Brotherly Love

by Jason Blacker

  I walked up to the fireplace and studied the signature. It looked like Roger Barratt’s work. We’d gone to art school together and he was doing well painting portraits of the rich and those who thought they were famous. Last time I bumped into him at an art show he’d bragged about how he’d crack a quarter of a million dollars that year. And that was a few years ago.

  I didn’t care for him and I didn’t care to be prostituting my art for greenbacks.

  “Do you like it?” she asked as she came up and stood beside me.

  “It’s nice,” I said, “great technique.”

  I didn’t really want to tell her what I thought of it. I can be an ass, but I needed this woman’s help in understanding her husband.

  “Please, sit down.”

  I sat down in an ornate chair. I wanted to call it a French arm chair, but I don’t know my arm chairs from my cushions. But that’ll give you an idea. The arms on the chair were padded with a floral pattern and they ended in balled fists, in natural wood. It was surprisingly comfortable for such an ornate but rigid chair.

  “Can I get you anything to drink.”

  I shook my head. With the coffee I’d had at home, the coffee John had given me, and the Perrier, I felt like my teeth were bobbing buoys in the back of my mouth. Phyllis came and sat down across from me on a couch that was just a larger version of my chair.

  “You are Phyllis, I presume?”

  She hadn’t given me the courtesy of an introduction so I took one for myself.

  “Yes, I thought you knew when I answered the outdoor buzzer.”

  I smiled. In the corner of my eye I saw movement. A tall lanky young man came into the living room. From the pictures I’d seen, this was the sullen son. I stood up walked over to him and offered my hand. I wanted to see just how sullen he was. He didn’t accept it. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets. He was a few inches taller than me, but he’d been in my fighting class. Light Heavyweight, if you were wondering.

  He had deep blue eyes and a straight nose. He was a handsome lad if you could get past the sullenness of his features. His hair was a brown, dirty bird’s nest of a mess. His mouth was thin and sharp like a shark’s and he held my gaze steadily. Then he turned to his mother.

  “Who is this?”

  He asked in the vacant tone of schoolboy kicking over a dead bird.

  “That’s Detective Carrick with the LAPD. He has some information about your father.”

  “Did you look at his badge?”

  “Well...no.”

  Still standing rigidly with hands stuffed in his pocket he looked back at me.

  “Can I see some ID?”

  I pulled out my PI’s license and held it open in front of him. He went to reach for it with his left hand.

  “You got eyes on your fingers?”

  He stopped for a minute trying to figure out what I meant and then he pulled his hand away and looked at it steadily for a minute until I put it away. He turned back to look at his mother.

  “He’s not even a real cop. His a private investigator.”

  He said those last words like he was accusing me of being the whore of Babylon. I wasn’t going to let her say anything before she’d heard me out.

  “I’m here in an official capacity with the LAPD. I’d suggest you might want to hear what I have to say, Phyllis.”

  He looked at her and glared. She nodded at me. I sat back down on my French chair, feeling like royalty.

  “Please, tell me why you’re here.”

  “I first need to determine that you’re both kin of Ray’s. I understand you are his wife, Ms. Hope...”

  “Ms. Rivera.”

  “Ms. Rivera, and you are his son?”

  I looked at him and he nodded then he went and sat down next to his mother. He kept a steely gaze on me the whole time.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Curtis.”

  “Curtis Hope or Curtis Rivera?”

  “Hope.”

  I looked back at Phyllis and weighed my words carefully.

  “I’m afraid, Ms. Rivera, that we found Ray in De Neve Park this morning. It looks like he’s been murdered.”

  She swallowed hard and blinked her eyes several times. They got wet but they didn’t leak. I looked at Curtis. He was looking off someplace in the carpet, chewing his left fingernails. His stare was vacant.

  “Murdered, are you sure?” asked Phyllis.

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re quite sure. You’ll be invited to come down to the coroner’s office later today, maybe tomorrow, to identify the body, but that’s just routine. We know it’s your husband we found. ID and photographs found on his body confirm it.”

  She nodded again and then her wet eyes started to leak. Curtis got up from the couch and disappeared. He came back moments later with a box of tissues and offered them to his mother. She took one and dabbed at her eyes.

  “How was he killed?” asked Curtis.

  “We can’t release that information just at the moment. But it appears, if this is of any comfort, that death was quick and painless.”

  I don’t know why I said that. The two of them, especially the son, didn’t seem to be all that concerned. This is the rot behind these gilded walls. The families that put their best faces forward are often wearing masks to hide the monsters underneath.

  “Were you close to your father, Curtis?”

  He shook his head, took his fingers out of his mouth and looked at his manicuring like a thoughtful professional.

  “No.”

  “Why would anyone want to hurt Ray?” said Phyllis.

  Sometimes folks say things because they think they’re the right things to say. This family wasn’t all torn up about their patriarch's death. They were just putting their best faces forward for my benefit.

  “Well,” I said, playing along with this ball of yarn as we batted it around like kittens, “if we can determine why Ray was at the park so late at night, we might find motive, and from motive we can often find the killer.”

  I looked at Curtis and a wave of anger spilled like high tide behind his eyes, but no sooner had I seen it, did it retreat again.

  “You said he was at the park late at night?” asked Phyllis

  I nodded.

  “We haven’t confirmed time of death but from all accounts it was after midnight.”

  “And he was only found this morning?”

  I nodded again. Phyllis was getting good at asking the questions and I wanted to get her good at answering them.

  “A neighbor found Ray in the park this morning just after seven thirty.”

  Phyllis dabbed at her eyes again.

  “He was all alone all night.”

  She said it quietly, mouthing the words, feeling them in her mouth like small marbles. She balled up her tissue in her fist and looked out the window to her left, past her son. I didn’t know much about this murder yet, but I knew she had some feelings for him. Maybe some distant ones that the sun of misunderstandings and broken dreams hadn’t burnt up like morning fog.

  “Why do you think he might have been out in the park late at night, Ms. Rivera?”

  She turned back and looked at me and tried to put on a brave smile. It didn’t look natural on her face.

  “You know, Mr. Carrick,” she said, her voice broken and sad like a threadbare rug, “about sixty years ago, or more, Elvis Presley used to come out to De Neve Park and play touch football with his friends, when he used to live out here in LA. Simpler times then, I suppose. More carefree and more honest, too, I guess.”

  She looked back out the window, a wistful far-away look on her face.

  “I don’t know about that. I think there’re some carefree, honest times around now, just not for all folks. You have to practice honesty to get good at it.”

  She didn’t say anything but I thought I saw a smile inch up the corner of her mouth like a worm.

  “You know why he was there at the park late at night, don’t you?” I asked.


  She nodded, at least it looked like a nod. Maybe it was a twitch.

  “He was meeting men to have sex. Correct?”

  “That’s bullshit, that’s a fucking lie! My father wasn’t a faggot, you can’t say that!”

  I looked over at Curtis, and he was balling his fists in anger. His face flushed red with it.

  “I didn’t say he was a faggot, son, but I reckon he was a closet homosexual.”

  Yeah, I was poking the bear. But the son was either in denial or playing me for a patsy. No way his mother knew without him knowing, too.

  “Tell him it’s not true. Tell him to stop lying!”

  Curtis was almost getting hysterical. His voice was raised and the veins on his neck sticking out like snakes. Spittle was doing squats between his lips. Phyllis reached out and placed her left hand, which still held the balled up tissue, onto his leg.

  “It is true, Curtis, you know that. It’s okay.”

  Curtis gritted his teeth and his jaw bulged at the sides like he’d stuffed gum there. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Still, it doesn’t mean he deserved to die. The world needs more love, Mr. Carrick.”

  “I don’t figure how disloyalty and philandering is love, Ms. Rivera, but I’ll give you that he didn’t deserve to die.”

  “How can you be so goddamn understanding, after everything that asshole put you through.”

  Curtis was looking at his mother. Anger still hot on his face like a birthmark. His blue eyes smoldering.

  “A part of me still loved him, Curtis.”

  “No, no. You just couldn’t leave because he wouldn’t give you a dime, you...”

  Curtis found himself finally; he remembered I was in the room. He looked over at me guiltily and saw I was listening, so he looked away and stopped talking. Probably the best for him.

  “I did love him, Mr. Carrick, though it was an unrequited love that died a lonely death. But I never gave up on hoping I might become what he needed. Everything that he needed. Can you understand that?”

  I nodded. I could understand it. The same way I see the same old suckers at the horse races, their jackets threadbare, the lines of misery written deeply all over their faces, and yet, they still hope their pony will come in one final time, just like in the good old days when they danced with lady luck. Ain’t gonna happen.

  My phone rang and I answered it. It was John. He asked where I was and I told him.

  “Great, can you hang tight for fifteen to thirty? My guys’ll be coming by with a warrant and we want to nab Ray’s computer before anyone takes wind of it and has a chance to erase it.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” I said, facetiously.

  “See, just like the old days.”

  “In the old days,” I said, “I was the boss.”

  “But this is the new reality. Listen, I also heard back from the coroner. Ray was killed with a hit to the head by that rock Mike found. Coroner also puts his death at between twelve and two a.m.”

  We hung up and I put my phone away. Phyllis looked at me with a question on her face. I was feeling magnanimous.

  “That was the Homicide Captain,” I said. “He’s heard back from the coroner and your husband was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, sometime between midnight and two a.m.”

  I already had a good idea who the killer was and he was sitting in front of me. Nine times out of ten the perp and victim know each other. Most times intimately. Phyllis wasn’t up to it. I didn’t see her heading over to the park after midnight just to confront her philandering husband and knock him on the head with a rock. She’d been living with his disappointment for years.

  The son however, I reckon he could be good for it. Just out of his teens, I’d put him in his very early twenties. He’s got a huge chip on his shoulder, that I noticed the moment he came into the room. And he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t know what type of man his father is. I figure, he confronted his father and the whole thing went sideways on him.

  But I needed evidence. Well, not me so much as the LAPD Homicide Unit needed evidence. I’m sure they’d get it. There’d be DNA on the rock if they could get at it. And footprints, too. I saw one of the techs taking footprint casts.

  Anyway, I wasn’t about to tip my hat, I’d left it in the car, and I wanted to find out who Ray’s hope was. The man in the shadows with his pants down. Could be a jilted lover or we could have one of those homosexual serial killers out there who prey on closeted men. I’d seen that before. Those homophobes get a real hard on for “teaching” closet homosexuals a lesson.

  I didn’t have much else to ask. Not until after John and I had figured out who the other man in this cloaked closet was. Then we’d come back and I could ask Curtis some more questions. Even if he wasn’t good for this, his alibi was going to be shit. Probably home asleep. That’s likely what he’ll say. But I had some time to kill, so I asked her if I could get a coffee. I used the washroom too. Just as ornate as the living room.

  And we sat and I complimented her on her decoration which got her talking. We spoke about the painter, Roger Barratt and I ended up apologizing for her loss. It was a loss for her. Because even though Ray might have been an ass, she seemed like a sweet woman, lost in a dark night where her youthful dreams had turned to nightmares.

  By the time I had finished my coffee, the cops were here with the warrant. I left discreetly and went back home to my apartment the size of Ray’s living room. I was working on another painting. This one I was calling Blood Orange. It was about LA. You might have figured it out.

  At three thirty I was at the North Hollywood station where John likes to hang his hat most days. I was waiting while the desk cop called John out for me. I knew the routine. I signed in and I was issued a visitor pass. John met me in the lobby. He came up to me grinning and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Cat got a mouse?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we’ve got great news, come along and I’ll show you.”

  I followed him through some doors and down some halls. He showed me into a bigger office than the closet we’d met in many times before.

  “You’re moving up in the ranks,” I said. “They’ve let you out of the closet.”

  He grinned at me and pulled me a chair to his side. We both sat down.

  “I don’t have a permanent office here, I grab what I can get. Since you left, we left Parker Center.”

  “I know. I’ve seen the new building. Fancy pants. So, when I leave, the department starts finding all sorts of money.”

  “What can I say. You were too expensive for us to funnel funds anywhere else.”

  “Right, when I left, Captains didn’t get more than a hundred and twenty k a year. Max. That’s not enough to make a man rich.”

  “Well, we do a bit better than that now. I think it maxes at 180, but I haven’t got there yet.”

  “That’s all right, but you’ve put in how many years? Twenty?”

  “Twenty five next year.”

  “Twenty five years to make what a lawyer in this city makes after his first couple of years. And you have just as much of an education.”

  John grinned at me and shook his head.

  “Why do you carry such a hard on still for the department. You and I both came in to serve and protect. It was never about the money.”

  “You know why, John. I ended up being the patsy. The fall guy. It still poisons my blood.”

  “I get it, Anthony, I do. But man, that was ten years ago, now. Things have changed in the department. Brass is much better.”

  “Thirteen years ago now.”

  “Still, you’ve gotta let it go. It’s gonna eat you up, man.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And seriously, I’ve spoken to folks at head office, they’d take you back in a heartbeat.”

  “What, so I can start as a cadet again, at my age. I don’t think so.”

  “Nah, they’d fast track you. After your eighteen months probationary they’d put you up to detective with
a quick route to lieutenant.”

  I shook my head sadly. I had ten years on the job. If they counted that, I’d need to work a minimum ten years more. Most likely as a detective or lieutenant. It’s hard to slide back down the hill you just struggled climbing up for years.

  “I’ll ponder it. Thanks for looking out for me. You’ve been a good pal, John. Anyway, what do we have here with the homicide in the park?”

  John turned on the computer at the desk and we waited while it booted up and he signed on.

  “The computer techs have found a ton of info on Ray the philanderer. He’s been active in a gay forum for some time where he’s been meeting some men. Let me just get the information up here so I don’t mess it up.”

  I waited and watched as the computer came to life. John opened up his mail and then an email from one of the computer techs.

  “Yeah, here it is. Says Ray was a long time visitor to a site called ‘gay for a day dot com’. Let’s check it out.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “It’s not gay porn, Anthony, it’s a membership site where guys can meet discreetly.”

  “What, you a member?”

  “Fuck off. But I’m not as homophobic as you are.”

  “I’m not homophobic.”

  “Then relax about it and stop getting your boxers in a pinch.”

  “I don’t care what other people do with who they do it to, I just don’t wanna be involved.”

  “Geez, Anthony, seriously, it’s not a bug you can catch. Ah, here it is.”

  The gay for a day site came up. It was very well designed. Not a smack right in the chops, but you definitely knew just by the homepage why you were here. It advertised totally anonymous, discreet hookups for men who had ‘other’ commitments.

  “Do you want to take a tour?”

  “No.”

  John slapped me on the side of the shoulder.

  “Just teasing with you, pal. But here’s where it gets interesting. When Ray first got on the site he met up with a few guys, but for the last six months, from what we can tell he’s been exclusive.”