Silver Lake (7 page)

Two officers had already run through the previous evening in detail. “Coq au vin has wine in it, doesn’t it?” they asked. They inquired about drugs last night and drug use in general and appeared dismayed no drugs were involved. “So then only a fair amount of drinking,” they said.

Questions: Did Tom say he owed money? Was Tom in some kind of trouble or hiding from anyone? And precisely how much did Tom have to drink?

Too much, Robbie thought to himself, although when they got him to bed he could barely stand, let alone hang himself, and so maybe he wasn’t as intoxicated as he seemed.

“He was alone and lonely,” Robbie told the police.

“What kind of lonely?” the lead officer asked.

“What kind of lonely?” Robbie asked back. “Lonesome lonely,” he said.

“When you played tennis,” the lead officer asked Robbie, “who won?”

“This matters?” Carlo asked.

“We didn’t keep score,” Robbie said.

“Didn’t keep score. So you weren’t gambling,” the officer said.

The two men were asked if the rope Tom used belonged to them, and they said it did not.

“And before he showed up at your office yesterday morning,” the lead officer asked, “you had never met Mr. Field, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Robbie said.

The officer looked at Carlo. Robbie looked at Carlo.

Carlo said, “That’s right.”

Did the two men hear anyone else enter or leave the premises? No. Was it possible someone came inside and they simply didn’t hear him? Probably not, but the men had to admit they were sound asleep and Carlo had taken a pill—when did he take the pill?

“Not long after we went to bed,” Carlo said, and his frown deepened. He was sitting now with his legs still crossed at the ankle, his hands plunged into his pockets.

The lead officer was needed outside. Robbie listened to her talk with a forensics man wearing surgical gloves, and Robbie wasn’t sure whether he and Carlo should have overheard what they did, but then, it wasn’t like they were true suspects in any crime.

Details emerged, like about how because Tom was barefoot, he ended up with splinters in his feet, probably from standing on the wooden fence to tie the rope to the neighbor’s tree. It was unclear whether he used the chair to step up on the fence and then jumped from the fence or if he stood on the chair and kicked it away. He may have had plenty to drink, but not so much he lost his balance or rope-tying skill.

Details: The rough estimate was that he had been dead for two to three hours before Robbie found him. Tom’s car keys were found in his trunk—he must have retrieved the rope from the car.

Questions: When did the branch snap, when Tom jumped off the fence or kicked away the patio chair? Or later after he’d been swinging a while?

An officer carried away the rope in an evidence bag. The lead officer, a detective named Michaels, talked to the two men again
while the body in the body bag was wheeled out. She was saying something about removing Tom’s car later in the day.

Details: Tom stuffed his socks into his high-tops and left his sneakers by the patio door. Tom folded a dishtowel and left it on the dining table.

What kind of lonely.

The two men were told that the police would be leaving soon but wished to ask them a few more questions, if they didn’t mind, and they wanted to put the questions to each man separately. Robbie didn’t like this. Would a husband and wife be split up for an interrogation as if they were suspects? But Carlo didn’t behave like it was a big deal and stepped into the kitchen with one officer while Robbie followed Detective Michaels into the guest room.

The detective wore a uniform that made her look round in the shoulders and square in frame, probably due to the bulletproof vest beneath her shirt. The arc of her brow mirrored the arc of her mouth. The guest room window looked out toward the street, and Robbie could see neighbors had gathered, like their next-door neighbors on whose property the aggravated Liquidambar sat as well as some from across the street. The ambulance drove away, lights on for some reason, siren off.

The detective presented Robbie the exact same questionnaire the two men together had already answered. How long was Tom Field known to them. Tennis played weekly. The rope, not from this household, not given to Tom by anyone present.

And then Detective Michaels asked: “So there wasn’t any kind of sexual activity last night with Mr. Field?”

“No,” Robbie said, and he knew she was doing her best, yet Robbie was irked. He said, “Because that’s what we guys do when we hang out together.”

Detective Michaels tapped her pen against her pad.

“I’m sorry,” Robbie said, and responded more cordially, “Nothing happened, no. I don’t know whether Tom would have wanted it to, but nothing did.”

Robbie stared at the table by the guest bed with the three books Tom had taken down from the shelves. One was the text on classical architecture, but the two others were monographs on modern artists, not old masters but twentieth-century painters, two painters whom Robbie revered. There had been a stretch of conversation at some point out on the patio when Tom rued what he perceived as the havoc Modernism had wrought, the downfall of figurative painting, and Robbie in defense had waxed on about the aesthetic discoveries one artist made when he painted a landscape and then scraped the surface of the canvas with a squeegee, ruining the landscape but producing an abstraction with mesmerizing striations. Robbie spoke about how his other favorite painter’s best work was in fact inspired by the hill streets of Ocean Park as if seen in a squint: abstract, yes, but born from a figurative imagination. And Tom had pooh-poohed Robbie, but then look, he’d been listening. In the middle of the night, Tom Field got up and located the art books for himself, and at least he had enough curiosity to try to figure out what it was that Robbie saw where he, Tom, saw nothing. Tom had wanted to understand.

Detective Michaels was saying something about how shock was often delayed—Robbie realized he was shaking—and it would be best if Robbie didn’t try to drive today, today he needed to take it easy, and at least the two men had each other, they would comfort each other, they would survive this together. The detective grabbed the wool throw from the guest bed and draped
it over Robbie’s shoulders. She took Robbie’s hands and had him clasp the blanket.

Robbie rejoined Carlo on the couch. He wanted to tell him about the art books but couldn’t because his teeth were chattering. Carlo reached his arm around Robbie and tried to warm him up.

Finally Robbie had to ask: “Because we wouldn’t do a threeway?”

Carlo didn’t say anything.

“Because then he heard us?” Robbie asked. “Do you think he heard us?”

Carlo tried to hush him.

“He said he was born at the wrong time. Do people kill themselves because they’re born at the wrong time?” Robbie asked.

Carlo started to say something but then didn’t speak.

“What?” Robbie asked.

Carlo shrugged.

“No, what?” Robbie insisted.

Carlo shook his head from side to side. He said, “Nothing.”

“You heard him, all the things he was going to do,” Robbie said.

Even then, already that morning, the two men were like boats in abutting berths knocking up against separate piers.

“Don’t,” Carlo said, and he sounded tinny, ventriloquized. “Don’t try to figure him out, Robbie,” he said. “You won’t.”

• • •

T
HAT DUSK ROBBIE SAT
on the piano bench by the window and peered out at the darkened lake. He was alone in the house, which he was not happy about.

All afternoon he had shuffled around, still wrapped in the blanket, while Carlo put away the dishes and pots and pans, while Carlo swept, while Carlo stripped the guest bed and laundered the sheets and remade the bed. Despite Robbie’s admonition that for all they knew the police might want a second look at the patio, Carlo hacked up the fallen branch and stuffed the debris in the green recycling bin. It was also Carlo who went round the neighbors and told them roughly what had happened. When he returned, he reported that they were sympathetic, as if this sort of freak tragedy in one’s home could befall any of them. Then Carlo rode his bike down to the office—but why on a Sunday? To accomplish what beyond getting away from the house, and from Robbie moping about?

The doorbell startled him. Detective Michaels had returned with a police tow truck to remove Tom’s car. As they moved the car out, the duct tape binding the front fender to the chassis came loose, and the driver had to leave the truck idling while first he tried to retape the fender before deciding to remove it.

“How are you doing?” the detective asked. “Where’s your partner? Did he go out?”

Robbie said, “I don’t get it. He was looking for a church to join.”

“Your partner?”

“Detective, what will happen to Tom’s belongings?”

“We’ll head over to his residence shortly. Family will be contacted.”

“There’s only his grandmother, as far as I know. He didn’t mention his parents.”

“Mr. Field didn’t by chance leave a cell phone here, did he?”

“He mentioned losing it,” Robbie said.

Before leaving, the detective asked if Robbie, as Tom’s only identifiable friend, could make himself available the next day in case she had additional questions after going through Tom’s apartment.

“If we find certain evidence, we might be able to close the case quickly,” she said.

“Like a suicide note?”

“Sometimes there are strong indications of a certain plan in place.”

“A suicide note,” Robbie said.

“If you will,” the detective said.

Robbie said he hoped to return to the office, but in fact the next morning, Monday morning, while Carlo got up at the regular time and showered and was good to go, Robbie couldn’t get out of bed. Carlo told him to sleep in, it was fine, and Robbie insisted he’d be down the hill in an hour. An hour later, when he did get out of bed, he only made it as far as the couch. He was hung over without having had any alcohol the night before, dizzy yet not fevered. His back ached the way it did when he played too much tennis. He was still wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt when Detective Michaels came by again at noon. She was carrying an oversized manila envelope.

Robbie tried to neaten up a bit. He combed his hair with his fingers. He fluffed couch cushions.

“We successfully accessed Mr. Field’s apartment,” the detective said.

“And did you find a note?”

“Not as yet,” she said. “Nor did we find any medications—”

“Anti-depressants?”

“Or anything else, not even aspirin. Or alcohol—only iced tea. I think it was iced tea.”

“Green tea,” Robbie said.

“That might explain the color. Like pond water,” the detective said. “We did, however, find a cell phone.”

“He didn’t lose it after all?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Field was not the tidiest person. There were some large piles of dirty laundry we had to dig through. There aren’t many numbers on the cell phone, a few, and one of them does appear to be Mr. Field’s grandmother.”

“You called her?”

“We have someone at the station trained for that,” the detective explained.

Because she was sitting at the edge of couch, and because the cushions hadn’t been completely tucked back in place after Robbie’s morning nap, the seat cushion was lifting away somewhat from the upholstered frame. Robbie was going to offer to reposition the cushion to make the detective more comfortable when he noticed something small and black and square wedged between the back and seat frame. There was also a glint of gold. The detective shifted back on the couch, hiding again whatever the little object was—a wallet? A credit card case?

“Mr. Field also seems to have been something of a musician,”
the detective said. “There was an electric keyboard propped up on a workout bench and then some sheet music.”

“What else did you find?”

“Stacks of library books. A suit in the closet, but not much else really. Most of his clothes seemed to be scattered around the floor—”

“What about a tux?”

“Yes, right, also a tuxedo. So you’ve been to his place?”

“No,” Robbie said. “He mentioned owning one.”

“We found some art supplies, some pencils, brushes, and whatnot. And then this,” Detective Michaels said, “which I brought to show you.”

She withdrew a large spiral-bound sketch book from the envelope and handed it to Robbie, who began leafing through it. On each page of most of the pad, there was a single portrait of a man or a woman or a kid, old, young, pretty, less pretty—it didn’t appear as though Tom had ever drawn the same subject twice. By far, the majority of charcoal portraits were of men around Tom’s age, many full nudes or nude torsos, a few of the guys with hard-ons, although most not. All of the drawings were dated, the earliest page a year ago, the most recent the previous week.

“I’m wondering if any of these subjects are familiar to you,” the detective said. “If you recognize anyone, if you can identify anyone, then we might try contacting him.”

Robbie began at the beginning of the sketch book and turned each page carefully. He knew no one. What he could say, however, was that Tom was deft at chiaroscuro. He used white chalk sparingly, and sometimes he rubbed in sienna or umber, which animated his portraits and gave them warmth. He was skilled and he
knew it because he had enough ego to sign every page, his name in tight small caps followed by a period, an emphatic statement:
TOM FIELD.

“He was talented,” Robbie said.

“I’d have to agree. But you can’t—”

“All strangers,” Robbie said. “To me, anyway, they’re all strangers.”

The detective removed another smaller envelope from her jacket pocket. The envelope contained snapshots, which she spread out on the table as if she were going to perform a card trick. She said the photos had been stashed in the glove compartment of Tom’s car. Again she asked if they meant anything to Robbie, and he began to suspect that the detective was less interested what information he might provide than how he reacted to seeing the photos, all of which were of Tom at different ages, none recent, many of him posed with an older gentleman usually wearing a seersucker suit and leaning on a cane with an ivory handle or with an older woman who sometimes wore an auburn wig. No surprise, Tom was adorable as a little boy and he always seemed to be caught in mid-sentence. The detective herself had to chuckle at the shot of Tom and his teddy bear wearing matching lederhosen. Here was Tom in tennis whites clutching a racket. Tom by a lake, hair wet, a towel around his shoulders, lips blue. Tom as a teenager in the passenger seat of a convertible, arm over the side, too cool for school. Always speaking something and always, it seemed to Robbie, in a good mood.