Light Before Day

by Christopher Rice

  Linda reddened and wilted slightly in the same instant. She turned her back to us and tapped the edge of the doorframe with the side of a clenched fist. "I knew somebody would come asking about this someday," she said. "But I sure as hell didn't expect it to be you, Jimmy. Are you writing a book about this?"

  Jimmy just kept his mouth tight. "A name came up," she said haltingly. "A name that I didn't think I could use because I thought if I did, this man would find a way to kill the story."

  I tried to affect a sympathetic look.

  "A man named Joseph Spinotta," she said quietly.

  I was grateful that her back was turned. Jimmy did a lousy job of hiding his reaction; he sputtered before he shut up. Our two theories had just converged. Corey's strange meeting with Billy Hatfill, as well as the specifics of his disappearance, both pointed to a connection with Billy and his missing sugar daddy.

  Linda turned around. "Spinotta was still one of the biggest names in town. Everyone thought that website of his was going to make television obsolete. Leo Bodwell told Sheriff that Ben Clamp had started attending parties at Spinotta's home. A-list-only affairs—not that many gay boys on the guest list. The beeper Ben left behind didn't turn up that many clients, but his hourly rate was steep. I figured Spinotta's place was where he did most of his business. But I couldn't find anyone willing to talk about what went on up there, so I couldn't pursue it."

  "What about Terrance Davidson and Roger Vasquez? Were either of them connected to Spinotta?"

  "Terrance Davidson waited tables at a restaurant in Beverly Hills," she said. "His manager fired him for being late. The manager claimed that she received several threatening phone calls from an older man protesting Terrance’s termination. This man kept using a certain phrase that stuck with her. He said that Terrance was not quality material."

  She met my heavy stare. "It was one of Spinotta's catch phrases. He would say it in meetings all the time. He would write it on project proposals that he thought were dated or out of step with the nation's youth. He even turned it into an acronym, NQM. To be sure, I even tape-recorded an interview Spinotta did with KCRW and played it back for the manager. She said the voice was the same."

  "And Roger Vasquez?" I asked.

  "I didn't find anything on him," she said quietly. "But by then I wasn't looking anymore. I was just going to run with what I had."

  "Why didn't you mention their parents, their families?" I asked.

  "None of them gave a shit," she said. "Even after my article ran, none of them lifted a finger to find their son. I finally called Roger Vasquez's mother. She told me her son was with the angels and she hoped the angels weren't pissed." Her anger over this was palpable. Given that she had taken up the cause of the Vanished Three even after their parents had turned their backs on them, I almost forgave Linda for what she had buried.

  "I'll make a deal with you two," she said. "You keep my name out of this, and I'll give you my file. If you ever mention me, I'll say you broke into my office."

  I drove west on Pico Boulevard as Jimmy leafed through Linda's file. It was not nearly as thick as I had hoped it would be. "Unbelievable," Jimmy finally said. "She sat on all that even after Spinotta became one of the most notorious white-collar criminals in this city. And she's still got the nerve to lecture you on what she did for your community."

  "You think Spinotta could have killed the story?" I asked.

  "Hell no," he said. "She was afraid of something else."

  "What?"

  He gave me a long look, which told me he was measuring his words carefully. "If Linda dug too deep into Spinotta's social world, she was going to find out those three guys were doing something that didn't fit with her image of them as innocent victims. That wasn't exactly Little House on the Prairie up there."

  "She had no trouble reporting that Clamp was a male prostitute," I countered.

  "Clamp's disappearance made the evening news before her story ran. She didn't have a choice." He gave me a few seconds to absorb this. "We need to find out what those three guys were doing up at Spinotta's place."

  "Partying, probably."

  "I don't think so. Does it strike you in the least bit that these guys all left town over the months leading up to Joseph Spinotta's big exodus?"

  I felt foolish for not having noticed it sooner. He continued. "Linda said Spinotta's parties were A-list-only affairs. Not that many gay boys on the guest list. So what were these three guys doing up there? I bet it was a lot more than drugs and skinny-dipping."

  "They were eye candy, Jimmy."

  "I doubt that's all they were," he said. "I'd bet these guys were in Spinotta's inner circle. Your job is to find out what they were doing in there."

  "You want me to ask Billy Hatfill?"

  "Not yet," he said. "Not until you get your meeting with Corey's uncle. Ask Billy about this now, and he'll probably leave town himself."

  Neither one of us said anything for a while. Jimmy broke the silence. "Terrance Davidson canceled his dial-up service. Roger Vasquez never bothered to get any, even though he could have afforded it. Ben Clamp didn't advertise his services as well as he could have in this new cyber-age. What does that sound like to you?"

  "Three guys who were new to the city and struggling to maintain?" I asked.

  "Or three guys who didn't plan to stay here for very long."

  "Linda said the sheriff's department went through Ben Clamp's beeper and didn't turn up that many clients," I said. "She assumed he was doing most of his business at Spinotta’s house."

  "Or he was slowing down before he skipped town," he said.

  "All right," I said. "So where does that lead?"

  "If you ask me, these boys were planning some sort of escape," he said.

  "You think they were running from something?"

  "Nope," he said, "I think they were Spinotta’s advance team. I think Spinotta figured out he was going to have to skip town and he sent these three guys to prepare the new residence."

  I waited for him to add to this theory, but he didn't, leaving me to imagine the everlasting party Spinotta and his Vanished Three might have created on a private island in the South Pacific, where drugs and alcohol flowed unabated and each morning saw the departure of another piece of reality on the retreating tide. It sounded inviting. Too inviting. I forced myself back to the present.

  "So before they leave town, these guys leave their personal belongings out for anyone to find? You would think an advance team would be a little more subtle."

  "It's just like Corey's apartment," he said. "It's a message."

  "What kind of message?"

  "They were turning their backs on their old lives," he said. "Shedding all vestiges of their former selves."

  "So you think Joseph Spinotta and the Vanished Three are all living in a Franciscan monastery somewhere?"

  Jimmy brayed with laughter.

  "Seriously, Jimmy."

  "I don't know what the hell they were doing," he said. "But I think they were doing it together. I pulled together a file on Joseph Spinotta last night. It's interesting. I want you to read it."

  When we passed under the 405 Freeway, the fog lifted slightly and the sun looked like a runny soft-boiled egg through the high, milky clouds.

  "Where does this leave Corey?" I asked.

  "Same place he was this morning," he said. "I think he's trying to point the finger at these three men."

  "And Billy Hatfill and Joseph Spinotta," I added.

  "Yep."

  "You think that two weeks ago, Corey got some dirt on Billy and used it to get something out of him," I said. "You think this was it? You think it's got something to do with Spinotta and the Vanished Three? Maybe he knows where they are."

  Jimmy just smiled.

  "What?" I asked him.

  "You should write fiction, too."

  Chapter 7

  We pulled over at a hamburger stand on Santa Monica Boulevard just west of Crescent Heights.

  The pl
ace had a warren of tables and chairs under a rippling plastic tarp, and the neighboring businesses were small bars with patrons who remembered what it was like when the most dangerous STD you could get was hepatitis.

  Jimmy walked out onto the sidewalk to make a phone call. I wondered if he was phoning his mysterious wife to tell her that his adversary Linda Walsh had not shot him. I was left with a chiliburger and a file on Joseph Spinotta that was as thick as a novel. Jimmy had used his LexisNexis account to print out everything that had ever been written about the man. He also located a photograph of the guy online. I studied it, trying to see what Billy Hatfill had seen in him besides dollar signs. Spinotta had a thatch of black hair and a long, angular face. His black eyes were mostly iris, and his high cheekbones and dimpled chin looked constructed by a surgeon.

  When Spinotta first arrived in Los Angeles with his big idea to transform entertainment by bringing it to the web, it seemed as if most of the reporters who profiled him were convinced they were covering the first wave of a revolution. Spinotta abetted them, making extravagant prophecies of a new world. Wired quoted him as saying, "When you consider the limitations of television and film and then when you look at the stranglehold they have on all forms of creative media, you have the kind of situation that led the French to leave their lattes and start building barricades in the streets."

  But the irony behind Spinotta's rhetoric wasn't lost on most of the reporters who profiled him. He was securing gobs of investment money from the very media tyrants he was assailing in the press. At the time, Silicon Valley's billions were starting to make the Hollywood Hills look like a third-rate suburb. Joseph Spinotta promised to link the two in the interest of making the entertainment industry more cutting-edge, and allowing Hollywood moguls to co-opt and quash any industry that was more profitable than their own.

  The early articles mentioned neither Spinotta's sexuality nor his young companion, Billy Hatfill, but as his venture capital mounted and Broadband Access Media neared its vaunted launch, another element crept into Spinotta's public comments. "Young people are tired of being condescended to," he told the Wired website. "Every horror movie geared toward the young audience tries to teach them that their sex drives are evil. One of the great advantages of BAM is that we won't be hamstrung by a set of outdated Puritan values that alienate our nation's young people."

  It was a brazen misstep for a man who had been so good at propagandizing his vision.

  Spinotta's musings on outdated Puritan values elicited fiery responses from several conservative columnists. Some commentators went so far as to accuse Spinotta of seeking to sexualize the nation's children for the delectation of the cabal of gay men who secretly ran Hollywood. A few even blamed him for the massacre at Columbine High. Spinotta responded to his critics by inviting all of them to become columnists for Broadband Access Media.

  Amid all the hype, it was difficult to find any concrete biographical information on the man leading the charge. An early BAM press release made mention of the fact that he had "been part of the innovative tech firm that conducted the first test of a satellite-based phone system." But if you read between the lines, it was clear that the words first test meant the test had failed, and the fact that Spinotta's specific role in the project wasn't mentioned meant it was possible he was working in the company's mailroom at the time.

  None of the profiles mentioned any degree from Yale Business School, a detail I had picked up through word of mouth, and I wondered if it was merely a rumor started by the man himself.

  There was a mention of the project that had first brought Spinotta to Southern California. In early 2000, Spinotta had been hired as an independent contractor by the real estate firm of Cale

  & Faulkner, which was well known for the massive cookie-cutter subdivisions it had laid out all over Southern California. I realized that the Cale in the company's title was Martin Cale, Corey's uncle. Meadow Oaks was the name of the project Billy Hatfill had mentioned to me, the one that had first brought Spinotta to Southern California.

  Spinotta’s quick rise ended thanks to one small detail: the website itself. Rumors had surfaced that the site was running behind schedule in producing its promised original dramatic programming and was probably not going to make its much-touted launch date. Stories surfaced of a massive but badly run office in a Culver City warehouse where employees fresh out of high school flitted around on scooters, neglected to return people's calls, and kept A-list actors and directors waiting for up to an hour.

  Then the site debuted, a slick page with four links to pages that were still under construction and four original movies that required high-speed connections that most users outside of major cities didn't have yet or couldn't afford—especially the kids who were Spinotta’s targets.

  The press turned on the mogul as quickly as it had embraced him. Within a week of the site's inauspicious launch, a middle manager fired all of the forty-five Culver City employees, and when reporters attempted to contact Spinotta at his home, they were told that he was unavailable.

  A few days later, it became clear that Spinotta and most of the venture capital had gone with the wind.

  Those BAM investors who didn't support gay marriage probably had an about-face on the spot. Even though Billy Hatfill had regularly attended meetings with Spinotta, he was not listed as having any stake in the company itself. Spinotta’s Sunset Strip mansion had been fully paid for and placed in Billy Hatfill's name before BAM's incorporation. There was no bridge the angry investors could cross to collect on their investment from the young man Joseph had left behind.

  The press framed Spinotta’s exit from town as a shameful exodus. My impression was different. The media interpreted his big talk and bluster as symptoms of a shameless self-promoter painfully out of his depth. I heard a scam artist who was playing on the sensitivities and fears of his wealthy investors.

  There had barely been a week between the site's disastrous launch and Spinotta’s flight.

  Wouldn't a man with Spinotta’s ego have held on a little longer? Spinotta had also taken pains to make sure that Billy Hatfill would be protected after he left. I filed these details alongside the facts that Terrance Davidson had canceled his dial-up service and that Ben Clamp's beeper had yielded a sparse client list.

  * * *

  "Speak," Jimmy said, taking a seat across from me. The tables around us were now mostly empty.

  "I don't think Spinotta had any interest in creating a website," I said. "I think the whole thing was a scam."

  "There are easier scams out there," Jimmy said, but I could tell he was just playing devil's advocate.

  "Not the kind that yield tens of millions in venture capital. He made sure Billy was taken care of, months before he left. He skipped town right after the site's debut. He didn't hang in there and fight, didn't try to stonewall the press with talk about how BAM had just hit some bumps in the road." I now had Jimmy's full attention. "I think he was planning to leave the whole time."

  Jimmy's thoughtful frown told me he was impressed. His eyes cut past me to the sidewalk.

  The man approaching our table was over six feet tall and almost two hundred pounds. His head was a bald dome with a neat fringe of red hair, and his dark green polo shirt strained against his beer belly's weight. He studied me with beady eyes nearly buried in the folds of his face.

  "Adam, this is Dwight Zachary. He's a homicide detective for the LA County Sheriff's Department—"

  "Jimmy!" the man named Dwight barked.

  "He also doesn't want you to know that," Jimmy added. "See, Dwight and I have what you might call a special relationship."

  "Who's the bottom?" I asked.

  Neither man got it.

  "Dwight is the real Joe Ring," Jimmy announced.

  He saw my confused stare and his face went red. "Joe Ring. My series character. The reason I can afford an office that's detached from the main house and a view of every mini-mall from Burbank to Panorama City." I still didn't say anythi
ng. "Jesus Christ. You haven't read a word I've written, have you?"

  "I've been busy."

  "Your whole life?

  "Drunk mom, remember?"

  Dwight Zachary took a seat and regarded me with dubious interest.

  "Dwight has something to share with us," Jimmy said.

  "I have something to share with you, Jimmy," he said.

  "I sent Dwight on a little fishing expedition and it looks like he caught something," Jimmy said to me.

  "What was he fishing for?" I asked.

  "Joseph Spinotta," Jimmy said.

  Dwight looked from me to Jimmy and then back again, with his cheeks puffed and his lower lip jutting out like a sad baby's. "Your boss doesn't have much faith in law enforcement," he said. "He's barely told me what you guys are up to, and already he's phoning me like I'm his errand boy. But Jimmy and I are friends. And he says you two might be onto something big. I figured I would help out. That way, if Jimmy gets ready to throw shit at a fan, I can step in and unplug the fan first."

  And land a high-profile arrest, I thought, and maybe get himself written about in another installment of the Joe Ring series. I had an automatic respect for most cops, but I didn't see their desire for fame as any more noble or interesting than that of the pretty Starbucks employee who screws up your order because she's too busy reading Tony Barr's Acting for the Camera. I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  "A friend of mine's at the Santa Clarita Station," he continued. I noted that he didn't give us the friend's rank because he didn't want us to identify the person. "She used to be over at the West Hollywood station before she put in for a transfer. I asked her if the name Joseph Spinotta meant anything to her, and it was like I had told her what day she was going to die."

  "Memories from West Hollywood?" I asked.

  "Nope," he answered. "A little over three years ago, a girl came into the station in Santa Clarita, scared out of her mind, said she had to talk to a woman. The only woman there was my friend, so she agreed to see her, just to calm her down. The girl said a friend of hers had been raped at one of Spinotta's parties."