The Death of Friends

by Michael Nava

  “You’ll see,” he said, opening the door to let me pass.

  There were mirrored walls in the small entrance hall that reflected a miniature of Michelangelo’s David on a black marble plinth. Beyond that was a large, sun-filled room furnished in white. I could see through glass doors a terrace and a pool. The terrace was landscaped with potted palms and exotic flowers. The pool was an irregular circle, rimmed with porous stone. At the far end of the terrace, beneath a vine-laden gazebo, there was a sunken hot tub. It took me a moment, but I recognized the pool as the set in Asshole Buddies.

  “Over here,” Tommy said, walking ahead of me, through the white room.

  I followed him into a smaller room dominated by an oversized TV on which a soundless video was running, showing half a dozen men having sex on board a boat. In the center of a room, watching the film, was a tall, powerfully built old man grasping the railings of a wooden platform, his legs encased in metal braces. Beside the platform was a motorized wheelchair. The platform was arranged at an angle so that I saw him in profile. He wore a red-and-white striped shirt and white slacks pulled tight by the straps of the braces around his wasted legs. He was bald, except for a fringe of long white hair, and he sported a goatee.

  “Mr. Bligh?”

  He craned his neck to face me. He was round-faced and ruddy. Beneath wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes were bright blue and he might have passed for a department-store Santa Claus but for the hooded intelligence in those eyes; they were the eyes of a bird of prey.

  “Mr. Rios,” he said, in his deep, booming voice. “You’re early.” He reached for a remote control on the railing and switched the TV off. “Get me down, Tommy.”

  Tommy Callen unstrapped him and helped him into the wheelchair. When he was settled, he said, “Sit down, Mr. Rios. Tommy, bring us some coffee.”

  I sank into an overstuffed chair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your physical therapy.”

  “What, that?” he said, glancing at the platform. “It’s not really therapy. It helps the circulation in my legs and it feels good to be upright for a while, but it doesn’t improve my condition.”

  “How long have you been in a chair?”

  “Ten years,” he said. “Industrial accident. I’ll spare you the details, but the settlement bought me this house and helped me start up my production company. So I suppose it was a fair trade.” His eyes beamed irony. “Though I might have been asked first.”

  “You own Wilde Ride outright?”

  “Lock, stock and barrel,” he said.

  “How does someone get into your business?”

  He crinkled a smile. “You exude distaste, Mr. Rios, and that surprises me after everything you’ve done for the community.”

  “What community is that?”

  “The gay and lesbian community,” he said. “I’m a big contributor to a lot of the organizations, and after I talked to you I made some calls. You’re a contributor yourself. I’m surprised we haven’t met before at the Center dinner or an APLA party.”

  “Those functions seem awfully self-congratulatory to me,” I said.

  “And why shouldn’t they be?”

  “To congratulate yourself on your own generosity seems a little immodest, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I don’t see it that way,” he said, amiably. “I see it as a celebration of our survival as a people.”

  “I’m not sure we would agree on who our people are,” I said. “I’ve seen one of your movies.”

  “And what did you think of it?”

  “I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment,” I replied.

  “You disapprove,” he said, lightly.

  “It bothered me that your performers didn’t use condoms.”

  “You’re talking about Buddies,” he said. Tommy brought in a tray with coffee. He took a cup. “Thank you, Tommy.” He offered me the cup. “Sugar, cream?”

  “Black is fine,” I said, taking the cup.

  “I didn’t direct Buddies,” Bligh continued. “The man I used thought the action would be hotter without condoms. I fired him when I found out, but he’d already shot the footage and it seemed pointless to waste it.” He sipped coffee. “I value my actors. It was very upsetting to me.” He set the cup down. “You asked me how I got into the business, Mr. Rios. I’ll tell you.”

  “Please.”

  “Because I’m in this chair,” he said, gripping the arms of his wheelchair. “You see, someone like you, young, good-looking, able-bodied, can actualize his erotic fantasies. I can’t. And there are more gay men like me in this country than there are like you. Not necessarily crippled, but closeted, maybe, or in small towns or living in the country, remote places where you can’t find the sexual opportunities that exist in places like West Hollywood. My movies are their lifelines. I give them in fantasy what most of them will never be able to have in reality.”

  “But always the same fantasies,” I said. “The same muscle-bound boy having impersonal sex.”

  He chuckled. “You don’t understand how it works. The movies sketch situations, the viewer fills in the blanks. Isn’t that what sexual fantasy is all about?”

  “I’ve never fantasized about someone calling me a faggot while I was giving him a blow job.”

  He fixed me with his predator’s eyes and said, “The thing that makes sex between men exciting is the implicit possibility of violence as their powerful bodies go at each other. It’s as much about making war as making love. Your lover is also your enemy. Of course there’s an element of humiliation in it. That’s part of the erotic thrill.”

  “Someone else might say you promote self-hatred,” I said.

  “He would be wrong,” Bligh said, icily.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” I said. “I didn’t come here to talk about your movies. I came here to talk to Zack Bowen.”

  “He’s not here, Mr. Rios,” Bligh said. “He left yesterday.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Before I answer that,” he said, “if I answer it, I need to know what your interest is.”

  “The police are looking for him in connection with a murder. He came to me asking for my help, then ran away before I could give it to him.”

  “Why would you want to help Zack?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I said, “and I won’t be sure until I talk to him, but better me than the police. The murder victim was a friend of mine.”

  “Judge Chandler,” Bligh said, sedately sipping his coffee.

  “You knew him?”

  “I introduced him to Zack.”

  12

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I said. “How did you know Chris?”

  Bligh raised his cup to Tommy, who had sat silently through the conversation. He poured coffee into it and gestured to me with the pot. I shook my head.

  “I told you I’m a big donor to gay causes, but not just gay ones,” Bligh said. “In this political climate, it helps to have friends in power. I met Judge Chandler at a fundraiser for the mayor a couple of years back. We got to talking and he was very interested in my line of work. The judge was one of those men I was telling you about earlier who don’t have access to the gay world. I mentioned to him that I occasionally gave small parties where I introduced my friends to some of my actors. I asked him if he’d like to come to one of them. Of course, he said he would.”

  “What kind of parties?”

  Bligh laughed, a great, booming laugh. “Dinner parties, Mr. Rios. Not orgies. Not with all the white in this house.”

  “I see,” I said. “You introduced powerful, closeted gay men to prospective sex partners.”

  “I introduced one set of friends to another set of friends,” he said. “Whatever else happened was up to them.”

  “You pimped your actors,” I said.

  “Do you know what, Mr. Rios?” he said smoothly. “I don’t think I much like you.”

  “Maybe it’s because I don’t trade in the same euphemisms as you do.”r />
  He shrugged. “Whatever. I’m not running a prostitution ring. I just do favors for my friends.”

  “Friends who could do you favors in return,” I said. “Friends who would have something to fear from you if they didn’t return your favors.”

  He shook his head chidingly. “You have a devious mind. I suppose it comes from your legal training. Let me be clear, I’m not a pimp and I’m not a blackmailer. I’m a businessman in a very controversial business who watches out for himself.”

  “Was Zack a regular at your parties?”

  “No,” he said. “Zack worked for me.”

  “He performed in your movies, you mean.”

  “Just the one,” he said. “He had the right look, but not the right attitude.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you saw the movie,” he replied. “Did Zack look like he was having a good time?”

  “No, he looked like he wished he was someplace else.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “By the time I found Zack, he was pretty damaged. He was a street hustler, you know. That’s not an easy life. Anyway, I couldn’t use him in the videos, so I hired him to look after me, what Tommy does now.”

  I glanced at Tommy, who frowned but said nothing. A moment later, he slipped out of the room.

  “It was generous of you to keep Zack on,” I said.

  “You have a gift for innuendo,” Bligh rumbled.

  “I’m just responding to what you don’t say.”

  “What am I not saying?”

  “Zack did more than look after you, didn’t he? Wasn’t he your lover, too? Isn’t Tommy?”

  “So?” he said, touching a withered leg. “Did you think I became a eunuch when I lost the use of my legs? There are other ways of having sex.”

  “That’s not my point,” I said. “Did Zack leave you for Chris?”

  “He went with my blessing,” Bligh said, with a crooked smile. “It was good for my business. I put my personal feelings aside.”

  “What happened then?”

  “They fell in love,” Bligh said. “I didn’t hear from either one of them again until Zack showed up a few days ago needing a place to stay. He said his apartment was damaged in the earthquake, but then I read about the judge’s murder and when I asked him about it, he told me everything.”

  “What did he tell you, Mr. Bligh?”

  “He told me that he’d gone to the courthouse the night of the earthquake and found the judge already dead. Isn’t that what he told you?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Did you believe him?”

  “Zack doesn’t lie,” he said simply.

  “Not even to protect himself?”

  “Zack’s problem,” Bligh said, “is that he doesn’t know how to protect himself.”

  Bligh’s observation squared with my sense of Zack as being childlike.

  “Why didn’t he meet me last night?”

  “Because I wanted to meet you first,” Bligh said. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t intend him any harm. Do you?”

  “Why should I? He came to me.”

  “You were Judge Chandler’s friend. If you think Zack killed him, you might turn him over to the police.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a lawyer, not an agent of the police. If I thought he killed Chris, I wouldn’t take his case, but I wouldn’t turn him over to the police, either. All I want is to talk to him. I want to know what happened to Chris.”

  After a moment, Bligh said, “I own a cabin in Arrowhead. We use it for shoots. Zack’s up there. There’s no phone, so you’ll have to drive up.”

  “All right,” I said. “How do I get there?”

  Bligh called out, “Tommy, bring me a map to the cabin. And my checkbook, too.” He looked at me. “I want to hire you to represent Zack.”

  “I told you, not if he killed Chris.”

  Tommy came into the room with the map and the checkbook. Bligh said, “He didn’t. I’m sure of that.”

  “Why?”

  “The judge was Zack’s way out of this life,” he said, his ironic gaze taking in the room, himself. “He grabbed at it with both hands and didn’t look back.”

  “If that’s true,” I asked, “why are you so eager to help him now?”

  “I want him back,” Bligh said. His cold tone deflected pity, but for a second the guard went out of his eyes, and he looked old and sad.

  Behind him, Tommy Callen’s face closed like a fist.

  Back in my car, I studied the map Bligh had given me and estimated that it would take four hours to reach the cabin. It was just after noon. I had no way of knowing how late I would be, so I went to see Josh before I left.

  Driving to the hospital, I mulled over my conversation with Sam Bligh. His body seemed a metaphor of his character; powerful but crippled. He was shrewd and unsentimental and, despite his demurrers, probably capable of blackmail if it suited his purpose. It would’ve been easy to dismiss him as an exploiter, except that pornography was clearly more than just his business. I could see when he talked about the implicit violence of sex between men that it was something to which he’d given a lot of thought, but it wasn’t an original thought. Depicting gay sex as a gladiator’s contest was a way for some homosexual men to assure themselves of their masculinity, as if violence was the defining characteristic of manhood. I didn’t buy it because I’d had the example of my father, a violent, brutal man, who choked on the fumes of his own rage like someone trapped in a burning building.

  I wasn’t sure that Bligh had completely convinced himself of it, either. He had felt something for Zack Bowen and it must have hurt when Zack rejected him for Chris. How much did it hurt, I wondered. How much had he wanted Zack back? Enough to kill? Not personally, not with his crippled legs, but he was a man of considerable resources. The more I looked into Chris Chandler’s murder, the clearer it seemed that the least likely suspect was the one who was acting the guiltiest. Zack Bowen.

  Josh was sitting up in his bed, with earphones plugged into his ears, eating a gray hospital lunch. When he saw me, he smiled happily and pulled out the earphones.

  I kissed his cheek. “You look better today,” I said.

  “They’re going to release me tomorrow afternoon. Will you give me a lift home?”

  “Sure. I need to drive to Arrowhead, but I’ll be back tonight.”

  He pushed his tray away. “This stuff is crap. Why are you going to the lake?”

  I told him about Sam Bligh.

  “This kid Zack must be something,” he said.

  “Catnip to older men, anyway.”

  He smiled. “Don’t you fall for him.”

  “Not to worry,” I answered. “Josh, I talked to Singh yesterday.”

  “I know,” he said, mashing his food with his fork. “He told me this morning.”

  “Why don’t you come and stay with me when they release you?”

  “Not yet,” he said, quietly. “I will, when it’s time.”

  I didn’t push it. “You want to talk about it?”

  He looked at me tenderly. “I’m not afraid.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “You remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” he said, “where Jones is standing on the side of a canyon and he’s got to get to the other side?”

  “I didn’t see that movie,” I said.

  “Well, he’s searching for the Holy Grail, and he gets to this canyon and he has to cross to the other side, but all he can see is that if he does, he’ll fall to the bottom. He’s like terrified, but there’s no going back. So he takes the leap. The leap of faith.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a bridge,” Josh said, “but he couldn’t see it because it was made out of exactly the same rock as the sides of the canyon and it blended in with them.” He smiled. “That’s what this feels like to me. I’m on one side and I have to get to the other, but I can’t see how, so I just have to—” He broke off. “I lied to you, Henry. I am scared
.”

  I crawled onto the bed and held him.

  I was standing in the front of the elevators when I heard a woman say, “Hello, Mr. Rios.”

  “Detective McBeth,” I said, turning toward her. She was in jeans and a UCLA sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was visiting a friend,” she replied, “and I thought I saw you walk by.”

  “You were visiting a friend on this floor?”

  “Cops get AIDS, too,” she said. “The person you were visiting—I hope it’s not…”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. How’s he doing?”

  “They’re releasing him tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.”

  The elevator arrived and the door slid open. I started to board it when she touched my arm, lightly restraining me.

  “If I could just have another minute of your time,” she said.

  I let the elevator go. “All right.”

  We moved away from the elevator, out of the hospital traffic. She said, “Mrs. Chandler called me this morning and told me that she and the judge separated a month ago because of his involvement with Zack Bowen. She also told me that the judge recently changed his will and made Zack Bowen a beneficiary.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I told her to call you.”

  Her almond eyes registered surprise. “Did you? She didn’t mention that. Are you representing the family?”

  “I talked to her as a friend.”

  “I think you must know a lot more about all of this than you let on the last time I talked to you,” she said. “I think you know where Zack Bowen is.”

  “Is he a suspect?”

  “It’s beginning to look that way,” she said. “Look, if it makes any difference to you, I hope he’s clean, but I can’t rule him out until I talk to him.”

  “Why should you care whether he’s clean?”

  “Like I told you the last time, we have something in common. You and I, the judge, Zack Bowen.”

  “You keep implying you’re gay,” I said, “but you won’t just come out and say it. That bothers me.”

  “Not everyone can be as open as you are,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not on the same team.”

  “I have to go now, Detective.”