Light Before Day (15 page)

Linda Walsh popped a piece of nicotine gum into her mouth and clearly decided to say nothing. Jimmy broke the tense silence. "Linda and I sat on a panel together at Left Coast Crime a few years back. I gave her a hard time, and apparently she's still sore about it."

Linda Walsh cracked her gum. "The moderator asked me a question about how I come up with my characters. Jimmy started to answer. When the moderator stopped him, he apologized and said he thought the question had been directed at someone who actually created characters."

"Oh, come on!" Jimmy burst out. "You weren't the only one I gave it to that day. One of the other authors on the panel introduced himself as a writer of
literary
thrillers, so I asked him if that meant he took a break from the action to describe how a tree was a metaphor for human evil."

"I think it's safe to say that Jimmy charmed the pants off of everyone at Left Coast Crime that year," Linda remarked.

Jimmy turned to me. "Linda writes novels about a saucy but determined female reporter who's willing to break a high heel to get a good story. Check your local listings soon."

Linda said, "And Jimmy writes novels about loser vigilantes in which all of the female characters are either prostitutes or his mother. Check your local drunk tank soon."

"I'm happy to say I've never had an alcohol problem," Jimmy said. "Now, Adam, on the other hand—"

"Shut up, Jimmy!" I snapped.

After this, the conversation predictably stalled. Linda's son slid off her lap, surveyed the living room, and decided he didn't like his options. Jimmy strolled across the room with a bowed head and started poking at a Tickle Me Elmo with the tip of his cane.

"Well, this has been a real treat," Linda announced. She got to her feet. "Will I see you at Bouchercon, Jimmy?"

"Tell us about the West Hollywood Slasher, Linda," Jimmy said.

Sharp lines appeared at the corners of Linda Walsh's mouth. She hoisted her son onto her lap and put one arm tightly around his back as if trying to shield herself with his body.

"Why?" she asked in a small, tight voice. The mention of the Slasher pained her and I was curious to know why.

"Adam here thinks the guy might have nabbed his boyfriend," Jimmy said. It was basically a lie, but I could tell that Linda Walsh wasn't about to give us any information unless the stakes were high and personal.

She put her son's head on her shoulder. "People usually go missing when they're driving from one place to another," she began. "These guys vanished out of thin air. All of them had barely been in LA for a year, and according to their friends they were the type of West Hollywood guys who thought they would catch fire if they went east of Fairfax or west of Doheny. None of them took any long road trips. None of them were driving on any isolated highways.

"We're also talking about type A guys who worked out at the gym five times a week. You don't abduct someone like that off a street corner without someone noticing. West Hollywood is
the
most densely populated area of the Southland, and even after pictures of these guys were flashed all over the news, no one came forward to report anything suspicious. No one saw them leaving a bar with a strange guy. No one saw them,
period."

"Was there any evidence these guys visited chat rooms?" I asked. "It's a popular way to meet people in my part of town."

"That's a good theory," she said. "So you think they were lured out of their apartments by someone they met online, then the guy drove back to their places and put their personal items out for anyone to see?" I still thought a chat room might have been the Vanished Three's portal to oblivion, but I didn't believe they had met up with one individual. I nodded anyway, just to keep her talking. "Too bad none of them had Internet access."

"You're kidding," I said.

"Terrance Davidson had an America Online account he canceled a few months before he disappeared," she responded. "He also didn't have cable TV. Out of the three, he was habitually unemployed, so it made sense that he wasn't willing to pay for it. But Roger Vasquez had steady employment and he never subscribed to any service. I thought for sure that Ben Clamp would have taken out an escort advertisement online, but it turned out he ran ads in the back of a couple of gay magazines with his beeper number and that was it."

"Leo Bodwell," I said quietly. "The man Ben Clamp was living with."

Linda gave me an unblinking stare. I saw a slight pulse beating in the side of her neck.

"What about him?"

"What did you think of him?"

"He didn't deserve what happened to him. At all."

I glanced at Jimmy and saw that he was staring at Linda with one eyebrow slightly raised.

His eyes flicked to mine and he gave me a small nod.

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

"You can't. He's dead." She put her son down and walked quickly into the kitchen, her child waddling after her. "He died of an aneurysm last year. He moved to Arcadia after I wrote my story and ended up managing an Olive Garden."

"Kind of a long fall from owning your own restaurant," Jimmy noted.

She bristled and took a slug of water. I got the sense that she was having an argument with herself.

"So it wasn't Leo Bodwell's arrest that got you on the story?" Jimmy asked. "It was your brother." Linda gave Jimmy a piercing look. "How's he doing, by the way?" Jimmy asked.

"He committed suicide," she said quietly. She held her water bottle halfway to her mouth.

"All those wonder drugs weren't working for him, and he'd seen what happened to his friends at the end."

"AIDS?" I asked.

Linda looked like she was about to pounce on Jimmy and wring his neck. I thought that was our cue to leave. Jimmy didn't. "What got you so invested in this, Linda?" he asked. "Were you just acting out of obligation to your brother?"

Jimmy had an agenda here. I wasn't sure what it was, so I kept my mouth shut. "You created the story, didn't you?" he asked. "Your brother called you about these disappearances, and you went to the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station and convinced them they would have a riot in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard if they didn't storm Leo Bodwell's restaurant."

"No! And I don't use my novels to accuse men of murders they might not have committed!"

Jimmy's lips set into a thin line. I knew she was referring to the man who had broken into Jimmy's house in the middle of the night with a tire iron. She turned to me. "I was looking out for your community! I was trying to keep those men from being turned into a statistic!"

Linda reddened and wilted slightly in the same instant. She turned her back to us and tapped the edge of the doorframe with the side of a clenched fist. "I knew somebody would come asking about this someday," she said. "But I sure as hell didn't expect it to be you, Jimmy. Are you writing a book about this?"

Jimmy just kept his mouth tight. "A name came up," she said haltingly. "A name that I didn't think I could use because I thought if I did, this man would find a way to kill the story."

I tried to affect a sympathetic look.

"A man named Joseph Spinotta," she said quietly.

I was grateful that her back was turned. Jimmy did a lousy job of hiding his reaction; he sputtered before he shut up. Our two theories had just converged. Corey's strange meeting with Billy Hatfill, as well as the specifics of his disappearance, both pointed to a connection with Billy and his missing sugar daddy.

Linda turned around. "Spinotta was still one of the biggest names in town. Everyone thought that website of his was going to make television obsolete. Leo Bodwell told Sheriff that Ben Clamp had started attending parties at Spinotta's home. A-list-only affairs—not that many gay boys on the guest list. The beeper Ben left behind didn't turn up that many clients, but his hourly rate was steep. I figured Spinotta's place was where he did most of his business. But I couldn't find anyone willing to talk about what went on up there, so I couldn't pursue it."

"What about Terrance Davidson and Roger Vasquez? Were either of them connected to Spinotta?"

"Terrance Davidson waited tables at a restaurant in Beverly Hills," she said. "His manager fired him for being late. The manager claimed that she received several threatening phone calls from an older man protesting Terrance’s termination. This man kept using a certain phrase that stuck with her. He said that Terrance was
not quality material."

She met my heavy stare. "It was one of Spinotta's catch phrases. He would say it in meetings all the time. He would write it on project proposals that he thought were dated or out of step with the nation's youth. He even turned it into an acronym, NQM. To be sure, I even tape-recorded an interview Spinotta did with KCRW and played it back for the manager. She said the voice was the same."

"And Roger Vasquez?" I asked.

"I didn't find anything on him," she said quietly. "But by then I wasn't looking anymore. I was just going to run with what I had."

"Why didn't you mention their parents, their families?" I asked.

"None of them gave a shit," she said. "Even after my article ran, none of them lifted a finger to find their son. I finally called Roger Vasquez's mother. She told me her son was with the angels and she hoped the angels weren't pissed." Her anger over this was palpable. Given that she had taken up the cause of the Vanished Three even after their parents had turned their backs on them, I almost forgave Linda for what she had buried.

"I'll make a deal with you two," she said. "You keep my name out of this, and I'll give you my file. If you ever mention me, I'll say you broke into my office."

I drove west on Pico Boulevard as Jimmy leafed through Linda's file. It was not nearly as thick as I had hoped it would be. "Unbelievable," Jimmy finally said. "She sat on all that even after Spinotta became one of the most notorious white-collar criminals in this city. And she's still got the nerve to lecture you on what she did for your community."

"You think Spinotta could have killed the story?" I asked.

"Hell no," he said. "She was afraid of something else."

"What?"

He gave me a long look, which told me he was measuring his words carefully. "If Linda dug too deep into Spinotta's social world, she was going to find out those three guys were doing something that didn't fit with her image of them as innocent victims. That wasn't exactly
Little
House on the Prairie
up there."

"She had no trouble reporting that Clamp was a male prostitute," I countered.

"Clamp's disappearance made the evening news before her story ran. She didn't have a choice." He gave me a few seconds to absorb this. "We need to find out what those three guys were doing up at Spinotta's place."

"Partying, probably."

"I don't think so. Does it strike you in the least bit that these guys all left town over the months leading up to Joseph Spinotta's big exodus?"

I felt foolish for not having noticed it sooner. He continued. "Linda said Spinotta's parties were A-list-only affairs. Not that many gay boys on the guest list. So what were these three guys doing up there? I bet it was a lot more than drugs and skinny-dipping."

"They were eye candy, Jimmy."

"I doubt that's all they were," he said. "I'd bet these guys were in Spinotta's inner circle. Your job is to find out what they were doing in there."

"You want me to ask Billy Hatfill?"

"Not yet," he said. "Not until you get your meeting with Corey's uncle. Ask Billy about this now, and he'll probably leave town himself."

Neither one of us said anything for a while. Jimmy broke the silence. "Terrance Davidson canceled his dial-up service. Roger Vasquez never bothered to get any, even though he could have afforded it. Ben Clamp didn't advertise his services as well as he could have in this new cyber-age. What does that sound like to you?"

"Three guys who were new to the city and struggling to maintain?" I asked.

"Or three guys who didn't plan to stay here for very long."

"Linda said the sheriff's department went through Ben Clamp's beeper and didn't turn up that many clients," I said. "She assumed he was doing most of his business at Spinotta’s house."

"Or he was slowing down before he skipped town," he said.

"All right," I said. "So where does that lead?"

"If you ask me, these boys were planning some sort of escape," he said.

"You think they were running from something?"

"Nope," he said, "I think they were Spinotta’s advance team. I think Spinotta figured out he was going to have to skip town and he sent these three guys to prepare the new residence."

I waited for him to add to this theory, but he didn't, leaving me to imagine the everlasting party Spinotta and his Vanished Three might have created on a private island in the South Pacific, where drugs and alcohol flowed unabated and each morning saw the departure of another piece of reality on the retreating tide. It sounded inviting. Too inviting. I forced myself back to the present.

"So before they leave town, these guys leave their personal belongings out for anyone to find? You would think an advance team would be a little more subtle."

"It's just like Corey's apartment," he said. "It's a message."

"What kind of message?"

"They were turning their backs on their old lives," he said. "Shedding all vestiges of their former selves."

"So you think Joseph Spinotta and the Vanished Three are all living in a Franciscan monastery somewhere?"

Jimmy brayed with laughter.

"Seriously, Jimmy."

"I don't know what the hell they were doing," he said. "But I think they were doing it together. I pulled together a file on Joseph Spinotta last night. It's interesting. I want you to read it."

When we passed under the 405 Freeway, the fog lifted slightly and the sun looked like a runny soft-boiled egg through the high, milky clouds.

"Where does this leave Corey?" I asked.

"Same place he was this morning," he said. "I think he's trying to point the finger at these three men."

"And Billy Hatfill and Joseph Spinotta," I added.