The Death of Friends (18 page)

“So you didn’t make that call?”

“Let me explain something,” he said. “Zack’s a good boy. I know he’s queer, but he never bothered me with any of that stuff and he’s always been polite and respectful, so even if I did see something like that, I’d forget about it.”

“But you didn’t,” I pressed.

“No, I was dead to the world until my wife woke me up screaming for Jesus.”

“Would you testify to that?”

He regarded me suspiciously. “You mean in court?”

I nodded.

“Well, I can’t say that I would,” he replied. “I mean, I didn’t see nothing, so it’s none of my business.”

“I need to prove that the person who called the police wasn’t a tenant,” I said.

“You said they found things at Zack’s apartment,” he said. “What does it matter who told the police? I mean, if the boy killed the man, he should pay the consequences.”

“Mr. Ward, does Zack seem like a killer to you?”

He reached for another Kleenex to cover a loud sneeze. “Bless you,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “Well, Zack don’t seem much like a killer to me, that’s true. But, hell, gays kill each other. Just look at that guy they put in the gas chamber up in Illinois. Gacy.”

Great, I thought, now we’re all potential serial killers, as if every straight guy was a potential Ted Bundy.

“I’m talking about Zack Bowen,” I said, playing to his prejudices. “This is a kid who collects ceramic turtles and sews his own curtains.”

“Yeah, he is kind of a sissy. But if he didn’t kill the guy, how did that stuff get in his apartment?”

“What I think is that the cops were eager to make an arrest and they went after the obvious target without doing much of an investigation.”

“Yeah,” he mused. “That’s what they said about O.J.”

“All I’m asking you to do is testify that you didn’t make that call. I’ll keep the inconvenience to a minimum and you’ll help keep an innocent man from going to jail.”

“Would I be on TV?”

Simpson, again, I thought, the trial that had forever corrupted the criminal justice system.

“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully.

“Leave me your card,” he said, “and I’ll talk to my wife about it and we’ll get back to you.” He sneezed. “And be careful of the air.”

From Culver City I drove back to West Hollywood, where Darlene Sawyer was staying with friends on a street not far from where Josh lived. I’d expected Sawyer to be one of the legion of pretty, aerobicized twenty-something would-be actors who roamed LA. with glossy head shots and perfect orthodontics. Instead, I found a thin woman in her mid-thirties with a frank, intelligent face and a whiskey voice. She ushered me into a plant-filled living room, offered me coffee, lit up a Virginia Slim and said, “So, who framed Zack Bowen?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She exhaled smoke and smiled, showing small, yellowed teeth. “You’re his attorney,” she said. “You must know he didn’t kill Chris.”

“You, either?”

“Honey,” she said, “Zack loved that man, and he was good for him. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d hurt him.”

“Nonetheless,” I said, “someone in your building said he saw Zack on the night of the murder wearing a bloody shirt and carrying the object that was used to kill Chris.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” she said.

“No, the police said the anonymous caller was male. That lets you and your ex-roommate,” I glanced at my notes, “Joan Woods, off the hook. Unless either of you had a male visitor that night.”

She laughed. “Flatterer,” she said.

“So the answer’s no.”

“Joan and I ate dinner, watched a tape of
The Awful Truth
and were in bed by ten.” She smiled crookedly. “Our respective beds, I mean. No funny business there.”

“And the next day Ms. Woods returned to Michigan?”

“It was a couple of days later,” she said. “The earthquake worked her last nerve. I can’t say I blame her. L.A.’s a scary place even when the earth isn’t trying to swallow you whole.”

I liked her. She had the air of someone who’d been battered around the edges and didn’t give a damn about appearances. A truth-teller, so I asked her what she thought of Zack and Chris as a couple.

She gave it some thought. “Zack’s a little hunk, of course, but not the world’s most sophisticated guy, so when Chris first started coming around I assumed he was taking out his midlife crisis on Zack and I was all set not to like him.” She fanned wisps of smoke from her face. “But it wasn’t like that. Chris cared for him. I mean, I don’t know that it would’ve been a long-term thing, they were very different men, but the feeling between them was real.”

“How could you tell?”

“Darling, feelings are my metier,” she said. “I absorb them and save them up so I can call on them when I’m performing. I paid attention to Chris and Zack and it was a very sweet thing to see. Chris was a bit on the stodgy side, like you, love, if you don’t mind my saying so, but around Zack he was like a schoolkid with his first big crush and Zack was so proud and so happy.” Worry flickered across her face. “Where is Zack? How is he?”

“He’s at the men’s jail downtown,” I said. “He’s holding up as well as can be expected.”

“Will they let me visit him?”

“Yes, and I’m sure he’d appreciate it,” I said. “Do you think Don Ward might have been the anonymous tipster who called the cops?”

“No, not Don. He’s kind of homophobic, but it’s in that passive way of pretending not to notice, you know what I mean? As if by ignoring gay people, they don’t exist. He wouldn’t want to get mixed up in anything that happened between Chris and Zack. And anyway his wife, Donna, was very sweet on Zack, so she wouldn’t let Don do anything to hurt him.”

“What do you mean she was sweet on Zack?”

She laughed. “You dirty man. Think maternal, not erotic. Donna’s a motherly woman and Zack was clearly a boy in need of mothering. Even I was known to wipe the smudge off his cheek from time to time.”

“What about Ben Harper?”

“A himbo,” she said. “You know, a male bimbo? His tits are bigger than mine, but when it comes to IQ we’re talking double digits at best. Zack made him nervous because he’s as buff as Ben, only he’s a queer, and Ben worried about guilt by association. But did he call the cops? Only if someone else dialed for him.”

“I may need you to testify.”

“Great, where do I sign up? I’ve always wanted to be a witness. Maybe the exposure will give me a career break.” She laughed again. “I mean, it worked for Kato Kaelin, didn’t it?”

It took me another day to catch up with Ben Harper. He was staying at a place called the Double Palms Motel, not far from the apartment complex. Ben Harper was the first man I’d ever met for whom Fabio was a role model. He had the same height, girth, long blond hair and musculature of the man who’d risen from the cover of romance novels to fame and fortune and, just like Fabio, Harper liked to show it off. Tight black jeans, muscle shirt and skin that was unnaturally tan even by L.A. standards. As he thrust a big, calloused hand at me, I couldn’t help but think Sam Bligh could give this guy a career in the movies.

“You Mr. Rios?” he said, in a surprisingly pleasant tenor.

“Yes,” I said, submitting to a bone-crushing handshake. “Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Harper.”

“Ben,” he said. “Come on in. The place is kind of a mess.”

It was a standard motel room, vaguely southwestern in decor, with a queen-sized bed, bureau, TV and a couple of chairs. There were clothes everywhere, a jock strap hung from the doorknob, the remnants of fast-food meals overflowed the wastebasket and a dozen empty Dos Equis bottles lined the window sill.

“Have a seat,” he said.

I took the only chair in the room that wasn’t piled with clothes while he sat at the edge of the bed. His long, narrow face would’ve been handsome had there been a glimmer of anything in it, but he was as blank as an animal.

“I won’t take up too much of your time,” I said. “I told you on the phone I’m Zack Bowen’s lawyer. You know he’s in jail on a murder charge.”

He nodded his head with every word. “Huh-uh. Yeah, I heard from Karen. Too bad.”

“The police got an anonymous call from someone claiming to be one of Zack’s neighbors, saying that he saw Zack the night of the murder carrying what the police think was the murder weapon. I wondered if you made that call?”

“Nope,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation.

“It was the night of the earthquake,” I said. “Around one in the morning. Were you at home?”

He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “Guess so. Probably, but I didn’t see a thing.”

“That’s odd,” I said, “because none of the other tenants saw anything either. So it was either you or no one.”

It took him a minute to work this out. “So what are you saying, that I’m lying?”

“You didn’t like Zack much, did you?”

He fidgeted. “Didn’t think about it one way or the other.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Ben,” I said. “If you didn’t like him, you didn’t like him. It’s your right.”

This seemed to register. “Damn right it’s my right,” he said. “I don’t like fags, okay? No law against that.”

“No, but you’re not afraid of them, either, are you?”

“Say what?” he said incredulously.

“The police say the reason the caller wouldn’t identify himself was because he was afraid Zack might get back at him.”

“Shit,” he said, smiling hugely. “I could break that little fag over my knee.”

“So if you had seen anything and called the cops, you would’ve identified yourself to them, right?”

“Didn’t call ’em,” he said, reverting to monosyllables. “Didn’t see a damn thing. Was probably asleep.” He grinned. “Or beatin’ off.”

There was no innuendo in this statement; it was just his way of making small talk.

“Would you swear to it?”

He raised his right hand in a Boy Scout salute. “I swear.”

“In court?”

He dropped his hand and said, “Hey, man, I work for a living. I can’t be taking time off to go down to court.”

“It won’t take long,” I said. “I’m sure your employer would understand if I subpoenaed you.”

“If you what?”

“A subpoena is an order from the court requiring a person to come and testify.”

“And what if I just tear it up,” he said.

“Ben,” I said, “we’re talking about a murder trial. You’re very important, not just to me, but to the D.A. Without you, we might not be able to get to the truth. You’re kind of a star witness.”

He very nearly preened. “Do I get paid?”

“Yeah, there are witness fees. Not much, but then your employer might be persuaded to give you the time off with pay. For doing your duty as a citizen.”

He thought it over. “Yeah, sure, what the hell. When do you want me?”

“A couple of weeks,” I said. “I’ll get that subpoena to you. If there’s any problem with your bosses, any problem at all, you let me know.”

“Is he gonna get off?” he asked.

“Who? Zack? I don’t know.”

“Because if he did it, he should get the chair.”

I got up to go. “That’s for the jury to decide. Thanks for your time.”

As I replayed the interview in my head on the way home I was pretty sure that Harper was lying, but I didn’t know about what. Since he was no friend of Zack’s, and wasn’t afraid of him, he had no reason to lie to me about having made the call to the cops, unless he hadn’t figured out that by doing so he would be helping Zack. If that was the case, I could only hope he wouldn’t add it up before the hearing. Still, it was hard to imagine why he would’ve called anonymously. The obvious possibility was that it was the cops he was afraid of, rather than Zack. I made a mental note to see if he had a prior criminal record.

If he was telling the truth, then that meant that none of Zack’s neighbors was the anonymous tipster. That was clear even from a comparison of the physical layout of the complex with the tipster’s account of how he had seen Zack. There was no way someone sitting at a table in the kitchen could have seen Zack passing by the window and carrying the obelisk in his hand unless he was holding his hand out in front of him. Yet the tipster did have a general idea of what the building looked like, so he had obviously been there.

To plant evidence, I thought.

A
COUPLE OF NIGHTS
later, I found myself standing at the entrance to the underground garage at the municipal courthouse, waiting for Freeman Vidor. A long driveway descended from the street into the garage, and above the entrance were signs warning that parking was restricted to permit parkers and all others would be towed. To my right was a shuttered guardhouse. As usual at that hour, downtown was nearly deserted. At half past ten, Freeman emerged from the garage, smoking a cigarette.

“Ready to break in?” he asked.

“What were you doing in the garage?”

“Checking out security,” he said. He crushed the cigarette on the ground.

“Is it tight?”

He smirked and said, “You’ll see. Come on.”

The garage was a vast, echoing subterranean space that not only provided parking for court employees but also county workers in nearby buildings. Except for Freeman’s black Jaguar, which he’d parked in a handicap space, the few cars visible all had parking permits on their back fenders.

“The lot goes beneath Olive,” he was saying, indicating the dark reaches of the place. “The way we came down is the only entrance and there’s just one exit, to Temple. You notice the guardhouse at the top of the driveway?”

“Yes,” I said. “It looks abandoned.”

“There’s a guard up there during the day,” he said. “You have to have a permit to park down here and he’ll stop you if you don’t and turn you around. If he misses you, there’s a patrol that goes around, and if they find a car without a permit they tow it.”

I gestured to his car and said, “Evidently they don’t patrol at night.”

“They did,” he said, “but the county runs the courthouse and the county’s bankrupt. They cut out the night patrols a year ago.”

“Is that why there’s no one at the guardhouse, either?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess the county can’t afford the overtime.” He headed toward a pair of double metal doors recessed into a concrete wall. “The doors into the courthouse. Try ’em.”