Simple Justice (21 page)

She pulled suddenly away.

“We’ll have to talk about that.”

She said it in a voice that was part sultry temptress, part scolding mother, and oozing with self-satisfaction.

She drove off, leaving me angry that I’d let her set me up so easily, when I should have seen it coming a mile away.

The temple where Billy Lusk was eulogized was only a few miles from the address I’d copied from Jin Jai-Sik’s driver’s license.

I turned the Mustang east on Olympic Boulevard and put on the headlights against the dusk. The air was warm and still, “earthquake weather” in L.A. parlance, though the only things rumbling at the moment were the wheels of the Mustang, which needed aligning.

I cruised along an unrelieved stretch of commercial real estate that had been a corridor of flames during the last riots, until I reached the heart of Koreatown.

A tangle of neon signs, formed from the slash mark ideographs of hangul, the Korean word system, loomed brightly above the bustling business district.

The address I was looking for was in the residential section to the north, where most of the faces were Hispanic, but Korean families were part of the mix. I found the house on a broad, clean street of restored Victorians and Craftsmen, which managed to look hospitable despite the cast-iron burglar bars that covered almost every ground-level window.

I left the Mustang at the curb and followed a cleanly edged walkway across a gentle slope of lawn. Three steps led to a broad porch and massive front door of lacquered wood, with a heavy knocker of burnished brass.

Lights were on inside, but dense curtains guarded the interior from prying eyes.

A thin, graying Korean man, tidy and well groomed, answered the bell with a newspaper in his hand. He wore dark pleated slacks and a starched white dress shirt, and examined me dispassionately through wire-rimmed glasses.

I told him my name and that I was looking for Jin Jai-Sik.

“No English,” he said. “Sorry.”

I glanced at the copy of
The Wall Street Journal
in his hand.

“It’s very important that I talk with him.”

The man took a quick look back into the big house, where a little girl sat at a dining room table, bent over a book. It was difficult to tell if she was the same child whose photograph I’d seen in Jin Jai-Sik’s wallet, but the general resemblance was close.

The man stepped out and quietly shut the door.

“Jin no longer live here.”

“Are you his father?”

The pain in his eyes gave away the truth.

“Jin no longer live here,” he repeated more firmly.

“He has something that belongs to me. It’s important that he return it.”

I wrote my name and phone number in a small notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to him.

“If Jin does not return what belongs to me, I may have to inform the police. Please, Mr. Jai-Sik. Have him call me.”

“I try.”

He turned back into the house but paused at the door.

“If Jin take something not belong to him, I apologize for him and for his family.”

He went in, and I heard the door being locked and latched.

Along the porch, window curtains parted, and the little girl peeked out.

Before I could get a good look at her, someone whisked her away, and the heavy curtains fell closed again.

I made my way home in the sluggish Saturday evening traffic along Santa Monica Boulevard.

The prostitutes were out in force, wooing potential customers, who drove slowly in the right lane.

On the street corners between Van Ness and Highland avenues, most of the hustlers were black and Hispanic, giving way to more and more young white men after that, with a rash of slinky transvestites in the first block or two on either side of La Brea, displaying themselves in the warm night air like sweet-smelling gardenia blossoms ready to be picked.

A mile farther on, I crossed La Cienega into the heart of Boy’s Town, where the traffic slowed to a crawl, and music from the clubs blasted the street. Men were everywhere, bunched on corners waiting for lights to change, streaming by in crosswalks, flowing in and out of the clubs and cafes, their eyes alert to the next striking face, the next impressive body, the next chance at love.

I arrived back on Norma Place to the tinkle of dinnerware and laughter coming from the house. Maurice and Fred held a small AIDS fund-raising party on the third Saturday of each month, during which guests were wined and dined for a twenty-five-dollar donation. Together, Maurice and Fred belonged to half a dozen AIDS organizations, part of an army of men and women committed to battling and coping with the epidemic.

There were times when I wished I had an ounce of their courage to get so close to it. To see it, to touch it, to feel it all around. To acknowledge that in all that life out there, death was quietly, relentlessly at work.

The driveway was filled with cars, so I parked on the street, hanging my residential permit on the rearview mirror to avoid a ticket. I was exhausted from the long day and had a lot on my mind. Otherwise, I might have recognized the ’52 Chevy pickup parked at the end of the block, with its engine idling and its sharp yellow paint job begging to be noticed.

I hurried up the drive with my hands in my pockets and my head down, hoping to get to the apartment unseen by anyone inside the house. I didn’t make it.

Fred stepped out on the front porch, scratching a plump gray cat behind the ears, and invited me in for dessert. When I demurred, Maurice appeared behind him, gently wheedling.

“Just for a minute,” I said, and mounted the steps toward a houseful of people I didn’t know and didn’t want to meet.

Fred set the cat on the porch railing, and I told him I’d rather have a glass of wine, if it was all the same. I was on the top step when I remembered the yellow pickup and realized, too late, what it meant.

As I turned, I heard five or six shots in rapid succession, their sound more a crack than a pop.

In the same moment, I heard glass shattering as the bullets took out windowpanes across the front of the house.

Maurice and Fred wisely hit the porch floor, with Fred’s big body thrown protectively over the smaller Maurice.

My reaction was just the opposite.

I faced the street and braced myself for a bullet, determined to play out my part in the violent little scenario I’d helped create. As frightened as I was, I felt ready for whatever happened. A weary part of me welcomed the quick, clean escape a single bullet could provide, if only the shooter were a halfway decent shot.

I was asking too much of Luis Albundo.

As I waited for the bullet’s impact, I stared into his rage-filled eyes a moment before the pickup sped away, its license plates covered over with newspaper and tape.

The sound of its peeling tires gave way to the din of screaming and pandemonium inside the house. I sensed my feet still firmly on the step, my body intact, my heart pounding wildly. I felt a strange disappointment.

Maurice and Fred picked themselves up, amazingly unshaken, and did a quick inventory of injuries. Both had seen action in separate wars, Fred as a soldier and Maurice as a medic, and it showed as they moved among their guests with calm and purpose.

They found only minor cuts, caused by flying glass, and everyone chattered incessantly, pumped up with adrenaline and relief.

Then Maurice discovered the lifeless ball of gray fur behind the porch railing, where a bullet had struck the cat directly in the chest. There was a little blood, but not much, and the cat’s eyes were open.

Maurice closed them, then carefully picked the animal up, cradling it in his spindly arms. Fred tried to help, but Maurice pushed him away, disappearing in his delicate way with quick, tiny steps around the side of the house.

Distant sirens added their wail to the general uproar, becoming louder as they got closer.

I found a glass of wine sitting untouched on the porch and drank it down all at once, the way you’d drink a glass of cold water on a hot day.

Patrol cars pulled up out front at dramatic angles, filling the street, while neighbors bunched together on the tree-lined sidewalks.

Fred handed me a fresh glass of wine and asked me if I was all right. I said I was, and as I drank it down, my shaking hands began to settle.

I crossed the yard and approached a sergeant, who stood by her patrol car talking into a radio transmitter.

I told her the shooter was a man named Luis Albundo, spelled it for her, and mentioned that I was the target. I described him for her, along with his vehicle, and suggested he might be heading east, back to Echo Park.

After she’d relayed the information to the sheriff’s communication desk, I told her about my involvement in the Billy Lusk murder case, and my confrontation with Luis Albundo three days before.

“Billy Lusk was murdered with a thirty-eight,” I said. “The gun tonight sounded like a smaller caliber. But if they find one, and it is a thirty-eight, they’ll want to run it through ballistics.”

“You sound like you know something about guns,” she said.

“My father was a cop.”

Within a few minutes, she got a call on her police radio informing her that deputies had apprehended Luis Albundo on the Sunset Strip. The yellow pickup had become hopelessly trapped in a gridlock of limousines in front of The House of Blues.

“No gun,” the sergeant said. “He must have tossed it. We’ll search all possible routes. You OK?”

I told her I was. A few minutes after that, another patrol car pulled up, and I was asked to identify the man sitting in the backseat in handcuffs.

“That’s him,” I said, and they drove Luis Albundo away as he shouted obscenities at me in Spanish.

I went up to my apartment and called Paca Albundo to tell her she had another brother in jail.

It’s over,” Harry said. “You’re off the story.”

We stood in the parking lot of the sheriff’s West Hollywood substation, where Luis Albundo had been booked for attempted murder, among other charges.

Harry had come down to talk with the deputies when they’d learned that I had no press credentials from the
Sun
. Before they’d reached him, he’d also gotten calls from the
Sun
’s publisher and from Queenie Cochran.

“You can’t pull me off the story now,” I said.

“I just did.”

Harry climbed behind the wheel of his Ford Escort. I stood between him and the door so he couldn’t get away.

“Why? Because Queenie Cochran’s pissed and the
Sun
might not get to do any more puff jobs on her clients? That’s stupid, Harry.”

“I’ll tell you what’s stupid. Trespassing on private property and spying on Samantha Eliason, that’s stupid. Antagonizing this Albundo guy until he tries to do a drive-by on you, that’s stupid. Forcing your way into an interview with Margaret Devonshire, now that’s really stupid. Her husband plays poker with the publisher, for Christ sake!”

“A disrupted poker game! Oh, Harry, however can I make amends?”

“You’ve put the entire Billy Lusk coverage in jeopardy.” He pushed me aside and pulled the door closed. “Not to mention my goddamn job.”

“I was doing my job, Harry. The one you gave me to do.”

“You’re a loose cannon, Ben.”

“I’ve always been a loose cannon.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You can’t get away with it anymore. Six years ago, you screwed up big time and everybody’s watching you now. I warned you to take it slowly, keep a low profile. But you didn’t listen.”

He switched on the ignition. I reached through the open window and turned the key, shutting the engine off.

“Harry, I know Gonzalo Albundo didn’t murder Billy Lusk.”

“No, you don’t know that. You think it, maybe. For your own personal reasons, whatever they may be.”

“In my gut, I know it.”

“Have you forgotten that he’s an admitted gang banger? That a witness puts him at the scene? That blood on his clothes places him with the body? That he confessed, for Christ sake! Those are the facts, Ben!”

“You always taught me to look beyond the obvious, Harry. Assume nothing, check everything. Remember?”

“All right,” Harry said tersely. “We’ll go through this one more time. Tell me exactly what you know.”

“First of all, Gonzalo Albundo is not a member of any gang we can find. Everybody who knows the gangs in that area says he didn’t run with one. Everything in his past indicates complete antipathy toward gang-banging. He was raped in jail, no gang protection there. And no tattoos on his body, except for some he crudely scratched on himself, after the fact. He doesn’t fit the profile of a gang banger, Harry. Not even close.”

Harry wiped his glasses on a handkerchief, something he often did when he was about to end a discussion.

“So why was he down there, Ben, hanging around a gay bar?” He said it calmly, and it felt faintly patronizing. “And why did he confess?”

He slipped his glasses back on and said, “I’m waiting, Ben.”

I decided to play my hand, while there was still time.

“Because he’s gay.”

Harry slumped a little behind the wheel, shaking his head. “And just how the fuck do you know that?”

“For starters, I found a gay magazine and a package of condoms hidden in his bedroom.”

“Which proves nothing.”

“He may not be active yet. But he’s at least curious, and probably much more than that. His sister told me he’s become withdrawn in the past year, no communication. It sounds like he could be in deep conflict about his sexual feelings.”

“This is psychobabble, Ben. It’s not your field.”

“Hear me out, Harry.”

He found a cigarette, lit it, and stared out at the brick wall in front of him. Over its top, I could see the baseball field across the street. In between, a stream of men sauntered from their cars to the clubs.

I kneeled down to Harry’s level.

“I think that Gonzalo sneaked out late that night, dropping from his bedroom window. When his sister showed me his room, I found the screen unlatched. He probably rolled his car down the hill with the ignition off to avoid waking anyone, then drove to The Out Crowd.

“He got there in a matter of minutes. He hung around outside in the shadows, trying to meet a man or just see what was going on. That’s when he heard Billy Lusk arguing with someone, then a gun go off. He might even have seen Billy go down. It’s even possible he could identify the real killer.”

“What about the blood on his clothes?”

“In his bedroom, I saw Boy Scout merit badges for first aid training. He probably went to Billy’s side instinctively, to help. That’s when he picked up the blood, and when Jefferson Bellworthy saw him kneeling over the body.”

“If he wanted to help, why did he run?”

“He realized that if he stayed and was questioned as a witness, he’d be exposed as a homosexual. When he saw Bellworthy, he panicked and took off.”

“That doesn’t explain the confession.”

“He’d rather confess to murder than admit to his family and friends that he’s queer.”

“That’s nuts.” Harry finally looked at me. “You don’t choose to rot in jail or die by lethal injection just because you like boys instead of girls.”

“You do if you grew up with an older brother who was violently homophobic. If the idea of living a gay life goes against everything within your cultural and family traditions. If your parents are Catholic, and you love and respect them more than you respect yourself.”

“Sorry, Ben, I don’t buy it.”

“Gonzalo Albundo is a frightened, confused teenager, Harry. He feels he has no rightful place in the world. That he’s all alone. No hope, no future. It’s the reason so many gay kids commit suicide. Gonzalo Albundo is just one more of those suicidal kids, Harry, self-destructing in a different way.”

“That’s all conjecture, and not terribly convincing.”

Harry stubbed the cigarette out in his ashtray.

“Look around, Ben. We’re in West Hollywood. If the kid’s gay, he comes down here and meets a thousand guys like himself.”

“This is the last place some people would ever want to come, Harry. It’s a strange world to a lot of guys. It scares away more gay kids than it attracts.”

“OK, then he joins a gay church or one of those gay rap groups or gets some counseling at those gay centers they have. But he doesn’t take the blame for a murder he didn’t commit. You can’t sell me on that one, Ben.”

“Damn you!”

I stood and pounded the meaty side of my fist hard enough on the Ford’s roof to make Harry jump.

“Damn you and your white heterosexual arrogance. Like you know everything. Like the story begins and ends with how Harry Brofsky sees it. Damn you and the rest of the media that’s owned and run by men like you!”

I whirled away from the car, frustrated almost to tears, then turned back on him.

“You remember what it was like to be sixteen or seventeen, Harry? How confused you were about some things? How terrified? Now imagine what it’s like to be that age and know you’re a faggot in a world that hates faggots. Some of those kids would rather die than face the truth about themselves or reveal it to someone else.”

At least he was meeting me with his eyes; I was getting that much respect, anyway.

“I know something about this, Harry. I know how desperate it can feel.”

“I admire your compassion,” Harry said, and I knew right then that I’d lost. He started the engine. “But I think your personal feelings are clouding your objectivity.”

“Fuck objectivity! How often have I heard you say that? There’s no such thing as objectivity, only fairness.”

“You’re off the story, Ben.”

“Harry, don’t.”

He was backing out. I held on to the car, moving with it.

“I have to, Ben. You’re too close to it. It’s making you do crazy things, and neither one of us can afford for that to happen again.”

“You got me into this, Harry. You’ve got to let me finish it.”

He shifted gears, out of reverse.

“Go home, Ben. Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” I kicked the side of his car, leaving a dent deep enough to serve soup in.

Harry hit the accelerator and sped to the exit, where his left turn signal blinked at me like an obscene wink.

I watched his taillights disappear down San Vicente Boulevard, becoming small red blurs through my angry tears.