Justice at Risk (16 page)

“That was the Fairchild house, the big one. You should probably get out here.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s a few minutes before four. I’ll meet you back here at five, unless my interview runs over, which doesn’t seem likely. Mrs. Fairchild was very specific about the time frame.”

Templeton reached into her purse, found a notebook and pen, and held them out to me. I patted my coat pocket.

“Thanks, I carry my own.”

I climbed out.

“Wish me luck, Justice.”

I gave her a small salute, and she pulled away, making a U-turn to disappear back the way she’d come. When I peered around the corner, she was well down the block, speaking into an intercom positioned to the left of the Fairchild gates. Moments later, the big gates opened, and she drove through, and up.

I surveyed the wide street, then started walking downhill. By the time I reached the Gamble House, I’d spoken with a postal carrier, a painter stenciling street numbers along the curb, and a woman bringing in her mail; none of them had anything to tell me about the Fairchild house or its inhabitants that I didn’t already know. I found a tour about to start on the front steps of the Gamble House, and told the official guide I was writing a history of the neighborhood and hoped to find someone who could talk to me about some of the other landmarks in the area. She sent me inside to make inquiries at the front desk, and to look through the historical books on sale. The woman behind the counter heard me out, thought for a moment, then threw her hands up in the air, smiling brightly.

“I know just who you should talk to! Mr. Villereal, our landscape technician.”

“He’s familiar with the neighborhood?”

“Oh my, yes. His family has taken care of the yards up here for decades. He started as a boy working beside his father, then took over the yards himself as he got older. Eventually, he settled here as our full-time greens man. He’s a walking encyclopedia on the botanical history up here.”

“I was hoping to ask a few questions about the families as well.”

“Dig enough in someone’s garden, and you’re bound to learn something about the person, don’t you think?”

“Wisely put. Where will I find Mr. Villereal?”

“You’ll have to look around. He’s always about, puttering in the gardens.”

Several minutes later, after traversing the southern and eastern boundaries of the magnificent house, and pausing to take in the views of the hills and the valley, I came upon an older man in gray work clothes dumping nitrohumus into a bed of bird-of-paradise plants. His hair and mustache were white, his brown skin burnished deeply and cracked by the sun, his body trim. He moved carefully as he knelt, as if the muscles in his back and shoulders were locked permanently into position.

“Mr. Villereal?”

He looked up without speaking. I complimented him on his well-shaped hedges, and wondered if I might ask a few questions.

He stood slowly, grimacing as he worked out the kinks, and ran his sleeve across his forehead, drawing off the sweat. When he spoke, in perfect English, I heard a Mexican accent that had faded but survived over time, like good adobe.

“What would you like to know, sir?”

I asked him how long he had worked in the upper Arroyo Seco. He guessed fifty years, maybe more.

“Have you ever worked at the Fairchild house? The one around the corner and up the hill?”

He shook his head no.

“Do you know anything about the family?”

He smiled, his teeth bright against his brown skin.

“A little, yes. A very important family up here. Mrs. Fairchild, she’s a fine woman.”

“You’ve met her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But you said you never worked for her.”

“At Easter, she would have a party for the children. She would wave to us from the balcony. And once, many years ago, we had some personal business between us.”

“Do you mind my asking what that was?”

“It was nothing, really. The boy, Taylor, he was riding his bicycle one day. He fell, hit his head on the edge of the street, near where I was trimming the grass. Of course, I hurried to help him. I took my shirt to stop the bleeding and carried him up to the Fairchilds’ house. That was how I first met Mrs. Fairchild.”

“You carried him in your arms, all the way up that drive?”

He grinned.

“I was younger then. Stronger.
Muy macho
.” I smiled, and he laughed. “They had no gate then, the Fairchilds. I walked right up to the front door and rang the doorbell. The maid answered, of course, and then Mrs. Fairchild came. He was fine, the boy. Scared, a few stitches to the head. But he was all right.”

“Mrs. Fairchild must have been very grateful.”

“Oh, yes. She was very good to me, to my family.”

“She rewarded you in some way?”

He dropped his eyes, and when he brought them up again, they were cloudy with emotion.

“My three children, they all went to college because of Mrs. Fairchild. She pay for everything, the books, the tuition, all of it. A very generous lady, Mrs. Fairchild.”

“And the Easter parties you mentioned. Your children were invited?”

“All the children whose parents worked in the neighborhood. The maids, the gardeners like me, black and Mexican, everyone. Mrs. Fairchild, she would sit up on the verandah enjoying to watch. It was always very nice, hundreds of colored eggs hidden all over, all the children running around with their baskets looking for the eggs, and the chocolate candies wrapped in pretty foil.” He smiled, remembering. “You know, up there on the hill, on the rolling lawn. My children very much enjoyed that.”

“Mrs. Fairchild wasn’t concerned about security? Bringing all those strangers on to her property?”

“There were always policemen there. You know, because of her husband being a police officer. The police, they have always been very good to Mrs. Fairchild.”

“Especially after Captain Fairchild was killed, I imagine.”

He shrugged, tilted his head, said nothing.

“His death must have been very hard on the boy.”

“Oh, yes. It was a very sad time. Very hard on the boy, Taylor.”

“The Easter parties ended with Captain Fairchild’s death?”

“Oh, no! Mrs. Fairchild, she wanted things to be the same, for the boy. She had one more Easter party for the children, the next year. It was after the other thing happened that the parties were stopped, when Mrs. Fairchild began to keep such a close watch on her son.”

“What other thing was that, Mr. Villereal?”

He dropped his eyes again and turned back to his gardening.

“Mr. Villereal?”

“I am not so sure this is something I should speak about.”

“Why is that?”

“It is a private thing. A very bad thing, I think. Mrs. Fairchild, she was hurt greatly by it. And, of course, the child.”

“If I were to promise to keep it just between us, could you tell me? So I might understand why such a generous woman as Mrs. Fairchild would stop the Easter parties, when all the children had enjoyed them so much.”

He dug both hands into the big bag of nitrohumus and transferred a pile of it to the base of a bird-of-paradise.

“Mr. Villereal?”

He glanced up, but only partly, leaving a gap between us. His weather-lined face seemed further creased with pain.

“It was when the boy’s uncle did things to the child, and Mrs. Fairchild found out.”

“Captain Fairchild’s brother, Matthew, the lawyer?”

“Yes, Matthew, I think that was his name.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I only know that in the year following his father’s death, the boy was very sad. He seemed to need to be with older boys, and to talk to men his father’s age. He would even walk down the street at times and talk to me as I worked in a neighbor’s yard. Not about anything, really, just to talk, you know? He seemed lonely, as if he missed his father very much. I would dig in the garden, trim the hedges, and try to be a friend to the boy.

“Then, Mrs. Fairchild, she learned that the boy’s uncle had been doing bad things to him, and after that we never saw Taylor again. Mrs. Fairchild kept him inside, or took him to school and picked him up in her big car. He was never out of her sight.”

“Do you know how Mrs. Fairchild found out? About the sexual abuse?”

“The boy, Taylor, had a friend, Jacobo. A family friend, an older boy. For some years, I tended his family’s yard. Taylor, he told Jacobo what his uncle was doing. This Jacobo, he told his parents. This is how Mrs. Fairchild found out.”

“Jacobo. In English, Jacob?”

“Jacob, yes.”

“Jacob Kosterman?”

“Kosterman. Yes.”

“What happened to the uncle, do you know?”

Mr. Villereal spoke as he bent to the soil, showing me his back.

“That is something of which I know nothing, sir.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Please, if you will, I have my work to do.”

I thanked him for answering my questions, but he said nothing, just kept his back to me, busy with his plants, until I knew it was time to go.

*

Templeton was waiting for me at the spot where she’d dropped me off, as I climbed the hill past the Fairchild mansion. I heard the lock on the passenger door electronically unlatch, opened the door, and slid in.

“How did your interview with Mrs. Fairchild go?”

Templeton switched on the ignition and shifted into drive.

“Reasonably well, if I were writing a puff piece. She’s very gracious but also keeps a lot to herself. She seemed to know how to give me just enough, while deflecting any questions that started to scratch the surface. I taped our conversation. You’re welcome to listen to it at some point, if you’d like.”

“I might do that. Was she wearing red?”

“Head to foot.”

She turned the wheel and swung away from the curb in a wide arc.

“How about you, Justice? Learn anything interesting?”

“I learned that Rose Fairchild is quite generous to people who do her a good turn. Also, that bad things do happen up here.”

“Care to be more specific?”

As Templeton pointed the car downhill, I told her briefly about what Uncle Matthew had done to little Taylor when he was especially vulnerable after his father’s death.

“When we get back to the office, I’ll ask Katie Nakamura to see what’s become of Matthew Fairchild. He might even be worth an interview, if we can arrange it.”

We passed the big gates and ascending driveway of the Fairchild place, and could see a gray-haired woman in red sitting behind the rail of a second-story verandah. Rose Fairchild gazed out across the rolling slopes of her rambling property, presiding over her private world, perhaps studying us as we went by.

I wondered if she might also be recalling all those Easter parties of long ago, and hearing the laughter of the children as they scampered up and down the lawns, when her husband was still alive, her son still innocent, her private world still safe and intact.

I wondered about a lot of things in Rose Fairchild’s life as we wound our way out of the Arroyo Seco, down into the flats of the city, back to the world of weeds, litter, and discordant voices.

It was almost six by the time Templeton and I had covered the ten miles from Pasadena back to downtown Los Angeles, with most of the commuter traffic headed in the other direction, away from the city. On our way in, we stopped near the train station for French-dipped sandwiches at Felipe’s, where a cup of coffee was still a dime and the double-dipped pork sandwiches were served with thick slabs of blue cheese that was pungent and sharp. We ate ours with dollops of sweet, crispy coleslaw on the side, sitting on tall stools at a long table, trying to make some sense of the Callahan and Mittelman murders, and figure out just where a few other names figured into the tangle.

Satiated on food, if not conclusions, we crossed the central city to the warehouse district, and the faded, ornate Romanesque building that housed the
Sun
. Except for a few sports reporters, there was almost nobody on the third floor, where editorial was located. Even Harry had gone home, after leaving a note posted to his office door:
Getting some shut-eye. Call me at home if there’s another crisis
. It was a desolate setting, all those empty reporter’s pods, some of which might never be filled again. It had my past and the future of newspapers in general written all over it, and my lunch with Jacob Kosterman started to grab at me again, as his tempting talk of power and paychecks danced like sugarplums in my head.

We found Katie Nakamura in the library, bent over a computer, working in Nexis. I put in my request for anything she might pull up on a lawyer named Matthew Fairchild, uncle of Taylor Fairchild and brother-in-law to his mother, Rose. She added it to her list of projects, and went back to work.

After that, I drove home, all the way out Sunset Boulevard to avoid the Friday evening freeway crush, with my lunchtime craving for alcohol coming back a little stronger than I found comfortable. The surface street proved a poor alternative—there were no longer any routes in the city free of gridlock at rush hour—but at least the scenery was more interesting. I passed through neighborhoods that were Latino, gay, Thai, and Pakistani, then lurid with the promise of commercial sex, along the stretch where the Sunset Tiki Motel was situated. Roughly ten miles and one hour after leaving downtown, I was moving slowly along the Sunset Strip, past all the trendy joints that would be filled by midnight with Hollywood’s pseudo-hip, while the wannabes lined the sidewalk outside, hoping to be blessed with admittance. There were at least three liquor stores along the Strip with convenient parking that would have made buying a bottle of wine, or something stronger, a two-minute stop on the way to hell. I passed each one with my hands tight on the wheel, my eyes straight ahead.

When I reached the house, I called Oree Joffrien at home, hoping for a dinner companion, or just someone to talk to; he was out, so I left a message. Peter was still at work, so I fed the animals and took Maggie for a walk by myself, greeting neighbors whose identities I knew only by their dogs’ names, as most of them knew me. Then, before the loneliness of the empty Friday evening closed in too tightly, and the lingering memory of hot saki began to haunt, I changed into an old pair of sweats and spent fifteen minutes stretching and gutting out my regimen of sit-ups and push-ups, trying to reclaim some diminished muscle mass before it was too late. After that, I took off on a two-mile hike into the hills, all the way to the top where the road ended, punishing myself with a fast pace and not a single break until I reached the summit. A strong March wind was up, blowing the basin clean, and the lights of the city sparkled like a million tiny diamonds. Then I was striding down even faster than I’d climbed, two miles home to a hot shower and a nap, before waking in the disorienting darkness.

I lay for a while naked on the cool sheet, in the small bedroom Maurice and Fred had shared for more than forty years. I felt my body—my chest, arms, belly—and found some firmness coming back, some dormant muscles being revived. Twenty years ago, in my final year as a college wrestler, I’d weighed twenty pounds less at meet time, been twice as strong, immeasurably more quick. I still had dreams in which I was twenty again, in top condition, with a chance to win; sometimes, in my feverish sleep, sweating and turning, I relived certain matches, like old tapes I couldn’t shut off. Never the matches I’d won, which had been most of them; only the rare few I’d lost. In the dreams, I’d strain, grope, lunge desperately to make the right moves, undo the outcome. Always, on the brink of possible victory, I’d wake, as I was slowly waking now, realizing I was forty, not twenty; that I would not, could not, change the old scores, could not get back to where I’d once been, could never do things over, differently.

Through an open window, I heard mournful cello music coming from a neighbor’s house as he practiced a sonata. I listened awhile, thinking about Oree, how much I wanted to connect with him, if he’d let me, how much I’d like to have him there beside me, if he was willing, as I tried to pull my life together, start over. It had been a long time since I’d admitted my need for another person in my life, a mate, someone strong enough and smart enough to stand up to my bullshit and my fear, to call me on it when necessary. Templeton was getting pretty good at that, and Harry had managed it from the start, but that was different. I needed a man beside me in the total sense; every fiber in me cried out and ached for that. It was something a lot of people wouldn’t understand, something many others would condemn, but that didn’t change it in the slightest; it never had and never would, and when you reach a certain age you understand that, and stop worrying about the other people, while you still have some time left to make a life for yourself, on your own terms. I hadn’t thought about these things for a while; it had taken the emergence of Oree Joffrien into my life to do that. Yet, for all his warmth and wisdom, he seemed disconcertingly distant, always just out of reach. I didn’t like to admit it, but I felt more alone now than I had before I’d met him.

The sonata ended, the cello fell silent, and the house grew cold. I got up, put on some decent clothes, and walked down to Tribal Grounds, where a hot mug of coffee in my hands and friendly people around had become a familiar substitute for companionship. I drank my dark roast at a sidewalk table as the men streamed by on their Friday night pilgrimage into Boy’s Town, feeling a little older as the night got later and the faces got younger. After that, I sauntered on down the boulevard to the Powder Room in search of Tiger Palumbo.

She was behind the bar, wiping it down while she chatted with a female couple who sat on barstools, holding hands and sharing a pitcher of beer. A few more women were scattered here and there along the bar, while a dozen or so were gathered around the pool table, the players laughing and slapping high fives after sinking difficult shots. A k.d. lang tune played insistently in the background, something about constant craving, but not so loudly that it killed the conversation. As far as I could tell, I was the only man in the place.

Palumbo looked over as I took a stool at the end of the bar near the door. So did the two women she was talking to. She turned back to them, took a minute to finish the conversation, then came in my direction, taking her time while she sized me up. She was shorter than I expected, with wide hips, stubby legs, and an upper body that looked as if it could still throw solid uppercuts if necessary. Her hair was ducktailed, brown with streaks of gray at the sides, her face free of makeup, and her outfit standard issue West Hollywood dyke: Doc Martens, tight blue jeans, a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. As she got closer, under the glow of a Bud Light sign behind the bar, I saw that her eyes were green and her brows unplucked. A trace of downy hair was visible on her upper lip and down the sides of her face, like the first signs of a mustache and sideburns on a pubescent boy. As wispy as her facial hair was, my guess was she took some pride in it.

“Can I help ya?”

“Mineral water, if you’ve got it.”

“Got some ID, pal?”

“You’re joking, right?”

She stood with her legs slightly spread, her strong-looking hands braced on the bar, and not a trace of humor in her eyes.

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“I’m not a cop.”

She said nothing, just waited. I pulled out my wallet, showed her my driver’s license. She barely glanced at it.

“Need to see three pieces of picture ID.”

“Nobody carries three pieces of picture ID.”

“That’s the house policy.”

I heard laughter behind me, coming through the door. Two twenty-something men, slim and pretty, and a larger woman in the same age range sauntered past and took stools farther down the bar.

“You going to ask them for three pieces of picture ID?”

“I know them. I don’t know you.”

“What if I’m a friend of Cecile’s? Does that make a difference?”

“If you were a friend of Cecile’s, I’d know ya.”

“I saw her just this morning. We talked about you as a matter of fact.”

“Me? I don’t think so.”

I leaned toward her, lowered my voice.

“She keeps a framed photograph of you on her credenza, right behind her desk. She mentioned how you like to ply her with flattery when you want to have your way with her.”

Even in the muted light, I could see Palumbo blush.

“Go on!”

“I believe you two have a fifth anniversary coming up.”

“You do know Cecile!”

“I believe I said that.”

“Well, why didn’t ya say so sooner?” She shook a playful fist at me. “Damn!”

“Think I could have that mineral water now?”

“Hell, yes. On the house. You sure you don’t want somethin’ stronger?”

“Not very. That’s why I’ll have the water.”

She grabbed a bottle, unscrewed the cap, wiped the lip with a fresh towel, and set the bottle on the bar, sans napkin.

“Shit, man, you come in here like you’re some straight dude wandered into the wrong bar, or out slummin’, maybe lookin’ for trouble. I was ready to show ya the door.”

“I’m surprised there’s not a bouncer out front.”

“Rhonda don’t come on till eight, when we start to get busy. She never woulda let you in—not without the ACLU filin’ a lawsuit first.”

I laughed.

“I think that’s called reverse discrimination.”

“I call it protectin’ the regular clients from assholes. So just how do you and Cecile come to be pards, anyway?”

“Oree Joffrien introduced us.”

“That professor guy, from UCLA.”

“That’s the one.”

She tidied up the bar as she talked.

“They go back a ways, Cecile and Oree.”

“Not that far, really. From what Oree tells me, he met Cecile at New York University. You must know friends of Cecile’s who go back a lot further. I mean, since she grew up out here and all.”

Palumbo shook her head, set out a bowl of popcorn.

“Naw, not really. She was pretty much in the closet till she got to that school in New York. Started makin’ friends after that.”

“Oree mentioned that you met her on a cruise up in Alaska.”

“Yeah, how about that! I got up my nerve one night, asked her to dance. It was cowboy music, you know, line dancin’. She was in heels and I was in saddle boots! Christ, what a pair we was. But once we got to talkin’, we just hit it off. Who woulda known?”

“They say opposites attract.”

“Well, she got herself one unrepentant butch dyke when she got me, and she ain’t never asked me to tone it down yet.”

“How’s her family accepted you?”

“Cecile’s family? Hell, I never met one of ’em. They don’t have nothin’ to do with her. Never accepted her bein’ a lesbian, she told me, not even as feminine as she is.”

“That must be painful for her.”

“Cecile’s fragile-lookin’ as a flower, but she’s tough inside. Said she got over it a long time ago, that it’s just her and me against the world now, which is OK by me. Any of her family come around givin’ her problems, they got me to deal with, you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“Listen, what’s yer name—?”

“Ben. Ben Justice.”

“Ben. I gotta get back to the bar, take care of the girls. Includin’ those two queens who just come in.” She nodded toward the two young men who had just entered, then stuck out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure. Any friend of my woman’s welcome in the Powder Room. You just tell Rhonda at the door that you and Tiger’s pards.”

She shook my hand with a grip more powerful than most men’s, then returned to business. I emptied half the bottle, left a dollar for a tip, and stepped out into a brisk wind and a night that had grown quickly cold. Only in Boy’s Town would you see men in shorts and tank tops in frigid weather, and there were plenty of them now, on their way to and from the gyms or showing it off at Starbucks on the corner while commuters along Santa Monica Boulevard gawked, tittered, or sneaked glances as they passed slowly in the steady traffic. I turned up my collar against the cold and started home.

It wasn’t until I was passing the S&M paraphernalia shop the owners called 665—“One Number Short of Hell”—that I sensed someone might be following me. Others were coming and going, but they were moving at different paces; the figure who had caught my attention seemed to be in step with me, while keeping his head down. I confirmed it when I stopped suddenly and looked back, past the white exterior of the Metropolitan Community Church that separated us. I saw a darkish figure in a long heavy coat, the collar turned up around his ears, a skullcap pulled low, his face well obscured as he pretended to study the interior of a massage and tanning salon.