Revision of Justice (6 page)

I nodded.

“Come, then!”

The old woman was already moving down the hill behind her cart. I climbed back into the Mustang and moments later pulled alongside.

“She says her name is Constance Fairbridge,” Templeton said. “Her house is just down the road.”

I followed slowly behind, while the old woman recited passages from Genesis. Before long she crossed the road to a dirt-and-gravel drive, where the wheels of her cart settled into familiar grooves. A white mailbox with the name Fairbridge scrawled in pencil stood at the entrance.

The drive led through a stand of oak so thick no moonlight pierced it into a clearing of wild grass and a carpet of ivy coated with dust. A two-car garage built of split logs stood off to the right, leaning badly from age and neglect. Next to it was an ancient gasoline pump with a crank handle and metered numbers frozen in another time.

A two-story cabin that resembled a small hunting lodge stood on the left of the property, with a broad porch running all around. It was a generous, untended piece of land that had somehow survived the ungentle subdivision that had carved up the rest of the area over the decades. Beyond the house was a private stretch of canyon well hidden from the road.

Glass bottles were everywhere, hundreds of them. Clear bottles, colored ones, all shapes and sizes. They lined the porch, the steps, the railing. More could be seen inside, on the ledges of the windows.

I parked and climbed out.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Mrs. Fairbridge?”

“The cars,” she said. “I forget about the cars.”

“Do you live alone?” Templeton asked.

The old woman’s eyes scanned the trees, then the dense underbrush.

“I have the birds. The little animals.”

“Anyone else?”

“You’ll find all the truth you need in the book of Genesis.”

“Would you like us to call anyone?” Templeton said.

“Why?”

The old woman looked at Templeton like she was crazy.

Templeton smiled.

“No reason. As long as you’re all right.”

“I’m just fine. You’ve been very nice.”

Her face grew troubled; she took Templeton by the wrist.

“Come, let me show you.”

Mrs. Fairbridge tugged Templeton along, while Teal and I followed. The old boards creaked under our weight. When she reached the front of the house, she raised a thin, scabby arm and pointed up the canyon with an unsteady finger.

“Sodom and Gomorrah!”

She looked around at the three of us, fierce emotion showing inside the pink rims of her watery eyes.

“Sins of the mother and the father, visited on the child! Oh, the shame, the unpardonable sin!”

“Maybe she’s upset about the Hollywood Sign,” Teal said. “Some movie she saw?”

Mrs. Fairbridge shook a gnarled finger in Teal’s face.

“Not the sign!”

She swung her arm and pointed hack up the long, jagged ravine. I stooped to follow the direction of her finger more carefully, and realized it was fixed on Gordon Cantwell’s hillside house.

A hundred feet below, the criminalist’s lamps could be seen on the terrace, casting their eerie light into the canyon’s shadows.

We emerged from the lower slopes of Mount Lee onto Beachwood Drive, which took us in a straight line through the Hollywoodland Gates to the flats below.

The sandstone gates, with their arched passageways for pedestrians and peaked columns for show, had been erected in 1923 as the entrance to a prestigious new subdivision. The Hollywood Sign had gone up the same year—as HOLLYWOODLAND—an enormous billboard advertising the sale of real estate, which would not lose its last four letters and some of its crassness until a much-needed renovation in 1945.

By day, the Hollywoodland Gates had a fairy tale quality. Now, after the unsettling events of the evening, they looked hulking and gothic.

“I’m glad to be out of there,” Templeton said, as I hit the last, flat mile of Beachwood Drive and the sign became a row of crooked teeth in my rearview mirror.

With the hills behind us, I picked up the signal for KLON-FM at 88.1 and we listened to some lush Saturday night jazz while gliding through a scabrous section of Hollywood down to Santa Monica Boulevard.

At the intersection, several patrol cars were pulled up at a gas station, pinning down a three-toned Dodge van. The cops had two young white men spread-eagled against the side panels; two more were being handcuffed on the ground, their pimply faces pressed against the greasy pavement.

“Just what we need,” Templeton said. “A little more drama.”

“What we need is a party.”

It was Teal, from the backseat, sounding petulant.

“We just came from a party,” Templeton said.

“Yes, and there was a dead person there.”

I turned right onto Santa Monica Boulevard, pointing the Mustang past a string of Latino bars and equity waiver theaters toward West Hollywood. It was 1 a.m., and this part of the world belonged to dancers, drinkers, cabbies, and whores, along with roving vehicles filled with jumpy-eyed teenagers on the prowl.

Three miles and a few dozen curbside hustlers later, we crossed La Cienega Boulevard into the heart of Boy’s Town. The first busy bar we passed was the Powder Room, overflowing with women rather than men; another lesbian enclave appeared soon after, a cozy little coffeehouse called Eleanor’s Secret.

After that, as West Hollywood began edging up against Beverly Hills, the street was crawling almost exclusively with men.

We slowed to a stop in the heavy traffic and felt a sonic disco boom hit us from one of the clubs, where a line had formed to get in and music blasted through the open doors.

“Christian extremists could launch a SCUD missile attack on West Hollywood,” Templeton said to me, “but the bars in Boy’s Town would stay open for business.”

“With most of the customers making jokes about the size of the incoming missiles.”

I turned right at Hilldale, pausing as a stream of young men crossed between the bank and the bagel joint. Two or three blew kisses or made lewd propositions to Teal, who now sat perched atop the backseat like a prom queen, pretending not to notice. He told me he’d get out at my place and walk home from there.

A minute later I was pulling to the curb in front of the small house owned by my landlords, Maurice and Fred. A gleaming new Infiniti, a twenty-sixth birthday gift from Templeton’s ever-doting father, sat in the driveway. A light was on in the living room—unusual at that hour for Maurice and Fred—and I could see them huddled in earnest conversation on the sofa.

“Remember my offer,” Templeton said, as she faced me on the sidewalk. “I could really use a partner on this magazine piece.”

“I’ll think it over.”

“Did I mention that
Angel City
pays a dollar a word?”

“Not that I recall.”

“They do.”

“It’s a decent rate for a city magazine.”

“That’s more than two thousand apiece, Justice—after split.”

“And more than four thousand for you if we don’t.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not strapped for cash.”

“I’m always strapped for cash, and you know it.”

“Any work lately?”

“I ghosted a few trade journal pieces last month. For a real estate executive who writes like a lawyer.”

“You must have loved that.”

“It was a job. No byline. No background check. No questions asked.”

“What did this job pay?”

“Not a buck a word.”

“We definitely should talk, then.”

She pecked me on the cheek and started toward her fancy new car.

“Templeton—I’m not looking for charity. Not from you, not from Harry.”

“Don’t worry, Justice—if you come aboard, you’ll earn every penny.”

She drove off waving a hand out the window, as if having me back in her life was already reducing What’shisname to an inconsequential memory. I wasn’t sure I liked that. But I did like the sound of a buck a word.

“I was hoping we could talk.”

Teal stood next to me, looking fidgety.

“Really? What about?”

His eyes flashed mild contempt.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Justice?”

“Somewhat.”

Slowly, like a chameleon changing colors, his manner grew soft, deferential.

“Maybe I could buy you a drink.”

“Congratulations, Teal. You said the magic words.”

We walked to Rimband’s, three blocks down in the thick of the action. It was Teal’s choice, not at all the kind of place I would have picked. I was doing my best to stay out of bars these days, away from the siren call of hard liquor, but if I was going to be in one, I preferred a long, dark counter with beat-up bar stools, sawdust and peanut shells on the floor, kick-ass music, and a pool table where good-looking young men had to bend over to make their shots, showing their shape.

I suspected Teal was looking for a comfort zone and, for someone like Teal, Rimbaud’s would be the place. It was a small, polished, continental restaurant with linen tablecloths and fresh-cut flowers where you could hear soothing Sinatra and Nat King Cole tunes in the background and listen to bitchy comments at the bar about Drew Barrymore’s hair and Tom Selleck’s marriage. It was also popular with the kind of older gentlemen who dote on cute young men like Teal the way lonely matrons do small, fluffy dogs.

The breathy voice of Carmen McRae singing “A Taste of Honey” welcomed us as we entered. Heads swiveled, eyes drawn immediately to Teal’s blond, youthful head, before moving down to see if the rest matched up.

We squeezed into a corner of the bar that looked out on the street, where hundreds of young men made their final move to one more club before the 2 a.m. curfew, the way thousands of straight men and women were moving with quiet desperation in other parts of the city.

The bartender wore tight shorts and a tighter tank top. His skin was flawless, his hair peroxided, and he clenched his butt so tight when he walked that it looked sutured. After some silly small talk that included a sexual innuendo or two, he took our orders and sashayed away.

Teal leaned close, indicating he was ready to talk, or at least negotiate. I tossed out the first chip.

“So tell me, Teal, just how long have you known Dylan Winchester?”

“Suppose I don’t want to discuss certain things?”

“Suppose I give Lieutenant DeWinter a call and tell him you disposed of Winchester’s cigar?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t believe you.” Teal had turned snippy again; it seemed he couldn’t help himself. “After all, you’re fairly notorious when it comes to making things up.”

“Let’s try another scenario, Teal. Suppose DeWinter does believe me. What if he decides to ask you some tough questions—putting you in the position of having to lie to a cop?”

I leaned close to his ear.

“Destroying evidence is a felony, Teal. That cute ass of yours would get quite a workout in Men’s Central.”

Teal’s Adam’s apple performed a little jump as he swallowed.

Then, unhappily: “Anything I tell you is strictly off the record.”

“I can live with that.”

The bartender placed a generous glass of fumé blanc in front of me and a double scotch rocks in front of Teal, and took Teal’s cash away.

Teal raised his glass in a toast, though he wasn’t smiling.

“To our new relationship.”

He couldn’t have made it sound any less warm. I tapped his glass with mine, and we sipped.

“Tell me about Dylan Winchester, Lawrence.”

“Private or professional?”

“Professional I can get from his résumé.”

The recitation that followed—delivered coldly, with a trace of venom—was not what I’d expected.

“Dylan likes slim, smooth boys with brown skin. Light or dark, as long as they’re pretty. Asian or Mexican, in the fifteen to twenty range-although he’s been with his current boyfriend for a decade. Which you’d understand if you saw him.”

“You’re telling me Dylan Winchester’s gay?”

“What did you think I was doing with him when you saw us? Auditioning for his next movie?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Up yours, Justice.”

“We’ll discuss that later.”

He gave me a sour smile and drank more scotch.

“Dylan looks like rough trade and likes to act tough. But in bed he’s almost exclusively a bottom.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

“I get around.”

“You still haven’t told me what you were doing with him in the yard.”

Teal hesitated; anxiety kept his eyes moving.

“A few minutes earlier, I’d seen him going down the steps.”

“Toward the terrace.”

“Yes. He was calling out Ray Farr’s name. Dylan sounded drunk, angry. I followed him, even though it was dark.”

“Why?”

“The awful truth?” Teal attempted nonchalance. “I wanted to get him alone so I could give him a blow job.”

“How romantic.”

“I’m not the romantic type, a trait I believe we share.” He smirked. “Judging from your earlier behavior.”

“It depends on whom I’m with.”

“That makes two of us.”

So we loathed each other; that was out of the way.

“What happened when you followed Winchester down to the terrace?”

“I never got that far. I ran into him as he was coming back up.”

“What was his mood?”

“Upset, in a hurry.”

“Without his cigar, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“You tried to talk to him?”

“He brushed past me, determined to get away. I went after him. That must have been when you saw us.”

“So you never saw JaFari’s body until—”

He cut me off, sounding both sincere and scared.

“I didn’t know he was down there until your friend Alexandra came upstairs to tell you. I swear, that’s the truth.”

“How well known is it that Winchester likes boys?”

“He doesn’t advertise it. After all, he makes a living directing action pictures for the major studios. But it’s no secret in gay circles that he’s queer.”

“Maybe it’s just rumor. That’s common enough.”

“I speak from firsthand knowledge, Justice.”

“But you’re as blond as a baby chick. You told me—”

“Dylan makes exceptions if you’re young enough and he’s had enough to drink. At the time, I was and he had.”

“When was that?”

“More years ago than I care to count.”

“Count anyway.”

“Nine, ten. Somewhere in there.”

“And now you’re trying to rekindle the old flame?”

“I’m turned on by butch men. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“For now, maybe.”

He turned to stare out at the street, looking haughty again.

“Why was Winchester looking for Reza JaFari tonight?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“What was their relationship?”

“They slept together briefly when Raymond—that is, Reza—was a teenager. You know, before that heavy beard and all the body hair. Body hair is a big no-no with Dylan.”

“How long did it last?”

“Dylan got tired of Ray after a few weeks and started looking for someone new. He was a hot young director back then, handsome as hell. Boys were all over him, not to mention girls. He had his pick of hopeful starlets, of which I was one.”

“And Reza?”

“He didn’t have the patience for acting. He was just one of those pretty boys who slip into the gay Hollywood circuit and date older men with money.”

“And eventually he met Winchester.”

“It was at a party up in the hills thrown by Nando Sorentino, the set designer. Schlesinger was there and Vidal and Jim Bridges, the writer-director.” Teal shook his head, as if to himself. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Nando, too, come to think of it. God, it’s time to weed out the old phone book again.”