“ALL I KNOW,” Inez explained in her unpacked office, the lights on her phone blinking urgently, “is that in politics, when your opponent goes negative you hit back hard and fast. Same thing here.”
“I’m not running for anything,” I replied.
“You’re running for your reputation,” she said. Her phone buzzed. “Let me get this.”
I went to the windows. A bronze cast to the late-afternoon light gave the city a solemn, funereal look. The smog was so deep it reminded me of the fog I’d watched roll in over Twin Peaks the previous afternoon at Grant’s house. Out over the ocean, the sun inflamed the wispy clouds. The little stucco houses were lined up in neat rows as far as the eye could see, like modest grave markers. An eastbound jet crossed my field of vision and I was filled with the urge to run.
“That was the sheriff’s PR guy,” Inez said. “They questioned Gaitan. He denies being the leak.”
I turned back to her. “Duh.”
“They tried the reporter. She climbed on her First Amendment high horse.” Inez lit a cigarette, using a wooden kitchen match from a box on her desk.
“I assume that means no retraction.”
She flicked the match into an ashtray. “The sheriff backs up Gaitan; the paper stands by its story.”
“The sheriff backs up Gaitan? Gaitan’s a cowboy at best. At worst, he’s dirty.”
“From your perspective,” she said, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “To the sheriff, he might just be a very zealous cop.”
“Who hates blacks and gays and plants evidence in drug cases.”
“All unproven allegations,” she reminded me. When I didn’t answer, she continued, “I know you don’t want to turn this into a media circus, but now that they have your name, they’re going to hound you until you respond. Let’s do it in our way and on our turf.” She smiled. “Trust me, Henry. I know what I’m doing.”
I looked at her. Years earlier, when we were both young public defenders, she told me the only part of trial she really enjoyed was the summation, when she knew the jurors were transfixed by her every move, hanging on her every word. We were deep in our cups—I was still drinking—and I remember she leaned against me, her heavy, scented hair falling against my cheek, and giggled, “I love it when they watch me. It’s better than sex.”
“You should consider what effect this might have when you run for mayor,” I said now.
“I’m only defending an old friend’s reputation from police excess.”
“An old friend you thought might be a murderer.”
Her eyes were hard and bright in her expensively madeup face. She crushed her lipsticked cigarette in the ashtray. “In politics it pays to assume the worst about everyone,” she said. “You’re rarely disappointed. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering if she would have been so anxious to stand beside me if I had been guilty.
“Don’t be childish,” she said. “Amerian was a whore. You slept with him. If you consort with lowlifes you’ve got to expect complications.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it your way. We’ll meet the press.”
“I do the talking,” she said, reaching for the phone.
Inez had deployed an associate from the firm to drive past my house. He reported four TV vans parked outside, so I checked into a hotel under a false name, ordered in a pizza and called voice mail. Eighteen messages from friends, colleagues and clients. Most expressed concern, but some had phoned in the same spirit that makes people slow down at the site of a traffic accident. I didn’t return those calls. By the ten o’clock news, KPRA had obtained a picture of me that I got to watch appear on the screen behind the broad shoulders of a male-model anchorman above the caption: SERIAL KILLING SUSPECT. I turned the TV off and worked on my statement for the press conference the next morning. At around one, after a final cheerleading call from Inez, I turned in.
I woke up an hour later, freezing. The air-conditioning had gone on overdrive. I shut it off and drifted back to sleep, but woke up a second time, drenched in sweat. I opened a window that looked out on a courtyard. The red night sky seemed to pulsate, as if lit by a distant fire. A draught of ocean air rustled through the banana trees and fluttered the still, blue surface of the pool. Anxiety knotted my stomach when I considered the prospect of pleading my story to an audience of skeptical reporters. The feeling was similar to the anxiety I experienced when I told someone I was gay for the first time, never knowing whether the response would be acceptance, repulsion or something in-between, polite and noncommittal. It occurred to me that my empathy for my clients must come from my own half-submerged feeling of being constantly on trial and having to establish my normality over and over in the face of the presumption that gays are freaks or monsters. The irony was that my sympathies were with the freaks and monsters, just as it was with my clients and not the hypocritical good burghers who passed judgment on them. I returned to bed and lay awake staring at the ceiling, where lighter shadows danced across the darker ones. What had the old psychic told me at Forest Lawn when I asked her to predict my future, nothing you can’t survive? Cold comfort at four in the morning.
The press conference was held in the public meeting room of the shopping center that adjoined Inez’s office building. It had been a slow summer for scandal, and we had a packed house. After associates from Inez’s firm handed out copies of the photos from the deputies’ bathroom at sheriff’s headquarters, she read a statement explaining away the evidence of my connection to Alex’s murder and pointing out that no evidence connected me to Baldwin’s killing. “In fact,” she continued, “because the police had my client under surveillance the night of the second murder, they know beyond any doubt that he is innocent, but they continue to harass and defame him because of a pervasive homophobia in the sheriff’s department personified by the lead detective in the case, Montezuma Gaitan. Because of this bias against homosexuals, the sheriff has ignored the obvious fact that these murders were hate crimes. We informed the sheriff some time ago that the first victim, Alex Amerian, was gay bashed, not once, but twice in the months before his murder and …”
It had been a long time since I’d seen Inez in action and I’d forgotten how good she was at this. She wore an authoritative blue suit and she had tied her hair back in a schoolmarmish bow. Standing beside her, I watched some of the reporters begin to nod agreement as she tore into the sheriff’s department, not even aware they were doing it. I spotted Richie at the back of the room. He gave me a thumbs-up.
“… will file a malicious prosecution action if the department does not immediately issue a statement that my client is not and never was a suspect in these tragic killings. Furthermore, ladies and gentlemen of the media, now that you are aware of the true facts of this case, I must also warn you that we will take legal action against any news organization that continues to refer to my client as a suspect. And now, Mr. Rios will say a few words.”
I went to the podium, looked at the sea of hardened, curious faces, and said, “It’s unfortunate that simply by being gay, one can become a suspect in a murder case, but that’s what happened here. There was a time when police didn’t bother to investigate the murders of gay people or, for that matter, blacks or Latinos, because one more or less of us was not considered anything to get excited about. Even today, it still seems that police bigotry plays a bigger role in their investigation of hate crimes against gays than the actual evidence. The sheriff’s department knows by now that I am innocent of these crimes. I call upon the department to exonerate me and give me back my reputation. That’s all.”
When the press conference was over, there was a rush to the door and, presumably, across town to sheriff’s headquarters. Only Richie remained behind.
“You were fabulous,” he told Inez. “You had them eating out of your hand.”
I began to introduce them. Inez said, “I know Richie. His magazine profiled me when I went to DC. You two are friends?”
“I’m Henry’s imaginary friend,” Richie replied. “The one who slipped him the photos of the little boy’s room at sheriff’s headquarters.”
“Sorry I didn’t mention the magazine,” I said.
He brushed it aside. “I’m already working on the press release.”
“How do you think they’ll play the story?” Inez asked him.
“Listen, you did for Henry what Johnny Cochran did for O.J.,” he said. “The press will be all over the sheriff with those pictures. By the time they’re finished with him, no one’s going to care or remember that Henry was a suspect.”
“Unlike O.J. Simpson,” I reminded him, “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s not the point, anymore,” Richie replied.
The press conference was on Wednesday morning. That afternoon, the sheriff declined comment on Inez’s allegations, but a liberal member of the board of supervisors called for a special commission to investigate them. The story dominated that night’s news broadcasts, with follow-ups the next day, but by the weekend it had gone into suspended animation, as everyone, including me, waited for the next development. I used the time to call my clients and reassure them I was not going to jail for murder. By and large, the cons were more amused than concerned about my situation, because they knew how the cops could be once you made their shit list. They all had stories about rousts and hassles and some of them were even true. Many were more surprised by the news I was gay. A couple demanded another lawyer; one propositioned me.
A week after the press conference, I called Inez to ask whether she’d heard anything from the sheriff.
“Nothing,” she said, unworriedly.
“What do you think is going on?”
“The sheriff’s an elected official,” she reminded me. “He can’t afford to alienate anyone, that’s why he’s not commenting. My guess is that he’ll lay low and hope all this blows over.”
“Will the press let him do that?”
“Until something else happens, there’s no story,” she said. “Even the media doesn’t make things up. Yet.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“They’ll never admit any wrongdoing, but I bet you’ve seen the last of Detective Gaitan.”
“Everyone’s waiting for another murder, aren’t they, Inez?”
“Just make sure you’re far away when it happens.”
Late Friday afternoon, there was a knock at the door. I assumed it was a solicitor, but when I looked through the peephole I saw two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and a patrol car pulled into my driveway. I turned around, went to the phone and dialed Inez at home. Her machine picked up. I left a message and answered the door.
“Yes, what can I do for you?” I asked them.
One was white, one Latino, but otherwise they could have been twins, six-two or three, square-jawed, crew-cut, pneumatic muscles bulging beneath their uniforms. They weren’t wearing badges.
“You Henry Rios?” the Latino cop asked.
“That’s right. Who are you?”
“We have a warrant for your arrest,” the white one said. He had wet blue eyes, a saint’s eyes.
“On what charge?”
“Auto theft,” he said. “Two counts.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
“You see anyone laughing?”
“Let me see the warrant.”
The white cop handed me the arrest warrant. The defendant had my name, but according to his birthdate was twenty years younger than me.
“Wrong Henry Rios,” I said. “If you’ll let me get my driver’s license, I’ll show you …”
The Latino cop pulled his cuffs from his belt and said, “Put your hands behind your back.”
Trying to remain calm, I said, “This Henry Rios is twenty-three years old. I’m forty-five. You can see I’m not the man you’re looking for.”
The white cop grabbed my shoulder, flipped me around and slammed my face against the wall. The other one cuffed me.
“Turn around.”
I turned, tasting blood in my mouth. “What the hell’s going on here?”
The Latino cop grinned and said, “We’re taking you for a ride, counsel.”
I looked at him and understood immediately what was happening.
“Gaitan put you up to this.”
The white cop pushed me down the steps to the patrol car. “Let’s go.”
We drove out of the city on the 5 North into the vast unincorporated areas of Los Angeles that were the sheriff’s domain. The cops ignored my questions about our destination. An hour out of the city, they turned off the 5 onto the 114, the road into the high desert. Dusk had fallen. The landscape, familiar from thousands of Westerns, was mountainous and austere, the ground covered by low growing vegetation, creosote and burro bush, broken only by solitary Joshua trees. We got off the freeway and headed toward a blur of city lights. We drove down a road as brightly lit as a carnival midway with fast-food restaurants and car dealerships. Drivers in other cars glanced at me and then looked quickly away. The glittering road trailed off to a row of shuttered businesses. It was getting darker. We turned off the main road to a bumpy side street. A splintering sign read: WELCOME TO ROYAL PALMS HOMES. We turned again. Around me the frames of unfinished houses rose against the deep blue desert sky. Abruptly, the car stopped. The Latino cop cut the lights.
“Where are we?”
“You’ll find out,” he said.
The white cop hauled me out of the backseat and pushed me toward one of the houses. The air was cold and dry. There was a stack of four-by-fours on the ground. The wood was old, decaying. The houses had been abandoned. I staggered forward until the cop behind me, the one with the saintly eyes, yanked at the handcuffs and ordered me to stop.
“Get down on your knees,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder. His partner had come up beside him. Their faces were lost in the gloom.
“What are you doing?”
“I said, get down on your knees,” he said, sliding his service revolver out of its holster. A Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic. Standard issue. He laid his finger on the barrel, regulation-style. He only had to slip it onto the trigger and squeeze.
“What’s the problem, Henry?” the Latino cop said. “Ain’t that where you fags spend most of your time?”
I spat, “Fuck you” at his smirking face.
The white cop grabbed the cuffs, kicked my legs out from beneath me and forced me down. He scowled, not from anger but concentration, and lowered his revolver to the level of my eyes. I looked up. His eyes had disappeared into shadow but when he stooped down to murmur, “Face the other way,” I saw them again, mournful still.
“Don’t do this,” I said.
“Turn your head,” he said, louder, irritated.
I turned my face away from him and stared through the doorway of the skeleton house to a purple ridge between two mountains where a quarter moon was rising. I felt the gun gently probe my neck. Cold tears began to drip down my face.
“Think pretty thoughts,” the Latino cop said.
I drifted out of myself. I could see us there, a man kneeling before the bones of a house, two big men standing shoulder to shoulder behind him, one with his arm outstretched, the gun grazing the neck of the kneeling man. The bare terrain, the dark mountains, the big sky tumbling around them, the stars as watchful as eyes, as tremulous as souls. The man with the gun lifted it slightly until it pressed against the skull of the kneeling man. The kneeling man screamed, “No!” As his echo died, the man with the gun, instead of shooting, turned his hand and slammed the barrel into the back of the kneeling man’s head.
I toppled forward. The Latino cop stepped in front of me, sliding his nightstick from his belt. The sad-eyed white cop came around the other side. I curled into the fetal position just as I had as a child when my father cornered me. After a few minutes, I could no longer tell whether it was his voice or theirs that called me queer and maricón.
I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed. My body resisted consciousness and I soon knew why. The smallest movement was an electric jolt. Even my hair hurt. The left side of my body throbbed dully. The room swam slowly into focus. Cinderblock walls painted nausea green, an old-fashioned air conditioner in one window, steel bars in the other. A closet, a bathroom. Across from the bed, a steel door with a narrow, horizontal window in it. A stripe of face appeared in the glass. Eyes, nose, hair. There was a clank and then the door opened to reveal Inez Montoya, a sheriff’s deputy and a woman in a doctor’s white jacket.
“Why is he handcuffed?” Inez demanded.
“He’s under arrest,” the cowed deputy explained.
She shoved a paper at him. “This is a court order for his immediate release. Uncuff him.” The deputy gingerly stepped past her and complied with her demand. To the woman behind her, she said, “Can he be moved?”
“There are no broken bones,” she said, “but he’s probably in a lot of pain.”
“No probably about it,” I said weakly. “I hurt like hell. What happened?”
Inez came to the side of the bed. “I don’t know. They found you sitting in the lobby last night in cuffs. You told the jailer to call me. Do you remember anything?”
“They hauled me out to the desert and put a gun to my head. Sheriff’s deputies.”
“Gaitan?”
“No, some thug friends of his. Shit, I hurt.”
“I know,” she said, touching my hand lightly, “but, Henry, while they had you in custody last night there was another murder in West Hollywood.”
I lay back in bed and laughed until I choked on the pain.
The third victim’s name was Tom Jellicoe, twenty-seven, a sales associate at Barney’s in Beverly Hills. He was last seen getting into a cab by the bouncer of the after-hours club which he had just left. The next day, his body was found behind a discount shoe store that fronted Santa Monica Boulevard. He’d been tossed naked into the Dumpster, beaten and stabbed, the words FAG-AIDS etched across his chest. I studied his picture in the Times. Streaked hair, pudgy, smooth-faced. Cute but only just. Nothing special about him except the manner of his death.
The Times characterized the murders as “puzzling to police” and went on to say that “one man had been questioned in connection with the earlier murders, but no arrests have been made.” The paper’s libel lawyers were more cautious than the TV stations. They continued to broadcast my name and picture in their reporting of Jellicoe’s murder, albeit also running clips from the press conference. Anticipating this, Inez had wanted to hold another press conference on the steps of the hospital, but I asked for a few days for the swelling to go down, both physical and psychological, before we made any statements. She quickly agreed, making soothing noises about my need to rest and recover from the trauma of the assault, and I let her believe that was all the damage there was. I couldn’t tell her that what had really happened out there was when the cop had pressed his gun against the back of my neck and I knew I was going to die, in the last second, after I shouted “No,” I felt not terror but relief. Maybe it was no more than a chemical reaction of the body to ease the inevitable moment of death, but it bothered me how easily prepared I was to let go. Had Tom Jellicoe felt something similar in the last seconds of his life? Was he glad to be done with it? I tossed the paper into the recycle bin.
The doorbell chimed. I hobbled to the door in my bathrobe, on a sprained ankle, and put my eye to the peephole. My visitor was wearing a flowered shirt and khaki shorts that showed thick, pale legs, but the mirrored sunglasses still made him look like a redneck cop from the wrong side of the bayou. Odell. When I opened the door, his glasses reflected my bare, battered torso.
“Jesus,” he said.
“But no broken bones,” I said, my refrain to everyone who had seen me in the past three days. “I’m guessing from your get-up this isn’t an official visit.”
“I heard what happened,” he said, removing the mirrored glasses.
“Really?” I said, leading him into the living room. “Maybe you can explain it to me because I’m still not sure.”
“What I heard was secondhand. Hearsay. I’d like to hear your version.”
“Why, Sergeant? Why should I talk to you?”
“Because I have information that could help you if you decide to take some kind of legal action against the department,” he said.
“Off the record, of course.”
His small, bright, intelligent eyes met mine. “That depends.”
I told him what I remembered. “At some point as they were working me over,” I concluded, “I passed out. I came to in the jail ward of the local hospital where they’d dropped me off, charged with resisting arrest.”
“What were their names?”
“They weren’t wearing shields.”
“What about the booking sheet?”
“I was never booked. They left me sitting on a bench in cuffs. There’s a note in the jailer’s log with my name and the charges beside it, but he swears he didn’t write it. He claims he didn’t even see them bring me in.”
“Would you recognize the deputies if you saw them again?”
“I don’t know. Most of the time I was staring at the backs of their heads. When the one cop pulled his gun on me, his face got so big I could’ve counted the hairs in his eyelashes, but now it’s fading. My doctor says I have a mild concussion, and between that and the painkillers, my memories are sketchy.” I yawned. “You work for the sheriff. Do you know who they were?”
He seemed to study my injuries before he spoke. “Six, seven years ago,” he said, “there were rumors about a paramilitary group inside the sheriff’s department. Maybe you remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“It was supposed to be centered out at the Antelope Valley station. There’s a lot of crazies out in the high desert, survivalists, militia-types, white supremacists.” He grinned. “It’s a little bit of Idaho right here in Southern California. A lot of deputies live out there.”
“The Simi Valley syndrome,” I said, referring to the distant suburb of LA county that was home to many LA police officers. It was famous as the site of the first Rodney King trial in which a white jury’s verdict acquitting the cops who beat King precipitated a riot.
He shrugged. “Something like that. The sheriff wanted to get to the bottom of things, so he sent a couple of deputies in kind of an undercover capacity. I was one of them.”
“You worked Internal Affairs?”
“Not officially,” he replied. “The sheriff just figured I’d fit in.”
I nodded, easily imagining Odell in the role of a bigot. “Is there a militia inside the department?”
“It was more like twenty guys getting together in a bar once a week, complaining about how the world’s going to hell in a handbasket and how they would take care of business if they were in charge, and then one day a light goes on and they realize, hey, we’re police officers. We are in charge, at least out there on the streets.”
“Every cop eventually has that revelation.”
“These guys were more organized about it,” he said. “They put themselves in positions where they could give each other cover.”
“You mean cover-up,” I said. “For what?”
“Excessive force, illegal searches, falsified police reports, planted evidence,” he said. “Everything you defense lawyers claim we do, these guys did, and they protected each other.”
“Was Gaitan one of them?”
He nodded. “He was four years out there after he did his stint at the jail.”
“What happened with your investigation?”
“We got the goods on six of ’em.”
“Including Gaitan?”
“No, but we knew he was involved. Deeply involved.”
“And the ones you caught?”
“Five were allowed to resign to avoid criminal prosecution. The last one, he pleaded no contest to one count of falsifying reports and served nine months. Another dozen, including Gaitan, were reassigned.”
“That’s not even a slap on the wrist.”
“The sheriff wanted to break things up, not send deputies to prison. Bad for morale.”
“Not to mention public relations.”
“LA is the hardest place in the country to police,” Odell said. “People here want it both ways. They expect us to put our lives on the line for them but they dump on us every chance they get.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“I’m not going to argue the point,” he said, the softness of his voice concealing steel.
“So why are you here?”
“I think the men who came to your door were two of the guys who resigned.”
“Where’d they get the gear?”
“From their buddies in the department,” he said. “We didn’t catch all of them and some who were reassigned have drifted back. I hear on the grapevine they’ve started meeting again. I’d be surprised if their attitudes toward law enforcement have changed.”
“Police vigilantes,” I said. “Does the sheriff know they’re back?”
“He does now.”
“Gaitan was behind it, wasn’t he?”
“That’s gonna be hard to prove. Mac’s much smarter than you give him credit for.”
“Smarter? He’s just a thug.”
“That press conference of yours was a provocation.”
“To him or to you?”
“It hurt all of us,” he said, emphatically. “Good cops and bad. I’ve personally worked real hard to build up trust with the gay community in West Hollywood. You destroyed that.”
“Blame the bigots in your department. Besides, how do you think I felt about having my name appear in the media as a murder suspect?”
“That was Gaitan working freelance.”
“It doesn’t matter. I had to respond. My reputation was on the line.”
“We could’ve worked something out,” he said.
“Not according to your boss, the sheriff,” I replied.
“He listens to me.”
It occurred to me that while Odell might look like a corpulent southern sheriff, he had the soul of a frontier lawman; Gary Cooper’s heart in Andy Devine’s body.
“I thought you worked for him.”
“Chuck Ramsay and I go back a long way. We have our understandings.”
“Why aren’t you running West Hollywood if you’re so tight with him?”
“I do,” he said. It was a simple declaration of fact. “I’m not still a sergeant because I can’t get promoted. I choose to stay in the field.”
“If everything’s copacetic with you and the sheriff, why are you giving me ammunition to sue the department?”
“I don’t like what happened to you.”
“That’s touching,” I said, “if not entirely convincing.”
He shrugged. “Believe what you want. There’s a problem in the department. I want to see it solved.”
“You’re an insider, Odell,” I said. “Someone like you doesn’t tell tales out of school unless you’ve already been to your friend, the sheriff, and he blew you off. Is that what happened?”
He got up to go. “I did what I came to do,” he announced. “The ball’s in your court.” On his way out, he paused and said, “But I’d keep an eye on your lawyer.”
The next morning, while I was still pondering Odell’s warning, Inez turned up at my door with a bag of pan dulce and a box of Abuelita cocoa. She removed her pinstriped jacket and went into the kitchen, where she went about making the cinnamon-laden hot chocolate. Refusing my offers of help, she clattered through the shelves and cupboards, cursing when she couldn’t find what she was looking for. I had never seen Inez in a kitchen before. It was unnerving.
“Whenever I was upset, my mother always served me pan dulce and Abuelita” she said, running her finger along the rim of a serving plate. “Look at the dust on this. When was the last time you cleaned in here?”
“I don’t dust my dishes. Wouldn’t it be easier if I did this?”
“You’re sick,” she said. “Fuck! I burned my hand on the fucking pot. Don’t you have pot holders?”
“On the rack under the sink. And I’m not sick, Inez, I’m battered.”
She turned from the stove to me. I was wearing drawstring pants and sandals. “You look better than you did in the hospital.”
“They were very careful how they hit me,” I said. “Soft tissue damage only.”
She poured the chocolate into mugs. “Here, you take these. I’ll bring the pastries. Let’s sit outside.”
It was a musty midsummer morning, the air dry and stale. The canyon was more brown than green. Fire season. We sat down at the picnic table. The chocolate burned my tongue while the pan dulce, a little mound of bread topped with squares of crumbly sugar, was flavorless. So much for Inez’s home remedy. My mother gave me chicken soup when I was sick.
“I’ve been talking to the sheriff,” Inez said. “I think we’ve worked out a deal.”
“A deal? Three days ago you wanted me to show my wounds to the world.”
“The sheriff disclaims any responsibility for the men who abducted you,” she said, through a mouthful of pastry. “He says they were impersonating deputies.”
“I know,” I replied. “Odell told me.”
“Odell?” she said, narrowing her eyes. “When did you talk to him?”
I told her about his visit, leaving out his warning at the end.
“He should’ve come to me,” she huffed when I finished. “Still, I guess it doesn’t matter as long as you understand why it would be a bad idea to sue the department.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I want to sue the department. I want to crucify the department. Those men were acting under color of authority whether or not they were employed as deputies.”
“Do you know how hard that’s going to be to prove?” she asked, blowing across her cup. “Or how long it’s going to take? Years, Henry. Not to mention the expense.” She sipped her chocolate. “I’ve been acting as your lawyer as a favor, but if you take on the sheriff, the firm will expect to be paid for my time and I’m not even sure I’m the best lawyer to handle this kind of case.”
“Inez, I was kidnapped, threatened with a gun and beaten,” I said. “I want those punks punished, and if Gaitan is connected, I want him punished, too. I don’t care how long it takes or how much it costs.”
“I understand,” she said. “You feel victimized, but think about it as a lawyer for a minute. You’ll be in discovery for a decade just to figure out the identity of the men who kidnapped you, and you’ll spend another ten years arguing over whether the department was liable for the action of a couple of rogue cops or ex-cops. Are you ready to depose every deputy who works or ever worked out in Antelope Valley? Subpoena every piece of paper? Because that’s what it’s going to take to get answers, if you can get answers. We both know cops and cons don’t snitch.”
“One of the many ways you can’t tell them apart,” I said. “Odell will cooperate.”
“I wouldn’t count on him,” she said. “He may have a hair up his ass now but he’s a company man. He’ll come around. Besides, what about that daughter of his in LAPD? They find out the old man’s a snitch and they’ll make her life miserable.”
I was exhausted and my body ached. Inez had covered all the angles and she was right about everything. The case would be complicated and difficult even if Odell cooperated and if he didn’t, I could forget about it. If Inez bailed, I faced the further difficulty of finding a lawyer who would work on at least partial contingency. Unless I represented myself, but I was a criminal lawyer, not a civil one, and I would be over my head from day one.
“You said you cut a deal with the sheriff,” I said, wearily. “What kind of deal?”
She perked up. “He agrees to issue a statement completely exonerating you from any suspicion in the West Hollywood murders and apologizing for the leak to the press. He also agrees to launch an internal investigation into whether anyone in his department was involved in your abduction, and if they were, he’ll turn their names over to the District Attorney for prosecution. Finally, he agrees to a cash settlement. A hundred thousand dollars.”
I laughed incredulously. “He denies any responsibility, but he’s willing to buy me off.”
“He denies legal responsibility,” she said. “But he knows he’s got a problem with his people out in the desert, so he accepts moral responsibility.”
“Accepting moral responsibility is the last refuge of politicians. It’s meaningless,” I said. “Plus, Inez, how does he propose to get the board of supervisors to approve a hundred thousand dollar settlement on a claim that doesn’t officially exist?”
“That’s his worry,” she said. She licked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Deal?”
“What’s his quid pro quo?”
“We keep our mouths shut.”
“About the settlement or what happened out there in the desert?”
“Both,” she said. I looked at her. She met my eyes and gazed back at me. There was a lot of history in that back and forth. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, Henry. It’s in everyone’s best interest.”
“Does this buy the sheriff’s neutrality in the mayor’s race or his endorsement?”
Her face slowly darkened and she pulled herself up from the table.
“That’s it. You go tilt at your fucking windmills alone.”
“No, wait,” I said, laying a restraining hand on her arm. “Don’t leave, Inez. I’m sorry. I’m not in the best frame of mind.”
“I know what happened to you out there,” she said, “but you have to be reasonable.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I should be reasonable. A messy case like this could eat up the next five years of my life. Ruin my practice, bankrupt me. Drive me crazy. I just hate that Gaitan will get away with humiliating me.”
“That’s playground thinking.”
“I can taste his hatred in the back of my throat.”
“Maybe you’re tasting your own,” she said. “What do you care? He’s an asshole.”
“It was guys like Gaitan who expelled me from la raza for being gay.”
“You let them,” she said. “They tried to run me out because I’m a tough broad. I fought back. So could you.”
“It’s too late,” I said. “I don’t belong anymore. I don’t want to belong.”
“So you’re happy with this life?” she said, gesturing toward my empty house. “Your boyfriend’s ashes on the fireplace. Dusty dishes in the kitchen. Wake up, Henry. Josh is dead, not you.”
“You are a tough broad,” I said, smiling. “Why aren’t you a lesbian?”
“Diosito mio, I get so sick of you men sometimes, I wish I was a dyke,” she replied. “What can I say? I like boys. Do I have to tell you why?”
“Make the deal,” I said. “We’ll split the money.”
“You need it more than I do.”
“Please, leave me with a shred of male dignity.”
She kissed my forehead maternally. “I’ll take care of it. You get better. ’Bye, m’ijo.”
I SAT ON the deck for a long time after Inez left. Letting Alex Amerian into my life had brought me one disaster after another, and I should have been relieved that it was finally over. But I wasn’t. There was a man out there venting his hatred for people like me on the bodies of young men. Some of those entrusted to find him shared his hatred for his victims. It was hard to say from whom the rest of us had the most to fear.