by Michael Nava
I took it from him. He got up and lit another cigarette.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi, handsome.” It was Tony Good, returning the message I’d left on his machine.
We made arrangements to meet that night at ten at a bar in West Hollywood. I got up from the table and put the phone back. Larry was in his study, going through a pile of papers. Watching him, it occurred to me that I hardly knew him at all. It was as if all these years I’d been seeing him in profile and now that he turned his face to me, it was the face of a stranger.
“I have a million things to do before I leave,” he said. “Some of them I’m going to ask you to finish for me once I’m gone.”
“Sure. Of course.”
He sat down behind his desk. “Don’t take all this so hard.”
“We’re friends,” I replied.
He didn’t answer but picked up a folder, flipped through its pages, and withdrew a sheaf of papers.
“This is a copy of my will,” he said, handing me the papers. “You’re my executor. Take it, Henry.”
Numbly, I accepted.
Freeman Vidor stepped into the Gold Coast wearing a pair of hiphuggers, a pink chenille pullover and about a dozen gold chains. He sauntered toward me, stopping conversation with each step.
“Jesus,” I said, when he reached me. “This is a gay bar, not the Twilight Zone.”
Freeman looked around the bar. There were a lot of Levis and flannel shirts, slacks and sweaters, even the odd suit, but his was the only chenille sweater to be seen in the place-*
“Back to R. amp; D.,” he said. “Is Good here yet?”
“No, I doubt if he’ll be here any sooner than eleven,” I replied. “Ten o’clock was just a negotiating point.”
“How about a drink?”
“Sure. Pink lady, okay?”
“Screw you,” he said, and in his deepest voice ordered a boilermaker.
“I want to talk to Good alone for a while,” I said, when the drink came. “Then you join us.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
I looked at him and said, “Mingle, honey.”
Tony Good walked in the door at five minutes past eleven. I watched him stand unsteadily, just inside the doorway, and swing his head around. I raised my hand and he nodded. He made his way through the crowded room until he was beside me. He was even better looking than I remembered. Black hair, blue eyes. Model perfect features. Only his teeth spoiled the package. They were small, sharp, and yellow. He climbed up onto the bar stool next to mine and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. The bartender started pouring the five different liquors that went into the drink.
“You’re not drinking?” Tony asked, indicating the bottle of mineral water in front of me.
“No,” I said. “You go ahead.” I paid for his drink.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said in a tired Bogart voice, and knocked off a good third of the drink in a single swallow. “So,” he said, crumpling a cocktail napkin, “is this a date or what?”
“You wanted to see me, Tony.”
He squinted at me for a second, then said, “You called me, remember?”
I looked away from him and poured some mineral water in my glass. “Not the first time,” I replied.
He took a sip of his drink. “You’re cute, Henry, but not cute enough to play games.”
“The first time you called,” I said. “Back in October. You told me that you knew who killed Brian Fox.”
Tony had worked his way down to the bottom of his drink. The bartender, without asking, starting pouring him another.
“Who the hell is Brian Fox?” he asked.
“Now you’re playing games,” I said, looking at him. I flicked my head and Freeman came across the room until he stood behind Tony. Tony looked over his shoulder and got an eyeful of pink chenille.
“Jesus, what’s this?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me to show my badge,” Freeman said in a low voice. “It’s bad for business.”
Tony looked at Freeman and then at me. I waited for him to call Freeman’s bluff. Instead, he picked up his drink, gestured to the bartender and told me, “Pay the man.”
I paid for the drink. “So who was it, Tony?”
He churned his drink with a swizzle stick and answered, “Sandy.”
“I want details,” I said.
“First we gotta make a deal,” he said. “I tell you what I know but it stays here, between us. You nail him some other way.” He looked defiantly at Freeman and me.
“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“It was back about a year ago. We were in rehearsals on Edward. I came out back for a smoke and saw this kid hanging around the parking lot.”
“Fox?” I asked.
He took a swallow of his drink and nodded. “Yeah, but he didn’t say his name. He was kind of cute, so I started talking to him. I asked him what he was doing there, thinking maybe he was a hustler. He goes, ‘I’m waiting for Goldenboy.’“
“Goldenboy?” Freeman asked.
“That’s what I said,” Good continued. “He points to Sandy’s Mercedes. He’s got this license plate on it — “
“It spells out Goldenboy,” I said.
“You’ve seen it,” Good said. “He tells me he’s got to talk to Goldenboy, so I go, ‘Don’t you know his name?’ The kid says ‘Yeah, it’s Sanford Blasenheim.”‘
“Is that Sandy’s real name?” I asked.
“Does that sound like a stage name to you?” Tony asked, smiling snidely. “Anyway, I know this kid doesn’t know Sandy ‘cause no one calls him by his real name.”
Freeman asked, “So how did Fox know it?”
Tony had finished the drink and signaled the bartender for a third. “This is thirsty business,” he said to me.
“How did Fox know?” I asked.
“He gave me some bullshit story about breaking into DMV’s computer and running the license plate,” he said.
I looked at Freeman. “Is that possible?”
“The kid knew his computers,” Freeman said, “but that sounds like too much trouble. All’s he had to do was call DMV and say he was in a hit-and-run with Blenheim’s car and ask them to run the plate.”
“DMV’s pretty generous with their information,” I observed.
“They don’t get paid enough to care,” Freeman replied.
Tony, who had been listening, broke in, “But how did he know about the license plate? He wouldn’t tell me that.”
“The parking lot,” I said, still speaking to Freeman. “When he followed Jim and Sandy out to the car, he saw the license plate.” I turned back to Tony. “What else happened, Tony?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I tried to make a date with the kid, but he says he wasn’t gay. So I told him, then you don’t want to know Sandy, ‘cause you’re just his type. After rehearsal I came back outside and the kid was in the front seat of Sandy’s car with Sandy. Then they took off.”
“Is that the last time you saw Fox?” I asked.
“I saw his picture in the paper,” Good said, slowly, “the day after he was killed.”
“Why didn’t you go to the cops?” Freeman asked.
Tony looked at me. “You saw me in the play. What did you think?”
“You were good,” I said.
“Damn right,” he said, easing himself off the bar stool. “I’m a fucking good actor. All I need is a break.” He picked up his drink, took a gulp, then put it down. “I started out in that play as one of the soldiers in the first scene. Big fucking role. Two lines, two minutes. And I had to fuck Sandy to get even that. That pig.”
“But you ended up as Gaveston,” I answered. “You fuck Sandy for that, too?”
He smiled, showing his jagged little teeth. “Yeah, you could say that. I told him I knew about the kid. I told him what he could give me to keep my mouth shut.”
I nodded. “Then why did you call me?”
He set the drink on t
he counter with the over-delicate movements of a drunk. “‘Cause I wanted someone else to know,” he said, “and put the pig in jail where he belongs.” He looked at his watch. “This has been lots of laughs, Henry, but I’ve got a client waiting for me.”
He started away.
Freeman and I followed a few minutes later and stood in front of the bar.
“Do you still have friends at L.A.P.D.?” I asked.
Freeman half-smiled and replied, “You told that guy you’d keep the cops out of it.”
I thought of Jim Pears whom I had not believed when he told me he was innocent. “I lied,” I said.
Freeman said, “There’s still a lot to explain. Pears was in the room. He was the only one.”
“I know,” I replied. I shrugged. “Maybe nothing’ll come of it, but if it helps Jim it’s worth it.”
“Nothing’s going to help Jim,” Freeman said. He shivered from the cold.
“Get ahold of your cop friend in the morning,” I said. “We’ll get together and visit Tony. By the way, where did you get that sweater?”
Freeman laughed. “My ex-wife.”
It was after midnight when I got to Larry’s. I pulled into the garage and sat for a moment in the darkness. It was perfectly still. I began to fit things together.
Brian Fox had not gone to the restaurant to see Jim, but to meet Blenheim. It was Fox who took the back door key from the bar. He used it to let Blenheim inside. Then what? I closed my eyes and reconstructed the layout of the restaurant in my head. They went downstairs. Blenheim killed Brian. But without a struggle? How? I listened to my breathing, and rolled down the window. That part I didn’t know yet.
I had to get Jim down into the cellar, too. Could it be that he and Blenheim had killed Brian together? The garage creaked. A breeze swept through like a sigh. Or had Jim come down after it was done? Blenheim would have heard the steps from the kitchen floor overhead. Steps. I opened my eyes. There were footsteps in the garage. I pulled myself up in my seat and glanced into the rearview mirror. A dark figure merged into the shadows and was coming up beside me.
Slowly, I opened the glove compartment and got out the flashlight. I prepared to flash the light in the intruder’s eyes and push the door open on him. Now. I swung the light around and clicked it on, reaching, at the same time for the door handle. Then I stopped as the figure backed up against Larry’s car.
It was Rennie.
22
“Henry!”
I clicked off the light and got out of the car. “It’s all right.”
“I thought you had a gun,” she said, recovering her breath.
“I’m a lawyer, not a cowboy,” I replied. “I can hardly see you in here. Let’s go outside.”
I reached for her hand, found it, and led her back out where the streetlamp illuminated the quiet street. Although she wore an overcoat, she was still shivering. I put my arm around her.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“My car,” she answered, pointing to a white Mercedes parked at the curb just past the house. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why didn’t you wait inside?”
“I needed to see you alone,” she said. “I didn’t want Larry to know.”
Her shivering subsided. In the bright white light her face was tired but seemed much younger, sharper. This is how she looks on stage, I thought.
“Come back to my car with me,” she half-pleaded. I followed her to the Mercedes and got in. The car reeked of cigarettes. The dashboard clock read 12:30.
“Tom’s in trouble,” she said abruptly.
“Go on.”
She stared out into the street. “I was at home, alone, when there was a call from someone — male, asking for Tom. He wouldn’t tell me who he was. I hung up.” She glanced at me. “I know it’s rude but the strangest people somehow get our number, fans, salesmen, you name it.”
She was getting off the point. “What happened next?” I prompted.
“He called again. He demanded to talk to Tom. I told him Tom wasn’t in and he said-” Shallow lines appeared across her forehead. “ — that if I was lying it wouldn’t save Tom, and if I wasn’t, he would find him.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“But you must be used to crank calls,” I said. “Why did this one bring you to me?”
She fumbled with her cigarette case and extracted a cigarette. I rolled down the window when she lit it. “I know I’m not being clear,” she said. She exhaled, jerkily, a stream of smoke. “Tom goes to bars. Homosexual bars. He meets men, has sex with them, and comes home. He doesn’t do it often. It’s a part of his life we don’t discuss.”
“But you know about it.”
She dug into the pocket of her overcoat and came up with a handful of matchbooks. “It’s these,” she said.
I examined them. They were all from local gay bars.
“He leaves them for me to see,” she said, softly.
Some of the matchbooks had names and phone numbers written in them. “That seems cruel,” I commented.
“To an outsider,” she said, stubbing her cigarette out. She smiled, faintly, ironically. “Tom is — he doesn’t lie very well. He can’t bring himself to talk about this with me, but he won’t lie about it, either. These,” she nodded toward the matchbooks, “are his way of letting me know.”
“Why?” I asked. “Aren’t you the one who told me that discretion is the better part of marriage?”
“I’m more his mother than his wife,” she said as if giving the time. “He depends on me to look after him. And I have a mother’s intuition about him — when his hurts are real, when they’re not,” she continued with a sort of mocking tenderness. “When there’s danger.”
“Lawyers have a kind of intuition, too,” I said, “and my intuition tells me that there’s something you’re holding back.’’
She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘‘I lied about the call. It wasn’t anonymous.”
“Who was it?”
“Sandy,” she replied.
“Why would he threaten Tom?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. There’s something going on between them. Sandy’s been completely out of control. He and Tom had a big fight a couple of days ago and Tom finally threw him out of the house. Then this.” She shuddered. “I’m afraid, Henry. He’s crazy. Help me find Tom.”
I put aside the questions I wanted to ask her about Tom and Sandy. They seemed irrelevant when I remembered that Sandy Blenheim was a killer.
“You think he’s at one of these places?” I asked, holding up the matchbooks.
“I don’t know where else to look,” she replied.
Last call had been called five minutes earlier but no one was moving. I walked around the bar again, the last in Tom’s match- book collection. The other three had also been like this, dark and out of the way, far from the glittery strip of Santa Monica Boulevard known by the locals as Boys Town with its trendy bars and discos.
This bar, The Keep, was on a Hollywood side street that had disappeared from the maps around 1930. There wasn’t much to the place: a bar lined with stools where customers could sit and watch their reflections blur in the mirror as the night wore on, a small dance floor bathed in blue light, a few tables lit by orange candles. Posters of beefy naked men covered the walls. Many of the patrons were middle-aged or older, and the level of shrieking was pretty high. Definitely a pre- Stonewall scene.
I leaned against the wall and looked around. Half a dozen of the bar stools were occupied. A handsome man’s reflection smiled at me. I smiled back and continued inspecting the other customers. Tom Zane was not among them.
As I started out the door, I heard someone say, “Ambassador.”
I stopped. “Zane,” I replied.
The skinny bartender jerked his head toward me, his long earring dangling against his cheek.
“You say something?” he asked me.
&nb
sp; I shook my head and walked back to where I had been standing. The man in the mirror was still smiling. He wore a plaid shirt beneath a black leather jacket. He had dark hair and a moustache. His eyes were brown.
Holding his eye in the minor, I stepped forward until I stood directly behind him. His smile widened.
“Zane?”
“Ambassador,” he replied, and swung around on the bar stool until he faced me.
“I didn’t recognize you at all.”
“Were you trying to?”
“As a matter of fact, I was. Rennie sent me to find you.”
He frowned. “Rennie?”
“There was a call tonight, threatening you. She brought your matchbook collection to me and sent me looking for you.”
“Goddammit,” he breathed. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She was worried, Tom. The caller was Sandy.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What did she tell you about Sandy?”
“That you had a fight and kicked him out of your house.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. He dropped a ten dollar bill on the bar and we went out to the street. It was drizzling. The bar was in a warehouse district and, as we headed down the street toward Cahuenga, a Doberman sprang out from a fenced- in lot and barked. A woman in the tatters of a coat hurried by, stopped, and screamed invectives at the dog. We reached Cahuenga and Tom’s car, a red Fiat Spider with a plate that read “Drifter.”
“Where are you parked?” Tom asked.
“Just down the street.”
“I think you should forget any of this happened,” he said, reaching to the moustache and pulling it from his face. I watched, fascinated.
“What about the eyes?” I asked.
“Brown contact lenses. The hair’s just a colored mousse. Washes right out,” he smiled. “It’s Hollywood, Henry.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble just to have a drink at a place like that.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to be invisible, Henry?’’ he asked, opening the car door.
I shook my head.
“No,” he said. “I guess you wouldn’t miss what you haven’t lost. Me, I can’t walk down the street without some girl throwing her tits in my face or some fag groping me. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m down on sex, but I like to choose the time and the place.” He got into the car and smiled. “You heard what I said about forgetting about tonight.’’
