Michael Nava - Goldenboy

He set the drink on the counter with the over-delicate movements of a drunk. “‘Cause I wanted someone else to know,” he said, “and put the pig in jail where he belongs.” He looked at his watch. “This has been lots of laughs, Henry, but I’ve got a client waiting for me.”

He started away.

Freeman and I followed a few minutes later and stood in front of the bar.

“Do you still have friends at L.A.P.D.?” I asked.

Freeman half-smiled and replied, “You told that guy you’d keep the cops out of it.”

I thought of Jim Pears whom I had not believed when he told me he was innocent. “I lied,” I said.

Freeman said, “There’s still a lot to explain. Pears was in the room. He was the only one.”

“I know,” I replied. I shrugged. “Maybe nothing’ll come of it, but if it helps Jim it’s worth it.”

“Nothing’s going to help Jim,” Freeman said. He shivered from the cold.

“Get ahold of your cop friend in the morning,” I said. “We’ll get together and visit Tony. By the way, where did you get that sweater?”

Freeman laughed. “My ex-wife.”

It was after midnight when I got to Larry’s. I pulled into the garage and sat for a moment in the darkness. It was perfectly still. I began to fit things together.

Brian Fox had not gone to the restaurant to see Jim, but to meet Blenheim. It was Fox who took the back door key from the bar. He used it to let Blenheim inside. Then what? I closed my eyes and reconstructed the layout of the restaurant in my head. They went downstairs. Blenheim killed Brian. But without a struggle? How? I listened to my breathing, and rolled down the window. That part I didn’t know yet.

I had to get Jim down into the cellar, too. Could it be that he and Blenheim had killed Brian together? The garage creaked. A breeze swept through like a sigh. Or had Jim come down after it was done? Blenheim would have heard the steps from the kitchen floor overhead. Steps. I opened my eyes. There were footsteps in the garage. I pulled myself up in my seat and glanced into the rearview mirror. A dark figure merged into the shadows and was coming up beside me.

Slowly, I opened the glove compartment and got out the flashlight. I prepared to flash the light in the intruder’s eyes and push the door open on him. Now. I swung the light around and clicked it on, reaching, at the same time for the door handle. Then I stopped as the figure backed up against Larry’s car.

It was Rennie.

“Henry!”

I clicked off the light and got out of the car. “It’s all right.”

“I thought you had a gun,” she said, recovering her breath.

“I’m a lawyer, not a cowboy,” I replied. “I can hardly see you in here. Let’s go outside.”

I reached for her hand, found it, and led her back out where the streetlamp illuminated the quiet street. Although she wore an overcoat, she was still shivering. I put my arm around her.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“My car,” she answered, pointing to a white Mercedes parked at the curb just past the house. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Why didn’t you wait inside?”

“I needed to see you alone,” she said. “I didn’t want Larry to know.”

Her shivering subsided. In the bright white light her face was tired but seemed much younger, sharper. This is how she looks on stage, I thought.

“Come back to my car with me,” she half-pleaded. I followed her to the Mercedes and got in. The car reeked of cigarettes. The dashboard clock read 12:30.

“Tom’s in trouble,” she said abruptly.

“Go on.”

She stared out into the street. “I was at home, alone, when there was a call from someone — male, asking for Tom. He wouldn’t tell me who he was. I hung up.” She glanced at me. “I know it’s rude but the strangest people somehow get our number, fans, salesmen, you name it.”

She was getting off the point. “What happened next?” I prompted.

“He called again. He demanded to talk to Tom. I told him Tom wasn’t in and he said-” Shallow lines appeared across her forehead. “ — that if I was lying it wouldn’t save Tom, and if I wasn’t, he would find him.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“But you must be used to crank calls,” I said. “Why did this one bring you to me?”

She fumbled with her cigarette case and extracted a cigarette. I rolled down the window when she lit it. “I know I’m not being clear,” she said. She exhaled, jerkily, a stream of smoke. “Tom goes to bars. Homosexual bars. He meets men, has sex with them, and comes home. He doesn’t do it often. It’s a part of his life we don’t discuss.”

“But you know about it.”

She dug into the pocket of her overcoat and came up with a handful of matchbooks. “It’s these,” she said.

I examined them. They were all from local gay bars.

“He leaves them for me to see,” she said, softly.

Some of the matchbooks had names and phone numbers written in them. “That seems cruel,” I commented.

“To an outsider,” she said, stubbing her cigarette out. She smiled, faintly, ironically. “Tom is — he doesn’t lie very well. He can’t bring himself to talk about this with me, but he won’t lie about it, either. These,” she nodded toward the matchbooks, “are his way of letting me know.”

“Why?” I asked. “Aren’t you the one who told me that discretion is the better part of marriage?”

“I’m more his mother than his wife,” she said as if giving the time. “He depends on me to look after him. And I have a mother’s intuition about him — when his hurts are real, when they’re not,” she continued with a sort of mocking tenderness. “When there’s danger.”

“Lawyers have a kind of intuition, too,” I said, “and my intuition tells me that there’s something you’re holding back.’’

She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘‘I lied about the call. It wasn’t anonymous.”

“Who was it?”

“Sandy,” she replied.

“Why would he threaten Tom?”

She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. There’s something going on between them. Sandy’s been completely out of control. He and Tom had a big fight a couple of days ago and Tom finally threw him out of the house. Then this.” She shuddered. “I’m afraid, Henry. He’s crazy. Help me find Tom.”

I put aside the questions I wanted to ask her about Tom and Sandy. They seemed irrelevant when I remembered that Sandy Blenheim was a killer.

“You think he’s at one of these places?” I asked, holding up the matchbooks.

“I don’t know where else to look,” she replied.

Last call had been called five minutes earlier but no one was moving. I walked around the bar again, the last in Tom’s match- book collection. The other three had also been like this, dark and out of the way, far from the glittery strip of Santa Monica Boulevard known by the locals as Boys Town with its trendy bars and discos.

This bar, The Keep, was on a Hollywood side street that had disappeared from the maps around 1930. There wasn’t much to the place: a bar lined with stools where customers could sit and watch their reflections blur in the mirror as the night wore on, a small dance floor bathed in blue light, a few tables lit by orange candles. Posters of beefy naked men covered the walls. Many of the patrons were middle-aged or older, and the level of shrieking was pretty high. Definitely a pre- Stonewall scene.

I leaned against the wall and looked around. Half a dozen of the bar stools were occupied. A handsome man’s reflection smiled at me. I smiled back and continued inspecting the other customers. Tom Zane was not among them.

As I started out the door, I heard someone say, “Ambassador.”