Howtown (2 page)

At the mention of my lover’s name, she gazed down at the milky surface of her coffee. “Will you be staying long?”

“Until Monday,” I said, adding deliberately, “Josh has to get back to school. He’s at UCLA.”

Brushing the tip of her cigarette against the edge of an ashtray, she said, “Yes, I think you mentioned that once.” As if to forestall further discussion of Josh, she asked, “Do you like Los Angeles?”

“Most of the time. Our house is on a hill, too, like yours. I can see the Hollywood sign from the kitchen window. The other day Josh spotted a pair of deer in the underbrush. It’s not at all what I expected.”

“Deer,” she repeated. “That’s interesting.”

“Do you ever get down to LA?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “I have no reason to.”

I thought about that for a moment and let it pass. Tactless remarks were part of the price we paid for remaining strangers. That, and a finite store of small talk. I’d exhausted mine.

“You said you wanted to see me on a professional matter. Something going on?”

She set her cigarette down. “Not with me,” she replied. “Do you remember Sara Bancroft? We grew up together.”

A dim image formed in my head of a tall, blonde, unlikable girl. “Vaguely.”

“She married Paul Windsor. I think you knew his brother Mark.”

I remembered Mark Windsor well, his younger brother Paul less well. The Windsors were local gentry in Los Robles. Mark and I had run track in high school. Miler, we called him, after his event. I had been infatuated with him. Paul had just been someone who got in the way when I was trying to be alone with Mark, little good that that did.

“I remember them.”

“Paul’s been arrested for murder.”

This got a startled “Really?” out of me.

“Apparently he needs a lawyer,” she said, without a trace of irony. “I told her I’d talk to you.”

“Do they still live in Los Robles?”

“Yes.”

“There isn’t a town in California that’s too small not to have too many lawyers,” I said, “including Los Robles. I suggest they start there.”

Elena stroked her throat, a nervous gesture that went far back into our childhood. “Sara insisted on you.”

“Why?”

She put out her cigarette decisively and said, “I don’t know very much about it, Henry. Sara was upset, and she’d been drinking when she called me. The man Paul’s supposed to have killed was involved in child pornography. The police are saying it was because he was blackmailing Paul. Sara denied it. She—”

“Wait,” I said. “Back up. What’s the connection between Paul Windsor and child pornography?”

Her fingers tugged her throat. “A few years ago Paul was arrested for—I don’t know what it’s called—child molesting?” She forced her hand down. “The girl was fifteen, I think, but it had been going on for some time.”

“Are you telling me that Paul Windsor is a pedophile?”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

I had heard her use that tone before. It implied that her ignorance was grounded in superior morality.

“It’s a technical term,” I replied, “denoting someone who is sexually attracted to children. The street term is ‘baby fucker.’ ”

Her face darkened. “That was cheap.”

I shrugged. “Was he convicted?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but he didn’t go to jail.” Clearly uncomfortable, she fiddled with her coffee cup. Elena had arranged her life as tastefully as she had this room. All this talk of murder and child molesting must have been as unpleasant for her as discovering a bowel movement in the center of her coffee table. I felt a tiny bit of pleasure at her discombobulation. Maybe, as she’d said earlier, I’d been a lawyer too long. In any event, I was used to cleaning up other people’s shit.

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“A week, ten days ago.”

“Is he in jail?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then he’s already been arraigned,” I said. “He must’ve had a lawyer for that.”

Elena looked doubtful. “I really don’t know the details, Henry. Sara called three days ago. She said she’d read about you in the papers last year when you had that case in Los Angeles. That busboy.”

Jim Pears, I thought, a boy who’d been accused of murdering a classmate who had threatened to expose Jim’s homosexuality. The case had never gone to trial because Jim killed himself, but I had still been able to establish his innocence. Then it occurred to me why Sara Windsor might have insisted that I defend her husband.

“Does she think that because I’m gay I have some special insight into pedophiles?”

She cast a cool look at me and said, “Not everyone judges people by their sexual practices. Maybe she just thinks you’re an able lawyer.”

“What do you think, Elena? She’s your friend.”

“I hadn’t spoken to her in years before she called.”

I have a good ear for lies, and I’d just been lied to. Elena was apparently embarrassed by her old friendship with the wife of a child molester. It made me think less of her.

Acidly, I said, “Sexual deviance isn’t a virus, Elena. It’s not catching.”

“What are you talking about, Henry?”

“Loyalty to one’s friends.”

Her face reddened again. “Why else would I have asked you up here?”

“Touché.” I picked up my now cold cup of coffee. The faint flavor of hazelnut had soured as it cooled. “I don’t defend child molesters.”

“That’s not what Paul’s accused of,” she pointed out.

“From what you’ve told me, his pedophilia would very likely come up in trial.”

She reached into the silver box for another reedy brown cigarette and lit it impatiently. Her brand was popular in the ghettos because it could be dipped in PCP without showing a stain. She asked caustically, “Do you always make such fine moral distinctions?”

“Morality doesn’t have much to do with it. I choose not to add to the popular delusion that all gay men are pedophiles by defending them.”

“You don’t want to be tarred with the same brush, is that it?”

“Don’t patronize me, Elena. I don’t give a damn what you think of me or how I live, or what my principles are.”

“I never thought you did.”

We stared at each other, puffed up and ready to strike.

“And what about Sara?” she demanded. “Are you going to tar her with the same brush?”

“That’s touching considering that you haven’t spoken to her for years.”

“What would you say to Mark Windsor if he walked into the room and asked you for help, Henry?” she asked quietly. “There are some old friends one does not refuse.”

I was disarmed. Elena had never before acknowledged that she understood what I’d felt for Mark. Even more astounding was the implication of what she’d felt for Sara. I searched her face to see whether the implication was intended but her expression revealed nothing.

“All right, Elena. I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you.”

She got up and went over to a small desk where she consulted an address book and wrote something on a slip of paper. She handed it to me and I glanced down at the name and number.

“I’ve never asked you for anything before,” she said, evidently bothered by incurring the debt.

I reassured her. “It’s not a big deal.” I extracted myself from the chair. “It was nice to see you, Elena.”

“I’ll walk you out to your car.”

The heat had become a bit denser and the light a little dustier as the fragrant morning waned. Birds called from the surrounding trees and the low burble of water sounded from the stream that ran through Elena’s property. Against this blurred and languid landscape, she seemed too sharp, too definite to belong.

“This is heaven,” I said, opening the car door.

She smiled, deepening the lines around her mouth. “Have you ever read Primo Levi?”

“No.”

“He has a passage in his book about concentration camp survivors—to the effect that those who have once been tortured go on being tortured. Heaven’s not possible for people like that.”

I was startled by the vehemence of the analogy—if that’s what it was—to our childhood and said, “You have a long memory.”

“I’m older than you,” she replied. “I have more to remember. Good-bye, Henry.”

“Good-bye,” I said, from my car, and rolled out of the driveway.

She waved, briefly, folded her arms in front of her and watched me go.

J
OSH WASN’T IN THE
room when I got back into the city though there were telltale signs of his recent occupancy—clothes scattered on the floor, the bathroom faucet left dripping, an open book left facedown on the bed. The book was called
Healing AIDS Through Visualization
and I picked it up and read a paragraph. The author urged his readers to imagine their bloodstreams were filled with anti-HIV commandos on search-and-destroy missions. It was the kind of thing that, privately, I felt he read far too much of. I preferred to place my trust in science. But given the shameful record of the medical establishment on AIDS I had to admit sometimes that my trust was perhaps as misplaced there as was his in New Age naturopathy. I upbraided myself for my negative thinking. Josh wasn’t sick, after all, though the previous summer his T-cell count had fallen to the point that he’d been put on a combination of drugs, including AZT.

His health had precipitated our move back to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, to allow him to be close to his parents. The move had not been easy for either one of us. I had given up a going law practice and roots that went far back in a town that had been my home since I’d left my parents’ house at seventeen. What Josh had surrendered was not as tangible but equally important. To him the move back had represented a step back from the adult independence which, at 25, meant so much to him. It had also awakened the nightmare of mortality for both of us. He wouldn’t have done it except that his parents were old and the bond between them and their only son powerful. For their sake, we had moved, and yet I knew we both wondered if it had been the right thing to do.

As always when he was gone I felt a tiny tremor of apprehension, like a second, fainter heartbeat that never seemed to stop.

I forced myself to think about Elena. Having told her I would call Sara, I now felt reluctant to do so. Although Los Robles, Sara, even Elena, were in the past, the past was a thin layer of ash over embers that could still burn. Overcoming my resistance, I sat in the rocking chair by the bay window, pulled the phone into my lap and dialed Sara Windsor’s number. After a moment of long-distance static, the phone rang and was answered, and a woman’s voice ventured a tentative “Hello.”

“Mrs. Windsor?”

The voice was cautious, remote. “Yes.”

“This is Henry Rios. I’ve just been to see my sister. She said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Hello, Henry. Thank you for calling. I didn’t know how long it would take Elena to talk to you.” She paused. “Did she explain the situation?”

Fencing with Elena had used up all my verbal delicacy. Abruptly, I replied, “Your husband’s in jail for murder and you want to hire me to defend him.”

When she spoke again, she matched my abruptness. “Yes, that’s right.”

I put my feet up on the bed and glanced out the window toward Alamo Square, the small park that gave the inn its name. A couple of joggers came to a slow stop. One of them was Josh and the other was Kevin Reilly, the bridegroom-to-be. Josh stripped off his blue singlet and even from here I could see how thin he was.

“Henry?”

“I’m sorry Mrs. Windsor, I didn’t hear you.”

“I was asking whether you were available.”

“I practice in Los Angeles now,” I said, looking away from the window. “Unless there’s some special reason you want to hire me it would be inconvenient for all of us.”

“There isn’t a lawyer in town who’ll touch the case.”

“Why not? The Windsors aren’t exactly sharecroppers.”

“It’s not a matter of money,” she replied contemptuously. “They don’t have the guts to stand up to the publicity.”

“Has there been that much? I’d think that the family could contain it.”

“You have a very exaggerated idea of the family’s influence,” she said tartly. “And you don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“Then you’d better explain it,” I said, impatient with her peremptory tone.

“I don’t know exactly where to start,” she said more softly. “Paul’s been arrested before, did Elena tell you that?”

“Yes, on child molesting charges.”

“That’s right,” she said quickly. “The charges were dropped because the—girl wouldn’t testify. Everyone thought we pressured her but that isn’t true. Anyway, the whole thing was a scandal. When Paul was arrested this time, all that came up again. But it’s even more complicated than that.”

“What else?” I asked, hearing Kevin and Josh’s voices in the hall.

“Paul’s father owned a construction company.”

“Yes, I remember,” I replied. Windsor Construction was big business in our little town.

“Mark took it over and expanded it into development. You wouldn’t believe how much the town has grown,” she added. “A lot of it’s Mark’s doing. There’s always been talk about whether he was going about it in a strictly legal way.”

“Mark?” I was incredulous.

“You’ve been away a long time,” she replied dryly. “People here are beginning to debate whether all this growth is good. Mark’s a major developer and that makes him the enemy to quite a few people, including the editor of the
Sentinel
.”

The door was thrown open and Josh bounded into the room, saw that I was on the phone and froze for a second, then tiptoed toward me and kissed my forehead, dripping sweat on my shirt. He moved away but I reached out and gripped his arm. He looked back, smiled and pointed toward the bathroom. I let him go. A moment later I heard him run the shower.

“What does this have to do with Paul?”

“As I said, the editor of the paper is antidevelopment,” she replied. “He led a campaign to put a no-growth proposition on the ballot in November. I guess he sees his best way of winning is to turn it into a vote against the Windsors, but first they have to make us out to be monsters. You’d think,” she said scornfully, “we were the Marcoses or the Duvaliers.”