Light Before Day (19 page)

I knew she was referring to Dwight Zachary. "Don't worry," I said. "I'm not a big fan of Detective Jackass."

She liked my answer as well as the frightened sound of it. She grasped my shoulder firmly as she moved past me. "I made you a plate. You want me to get it for you?"

"No thanks," I said.

She paused in the doorway as if to appraise my value as an ally in her campaign to ensure her husband kept all his limbs. "Let's try to get along, Mr. Murphy. Just to see what happens."

Once she was gone, I considered breathing again. If Brenda Wilton was going to shoot anyone else, I would be surprised if it wasn't me.

Twenty minutes later, I was reading through the turgid file on Martin Cale when Jimmy came into the office carrying a ceramic plate covered in Saran Wrap. He put it on his desk and took a seat. "Just eat it," he said. "She didn't put anything in it."

"There's no silverware."

"Call Brenda and ask her to bring you some," he said, then guffawed. "Look, I'm sorry she chewed you a new asshole. She has to do it to someone at least once a month. For once, it wasn't me. Thank God!"

"Please tell me what's going on."

He clapped his hands together. "What's going on is that it could have been the Dalai Lama in our bedroom working me over with a tire iron and she
still
would have shot him and she
still
would have found a way to blame me for it."

He pressed his palms against the desk and drew a deep breath. "Samuel Marchand murdered his sister because she was having sex on camera, and his wife gave him an alibi because she knew he'd beat the shit out of her if she didn't. And
Last Daughter
was not supposed to be a message to
him.
It was a message to the higher-ups at the LASD who didn't think the murder of a porn star was worth investigating because they thought anyone in her line of work had it coming, and because the suspect lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, and out of their jurisdiction.

"And
supposedly
I meddled in a real-life case just to compensate for never scoring with the book critics. But the only reason I have any
awareness
of this is because that woman has made me sit through a year of therapy. You would think that would be enough of an admission, wouldn't you? But now that burnt-out Ocean Park hippie of a Brentwood therapist is trying to convince me that I constantly seek out evidence that the world is a brutal and dangerous place because my mother was distracted and inattentive when I was growing up."

He leaned into my face. "Is the air clear yet? Or would you like to hear about our sex life?"

"I'd like to go home and wash my new asshole," I said.

"Sit down!"

I sat down in one of the Eames chairs. Jimmy left the room and returned with silverware and a napkin. I ate my dinner in silence. When I finished, Jimmy was slouched back in his desk chair, his hands folded over his stomach, his face expectant. I took him through the sad story of Brian Ferrin's brief relationship with Roger Vasquez.

"The Vanished Three
all
sent Brian Ferrin their picture in that chat room?" Jimmy asked.

"Yes. I showed Ferrin their pictures and he ID'd all three of them. Roger Vasquez was the only one he responded to."

"And you think if he'd responded to one of the others, he still would have ended up in Spinotta's bed, drugged and assaulted?"

"Yes. You told me these three guys were playing some special role in Spinotta's inner circle,"

I said. "I think this is it. They were fishermen. Why would they do this shit? They had to know they had turned into everyone's worst nightmare of the predatory fag."

Jimmy didn't answer. "What?" I asked him. "You think they were in it for money? You think Spinotta made them big promises?"

"Yes," he answered. I expected him to say more, but he didn't.

"What, Jimmy?"

"Like I said, I think these guys left behind their old lives to go join a new and better one that Joseph Spinotta provided for them. I think they're probably enjoying it right now."

I got to my feet and went to the office door. The slanting sunlight laced the swimming pool's surface with the shadows of tree branches. Brenda was brushing birdseed off the stone bench at the clearing's edge while Archer waddled eagerly around her feet. If she was so interested in helping us, why was she sitting out one of our major rap sessions?

"You think you're one of these guys, Adam. And you're right that, superficially, their lives resemble yours. They moved to LA in their twenties, just like you did, to leave their difficult histories behind. They were struggling to make lives for themselves, just as you still are. Then they fell under Joseph Spinotta's spell for some reason and started doing this vile shit." He let this sink in for a few seconds. "You're
not
one of them, Adam. You don't have to take responsibility for them, and you don't have to answer for them. You are your own man even when you don't want to be."

Taken aback, I turned to face him. He looked wary, as if I would lace into him. I didn't.

Jimmy usually gave compliments on the back of his hand, but the idea that I could investigate the crimes of other gay men without taking responsibility for the criminals themselves flew in the face of every noble fantasy I had held about becoming a crusading journalist. It seemed that Jimmy was trying to strip away my arrogance and judgments, not because he thought I deserved to be punished, but because he liked the person he saw underneath.

"You think Brian Ferrin will go on the record?" he asked.

"I gave him my cell number."

"You don't sound very hopeful."

"I'm not. He's convinced what happened to him was his fault. I tried to make a plea to his inner victim, but I don't think it took."

"Any word from Billy Hatfill?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Maybe he changed his mind about getting me the meeting with Cale. He had some pretty strong words for me the other day."

"Like what?"

"Apparently, I bleed judgments. I leave a trail of them wherever I go. I'm going to drown in them someday." I had delivered Billy's words in a sarcastic tone of voice, but Jimmy didn't seem to get the joke. He furrowed his brow.

"What?" I asked.

"You're right," he said. "Those are strong words."

"You think I should be afraid of him?"

"I want you to remember every single word he says to you," Jimmy said. "If that's too difficult for you, hide a tape recorder in your pocket. I want to know where Billy fits in all of this. I also want to know why he wants you to meet with Martin Cale."

"I'll find out when I meet Martin Cale."

"You'll take Billy out to dinner first."

"What am I going to talk to him about?" I asked. "If I ask him about any of this, I'll lose my meeting with Cale."

"I said dinner, Adam. Billy Hatfill is leading you to Martin Cale for a reason. It would be nice to have some sense of what that reason is before you row yourself out to his yacht."

I could tell he was holding out on me and I stared at him until he broke. "Our working theory is that Corey blackmailed Billy with something he learned from his uncle, right?" I nodded. "Our wild guess is that Corey was using some dirt on Joseph Spinotta. If that's the case, then maybe Billy is pissed about having to take a hit for his sugar daddy. That might explain why he was so helpful the other day."

"You're saying Billy's not trying to help me find out what happened to Corey. He's trying to help me find out what dirt Corey used on him."

Jimmy nodded.

"That's all speculation, Jimmy."

"I know," he said with a wan smile. "That's why you're going to take him out to dinner." I groaned. "I'm your new boss, remember? The other option is that you spend tomorrow morning in a judo class with my wife so you can make sure she doesn't land anyone in a wheelchair. You have three seconds to make your decision."

C H A P T E R 8

Billy Hatfill came out of his front gate wearing a silver dress shirt that had a metallic sheen to it and black pleather pants that were so tight they squeaked like a small bird as he slid into the passenger seat. He directed me down the hill and onto Sunset Boulevard without telling me our destination. It was Thursday, so the traffic on the strip was light. The streetlights winked at me off the face of the silver Rolex on Billy's left wrist.

"Martin Cale is coming to shore Saturday night," Billy said.

"That was fast."

"Well, I didn't tell him Corey was missing. I didn't want to steal your thunder."

"Considering he never told you Corey was his nephew, I guess you two are even," I answered.

"Good point," he said.

"Why does he think I want to meet with him?"

Billy emitted a long, pained sigh. "Martin Cale thinks that you are a very bright and adorable young man who is interested in taking a cruise on his yacht. I'm sending Everett with you just in case Cale gets too persistent."

When I considered the prospect of having to fend off the advances of a wealthy closet case who put miles of ocean between himself and accountability, my forced dinner with Billy suddenly seemed more like a high tea.

"How’s it going, by the way?" Billy asked. "Your little investigation, I mean."

"Corey was a private guy when he was still around," I said carefully, my eyes locked on Doheny Boulevard's palm-tree-lined corridor into Beverly Hills. "I'm starting to understand why."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I shrugged, as if Billy needed some sort of security clearance before I told him anything else.

He let out a sharp breath; then I heard his pants squeak as he shifted in his seat. He told me to take a left onto Burton Way, a four-lane thoroughfare that runs smack into downtown Beverly Hills. The wide median held clusters of tall and slender palm trees. Billy directed me to an eight-story concrete building with a row of backlit ficus hedges out front and rows of tiny rounded balconies on each floor. A massive sandstone overhang extended over a set of broad marble steps. The hovering valets wore khaki vests over white dress shirts that made them look like safari guides in search of their hats.

I had read about the place in several magazines. It was an exclusive hotel popular with rap stars and the ten-person entourages that accompanied them. The lobby was an endless sweep of white travertine marble lit by banks of flickering tea candles. The dining room lay behind a series of hanging taffeta curtains that trembled in the breeze from a nearby patio.

The maitre d' had a long pale face with pinprick eyes and an artful mess of pinkish-gold hair.

He whispered something in Billy's ear as he showed us to a corner table. Billy dismissed him politely, as if the guy had asked him business advice during Billy's off hours. A swarm of fast-talking agents on the patio alternated between checking their watches and looking around in every direction, as if only they knew about the SWAT team that was about to come bursting through the entrance.

I took my seat and tried to lose myself in the menu. It was written in some hotel hybrid of Romance languages. If the restaurant deigned to serve granola, they probably spelled it with an

~.

"What's the look about?" Billy asked me. He was rolling up his sleeves.

"Which one?"

"The one on your face," he said. "What's the matter? They don't have travertine and tea candles back in New Orleans?"

I obliged him and smiled.

"You looked so put out that I thought it might have something to do with Greg," he said.

"Who's Greg?"

"The maitre d'." Billy gave me a narrow look. "You blew him."

My eyes shot to the host's stand. The pale-faced host gave me an arch smile and waved at me with the middle three fingers on his right hand. "Oh, dear," Billy whispered. "You really don't remember him, do you? That's okay. He says you weren't the only two guys in the hot tub that night. That's what he was whispering to me, by the way."

There had been a time when I listed every man I had slept with, a record intended to persuade me I was desirable. When it had become more and more difficult to remember those names, the list had shamed me instead of validating me.

"Relax, Adam," he said. "Everyone has a blackout now and then." He returned his attention to the menu.

Had he picked this restaurant solely because he knew I couldn't remember getting nasty with the maitre d'? "I don't get you, Billy. What other people say about you makes more sense than the things you say about yourself."

"Other people don't say anything about
me,
Adam. They say things about Joseph, about the view from his house. You're the only one who's ever shown an interest in what I do once the party is over. You have no idea how much I would like to be flattered by the attention, Adam.

But I know full well the two of us would never have seen each other in lighting this good if Corey Howard hadn't come to my house three weeks ago."

He was trying to beg a set of questions I wasn't willing to ask until after my meeting with Martin Cale, so I decided to throw him off. "How did you meet Joseph?" I asked.

He was visibly startled by the directness of the question. "My father set us up," he answered.

He gave me a chance to express some kind of disgust or amusement. I didn't. "It's a long story."

I toasted him with my water glass. He took the cue.

"My parents didn't take much of an interest in anything I did. But they were still dead set on having me attend an Ivy League school. Probably because they thought a Yale education would fix everything they hadn't."

He failed to suppress a smug little grin. "So I took the personal essay sections out of the applications for Harvard, Yale, and Brown, and I got some copies of
Stroke
magazine, made a little collage of body parts for each application, and dropped them in the mail. Months went by.

Nobody said anything. Then one day my father comes to me and tells me he has a meeting in San Francisco with the IT guy for his investment firm."

"Joseph Spinotta," I said.

Billy nodded and cradled his double scotch in both hands. "My father had never met with an IT guy in his life. He'd certainly never asked me to accompany him on a business trip. Our first night in San Francisco, we had dinner with Joseph. He wouldn't shut up about this website he was planning to start.
Bam.
I thought it sounded like he was selling cleaning supplies. But he kept running on about all the opportunities it would afford young people. Suddenly my father was talking about opportunities and young people as well. Together, they both said those words so many times I thought I was at a NAMBLA meeting."