Justice at Risk (13 page)

“We didn’t find a cell phone among his belongings.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. Or that records of his calls don’t exist.”

“I suppose he might have had one.”

“I know for a fact that he did.”

“How do you happen to know that, Justice?”

“His employer, Cecile Chang, mentioned it. I checked, and learned that he always carried it with him. That’s what you do when you’re genuinely interested in getting some answers, Sergeant.”

The smugness was gone, replaced by a flash of anger.

“For what it’s worth, all the checking into phone records was done before I took over the case.”

“Why did you take over the case, Sergeant?”

His eyes grew hard, fixed on mine.

“Because I’m a senior investigator in homicide. And because Miss Zeigler suggested that two officers from the LAPD might somehow be involved, stemming from an alleged incident some years ago. We take such allegations very seriously.”

“Why would Miss Zeigler make up such a wild story, Sergeant?”

“I’m not suggesting she made anything up.”

“Then why would her fiancé tell her such a wild story just before he was murdered?”

“If I had that answer for you, we could probably close these two cases.”

“Then you do concede they’re connected.”

His voice grew sharp.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I think you did.”

“What you think—”

He caught himself, and shut up.

“Perhaps you could show us the police and autopsy reports on the two murders, Sergeant.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“To answer some questions in Miss Zeigler’s mind.”

“In her mind. Or in yours?”

“Should it matter?”

“That’s departmental paperwork.”

“They’re public records. I’ll get copies, with or without your help. What reason would you have for stonewalling, Sergeant?”

His voice was cold.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You might do me one more favor.”

“What would that be?”

“Tell me what you know about Charlie Gitt.”

Not a muscle moved in Montego’s face, not even behind his eyes. But he took a sharp, deep breath, and his nostrils flared.

“What’s Charlie Gitt got to do with this?”

“You know him, then.”

“I knew him once.”

“Fifteen years ago, Sergeant?”

Finally, Montego’s eyes moved, sneaking away from mine as he stood. He showed us his back, with his hands in his pockets, jingling change. He appeared to be staring out the window toward Chinatown, although, for all I knew his eyes might have been cast down on the pictures of his family.

When he didn’t speak, I did some prompting.

“Fifteen years ago, on the night of April fourteenth, you and Charlie Gitt answered a call at County Hospital and took a police report on the beating of a transvestite in an alley near the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Your name is on that report, along with Gitt’s. And, of course, the commanding officer who signed off on it, Taylor Fairchild.”

Melissa Zeigler’s eyes widened as she turned toward me. Montego kept his hands in his pockets as he faced us again. His coloring was no longer so dusky; some of it had drained from his face.

“I was a police reporter once, Sergeant. Commanding officers don’t ordinarily sign off on a routine police report. Especially when they’re assigned to a different division. As I recall, the exception is when there’s some reason to bury a report to keep it out of the wrong hands. My pals at the
Sun
tell me it doesn’t happen anymore, at least not that they’re aware of. But this was fifteen years ago, before Rodney King, when Daryl Gates was on the throne and things were handled differently.”

Montego still wasn’t talking. He stared down at me with eyes that suggested all kinds of questions were racing around inside his head.

“For what it’s worth, I never knew Gates personally. I never met the man, except for a passing word or salute at a special roll call. A lot of us didn’t.”

“But you did know Charlie Gitt. Why don’t you have a seat, Sergeant, and tell me about him?”

Montego took three strides to a side table, where he unscrewed the cap on a bottle of spring water. He drank some, recapped it, set it down, and returned to his chair. He folded his hands in his lap and took a deep breath before he spoke.

“Whatever I say here is strictly off the record, Justice. Among the three of us.”

“Fine.”

“Charlie Gitt was a loose cannon in the department. He started off with a lot of promise. College degree, clean-cut, obedient, athletic. Not afraid of anything—the guy had brass balls. Plus, he was black, at a time when we needed more black officers. Rose fast for a young officer, into Metro before he turned thirty.”

“Metro was where the toughest detectives used to go. Stakeouts, violent suspects, that kind of thing.”

“Like I said, Gitt was one tough dude, and he had the physique to back it up. But something happened to him along the way. Citizen complaints, brutality, mistreatment of prisoners, you name it. He became a very twisted guy.” Montego laughed strangely. “He even scared some of the guys on the force who scared me.”

“I imagine there was a lot of pressure trying to be a polite black cop under Daryl Gates. Smiling and saying yes sir, carrying out orders, while racism was institutionalized all around you.”

Montego looked at me more evenly.

“No comment.”

“Being a closeted gay cop under Gates had to be hell, too. Every day when he came to work, Gitt faced something of a double whammy, didn’t he?”

“It seems that you already know quite a lot about him.”

“I know that he runs an underground gay sex club in east Hollywood that seems to have escaped police scrutiny. That kind of makes me curious.”

“He also lives in a house up in the Silver Lake hills designed for S&M orgies, which he apparently hosts on a regular basis. We know about that. But times have changed. It’s a private matter.”

“Was the beating of a transvestite fifteen years ago a private matter, Sergeant?”

“The victim wanted to keep it that way. His life could have been ruined by public exposure. At the request of his mother, and out of deference to the victim, we went out of our way to keep the whole thing quiet. That’s why Taylor Fairchild put his name on that report—to ensure that a victim’s privacy was protected.”

“I don’t suppose you know where Winston Tsao-Ping is now?”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be my place to tell you, would it?”

“Have you had any contact with him since the night you took the report?”

“Absolutely none.”

Montego looked at his watch, then stood.

“Is there anything else, Miss Zeigler? Mr. Justice?”

“What about Charlie Gitt? Spoken to him lately?”

“He’s someone neither I nor the department cares to associate with. That’s all I have to say about Charlie Gitt.” He turned to Melissa Zeigler, his voice more gentle. “I’m extremely sorry about what happened to your fiancé, Miss Zeigler. If there was anything I could do to change what happened, I would. Please believe that.”

“Thank you.”

He escorted us down in the elevator, and saw us to the security desk at the front entrance, where we signed out. He stood watching from the middle of the lobby until we were out the door, exactly where he’d been standing watch when we’d arrived.

I pulled away from the parking lot in Little Tokyo a little after three and several blocks later edged onto the Hollywood Freeway, heading toward the Valley.

There was still time to beat the worst of the afternoon rush, which seemed to be starting earlier and ending later with each passing year. It made me think of that new high-rise complex that would be going up before too long next to Chinatown, filling the railyards with business towers and packing more bodies and automobiles into the central city, while the deep pockets of the developers and their connections got deeper, and life for the rest of us got a little more miserable.

Demographers were projecting that by the year 2025, the current population of California—thirty-two million—would have mushroomed to fifty million, analogous to absorbing the entire population of New York State, with most of the new arrivals crowding into already teeming Southern California. How they were all going to get around remained to be seen, and added an ominous new dimension to the term road rage, which was evident all around me now in the beep of horns, squeal of brakes, and a middle finger extended out the driver’s window next to me. At least no one was shooting wildly at a passing car, something that happened often enough in Los Angeles to be on everyone’s mind at least some of the time; the driver next to me apparently wasn’t among the more cautious, because motorists had been blown away for lesser infractions than flipping someone off. Carjacking was the other local driver’s nightmare—if you drove a nice vehicle, you never knew when you might be forced to give it up at gunpoint while stopped for a red light, or even shot to death on a whim after turning over your keys. At least that was one crime I didn’t have to worry about, given the condition of the old Mustang.

By four, with a freeway headache setting in, I was back in my office at New Image Productions, closing the door behind me, and giving Peter Graff another lesson in how to kiss a man. He was an apt student, who didn’t seem to mind repetition drills. When we finally settled down to work, I asked him if he’d accompanied Tommy Callahan when Callahan taped his interview with Charlie Gitt a few weeks before.

“Sure, that’s part of my job. I set up the interview, handled the crew.”

“What did you think of Gitt?”

“To be honest, he gave me the creeps.”

“How’s that?”

“The things he said during the interview, the way he looked at me.”

“Hungry, the way I do?”

Peter grinned.

“Sort of, but different. It was this weird, crazy look, like I was something he wanted to control, devour. It kinda spooked me.”

“He didn’t bother you, though?”

“No, just that look.”

“You were OK with the interview?”

“Oh, yeah. Plenty of good sound bites. Why?”

“Just curious, that’s all.”

We sat down and attended to business, finishing what Peter called a “wish list” of visual material I felt I needed to supplement what Callahan had already pulled together—more footage from the notorious gay sex club scene in New York City, prior to the crackdown by the mayor, along with more sound bites on the pros and cons of unrestricted sexual activity between consenting adults, if we could get them. I also wanted some visual references to similar heterosexual scenes—legalized Nevada brothels, straight porn footage, college spring break orgies, a few
Hustler
and
Penthouse
covers, a headline or two on hetero swinger clubs to remind viewers that homosexuals weren’t the only ones who indulged in multiple partners and multiple orgasms.

The plan was for Peter to submit the list to Cecile Chang for her approval, which would be determined according to the availability and permissions costs of the elements I’d requested, subject to the budget limitations of my show. Meanwhile, I was to begin writing the first draft of my script, which was due in three weeks.

Peter and I worked side by side, bent over his desk. We didn’t discuss his sexual initiation of the previous evening, yet every time our bodies touched—a knee, a hand, a shoulder as one of us leaned in—the sexual tension became palpable. We worked through dinner, long after everyone but the security guard had gone, then ordered pizza delivered; we ate behind our locked door, feeding each other the virginal point of each slice, then laughing as we chewed. By midnight, our work was done, our shirts were unbuttoned, and we were on the carpet, kissing and dry-humping with our pants on like two hormonal teenagers postponing the next big step.

At half past midnight, our shirts buttoned and tucked back in, we sauntered out past the security guard, holding our jackets in front of us, hiding our wet spots and trying not to laugh. We kissed again in the parking lot, still tasting of garlic and anchovies, then drove home in our separate cars. As I followed the tiny taillights of Peter’s vintage VW bug up through the canyon, I felt as if I were floating in a time warp—a man of forty finally ready to slow down, thrown inexplicably together with a dazzling young colt, into a heady swirl of youth and innocence that was a wondrous blessing and a troubling curse all at once, like the powerful pull of male beauty itself.

The conflicts I was feeling intensified when I arrived back at the house to find the red light on my answering machine blinking in the dark. While I looked out the kitchen window, watching Peter climb the stairs to the apartment, I listened to the deep, warm voice of Oree Joffrien: “Sharing Mose Allison with you the other night was great, and dinner afterward. I haven’t eaten Thai in a while, and never with such a personable guy. I need to get out more often, it’s been a long time. So please don’t misinterpret any reticence on my part as disinterest. Just being cautious, I guess. Did I mention there’s a Ruth Brown gig coming up at the Cinegrill? Maybe we can catch it together. I’ve missed you the last couple days. Call when you get a chance.”

I showered, brushed my teeth, trimmed my beard, then went to bed seeing Peter Graff’s body and hearing Oree Joffrien’s words in my head. Somewhere in there was the face of Melissa Zeigler, telling me she’d never have a child, now that the love of her life was dead. Peter again, weeping over the loss of his friend Callahan. His girlfriend Cheryl, telling me to take good care of him. Harry, looking like hell. Too much garlic and anchovies too close to bedtime can do that to you, especially when you add a dash of guilt.

I didn’t close my eyes until just before dawn. The phone jarred me awake at 10 a.m. sharp. It was Denise, back from the flu. She told me Cecile Chang wished to see me, and asked if I could make it at ten thirty. I asked for eleven. She said OK.

*

“I found your wish list on my chair this morning.”

“Peter put it there before we left last night.”

“You worked late?”

“We left a little after midnight.”

“Peter’s very conscientious.”

“Yes, he is.”

Cecile Chang glanced up over the pages of the printout.

“You’re getting along well with him then?”

“Quite.”

“And what about my friend Oree? No luck there?”

“Are you playing matchmaker, Cecile? Like my friend Alexandra?”

“He’s an exceptional person in my view.”

“I feel the same way.”

“Peter’s awfully young.”

“Yes, he is.”

“But quite extraordinary-looking. Hard to resist, I imagine.”

I said nothing. A moment later, she lifted the wish list.

“You kept a copy for yourself?”

I nodded.

She slipped it into a file slugged
Bareback Sex/Callahan Segment
. Callahan’s name had been crossed out, and mine penciled in above it. She placed the file back into a partitioned file holder on her desk and faced me, folding her delicate hands on top of it and smiling comfortably.

“I took another look at your outline. Along with this list of additional visuals, I believe I have a pretty clear picture of where you’re going with your segment. I like it.”

“Thank you.”

“May I offer some advice?”

“I expect it, Cecile.”

“I’d warn against straying too far from the focus of your subject. You seem to want to hammer home the point that we live in a sexually repressive society—that Americans in general are deeply afraid of sex, or at least squeamish about it.”

“My grandmother on my father’s side was Catholic. She took the view that sex was dirty, and therefore should be saved for marriage. I think a lot of people see it that way, though they might not admit it.”

“You’re a practicing Catholic?”

“Renegade, gone to hell.”

“How long have you been lapsed?”

“I started being a doubter at twelve, when our priest told me he needed to examine my privates to see if I’d been abusing myself.”

“How did you respond?”

“I let him. And I liked it. I think he sensed I would. Pedophiles are crafty that way, at least the smart ones.”

“You’re still angry with him.”

“I’m still angry with a lot of people.”

“Be careful not to get up on a soapbox.”

“I’ll die standing on my soapbox, Cecile. They’ll have to bury me in it.”

Her smile widened.

“According to your outline, you plan to deal with this issue of prurience in the introduction, during the host’s stand-up.” She tilted her head, like a bird hearing a strange sound. “Did I say prurience? I suppose I meant
prudishness
, didn’t I?”

“The two go pretty much hand in hand, don’t you think?”

“Develop that thought for me, in the context of your script.”

I glanced out the window, across the parking lot, at a rooftop billboard crowded with the images of skinny boys and girls dressed in designer underwear and nothing else. Below it, on the side of the building, was a smaller billboard warning kids about teen pregnancy, with a hotline number. It was no coincidence of the moment—the boulevard, every boulevard in L.A., every boulevard in America, was plastered with similar contradictory messages, most of them used to sell something, to make us want to be someone we weren’t, to be envious of someone else’s body, or the things they owned. My eyes came back into the room, and settled again on Chang.

“We’re a country that constantly thinks about sex, a culture immersed in sexual images, obsessively lascivious. Yet we simultaneously condemn it, pretending that sexuality, especially at its most primal, is something to be ashamed of. We strangle our most basic feelings and impulses in a noose woven from guilt and shame. That’s one reason so much sexuality gets expressed in twisted and destructive ways.”

“That’s how you see bareback sex manifesting itself?”

“In a perfect world, without HIV and AIDS, I’d see bareback sex—any form of sex that doesn’t cause injury or death—as a personal choice, even a healthy rebellion against the forces of hypocrisy and repression that try to tell us what to do with our bodies, whom we should love and how. But HIV and AIDS have changed the rules. Those who ride bareback, particularly homosexual men, are acting out their own self-destruction, even the more general destruction of the gay community, no matter how they choose to justify or rationalize their behavior.”

“We tread in a sensitive area here, Ben. I don’t want to use the Public Broadcasting System to further stigmatize the gay community. Neither as a lesbian, nor as a responsible filmmaker. But I don’t want to bow to the PC police, either.”

“I’m on the side of personal responsibility, Cecile, not a new repression that shuts down bathhouses and condemns nonmonogamous sexual pleasure. That plays right into the hands of the fundamentalist right and those who embrace conformity to placate their own personal unease with sexuality. But we’ve also got to take an honest, unsentimental look at what’s going on with a number of gay men who seem to be on a suicide mission, willing to take others along for the ride, especially the young. We need to examine the role alcohol and drugs play in that, as well as simple sexual compulsion.”

“As they do in the straight world.”

“Of course.”

“You feel confident you can find that balance, and still maintain your focus?”

“I need to remind viewers at the top of the hour, to
show
them, that in our culture, sexuality scares the hell out of most people, especially if it’s outside the narrow boundaries of the so-called norm. That cultural puritanism, coupled with this frightening disease, has resulted in the demonization of gay men, turned them into monsters.”

“How would you illustrate that?”

“It’s on my wish list—a clip of Jack Nicholson around Oscar time, bragging to the media that he never uses a condom when he screws.”

“Yes, I saw that. I’m not sure we can get that clip. How does it underscore your point?”

“Jack Nicholson can brag to the media that he always rides bareback. People laugh—‘Oh, that rascal, Jack.’ A gay man makes the same comment, the public wants him executed, or at least locked up. Without that clip, or at least a photo of Nicholson, I lose the line, and the thought. Isn’t that how it works in TV, Cecile?”

“Unfortunately, without the pictures, it’s difficult to tell the story.”