Early Graves (10 page)

Rogers ate as if eating was going to save him. A thick stack of flannel cakes swimming in butter and syrup. Eggs, sausage, bacon, toast. Pushing it desperately into his mouth. No time to talk. Scarcely time to breathe. The air came and went noisily through his nose. He stuffed his mouth and slurped coffee. His throat pumped. His eyes bulged.

Dave asked him, “Why Van Nuys, for God’s sake?”

“Listen.” Rogers mopped up his plate with a ragged scrap of toast. “It’s a double bind.” He gobbled the yolky toast, finished off his coffee, turned on the fake padded leather seat of the booth, and waved the coffee cup at a clutch of waitresses gossiping behind a counter. “You rent in West LA, and everybody knows you’re a faggot. You move to Van Nuys, and try to blend in with the community. Flo was funny there. You think if we’d told her up front we were gay, she’d have rented to us? Forget it. So, you’re there a week, and the talk starts. Ah.” He set the cup in its saucer. A waitress in starchy brown and orange filled the cup and swept away their plates. When she’d gone, Rogers finished his thought: “‘How come they’re not married? No kids on the weekend? No friends but men?’” He patted his tank top, his cutoffs. “Shit. Have you got a cigarette?”

Dave took his pack out, pushed it across to Rogers, along with the lighter. Rogers lit up. Dave said, “So you enlisted the secretarial pool. Why don’t you save yourself a lot of trouble and stop trying to please other people.”

“Why? Look at Flo. She was okay, just as long as she didn’t know, all right? We were friendly and if she had doubts she didn’t let them get to her. We were good pay, always on time, kept the place up.” He laughed a sorry little laugh. “You may find this hard to believe, but we had real good times. She loved Frank.” His voice shook. “Jokes—about the soaps. They were like a couple high school kids when they started their shticks. Taking off the characters, the plots. It was a riot.” He worked his mouth hard, biting his lips, but tears ran out of his eyes. He said, “Ah, shit, excuse me.” He snatched paper napkins out of a shiny metal holder on the orange Formica table top and angrily wiped his eyes and pressed the wadded napkins to his mouth, and shook his head, unable to speak. Dave busied himself smoking, drinking coffee, gazing out the window past flower beds to the boulevard, where rain was falling again. Rogers laid the wadded paper napkins down. “I’m sorry. I still can’t get over it. It’s too soon. He wasn’t going to die for months and months. I was preparing myself for that. They have counseling sessions, you know, to get you ready. Not just the one that’s going to die, the lovers, the families, whoever is going to be left behind.” Rogers drew shakily on his cigarette, blew at his coffee, tried the coffee. “God damn it, I loved him so. I was so lucky to have him.”

“How did he get AIDS?” Dave said.

“I didn’t say he was perfect,” Rogers said. “He was impulsive. He couldn’t help it. I’m not made like that.”

“Except about food,” Dave said.

Rogers looked blank again, then laughed. “Oh, food. Yeah, right. Well, that was how Frank was about sex. I mean, he wouldn’t go prowling. No, no. But if it cropped up, if it landed in his lap, he couldn’t resist, you know?”

“How often did this happen?” Dave said.

“In West LA?” Rogers said. “Too often. You can’t go around the corner to the 7-11 for a bag of croissants and a bottle of Tanqueray without some stranger putting the make on you. Or some neighbor out walking his dog.” Rogers smoked for a moment, drank coffee, set the cup down. “Out here it was no problem. And we were very happy.”

Dave fought to keep a straight face.

“We were. Really. Backyard barbecues and all. I mean, what faggot do you know who doesn’t, in his heart of hearts, want to be just like Mr. and Mrs. Joe Doaks next door?” His voice wobbled again. He stabbed out the cigarette in a little tin ashtray. “Damn. We had time coming to us.”

“Except Frank went back to West LA,” Dave said.

Rogers’s eyes pleaded with him. “Just that once.”

“Once was all it took,” Dave said. “Did you ever meet any of those pickups of his? For instance, a tall, skinny street kid, long blond hair tied back with a bandanna?”

“A hippie?” Rogers gave a crooked smile. “No. Button-down collars were Frank’s style. If the wristwatch didn’t cost at least five hundred dollars, Frank wasn’t interested. And no long hair. Please. Disgusting. No, he liked people clean, squeaky clean.”

“It’s hard to be sure about that,” Dave said.

Rogers laughed bleakly. “Isn’t it just.” His face crumpled again, and he pawed out for the napkin dispenser. “I miss him so. What’s going to become of me?”

Dave said, “Don’t cry. Answer my question.”

Rogers uncovered his face. “No,” he shouted. “I never met any of them. Who the hell is this kid? Why is he doing this crazy thing? Those men were all dying. What’s the point? And why Frank, of all people? Why Frank?”

“And Art Lopez, and Sean O’Reilly, and Billy Bumbry, and Edward Vorse, and Drew Dodge. Why them? Did you know any of them? Did Frank Prohaska know them?”

“Not I. I already told the police.” Rogers wiped his face again, blew his nose, wadded the napkins, laid the wad on the table. “I don’t know them. I heard the names. Read them in the
Times,
saw them on television. Frank? If he knew them, he never said so to me. He would have said so. We told each other everything.”

“Sure you did.” Dave picked up the check.

“Give me that.” Rogers grabbed for it. Dave held it away from him. And it seemed to him that for the first time in the hour and a half this encounter had lasted, Rogers registered that one of Dave’s arms was in a sling. He frowned, dropped his hand to the tabletop. “What happened to you?”

“The blond kid I spoke of,” Dave said, and pushed out of the booth, “tried to kill me too. He missed.”

“Dear God.” Rogers lost some of his surliness. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. That’s why you’re poking around. I wish I could help.”

Dave said, “You’ve got enough trouble. Forgive me for bothering you. Thanks for your time.”

Rogers slid out of the booth. “Thanks for breakfast.”

Dave paid the check, and they pushed outdoors.

“Rain,” Rogers said disgustedly. “Just what I needed.”

“Where are you moving to?” Dave said.

“My parents’s. The furniture goes in their garage. I’ll let my car sit outside.” He walked up the parking lot toward the yellow truck. The rain laid a quick bright surface on the tarmac. It washed over Rogers’s sandals, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll find an apartment. I just need time. Flo wasn’t about to give me that.”

“No. Well, it’s good you have a roof to stop under,” Dave said. “Your parents will be some comfort to you.”

Hand on the truck door, Rogers turned back. “Are you kidding? They don’t know about me. Luckily, the TV news ignored me when Frank was killed. My parents never even knew Frank and I lived together. When I simply had to have them over, he’d take all his stuff and hide out at a friend’s.” Rogers climbed into the truck. “Believe me, my parents won’t be any comfort. I hope to God I can keep from crying.”

“Explain,” Dave said. “Give them a chance to help.”

“Be serious,” Rogers said, and started the truck.

When Dave swung the Jaguar into the street, he saw Samuels get into an unmarked car down the block.

T
HE MONTE VERDE ROSE
out of dark old trees on the steep hills above the Sunset Strip, a gray stone tower, built in the 1920s, the setting of legends. Had John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Anna Sten really lived here? Was this where young Mary Astor had bedded down with George S. Kaufman? Did it matter? Did it matter if a renowned German director had been shot full of holes by his dandelion-haired twelve-year-old mistress among his vases of peacock feathers on the ninth floor? If that French comedian had hanged himself in a harness of straps and chains in the penthouse? If two teenage boys had really turned a Romanian concert pianist’s Bechstein into his coffin one moonlit summer night? Dave had forgotten half the stories he’d heard about the Monte Verde, but when he pushed in through the bronze and glass doors out of the clammy drip of the funereal cypresses at the entrance, the vast high tomb of the lobby made him believe the ones he remembered. He’d never set foot in a place that felt so haunted. He made for elevator doors, far across the lobby.

“Sir.” His voice came from behind a carved counter between two Gothic pillars. “Who did you want to see? I’ll telephone and tell them you’re here.” The speaker was a six-foot man-child in clothes even wider in the shoulders and blowsier in the trousers than Cecil’s and Amanda’s. His hair was shaved on the sides and spiky on top and dyed blue. He wore a blue glass earring, blue war paint above his blue eyes, and he held a telephone receiver at the ready.

“Milford Stein,” Dave said. The place echoed the name.

“And you are?” the young man said.

“Dave Brandstetter. I’m a private investigator. Mr. Stein isn’t expecting me. Tell him it’s about the death of Edward Vorse.”

The young man put down the phone. “He won’t see you.”

“Shall we let him decide that?” Dave said.

“The man is an emotional wreck. He can’t take any more.”

Dave turned and headed for the elevators again.

“You need a key to operate the elevators,” the desk clerk said. “And to get the key away from me, you’ll have to kill me.” That surprised Dave, and he turned and stared at the young man. He was holding a revolver, a .38 by the look of it, and new. He was pointing it at Dave’s chest. “I’m sorry about the uniform, but a person has to draw the line somewhere. I am a security guard. I am licensed to use this, and trained to use it.”

“I just want to ask Mr. Stein a question,” Dave said.

“Then telephone ahead,” the clerk said, “or write a letter. Make an appointment. Have Mr. Stein leave word with this desk when you’re expected.” He smiled. His teeth showed braces. Dave wondered when he was going to have his twenty-first birthday. The child said, “All right? No hard feelings? Reasonable? Sensible? Businesslike?”

“Just like the gun.” Dave went out under the dripping trees again. He stood on the cracked long curve of driveway for a minute, then headed down it. Not to unlock the Jaguar and drive off. To find Samuels and have Samuels lean on Boy Blue with the authority of the LAPD. But a tour bus came groaning up the drive. Dave stepped back into wet shrubbery to let it pass, then stood watching as it creaked to a hulking halt at the entrance, breathing out white exhaust into the drizzle.

The doors flapped open, and passengers began to climb down—well-dressed old people, most of them women wrapped in flowered plastic raingear. Laughing and chattering and giving little whoops about the rain, they hurried inside through the double doors. Dave climbed the drive again and stepped in among them, pulling off his Irish tweed hat so his white hair showed. He kept to the side of the crowd away from the desk, and turned the collar of his trenchcoat up to hide his face from Boy Blue, who greeted the group cheerily, and hurried to unlock the elevator doors. The crowd was big enough to fill two cars. Boy Blue opened both shafts. Dave squeezed into the second car, his lungs filling with gusts of English lavender from the Disneyland-happy old ladies.

Milford Stein’s floor was the tenth. Dave hung back, letting the hallways empty. When the last merry bye-bye faded, and the last door closed with oaken solidity on the carpet-hushed corridors, he knocked at number 1008. Stein’s horn-rimmed glasses looked too heavy for him. The eyes behind the thick lenses were large and brown and filled with sorrow. They made him look like a child, though his hair and skin were gray, and his face creased and craggy. He wore a hand-knit cotton sweater and well-worn wide-wale corduroy trousers. When he heard Dave’s name and the name of Edward Vorse, he stepped back and made a mute gesture that invited Dave inside. He closed the door and reached, offering to take Dave’s coat.

Dave said, “I won’t stay. The boy on the desk downstairs made it plain you don’t want to be disturbed.”

Stein smiled faintly. “He acts like my mother.” Stein plainly hadn’t used his voice for a while. It was scratchy. He cleared his throat. “Do stay. Have a drink.”

The room was crowded with antique sofas, chairs, tables, cabinets. Dave couldn’t make out in the dimness—the walls of the Monte Verde were thick, the windows narrow—whether the pieces were any good or not. Dark oil paintings in heavy gilt frames glowered on the walls. Stein was a set decorator for the studios. They didn’t make a lot of period movies anymore. Did Stein feel comfortable anywhere but at home, nowadays? Stein opened doors on a tall cabinet far away. There came the faint chink of glass. He said: “Please sit down. What can I bring you?”

Dave shed the coat and hat. “Scotch, thanks.” The stuffing of the wing chair he chose was lumpy. The velvet was threadbare, a condition cherished in today’s market. He couldn’t make out the color. Whatever it was, it had been darker a century ago. He took the glass Stein handed him, cut glass, lead crystal by the weight of it, and of the best workmanship—a man could shave on the edges. Stein sat down with his drink in a wing chair opposite.

“The police,” he said, “asked me all about Eddie and his associates. A Lieutenant Leppard. A fancy dresser.” Stein smiled faintly. His tone grew ironic. “I couldn’t tell him all about Eddie, could I? Like, for example, that Eddie had AIDS. What is it they say, the wife is always the last to know? I believed what I wanted to believe, didn’t I? And let the questions go. I knew he was tricking around.” Stein shrugged miserably. “I did my best to ignore it. I wanted him to be happy.” Stein got up to find a chased silver cigarette box, to hold it out for Dave to take a cigarette, to take one himself, to set the box down again, to light Dave’s cigarette and his own, to resume his seat. “You’re a distinguished man in your profession. A celebrity. What brings you to my humble door about Eddie?”

Keeping it brief, Dave told him about finding Drew Dodge’s body, and about being jumped in the dark by the knifer who’d killed Dodge. And maybe Eddie. “But something’s out of kilter. I don’t have AIDS. The police think all his victims knew him. I didn’t. He was a tall, skinny street kid with long blond hair tied back with a bandanna. Young, eighteen, maybe less. What I came to ask you is, did Eddie Vorse know anyone like that? Did you ever see them together? Ever meet him?”