Spider Season (10 page)

I could hear in his voice that much of the pain was still raw. I reached across the table and took his hand.

“I’d like to hear about it,” I said.

And so we talked, a lapsed Catholic and an ex-priest, sipping from our heavy porcelain cups and getting refills as first an hour passed, and then another. Ismael spoke about the anguish he’d suffered as he’d wrestled with the decision to renounce his vows and leave the Church he’d served since he was a teenage acolyte. He was not one to wallow in self-pity and his narrative had more to do with the substance of his decision than the pain it had personally caused him. His disillusionment, he said, had begun with the hypocrisy of the Church in the wake of the scandal that had exposed thousands of priests and former priests as sexual predators and thousands more children as their victims, while covering up the complicit crimes of its highest officials. He’d been deeply troubled by the unwillingness of certain bishops and cardinals to turn over potentially incriminating records, particularly within the Los Angeles archdiocese, which he’d served so loyally for so long.

Yet his problems with the Church, he said, went much deeper than its recent sex abuse crisis, to the violence it had committed centuries ago in Christ’s name, its shameful history of anti-Semitism, and the rigid dogma that, in his view, fostered intolerance, suspicion, and hatred. Ismael likened the flawed doctrines of the Catholic Church to those of the evangelical Christian movement and the fanaticism of Muslim extremism, the kind of irrational mass thinking that had led to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust, an us-versus-them mind-set that was now leading the world toward a terrible conflagration that would ultimately be waged with weapons of mass destruction in the name of God.

“I was so naïve to have never seen these things,” Ismael said. “How could I have been so blind? How could I have been a part of it for so long?”

He grew increasingly passionate as he spoke, reminding me of the fire I’d once felt for crucial causes, a flame that had nearly sputtered out. I wanted to be more like Ismael, I realized. I wanted to be close to his goodness and his selflessness, to share it, to somehow be made better by it. Much the way I’d once felt about Jacques.

Ismael laughed. “You want to know what’s so ironic about my work? The immigrants I try to help—most of them are as devoted to the Church as ever.”

“I suppose their faith is all they have.”

“And the Church counts on that,” Ismael said, “on their poverty and their ignorance.”

“Yet you don’t give up,” I said. “It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

“I still have my spiritual faith,” Ismael said. “That hasn’t changed. But I’m learning a new way to worship, one that’s more compassionate and inclusive, and less condemning. If we could just get back to that, to that essential principle of loving one another, without judgment, we could do so much good in the world.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “you seem too good to be true.”

He dropped his eyes, embarrassed. “Please don’t say things like that.”

“It’s how I see you, Ismael. I can’t help it. You inspire me.”

“It works both ways, Benjamin.” He squeezed my hand. “You might not realize this, but you were the catalyst that helped me change my life. Five years ago, when we met, I found myself drawn to you in a very powerful way. I’m not sure exactly why. Your anger, your passion—it was like an earthquake in my placid world. It stirred feelings in me, made me face truths about myself I could no longer ignore.”

“That last day I saw you,” I said, “when you took my confession in the church garden, I reached out and stroked your face.”

“You also kissed me.”

“Chastely,” I reminded him.

“Yes, but I’ve never forgotten that moment.”

“Nor have I.”

“And here we sit again, all these years later.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“And your break from the Church—you’re sure you’re okay with it?”

“It feels like grief. Like I’ve lost someone I expected to have with me for the rest of my life.”

“I know the feeling.”

His eyes were steady, but they couldn’t hide his suffering. He clasped my hand even tighter.

“It’s a lonely feeling, isn’t it?”

“The loneliest feeling in the world,” I said.

ELEVEN

Early that evening, I was completing a workout with free weights at Buff when I glanced out one of the big windows to see a familiar figure across the street. Motorcycle Boy was leaning against a palm tree in front of Starbucks, staring up in my direction.

At that moment, flush with testosterone, I snapped. Within seconds, I was racing down the stairs and out of the gym, still in my workout gear. As if anticipating me, the skinhead strode east, passing a courtyard tapas bar as he left the glitzier section of Boys Town behind. He had more than a block on me and I began to trot, closing the gap. It was still the rush hour, but he dashed pell-mell into traffic, causing drivers to hit their brakes and diners at outdoor tables to look up as tires squealed. He weaved through traffic until he was on my side of Santa Monica Boulevard—the south side—and moving east again, picking up his pace. He caught a green light at La Cienega and I sprinted after him as it turned to yellow, chasing him several blocks past City Hall and Hamburger Mary’s. The venerable Gold Coast came into view, with its rugged bartenders, strong drinks, and a pool table that was always busy. Just before we reached the bar, Motorcycle Boy turned right down La Jolla Street and out of my sight.

When I rounded the corner, he was gone. I dashed to the alley at the next corner and scanned the adjacent public parking strip to my left, where men sat in their idling cars or drove slowly through, cruising for a pickup. A few hustlers lingered about, one eye out for clients, the other for cops. A ragged homeless man dug through the big Dumpster behind Out of the Closet, picking through discards that weren’t even good enough for the thrift shop. The skinhead was nowhere to be seen.

I was seriously winded and took a moment to get my breath. Then I glanced in the other direction down the alley, to my right, and caught sight of the skinhead again. He stood at the end of the block, hands on hips, waiting for me. The moment I saw him he took off, south down Kings Road in the direction of the famous Schindler House, clearly daring me to follow him.

I quickly reached the street and saw him a few hundred feet away. He glanced back before turning into Kings Road Park, and I went after him again. The park was a small green space carved from the surrounding landscape of condo and apartment buildings, which blocked out most of the light that was left in the deepening dusk. When I reached the cast-iron fence and turned in at the gate, the park looked dark and empty beneath its heavy canopy of pine and eucalyptus.

On my right, where one often saw parents and nannies with small children, or elderly men and women chatting or feeding the squirrels, the benches were empty. I followed a short path that opened to a small lawn ringed with trees and dense foliage. I didn’t see him. I scanned the rear of the park, wondering if he’d made his escape through the back gate. Logic told me he hadn’t. He wanted me here, where it was private and the shadows were deep.

The path wound to my left, around a small grove of banana palms, twisting vines, and other leafy foliage, where a narrow stream of water cascaded down a rock formation into a small lagoon. Except for the titters of small birds high in the trees, the sound of the falling water was all I could hear. I continued along the trail as it circled the dense grove. As I reached the far side, I stopped to listen again, aware of the insistent beating of my heart. The faint light of street lamps failed to reach this side of the fountain and towering banana palms. Darkness enveloped me.

“Benjamin Justice.”

I whirled to find him standing a few feet away in a small alcove, in front of a slatted wooden bench. He was close enough that he could have put a knife in me if he’d wanted to.

“You move quietly,” I said. “You know how to sneak up on a guy.”

“When I need to.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Who said I wanted anything?”

He was wearing a faded tank top with the logo of a heavy metal band I hadn’t heard of in years, snug-fitting Levi’s that showed off his package, and the same menacing black motorcycle boots he’d worn the first time I’d encountered him. Dark blond stubble was thick along his jaw and chin, accentuating the ruggedness that made him so attractive. His blue eyes blazed, even here, beyond the reach of the streetlights, where the dusk was quickly becoming night.

“You’re the one who followed me,” he said. “So maybe it’s you who wants something.”

“I want to know who you are, and what it is you’re after.”

“My name’s Lance. Does that help?”

“It’s a start.”

“And you’re Benjamin Justice. The faggot who wrote a book about stuff he did a long time ago and how bad he feels about it now.”

I raised my eyebrows skeptically. “You read it?”

“Yeah, I read it.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to learn more about you.”

“For what purpose?”

“Not because I want to suck your cock, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why would I be thinking that?”

“Because you’re queer, and that’s what you guys like to do.”

He said it straight out, like a simple statement of fact. If there was malice in his words, I didn’t hear it.

“I understand that you’re a jarhead,” I said. “That you served in Iraq.”

He pulled out a pack of unfiltered Marlboros, lit one, took a long drag.

“Yeah, I was over there. What’s it to you?”

“Couldn’t have been much fun.” When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “You from around here?”

He pulled deeply on the cigarette again, holding in the smoke. When he finally let it out, he said, “You know how many packs a day I smoked when I was over there? Six. Six fucking packs a day, and when I went over I was trying to quit.”

“That’s a lot of tar and nicotine.”

“So how come you don’t smoke?”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“I know plenty about you, and not just from your book.”

“What’s so interesting about me, Lance? Why do you follow me around, trying to get under my skin?”

He took a final drag, dropped the butt, crushed it with the toe of his boot. Then he took a step closer and studied my face a moment with something more than just curiosity, some emotion I couldn’t name. He repeated what he’d done the first day we’d met, just before I’d grabbed him and slammed him to the ground. He reached up with his right hand and caressed my face. This time I didn’t stop him, or move away. I felt him run his fingers over my rough beard, around the contours of my jaw, down my neck, along a biceps still swelling and hard from my workout. Then he pressed his hand to my left pectoral and kept it there, while my heart beat faster.

Nearby, someone cleared his throat. I glanced over to see a uniformed city worker with a set of keys in his hand, looking faintly embarrassed. He told us the park was closed for the night, that it was time for him to lock the gates.

Lance kept his hand over my heart a moment longer, peering deep into my eyes, before removing it and stepping back.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said, making it sound like both an invitation and a threat.

Then he was gone, back down the path and across the park. I followed to the edge of the street, where I saw him ride off on his Harley. It was a stylish FXST Softail, the seminal 1984 model with the V-2 engine that had saved the company from financial ruin. As Lance roared away on his gleaming hog, I realized he’d kept it in mint condition, the way I’d restored and maintained my ’65 Mustang. He’d had it parked at the curb, right out front, which meant he’d had this encounter planned all along, right down to the privacy of the location. Whatever was going on with him, I thought, he wasn’t stupid.

The city worker locked up the park and drove off. I stood alone as night closed in on the neighborhood, trying to figure out what kind of game Lance was playing but no closer to knowing than I’d been an hour ago, or yesterday, or last week.

*   *   *

Back at Buff, I showered and changed into my street clothes, then dropped in at the sheriff’s substation on my way home to inquire about the copy of the police report I’d requested. When I asked for Detective Haukness at the front counter, a deputy informed me that Haukness had been reassigned to the homicide division, working out of department headquarters in East L.A.

“I’d still like my copy of that report,” I said.

The deputy slid a form in front of me, asked me to fill it out, and told me my request would have to go through channels.

TWELVE

By the second week in July, five weeks after its publication,
Deep Background
had managed to sell enough copies to warrant a modest second printing.

Although it was barely a blip on the BookScan radar screen, it would have been a great excuse to celebrate with Ismael. I even entertained fantasies of getting him drunk on champagne and having my way with him. The problem was he was roughly twenty-six hundred miles away in Washington. He’d been called out of town again, this time to help organize a new effort to get an immigration amnesty bill before Congress as early as possible in the next presidential term. He knew such legislation would face stiff opposition from Americans who appreciated the benefits of slave labor from across the border as long as the workers didn’t ask for too much, like decent health care and education for their children. He wasn’t sure when he’d be back. We’d never even managed to meet for dinner before he left.

My book turned up briefly on the
Los Angeles Times
bestseller list, peaking at number three, for which Judith Zeitler deserved most of the credit. She’d set up readings at key bookstores around Southern California that were thought to be on the
Times
survey, a routine ploy by savvy publicists and authors that could make a modest seller look more successful than it really was. I could now claim to be a “best-selling” author, though only regional in scope. Southern California was a big book market, to be sure, but the truth was that if an author sold a mere few hundred copies at the right bookstores in a brief enough time span, his or her book could jump on a regional list and warrant the bestseller label. One notorious author, a game show producer with buckets of money, had even run around to key bookstores buying up armloads of his own poorly reviewed love story. The strategy had worked and, ever since, his publicity materials had referred to him as a best-selling novelist.