Spider Season (36 page)

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do when I got to Holt’s place, but I had a general idea. He had to be stopped, but I didn’t think there was enough hard evidence to connect him to anyone’s death. Anyway, police investigations can sometimes drag on for months, and there was no telling what Holt might do in that time. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to Maurice. Someone had to deal with Holt in a permanent way, and I seemed to be as good a candidate as any. At this point, I figured, I didn’t have a whole lot to lose.

The dusk was deepening as I approached Nichols Canyon Terrace. I parked on a turnout, hiding the Metro in the shadows of an oleander grove, and hiked up Nichols Canyon Road from there. As I turned into Holt’s street, I heard a few dogs bark in the canyon behind me, aroused by the sound of a passing motorcycle heading up toward Mulholland Drive. The engine’s rumble gradually faded and with it the yapping of the dogs. The cul-de-sac was empty as I made my way quietly to the end. I saw one or two lights in windows that turned living rooms into dioramas with live figures moving about, but they didn’t appear to notice as I crept past. Holt’s bloodred 1953 Ferrari sat in the driveway where I’d seen it the first time I was up here. A
FOR SALE
was displayed in a side window.

I walked directly along the stone path around the north side of the house. As I rounded the corner, I saw Holt standing on the terrace with his back to me, silhouetted against the city lights. The patio had recently been swept clean; a broom leaned against a wall of the house, next to a pile of sweepings. With no leaves underfoot, I was able to cross the patio soundlessly, past the empty swimming pool.

As I got closer, I saw the machete lying flat atop the low wall, near the heavy stand of bamboo Holt had been thinning the first time I was here. Closer to where Holt stood, the morning-glory vines entangling the wall were still untouched, entwined around the columns and stretching out unchecked toward Runyon Canyon.

When I was only a few steps behind him he turned to face me, as if he’d been aware of my approach all along. He was wearing a heavy gardening glove on his right hand, which was loosely closed. The other glove lay atop the wall next to him.

“Hello, Benjamin. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’ve returned.”

“How could I not, after all that’s happened?”

I stepped over next to him, my thighs pressed against the upper edge of the wall, calculating the effort it would take to push a man of Holt’s size over. Not much, I thought. He was slightly built and not very tall. I remembered the look of his soft torso when he’d had his shirt off, the undeveloped muscles. I figured it would depend on how much fight he put up. Maybe none at all, I thought, if I struck quickly and unexpectedly.

“It took a bit of doing,” he said, almost whimsically, “but you’ve finally taken me seriously.”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it, Jason?”

“Not a very nice thing to say, for someone who wants to be my friend.”

“You didn’t really believe that, did you? That I’d ever want to be close to someone like you.”

“But we are close, Benjamin. We’re together now. Two people who have so much in common.”

“Because we both know what it is to kill someone?”

He stepped toward me, laying his ungloved hand on my upper arm, stroking it, looking into my eyes. The feel of his hand made my skin crawl, but I let it stay, biding my time.

“How I’ve longed to touch you, Benjamin. It seems like forever, and now you’re here.”

“At the very spot,” I said, “where you pushed Silvio Galiano to his death.”

I glanced over the low wall to the rocks. They were faintly illuminated by light from the big front windows of the house. Otherwise, this side of the property was secluded and deep in shadow. It was unlikely anyone could see us.

Holt raised his bleached brows playfully. “Is that what you think happened, Benjamin? That I’m responsible for Silvio’s unfortunate death?”

“There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

“Why would I kill Silvio? He provided everything I needed.”

“Because you wanted it all for yourself, without the responsibility of being his companion. You hooked up with him in 1989, when he was already old and sick with AIDS. It was still considered a death sentence then. Gay men were dying by the thousands. You figured he’d be gone in a year or two, like all the others. Only he managed to hang on. His doctors and his strong spirit kept him alive. Then the protease inhibitors showed such promise in ’95 and came on the market the next year, the so-called AIDS cocktail that suddenly offered new hope for people like Silvio. He started getting better, like so many others who were infected.”

“On the contrary, I was thrilled about the protease cocktail. I’d lost friends, you know. There were others who were infected for whom I cared deeply.”

“Yes, it was great news for them. But not for you, Jason. It ruined your scheme to get your hands on Silvio’s assets. You were stuck with an old man who might live on for years and possibly disinherit you if he discovered your affair with Charles Wu. So you pushed him over this wall, down to those rocks.”

“Pure speculation, from a man without a shred of credibility. Anyway, the police investigated. My alibi was airtight.”

“I have a copy of the photograph Wu used to paint your portrait. Before she died, your aunt, Victoria Faith, made sure I would get it. I’ve spoken with Wu. He’s admitted everything.”

To my surprise, the tone of Holt’s voice grew increasingly smug.

“I knew you couldn’t resist playing detective. I spun my web. You took the bait. And here we are, together at last.”

“You’ve killed two people, Holt. That’s all you’ve accomplished.”

Holt laughed brightly.

“Don’t tell me you’re wired up with a hidden microphone, like in the movies? Trying to get me to say something incriminating.” He ran his ungloved hand up and down my sides, then patted my chest. “Mmmm, still in good shape for a man your age. What a shame I won’t be able to enjoy you in the flesh.”

He spun me suddenly so that I was pinned between him and the wall, and brought his gloved hand up to within an inch of my face. Cushioned in his gloved fingers was a large, dark spider—four to five centimeters long, if I had to guess—with hair covering its stubby body and thick, jointed legs.

Holt was grinning. “Maybe you’ll tolerate spider venom better than Fred, even with your compromised immune system. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

I started to slide away, but Holt kept me penned in, pressing the spider close to my mouth.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you. He’s very aggressive. Doesn’t scurry away and hide, like the black widow or the brown recluse. This is the deadly Australian funnel-web spider—
Atrax robustus
. Only twenty-seven species of spider are known to have caused human fatalities, and the male funnel-web ranks right up there at the top. This one comes from the Sydney area—the most dangerous of all the southern Australian funnel-webs. Cost me a pretty penny to have him smuggled in. I’m selling the Ferrari to cover it. They like moist climates, you know. I keep him in the spare bathroom. He has his own humidifier.”

“He must hate this dry heat,” I said. “Maybe you should take him inside, put him to bed.”

Holt laughed archly. “It’s always nice when one can make jokes in the face of death.”

“Wouldn’t it look suspicious if I died of a spider bite, so soon after Fred?”

“I doubt they’ll ever know the cause. Even if they do, they’d have a good deal of trouble proving I was responsible. I know how to cover my tracks, you know. And if they do figure things out and arrest me—”

“You’ll finally be a media darling, grabbing the spotlight for your fifteen minutes of fame. And I will have been punished, for never giving you the attention you demanded.”

He smirked. “Nicely put—very succinct.”

I tried to draw back from the spider, but Holt followed, keeping him close.

“The onset of symptoms occurs almost immediately,” Holt said, “and they’re quite unpleasant. For small children and others with weak immune systems death can come within hours, even minutes. Even if you remained conscious long enough to tell someone what kind of spider bit you, I doubt there’s any funnel-web antivenom around here. By the time they flew in a vial from Australia, you’d be long gone.”

He pressed the spider toward my lower lip until it was only millimeters away.

“Oh, look! It’s showing its fangs. They’re rather large for a spider, you know. It’s one reason the funnel-web can inject a large dose of venom so quickly.”

Behind Holt, I noticed a crouched figure slipping quietly through the shadows, across the leafless patio. He moved with practiced stealth, like someone who’d been trained for it. Even before he got close, I recognized him as Lance.

I raised my voice, hoping he’d hear. “I suppose striking quickly would be the best course, wouldn’t it?”

Before Holt could respond, Lance grabbed him by the back of his shirt and yanked him away. Holt’s eyes widened and he cried out, stumbling backward. His gloved fingers opened, losing the spider. Lance slipped his left arm around Holt’s neck, and used his right to reach down and seize Holt firmly between the legs. Holt screamed, but not for long. Before I could stop Lance, or even think about trying, he raised Holt off his feet and flung him face-first over the wall. Holt’s arms flailed in a frantic windmill motion as he dropped through space. His scream died in his throat in the second or two before he struck the rocks.

I looked over to see him sprawled facedown, blood pooling beneath his cracked skull. His legs were twisted awkwardly beneath him, still twitching. They kept on like that for the better part of a minute. Then the movements ceased and the pool of blood stopped spreading, a sure sign the pumping heart had been stilled.

I turned away to look for the funnel-web but couldn’t find it. It had crawled into the darkness of the untended yard and I wasn’t about to go searching around for him in the weeds. In this parched environment, I figured, he wouldn’t last long.

As I returned to the wall, Lance was drawing a cigarette and staring out at the city lights like someone having a smoke after sex. As he turned toward me, I could see by the brightness in his eyes and the flush in his face that he’d enjoyed the thrill of what he’d just done. It was a feeling I knew all too well. Like father, like son, I thought, and so on, into eternity. Lance was still at war, but now the war was inside his head. I knew that feeling too. At that moment, I didn’t need a paternity test to know that Lance Zarimba came from my seed, from my genes.

“I owe you my life,” I said.

“You gave me mine,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “That makes us even.”

“You saw the news reports that I’ve been searching for you?”

“Yeah, I saw ’em.”

It was nearly dark. A few dogs had barked up and down the nearby canyons for a minute or two after the commotion but had grown quiet again.

“The spider’s gone,” I said. “We’ve got nothing to prove that Holt threatened me.”

“I guess we don’t.”

He took another drag, unhurried, unruffled.

“With our backgrounds,” I said, “and my problems with Holt, I doubt the cops or the D.A. would believe us. They’d probably see this as pure revenge.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“You need to get out of here. We both do.”

He said nothing to that, just looked steadily into my eyes.

“If questions ever come up,” I went on, “and they somehow put us together up here on the night this happened, I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll tell the truth leading up to the moment Holt went over the wall, but I’ll claim that I did it myself, that you tried to stop me but couldn’t. I’ll stick to that story, no matter what. Understood?”

He considered it a moment, took another hit of nicotine, and said, “If that’s how you want it.”

Distantly, behind him, a light came on in a hilltop house. Several other houses around the canyon that had been dark were now brightly lit.

“Lance, you really need to go.”

“Not just yet.”

He crushed his cigarette in his callused palm and slipped the butt into a pocket of his jeans. Then he surveyed the patio and the yard. He grabbed the glove off the wall, shoved his left hand into it, and took hold of the machete by the handle. He returned to the spot where he’d tossed Holt over and where the morning-glory vines had spread. Gripping the machete tightly, he leaned out and hacked away at the farthest branches, letting them fall near Holt’s body but not atop it. Then he dropped the machete over the side so it landed in the same general area. It clattered on the rocks and skidded away a few feet before it stopped. A couple of dogs barked briefly at the noise and then the stillness returned.

“That might help us a little,” he said.

He removed the glove and laid it back on top of the wall where he’d found it. Then he faced me, standing close.

“I guess it’s time I hit the road,” he said, but didn’t move.

“Where will you go?”

“I got a wife waiting for me in Mexico, name of Paca. Down in Jalisco, little town called Purificación. We got a restaurant there and a little house I built. Things are simpler down there, the way I like ’em. With my disability check, we live pretty good.”

“You’ll need to keep taking your meds.”

“You know about that, huh?”

“Detective Haukness filled me in. He’s concerned about you.”

“Tell him I’ll be okay. I get my meds sent down.”

“What about therapy, regular appointments to monitor your progress?”

“What I got down there is better than anything the doctors can do. I got a woman who loves and needs me. I got a family.”

“A family?”

“We got a daughter, born last year. Estrellita, we call her. Little Star.”

“I have a granddaughter?”

He nodded. “Looks a little like me, which means she looks a little like you. The blue eyes mostly. Otherwise, she’s dark and pretty like her mom.”

I stared out at the city, letting it sink in. When I turned to Lance again, I said quickly, “I swear, I never knew about you. Your mother never contacted me, never let on that she was pregnant.”