The Death of Friends (26 page)

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “He hadn’t exchanged one kind of closet for another. You went to see him the night he was killed. He told you he didn’t want to see you again. He told you he wasn’t going to give you another cent. He told you he was going to tell Zack everything. You couldn’t take it, so you reverted to your old habits and killed him. Then you heard someone coming down the hall and hid in the bathroom. It was Zack. After he left, you took the weapon and brought it here. When Zack came to see Bligh in a panic, you saw your chance and planted the weapon in Zack’s apartment, then called the cops and told them they could find it there. Bligh sent Zack up to his cabin and you called the cops again and told them he was hiding there. Those calls were recorded,” I lied. “It won’t be hard to prove it’s you on the tape.”

He made a dive for the door. I let him go. He wouldn’t get far, not with the cops waiting at the gate.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting in the courtyard of a coffeehouse on Santa Monica Boulevard. Above the murmur of a fountain, Louis Armstrong sang “Lush Life” over outdoor speakers. McBeth made her way across the cobblestones balancing cups of coffee in her hands. She set them down on the table, pulled out a metal chair and sat down, reaching for a cigarette from the pack in the pocket. Her blazer fell open, revealing her gun. She tugged the coat closed.

Lighting up, she said, continuing our earlier conversation, “You didn’t exactly get him to confess.”

“I know,” I said. “But when he told me Chris was still seeing him even after he met Zack, it caught me off guard, so I threw everything I had at him. He did try to run,” I pointed out. “That shows consciousness of guilt.”

“It’s a circumstantial case at best,” she replied, flicking ash from her lapel. “We can’t even put him at the scene.”

“He was at the restaurant where Zack worked the night Chris was killed,” I reminded her. “But he lied about eating dinner there. Zack said he talked to him in the bar at the beginning of his shift and mentioned that Chris was at the courthouse, but then he left.”

She shrugged. “Circumstantial.”

“He had access to the key to Zack’s apartment while Zack was at Bligh’s.”

“I know all that,” she replied, irritably. “But no one saw him there.”

We drank coffee in silence. “What about Bligh?” I asked. “Did he say anything useful?”

She shook her head. “Bligh won’t talk. He doesn’t want to incriminate himself.”

“We’ve still got the anchorman and the priest.”

“Yeah, but all they can give us is his m.o.”

“Well, the D.A.’s just going to have to go with what he’s got,” I said.

“Yeah,” she replied, glumly. “On the bright side, you guessed right about him. That was nice work.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I wasn’t entirely right. I didn’t figure that Chris was still having sex with him after he met Zack.”

“That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “I guess Chris wasn’t as far out of the closet as I thought he was.”

“From what I understand,” she said, “it’s a pretty deep place.”

TWO WEEKS PASSED
. T
OMMY
was arraigned on charges of first-degree murder. Privately, McBeth told me that the D.A. was already talking about pleading it down to second degree or even voluntary manslaughter because, based on the evidence, if the case went to trial there was no more than a fifty-fifty chance of a conviction of any kind. I shared her pessimistic assessment, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Zack called and I had to break the news to him of Chris’s infidelity, if that’s the word for it. He was as upset by it as Bay had been when Chris left her for him. I couldn’t find it in myself to defend Chris to him as I had with Bay. Chris, it seems, had been a lot more troubled and self-destructive than I’d ever realized. Maybe none of us had known him after all.

At any rate, I didn’t have much time to spare for Chris Chandler. Josh had been almost a month off all his drugs and he was so weak that he now seldom got out of bed. He was lucid when he was awake, but he slept most of the time, and there was little I could do but sit with him and wait for the end. After all the dramatic ups and downs of the past couple of years, the quiet with which he was dying seemed almost anticlimactic. The house was as hushed as a hospital zone, with nurses around the clock, his parents and sisters coming and going, and Singh dropping by at least once a day. None of us had much to say to each other. Not that there was any animosity between his family and me, not even with his father; it was the waiting that exhausted us.

I was sitting in the bedroom one afternoon reading Dickens to him while he slept the dazed, light sleep into which he slipped more and more often, when I heard the doorbell ring. The day nurse, a motherly gay black man named Robin, came in and told me, “There’s a lady who wants to talk to you, Henry.”

I put the book down and asked, “Did she give you her name?”

“Bay,” he said.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, getting up. “You mind reading to him?”

Robin picked up the book.
“Bleak House,”
he read. “Sounds depressing.”

“It’s not,” I said. “He says it’s his favorite novel because it has lawyers and a happy ending. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Bay was standing at the window doors looking out at the canyon. She was in slacks and a pink sweater. She turned when she heard me enter the room and smiled wanly.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” she said.

“No, it’s fine,” I replied. “It’s good to see you, Bay. Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks, I can’t stay. Mind if I sit?”

“Please.”

We sat across from each other. “The man who answered the door was a nurse,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Josh?” she ventured.

I nodded. “He’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry, Henry.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. She looked at a loss for words, so I added, “It’s all right, Bay. There’s nothing anyone can do now.”

“I’ll pray for him,” she said.

I let a moment pass, then said, “Did I tell you it’s good to see you?”

“Yes, it’s good to see you, too, Henry. I guess the last time we talked wasn’t so pleasant for either of us.”

“You had a right to be mad at me,” I said. “I lied to you.”

She shook her head. “Chris lied to me,” she replied. “You just got caught in the middle. In your situation, I probably would’ve done the same thing. It wasn’t about you, it was about Chris.”

“Chris was a troubled guy,” I said.

She released a low laugh. “That’s an understatement. But you know what happens in a marriage is that you get so used to the other person you stop seeing him as someone separate. You just assume he wants what you want and thinks the way you think. You forget he might have his own—what? Desires? Longings? Secrets?” She tilted her head and regarded me quizzically. “Do you know what I mean?”

I thought of the morning Josh told me he was in love with another man, and said, “I know exactly what you mean. We never know anyone as well as we think we do.”

“No, never. That’s why I didn’t come sooner, to tell you about Joey.”

“Joey?” I said. “What about him?”

“You thought he killed Chris,” she said. “So did I.”

I stared at her.

“You see,” she continued, “after Chris left me, I wasn’t sure I knew anyone anymore, not even myself, so when Joey told me he’d found his father’s body that night, I didn’t know what to think.”

“What happened?”

She said, “He had dinner with Chris that night. They had a big fight and Joey ran out on him. Later, he went to the court, to apologize, he says, though I think it was probably to pick another fight with him. He says when he got there Chris was already dead. He got scared and left. He went to his grandfather and told him what had happened. Dad told him to keep his mouth shut, but, unlike Chris, Joey’s never been any good at keeping secrets from me and I suspected the worst. Mind you, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him point blank if he’d killed Chris, I just assumed it.”

“Did your father also suspect him?”

“Not until you talked to him. That really shook him up. I went to that hearing to try to make some kind of deal with you, but I lost my nerve. When Detective McBeth lied on the stand, I saw my chance to help you, indirectly, by telling the prosecutor I’d given McBeth Chris’s keys. I thought if I helped you get Zack Bowen off, you’d forget about Joey.”

“You didn’t think Zack killed Chris.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know, because I didn’t know if Joey was telling me the truth about what happened that night. I went over it again and again and I just couldn’t say for sure.”

“What do you think now?”

“This man they’ve arrested. He killed Chris.”

“Tommy Callen. I think so, too, but the evidence isn’t all that compelling.”

“Joey saw him that night,” she said.

“What?” I said incredulously.

“He was on the news the other night,” she said. “Joey told me he saw him in the parking lot just before he went up to see his father. He’s sure of it.”

“What exactly did he see?”

“He saw this man get into a car and drive out of the lot. He remembers because the man left in a hurry.”

“Does Joey remember whether the weapon that was used to kill Chris was still in his chambers when he went up there?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t ask him.”

“Is he sure enough about seeing Tommy to testify?”

“Yes,” she said. “Dad doesn’t want him to, but I told him he owed it to Chris.”

“Why is your father opposed?”

“Dad thinks Chris did enough damage to the family,” she said. “Chris betrayed him, too, you know. He loved him like a son.”

“I remember,” I said.

“I want this man in prison,” she said. “He deserves it. I don’t care if we have to air some dirty linen to do it.”

“Then you need to go to the police,” I said.

She nodded. “I know. But I wanted to tell you first, so we could be friends again, if that’s possible.”

“I hope so,” I said.

She got up, “I better go. I’m sure you want to get back to Josh, but Henry, there’s one more thing I have to tell you.”

“What is it, Bay?”

“The thing that got Joey so mad at his father that night, the reason I thought he might have killed him.”

Puzzled, I said, “You mean other than the fact that he’d left you?”

She nodded. “That wasn’t it. I mean, Joey was furious at Chris for that, but he wouldn’t have killed him because of it. It was the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“He told Joey he was HIV-positive,” she said.

“Oh, God.”

“You need to tell his friend Zack to get tested,” she said.

“What about you?”

“I’ve already been tested,” she said, slowly. “I’m positive.”

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” I’d run across that text when I was an undergraduate, still struggling with my own sexual nature, and it had spoken so chillingly and directly to me that I’d written it down on a scrap of paper and carried it in my wallet. The paper was long gone, but the words were imprinted in my memory and they came to me now, as I sat in the living room after Bay had gone, thinking about Chris Chandler, who had waited too long to bring forth that which was within him. When he did, he’d left a trail of destruction in his wake that would continue long after his murder at the hands of the sociopath. I was all wrong about Chris Chandler. He hadn’t come out of the closet in a surge of midlife decisiveness. He’d been driven out by guilt over what he’d done to Bay and his inability to tell her. Chris had simply moved from one room of his closet to another until nothing could reach him, not even love, and his closet had become his coffin.

I would have to tell Zack. The thought of it made me sick at heart. I could only hope he’d been safe with Chris, a chance Bay never had since she knew nothing of Chris’s other life. I could have told her. The thought made me even sicker. Had Bay intended that? The layers of deceit among the three of us were so thick I no longer knew what to think of the Chandlers. I would work my way through that maze another time. For now, I needed the simplicity of Josh and me. I got up and went back into the bedroom where Robin was standing beside the bed, peering into Josh’s eyes,
Bleak House
abandoned on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

“I think he’s in a coma,” Robin said. “You sit with him. I’ll call Dr. Singh.”

He hustled out of the room. I sat down at the edge of the bed and stared into Josh’s motionless eyes. Only the faint stream of his breath indicated there was any life left in him. I clutched at his hand.

“Josh,” I said, brokenly.

I felt, or imagined I felt, a slight compression of his hand in mine.

And then he was gone.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Henry Rios Mysteries

I
WAS SITTING
by myself at a plastic table outside the coffee kiosk in the plaza between the county courthouse and the Hall of Records in downtown Los Angeles on a warm, polluted morning in late April. It was nine-forty-two. The office workers had reluctantly straggled off to their jobs, leaving empty cups, pastry crumbs, packets of sugar and lipstick-stained napkins on the surrounding tables. A homeless woman—a swirl of rags, a baked face—rooted through the litter. She carefully wrapped the remains of a bran muffin in a paper napkin, tucked it into a soiled pocket and approached me with an outstretched hand. Her eyes were like wounds. I gave her a dollar, to the frowning displeasure of the boy behind the counter at the kiosk. The sky was metallic, as if the city was enclosed by a dome, and nothing stirred among the dusty plants and trees in the plaza. The poisonous air made my eyes sting. I sipped lukewarm coffee and glanced at the paper. There was a picture of a heavyset man in a tuxedo, standing at a podium with an oversized Oscar behind him. The caption identified him as Duke Asuras, head of Parnassus Pictures, and quoted him as having said at the recent Academy Awards ceremony, “Filmmaking isn’t an industry, it’s warfare and the whole world is our battleground.” I glanced at my watch. It was time to go to court.