Gray Area

by George P. Saunders

  Later, there was rest. Sporadic in its coming, so to speak, but on these brief occasions, Diamond attempted conversation. It was generally met with a more passionate, less verbose response from Linda. After yet one more bout of frenzied sex, Linda rolled off of him and stared into his eyes.

  “Why did you come here tonight?” she said.

  They were way past the bullshit at this point, and Diamond saw no reason to be cagey. “For answers.”

  Not strictly true, his unconscious would have objected. But in his heart of moral heart, that’s why he had dropped by. Linda knew better. “You’re lying.”

  Diamond thought about that for a second. Then smiled. “So are you. So is Marshall.”

  It was Linda’s time to take a breath. “So. You still think I may have killed Jason and Marianne.”

  “Maybe,” Diamond sighed. “But I’ll take a guess at this point and say no.”

  “Okay, if not me, then how about Don Simpson?”

  Diamond met her gaze frankly. Not out of the question, nothing was at this stage of the game. “Maybe,” he said again. “But—”

  “But, your guess is no. Did you talk to Robert August?”

  The Robert August issue made him glance at his watch. He was vaguely concerned about the passage of time—strike that, the amount of time he had spent here tonight. He should have been at headquarters, reviewing files, re-examining forensic evidence, planning meetings.

  Instead, he was here screwing his brains out with his prime suspect in a murder one case. Lovely.

  “Tomorrow,” he muttered, then caught something in her eye that made him curious. “Are you saying August killed those people?

  Linda smiled enigmatically. “I’m not saying anything.”

  Diamond felt a momentary surge of anger and he pulled her hair, a gesture which could have been confused as passion, but which Linda understood to mean (and Diamond clearly meant) as a warning.

  “That’s the problem with this case. No one says much of anything. It’s beginning to piss me off.”

  Linda freed herself from his grasp, then snuggled herself against his chest. They didn’t say anything for a long time after that. Diamond was about to doze off, when Linda whispered. “How did she die?”

  Diamond’s eyes opened slowly. “Who?”

  “Your wife.”

  Not a favorite subject, not one he really wanted to revisit. Not here. Not this night.

  “Didn’t Marshall mention that, too?”

  Linda kissed him gently on the lips. A kiss more comforting than passionate. A kiss that seemed to beg for him to trust her. Which, for some strange reason, he wanted to do.

  “Not really,” she said. “I only asked him once. Just as I’ll only ask you this once. He told me never to ask him again. Are you going to say the same thing?”

  Diamond turned his head and stared out the bedroom window at the moonlight just beyond.

  His wife’s death was more like a dream now, a phantom incident that seemed never to have occurred. He had rendered the circumstances of her death to just that—a misty, shadowy thing, deliberately devoid of detail. A ghost. Something that may or may not have ever been. Still, there was memory. And even now, pain.

  “It was five years ago,” he began, his voice surprisingly husky. He couldn’t help but notice the choke in it. “Christmas Eve.”

  Then, suddenly, he was back there. The night loomed large, real and three dimensional, and there was no deficit of detail or remembrance. He could even smell the cool air and the vague scent of stir fry from the King Fu restaurant down the street as he held his wife’s dying body in his arms.

  The evening had started out so well. They had made love, celebrating his last case as a lawyer—one he had won. He had been hired by the SRT and was looking forward to his new career. That night there was success in his life and redemption for his young client, a 17 year old girl accused of killing her 20 year old brother for attempted rape. The case had been a complicated one. In fact, it had almost ended up in Superior Court, instead of remanded to Juvy where it should have remained from the beginning, had it not been for some aggressive posturing by the District Attorney. When all was said and done, however, Lou Diamond had defended Missy Jones from the powers that be, and had prevailed in her defense. The press hailed him as a champion of juvenile females’ rights and everyone had gone home happy. Except the prosecution who had pushed for, at minimum, second degree manslaughter. Miss Jones had indeed killed her drunken brother, LeRoy, as he had tried to assault and sexually molest her. But it had indeed been an accident. During the struggle to free herself from his grip, she had kicked him down two flights of stairs, where he landed and broke his neck. The prosecution’s case contended that one single kick did not send LeRoy into the next world. Instead, they insisted that it had been several pre-meditated blows, designed to inflict maximum damage, that had done the deed. And on and on. Bottom line, the prosecution’s case was marginal, at best, even though Missy herself had been in and out of Juvy (along with LeRoy) for the past several years. Diamond’s defense was straight forward and simple, enough for any jury to understand with minimal mental struggle: Missy’s brother was a drunken brute with one incident of assault on his record already, and Missy had had no choice but to defend herself from his crazed attack. Her outer clothes had been ripped, there were bruises on her face and neck, and the torn panties pretty much told the story of what had happened—or would conceivably have happened if Missy hadn’t struggled free.

  The case had gone on for over three months mainly due to delays in discovery and holiday calendaring for court depos and/or pre-trial appearances. But it had ended the last day before Christmas and Lou Diamond was glad of it—as was his wife, who had seen precious little of him for several weeks.

  They were going to meet his brother and Cyndi that night. A quiet dinner at their favorite restaurant, Dantanas, in West Hollywood. Marshall had arrived a few minutes early, had called upstairs from his cell, which forced Lou and Maria out of bed in a hurry to dress. Maria, amazingly, had finished before Lou, who had decided on a leisurely shower just to irritate Marshall (as was his occasional custom, just for fun). Maria, looking radiant, opened the shower door, kissed him, told him she was going to run across the street to the ATM and snag some cash. He had wanted her to wait for him, but she said this was a better use of time—killing two birds with one stone by letting him dress, while she took care of the practical.

  Lou remembered how he had told his wife to tell Marshall to go with her. That particular ATM got kind of dark at nights, even though this was a pretty good neighborhood. Maria promised she’d tell Marshall. Which she had done.

  Marshall, however, had been romantically preoccupied with Cyndi in their car when Maria came downstairs. She teased him, as he pulled back from a lingering kiss with his wife, and told him she was going across the way to the ATM. Marshall offered to go with her; Maria, ever considerate, told him to carry on with Cyndi. They all laughed—for Maria, her last laugh.

  Then Maria walked across the street to her death.

  Lou Diamond, as fate would have it, exited the doors to his apartment just as his wife was being gunned down across the street by two fourteen year old boys with an assault rifle. They killed her on the run, not even successfully pulling her purse free from her falling body. They disappeared around the corner a second later as Lou, stunned from shock, finally began to run.

  Marshall could only stare, frozen, from his car. Cyndi, likewise, seemed transfixed by the horror she had just witnessed.

  When Lou gathered his dying wife close to him, Maria had stared up at her husband in pain and confusion, blood trickling from her mouth. Her last words to him were: I’m sorry.

  On that night, Lou Diamond swore one day that he would kill his brother.

  Diamond brought himself back to the present, here and now, with Linda.

  “I blamed Marshall for a long time. Blamed him for not being there, for not walking her over to that machine, like
he should have done.” Diamond’s jaw clenched, old fury on the march again. He then deliberately took a long breath. “But all the while, I was really blaming myself. Hating myself because I had failed. Failed to protect her, for not being there. Me and my goddamn shower...”

  He looked over at Linda, who had a tear in her eye. “I never told that to anyone until now. Not even to the Department shrink.”

  Linda kissed his shoulder. “I’m glad you told me.” She then kissed him tenderly on the lips. Diamond’s eyes watched her, never closing, and his heart suddenly ached.

  “What makes you tick, lady?” he whispered. “Why me?”

  Linda’s eyes seemed to convey the same pain he was himself feeling. “Because—” She hesitated.

  He pushed. “Because what?”

  “Because ... when I look at you ... I see myself. I see narcissism carried to the extreme.”

  Diamond stared at her, not understanding.

  “When I first saw you, I didn’t want you to speak to me,” she said. “I didn’t want to get to know you. I didn’t want you to get to know me.” She looked down and when she spoke again, Diamond knew she was telling the truth. “I just wanted you. And I wanted you to want me.”

  “And that’s it?” he said.

  “No, there’s something else.” She pulled away from him slightly, her tone measured. “I felt as if I knew you already. I can see in your eyes what you are.”

  Diamond frowned. “A killer, and not a nice guy to boot.”

  “No. You’re better than what you believe yourself to be. You may not buy it, but ... you’re a hero. An old fashioned one, I think.” She smiled almost demurely. “Maybe,” she continued, “I was hoping you could save me.”

  This surprised him. “From what?”

  “From everything,” Linda said with a touch of genuine sadness that beguiled Diamond even more. “Simple, huh?” she said.

  “It’s never that simple,” he said.

  “It can be. If you let it,” Linda replied, perhaps a little too quickly. And now Diamond knew she was playing again. He looked at her for a moment then swung his legs out onto the edge of the bed. She tried to touch his shoulder, but he stood and reached for his clothes which were still damp despite their proximity to the little hand-held heater Linda had provided for them on the chair.

  It could be that simple. If he let it.

  The words hung there, and he repeated them over and over again in his head. Simple. If he let it. Simple … if—

  “I can’t,” he said at last, dressing.

  The answer didn’t seem to surprise Linda. “I know,” she said.

  Neither spoke as he dressed. When he reached for his wrinkled jacket and began walking to the door, he heard her speak.

  “Will I see you again?”

  He turned to her and laughed without a trace of humor. “What’s going on, Linda?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The little clues you leave me. The hints that this case is nowhere near as clear as it appears. Why is Marshall lying to me? And why are you?”

  Linda got out of bed, her perfect body glowing in the moonlight. She walked slowly over to another chair, reached for a robe and put it on. She stared out the window and sighed.

  “We’re all trapped by lies, Lou. Or omissions.”

  “Stop sounding like a lawyer,” he snapped, his patience evaporated.

  “Stop pushing like a cop,” she snapped back with equal ferocity. “I told you to talk to Robert August. Do it tomorrow. Before it’s too late.”

  Diamond reached for the door. “I won’t wait until tomorrow.”

  Linda let him exit almost completely before she spoke again. “Why do you think Marshall hired you, Lou?”

  Diamond turned back to her. “I’m his brother.”

  “And you’re supposed to close this case up fast,” she said evenly.

  Evenly enough for Diamond to walk back into the room and regard her with a frown. “What are you saying?”

  “I like you, Lou,” she said, and again, something in her voice made him believe her.

  “I like you, too, Linda. Now what are you saying?”

  Linda looked like she wanted to continue. To fess’ up, he mentally interjected. To come clean? Her expression seemed to say as much. But then it was gone. That flicker in her eyes that seemed to want to share completely with him, fizzled out. “Nothing.”

  “You still think this is a game?” he asked.

  “No,” Linda said, and this time a shudder went down his spine. “Far from it,” she said. “Talk to August.”

  Diamond nodded. “I’ll do that.”

  He turned and walked out of the room.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was not yet midnight and the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to Santa Monica was jammed wall to wall with traffic. Inertia, restlessness and just plain damn irritation with himself caused Diamond to squirm in his seat, occasionally hitting the steering wheel with half-hearted disgust.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he found himself muttering as he inched along in the traffic with the full moon blazing down on the line of cars stretching out to the horizon.

  Thinking with your dick, the old expression appeared. Yep, old badger, thinking with the old Peter, instead of the noggin’. Just the thing to be doing on a multiple homicide case with more holes in it than a pound of swiss.

  The recriminations came hard and fast. She’s your number one suspect, he told himself, his mental chiding momentarily cool and incisive. She’s a damn smart attorney and a bit of a twisted sister in her own way ... and she likes games. You know she’s lying; if not about the murders, then about something. She knows Marshall is lying about something. And she knows you know everyone’s lying.

  Bugger. Idiot. Left your best work in the sheets, didn’t you?

  Diamond closed his eyes.

  “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he muttered again.

  Traffic began to move again and within a few minutes the five mile an hour crawl had increased to ten, then twenty, finally to a cruising forty. He would be in Century City in fifteen minutes. He would be outside of Robert August’s high-rise condominium one minute later.

  Diamond couldn’t shake the last few minutes with Linda. She was trying to tell him something, he was sure of that much. In her convoluted, damning, circuitous way ... but there was sincerity in her attempt. What was she afraid of? Why was she holding back?

  What the hell did she know?

  The PCH turned into the Santa Monica Freeway East. Diamond hit the accelerator and put the siren on top of his car, racing through highway traffic to the National Boulevard exit into Century City.

  Robert August. Perhaps he was the final piece to the puzzle, the bad guy he was looking for. In an instant, Diamond knew this was probably not completely true. It could never be that simple.

  Could it?

  No.

  Because as he told Linda ... it was never that simple.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The boy was young, but not too young, and that was a good thing. Still fresh, still vital, with a fine ass that showcased a tattooed lion on each cheek—but not jailbait. That would have made him feel old … and desperate. At the age of thirty-one, with a body that enjoyed two hour workouts at the Bali gym every morning, attorney Robert August did not want to feel old and desperate.

  “Can I have more wine?” the boy asked, unbuttoning his shirt and rising from the sofa where Robert and he had been sitting, or more accurately, kissing and fondling for over twenty minutes.

  “Sure, help yourself,” August said winking. The boy walked over to the bar counter that bordered the kitchen. The boy had a name, August recalled. Ah, yes. Tim. Timmy.

  “You like Tim or Timmy better?” Robert asked, not really giving a flying fuck, but giving a stab at conversation as the boy poured Merlot into his empty glass. What he really wanted to do was get Tim or Timmy into bed, fast, then get him out fast, so he could finish a brief that was due to opposing cou
nsel by the following afternoon. A brief for the Big Boys at Arc-Link.

  The Antichrists. You remember them, right?

  Right. He wished he had never heard of Arc-Link.

  “Tim or Timmy, I don’t care,” the boy replied, moving back to the sofa and sitting down again. “Whatever you like. Whatever gets your cock hard.”

  Now we’re talking, August fairly trembled with joy.

  He kissed Timmy (yes, Timmy was far better…), and reached for the latter’s crotch.

  August had been restless today—in fact, he’d been restless ever since Jason and Marianne were murdered two nights ago. He had wandered over to the Mother Lode on Santa Monica Boulevard earlier than most nights, hoping to find some reasonable action with a minimal amount of conversational preamble. In short, he needed to fuck. And the Mother Lode, short of picking up some skanky trick down near Western, was the best possible hunting ground for suck necessities. He had ceased to feel resentment over his homosexuality as he once had in the not too recent past; nor did he feel the attendant shame coupled with the compelling hunger that drove him out nightly to quench his lust. With his father’s death—the last parent—he was free from the Catholic incarceration of self-recrimination and guilt. He was out now. Free at last. The past year had been the most profoundly joyful and liberating in his life, both personally and professionally. All had been going well.

  Until Jason was found murdered in the law library and Marianne Simpson a bloody wreck lying nearby.

  He felt bad for Jason, he had really liked the man. He knew that Jason dug the switch-hitting thing vis-à-vis sex on both sides of the fence. That hadn’t bugged August a bit. Well, it hadn’t before Jason went off and got himself pole-axed while sticking that icy little fish-bitch Marianne. He could deal with the bi-sexual thing that Jason so desperately craved. Hell, we all have cravings, August thought to himself. We tend to make do and forgive those cravings in others. He wished with all of his remaining Catholic guilt and love for his fellow man (or woman, as the case may be) that he could have found it in his heart to forgive Marianne Simpson. But he could not.