Revision of Justice (33 page)

I found what I was looking for by the telephone in Teal’s dining room, open to the page about the cyanide discovered in Danny Romero’s backpack.

By then, the sirens had stopped.

Out the window, I saw Teal sitting on the curb, wrapped in a blanket, being tended by a paramedic. Two uniformed deputies were approaching cautiously up the front walk with their hands near their unclipped holsters.

My notebook was too big for my pockets so I slipped it into the waistband of my pants, against the small of my back, the way reporters often do. Then I raised my hands and stepped out to the porch.

One of the deputies unhooked a set of handcuffs from her belt. I turned around and put my hands behind me, palms together, the position I’d seen my father order suspects into when I was a little kid and wanted to be just like him when I grew up.

The other deputy, male, asked me what had happened.

“The guy at the curb did something he shouldn’t have. I got mad and broke his nose. Then I painted the walls with his face.”

The deputy read me my rights. Fifteen minutes later, I was in a holding cell at the West Hollywood sheriff’s substation down the hill. Before I was allowed a phone call, I spent an hour chatting with a friendly transsexual who had a compulsion for shoplifting perfume with Elizabeth Taylor’s name on the bottle. I figured Harry and Templeton were tied up with the fire, so I placed my call to Claude DeWinter. I told him where I was and that I’d appreciate it if he’d get me out.

“Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be down.”

Before another hour passed, he was at the substation getting me released on my own recognizance. When he saw me, he greeted me with a question that didn’t need an answer.

“You’re trouble, you know that?”

He thanked the deputies for making things easy for him and walked me out to the parking lot. I told him I needed a cup of coffee.

“From what I hear, you’ve got an even stronger taste for alcohol.”

“You’ve been talking to Templeton again.”

“Is that what set you off today? Too much hooch?”

“I only punch people when I’m sober, Lieutenant. I’m weird that way.”

“You’re weird in a lot of ways, Justice.”

He looked up the street toward Santa Monica Boulevard. “So where do you get a decent cuppa coffee around here?”

“Just about anywhere, if you can stand breathing the same air as homosexuals.”

“I’ll manage.”

I took him to Tribal Grounds, where we both ordered Kona Roast Supreme because it sounded potent. We took a table inside the patio, just off the street, out of the wind.

“Thanks for springing me, Lieutenant.”

“I owe you.”

“You heard from Beverly Hills homicide, I guess.”

“This morning. That spilled coffee on Petrocelli’s carpet came back positive for cyanide. Same with the stained cloth you gave them all neatly bagged. They love you over there.”

Then: “You have any more hunches you want to share?”

“I might.”

We sat for another minute or two not saying much, letting the caffeine do its job while we watched the last of the sunset reflect off the towering blue and green exterior of the Pacific Design Center a long block away.

When his cup was empty DeWinter unwrapped a stick of sugarless gum, rolled it up like a rug, and popped it into his mouth.

“About this Petrocelli business. You think whoever snuffed Petrocelli also took care of Reza JaFari.”

“Seems likely, don’t you think?”

“Very likely. I just don’t know why.”

He chewed his gum thoughtfully, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t.

“My guess is that you have both a good idea who and a good idea why. If I didn’t think that, you’d still be cooling your heels in the can.”

“Like I said, I appreciate you getting me out.”

“I appreciate the further cooperation you’re going to give me.”

He folded his gum wrapper into a neat, tiny square and placed it on the edge of his saucer.

Then he looked at the young men passing in both directions on the sidewalk.

“I never knew until I came to L.A. how many frigging queers there really are in the world.”

“Neither did I, Lieutenant. That’s why I stayed.”

He thought about that a moment.

Then: “Tell me what you know, Justice.”

“Funny, an old editor of mine named Harry Brofsky was saying exactly the same words to me this morning.”

“I don’t think there’s a damn thing that’s funny about it. Neither does your buddy Romero.”

“How’s he doing?”

“I wouldn’t want to trade places with him.”

“You’ve got your suspect, Lieutenant. What do you need me for?”

The streetlamps flickered on along the boulevard. A bare-chested blond gym boy with a tiny silver barbell in each distended nipple and another through his navel sauntered past. His arm rested comfortably around the narrow waist of a powerfully built black man nearly as dark as DeWinter.

The big cop sat immobile but his eyes followed the two men until they were out of sight.

“Interested, Lieutenant?”

He shot me a look, took my cup, got up, and went for refills. When he came back, he said, “I know that Romero was in Cedars-Sinai hospital going through intake when Petrocelli drank a cup of coffee laced with cyanide.”

“Which leaves you with three possibilities, Lieutenant. One, Danny’s innocent. Two, he’s got an accomplice. Three, somebody did a copycat on Petrocelli. My guess is you’re leaning toward number one, and you don’t feel too good about it.”

“Romero’s still my best suspect.”

“But you’d like a better one.”

“I think you know some things you’re not telling me.”

“I like to have my cards in order, Lieutenant, before I lay them on the table. In my situation, I have to.”

“How long?”

“I’m getting close.”

DeWinter looked out at the street again while he sipped his coffee. The smell of smoke was all around us.

“Hell of a fire up near Griffith Park.”

“Looks that way.”

“The Santa Ana winds always stir up trouble. Make people crazy.”

“The way I look at it, we’re all crazy, Lieutenant. Some are just stitched together a little better than others.”

He was quiet for a moment, finishing his coffee. He looked tired, reflective, less mean.

“You’re still going to have to deal with this assault rap, Justice. I can’t do much for you beyond what I’ve done.”

“I’ve been in worse jams.”

“Alexandra tells me somebody tried to run you down last night.”

“Did she.”

“She’s worried about you, Justice. Thinks you’ve got some kind of death wish.”

“Templeton’s got a motherly streak.”

“She’s a fine woman.”

“Many men seem to think so.”

“But not you?”

“I suppose I appreciate her mind and soul more than her body.”

He shook his huge head.

“That’s just something I can’t understand.”

“No one’s asking you to, Lieutenant.”

He bent his head, rubbed the back of his neck.

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me what she really feels about me.”

“She’s really got her hooks in you, doesn’t she?”

“Pretty damn deep.”

“You sure you want to know?”

“I’m twice divorced. Both times, they left me. I can take rejection.”

“She’s on the rebound, Lieutenant.”

He smiled painfully.

“I was afraid of that.”

I stood, in need of Tylenol, food, and sleep, in that order.

“I’ll call you as soon as I have something concrete. In the meantime, I have a request.”

“What’s that?”

“Take the cuffs off Danny.”

“I already have.” DeWinter lifted himself out of his chair. “If you continue to work with me, I’ll go you one further. I’ll kick him loose, into your custody.”

“You sure you want to do that, Lieutenant?”

“Alexandra talked me into it.”

“I guess I owe you both, then.”

We stepped out to the sidewalk, where the passing men had to change course to get around DeWinter’s massive frame.

“You know, Justice, I used to be a drinker myself.”

“Is that right?”

“Still go to meetings once in a while.”

“I’ve never been fond of groups myself.”

He nodded slowly, then said, “Call me if you have something. Don’t make me wait.”

He hitched up his pants.

“And, Justice, do us both a favor—be careful.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder just before he walked away.

When he was gone, I could still feel it there, along with my surprise.

The winds ran wild all night, howling through the trees along Norma Place and beating in noisy gusts against the old apartment.

I kept Maggie with me upstairs, afraid she might break loose from the yard.

The tequila still had hold of me and after some dinner I drank a tall glass of wine slowly to settle myself down. I spent the evening clicking through the TV channels, watching coverage of the fire and seeing if the JaFari story turned up. It did.

Pieces of it were on every newscast, along with Danny’s mug shot taken eight years earlier when he was arrested for assault. He looked incredibly young in the photo, stunned by the sudden knowledge of how cruel people can be, and perhaps by his own capacity for violence. I saw less of Jacques in Danny now, and more of myself.

Most of the newscasts referred to him as “the HIV Killer,” sensationalizing the story for maximum ratings; a few showed more responsibility, stating only that he was under arrest in the JaFari case, and refusing to speculate further.

The phone rang at half past ten, a call from Claude DeWinter.

“I don’t know if you’re planning any visits to your friend Romero, Justice. But you’ll need to be prepared.”

“The TV people?”

“They’re all over the hospital, trying to get live pictures. Some print people too—the tabloid scum, especially. I’ve doubled the police guard outside Danny’s room. You’re cleared with the cops on the watch. If you go, take some ID.”

DeWinter also warned me that Teal might tip the hounds to where I lived. I told him I didn’t think so.

“Why’s that?”

“If Teal connects me to Danny, he connects me to himself. I have a few stories of my own I could tell. I don’t think Teal wants certain aspects of his private life made public. If I’m right, he won’t even press charges on the assault.”

“You’ve got my numbers, Justice. Watch your back.”

I shut off the TV as another HIV Killer story came on, with the camera zeroing in on Danny’s eyes for effect, the way TV loves to do. I fell asleep with Maggie beside me on the pillow, where Danny’s head should have been.

When I woke at sunup she was sitting at the window, looking down the driveway toward the street. Waiting for Danny.

Danny.

He was central to all my thoughts now, yet I’d neither seen nor talked to him since fleeing the hospital Tuesday afternoon. I had to go back; I knew that much. And I had to help him die, one way or another. The way I hadn’t been able to help Jacques when his time came, because there had been a big hole inside me where my courage should have been.

If I couldn’t be there for Danny, I was lost again. Maybe forever.

I stood on the landing while Maggie trotted down the stairs to pee. Sirens screamed nonstop across the city, which told me the Beachwood Canyon fires were raging out of control in the hills four miles away.

I ran the kitchen tap until the water got hot, mixed a cup with instant coffee, and switched the TV back on.

Coverage of the fire had pushed Danny off most of the newscasts. Houses were burning and dogs and deer were running terrified down into the busy streets. People who had lost their homes huddled, weeping, before the cameras. TV reporters collared weary firefighters, pressing them about the cause of the fire, and when they couldn’t get the answer they wanted, speculating endlessly and repetitively to fill airtime, as TV reporters tend to do.

I thought about Constance Fairbridge alone in her old house with nothing but her precious bottles and little animals around her. Cantwell surely would have checked on his grandmother, I thought, but I wanted to be sure. I called information, got no listing for her, and left a message on Cantwell’s machine reminding him how vulnerable her property was to fast-moving flames, and how fragile her mind had become.

I also left a beeper message for Templeton, who called me back within the hour. She didn’t have much time to talk.

“Harry’s out here at the command post with me. But we’re still overwhelmed. The
Times
has more than a dozen reporters on the fire. We’ve got three.”

“Life’s never been fair,” I said. “Or
Time
, for that matter.”

She wasn’t in the mood for bad journalism jokes, so I cut to the chase.

“I think somebody should check on Constance Fairbridge. Maybe you can give her address to one of the firefighters. Make sure she’s safe.”

Templeton promised she would. I gave her the street number and our conversation was over.

I left Maggie with Fred, then drove two miles south to the Margaret Herrick Library.

I checked in with the guard, climbed the Kirk Douglas Grand Staircase, and filed my request with the Special Collections desk. A few minutes later, I was at a corner table, starting in on a stack of Gordon Cantwell’s earlier scripts, which totaled nearly a dozen.

I read the first one all the way through—line by line—but it took me nearly two hours and after that I began to skim. They all seemed like the same script, anyway.

Man or woman faces tremendous, life-changing challenge in Act One, which ends by page twenty. Important turning point ten to fifteen pages later. Midway through Act II, a plot twist that throws the story in an entirely different direction, with new obstacles and challenges. Act II ends between pages seventy-five and eighty-five, with the hero or heroine facing the final, most daunting leg of the mission. Act III ends between pages one hundred and one twenty, sometimes with a tidy, half-page resolution tacked on, tying up all the loose ends and offering a pat lesson about morality and character.

The Cantwell Method.

He had it down to an airtight formula, which I’m sure he would have called classic story structure. Perhaps it was; I was hardly an expert.

But for all their technical precision, Cantwell’s scripts were hopelessly contrived. The story lines were hackneyed, the characters cardboard, the dialogue flat and unbelievable.

I kept looking, but I found no real energy or emotion or heart. No sense that Cantwell was driven to create his stories by any genuine feeling for his characters or their problems. Not an inkling of humanity in a single line. It was all cold at the core, hollow.

Everything felt driven by plot—plot worked out according to the rigid Cantwell Method—with the most interesting scenes suspiciously reminiscent of others already captured on film. An elevated railway and car chase borrowed from
The French Connection
. A war room sequence from
Dr. Strangelove
. A restaurant confrontation from
Five Easy Pieces
. A deathbed drama from
Terms of Endearment
. A teary farewell scene from
Shane
. And on and on and on.

Cantwell may have placed all his plot points on the proper pages, but his scripts were as predictable as political campaign promises. Reading them, I was no longer surprised that none of them had been sold or produced, and that Cantwell had felt the need to inflate his credits.

I returned his old scripts to Special Collections, checked out with the guard downstairs, and pushed through the big doors to the rose garden plaza outside.

In the skies to the northeast, a monstrous column of smoke rose before becoming lost in the general haze that covered much of the city. My eyes were stinging as I entered the garage at street level, passing the parking tollbooth and turning down the rear aisle toward the middle section where the Mustang was parked.

I was almost there when I saw the gray sports utility vehicle with the dark windows waiting at the end of the aisle, tucked into the last slot almost out of sight. Its left headlight was smashed and the frame twisted from its impact with the boulder two nights earlier in the hills above Sunset.

I stopped at the Mustang, opened the trunk, tossed my notebook in, and lifted a crowbar out. Then I turned and started running straight toward the wagon.

Its tires squealed as it pulled out.

This time I was well out of its path, the hunter instead of the hunted. I ran at it from the side, swinging the crowbar with a crushing blow across the highest arch of the windshield, which shattered into tiny pieces held together by a protective plastic shield. All I wanted was to create one small hole in that windshield, an opening, a glimpse of the driver’s face.

The wagon shot across the aisle away from me. I sprinted after it, cutting through parked cars, angling in on it again and whacking the windshield one more time.

Again, it splintered but held.

The driver lost control and slammed into a concrete pillar, crushing the nose and grillwork. Steam hissed from under the hood. The vehicle jammed into reverse, its wheels spinning on oil and slick concrete. I swung the crowbar on the driver’s side, caving in the window, giving me a good look at a face I’d seen countless times—on billboards, posters, magazine covers, cereal and toy boxes, and rubber masks like the one I was looking at now.

E.T., Hollywood’s most famous and widely merchandised extraterrestrial, gaped at me from behind the wheel.

I reached to tear away the mask, but the wagon was moving again.

I heard the transmission slip into a forward gear and jumped to the safety of another pillar. E.T. glanced my way as the wagon sped by, his wrinkled features puckered into a silly rubber smile. I took off after him again.

The wagon careened toward the exit, smashing through the wooden arm of the toll gate, speeding toward the street. I sprinted after it, pushing the startled toll collector aside.

The fleeing vehicle shot into the nearest traffic lane at the same moment a big horn let out a warning blast that didn’t stop. The double-bugle horn was still sounding as the concrete-loaded dump truck beneath it plowed into the wagon, driving it over the curb and into a power pole, crumpling it like a cheap toy.

The horn was stuck and still blowing as the trucker backed his rig off the crushed wagon, while traffic came to a stop in both directions.

I was the first person to reach the driver’s door. It was caved in, like the front corner of the wagon on that side. Folded up on the dashboard was a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

E.T. was pinned by twisted metal and the steering wheel, which had caught him under the chin, crushing his windpipe. I heard choking sounds inside the mask and ripped it away.

Anne-Judith Kemmerman’s musclebound boyfriend worked his jaw frantically up and down, gasping for air. His eyes bulged, and gagging sounds came from his compressed throat like the last gasps a fish makes fighting to stay alive out of water.

The man was an idiot, a murderous idiot driven by testosterone and puerile male pride to try to kill me. Still, I took no pleasure in watching him die,

That felt new to me, strange. Maybe I’d finally tasted enough vengeance in my life, gotten my fill.

The trucker was beside me, then a growing crowd. I asked for a pocketknife, so I could open an emergency airway in Muscles’s throat. By the time I got the knife, he’d stopped moving and making his ugly noises. I reached in, felt for a pulse, found none.

I closed his eyes and told the gawkers to stop staring and move away. I had no business doing it, but there must have been something in my voice that suggested authority, because they did.

Then the police came, and more questions.

When they were done with me, I phoned Claude DeWinter and told him what had happened. He asked me if the Beverly Hills police knew about the connection of the dead driver to Anne-Judith Kemmerman.

I told him they did, then went home.

*

Back on Norma Place, I found a nine-by-twelve manila envelope waiting for me on the apartment steps.

My name was handwritten on the front. A return address for International Talent Associates was printed in the upper left-hand corner. Inside was a handwritten note from Roberta Brickman paper-clipped to the front cover of a script.

Dear Mr. Justice:

Here is the script you told me you were looking for. I hope it proves useful to you in some way.

Although I found our meeting yesterday quite painful, I also felt better afterward for having talked more frankly with you.

This is not for publication, but I thought you might like to know that I’m seriously rethinking my future. That’s the positive side to being infected with this virus—it forces one to decide what truly matters.

I’m considering a career change, perhaps to AIDS fund-raising or education work. I plan to live a very long time, but I’m not sure I want to spend that time making deals.

Please extend to Alexandra Templeton my good wishes for the article the two of you are working on.

Regards,

Roberta Brickman

The script bore the name and logo of Paramount Pictures in embossed gold against pale blue. I opened it to the first page. Centered, in capital letters and boldface type, was the title:
NOTHING TO LOSE
.