Spider Season (24 page)

“She hadn’t mentioned that,” I said. “That the two of you intend to leave the city.”

“I’m sure she would have gotten around to it.”

“There’s a lot she hasn’t shared lately.”

“She’s had a lot on her mind, Justice. The book, the wedding, the baby.”

“Alex and I go way back, Kase. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“People grow, change. They discover they want something different. She’s moving on, leaving her old life behind.”

“Leaving me behind, you mean?”

He managed to clamp down an incipient smile, but the smugness was unmistakable.

“I’m sure she’ll stay in touch.”

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

He ignored it and glanced at his heavy gold wristwatch. “Game starts in half an hour. I should get going. You know how the parking is up there.” He held up the big envelope. “I brought copies of the reports you wanted. It seemed important to Alex, so I went out on a limb.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not that I can see. Silvio Galiano was found dead on his own property. Took a sixty-foot fall over a low wall, onto solid rock. Something that might happen to an older man suffering from age and infirmity. Nothing to suggest foul play or suicide. The coroner ruled it a probable accident.”

“Galiano had a younger lover,” I said. “A man named Jason Holt.”

“He’s mentioned in the detective’s report. Holt was Galiano’s primary beneficiary. Got the house, the car, most of the liquid assets.”

“He was investigated?”

Kase nodded. “The detectives questioned a number of witnesses, looked at the evidence. Holt’s alibi was airtight. You can take a look for yourself.”

He handed me the envelope.

“I appreciate your help on this,” I said.

“You didn’t get it from me. Understood?”

I nodded. He turned and started up the slope.

I called after him. “Give my best to Alex, will you, the next time she checks in? Tell her I thought her article was fantastic.”

He waved without looking back, the kind of halfhearted gesture that confirmed he heard me, but not much more than that.

*   *   *

I returned home to find Fred at the end of the driveway, digging into the mailbox for the day’s deliveries. He handed me a couple of bills and an envelope bearing the return address of the sheriff’s West Hollywood substation.

Upstairs, I tossed the clasped envelope Kase had given me on the kitchen table and tore open the smaller one from the Sheriff’s Department. Inside was a photocopy of the police report I’d requested weeks ago, dated late June, when I’d had my confrontation with the ex-Marine named Lance.

The first thing I noticed was a few thick, dark lines drawn with an ink marker. Someone had blacked out Lance’s address, phone number, and Social Security number, a nod toward personal privacy that seemed reasonable. But they hadn’t blacked out his last name, and it riveted my eye.

Zarimba.

It was an unusual last name, too unusual to be a coincidence. Cheryl Zarimba was the last woman I’d been involved with, during my final heterosexual fling in college. She’d supposedly been on the pill, and AIDS was still unknown, so we’d never used protection. Lance was too young to be her brother, and my gut told me he wasn’t her nephew. There could only be one explanation, I thought, and it left me reeling.

Lance Zarimba was our child, the son I never knew I had.

All the crazy things he’d done in recent weeks suddenly made sense. Tracking me down after my memoir appeared. Climbing into his old man’s Mustang to play make-believe behind the wheel. Getting a thrashing for it, like the beatings I’d taken so often from my own father for the slightest offense. Touching me tenderly the way he had, tricking me into embracing him, if only for a moment, the way every boy longs to be held by an absent or unaffectionate parent. Watching me from a distance, seeing how I lived, trying to figure me out, get a sense of who I was. Luring me down side streets to Kings Road Park so he could talk to me in private, reach out to me again, even as his anger and resentment conflicted with his need to get close. Then showing up unexpectedly at the wrestling clinic to flex his muscles and let me know how tough he was and to even the score, before roaring off on his big bike with a final show of bravado, to let me know he didn’t need me.

The explanation seemed as plain as the tattoos on his wiry body: Lance had been acting out the stages so many boys go through with detached or violent fathers. The only difference was that he’d had to wait a decade or two to do it and then stage it all very carefully, playing me like a puppet so he could act out his deepest needs.

I had a son.

The shock of it was immense, overwhelming. I sat down on the nearest chair, clutching the police report, staring dumbfounded at his printed name: Lance Zarimba.

I had a son. A fatherless boy shaped by abandonment and alienation, an ex-soldier forged and scarred by combat, a troubled man I didn’t really know.

I had a son.

And I had no idea where he was, or if I’d ever see him again.

TWENTY-FOUR

Jason Holt no longer seemed so important, and I left the big envelope from Lawrence Kase sitting unopened on my kitchen table. Finding Lance was all that mattered to me now. I had to at least talk to him once more, acknowledge that I knew who he was, get a sense of what he wanted from me, if anything. Not finding him was unthinkable.

I spent the rest of that day and most of the night driving the streets of West Hollywood, searching for him. It seemed improbable that I’d run into him, but I couldn’t sit still and do nothing. When once he’d been always lurking about, always watching me, now he was nowhere to be found.

I got on the phone to the Veterans Administration, was put on hold forever, was transferred from department to department, finally got somebody who sounded like she might be able to help, but never got a call back. I phoned Detective Haukness and left a message, telling him that I’d discovered I was Lance Zarimba’s father, needed more details so I could find him, and would appreciate his help. I kept waiting for his call.

On an outside chance, I called Bruce Steele to ask if Lance had shown up at any of the Saturday wrestling workouts. He hadn’t, but Steele reminded me that we’d last seen Lance roaring off on his hog in the direction of Hollywood, which meant due east. Over the next few days, I got in the Metro and hit every biker bar I could find between West Hollywood and Montebello, where I stopped at the edge of the Rio Hondo, looking across the narrow channel. Beyond the concrete-encased river lay more suburbs and then Riverside County and then the vast desert that stretched all the way to the Mexican border. Lance could have been anywhere out there, I thought, or even long gone and out of the country by now.

It must have been a strange sight as I pulled up to a tough-guy biker bar and parked next to a row of big choppers in Maurice’s stubby little turquoise convertible, but I was so intent and focused on finding Lance that it never occurred to me. Most of the bars smelled and sounded the same—cheap beer and stale urine, with the
clack
of billiard balls in the background, along with jukebox music that pounded like angry fists—and every stop was pretty much like the last one. I’d start with the bartender, asking about an ex-Marine named Lance Zarimba, with a shaved head and a Semper Fi tattoo on one biceps, who rode a 1984 Harley FXST Softail. Then I’d move on to the drinkers along the bar and around the pool table, explaining that I was the man’s father and needed to talk to him. Just hearing those words—“I’m looking for my son”—coming out of my mouth was a strange sensation. Until I got used to it, it felt like I was hearing them spoken by someone else. I found a few sympathetic listeners, but most of the barflies took me for a cop and clammed up or cleared out fast.

As the days passed with no solid leads and my frustration mounted, I was tempted more than once to slide onto a bar stool and order a shot of Cuervo Gold and throw it down and wait for the alcohol to hit and then order another one, and more after that, into oblivion. But something in me wouldn’t let me return to that place, where you see salvation in the golden inch of a shot glass and a full bottle fools you into thinking it will last forever. I came close to caving in, so close I found myself staring at the gleaming fifths behind a bar out in Pico Rivera, hearing the bartender ask me if he could get me something in a voice that sounded muffled and distant, while the saliva sluiced in my mouth and the old hunger seized me. I almost crossed the line, almost ordered a shot, but then I realized if I did I’d never find Lance, never see my son again. Or, if I did, I’d be no good to him because I’d be a pathetic drunk drooling sentimental bullshit or looking for a fight, one or the other. I fled the bar like it was on fire, realizing how close I’d come to detonating my life one more time.

Finding Lance consumed me. I left another message for Haukness, then started hitting motorcycle shops the way I’d scoured the bars. I barely ate, didn’t shave, even missed a few doses of my medications, which I’d always taken like clockwork. Ismael left several messages for me that I didn’t return and he finally stopped calling. My mail piled up, unopened. I tossed it on the kitchen table, atop the envelope Kase had given me. I always seemed to be going out the door, on my way to somewhere, anywhere, where I might run into Lance.

Finding my son became my mission, my obsession.

*   *   *

“Benjamin, you don’t look well. What on earth is going on?”

It was Maurice, who hadn’t seen me for nearly a week, bringing Fred back by taxi from a doctor’s appointment. I was about to get in the Metro for a trip to North Hollywood to scope out the motorcycle shops there. Fred checked the rainbow mailbox, as always, but no mail had been delivered that day. Then he struggled up the steps and into the house while Maurice lingered behind. He demanded that I explain myself, so I told him about Lance, all of it.

“A son? You’re certain he’s yours?”

“As certain as I can be, without a blood test to confirm it.”

“That’s fabulous!” I was silent. Maurice stared at me quizzically. “Isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you want to find him?”

“Of course.”

“Have you spoken to Ismael about this?”

“To be honest, I haven’t talked to Ismael for a while.”

“Benjamin, what’s gotten into you?”

“I have a son, Maurice. It’s a bit of a shock.”

“That’s no excuse not to share it with your boyfriend.”

“Is that what Ismael is?”

“Isn’t it?”

“I’m not too sure about that, either.”

I mentioned Ismael’s calls that I hadn’t returned and my concern that maybe we weren’t right for each other, that Ismael needed someone kinder and gentler, instead of a hothead loaded down with all kinds of bad history and emotional baggage.

“Balderdash, Benjamin! Haven’t you ever heard of yin and yang? Oppposites attracting? What’s more boring than a symphony composed of only the most melodious and perfectly blended notes? And if you’re trying to place Ismael on a pedestal, as if he has no personal issues of his own, think again, dear boy. He was a Catholic priest, after all. Need I say more?”

“I get your point, Maurice.”

“You care about him, don’t you?”

I didn’t have to think about it. “Very much.”

“And he happens to be crazy about you, even if he finds your flaws bewildering at times. He deserves to know what you’re going through. And you need all the support you can get right now, if you’d just find the courage to admit it.”

Frankly, except for Lance, there was no one I would rather have seen just then than Ismael.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.

“Of course I’m right! Now turn around and go upstairs and call him! Then get yourself cleaned up and come down for a good lunch. Why is it that you big, burly men always fall to pieces at times like this and need a tough old queen to step in and straighten you out?”

I raised my hands and shrugged. “Yin and yang?”

He rolled his eyes, then shooed me up the driveway.

“Go on, now! I expect to see you cleaned up, decently dressed, and down in the kitchen in thirty minutes flat. And don’t forget to floss!”

It took less time than that. I’d reached Ismael at his office and told him I needed to see him, that I had something important to talk about that couldn’t wait. He agreed to meet me at his hotel in Boyle Heights. Just hearing the concern and compassion in his voice reminded me why he meant so much to me. I ached fiercely to see him again.

Maurice had fixed me a tuna sandwich on whole wheat to go, and gave me a bottle of juice to wash it down. I gobbled the sandwich and then my meds as I drove.

*   *   *

The fastest way to Ismael’s place was straight out Beverly all the way downtown, where it turned into First Street and carried me across one of the fourteen historic, ornate bridges spanning the Los Angeles River and into Boyle Heights.

Ismael had a room in the Boyle Hotel, a four-story redbrick structure built in 1889 that for decades had housed mariachis who ventured out every night with their horns and guitars to perform in restaurants and clubs around the city. The old hotel was located across from the faded bandstand
quiosco
on Mariachi Plaza, a few blocks south of Cesar Chavez Boulevard. I parked on the street and hurried through the musty lobby, past a group of costumed mariachis carrying their instrument cases in one hand and their big, embroidered sombreros in the other.

Ismael’s room was on the third floor toward the back, away from the street. The long hallway was empty, although a few doors were open, probably to let the air circulate. I could hear a Spanish-language radio station playing in one of the rooms and residents tuning their instruments in others. I tapped eagerly on Ismael’s door. There was no answer, so I knocked louder.

When he still didn’t come, I pounded with the meaty part of my fist, remembering what Jason Holt had said to me the last time he’d called:
I followed him home, you know. All the way to that hovel he lives in, across the river in East Los Angeles.
I had no idea what Holt was capable of, but I grew frantic thinking about it, and pounded my fist harder.