HELP WANTED

A PINX VIDEO MYSTERY

MARSHALL THORNTON

Copyright © 2023 Marshall Thornton

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published by Kenmore Books

Edited by Joan Martinelli

Cover design by Marshall Thornton

Images by 123rf stock

First Edition

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Whatever Pasta

The Girl in the Little Black Dress

Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries

Fathers of the Bride

Also by Marshall Thornton

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Joan Martinelli, Nathan Bay, Jackie Meloche, Danielle Wolff, Ben Thompson, Chris Carter, Tina Greene-Bevington and everyone at Bay Books, and also Mark Jewkes and Louis Dumser.

1

It had been more than nine months since I had stumbled over, randomly come across, woken up with, or in any other way, shape or form interacted with a corpse. And I was loving it.

Given that I was not running around with my friends, Marc, Louis, Leon—and occasionally my mother—risking life and limb to solve murders that were, to be honest, none of our business, I found myself with a lot more time. Much of it I devoted to my business, Pinx Video, a video store on Hyperion wedged between a dry cleaner and a Taco Maria. We specialized in renting VHS tapes, though we would sell you one if you were willing to pay the hundred-plus dollars they often cost. You could also rent a laser disc, but those have never really taken off, so we only had about thirty and I wasn’t interested in adding more.

One reason the store was so popular was that we had a large selection of porn; mostly gay. A lot of our customers would come in and rent a mainstream film and a porno, as though the fact that they were renting Jurassic Park disguised the fact that they were also renting Jurassic Dick. Of course, that was never something I complained about. In fact, it was a big part of how I made my living.

Since I was around more, Mikey—my unofficial manager—had to make a few adjustments. For the better part of a year, he’d practically been running things while I ran around sticking my nose into things that weren’t my business; literally. Now, my being at the store more often caused the occasional bit of friction. In fact, Mikey barely spoke to me for the better part of September. I had to give him a dollar-an-hour raise in order to put an end to the cold shoulder. And to remind him the important decisions were up to me.

Through most of the holidays, we’d been short-staffed. That was one thing Mikey and I agreed on. However, we had a small problem. The previous spring I’d hired one of my neighbors, Patty Wong, which did not go well. I’d finally let her go in August, telling her we were over-staffed. That now posed a problem since Mikey wanted to put a Help Wanted sign in the window. I was opposed since Patty occasionally came in to rent videos—she had an affinity for the worst movies ever made— and would definitely ask me for her job back if she knew we were looking.

“To quote the dragon lady herself, ‘just say no,’” Mikey said when we discussed it. By dragon lady he meant Nancy Reagan, though he’d used the term occasionally for Patty. Either way, it didn’t make me happy. It was my apartment building Patty lived in, after all. So my dilemma was how do we let everyone know we’re hiring without letting anyone know we’re hiring? Tricky, huh?

The other tricky thing, or maybe the trickier thing, was my life. Was I really doing what I wanted to be doing? I mean, my health had been stable for nearly a year. The AZT was keeping the HIV at bay. I’d begun to think of what was happening inside my body as the Alphabet War—since it didn’t seem that death was impending, I could make jokes. But how much time did I have? Two years? Five? What did I want to do with that time? What could I want?

Financially, I was fine. Pinx Video provided enough income for me, and would… well, forever really. People were not going to stop watching movies, which meant they’d keep renting them from me. I could live until the year two thousand, more, and I’d always have an income. But is that what I wanted? The same thing for the rest of my life?

It was safe, certainly. And safe was important. Safe mattered. Maybe that was the answer.

And I had my friends; they also mattered. Marc and Louis had spent most of the summer and fall house-hunting and had finally found a house they liked not too far away. It was a fixer-upper on Waverly Drive, a few blocks away from the LaBianca house—a Manson crime scene. A fact they brought up every time we talked about the house.

“You really should stop saying that,” I told them. “I mean, people don’t need to know that a horrible murder happened just blocks away.”

“There are nine million people in Los Angeles County, I think we’re never very far from a horrible murder scene,” Louis replied.

“But no one wants to think about it.”

“I do,” Marc said.

Their bid had been accepted and they were now waiting for the inspection which, because of the holiday, wouldn’t be happening for another two weeks.

Leon had been in love at least six times in the last nine months. Tina, an old friend of mine who occasionally joined us, had been promoted from script reader to D-girl and basically disappeared from our lives. We were more likely to see a movie she’d picked out than to see her. My costumer friend, Robert, was also AWOL. He’d left a message on my machine that he was going back to Ohio to take care of his ailing grandfather. It seemed grossly out of character, so I wasn’t sure whether to believe it. But he hadn’t left a number, so there was no way to grill him on what he was really doing.

My mother had come to visit for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’d nearly gotten married at Easter, and after that fell through she wanted distraction for the holidays. Marc, Louis, Leon and I did our best to provide it. Which doesn’t mean it was especially fun. In fact, remind me to never go to Universal Studios two days before Christmas with my mother, a gigantic thermos of heavily spiked eggnog, and three thirsty homosexuals. Actually, you don’t have to remind me. They’ll probably never let us back in.

It was now January sixth and time for our weekly Thursday dinner. Even though the temperature was floating around sixty degrees, we ate outside in our courtyard. Louis had bought one of those standing gas heaters secondhand from a restaurant rental company. It was the kind with the heating element floating six feet in the air and wearing a little metal hat.

Our small L-shaped building had six minuscule apartments. We had the two in the front, upper and lower, and had commandeered part of the courtyard. Well, Marc and Louis had done the commandeering. I just enjoyed it with them at least once a week.

Two of the apartments, the ones in the back, were currently empty, the tenants having moved out in November. They’d been painted in early December and put on the market. The holidays had slowed things down, but I was sure they’d rent soon.

Patty Wong lived in another of the apartments, and in the last was a straight bodybuilder we barely saw. He had some kind of nine-to-five job and managed to squeeze in four to five hours at the gym every day. We only ever saw him when he was coming or going. We tried not to gawk, but rarely succeeded. I probably had the best apartment in the building since it had an unobstructed view of the basin. The other second-floor apartments had peek-a-boo views, nothing like mine.

For dinner that night Louis made salmon marinated in honey, molasses and soy sauce with a butternut squash risotto. Dessert was crème brulée. He was on a health kick, which explained the fish and not much else. Right after he brought out the entrée, Louis asked, “Did you hear about that figure skater? The one who got knee-capped?”

“What does knee-capped mean, exactly?” I asked, sipping the very large glass of white wine I’d been given. Pinot Grigio, I think.

“She got hit with a pipe or something,” he said. “Sounds like the mob. They do that sort of thing.”

“Can you bet on figure skating?” Marc wondered.

“I would think so. You can bet on politics. Why not figure skating?”

“You cannot bet on politics,” Marc said, eyeing Louis skeptically.

“I didn’t say it was legal. I just said you could do it.” Waving his hands at the dishes he’d brought out, “Help yourselves. Don’t be shy.”

I served myself a small piece of salmon and a tiny bit of the risotto, causing Louis to say, “Oh my God,” then grab the serving spoon and double the amount I’d given myself. “You have to stop eating like a fashion model. You’re a growing boy.”

“I’m almost thirty.”

“That just proves my point.”

Louis had turned forty in November and Marc was about eight years younger. They were spreading in the middle and generally looked like two middle-aged dads on their way to play golf. I got the impression they wanted me to join them in comfortable middle age but, for medical reasons, I struggled to keep weight on.

We’d barely touched our dinners when Patty Wong came out of her apartment carrying a laundry basket with almost nothing in it. She was in her mid-fifties, Asian, about my height (which is not tall), and tended to wear capri pants with flip-flops in all sorts of weather. She flitted over to our table and said, “I wish I could join you for dinner, but I have so much to do.”

Louis just smiled at her.

This was a game she played, reminding us that she hadn’t been invited. Though I’m fairly sure the first time she said something like that Louis told her she was welcome any time, but since she never joined us he stopped repeating the invitation. Not to mention there was the thing with Leon.

“Where is Lee? I miss seeing him at your table.” She absolutely refused to call him Leon.

“He’ll be here for dessert,” Louis said.

“Tell him I said hello.”

“How do you know him again?” Marc asked.

“It’s a very funny story. I’ll let him tell it though. He’s so much better at it.” And then she was off to the laundry room with her two or three items.

Leon swore up and down he had no idea who she was, no matter how many times we asked him. Speaking of Leon, he arrived in time for dessert. Largely because after the entrée we decided to have another glass of wine and wait for him. We nearly gave up.

When he did finally come up the red-painted, cement steps that led down to the street nearly a full story below, he stood at the table and, with a great flourish, passed out three copies of the newspaper. By way of greeting, he said, “Page eight, below the fold, far right column.”

We all opened the papers and flipped the pages. I gasped when I found the article. The headline said, “Homicide Detective Steals a Hundred Grand.”

Detective Javier O’Shea, 32, has been accused of stealing one hundred thousand dollars from a crime scene just before Christmas, Los Angeles police announced yesterday. The cash was logged at the scene but disappeared before it could be secured in an evidence locker. Suspect is believed to have smuggled the cash out of the station in a gift-wrapped box. Arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday, January 11th.

“This can’t be true,” Louis said. “Tall, dark and devastating wouldn’t do anything of the sort.”

“Did you have these printed up as some kind of joke?” Marc asked.

I was too shocked to say anything. Javier was a homicide detective who’d helped us out of a few scrapes. He was also gay—which I’d learned when he kissed me. For various reasons—mostly mine—we’d never actually done the deed. Even though I had devoted considerable time to thinking about it.

“It’s not a joke,” Leon said. “I think we need to do something. We have to help him.”

“No,” I squeaked.

Everyone turned to look at me.

“No?” they all seemed to be saying with their eyes.

“Do you know how many times he’s told me, you, all of us not to get involved in police business?”

“Did he ever add ‘even if I’m accused of a crime?’” Leon asked.

“Well, no, not specifically. But I’m sure he’d want us to mind our own business.”

“Why?” Leon asked.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why do you think he’d want us to mind our own business?”

“Because we’ll probably just make things worse.”

“Oh, we will not. How many murders have we solved?” Leon asked in a very snotty tone.

“And how many times have we been thanked for that?” I asked, trying to match his tone but failing.

“Your mother said thank you when we figured out who killed her very nearly son-in-law,” he said. Honestly, I had no recollection of that. Sonny Leone had been killed by his wife and her sisters, my mother’s almost daughters-in-law, a fact which eventually put an end to the idea of marriage to Prescott Cotton. Did she really thank us for that?

Louis speculated, “If we assume Javier is being set-up then we have to ask the question, Why Javier? To answer that, we have to find out more about him.”

“So we should do, like, a background check?” Marc asked.

“No! We should mind our own business.”

“You’re right,” Leon agreed with Louis. “We should find out the basics. What do we already know?”

“We know he’s not a felon,” Louis said. “Or at least not a habitual felon. He couldn’t have gotten into the LAPD with a record.”

“We know he’s gay,” Marc said. “That might put him at some risk in the LAPD. I mean, if they’ve figured it out.”

“You’re suggesting someone found out he’s gay and planted the money on him so he’d be kicked out?”

“It’s possible.”

“Okay. You cannot go around saying that,” I pointed out. “If that isn’t what’s going on then you put him at even more risk. This is the only place you can safely say that. Which, if you think about it, is another reason we shouldn’t—”

“Noah has a point,” Louis said. “We need to be careful. What else do we know about Javier?”

“We know he likes Noah,” Leon teased.

“Liked. I don’t think he still likes me.” We hadn’t seen each other in a very long time. He couldn’t still—could he?

“Is that it? Is that all we know?” Marc asked. This was followed by a long pause.

Finally, Louis said, “We seem to know a lot about his sex life and not much about his life.”

“I love that you think there’s a difference,” Leon replied.

“Noah, don’t you know more about him?” Marc wondered.

“He’s a good dresser?” I half-guessed.

“Wait,” Marc said. “Didn’t he tell us his family was very Catholic?”

“I don’t think that has much to do with this…” I pointed out. Then added, “I got the impression he’d been with women before coming out.”

“And now we’re back to sex,” Louis said.

“The kind of sex I don’t want to think about,” Leon said.

“Do we know where he lives? Does he live alone? Does he rent or own?” Marc wondered. “Do we know anyone who could run a credit report?”

“Christopher could, but would he? We had to sign something that allowed him to do that. It might not be entirely legal for him to just run one,” Louis explained.

Christopher was their real estate agent. He was in his early fifties and reminded me of the sort of gay man who was the butt of the joke in a Busby Berkeley musical.

“Which doesn’t mean he won’t do it,” Marc said. “He seems the sort who might enjoy breaking the law.”

“Just because you enjoy breaking the law doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

“Oh, Louis.”

“Once again, none of this is any of our business,” I insisted.

“We should probably try to get a credit report,” Leon said. “If tall, dark and possibly criminal is having money problems then he would have a reason to steal the money. Maybe he did it. We should at least consider that.”

“He did not steal the money,” I said reflexively.

“So, you do want to help him,” Leon said.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Should we still help him, if we find a motive?” Louis asked.

“Yes, I think we should,” Marc said. “If he did steal the money, I’m sure he had a good reason.”

Realizing they were never going to stop, and having had enough, I said, “You know maybe we should just call him up.”

“Do you have his number?” Leon asked, a challenge.

“As a matter of fact…”

He’d given it to me when I called him from Las Vegas to ask a favor. I mean, he didn’t give it to me. He simply told me to call him there. I don’t know that he wanted me to keep the number. But I did. I’d kept it on the hotel stationary for a few weeks and then finally put it into my address book. Just in case. I mean, not just in case he got accused of a crime. Just in case—oh, never mind.

“So then call him. Set up a time for us to go over. Saturday afternoon is good for me.”

“We can do that. Can’t we Louis?”

“I’m trying to arrange it with Christopher so we can go over on Saturday and do some measuring at the house.”

“We can do that in the morning,” Marc pointed out.

Then they all looked at me. What had I done? This was the exact opposite of what I wanted. All I could think to say was, “Oh God.”

2

Friday, I opened the store at eleven. I always tried to arrive an hour early so I’d have time to collect the returns that had been put through the night drop. I also had to turn on all the lights, boot up the computer—which beeped and crackled and popped for a surprisingly long time—count the cash drawer, make sure there were enough credit card slips (a lot of people charged their video rentals), and generally straighten up. Whoever opened also got to choose the first movie of the day. That morning I chose When Harry Met Sally.

On most Fridays there were at least thirty returns waiting. Those had to be logged into our system, with the videos themselves going back to our tape room, and the boxes returned to the shelves so that customers could rent them again. I also checked to see if any of those videos were late and made sure to add charges to the appropriate accounts.

Last but not least, I had to check the phone machine for messages. That morning the display said there were fourteen messages. That seemed like a lot. Usually, we’d have one or two calls from people asking us to set aside the latest releases for them—something we did not do—and very little else.

I pressed the play button. The first message was a man saying, “Hi. I’m calling about the ad you placed in Frontiers for a video store clerk. I’d love to interview. I have retail experience. My name is James Brockport. And my number is…”

I didn’t write any of that down. The next message was the same. Well, different name, no retail experience. The third was a woman who loved movies and asked if she got the job would she be able to borrow movies for free. She would be—but not new releases. I listened to two more messages, then stopped.

I called Mikey.

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Oh, yeah. I put an ad in Frontiers. I forgot to tell you.”

“Yeah, we’ve got at least fourteen responses.”

“Great!”

“You know I didn’t want to advertise.”

“I really don’t think Patty Wong reads Frontiers.”

“I’m not prepared to interview people. I don’t have any kind of schedule set up. I haven’t thought about what kind of person I’m looking for. I don’t even know when I’ll find the—”

“I’ll interview them.”

“You’re not choosing my next employee.”

“You don’t need to say it like that.”

“It’s my store.”

“I know that,” he said quietly.

It wasn’t until I was off the phone that I realized I’d committed to interviewing potentially dozens of people. All by myself. I could ask Mikey to help, but I’d have to do some seriously humiliating backpedaling. After I unlocked the front door, I began calling people back about the job. I decided to take the weekend off, so I scheduled the appointments beginning on Monday.

The rest of the day was busy. Missy had left at the beginning of summer when I’d started coming in more. I tried not to take it personally. These days Mikey came in at three and worked until eleven Monday through Friday. His boyfriend, Randy, was a nurse at USC County and worked a similar shift so basically Mikey was happy. Or happy-ish. Evening was the busiest time, so he wasn’t able to insert himself into a lot of management decisions. Which didn’t mean he didn’t sometimes try.

Anyway, I managed to do most of the callbacks and field another ten new calls about the job. I did find ways to turn down a few people—those looking for a second job with hours that just didn’t fit. Two people asked about benefits, like insurance and vacation time. They both decided not to schedule an interview when I said, “You’re kidding, right?”

As soon as Mikey got there at three, I retreated to my office. Taking a deep breath, I dialed Javier’s number.

“Javier?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“It’s Noah. Valentine.”

Why did I feel I had to say my last name? He couldn’t know that many Noahs. Could he?

“Did someone die?”

“No. Why do you ask that?”

“You don’t usually call me unless there’s a corpse somewhere. Usually one that died violently.”

That was painfully true, so I thought it best to change the subject. “We read about your trouble in the newspaper. Marc and Louis, and Leon, and I. We’d like to help. Can we stop by—”

“No. I have a lawyer and a union rep. I don’t need your help.”

“Of course,” I said. “We could stop by just to be supportive.” There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “Or not.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

“Will you? I mean, everyone needs friends.”

“Not when you’re accused of a crime. All I need is my lawyer.”

His voice was cold enough that I thought it best to say goodbye.

Well, that was that. I was not unhappy. Javier’s problems were not mine. He was right. He didn’t need our help. My friends just missed our little ‘investigations.’ Honestly, they needed to learn to mind their own business.

I stuck around until almost eight just to make sure Mikey got a dinner break and to help with the afterwork rush. Then I went home. I was fairly certain Marc and Louis were wandering the aisles of Home Depot fantasizing about re-doing the house they hadn’t finished purchasing. So I wasn’t surprised when they weren’t in the courtyard. I was halfway up the stairs when Patty Wong, wearing a pink shell and a sharply angled red beret, popped out of her apartment.

“There you are,” she said, eyebrow arched. “I’ve been waiting for you?”

“You have?”

“I saw your ad in Frontiers. Why didn’t you tell me you needed someone? I’m happy to come back. I liked working for you. You’re so nice.”

“I’m not that nice. Not always. Sometimes I can be—you know, that’s a really nice offer. I do appreciate it. I’m sure there’s other things you do, have some kind of work that you, I mean, no one can live off what I pay. It’s just part time.”

“Part time is exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Oh, well, I guess, um, it wouldn’t be, it’s not really…”

Eventually, I stopped fumbling around and told her to come in Monday morning.

“See, I was right, you are nice,” she said.

I smiled at her, then I went up to my apartment, put my personal copy of Howards End into the TV/VCR combo I hid in a vintage armoire, and poured myself a bowl of raisin bran. Whenever I felt my life teetering on the edge of disaster, I turned to the Schlegel sisters. Disastrous things happened to them, but they always remained calm.

* * *

The next afternoon, I left the video store as soon as Carl and Denny got there. They were a retired couple who insisted on working together. Formerly, they’d worked only during the week and my suggestion that they switch their days off to Monday and Tuesday had not gone over well. However, since the switch they’d each admitted to me separately that they liked the schedule. They did less socializing but managed to get more rest. I promised both that I wouldn’t tell the other that they had the same opinion.

For much of that Saturday morning I’d debated if and when to tell Mikey that Patty was back on the schedule. For the first week, at least, I decided she’d work eleven to two-thirty. That way she didn’t have to open, which she wasn’t good at, or close, which she also wasn’t good at. She’d also be gone before Mikey came in at three. It seemed best to put off telling him until it was impossible not to.

Of course, I’d have to pay her for four hours. That was the law in California if you called someone to work. I thought the extra half-an-hour a small price to pay to keep the two of them separated.

When I got home, Marc and Louis were already sitting in the courtyard with Leon. It was a gray day in the sixties. Leon wore a parka with a pair of fingerless gloves. Marc and Louis were much less conspicuous in simple sweaters.

Being from the Midwest, I hadn’t bothered with a jacket and just wore a simple, plaid flannel shirt. My concession to the cooler weather was long sleeves and a pair of jeans.

They were drinking mulled wine while nibbling on brie and water crackers. After Louis got me a cup of the wine, I said, “Well, I called Javier, and he doesn’t want to see us. He says he doesn’t need our help.”

“How ridiculous,” Leon said. “We should march right over and tell him exactly how much he needs us.”

“Unfortunately,” I said. “I don’t know where he lives.”

“I’m sure he just doesn’t want to impose,” Marc said. “Did you tell him how much we want to help?”

“I did,” I said, even as I wondered, Did I? Then I realized I hadn't really. It had been a very short conversation. “I offered to come over and simply be supportive, but he wasn’t interested.”

“But what is he going to do? He’ll end up in prison. He’s far too pretty to go to prison,” Leon said.

“Actually, Noah has a number of videos that suggest he’d do quite well in prison.”

“Louis, those are pornos, not documentaries.”

I had to put a stop to this tangent, “He said he has a good lawyer and his union rep in his corner. Honestly, he sounded very confident. He says he’ll be fine, and I think that’s probably true.”

“Excuse me,” Louis said, getting up and going into the house. I assumed he was going to bring out another appetizer, though the brie and crackers were plenty for me.

“How do we change his mind?” Leon wondered.

“I’m not calling him again,” I said. “He’ll think I’m a stalker.”

“You do seem like the type.”

“Leon, behave,” Marc said. To me he said, “Maybe if Louis calls? Do you think that might change his mind?”

Before I could answer, Louis was back. He hadn’t brought any food. Instead, he’d brought the phone book. He was already flipping through the pages. There are three J. O’Sheas, a couple of Josephs and five James. Noah, what’s the number?”

I rattled it off from memory. Leon mumbled “mmm-hmm” under his breath as though that proved something.

Louis said, “Ah-ha,” and read off an address on Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.

Right away that seemed odd. “That’s a really nice area, isn’t it?”

“We can’t afford it,” Marc said. “So, yes, it’s nice.”

“How can he afford it?” I asked. Even if he made a lot as a detective, there were two of them. Together they had to make more than he did and if they couldn’t—

“We’ll just have to go and find out,” Louis said, closing the phone book.

“Oh God,” I mumbled.

A half an hour later, we climbed out of Marc’s Infiniti in front of a palatial, two-story home behind a well-manicured hedge.

“How can he possibly live here?” Marc asked.

“Actually, I don’t think he does,” Louis said. “He lives at one forty-four and a half. I think if we walk down the driveway, we’ll find a guest house.”

Half-way down the driveway I noticed a flight of stairs on the side of the garage. It had been hidden by a gigantic Land Rover.

“No, he lives over the garage,” I said.

“Oh. That makes sense, too,” Louis replied.

As we climbed the stairs I reminded them, “He’s not going to be happy to see us. We should try to be supportive. Maybe don’t ask too many questions.”

“Supportive people ask questions,” Leon said.

“We need to say things like, ‘We’re sorry this is happening to you,’” I said, drawing on the cards people wrote after Jeffers died. “And ‘we’re sure everything will work out.’”

Leon glared at me, as he knocked on the door. “Maybe we should have stopped and gotten him a card. Something like, ‘Sorry you’ve been falsely accused, hope you’re exonerated soon.’ Does Hallmark make those?”

“Just remember he doesn’t want us here,” I hissed, as the door opened, and Javier was standing there.

His ebony black hair was sticking up all over the place, there was stubble on his chin, it looked as though he’d been wearing his CSULB sweatshirt and red plaid pajama bottoms for days. He looked, in a word, disheveled. He also looked incredibly sexy. I couldn’t figure out how he did it. When I was a mess, I was a mess. End of sentence.

His attractiveness was almost a superpower.

“You shouldn’t have come,” was the first thing he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leon said, pushing by him. Marc and Louis followed, leaving me standing there mouthing the words, “I’m sorry.”

Silently, he stepped back and waved me into the apartment. It was small, only as big as the garage below. Similar to a loft, there was an efficiency kitchen, a dining area, a living area and a sleeping area. On the wall that was attached to the main house was a large closet and the bathroom.

The apartment was also disheveled, but not as sexy. Louis went into the kitchen area, saying, “Why don’t I make us some coffee or maybe tea?”

“I only have coffee.”

“Well, then I’ll make that.”

Marc and Leon sat down on the sofa. After the briefest pause, Leon said, “Okay tell us everything. The newspaper was light on details.”

After a long sigh, Javier gave up and said, “I was accused of stealing money from a crime scene. But that’s an active investigation so I can’t talk about it.”

Leon frowned. “You’re a homicide detective so I assume it was a murder scene.”

“I can’t confirm or deny that.”

This was painful. I decided to try to help. “The article said you smuggled the money out of the station in a gift-wrapped box. I know that’s a crime but you’re the accused. Ethically, you can talk about it, can’t you?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said reluctantly.

We all waited.

Finally, Leon said, “Okay, so talk.”

He bit his lip for a moment, then began, “Early in December a gift-wrapped box was left on my desk at the station. It had a note that said, ‘Open when alone.’ I took the box out to my car and opened it. Inside were three pairs of sexy underwear. I thought I had a secret admirer. Nearly three weeks later there was another gift-wrapped box on my desk. There was no note this time, but I knew better than to open it inside. I took it out to my car. When I opened it, I found a lot of cash.”

“A hundred thousand dollars?”

“No, it wasn’t that much. But it was enough that I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t think it was wise to bring it back into the station or to bring it home, so I drove to my mother’s house and put the box in her garage. The next day, my apartment was searched. They found ten thousand dollars underneath my bed.”

“Wait, what? You just said you brought the money to your mother’s house.”

“I did.”

“So, the money they found… ?”

“Wasn’t mine. At some point someone put it under my bed.”

“Do you think when they didn’t find the gift box they planted the money during the search?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Javier said. “But it’s possible.”

“How much money was there between the gift box and what they found here?”

“Twenty, twenty-five thousand tops.”

“The newspaper said a hundred was stolen from the scene. Do you think this is a way for someone to end up with seventy-five thousand dollars and not be under suspicion?”

“That’s occurred to me.”

“So there was definitely a hundred thousand dollars at the murder scene?” I guessed.

“I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“Do you know the names of the officers who conducted the search?” Louis asked.

“I’m not telling you that. You’ll get yourselves in trouble.”

Then Leon said, “I have a question about the underwear.”

“Oh my God,” I couldn’t help saying.

“What? I think it’s important.” Turning to Javier he asked, “Macys or International Male?”

“Macys.”

“Hmmm. We’re looking for a heterosexual.”

“Well, that narrows things down,” I said sarcastically. I mean, seriously they’re most of the planet.

Leon shushed me and asked, “Bikini briefs or tighty-whities?”

“Bikini briefs.”

“What does that tell you?” Marc asked.

“Not a thing. I just wanted to take a moment and visualize Javier wearing them.”

“Oh my God,” I said again.

“You keep saying ‘Oh my God,’” Leon said. “Have you had a religious conversion?”

“Boys,” Louis scolded, then he said to Javier, “Tell us about the box. Did you dust it for prints?”

“No. I just hid it in my mother’s garage. Things have happened quickly, so I haven’t been back.”

“Do you have a fingerprint kit? We could go to your mother’s and get the box so you can print the box—”

“I doubt there are prints on the box. This has been well thought out. Look guys, I can take care of this myself. I don’t want you involved.”

“But we can help…”

“No. I’ll be able to handle this. I have a union rep. I’m not worried. It’s all going to blow over.”

Louis started handing out cups of coffee. Then he brought over a plate of cookies—they looked like they’d come from Trader Joe’s—

and set them on the coffee table. Javier stared at them, and said, “I have cookies?”

“They may be a little stale,” Louis admitted. Then said, “Whoever is trying to frame you had access to the murder scene and the evidence locker at Rampart station. How many people were at the murder scene?”

“A dozen, possibly more. There were several patrol officers, me and Wellesley from homicide, at least four techs from forensics, and quite a crew from narcotics. But I don’t know that the money was taken there. I just know it never got into evidence.”

“Who was supposed to put it into evidence.”

“According to the paperwork, me.”

“But not according to you,” Louis guessed.

“I thought Wellesley was doing it.”

“Have you spoken to her since all this happened?”

“No.”

“Okay, great,” Louis said. “We know that whoever is trying to frame you was probably at the crime scene, able to come and go at Rampart Station, and capable of falsifying police records. That should narrow this down significantly.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. He was saying it was a policeman. Immediately, I thought, We should not be involved. Sure, this already had occurred to me—but now it occurred to me again. We should really, really, really not be involved.

As though reading my mind, Javier said, “I appreciate your coming by, but you cannot get involved in this.”

“We’re not getting involved,” Leon said. “We’re just asking a few questions. Where’s the harm in that?”

Just then, the door burst open and some kind of tactical team rushed in wearing body armor and waving around long black rifles. They screamed at us to get on the floor. Which, of course, we did.

3

The next few minutes were very tense. The tactical team, which at first was just a few officers, continued to grow. From my vantage point on the floor, it was difficult to determine how many of them there were. Booted feet were everywhere and there was a lot of yelling, so my best guess would be around a thousand.

Finally, things calmed a bit, and a pair of detectives entered the apartment. I was able to see two pairs of civilian-style shoes. One pair, expensive and shiny—possibly Kenneth Cole. The other was an uninspired pair of brown lace-ups—possibly not even designed.

I painfully twisted my neck upward so I could get a look at the detectives. I’d never seen either one of them before. One of them, the one who wore the lace-ups, was probably one of the blandest people I’d ever seen. Seriously, he could have been as an example of generic human male, if you ever needed such a thing.

He asked, “Who are these guys?”

“Beats me,” Kenneth Cole said. He, on the other hand, wore a well-tailored, gray suit, an impeccably pressed white shirt, and a striped black-and-green tie.

Both detectives wore bullet proof vests, which somehow Kenneth Cole made look elegant. While Bland—well, he looked bland.

Quickly, the decision was made to remove us from the apartment. Tactical officers picked us up, and hustled us out the door and down the stairs to the driveway. The four of us were pushed up against a Range Rover and one of the officers was left to keep an eye on us.

“I don’t know about you boys,” Leon said. “But I’m a little turned on.”

Louis rolled his eyes, while Marc asked, “What is happening?”

Just then, Javier was brought out of the apartment in handcuffs and led down the stairs. Leon whispered, “How many times do they have to arrest him?”

He was brought down to a patrol car at the end of the driveway and put inside. Kenneth Cole and Bland stopped near us. Bland said, “You take those two and I’ll take shorty and the bubble-headed bleach blond.”

Kenneth Cole led Marc and Louis away from us about thirty feet further down the driveway. Bland looked at Leon, and said, “Go stand over there.”

Before he walked away, Leon said, “I’ll have you know I’m a natural blond. Not this particular shade, but—”

“Shut up and do what I said.”

Leon walked away and stood by a carefully sculpted bush. Bland turned to me, introduced himself, and began firing questions.

“Detective Willis Carmichael. Who are you?”

“Noah, Noah Valentine.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We heard that Javier was in trouble and we came to be supportive.”

“Why?’

“Because we’re friends.”

“Friends?”

“You know, people who like each other.” It seemed appropriate to define the word for him since he looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

“Are you friends with LaToya Kennedy?”

“Who?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“No, I’m not friends with her. I don’t know who she is.”

“You’re telling me that you’re friends with Javier O’Shea and you don’t know his girlfriend, LaToya Kennedy?”

I couldn’t say anything because all the things I could think of would have outed Javier and, clearly, he wasn’t out at work. Besides, maybe he really did have a girlfriend named LaToya. For all I knew he could have been bisexual or maybe just trying hard not to be gay. People did all sorts of things you didn’t expect.

“You heard he’s been accused of stealing. Did he tell you anything about that?”

“He didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. It was true, though certainly not all of the truth.

“What about you? What do you do for a living?”

“I own a video store.”

“How’s business?”

“Good.”

“You’re sure about that? Cash flow problems?”

He thought I was involved with stealing the money. That seemed a bit presumptuous.

“The only problem I’m having right now is that I’m understaffed. Do you want a part-time job?”

I would never hire him. He was boring, dull… and bland. Not to mention a little rude. He sliced and diced me with his eyes, then asked, “What about Elliott Twiss? You know him?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Your good friend Javier never mentioned him?”

“Why would he?”

“I told you; I’m asking the questions. When was the last time you actually saw your friend?”

“Um, well, I guess it’s been almost a year.”

He looked at me like he’d enjoy running me through a meat grinder. “You have a very broad definition of what a friend is. What do you know about the trouble Detective O’Shea is in?”

I tried to remember what was in the newspaper so I could repeat it in my own words. “You think he stole some money from a crime scene. He told us his union rep would prove that he didn’t do it. That’s really all I know.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Um, I guess around four, maybe.”

He glanced at her watch. “It’s five thirty. We entered the apartment a half an hour ago. That means you were with Detective O’Shea for an hour.”

“It probably wasn’t that long. Maybe we got here at four-thirty.”

“Or maybe more happened than you’re willing to talk about.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“No. As I told you—”

“Yes, I know, you ask the questions. I get it. But here’s the thing—the missing money? Javier says it never got into evidence.”

“That’s not true. It was logged at the scene by Detective O’Shea. It never made it to the evidence locker.”

“Okay, whatever, if he was going to turn around and steal it, why would he implicate himself by logging it in? Why not have someone else log it so it looks like he never touched the money?”

He looked at me for a long time. I thought he might be considering what I’d just said, but instead he accused me, “There’s a lot you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

“No.”

“Where were you last night?”

“I was at work until eight o’clock. And then I went home.”

“Can anyone corroborate that?”

“I spoke to my neighbor, Patty Wong, in the courtyard. That was around eight-twenty.”

“And the rest of the night?”

“I watched a video and fell asleep.”

“What was the video?”

“Howards End.”

“Is that a porno?”

“No. It’s British.”

The look he gave me made me wonder if that was worse.

“Do you know where Detective O’Shea was?”

“He wasn’t with me. That’s all I know.”

Carmichael stared me in the eye so directly it nearly hurt. Then he said, “I think you’re connected to all this. I just don’t know how.”

“I’m not. I don’t even know what ‘all this’ is.”

“All this is your worst nightmare.”

That was definitely presumptuous. Very presumptuous. What did he know about my nightmares?

* * *

On the drive home we were silent for the first few miles, as though we wanted to get far enough away from Detective Carmichael and Kenneth Cole so they couldn’t hear us.

“Louis,” Marc said. “I have to have a cigarette. I’m sorry.”

Normally, Marc did not smoke in the car. It was an agreement they had. But that afternoon, he didn’t wait for Louis to reply, he simply rolled down the window on the passenger side and lit a cigarette.

“Me too,” Leon said, immediately joining Marc.

Louis let them puff for a bit, then asked, “What did we learn?”

“What? We weren’t the ones doing the questioning,” Marc pointed out. “I don’t think I learned anything.”

“The questions they asked should tell us things.”

Understanding what he meant, I said, “Detective Carmichael thinks Javier has a girlfriend named Latoya Kennedy.”

“See,” Louis said. “Our detective, his name was Griffith, asked if I knew her, as well. But he didn’t say she was Javier’s girlfriend.”

“I don’t think she was,” I said. “That’s just what Carmichael thinks.”

“Did you tell him Javier’s gay?” Louis asked.

“No. Did any of you?”

They hadn’t.

“Not that it matters,” Leon said. “He’s in much bigger trouble than getting outed to his co-workers.”

“True, but…” Louis said. “This LaToya Kennedy must have something to do with all this. Otherwise, why bring her up?”

“So, you think she’s involved somehow in the theft?” I guessed.

“Don’t you?”

I did. Then, I guessed, “Maybe she’s the one who sent the present, the first one. And then later she stole the money.”

“Do you think she’s a police officer?” Leon asked.

“Maybe,” Louis said.

“Why didn’t they ask if we knew Officer Kennedy then?” Marc asked. “Or Detective Kennedy.”

He had a point. She probably wasn’t a police officer, but if she wasn’t… who was she? Then something hit me. Something obvious. “Why did they arrest him?”

“For the theft,” Marc said.

“No,” I said. “The article said he’s being arraigned on the eleventh. That’s Tuesday. They just arrested him for something else.”

“That awful Carmichael person asked where I was last night,” Leon said. “Boy did he get an earful.”

“Same. I was asked about last night,” Louis said. “I was also asked if I knew where Javier was.”

“Me too,” Marc said.

“Something else happened,” I said. “Something bad. Do you think someone was murdered? Do you think that’s why Javier was arrested?”

The car went quiet for the few last blocks it took to get home. Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in Marc and Louis’ living room. Their floor plan was identical to mine: a too-small living room, a tiny dining area, and a kitchen you could barely pirouette in. They had a café table in the dining area and, in the living room, four comfortable, secondhand chairs loosely slip-covered in a brown-and-black herringbone fabric placed around a circular coffee table. A tiny bookshelf against one wall held a portable stereo and a few books. Their TV was in the bedroom.

Marc passed out glasses of white wine while Louis threw together a platter of cheese and crackers. Once they were seated, Marc turned to Louis and asked, “What should we do first?”

“We should probably get that box of money out of Javier’s mother’s garage. It might tell us something.”

“We don’t know where his mother lives though,” Marc said.

“Can we try looking her up in the phone book?” I asked. It had worked for finding Javier.

“We don’t know what her last name is,” Leon said.

“Um… O’Shea,” I pointed out.

“Mexican women don’t take their husband’s last name,” Leon said.

“How do you know that?”

“Do you have any idea of how many Mexican men I’ve dated? They talk to me. It’s not all about sex.”

“So, we have no idea where she lives,” Marc lamented.

Abruptly, Louis stood up. That’s when I realized the pockets in his Dockers looked suspiciously lumpy. From one pocket he pulled out a wallet, from the other a set of keys. He put them on the coffee table in front of us.

I asked, “Are those Javier’s?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

“How did you get them?”

“They were sitting on the side table by Javier’s front door. One of the goons pushed me up against it, so I sort of grabbed them.”

“Louis! What if they’d seen you?”

“I don’t know. Firing squad?”

“Oh, shut up,” Marc said, disgusted. “I’m sure they would have charged you with something and we’d have had to get you a lawyer and give them the down payment on our house.”

“But nothing happened, so we don’t need to worry about it.”

“What’s done is done,” Leon agreed. “Let’s see what’s in the wallet?”

It was a nice leather one, the kind you’d get at a department store. The kind people liked to give as gifts. A dad wallet. It was nearly new, too. I wondered if someone had given it to him for Christmas. Not that that helped us in any way.

Louis opened the wallet and took out the cash. He counted it. “Eighty-seven dollars.” He dug a couple other things out of the main compartment. “And a condom.”

“Magnum?” Leon asked.

“Regular.”

“Come on guys, let’s not invade his privacy too much,” I said, feeling myself blush.

“I was sure he was a Magnum boy,” Leon said under his breath.

“Here’s a receipt from a donut shop,” Louis said raising an eyebrow. “Is that too personal?”

“No. But it doesn’t sound very helpful,” I said.

“It’s for almost forty dollars. On December twenty-third he bought ten cups of coffee and two dozen donuts. Angel’s Bakery. Twelve seventy-eight Sunset Boulevard.”

Louis handed me the receipt. Stapled to the receipt was a carbon credit card slip, just like the ones we used at the store. Javier’s name was on the slip. As was his signature. Or, a signature; probably his.

“What else is in there?” Leon asked.

Louis poked around. “Credit cards. American Express. MasterCard, Macy’s, Nordstroms.”

“He does like to dress well,” I noted.

“There’s a Bally’s Gym Membership, Triple A Card, Driver’s License—” Louis studied that for a moment. “This says he’s thirty-four. The article said thirty-two, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did,” Leon said.

“This might—” Louis said. “He has a business card. There are about ten of them. But one of them has something written on the back. ‘In case of emergency contact Marta Ortiz.’ Then it gives a phone number.”

“Do you think that’s his mom?” I asked. “We’re not going to call her, are we?”

“Absolutely not,” Louis said.

“Let me get the phone book,” Marc said. He popped into their bedroom. I assumed it was in a closet somewhere. A moment later, he was back with the white pages for the 213 area code. Sitting back down, he opened the phone book on his lap and flipped to O. Flipped a few pages back and forth. “There’s an M. Ortiz.” Then read out the number.

“No,” Louis said. “That’s not it.”

“Tell me the number again,” Marc said. As Louis did, Marc ran his finger down a column of Ortiz’s. “Here it is. It’s under Helena Ortiz.”

“Why?” Louis wondered.

Then I remembered Javier saying once that the only person he’d come out to was his sister. I didn’t remember him using her name but…

“It might be his sister,” I said.

“You think the mother doesn’t want to be found?” Leon asked.

“If you don’t want to be found you pay the extra dollar and a quarter every month for an unlisted number,” Louis pointed out. “What’s the address?”

“It’s in Los Feliz.”

“It’s not that late,” Louis pointed out.

“It’s dinner time. I’m starving,” Marc said.

“Okay, I’ll make dinner. You guys should go and break-in to Mrs. Ortiz’s garage.”

“I’m not doing that,” Marc said.

Meanwhile, Louis had already picked up the cordless phone from the top shelf of the bookcase and was dialing.

“What are you doing?” Marc asked. Louis held up one finger. He listed as the phone rang. I could hear that a machine had picked up.

“No one’s home,” Louis said. He hung up and took a good long look at me and Leon. “You two had better get moving. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

4

I really don’t want to do this, I thought, as Leon and I sat outside of Marta Ortiz’s house. It was a grand, two-story stucco house set back from Myra Street. The house was large, but the lot was small, with a two-car garage sitting in front right on the street. Next to the detached garage was a brick walkway with a large wooden gate rounded at the top.

“I’m sure the door is locked,” I said, hoping that we could just give up.

“Yes, darling, I’m sure it is. But we have the keys, remember?” With that, he got out of my car and walked across the street.

Next to the gate was the garage on one side and a spreading mound of honeysuckle on the other. I watched as Leon flipped through Javier’s keyring and tried a couple of keys. Quickly, he got the gate open.

Turning, he waved at me to come. My stomach sank. Breaking and entering always made me nervous. Well, we weren’t breaking. We had a key. So it was just entering. Which sounds kind of obscene. I could just hear a judge convicting me of entering. Horrible. And embarrassing.

Leon went through the gate. I was still in my little red Nissan. I considered just staying there. I mean, he didn’t really need me, did he? But…

I’d probably never hear the end of it if I didn’t join him, so I got out of the car and, after looking both ways—for cars and witnesses—crossed the street. The door into the garage was around the back and Leon had already opened it.

Inside, both parking spaces were empty. Against the back wall was a row of metal shelves and a chest freezer. On the far wall were garden tools: rakes and shovels, hung on hooks. Random cans of paint, bags of dirt, old boxes, boots and a stack of newspapers lined the walls on both sides.

“Now,” Leon said. “If you were ten thousand dollars in illegally procured cash, where would you be hiding?”

“It’s in a gift box so probably somewhere out of sight.”

“I’ll check the freezer.”

“I’ll take the shelves.” I walked to the far end. I began moving things around. Plant food. Garden gnomes. Boxes of screws.

“Oh, thank God,” Leon said as soon as he lifted the top of the freezer.

“You found it?”

“No. It crossed my mind that this is the kind of freezer people use to store dead bodies. Fortunately, I’m only seeing pot roast and peas.” He closed the lid and then climbed on top of it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m checking out the top shelves. You check the bottom ones. Do you like how I did that? Me top, you bottom?”

“Shut up.”

I bent over and began poking around at the lowest shelves. While I was moving things around my head was level with the second shelf. It took a bit, but all of a sudden I realized I was staring right at a gift box. In Christmas wrapping—chubby Santas wearing sunglasses. I moved a battery charger and pulled it out.

“Found it,” I said.

“Good,” Leon said. “Open it.”

“I’m not going to open it. It’s evidence.”

“We need to know if the money is inside,” he said. He did have a point.

“We should have worn gloves. We don’t want to get fingerprints inside the box.” It was too late to worry about the outside of the box.

“You should have thought about that before we left.”

“We can open the box when we get back home.”

“What if it’s not the right box?”

“You think there are two gift-wrapped boxes in this garage?”

“It’s possible. If you’d asked me yesterday, I’ve had told you we wouldn’t find one.”

“Fine, I’ll open it, but—”

The garage door began to automatically slide open. Leon was still on top of the freezer. A gray Jaguar pulled into the garage. We were staring right at the driver, an elegant woman in her late fifties.

Then Leon was next to me saying, “Think of a good excuse.”

“Like?”

Marta Ortiz got out of the car without taking her eyes off us. She was tall, wore a gray business suit, carried a briefcase, and had a leather purse slung over her shoulder.

“What are you doing in my garage?”

“We’re friends of Javier,” I said.

“No you’re not,” she said, looking us up and down slowly. As she did, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what Leon and I looked like. Except I couldn’t. All I could think about was what we looked like.

I was wearing white 501s, black Doc Martens, a red T-shirt and a jean vest with a giant button that said SILENCE = DEATH. (The button was Mikey’s idea. He thought it was a good idea that we wear them at the store.) And my hair—well, it was my hair. Leon wore a leopard print T-shirt, black leather pants and his very blond hair. I’m sure he was planning to go out later. We nearly screamed gay. No, not nearly. We screamed gay.

“My son arrests people like you,” Marta Ortiz said. That was not true, though it was true he had nearly arrested me on a couple of occasions.

“You know, we’ll just be going,” I said.

“What’s in the box?”

“It belongs to Javier,” Leon said. “He asked us to get it.”

“Actually, it doesn’t belong to Javier,” I pointed out. I mean, it could be bad if people started thinking the money was his.

“It does belong to him… sort of,” Leon said.

“No,” I said to him. Then, “We’re bringing it to him. Eventually.”

“Why did you bring it here?” she asked. Suspicion rolled off her like smoke on a dance floor.

“We didn’t bring it here. Javier did. We’re just picking it up for him.”

“So, it does belong to him.”

“No. Not really. It’s evidence.”

“It’s evidence,” she repeated doubtfully. “And he sent the two of you to get it.”

“Yes, we’re here to pick it up,” I said. Trying to tell the truth while implying that he did indeed send us.

“What kind of evidence?”

I looked to Leon for help. He was frowning. “Mrs. Ortiz, you’re not aware that your son has been arrested for theft?”

“What? No. You’re lying. I’m going to call him and have him arrest you for theft.”

“He was arrested again this afternoon,” I said. “We’re not sure why. Possibly something worse than theft.”

“He hasn’t called you to bail him out?” Leon asked.

“It’s only been two hours,” I said to him. “They may not have given him his phone call yet.”

Though, given her reaction, he hadn’t called his mother the first time he was arrested. And if he didn’t call her then I doubted he’d call her now.

Marta Ortiz’s face had gotten very tight, like she smelled something bad. “Why should I believe you two ridiculous people?”

“This doesn’t belong to you,” I said, meaning the box. “So we’re not stealing anything from you. We’re just going to leave now.”

“Hold on,” she said.

We waited as she set down her briefcase and dug through her purse. I thought she was going to take out one of those chunky cellular phones like Leon had. It would make sense to at least try and call Javier. But instead, she pulled out a small revolver and aimed it at us.

“You’ve broken into my property and are trespassing. I can legally shoot you.”

That can’t be true? I thought before saying, “We didn’t break anything. We didn’t break and enter, we just entered. And we have a key.”

“Where did you get a key?”

“It’s Javier’s,” I said.

“Javier gave you a key?”

“Well—”

Leon kicked me and said, “Yes. Javier gave us a key. When he asked us to retrieve this package for him.”

“I don’t believe you—”

“Run!” Leon screamed.

“What?”

“Run!”

I watched as he ran out of the garage. A moment later, I followed. As we were crossing the street, Marta Ortiz fired two shots at us. Luckily, she was a bad shot. Well, not so luckily for her Jaguar. She managed to obliterate the driver’s side window.

I imagine that was our fault, too.

* * *

Louis had made what he called Whatever Pasta. I’d had it before. Basically, it was whatever pasta he had in the cupboard with whatever he had in the refrigerator in a cream sauce. It was always different and always delicious.

“She really shot at you?” Marc asked. We were back outside under the heater. He wore a gray cardigan sweater that made him look like a chubby Mr. Rogers.

“Four times,” Leon said.

“Twice,” I corrected him.

“I’m sure I heard four shots,” he said. “Maybe there was an echo.”

Somehow, despite being shot at, I’d remembered to run upstairs and get my pills. I now had an extra pill to take—well, a couple of extra pills. Something called Videx, which I had to chew, and Pepto Bismol to counteract the side effects of the Videx. Probably not a good idea, but I washed them down with the glass of chardonnay I’d been given. Occasionally, wine took the edge off the side effects. Or at least the side effects from burglary.

“I can’t wait to look in the box,” Marc said.

“It’s not that interesting,” Leon said. He’d examined it on the drive back from Los Feliz. “There’s nothing in the box but money.”

“How could that not be interesting?” Marc asked.

“Did you count it?” Louis asked. He’d just sat down after bringing out a warmed loaf of French bread.

“No, Noah wouldn’t let me.”

“You would have gotten your fingerprints all over it.”

“What kind of money?” Marc wanted to know. “Small bills? Big bills? Have they been well circulated or are they mint?”

“I didn’t see anything bigger than a twenty,” Leon said. “And they’d definitely been circulated.”

“You counted it?!” I accused.

“I only touched the edges.”

“Drug money,” Louis said.

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“Why else would someone have thousands of dollars in well-circulated cash?”

“I have thousands of dollars in well-circulated cash,” I said. “I mean, not every day. But if I didn’t make a bank deposit for a month I would have that much.”

“But you wouldn’t do that,” Marc pointed out. “And you wouldn’t bring the cash home.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But some other small businessperson might.”

“Wait a minute,” Louis said. “You’re right. There is another possibility. Theft. Have we heard of any small business robberies? There have to be a lot of them.”

In the silence that followed, I took a bite of my pasta. There was leftover salmon from Thursday—which now seemed ages ago—frozen peas, some shrimp, mushrooms, and a lot of parmesan. Finally, the silence ended when Leon said, “Yeah, I’m still leaning toward drug money.”

“There’s nothing in the box but the money?” Louis asked.

“No, I said that already,” Leon replied.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“What do you mean it’s not true? I already said it. There’s nothing in the box but the money.”

“And the evidence bag it’s in.”

“Oh, well, yes that.”

“That’s a neon sign,” Marc said. “They might as well have written ‘I stole this from a crime scene’ in the lid. They didn’t, did they?”

I just frowned at him and sipped my wine.

“Marc, tell them what you found out about Elliott Twiss.”

“Who?” Leon asked.

“Elliott Twiss,” I said. “Carmichael asked about him. You guys were asked, too, weren’t you?”

“Yes, it appears that Detective Griffith was definitely up to speed on the case,” Louis said. “Very detail oriented.”

Marc picked a newspaper up off the ground where he’d left it. “This is the Times from December twenty-sixth.”

“Where did you get that?” I mean, it was nearly three weeks ago.

“From a recycling bin.”

“You recycle?”

“Well, no. But several of our neighbors do.”

“You went up and down the street rifling through peoples recycling to find a newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“You realize you could have gone to the library.”

“Which is not open on a Saturday evening.”

“Oh, well, true.”

“Anyway,” he said. “The point is, Elliott Twiss was murdered on December twenty-third. That’s the scene Javier was working. That’s where the money came from.”

“What does the article say?”

“Basically, that the body of twenty-eight-year-old Elliott Twiss was found on the morning of the twenty-third by a neighbor. Police spokesperson Kamil Lowry said that they believe Twiss was murdered. They found drugs and cash at the scene.”

“Are they trying to make it sound like a drug deal gone wrong?” Leon asked.

“It couldn’t be, though,” I said. “The drugs and the money were still there—at least until someone with the LAPD stole the money. If you’re killing someone over drugs, you’d take everything—wouldn’t you? The drugs and the money?”

“Provided you could find them,” Leon said.

“Maybe that’s not what’s important, though,” Louis suggested. “Remember the coffee receipt we found. That’s from the twenty-third. It means that Javier left the scene and bought coffee for everyone.”

“Do you think he saved the receipt to get reimbursed?” Marc asked.

“Possibly. But it has a more important purpose now,” Louis replied. “It proves he wasn’t there the whole time. And if he wasn’t there the whole time someone else could easily have taken the money without his knowing it.”

“Wouldn’t they have sent a patrol officer for coffee?” I wondered. “Do you think someone higher up sent him for coffee?”

“Or maybe he was being nice,” Marc said.

“Or… maybe he was giving himself an alibi,” Leon said. We all looked at him. “What? We have to consider all possibilities. The fact that he left the scene proves that someone else could have done it. It doesn’t prove they did.”

Louis and Marc picked up our plates, Louis saying, “Nothing fancy for dessert. I just threw a few apples into the oven. We’ll have those with some vanilla ice cream.”

I sat there awkwardly with Leon. I was never all that sure what to say to him when we were alone. Other than the occasional felony, we didn’t have much in common.

Finally, he asked, “Have you figured out why Javier was arrested again this afternoon?”

“No. You?”

“No. But... it has to have been for something else… like the murder of Elliot Twiss.”

“Oh God, no.”

“Think about it. They believe Javier stole the guy’s money. That’s a motive to kill him.”

“Yes, but if Javier killed him why didn’t he take the money then? Why wait and steal it from an active crime scene?”

“That would be logical,” Leon admitted, then said, “Though after this morning I wouldn’t say Detective Carmichael is the most logical person on the planet.”

“Really? He seemed logical to me.”

“He asked if I had a wife. Me!”

“How did that come up?”

“He wanted to know where I was last night. I said I was in bed and that I was not alone. He asked if my wife could confirm that. Seriously.”

“Do you think he was being sarcastic?”

“Oh, well, I suppose he could have been. He actually didn’t seem that surprised when I said I had an alibi named Rico, and if that wasn’t enough, I had a second alibi named Aldolfo.”

“Last night? Why is he worrying about last night?”

“Beats me.

“Wait, did you say you had two guys in one night?”

“I always get sentimental after the holidays.”

I didn’t get the connection but thought it best left alone.

And then Louis and Marc were back setting baked apples and ice cream in front of us. They smelled wonderfully of cinnamon and nutmeg. When everyone was seated again, Louis said, “So, what are we going to do about all this?”

I couldn’t answer since I already had a mouthful of hot apple and cold ice cream.

“Why don’t I find out everything I can about Elliot Twiss,” Leon said. “I’ve already got a few ideas.”

“Okay. Noah, you should keep calling Javier. If he was arrested on a minor charge, he could be out of jail in the morning.”

“What if it’s not a minor charge?” I asked.

Leon explained his theory about Elliott Twiss’ murder.

Then Louis said, “If they’re charging him with murder it will take a few days to set bail; if he’s even allowed bail. And the bail will be quite high.”

I was sure that was information he’d gotten from L.A. Law, which meant it might or might not be true.

“Marc,” he said, continuing. “Why don’t you find out what you can about Marta Ortiz. Specifically, whether she has the kind of money to bail her son out of jail if he’s charged with murder.”

“She lives in Los Feliz,” Marc said. “She probably does.”

“Not if the house is mortgaged.”

“I’ll call Christopher. He might be able to help us with that.”

“What about you Louis?” Leon asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find LaToya Kennedy.”

5

In the morning, I turned on the Today show while I got ready for work. When the news portion came on, I learned that the Lorena Bobbitt trial was beginning. The most interesting part of that whole story was how carefully television reporters tried to avoid the word penis. Her trial was for malicious wounding, and she’d ‘emasculated’ her husband. That kind of made me laugh, since most women emasculated their husbands with wit and not steak knives.

There was another story about the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ thing, which sounded kind of stupid. Someone was suing someone, and I couldn’t figure out what that meant, but the story did mention a guy in the Navy who was an ‘admitted homosexual.’ That was almost as weird as ‘emasculated’ husbands. All I could think was that men all over the country were dramatically saying, “I admit it, I’m a homosexual.”

In fact, I admitted it to myself as I tried to decide if I needed to shave. As homosexuals go, I was pretty average: brown eyes, even features, a bit on the small side. Okay, a lot on the small side. An aging twink, I guess you’d call me. My dominant feature was my hair; it was dark and uncontrollable. A hairdresser had once said I had the oddest growth pattern he’d ever seen. He asked me not to come back.

After I’d applied three different gels and still couldn’t come up with anything resembling a style, I gave up and went to work. I had a little more than two hours before we opened. The first thing I did was go into my office and call Javier. There was no answer, so I left a message asking him to call me at the store. Then I checked the answering machine only to discover we were still getting calls about the open position. I made a list of all the new calls and added them to the names I’d written down the day before.

When Patty came in, I would ask her to call them and set up appointments. There were a couple of people coming in that day. One at eleven-thirty and another at two. I did most of the opening chores and at ten-thirty I called my mother.

“There you are,” she said when she picked up the phone. I usually called some time on the weekend.

“I know. I’m sorry. The last few days...”

“I heard. Poor Javier.”

“You heard?”

“I talked to Leon. And then Marc. And Louis, just for a minute.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sure Javier is completely innocent.”

“Mom, you’ve only met him once.”

“But you like him. You couldn’t possibly like him if he was a bad person.”

That was a challenging statement. My ex, Jeffers, was not exactly a good person. Maybe not a bad person, but definitely not a good person. If past was prologue, I was not what you’d call a good judge of character.

“I haven’t seen him in almost a year.”

“I know. You mentioned that at Thanksgiving. And again, at Christmas.”

I did not mention it either time. It was the answer to a question she wouldn’t stop asking.

“You really should date more. Or whatever you boys call it.”

My God! Was my mother telling me I should be out there tricking? Yuck.

“You’re only young once,” she added wistfully.

“How have you been?” I asked, pointedly changing the subject.

“Oh, I’m fine. I was a bit blue after I got back from my visit. Then I decided I’d fly out to see you boys four times next year. I just got a United Airlines Mileage Plus Credit Card. If I buy all my groceries, gas, incidentals and two flights to Los Angeles, I’ll get the third one free. Or at least I think so. I could be wrong; in which case I’ll get the fourth one free!”

“Okay, but you have to pay that money back.”

“I know that, dear. I’ve had my own credit card since the seventies. That’s when they finally let ladies—anyway, that’s enough about me. What are you doing to help Javier?”

“I think he’s still in jail. I just called but he wasn’t at home.”

“Does he need bail money? I could send—”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Maybe I should just send a little in case you find you need it.”

“No.”

“Of course, you have that ten thousand in the box. I suppose you could use that.”

“That’s evidence.”

“It was evidence. The chain of custody has been severely compromised. There’s no telling how much money was there to begin with or to whom it originally belonged. If you need to use it to get Javier out of jail, you really should.”

“I’m sure that would be illegal in at least six ways.”

“Dear, you stole the money out of a woman’s garage. This is no time to quibble.”

I hated the fact that she was right, so I asked, “Were you always this immoral and I just never noticed?”

“I am not immoral. There’s a difference between what is legal and what is moral.”

“I’m sorry. Were you always this lawless?”

“Well, I suppose, yes. It’s just that when your father was alive, he took care of everything.”

“Okay, but he wasn’t lawless.”

“No, he wasn’t,” she sighed, clearly regretting my father’s law-abiding ways.

Someone came in the back door, and a moment or two later Patty Wong was standing in my doorway. She was wearing a black turtleneck with a tank-green jumper over it, black tights and ballet shoes. She looked like she was ready to read poetry with Allen Ginsberg at a coffee house.

When she stepped into my office she brought a cloud of cheap perfume with her, something that had heavy notes of dusty potpourri and spoiled fruit.

“Hello, Noah. Here I am. On time.”

Holding my breath, I said, “Mom, I have to go,” into the phone.

“All right, but call me during the week. Don’t make me wait until the weekend to find out what’s happening with Javier.”

I agreed, though I thought it silly. No matter what happened to Javier during the week, I doubted I’d be the first to tell her. I said I loved her and hung up.

“Was that your mother?” Patty asked. “Oh my God, that is so sweet. You make me sorry I never had children.” She sighed dramatically and briefly rested her hand on her stomach, which made the statement seem completely insincere.

I stood up, saying, “Okay. The first thing I’d like you to do is call this list of people and set up interviews for this week.”

I picked up a legal pad and tried to lead her out of my office. She didn’t budge.

“Interviews? You mean for the job? But I’m here.”

“Yes, I thought I’d hire two people.”

“All right. I suppose that’s a good idea. You’re so clever.”

And probably a bit too transparent. I could see her calculating how scant her schedule would be. I tried to move by her—seriously, I was still holding my breath—but she said, “So, I did want to say thank you so much for taking me back and I hope this morning thing is only temporary. I’m much more of a night person.”

That was challenging since Mikey worked most nights and I couldn’t put them… no, that would be a disaster. Plus, I had Carl and Denny for the nights Mikey didn’t work and the ones he needed help on.

“I was thinking ten-thirty to two-thirty. Just a couple of days a week.”

“Oh,” she said coldly.

I was sure she had other sources of income. She seemed to live comfortably whether she worked for me or not. So she must. Marc was certain she was doing phone sex out of her apartment, though I was sure that was much more profitable than working in a video store. So much so that it raised the question, why would she work in a video store if she could make a lot more money moaning into her phone? I mean you’d get to see real human beings, but still.

“Well, we can talk about it later,” she said, squeezing by me to get behind the desk. I’d been hoping she’d do this out front, in-between customers. I gave up and went out to watch the front myself… and breathe.

* * *

An hour later, my first interview arrived. His name was Eldridge Hall. He was around twenty years old, tall, thin and gangly. He wore a flat woolen hat, an earring with a red feather, a black motorcycle jacket with several buttons on his lapel (including one for ACT UP), his T-shirt said FAG, his jeans were ripped, and his black boots seemed bigger than he was.

I asked him to fill out an application then went back to my office to see why Patty hadn’t finished making the calls. I opened the door and asked, “Are you almost done?”

“I’ve barely gotten started.”

“How many appointments have you booked?”

“None.”

“What?”

“You didn’t want me to lie, did you? They asked questions about the job and I told them, honestly, what my experience was.”

In other words, she’d scared them off.

“Okay, you know what, I’ll finish that. Why don’t you take over the front. I have an interview.”

She scowled at me. I was interviewing someone she hadn’t had a chance to scare off. Reluctantly, she left the office.

I called out to Eldridge, asking him to come back to the office. Trying to wave away the remnants of Patty’s cologne, I settled myself behind the desk. He walked in, set his application in front of me, and sat down in the guest chair. I quickly looked over the application. At the bottom there was a question about availability. Eldridge wasn’t available on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I asked, “Do you have another job?”

“I’m a student at UCLA.”

“Oh, what are you studying?”

“Women’s Studies. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“The department doesn’t have an LGBT major, so I’m kind of cobbling one together. They only have four gay classes. I’ve already taken those, so in addition to the Women’s Studies core classes I’m doing independent study both in the department and out of the department. Right now, I’m doing an independent study with Carlos Habermann, the brilliant psychologist. It’s called, The Public and Private Mating Proclivities of the Modern Gay Male.”

“So… you’re going to bars and watching guys?”

“Yeah, mostly. I’m not old enough to drink, so it gives me something to do while I wait for someone to flirt with me.” Then he smiled, and I wondered how he ever got any research done.

I looked down at his application and asked about his employment history, which was pretty scant.

“You did an internship at Lehman Brothers?”

“My father made me. Believe me, I’m not a capitalist.”

“I think I’m a capitalist.”

“Oh, you’re probably not. By capitalist I mean individuals who live off the profits of simply having large amounts of money. They themselves contribute almost nothing to our society. Small businesses like this can exist in a myriad of political systems: capitalist, socialist, fascist, authoritarian, and even communist.”

“What do your parents do?”

“Oh, they’re just rich. But don’t get the wrong idea. I do need a job. They’ve cut me off.”

“Because you’re gay?”

“Because I changed my major. They want me to study business administration.”

“Business was my major.”

“Your parents made you?”

“No. It was a lack of imagination.”

He laughed. It hadn’t been a joke.

“Well, um, I have a lot of other people to interview,” I said. If I could keep Patty away from them. “I’m going to try and make a decision by the end of the week.”

I stood up. So did he.

“Can I just say that I so respect what you’ve done. You may not realize it, but running a gay-oriented business is a radical political statement. This is the epicenter of gay culture.”

“Uh-huh.”

It was nice of him to say that, though it did seem a little over the top—and like a lot of responsibility. It also made me feel old. I walked him out of the store so Patty couldn’t get her hands on him. I was pretty sure I was going to hire him.

As I walked back to my office, Patty asked, “Do you want me to make the rest of those calls?”

“No, I’ll do it. You just watch the front.”

I made a few calls. Unfortunately, I had difficulty understanding Patty’s notes and called two of the people she’d already called. They were awfully rude to me. I was about to make another call when the phone rang.

“Good morning, Pinx Video,” Patty and I said at the same time. “I’ll take this Patty”

She hung up.

“Pinx Video, how can I help you?”

“Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

“Oh shut up, Louis,” I replied, immediately recognizing his voice. “What do you want?”

“I found out why they arrested Javier.”

“You did, really?”

“Yeah. They arrested him for the murder of LaToya Kennedy.”

“She’s dead?” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, since I really had no idea who she was. “Who was she?”

“Hard to say. All I really know right now is that she lived on West 30th. She was killed in her living room. There were four other adults in the house and no one saw a thing.”

“Really? No one saw anything?”

“Unbelievable, right?”

“Can we find out who was in the house? Maybe talk to them?”

“They’re not going to talk to us. They’re terrified of whoever killed her.”

“Oh,” I said. This should have dawned on me quicker. “Gangs?”

“Maybe.”

“But how is Javier connected to all this?”

“Oh, I forgot to say. She’s a civilian employee of the LAPD. She worked at Rampart. The article mentioned she was under investigation for a recent theft of evidence.”

“Under investigation but not arrested? Javier was arrested—Do you think she turned him in?”

“That’s possible.”

“If her death is gang related then the theft would be too.”

“That’s logical.”

“So why did the gang kill her?”

“She knew too much?”

“Which gang do you think it is?”

“God knows. There’s like three or four hundred gangs in Los Angeles County.”

“I guess this means I can stop calling Javier. He’s not getting out of jail for a very long time.”

6

I managed to hustle Patty Wong out of the store before Mikey arrived. My two o’clock interview didn’t show up. Which made me wonder if Patty had somehow gotten to him first. I quickly looked around to see if she’d made any messes I needed to clean up. Surprisingly she’d done okay. The day’s receipts were in a neat stack, the front desk was orderly, the returns had been put away, and there was a tape playing, Hudson Hawk.

Mikey, who was in his mid-thirties, fair and balding, walked into the store. He’d barely smiled at me when he looked up at the television we’d hung near the ceiling.

“Hudson Hawk?” he asked. It was only then I remembered Patty’s penchant for notoriously bad films. Mikey sniffed the air. I hadn’t thought about it, but her perfume was still—

“You hired her back,” he said with a dark look.

I wanted to lie and say absolutely not, but I couldn’t. “She saw the ad in Frontiers and put me on the spot.”

“She reads Frontiers? Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

Perhaps I should have. Straight, middle-aged, Asian women weren’t their target audience. I mean, I thought she was straight. She seemed straight. Of course, you couldn’t ever be completely one hundred percent sure about anyone. Is that why she wanted to work for me? Because she was a closeted lesbian?

I put those thoughts aside and rushed onward, “I’m only having her here from ten-thirty to two-thirty. You’ll never see her.”

“No, just the results of her.”

That I couldn’t help.

“And I’m still hiring another person. I met with someone this morning. I think you might like him. He’s doing this kind of gay studies thing at UCLA.”

“Can I look at his resume?”

“He filled out an application. You can look at that.” I hadn’t thought to ask for a resumé. I mean, it was a job in a video store, not an academic posting.

“Okay. I’ll look at that.”

I went and got it for him out of the office. It seemed to placate him, and we didn’t talk about Patty again that afternoon. He did, however, eject Hudson Hawk and put in Torch Song Trilogy.

The afternoon turned out to be much quieter than I’d expected. TV was still in reruns and the holidays had died down, those things suggested we might get a lot of business—but then maybe people had spent too much over the holidays and needed to cut back. The economy, though, seemed to be doing well. Marc and Louis were always talking about mortgage rates, which were historically low. In October they’d locked a mortgage in at just under seven percent. Since then, it had crept up over seven, so they were thrilled.

Mikey took a short dinner break between five-thirty and six. While he was gone, a gentleman in his fifties, wearing thick round glasses that made his eyes look extra large, set two recent releases on the counter: Cliffhanger and Rising Sun. As I took his card and entered the numbers for the tapes, I could tell he was working himself up to ask me something—usually, this meant the customer was about to ask something about the pornos, like would I give out lists of the titles they rented. I wouldn’t. That was illegal.

“So, this is a gay video store?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ve been coming here for a year and I had no idea. What exactly makes it gay? I mean, you have all the same movies.”

“We do have some movies you wouldn’t find elsewhere.” Actually, a lot if you counted the pornos, but something told me he’d never gone back there. “We have a Gay and Lesbian section.”

And a rainbow sticker in the window, and the gay rags stacked near the door, and a display of lubes behind me. It was surprising the things that straight people managed not to see.

“And you know, gay people like the same movies straight people like.”

He looked at me for a moment like he didn’t believe me, then asked, “I hope you don’t mind if I keep coming here. It’s very convenient.”

“Happy to have your business.”

Mikey returned a few minutes later while I was still thinking, What was that? I left the store around six o’clock.

The moment I reached the top of our stairs and stepped into the courtyard, I saw that Marc, Louis and Leon were sitting at the rusting iron table.

“There you are!” Leon said, jumping up. “We have to hurry, your appointment is at six-thirty.”

“What appointment?”

“You’re getting a haircut,” he explained.

“I am? Why?”

“You do need one, don’t you?”

“Not really.” Okay, really I did, but still… “I’m very confused.”

“Just trust me,” Leon said.

“Um, that has never been a good idea,” I said, though I still got into Marc’s Infiniti with the three of them. Really, some of my decisions are questionable.

Five minutes later, we pulled up in front of Sheerly Divine, a hair salon on Rowena. The building was starkly modern, or at least it was in the fifties. Two narrow storefronts had what looked like apartments above, big windows, angular walls. The entrance to Sheerly Divine and its picture window were both covered in metal security gates. The gates looked new, and I wondered if they were put up after the riots.

Inside there were two barber’s chairs, a wall of mirrors, a couple of workstations, some random chairs for people who might be waiting—or just there to watch—and a couple of dusty, plastic plants. The walls—or at least the parts that weren’t covered with mirrors—were an electric blue.

In one of the chairs sat a very tall Black man about Leon’s age. He wore a tight pair of black leather pants with a fresh, new, white T-shirt. His hair was close-cropped and orange. When he saw us, he said, “There you are! Hello, darlings!”

“Hello Ricky Lee,” Leon said. “Thank you for fitting us in.”

“No problemo. Who’s my victim?”

Suddenly, I was pushed forward. I said, “Hi.”

“This is Noah,” Leon said.

“Wonderful.”

Ricky Lee took me by the wrist and led me to a chair. Once I sat down, he wrapped a plastic smock over me and began fingering my hair. He made a guttural sound in his throat—somewhere between confusion and anger—before asking, “What do you think of a buzz cut?”

I shook my head and frowned. He went back to digging around up there.

“So… Ricky Lee,” Leon said. “I’m afraid we have an ulterior motive.”

“Of course, you do. Most of my clients do. I’m running a special on quarter ounces if you’re interested.”

“Actually, we’re hoping to ask questions,” Louis explained.

That stopped Ricky Lee. With some difficulty, he pulled his fingers out of my hair, and studied Marc and Louis in the mirror. “Questions about?”

“Your sideline.”

“I don’t have a sideline. You’re mistaken.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Ricky Lee,” Leon reassured him. “This isn’t some kind of sting. We just need information.”

“I will only answer hypothetical questions,” he said, then looked in the mirror and asked me, “Have you considered cornrows?”

“Like Bo Derek? No. Absolutely not.”

“Hypothetically, did you know Elliott Twiss?”

Ricky Lee frowned into the mirror. He reached over to his station and picked up a pair of scissors. He began chopping at my hair a little more aggressively than I would have liked. He stopped abruptly and said, “Hypothetically, no. I heard about an Elliott Twiss from a client. Someone killed him last month. Then some cop stole all his money. That Elliott Twiss?”

“Yes, that Elliott Twiss” said Louis. “He was apparently a drug dealer.”

“Well, just to be clear. There’s no drug dealer’s chamber of commerce, and we do not meet for tea and crumpets on Saturday afternoons. Hypothetically.”

“Maybe you should just tell us how all this works,” Marc suggested. I might have asked that question myself, but Ricky Lee had gone back to snipping at my hair and I was distracted. And by distracted, I mean fearing for my life.

“I’m only guessing,” Ricky Lee said. “But the kind of drug dealing I would do—if I did that—would be kind of like Amway. You know. I would sell drugs socially. Clients ask and I provide. I get my drugs from a distributor who gets them from another distributor who get from… you get the picture. It’s a pyramid scheme, except the products are real and everyone makes money. Top to bottom.”

“How much do you make in a week?” I asked, praying I’d be leaving with both my ears.

“That’s an awfully personal question,” he said.

“Elliott Twiss had a hundred thousand dollars in his apartment,” Leon said.

“Oh my word. I’m selling a quarter ounce for twenty bucks. Do you know how many I’d have to sell to have a hundred thousand dollars lying around?”

Apparently, none of us could do math in our heads since we didn’t answer. Then Marc asked, “Is marijuana all you sell?”

“No. I do some cocaine catering. Weddings, commitment ceremonies, birthdays, anniversaries… I did a bar mitzva—the adults not the children. I don’t sell crystal. It does terrible things to your hair. Bad hair is bad for business.”

“Do you think Elliott Twiss was higher up the Amway chain?” Louis asked.

“Possibly. But then, didn’t he live down by the 10? That’s not a very good neighborhood. If he had that much money, you’d think he’d live someplace nicer.”

“Isn’t it hard to hide that much money?” Louis asked.

“You mean, how do you launder your profits?”

“Hypothetically.”

“Most of what I make goes in my tip jar. On a good week, I might ring up a few extra cash haircuts. No one’s the wiser.”

“That might be a lot harder for Elliot Twiss,” Marc pointed out. “With so much more money.”

“True, but that hundred thousand might be his stake. He spends it on a new supply. Replenishes his stake and keeps the profit. Then he does it all again.”

“What’s the profit margin?” I asked.

“Oh, I have no idea. I mean, I mark it up a hundred percent. I assume everyone above me does the same or more.”

“So Twiss could have been at it for a while. If he started out with five thousand dollars, then he’d have ten, twenty, forty, eighty…”

“If he didn’t take any for expenses and profit, he might have put that money together very quickly.”

“What kind of things can get you killed?”

“Stealing, obviously. Conversations like this one.” He gave us all a dirty look. “Talking to the police. Selling in other people’s territory. Almost anything really.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“No. I’m too insignificant for anyone to kill me. Plus, I cut the hair of the people most likely to kill me. For free. They’re not going to want to give that up.”

I could tell he was nearly finished cutting my hair, and I still had a question I needed him to answer. I blurted out, “How do you know Leon?”

“Oh we go way, way back. Don’t we, darling?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Leon said.

“I wouldn’t either if I were you,” Ricky Lee said.

“Did you go to film school together?” I asked. I was sure Leon had mentioned going to film school. Several times.”

Ricky Lee looked back at Leon. “You went to film school?”

“I did. American Academy of Filmic Arts. It’s on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“BA or MFA?” Ricky Lee asked.

“I attended.

“Really? How many classes?”

“Oh, come on. Everyone in Hollywood exaggerates.”

Louis brought us back on track with, “Will you let us know if you hear anything about Elliott Twiss?”

Ricky Lee was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Sure. As long as it doesn’t put any of us in danger.” And that probably meant, no.

Then he spun me around, so I faced the mirror and showed me my haircut. It was actually pretty good. Now it was a question of how long it would stay that way.

* * *

Before we got into Marc’s Infiniti, he and Leon insisted they needed cigarettes—probably all that drug talk. The four of us stood next to the car. Louis asked, “What do you guys think?”

“I think I should have gotten an eighth while they’re still on sale,” Leon said.

“Other than that.”

“It seems like Elliott Twiss was pretty low level. Even though a hundred thousand sounds like a lot,” Marc said.

“You know he could have had a lot more money. Maybe he was killed for the money and the killer left a hundred thousand so it wouldn’t seem like that was the motive.”

“But what does that have to do with Javier?” Louis asked.

“Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “Maybe it was just a random crime and someone in the LAPD stole the money and is blaming it on Javier.”

“No, it’s not random.” Louis said. “Remember Javier said he was given a gift package with sexy underwear three weeks—”

“Sexy is debatable,” Leon said.

“Three weeks earlier,” Louis continued. “That means Elliott Twiss was killed so that the money could be stolen.”

“And blamed on Javier,” I said.

“Unless, of course, Javier is lying to us,” Leon said.

I wanted to punch him. Unfortunately, I learned a long time ago that I could only punch hard enough to hurt my hand and not much else.

Marc stubbed out his cigarette on the sidewalk. “Okay, let’s go.”

We were home five minutes later and ran into Christopher coming down our stairs just as we were going up. He was holding a manilla folder in his hands. Not surprising, since they were working on a real estate deal.

“There you are! I was just about to give up,” he said.

“Sorry we’re late, we had an errand to run,” Louis said.

I hadn’t met Christopher before. He was an overweight gentleman somewhere in his fifties. It was a bit uncomfortable when Louis introduced me and Christopher said, “Oh yes, he’ll do.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, suddenly worried my friends had pimped me out.

“Christopher has an important dinner on Monday,” Marc explained. “He’d like someone to go with him. And he was nice enough to run a couple of credit reports for us…”

They were pimping me out.

“Um…”

“Don’t worry,” Christopher said. “I won’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely.”

That wasn’t reassuring. He must have seen that because he continued, “Look, sweetheart, I just need a pretty young thing to show off. This is the first year I’ve been single in eons. I don’t want the competition to think I’m losing my edge. You don’t even have to pretend you like me. Lord knows my real boyfriends never do.”

I glared at my friends; they looked over at the file in Christopher’s hands. There was really nothing to do about this turn of events.

“All right fine. Monday night. How long do I have to stay?”

“I’m not sure. At least until everyone’s seen you. How are you at improv? We could have a fight and break up right before the entrée.”

I was terrible at improv and if I was going to a dinner I might actually want to eat. “I’ll stay until after dessert and then I’ll quietly leave. You can tell people I had a migraine.”

He thought for a moment, and then said, “All right. They’ll think I’m lying about the migraine but that’s perfect.”

He handed over the files. Louis invited him to come up and have a glass of wine with us, but he said, “I’d love to, but I can’t. Believe it or not I have a showing in Atwater at eight. I must run.”

Marc and Louis thanked him profusely, then we continued upstairs to the courtyard. Louis turned on the heater while Marc went to get the wine. Leon snatched the files out of my hands and sat down to read them. When Marc came out with a magnum bottle of chardonnay and handed Leon a glass, Leon said, “Oh, my, this isn’t good.”

Quickly, he ran through Javier’s report. The cards we’d found in his wallet were all there, mostly run up to their limit. There were also several cards that were delinquent, cards he didn’t carry with him. “He needs at least twenty thousand to dig himself out of this mess.”

“So even the ten we know he has wouldn’t help him a lot,” Louis said.

“What about his mother?” Marc asked.

Leon closed the file he was looking at and opened the second one. He scanned it for just a moment. “Her credit is excellent. And there’s no mortgage listed.”

“Which means she could post bond for Javier,” I said.

Would she, though?

After we’d fully digested the files, we talked about other things. We debated whether it would be worth seeing Robin Williams in drag in Mrs. Doubtfire—it was decided we’d wait until I got the VHS tape. Marc got drunk enough to admit that he loved The Nanny. And we took a stab at attempting to figure out where exactly Bosnia was.

I decided I needed a little time to unwind, so about nine I said my goodnights. As I walked toward the stairs, Louis said, “Noah, we should leave around ten-thirty tomorrow.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Javier’s arraignment is at eleven.”

And then, all of a sudden, I’d had it. My friends were playing fast and loose with my life. They’d arranged a haircut without my knowledge—admittedly it wasn’t a bad cut, but it could have been. They’d pimped me out to a man old enough to be my father. Yes, I didn’t have to have sex with him and I’d get a free dinner out of it, but still. And now I was being told—

“No,” I said firmly.

“Oh, you don’t want to go to the arraignment. I took a personal day—”

Crap. The arraignment. I’d forgotten all about it. And, yes, I did—

“Of course, I want to go to the arraignment,” I admitted.

“Then what’s the problem?”

The problem was, it wasn’t my idea, but I couldn’t really say that, so I said, “We need to leave at ten. I hate being late.”

Louis shrugged and said, “Okay.”

7

In the morning, I called Patty Wong first thing and asked her to open the store. The arraignment was scheduled for eleven. I hoped it would be done by one so that I could make it to the store and send Patty home before Mikey got there. Less than twenty-four hours ago I’d promised he’d never see her, so the two of them in the store at the same time the very next day would be a huge problem.

Arraignment court was located across the street from the men’s jail on Bauchet. The architecture of the court and the jail were both basic World War II bunker—thick concrete slabs with little slits for windows. Reassuring to know that in the event of nuclear war people could still be incarcerated.

When we got out of the car in the parking garage, Louis said, “Cheery place.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a good thing if you wanted to stay,” I pointed.

We followed the signs and got to the courtroom about ten-thirty—a half an hour early for Javier’s arraignment, though court itself was already in session. A large wood-paneled room, there was a gigantic, raised desk—or bench I guess you’d call it—on the far side of the room. There was a robed judge sitting behind it: a middle-aged woman whose dyed hair badly needed a touch-up, moving a stack of files from one spot to another. Above her head, there was a giant seal on the wall. It might have been a state seal or it could have said something about justice. I couldn’t make it out standing in the back.

On the right side of the room was a desk for the clerk or bailiff—or whatever he was called. He was a younger guy in a uniform. Like the judge’s bench, his desk was covered in stacks of files.

We sat down in the spectator section, which looked to be filled with mostly lawyers waiting for their clients to be called. At first we sat in the back and watched while men were arraigned one after the other. It seemed pretty routine. The clerk called their names, they were led out of the back, their lawyers came to the front and introduced themselves to the judge. She ignored them and kept her nose buried in the files.

Then she’d look up and read the charges and the accused’s rights, which were the same ones we’ve heard a million times on TV. “You have the right to remain silent—” After that the defense attorney and the prosecutor haggled about how much the bail would be. The cases were mainly assault, small-time drug possession and burglary. Two seats just behind the defense table opened up. It appeared the burglar’s parents were leaving now that his arraignment was over, and Louis said, “We should go snag those.”

Rushing up to the front row to grab the seats, we found ourselves cutting off Detective Brenda Wellesley and another detective I’d never seen before. Wellesley was every bit as disheveled as she always was, while the detective she was with was tall, thin and exceptionally neat. Seeing them coming, Louis plunked down into a seat and pulled me down next to him.

“What are you doing here?” Wellesley demanded.

Since the arraignments we’d witnessed so far did not include arresting officers, I asked back, “What are you doing here?”

“Javier was my partner. The least I can do is be here.”

“And who’s that?”

“My temporary partner, Detective Cyrus Featherstone.”

He looked at me and raised his chin in acknowledgement. She turned to him, and said, “These are the idiots I told you about.”

“Ah, yes, you’re right. They do look like idiots.” Then to us, he said, “I heard that you were at Javier’s on Saturday when he was arrested… again.”

This was obviously news to Wellesley, “What were you doing there?”

“We were trying to be his friend,” I said. “Where were you?”

“You need to keep out of this. You’ll do more damage than good.”

The bailiff called Javier’s name and we all looked over to the door in the corner behind the judge’s bench. That door opened and a guard led Javier into the courtroom. He wore a set of orange scrubs with a white T-shirt underneath. His hands were cuffed to his belt. He had a band on his right wrist, someone had written K-1 on it. Seeing him like that was like a kick in the gut. This was real, not just something we were talking about. Javier was really in jail. He was really in trouble. A lot of trouble.

Wellesley and Featherstone scrambled off to find other seats. Javier glanced at them and then at us. He frowned deeply. Escorting him around to be seated, the guard chained him to the defense table. As that happened, Javier leaned toward us, and said, “Go home. You shouldn’t be here.”

Jeez, I thought. No one wants us around.

“We want to help you,” Louis said.

“You can’t.”

Javier’s attorney joined him at the table. He was in his sixties and very corporate looking. I heard him say, “I told you not to talk to anyone.”

“I just told them to go away,” Javier said.

His attorney turned and gave us a dirty look. We stayed where we were.

The judge said, “Are we ready?”

“Yes, your honor. Samuel Golden of Herkimer, Shalley and Wallup. For the defense.”

The prosecutor never introduced himself. He’d clearly been there for hours. The judge didn’t acknowledge Mr. Golden. She simply began reading Javier his rights. When she finished, she asked, “Do you understand your rights, Detective O’Shea?”

“Yes.”

“You are charged with grand theft, obstruction of justice, falsification of a police report, tampering with evidence. Would you like to enter a plea at this time?”

“Your honor,” the prosecutor said, standing up. “Since these charges were filed Detective O’Shea has been arrested and charged in the death of LaToya Kennedy. At this time, we would like to amend the charges to include first-degree murder.”

That got the judge’s attention.

“I see,” she said. “With the addition of first-degree murder, how do you plead, Detective O’Shea?”

“Not guilty.”

“So noted. Let’s put a preliminary hearing onto the calendar.”

The bailiff suggested January nineteenth, only eight days away. Mr. Golden requested that it be moved until the twenty-fourth. They haggled back and forth a bit and then settled on the twenty-first.

“Your honor,” Mr. Golden began. “We request bail be set.”

The prosecutor stood again, and said, “The state requests no bond.”

“My client is an upstanding member of the community, a police officer—”

“Detective O’Shea is believed to have entered LaToya Kennedy’s home and killed her. That makes him a danger to this community.”

“But the police have taken Detective O’Shea’s service weapon,” his attorney said.

“Which is not the murder weapon,” the prosecutor admitted. “He could still have access to the weapon used. It’s also very likely that Detective O’Shea has other weapons or that he knows how to obtain weapons.”

“All right, you’ve made your point,” the judge said. Then she sat there for a long moment mulling a decision. A difficult decision, or at least one she wanted to appear difficult. “I’m going to have to say no bail.”

“Your honor—” Golden began.

“We can revisit my decision after the prelim. I may feel differently after I know everything the district attorney has on your client.”

Reluctantly, Golden thanked her. And that was that. As Javier was taken away, the clerk called for the next case. People were moving every which way. Wellesley and Featherstone were chatting seriously with the prosecutor—which seemed odd since she said they were there to support Javier. An older, white-haired guy in a stained shirt was seemingly accosting Golden as he came down the aisle.

Louis said to me, “Come on.” And we hurried out to what passed as a lobby. He had his eyes on Golden. When we got close, he said, “Excuse me, Mr. Golden.”

The attorney stopped. The white-haired guy asked, “Who are you?”

“We’re friends of Javier’s,” I said. “We have some evidence.”

“Are you in the department?” The white-haired guy asked. “I don’t think I know you.”

“We’re not police,” Louis said.

“Then it’s very unlikely you have evidence.”

Golden decided to step in, saying, “This is Harold Grayling, he’s with the union.”

No one said hello or nice to meet you.

“What evidence do you think you have?” Golden wanted to know.

“We have a receipt for coffee,” I said. “Javier bought everyone working the Twiss crime scene coffee.”

“Okay, so he’s a nice guy,” Grayling said.

“No, it means he left the scene for at least a half an hour. Someone else could easily have stolen the money.”

Golden looked at me curiously. “We’ll need a lot more than that.”

“Shouldn’t you have it though?”

“Why do you have it? Did Javier give it to you?”

“I picked up his wallet when he was being arrested,” Louis admitted.

“That means you interfered with the investigation. You could face charges for obstruction of justice.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Well, it wasn’t. You’ve compromised evidence. If indeed it is evidence.”

“But he bought that coffee for people at the scene,” I said. “They have to remember that. The receipt backs up what they should be saying.”

“I’ve read the statements. No one there that day mentions Javier getting anyone coffee. And there’s no record of him leaving the scene.”

“But, how can… No one said anything about the coffee? Seriously?” I said, somewhat appalled.

“Javier was the lead officer” Grayling said. “He wouldn’t have gone for coffee himself. He would have sent someone. He probably gave them cash and they brought back a receipt.”

“No. He charged it. On his MasterCard. There’s a credit card slip stapled to the receipt. We should at least give it to you.”

“Throw it away,” Golden said, stepping closer to us. “Look, this is how it’s going to be. I’m meeting with the district attorney early next week. We’re going to hammer out a deal for Javier. That’s the best outcome we can hope for.”

“He’s innocent. Why would you do that?”

Grayling snorted like I’d just said something stupid.

Golden explained, “Going to trial would be a very bad thing. You see juries think that if someone was arrested they have to be guilty, and if that someone is a cop, they believe that even more.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it does. They don’t believe the police would arrest another officer unless the evidence was so strong they couldn’t not arrest them.”

Okay, so it did kind of make sense.

“It’s not fair.”

“Fairness has nothing to do with justice.”

That was a weird thing for him to say. I’d always thought fairness and justice were basically the same thing. Golden and Grayling walked away.

I looked at Louis and he said, “We’re not throwing away that receipt.”

“No way,” I agreed.

“Did you notice the prosecutor admitting they don’t have the murder weapon?”

“I did.”

“I wonder what evidence they do have?” he wondered. “For the murder, I mean.”

“The news story said that no one in the house saw anything.”

“So, that’s like the opposite of witnesses.”

“She has something to do with the stolen money.

“That would be a motive, to keep her quiet.”

“I wonder if he has an alibi.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe not a good one.”

Before we could continue speculating, Louis abruptly cleared his throat. I turned around and Detective Wellesley was standing there. I blurted out, “You don’t really think Javier stole that money and killed Latoya Kennedy, do you?”

“I think what the evidence tells me to think. And there’s a lot of evidence that tells us exactly that.”

“What evidence is there, exactly?” Louis asked.

She frowned. “It’s not my case, and if it were my case I wouldn’t talk about it.”

“You worked the Twiss case with Javier. Right?” I said. “You know he left the scene—”

“How do you know about that?”

Ignoring her, I simply continued. “You know he went to get coffee, so he was gone for, what? Half an hour? Longer? Other people could have taken the money. You could have taken the money.”

“These are exactly the kinds of questions you shouldn’t be asking. These are the kind of questions that get people killed. Mind your own business.”

I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that.

* * *

On the way home, Louis and I stopped at a Chinese place in a mini mall on Sunset. We shared lemon chicken and shrimp fried rice. “Do you think they can actually prove anything?” Louis asked as he dished out his lunch.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, let’s think about the theft first. They can place him at the scene. He logged the money at the scene. They found ten thousand in cash at his home.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he logged the money. Someone logged it in his name.”

“Right. But I was looking at it from their point of view. They’ve probably also run a credit report like we did.”

“Okay. They know he needs money. They think he has a motive.”

Louis took a bite of his chicken and chewed thoughtfully. Swallowing, he said, “Unless that ten thousand is in an evidence bag like the money we found, they probably can’t prove that it’s money from the crime scene.”

“It doesn’t sound like they have much,” I said, “But if no one at the scene will admit to his getting coffee, which is basically them lying, there’s no telling what else they might be willing to lie about. For all we know they have actual ‘witnesses’ to his taking the money.”

“Did you notice that when you brought up the coffee run, Wellesley didn’t say she knew about it or that she didn’t know about it?”

“She just said asking about it would get us killed.?”

“By who?” Louis asked. “And why?”

8

I did not get back to the store in time to send Patty Wong home before Mikey got there. I probably shouldn’t have gone to lunch, and we probably shouldn’t have tried the freeway on the way back. As I walked into the store, I prepared myself for having to tear them apart, possibly getting scratched in the process.

However, the first thing I noticed when I walked in was the silence. Absolute, bone-chilling silence. I half expected to find the store completely empty when I got to the front, but no, Patty and Mikey were both behind the counter. Mikey was reading Frontiers, while Patty picked at her nails.

“No movie?” I asked in what I hoped was a bright voice.

“We can’t agree.”

“I suggested Shanghai Surprise.”

Mikey rolled his eyes.

“Gay boys love Madonna.”

“When she sings.”

“He wanted The Lion in Winter. All that yelling.”

“It’s a classic and it doesn’t rent enough.”

“Shanghai Surprise doesn’t rent enough either.”

“With good reason.”

“There isn’t one single movie in the store you could both agree on?” I asked.

Silence. I shook my head, then said, “Well, I’m here now so you can go, Patty. Thank you for staying late.”

“I do need to talk to you,” she said.

“About?”

“I may have gotten into a fight with a customer.”

“May have?” Mikey said.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Well, there was a customer who was here first thing right as I opened the door. He had rented The Conversation and Behind the Green Door. They were due back last night by ten o’clock. He wanted me to wave the fee because he’d brought them in at exactly eleven o’clock. I said absolutely not.”

“You can use your discretion.”

“That’s what I said,” Mikey said.

“You talked to Mikey about it?”

“I did use my discretion,” she said. “My discretion is that videos need to be exactly on time. Not ten minutes late, not five minutes late, not a minute late. If you’re not going to hold to that rule, then what’s the point of even having a late fee?”

“First of all, they’re my rules. And I’m giving you permission to bend my rules if you think it will help keep a customer. Honestly, it does sound like this guy made an effort, you probably should have given him a break.”

“You’re too nice, you know that don’t you?”

“Yes, I do!” I nearly shouted at her.

She huffed and stormed off into the tape room, presumably to get her things and go home. Mikey looked at me and “You really are too nice.”

“Stop agreeing with her!”

I turned on my heel and thumped over to my office. I would have slammed the door, but it’s not that kind. It gently whooshed to a close, hardly expressing my emotion.

I should fire Patty just to prove I’m not too nice. Of course, I knew I wouldn’t. It didn’t seem very nice to fire someone for simply pointing out you’re too nice. It wouldn’t be the only reason, but it would be the only one I was willing to talk about.

I really couldn’t figure out why she wanted to work for me. I didn’t pay well, she didn’t seem to like movies, she certainly didn’t like the customers. Of course, if she really did make money from phone sex then it might be nice to have a part-time job she could tell people about. ‘I work in a video store’ is much more socially acceptable than I get old men off by talking dirty to them over the phone.

Attempting to put the whole thing out of my mind, I read through a couple of studio brochures, I placed an order for new videos. There wasn’t anything great coming out: In the Line of Fire, a bunch of random Disney movies, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Striking Distance… I wouldn’t be tempted to take a lot of them home myself.

Over the course of the afternoon, I had three interviews. All disasters. Well, two disasters and, strangely, one possibility. The first interview ended abruptly when the young man—he was only nineteen—asked me what I paid. I told him and he got up and left, so apparently it was not enough. The third interview was a lesbian from North Hollywood who was only available for four hours on Thursdays. Well, most Thursdays. Or more like every other Thursday. And no Thursday in April or August.

The most possible candidate was named Ryan. He was dressed like a devotee of Kurt Cobain. I only knew who Cobain was because he’d gotten a lot of press—I’d seen it in Frontiers—for saying “Everyone is gay.” I guess it was nice of him to say that, but it was highly unlikely. Anyway, I was asking Ryan about his work experience, which happily was mostly retail, when he stopped me and asked, “How do you feel about felonies?”

That was a difficult question. In the last week I’d burglarized a garage, interfered with a police investigation—well, actually two—and lied to the police. Though I’m not sure that last rises to the level of a felony.

“It really depends,” I said, honestly.

“I have a felony conviction. I’m also required to register as a sex offender.”

“What did you do?” I asked carefully, hoping he wouldn’t explain too much.

“I had sex in a car.”

“Wait. What?”

“I had sex in a car.”

“That’s a felony?”

“My pants were down around my ankles when the cop showed up. That’s indecent exposure. And I drew a judge who hates gay guys. So, no reduction to a misdemeanor.”

I sat with that for a minute. I had certainly had sex in a car, back when Jeffer and I first got together. It was fun to have sex in different places, some of them a little risky. And it didn’t occur to me at the time—I guess I was a little busy—that it could get us arrested. And put on a sex offenders list. I mean, straight people had sex in cars all the time and they never ended up as sex offenders.

I almost hired him right there.

“Well, I’m going to make a decision in a few days. I’ll give you a call.”

“Um, before I go, I have an idea. I was thinking that it would be cool to catalog your porn videos by kink. It might be useful to be able to tell your customers which ones have prison scenes, gangbangs, body worship, foot stuff, public sex…”

The last was said a bit sheepishly.

“That would take a lot of time, which I couldn’t pay for.”

“Oh, I would do it for free. On my own time.”

“Well, that’s certainly something to think about.”

I went home around seven. We hadn’t had much of a rush, and I always got the feeling Mikey liked the store better when I wasn’t there anyway. When I walked into the courtyard nothing was happening. Absolutely nothing. Marc and Louis’ apartment looked empty, which made sense since Marc’s Infiniti was not in its parking space. I figured they were doing something with the house they were buying. Measuring, daydreaming, talking to painters, meeting with handymen. Buying a house involved a lot more than I remembered.

It had been six years since Jeffer and I bought the house on Hayworth. A very long six years. I wasn’t quite twenty-four when we bought it; Jeffer was ten years older. Honestly, he did most of the work. I think I only saw the house once before we moved in. And then, after he died, when his family sold it, well, my end was just a twenty-minute appointment at the escrow company where I signed papers and received a much smaller check than I expected.

Walking into my apartment, I struggled not to rehash my whole relationship with Jeffer. There was a lot to be angry about: with him, with his family, with myself. But it was over and none of it could be fixed. No matter how much I would have liked to go back and fix it all.

I took a Budget Gourmet out of the freezer—Swedish meatballs—and slipped it into the oven. My mother, not to mention Louis, would be horrified. But it was easy and fast. I laid out my medication and then sat down with a half a glass of white wine to wait the necessary twenty-five minutes for my dinner to be ready.

To avoid dwelling on the past, I dwelled on the future. Well, the near future. What should we do next to help Javier? I really did want to help him. He’d certainly helped me in the past. Something was bothering me about the arraignment. It wasn’t Detective Wellesley being an asshole, I was used to that. It wasn’t even the lack of concern Javier’s lawyer had for whether he was innocent or not. It was that his mother wasn’t there. Javier needed her. She was his mother. If it were me, my mother would have been there. And if she wasn’t there it would be because she was breaking into the judge’s chambers.

I grabbed my cordless phone from its base, checked my address book for a number, and called Patty Wong.

“Patty,” I said when she answered. “Could you open the store tomorrow?”

Long silence. “I told you I prefer to close.”

“I’m keeping that in mind. Honest.” Total lie, of course. I was not keeping it in mind. “I need someone to open tomorrow, can you do it?”

She sighed heavily. “Have you hired someone else yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Who are you considering?”

“I haven’t narrowed it down yet. I’ve seen some great people.” Two lies in two short sentences. I was impressing myself. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious about what my schedule will be when you hire someone.”

“Oh, it’ll probably stay the same,” I said. I mean, I couldn’t put her on the schedule with Mikey. Eldridge the student or Ryan the sex offender would both be good fits for Mikey which meant I was likely to put one of them on nights.

The uncomfortable silence suggested she wasn’t happy with my decision. Finally, she said, “Well, you do what you have to do. That’s what you’re going to do anyway.”

Then I finally asked, “Patty, this isn’t your only source of income, is it?”

“I’m going to have to go now. I’m getting another call.”

And then she hung up. I doubted she was getting another call. Or maybe it was a sex call? No, that couldn’t be right. She wanted to work nights. If she made her money from phone sex, wouldn’t she need to be at home? But then, I was making the assumption that most phone sex took place at night. I could be wrong. For all I knew, the peak hours could be late morning to early afternoon. Which would mean working at the video store was costing her money.

I have to admit, I was thoroughly confused.

* * *

I also have to admit, I didn’t sleep well that night. I knew I wanted to talk to Javier’s mother—well, not wanted, needed—but I didn’t know much about her. I knew where she lived, but I certainly didn’t want to go back there. She might shoot at me again and not miss this time.

It was best to meet her in a public place, somewhere she might hesitate before starting a gunfight. Even though it was a Saturday evening, the gray suit she’d been wearing and the briefcase suggested she’d just come from a high-powered job. She was some kind of professional; doctor, lawyer, financial advisor. One who worked weekends.

Of course, I had no way of figuring out which profession. Which is how I ended up parked outside her house just after 7 a.m., slunk down in the driver’s seat, baseball cap firmly secured on my head with its bill practically touching my nose.

The garage door opened at 7:36 and a brand new, apple red Jaguar pulled out of the garage. I doubted she’d traded in her old one. It was probably a loaner she’d gotten while they fixed her window. Still, I was in luck. It was going to be easier to follow a red Jaguar than a gray one.

I waited until she was at Franklin taking a right. As soon as she was out of sight, I started my car and zipped down to the intersection. On Franklin, she was three or four car lengths ahead of me. The Jaguar was clipping along, and I had to press my Nissan’s accelerator all the way to the floor to keep up. I wondered if she was driving one of those twelve-cylinder models.

At Hillhurst, she stopped and waited for the light. Her blinker was on. She was about to turn left. There was a Chevy Citation sitting between us. When the light changed, the Citation and I followed her onto Hillhurst going south. Soon we reached the big intersection by the Vista Theater, where Hollywood and Sunset merged with at least two other streets. I’d allowed another car to slip between us so she wouldn’t know I was there. She took a left. I had to speed up to make it through the light.

I was afraid she might turn onto Virgil and cut down to the 10, but she stayed with Sunset. She stayed with Sunset a long time. Eventually, we were in Echo Park. She turned right onto a side street and then, almost immediately into a parking lot behind a three-story brick building.

Not wanting her to see me, I drove past the parking lot and down the street. The neighborhood quickly became residential with some nice Craftsmans that would be worth fixing up. I came to an alley and cut across to the next side street. Then I drove back out to Sunset. I found a space in front of the brick building and parked. Getting out of the car, I filled the meter with a couple of quarters.

I stood back and tried to study the building. It was probably from the twenties or thirties and had a lot of extra ornamentation. There was a neon sign up on top that I couldn’t read. It had once been some kind of recreation center. The first floor was storefronts and the second two floors looked to be apartments. Of course, I had no idea if she’d gone into one of the businesses or one of the apartments. For that matter, the parking lot could service a number of other businesses. She might not have come into this building at all.

There was a coffee shop, a bookstore, some kind of personal trainer— none of which she was dressed for. Just around the corner, there was an attorney’s office: Ortiz and Green. Okay, so that’s where she was going. I took a deep breath and tried the door. I pushed and it didn’t budge. Locked.

I stepped back. Her house was pretty nice. So was her car. I wondered how she made enough money to support them as a storefront attorney in Echo Park. It wasn’t a great neighborhood. In a ten-block radius, I doubted there were many people who could afford an attorney. So, what was she doing here?

“You,” I heard her say when she came up behind me. I turned and saw that she was wearing another excellently tailored suit. This one was navy. She was juggling her briefcase, purse, a set of keys and a fancy coffee in a paper cup.

“Hello, Mrs. Ortiz. I was hoping I could speak to you and maybe you wouldn’t shoot at me this time.”

She squinted at me for a moment then handed me her keys. “Open the door.”

I had a little trouble with the door, it was very old and kind of sticky. When I finally opened it, I turned to hand her the keys back and she was glaring at me as though I was less than human. Without a word, I followed her into the storefront and back to a makeshift office. She set her coffee down on a folding table that was serving as her desk. She took the nicest chair. I stood for a moment waiting for her to suggest I sit. Finally, I just sat down in the folding chair across from her.

“What is it you want?”

“I went to Javier’s arraignment. You weren’t there.”

“He had an attorney, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then there was no need for me to be there.”

“I think he could have used your support.”

“If he wanted my support, he could have called me,” she was very calm. She even took a sip of her coffee.

“He was arraigned on murder charges.”

That caused a ripple. “Who was he charged with killing?”

“A woman named LaToya Kennedy. The police think she was his girlfriend, but she wasn’t.”

“Yes, I’m sure you think that. You people think everyone is like you.”

I decided to ignore that. For one thing, it was rude. For another, I hadn’t actually said anything except that LaToya Kennedy wasn’t Javier’s girlfriend. She’d made a leap there. One that said she knew more about her son than she was willing to admit.

“The police think the two of them stole money together and then he killed her. I guess so he could keep all the money or something.”

“That doesn’t sound like Javi. He wouldn’t treat a woman like that. I taught him better.”

I literally bit my tongue. Seriously, she taught him not to kill women? That seemed pretty basic.

“I don’t think he’d treat anyone like that,” I said.

“What exactly do you want from me?”

“His lawyer is already talking about a plea deal.”

“His lawyer shouldn’t have shared that with you.”

“I didn’t get the impression he was a good lawyer. We have a receipt that proves Javier was away from the Twiss crime scene for at least a half an hour. Someone else could have easily have stolen the money. And if he didn’t steal the money—”

“Javi gave you the receipt?”

“Not exactly.”

“How exactly did you get it?”

“My friend took Javier’s wallet while he was being arrested. Javier, not my friend.”

“Chain of custody. It’s not admissible.”

“But, there’s a credit card receipt, too. From MasterCard. It proves it was him who paid for it.”

“I don’t—” she stopped abruptly. Then, took a long sip of her coffee. “He doesn’t need you. His attorney could get the information from MasterCard.”

“I don’t think he’s going to. He told us to destroy the receipt.”

“Is that it? Is that all the evidence you have?”

“If we can prove he didn’t take the money, then there’s no motive for the murder.”

“But the money was in the box you took out of my garage. So he did steal the money.”

I explained about the first present and the second present and the money the police found under his bed.

“But that’s only twenty thousand dollars. Where’s the other eighty?”

“We don’t know.”

“You’re saying my son is being framed and his lawyer’s not doing anything about it?”

“Basically.”

We sat quietly for a moment. She drank her coffee. I was jealous. I could really use a coffee. Maybe a latté. Maybe a mocha latté. I thought about stopping at the coffee shop on the way back to my car. Then I asked, “What kind of work do you do here?”

“I represent disadvantaged members of the Latino communities. Pro Bono. I worked for thirty years in corporate law and made a fortune. Now it’s time to give back.”

“It may not seem like it, but at the moment I think your son might be a disadvantaged Latino.”

9

As I drove home, the news on the radio told me that the ice-skater who’d been knee-capped was named Nancy Kerrigan and the person behind her attack was the husband of another skater, Tonya Harding. Harding claimed to not know anything about the attack. Which, for me, begged the question, was it a surprise anniversary gift? ‘Honey, I decided not to get you roses. Instead, I beat up your competition.’ Romantic, right?

Even though I’d asked Patty Wong to come in early, I managed to beat her to the store. I decided I’d ignore everything and went to my office. I flipped through my address book and called Louis.

“Mr. Dosier’s office.”

“What? Who?” I said, reflexively. Then I remembered this was Louis’ last name. Meanwhile I’d been hung up on. I called back.

“Mr. Dosier’s office.”

“Yes, this is Mr. Valentine calling.”

“One moment.”

When Louis picked up the line I asked, “When did you get a secretary?”

“Assistant.”

“Whatever.”

“I got a promotion. Right after we got back from Las Vegas.”

“Oh,” I said. How had I missed that? I mean, I remembered celebrating something around that time. I thought it was their anniversary. I’d brought a gift. I mean, Leon hadn’t… but he’s Leon. “Anyway, I went to see Javier’s mother this morning.”

“Do I need to call an ambulance?”

“I went to her office. I didn’t think she’d shoot me there.” Though, honestly, I suppose she could have. “She’s a lawyer.”

“And she’s not helping her own son? That’s cold.”

“I might have got her interested. I hope I did.”

“That would be good.”

“She said the receipt didn’t matter. But they can get the charge from the credit card company and so chain of custody isn’t an issue.”

“So she thinks it’s valuable?”

“She didn’t say, exactly. She’s not really chatty.” That was an understatement.

“Neither is her son,” Louis pointed out.

“True. Have you thought about who might be trying to frame Javier?”

“As a matter of fact, Marc and I had a long talk about it last night. He’s got an idea he’s working on.”

“Okay,” I said. That was vague but intriguing. “Where were you last night?”

“House stuff. You know.”

“Are you getting excited?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know. It’s going to be a lot of work. And a lot of money. There’s a dining room—or there will be when we knock down a wall. So I’m looking forward to that.”

I heard Patty Wong come in the back door.

“Patty’s here. I should probably go.”

“What time are you off?”

I glanced around my desk at the bright yellow Post-It notes Mikey had a habit of sticking to my desk. One of them asked that I let him have a longer dinner on the twelfth so he could meet his boyfriend Randy to celebrate their anniversary.

“I should be home around eight, maybe nine.”

“Stop in and have dessert with us.”

I agreed to do that and hung up.

“Oh, you’re here,” Patty said when I walked out to the front. “You said you wouldn’t be. I didn’t think you were the sort to lie.”

“My errand didn’t take as long as I expected.”

“Mmmmm-hmmmm. I could have slept for an extra half an hour.” Was that why she wanted to work later? So she could sleep all day?

“Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s all about you. It’s always about you.” She was saying that as though it was a compliment, though it clearly wasn’t.

“It is my business.”

“Exactly. That’s what I meant.” She gave me a curious smile that suggested I was the one being weird. Which made me wonder, was I being weird?

“Just go ahead and open up,” I said, uncomfortably. “I’ll be in my office. Just wanted you to know that I’m here, that’s all.”

“Of course, you just relax. I’ll handle everything.”

No, I wasn’t the one being weird. She was.

In my office, I tried to distract myself with catalogs. But I’d already done the ordering for the week. Quickly, my mind drifted back to Javier. Who might be trying to frame him?

Actually, it wasn’t that hard a question. He was obviously being framed by someone who wanted him to go to prison. Someone who didn’t want him to be a policeman anymore. So, had he seen something he shouldn’t have? Is that what was going on? And, did he know that he saw something like that?

I needed to talk to him. I pulled out the phone book and looked up the phone number for the county jail. I called the number for visits and got a recording. It told me that visiting hours were on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I wrote them down.

I could go in the evening, which might be better. The recording was still playing, telling me that I couldn’t bring weapons, drugs or hygiene products. The first two made perfect sense. The third made me wonder if people had tried to pass off drugs as antiperspirant.

There was a long list of what I could and couldn’t wear. Most of which I hadn’t planned to wear anyway. But as it went on, I became more and more concerned. I didn’t want to wait until Friday. I needed to talk to Javier. I needed to talk to him now.

The recording had said that there were professional visiting hours from eight in the morning until seven at night basically any day of the week. By professional I was sure they meant lawyers. There was no way I could pass myself off as a lawyer. I only owned one suit and I promised myself I’d never wear it again.

I almost gave up the idea but then started wondering who else might be a professional. A psychologist might be sent to examine a prisoner, a social worker might come to help them transition back into society, maybe a parole officer, though I wasn’t sure why. I doubted I could pass myself off as a psychologist, I looked too young. Maybe a social worker, but Javier hadn’t been tried yet, no less sentenced. And since I wasn’t even sure if a parole—paralegal. Yes, that was it. I could pass myself off as a paralegal. I could pretend to work for Javier’s lawyer and bring some legal looking papers for him to sign. I opened up the bottom drawer in my desk and looked through my Pendaflex files. The only thing that looked remotely legal was my lease. I grabbed it and hurried out of the store.

On the way, I waved goodbye to Patty who stood there raising a well-plucked eyebrow at me. Over her head on the TV, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was playing. I was not sorry to miss that. About two blocks away there was a copy shop. I made a quick copy of the lease then asked for Wite-Out. I brushed out my signature as well as the heading for the document LEASE AGREEMENT then copied the copy. I rushed back to Pinx, slipped into the parking area to get my car, and drove home.

Dressing like a paralegal was harder than I expected. I assumed—and this may or may not be correct—that a paralegal was someone who wished they could be an attorney but couldn’t afford law school. I had the ‘couldn’t afford’ part down, but the ‘wishing I was a lawyer’ part was a little more challenging. I put on my nicest, bluest blue jeans, my shiniest pair of Doc Martens—well, my only Doc Martens, a white, button-down Oxford shirt with a red and black power tie and, well, it just wasn’t enough.

Finally, I decided to break my promise to myself and took out the jacket that went with the black suit I’d worn to Jeffer’s funeral and sworn I would never, ever wear again. Putting it on, I immediately saw that it completed the look. The clothes, along with my recently cut and almost behaving hair, made me look like someone who might someday wish to be an attorney.

It was almost eleven when I arrived at the Men’s Jail. I parked in their lot for five dollars. Then I walked into the jail. Carrying my thin, manilla folder, I went through a metal detector, then followed a sign over to the visitor’s reception desk. I started to explain what I was doing there and got a clipboard shoved at me. I had to fill out my name, the inmate’s name, and the firm I represented. The last was the hardest. I couldn’t actually remember what Javier’s lawyer’s name was, so I put down Ortiz and Green. As I slid the clipboard back, I prayed that they didn’t have a master list of who’s attorney was whose.

“Photo identification.”

I handed over my driver’s license.

“Business card.”

“I don’t have one. I’m new. I just started with Ortiz and Green.”

That earned me a disdainful stare. Then the question, “How is Marta?”

I looked both ways and said quietly, “Scary.” Well, it was the truth.

The receptionist nodded, and said, “Next time, bring a business card. Sit over there and someone will call you.”

I walked over to the waiting area where there were more people than chairs. The people, mostly men, were much more lawyer-y than I was. I waited for nearly an hour. Half-way through I found a place to sit. Honestly, the whole place was kind of awful. I mean, yes, it was a jail so it was probably supposed to be awful, but still…

Everything smelled like a very ineffective, pine-scented disinfectant. Beneath the surface there was the impression that some horrible bodily function had recently been cleaned up. Which is not to say the jail didn’t actually look clean. It did. But like much of what was said in the building, it was a lie.

Finally, a guard came out and called my name. He was a Black guy around my age, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone quite so bored. I was afraid he might fall asleep as he led me through what was essentially a cage with gates on either side, then down a long hallway until we got to a wall of beige doors. One—the furthest away from me—had a sign that said ATTORNEY ROOM, but I think it applied to all the doors. That seemed true when we stopped in the middle at a door with the number 7 above it.

“First visit?”

“Um, yeah.” I felt like I needed to say something that would sell the paralegal act. “I hope you’re treating our client well.”

He struggled to raise a doubtful eyebrow. “Your client is in segregation just like any other police officer. No more, no less.”

I guess that should have been obvious.

“You have fifteen minutes. I’ll be back to let you out. You have paperwork that needs to be signed?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t need a notary, do you? Because that’s a different room.”

“No, it’s fine.”

He handed me a clear Bic pen. “You’re going to need to return this to me when your visit is over. Don’t lose it. That would be a bad thing for your client and for you.”

“Okay,” I said. I hadn’t spent much of my life wondering if a Bic pen was a deadly weapon, but apparently it was.

The guard opened the door, and I stepped inside. I found myself in a room just slightly bigger than a phone booth, which was divided by a window. On either side of the window was a telephone. Each side had a kind of table and a metal stool attached to the floor. At the bottom of the window was an inch-high slot to pass papers back and forth.

I sat down and waited. After a few moments, Javier came in. This time he wore a set of dark blue scrubs—much more flattering than the orange. I realized I should have given more thought to everything I had to ask him. I only had fifteen minutes. What were the most important things to find out?

“What are you doing here?” he asked, even before he sat down.

“I have questions I need to ask you.”

“The guard said my lawyer sent paperwork to be signed. Did you lie your way in here?”

There really was no possible answer but, “Yes.”

He watched me for a moment. “Fine. What do you need to ask?”

“I went to see your mother.”

Two deep creases appeared between his eyes. “That’s not a question.”

“I think she might want to help you.”

“Also, not a question.”

“Okay, what’s the deal between you two?”

“I’m a disappointment. I’m not an attorney. Plus, I work at Rampart. That means I arrest a lot of Latinos. She has a problem with that.”

“Does she know you’re gay?”

He shook his head. “That would make me a bigger disappointment.”

“Where’s your father?”

“Beverly Hills with his second wife, Shelby.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not what it sounds like. He and my mother worked in corporate law, real estate partnerships, finance, things like that. They made a ton of money then my mother got very into her heritage. Her family has been here since before this was California, back when it was still Mexico. She decided being married to a white guy making money hand over fist wasn’t for her.”

I nodded. It fit with what she’d said to me that morning. I moved on, “When you were arrested, Louis took your wallet and keys. We found the coffee receipt. It proves you left the scene which means someone could have taken the money while you were gone.”

“I assumed they found my wallet and destroyed the receipt.”

“I told your lawyer about it, he said we should throw it away.”

“Then maybe you should.”

“But your mother pointed out we can get the receipt from the credit card company. We can prove that you left the scene. And it’s admissible in court.”

“It doesn’t mean I didn’t take the money, though. It just means I bought people coffee.”

“It means you were away from the scene for a period of time. That creates doubt. Someone else could have taken the money while you were gone. I mean, they probably did, right?”

“Or I took the money then went to get coffee so I’d have an alibi. A coffee receipt is not going to save me.”

“Your lawyer said no one at the scene mentioned you going for coffee, though. Isn’t that suspicious?”

He shrugged.

“Someone is trying to frame you. Do you know why?”

Not surprisingly, he didn’t answer. “I should probably sign that document, don’t you think?”

I slid the manilla folder through the slot followed by the Bic pen. Javier opened up the file and glanced at the document.

“This is your lease.”

“Yeah. It’s the only thing I had that looked legal.”

“You’d better hope they don’t read it.”

“That would be illegal.”

That made him smile—probably because I hadn’t been doing a good job of staying within the law lately, so it was ironic. He looked me over and said, “You look nice by the way. You look like someone they’d send to have me sign a document.”

That was one of the best compliments I’d gotten in a long time.

“I think I know the answer to this, but I have to ask, was LaToya Kennedy your girlfriend?”

“No. Who told you that?”

“One of the detectives. Who is she then? I mean, who was she?”

“She worked in the evidence room.”

“You were friends?”

“I barely knew her.”

“She had access to the stolen money, and she could have made the changes to the paperwork.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have an alibi for when she was murdered?”

“Not exactly.”

I tried to resist asking what that meant but failed. “Could you explain?”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’re not helping.”

“Neither are you.”

“I basically broke in here to see you, you could at least—”

“Fine,” he said, but then waited a moment. After a long sigh, he said, “I was at a place called Exile. I used a fake ID to get in. Happy?”

I’d heard of Exile. It was a stand-up sex club. Leon gave us the run down one Thursday night over dinner. It wasn’t like a bathhouse, there were no lockers or rooms. You bought a membership and then you could walk around and do whatever with whomever. Basically, standing up with your pants down around your ankles.

“Why would I be happy?”

“You’re disappointed in me.”

“No. It’s—you’re a single guy. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

All right, fine. I was a little jealous. Though I wasn’t sure of what exactly. I might have been jealous of Javier having sex with other guys, though if I thought about it, of course he was doing that. I might have been jealous because I wasn’t having sex with other guys. But I’d had bad luck with sex. First, there was my ex, Jeffer, who lied and gave me HIV, then there was C.B., the dead guy I woke up with. Neither experience made me particularly horny.

I tried to get off sex and back to crime. “So there’s no way you can prove where you were?”

“Nope.”

“LaToya Kennedy didn’t steal the money for herself, did she?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you got two packages. One that set up the other. If you hadn’t gotten the package with the sexy underwear, you’d have just opened the second package.”

“Right.”

“That means the whole thing was planned for weeks. Someone probably killed Elliott Twiss so that they could steal the money and blame it on you. She wouldn’t have been planning it alone.” Then, after reading the look on his face, I added, “You figured that out already, didn’t you?”

He slid the folder back under the window. When he did, he left his fingers resting on my side. His eyes implored me. I reached out and touched his fingers. They were warm and electric.

“I may never have another chance to say this. I’m sorry things never worked out for us. I feel like I missed out.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way. We can get you out of this. You know who’s trying to frame you, don’t you? Is it because you know something you shouldn’t? Is it someone in the LAPD?”

The guard knocked on the door. Our time was up.

“My lawyer is going to do a plea deal. That’s the best way forward.”

“But you didn’t do anything. Why would you take a deal?”

“Because I’ve done other things, things I ought to be punished for.”

10

After I left the jail, which was accompanied by an incredible feeling of relief, I drove back to my store. I parked in the back, then walked around to the street. I stopped in at Taco Maria and got two steak tacos and an order of chips and guac.

When I walked into my store, it was reasonably busy. Patty decided to ignore a customer and instead glare at me, saying, “Your mother called,” in the sort of tone that implied I should not be taking personal calls.

I was tempted to tell the customer she’d made wait that it was my store and it was perfectly fine for my mother to call, but I realized that would mean it would take even longer for him to get his videos.

Wisely, I ignored the situation and went back to my office. First, I ate my lunch. It was delicious. I tried not to think about what Javier had said or the heat I felt when he touched me. I mean, maybe I felt like I’d missed out, too. Like we’d missed out. I just—there’d been so many other things to think about, but now, suddenly, there was only Javier to think about.

When I finished my lunch it was after one, which meant it was four in Michigan. I dialed my mother, anxiously waiting for her to answer.

“Is everything okay?” I asked when she picked up.

“I don’t know, dear. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine,” I said, sounding exactly the opposite.

“Have you made any progress for poor Javier?”

“I’m not sure. I went to see him in jail this morning.”

“That must have been exciting. I’ve never been to jail before.”

“You really don’t want to go.”

“Well, yes, that’s what they say. But many of the places I’m not supposed to go have turned out to be quite fascinating.”

I thought it best to ignore that comment, for fear she might elaborate.

“Will you be able to get him out soon?” she asked.

“No. The judge didn’t grant bail. The only way to get him out is to prove his innocence.” And even that might not work.

“I’m sure you will. Does he have an alibi?”

“No. Not really. For the theft he was at the scene for the whole time except about half an hour. And the murder, well, he was home asleep. Alone.”

Well, I certainly wasn’t going to tell my mother the truth about where he was. Explaining sex clubs to my mother was out of the question.

“Oh, that is tough,” she said. “Can they connect him to the murder weapon?”

“I don’t think they’ve found it.”

“Well, I’m sure he doesn’t have a motive.”

“He’s been having money problems.”

“So they have motive and opportunity. All they need is means.”

“Mother—”

“What? I took out a few books on criminology from the library.”

“Oh dear.”

“Have you considered the possibility that someone is actively trying to frame him?”

“Yes. He won’t talk about it.”

“Then it’s probably true. He doesn’t want to tell you what he knows because he’s trying to protect you. That’s sweet of him, but very foolish.”

I said, “Uh-huh.” Not because I agreed. I mean that might be some of it, but the thing he’d said at the end, that he ought to be punished. I wasn’t sure that didn’t have a lot more to do with this than his watching out for me.

“So, who do you think is framing him?”

That raised the question, Who could frame him?

“I suppose that depends on what this is about. It might just be about the money. The police told the press that there was a hundred thousand dollars stolen from the Elliott Twiss crime scene. We can only account for twenty of it. That means someone else has at least eighty thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money. I don’t think my house is worth eighty thousand dollars.”

“Don’t tell that to Marc and Louis. They’re paying almost two-fifty for their house.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know.”

“So you think it’s all about money?”

“Maybe. I think LaToya Kennedy was behind the gift boxes.” She hadn’t heard about those, so I explained.

“And that’s why someone killed her,” she guessed. “To make sure she kept quiet.”

“Probably.”

“And they also killed this Elliott person. To get his money.”

“I think so.”

“That means they were planning to pin it on Javier for weeks. Why him?”

And that, I didn’t know.

* * *

The rest of the day was pretty average. People came in dribs and drabs, returned videos, checked out videos, asked for videos we wouldn’t have for months. Patty mostly watched. She finally left at two-thirty and Mikey came in at three. He immediately took Rhinestone out of the VCR (Patty especially loved bad movies starring Sylvester Stallone) and put in The Fugitive. Mikey was a little more dressed up than usual, wearing a shirt with a collar. He and Randy were meeting in Chinatown for their anniversary dinner. I felt bad. I should probably have given him the whole day off—but he seemed happy with the extra-long dinner hour.

As planned, I arrived home around eight. Marc and Louis were sitting in the courtyard drinking chardonnay. They’d already taken their dinner dishes inside. Marc smoked an extra-long cigarette.

“There you are,” Louis said when he saw me. He poured wine into a waiting glass and handed it to me. I noticed there was a fourth empty glass.

“Who’s coming?”

“Leon will be here in a few minutes. He said he’s got information. And by the way, Marc totally disagrees with your theory that this is all about the money.”

“Um, what?” When did I have that theory?

“I talked to Angie.”

“Of course, you did.”

“Someone’s trying to get Javier,” Marc said. “That’s the only logical explanation. Did you ask him who might be trying to frame him?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t want to tell me.”

“He’s protecting you. How romantic.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it romantic,” I said lamely, thinking back about our fingers brushing and what he said about missed opportunities. That led right to what he’d said about deserving this. I almost repeated that, but then, I don’t know, it seemed too personal.

“Noah,” Marc said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Louis asked if you wanted coffee.”

“You just gave me wine.” On occasion their hospitality was a little over the top.

Louis said, “I’ll get dessert.”

“You guys don’t want to wait for Leon?” I asked Marc.

“God, no. What was jail like?”

“Very governmental. Like high school with bars and safety glass but much scarier.”

“I don’t know, I thought high school was terrifying.”

“Did you go to high school?” I asked. Marc had spent his teenage years on a TV show called Kapowie.

“During hiatus.”

Dessert and Leon arrived at the same time. I thought the upside-down cranberry cake was more attractive, but I doubted Leon would agree. Once I saw the cake, I reversed my earlier decision, and said, “Sorry, can I have coffee instead of wine?”

“Absolutely,” Louis said. Meanwhile, Leon snatched my wine glass and poured the contents into his own.

“Never let good wine go to waste. Actually, never let bad wine go to waste either. One must always be frugal.”

Once Louis sat down, Leon took out the briefcase he’d carried up—which I’d thought was weird but, you know, Leon… He opened it and took out a short stack of papers. He handed each of us three sheets stapled together. He still had quite a few left, but I quickly forgot about them when he said, “This… is the Elliott Twiss autopsy.”

I was about to take a bite of the cake but stopped. “It’s not legal for us to have that, is it?”

“Of course not,” Leon said, grumpily. “You’re such a stickler for that kind of thing.”

“You mean what’s legal and what’s not?”

“Exactly. You should work on that.”

Glaring at him, I ate the bite of cake I’d kept hovering in front of my mouth. It was dark and spicy with a wonderful sweetness on top.

“So how did you get it?” Marc asked Leon.

“It’s called a Rolodex. I just called people I know until someone knew someone who knew someone. Actually, I was trying to get a copy of the murder book, but this was the best I could do.”

“Still impressive,” Louis said.

“Thank you.”

“Did you have to pay for it?” I asked.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact… dinner and a little romance.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, darling. As they say, in the dark all cats are black.”

“Still.”

“I sincerely want to help Javier. The least I can do is get a blow job.”

I really wanted to tell Louis the cake was delicious—well, I really wanted to change the subject by telling Louis the cake was delicious. And it was. Very. But he and Marc were already deep into the autopsy. Which made the timing seem wrong. Frowning, I started to read the pages in front of me.

The patient was a twenty-four-year-old male found dead in his living room by a neighbor during the late morning of December 23rd, 1993. Patrol officers arrived at the scene shortly thereafter. After securing the scene, EMS were called, and the patient was officially pronounced dead. Detective Javier O’Shea was also called. Polaroid photographs were taken of the patient in situ. Rigor mortis had already begun.

Under the heading, EXTERNAL EXAMINATION, it continued:

Patient is well-developed, well-nourished twenty-four-year-old White male. Upon arrival, the patient’s hands were bound together in the back with silver duct tape. After being photographed, tape was cut and removed. Body is still in rigor mortis. An opening was made over the liver, a thermometer inserted into the liver. Temperature of the liver was shown to be eighty-three degrees. Time of death would then be ten to twelve hours prior to patient’s arrival at morgue. Death is estimated to have occurred sometime after midnight on the twenty-third. Patient has no marks, cuts, abrasions, or other defensive wounds. Back of the head shows entry wound from small caliber handgun. Gun was fired at close range, as stippling is present around the wound. No exit wound…

Louis must have gotten to roughly the same spot as he abruptly said, “This looks like a professional killing.”

“Oh Louis, how would you know?” Marc asked.

“It’s just logical. A small caliber gun is used so that the bullet can enter the brain cavity, but not exit. Meaning it bounces around within the skull, basically shredding the brain. Best of all, it leaves very little mess.”

“Hence, professional,” Leon said.

“You know, I just want to say…” They all looked at me as though I was about to say something important. “That the cake is delicious, Louis.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Of course, it’s delicious,” Leon said. “It’s always delicious.”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tell him.” I took a too big bite of the cake and awkwardly started chewing. A few moments later, like the others, I was back to reading the autopsy.

The internal examination did not show anything unusual. Well, until the brain was examined. I stared at a paragraph for a minute, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

“What’s the occipital bone?”

“The back of the skull,” Louis said.

I pushed the autopsy away from me. I’d had enough.

“And…” Leon said, as though he anticipated a drum roll. “This is LaToya Kennedy’s autopsy.” He passed out another set of papers. It was like he was reading my mind and not in a friendly way. I didn’t want to read another autopsy. I left mine sitting in front of me.

Leon said, “Notice that her hands were also taped behind her, and she was shot through the occipital bone.”

“How does that happen?” I asked.

“Well, they tape your hands and then—”

“I mean, why didn’t she fight back? Why didn’t Elliot Twiss fight back? Wouldn’t they know what’s about to happen? Why did they cooperate?”

“I suppose they thought there was a chance they weren’t going to be killed,” Marc said.

“So, it’s optimism?”

“Hope, more likely,” Louis said.

“She should have screamed,” I said. “Louis, didn’t you say there were four people in the house when LaToya was killed?”

“That’s what it said in the newspaper.”

“What time was she killed?” Marc asked. “Maybe the other people in the house were asleep?”

“It happened in the middle of the night,” I said.

“Where does it say that?” asked Leon.

“Javier said it. He doesn’t have an alibi because he was at Exile.”

“Oh, he was, was he?” Leon said. “That’s not fair. I was there twice last month and he wasn’t there either time.”

“That’s really not the point, Leon,” Louis said. “Don’t you have to buy a membership to those places? And show an ID?”

“He used a fake one.” I shrugged and said, “I’m sure he thought it was a good idea at the time.”

“Hmmm, I’m sure he did,” Marc said.

“It appears the same person who killed Elliott Twiss also killed LaToya Kenney. I wonder if Javier has an alibi for when Elliott Twiss was killed.”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Well, we’re going to need to find out, aren’t we?” Leon said.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

11

The next morning, I woke up thinking I needed to talk to Javier again. It had barely been twenty-four hours. I was afraid to go back and pretend to be a paralegal and have him sign another copy of my lease. I doubted I’d get away with that trick again. No, I was going to have to wait another day. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were the days anyone could visit. I could manage to be just anyone.

Of course, I wanted to know if he had an alibi for the Twiss killing. I also wanted to ask again who might want to frame him—I was pretty sure he knew but didn’t want to tell me.

It had to have something to do with one of the cases he was working. Probably one from sometime around Thanksgiving. There had to be enough time for him to piss someone off, and then enough time for them to plan how to get him, and then convince LaToya Kennedy to help them. That was a lot of time.

So which case? And how could I find out? I sat up in bed and literally said, “Oh crap.”

His cases were also Detective Wellesley’s. I was going to have to talk to her. And that did not make me happy. Still, over a bowl of cereal and my morning meds, I thought about how to approach her. I decided I’d just go over to Rampart Station and look for her. It wasn’t that far away.

First, though, I had to call Patty Wong and ask her to open the store. Again. That didn’t go well.

“Is this going to be a regular thing?”

“No, something’s come up. That’s all.”

“Things keep coming up. I did tell you I prefer to work nights. I’m not what you’d call a morning person. I’ve barely got my makeup on before ten. Can I say no?”

“Oh, um, well, I guess.”

“Then I’m saying no.”

“Okay. Never mind, then. Come in at eleven.”

“Eleven-thirty?”

“Sure. Come in at eleven-thirty.”

She hung up on me. I really did have to fire her. I mean, sure, I’d been playing fast and loose with her schedule, but she was the one who said she wanted to work for me. You’d think she’d be grateful for the extra half an hour, right?

I showered and got dressed for work, all the time hatching a plan on how to talk to Wellesley. Before I left, I called Rampart Station and left a message for her. I told the young man who’d answered, the young man who was probably a Frontier Scout earning a badge, that I had something for Wellesley, and she just needed to stop by the video store and pick it up.

Getting to the store well after ten, later than I liked, I ran around and got things set up. Right after I opened the door, I put in the tape Coal Miner’s Daughter and got busy putting the returns back into inventory. When Patty Wong came in, I slunk back to my office and hid there for a couple of hours. I only had one brief interaction with her. About ten minutes after she got there, she knocked on my door, and said, “I can’t stand country music. I’m going to throw on Heaven’s Gate.” She was gone before I could object.

Around twelve-thirty, I began to worry that Wellesley might not have gotten my message. I felt like I should do something about that, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave another message. Perhaps I should go to the station. Could I go there? Did I have time? I had to drive there, park, find Wellesley, get her to answer my questions, find my car, and drive back. In less than two hours. And if I was going to do that, I’d have to leave—

Patty Wong was knocking at my door. Without waiting for me to answer, she swung the door open, and said, “There are two homicide detectives here to see you.”

She looked me up and down as though she was trying to decide if I was dead. Or a murderer. I wasn’t either, so I said, “Thank you.”

A few moments later I was standing with Wellesley in front of Sci-Fi. Detective Featherstone was floating around nearby. I knew he could hear us. It wasn’t a big enough store for private conversations, but I didn’t care.

“You have something for me?” Wellesley asked.

“Oh. Yeah,” I said, right before I ran over and jumped behind the counter, opened a box from underneath then slipped out a special card. Returning to Sci-Fi, I held it out to her.

“What is this?” she asked as she took the card.

“It’s good for one free video rental.”

“That’s why you called me? To give me a free rental?”

“No. Actually, I want to ask you some questions. I think Javier is being framed.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he couldn’t do it. It’s not in him.”

“Yeah, that’s how investigation works—you follow your opinions,” she said sarcastically. “Do you have any facts?”

“Elliot Twiss and LaToya Kennedy were killed in the same way. If Javier has an alibi for the time Twiss was killed, then he couldn’t have done both murders.”

“Does Javier have an alibi for the Twiss murder?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that since he was lead on the Twiss murder that he could have simply copied the killer’s MO to make it seem like LaToya Kennedy was—hey, hold on—how do you know they were killed the same way? That information hasn’t been released.”

“It was just a guess,” I lied.

“Well, stop guessing.”

“I’m sure Javier is being framed. Can you tell me about the cases the two of you have been working on for the past few months? One of them—”

“No, I cannot give you that information.”

She glared at me for a moment. Then said, “You need to stop. I know you went to see Javier. You went to see his mother. You and your friends went to see a low-level drug dealer named Ricky Lee Charles.”

“I got a haircut.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“But I did get a haircut.” I resisted the temptation to reach up and tug at my hair to prove it was shorter than the last time—

“Just stop. None of this is your business.”

“Javier is innocent.”

“No. I’m sorry. He’s not.”

“Let me ask you a question. Do you know where the eighty thousand dollars is?”

“What do you mean eighty thousand? There was a hundred to start and only ten was found at Javier’s. Why do you think there’s only eighty thousand missing? Why not ninety?”

Oh, crap. Me and my big mouth. I managed to avoid getting arrested by impressing upon Wellesley that I could not, under any circumstances, count.

“I, uh, you know, math isn’t really my thing.”

“Why does that not surprise me? Fine, we’re done,” she said, bringing the interview to a close. Before she left the store, she used her free rental on Kindergarten Cop. As they walked out of the store, Featherstone glanced back at me and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “What a bitch.” Which, honestly, was no help at all.

I turned to go back to my office, but Patty stopped me by asking, “Since I came in a half an hour late can I stay until three-thirty?”

“God, no.” The last thing I needed was a repeat of the cold war between her and Mikey.

“What does that mean?”

“Um, well, you could leave at two, if you want.”

“Then I’d lose a whole hour.”

“Okay but you could have picked up half an hour and didn’t want to.”

She struggled to keep a frown off her face. Forcing a smile she said, “You’re the boss.”

Those words had never sounded quite so insulting.

* * *

It was Thursday night, the night we got together for dinner no matter what. Every week I scheduled Carl and Denny to come in and help Mikey. That way Mikey got a dinner break and I never got held up at the store. I left at quarter to seven and was standing in our courtyard by seven.

The table in our courtyard was set, a black-and-gray herringbone tablecloth, shiny black Fiestaware dishes, vintage silverware and enough IKEA candles to burn down a church. There were five settings and five chairs.

“Is Tina coming?” I asked when Louis brought out a glass of wine for me.

“Tina? Don’t be silly. She dumped us for glitz and glamor. No. Marc has a surprise.”

“I do,” Marc agreed, suddenly standing next to Louis.

A moment later Leon came up the stairs. He was still dressed for work in a light gray, almost silver suit. His shirt and tie came close to matching the color of the suit. He carried a bottle of wine in one hand. He glanced down at the table, and said, “Oh my. Are we playing guess who’s coming to dinner?”

“Don’t even bother,” Louis said. “You’ll never guess.”

“Margaret Thatcher.”

“Why on earth would you guess Margaret Thatcher?” Marc asked.

“Louis said I’ll never guess. It had to be someone completely illogical.”

“Well, he’s not that illogical.”

“Ah, it’s a he,” Leon said, then began to think who it might be. “Is it Jeff Stryker?”

“Oh my God,” I said.

“It’s not a porn star,” Louis said.

“Pity,” Leon replied.

Someone behind us cleared his throat and we all turned to find a man in his late forties, balding, his middle pressing a wrinkled white shirt out over his belt. He wore an ill-fitting suit, though it might have fit several years ago when it was in style. He held a quart-sized bottle of beer in one hand and some wilting daisies in the other.

“Are you the mystery guest?” Leon asked, his voice dripping with disappointment.

“This—is Don Wakowski,” Marc said. “He’s the technical advisor on Street Patrol.”

We all nodded since we knew what Street Patrol was. I didn’t watch it, but at the store we had the entire first season on three tapes. The boxes made it seem like the fictional LAPD officers shot even more people than the real ones.

“This is my partner, Louis,” Marc said. “And these are our friends Noah and Leon.”

I was about to point out that Leon and I were not partners, when Don said, “You know, funny story, I thought you said your partner’s name was Lois. I brought her flowers.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Louis said. “I like flowers.” He reached out and took the daisies from Don adding, in his best Donna Reed voice, “I’ll just put these in a vase.” Then he went inside.

The four of us stood there awkwardly, then Don looked from me to Leon and back again.

Leon said, “Yes, we’re all gay. But don’t be frightened. We’re only allowed to convert one heterosexual a month. And we always met our quota during the first week. It’s the thirteenth, so you’re fine.”

“Leon, behave,” Marc said.

“I’m okay with you boys. It just… took me by surprise.”

Desperate to move on, Marc said, “Don spent twenty-five years with the LAPD, so he knows a lot about them.”

“I do. On the other hand, I don’t know why I’m here exactly. One of the producers told me I should come. Said you wanted advice. You boys don’t want to join the academy, do you? That’s not a good idea. I mean, the LAPD is not that kind of place.”

“We’re not going to join,” Marc said.

“Are you writing a script? Some kind of gay Charlie’s Angels?”

Honestly, I’d be more likely to watch a gay Charlie’s Angels than Street Patrol, but now was not the time to mention that.

“No, that’s not what we’re doing,” Louis said, returning from the kitchen. “I brought you a mug for your beer. You did want to drink that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. And I’ll take a shot of whiskey if you’ve got it.”

“Coming right up.”

“Our friend is being framed for crimes he didn’t commit,” I said. “He’s a homicide detective. Javier O’Shea.”

“Oh yeah. I’ve heard that name. He’s your friend, huh?”

I felt uncomfortable. I might have just outed Javier by association.

Marc covered by saying, “Yes, we’ve actually solved a few murders. That’s how we know him.”

“You’re shitting me,” Don said.

“Well, mostly Noah,” Marc admitted.

“Hey, we all contribute,” Leon said.

“We do it together,” I said to Don, who looked very confused. To help him out, I added, “Kind of like real life Charlie’s Angels.”

He still looked confused.

“Since it seems like someone in the LAPD is trying to frame our friend,” Marc said. “I thought it might be good if we could talk to someone who understands the department.”

“Yeah, well, right off the bat there are about seven thousand police in the LAPD, not counting unsworn officers. You have a lot of suspects.” Don seemed revived by the opportunity to offer factual information.

“What’s an unsworn officer?” I asked.

“Office support mainly. LAPD has a lot of positions that don’t require the ability to make an arrest.”

“Like LaToya Kennedy,” I said.

“Who?”

“Do you know much about Rampart?” Louis asked. He’d brought out a bottle of Jack Daniels and balanced a bunch of shot glasses in one hand. He set them up on the table.

I said, “None for me, thanks.”

“Wimp,” Leon said.

Don knocked back a shot of Jack. Leon and Marc followed suit.

Then Don said, “Yeah, we base a lot of Street Patrol on Rampart. That’s why there’s so much corruption on the show.” He looked briefly uncomfortable, and said, “My daughter likes the gays.”

“Uh… thanks,” Marc said. We all glanced at each other.

Then I asked, “What kind of corruption is there at Rampart?”

“Police brutality, theft of cash and narcotics, coercion, perjury, falsification of evidence, witness intimidation, murder.”

“Wow. Sounds like they’ve covered all the basis,” I said.

“On that note, why don’t we sit down,” Louis said. “I’ll bring out the salad.”

We sat. Rather than continue, Marc asked a neutral question, “Do you live nearby?”

“Not really. I’m in the hills above Sunset.”

“Oh, that’s a nice area.”

“Yeah, working on a TV show about cops pays a lot better than actually being a cop.”

“You have kids?” I asked because, well, that’s what you asked straight people. And he had mentioned a daughter.

“Three girls.”

“Any cops?” Leon asked.

“Over my dead body.”

Louis returned with a large, colorful bowl he’d gotten at Pier One which contained the salad. He’d put on a frilly pink apron—Leon had bought it for him as a joke that I’d never seen him wear before. I think he was teasing Don, or mocking him, I wasn’t sure which. He told us to serve ourselves, suggesting that Don start.

The salad was at least two types of lettuce, kalamata olives, tiny tomatoes, feta cheese, red onions and croutons, dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette.

As Don served himself, Louis said, “I get the impression you’re not surprised that our friend Javier is being framed.”

“It seems par for the course.”

“Even though he’s LAPD himself?”

A cloud seemed to hover over him as he offered the salad tongs to Leon. He paused and then asked, “Is this about SNIT?”

I almost laughed. Snit? Really?

“SNIT?” Marc asked. “What is that?”

“Special Narcotics Investigation Team. It usually has four or five members. They were impressive at first, well, their numbers are still impressive, but their methods are not… they’re responsible for a lot of the bad things going on at Rampart. Coerced confessions are their specialty. They’ve sent a lot of suspects to the hospital.”

“Do you know the names of these SNIT guys?” Louis asked.

“Willard Campbell, Jason Feeley, Ben Freeman, David Marek. I think there’s a fifth one. Or was. I don’t remember his name.”

“Would they have anything to do with homicide?”

“Committing them, yes. Investigating them, no. They’re narcotics.”

The salad was excellent. If we hadn’t had a guest, I would have asked what the entrée was. Honestly, I hated to be surprised. And the anticipation…

“Do you know Detective Wellesley?” Marc asked.

“I know of her. She’s not well liked.”

“Why is that?”

“There was a consent decree in the eighties forcing the department to hire more women and minorities. Wellesley was hired under that and promoted under that.”

“Is that why she’s not liked?”

“The consent decree was very unpopular. A lot of officers, like Wellesley, were quickly and deliberately promoted beyond their abilities. Set up to fail. If they failed the consent decree failed.”

“Do you think she might be corrupt?” Louis asked.

“I can’t say one way or another.”

“How do you manage not to be corrupt in a place like Rampart?” Marc asked.

“Well, there’s corrupt and then there’s corrupt. If you know what I mean.”

I wondered if this was what Javier meant when he said he’d done other things, things that meant he deserved to go to prison. Had he been at least a little corrupt and now he was sorry? Is that why he thought he deserved what was happening to him?

Louis and Marc picked up the salad plates and slipped off to the kitchen.

“What about Javier O’Shea?” I asked. “You said you’ve heard his name before?”

“Yeah, recently. He’s the detective who stole money from a crime scene with his girlfriend and then turned around and killed her. I’ve already talked to the producers about using it as an episode of Street Patrol. But you think he’s being framed.”

“We do,” said Leon.

“That’s not a bad twist. He’s homicide, right?”

“Yes.”

“He’s been around for a while?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You’d think he’d have the good sense to stay away from the SNIT boys.”

“What exactly do you mean by stay away from?”

Before he could answer, Marc and Louis were back with our entrées. “London broil with mushroom sauce and roasted winter vegetables.”

“Oh wow,” Don said. “Just like in a restaurant.”

“Better,” Leon said. “There’s no bill.”

The plates were passed out, more wine was poured. It was white, so Louis said to Don, “I hope you’re not a traditionalist.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“White wine with red meat.”

“Oh, you know, I’m going to stick with beer.”

“Good for you,” Louis said.

The dinner was wonderful, the beef tender, the sauce rich and salty, the veggies crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside. Conversation drew to a halt while we ate. I finished almost all of my dinner; it was that good.

Just as we were done, Don matter-of-factly said, “I’m guessing your friend Detective O’Shea is gay. That’s why you all are friends.”

“My word, you are a detective,” Leon said.

“Don’t—” I started but the cat was obviously out of the bag. “You can’t say anything. It could be dangerous if people knew.”

“Sounds like he’s in a dangerous spot already. I mean, he’s in jail accused of some serious crimes.”

“So why isn’t anyone doing anything about SNIT?” I asked, feeling just a little foolish.

“On paper they’re doing a lot of good.” He shrugged. “It’s easy to look the other way when the people being hurt aren’t exactly fine upstanding citizens.”

“Javier is a fine upstanding citizen,” I said. “And a good cop.” Or at least I hoped he was a good cop.

“Well, let’s hope he finds a way out of this.”

Just then, there was a clicking on the stairs. I turned just as Patty Wong reached the courtyard. She was decked out in a traditional Chinese embroidered red silk dress. She had a blond mink coat hooked in her arms, strappy black sandals on her feet and a gardenia in her black hair. She was also wearing much more makeup than she usually wore.

She walked right over to the table, saying as she got there, “Lee, you’ve got a boyfriend.”

Since she was looking right at Don, the poor man sputtered, “Oh, no, no, no, that’s not what’s going on here.”

“You don’t need to be shy around me. I adore gay boys.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Leon said.

“Well, whatever you’re calling it.”

“No offense. You’re not my type,” Leon said to Don.

“You ain’t my type neither.”

I always found it odd that one of the ways to prove male heterosexuality was to abandon grammar entirely.

“You look very nice, Patty,” Louis said. “Where’ve you been?”

“I was at the opera.”

“The opera?” It was barely nine o’clock and operas tended to be very long, so I asked, “Why are you home so early?”

“I only go for the first act. I like to be long gone before people start dying.” She smiled at us, then said, “Oh no, don’t get me a chair. I can’t stay. So much to do.”

“O-kay,” said Louis, who hadn’t moved. None of us had. She gave a little wave and clicked off to her apartment.

Should we have made a point of asking her to sit with us? I mean, we might have if she wasn’t quite so… well, Patty. I could never figure out if she wanted to hang out with us or if she just wanted to make us feel bad for not asking. Not asking, because we had asked. Demanding. That’s what she seemed to want. That we demand she sit with us.

But what would that be like? An hour of her teasing Lee—I mean, Leon—without really letting him know why she thought she knew him. An hour of her saying things that appeared nice on the surface, but when you thought about them for a second or two, seemed to be not nice. Not nice at all.

As soon as Patty’s door closed, Louis looked at us and asked, “Dessert?”

12

The next morning, I had a tiny, teeny, little hangover. Fortunately, I’d told Patty to take the day off. Monday through Thursday seemed like a good schedule. Yes, it was only sixteen hours, but that was about all I could stand. She couldn’t gum things up too much in that time.

I decided I’d call Eldridge and hire him. Maybe I’d have him come in that afternoon. It was a Friday. And Fridays were busy. People tended to pick up their weekend entertainment. Sure, they did lots of other things on the weekend, but there was always time for a movie and a porn. Or just a porn.

After letting myself in the back, I turned the lights on and went out to pick up the videos that had been dropped through the night drop. There were nearly two dozen. There was also a thick nine by thirteen manila envelope. It wasn’t addressed, but I assumed it was for me. I mean, it was my store.

I set the envelope on the counter and then picked up all the videotapes. I thought about doing the returns before I opened the envelope, but I’d never been one of those people who could delay gratification. I needed to know what was in the envelope and I needed to know now.

Flipping it over, I saw that whoever had sealed it had used Scotch tape to keep the lip of the envelope down. I took it back to my office. I had a letter opener in the center drawer of my desk. I mean, I barely ever used it. In fact, I would have gotten rid of it, but after the last few years I didn’t mind having a piece of office equipment around that doubled as a weapon. Yes, I now think of things like that.

Using the letter opener, I slit the top of the envelope open. Inside was nearly half a ream of paper. I slid it out onto my desk. I flipped through a few sheets and said, “Oh my God.”

It was Javier’s case files.

Who dropped them off? Wellesley had been adamant she would not give me information on their cases. Was this her way of helping but not helping? Or, no, it wasn’t… Featherstone had overheard our conversation. Maybe he copied the files and dropped them off. I didn’t really know him. Was he the kind of person who would do something like that? Wellesley had always looked at me as though I was a bug to be squashed and she was the shoe to do it. So maybe it was Featherstone.

Skimming through the stack, I tried to figure out where they started and stopped. Quickly, I saw that there was an order to the pages. Incident report, statements, crime scene photos, autopsy, fingerprint reports, labs, a chronology—which was just a list of who was spoken to and who spoke to them. Scanning through the first chronology it was all Javier and Wellesley, sometimes together sometimes alone.

I took a file folder out of my desk and put the first case into it. The next case, right after the chronology, began with an incident report. I flipped through, and when I got to the chronology, I put that case into a folder. I did that six more times. Eight cases total.

Picking up the first folder, I began to study them. The first murder victim was a woman name Dotty Redman, aged twenty-four. She was found in the yard outside a small house she was renting in Echo Park. She’d been beaten to death. The photos made her look like a department store dummy who’d been thrown out the front door. And as soon as I thought that I wondered if she had indeed been thrown out the front door. Her head sat on her shoulder in a way it shouldn’t. I stopped looking at the photos and went on.

There were statements from several of her neighbors. Consistently, they said there’d been a man around. One of them had spoken to him and he’d said he was Dotty’s husband from Tennessee. I just skimmed the autopsy. It confirmed what I’d seen. She had a broken neck, broken ribs, a broken wrist and many, many contusions.

Then, there was a copy of a restraining order from Tennessee. Willy Redman was not to go within two hundred feet of his wife, Dotty (real name Dorothy). Behind that were several incident reports from a town called Pigeon Forge. Willy had been arrested for beating his wife three times. After the restraining order was issued, Dotty left town. None of the incidents came to trial.

The reports had been logged in by Wellesley. She’d also written a note to the file that Willy Redman was back in Pigeon Forge. He claimed he left Los Angeles the day before his wife was killed. He apparently had a receipt that afternoon for gas at a station in Riverside.

My gut said that didn’t matter. Riverside was maybe an hour away. It wouldn’t have been that hard to drive over and get gas and then come back to kill his wife. He could also have killed her, then driven directly to Riverside and gassed up. Time of death was always a window. I doubted the receipt was the get-out-of-jail-free card he thought it was.

I went on to the next file. This was a drive-by shooting in front of a music store on Pico Boulevard. The victim was Santos Garcia aged twenty-three. The owner of the music store told Javier that Santos had just purchased new guitar strings when he walked out of the shop and was shot four times. He survived, or rather he survived until the EMTs were able to get him loaded into an ambulance. He died well before they got to the hospital. The owner claimed to see a classic Impala from the sixties speeding away. There were photos of the scene without the body—markers noting where the bullet cartridges were found and a large pool of blood. There were two full pages noting who’d been spoken to regarding the murder. None of the witnesses remembered anything. On a second visit, the store owner claimed not to have seen the car.

I jumped when I heard knocking at the front door. Crap. I’d gotten distracted by the files. I glanced at the clock on the wall, it was twelve after eleven. I hadn’t finished my opening chores, hadn’t even unlocked the door. I rushed out of my office to greet my first customer of the day.

He was an average looking guy of about thirty. He handed me a plastic bag with two tapes in it.

“They’re on time,” he said defensively, which suggested they probably weren’t. I bent over and picked up a couple more videos that had been slipped through the night drop.

“Do you have The Firm?”

It was a very new release, so I probably didn’t. But I wouldn’t know for sure until I did all the returns.

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check. Why don’t you look around?”

He shrugged and began wandering around. I could tell by the way he meandered that he was going to slip into the small room where we kept the porn the minute my back was turned. Odd, since he’d have to bring whatever he chose to the counter so I could make a record of it. Not that I was legally able to share those records. Well, not without a court order.

I hurried through the returns, eventually finding a copy of The Firm. I was nearly finished with the returns when my single customer came out of the porn area with Naomi’s Naughty Nights. He seemed excited when I told him I had The Firm. He rented both videos, though I was sure he’d be watching Naomi before Tom Cruise. And probably after, too.

Once he left, I hurried through my opening chores. Well, not all of them. Two more customers came in. They had questions. And wanted suggestions. So I never got to counting the drawer.

“Do you have any travel documentaries about Russia?”

“I do not.”

I mean, why would I? A video like that would cost at least sixty dollars, which meant I’d have to rent it twenty times to break even. I doubted there were twenty people in Silver Lake who’d be traveling to Russia any time soon. And even if there were, wouldn’t some of them want a book instead of a video. I mean, I suppose you could watch a travel documentary about Russia without actually going there, but—

Okay, so the whole day was like that. Around twelve-thirty UPS delivered a box of new videos, which I had to unpack, check against my invoice to make sure I’d gotten what I ordered, and then input into the computer. All before shelving them.

There were six copies of Rocky V, though I couldn’t rent those until the following Wednesday; four copies of Sleepless in Seattle, which rented so frequently we’d had two copies break; and two each of Star!, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Jane Eyre, and Two for the Road. Hopefully they’d all rent quickly. And often.

There wasn’t any time to go back to my office and read the files that had appeared that morning. In fact, I barely got to think about them. Mikey arrived a little before three. I was starving, so I ran over to Taco Maria and grabbed a taco. I was sitting down at my desk—thinking about opening another file, when I looked up to see Mikey standing in the doorway.

“Hey. What did you do with the schedule?”

“It’s on the door,” I said. I always hung it on the office door. Of course, the door was standing open, and I could see that it wasn’t there. “What happened to it? Did it fall off?”

“I don’t see it on the floor,” Mikey said.

“Okay. Do you need it? You’ve been on the same schedule for months.”

“Randy and I are talking about going on vacation. He has four weeks and if he doesn’t use some of it, they won’t give him anymore.”

“Oh well, that’s nice.” It wasn’t all that nice. I hadn’t hired anyone yet and couldn’t do without him. “You know, staying home and just catching up on your life is good too. Actually, more relaxing than going on vacation.”

“He was saying that since I’ve been here three years, I really should be entitled to few vacation days myself.”

“It’s not that kind of job.”

“That’s what I told him.”

He wandered off and I tried to eat my taco. Should I give him a few vacation days? I could probably afford one or two. Or was there something else I could do for him? I mean, he had done a lot for me. I did kind of owe him.

Come to think of it, he’d done more for me than Javier O’Shea, and yet I was spending an incredible amount of time trying to save Javier. Maybe that wasn’t a fair comparison though. No one had accused Mikey of murder. I’d like to think I’d have worked just as hard to clear Mikey’s name. Okay, three paid days. But that’s all.

I left around six o’clock. I stacked up the files and put them into my car, and then drove to meet Marc and Louis at New York, New York, which wasn’t very far from Pinx Video. They had a two-for-one drink special from five until eight. The bar was right off the 5, so it was a great place to stop after work if you were someone who worked downtown and lived in the valley.

When I walked in it was packed, and the Pet Shop Boys were singing their version of “Go West.” Wisely, I’d left the files in my car. I’d look at them later. I fought my way to the bar and waited in line for a drink. While I was there, Marc popped up next to me saying, “We’re in the corner with Leon.”

“I’ve got Javier’s case files.”

“Really? How did you get those?”

“When I went to work this morning, someone had put them through the night drop.”

“You’re kidding! Who do you think did that?”

“I don’t know. I asked Detective Wellesley about them, but I really don’t think it was her. Featherstone was there too, so maybe…”

“Or, it could be anyone they told.”

“I suppose.”

“Actually, it really just has to be someone who has access to the files and knows that you’d like to look at them.”

It was my turn to order. I asked for a Ketel and tonic. Quickly I was given two, both in plastic cups. Marc and I squeezed our way across the room.

“Noah has Javier’s case files,” Marc said as soon as he thought we could be heard.

“What?” Louis asked. Marc had been wrong. He couldn’t be heard.

“I said, ‘Noah has Javier’s files.’”

“Oh, my.”

“Well, what do they say?” Leon said.

“I only read two of them. There are eight.”

“Why didn’t you read them all?”

“I was busy at work.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Louis. “When are you going to hire more staff.”

“Crap. I was going to do that today. I got distracted by the files.”

“Why didn’t you bring them?” Leon asked.

“The files? In here?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously, look at this place,” I said. “I left them in the car.”

“Come on,” Louis said, and he began leading us out.

As I followed, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“We’ll go out to the car.”

“I just got a drink, um, drinks,” I pointed out. I also noted that they all still had one full drink in hand.

“Walk on my left,” Louis said.

Of course, it was crowded enough that the bartenders weren’t watching us, and we were able to walk out with our drinks. We headed to the back parking lot.

“Marc’s car is more comfortable,” Louis said, so I put my drinks on his roof while I ran over to my car and got the files. When I got back to his car, I opened the door to the backseat, handed in the files, grabbed my drinks and angled my way inside. Fortunately, Leon—who was in the back with me—had folded down the Infiniti’s armrest which had two drink holders. His drink was in one holder, but I was at least able to put down one of my drinks.

Louis flicked on the dome light so we could read. Leon handed out the files, two for each of us. I was taking a long sip of my drink when he handed me my files.

“You know, Louis, there’s not much point in being at a bar if we’re going to sit in the car,” Marc said. I had to agree. He had a point.

“It’s two-for-one for another hour,” Louis said. He also had a point. “And we’ll be back inside before you know it.”

Resting the files on my lap, I flipped open the first one. Scanning through the incident report I saw that this case was about a man who’d been found by his wife floating face down in his swimming pool. His wife said that she was upstairs asleep, but woke up around 2 a.m. and looked out the window to see him floating in the pool. Everything about the report suggested an accident. He’d been drinking. There was a bottle of vodka by the pool.

In fact, it didn’t look like there had been a detective called. So why was this among Javier’s files? I flipped to the next page which was the autopsy and quickly saw that there was no water in the man’s lungs, and that there was bruising on his neck and petechia on his face.

“What’s petechia?” I asked.

“Spots from broken blood vessels,” Louis said. “They come from strain, like vomiting really hard or being strangled.”

I didn’t question how he knew that. He did work at a private hospital—even if he was in IT, some medical knowledge had to rub off, right?

Skimming through the rest of the file, I saw that Javier was having trouble getting up to speed. The man’s widow was claiming that whatever happened to her husband she’d slept through it. The house wasn’t searched until well after the autopsy. Javier didn’t seem to have many leads, though he had discovered there was a hefty million-dollar life insurance policy. He met with the insurance company’s investigator and there was a copy of his business card in the file. They’d tried talking to the neighbors to see if anyone had heard anything, but no one had. Nearly a week had gone by, so even if they had they might have forgotten.

“This poor woman,” Marc said. “Her husband beat her to death even though she had a restraining order.”

“I read that one this morning,” I said.

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Leon wanted to know.

“A reason for someone to want to frame Javier. Probably someone in SNIT.”

“If it’s SNIT then it has to do with drugs, don’t you think?” Louis said.

“Then the woman whose husband beat her to death is probably not it,” Leon said.

“It’s still sad,” Marc said.

That also let out the guy who was found in his pool after his wife, and the boyfriend she was probably hiding, killed him. I went on to the second file I’d been given. I took another sip of my drink; I was only a little way through it. Meanwhile, Leon had finished his. Looking at mine he asked, “Do you want me to take this off your hands?”

“Um, sure.”

“I’ll get you another when we go back inside.”

“Whatever,” I said, but actually meant ‘You’d better.’

I tried to start reading, but Louis said, “I’ve got a homeless man. They found his body in Echo Park. He may have been living under the freeway nearby. They have no suspects. No witnesses. Nothing.”

“How was he killed?” Marc asked.

“Beaten to death.”

“Yeah, that’s probably not what we’re looking for,” Leon said.

I started to read my file. The incident report told the story of a backyard party on Alvarado Street, which I was pretty sure was in Westlake. During the party a father and son got into a heated argument and the son threw a punch. It hit his father’s jaw at just the right angle and broke his neck. He died instantly. The witness statements and the statement of the accused—actually a confession—all matched. Javier had already met with the district attorney on this one. He’d been asked to follow-up on a few things: life insurance, inheritance, what the fight had been about.

It seemed the DA wanted to be sure that the son hadn’t intentionally killed the father. Though, honestly, if you intended to kill someone by punching them in the face you probably couldn’t. It was one of those fluke accident things. Really not something you could plan. No matter though, it probably wasn’t the case we were looking for.

“I’ve got a gang killing,” Louis said.

“In front of the music store?” I asked.

“No. This one’s in front of a house. Two people were shot in a drive-by. One of them died.”

“Louis, could you turn the car on so we can have some heat,” Marc said. “I’m freezing.”

It was kind of cold. The temperature had hit seventy-five right after lunch but had fallen drastically since sunset. Louis started the car, and the heat came on.

“I have the music store file,” Leon said. “I’d say the gang-related cases are the ones most likely to involve SNIT. Gangs make their money from drugs.”

“What was the case you read about like?” Louis asked.

“A guy, I guess he was a gang member, was shot coming out of a music store after he bought some guitar strings. There were very few witnesses, and the store owner said the shooters were in an old Impala, but then he took that back and said he didn’t see anything.”

“Yeah, no one saw anything on my drive-by either,” Louis said.

“What are the names of the guys in SNIT?” I asked. Don Wackowski had mentioned them, but I didn’t remember.

“I wrote them down,” Marc said. “I left their names at home. I’ll give you the list later.”

After that we went back inside. We all managed to get another round of two-for-ones before happy hour ended.

13

The next morning, I had another tiny, teeny, little hangover. I also had eight files and four names I wanted to check against those files. I got to the store and did my opening tasks. I brought the files out to the front so that I could look through them. Of course, any hope of that evaporated almost immediately since there were three people waiting to get in the minute I opened the door.

As annoying as she could be, I decided to call Patty and see if she’d come in for most of the afternoon. Well, all of the afternoon.

“Oh, did you boys have fun last night?”

“I have some business things to take care of. I’m not planning to go home and take a nap.” Although, that did sound like a lovely idea.

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything. You’re still young. Relatively. You should be out having fun on a Friday night. I wish I’d had more fun when I was your age. Not that I didn’t have my share. I just wish I’d had more than my share.”

“So you wouldn’t mind coming in, say from noon to about seven?”

“Of course not. I’m a team player. I’ll be there at twelve-thirty.”

I was about to say something, but she’d already hung up on me. Twelve-thirty was going to have to do. Business was brisk for the next two hours. Patty was nearly half an hour late, getting there at ten to one, but I was still relieved to see her walk through the front door.

I hid in my office for almost an hour going over the files. Willard Campbell, Jason Feeley, Ben Freeman, David Marek. That was SNIT. I checked each file for one of those names and I found nothing. None of them. No connection to any of the murders. It was disappointing.

We were going to have to take the next step in each of these investigations. But how could we do that? I mean, for the two gang-related shootings there was no obvious next step. There probably were for the other cases, but the two most likely cases were at a dead end.

That made me wonder if we were wrong. That maybe it wasn’t one of the gang cases. Maybe it was one of the others. The phone on my desk rang. I picked it up.

“Pinx Video.”

“Noah? It’s Louis.”

“Hi Louis, how are you?”

“I came into the office for a few hours so I could use Lexis/Nexis. I wanted to dig through some old newspapers.”

“Why didn’t you just look in your neighbor’s recycling bin?”

“I wanted to look at November. No one has those around.”

“The library—”

“I won’t get in trouble. I promise. Listen, the Juan Doe who was found in Echo Park was killed on November 3rd and reported in the newspaper two days later. A week later there was a notice that a Mario Garcia of Pico-Union was missing.”

“Okay.”

“Then, on November 17th, there’s an obituary for Mario Garcia. It says that he died November 3rd. It doesn’t list a cause of death, but it does say ‘our beloved Mario was taken from us…’ That sounds like violence to me.”

“Could be cancer.”

“Usually when it’s cancer they say, ‘after a long illness.’”

“It could all be a coincidence,” I pointed out.

“Their descriptions match, and they died the same day.”

“It’s LA, though. A lot of people die every day.”

“Yeah, I know. The thing is LA is enormous. If we were matching a body that was found in Malibu, I’d say they weren’t the same guy. But Mario Garcia lived four miles from where the body that looked just like him was found.”

“Okay, so maybe we have a name for the homeless guy.”

“Yeah, but if this is the same guy I don’t think he was homeless. He had a family with young kids and a job. I mean, really young kids. The youngest is a one-year-old.”

“Hold on,” I said, setting the phone down. I looked through the files until I found the one for the homeless guy. I spread it out in front of me. When I picked up the phone again, I heard Patty saying, “Pinx Video.”

“I have this, Patty.”

“Hello Patty. It’s Louis.”

“Oh Louis! Are you boys planning something scandalous?”

“We are as a matter of fact.”

“We are not,” I said. “Thank you, Patty.”

“Oh, I’ll let you go. I have lots to do. Busy, busy, busy.”

I sighed heavily when she hung up, and Louis said, “Patience is a virtue.”

Honestly, I wasn’t always sure virtue was something worth pursuing. I put that complicated thought aside and quickly flipped through the file.

“His body was found near what’s described as a homeless encampment…”

“Probably tents.”

“His clothing is described at the beginning of the autopsy. Um, dirty, odorous, torn, worn. Those are the adjectives the medical examiner used.”

“What about identification?”

“I don’t see any mention of that,” I said. I kept flipping through the file. There wasn’t that much. There certainly wasn’t a copy of Mario’s missing person report. Or any indication his body had been identified and picked up from the medical examiner. I’d reached the end of the file. The last page was the chronology. I kept staring at it. It was a regular sized piece of paper, 8 ½ by 11, lines that extended across the page had been drawn about every half inch. The first fourteen lines each had something written on it by hand: notations about the opening and closing of the crime scene, when the body was delivered to the medical examiner, when the autopsy report had been delivered to Javier.

The interviews with other homeless people in the immediate area had taken place in the days after the murder. No one had seen anything, no one would admit to knowing anything about the victim. Then I noticed something strange. The last notation said, “Talked to Missing Persons regarding possible matches.” The rest of the lines on the page were blank, except the next two lines were broken in spots. It looked as though something had been written on those lines and then someone had tried to paint them out using Wite-Out before they were copied.

“It looks like a couple of lines were whited-out on the chronology and then copied.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“So, you think I’m right. Mario Garcia is Juan Doe.”

“I think you’re right, yes.”

“That means there are documents that were removed from the file,” Louis said. “Which raises the question, did the person who gave you the file take the documents and alter the chronology? Or was it done before the files were copied?”

I didn’t bother answering that. Instead, I said, “I think I have to talk to Javier.”

“I think you do.”

I very nearly flew out of the store. Patty was busy checking out customers. The line was three deep. Not so much because we were busy. but more because she had trouble working the computer system. I had shown her several times, finally giving up and promising myself that the only way she’d learn was to do it on her own.

The waiting room at the Men’s Jail had an entirely different feeling than it did during the week. There seemed to be no attorneys this time, just young women with small children, old people with unhappy faces and young men who looked like they might be locked up next week. And me. I stood out like a sore thumb. Much more so than I had on Wednesday.

I had to wait more than an hour. It was nearly three when my name was called along with eight others. We were marched down the hall and through the gates, making me feel like we were all prisoners as well. A chain gang with invisible chains.

Then we were led into a narrow room which had a row of open booths, each with a metal circle for a seat and narrow flaps of green metal for privacy. I sat down on the circle in front of me. Like the attorney room, there was a window with a telephone receiver and either side. Unlike the attorney room, there was no slot for passing papers back and forth, and little privacy.

A moment after I sat down, Javier appeared and sat across from me. He wasn’t happy to see me. Picking up the telephone receiver, he waited until I’d done the same.

“I hoped I wouldn’t see you again.”

“Should I be flattered?” I said, sarcastically.

“You know why. Don’t be mean.” After he took a breath he said, “You saw my mother.”

“I did. Did she come visit you?”

“No. She sent an attorney. An expensive one.”

“That’s great.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“Yes, you’ve said that. A few times.”

“Because I didn’t want you involved.”

I hadn’t actually wanted to get involved, I just… “Well, I am,” I said, “So there.”

“Why are you here?”

“I want to ask about a case you worked. The homeless guy, the Juan Doe who died in Echo Park.”

“How do you know about that? How do you know about my case?” His face grew angry, nearly ruining his good looks.

“I asked Detective Wellesley to give me the files.”

“And she gave them to you?”

“Not exactly. Or, I mean, I don’t think so. I went to work, and someone had put copies of your case files through the night drop. It might have been Wellesley, or it might have been her new partner, Featherstone. Or someone else entirely. Someone who wants to help you.”

He didn’t say anything. That was somehow worse than his barking at me. The woman next to me chattered about how smart her daughter was. The teachers loved her. The other students did too. I doubted much of that was true.

I asked Javier, “Do you know Featherstone?”

“I’ve seen him around, that’s all.”

He stopped and took a few breaths, clearly trying to calm himself. “This is so much more dangerous than you think, Noah. More dangerous than anything you been involved with before.”

Okay, that was really saying something since I’d been hung off a balcony, had a gun waved at me—a couple of times actually—and woken up with a corpse. I know I’ve mentioned the waking up with a corpse thing a few times, but you wake up next to a dead guy and see if it doesn’t come up in conversation—a lot.

“The homeless guy’s name was Mario Garcia,” I said. “He wasn’t really a homeless guy, was he?”

He looked confused. “That’s in the file. Isn’t that in the file?”

Vindication.

“I thought stuff was missing. Did you have the missing persons’ report?”

“Yes, that should be in there.”

I shook my head.

“I spoke to the family. There should be notes about that.”

I shook my head again.

“So just to confirm,” I said. “It is Mario Garcia you found in Echo Park.”

“Yes, of course it is.”

“He wasn’t homeless, was he?”

“No.”

“Do you know why he was killed?”

“Not yet. I spoke to his family. They have no idea why someone would want to hurt him. It’s probably a stranger crime, random, sexually or even racially based. Possibly a serial killer.”

“Could it have to do with SNIT?”

His anger flashed again. He moved his jaw from one side to the other, grinding his teeth. “You have been busy.”

“Should I take that as a yes?”

“No. It’s a no. It’s a definite no. I don’t see what Mario Garcia would have to do with SNIT. He wasn’t in a gang. He wasn’t part of the drug world. There’s no reason for them to have anything to do with him. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment and just looked at him. Was he lying to me? I couldn’t tell. I had the strong feeling he knew exactly what he’d done to get himself into all this trouble. Which meant he was probably lying to me. I stood suddenly, still holding the telephone receiver.

“You’re going?”

“The last time I was here, you said that you’ve done other things you deserve to be punished for. What were you talking about?”

“I can’t talk to you about that. Not now. Not while I’m in here.”

“But you’re not getting out of here. Not unless you start telling me what’s going on.”

“It would kill me if something happened to you.”

* * *

Driving back to Pinx, I thought about Javier the whole way. Why wouldn’t he take my help, our help? Why was he letting his lawyer negotiate a deal that would put him in prison for, well, possibly decades. It couldn’t just be about me. Yeah, I had feelings for him, and he had feelings for me, but… it was a flirtation. With a little making out. No one would go to prison for that. Would they?

No, this really had to do with the thing he wouldn’t tell me. The thing he thought he should be punished for. Whatever that was. But what could it be? At this point, I would guess it was obvious he’d at least turned a blind eye to the corruption around him. Did he feel bad about that?

I was about a block passed Cuffs—the notorious gay bar—nearly to the store, when white smoke began to ooze out from under my hood. Almost as soon as I noticed the smoke there were some banging noises, kind of like horses kicking the sides of a stall, I turned into the entrance to the parking area behind Pinx, sliding down the slope my car died completely. I drifted into a parking space. Well, almost into the space. I tried starting the car again, but for all intents and purposes it was dead. Smoking, but dead.

I got out and stared at it. It was only five years old. A 1989 red Nissan Sentra. Jeffer had bought it for me. He’d done the production design for two slasher movies in a row and gotten paid well for each. It’s a much harder job than you’d think. He had to make sure that every time a character got killed their clothing and the furniture around them were all colors light enough that the blood would stand out. At the same time, that couldn’t be obvious. Tricky.

Anyway, I had a five-year-old car. It shouldn’t just stop working. Should it? Oh God, I thought, L.A. without a car. Just what I needed. I couldn’t deal, so I went into the store and threw myself into work.

“It’s been so busy,” Patty said the minute she saw me. There was a line at the register. Basically, everyone in the store was waiting. I told Patty she should take a break, then quickly and efficiently checked everyone out. I apologized for the delay. A lot.

A few hours later I sent Patty home, and Carl and Denny came in. Saturdays were busy but steady. There was never a rush like we had during the week when people would pop in after work to get their evening’s viewing. Still, I stayed until about eight, when I asked Carl to run me home while Denny watched the store.

On the way, I explained to Carl what had happened.

“A new car like that shouldn’t do that. I mean, I remember when cars used to overheat but that almost never happens anymore.”

“You think it overheated?”

“I don’t know. Do you take it to the dealer?”

“What for?”

“Well, for maintenance.”

And as soon as he said that, I realized, “Oh shit.”

“You haven’t been taking it anywhere?”

To be fair, I had been busy. Very busy. I did remember that Jeffer took the car in a few times for oil changes and things like that. But then, well, the whole mess of our lives got in the way. I found out I was HIV positive, moved out, he died, I fought with his family… I mean, these days I’m happy—no, I’m proud if I manage to take my meds and keep the store open (and solve the occasional murder). I mean, remembering that I should change the oil in my car was just ridiculously too much.

Oh, God.

Marc and Louis were waiting for me in the courtyard. After Louis brought me a glass of wine, I said, “My car died.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Louis said. “Was it a long illness?”

“It was stupidity. Apparently, you’re supposed to change the oil.”

“Oh my,” Marc said. “That does suck.”

“I think we’re going to go car shopping,” Louis said.

“It can’t be fixed?” I asked, a bit too hopefully.

“You should probably check, but that kind of thing… it doesn’t look good. You went and talked to Javier, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

When I didn’t say anything more Louis said, “And…”

“And he still doesn’t want to tell me anything.”

“Did you find out anything at all?”

“Yes. You’re right. Mario Garcia, the body found in Echo Park, was definitely not homeless. Javier spoke to his family.”

“That’s not in the file.”

“No, it’s not.”

“If someone removed things from the file, then Javier must have been onto something.”

“Can we go talk to the family tomorrow?” I asked.

“We have contractors most of the day,” Marc said. “We’re also talking to an architect. The whole thing is getting out of hand.” He threw an unhappy glance at his partner.

“It’s going to be fine,” Louis said evenly. “Everything we’re planning will make the house worth more.”

“It might also make it a house we can’t afford.”

Louis ignored that and turned to me with a smile, saying, “You can borrow the Honda tomorrow. I’ll give you the Garcia’s address.”

Most of the time we went places in Marc’s Infiniti—which they’d bought at the end of its two-year lease. It had leather seats and spiffy gadgets. Louis’ Honda was about as ordinary as cars get. It was four-door, beige and had fuzzy cloth seats.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely. We can’t help you much during the week. Unless you want to get up at seven-thirty and drive me to work. And then pick me up ten hours later.”

“No. Thank you,” I said, not even considering it. If I was awake at seven-thirty I was sitting bleary-eyed over a cup of coffee and not driving to the valley.

Louis went into their apartment and came back with the keys to the Honda. Setting them in front of me, he said, “Do your best not to kill my car.”

“Shut up.”

14

My phone rang at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. It was my mother. I curled up on my sofa and pulled an afghan over my head.

“Noah, dear, I heard about your car.”

“It’s going to be fine.”

“Can you afford a new one?”

“I haven’t had a chance to go over my finances.” Mostly because I already knew I couldn’t afford a car payment. “I’ll work it out though.”

“I’m sure you will… however…”

“However?”

“Well, I’m thinking I could buy you a car.”

“Mom, you’re retired. You live on a fixed income.”

“The house is paid for, and I have your father’s pension and social security and all these mutual funds…”

“But you were just talking about getting a credit card.”

“For the air miles. Just because I have a little money doesn’t mean I don’t like a bargain. Speaking of which, you remember that Bonnie Carver’s son works at Ford?”

Bonnie Carver was the woman across the street who my mother sometimes, rarely actually, had coffee with.

“Um, yeah, so what?”

“He gets the Friends and Family program. The discount is enormous. It’s practically like stealing.”

I had the uncomfortable feeling she’d much prefer to steal me a car.

“Do you want me to get you a Ford?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really… You know I haven’t even had the car looked at. It’s possible it could be fixed.”

“Oh, sweetheart. Louis said you hadn’t put oil in it for… Well, he said you never put oil in it.”

“It had been a really long time,” was about as much as I was willing to admit. Then I said, “I don’t think I can take your money.”

“But it isn’t just my money. There’s only you. Someday I’ll be gone and then the money will be yours. I’d much rather see you enjoy the money.”

“I don’t know that I’ll exactly enjoy a Ford.”

“Okay, I used the wrong word. I’d much rather see you have the things you need. Is that better?”

And then I realized what we were really talking about. It was a very real possibility or maybe even a likelihood that I would die before she did. Then who would her money go to? What meaning would it have? I didn’t want to, but I said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Will you? You promise?”

“I promise I’ll think about it.” Not that I was looking forward to it. The idea of taking that much money from her was humiliating, I felt like a failure, nearly thirty-years-old and I couldn’t take care of myself. And yet, giving me a new car would make her happy. I did want to make her happy.

“Thank you, dear. Now, how are things going otherwise? Have you found a way to help poor Javier?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Who do you think left those files for you?” she asked. Of course, she knew about that. She’d probably spoken to everyone but me about them.

“It has to be Wellesley or her new partner Featherstone. I’m leaning towards Featherstone. I think he stole them from her.”

“I was thinking it might be Wellesley. Since there are missing documents, she could be trying to trick you.”

“Yes, that’s possible.”

But was it? What would she have to gain? She told me she thinks Javier is guilty. Maybe she knew for a fact he wasn’t. Maybe she was deliberately covering up Mario Garcia’s death. Maybe she had something to do with it. I mean, he was beaten to death. I didn’t think she could do that. Not on her own. Though maybe I was being sexist. To be honest, she could probably beat the crap out of me. Maybe Mario Garcia wasn’t much big—

“Noah, are you listening?”

“Oh, sorry.”

“I was asking about Javier’s mother. Are you sure she won’t help him?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you—she sent an expensive lawyer.”

“That’s it? She didn’t go see her son herself?”

“Not every mother is you, Mom. Motherhood doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.”

“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”

“There is.”

“Sweet boy.”

I was getting a little verklempt, to quote Mike Meyers, so I said, “Mom, I need to get ready for work.”

“How are you getting there?”

“Louis loaned me his car.”

“Oh, that’s nice of him.”

“It is.”

“You know I could arrange a rental. With my credit card so I get the air miles.”

“I’ll be fine. You don’t need to do that. I’ll talk to you next week.”

“All right then. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I crept out from under the blanket and hung up the phone. Oh God, I thought, we went full Hallmark card. Disgusting.

I ate a half a bowl of cereal, took my meds, and jumped into the shower. I began thinking about Javier’s mother. It was good that she’d sent a lawyer, but my mother was right. She did really need to go see her son. Of course, he might not be any friendlier to her than he’d been to me…

I decided there was enough time to see the Garcias before I opened the store if I hurried. And, if I opened the store a few minutes late it wasn’t such a big deal, was it? I wasn’t going to fire myself. Though occasionally it seemed like a good idea.

I walked out to the street and found the Honda where Louis had said it would be, about a block and a half away. I opened the driver’s door and climbed in. I noticed a Thomas Guide on the passenger’s seat. A godsend, really. I looked up the address Louis had given me and set out.

The Garcia family lived on Constance Street in a clapboard four-flat with a flat roof. On the first floor, there were four doors in a row, two that accessed the downstairs units and two for the second floor. The address told me to go to the third door, the one that was for the second-floor unit on the right. I rang the doorbell.

After a couple of minutes, a young Latina woman around my age opened the door. She had a toddler balanced on her hip and was slightly out of breath from running down the stairs that I could see behind her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Hi. My name is Noah Valentine. I have a video store on Hyperion.”

“We don’t have a tape machine.” Her English was excellent, but you could tell it was her second language.

“I’m here because a friend of mine is in jail, and I think it might have something to do with… I’m sorry, I should have asked this first. You’re Mrs. Mario Garcia?”

“What is this about?”

“As I said, my friend is in jail, and I think it has something to do with your husband’s death.”

From the top of the stairs a woman began speaking Spanish. She sounded older. The woman in front of me turned and yelled something back. I don’t think it was kind.

Looking back at me, she said, “My mother-in-law, Mario’s mother. Look, we don’t know very much about Mario’s death, and what we do know doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t homeless. The clothes they found him in weren’t his. I don’t know why someone would kill him and then change his clothes.”

“Did a detective Javier O’Shea come to see you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“He’s my friend,” I admitted. “The one in jail.”

She squeezed her brow together in concern. I’d barely said anything and had managed to scare her.

“My husband didn’t sell drugs. He was a good man. He worked two jobs for us. He wanted to make a better life for our children.”

“Of course,” I said, struggling to understand the turn we’d taken. So Javier asked if your husband had anything to do with—”

“We’re not even Mexican for Christ’s sake. We’re from El Salvador. Our families came here because they thought it was safer.”

“I’m sorry that didn’t turn out to be true.” Then I asked, “Can you tell me the last place you’re sure your husband was?”

“He worked nights as a busboy at a Mexican restaurant on 7th called El Perro Loco. They say he worked until eleven and left as usual.”

“Did Javier ask about anything besides drugs?”

“Yes, of course. He asked if Mario had been having trouble with anyone. But people liked him. He was a good man. People could see that.”

“You don’t have any idea why someone would want to hurt your husband?”

As soon as I asked the question, as soon as I asked it that way, I could see on her face that she did. I waited. It was a long moment before she began.

“We used to get phone calls, people even came by a couple of times. Mario Garcia is a common name. We had the number changed and unlisted. The calls stopped. Mario wouldn’t tell me much about the people who called or the ones who came to the door.”

“You think they killed the wrong Mario Garcia.”

“I do. Yes.”

“Did you tell that to Javier?”

She shook her head. “My mother-in-law is very frightened. She wouldn’t let me. She’s probably right.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“You own a video store, what can you do?”

* * *

I got to the store only a few minutes later than usual. Rushing around, I did all my opening chores quickly. There were notes from Carl and Denny. They usually left notes, mostly customer complaints: We need more laser discs, we should have more foreign films, the porno section was too visible, it wasn’t visible enough, we needed more kink, we shouldn’t have pornos at all. Generally, I threw the notes away—I received enough customer complaints working on my own.

Luckily, there were no unexpected deliveries through the night drop. As I did every day, I scooped up the video boxes and brought them over to the counter to be marked returned in our system. One of the boxes was empty, which meant I’d have to look up who’d rented it, call them, and ask them to bring back the tape itself. The box alone wasn’t doing me any good.

In addition to marking the videos returned, I had to make sure the right tape was in the right box and check to see if they’d been rewound. We had a machine under the counter which rewound the tapes and did nothing else, but we preferred that our customers do it. It made our lives much simpler.

I opened the door on time and customers began coming in shortly after. Sundays were always a good day, steady, without a lot of peaks and valleys. When I had a little break, I called Eldridge and hired him. I arranged for him to come in the next afternoon to meet with me and then Mikey. I decided to have Mikey train him. In the long run, it was just a better idea.

Generally, when I worked alone, I would put a sign on the door BE BACK AT 1:00 (or whatever) and slip down to Taco Maria for half an hour around lunch. I had to wait until the store was empty and then grab my chance. I was digging under the counter for my sign when the bell rang. A new customer. I popped up and saw Detective Brenda Wellesley standing there.

She wore a faded pair of jeans, Nikes, and a navy blue corduroy blazer over a pink linen top. Her hair was down and relaxed. On TV, when a police officer showed up in civilian clothes someone inevitably pegged them as a cop. I was surprised to find this was entirely true. Wellesley looked completely different, but the way she looked around the store, as though expecting a shooter to jump out from behind the romantic comedy section, gave her away.

She set one of our bags on the counter saying, “I want to return this.”

Kindergarten Cop. On time. We offered three-day rental.

“Did you like it?”

“It was ridiculous. I mean, he’s German. Sure, they might let him onto the force if he was naturalized, but he wouldn’t go far. Someone like that would never get to be a detective.”

“You would know more about that than I.”

“And apparently people who write movies. Plus, no one would ever go undercover in a grade school. I mean, the risk to the kids.”

“Would you like to rent something else?” I asked, trying to think of a film that might be more accurate. Honestly, I couldn’t think of one that might meet her standards.

“No, I don’t really like movies.”

It seemed like she should leave, but she just stood there. After a moment, I asked, “Do you like Javier?”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, do you think he’s a nice guy? A good cop?”

“He’s better than most.”

“You don’t really believe he killed someone, do you?”

“I see a lot of things I don’t believe. It doesn’t mean they’re not true.”

I wished I could be sure she was the one who’d given me Javier’s files. If I knew for sure, I’d tell her that Mario Garcia was killed by mistake, probably by SNIT. And that was probably why Javier was being framed. They were probably trying to cover up their mistake. Yes, I know, there were a few too many probablys in my theory.

“Did you take over Javier’s cases?”

“I didn’t take over anything. They’re my cases, too. Why are you so interested?”

“Because I know Javier didn’t do anything wrong. Because I want to help him.”

“How do you know he didn’t do anything wrong?”

“He has an alibi for the night LaToya Kennedy was killed. He just can’t prove it.”

“Then it’s not an alibi. Is it?”

Of course, he could prove it. He must still have the fake ID he used. Even if he doesn’t have it, even if the police have found it and took it as evidence, it still can be matched to the records at Exile. Provided they kept them. But they’d have to. That would be the whole point of membership. Actually, now that I think about it, he also has his membership card.

There was just one problem. One big problem. He’d have to come out. To me, it was way better to come out than it was to go to prison. But maybe that wasn’t the case for Javier. Was that what he meant when he talked about deserving this? Did he think he deserved to go to prison just for being gay?

“You know things you’re not telling me, don’t you?”

“No. No, I don’t. Honestly. Cross my heart.”

“I want to tell you to keep your nose out of this, but I know you’re not going to listen to me. If you do manage to stumble onto something, come to me and only me. Can you do that?”

“Sure, I can do that.”

That’s what I said, but what I meant was ‘absolutely not.’ I mean, not only didn’t I know whether she was the one who’d dropped off the files, I also didn’t know if she wasn’t part of Javier’s being framed. I mean, if it was SNIT—well, I knew she wasn’t a part of SNIT, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do their bidding. She could easily be working with them.

After she left, I put up my lunch sign and hurried down to Taco Maria to eat a chicken taco. It gave me indigestion.

15

It all happened very quickly, but I’m certain I woke up in mid-air. The earthquake began with a devastating jolt at—what I later learned was—four-thirty in the morning. I landed, still wrapped in my bedsheets, on the floor between my window and the bed. The jolt was followed by a growing, growling sound similar to an oncoming train headed straight toward our building. Behind that sound came the bleating of a thousand car alarms.

The building, which was made of wood and stucco and was built just after World War II, began to shake and shimmy like a creaky, old boat on the high seas. I scrambled up off the floor, dropping my sheets onto the floor, and ran to stand in the doorway between my bedroom and living room in time to watch the armoire that held my TV and stereo topple over onto the floor.

And then, things began to calm. The building stopped moving, the dishes in my kitchen stopped clattering, the only sound left was the mournful sound of those damn car alarms.

It was dark, very dark. Our power had gone out—including the streetlamp on our corner. I took a step toward my dining area window which looked out over the basin and saw that there was no light in big patches. There were a few spots throwing up sparks and at least one fire catching hold. And yet it was strangely quiet.

“Noah!” I heard Louis calling from the courtyard. “Are you all right?”

I found my front door and stepped onto the walkway outside my apartment. Looking down I saw Louis in the courtyard. Well, I saw him for a moment. He shined a flashlight in my face and then I didn’t see anything.

“You’re, okay?” he asked again.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“We heard a big crash.”

“My armoire fell over.”

“Just as long as it didn’t fall on you.”

“It didn’t. I’m fine.”

And then an aftershock started. A big aftershock. I grabbed the railing and hung on. Briefly, it was so intense I was afraid I’d get thrown into the courtyard. There was a tremendous sound of glass breaking inside Marc and Louis’ apartment. The car alarms began anew.

“Louis!” Marc called from inside the apartment.

Louis stepped under the balcony/walkway, and I heard him say, “That’s okay. It’s time for new wine glasses anyway.” Then he was back in the courtyard calling up to me, “Noah, put some clothes on and come on down.”

It was then that I realized I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of tighty-whities and a peach-colored thermal undershirt. And, it was very, very cold.

Going back into my apartment, I squeezed around my armoire, which now took up most of the available floor space in my living room and fumbled around my bedroom, finding something warm to wear. I put on a pair of 501s, some woolen socks, a clean thermal T-shirt (lavender), a thick white sweater from Banana Republic, and a jean jacket.

In the time it took me to get dressed, there were probably twenty aftershocks, though none anywhere near as strong as the first one. Most you could barely feel. They resulted in an unsettled, off-balance feeling but not much more.

By the time I made my way down to the courtyard, Louis had already turned on the heater next to the table, lit half a dozen candles, had an AM/FM radio playing, and had fired up the hibachi to boil water. When he saw me coming down the stairs he said, “I’ve got an old French press, so we’ll have coffee soon.”

“Louis, how are you going to grind the beans?” Marc asked, sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. With him was the body builder who lived next door to me and a young woman I’d never seen before.

“There’s a can of Folgers in the earthquake kit,” Louis said.

“Of course, there is,” Marc said under his breath. Then to me,

“You know Stu, and this is his girlfriend, Colleen.”

“Friend,” Colleen quickly corrected, and from the way she said it I was pretty sure that was overstating it.

We talked a bit about the things that had broken in the quake. Marc and Louis had a bookcase fall over and at least a case of broken glasses—somehow Louis was managing to pop in and out without shredding his feet on the broken glass.

Stu’s degree in fitness education had fallen off the wall and the frame had broken.

“He doesn’t have much furniture,” Colleen said, as though this was a personal fault. “I hope my apartment is still there. Do you think I could go home soon?”

“Where do you live?” Marc asked.

“The valley.”

“They’re saying on the radio the epicenter is Northridge,” Louis pointed out. “You should maybe wait a while.”

“Have you seen Patty Wong?” I asked. It just hit me that she wasn’t with us. It seemed odd that she hadn’t come out. Even if only to say she was too traumatized to join us.

“No,” Marc said. “She hasn’t made a peep.”

“Should we check on her?”

Marc shrugged. “I suppose she could have slept through the whole thing.”

“I doubt that,” I said. I would have liked to have slept through the whole thing myself. In fact, I’d like to still be asleep.

Stu stood up and went over to her door. He knocked, hard. “Patty? Patty, are you in there?”

Nothing happened.

“Do you think she’s hurt? Should I break the door down?” Stu asked, puffing his chest to let us know he could actually break the door down. “I think I should break the door down.”

He was about to make a run at it, when I said, “Wait. We should check to see if her car is here.”

“I’ll check,” Louis said, already sprinting toward the stairs.

It took longer than I expected. While he was gone, we speculated about Patty. If she wasn’t here, where would she be? How did she survive? I didn’t pay her enough to afford the rent. Did she have any friends, no one had ever seen a visitor? What about family?

“Someone comes over. I hear sex noises a lot,” Stu said.

“I knew it,” Marc said. “Phone sex.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Stu agreed. “No one has to come over for that.”

And then Louis was back. Behind him were two of our neighbors from across the street: A younger, very hot guy who rode a motorcycle and his older girlfriend who looked like a poor man’s Bo Derek—without the cornrows.

“Patty’s car isn’t here,” Louis said, then introduced Jay Fielding and Carol Sparks.

They said hello. Jay and Stu started saying dude a lot.

“I’ll make another pot of coffee,” Louis said, “then get breakfast going. Sit down, sit down.”

Jay and Carol sat down with us. For a few minutes we talked about the damage we’d experienced, repeating things we just said minutes before. Carol owned the house across the street, which she’d been given by a friend of the older, male persuasion.

Part of the ceiling in her kitchen came down. The previous owners had knocked out a wall which might have been keeping the ceiling up. She sighed and said, “Oh well. I was thinking about re-doing the kitchen anyway.” Then she bummed a cigarette from Marc.

Louis brought out seven mismatched coffee cups and passed them around. Then he set the French press on the table, and said, “That’s nowhere near enough. I’ll put more water on to boil and then get some pancakes started.”

Carol told him not to go to any trouble, but she wasn’t very convincing.

“Noah, your TV is portable, isn’t it?”

“It’s in the armoire.” Then I said to the others, “My armoire fell over.”

“Marc, go help Noah with the armoire. If the TV’s okay, bring it down. I want to see the news.”

It seemed like a good plan. I mean, the radio was okay, but none of us were paying attention. Without being asked, Jay and Stu followed us upstairs and basically took over. Straight men are good for certain things.

The TV seemed to be functional, and my stereo looked like it might be okay, too. A lot of my CDs had broken cases, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage. And then the building shook a little, as if to add the phrase—so far.

“Do you mind if we bring down one of your dining chairs to put the TV on?” Marc asked.

“Not at all.”

Jay carried the TV and Stu carried the chair. Marc and I trailed after them. Louis popped out of the apartment holding something that looked like a metal travel cooler.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s an old generator. We got it at St. Vincent de Paul. It should run the TV.”

It was all set-up quickly, in about the time it took to boil more hot water for coffee. The generator ran on gas and was a bit loud. The TV had to be played on full volume, but it didn’t matter. Even though it was about five in the morning, none of the neighbors were sleeping. It was still pitch black, but we were cozy sitting there in candlelight, with the propane heater on, sipping coffee and eating pancakes. Louis tuned the TV to KNBC, and we were watching a couple of anchors who looked remarkably well put together. As disasters go, this one was kind of okay. Well, for most people. Some of the pictures they were showing…

By the way, the pancakes were amazing. They had blueberries and walnuts and chocolate chips and…

“Did you put everything you had in the kitchen into these pancakes?” I asked Louis.

“No, I left out the broken glass.”

“Well, they’re really good.”

“Yes, they are,” said Colleen who’d barely touched hers.

“Do you want to call Angie?” Marc asked. “She’s probably freaking out.”

“I have a cordless phone; it doesn’t work when the power’s out.”

“We’ve got an old princess phone in the closet.”

“For exactly this kind of situation,” Louis said.

“Oh, after, could I call my daughter?” Jay asked. “She’s in Santa Monica with her mother. I’d like to be sure she’s okay.”

“She’s seven,” Carol added.

“Why don’t you go first,” I said.

Marc led him into the house while Carol mouthed a thank-you to me. The TV was showing pictures of damaged buildings in the valley. Of course, it was still dark, so it all looked like it was happening in the middle of the night. Which, it kind of was.

“Louis, aren’t you guys worried about your house?”

“It’s the first thing we thought of, but… it’s not our house yet. If it fell down the bank won’t give us a mortgage and if we can’t get a mortgage the deal is off. I’m pretty sure we get a hundred percent of our deposit back.”

Marc had come back part way through, and added, “We’re driving over as soon as it gets light.”

“You think it will be safe then? I need to go check the store.”

“What store is that?” Carol asked.

“I own Pinx Video.”

“Oh, I love your store!”

I smiled, while Colleen and Stu joined in complimenting my store.

Marc said, “It should be safe when the sun comes up. And if it’s not, at least you’ll be able to see that it’s not.”

Of course, my car was still in the parking lot behind the store. I made a mental note that I needed to call Mikey before I called my mother.

Jay came out of Marc and Louis’ apartment, saying thank you to them and me. I would have gone next, but Colleen wanted to call her mother—who had high blood pressure. She also wanted to call a cab. We didn’t think there would be any, but she insisted she wanted to try. I was getting the distinct impression her date with Stu wasn’t going well—even before the earthquake.

“Oh God, it’s starting again,” Marc said as another aftershock hit. It didn’t last long, though, and soon Louis and Marc got busy picking up the breakfast dishes. I followed them into the house just as I realized the phone was not in use anymore.

I don’t know when it happened, but they’d already put their apartment back in order. The only sign that anything at all had happened was a broom standing next to the kitchen with a large pile of broken glass next to it.

I called Mikey first.

“Hey, are you and Randy okay?”

“Yeah. We’re fine. Randy’s already gone to the hospital. They’re expecting a tough day. Did you know that half of the people who die in a quake die of a heart attack?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“How is the store?”

“I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m waiting until the sun comes up. I was wondering—”

“Yes,” he said before I could finish. “I’ll meet you there in about half an hour.”

“Would you mind picking me up? My car died on Saturday.”

“Oh, sure. You’re having a bad week.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

I’d been trying not to look at it that way, but after he said it, I really had no choice. He managed to say goodbye without depressing me further. Then I called my mother, hoping she’d be more optimistic.

“Oh, thank God! You’re all right then?”

“Yes, I’m fine. The worst of it was in the valley.”

“And Marc and Louis? Are they all right?”

“Yes, they’re right here. I mean, Louis is. I’m in their apartment.”

“What happened to your apartment?”

“Nothing. The power is out so my phone doesn’t work.”

“That’s why your message machine isn’t working. I called the store, too.”

“Okay.”

“What about Leon? Is he okay? He doesn’t answer his phone either.”

“Did you try his mobile phone?”

“I did, but he doesn’t answer that either.”

“Louis? Have you heard from Leon?”

“No, but I’m sure he’s fine. He wouldn’t be caught dead in the valley.”

“We think Leon’s fine, Mom.”

“Well, I hope so. Honestly, the things they’re saying on television are just terrifying.”

I could hear the anchor on KNBC telling us not to call the police because they’re only responding to emergency calls, and not a lot of those. Okay, that was a little terrifying.

16

Eventually, the sun came up, though it did seem to take its time. It felt like forever that we sat there in candlelight, sipping coffee, nibbling on the different treats Louis would bring out. Mikey showed up a few minutes before seven. Marc and Louis were getting ready to go and check on their house. Our neighbors had drifted off. It was as though the sunrise brought everyone back to reality.

“So what happened to your car?” Mikey asked as we walked down the stairs to street level.

“Apparently, there’s this thing called maintenance that I should have been paying attention to.”

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not your fault.”

“No, it kind of is. I’m sort of your right-hand man. I should have been bothering you about things like that.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mikey. You’re my employee, not my mother.”

And, honestly, I wouldn’t blame my mother either. I was old enough to take care of myself, or at least take responsibility when I didn’t.

We climbed into Mikey’s brand new, shiny black Volkswagen Corrado. I’d never seen one before. It was a sporty two-door with a sloping back and black leather seats. It looked like way too much car for Mikey to afford. I was wondering how he paid for it working for me, when he said, “It’s Randy’s. He works a lot of overtime.”

“I didn’t say anything. I mean, it’s a nice car. I should have said that.”

“I have a twenty-year-old VW bug. Honestly, I think Randy prefers my car to his.”

“Do you have any idea how long he’ll be at the hospital?" I asked.

“Days probably.”

I wondered what that might be like, to have a job so important you wouldn’t be home for days. I never said, ‘I couldn’t possibly do that, I run a video store, people need me.’ And I never said it because it wasn’t true. No one would die if the store didn’t open.

There weren’t a lot of cars on the street, so we were able to park right in front. Across the front of the store were three large plate glass windows and a doorway. The window to the left, on the Taco Maria side, had a large crack running across it diagonally. I had the nasty feeling it was being held up by the posters taped to the inside.

Opening the front door, which was metal and glass, I pushed and pushed, only to find that the frame had twisted, and the bottom of the door now scraped the floor with a cringing sound.

“Oh my God,” Mikey said, as he took it all in.

To our right, there were four rows of shelves holding videotape boxes. Well, they used to hold the boxes. Most of the boxes were now piled on the floor. To our left was the counter. Fortunately, the computer was still sitting there on the counter—though it had shifted several inches, it had not been thrown to the floor. The ridiculous number of specialized cords the setup required might have saved it.

“I’ll call the landlord,” Mikey said. “We need to get plywood put up on the windows ASAP.”

“Just the one,” I said, pointing to the window on the Taco Maria side.

“Um, no, all the windows.” He pointed at the other windows and in the different light, I could see that they too had big cracks. He went over to the counter and picked the phone up off the floor. He hung up the receiver and then picked it up again to dial the landlord. I walked back to my office to see—

The backdoor was open ajar, the door splintered like someone had broken in. “Mikey!” I called out.

He hung up the phone and was there in a flash.

“It looks like someone has been in here.”

“Looters.”

“We’re going to have to do a complete inventory.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I did not have earthquake insurance; it was insanely expensive anywhere in Los Angeles County. Besides, the actual building was the landlord’s responsibility. I did have theft insurance, though, so anything stolen would get paid for. We just had to figure out what was missing.

I glanced into my office; things had shifted around on my desk, but nothing looked broken.

“Should I wait a minute before I call the landlord?”

“Maybe. We should check the tape room.”

Mikey got there first. A couple of the shelves had fallen into one another. Very few of the tapes were still on the shelves. They were on the floor in piles, large piles. All six sets of shelves had emptied themselves.

“Oh shit, what the—”

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s someone—”

I found him standing in the last row. Shaking. Then he whispered, “There’s someone under there.”

At first, I couldn’t see it. It just looked like a pile of VHS videos in black and brown plastic boxes. Some of the boxes had split open and the tapes had popped out, but—

And then I saw a foot. A sandaled foot with chipped red polish on the toenails, her toenails. I pushed the videos to the side. Once I got enough of them off, I reached around her neck and checked for a pulse.

I knew there wouldn’t be one. Her hands were taped together with duct tape, and I could see that there was the sticky goo of a bullet hole in the back of her head. She was dead. Very dead.

My first thought, a selfish one I’ll admit, was that my months-long vacation from dead bodies was now officially over. My second thought, a more generous one, was that her last moments must have been terrible. She must have known what was about to happen.

I stood up, and said, “It’s Patty Wong.”

Mikey looked at the body, and said, “Oh, shit, it is!”

“We need to not disturb anything else. I’ll call 911. You go stand outside. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I followed him out of the tape room, stopping at the front desk. He walked outside while I made the call.

When the emergency operator answered, I said, “I own Pinx Video. Um, I think I need someone to come out.”

“Sir, we’re asking people to hold off unless it’s an absolute emergency.”

“There’s a dead body.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Does that qualify as an emergency? I mean it should, right?”

“I’ll need to check with my supervisor. How did the person die?”

“Murder. I mean, it looks like murder.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll send a car as soon as I can. What’s your address?”

I gave her the address of the store. She told me not to touch anything and I said I’d be standing outside. We hung up.

When we got out to the sidewalk in front of the store, Mikey said, “This sucks so bad. I hated Patty Wong.”

“She was annoying,” I admitted.

“Now I feel guilty for hating her. You’re not supposed to hate dead people.”

“You don’t have anything to feel guilty about. You didn’t kill her.”

“No, of course, I didn’t kill her. And I’m not glad she’s dead. I just… I wish I felt worse about it.”

Honestly, I couldn’t say I felt that bad about it either. I was more annoyed that I’d broken my months-long spell of not discovering dead bodies.

“Do you think it was looters? Do you think they broke in and killed her when she tried to stop them from stealing things?”

“No. She was killed execution style.”

“Like it was a hit? You think Patty was in trouble with the mob?”

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. Actually, I doubted it. The mob, aka the Mafia, wasn’t up to that much anymore. I mean, I never heard about them in the news. Street gangs had pretty much taken over most organized crimes. I had the feeling there were more mobsters in movies than in real life.

“What do you think she was doing here?” Mikey asked. “She wasn’t scheduled to work, was she?”

“No, she wasn’t. Carl and Denny worked last night.”

“Do you think she came in this morning to check on the store?”

“No, she was cold. Besides, she had to have come here before four-thirty. We were all in the courtyard after the quake. She wasn’t there. Her car wasn’t there.”

The police were taking a long time to arrive. “I’m gonna go back in for a minute,” I said.

“Oh my God, why?”

“I just want to look at things again.”

“You’re kidding? I just want to forget I ever saw that.”

I ducked back into the store and went immediately to the tape room. Now that it was less of a shock, I wanted to take a good look at Patty. Poor Patty.

The first thing I asked myself was why was she back here in the last row of the tape room? We figured out she was killed before the quake. So the tapes we’d found on her body weren’t there right after she was killed. They’d fallen on her during the quake.

Someone had broken into the back. Had she heard them? Was she attempting to hide? A chill ran down my spine as I thought about her cowering in the last row, listening as her killer came closer and closer.

Then I was standing over her body, staring at her. She wore a decent pair of jeans and a bright red peasant top that closed at the neck. She usually wore something similar when she worked, which brought me back to the question of why she was even there. Was she working? But why did no one tell me?

I found myself staring at the tape on her wrists, silver, sticky. Then I noticed the scratches on her arms. And her left arm, it looked… askew. I bent over and felt along the side of her arm. It was broken. It was definitely broken. She’d fought back.

Good for her.

And not good for her. That meant she’d been hiding back there, waiting to be found, they’d tried to tape her hands, but she fought. She fought hard enough to break a bone. She knew what was coming. She knew she was about to be killed.

I walked out to the front. I grabbed the phone and called Carl and Denny. Carl answered.

“Hi, it’s Noah.”

“Yes, hello. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. You guys are okay?”

“Oh, we’re fine. We lost a few knickknacks,” then he lowered his voice, and added, “I hated them anyway.” He raised his voice again, I suspect he wanted Denny to hear, “It’s so sweet of you to check on us.”

“Well, not that sweet I’m afraid.”

“Do you need us to come to work?”

“No. In fact, I don’t know when we’ll be open again. I have bad news. Patty Wong is dead.”

“No, she can’t be. We saw her last night.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. She was killed here in the store.”

“By the earthquake?”

“No, it happened last night. Before the quake.”

Carl turned away from the phone and yelled out, “Patty Wong is dead. She was killed last night at the store.”

“You’re kidding,” Denny said in the background. “It could have been us.”

“Why was she even here? You guys were working when I left.”

The night before had seemed very normal. Carl and Denny had come in and I’d left shortly after. So—

“Well—we got a call from the LAPD that someone had tried to break into our house. We called Patty and had her take over.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Oh you looked so tired. You’d been at work all day.”

“He works too much,” I heard Denny say in the background.

I almost asked why one of them didn’t go home while the other stayed at the store, but I knew the answer. Once Denny was complaining about how long it took to do their errands and I suggested it would be faster if they split them up. He gasped in horror. “I couldn’t possibly do errands alone. I’d miss him too much.”

“How was your house?” I asked.

“That’s the funny part. There was nothing wrong with the house. We expected to get home and find patrol cars out front, but nothing. We called Patty and offered to go back, but she said she was fine.”

A black-and-white pulled up behind Mikey’s car.

“I should probably go now. The police are here.”

Carl said goodbye, and Denny echoed him.

I hung up and hurried out to the street. A police officer stood there talking to Mikey. He wore a name tag that said Tavish. He was already giving me a dirty look.

“You were told to exit the scene.”

“I’m Noah Valentine. It’s my store. I had to use the phone.”

“Where is the body?”

“Go behind the counter and through the door into the tape room. She’s at the back.”

He walked into the store. I told Mikey what I’d learned from Carl on the phone.

“Someone wanted them out of the store. Do you think they were planning to kill Patty? But why not kill her at her apartment?”

“Sound,” I said. “Her apartment is in the middle of the building. If she screamed everyone would hear it.”

Well, everyone living there. There were still two empty apartments.

“No one would have heard her screams here,” Mikey noted. “Not after closing.”

Very quickly, Officer Tavish was back.

“I’ve called and requested detectives. Usually, we need EMTs to confirm death, but that’s not going to happen today. Not with the quake. I’m going to set up a perimeter in a minute. Can you tell me when the back door was broken into?”

“I suspect it happened a little after eleven.”

“And why do you think that?”

“That’s when we close. There’s no reason to think this happened before closing. She was happy to get the shift. She wouldn’t have closed early. And if someone wanted to kill her while the store was open, they could just come in the front. That door is open all day.”

Officer Tavish nodded.

“And the victim’s name?”

“Patty Wong.”

“And do you know of anyone who’d want to hurt her?”

“Why would you ask that?” Mikey said. “Of course we don’t know who did this!”

“People know more often than you’d think.”

Officer Tavish walked away, going down the ramp to the parking lot in the back. I assumed he was going to put some tape around the back entrance to the store. Who knows, there might be evidence just sitting outside the door, on the steps, in the parking lot.

17

Almost an hour later, two detectives showed up. One of them was Featherstone, the other a burly looking guy I’d never seen before. The burly guy took Mikey aside. I got Featherstone. Before he had a chance to start, I asked, “Where’s Detective Wellesley?”

Featherstone shrugged. “She took a personal day. Ask me, she lucked out. Don’t worry, we’ll get the job done. What can you tell me about the victim?”

“She lives in my building, that’s why she came to work for me. She worked for me before. Last spring. She’s not very good. I just let her back last week.”

“Are you telling me you killed her because she’s a shitty employee?”

“What? No. Why would you ask something like that.”

“Because it’s my job.”

“It’s your job to figure out who killed Patty.”

“And part of that job is asking people if they killed her. Can we move on?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Was she involved with anyone? Boyfriend?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So you never saw anyone around?”

“No. Never.”

“What about family?”

“She never mentioned them.”

“And you never saw anyone who might have been family?”

“No. Never.”

“If you had to guess, who do you think killed her?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“You’d be surprised how many times people know exactly who the murderer is.”

“Yeah, Officer Tavish mentioned that. But I don’t know.” Or did I? I said, “Except—”

“Except what?”

“Except… this could be connected to the Twiss murder and the Kennedy murder. It’s the same MO.”

“How do you know that? How do you know anything about those murders?”

“Wasn’t it in the newspaper?” I played dumb.

He stared at me. I tried to hold his stare but finally turned away. I’d never noticed that his eyes were gray, and kind of cold. I was sure he was the one who’d left the files for me at Pinx. He seemed angry I’d mentioned something I could only have known from the files. He must have thought his partner might hear. That could get him in trouble.

“How did Ms. Wong get on with your other employees?”

“No one who works here killed her.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t think she got on with anyone.”

Then he began asking a lot of questions about time. When did we close? What time did we find the body? Where was I last night? My alibi was not great.

“I was at home. I watched a couple of videos and went to bed early.” Well, I did. Then I added, “I couldn’t go anywhere. My car died. It’s out in back.”

That was a better alibi, though I suppose I could have walked down the hill and killed her. Or borrowed Louis’ car again.

Finally, he said, “Go home. Stay there. I’m sure we’ll have more questions later. Your store is going to be a crime scene for a few days at least.”

“I need to call my landlord and have plywood put over the windows until they can be replaced.”

Featherstone shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about that for now. There will be an officer here until we release the scene. Which I think is going to take longer than usual.”

I just nodded.

When we got back to my apartment, I asked if Mikey wanted to come up for a bit.

“Actually, the policeman did say I should stay nearby.”

He followed me up the red stairs to the courtyard where we found Louis, Marc and Leon having mimosas.

“It’s not even eleven o’clock,” I said.

“The orange juice makes it a breakfast cocktail. Did you want one?”

“Oh, um, yes.” Then I said, “You’ve met Mikey before, haven’t you?”

“Noah, they’re in the store all the time. Especially that one,” he pointed at Leon. “Some time I’ll tell you what kind of porn he likes.”

“We don’t do that,” I said sternly. “We keep that information confidential.”

“I’ll bet,” Leon said, skeptically.

Louis was back with two mimosas, handing one to each of us.

“How is your store?” Marc asked.

“Oh, well—”

“Patty Wong is dead,” Mikey blurted.

“Dead!” Louis said.

“Oh my Lord,” Leon gulped the rest of his mimosa. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“And yet she ended up dead. In your store,” Leon accused.

“Shut up,” I said.

“Wait, was she in the store during the quake?” Marc asked. “Did something fall on her? Why was she there at four-thirty—”

“No, it happened last night after closing.” I hesitated to say it, but really I had no choice. They’d find out sooner or later. “She was murdered.”

“She was working? I thought you didn’t want her closing?” Louis asked.

“That’s the weird thing. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Someone called and said there was a break-in at Carl and Denny’s house, so they swapped shifts with her. But when they went home, their house hadn’t been broken in to.”

“Well, that’s suspicious,” Leon said.

“You think someone might have done that to lure her to the store?” Marc asked. “But why? She lives alone. If someone wanted to kill her, why not do it here?”

Before I could provide the answer, Louis said, “Because we’re here. I mean we’re out here a lot.”

“So someone was watching her, learning her schedule just so they could kill her?” Marc said. “Wow. I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about her. She could be involved in all sorts of things.”

“How was she killed?” Louis asked.

“Her hands were taped, and she was shot in the back of the head.”

“Well, that sounds familiar,” Leon said.

“It does,” I admitted. “Except, why her? I don’t see the connection?”

“Don’t you, darling?” Leon asked.

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re assuming she was the target,” Leon said. “That would be a mistake.”

“You mean the killer went there to kill someone else,” Mikey blanched as he said it. “Like me?”

“Do you think someone wants to kill you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then probably not you.”

“I agree,” Leon said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Obviously, they were there to kill you.”

“Me!” I nearly screamed. “That’s crazy.”

“Think about it,” Leon said. “Patty just started, so whoever did it might not even have known she worked there. They must have called about a fake break-in at Carl and Denny’s to get them to leave, assuming they’d call you and you’d be working. But when they got there, you weren’t there; Patty was.”

“You think they killed her thinking she was me? She’s a middle-aged Asian lady, it’s not that hard to tell us apart.”

“Harder than you think, dear,” Leon said. “You’re both around the same height, your hair is dark.”

“Leon, stop it,” Louis said. “Noah, they probably went there planning to kill you and found her instead. The reason they were there was probably obvious to Patty, so they had to cover their tracks.”

“You mean, I got Patty killed?”

“Well, not intentionally. You’re still a good person.”

“Oh dear...”

Three mimosas later, Louis was serving us all a light salad topped with coconut shrimp and a tropical fruit dressing. He apologized profusely, saying it was all he had in the fridge. The contents of my refrigerator would have provided tossed frozen dinner sprinkled with moldy cheese. Far less appetizing.

* * *

After we ate, Louis served coffee and aperitifs. I slipped upstairs to take my pills; I’d gotten completely off schedule. I needed to get back on track or the medicine might stop working. Ten minutes later I went back out. From my vantage point on the second-floor walkway, I could see that Detective Featherstone was here with the burly looking detective.

Slowly, I descended the stairs—I really didn’t want to, but that would look bad. From the snippets of conversation, I could hear, I figured out that they were here to question us about the murder.

When I reached the table, Featherstone looked me over for a second, and then asked, “Why didn’t you tell us about Ricky Han?”

“What? Who? Is that who killed Patty?”

“There ain’t no Patty,” the burly one said. “There never was.”

I glanced at my friends, and said, “What is he talking about?” No one said anything. That’s when I noticed Leon looking a lot like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“How long has Ricky Han been working for you?” Weatherstone asked me.

“I don’t know anyone named Ricky—I mean, I know people named Ricky, just not that Ricky. He never worked for me. Patty Wong worked for me last spring and then she started again last week. Wasn’t that Patty—”

“Holy shit!” Mikey said.

“What? Is Patty alive?”

“There is no Patty,” Featherstone said.

“So this person you call Patty,” the burly one said. “You got an I-9?”

“Oh, well, no. She said she lost her wallet. She said she’d bring it in…”

“Both times he worked for you? He lost his wallet.” Burly again. “You expect us to believe that crap?”

“You know, the second time she worked for me, I didn’t remember that she’d never filled out the form.” God, that sounded lame. “And it’s only been a week.”

“So you really had no idea she was a he?” Featherstone asked.

“No, none!”

“None of us did,” Louis said.

“Yeah, right,” the burly one said.

“Gilman, give me a break. You had no idea what we were dealing with until you pulled the victim’s wallet,” Featherstone said.

“How was I to tell?” Gilman said. “He was face down on the floor.” Then he looked at us, and said, “Come on. You gotta help us out. This guy was one of you. Tell us everything you know so we can find out who killed him. Did he like to dress up like a girl and trick guys into having sex?”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You found her body in my store. She wasn’t in a bar. She wasn’t on a date. She wasn’t trying to have sex with anyone.”

“He. We’re talking about a he,” Gilman said, as though it was evidence of something. But I didn’t want to say he. It felt wrong. It wasn’t how I knew her. Did I know her though? That was an uncomfortable question.

“We don’t think her murder has anything to do with her being Patty,” Louis said.

“You don’t, huh?”

“Ease up, Gilman,” Featherstone said. “Why don’t you think that?”

Louis looked at me, so I said, “Her hands were taped behind her back. She was shot in the back of the head execution style. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

“What’s he talking about?” Gilman asked Featherstone.

“They’re friendly with Javier O’Shea.” Then to me he asked, “How do you know anything about those other murders?”

“You already asked me that.”

“I’m asking again.”

Now I was stuck. I didn’t want to mention the files that were dropped off—I was certain it was Featherstone who’d dropped them off. He was probably asking me as a cover-up. In fact, the way he was looking at me—

“It’s not really important how we know,” Louis said. “What’s important is that Javier didn’t kill her, so the fact that the murder looks just like LaToya Kennedy’s murder means he’s innocent.”

“No, it don’t,” Gilman said. “You’re friends of his. Maybe you killed Ricky Han so you could say that Javier was innocent.”

“That’s a little extreme,” Marc said. “Actually, it’s very extreme.”

“I’m going to need everyone’s whereabouts last night,” Featherstone said, taking out a notebook.

That took nearly half an hour. Marc and Louis had been at the Faultline’s beer bust and then a late dinner at La Casita Grande. Leon was on a date with Eduardo, which surprised me.

I interrupted, “Eduardo? Is this the same Eduardo you were seeing last year?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“You are such a girl,” Leon said. Gilman raised an eyebrow and he added, “I meant that metaphorically.”

“This Eduardo will vouch for you?” Featherstone asked, impatient.

“Of course he will. Repeatedly.”

Mikey was having drinks with a friend at Revolver in West Hollywood. He was with his friend until nine-thirty. If Patty was killed around ten, it was unlikely he’d have had time to get there.

Then it was my turn. For the second time that day, I explained I’d stayed in and watched videos.

“Can anyone confirm that?” Featherstone asked.

“No,” I said. Of course, it was worse than that. My mother had called, and I’d let the machine take it. I pointed out, again, that my car wasn’t working and had been sitting behind the store. I’d have had to walk there and back to kill Patty. I suppose it was possible—which looked to be exactly what they were thinking.

After getting our whereabouts, the detectives left. Almost immediately, Mikey stood up, saying, “I promised Randy I’d bring him some take-out an hour ago. He’s not going to believe any of this.”

Marc and Louis cleared the dishes into their apartment. The way he’d paled when the name Ricky Han came up told me Leon knew more about Patty than he’d said. She’d always claimed to know him, and he’d claimed he didn’t know her. I suspected things made a lot more sense now.

I didn’t want to ask, though, until Marc and Louis came back, so instead I asked, “I never got a chance to ask. Did your apartment fall down in the quake?”

“No, it’s still there. Held together with chewing gum, I’m sure.”

We sat in awkward silence for a few moments until Marc and Louis came back. They were each holding two ice-cold straight up martinis. Before they sat down they put one in front of each of us. I had no idea how I was going to drink that. But I did know I would try.

“So,” Louis said, looking at Leon. “Spill. You know something.”

Leon asked, “You don’t have anything stronger, do you?”

“Stronger than a martini? It’s a hundred percent alcohol.”

“Then I guess it will have to do.” He picked up the drink and sipped it. Then he began, “When I first arrived in Los Angeles many, many years ago. I came from… well, let’s just say a small town west of the Mississippi. I thought being gay was all about drag. So I found my way—”

“Wait, are you going to tell us you used to do drag?” I asked, I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t fit my view of Leon. Of course, Patty Wong having once been Ricky Han—well, that didn’t fit my view of her, either.

“Yes, of course, I’m going to tell you I used to do drag. Briefly. For a very short period I hung out at the Queen Mary.”

Not the big boat, obviously. The Queen Mary was also a drag bar in Studio City. I knew that because we’d met Bunny Hopper—who’d appeared there for years—on one of our previous adventures. Otherwise, I’d have had no idea.

“And that’s where you met Ricky Han?” Louis guessed.

Leon nodded. “Madame Yin Yang. She was a big draw. She didn’t lip sync. She sang her own songs. Straight people loved her. At her peak she filled the house almost every week. One of her favorite numbers was “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Flower Drum Song. Of course, she wasn’t the only queen to perform that particular number. Her gimmick was she sang it in Chinese.”

“Patty spoke Chinese?” Marc asked.

“Beats me,” Leon said. “It sounded Chinese, but she could have been singing gibberish for all I know.”

“And you had no idea that Patty was once Ricky Han?” I asked. “None?”

“No. I hadn’t a clue.”

“Didn’t Ricky Han look like Patty when he was in drag?”

“Patty looked like a woman. Ricky looked like a drag queen. And in case you don’t know the difference, it’s two pounds of makeup and three feet of hair.”

18

Mentally, I was exhausted. An earthquake—not to mention a day full of aftershocks—Patty Wong murdered and exposed as Ricky Han, Leon a drag queen. So much to take in. And, Javier was still in jail and on his way to prison if we didn’t do something.

“Are there photos?” Marc asked Leon.

“Photos of what?”

“Of you. As a drag queen.”

“No. I destroyed them all.”

“I can’t believe you never told me. What was your drag name?”

“I’m not telling you. Those days are a very long time ago.”

“How can it be a very long time ago? You tell people you’re still in your twenties.”

“I tell people that; I don’t expect them to believe it.”

“Should we guess?” Louis asked. “What is it? Your first pet and the street you grew up on? That makes my drag name Giant Dix.”

Marc rolled his eyes. “Louis that’s the rule for getting your porn star name. Not your drag name.” Then to us he added, “He just likes saying Giant Dix.”

“You had a dog named Giant?” I asked.

“Cat. He really was quite large.”

“Come on Leon,” Louis persisted. “What was your name? Anita Cox? Maxi Pad? Brooklyn Tunnel?”

“Stop!” Marc exclaimed, then said, “Leon, you have to tell us. He’s just going to keep going.”

“I’m not telling.”

“Fine. Then you’re not getting another drink,” Marc said. “In fact—” He stood up and snatched Leon’s half-drunk martini away from him.

Leon pursed his lips, glaring at Marc.

“All right, all right... Roberta E. Lee, happy?”

“That’s a terrible drag name,” Marc said, giving him back his drink.

“I was a terrible drag queen.”

“But that’s why Patty called you Lee!” Louis said.

“Yes, in retrospect I can see that.”

“I feel horrible,” I said. I hadn’t known I was going to say it, it just popped out.

“Too much to drink?” Louis asked.

“No. I feel bad about Patty Wong. She never felt like she could tell us who she really was.”

“I think that’s the point,” Louis said. “Patty is who she really was. Telling us about Ricky Han, well, why would she do that? Did we really need to know?”

That was a different way of looking at it, and maybe even the way Patty looked at it. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t any of my business—or anyone else’s for that matter. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t tons I was curious about.

I asked, “Do you guys really think I was the intended target?”

“Absolutely,” Leon said.

“It does seem likely,” Louis agreed.

Marc was aggressively nodding his head.

“But why?”

“Because—” Leon said. “You obviously know something they don’t want you to know.”

“If I know it you guys know it too.”

“But they don’t necessarily know we know what you know that they don’t want you to know.”

That was a little hard to follow; one of us was a little drunkie.

“Oh my God,” Marc said. “Leon, stop. I think what Noah wanted to say is that we could all be in danger.”

“Yes, that’s what I was saying… but what do you think we know that could get us killed?”

“Well, we know that SNIT is trying to frame Javier and that they’ve killed people to do it,” Louis said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“We don’t have any actual proof… and besides, we haven’t gotten anywhere near them,” I pointed out. “Featherstone said Wellesley was on some kind of break. She’s probably trying to figure a way out of this without getting caught.”

“Do you think she knows you went to see Mario Garcia’s family?”

“I don’t think—I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“Maybe that’s why someone tried to kill you,” Marc said.

“And not us,” Leon said. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind a strange man showing up in the middle of the night at my apartment. But not if he’s there to murder me.”

“Could you be serious for one minute,” I said.

“Oh fine. Your life’s in danger. I guess we’re obligated to make this about you.”

“Thank you. What do you guys think I should do?”

They thought about it for a few moments. “We need help,” Louis said. “Someone who could protect you.”

“You mean like Javier,” I said, somewhat sardonically.

“What about Featherstone?” Marc asked. “Do you think he’s an honest cop?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I think he’s the one who left the copies of Javier’s cases.”

“Are you sure though?”

“That’s the thing, I’m not.”

“What about Javier’s mother. She’s an attorney. Maybe she could help.”

Then I had an idea. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. “I should get Wellesley to meet me. I’ll tell her I went to see Mario Garcia’s family. I’ll tell her I think the SNIT guys killed him by mistake. Then I’ll tell her I gave the information to a lawyer in case anything happens to me.”

“Are you going to give the information—” Marc started to ask.

“No. You guys know everything, but I don’t want to tell Wellesley that.”

“Thank you,” Leon said. “It really is rude to put your friends in mortal danger.”

“You don’t think that will stop SNIT, do you?” Louis asked.

“No. But I think it might slow them down. “

“And then?”

“We could go to the LA Times.”

“Or the FBI,” Marc suggested.

“I have a better idea,” Leon said. “Let’s get guns and take the SNIT team out, one by one.”

Louis looked at Marc and asked, “Why do we invite him here?”

Rolling his eyes, Marc said, “I have no idea.”

“Seriously, though, weapons would not be a bad idea,” Leon said, sounding all too reasonable. “Just in case.”

“You know, I still have my trusty taser,” Louis said.

“It’s not a taser,” I said. “It’s a stun gun.”

“If it saves your life, does it matter what you call it?”

“Point taken.”

Louis got up and started toward the apartment. Leon stared at me a moment, and said, “A stun gun is probably not going to cut it. How are you fixed for knives?”

Marc called out, “Louis, bring knives!”

“What else do you have lying around?” Leon wanted to know. “Baseball bats? Heavy wrenches? Mallets?”

“Seriously, Leon, do we look that butch?” Marc asked.

“I have a hammer,” I said. It wasn’t large, I used it for hanging pictures. I tried to think what other murderous items I might have around my house. I mean, I could smother someone with a pillow, but they’d need to cooperate or be sedated or both. I could probably strangle someone—if they were smaller than I am. Meaning, very small. Or, I could—

“I’ve heard you could kill someone with a ball point pen or a credit card,” Marc said.

“If you’re James Bond,” Leon said. “And hire a stunt coordinator.”

Then Louis returned with the stun gun and a selection of knives from his kitchen. He spread them all out on the wrought iron table among our cocktails. I picked up the stun gun—it looked like a deck of cards had bred with a crab.

“Are the batteries fresh?” I asked.

“I just replaced them.”

Now I just had to decide on what to wear so I could keep it hidden until needed. Fortunately, it was winter in Southern California, so a light jacket did not look odd.

Louis was explaining his knives. “This is a paring knife, this is a carving knife, this is a utility knife, and this one is for fileting.”

“I’ll take that last one,” Leon said. “I’d rather filet my enemy than pare him.”

“What about that one?” Marc asked, pointing at a knife Louis hadn’t mentioned.

“I’m on the fence about that one. It’s professional grade so I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

Marc snatched it up. “You love me, remember?”

“Fine. If you do have to stab someone, remember to twist once you’re in. They don’t come back after that.”

“He’s been reading spy novels,” Marc explained.

I stood up saying, “Now that we’re armed, I think I should go to bed.”

“Yes, I think that’s a good idea,” Louis said.

And with that, I hobbled up the stairs.

* * *

I did not make it all the way to my bed, as I discovered the next morning when I woke up on the sofa. My cordless phone was ringing. I would have ignored it, but the receiver was wedged between the sofa cushions. I was practically sleeping on top of it.

“Hello?” I groaned.

“I’m so sorry it wasn’t the big one?”

“What? Mom? You mean the earthquake?”

“Of course, I mean the earthquake. What else could I mean?”

“You’re sorry it wasn’t the big one? That’s terrible!”

“No, it’s not. If it had been the big one then we wouldn’t be waiting for the big one, we’d have gotten it out of the way, and my boys would be all right.”

I bit my tongue. As an only child, I did not like my mother adopting my friends. I know it’s selfish, but I’d gone to a lot of trouble raising her (particularly during my teenage years) and I didn’t really want to share. I know the traditional view is that parents raise children and not vice versa, but that is just naïve.

“I’m sorry our disaster is so disappointing.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

She then fell into silence. I couldn’t hear much more than the blood pounding in my head. How many drinks had I had yesterday? I tried to count them but got distracted by the fact that she wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t she saying anything? It was her responsibility to keep the conversation going since she’d called me, wasn’t it?

“Well,” she said, finally. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Oh God, who did you talk to?”

“Leon called me. Poor Patty. It’s tragic.”

“You only met her twice,” I pointed out. Patty had flitted by the table a couple of times during my mother’s holiday visits.

“I know. She seemed lonely to me.”

“Well, she’s not lonely anymore.”

“I hope that’s true. I hope when you die you get to see all your favorite people again. I mean the dead ones, not the living. That would be weird.”

“I imagine being dead is a little strange regardless. More so if it turns out to be a big party.”

“Oh, posh.”

“So you know she didn’t start out as a woman?”

“Yes, Leon said.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“I think it’s a pretty easy thing to understand.”

“It is?”

“Of course. The grass is always greener.”

“I think there’s a little more to—Have you ever wanted to be a man?”

“Absolutely. The day you were born for one. I love you like a son, dear, but—”

“I am your son,” I said.

“Exactly. But I really could have done without childbirth. Not to mention pregnancy. The whole reproduction thing is very unfair. A man contributes one very pleasant little squirt then a woman has nine months of aches, pains, vomiting, nausea, bloating and swelling, followed by literally being ripped open—”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Leon said you have no idea who killed Patty. Is that true?”

It wasn’t, but it was nice of Leon to lie to my mother. He wasn’t usually that considerate.

“No idea whatsoever.”

“It has to have something to do with Javier’s troubles. It would be too big a coincidence if it didn’t.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you making any progress with his case?”

“It’s not really a case, Mom. I’m not a private detective.”

“You know what I mean. Have you? Made progress?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, you must have discovered something. I mean, given that it was your store, they were probably there to kill you.”

“How, um, really? Aren’t you scared for me?”

“Of course, I’m scared for you, dear. I’m always scared for you. So, who wants you dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said, before I explained about SNIT and Mario Garcia and my plan to try and trick Detective Brenda Wellesley.

“Well,” she said, taking it all in. “You are bringing a weapon, aren’t you?”

“I have a stun gun.”

“Your birthday is coming up. I’m going to get you a Glock.”

“Mom!”

“What? Would you rather have something classic like a Smith & Wesson?”

“I don’t want a gun. I don’t like them.”

“Yes, I know that. If you wanted a gun, you would have gotten yourself one. You need a gun, though. Which is why I’m getting you one.”

And I couldn’t argue with that. After hanging up, I got up, drank two full glasses of water, took a couple of aspirins followed by my HIV meds, put two frozen waffles into the toaster, made coffee, and turned on the television. I also tried to figure out exactly how much I’d drunk the day before until I realized that might not be such a good idea.

The TV was telling me the death toll was hovering about thirty-three, half of whom had lived in the Northridge apartment building that collapsed. I had a few moments thinking about what that would have been like if it had happened to my building. I’d have landed right on top of Marc and Louis. That was a creepy thought. I would absolutely hate being the instrument of their death. I poured myself a cup of coffee and tried not to think about it.

President Clinton had already declared Los Angeles a disaster, which I’m sure Jay Leno would make a joke out of—not that I cared enough to watch and find out. They talked about the curfew—which was the first I’d heard of it. It was dusk to dawn and likely to be continued at least another day.

That meant something. My plan was to find Detective Wellesley and talk to her. But I only had until dusk—about six o’clock. And, I didn’t have a car, which did make things a bit harder. I grabbed the phone and called Marc and Louis. Yes, I could have just run down the stairs, but I was barely through my first cup of coffee.

Even though my windows were closed, I could hear their phone ringing. Their answering machine picked up. Their message, which they’d had for a few months, was annoyingly bizarre. It was the music from Jaws for about thirty seconds followed by Marc screaming, “Don’t go near the water!” and then Lous saying, “Please leave a message.”

I hung up.

It was well after nine o’clock. I wondered if they’d gone to work. I felt like I should go to work, but I knew the store was still a crime scene so I wouldn’t be allowed to go in and put the videos back on the shelves. The easiest thing to do was to call Wellesley and either do my thing over the phone or try and get her to come by. I called Rampart Station right before ten o’clock. I got a busy signal. I didn’t have her direct line. She wasn’t as free with her business cards as Javier. I kept trying.

Around noon, I heard Marc and Louis come home. I put on a clean T-shirt, moved my hair around and went downstairs.

“Where’ve you guys been?” I asked, when Louis answered the door.

“Come in, come in,” he said. Marc was sitting at the café table they had next to their tiny kitchen. I sat down while Louis got me a cup of coffee.

“What’s going on?” I asked, since they were both acting a little odd.

“Our house got red tagged,” Marc said.

“What does that mean?”

“Condemned,” Louis said, tersely. He slipped a slice of coffee cake in front of me.

“But yesterday you said the house was okay?”

“Christopher called in a few favors and got the city inspector to put us on the list. Apparently, the foundation is practically crumbling. The whole place could come down in the next aftershock.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Do you still have to buy it?”

“Christopher says we can back out. We’re trying to decide what’s best.”

“Prices are likely to drop, at least for a while,” Marc said. “They often do after earthquakes.”

“We’re dropping our offer at least forty thousand,” Louis said. “And, of course, they have to fix the foundation.”

“It has to be un-condemned. Is that a word?” Marc wondered.

“So, the people who are selling, they have to pay for everything?” I asked.

“Or they could tell us to go away and try to sell it as a tear-down.”

“Would you want to do that?” I asked. “Would you want to build a new house?”

“Christopher says it’s not a good time to build,” Marc explained. “There’s going to be a lot of work repairing homes for at least a year. Construction costs are likely to rise. And we were barely getting in as it was.”

“Will you get your deposit back?”

“Probably. It’s not our fault the house was red tagged.”

“Christopher says the best scenario is one where they ask us to go away.”

“And they might. They’re not making any money on the deal. Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry. I know you guys were really excited.”

“It sucks,” Marc said.

“What are you going to do with the rest of the day?” I had an idea about what I wanted them to do, but I had to feel them out first.

“I have to go into my office and check out the damage,” Louis said, taking a bite of his coffee cake. With his mouth half full, “Marc has set up a meeting with our contractor, just to get a second opinion.”

Then he studied me for a moment, “Why? What do you need?”

“I’m trying to contact Wellesley, but I keep getting a busy signal. I thought maybe if I go down to Rampart…”

“You know, we were pretty tipsy when you came up with that idea,” Louis said. “I think it’s too dangerous. I think you should stay here where you’re safe.”

As though I hadn’t heard a word, I said, “Maybe one of you could drop me off and I’ll try to find Wellesley.”

“You haven’t heard a word I said.”

“Louis, it’s a police station. How dangerous can it be?”

“No, I’m not dropping you off there.” I looked over at Marc and Louis added, “And neither is he.”

19

Well, that sucked. My plan went completely out the window. I mean, I could walk; it wasn’t that far, about a half an hour each way. Of course, if Marc and Louis thought walking into a police station was dangerous, I’m sure they’d think walking down the street… many streets… would be even more dangerous. Right? While I was trying to figure this out, I walked upstairs to my apartment. Coming in the door, I saw that there was a message on my answering machine.

“This is Tracy at Becker Morse Medical Group. We need to know, are you available this afternoon? Please call me back…” and she left the number.

What did they want? My appointment wasn’t until next week. I was pretty sure. I’d already done the bloodwork, so did they want me to come in early because it was bad? Oh God, it was bad. They wouldn’t have called me if it was good. Doctors never wanted you to come in early if it was good news.

I called the office back and got the receptionist named Peggy. I remembered her since she reminded me of one of my grade school teachers. Third grade? Fourth grade? Sternly, she said, “Noah, you had an appointment with Dr. Sam at nine-thirty. Did you forget?”

I’d been seeing Dr. Sam for years now, since even before I found out I was HIV positive. He was blond and desperately handsome. I had the feeling many of his patients pretended to be sicker than they were just to see him.

“I thought that was next week?”

“No, it was today. Not to worry though, you’re not the only one forgetting things today. How soon could you be here?”

“Oh, that’s okay. We can push it back a few weeks.”

“No, Dr. Sam said he really wants to see you.”

Eh, crap. My T-cells had probably fallen. Again. This was the last thing I needed.

“Um, I guess I can be there by eleven-thirty. Noon, maybe?”

“Okay, we’ll see you then.”

As soon as I hung up the phone I went out to the balcony and looked down at Marc and Louis. “I need a ride.”

“No,” they both said at once.

“To my doctor.”

“Is your doctor within walking distance of Rampart station?” Louis asked, skeptically.

“His office is Beverly Hills Adjacent.”

“Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”

“Absolutely.”

I jumped into the shower for less than ten minutes, threw on a pair of jeans and a button-down pink shirt. I mean, the doctor deserved more than a T-shirt, right? Grabbed my wallet, my keys, my stun gun and Louis’s knife, and was out the door in approximately fourteen minutes. Not bad.

We hadn’t gone very far, when Louis asked me, “How are you getting home?”

“I’ll have them call me a cab.”

“And then you’ll go directly home.”

“I promise.” And when I said it, I meant it. I knew the appointment would go badly and I’d want some time at home to regroup. Deal. Cope. Whatever we’re calling it.

The rest of the drive there, I was edgy and a little nauseous. Louis tried to keep a conversation going. He had a new Lorena Babbitt joke that wasn’t really very funny. Finally, he asked, “Are you nervous about the doctor?”

“Yeah.”

“You know they’re going to find a cure. You just have to hold on until they do.”

I know he was trying to be kind, but he made me feel like someone lost at sea, holding onto one floating scrap of wood from a boat that no longer existed. I was only going to be able to hold onto the bit of wood for so long. Eventually, it would slip from my fingers.

“I hope you’re right.”

He dropped me off, told me again not to go near Detective Wellesley—at that moment, she was the furthest thing from my mind. I said goodbye and went up to my doctor’s office.

In the waiting room, after I checked in, I picked up a copy of People Magazine. The headline was Young, Rich & Wild with a big picture of River Phoenix who’d died of an overdose a few months before. Mostly it was about Johnny Depp’s Viper Room, which he claimed was not a drug den—the magazine had been kind enough to include a photo of Johnny looking stoned out of his mind. I’d spent enough time in my doctor’s office to know that the storyline People Magazine preferred was: Rich People Are So Unhappy. I have to admit I was kind of a sucker for that plot. I mean, I was probably happier than most of them, right? Yeah, I don’t believe it either.

The nurse opened the door to the waiting room and called me in. His name was Gino, he was dark with a very heavy beard, and he’d taken to flirting with me. But that day he was quiet, which increased my anxiety by about a thousand percent. Dr. Sam was going to have bad news. Very bad news.

Gino weighed me, took my temperature and blood pressure, then asked “How are you feeling?”

“A little tired,” I said, though honestly that could have more to do with the stress of being shot at, surviving an earthquake, and having an employee murdered than anything to do with my health.

He wrote that on a clipboard, and said, “The doctor will be with you in a moment.”

He smiled at me and then left. It was a sympathetic smile; I was sure of it. He’d been much flirtier in the past. Something wasn’t right and he knew it. Oh God, I hoped I had some T-cells left. They had been fading over the last few years. They’d were under four hundred for a while, but then—and I kind of think this had to do with the dead bodies in my life, they are stressful after all—then (after the dead bodies stopped) my T-cells rebounded to around four-fifty. They were likely falling again. How low might they be? Under three hundred? Lower? I’d heard of people still being alive with like nine T-cells. They made jokes about naming them. Of course, they were also probably very sick.

I hadn’t been sick though. So maybe the news isn’t that—Dr. Sam walked into the room with his nose deep in my file.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“How bad is what?”

“I don’t know, you’re the doctor. Peggy said you wanted me to come, that it couldn’t wait.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Okay, just tell me. Get it over with.”

Strangely, I was finding this situation more frightening than a bunch of corrupt cops. Maybe I needed to rethink a few things.

“Your bloodwork is good.”

“It is?”

“I wanted you to come in because I’ve been invited to enroll a portion of my practice into a clinical trial. It has to do with a new kind of drug therapy which utilizes multiple drugs to attack the virus in different ways to keep it from replicating.”

“So, it’s not a cure.”

“No. But, I think extending your life would be a victory. Don’t you?”

“I do. Definitely.” After a moment, I asked, “Is this one of those clinical trials where one person gets the medicine, and another person doesn’t?”

“No, this is actually about comparing medications. So, one group will get a regimen of three drugs while another group will get a regimen of three other drugs. One of the drugs will be AZT in both groups. You’ll be adding, not subtracting.”

“Okay.”

The study was being run out of UCLA Medical Center and an intern would be calling to arrange a home visit. They’d bring my first six weeks of medication and run through the paperwork with me. I needed to come see Dr. Sam every six weeks rather than three months. If I had any serious side effects I was to call him immediately.

“There will probably be a lot of paperwork. You’re going to need to take your medication on time and write down any side effects you have. The trial is for a year. We’re optimistic that at the end of that time you’ll be able to stay on whichever of the two regimes are more effective.”

“And you think this will help keep me alive?”

“I do. I’m very optimistic.”

I was silent for long enough that Dr. Sam asked, “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I am. I just… I’ve spent a lot of the last few years thinking about other people, not even people I know well most of the time and… well, I try not to think much about the future and where I’ll be in five years. It’s too scary.”

“Maybe now you can think about it.”

“Maybe I can.”

In a haze, I stopped at the reception desk, paid my co-pay, and asked Peggy if she’d call me a cab.

“You’re a cab,” she said, then cracked up. When I didn’t laugh, she cleared her throat and said, “Of course I will. Do you have a preference?”

“No.”

“Okay. Where are you going?”

“Home,” I said, and then gave her the address. I stood there while she made the call.

When she got off the phone, she said, “About twenty-minutes.”

“Thank you.”

I sat down in the waiting room and waited. Not a cure, but it would help to keep me alive. Honestly, that was just like a cure. I mean, I understood that they weren’t going to be able to make the virus go away. But if I wasn’t going to die. That was almost a cure. And in this case, almost was a lot.

I began to giggle. It sounded like… it seemed entirely likely that I was going to live. Which was absolutely amazing. I tried reminding myself that a hundred things could go wrong. A thousand. But it didn’t work. All I could think was that maybe, just maybe, I was going to live. And that…

I started giggling again.

AIDS had lived in the background of my life for about four years, it had been like a low hum. I’d tuned it out as best I could. Tried not to think about it, tried to just go on. But now, with the possibility of these new drugs, the hum was gone. I might live until the year two thousand, two thousand and ten, twenty, those numbers had seemed like science fiction, but now they seemed like time I might see. What would I do with all that time?

After about ten minutes, I went downstairs to wait for the cab to arrive. I had another ten minutes, but I didn’t want to take a chance and miss it. What would I do when I got home? Should I call my mother and tell her about the trial? Should I call Marc and Louis? Marc and Louis would want to throw a celebratory dinner. That would be fun but… what if the trial didn’t work? What if they took a closer look at my file and decided I wasn’t a good fit? No, I couldn’t do that to people. I had to wait. I had to not tell anyone just yet.

So, what would I do when I got home? I was excited, antsy even, I couldn’t imagine going home and just sitting there, doing nothing. A Yellow Cab pulled up in front of me. It was a Ford Crown Victoria. I climbed into the back and was about to give him my address but then I said, “Could you take me to Rampart Station?”

“Are you all right sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s not an emergency of any kind.”

He turned on the meter and pulled away from the curb. What was I doing? I’d promised Louis I wouldn’t go to Rampart. But, well, I felt lucky. Things were going my way. All I needed to do was stop in, find Wellesley and ask a few questions, then go home. Yes, I would probably have to walk home, but it would be fine. It was my lucky day.

I should probably give more thought to exactly what I was going to do, I realized, as we got onto Wilshire, which we’d take across town. I was going to find Wellesley. And then?

Talk to her. About what? The fuzziness of my plan was becoming apparent. I had had a lot to drink after all—wait, I needed to tell her I knew who killed Mario Garcia. I needed to tell her I knew someone killed Mario Garcia by mistake and that they’re trying to blame it on Javier.

She’ll probably ask what that information is and then I’ll say it’s somewhere safe. And if anything happens to me or my friends the information will be released to the Los Angeles Times.

What will she say to that, I wondered?

Probably not that much. If she’s working with the SNIT guys, she’s going to want to talk it over with them. She’ll probably just growl at me like she always does.

On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong. What if she’s not working with SNIT? What if she wants to help? No, that didn’t seem very likely. If she’s not working with SNIT she’ll probably want to stay as far away as possible.

The cab dropped me off in front of the station. I climbed the steps and went inside. I’d never actually gotten all the way inside before. In the lobby, there was a counter similar to a reservation desk in a hotel. A uniformed officer was standing behind it. I walked over.

“Hi. I need to see Detective Wellesley.”

Without checking, he said, “She’s not here today.”

“Is she out sick?”

“I don’t know. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t tell you. Can someone else help you?”

“No. Not really. Do you think she’ll be here tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I can give you her phone number and you can leave her a message.”

“I already did that.”

“Then you’re going to have to wait until she calls you back.”

“It’s really important.”

“But you can’t talk to anyone else.”

“No.”

“Then it’s not that important, is it?”

I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I said, “Okay,” and left. What should I do? Should I maybe call her again and this time leave a very detailed message? I didn’t want whoever killed Patty Wong to show up at my door while Wellesley had the sniffles. If she did actually—maybe she took the day off so she herself could show up at my door and off me. There was a depressing thought.

I could have looked for a payphone to call another cab, they probably had one somewhere in the station. Of course, that one just cost me a fortune. I wasn’t far from my apartment, it seemed silly to call a cab, then wait twenty minutes for it to show up just to drive me for five minutes. I started walking.

It was a simple walk. I just walked down to Benton Way, which crossed the freeway and kept going until I got to Marathon. Then it was Marathon until I got to the top of the hill and finally my apartment. The day was warming up, the sun was strong. All the color seemed to have been bleached out of the neighborhood. Every building seemed to be some variation of sand.

I’d crossed the bridge and was approaching Bellevue, when a beige Crown Vic screeched to a halt in front of me. My first thought was, “Oh crap. This was not a good idea.” There were three guys in the car, two of whom jumped out. They made no attempt to cover their faces, but then why would they, they were obviously cops. Not that I recognized them.

I was grabbed and, despite my kicking and screaming, pushed into the back seat of the Crown Vic. They easily cuffed my hands behind my back. The two cops squeezed in on either side of me.

The driver was a stern looking guy with a crew cut, very military. He didn’t turn around and say anything. In fact, no one said anything. Not even me.

As we pulled into traffic, the one on my right who was the tallest and the blondest of the crew, pulled a Trader Joe’s cloth grocery bag out from under the front seat and put it over my head.

I was already incredibly uncomfortable, practically sitting on my hands. I said—because I had nothing to lose by saying it— “I’m sure we can work this out if we just have a simple conversation. No need to kidnap me.”

No one said anything.

“And by the way, if this is about ransom, I don’t know anyone who could afford to pay you more than two thousand dollars.” (Which was all I could afford to pay back.)

“Shut up,” one of them hissed. I think it was the driver.

Okay, they probably weren’t going to ransom me. These must be the SNIT guys. Which meant they were going to kill me. Well, there was irony for you. On the day I find out I might, maybe, not die of AIDS someday, I get murdered. Believe it or not I actually giggled.

“What the fuck?” one of the cops said. The one with the weak chin, sitting on my left.

“Sorry.”

No, wait, that didn’t make sense. I’d seen their faces and then they put a bag over my head. They didn’t care if I knew who they were, but they did care if I knew where we were going. What did that—they weren’t going to kill me. They were taking me to a location that they didn’t want me to know about so they could… what?

Frighten me. Intimidate me? Threaten me? All of the above? I’m sure the least they’d want was for me to stop trying to help Javier. And I was probably going to have to promise to do exactly that.

I realized I had taken a seriously wrong turn. I should have simply gone back to Javier’s mother, told her what I knew, and then let her deal with it. Even the most corrupt policeman was less likely to kidnap a lawyer than a video store owner. My options for retaliation were much more limited. What could I do? Cancel their membership?

Where were we going? It already felt like we’d been driving for quite a while. Were we going east or west? I couldn’t tell. Or wait, could I? Wait what time was it? A little before one was my guess. Crap. That wasn’t going to help. The sun would be just about directly above us. If it were earlier in the day or later in the day, I’d be able to feel the sun on my neck and back and that would tell me which direction we were going in. But the sun beating down on the roof of the car didn’t tell me anything.

I mean, if we were driving east they might be driving me out to the desert to make me dig my own grave and then put me in it—once again, though, the hood. Yes, I know, I was placing a lot of hope in the hood—or rather, Trader Joe’s cloth carry all. But—

At the moment, it was the only hope I had.

20

I’m not sure how long we drove. It might have been an hour, or a half an hour, or fifteen minutes. It’s surprising how quickly you lose track of time when there’s a shopping bag over your head. The car finally stopped, and I was yanked out of the backseat. No one was saying much of anything. The only noise in the car was the police radio occasionally spewing gibberish. They’d either discussed this a lot in advance or it wasn’t their first kidnapping. I decided the latter was more likely.

We went up a steeply angled wooden staircase, meaning that we were probably at a house that was built on a hill. That was an afterthought, though. Mostly I was appreciating how difficult it was to climb stairs with your hands cuffed behind you, a bag over your head, and a goon giving you little shoves to keep you going.

When we got to the top of the stairs, we crossed a stone patio. Then I heard the woosh of sliding glass doors and we were inside a house. I was led to the center of what felt like a large room. Then I was pushed down into a straight back chair. The bag was yanked off my head. I blinked a few times, adjusting to the sudden flood of light. Taking in the house around me, I saw a large living room that led right into a kitchen, big windows looking out over the valley, I think, and—next to me, taped to a kitchen chair—Detective Wellesley. There was silver duct tape over her mouth.

“Oh,” I said, not very articulately. “Um, I was trying to call you.”

She glared at me. You’d think this was all my fault. All right, it was probably a little my fault. Maybe even a lot my fault.

“Why were you trying to call her?” Tall and blond asked.

I turned my attention to my captors. I was pretty sure I was staring at least at some of SNIT. They were staring back, looking at Wellesley and I as though we an exhibit at a museum—some kind of modern art they didn’t quite get.

“He asked you a question. Why were you trying to call her?” That was Crew Cut, the shortest, squarest looking of the bunch.

“Uh, well, we haven’t talked in a while. I wanted to catch up.”

“Bullshit,” that was the third one. He had a weak chin and nervous eyes. “How much do you know?”

“Actually, I don’t know anything.”

“What does that mean, you don’t know anything?”

“It means I don’t know anything,” I tried again. Crew Cut looked like he might hit me, so I said, “I have theories, I have guesses, I have speculations. None of that is knowing something.”

“What’s your theory?”

“I think someone, possibly one of you, killed the wrong Mario Garcia and, when it looked like Javier O’Shea might figure it out you tried to frame him for theft, which necessitated your killing Elliott Twiss and then Latoya Kennedy.”

The looks on their faces told me I’d hit the nail on the head. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea. Quickly, I added, “Of course, I could be completely wrong. I probably am completely wrong.”

Crew Cut said, “We need to kill this guy.”

Weak Chin replied, “No one’s going to believe him. He’s just a fag who owns a video store.”

“Who else knows about your theory?” Crew Cut asked.

“No one. No one at all.”

“You don’t have friends?” Tall and blond asked.

“Nope. I’ve just never been very popular.”

“Oh, that’s sad,” Weak Chin said.

That made me wonder if I’d just made a mistake. If no one knew my theory, then they could just kill me and that would be the end of it. If I had a lot of friends who I’d told, they might not—no, they’d probably just kill my friends. Of course, if one of my friends was a lawyer…

“You know, now that I think of it—”

“Now that you think of what?”

“I did write my theory down and give it to my attorney. In case something happened to me.

Crew Cut was suddenly in my face screaming, “Who the fuck do you think you are? We’re LAPD, you think you’re going to get away with this kind of shit?”

He was so in my face, and I was leaning back so far to get away from his screaming that I tipped over my chair. I have to tell you, falling backwards with your hands cuffed behind you is not a fun thing. I wasn’t attached to the chair so I kind of slid off a little.

“Will, cool it,” Tall and Blond said. “He’s bluffing. Let’s just kill them both.”

“Hold on a minute,” Weak Chin said. “I didn’t sign up for this. I mean, yeah, drug dealers, lowlifes, scum… that’s one thing. But she’s a cop and he’s just a video guy.”

“It is what it is, Jason. You wanna go to prison?”

“No, I don’t wanna go to prison but… This is—”

“Outside. Now,” Will said. He turned and walked out the slider to the deck. The other two shuffled after him.

I sat up and looked around the house. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a big crack running down the living room wall. The living room furniture had shifted out of place and the floor was littered with junk that had once been on the coffee table and the walls. When I looked over at the kitchen, I noted that the cabinets were open and most of the dishes and glasses had smashed onto the floor.

Getting up onto my knees—quite the task while handcuffed—I noted that the floor slanted downward by an inch or two. This place had to be red tagged, which probably made it available as a spot to keep people you’ve kidnapped.

Even through the slider I could hear them arguing. We had to find a way out of this. I walked over to Wellesley and squatted next to her face. I leaned close and tried to grab the edge of the tape between my teeth.

She pulled her head away from me, and said, “Mmm-mmm.”

“Hold still,” I said,

“Mmm-mmm.”

Ignoring whatever it was she was trying to say, I dove for the tape, managing to get the edge between my teeth—along with some of her cheek.

“MMMM-MMM.”

I managed to release her cheek and get a good hold on the tape, then I pulled my head back. The tape came away from her face just a bit. I tried getting a better bite. Then pulled again. This time, she twisted her head away quickly and the tape came halfway off. I tugged again and her mouth was free, though the tape was still stuck to her other cheek.

“My hands, you need to get me undone. You just wasted time… Never mind just find something to cut with.”

I began looking around the house frantically. There was a desk in the living room area with the drawers gaping open. I walked over and peeked into an open drawer. As I did that, I asked Wellesley, “Do you know where we are?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re in Sherman Oaks. Not that far from Northridge. I got a peek at the view while they were bringing me in.”

I saw something that might help in the center desk drawer, turned around, and began to feel for it.

“I have to ask. I thought Featherstone was the one who left me the files, but it was you, wasn’t it?”

“Stupid, I know. I thought it would confuse you. Get you out of this.”

“So you’re the one who changed the reports on Mario Garcia?”

“No comment.”

“What about Featherstone? Is he—”

“He’s friendly with these guys. You know, there are probably knives in the kitchen…”

“Okay,” I said, but didn’t move from the desk. I’d managed to get a box of paper clips out of the drawer and spilled them onto the desk. Twisting my head to look over my shoulder, I picked one up. Then, I went over to where Wellesley was sitting.

“I need to open my handcuffs with this paperclip. Can you help guide me?”

“I said to get a knife. That’s not going to work.”

“No, it will. I saw it in a movie.” Though at that particular moment I couldn’t think which one.

I stood next to her concentrating on the clip behind me. I folded it open so that it was relatively straight, then I had to get it into the keyhole. I turned so that Wellesley could see.

“I’m going to try to get the clip into the lock. Tell me if I’m close.”

She sighed heavily.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes, get a knife and cut me loose.”

“I will, in a minute.”

Fortunately, I could still hear the SNIT guys arguing outside. Which was good, since it meant at least one of them didn’t want to kill us.

Reluctantly, Wellesley said, “To the right.”

I moved the clip.

“The other right.”

I moved the clip in the opposite direction. It slipped into the keyhole. I began moving it around and around trying to figure out how to get the lock to click open.

“Hold on,” Wellesley said. “You’re going to need to use the lock to bend the clip about a quarter of an inch from the end. Then it’s shaped like the key, and you can fish it around then.”

“I thought you said this won’t work.”

“It won’t. You’re probably getting us both killed.”

I was tempted to growl at her. She was a very negative person. I went back to concentrating on the paperclip, I managed to get it bent at a ninety-degree angle at what I hoped was a quarter of an inch from the end. I eased it back into the lock. I was fishing around, praying to hear a click, when the four crooked cops came back in.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Will AKA Crew Cut asked.

I spun around. As I did, the cuffs clicked open. I kept my hands behind my back as though I was still cuffed. Sheepishly, I walked back over to my chair. When I sat down, I answered the question.

“Wasting what little time I have left, I suppose. What have you been up to?

“I’m Jason,” the one with the weak chin said. “I figure we should be on a first name basis since we have to talk about what we’re going to do here. You’re Noah, right?”

“Are you afraid you kidnapped the wrong person?”

“Naw, he’s just being polite,” Will said. “You on the other hand are being kind of an asshole.”

“Um… thanks?”

“Exactly. So, do you want to end up buried out in the desert?”

“No thank you.”

“Good. Now we need to figure out what you have to do to avoid that. How about you start by telling us who this lawyer is you gave your theory to.”

“You know, maybe it’s time for me to tell the truth. There’s no theory. I didn’t write anything down. I made that up.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Honestly, I really did.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Wellesley said. “He doesn’t matter. I’ve been investigating you. Internal Affairs knows about my investigation, and I have enough evidence against you to put you all in prison for the rest of your lives. So… Jason Feeley, Will Campbell, Dave Marek, I’m arresting you for the murders of Mario Garcia, Elliott Twiss and LaToya Kennedy. You have—”

“You forgot Patty Wong,” I said.

She turned and glared at me, “Do you mind? Jason, Will, Dave… you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights?”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Will said. “You’re fucking handcuffed. You can’t arrest us. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Dave, you live nearby, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, I think you do. You live in Sherman Oaks. We’re probably on your street, that’s how you noticed the house was red tagged.”

Whoa, she was better than I thought she was. But what was she doing? She continued laying things out, “That’s why you guys probably don’t want to kill us here. See, it might take a while, but eventually a couple of uniforms will start knocking on doors asking if anyone saw anything suspicious today, the day I was kidnapped. Someone will have seen something. That will lead them here.”

“But it will be a dead end. Because you’re right, we’re not going to kill you here,” Dave admitted. “We’re going to take you out to the desert.”

“And if we don’t cooperate?”

“It’s not like you got a choice.”

Wellesley stood up, still taped to the chair, and practically threw herself into the kitchen area and ended up on the floor. On top of the broken crockery. That’s gotta hurt.

Jason began yelling, “Oh my God, oh my God, she’s bleeding.”

“Ah fuck,” Dave said.

It took a second for me to catch up. They didn’t want to kill us here… because it would make a mess. Wellesley decided she’d make a mess here anyway. Wow… that was kind of smart.

“Get a towel,” Dave said. “Don’t let her bleed all over the place.”

Will came around the kitchen island to grab a tea towel that had been left there. That meant he was close to me. What to do? Then I remembered—I had a weapon! I got up, let the handcuffs dangle from my left arm, grabbed the stun gun out of my pocket and zapped him in the neck. Will went down.

His jacket fell open and I saw his revolver in a holster on his belt. I reached down and grabbed it. Now I had a stun gun in one hand and a gun in the other. I waved the gun at Dave.

“Holy shit,” Dave said. Then looked at the others, “You didn’t search this guy?”

“He owns a fucking video store,” Jason said. Using the hand that held the stun gun, I threw the tea towel to him so he could press it to Wellesley’s face. We needed help, we needed help fast. Then I remembered how close together houses were in the hills—well, most places in LA but really close in the hills. I aimed at the sliding glass door and fired the gun.

The glass shattered, everyone jumped a little, the glass made a lot of noise. As did the bullet. The gun kicked harder than I expected and I nearly dropped it. That would have been bad.

Squatting behind the island, practically kneeling on Will, I started screaming, “HELP, HELP, CALL THE POLICE!”

For good measure, I fired the gun at the ceiling. Dave fired his gun. Chips of the marble countertop flew everywhere. Shit! I reached a hand up and, aiming the gun backward, fired.

“Fuck!”

Did I hit him? Wow, that would be really lucky. I popped my head up over the countertop and immediately saw that I had not hit him. He was aiming at me, so I popped back down. He fired a couple more times, really making a mess of the countertop. Then, below me, Will’s police radio went off.

“Units in the vicinity of Round Valley Drive, shots fired.”

“Dave, we gotta get out of here,” Jason said. “We can’t be here when that call is answered.”

Beneath me, Will tried to crawl away. I bent down and attempted to zap him again with the stun gun, but it didn’t have much of a charge so all I got for my trouble was Will saying, “Ouch, fuck.”

Meanwhile, Jason bolted from the house. Then Dave behind him. Followed by Will. I raised the gun, but Wellesley said, “Let them go.”

I looked back at Wellesley; she was now pressing the tea towel to her face herself. In the distance, I heard a police siren.

“So, have you really been investigating them? Are you really working with Internal Affairs?”

“I can’t comment on an active investigation.”

21

Eldridge turned out to be a great hire. Mikey was over the moon. I also hired Ryan. Reorganizing our porn by kink was actually a good idea. As it turned out he was also very good at suggesting videos we needed to add to our collection. Even a short conversation with him was turning out to be an education.

I finally had my car towed to a mechanic and checked out. Everyone was right, it would cost about what the car was worth to fix it. I spent a few days with a rental driving around to car lots, and at a Toyota dealership found another Sentra, same year, also a coupe. This one had fewer miles and was bronze.

When I told the sales guy my mother was going to pay for it—on that credit card she got so she could get the air miles—he put a lot of pressure on me to buy a brand-new Corolla at three times the price. I wanted to kill him when he convinced my mother it was a good idea. I barely avoided having a nasty fight with her about the whole thing. I made a solemn promise to myself that I would always change the oil so the car would last forever.

Early one morning, a UCLA grad student just a few years younger than me, came to my apartment. She brought with her three very large plastic bottles. My eyes must have gotten large when I saw them, because she said, “It’s a three-month supply.”

“Oh, okay.”

That made it better, though it did seem like a lot of pills.

She handed me a sheet that explained when I was to take which pill. Then she gave me a printed logbook.

“You’re going to need to write down that you took the pills as instructed. If you don’t take them as instructed, make a note of that by putting a cross through your check mark. Don’t lie, it will skew the results.”

“This seems like more than I expected.”

“You’ll be fine.” Then she handed me a pill case with three different compartments for each day of the week. “This will help.”

“I guess it will,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how exactly.

Before she left, we filled out a four-page form about my health, my sex life and my eating habits. Of the three, my health was the bright spot. My sex life was nonexistent, and my eating habits were terrible (when I wasn’t at Marc and Louis’ table), but my health was good—considering.

After she left, I distributed the pills to their correct compartments and took that day’s “lunch” pills. I hoped I wouldn’t screw this up.

A few days later, it was time for our regular Thursday night dinner. Javier was coming, which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time choosing something to wear. I finally went with a cream-colored, long-sleeved, winter-weight shirt with a pattern of martini glasses all over it that was festive. It also looked good with my black jeans and Doc Martens.

Before I went downstairs, the phone rang. My mother.

“I know you’ve been busy, so I took it upon myself to go car shopping for you.”

“You’re not buying me a car in Michigan, are you?” My voice went up an octave. It would be just like my mother to try and lure me home with the promise of a car. I, however, had no desire to drive a car, brand new or otherwise across the country. I’d arrived in Los Angeles on a People Express flight with nothing but a backpack, the promise of a couch, and enough cash in my pocket to buy a fifteen-year-old Ford Maverick. I had never had a desire to See the USA in a Chevrolet or otherwise.

“Of course, I’m not buying you a car here,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t have time to come out and get it. Though, I could—oh never mind. Anyway, I’ve been looking around and these are the requirements I’ve put together. You need something nondescript in case you’re following someone, something with a lot of power in case you’re being chased, something sturdy enough to withstand an impact—”

“Mom, I really don’t—” I started and then gave up. I was going to say there was no reason to think I’d need any of that, but then, who was I kidding.

“You know, I’ve asked everywhere for some kind of release inside the trunk and no one makes them. Can you imagine? I mean, you never know when you’ll be locked in your own trunk.”

I had to admit that was true.

“So did you reach a decision? What kind of car am I getting?”

“Well, I am very tempted to get you a Crown Victoria.”

“A police car?”

“It works for them.”

“Parking it would be a nightmare.”

“I thought of that. What about a Bronco?”

“Isn’t that like a truck?”

“Almost. Not quite though.”

“Couldn’t we just fix my car?”

“Oh no dear. I explained what happened to one of the salesmen. Very nice gentleman named Rick. I always liked that name. Ever since I saw Casablanca.”

“But he’s trying to sell you a car so…”

“I explained that I wouldn’t be buying a car in Michigan. He’s been very sweet about it. He even asked me to lunch.”

“Oh,” I said. But that was not overly exciting. My mother’s last romantic adventure had ended badly.

She must have picked up something in my voice, because she said, “Don’t worry. Leon has insisted on doing a complete background check before I go to lunch with Rick. I am hoping, at the very least, he’s not connected to organized crime.”

“Yes, that would make a pleasant change,” I said. “Listen I’m going downstairs for dinner. I’ll call you on Saturday.”

“All right, dear, you have a fun evening.”

When I got downstairs, Marc and Louis had really outdone themselves. The tablecloth was red, the dishes were a mix of the black Fiestaware I’d seen before and some new brilliant white dishes, the napkins were black-and-white check. Next to each setting was a gigantic wine glass. Seriously, they were practically fishbowls on stems. Louis came out of the apartment with a tray of fried ravioli in one hand and an open bottle of red wine in the other.

“Louis, the table is amazing,” I said.

“Thank you. Yesterday we took a mental health day and went down to the Crate & Barrel outlet in Long Beach.”

“Who else is coming?” I asked because there were seven settings.

“Leon is bringing Eduardo. And Javier is coming.”

“Oh. So, Javier is out of jail?”

“His is. He asked to bring someone. He said it was a surprise.”

As Louis poured me a glass of wine, Marc came out of the house. He had a big smile on his face, and said, “So… you’ve heard of the Nostalgia Channel?”

“No, I haven’t. It’s on cable?”

“It is. Anyway, they bought the rerun rights to Kapowie! the TV show I did when I was a teenager.”

“I remember.”

“This is great because I’ll get some residual checks. And, they want to do a where-are-they-now episode to cap it all off. My agent is working out the details right now.”

“You have an agent?”

“Not exactly. It’s my same agent from when I was a kid. He’d get paid regardless since he got me the original gig, so I thought he might as well do the work.”

“That’s great!” I said.

“I’m excited. More money for our house… someday.”

“Christopher says prices will be falling,” Louis said. “He thinks they’ll fall for about a year. He’s suggesting we take six months off before we start looking again. Then lowball anything we like.”

“Isn’t that going to hurt him in the pocketbook?” I asked.

“Probably. But, if anyone can make money out of a falling market it’s Christopher.”

When Javier arrived I blushed from head to toe, even though I’d known he was coming. It was totally humiliating, even more so because of all people he’d brought Brenda Wellesley with him. The two looked awkward and a bit uncomfortable in their nonofficial roles. Javier was dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a loose-fitting, pale gold, shiny shirt. Wellesley wore a pair of slacks that almost fit and had pulled back her hair—and, she wasn’t wearing glasses. She must have gotten contacts.

Marc and Louis got them wine, while I waited awkwardly with them. Wellesley looked over the table like it was a crime scene, which caused me to say, “The white dishes are new. The black ones they had before the quake. A lot of those got broken, so they don’t have a whole set anymore.”

And then I realized I was talking to Wellesley about broken crockery, something with which she had an intimate experience. The cut on her jaw had been stitched together and covered in some kind of antibiotic cream. I was about to say something about it, when Leon and Eduardo came up the stairs.

Introductions were made. We told Eduardo it was nice to see him again. Leon shot us a sharp look as though we’d said something inappropriate. Wine was gotten for the new arrivals and then it was time to sit down to the soup, a wonderful, creamy parsnip soup served with crispy, warm French bread.

I was seated next to Wellesley on her right, so I got a close look at the wound on the side of her face. It ran from right in front of her ear down to her jaw line. It was worse than I remembered.

“Shouldn’t you have some kind of bandage on that,” I asked, probably a little rudely.

“The doctor said it’s better if it gets air.”

“Cocoa butter,” Leon said. “My mother swore by it. Of course, she only used it on my sisters. She thought scars gave me character.”

“You have sisters?” I asked.

“None of your business.”

Wellesley looked at us for a moment like we were nuts, then said to Leon, “Thank you for the suggestion.”

“What can you tell us about the investigation into SNIT?” I asked. “There was an article in the paper yesterday. It only mentioned Dave Marek and Will Campbell. Why were they the only ones arrested?”

“Jason Feeley will be giving evidence against Marek and Campbell,” Wellesley explained. “He’ll be charged later once the deal is worked out.”

“Does that mean he won’t be charged with murder?” I asked.

“No, he will be. He’ll just get a lighter sentence, be sent to a minimum-security prison where it’s easier to be former police.”

Then it was time for the salad, a simple Caesar. Wellesley offered to help but Leon stopped her. “No dear, it’s so much better if we just let them do it. It’s like a pas de deux.”

I doubt she knew what that was, because she just said, “Yeah, okay.”

Louis tried to keep the conversation light, not focused on recent events, or at least our personal recent events. We did talk about the Clinton’s healthcare plan, Marc’s Kapowie! news—complicated since we had to explain to Wellesley what the show was since she was already in college when it aired—and Philadelphia, which had come out the month before. Louis thought it trivialized the AIDS experience, while Marc pointed out that Hollywood had been trivializing straights lives for nearly a century and that being trivialized by Hollywood was something of an accomplishment.

“Neither of the actors seemed very gay to me,” Eduardo said.

“I’m sure that was deliberate,” Leon said. “Straight people won’t feel bad for you unless you act just like them.”

I thought I’d better change the subject since I wasn’t entirely sure Javier had come out to Wellesley, so I asked, “What happened to Featherstone?”

“He’s on administrative leave. We haven’t established how involved he was with SNIT, but I’m sure he was involved enough that his career is over at the very least,” Wellesley explained.

Something occurred to me. “He took our schedule, didn’t he? That’s why they thought if they lured Carl and Denny away that I’d have to come in. And my car was in the back, so they thought the ruse had worked. Featherstone is an accomplice to murder.”

“Does anyone need more wine?” Louis asked, as he and Marc scooped up the salad plates. We did. He asked Marc to come back with more wine and then, once all our glasses were full, Leon stood up and said, “I think we should toast to Patty. As some of you know, I knew her when she was a big draw at the Queen Mary. She wasn’t what you’d call a friendly queen, but I do remember this one time when she gave me some advice. I was done up as Roberta E. Lee in this giant, frilly hoop skirt. She took one look at me backstage, and said, ‘Darling, this isn’t for you. You need to find your thing. Elsewhere.’ I was crushed, of course, but she was absolutely right. To Patty!”

A few minutes later, Louis brought out a large platter with a big, broiled piece of cod surrounded by roasted winter vegetables.

Fresh cod is amazing, not at all like the fish they make fish sticks out of, though that too is rumored to be cod. While we ate, Marc tried asking Wellesley a few personal questions, but she didn’t seem much interested in talking about herself. All he really got was that she had been married and wasn’t interested in doing it again, and that she became a police officer because she wanted to help people and it seemed the most direct way to do that.

Something had been bothering me, so I went ahead and asked: “Why do you think they killed Patty Wong? Were they really going to kill me? I mean, I feel like they just wanted to scare me into silence when they kidnapped me so—”

“According to Will Campbell, Ricky Han wouldn’t cooperate and Dave Marek lost his cool.”

“That does sound like Patty,” I admitted.

“It’s unlikely charges will be brought in the death of…Patty Wong, if you insist.” Wellesley explained.

“Why not?”

“We have enough evidence to put them away for life with the other murders, and…”

“And the prosecutors don’t want to touch Patty’s case because she wasn’t Ricky Han, she was Patty,” Louis said.

“Juries often follow their emotions rather than the law,” Wellesley said.

“But who she was doesn’t have anything to do with her being murdered,” I pointed out.

“No. But if you can make a victim look guilty of anything it’s harder to get a conviction.”

“They’d make it seem like she deserved what she got?” Marc asked.

“A good defense attorney would try to do that, yes,” Wellesley said.

“Would your mother do that?” I asked Javier.

“Of course. I mean, she wouldn’t come out and say anything directly, but any good defense attorney would make a point of anything that might make a jury uncomfortable.”

“Won’t there be the same problem with Elliott Twiss and LaToya Kennedy? He was a drug dealer and she was a thief. Couldn’t a defense attorney make it seem like they got what they deserved too?”

“Yes, you’re right,” Wellesley said. “But we also have Mario Garcia. He was innocent. He was just a guy with the wrong name.”

After the entrée was cleared, Louis suggested we rest a bit before dessert. Then we talked about our experience of the earthquake the week before. Obviously, we didn’t exactly do ‘where were you’ since pretty much everyone was in bed at four-thirty in the morning. But…

“I was with Eduardo,” Leon said. “We were getting busy and let’s just say the earth moved.”

“Oh stop,” Eduardo giggled.

“I was also awake,” Wellesley contributed. “I have insomnia. I was lying in bed thinking about taking a run around the reservoir, when all of a sudden all hell broke loose. I decided a run might not be a good idea.”

We didn’t ask Javier what it was like to be in jail during an earthquake. It couldn’t have been pleasant.

Louis had just brought out dessert, a delicious looking upside-down cranberry cake with whipped cream.

“Have you heard from your mother?” I asked Javier.

“We had lunch. She made a ninety-minute argument about why I should leave the LAPD and go to law school.”

“Being a lawyer would be safer,” I pointed out.

“It’s not my thing,” he said with some finality.

And then dessert was over—the cake was fabulous—and everyone was saying goodbye. Before they left, I pulled Wellesley aside and said, “Thank you. I’ve thought a lot about everything that happened. I think when you deliberately fell on all that glass. It gave me time—you saved us.”

“Yeah, or maybe I tripped.”

And then she smiled, making me realize I’d never seen her do that before.

* * *

After everyone was gone and table cleared away, I said good night to Marc and Louis and went upstairs. I’d had enough wine that I was brilliantly awake. I was thinking about calling Javier, trying to talk myself out of it, when there was a tapping on my door. I opened it and there he was.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Come in. I really don’t have anything but water, I can get you a glass—”

“That’s okay. I don’t think I’ll stay long.”

Well, that was disappointing.

“Um, would like to sit down?”

“Sure.”

We sat down on my loveseat, which meant we were pretty close together. I couldn’t really think about anything except that I wanted to kiss him, which made thinking of something to say kind of hard. I went for it. I leaned against him and slid my fingers into his hair. I pressed my lips against his and then…

He didn’t kiss me back. After just a moment, I pulled away.

“I’m sorry, I guess I misread things.”

“I just really can’t,” he said. And that was totally confusing.

“So, you didn’t mean it?” I asked. “When you said you wished things had worked out for us.”

“I did mean it. It’s just. Complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

He was quiet. And then I remembered something.

“You said you deserved to go to prison. Why did you say that?”

“You’ll hate me.”

I know I was supposed to say that was impossible, that I could never hate him, but I couldn’t say it. I didn’t know what he was going to tell me.

He took a deep breath, and then another. Then he began, “You remember the demonstrations in the fall of ’91? Over AB101?”

I nodded, though I barely remembered. The governor had said he’d sign an LGBT antidiscrimination law and then he didn’t. I know Marc and Louis invited me to at least one of the demonstrations, but I didn’t go. I had a bad case of thrush that fall and an intestinal thing that seemed like it would never end. And that was during the worst of things with Jeffer.

Javier went on, “Well, that October there was a demonstration in Century City, near the mall, in front of Century Plaza. Pete Wilson was having a fundraiser there. I was still in patrol. We were on high alert.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” I said, my mouth dry.

“The street in front of the hotel was full of demonstrators. We had mounted guys, probably a couple of dozen using their horses to keep people back. A command was made to clear the median. As we moved forward to do that, demonstrators sat down.”

“You can stop.”

“I broke someone’s arm,” he said, so quietly I could barely hear it. In a normal voice, he said, “Two weeks later I was called into my sergeant’s office, I thought I was going to get in trouble about what I’d done, but I was told I was being made a detective trainee. I was rewarded for hurting someone. Someone like me.”

He was right. It was complicated. It also explained some things, things I hadn’t understood. When I first met him, he was barely out. Then I ran into him at Pride looking super gay, and then he had a boyfriend, and then he didn’t, and I just learned he had a fake ID he used to go to sex clubs. He seemed to go from zero to sixty in a very short time. And while he was doing all of that, he was flirting and occasionally kissing me.

It seemed clear he was looking for something. Something hard to find. Forgiveness? Was he looking for someone to listen to his story and say, ‘You’re forgiven. It wasn’t really your fault. You did your job. What else could you do?’

Well, if that’s what he wanted, I didn’t know if I could say it. “I don’t really know what to do with that.”

With the world’s saddest smile, he said, “Neither do I.”

WHATEVER PASTA

Ingredient list:

Whatever kind of pasta you have in the cupboard: Penne, Bowties, Angel Hair, Rotini… just not Elbow. Elbow is for Mac and Cheese or salads, period.

Whatever else you have in the cupboard or freezer. Possibilities: White beans, frozen shrimp, canned salmon, canned albacore tuna, leftover chicken, frozen peas, canned corn, onions, mushrooms (fresh or canned), sun-dried tomatoes, or whatever else you enjoy.

Heavy cream

Butter.

So, boil your pasta. Meanwhile, in a skillet mix whatever else you have in the cupboard. Cook thoroughly, then add butter and heavy cream. The ratio for butter and cream is 1 stick to 1 cup. Increase or decrease as necessary.

If you’re using sun-dried tomatoes or a lot of mushrooms don’t worry about the sauce it should be great. If not, and you have it lying around, you can throw in some pesto.

Cook until the sauce has thickened. Plate. Top with parmesan cheese.

Give Vella a try!

Set in 1999 Los Angeles, this police procedural features Detective Brenda Wellesley. Brushed aside after a troubled past, Wellesley attempts to redeem herself by discovering the killer of the girl in the little black dress.

First three episodes are free! You can also purchase tokens at a greatly reduced rate.

Buy here!

"Like most guys, I'm a sucker for easy sex and a fast buck. Unlike most guys, I should know better."

Finalist for the Lambda Award in Gay Mystery, Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries takes place in Chicago during the early 1980s. Haunted by his abrupt departure from the Chicago Police Department and the end of his relationship with librarian Daniel Laverty, Nick Nowak is a beat cop-turned-dogged private investigator. In this first book of the best-selling series, Nick works through three cases: a seemingly simple missing persons search, an arson investigation, and a suicide that turns out to be anything but. While working the cases, Nick moves through a series of casual relationships until he meets homicide detective Bert Harker and begins a tentative relationship.

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After more than two decades together, Andrew Lane and Miles Kettering-Lane are going through a nasty divorce. Not only are they unraveling their relationship but also their business—Miles once had a popular home show on cable with Andrew serving as his producer/manager—the failure of which they blame on each other. Now, they’d be happy to never, ever see each other again. But the daughter they both adore, Kelly, announces she’s getting married, and that means one very important thing: a wedding.

Thrown together, at event after event—meeting the in-laws, planning the wedding, throwing an elaborate engagement party—the two clash over everything until, their future in-laws, Bradley and Pudge Lincoln and Terry and Lissa Collins, try to take over the entire wedding. The Lincoln-Collins' are very wealthy, to quote Pudge, “People think we’re in the one percent but that’s so embarrassing. We’re barely in the two percent!”

Andrew and Miles realize they have to work together in order to compete with the overbearing Lincoln-Collins' and give their daughter the wedding she deserves. Along the way, they realize things just might not be over between them.

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ALSO BY MARSHALL THORNTON

IN THE BOYSTOWN MYSTERIES SERIES

The Boystown Prequels

(Little Boy Dead & Little Boy Afraid)

Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries

Boystown 2: Three More Nick Nowak Mysteries

Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas

Boystown 4: A Time for Secrets

Boystown 5: Murder Book

Boystown 6: From the Ashes

Boystown 7: Bloodlines

Boystown 8: The Lies That Bind

Boystown 9: Lucky Days

Boystown 10: Gifts Given

Boystown 11: Heart’s Desire

Boystown 12: Broken Cord

Boystown 13: Fade Out

IN THE PINX VIDEO MYSTERIES SERIES

Night Drop

Hidden Treasures

Late Fees

Rewind

Cash Out

OTHER BOOKS

The Perils of Praline

Desert Run

Full Release

The Ghost Slept Over

My Favorite Uncle

Femme

Praline Goes to Washington

Aunt Belle’s Time Travel & Collectibles

Masc

Never Rest

Code Name: Liberty

The Less Than Spectacular Times of Henry Milch

Fathers of the Bride

Year of the Rat

A Fabulously Unfabulous Summer for Henry Milch

A Mean Season

Marshall Thornton writes several popular mystery series, most notably the Boystown Mysteries and the Pinx Video Mysteries. He has won the Lambda Award for Gay Mystery three times. His books Femme and Code Name: Liberty were both Lambda finalist for Best Gay Romance. Other books include My Favorite Uncle, The Ghost Slept Over and Fathers of the Bride.

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