Early Graves (8 page)

But it was then that Dave had come to know this place at the heart of LA. Brick apartments from the 1920s along one side, hulking old three-story frame houses with jigsaw-work porches and bay windows on the other two sides. The neighborhood hadn’t been exactly upscale even then. In the decades since, paint had peeled, window screens had rusted out, glass had been smashed and replaced by cardboard, or nailed over with plywood. The brick buildings had fared a little better, but not much. Shops were mostly deserted, doorways piled with blown trash. The lettering on painted signs faded over the doors of Mexican cafés. A corner grocery looked flyblown. A place that claimed to sell records and tapes had padlocked grillwork over its doors and windows, and no one inside. Still, life went on upstairs.

He heard voices when he parked the car and got out into a misting thin rainfall. Human voices, television voices. Music from boomboxes, very loud. The television voices spoke Spanish. The other voices spoke black. The music was black. A clutch of black teenage boys slouched at the far corner. Across from them, Latino boys slouched also, watching them. In the park, a solemn, white-haired, heavyset Mexican in plastic rowed a boat on the lake among ducks. He hinged the oars inside the boat, and rummaged in a white plastic supermarket bag, and began tossing bread to the ducks. A young pregnant black woman passed Dave as he fed the parking meter. She was pushing a pram with a baby in it. The baby was looking up at the rain, blinking, giggling. An old white woman bundled in many layers of coats and sweaters and stockings shuffled past. She was bent with the weight of four shopping bags. A man whose color no one could tell crept on hands and knees out of an alleyway and called to Dave. The man was hanging on to a bottle in a paper sack. Dave knew he was being stared at, so he swore at the man and went on.

He found the doorway he wanted. The number was right. It stood half open on a narrow stairway that stank of urine and years of greasy meals. Beer cans, fried chicken boxes, cigarette butts strewed the stairs. A bulging, green plastic garbage bag leaked stinking wetness where it had been dropped and forgotten. Light was supposed to come into the hallway of the second story from windows at either end, but the windows were grimy and the light outdoors was poor anyway. He looked up. In sockets along a smoky ceiling the splintery fragments of light bulbs showed. The walls were dense with spray-painted names and curses. He went along the hall, trying to read numbers on doors. Then he climbed to the third floor, and located the number, and knocked. Loudly, because the hall was filled with all those mingled noises.

A shout came from the other side of the door. He wasn’t sure of the words. He tried the knob. Locked. He sensed he was being watched. He stepped to the stairwell. Below, a plump man in a fly-front coat moved quickly out of sight. Samuels? Dave ran down the stairs. Nobody. He climbed back to the door, rapped again. “Who that? What you want?”

“Bill Bumbry,” Dave said.

“He don’t live here no more. He passed away.”

“Did you know him? Can you tell me about him?” Locks clicked, the door opened a crack, a face peered out, a black, bony face, bloodshot eyes. At Dave’s belt level. “Was you a friend of Billy’s? One of the gay ones?”

“Did he have any others?” Dave said.

The man smiled faintly. “Not white, he didn’t.”

“I’m trying to find out who killed him.” Dave took out his license and showed it at the narrow opening. “I’m a private investigator. Can I come in? It’s noisy out here.”

“And smelly.” The man shut the door, rattled the chain loose, opened the door. He sat in a wheelchair, in an old brown flannel bathrobe, a grubby blanket covering legs that ended at the knees. He let Dave step past him, and closed the door, whose spring lock clicked. “I don’t believe God would ever send a black person to hell. We got it here. Every day of our lives.” Chuckling, toothless, he rolled his wheelchair backward. This was easy: the room was almost empty. A narrow bed, beside it a little table with a lamp, a clock radio, a Bible. On the floor a television set with a cracked shell and bent rabbit ears. A doorless cupboard in a corner, shelves lined with cans of Dinty Moore beef stew. On the counter a hot plate and three charred saucepans. A grimy refrigerator, a sink with dishes in it. A door half open on a dark bathroom where the toilet box ran and ran.

“I can’t be too hospitable,” the man said, and tilted his head slightly, to indicate he meant the state of the room. “You can sit on the bed if you want. It’s pretty clean. I change it every week.”

“Thank you.” Dave sat on the bed. His shoulder hurt.

“What happened to your arm?” the man asked.

“Somebody attacked me with a knife in the dark last night,” Dave said. “I wondered if it might be the same one that killed Bill. I came to find out if anyone ever saw Bill in the company of a skinny blond kid with long hair. Maybe a teenager. Keeps the hair back by folding a bandanna and tying it around for a headband.”

“Not me,” the man said. He held out his hand. “I’m Dixon.” The knuckles were swollen, gnarly. Dave shook the hand gently. “Billy’s uncle. I haven’t lived here long. He lived here with his daddy, my brother. I saw Billy sometimes. He had his troubles, being so, well, like a girl? From a little child, you know—it made things hard for him with the other children. Poked fun at him, hit him. Lost his mama early too. That made it worse. His daddy tried to beat it out of him. Mason would never hit Dandy—that his dog. Just the boy. And I was the one Billy run to. I let him cry to me, I was kind to him. Why not? Wasn’t his fault. God made a mistake, is all—put a girl in a boy’s body.”

“But he lived with his father?” Dave said.

“Right here. I’d have had him with me, but I’m crippled. Railroad accident. No way I could look after a child. No money. Railroad lawyers seen to that. Disability all I get, and that ain’t scarcely enough for one, let alone two.”

“He grew up,” Dave said. “Why did he stay?”

Dixon shook his head. “Don’t make sense, do it? But he did. And he earned the money. Short-order cook. Suited Mason fine, laying around all day, free food and lodging, all the six-packs he could drink. Never changed how he treated Billy—same ugly mouth. But Billy looked after him. And the dog. See that wallpaper? Billy’s hand. He loved things to be pretty.”

“I think he knew who killed him, all of them did. The medical examiner couldn’t find any sign they’d put up a struggle before they were knifed. You never met his friends?”

“Police asked me that too,” Dixon said. “He never brought nobody when he come to see me.” The wrinkles in his forehead deepened. “Could you call them friends, that kind?”

“Did he mention any names?” Dave said. “Did he know any of the other young men killed the same way—Art Lopez, Sean O’Reilly, Frank Prohaska, Edward Vorse, Drew Dodge?”

Dixon listened hard, frowning, but he shook his head. “No, I heard those names on the TV news, but not from Billy.”

“Why isn’t his father living here now?” Dave said.

“Scared of infection. Billy got AIDS, you know. And Mason, he took Dandy and moved out. Took all the nice furniture Billy bought too. Left Billy here on a mattress on the floor, sick by himself. Claimed to me he was feeding him. You know what that meant? He got hamburgers in bags, and he sent Dandy up the stairs with them. ‘Go take it to Billy,’ he’d say, standing down there in the street door. Well, Dandy, he just a dog, and when he got up the stairs out of Mason’s sight, he ate the food. He never brought it up here, never.”

“Wonderful,” Dave said.

“But they good folks in this building, some of ’em. And one come and told me Billy was alone and sick and starving, and I used a pay phone and called around County offices I know, and one of ’em sent help, got him into a hospital. I paid the back rent here and moved in to hold the place for him. And after a while, he got strong enough to come back. I didn’t know him, he was so wasted. And then he went out the other night, and somebody killed him with a knife.”

“He never said he was afraid that would happen?”

Dixon shook his head. “All he was afraid of was AIDS.”

H
E FOLLOWED PATCHY TRAFFIC
up Alvarado through the rain. There was an odd tightness in his throat. Cold sweat covered him. He wanted the rattly car to get him home. It had been a mistake to come out. He would hit the bed and sleep. Or maybe he wouldn’t make the effort to climb to the loft. He’d just pass out on the couch. It had been a long time since he’d felt this bad. Motorcycles stood bunched at a curb in front of a shabby stucco building with a sign in faint, sputtery red neon tubing,
THE MOTO-CROSS
. It had the look of a place used only after dark, but a youth in chain-hung leather, boots, greasy dark curls, came out the door, carrying a crash helmet. He winced at the daylight, paused to put on the helmet, then straddled one of the motorcycles.

Dave turned off Alvarado and found a side street of hulking frame houses that had quartered USC students in the past. Very old, thick-trunked date palms lined the curbs. So did cars, sad specimens mostly, wheels to get to work on. Now and then a ten-year-old Lincoln or Cadillac had a shine to it other than what the rain put there. Bought cheap, when the price of gas went high. At last Dave found a place to park the Valiant, men trudged back through the sifting rain to the bar. He only pushed the door half open, only got half a blast of the rock music from inside, the roar of voices, jeering, laughing, howling, when a big hand was placed flat on his chest, and he was pushed back outside. A bearded young man followed the hand. He stood six foot five and weighed three hundred pounds. “Private meeting,” he said. “No visitors.”

“I’m an insurance investigator,” Dave said. “Yearly inspection.” He dug out his folder and flashed his license. “And I can tell you, I’ve got a lot to look for. The County doesn’t like gay bars anymore. Any excuse they can find, structural, wiring, hygiene, food handling, ventilation, too many customers for the room, anything, they’ll close you down, here. I can help you avoid that.”

“You don’t look like no insurance man,” the giant said. He breathed out beer fumes. “You look like a wino.”

“I didn’t want to scare the customers,” Dave said.

“Shit.” The giant looked up and down the street, as if an answer would come from there. But no one was on the sidewalk. It lay dismal in the rain, littered with soggy hamburger wrappers, pizza boxes, Coke cups. “Today? This is a business meeting, man. Come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow I’m busy.” Dave tried to step around him.

“Shall I break your other arm?” Goliath placed himself between David and the door. “Give you a matching pair?”

“The County thinks gay bars spread AIDS,” Dave said.

“Bullshit. You don’t get AIDS from drinking Coors.”

“Right. But I seem to remember a few years ago, on an afternoon like this when the place was closed to outsiders, a team of police kicked in that door, and found a naked boy chained facedown to the pool table. Everybody in the place had a go at him.”

“It was a frame-up,” the giant scoffed. “We should have known. It was the kid’s idea. He asked for it.”

“Maybe,” Dave said, “but it’s a way to get AIDS in a bar.”

“Chrissake, I know that,” the man said. “We cleaned up our act now. We collect toys for crippled children.”

“Uh-huh. Did you know Art Lopez? Early twenties, short, good-looking, a construction welder? He used to come here.”

Ajax shrugged. “Anybody can come here.”

“With his lover, a blond man in his mid-thirties. They wore jackets and boots like yours. Crash helmets. They rode twin motorcycles. Kawasakis.”

The giant scowled. “He was killed. By the knifer in the dark. Couple weeks ago. The other one got it the same way, when, last night, night before last? They both had AIDS.”

“They came here together, didn’t they?” Dave said.

“You’re no insurance man,” Hercules said. “You’re a cop. You’re on that case. Yeah, they used to come here—last fall. So what?” He snorted. “You should have seen them ride those bikes. Like a couple of Sunday school teachers. They didn’t kid nobody except theirself.”

“Who did they party with?” Dave said.

“Nobody,” the big man said. “Each other.”

“Never a tall, skinny kid in ragged jeans, long blond hair, a bandanna headband?”

“Is that who they think done it?”

“It’s who tried to do it to me last night,” Dave said.

“Shit.” Fafnir took a backward step, alarm in his eyes. “You got AIDS too? Ain’t you a little old for it?”

“A little,” Dave said. “No, I ain’t got AIDS too. But I seem to be frightening somebody. I wondered if, since two of the victims haunted this place, their killer did. If he chose his victims here.”

“No tall skinny kid in ragged jeans,” the big man said. “It’s leather or nothing here. We don’t serve you if you don’t come dressed right. Anyway”—again he looked along the rain-gray street—“it’s the wrong neighborhood. The killings were all in Hollywood and West LA. Pansyville.”

“It’s not that far away,” Dave said.

“It’s another fucking world,” the giant said.

“The skinny kid may be a false lead,” Dave said. “Do you own a knife?”

Samson growled, clutched Dave’s jacket, sweater, shirt in a fist, lifted him off his feet, thrust his whisker-matted face into Dave’s. “Listen up. It wasn’t me, okay?” He set Dave down, glowering at him. “I’m not into violence.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” Dave smoothed his old clothes.

And from nowhere came Samuels in his fly-front coat and rain hat, holding up a snub-nosed detective special, and panting. “Everything all right here?” he said to Dave, and to the big man, “Police officer.”

“No problem, sir.” The giant showed his teeth and took another step backward, hands raised. “Little misunderstanding, is all. Bar’s closed today.”

“For Saturnalia,” Dave said. “A few months late, but who’s counting?”

Samuels blinked his pale eyes. “Saturn what?”

“Monthly business meeting,” Atlas said.

“We seem to be running on parallel tracks,” Dave told Samuels. “If I buy you lunch, will you drive me home?”

“You don’t look like you feel so good,” Samuels said.