by Michael Nava
“He’d be eligible for parole in as little as five years,” I said.
She reached for her son’s hand. “I’m the one who should be punished for not standing up for you.”
“You’re here now,” he said.
“You forgive me?” she asked, tearily.
“You know I do. You forgive me for all the worry I caused you?”
“Oh, Theo . . .” She pressed his hand.
He turned to me. “I’ll take the deal.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” I said. “Trials are crapshoots. Now at least you know you’ll have a future.”
“Unless AIDS gets me first.”
His mother said, “Don’t say that, Theo.”
“You’ll be at the medical facility,” I reminded him, “and your mom and I are both going to be keeping an eye on you.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that.”
“We’ll be back in court next Monday to take your plea. Mrs. Phillips, we need to go.”
She grasped his hand in both of hers. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, Ma. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
••••
That weekend QUEER threw a fundraiser barbecue for Theo’s legal defense fund at Laura Acosta’s bungalow in Atwood Village. By the time Josh and I arrived, the nearest street parking was two blocks away. A rainbow of balloons attached to Laura’s mailbox marked her house, but the blaring disco music and kids passing joints on the veranda made the same point. We passed through small crowded rooms to the unexpectedly capacious back yard where I caught sight of Kim Phillips.
Theo’s mother was clutching a drink with a dazed expression. I tried to imagine the scene through her eyes— the shirtless boys making out on the lawn, bodies twisted together like origami; the spiky-haired, nose-pierced boy in cut-off jeans and a Keith Haring T-shirt; the slender young woman in a sundress patterned with sunflowers, wearing combat boots and with bright pink and purple hair; and Laura Acosta, a striped apron covering her pink guayabera shirt and khakis, standing at an enormous grill, prodding meat with a long fork with one hand and chugging a beer with the other. The warm, still air reeked of grilled beef, beer, and pheromones.
“Kim,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Theo told me about it,” she replied. “This is really something.”
“It’s a party,” I replied. “These people are here to help your son and to have fun while they’re doing it. This is my boyfriend, Josh.”
“Hi,” Josh said, extending a hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve been friends with Theo for a long time.”
She took his hand. “You’re the one who took him off the streets and let him stay with you.”
Josh nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope he didn’t get you into too much trouble.”
“All that matters now is helping him.”
She pressed his hand and released it. To me, she said, “I wanted to thank the person in charge.”
I smiled. “If you find that person, let me know.”
“What?” she replied, confused.
“Never mind. Let me introduce you to our host.”
We made our way to Laura.
“Hombre!” she shouted when she saw me. “You made it!”
I squeezed through the throng to reach her. “This is quite a turnout.”
“I just hope we have enough food. Tacos for the meat eaters, veggie burgers for the vegetarians plus all kinds of salads, rice, and beans. Yeah, it’s a big crowd, and half the people I’ve never seen before, not at our meetings anyway.”
“Laura, this is Kim Phillips, Theo’s mom. She wanted to thank you for throwing the fundraiser.”
Laura handed me the fork and her beer and embraced the older woman. “I’m glad you’re here, Kim.”
Nonplussed, Kim murmured, “Um, thank you. I’m glad I’m here, too.”
In the same commanding voice she used to quiet the babble at QUEER meetings, Laura shouted, “Hey, everyone, settle down for a minute. I want to introduce you to two important people. This is Henry Rios, Theo’s lawyer, and this is Kim, Theo’s mom.”
Her announcement was greeted by finger snaps and cheers.
“Let me take you around and introduce you to Theo’s friends,” Laura said. “Rios, mind the grill.”
“I really don’t know how to cook,” I said.
She grinned. “And you call yourself a maricón.” She peered through the bodies, spotted who she was looking for, and called, “Patty, come over here!”
The pink and purple-haired woman in the sunflower dress cut through the crowd.
“Henry, Kim, mi novia, Patty. Patty, el abogado y la madre. Listen, will you take charge of the grill for a minute so I can take Kim around?”
Patty rolled her eyes and said, “You know I’m a vegetarian.”
“M’ija, no one’s asking you to eat the meat; just make sure it doesn’t burn.”
I handed the fork to Patty and followed Laura and Kim into the crowd. A firm hand on my shoulder stopped me. I turned. Two men stood before me, the taller of the two still grasping my shoulder. He was a six-foot-something, middle-aged, pink-faced man with thinning, cornstalk blond hair, blue eyes, and decisive features, wearing khakis and a blue Lacoste polo shirt over a religiously exercised body. His companion was a little shorter and at least ten years younger, a handsome, leanly muscular African-American guy with sculpted features and warm eyes in a pink Lacoste polo and carefully pressed white walking shorts. They looked prosperous and out of place in the ragamuffin QUEER crowd; I would have pegged them as Log Cabin Republicans.
“Mr. Rios,” the older man said, dropping his hand. “I’m Ed Madden, and this is my partner, Tom Lucas. We wanted to thank you for taking Theo’s case. Can you talk about the kind of defense you’re planning?”
“Well, actually, I can’t. Attorney-client privilege.”
“He did it in self-defense,” Tom Lucas said abruptly.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Killing those bigots is self-defense,” he continued. “I only wish he’d thrown the bomb during a church service and taken out more of them.”
I glanced at Madden, expecting to see censure but he was nodding. When he saw my dismay, he said, “This initiative makes it pretty clear it’s us or them.”
“We’ll defeat them at the ballot, not by blowing up their churches,” I said. “Violence doesn’t change minds; it only leads to revenge.”
“You think if we win that’s the end of it?” the younger man demanded. “They’re going to keep coming back, year after year, with some new scheme to shove us back into the closet.”
“And we’ll keep fighting them,” I replied.
Lucas said, “Keep fighting them? No one should have to live like that. Just once, Mr. Rios, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not already be furious.”
His lover embraced him from behind, arms crossed around the younger man’s chest. “We’re both HIV positive,” Madden said. “Fighting the virus and these bigots— that’s asking a lot.”
“I know it is.”
“My friends die lying in their own shit,” Lucas said, in a fury. “Blind, in terrible pain. And these Christians want to lock us up? Hell, yeah, we should kill them. Let them see what it feels like to lose people you love.”
His eyes were furious, daring me to contradict him. I didn’t know what else to say. Fortunately, Josh grabbed my hand and said to the men, “Will you excuse us? Come on, Henry, you need to eat something.”
He dragged me away before I could protest, pulled me beneath an awning that shaded a corner of the patio, and pushed me into a plastic lawn chair.
“Sit,” he said, “and don’t talk to anyone else.”
A moment later, he returned with a plate of food and a glass of iced tea. “Here.”
“What’s all this? Did you think I needed rescuing?” I asked, balancing the plastic plate on my lap.
&
nbsp; “Yes,” he said. He pulled up another chair and sat. “Sometimes when you come home from work, you have this look, like you’re carrying too many secrets and they’re all disturbing. You had that look just now talking to those guys. You can’t carry the weight for everyone.”
“That’s the job,” I muttered.
“This isn’t work. Relax. Eat. Enjoy the sun.”
“You should eat, too.”
“I’ll get a plate in a minute.” His eyes followed Laura and Mrs. Phillips working the crowd. “It’s nice that Theo’s mom is here.”
“They’ve reconciled.” I put down the forkful of beef I’d been about the eat. “You haven’t said anything about your family lately.”
“I’ve been talking to my sisters. They’ve both been working on my dad, but he still won’t see me.”
“What about your mom?”
“She won’t go against him. They’re their own little world; they’ve always been like that. Sam and Selma Mandel versus the universe.”
“You’re their only son.”
“My dad has very traditional ideas about the sexes. Men work and women raise the children. Daughters get married and make grandchildren. Sons get a good education, become professionals, start families of their own.”
“One of your sisters is a nurse,” I pointed out. “The other one is an elementary school principal.”
“Yeah, but they gave him grandkids. I was the disappointment and now I’m more than that. I’m tref.”
“What does that mean?”
“Literally, food that’s not kosher, but my dad uses it to describe anything he considers disgusting. Homosexuals? Definitely tref.”
“That’s appalling.”
“I’ve been giving you a one-sided picture of him,” he said. “Once, when I was three or four, we were at a restaurant and a baby started crying, just howling. I was always sensitive, and the baby made me sad and I started crying too. My dad took me outside, squatted down, dried my eyes with his handkerchief, and said, ‘Don’t cry, Joshie. The baby is not sad or hurt. Crying is how babies talk because they don’t have words yet.’ Then he kissed me and took me back inside and sat me on his lap for the rest of the meal and fed me from his plate. See, he can be that kind of dad, too.”
“I hope he can find it in himself to be that kind of dad again. For both your sakes.”
“My sisters will wear him down. Persistence is their secret power.”
“I love you, you know.”
He kissed me. “I love you, too. Henry, do you think this is all happening really fast? We’ve only known each other a couple of months but I’m basically living with you.”
“When you meet in the trenches, and the bullets are flying around you, things speed up. Judgments, decisions, plans. It’s life during wartime.”
“If things were different,” he began, tentatively, “not so crazy, or so scary, would you still want to be with me?”
I looked into his beautiful eyes and said, “I can’t imagine any world where I wouldn’t want to be with you.”
••••
On Sunday evening, I sat at the kitchen table watching Josh chop vegetables for a stir fry while the rice cooker steamed. Cooking, I had discovered, was his secret passion and he was very good at it. I’d never eaten so well. The sun had set but it was not yet night. Still, the room was gloomy, shadows creeping from the corners, the high ceiling fading into darkness. The kitchen was tiled in hand-painted Talavera tiles in green and blue, a big brass light fixture hanging above the island, copper pots and pans hanging from the walls. Ridiculously oversized, like the rest of the place, for two men. I’d been the legal owner of the house for nearly a year, since Larry’s death, but I still felt like a squatter. I mentioned this again as Josh sliced mushrooms.
“You could try to make it your place,” he suggested. “Buy different furniture, have it repainted?”
“Larry’s suits are still hanging in the closet in the master bedroom.”
“That’s not the bedroom we sleep in?”
“No,” I said. “We’re in the guest suite.” I sighed. “I can’t stay here. We can’t stay here. It will always be Larry’s house to me.”
“What are you thinking?”
“We could sell it.”
“We?” he asked, smiling.
“We could sell it and buy a place that would be ours.”
“You know I don’t have money for a house.”
“I don’t either.” I laughed. “But if we sold the place, we could get something smaller with the money. I’d like to stay in this neighborhood. I love it up here in the hills. It’s quiet.”
“I do too,” he said. He pointed his spatula at me. “Are you formally asking me to move in with you?”
I stood up, approached him, and embraced him from behind. “Will you move in with me, Josh?”
He tossed a handful of chopped garlic and ginger into the wok. The oil popped and sizzled.
“Stand back, Henry, and yes, I will.”
“That makes me really happy.”
Whatever he was about to say was cut off by the phone.
He frowned. “Are you going to answer that?”
Sunday evening calls were never good news.
“I have to. It’s probably a client in jail.” I picked up the receiver from the wall phone. “Hello . . . Yes, this is Henry Rios . . . Yes, he’s my client. . . . What? . . . When? . . . No, don’t move him. I’m on my way.”
I slammed down the phone.
Alarmed, Josh asked, “Henry? What—”
“Theo’s dead. He hanged himself in his cell.”
FIFTEEN
The cops had removed Theo’s body and shipped it to the medical examiner despite my demand he be left in his cell, exactly as he’d been found, to allow me to inspect the scene. My protests were met with contempt— the sheriffs telling me they were a jail, not a morgue. When I asked whether photographs had been taken for their investigation, I was told there would be no investigation because there was no question about cause of death. The only information they gave— grudgingly— was that Theo had torn a sheet into strips, braided the strips together, and hanged himself.
I left the jail furious at being stonewalled by the sheriffs and incredulous that Theo had killed himself. It didn’t take long for the two to gel into suspicion and suspicion to harden into certainty. Theo’s conveniently timed suicide terminated his case without any repercussions to the district attorney or the Los Angeles Police Department. The DA wouldn’t have to explain why he had plea bargained a notorious capital case to second-degree murder; the threat of exposing LAPD’s involvement in the church bombing evaporated with Theo’s death; and, in public opinion, Theo’s suicide would amount to a virtual confession.
I knew the back story, but without Theo, that’s all it would be, unproven allegations against the police department that could not be tested in any public forum. I knew in my heart Theo had not taken his own life— he’d been murdered. I would demand the medical examiner’s report and, if necessary, seek a second autopsy from an independent lab. I knew, however, if his death was what I thought it was, I could count on methodical official obstruction, from further stonewalling to evidence tampering. Because what I believed was that Theo had been murdered by his jailers.
••••
I slammed the desk. “I want to see Mr. Unger. Now.”
The receptionist, taken aback by my fury, stuttered, “Is, uh . . . do you have an appointment?”
“Tell him it’s Henry Rios.”
She picked up her phone, pushed a button, and murmured into it, too low for me to hear. She hung up. “He’ll be right out.”
The windows looked east, toward Chinatown and beyond to an industrial landscape of warehouses and small factories. A gray pall hung in the sky, obscuring the San Gabriel mountains. I tried to compose myself, but I was so wound up I felt a single misstep and I’d be shattered.
“Henry?” With a quizzical expression on his face, Marc
approached, hand extended. I ignored it.
“Theo Latour was found dead in his cell just after midnight,” I said. “What do you know about that?”
He dropped his hand, and his face tightened. “In my office.”
On his desk was a foam container with the remnants of breakfast in it— bits of scrambled egg and bacon, a crust of toast. Beside it was an oversized cup of coffee. He cleared away the food, sat down behind his desk, and said, “Latour is dead? How?”
“The sheriffs say he hanged himself.”
“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
“I bet.”
His head jerked back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Who did you tell in LAPD about the deal we reached and when did you tell them?”
“Communications with my client are privileged.”
“Don’t try to hide behind privilege. I know you told the cops.”
“If you know, why are you asking and where are you going with this?”
“Whoever you told in LAPD didn’t think the plea bargain you agreed to gave the department enough protection. They figured the only way to shut it down completely was to kill Theo. Or maybe the DA refused to make the deal and the department had to come up with another way to close the case.”
“Are you seriously suggesting the department killed your client? That’s insane. In the first place, the jail’s run by the sheriff, not LAPD.”
“Oh, please. I’m sure the department’s helped clean up more than a few of the sheriff’s fuck-ups, enough for someone to call in a favor.”
“Second,” he said, ignoring me, “the police aren’t murderers.”
“You can say that with a straight face,” I said, mockingly. “Your entire practice is defending killer cops.”
“Watch your mouth,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
“Theo Letour was killed to prevent a department scandal.”
“Your hatred of the police has made you paranoid.”
“How many millions did the city have to pay out last year to settle complaints of police brutality?” I shouted.
