The Little Death (18 page)

They
looked at each other and then back to me.

“We
had lunch at around noon,” Lisa said, “and were done by twelve-thirty. I’m
afraid that after that we weren’t paying much attention.”

Mark
frowned thoughtfully. “Wait. I heard a phone ringing next door. It woke me, and
I looked over at the alarm clock thinking it might be the hospital — I work
there, too. It was about three-thirty or a little before. Then I got up to use
the bathroom and get a glass of water from the kitchen.”

“Did
you hear anything else?”

He
shook his head.

The
three of us looked at each other. Lisa touched her finger to her lip.

“But
I did,” she said. “The sound of silver rattling as someone opened a drawer. But
I thought it was Mark.”

“No,
I got a glass from the counter. I didn’t open any drawers.”

“All
this happened around three-thirty?”

“I’m
sure of it,” Mark said, “because I had to check in with the hospital at four.”

I
got up to leave. It was five-thirty. The burglar had been in my apartment only
two hours earlier.

“What
did he take?” Lisa asked.

“Some
letters.”

“Were
they important?”

“The
fact that they were stolen makes them important again,” I said, then thanked
them for their help.

Back
in my apartment I headed for the phone. I hadn’t noticed earlier that the
answering machine had been shut off. I switched it back on. The recording dial
was turned to erase. I moved the dial back to rewind, listening as the tape
sped backwards. The message had not been rewound before my visitor attempted to
erase it. Consequently, he had only succeeded in erasing blank tape. I turned
the dial to play. There was the noise of someone trying to clear his throat and
then the voice of a very drunk Aaron Gold.

“Henry
. . . secretary said you called the other day . . . need to talk to you . . . s’important
. . . s’about Hugh . . . Judge Paris . . . you got it wrong. Remember, no cops.
I’m at home.” The line went dead. I fast forwarded the tape to see if he’d
called again. There were no other calls.

Mark
said he heard the phone ringing at about three-thirty. A few minutes later,
Lisa heard someone in my kitchen. Aaron’s call must have come in while the
burglar was in the apartment. If he was in the kitchen, which was just a few
feet from the phone, the burglar heard the message. In fact, he not only tried
to erase the message but turned the machine off so that the red light wouldn’t
immediately attract my attention. Shutting off the machine had also prevented
any further messages from Aaron. Suddenly, I was very worried for him.

The
phone rang at Aaron’s house three times before his answering machine clicked
on. I waited for the message to finish knowing that Aaron often screened his
calls, and hoping that he was doing that now.

“Aaron,
this is Henry,” I said, practically shouting, “if you’re at home, pick up the
phone.” The tape ran on. I tried calling his office but was told he hadn’t been
in that day. I put the phone down, got my car keys and hurried out of the
apartment.

*
* * * *

Aaron
lived in a small wooden house on Addison, set back from the road by a rather
gloomy yard that was perpetually shaded by two massive oaks. There was a deep
porch across the front of the house. The overhanging roof was supported by four
squat and massive pillars completely out of proportion to the rest of the
building. Gold and I referred to the place as Tara. The recollection of that
mild joke dispelled some of my uneasiness as I opened the gate and stepped into
the yard.

It
was dusk and the shadows were at their deepest. Aaron’s brown BMW was parked, a
little crookedly, in the driveway. There were lights on behind the drawn
curtains but the house was still. I heard a noise, a movement on the side of
the house in the narrow strip of yard between the building and the fence that
bounded the property.

Abruptly
I stopped, turned and sped toward the side yard, moving as quietly as I could.
When I reached the edge of the building I stopped and listened. Another noise,
fainter. Breathing? I slowed my own breath. Someone had been coming up the side
yard when he heard me open the gate. Now he was standing still, wondering, as I
had wondered, at the source of the noise. I crouched, walked to the very edge
of the building, and then sprang.

For
an instant no longer than a heartbeat we saw each other through the evening
shadows. He raised his arm to his chest, holding something in his hand. I
balled my hand into a fist and brought it down on his wrist as hard as I could.
Startled, he dropped what I now saw was a gun. He gasped, turned, and started
running. I stooped down, retrieved the gun and ran after him. He was scrambling
over the redwood fence when I got to the back yard.

“Stop,”
I shouted, training the gun at his back. I squeezed the trigger and then
released it. It seemed suddenly darker as a burst of adrenalin rushed to my
head. He was wearing — what? — dark pants, a dark shirt, taking the wall like
an athlete. I knew that in another second it would be too late to stop him. I
had to stop him. But shoot him? I was going to shoot a man? This wasn’t even remotely
a situation of self-defense. I held on to the gun and ran for the fence. He was
nearly over the top. With my free hand, I reached up and grabbed his ankle. He
kicked free. In another second I heard him drop to the ground on the other
side. I clambered up the fence, trying to get footholds on the rough wood.
Reaching the top, I looked down at the alley, which ran the length of the
street. He was gone. He had run to the end of the block or else had gone into
someone’s back yard. I let myself drop back. Try to remember his face, I
thought, as I made my way back to the house. The back door was ajar.

I
entered the house through the kitchen.

“Aaron,”
I said in a whisper.

There
was no answer. I groped for a light switch, found it and turned it on. The fluorescent
light blinked on, filling the room with a white electric glare. From the
doorway of the kitchen I could see into the dining room and to the arched
entrance that led into the living room. There was a light on in there. I
stepped into the dining room and repeated Aaron’s name. There was no answer.

I
crossed the room to the archway, holding the gun loosely at my side. Aaron Gold
slumped forward in a brown leather armchair, his chest on his knees, his
fingertips scraping the floor. Blood dripped steadily from his lap to a bright
circle beneath him. On the table beside the chair was an empty bottle of Johnny
Walker Red, a glass, and a small pitcher of water. The strongest smell in the
room was of alcohol.

He’d
probably been too drunk to know what was happening.

I
took no comfort from this.

I
started toward him. There was a loud noise out on the porch, the sound of
footsteps and voices. Someone was pounding on the door.

“This
is the police. Mr. Gold. Open up. This is the police.”

Numbly
I went to the door and pulled it open. A young officer was flanked by three
other cops. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could utter a word, one of
them said, “He’s got a gun.”

As
soon as the sentence was out, there were four guns on me.

“Drop
it,” the first officer said. I let the gun slip from my hand to the floor. “Now
step outside nice and easy.”

“All
right,” I said, regaining my composure, “but my friend is hurt in there.”

“We’ll
take care of him in a minute.” One of the other officers directed me to turn,
put my hands up against the wall and spread my legs. The felony position. I did
as I was told. Another of the officers stepped into the house and I heard him
mutter, “Jesus Christ.” To the officers outside he said, “Get the paramedics.”

I
was searched, handcuffed and ordered to remain standing against the wall.

“This
is a mistake,” I said to the officer watching me.

“It
sure is,” he replied.

Now
I heard the shriek of sirens as the paramedics’ unit shattered the stillness
of the night. I had often heard that noise and wondered to what tragedy they
were being summoned. This time I knew.

The
officer who had first come to the door approached me, pen and pad in hand.

“What’s
your name?” “Henry Rios,” I said.

He
looked me over. Perhaps out of deference to the fact that I was still wearing
most of my suit from the funeral, he called me mister.

“I’m
going to read you your constitutional rights. Listen up.” He began to read from
the Miranda card in the dull drone that I had heard so many times before when I
was a public defender. I had about fifteen seconds in which to make up my mind
whether to talk to him or not.

“Do
you understand these rights?” he was asking.

“Yes,”
I replied.

“Do
you want a lawyer?”

“I
am a lawyer,” I said.

The
answer startled him and then he searched my face carefully. “I’ve seen you
before,” he said.

“I
was a public defender.”

He
whistled low beneath his breath. “Then you know the script,” he said. “Do you
want a lawyer?”

“Yes.
Sonny Patterson at the D.A.’s office. I’ll talk to him.”

He
nodded. “We’re going to take you down to county,” he said. “I’ll radio ahead
and have them rouse Patterson.”

“Thank
you.”

He
turned to one of his fellow-officers. “Take him.”

“What
charge?” the other asked.

“One
eighty-seven,” the first officer replied. Penal Code section
187
— murder.

Out
in the street the paramedics had arrived.

It
took Sonny Patterson two hours and seven phone calls to get me out of jail.
Most of the time I sat on one of the three bunks in a holding cell watching
soundless reruns of
Fantasy
Island
while he wheedled on the phone in
the booking office for my release.

The
last time I’d been at county was as a public defender the morning I met Hugh
Paris. Nothing at the jail had changed, including the inmate population.
Several trusties who recognized me from back then drifted past the cell, not
saying anything but just to stare. I smiled and said hello and they moved on.

The
sheriffs let me keep my own clothes but they did not spare me any other part of
the booking process. I was strip- searched, photographed, finger-printed and
locked up, all the while thinking, this is unreal. The worst part was the strip
search. Until then it had never occurred to me to make the distinction between
nudity and nakedness. Now I knew. Nudity was undressing to shower, or sleep, or
make love. When you stripped in a hot closet-sized cell that smelled of the
previous fifty men and under the indifferent stare of four cops, then you were
naked. I still felt that nakedness. It was like a rash; I couldn’t stop rubbing
my body.

I
made my mind into a blank screen across which flickered the images of the day
from Robert Paris’s casket to Aaron Gold’s fingertips dipped in a dark pool of
his own blood. These pictures passed through me like a shudder, but it was
better than trying to suppress them.

This
entire affair began with the murder of one man, Hugh Paris. Now it was assuming
the dimensions of a massacre. No one connected with the Paris family seemed
safe, including, perhaps, Robert Paris himself. Had the judge’s death been
purely coincidental to the fact that I’d begun to develop evidence that
implicated him with three murders? Was there a gray eminence in the shadows
directing events, or did the dead hand of Robert Paris still control the lethal
machinery? Until that afternoon I had believed the investigation into Hugh’s
death was closed. The killing of Aaron Gold changed all that. I was back at the
starting line, but with this difference: I was exhausted.

I
lay back on the bunk and closed my eyes. Maybe it was the ever-present
atmosphere of sexual tension in the jail or just my own loneliness, but I
thought back to the last time Hugh and I had made love. Once again I saw the
elegant torso stretched out beneath me as I lowered my body to his, and felt
that body responding, resisting, yielding. The image of his face came to me
with such clarity that I could see the fine blond hairs that grew, almost
invisibly, between his eyebrows. And I could see his eyes and in those eyes I
saw, with more regret than horror, the face of Aaron Gold bathed in blood.