Light Before Day (28 page)

I pulled to the curb across the street, jumped out, heard Brenda slam the door behind me, grabbed my cell phone, and dialed Nate's number. I heard a chirping ring from in between the parked cars several feet away. We found Nate sitting on the curb between two car bumpers. He was rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees, his mouth open as he tried to breathe.

I sank down in front of him and took his face in both hands. His eyes were wild and wet, his spiky hair twisted. "I didn't use," he managed. "I didn't use." He repeated the words over and over again, his voice waning.

"What happened?"

He choked out something that sounded more like anguish than words. Brenda stood behind him on the sidewalk, her eyes probing the entrance of the bathhouse. I turned and saw a tall black woman with Brenda's strong build emerge from the entrance. As the woman passed under the neon sign, I saw that she had a man's strong jawline, wide unblinking eyes, and cheeks caked with glitter. She threw her long braided hair extensions off one shoulder with the back of her hand and hurried off, addressing the sidewalk in front of her in some sort of drug-fueled babble.

As I ran across the street, Brenda shouted my name. I threw the entrance door open to find a wiry guy blocking my path. He wore a backward baseball cap, a T-shirt that bore the bathhouse's logo, and a thousand piercings in his nose and ears. "We're closed!" he shouted. I tried to shove past him and he grabbed my wrists. "We're fucking closed!" he shrieked.

He hit the wall next to me after I shoved him. I threw open the second door and found myself in a narrow corridor lined with half-open doors. Dim industrial lights lined the ceiling overhead, above a metal grate that formed a kind of drop ceiling. The walls and doors were particleboard painted black. They shook with the thumping bass beat of a popular dance song that I had heard in brighter places than this.

I heard the second door fly open behind me and saw Brenda moving toward me through the dim squares of light. "Whatcha doing, little man?" she called, trying to keep her voice hostage-negotiation-casual but speaking loud enough to be heard above the music. From the expression on her face, I was sure Nate had told her something that had brought her hand to the bulge against her hip. "Police are on their way, Adam."

I moved off down the hallway, pushing open stall doors as I went. The panicked patrons had left behind twisted pairs of underwear, used condoms, and overturned bottles of lube. I turned and found myself facing a stall door that stood all the way open. The cubicle had a single bed in the center and a nautical-style lamp behind a metal cage that had a red bulb in it. It threw a dull glow across a swell of belly and two pork-chop-shaped legs that stuck out from a towel.

I felt tiny pinpricks in my shoulders and upper back. The man on the bed was Scott Koffler.

His hands had been posed prayerfully on his bare chest, but his head was twisted to one side. A slick of vomit led from his mouth to the floor. A thin red line gleamed across his throat. The gash was shallow and had emitted barely any blood.

At my feet was a crumpled water bottle. It had no label and looked as if it had been crushed by a fist. But the top of the bottle was mangled in a different way. Scraped. Twisted. Chewed.

Suddenly I saw it. I saw the blade being held to Koffler's throat as the bottle was shoved inside his mouth, its contents forced down by his assailant's other hand. Probably GHB. A derivative of body-building products that could induce either a euphoric high or an immediate blockage of blood flow to the brain, especially when it was mixed with alcohol.

Brenda told me I needed to go. I met her eyes. The red semidarkness between us seemed to ripple and shimmer, and she seemed evanescent, distant. I knew what was she was saying to me, knew that she thought Billy Hatfill had something incriminating on me, something I had done in a blackout. Something I would never want the police to know about. But I couldn't react to her, and when she said my name again, there was panic in her voice.

"He set a trap," I said. "He knew I'd be at the park waiting for him. Then he followed Nate."

Brenda pulled me away from the bed, into the narrow corridor outside. I allowed her to guide me without taking my eyes off of Scott Koffler's body. His hands were crossed over his chest, a towel wrapped loosely around his waist. He was posed in the same way as my good friend Paul Martinez, when several months earlier his body had been discovered in a bathhouse just like this one. As Brenda herded me down the corridor, I was thrust back onto a darkened West

Hollywood street corner as Billy Hatfill asked me if I still thought about Paul. Paul, whose funeral I had walked out of in a quiet rage over his friends' inappropriateness and disrespect.

Paul, one of the first friends I had made after moving to LA.

I heard Billy Hatfill telling me I was going to drown in my judgments one day. Then I saw myself as I had been rendered by Corey Howard's hand, sleeping peacefully and dreaming of steel windmills. The image was replaced by a young boy's face, his eyes heavy, as it was lifted into my vision by a gloved hand. Then I was back in the bathhouse hallway, on my knees, inches from my own vomit, as I heard the sound of approaching sirens.

Brenda's hand was on my back.

"I'm not going anywhere," I told her.

C H A P T E R 13

The first officers to respond were Deputies John O'Brien and Frank Murton. They were with the special problems unit of the West Hollywood substation. Several months earlier, they had taken me on a ride-along so they could show me how they politely pushed the transgendered

prostitutes and their parolee customers farther toward Highland Avenue with ceaseless questions about the quality of their life choices and talk of recovery programs.

Frank Murton had been the one to give me the tip about Emilio Vargas, the guy who fought back against the fag bashers, the week before. He was about five-eleven, with a broad-shouldered body, a square head, and knife slashes for eyes. He was as straight as they come, but he had confided in me that his brother was a closeted member of the LAPD who drank so heavily to drown the stresses of his double life that he sometimes woke up in a different city and had no idea how he got there.

I was standing outside the entrance when the deputies arrived. Brenda was half a block away, standing watch over Nate, who hadn't moved from the spot he had been in when we first showed up. I told the two cops who they could expect to find inside and what I thought had been done to the guy. O'Brien entered the bathhouse. Something in my face must have told Frank Murton to stay behind. "You know the victim?" he asked.

"Yes, I was supposed to have a meeting with him two hours ago."

"What kind of meeting?"

A second sheriff's cruiser pulled off the boulevard. I tried to focus on the deputy in front of me and not the ones that were advancing toward us. A third cruiser pulled up the street from the other direction.

"What were you doing here tonight?" Murton asked.

"I don't do bathhouses, Deputy. I was supposed to have a meeting with Scott Koffler at one A.M. We were supposed to talk about a story I was working on—"

"What kind of story?" he asked, his voice gaining an edge.

"You're going to want to take me in."

"I am?"

"At ten to two, I got a call from my friend Nate Bain over there. He asked me to come here. I went inside and I found the body."

The radio at Murton's hip crackled. I recognized John O'Brien's voice, confirming that he had just found what I had told him he would find. Two of the deputies returned to their cars and positioned them to block off the street at both ends.

"You'll want to talk to that guy, too," I said, gesturing to Nate. As I did, I saw Brenda lower her cell phone from her ear. Instead of putting it in her pocket, she held it out to one side as two deputies approached her. I couldn't hear what they were saying.

"You want to tell me about this story you were doing," Murton said. It wasn't a question.

I started with Nate's visit to my apartment the previous Friday night and his brief ride with Scott Koffler and a marine helicopter pilot named Daniel Brady. Then I included everything Melissa Brady had told me earlier that day. By the time I was finished, the sheriff's department helicopter was circling overhead, its rotors making a sound like speeding train cars.

"Any idea what kind of relationship there was between Scott Koffler and Daniel Brady?"

I wanted to take a deep breath, but I figured that would show Murton that I was hiding something. I met his eyes. "None."

"Any idea where they went while they were here?"

"No," I said.

Nate and Brenda had both been shepherded off to different sheriff's cruisers, where they sat in the backseat as a deputy stood guard outside the door. When Murton's hand came down on my shoulder, I realized he was about to do the same to me.

They took me to the West Hollywood substation, where I was deposited in a tiny office with an empty desk and blank walls. There was no phone. It was hardly an interrogation room, but Murton locked the door behind him after he left. The laughter of other deputies outside struck me as taunting and irreverent.

As my head began to clear, I ran through what Scott Koffler had told me on the phone earlier that day. Corey had hired him to bring Daniel Brady to West Hollywood and then left town without paying him. I let this fact circle in my mind for a while. It left a vapor trail that stank to high heaven. After all the work he had gone to, I couldn't see Corey skipping town without sewing up this detail. Daniel Brady had died publicly and spectacularly, and Scott Koffler was part of the reason why. For Corey to leave the guy unpaid and unhappy was a phenomenally stupid move.

Another detail nagged at me. Corey had turned the Daniel Brady video into a production.

Jimmy was right; it was far more than a simple blackmail video. It was a production that involved brief choreography and costume elements, one of which concealed Brady's identity to anyone who didn't recognize his naked body. Why had Corey gone to all that trouble if the tape wasn't going to be broadcast to a wider audience? Why, in the e-mail sent to Melissa Brady, had there been no mention of such an audience?

The e-mail to Melissa itself struck me as half-assed, given all the work that had gone into making the tape. Not just half-assed. Last-minute. Rushed. Maybe Corey had intended to put the tape to a more elaborate use but couldn't. He didn't have time. Because he knew he was in danger. Because he had given Billy what he wanted, and Billy wanted him out of the way.

The half-assed e-mail to Melissa. Not paying Koffler. They both added up to a theory I had been fighting off since I first set foot in Corey's apartment.

Corey was dead.

I saw his keys, wallet, and cell phone waiting for me on his kitchen counter. Not a message from Corey. It was a different kind of message sent by someone else. Had Billy Hatfill staged Corey's disappearance to look like those of the Vanished Three? Was it another attempt to ensure I came to Billy when I discovered Corey was missing? Maybe it was a backup plan in case Billy's warning about Corey's strange visit to his house didn't have the desired effect on me.

I saw the shallow red line on Scott Koffler's throat. Suddenly I was once again outside of Billy Hatfill's front gate, being pawed by a precocious sex addict with a chunky silver bicycle chain around his neck. When I had rejected young Everett's advances, he had reached for the bicycle chain as if it were a weapon. Maybe Everett had used it tonight, wrapping it around Koffler's throat as he forced the bottle's contents down the guy's throat.

It was almost four A.M., Saturday morning. In a little over twelve hours, I was supposed to meet with Martin Cale. Billy Hatfill was just hours away from providing me with a horrible revelation about myself, and he was cleaning up the wreckage of a deal gone bad.

I felt the kind of nausea that usually followed a half bottle of bourbon. The ticks coming from the fluorescent light overhead seemed to be keeping time to a mad rhythm.

If I mentioned Billy Hatfill's name to anyone from the LA County Sheriff's Department, I could kiss my meeting with Martin Cale goodbye. To say nothing of what Billy Hatfill might do with whatever he had on me.

At ten minutes after five in the morning, the office door opened and Dwight Zachary entered. He was wearing exactly the same outfit he'd had on when we first met, except the polo shirt was dark blue this time.

I felt a small sense of relief. Then I saw the threatening look on his face, remembered the remarks I had made to him the other day, and realized he was going to make this as painful as possible. I decided to make the first strike.

"Where's Brenda?" I asked.

He stuck his thumb in one corner of his mouth, bit at the nail loud enough to make a sound, and sat on the edge of the desk across from me. I figured he had gotten Brenda far away from the sheriff's station as soon as possible. She was evidence of the fact that Dwight had crossed the line years earlier.

"Can I go?" I finally asked.

"I just got here."

"You caught this one?" I asked. There was disbelief in my voice.

"In a manner of speaking."

"I told Murton everything when he got to the scene. You want me to repeat it?"

"Scene," he repeated with a faint smile. "Murton says you did a ride-along with him a few months ago. Already you're speaking the lingo. What other
cool,
official-sounding cop words do you know, Mr. Murphy?"

I kept my mouth shut.

"We had Oceanside PD check on that address you gave us for Elena Castillo. You told Murton the helicopter pilot's wife was staying there?" I nodded. "Looks like no one's home. The car's not there."

"She said she might go stay with her uncle in San Diego," I said. "And she said she might take Melissa with her."

"Might?"

"Melissa was covering up for a pedophile, even if he was her husband. Elena didn't like that." I was relieved that they had not caught up with Melissa Brady or Elena Castillo. If they didn't have Corey's name, they were that much further away from Billy Hatfill.