Light Before Day (13 page)

He stepped back inside and crossed his arms over his chest. The door drifted shut behind him. "Missing?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "How long ago did he come here? Two weeks? He wasn't the most social animal on the planet. You might have been one of the last people to talk to him. Did he say anything about leaving town?"

"No," he said. "He was too busy talking about you. I told you what he said, Adam."

"Did Corey mention anything else when he talked to you? Anything about his job, his apartment?"

"Have you talked to his uncle?" Billy asked me quickly, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

An uncle. I shook my head, trying to act as if I'd somehow misplaced the phone number of a man I hadn't known existed. Corey had barely told me anything about his family aside from the fact that he had run away from home when he was sixteen. I had guessed that he met up with his mysterious sugar daddy somewhere around that time.

"I take it you didn't know," Billy said.

"Know what?"

"Corey's uncle is a man named Martin Cale," he said. "He's a real estate developer. He also happens to be an old friend of Joseph's. Martin Cale is actually the reason that Joseph and I moved here from San Francisco. Cale's firm was doing a subdivision out in the Inland Empire and he wanted Joseph to install a wireless Internet system for the entire property. It didn't happen. The technology wasn't quite there yet, but he and Joseph hit it off. Cale even invested in Broadband Access Media."

I blinked. Billy had given me a big chunk of information, the implications of which I'd have to work to understand, but he had skipped over the most important details. "How long have you known this man was Corey's uncle?" I asked.

"Two weeks," he said. "Joseph never mentioned Corey. Neither did Martin Cale. Corey told me the night he came here. It was his entree, if you will. I have to say, I was surprised. I don't mean to sound like a snob, but I didn't think Corey Howard came from money."

Corey Howard had not come from money; he had run to it at the age of sixteen. The sugar daddy I had always suspected him of having was actually a wealthy uncle with connections to white-collar criminals and their trophy boys.

"What's Cale like?" I asked, with what I hoped appeared to be just casual interest.

Billy rolled his eyes. "Let me put it this way. Cale's wife died last year. In New York. Where she had been living for ten years while her husband did business out here. He and Joseph were primarily business associates, but every now and then Martin Cale would come to one of our parties here and leer at every young thing that crossed his path like it had a For Sale sign on its ass."

'Were these young things male or female?" I asked.

"Guess," he said.

"Martin Cale is a closet case?" I asked.

"And a recluse," he said. "He lives on his yacht and rarely comes to shore. I might be able to set up a meeting, though, if you're interested."

Once again I had to hide my surprise. Why was Billy offering to connect me with Martin Cale? "Cale invested in Joseph's website? And he still talks to you, even though Joseph skipped town with his money?"

Billy stared down at the floor, as if his next line were written on the marble in front of my feet. I had cornered him, even though I wasn't quite sure how. "He's fond of Everett," he finally said.

"Martin Cale?" I asked carefully.

"Martin doesn't have a lot of connections to the gay world," Billy finally said. "He managed to get over his hard feelings about Joseph's departure rather quickly."

"I'd like to meet him," I said.

Billy nodded distantly. "I'll call you as soon as I talk to him," he said.

"I appreciate it."

He just nodded. He had been the one to suggest that I meet with Martin Cale in the first place, and now he seemed to regret his offer. Billy had already done a good job of telling me bad things about Corey; maybe he thought Corey's uncle would do more of the same, even if the man had presumably set Corey up with his apartment and car. But there was also the possibility that Martin Cale might have some unflattering things to say about the man standing across from me.

I told Billy goodbye before he could retract his offer.

I made my way out to my Jeep through the falling dark. I took out my keys, and suddenly I was eye to eye with Everett and his hand was on my crotch. He was standing with his back against the drivers-side door. He started kneading me, slow and hard, and got an instant response. His smile was genuine, without the sneering insolence of porn stars. He brought his lips to mine and I felt a sudden chill that told me my equipment was exposed and in the heat of his hand.

"We can pretend like we're brothers," he said, manipulating me with unnervingly practiced efficiency. "It's okay for brothers 'cause they can't have kids."

The boy was too many fantasies all at once, and they all belonged to someone else. I seized his hand and pulled it from my cock. His eyes flared and his mouth set into a defiant line. I held his hand in the air as I tucked myself back inside my jeans.

"Seduction is a lost art, Everett. Why don't you go look for it?"

I released his hand. His face went into neutral and he reached for the silver bicycle chain around his neck. I saw that the spokes were too chunky and strangely shaped to have come off a bicycle. Then a voice I didn't recognize shouted the boy's name. Billy was standing in the open gate, a faceless silhouette backlit by the glow from the house. He had called out to the boy with a depth of anger I didn't think he possessed. Everett rushed around the nose of my Jeep, then ran past Billy down the steps toward the house.

I expected Billy to step forward and offer some explanation for the boy's behavior. I couldn't see the expression on his face. Instead he turned and pulled the gate shut behind him. Billy's plan for Everett was to deliver the boy to a life as opulent as his own, but I was more curious to know where the boy had come from. It was obviously a place where it was acceptable for brothers to have sex, a place where hand jobs were the preferred method for greeting guys you had just met.

By the time I got back to my apartment, my head was spinning. I wanted to wait until at least after midnight before I made a second visit to Corey's apartment. That gave me a lot of time to try to sort through everything Billy Hatfill had told me that afternoon.

The Corey Howard I had known presented himself as a loner disdaining the West Hollywood social scene. Now I knew that he was the nephew of a wealthy closet case with connections to the shining stars of that very social scene. Even after I had offended him by comparing him to Scott Koffler, Billy had offered to set up a meeting with Martin Cale, a reclusive closet case that I would have had a hard time getting to on my own.

I picked up the phone and called my new boss. I gave Jimmy a rundown of everything I had learned that afternoon. He didn't interrupt. I couldn't tell if he was bored or intrigued.

"Are you just asking for my opinion here because you're worried about your old boyfriend?"

he asked. "Or do you think this has the makings of a good book?"

"That's your decision," I said.

"Joseph Spinotta," he said distantly. "I read about that guy. I saw that disaster coming from a mile away." I waited for him to say more. "This is interesting, Adam. This is very interesting."

I kept my mouth shut. The prospect of James Wilton paying me to investigate Corey

Howard's disappearance excited me a great deal more than I wanted it to.

"Two nights ago, Billy picks you up off the street and tells you that Corey paid a strange visit to his house," he recited. "He warns you about Corey, says Corey seems determined to teach you a lesson."

"Bight," I said.

"All bullshit," Jimmy said. "It was a cover story. Billy knew you would find out that Corey paid a visit to his home, so he tracked you down and fed you his line. He also made it personal, said they talked about your drinking, which was just another attempt to distract you from how much this strange meeting stinks to high heaven. Play it out in your head: Corey drops in on Billy out of the blue and in the middle of a large party at Billy's home. Why would you intrude on someone's party like that if you had never met the person?"

"If I wanted to surprise him. Catch him off guard."

"Right. Especially if you had bad news and you didn't want him to react poorly in front of people. It sounds like parties are Billy Hatfill's life, and you offend the shit out of him because you're not sold on the image he's trying to project. Corey wanted to catch this guy at his most vulnerable."

"What are you saying, Jimmy?"

"I'm saying Corey was running some kind of game on your friend Billy Hatfill," he said.

"And I think he was using some dirt he got from his uncle to do it. My first guess would be that Corey learned something about Billy's former sugar daddy and he used that information to get something out of Billy."

"Like what?"

"Money," Jimmy answered. "Maybe Billy paid him off and that's why Corey left town."

"Then why did he leave behind his truck, his wallet, his keys, and his cell phone?" I asked.

"Not to mention a container of milk out on the counter that's going to stink up the whole building in a few days? And Corey's got a wealthy uncle who's probably supporting him. Why does he need to extort money out of Billy Hatfill, who he's never met before?"

"Fine," Jimmy said. "Maybe it wasn't money Corey wanted."

"What, then?"

"That's a very good question," he said. "You feel like finding out the answer?"

"Do you?" I asked.

Jimmy didn't answer directly. "Tomorrow morning, let's pay another visit to Corey's apartment. If the neighbor's not home, we can poke around for a bit."

"Cool." A pulse was beating above the bridge of my nose, and it didn't respond to the pressure of my thumb and forefinger. The only parts of Corey Howard I was familiar with were his naked body and his swift and controlling reactions to my every move. Was Jimmy indulging in the same paranoid fantasies he made his living off of?

"You think I'm an over-imaginative lunatic, don't you?" he asked. "Trust me, little man. Even the wildest conspiracy theory cuts a path through woods that bears further exploration. And I've given you a good working theory. Whatever Corey and Billy actually talked about two weeks ago is the reason Corey's no longer around."

"Fine," I said. "But that doesn't explain Billy's behavior toward me. If Corey got dirt on Billy from his uncle, why is Billy giving me a meeting with his uncle? Martin Cale doesn't even live on dry land. I'd have had a hard time rowing out to his yacht."

"Meet with Martin Cale and find out."

He told me to pick him up at his house the next morning at nine A.M. and we said our goodbyes. I lay down on my bed and stared up at the room's Oriental screen, its painted landscape impossibly calm. Two weeks ago, Corey Howard had paid Billy Hatfill a strange visit.

Barely a week and a half later, Corey had missed his first day of work. It was almost impossible not to believe that the two events were connected, even if I wasn't totally sold on Jimmy's explanation.

Another possibility hit me so hard I felt a spasm of panic. I scrambled up and pulled open my desk drawer. Inside was a folded piece of paper. I took it out and found myself staring at the two-year-old
Los Angeles Times
article that Tommy Banks handed me the previous week. This time, instead of scanning it, I read every single word.

Gay Community Believes Serial Killer Is Behind Disappearances

by Linda Walsh,
Times
staff writer

The unexplained disappearance of a West Hollywood gay male prostitute has

spurred anxiety that a serial killer may be on the prowl, according to some city

residents, who claim the LA County Sheriff's Department is ignoring their concern

over this and two other missing-persons cases.

Ben Clamp, 23, was reported missing two weeks ago and is the third in a series of

recent missing-persons cases in West Hollywood that suggest a killer is at work in

the gay community, gay activists say. Clamp, who went by the name of P. J. Carter

and whose business cards told people he was a physical trainer, had appeared in

fifteen gay adult videos over the last year and had been featured in a local gay

magazine advertising gay male "escorts." In January, 22-year-old Terrance

Davidson, a chemistry major at Duke University who dropped out of school to

pursue his acting ambitions, was also reported missing. Two months later, friends

reported that Roger Vasquez, 24, a Sacramento native and a graduate of USC film

school, had disappeared.

"Three young, handsome men just vanish without a trace from our neighborhood,

and the cops just ignore the links among them," said Sal Garcia of the Greater Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Anti-violence Project. "It's getting so that people are afraid to go out at night. And they are getting very, very angry at the nonchalance of our

police department in the face of this danger."

A spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Department, Bernice Evans, said the police are

taking the cases seriously, but they have no evidence that the three incidents are

connected. "The LA County Sheriff's Department investigates all missing-persons cases as potential homicides," Evans said in a written statement. "We are keenly attuned to the concerns of the community, but the detectives handling these active

investigations do not believe that they are connected and have no reason to

suspect criminal activity."

In spite of police denials, Garcia claims many West Hollywood residents believe a

serial killer in Los Angeles is targeting young gay men. The killer has even been

given a moniker. "They're calling him The West Hollywood Slasher," Garcia says.

Tensions between activists and the Sheriff's Department escalated after Clamp was

reported missing by Leo Bodwell, 56, the owner of the West Hollywood eatery that