Grandin’s house turned out to be on the renovated half of the block, a red brick three-story townhouse with freshly painted white trim, sitting on the upslope side of Ravine. A steep stone staircase led to it, through an iron gate that someone had left unlocked. I parked beneath the house in the sawtoothed shadows of the tenements and picked my way up the stairs to a concrete landing. Another staircase, freshly constructed out of treated lumber, led up to a second-story front door. I climbed the second set of stairs and knocked.
A moment passed, and a man who was not Paul Grandin answered. He had a tough, handsome, blue-eyed face and long blond hair that he wore combed back from a widow’s peak and tied in a ponytail that ran halfway down his back. There was a gold earring in his right ear, a Semper Fi tattoo with globe and anchor on his right bicep. Behind him, from inside the house, I could hear a stereo playing a recording of blues guitar.
Scowling as he opened the door, the man craned his neck around the side of the building and looked down the stairs toward the street. “How’d you get through the gate?”
“It wasn’t locked,” I told him.
The guy grabbed his head, then his hips—as if he didn’t know where it hurt worse. “How many times do you have to tell the electricians to lock the goddamn door?”
He blew some steam from his mouth, then crossed his arms at his chest and stared at me like what was done was done. Like I was done.
“So what is it?” he said, leaning arms crossed against the jamb. “You selling something? Insurance? Magazines?”
“I’m looking for Paul Grandin.”
“Paul doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Do you know where I could find him?”
“Mister, I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
I dug through my wallet for a card and handed it to him. He stared at it curiously. “You’re Stoner?”
“Yeah.”
“Tim Bristol,” he said, nodding hello. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a detective before. A few cops, but never a detective.” He tucked the card in his shirt pocket. “So what is it, Paul’s in trouble again?”
Like Paul Grandin’s father, trouble had been Tim Bristol’s first thought.
“He’s in no trouble. He may have some information that relates to a case I’m working on.”
“What case would that be?”
Since I needed his help to find Grandin, I went ahead and told him about Greenleaf’s unexplained suicide. “Paul may have been one of the last people Greenleaf talked to.”
Tim Bristol chewed this over for a moment. “It’s possible, I guess. The guy always liked Paul, for all the good it did him.”
The man’s bitterness was undisguised and unmistakable. “I thought you and Paul were friends?”
“Friends?” He shook his head. “Uh-unh.”
“Didn’t you say he used to live here?”
“He did. Last summer he conned me into rehabbing the house. ‘Long about September, he got tired of doing the work, fished around for a better offer, and moved out.” The guy laughed like the joke was on him. “How’s that for friends?”
“Do you know where he went after he left?”
“I know where he wanted to go. Back home to live off his old man’s money. Get his sister and his mom to wait on him hand and foot. But of course that ain’t going to happen. Not in this life.” He stared at me curiously. “Have you talked to his old man?”
“Briefly.”
“Well, don’t, for chrissake, mention my name to him. He hates my guts. Thinks I corrupted his fucked-up little boy—me and that poor son of a bitch who killed himself. Paul never got around to telling him about the fifty others that came after us. And during. The little whore always goes with whoever can give him the sweetest ride and the least amount of trouble. He’s a taker, you know?”
Unfolding his arms, Bristol extended his hands and spread his fingers. “Take, take,” he said, clawing the air. “That’s all Paul understands. He had a tough time of it as a kid, so he figures it’s owed him—whatever he wants, whenever he wants. If somebody can’t fork over, well then, ‘Fuck you, buddy, it’s time to move on.’”
Tim Bristol glanced through the open door of the townhouse—at a piece of unpainted drywall forming the side of a staircase. “I sank every penny I had into this fucking place to please him. What a dumbass cocksucker, huh?”
He turned back to me and laughed another empty laugh.
Hearing Tim Bristol complain about his lazy, faithless, manipulative boyfriend, I could see why Grandin Senior considered his son’s life a ruin. His life sounded like a ruin to me, too. And if Mason Greenleaf had started him down the road to that life, I could see where Grandin Senior might easily hold a grudge. Judging from Bristol’s description, he’d certainly fallen a long way from the hapless, abused kid that Tom Snodgrass had described and that Mason Greenleaf had supposedly taken under his wing—if Paul Grandin, Jr., had ever been that kid. According to Bristol, he had been a rotten son of a bitch from the start.
“Did Paul ever talk to you about Mason Greenleaf?” I asked him.
“Yeah, once in a while,” Bristol said. “He used the old bastard just like he used everyone else. I mean, it was pathetic. Whenever he didn’t have a bit part at the Playhouse or couldn’t con a dollar out of one of his other rich johns, Paul would run over to Mount Adams and play the poor misunderstood kid for Greenleaf. You know, he’d swear he was going to clean up his act, quit the whoring around and the partying, and settle down to being an actor, making a career. Greenleaf bought it every fucking time! Five hundred. A thousand. He once gave him three grand when Paul conned him into thinking he had a screen test and needed the money for plane fare and hotel. I don’t know why he kept believing him. I mean, Paul had proved how insincere he was a thousand times over. I guess he wanted to think he could make a difference.” Bristol slapped himself lightly on the cheek, as if Paul Grandin was a dream he couldn’t quite shake. “Look, who’s talking, huh?”
But I was thinking about the little bits of money that Greenleaf had been feeding his friend. There had been regular withdrawals from the checking account in the amounts that Bristol mentioned, even as recently as the last week of Greenleaf’s life. Which meant he might have been subsidizing the kid for years—out of guilt or affection or some combination of both.
I studied Tim Bristol for a moment, knowing that what I wanted to ask him next was a question he might resent. But it had to be asked. “Was Paul soliciting this money from Greenleaf for sex?”
“What do I know?” Tim Bristol said, flushing. “I always got the impression it was more of a father-son thing. God knows, Paul didn’t have much of a real father. And God knows if there was something between them, Greenleaf wasn’t the first. Paul was turning tricks in high school down on Fourth Street.”
It was an ugly picture that he was painting of Paul Grandin, who appeared to be more of a victimizer than a victim—perhaps from the start of his relationship with Greenleaf. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Mason had been manipulated and taken advantage of by someone he’d loved. At the same time, I knew that Bristol was a jilted lover who’d lost his stake in Grandin and the house when Grandin had left him.
Bristol must have heard the vengefulness in his own voice, because he began to show some remorse. “Look, I’ve probably gone a little overboard about Paul. Leaving me in the lurch like he did—well, I’m not feeling real charitable. I honestly don’t think he means to use people up the way he does. He just never learned how to care about anyone but himself. You know, with his mom and sister he could do anything, and they’d just take him right back, give him a few bucks, a place to crash. And with his old man, it was like nothing he could do was right. Bouncing around between them for most of his life, he survived on charm and snake oil. I don’t think he ever tells the truth, but he’s such an attractive liar that you end up laughing it off—until somebody gets hurt.”
“Tim, do you have any idea where I can find Pa
ul?”
Bristol took a deep breath. “Yeah, I know where he went,” he said heavily. “The Playhouse had a new production starting up last fall. A morality play about AIDS that toured the city schools this year. Paul got a bit part in it, and one of the actors, a young guy with a few movie credits, cruised him during rehearsals. Paul, he just went with it. You know, no more rehab, chance at the big time, so long, Tim. He claimed it would be better for his health—he had these allergies to things like sawdust and nails. It was such horseshit. He just got tired of pulling his share of the load. The guy’s got a house in Mount Adams on Ida. Freddy Davis is the fucker’s name. I don’t know the address. I stopped caring what Paul did the moment he stepped out of this door.”
But he certainly didn’t look like he’d stopped caring. Bristol put a hand over his eyes, although there wasn’t a drop of sun falling on that shaded porch. “I don’t deserve this,” he said, fighting to control his voice.
There wasn’t a thing I could say that made a difference. So I said nothing.
I left Tim Bristol standing there with his hand to his brow and walked down to the sidewalk, shutting the iron gate behind me. The sun was glaring fiercely on the tarmac, on the windows of the sandblasted townhouses and crumbling brownstones.
I got in the car, the sweat coming out all over me, and thought about Paul Grandin, Jr. The play Grandin had been performing in—the play on AIDS—would explain what he had been doing at Nine Mile School, when Lee Marks had spotted him talking with Greenleaf after the performance in the deserted auditorium. What it didn’t explain was what they’d been talking about—or what the continuing bond was between the two men. Clearly, in spite of what Grandin’s sister had said, there was a bond that had continued after Greenleaf’s arrest and prosecution. Some sense of obligation or remorse or appetite that had kept Greenleaf feeding the kid money. If Greenleaf had a long-standing sexual relationship with Grandin, the fight with the gray-haired man at Stacie’s bar could have been a three-way lovers’ quarrel. Given Tim Bristol’s description of him, the kid was certainly promiscuous enough to have provoked such a scene. Why such a quarrel might have driven Greenleaf to suicidal despair was something only Paul Grandin could tell me.
******
Before heading for Mount Adams and Freddy Davis, I looped around Clifton and dropped off the coroner’s report with Terry Mulhane’s secretary. Mulhane was still seeing patients—the waiting room was stacked up like a lumberyard—so I left a message for him to call me when he was free.
I found a phone stand on Auburn Avenue, outside the office, and called my own answering machine to check for messages. But nothing had come in—from Ira Sullivan or Max Carson or anyone else. I dug another quarter out of my pocket and dialed Sullivan’s office. I got taffy-haired Cherie the Secretary.
“What can I tell you?” she said with a laugh. “He never came in. You oughta try him tonight at home, is what I would do. There’s a nice widow woman lives up the hall from him, Marlene Bateman, keeps an eye out for Mr. S. when he’s had a few too many. You try her, if he doesn’t answer the door.”
Knowing what a gossip she was, I decided to pump her for information about the message Sullivan had left the previous night.
“He called me yesterday,” I said putting a note of mild complaint in my voice, “and said that he’d spoken to a friend of Mason’s. But he didn’t give me his name.”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Let me think now—who all was through here yesterday?” I heard her paging through an appointment book. “When’d he call you, morning or afternoon?”
“It was in the evening, sometime after eight.”
“I got nothing here for last night. He saw Mr. Connors late in the afternoon.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s an assistant DA. Mr. Sullivan handles most of his legal work.”
It didn’t sound particularly promising.
“Nothing else?”
“‘Fraid not, hon’,” she said, like they were out of that kind of pie. “He saw him around four. They were still in his office talking when I went home at five-thirty.”
“All right. Connors, district attorney’s office,” I said, writing it down on my pad.
“You want his home address?”
She was a dangerous woman. “Sure.”
“He lives at 1673 Celestial Street, up on the hill. Real close to where Mr. Greenleaf lived.”
It was a short drive from Terry Mulhane’s office, through the late afternoon sun, to Mount Adams. I followed Elsinore up the hill, under the Ida Street bridge and through its arching shadow, circling around to Parkside. The Playhouse sat on a knoll above the Seasongood Pavilion—a squat red brick structure undulating along the hilltop like a Cyclopean wall. I parked in the lot behind the Marx theater and made my way through the shade of the elm trees to a side door marked “Actors Only.”
I knew the building well enough to find the rehearsal halls, which were deserted at that hour, save for a pudgy, balding stage manager in overalls and sneakers hammering at the back of a set. I told him I was looking for Freddy Davis.
“He’s not here,” he said, lowering the hammer.
“It’s kind of important I talk to him,” I said.
“Well, he’s booked pretty solid just now, buddy. He got a TV part a few months ago. A real nice break for him.”
“He’s out of town?”
“He was. I don’t know if he’s back now or not. Have you tried his agent?”
“It’s a personal thing.”
The man gave me a look of disbelief. “You’re a friend of his?”
“No. I’m looking for a guy, Paul Grandin. I heard he was living with Davis.”
The stage manager shook his head. “I don’t think Fred has had a thing to do with Paul for quite a while. I know we sure as hell don’t anymore.”
“He doesn’t work for the Playhouse?”
“Our director, Steve Meisel, fired him about two, three weeks ago. Too much trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
The man turned back to the set. “That’s not for me to say.”
“You don’t know where Paul’s living, then?”
He began pounding nails into a two-by-eight. “Scrounging, I guess, like he usually does. Sponging off friends—I don’t know what else and don’t want to know.”
“You wouldn’t know Davis’s address, would you? Just so I can double-check.”
“Some place on Ida,” the guy said over the hammering noise. “Take a look at the bulletin board in the actors’ lounge. There’s probably an old cast list with the number.”
21
I FOUND Freddy Davis’s address where the stage manager said I’d find it, posted on an old call sheet in the shabby actors’ lounge. Since his house was almost directly across from the Playhouse, I left the car in the lot and walked down the short slope to Ida Street. Davis’s bungalow was near the Pavilion side of Ida, a two-story townhouse with a pitch roof and a cantilevered porch in back looking out over the east side of town. I was prepared to find nobody home, but a moment after I knocked, a short, handsome, black-haired man in his late twenties answered. He was wearing white shorts and a white tennis shirt that matched his pearly teeth and set off his deep California tan. An ornately furnished living room spread out behind him like the train of a robe.
“Can I help you?” he said, smiling like a sunburst.
“You can if you’re Fred Davis.”
“I’m Davis. Who are you?”
I told him who I was and who I was looking for. The sun set in the man’s face when I said Paul Grandin’s name. But I was getting used to that reaction.
“Why are you looking for him?” Davis asked.
“A friend of his killed himself. Paul was one of the last people he spoke with.”
“What an exit!” the man said with a sharp laugh. “I pity him.”
“You think I could talk to you about Paul for a few minutes?”
“There isn’t much
to say. I haven’t seen him in several months. Not since April.”
“He moved out?”
Davis planted a hand on the doorjamb, as if he felt the need for anchorage. “Yeah, he moved out. I let him room here for a few months when he was down on his luck and sick with bronchitis, and he moved out. That’s about the whole of it. I don’t know where he went and don’t care.”
“Did he have any other friends at the Playhouse that he might have turned to?”
The man smiled a weary smile. “You know that old adage about burning your bridges behind you? Paul set fire to them while he was still standing on them. I don’t think he had a friend left among the actors at the Playhouse. Steve Meisel used to carry him on the payroll for old times’ sake, but from what I hear even Steve finally got sick of Paul’s shenanigans and let him go.” Davis stared out at the sunburnt street. “He’s out there somewhere. Causing trouble. You can bet on that.”
“He never mentioned a man named Mason Greenleaf to you, did he?”
Davis gripped the doorjamb a little more tightly, as if he could feel that anchor slipping. He didn’t want to talk about Paul Grandin, and I didn’t blame him.
“Yeah, he might have mentioned him. An old friend of his. Why do you ask?”
“He’s the one who committed suicide.”
“That’s too damn bad,” Davis said, lowering his eyes. “I guess he was one of the only people Paul knew whom he could count on in a pinch. At least, it seemed like Paul used to turn to him whenever he was in trouble. Now that he’s gone—Paul must really be alone.” Reddening, Davis looked over his shoulder at a sliding-glass window at the back of the fussy living room. Out on the sunlit porch I could see someone in white, sitting in a lounge chair.
“I don’t really want to talk about Paul anymore,” Davis said. “I’m sorry about his friend. I sure as hell hope that Paul didn’t have a hand in it.”
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