The Little Death hr-1

by Michael Nava

  The surroundings of the house, centers, neighborhoods which I see and where I walk; for years and years.

  I have created you in joy and in sorrows: out of so many circumstances, out of so many things.

  You have become all feeling for me.

  The words had a liturgical cadence, almost a prayer. You have become all feeling for me. I had not come to see Robert Paris buried, but to bury Hugh. And still I was dissatisfied. I put the book down and started up the car.

  Terry ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass of wine as I ordered another bourbon and water. The lunchtime crowd at Barney’s had thinned considerably since we’d been seated an hour earlier. The plate of pasta in front of me was mostly uneaten, but I’d refused the waiter’s attempts to clear it away. The presence of food helped me justify the amount of bourbon I was drinking.

  Terry wore a satiny cotton dress, white with thin red and blue vertical stripes. A diamond pendant hung from her slim neck. Looking at her I wondered if she had a lover. I didn’t imagine many men could accept her calm self-possession and luminous intelligence without feeling threatened. And, just now, she also looked beautiful to me.

  “I should be getting back to work,” she said, making no effort to move. Instead she poured the last of the wine from the bottle into her glass. Continuing our conversation, she asked, “What is it you can’t accept?”

  I shrugged. “Robert Paris’s death, I guess. I wanted a confrontation and he ups and dies on me.”

  “But you don’t think he was killed?”

  “No. Apparently he’s been in bad health for years and he died of natural causes.”

  “Then let it rest,” she said. She sipped her wine. “What are you going to do with yourself now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m completely unprepared for anything other than the practice of law.”

  “That sounds like a good reason to do something else.”

  “I agree, but the details of my new life are — elusive.”

  The waiter deposited my drink in front of me and made another play for my plate. This time I let him take it.

  “Just watch the whiskey intake,” she said.

  “I have to get my calories somewhere.”

  “You might come to my house for dinner some night.”

  “I’d like that.”

  We looked at each other.

  “I’m offering as a friend,” she said.

  “I know. I accept.”

  I saw her look away. What did she see when she looked at me, I wondered. An alien or just a lonely man? The latter, I thought. Her dinner invitation came out of compassion, not curiosity.

  “We’re both different, Terry. We play against expectation and we’re good at what we do. It’s our competence that makes us outsiders, not the fact that you’re a woman cop or I’m a gay lawyer.”

  She nodded, slightly, and made a movement to leave. I rose with her.

  “Take care of yourself, Henry. Go away for a few days, meet someone new, and when you get back, call me.”

  “I promise,” I said and watched her go.

  I should have gone, too, but instead I stayed another hour at the bar. Finally, when the first wave of the office workers from the surrounding business washed in, I asked for the check, paid it and left.

  I put the key into the lock, turned it, pushed the door and nothing happened. The dead-bolt was bolted. I fumbled on my key chain for the dead-bolt key and jammed it into the lock. I leaned my shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened. I stood for a moment staring at the door. I didn’t remember bolting it. In fact, I never did.

  Stepping into my apartment I suddenly stopped. There was something wrong. I looked around. Everything appeared as it had been when I set off for the university that morning, but was it? Had I closed the book lying on the coffee table? I walked around the room.

  The dead-bolt. I knew I hadn’t bolted the door. There was no point. There were so many other ways to break into my apartment that it never occurred to me that someone might try using the front door. But someone had, and he had very carefully turned both locks when he left.

  Slowly, starting with my bedroom, I methodically went through every room of the apartment, taking inventory. It took more than an hour to make the search. In the bedroom, I lifted from the wall my framed law school diploma. I opened the wall safe beneath. There I found intact my grandfather’s pocket watch, my birth certificate, my passport, my parents’ wedding rings — optimistically bequeathed to me — and five thousand dollars cash, some of the bills twenty years old, the sum of my father’s estate. Everything was accounted for.

  It was the same in the bathroom and the kitchen and in the hall closet. I sat down at my desk and began going through the drawers. Then I discovered what was missing: Hugh’s letters to his grandfather, which Aaron Gold had given me.

  I closed the bottom drawer. Robert Paris was dead but someone had stolen the only evidence I had which linked him to the murder of his grandson. The apartment seemed suddenly very quiet. I felt as if I were in the presence of ghosts. As much to get out as to learn whether she’d seen or heard anything I went to my neighbor.

  I pushed the doorbell beneath her name, Lisa Marsh. She came to the door in a bathrobe. This was not unusual, since she was a resident at the university medical school and worked odd hours. But her face was flushed, her hair disheveled and her eyes bright; it wasn’t the appearance of sleep.

  “Hi,” I began, waiting for recognition to register with her.

  She smiled.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed but someone broke into my house this afternoon.”

  She stepped back. “Oh, no. When?”

  “I left at ten this morning and got back an hour ago.” I looked at my watch. It was about six. “I was wondering if you’d seen or heard anything.”

  “You better come in,” she said. I did, closing the door behind me. All the curtains were drawn, but a lamp shone in a corner, revealing the remnants of a meal for two people laid out on a long coffee table. “Excuse me for a minute, Henry.”

  She went into her bedroom, and I heard her talking to someone. A few minutes later she returned with a man who was stuffing his shirt tails into his jeans.

  “I don’t think you’ve met Mark,” she said.

  “Um, how do you do?” I said.

  He smiled. “Fine.”

  “I am really sorry to disturb you,” I said to both of them.

  Lisa shrugged. “This is an emergency. Have you called the police?”

  “No, not yet. I’m trying to figure out what happened first.”

  We went into the living room and sat down. I told them about the dead-bolt, the neatness of the search and the fact that only one thing had been taken. They did not ask, and I did not tell them, exactly what that thing was.

  “What I was thinking,” I concluded, “was that you may have heard something or seen someone.”

  They looked at each other and then back to me.

  “We had lunch at around noon,” Lisa said, “and were done by twelve-thirty. I’m afraid that after that we weren’t paying much attention.”

  Mark frowned thoughtfully. “Wait. I heard a phone ringing next door. It woke me, and I looked over at the alarm clock thinking it might be the hospital — I work there, too. It was about three-thirty or a little before. Then I got up to use the bathroom and get a glass of water from the kitchen.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  The three of us looked at each other. Lisa touched her finger to her lip.

  “But I did,” she said. “The sound of silver rattling as someone opened a drawer. But I thought it was Mark.”

  “No, I got a glass from the counter. I didn’t open any drawers.”

  “All this happened around three-thirty?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Mark said, “because I had to check in with the hospital at four.”

  I got up to leave. It was five-thirty. The burglar had be
en in my apartment only two hours earlier.

  “What did he take?” Lisa asked.

  “Some letters.”

  “Were they important?”

  “The fact that they were stolen makes them important again,” I said, then thanked them for their help.

  Back in my apartment I headed for the phone. I hadn’t noticed earlier that the answering machine had been shut off. I switched it back on. The recording dial was turned to erase. I moved the dial back to rewind, listening as the tape sped backwards. The message had not been rewound before my visitor attempted to erase it. Consequently, he had only succeeded in erasing blank tape. I turned the dial to play. There was the noise of someone trying to clear his throat and then the voice of a very drunk Aaron Gold.

  “Henry… secretary said you called the other day… need to talk to you… s’important… s’about Hugh… Judge Paris.. you got it wrong. Remember, no cops. I’m at home.” The line went dead. I fast forwarded the tape to see if he’d called again. There were no other calls.

  Mark said he heard the phone ringing at about three-thirty. A few minutes later, Lisa heard someone in my kitchen. Aaron’s call must have come in while the burglar was in the apartment. If he was in the kitchen, which was just a few feet from the phone, the burglar heard the message. In fact, he not only tried to erase the message but turned the machine off so that the red light wouldn’t immediately attract my attention. Shutting off the machine had also prevented any further messages from Aaron. Suddenly, I was very worried for him.

  The phone rang at Aaron’s house three times before his answering machine clicked on. I waited for the message to finish knowing that Aaron often screened his calls, and hoping that he was doing that now.

  “Aaron, this is Henry,” I said, practically shouting, “if you’re at home, pick up the phone.” The tape ran on. I tried calling his office but was told he hadn’t been in that day. I put the phone down, got my car keys and hurried out of the apartment.

  Aaron lived in a small wooden house on Addison, set back from the road by a rather gloomy yard that was perpetually shaded by two massive oaks. There was a deep porch across the front of the house. The overhanging roof was supported by four squat and massive pillars completely out of proportion to the rest of the building. Gold and I referred to the place as Tara. The recollection of that mild joke dispelled some of my uneasiness as I opened the gate and stepped into the yard.

  It was dusk and the shadows were at their deepest. Aaron’s brown BMW was parked, a little crookedly, in the driveway. There were lights on behind the drawn curtains but the house was still. I heard a noise, a movement on the side of the house in the narrow strip of yard between the building and the fence that bounded the property.

  Abruptly I stopped, turned and sped toward the side yard, moving as quietly as I could. When I reached the edge of the building I stopped and listened. Another noise, fainter. Breathing? I slowed my own breath. Someone had been coming up the side yard when he heard me open the gate. Now he was standing still, wondering, as I had wondered, at the source of the noise. I crouched, walked to the very edge of the building, and then sprang.

  For an instant no longer than a heartbeat we saw each other through the evening shadows. He raised his arm to his chest, holding something in his hand. I balled my hand into a fist and brought it down on his wrist as hard as I could. Startled, he dropped what I now saw was a gun. He gasped, turned, and started running. I stooped down, retrieved the gun and ran after him. He was scrambling over the redwood fence when I got to the back yard.

  “Stop,” I shouted, training the gun at his back. I squeezed the trigger and then released it. It seemed suddenly darker as a burst of adrenalin rushed to my head. He was wearing — what? — dark pants, a dark shirt, taking the wall like an athlete. I knew that in another second it would be too late to stop him. I had to stop him. But shoot him? I was going to shoot a man? This wasn’t even remotely a situation of self-defense. I held on to the gun and ran for the fence. He was nearly over the top. With my free hand, I reached up and grabbed his ankle. He kicked free. In another second I heard him drop to the ground on the other side. I clambered up the fence, trying to get footholds on the rough wood. Reaching the top, I looked down at the alley, which ran the length of the street. He was gone. He had run to the end of the block or else had gone into someone’s back yard. I let myself drop back. Try to remember his face, I thought, as I made my way back to the house. The back door was ajar.

  I entered the house through the kitchen.

  “Aaron,” I said in a whisper.

  There was no answer. I groped for a light switch, found it and turned it on. The fluorescent light blinked on, filling the room with a white electric glare. From the doorway of the kitchen I could see into the dining room and to the arched entrance that led into the living room. There was a light on in there. I stepped into the dining room and repeated Aaron’s name. There was no answer.

  I crossed the room to the archway, holding the gun loosely at my side. Aaron Gold slumped forward in a brown leather armchair, his chest on his knees, his fingertips scraping the floor. Blood dripped steadily from his lap to a bright circle beneath him. On the table beside the chair was an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Red, a glass, and a small pitcher of water. The strongest smell in the room was of alcohol.

  He’d probably been too drunk to know what was happening.

  I took no comfort from this.

  I started toward him. There was a loud noise out on the porch, the sound of footsteps and voices. Someone was pounding on the door.

  “This is the police. Mr. Gold. Open up. This is the police.”

  Numbly I went to the door and pulled it open. A young officer was flanked by three other cops. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could utter a word, one of them said, “He’s got a gun.”

  As soon as the sentence was out, there were four guns on me.

  “Drop it,” the first officer said. I let the gun slip from my hand to the floor. “Now step outside nice and easy.”

  “All right,” I said, regaining my composure, “but my friend is hurt in there.”

  “We’ll take care of him in a minute.” One of the other officers directed me to turn, put my hands up against the wall and spread my legs. The felony position. I did as I was told. Another of the officers stepped into the house and I heard him mutter, “Jesus Christ.” To the officers outside he said, “Get the paramedics.”

  I was searched, handcuffed and ordered to remain standing against the wall.

  “This is a mistake,” I said to the officer watching me.

  “It sure is,” he replied.

  Now I heard the shriek of sirens as the paramedics’ unit shattered the stillness of the night. I had often heard that noise and wondered to what tragedy they were being summoned. This time I knew.

  The officer who had first come to the door approached me, pen and pad in hand.

  “What’s your name?” “Henry Rios,” I said.

  He looked me over. Perhaps out of deference to the fact that I was still wearing most of my suit from the funeral, he called me mister.

  “I’m going to read you your constitutional rights. Listen up.” He began to read from the Miranda card in the dull drone that I had heard so many times before when I was a public defender. I had about fifteen seconds in which to make up my mind whether to talk to him or not.

  “Do you understand these rights?” he was asking.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Do you want a lawyer?”

  “I am a lawyer,” I said.

  The answer startled him and then he searched my face carefully. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

  “I was a public defender.”

  He whistled low beneath his breath. “Then you know the script,” he said. “Do you want a lawyer?”

  “Yes. Sonny Patterson at the D.A.’s office. I’ll talk to him.”

  He nodded. “We’re going to take you down to county,” he said. “I’l
l radio ahead and have them rouse Patterson.”

  “Thank you.”

  He turned to one of his fellow-officers. “Take him.”

  “What charge?” the other asked.

  “One eighty-seven,” the first officer replied. Penal Code section 187 — murder.

  Out in the street the paramedics had arrived.

  9

  It took Sonny Patterson two hours and seven phone calls to get me out of jail. Most of the time I sat on one of the three bunks in a holding cell watching soundless reruns of Fantasy Island while he wheedled on the phone in the booking office for my release.

  The last time I’d been at county was as a public defender the morning I met Hugh Paris. Nothing at the jail had changed, including the inmate population. Several trusties who recognized me from back then drifted past the cell, not saying anything but just to stare. I smiled and said hello and they moved on.

  The sheriffs let me keep my own clothes but they did not spare me any other part of the booking process. I was strip- searched, photographed, finger-printed and locked up, all the while thinking, this is unreal. The worst part was the strip search. Until then it had never occurred to me to make the distinction between nudity and nakedness. Now I knew. Nudity was undressing to shower, or sleep, or make love. When you stripped in a hot closet-sized cell that smelled of the previous fifty men and under the indifferent stare of four cops, then you were naked. I still felt that nakedness. It was like a rash; I couldn’t stop rubbing my body.

  I made my mind into a blank screen across which flickered the images of the day from Robert Paris’s casket to Aaron Gold’s fingertips dipped in a dark pool of his own blood. These pictures passed through me like a shudder, but it was better than trying to suppress them.

  This entire affair began with the murder of one man, Hugh Paris. Now it was assuming the dimensions of a massacre. No one connected with the Paris family seemed safe, including, perhaps, Robert Paris himself. Had the judge’s death been purely coincidental to the fact that I’d begun to develop evidence that implicated him with three murders? Was there a gray eminence in the shadows directing events, or did the dead hand of Robert Paris still control the lethal machinery? Until that afternoon I had believed the investigation into Hugh’s death was closed. The killing of Aaron Gold changed all that. I was back at the starting line, but with this difference: I was exhausted.