Spider Season (2 page)

His lips curled into a small, enigmatic smile that I took for a challenge. I felt my heart race a little faster and my vision narrow. It was a potent and exhilarating moment, dangerous and unpredictable, the kind I hadn’t experienced in years. I wondered if the anticipation was as pleasurable for him as it was for me.

He glanced at the vintage Mustang. “Cool car.” Like he was there to buy it, not steal it.

“You had no business being in it.”

He shrugged his knobby shoulders. “I just wanted to sit behind the wheel for a while.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, like he’d done nothing wrong, like I was making too big a deal of it, which didn’t fit the circumstances. I figured he might be high on something—crystal maybe—one of the meth heads one sometimes encountered around WeHo, tweaking for days with their brains rewired over time by the insidious drug and their perception about as close to reality as Mars. Yet his pupils didn’t appear to be dilated; his fierce blue eyes were clear and steady. He stared at me implacably for a few seconds more. Then he took a step forward. I held my ground.

“I told you to stay down,” I said.

“I stopped taking orders when I left the Corps.”

I braced for a strike, maybe a sucker punch or some combative move he’d learned in the military. But what he did next I could never have foreseen. He reached up and touched my face.

My reaction was defensive, automatic: I shot low to my right, sweeping his left leg near the ankle, taking the leg out from under him the way I’d done hundreds of times in takedown drills and competitions decades ago. Often, an untrained man will go down immediately, especially if his momentum is moving forward, the way a table topples if it loses a leg at its weighted corner. But the skinhead didn’t fall that easily. He resisted just enough to balance on one foot, leaning into me in an effective sprawl, as if he might have had some wrestling in his own past, or picked up some useful countermoves in boot camp. He reached out and clung to me, clinching my upper body to his, until my face was buried in the web of golden hair that spread across his hard chest. I could smell his sweat, taste his salt, feel the solid structure of his torso as he clung to me and strained to keep me there. I slid my encircling arms higher up his leg, between his thighs and deep into his crotch. I bent my knees and lifted him upward until his heavy boots came off the ground, giving me more control.

Briefly, we were frozen like that, locked in a violent embrace. With both hands he pulled my face to his rippled belly, clutching me tight, like a desperate lover trying to hang on to someone leaving for the last time. Then, as I felt his heart pounding behind his ribs, he surprised me again. He suddenly went slack, as if he was giving in to me, allowing me to do with him what I wanted.

I seized the opportunity, slamming him facedown to the street and falling on top of him. I straddled his hips and tied up his legs with mine, flattening him and grinding his face into the rough pavement with my left forearm, while I used my other hand to cinch his right arm in a hammerlock. He wasn’t resisting at all now. His head was turned, one side of his face pressed firmly to the gritty asphalt. His forehead and the bridge of his nose glistened with blood, and his mouth was bruised and torn. Yet despite the thrashing he was taking, he bore a passive expression, like a long-battered child who’d grown callous to pain.

At some point I’d cut the inside of my mouth. I savored the tangy taste of my blood and the adrenaline high I was riding. It had been years since I’d experienced the thrill of a brawl. I realized how much I’d missed it, how alive it made me feel.

Dimly, as if from a great distance, Maurice’s voice penetrated my consciousness, like a hypnotist calling a subject back from a trance. He was telling me that the police were on their way and pleading with me to show restraint, insisting that the young man no longer posed a threat. Hearing Maurice gradually drew me out of my euphoria. My heartbeat began to slow and my tunnel vision gradually opened up. Little by little, I sensed the larger world around me again. For a minute or two, everything had been a slow-motion blur, but now it all became remarkably clear and sharp.

I lifted my forearm from the stranger’s neck, testing his will. He remained prone and still. As a precaution, to keep him down, I placed the flat of my hand near his left shoulder, over a tat of an eagle clutching a sheaf of arrows in its claws. In the sudden stillness, I became aware of the skinhead’s powerful shoulder muscles, the warmth and moisture of his flesh, the steady heaving of his breath, a few scars here and there on his lean body, possibly from battle. My face was pouring sweat, which mingled with his as it dripped onto his glistening skin. The intimacy between us was palpable. I wondered if he sensed it as keenly as I did.

That’s when it dawned on me how little fight he’d put up, even from the outset. A vainglorious part of me wanted to believe I’d overpowered a dangerous young man in his prime. But a more objective voice suggested something else was going on, something I didn’t understand.

He shifted his eyes to stare at my hand on his shoulder, reminding me of what had triggered my reaction in the first place—the movement of his own hand toward my face, which I’d taken as a threat. He’d touched me, but I realized now that it hadn’t been quick or aggressive. It had been gentle, almost tender. Our eyes met, and I tried to find something in his that might explain his odd behavior, whether he was innocently out of his mind or something else was going on. But the conflicting emotions I saw were impossible to sort out. Then his gaze fell forward again, passive and calm, toward a crowd of onlookers gathering on the sidewalk.

Sirens wailed through nearby streets, approaching fast. As they grew louder, I continued to study the stranger, searching for some sign of remorse, or at least anxiety, since he was about to be arrested. But all I saw was a bloodied young man lying facedown on the pavement, literally in my hands and under my control, his battered face a mask of seeming contentment.

I had the strange feeling that this was what he’d wanted all along.

TWO

“Benjamin, are you all right?”

Maurice unwrapped the terry-cloth towel that bound his damp hair and folded it neatly into quarters. He gently lifted the young man’s head and placed the makeshift pillow beneath. The skinhead accepted the kindness passively, without a word.

For a moment, I didn’t know if Maurice’s question pertained to my physical or mental state; perhaps it was meant for both.

“A couple of scrapes,” I said. “Nothing serious.” I glanced across the street to the old Craftsman bungalow where Maurice and Fred had lived for more than fifty years. “Where’s your other half? Ordinarily, he’d be out here, backing me up.”

“Napping,” Maurice said, sounding oddly stern. “He must have slept right through it. Just as well. He needs his rest.” Maurice scolded me with his eyes, before they darted sympathetically to the injured man beneath me. “Really, Benjamin, what’s gotten into you? I thought you’d put all this frightful violence behind you.”

The sirens reached a crescendo and two black-and-whites turned into the street, speeding toward us from opposite ends. No more than three minutes had passed since I’d yanked the skinhead from my car, which meant the radio call had gone out from dispatch seconds after Maurice had called 911. Within a minute, three more patrol cars were on the scene, the kind of prompt response you get in a tightly knit community like West Hollywood, with thirty-six thousand residents packed into less than two square miles. Two uniformed deputies separated me from the skinhead while the others set about questioning witnesses, including Maurice. A female deputy who seemed to be in charge asked me a few questions, put the skinhead in handcuffs, and sat him across the street on the curb. A minute or two later, an ambulance arrived and two EMTs began attending to him, checking his vital signs and cleaning up the abrasions on his face and upper body.

Finally, an unmarked detective’s car rolled up. A tall, lanky man in a western-style jacket and snakeskin boots climbed out leisurely, like he was on his way to a down-home Texas barbecue. His salt-and-pepper hair was clipped short in a crew cut, but a Pancho Villa mustache added a flourish to his narrow, bony face. The military-style haircut had probably been stylish fifty-odd years ago, around the time he was born, if the lines in his craggy face were a useful gauge. His jacket was open, and I could see a nine-millimeter Beretta in a clamshell holster on his left hip. His gold shield was displayed nearer his big belt buckle, a tacky piece of pseudo-silver jewelry shaped like the Lone Star State. I didn’t know whether to admire his ballsy taste in clothes or laugh.

The female deputy, who was now questioning Maurice, stepped away to confer with the detective. She pointed in my direction, then returned to Maurice, while the detective ambled toward me in his showy boots. Without extending his hand, he introduced himself in a southwestern drawl as Detective Dave Haukness. He let me know right off that he knew who I was and that I came with a past.

“Benjamin Justice,” he said, in a voice that conveyed no judgment, but no warmth, either. “I believe we’ve had dealings with you before.” His mild green eyes were as hard to read as his taciturn manner. “So why don’t you tell me what happened here?”

I tried to keep it simple and to the point. I explained that I’d caught the suspect behind the wheel of my car, apparently intending to steal it, pulled him out, then defended myself after he’d faced off and made a threatening move.

“He assaulted you?”

I hesitated. “He raised his hand to me.”

“He struck you?”

“He made contact. I took it as aggression.”

“Open hand or closed fist?”

“Open.”

“Right hand or left?”

“Right.”

“Where did he make contact?”

I pointed to my left cheek, which Haukness briefly examined.

“I don’t see any marks or unusual coloring.”

“I reacted quickly. He never landed a blow.”

“You said he made contact.”

“He touched me.”

“Touched you?” Again, the flat, neutral tone. “That’s it? And you threw him to the ground?”

“We engaged each other physically. I was fortunate enough to put him in a prone position and gain control.”

“How exactly did you accomplish that?”

I explained how I’d managed it, though I made it sound less violent than it was.

“He fought back?”

“He resisted a little.”

“Why didn’t you call nine-one-one, instead of tangling with the man?”

“My landlord, Maurice, took care of that.” I turned and pointed toward Maurice, who was tying his long, white hair back in a ponytail. “The older gentleman in the lavender robe.”

“About the suspect,” Haukness went on. “Did he have keys in his hand when you confronted him?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Implements of any kind, something he might have used to switch the ignition?”

I saw where Haukness was going and felt myself tighten. I’d been arrested once before for assault, not two blocks from where we were standing now. There had been other incidents, although I’d always managed to skate without a formal charge or a conviction. Alcohol had usually been involved, something I’d given up years ago.

“I didn’t really take time to look,” I said evenly. “It happened quickly.”

“So you don’t really know that he was attempting to steal your car.”

“He was in my car without permission.”

“Did you ask him why?”

“Eventually, after I’d subdued him.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“That he wanted to sit behind the wheel.”

Haukness raised his graying eyebrows. “Sit behind the wheel?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Did it occur to you to wait at a safe distance and let the deputies handle it?”

“Car thieves don’t usually wait around for the cops to show up.”

“Did he appear to be in a hurry to be gone?”

I hesitated again, fashioning a reply that wasn’t exactly a lie.

“I had the impression that he liked the car and might want it for himself.”

Haukness was silent a moment, looking thoughtful. Then he said, “Witnesses are giving us a different story.” I didn’t say anything, so he added, “They see you as the aggressor, Mr. Justice. Even your landlord feels you overreacted.”

“Maurice said that?”

“Not in so many words. But he’s concerned that your response was out of proportion to the threat.”

“The guy was in my car, Detective.”

Haukness glanced over at the skinhead. The EMTs were applying bandages to his wounds.

“You’re sure you don’t know the suspect?”

“Never saw him before.”

“A casual acquaintance, maybe? Someone you might have forgotten?”

It wasn’t that strange a question, in a city where gay men comprised nearly a third of the population. Still, under the circumstances, I resented it.

“Someone I picked up, you mean? A one-night stand lost in a blur of drugs and alcohol? Something like that?”

“I didn’t suggest that, Mr. Justice.”

“I never saw the guy until he got in my Mustang about twenty minutes ago.”

“You certainly got the best of him. You’re what—late forties?”

“I’ll turn fifty in September.”

He ran his eyes over my upper body, which I’d been diligently working on in recent months.

“You’re in pretty good shape for a man your age.”

“There are a lot of men in the neighborhood who are in pretty good shape for their age. It’s a gay ghetto. What can I tell you?”

He studied my eyes closely. “You take any drugs, Mr. Justice?”

“A few, for HIV.”

“That’s it? Nothing else?”

“Psychotropic, you mean?” He nodded. “Only prescriptions related to HIV, Detective.”

“You need any medical attention?” I shook my head. “A deputy will take your full statement and contact information.”

I nodded in the direction of the skinhead. “What happens to him?”

“He’ll be checked out in the ER, then booked in at the sheriff’s substation.”

“For attempted GTA?”

“I’m not sure the evidence supports a felony like grand theft auto. We’ll have to sort it all out.” He dug in a pocket of his jacket and handed me a Sheriff’s Department business card with his name and extension on it. “If you have anything to add, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call. That number will only be good for another few weeks. After that, I’m headed downtown to work homicide.”