Limits of Justice, The (10 page)

“I loved him, almost as much as I love the horses. Besides, all the ghosts are here. That’s why Equus must never be broken up and sold away. I tried to explain that to Charlotte. She didn’t understand.”

“What ghosts are those, George?”

He swept a slim, pale hand, indicating the distant dimensions of the darkening property.

“The ghosts of all the boys.”

“What boys, George?”

His dark eyes shifted uneasily.

“The ones who came to visit.”

“To be with Mr. Preston?”

He nodded, just once, slowly.

“The boys are dead?”

“We’re all dead, aren’t we? Our souls die the moment the older people begin to kill the child in us.” He dropped his eyes. “Or steal it for themselves.”

“Is that what Rod Preston did to you?”

The dark eyes, fiery as hot coals, found me again.

“Mr. Preston loved me. He was good to me, took care of me.”

“What about your parents, George? Where are they?”

“They didn’t want me.”

“Rod Preston raised you then.”

“Mr. Preston brought me back from Europe. He found me there, when he was making one of his movies. My parents were gypsies, nomadic, poor. They didn’t want me, so he gave them some money and brought me back.”

“Was that legal?”

Krytanos smiled knowingly.

“If you have enough money, anything is legal, isn’t it?”

“What happened to these boys, the ones whose ghosts you say haunt this place, who came to visit?”

He looked at me curiously, as if my question was silly.

“Happened? Nothing. They came for a while, then they went away and never came back.”

“And what did Mr. Preston do with these boys while they were here?”

“Sometimes we played in the pool, or games inside the house. Mostly we went riding.”

“What else, George?”

“I think you know.”

“You told Charlotte about this?”

“I didn’t want to. She didn’t leave me any choice.”

“How’s that?”

“I told her why Equus must never be sold, why I had to stay on, taking care of the horses, watching over the ghosts of the boys.”

“When you told Charlotte about the boys, how did she react?”

“She was angry. She didn’t believe me.”

“Did you argue?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you threaten her?”

“Not in the way you mean.”

“How, then?”

A tiny smile formed on his pretty lips; he looked pleased with himself.

“I showed her the pictures.”

“What pictures are those, George?”

“The photographs of all the boys, without their clothes on. The photographs that Mr. Preston had me take.”

“Was Mr. Preston in any of these pictures?”

“Sometimes.”

“Naked, with the boys?”

His smile vanished into a sadness whose source seemed vague, elusive.

“Of course.”

“Where are these pictures now?”

“Charlotte took them. I threw them all in her face. I had to, because she didn’t believe me about Equus.”

“She must have been quite upset.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You know that she’s dead, don’t you?”

“The police came. They told me. They asked me questions.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Not about the boys, just that Charlotte and I had argued, that I felt Equus should be mine.”

“Why didn’t you tell them all of it?”

“I don’t want to hurt Mr. Preston. He was always good to me.”

“But you’re telling me.”

His tone grew colder, harder. “Maybe that’s a mistake.”

“Have you seen Randall Capri’s book?”

“I don’t read books, except ones about horses.”

“You must have seen something about it on television or in the papers.”

“I don’t have television here. I don’t read newspapers. I have the horses, that’s all I need.”

“You look quite a lot like Randall Capri when he was younger.”

“I know.”

“You knew him?”

“For a while, after Mr. Preston brought me here. Randall came to visit. Sometimes he brought a boy with him. Sometimes two or three boys.”

“He found these boys, brought them here for Mr. Preston?”

“I don’t think I want to tell you any more.”

“You must have hated Charlotte Preston for wanting to take Equus away from you.”

He glanced toward his tethered mare, then up in the direction of the house.

“Mr. Preston said I could always live here. He promised he’d always keep me safe, take care of me. Charlotte wanted to sell Equus so they could tear the house down and carve the place up into half-acre parcels. Do you know how many horses you’re allowed to keep on a half-acre lot up here, Mr. Justice?”

I shook my head.

“One. One horse per half acre. As if horses can live like that and not go mad.”

“Charlotte told me her father named Equus after the famous play.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you ever see the play yourself?”

“Mr. Preston took me to New York once, in a private plane. We saw the play in a beautiful theater there. Mr. Preston cried. He told me afterward that I was the boy in that play.”

“But you would never blind your horses, like the boy in the play.”

“No, I could never hurt the horses.”

“What about a human being, George? Could you hurt a human being?”

“I don’t think I like your questions.”

“Tell me about Saturday, George—when you last saw Charlotte.”

“We argued, the way I told you. She was crying, and she took the photos and went away. And I never saw her again.”

“I think someone murdered her, George.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Up at the cottage, the mare whinnied. He glanced at her, then back toward me.

“I think you should go now.”

“Could I come back, talk to you again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe talking to you was a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

His boyish, bloodless face suddenly grew sullen, dangerous.

“You wouldn’t write anything bad about Mr. Preston, would you?”

“Would it upset you if I did?”

“Yes, quite a lot.”

He turned away toward the cottage. I ambled down the drive, slipped back through the gate, climbed into the Mustang, pulled back onto the road.

*

I saw George Krytanos one more time, as I fed the Mustang a little fuel, rolling down the hill.

He was atop the mare, watching me from a small bluff at the southern edge of the property. Dusk lay heavily on the landscape now, and in the shadows, with his slim figure and long, dark hair, he looked eerily ghostlike himself. Neither man nor boy, male nor female, alive nor dead, but lost somewhere in the netherworld between.

Friday-evening traffic into Los Angeles was the usual bumper-to-bumper grind, and it was after nine when I got back to Norma Place.

Mei-Ling was resting on the patio with Maurice, Fred, and Maggie. Maggie and Fred barely stirred at my approach, but Mei-Ling was on her feet like a pop-up toy, trotting over with her little pink tongue protruding from her barracuda teeth, while Maurice’s chaise lounge scraped flagstone as he rose. Mei-Ling stood at my feet, pawing at my pants leg, insisting that I pick her up. I finally obliged, while Maurice told me that she was beginning to fit more snugly into the household—he whispered that even Fred had taken to napping with her when he thought no one was around to witness it.

“That’s nice, Maurice, but I’m afraid this is her last night with us.”

“She’s found another home?”

“Templeton and I are attending Charlotte Preston’s funeral tomorrow afternoon. I expect Charlotte’s mother will be there. She’s Mei-Ling’s rightful owner.”

“Yes, of course.”

Maurice stroked Mei-Ling lovingly around the shoulders, refusing to look at me. I noticed that he’d given her a bath and a fluff, and bound a sprig of her hair between her ears with a small pink bow, just the kind of thing the childless Charlotte Preston would have done. It made me feel some sympathy for the dog—being festooned in a silly pink bow—though it didn’t mean I liked her any better.

“I guess she can’t help it if she thinks she’s a princess. Can you, Mei-Ling?”

She responded to her name by licking me on the tip of the nose.

“Maybe you’d like to keep her tonight, Maurice, spend some time with her before she moves on.”

“If that’s what you want, Benjamin.”

He took the dog from me, glancing at me with a miffed expression.

“It’s only right that her last night with us be filled with joy and companionship, not the aloofness of someone who clearly doesn’t have her best interests at heart.”

“I can’t keep a dog that’s not mine, Maurice.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She’s a
who,
not a
that.
And she happens to be sensitive, just like the rest of us.”

He took her away without another word, pressing her to his chest and nuzzling her with his face. I took the steps to my apartment, feeling more weary than usual, and found the red light blinking on the machine next to my phone. I played the single message and heard the deep, warm voice of Oree Joffrien, asking how I was doing and inviting me to his place for dinner tomorrow night.

I erased the message without calling back, and went out.

*

It was a typical Friday evening in Boy’s Town when the weather was balmy, which meant hundreds of men and a few dozen women packing the clubs and restaurants along the boulevard, or sitting at little tables along the sidewalk, sipping coffee and sizing up the competition.

I weaved my way through the throng of mostly younger men, past the pretty faces and the dance music that hit me like a gale force wind coming out of Micky’s until I found some open pavement and headed straight for A Different Light. Inside, a reading was in progress—Dorothy Allison down from Northern California on tour with her latest novel—and the crowd sat silently in stiff-backed folding chairs or browsed about the store with a respectful hush for the noted author of
Bastard out of Carolina.
I listened to Allison read her intensely personal story, feeling a pang of envy and a sense of my own cowardice, since I’d never had the courage to try a novel myself. I’d always been more comfortable hiding behind facts and figures, the bricks and mortar with which reporters build their walls and safety zones, always more comfortable telling other people’s stories, while trying not to look too deeply into their own.

When Allison had finished, followed by applause and the first question from the audience, I turned toward the racks where I’d once seen the illustrated books of Horace Hyatt. They were still there, nearly a dozen of them in the illustrated book section, which overflowed with oversized tomes replete with high-quality photographs of naked or half-naked men, published to satisfy the peculiarly male appetite for visual sexual fantasy. Most of the photographic subjects on the shelves fit the twentysomething-hunk label, from slim and boyish to rugged and muscular, but the numerous books of Horace Hyatt were different.

A few of his titles were enough to reveal his special taste:
Street Boys, Teen and Lean, First Shave,
and his purported masterpiece, according to a promotional claim on the cover,
Long Legs, Smooth Chests.
Hyatt’s models were all teenagers, or at least looked it, most of them on the lean or skinny side, some of them pimply and scruffy, a few of them classic pretty boys with flawless faces and gym-honed physiques. Most of them looked like real kids, straight kids, maybe, or boys whose sexual identity was still undefined or at least undeclared for the camera. There were no overtly sexual poses in Hyatt’s books, and not a single boy had been photographed naked. Hyatt liked them shirtless in slouching jeans or raggedy cutoffs, or wet trunks with sandy surfboards under their arms, staring blankly into the lens, letting the viewer read into their faces what he or she might find. There was an undeniable sensuality to the photos, though; they were of such high quality, one could see the individual texture of each boy’s skin, the finest flaw, the tiniest hair. With his skillful lighting and camera work, Hyatt had also managed to imbue each boy with his own special identity, and a certain humanizing beauty that lent an almost saintly quality to his subjects, freezing them in a moment of innocence and vulnerability on the brink of manhood, warts and all.

Behind me, as I flipped through Hyatt’s books, looking at the faces and bodies of hundreds of unidentified teenage boys, the questions for Dorothy Allison gradually reached their end. The audience, mostly women, applauded a final time, and I heard the metal squeak of chairs and the shuffling of feet as people lined up to have their books signed. I carried a copy of
Long Legs, Smooth Chests
to the register, paid thirty-five dollars for it, and took it home.

I was in the door only long enough to drink some water from the kitchen tap and flop on the bed with Hyatt’s book when the phone rang. It was Templeton, calling from the
Times,
working late again. She started in with some friendly chitchat, but I was tired and irritable from my drive back from Montecito, so I cut her off and gave her the gist of my visit to Equus and my meeting with George Krytanos.

“He sounds kind of spooky, Justice.”

“Not as spooky as Rod Preston, when he was alive and diddling young boys.”

“If what Krytanos told you is the truth.”

“I don’t know why he’d lie.”

“Perhaps he made all that stuff up about the boys, hoping to blackmail Charlotte Preston into letting him have the Montecito estate, or at least keeping it off the market.”

“It’s possible.”

“Speaking of Charlotte, didn’t you tell me she quit her job after her father died and left her that cushy inheritance?”

“That’s what she said.”

“I did some checking on the doctor she worked for, Martin Delgado. Charlotte quit her job in Dr. Delgado’s office nearly a year ago, months before her father’s death.”

“The doctor’s name is Martin?”

“Does that mean something to you?”

“There’s a tag on Mei-Ling’s collar that reads, ‘For Charlotte, with love, Marty.’”

“Bosses give employees gifts all the time.”

“Mei-Ling is one of those pedigreed, cutesy-pie types that comes with violins playing and heartstrings attached.”

“I’m taking notes, Justice.”

“Is there anything in your notes about forensics?”

“As a matter of fact, they did come back with a print check. Charlotte’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the syringe. They’re still leaning toward suicide.”

“They’ve leaned the wrong way before.”

“So Charlotte’s death does have you intrigued.”

“Maybe, just a little.”

“Maybe we should talk more about it tomorrow, on the way to her funeral.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve got a list of names that need checking out. I was hoping you could use some of your resources at the paper.”

I told her about the list I’d found in one of the files Charlotte Preston left with me, mentioned that it was in Randall Capri’s handwriting, and told her I’d give her a copy the next day. It seemed a good place to get off the phone, but before I managed that, Templeton started troweling new ground.

“So, have you heard from Oree?”

“I haven’t talked to him, no.”

“The question was have you heard from him.”

“I may have gotten a message on my machine.”

“You’re going to call him back, right?”

“If I do, you’ll be the last to know.”

“You’re so sweet, I could throw up.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Templeton.”

We clicked off simultaneously, and I leaned back on the pillows and opened Horace Hyatt’s book again. As I turned through the pages, ever more slowly, I was drawn deeper and deeper into his world of boys, into their eyes, their untold stories. The original copyright date on the book put its publication at nearly twenty years ago, which made the boys roughly Oree’s age now, in their mid-to-late thirties, at least those who might still be alive. Not one of them was remotely as beautiful as Oree in the classic sense, with his darkly striking face, princely profile, and finely muscled torso; most of these boys would probably have lost their modest looks with age, as so many of us do. Yet, as I studied their youthful, beardless faces, their slim, still-developing bodies, their incipient strength and sexuality, I felt a pang of erotic hunger that surprised me, the kind so many straight men must experience when they secretly salivate over nubile teenage girls. I’d never been much interested in boys, not even the postpubescent variety like these, except for the rare, quick dalliance when the attraction was mutual and I’d had too much to drink; if a man didn’t have some muscle and hair on his body, and some mystery about his personality, I didn’t really see the point. Now, though, alone and unhealthy, troubled by my past and frightened by my future, feeling unconnected to my libido for the first time in my life—feeling weak—I experienced an unexpected craving. Not momentary and whimsical as in earlier years, like a passing itch, but deeper and more powerful, like a buried spark flaring into a brighter, hotter flame. The spreading heat that felt like it could become all-consuming compulsion.

These boys were seductive in a way that had nothing to do with them, other than their youthfulness and innocence, and everything to do with me, who I was and what I needed, what I didn’t have. As I stared at the pictures, I understood that having boys like these was all about power and control—power over the young and susceptible, control over their unfinished bodies and minds: pathetic Humbert Humbert fantasizing endlessly about lovely, pubescent Lolita. The younger they were, of course, the greater the potential for power and control, and the more enticing and addictive they became to the kind of man who needed them to shore up his sense of emptiness and shaky self-worth. And there were so many of them out there, if you really wanted them, so many boys.

I closed Horace Hyatt’s picture book, reached for the phone, called Oree. He picked up on the second ring, and I could hear Sonny Rollins tooting his horn in the background. I imagined Oree with a good book in his hand, a cup of tea at his side, listening to his jazz, content with that. I told him I’d be pleased to have dinner with him Saturday night, and asked what time.