Revision of Justice (7 page)

“JaFari connected with Winchester that night?”

“Out by Nando’s pool. The light reflecting up through the blue water, the city lights twinkling below—it was the perfect setting. Here was this kid, seventeen or eighteen, slim, nice face. He had this incredible long dark hair that he brushed straight back like Bo Derek when she still had a career. New to the scene, waiting to be plucked. Dylan started drooling the moment he saw him.”

“And they were together by the end of the night.”

“Raymond fell hard. He figured Dylan was his romantic fantasy and his ticket to the easy life all wrapped up into one.”

“You make him sound awfully naive.”

“Don’t get me wrong. Ray was no virgin. He’d been fucked by plenty of men before he came to this country. Sexually, he was quite experienced.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He talked about it once—about certain sexual practices in the Middle East. Ray said it’s not that uncommon for young boys to be used sexually by older men, especially married men. It’s just not talked about.”

“But emotionally—”

“Ray was as ripe as a summer peach. Full of romantic notions when he came here, like a lot of immigrants. He didn’t understand that to men like Dylan, he was just another good-looking kid to be used and tossed away like Kleenex during the cold season.”

Teal’s voice and face suddenly grew bitter.

“Needless to say, Hollywood is littered with used-up boys and girls like that.”

“After Winchester dumped JaFari, you still saw him around?”

“He was different. After Dylan, Ray became more calculating. Started sleeping around a lot more, with both men and women, to get what he wanted.”

“And what was that?”

“Who knows? He talked about being a screenwriter, a producer, a director. Mostly, he was a hustler, out to get what he could with the least amount of effort. He had the looks, but there are thousands of young men in this town with great looks and no more talent than it takes to sell shoes.”

“JaFari must have had something going for him. Roberta Brickman hired him as her assistant.”

Teal reacted with a snort.

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s what she told me at the party.”

Teal raised his eyebrows, seeming to accept it.

“I knew Farr had a low-level job at ITA. Working as a runner or something. But working for an agent of her caliber?” He paused, then shrugged a little. “Maybe he finally got his act together. Stranger things have happened.”

The bartender announced last call. Teal raised his glass, set it down next to mine, and the bartender whisked them away.

“You still haven’t told me why you picked up Winchester’s cigar.”

He kept his eyes averted, saying nothing.

“Talk to me, Teal. Unless you’d rather talk to DeWinter.”

He dropped his head for a long moment, staring at the bar. When he looked back up, his eyes blinked back tears. He might have been acting; I suspected not.

“Obviously, I did it to protect Dylan.”

“Then you think he’s connected to JaFari’s death.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Why then?”

“Dylan went down there looking for Ray Farr, who’s gay. Or bisexual, whatever. I followed him down hoping for a quickie. If the police find that out, the press finds out. You know how reporters are. You people won’t leave it alone until you’ve dug up every choice little morsel. The more tawdry, the better. You guys live for that stuff.

“They’d connect Dylan to me, to JaFari, to half the kids he slept with. Straight directors can get away with sleeping around like that. Look at Polanski—he diddled a thirteen-year-old girl and he still works, even sits as a judge at film festivals. So do a few hundred other breeders like him who never got caught. But Dylan’s career would be over with the first headline. He’d be lucky to make a living shooting commercials back in Australia. I don’t think he could live with that.”

A tear spilled over; he wiped it quickly away.

“You fell as hard for him as JaFari, didn’t you, Teal? You still carry a torch.”

He glared at me for a moment, then looked away as the bartender set fresh drinks in front of us. Teal gave him more money, and we drank in silence for a minute or two. The bar was slowly emptying out.

“I never liked being the last one out of a bar,” I said.

“You haven’t finished your wine.”

I picked up my glass and drank it down. Then I shoved the glass away and slid my other hand up Teal’s thigh.

“My place or yours?”

Teal was staring straight ahead, into the empty dining room.

“Maybe I don’t like being taken for granted.”

“It’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it, Teal? You’re supposed to take me for granted.”

His mouth curled unattractively. Then he tipped his head back and swallowed the last of his scotch. He set his glass down and looked at me in a way that suggested desire behind the hatred.

“You really think you’re something, don’t you, Justice?”

I stroked the inside of his thigh, then reached deeper, where I felt the meat between his legs getting hard. “Shall we go?”

*

Back on Norma Place, the house was dark; Maurice and Fred had finally ended their earnest conversation and gone to bed.

Teal followed me up the gravel-strewn drive to the garage. We mounted the stairs to the small apartment at the top, where I’d lived rent free for more than a year, since ending a six-year drinking binge that somehow had failed to kill me.

Inside, I left the lights out. Our shirts came off first, each of us handling that step ourselves, quickly and efficiently.

When I reached out, I was surprised to find Teal’s body firmer than his soft looks had suggested. We dropped our pants and shorts to our ankles and left them there. Teal’s torso was tightly muscled and hairless down to his lower belly, where an erection rose up that was well out of proportion to his slim frame. At its base, large, droopy testicles were furred with soft curls. When I touched them, I heard Teal draw in his breath sharply through clenched teeth.

We got each other off standing up, my right hand on his cock, his right hand on mine. There was nothing remotely sweet or gentle about it; it was all heat and desire and burning pleasure, driving us into a single, frenzied rhythm of which we were both well-practiced masters.

Teal groaned and erupted, gasping as he came. I followed seconds later. We clung to each other for a few moments more, Teal’s fingers grasping the thick hair on my chest, my hands molded to his tight, smooth buttocks, until the momentary madness of sex had subsided.

Then he pried himself away, speaking crisply.

“That went well. Towel?”

I handed him one, he cleaned up and put his clothes quickly back together.

“I guess this means we’re not getting engaged.”

He smiled a little and turned toward the door, buckling his belt.

“See you around.”

“One more question, Teal.”

He waited with his hand on the doorknob.

“Dylan Winchester went to the party tonight looking for Reza JaFari.”

“I believe we already established that.”

“Roberta Brickman and a screenwriter named Leonardo Petrocelli were there for the same reason.”

“So?”

“It strikes me as quite a coincidence—three different people looking for the same man, an unimportant one at that, who later turns up dead.”

“Not really.”

“I don’t follow.”

“To outsiders, Hollywood may seem like a big place. But it’s actually a very small world, built on the most unusual relationships. You might even say incestuous.”

“Thanks for your insight.”

“Not at all.”

He stepped out the door and trotted down the stairs.

I watched him until he reached the end of the driveway, disappearing as he hit the street.

Back inside, I found a notebook and filled several pages with what Teal had told me.

Then I took a shower, trying to wash away the smell of him, the memory.

I woke Sunday morning to a telephone that wouldn’t stop ringing, no matter how long I ignored it.

When I finally answered, I wasn’t surprised to hear the grating voice of Lieutenant Claude DeWinter at the other end.

He had read Templeton’s news item in that morning’s
Sun
, called her at home, then called me. He wasn’t happy.

“She wrote that Dylan Winchester was at the party last night. The movie guy.”

I let out a monstrous yawn.

“How interesting, Lieutenant.”

“She tells me she got the information about Winchester from you.”

“True enough.”

“Where did you see him?”

“In Gordon Cantwell’s downstairs hallway. Later, outside the house.”

“Where outside?”

“The south side.”

“Where the terrace is located.”

“That general area, yes.”

“What was he doing?”

“Leaving.”

“When was this, roughly?”

“Nine thirty-two p.m., roughly.”

“Why are you so sure about the time?”

“I looked at my watch.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to know the time. Look, Lieutenant—”

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“That’s not how it works, Justice.”

“On the contrary, Lieutenant. You told me in no uncertain terms to butt out until I was asked. Like I said, you didn’t ask.”

“I don’t put up with this kind of shit, Justice. I bring the hammer down on jerks like you.”

“If you want people to cooperate, Lieutenant, maybe you should be more careful how you talk to them. For starters, I’m not enamored of the word
fag
. Not when it comes from someone who isn’t one.”

“How about
punk
?”

“Sorry, don’t care for that one, either.”

“I could toss your ass in the can for obstruction. You know that, don’t you?”

Another yawn got away from me.

“I haven’t had my morning coffee, Lieutenant. Can’t this wait?”

“Where can I find Winchester?”

“What am I, his agent?”

“Suppose you tell me who his agent is.”

“Until recently, he was with ITA—International Talent Associates. They can probably help you find him.”

“And if they can’t?”

“Call the studio that’s releasing a movie called
Thunder’s Fortune
. Winchester directed it.”

“What else can you tell me that might be useful to this investigation?”

“Try calling later in the day, Lieutenant, when I’ve got some caffeine in my system. Better yet, don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

I hung up. The phone started ringing again. I shoved it under the pillow and left it there until it stopped.

By then I had on a pair of sweatpants and was drawing the string as I made my way down the stairs.

“Coffee, Benjamin?”

It was Maurice, down in the yard with Fred, sorting and packing donations they’d collected for Out of the Closet, a small chain of thrift stores operated by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. It was the new focus of their volunteer work, since the foundation had closed its hospice, now that more and more people with AIDS were living longer and healthier lives.

“Desperately.”

“I just made a fresh pot. Help yourself. You know the way.”

They went back to work while I crossed the patio. Maurice, slim and agile, scurried about moving the lighter items and organizing the packing. Fred, big and beefy, handled the heavy stuff. They were working on their forty-second year as a couple, and moved together like the pistons of a well-oiled Packard Deluxe.

When I emerged from the house, gulping hot coffee, Maurice looked up from taping a box.

“We need to talk, Benjamin.”

He sounded a bit anxious, which wasn’t like him. The three of us took chairs at the patio table under the leafy branches of the jacaranda, sharing the shade with two chubby cats. Fred picked his teeth with a twig while Maurice drew back his long, white hair and bundled it into a ponytail.

“I may as well get right to the point, Benjamin. I’ve lost my job. They’re closing the dance school.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“After thirty-three years, I’m out of work. Classical dance instructors aren’t in great demand these days, certainly not at my age.”

I knew where he was going, and he had every right to go there. I just wasn’t eager to make the trip with him.

“I’ll be sixty-six in April. The two of us have our Social Security and the house is paid for. Fred has a small pension. But there’s not a lot left over.”

Fred grunted, which was about as much as I ever heard from him.

“I’ll start paying rent,” I said.

It was a humiliating thing to have to say at the age of thirty-nine, something more appropriate for a kid graduating high school. But the fact was, I hadn’t earned more than a few thousand dollars a year in the seven years since I’d left the journalism business following the Pulitzer mess.

“We’re not going to throw you out,” Maurice said. “It was Jacques’s old apartment, after all, and we haven’t been eager to have anyone in it but you. But we would like you to start exploring more income possibilities.”

He said it as gently as he could, and Maurice was the gentlest of souls. But it still felt like warm piss in the face. Some people actually enjoy warm piss in the face, but I’ve never been a golden shower queen myself.

“I’ll have something for you by the first of the month. Would five hundred do for starters?”

“Five hundred would be fine. But that’s awfully soon, Benjamin. We don’t expect—”

“Last night, an opportunity presented itself.”

Maurice brightened and sat forward in his chair.

“An opportunity? Really!”

I nodded, forcing a smile.

“Did you hear that, Fred? Reporting, Benjamin?”

“Something like that.”

He grabbed my hand optimistically.

“That’s wonderful! I’m sure it will develop into something!”

I shrugged, and kept the smile up.

He leaned closer, trying to squeeze a little more out of the moment.

“Maybe you’d like to spend the afternoon with Fred and me at the thrift shop. I’m sure they’d find something useful for you to do. Sorting goods. Sweeping up—”

It was something Maurice suggested every few months, testing to see where I was on the subject of AIDS. I was still in the same place I’d been since Jacques’s death—I wanted nothing to do with the world of AIDS in any way, shape, or form.

“Try me in another month or two, Maurice. Maybe—”

“I understand.”

I carried my coffee upstairs to call Templeton, feeling more like a doomed man with every step.

There must have been a million aspiring freelance writers who would have killed for the chance to cowrite an article for
Angel City
at a buck a word, even without full credit. To me, it felt like a sentence of punishment. It meant returning to an occupation where I could never be anything more than Templeton’s shadow, where my past would cling to me like sewage, where my name would always leave its peculiar stink on the story. Not exactly a fulfilling way to work, but employment nonetheless, which I badly needed at that moment.

I dialed Templeton’s number with mixed feelings. She picked up halfway through the first ring.

“Benjamin. I was just about to call you.”

I could hear Joshua Redman in the background, blowing “Sweet Sorrow” on his mournful sax. It seemed an appropriate tune.

“I’m accepting your offer, Templeton. Fifty-fifty, down the middle. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll need a cash advance. Say, a thousand by the end of the week.”

“That sounds doable. What changed your mind?”

“The prospect of homelessness.”

“Always a great motivator. Where would you like to start?”

I didn’t have to think about it long.

“Daniel Romero.”

A telling moment of silence followed.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Don’t start, Templeton.”

“I noticed how you were looking at him last night. You think you can keep your professional distance?”

“Probably not. You have his number?”

I jotted down the ten digits that came over the phone. Then I asked her how she got them.

“Confidential source.”

“Does your confidential source weigh three hundred pounds and chew sugarless gum?”

“Let me know what you learn from Romero. And remember, Justice—you’re a reporter now.”

“After a fashion.”

“Keep me posted.”

I heard a click at her end, and cut the connection at mine just long enough to get a new dial tone.

Then I punched in Daniel Romero’s number, feeling my pulse race a little, which it hadn’t done for a long, long time.