license plate? He wouldn’t
tell me that.”

“The parking lot,”
I said, still speaking to Freeman. “When he followed Jim and Sandy out to the
car, he saw the license plate.” I turned back to Tony. “What else happened,
Tony?”

“Nothing,” he said.
“I tried to make a date with the kid, but he says he wasn’t gay. So I told him,
then you don’t want to know Sandy, ‘cause you’re just his type. After rehearsal
I came back outside and the kid was in the front seat of Sandy’s car with
Sandy. Then they took off.”

“Is that the last
time you saw Fox?” I asked.

“I saw his picture
in the paper,” Good said, slowly, “the day after he was killed.”

“Why didn’t you go
to the cops?” Freeman asked.

Tony looked at me. “You
saw me in the play. What did you think?”

“You were good,” I
said.

“Damn right,” he
said, easing himself off the bar stool. “I’m a fucking good actor. All I need
is a break.” He picked up his drink, took a gulp, then put it down. “I started
out in that play as one of the soldiers in the first scene. Big fucking role.
Two lines, two minutes. And I had to fuck Sandy to get even that. That pig.”

“But you ended up
as Gaveston,” I answered. “You fuck Sandy for that, too?”

He smiled, showing
his jagged little teeth. “Yeah, you could say that. I told him I knew about the
kid. I told him what he could give me to keep my mouth shut.”

I nodded. “Then why
did you call me?”

He set the drink on
the counter with the over-delicate movements of a drunk. “‘Cause I wanted
someone else to know,” he said, “and put the pig in jail where he belongs.” He
looked at his watch. “This has been lots of laughs, Henry, but I’ve got a
client waiting for me.”

He started away.

Freeman and I
followed a few minutes later and stood in front of the bar.

“Do you still have
friends at L.A.P.D.?” I asked.

Freeman half-smiled
and replied, “You told that guy you’d keep the cops out of it.”

I thought of Jim
Pears whom I had not believed when he told me he was innocent. “I lied,” I
said.

Freeman said, “There’s
still a lot to explain. Pears was in the room. He was the only one.”

“I know,” I
replied. I shrugged. “Maybe nothing’ll come of it, but if it helps Jim it’s
worth it.”

“Nothing’s going to
help Jim,” Freeman said. He shivered from the cold.

“Get ahold of your
cop friend in the morning,” I said. “We’ll get together and visit Tony. By the
way, where did you get that sweater?”

Freeman laughed. “My
ex-wife.”

*****

It was after
midnight when I got to Larry’s. I pulled into the garage and sat for a moment
in the darkness. It was perfectly still. I began to fit things together.

Brian Fox had not
gone to the restaurant to see Jim, but to meet Blenheim. It was Fox who took
the back door key from the bar. He used it to let Blenheim inside. Then what? I
closed my eyes and reconstructed the layout of the restaurant in my head. They
went downstairs. Blenheim killed Brian. But without a struggle? How? I listened
to my breathing, and rolled down the window. That part I didn’t know yet.

I had to get Jim
down into the cellar, too. Could it be that he and Blenheim had killed Brian
together? The garage creaked. A breeze swept through like a sigh. Or had Jim
come down after it was done? Blenheim would have heard the steps from the
kitchen floor overhead. Steps. I opened my eyes. There were footsteps in the
garage. I pulled myself up in my seat and glanced into the rearview mirror. A
dark figure merged into the shadows and was coming up beside me.