“ARE YOU SURE?”
“I heard it from one of the cops at the scene,” Richie said. “What happened last night?”
From where I was standing I could see across the breakfast counter into the kitchen. There was a rag in the sink with Alex Amerian’s blood on it.
“Do you think I killed him?”
“No, of course not,” Richie said. “It must have happened after he left you. Did he say where he was going?”
I had walked into the kitchen. I picked the rag out of the sink and carried it into the pantry, where I tossed it into the washing machine.
“Henry?”
“He didn’t say. I assumed it was a John.”
There was a pause. “He told you he was a hustler.”
Something clicked. “You hired him last night.”
“That’s crazy. He didn’t come here.”
“No,” I said. “You hired him to go out with me.”
“I was only trying to help you get over this thing you had about him and Josh.”
“With what, a sex exorcism?” I asked bitterly.
“He wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“It was part of his act,” I said. “The hardened pro with the heart of gold. Was that your idea, too? Well, it didn’t work, Richie. He couldn’t keep up the act. His mask slipped and it got a little ugly at the end.”
“What happened?”
“I shoved him, he hurt himself.”
“How bad.”
“A bloody nose.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Henry,” he said.
“Maybe my mask slipped a little, too.”
Richie said, “He kept an appointment book. Your name will be in it for last night.”
“Then so will the name of his last appointment.”
“You were supposed to be his last appointment,” Richie said. “I paid him for an all-nighter.”
The bloody rag, my name in his appointment book. I felt a surge of panic.
“Have you talked to his roommate?” I asked. “Katie?”
“The speed-freak fag hag? I’ve been calling all day. The line is busy.”
“Maybe he told her where he was going last night after he left here.”
“She deals drugs, Henry. If she gets wind that Alex is dead and the cops are coming, she’ll split.”
“Then I’d better get to her first,” I said.
The moment I got into my car, I went into lawyer mode. I’d had sex and then scuffled with Alex Amerian hours before he was murdered. I knew exactly how those circumstances would look to a cop and what they would do with them. Once they focused on a suspect, the object of their investigation was to establish guilt. It was up to me to find exonerating evidence now, before I was incriminated. Meanwhile, I kept a lid on my feelings about Alex’s murder.
I parked across the street from Alex’s house where I’d so often kept nocturnal vigil the past few weeks. There were no signs of cops in the vicinity. I got out and walked to his front door. When no one responded to the bell, I tried the door. It was unlocked.
“Katie, are you … ?” The words died in my mouth. I saw why Richie had been getting a busy signal when he called. The phone had been yanked from the jack and left in the hall. I saw no other immediate sign of disturbance, but the air was charged. I proceeded down the hall, glanced into the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink. I made my way to the bedrooms in the back of the house. I deduced from the contents of the closets which room was Alex’s and which was Katie’s. In his room was a king-sized bed, a TV and VCR and a dresser. On top of the dresser was some change, unopened bills, a stack of men’s fashion magazines, Detour, GQ. No sign of an appointment book.
She slept on a mattress on the floor and kept her clothes in cardboard boxes. She had fashioned a desk from two sawhorses and a piece of particle board. On the table were pay stubs from a temp agency. There was also a computer monitor, a keyboard and a printer but no computer. As I stared at the monitor, I realized there were no personal papers of any kind in either room, no letters, address books, Rolodexes. The rice-paper shade that covered her window stirred. I rolled it up. The window was open, the screen had been removed. The signs were subtle, but it looked like someone had entered the house and removed things. Her computer, Alex’s appointment book, other papers of a personal nature. Unless, of course, the computer was being repaired, and he had taken his book with him, and there were no personal papers.
I slipped one of the pay stubs into my pocket and went out in the hall. At the other end of it, the door was thrown open and two uniformed sheriffs burst into the living room with their guns drawn.
“Put your hands way up in the air,” one of them shouted at me.
I raised my hands. “I’m not armed,” I said.
“Stay put,” the first cop said, while the second one came toward me, gun still drawn, and patted me down.
“He’s clean,” he shouted to his partner. “You can put your hands down, but keep them where I can see them.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
A third man had entered the house. He was in plainclothes but unmistakably a cop. He had thinning silver hair, a big gut and a face like a mound of mashed potatoes. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses. As he approached me, he removed them revealing small, shrewd eyes that brought his soft, pale face into sharp relief, like a blurred movie image that comes suddenly into focus. I saw intelligence, caution, cynicism.
“I’m Sergeant Odell,” he said. “Is that your black Accord parked across the street?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And what’s your name, sir?”
“Rios. Henry Rios.”
“You want to step outside with me, Mr. Rios?”
“Why? What’s going on here?”
“Well as near I can tell, you’re trespassing.”
“I know the people who live here.”
Odell smiled. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone here but us chickens.”
“The door was unlocked. I was concerned. I came in.”
“Why don’t we talk about it outside,” Odell said, taking me by the elbow. I shook him off. He stepped back and let me go ahead. The two uniformed deputies had holstered their revolvers but their postures warned me against sudden movement. I stepped out onto the porch, where another deputy was standing with a man in civilian clothes who looked remotely familiar to me.
“That’s him,” he said excitedly, pointing at me. “He’s been parking in front of my house two, three times a week in the middle of the night, just watching this place. I told him if he didn’t quit, I’d call the cops. Good thing I wrote down his license plate.”
Odell breathed heavily beside me. A fat man’s breath. “Good thing, huh,” he murmured.
“I know the man who lives here,” I told him. “His name is Alex Amerian.”
“Uh-huh,” Odell said. “Last night someone killed him, Mr. Rios. I’d like you to come down to the station and answer a few questions.”
“You can question me here,” I said.
“I’m not the man you need to talk to,” he said. “That would be Detective Gaitan from Homicide and he’s at the station.” When I didn’t immediately respond, he added quietly. “I could arrest you for trespassing and take you down in handcuffs. It’s up to you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I was assisted into the back of a patrol car. Odell got in beside me and we were driven down Santa Monica Boulevard the dozen or so blocks to the West Hollywood sheriff’s station at San Vicente. It was Saturday afternoon and the carnival that the city became on weekend nights had already begun. The windows of Twenty-Four Hour Fitness, the block-long gym just west of La Cienega, were filled with young men diligently racking their muscles on chrome-and-steel machines. The boutiques and coffeehouses were filled with weekend gays who gave away their tourist status with clothes and haircuts that were six months behind the times. Skinny twentysomethings paraded around shirtless, revealing elaborate tattoos and piercings. An old-fashioned queen in a white caftan and painted eyebrows walked a brace of poodles, swaying slightly right to left as if acknowledging applause only he could hear. A teenage Latino boy in the passenger seat of the car in front of us stuck his head out of the window and screamed, “Motherfuckin’ faggots!” at two suburban-looking men holding hands in front of a hamburger stand.
“Pull that kid over,” Odell said to the deputy driving the car. He turned on the siren and flashed his lights at the car, a beaten-up low rider. It pulled to the curb across the street from the low brown-brick building that housed the sheriff. We came to a stop behind it.
“Now what, Sarge?” the deputy asked.
“Bring him back here.”
The deputy got out, approached the car, talked to the driver. A moment later, the kid who had yelled the epithet got out of the car and was sullenly escorted to the patrol car. He was a skinny kid in a plaid shirt and jeans that were a half-dozen sizes too big for him hanging off his hips. A gang-banger. Odell rolled down his window and gestured to the deputy to bring the kid to him.
“I’m Sergeant Odell,” he said. “What’s your name, son?”
“I didn’t do nothing,” the kid replied.
“We’ll get to that,” Odell replied. “I asked you your name.”
“Jimmy,” he said sullenly. “Jimmy Saldana.”
“Where you headed, Jimmy?”
“Venice.”
“Where you coming from?”
“Boyle Heights.”
“West Hollywood’s a little out of your way, Jimmy,” Odell said. “What are you doing here?”
The kid shrugged, stared at his feet.
“Come to look at the fags, huh?” Odell said.
Jimmy lifted his head and apparently thinking Odell was an ally, smiled. “Yeah, the freaks.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Jimmy,” Odell said, in a voice filled with quiet menace. “This is my town and these are my people. I keep a list of punks that come in here and now your name’s on it. If I catch you again, I’ll haul your sorry cholo ass to jail, where you’ll get to meet the real freaks. Now get out of here and tell your partner to take the 10 next time he wants to go to Venice.”
Furious but frightened, the boy shuffled off with as much dignity as his sagging pants allowed.
“That was an illegal detention,” I said.
Odell looked at me. “You a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “Interesting.”
We pulled into the parking lot behind the station where the patrol cars were parked and came in through the back entrance into a corridor. Behind a glass wall were a set of holding cells and an office where the jailer sat. The station was bright and clean and looked relatively new. The deputies in their khaki shirts and tan pants looked more like forest rangers than cops. But Odell’s detention of the kid had reminded me that among the defense bar the sheriff’s department had a worse reputation than LAPD for violating suspects’ rights, because sheriff’s deputies began their training at county jail, where they were vastly outnumbered by the inmates and developed a siege mentality they carried into the streets.
“You mind waiting here for a minute, Mr. Rios?” Odell said.
“I’d like to get this over with.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
The deputy who’d driven us to the station departed and I was left alone in the corridor. It would have been easy enough to slip out the back door, and for a minute I considered it. I was not in a good position here. Anything I said would sound incriminating, but refusing to say anything would be equally incriminating. There was no innocent explanation of how I knew Alex, and the story of how I came to spend the last evening of his life with him would have made me suspicious of myself.
Ten minutes later, Odell beckoned me from the other end of the corridor. “Mr. Rios? This way please.”
The room was furnished with a table and four chairs. There was a video camera mounted on the wall in a corner and a wall phone next to the door. A burly Latino cop in a short-sleeved shirt, shiny trousers and a K-Mart tie was waiting in the room when Odell and I entered. The man’s shabby clothes did not disguise his authority. He was fairer-skinned than me, but as unmistakably Mexican: round face, thick salt-and-pepper hair, blunt eyebrows, black eyes. A hard alcoholic paunch. Strong hands, with fingers thick as chorizo. Late thirties, I guessed, but showing signs of heavy wear. He reminded me of my father. It was not a pleasant association.
“Mr. Rios,” he said. “I’m Detective Gaitan. Homicide. I want to ask you a few questions about Alex Amerian. You knew he was murdered last night.”
“Sergeant Odell told me,” I said.
“Sit down, Rios,” Gaitan said, pulling a chair out for himself. “Make yourself comfortable. We’re going to be here for a while.”
“That’s up to me,” I said. “I’m here voluntarily.”
Gaitan slowly lifted his eyes from the manila folder on the table in front of him and stared at me. It was the prison-yard stare with which inmates tried to terrorize each other when no other weapons were at hand. It darkened his eyes with hatred and menace, extinguishing the human light in them. One of my recidivist clients had called it the mirror of death. I knew better than to look away.
“Maybe Odell didn’t mention that I’m a criminal-defense lawyer,” I said. “I have clients on death row, Detective. You’re not going to intimidate me with a jailhouse stare.”
“Then take a look at these,” he said, and opened the folder, spreading its contents across the table. A half-dozen black-and-white photographs of Alex Amerian.
I sat down. Slowly, I picked up the first photograph and studied it as carefully as if it were a trial exhibit, to stave off the horror of what it showed: Alex’s naked body folded into a recycling bin shoved against a cinder-block wall spread with a bougainvillea vine. His head and shoulders, upper chest and legs were visible. The left side of his face had been smashed into pudding, the eye missing from its socket, a fragment of jawbone protruding below what remained of his ear. There were sharp lacerations in the broken flesh that looked like stab wounds. His head had been nearly hacked from the rest of his body. A bougainvillea blossom had fallen into his exposed esophagus. On his chest were what at first looked like deep scratch marks but, in a second photograph, a close-up, were revealed to be letters spelling out the words: KILL FAGS.
I flipped through the other pictures, close-ups, full-body shots, all taken at the scene, ticking off mental notes as if I were preparing a cross-examination. Besides the blows to his face and throat and the carving in his chest, there were other bruises and welts on his body, but they were nonlethal, even superficial. I remembered from the bruises across his back that he was in the business of being beaten up, at least sometimes. Had this begun as an S&M scene that had gotten out of hand? What had he told me? Most of his clients hated themselves for being gay and took it out on him. Something else about the body seemed odd; it was slightly bloated, as if it had been submerged in liquid. And there was something odder still.
“There’s no blood.”
From behind me, Odell said, “What say?”
“He was hacked to death, but there’s no blood in these pictures.” I looked at Gaitan. “He wasn’t killed in the alley.”
“Then where was he killed, Rios?” Gaitan asked. “You should know. You did it.”
I pushed the pictures back into the folder. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“Let’s talk and then you call your lawyer,” Gaitan said.
Before I could answer, Odell said, “You heard the man, Mac. He wants to call his lawyer.”
Without looking away from me, Gaitan said, “Why don’t you take it outside, Lucas? I’ll let you know if I need you.”
Odell slapped his palm against the table. Gaitan jerked his head toward him.
With the same soft menace with which he’d addressed the gang-banger, Odell said, “In my station when a suspect requests a lawyer, questioning stops.”
Suspect?
After I made my call, Odell escorted me to the holding cells.
“I can’t tell whether you and Gaitan were playing good cop/bad cop back there or if he really pissed you off,” I said.
Odell tapped the sally port to get the jailer’s attention and said, “You have more important things to worry about, Mr. Rios.”
“He doesn’t work out of this station, does he?”
The jailer buzzed us in.
“The homicide unit’s downtown,” Odell said. “He’s here as a courtesy. Hey, Tim, Mr. Rios is going to be your guest for a little while, ’til his lawyer gets here.”
“I’ll take care of him,” the slight, fair-haired jailer said. He got up and went to the door that opened to the holding cells. When he asked, “You prefer the Presidential suite or the honeymoon suite?” I detected the camp cadences of a gay man.
“Which has better room service?” I asked.
The jailer grinned; a best-little-boy-in-the-world kind of grin. A brother for sure.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Odell said.
“Sergeant,” I said. “You know you can’t hold me much longer.”
“I can still arrest you for trespassing.”
“A misdemeanor? You’ll have to cite me out.”
He smiled. “Not necessarily, counsel. The way we work it here is, when you arrest someone you fill out a PCD form and ship it to a judge, who has forty hours to either sign off on it or we kick the suspect.”
“PCD? That’s a new one on me.”
“Probable cause determination,” he said. “I’ll let you know when your lawyer gets here.”
“So, Deputy Tim,” I said to the jailer. “Do these cells come with conjugal rights?”
He blushed.
Forty-five minutes later, Inez Montoya, wearing a blue power suit and sneakers and carrying a tattered briefcase, bustled into the jail, with Odell trailing behind her, and demanded of the jailer, “Release my client.”
“Let him out,” Odell said. “You can talk in the interrogation room.”
He took us back to the room where Gaitan had showed me the pictures of Alex and left us there. Inez yanked a chair from beneath the table and plopped herself down. Her heavy bangs fell across her round, cherubic face. She pushed them away impatiently and said, “What the fuck is going on, Henry? I was on my way to dinner with the Governor when my office forwarded your call.”
My friendship with Inez Montoya went back almost twenty years, to when we’d both been public defenders. I’d stayed in criminal law while she’d gone into politics, eventually serving on the Los Angeles city council and two terms in Congress. From the House, she’d gone to HUD, where she spent three years as the assistant secretary. A few months earlier, she’d resigned and returned to Los Angeles. Currently, she was cooling her heels as a partner in a politically powerful Westside law firm while she plotted her race for mayor a year hence. Inez was fierce in everything, including loyalty to old friends, even one like me whom she had long ago written off as a loser.
“I think I’m being held as a suspect in a murder,” I said.
“Madre de Dios,” she muttered. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, and explained.
She listened without expression until I finished, then crushed her cigarette on the floor and said, “That was too lame to be made up.”
“You think I would make up something that makes me look like such a schmuck?”
“You stalk this guy until he agrees to go out with you, then you find out he’s a whore but go to bed with him anyway, then you get pissed off because he was a whore, so you beat him up before sending him off his merry way to get murdered,” she said. “Jesus, Henry, I thought you gay guys were supposed to be different than straight guys.”
“I didn’t exactly stalk him,” I said, trying not to explode at her. “And I didn’t exactly beat him up, and I certainly didn’t know he was on his way to get killed.”
She leveled a warning look at me. “Watch your tone.”
“For Christ’s sake, Inez. I got no sleep last night, I spent the afternoon at Forest Lawn shopping for a grave for Josh, and then I come home to find out that someone murdered my date and now I’m sitting here suspected of the crime. How would you feel?”
She dug into her briefcase for her cigarettes.
“I don’t think you can smoke in here,” I said.
Ignoring me, she lit up and puffed furiously for a few minutes. “You’re going to have to tell the cops the truth,” she said.
I had reluctantly come to the same conclusion myself while I was waiting for her. “I know,” I said, “but it won’t exonerate me. Not in their eyes. I’ll still be a suspect.”
She ran an exasperated hand through her heavy hair. “Pues,” she said. “Who else have they got? But since you didn’t do it, they’ll eventually give up on you.”
“Not before my reputation is destroyed,” I said.
“That’s the least of your worries,” she said. “What’s the name of the cop from homicide?”
“Gaitan,” I said, “but bring the other one in, too. Odell.”
“Odell’s just the watch commander,” she said. “It’s Gaitan’s investigation.”
“Gaitan’s a macho prick,” I said, and told her how he had attempted to question me after I’d requested a lawyer. “Odell stopped him.”
“All right,” she said. “But remember, Henry, you tell them everything, no matter how embarrassing it is for you.”
“You’re not enjoying this, are you, Inez?”
“Not really,” she said. “It’s kind of disgusting. You deserve to be convicted of poor judgment, if nothing else.”
I made my statement into a tape recorder that kept malfunctioning, so that every few minutes I’d have to repeat a sentence.
“I said, the reason I parked across the street from his house was because I was working up my courage to ask him out on a date.”
A look of comic disbelief flashed across Gaitan’s face. “You wanted to date him? Are you a homosexual?”
“Yes, Detective, that’s what I’m saying. I’m gay.”
The disbelief shaded into disgust. “But you’re Mexican, man.”
“Let’s move on,” Inez said.
I felt Gaitan’s silent contempt, as I described my date with Alex and then going back to my house to have sex.
“Sorry,” Odell said. “The machine. Can you repeat that.”
I looked at my hands. “We went to my house and had sex.”
Across the table, Gaitan muttered something.
“What’s that, Mac?” Odell asked. “You want to put something on the tape?”
He shook his head slowly in a gesture of disgust.
“Afterwards,” I continued, “as he was leaving, we got into a scuffle. I knocked him down. Gave him a bloody nose, I think. There was a cab waiting for him outside. He left, to another appointment, he said. That was the last time I saw him.”
“Why did you beat him up?” Gaitan asked.
“He said something disrespectful to me,” I said, hoping it was enough.
“What?” Gaitan persisted. “How could he dis you, Rios?”
“Inez,” I said.
“It’s not important,” she said. “The important thing is when the man left my client’s house he was still alive.”
“If Rios is telling the truth,” Gaitan said, “how come you were at the vic’s house this afternoon?”
“The man who introduced me to Alex called me and told me he’d heard Alex had been murdered. I went to his house to talk to his roommate to see what she knew.”
“Name of the man who introduced you?” Odell asked.
“Richard Florentino. He lives on La Cuesta Way, here in West Hollywood.”
“And how did he know about Amerian?” Gaitan asked.
“He said he’d heard it from one of your deputies,” I said, looking at Odell.
“He say which one?” Odell asked.
“No.”
“Who is this roommate you’re talking about?” Gaitan said.
“Her name is Katie Morse.”
“What did you think she was going to tell you, Rios?”
“I thought she might know where Alex was going after he left my house.”
“Why?”
“Because of this,” I said. “I knew as soon as you guys found out that I’d been with him last night you’d be all over me. I wanted to be prepared.”
“You don’t trust us to do our job?” Gaitan asked.
“I know you guys go in for the obvious answers.”
“That’s because most of the time they’re the right answers,” Odell said.
“Not this time,” I replied. “If you want to know who killed him, find out where he went after he left my house.”
Gaitan tipped his chair back, looked at me with undisguised distaste, and said, “You know what I think, Rios? I think you two had a lover’s spat and you killed him.”
“I’ve cooperated with you completely,” I said. “The only way you’re going to keep me here is to arrest me, and not on some bullshit trespassing charge.”
Odell said, “Will you consent to a search of your house and your car, Mr. Rios?”
“Now? Tonight?”
“If you didn’t do it, you shouldn’t have anything to hide,” he said.
“That’s right, Rios. You want to clear yourself, don’t you?”
“I want a minute with my lawyer.”
The two deputies left the room. “Listen to me, Henry,” Inez said, “I’m the lawyer here. We do this my way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That macho crap, daring Gaitan to arrest you.”
“We all know there’s no probable cause.”
“He’d do it just to harass you,” she said. “Good thing that other cop is here.”
“Do you think they could obtain a search warrant?”
“In a heartbeat. You have something to hide?”
“I told you, I bloodied his nose. They’ll find traces of his blood at my house and his fingerprints all over my car.”
“You explained all that,” she said. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not holding out on me, are you, Henry?”
“You don’t think I did it, do you?”
“Some judge somewhere will sign a search warrant,” she said. “I think you should cooperate. Let them have their search.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She had to think about it. “Of course not,” she said, after a moment.
It was four in the morning before the sheriffs concluded their search of my house. They had impounded my car for a later search, so Inez drove me home and remained with me until the last deputy left. I showed them where I had shoved Alex against the wall, pointed out the bloodstains, retrieved the bloody rag from the washer. Gaitan seemed particularly interested in my bathtub.
“You have a hot tub?” he asked me, emerging from the guest bathroom.
“No,” I said.
One of his deputies broke a glass in the kitchen. Gaitan wandered around the living room, stopped, looked at the urn on the mantel.
“What’s that?”
“It contains my lover’s ashes,” I said.
“Open it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
He picked it up, shook it. “You could hide a knife in here.”
“I won’t open it.”
By now, attracted by our rising voices, Inez had come over. I explained the conflict.
“I could come back with a search warrant,” Gaitan said.
“Forensics can take it and x-ray it,” Inez said. “But you can’t open it.”
“I won’t agree to that,” I said.
“We’re cooperating here, Henry,” she said. “Remember?”
Odell had joined us.
“I want it back tomorrow,” I said.
“I’ll see to it,” Odell said.
“Well, that’s over,” I said to Inez, after the cops had left. “For now.”
She lit the last of her cigarettes. “I’m going home, Henry.”
“Thanks for coming to my rescue,” I said.
She waved it off. “Don’t thank me yet. You’re not in the clear.”
“I’m sorry you missed dinner with the Governor.”
Anger and pity flashed through her eyes. “When we were starting out, you were the one with all the promise. What happened, Henry?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Inez. I’m still here, sober, working, alive.”
“You were supposed to do a lot more.”
“We don’t live in the same world anymore, and in my world, where a lot of guys are dead or drunk, those are major achievements.”
“Well, then, do me a favor and hang on to them. Stay out of trouble.”
I opened the door. “Trouble finds me.”
“Only because you advertise,” she replied, and drove away.
The next day, a deputy returned Josh’s ashes to me. The seal on the urn had been broken.