Limits of Justice, The (27 page)

“That means I shouldn’t drink tap water.”

“We advise our patients with HIV to drink only purified water, unless their viral load is undetectable and their T-cell count is fairly high.”

Viral load. T-cell count.
Terms I’d dreaded using for at least a year.

“I take it I’m not in that category.”

He reached for another sheet of figures, starting with my T-cells, the basic infection-fighting component of the human immune system.

“Your T-cell count is 362, which could be better. The figure for healthy people is generally in the eight hundred to fifteen hundred range. Below five hundred, you’re getting into risky territory.”

“At two hundred, you generally have full-blown AIDS.”

“You seem to know something about it.”

“I read the literature.”

He glanced at the next column.

“Your viral load is right at sixteen thousand. Which is sixteen thousand more than we’d like it to be.”

“But not critical.”

“It’s different with each person, Ben. There are extremely sick people with viral loads of a million and only a few T-cells left. So, compared to someone like that, you have a lot to be thankful for. But this virus can be voracious, as you know. It troubles me that you’ve got these serious levels after only a year of infection. We usually see these numbers in patients who have been infected for five or ten years without prophylactic treatment.”

“I had a rough year.”

“The good news is, you’re here now, and we can do something to get your HIV progression in check, turn it around.”

“You’re talking about the AIDS cocktail.”

“Two antiretrovirals combined with a protease inhibitor. As a therapy, it’s worked wonders for many, many patients.”

Patients.
I was a patient now.

“I’d like to postpone that as long as possible.”

“Why, Ben?”

“I just don’t feel like I’m ready for that step.”

“These numbers tell a different story.”

“The side effects I’m reading about, the potential toxic damage to vital organs, the long-term impact on the body we don’t yet know about. Frankly, the cure sounds potentially worse than the disease.”

“It’s not a cure, by any means. But given the choice of risking some side effects and allowing your HIV to develop into full-blown AIDS—”

“I’ve heard of people who have gone fifteen years and more without showing any symptoms.”

“You’re beyond that point, Ben. We could start you on combination therapy without the more powerful protease inhibitor if you’d like, just the antiretrovirals. See how that works.”

“Let’s just deal with this stomach infection for now.”

“At some point, you’ve got to put up a full defense against your HIV. It’s not going away on its own. In your case, it happens to be progressing very quickly. Thankfully, we’ve got a great opportunity to slow it down.”

“From what I hear, the cocktail runs the average patient twelve to fifteen thousand bucks a year.”

“A bargain compared to long hospital stays.”

“Still, I’ve got no medical insurance.”

“There are programs you can get into if your income is low. Clinical trials, that kind of thing.”

Clinical trials, that kind of thing.

“Just something for the stomach infections for now, Dr. Watanabe. We’ll talk about the bigger picture some other time.”

He nodded reluctantly, and reached for a prescription pad.

“In the meantime, you’ll take care of yourself? Good nutrition, moderate exercise, no drugs, minimal alcohol use.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

*

I was shutting the door of the Mustang in the underground garage when Freddie Fuentes stepped from the elevator with the Asian boy. A Band-Aid over a cotton swab covered the inside of the boy’s right elbow, suggesting he’d just had some blood drawn. Fuentes’s hand was on the meaty part of the boy’s shoulder, massaging it.

They climbed into a nondescript, late-model American car that Fuentes backed out and pointed toward the tollbooth. When he’d paid and driven through, I did the same, quickly enough to keep his car in sight. He made a left turn onto Olympic, then picked up San Vicente, angling east in the general direction of downtown. At Crenshaw Boulevard, he swung right, then left when he reached West Adams Boulevard, pointing east again. A few kilometers ahead, the tops of the downtown skyscrapers pierced the gray sky.

West Adams had been the great residential street in Los Angeles in the late nineteenth century and into the early 1900s, lined with some of the city’s most magnificent Victorian homes and formal Italian gardens. A Pacific Red Car line offered wealthy residents easy access to downtown and the beaches, and some of Hollywood’s earliest major figures had homes in the fabled West Adams district, including Busby Berkeley, Theda Bara, and Fatty Arbuckle. Later, certain ethnic stars who were prohibited from living in the more exclusive all-white enclaves bought luxurious homes on or near West Adams—Butterfly McQueen, Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, Leo Carillo. That helped precipitate white flight from the area in the forties. It had abated slightly in the seventies, when a handful of affluent Caucasians purchased some of the finer Victorians for historical preservation. The result had been a cluster of stunning, restored homes at odds with the surrounding pockets of poverty, where blacks did their best to make a life in the deteriorating neighborhoods abandoned by fleeing whites, who had taken economic stability with them. In the eighties and nineties, with an influx of Hispanic immigrants, new life and a measure of prosperity had returned to West Adams, where it was not uncommon to find a Spanish-speaking family or a large group of undocumented workers crowded into a dilapidated mansion that had somehow survived the wrecking ball.

The home that Freddie Fuentes pulled up to was clearly in the restored class, and surely high on the list of the West Adams Heritage Association. It was a fabulous potpourri of styles, if my barely trained eye was correct—Queen Anne in general design, but with suggestions of French Chateauesque and American Colonial Revival. The disparate styles and ornate flourishes had been melded into an intricate, Gothic-looking structure that rose three stories, counting the crowning ogee dormer with its Islamic-looking domed roof and spiraling turret. Out front, a brick walkway led between two squares of lawn to a broad flight of steps and an expansive arched entrance supported by twin Romanesque columns. To my mind, the rounded entrance, for all its flamboyance, looked more forbidding than welcoming.

Fuentes waited in the driveway outside a gate that eventually opened electronically. He drove in and parked behind a vintage black Cadillac that, from its slender, pointy fins, I guessed to be from the forties. As the gate closed behind him, he got out with the boy, led him across the lawn to the walk, and up to the deep porch. The shadows beneath the arch were so heavy I could barely see Fuentes and the boy, and it was impossible to make out the figure who opened the front door before they stepped inside. I wrote down the street number of the house and the license number of the Cadillac. A few minutes later, Fuentes emerged from the side of the house, got back into his car, waited for the gate to open, backed out to the street, and retraced his route to Olympic Boulevard, which he took downtown.

He turned left on Broadway, driving through one of Southern California’s major Hispanic commercial districts, where Latin recordings blared from the music stores and Latino shoppers swarmed the sidewalks. We passed Times Mirror Square, the monolithic structure that housed the
Los Angeles Times,
where Templeton was probably at work, and crossed into the neighborhood nearer the freeways, where most of the government buildings were located. Fuentes pulled into a restricted parking garage at the Federal Building. Down the street, I found a pay lot, parked, and hustled back, up the broad front steps and into the lobby, where I got directions from an information desk to the floor that housed the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

I stepped from the elevator into a sea of brown faces, which hardly surprised me. Nearly four million Latinos resided in Southern California, the single largest ethnic group, ahead of whites and second in concentration only to Mexico City. More than two million of those Hispanics were of Mexican descent, and most of those were immigrants who had arrived after 1980. Of the several million illegal immigrants in the United States, half lived in California, and half of those resided in Los Angeles County. Latinos were not the only immigrants by any means—roughly ninety percent of the city’s legal Chinese and Filipino populations, each numbering more than 200,000, were foreign-born immigrants, and more than fifty languages were spoken on the streets. Los Angeles may not have been the ideal melting pot many might have hoped for, but it was the Ellis Island of the twenty-first century. INS headquarters was the focal point of application and investigation, acceptance or rejection, the place where enormous power was wielded each day over the fates of individuals and sometimes entire families. It was where Freddie Fuentes had worked for twenty-two years.

As I glanced around, it seemed like half the city’s undocumented workers were there, attempting to get the piece of paper they so desperately needed—application for amnesty, temporary student visa, waiver for specialized work permits, marriage with a U.S. citizen that might earn them a green card, even the possibility of citizenship. I waded through them, asked where I might find Freddie Fuentes’s office. In a large waiting room, hundreds of people, young and old, sat on benches or chairs or leaned against the walls, waiting for their turn to see an official, waiting for their future to be determined.

I got there just in time to see Fuentes emerge from his office with an appointment list in his hand. He had taken off the jacket of his drab brown suit, rolled up his sleeves, loosened his cheap tie. He stepped toward a seated group, raised a hand benignly, smiled, and beckoned to a slender teenage boy with a baby face and Filipino looks. Fuentes put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as he rose, just as he had with the other Asian boy earlier that day, then guided him into his private office.

As Fuentes reached for the door, I saw a look of hunger transforming his face, what I took to be the quickening of sexual desire, a weak man’s anticipation of power and control. Then the door closed and I was left awash in the sea of hopeful immigrants, while the image seared my brain and sickened me to my soul.

I had my prescription filled, feeling both drained and weighted down by my conversation with Dr. Watanabe and the milestone it represented in my life.

After that, supplied with two large vials of antibiotics to be consumed over the next ten days, I drove back to Norma Place, where I presented Maurice and Fred with their gifts from Baja, and apologized for my rude behavior of the weekend before.

My sudden humility and low-key demeanor concerned Maurice, who took it as a troubling sign of my deteriorating health; it’s possible he thought I was actually dying and trying to get things off my chest before I was gone. I assured him that I was reasonably well, merely tired after my trip south, and genuinely remorseful. Even when Mei-Ling jumped up in my lap and started in on me with her tongue as I sat on their living room couch, I smiled passively and let her have her way.

After spending a strained half hour with them, I made my excuses to go. Maurice insisted I take Mei-Ling, at least for the night, for some company. I climbed with her under my arm up to the apartment, took my medicine, and lay down without undressing to rest, perchance to sleep. There were no suicide scenarios swimming out of the darkness now, only the faces of the two boys I’d seen that day with Freddie Fuentes, and the faces of Chucho Pernales and Mike and even Randall Capri in the photo Horace Hyatt had taken twenty-five years before. Sleep didn’t come.

Templeton called around ten, inquiring after my condition. I informed her I was mending from my night in Malibu, then related my adventures in La Jolla and Tijuana, and told her about the tail I’d put on Freddie Fuentes. She took down the West Adams address and the license number from the old Cadillac and said she’d check them out. I asked if she’d changed her mind about wanting a dog. She said she hadn’t, then good night.

*

Some time later, I woke to Mei-Ling’s shrill yip. It didn’t stop, and when I sat up in the bed, I saw her furry little form up on a chair, raised on her hind legs with her front paws on the windowsill as she looked out, barking her head off. I rose without turning on the light and went to stand beside her, stroking her and urging her to be quiet.

Then I saw what Mei-Ling saw: two figures in the shadows to one side of the drive, halfway between the garage and the street. They appeared to be male and female, the woman taller than the man, approaching hesitantly, clutching each other, looking up at my darkened window. I stood for perhaps a minute, watching them bicker. Then the man was turning and going, and a moment after that, the woman was following, hurrying on high heels to catch up.

I grabbed my keys and wallet and went after them. When I got to the street, I saw the taillights of a Jaguar XK8 convertible flick on, then the Jag pull away in the direction of Doheny Drive with two heads silhouetted in front, the man’s behind the wheel. I jumped in the Mustang and followed. The driver shot up Doheny to the west end of the Sunset Strip, turned left, then raced along Sunset through two or three yellow lights until he reached the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he made a soft left onto North Beverly Drive. The architecture down here below the hills was not particularly distinguished, with many of the houses built in the twenties for the pre-Hollywood crowd, but the neighborhood nonetheless epitomized respectability, or at least wealth. The house we ended up at was a two-story Mission-style place that had stature and dignity written all over it. I slowed and eased the Mustang to the curb as the Jag’s driver pulled into the gated, semicircular driveway and parked in front of a wide, columned porch as the barred gates swung closed. Also parked in the drive was a Mercedes I recognized from Charlotte Preston’s funeral entourage. Brightly glowing chandeliers in the shape of lanterns hung inside the porch, and as the man and woman stepped from their expensive sports car, I had no trouble recognizing Dr. Martin Delgado and his wife, Regina.

Before they reached the front door, I was out of the Mustang and across the street, gripping the iron bars of the big gate, shouting their last name. They both turned at once, registering alarm. I ordered them to let me in, to talk to me. When they hesitated, I started shaking the bars with what strength I had left, making them rattle enough for Dr. Delgado to come trotting down the drive.

“All right, for God’s sake. Calm down.”

He faced me through the gate.

“What on earth is it?”

“I think you know.”

“You must have seen us a few minutes ago, outside your apartment.”

“Bingo, Doc.”

Regina was behind him now, looking at me evenly over his shoulder.

“Let him in. Let’s tell him.”

“I still don’t see the point.”

“We went over this, Marty.”

“It’s not wise, Gina. I’ve got some exposure here.”

“Open the gate, damnit. Let’s tell him the fucking truth.”

“I’ll let him in if you’ll clean up your mouth until we get inside, so the neighbors don’t have to hear it.”

“Just open the gate, Marty.”

He turned a key in an electronic box, the gates swung open, and I stepped through. Delgado looked at me with a professional eye.

“You feeling all right, Justice?”

“I feel fine. Let’s talk.”

“Inside, if you don’t mind.”

“Lead the way.”

I followed them around the curve of the drive, past the Jag and the Mercedes, up the steps, where Delgado used two other keys to open the front door. His wife went in ahead of us, and he again turned his eyes on me.

“You’re sure you’re OK?”

“I said I was fine, Doctor.”

I remember raising my foot to follow him across the threshold, and the next thing I knew, I was stretched out on his sofa with a damp washcloth on my forehead, opening my eyes to see Regina Delgado looking down at me. Her husband sat on the edge of the couch with my wrist between his fingers while he looked at his watch. When he had my pulse, he put the back of his hand to my cheek.

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Breakfast, I guess. Around eight.”

“Is that usual, one meal a day?”

“Lately.”

Delgado looked up at his wife.

“Make him some tea and toast. Sugar in the tea.”

She went away, and Delgado removed the washcloth from my forehead. He opened it, refolded it, put it back in place with the cool side down.

“I’d start eating more regularly, if I were you. A checkup wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

I looked around.

“You have a nice house.”

“I make a nice living.”

“You were spying on me tonight.”

“Not really.”

“It looked that way to me.”

“It was Regina’s idea. She wanted me to talk to you.”

“You have a funny way of making your approach, up a dark driveway in the middle of the night.”

“We weren’t sure you were in. We weren’t even sure which unit you lived in, the house or the place over the garage.”

“How did you find me?”

He smiled, looking embarrassed.

“After you visited the center, we called a friend. A private detective. He’s very good.”

“Not good enough to figure out which unit I live in.”

“No, I guess not.”

His eyes did the nervous dance for a moment.

“Regina—both of us were concerned. We felt we should know more about you.”

“You could have asked.”

“You left rather quickly.”

“You threw me out.”

He laughed a little.

“Yes, I guess I did.”

A beautiful child of about seven or eight appeared at the top of the stairway, dressed in a pink bathrobe and bunny slippers, rubbing her eyes.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Nothing, honey. We have a visitor. He’s not feeling well, but he’ll be fine. Go back to bed, sweetie.”

“What’s his name?”

“Benjamin.”

A short, stout, middle-aged woman with Guatemalan features, also in a bathrobe but no bunny slippers, came scurrying up behind the little girl.

“Go with Fransceca, honey. Go back to bed.”

The nanny turned the girl away, and Delgado stared after her a moment.

“I’m sorry to put you out like this, Doctor. I feel like an ass, blacking out on your front steps.”

He turned, smiling.

“Not at all. We caused this, after all.”

He looked up as Regina came into the room with a silver tray. On the tray was a silver tea set with three cups, and two slices of unbuttered toast on a small plate. The doctor rose, and I sat up, seeing flashes of white light.

“Slowly, Justice.”

I thanked Regina as she placed the tray on the coffee table, then filled the cups with steaming tea. I lifted the plate and nibbled at the toast, while they sipped at their tea. I set the plate back, picked up the remaining cup, sipped at it, smiled stupidly.

“So here we all are, taking tea together.”

Regina swung her head toward her husband.

“Tell him, Marty.”

His uneasy eyes found mine.

“It’s about something you said the other day. About the Krytanos boy.”

“He’s a man now—sort of.”

Delgado grimaced.

“You were right when you said I’d performed a number of cosmetic surgeries on him at Rod Preston’s request. I want to emphasize that he was sixteen when the first surgeries were done, and that I had his full consent.”

“How gracious of you, Doctor.”

“I’m not asking for your approval, Justice.”

“Preston gave you a photo of Randall Capri to work with?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you find that somewhat morbid?”

“There was nothing illegal about it.”

“That’s what you came to my apartment to tell me in the middle of the night?”

Regina rose from her chair, paced the room.

“That was my idea. Marty hasn’t been himself since you came to the center with your wild accusations. He’s hardly slept, he’s moody. He’s even canceled some surgeries, afraid he won’t be able to concentrate.”

“I suppose a guilty conscience can do that.”

“It’s not what you think, Justice.”

Regina stopped pacing, put her hands on her hips.

“Damnit, Marty, just tell him.”

I ate more toast, then drank more tea, while Marty made up his mind. Finally, he threw up his hands and blurted it out.

“I didn’t castrate the boy. I merely cleaned him up.”

“Preston brought him to you cut up like that?”

“He called me in a panic, from Equus. Said there’d been an accident, told me a boy who worked for him had—well, we know what happened.”

“Do we?”

“He mentioned an accident, said he needed my help. He told me there could be problems if he took the boy to a hospital. His career could be ruined.”

“And you took care of the boy, no questions asked.”

Delgado exhaled roughly, nodding.

“I had Rod bandage him up to stop the bleeding, then rush him down here. I cleaned up the wound so that there was very little scarring.”

“You did it yourself, alone?”

“Yes, late at night in my office, when no one was around.”

“What about the boy’s testicles? You didn’t try to—”

“Reattachment? I’m not trained to perform an operation like that.”

“You could have taken him to a hospital, let someone else handle it.”

“In my opinion, the boy’s organs couldn’t have been salvaged. Preston found the boy several hours after the accident. At least that’s what he told me. I felt we were lucky just saving his life.”

“Worth a try, though.”

He said nothing to that, just looked away.

“Enough that you’re having some trouble with it now.”

His conflicted eyes came back around.

“Frankly, I’d managed to put it in the back of my mind until you brought it up the other day. Regina thought I should tell you what actually happened.”

Regina stepped to her husband’s side, placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I wanted you to know that my husband’s not a butcher. He would never do anything so horrible to a child. You can believe it or not. But it’s the truth.”

“The truth is a tough concept to pin down sometimes. Different people see it differently, I guess.”

“Marty and I have done our best to be honest.”

“Any other confessions you’d like to get off your implants?”

Her nostrils flared, along with her eyes.

“Desgraciado, puto!”

Delgado put a hand over his wife’s.

“He’s talking about Charlotte, how she died.”

“I know what he’s talking about. Fuck the bastard, after the way you took care of him just now.”

I stood.

“I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful. It’s just that murder passed off as suicide has a way of making me ask a lot of nagging questions.”