Gray Area (16 page)

The case had gone on for over three months mainly due to delays in
discovery and holiday calendaring for court depos and/or pre-trial
appearances.  But it had ended the last day before Christmas and Lou
Diamond was glad of it—as was his wife, who had seen precious little of him for
several weeks. 

They were going to meet his brother and Cyndi that night.  A quiet
dinner at their favorite restaurant, Dantanas, in West Hollywood. 
Marshall had arrived a few minutes early, had called upstairs from his cell,
which forced Lou and Maria out of bed in a hurry to dress.  Maria,
amazingly, had finished before Lou, who had decided on a leisurely shower just
to irritate Marshall (as was his occasional custom, just for fun).  Maria,
looking radiant, opened the shower door, kissed him, told him she was going to
run across the street to the ATM and snag some cash.  He had wanted her to
wait for him, but she said this was a better use of time—killing two birds with
one stone by letting him dress, while she took care of the practical.

Lou remembered how he had told his wife to tell Marshall to go with her. 
That particular ATM got kind of dark at nights, even though this was a pretty
good neighborhood.  Maria promised she’d tell Marshall.  Which she
had done.

Marshall, however, had been romantically preoccupied with Cyndi in their
car when Maria came downstairs.  She teased him, as he pulled back from a
lingering kiss with his wife, and told him she was going across the way to the
ATM.  Marshall offered to go with her; Maria, ever considerate, told him
to carry on with Cyndi.  They all laughed—for Maria, her last laugh. 

Then Maria walked across the street to her death.

Lou Diamond, as fate would have it, exited the doors to his apartment
just as his wife was being gunned down across the street by two fourteen year
old boys with an assault rifle.  They killed her on the run, not even
successfully pulling her purse free from her falling body.  They
disappeared around the corner a second later as Lou, stunned from shock,
finally began to run.

Marshall could only stare, frozen, from his car.  Cyndi, likewise,
seemed transfixed by the horror she had just witnessed. 

When Lou gathered his dying wife close to him, Maria had stared up at her
husband in pain and confusion, blood trickling from her mouth.  Her last
words to him were:  I’m sorry.

On that night, Lou Diamond swore one day that he would kill his brother.

Diamond brought himself back to the present, here and now, with Linda.

“I blamed Marshall for a long time.  Blamed him for not being there,
for not walking her over to that machine, like he should have done.” 
Diamond’s jaw clenched, old fury on the march again.  He then deliberately
took a long breath.  “But all the while, I was really blaming
myself.  Hating myself because I had failed.  Failed to protect her,
for not being there.  Me and my goddamn shower...”

He looked over at Linda, who had a tear in her eye.  “I never told
that to anyone until now.  Not even to the Department shrink.”

Linda kissed his shoulder.  “I’m glad you told me.”  She then
kissed him tenderly on the lips.  Diamond’s eyes watched her, never
closing, and his heart suddenly ached.

“What makes you tick, lady?” he whispered.  “Why me?”

Linda’s eyes seemed to convey the same pain he was himself feeling. 
“Because—”  She hesitated. 

He pushed.  “Because what?”

“Because ... when I look at you ... I see myself.  I see narcissism
carried to the extreme.”

Diamond stared at her, not understanding.

“When I first saw you, I didn’t want you to speak to me,” she said. 
“I didn’t want to get to know you.  I didn’t want you to get to know
me.”  She looked down and when she spoke again, Diamond knew she was
telling the truth.  “I just wanted you.  And I wanted you to want
me.”

“And that’s it?” he said.

“No, there’s something else.”  She pulled away from him slightly,
her tone measured.  “I felt as if I knew you already.  I can see in
your eyes what you are.”

Diamond frowned.  “A killer, and not a nice guy to boot.” 

“No.  You’re better than what you believe yourself to be.  You
may not buy it, but ... you’re a hero.  An old fashioned one, I
think.”  She smiled almost demurely.  “Maybe,” she continued, “I was
hoping you could save me.” 

This surprised him.  “From what?”

“From everything,” Linda said with a touch of genuine sadness that
beguiled Diamond even more.  “Simple, huh?” she said.

“It’s never that simple,” he said.

“It can be.  If you let it,” Linda replied, perhaps a little too
quickly.  And now Diamond knew she was playing again.  He looked at
her for a moment then swung his legs out onto the edge of the bed.  She
tried to touch his shoulder, but he stood and reached for his clothes which
were still damp despite their proximity to the little hand-held heater Linda
had provided for them on the chair.

It
could
be that simple.  If he let it.

The words hung there, and he repeated them over and over again in his
head. 
Simple.  If he let it
.
 Simple … if
—

“I can’t,” he said at last, dressing.

The answer didn’t seem to surprise Linda.  “I know,” she said.

Neither spoke as he dressed.  When he reached for his wrinkled
jacket and began walking to the door, he heard her speak. 

“Will I see you again?”

He turned to her and laughed without a trace of humor.  “What’s
going on, Linda?”

“What do you mean?”

“The little clues you leave me.  The hints that this case is nowhere
near as clear as it appears.  Why is Marshall lying to me?  And why
are you?”

Linda got out of bed, her perfect body glowing in the moonlight. 
She walked slowly over to another chair, reached for a robe and put it
on.  She stared out the window and sighed. 

“We’re all trapped by lies, Lou.  Or omissions.”

“Stop sounding like a lawyer,” he snapped, his patience evaporated.

“Stop pushing like a cop,” she snapped back with equal ferocity.  “I
told you to talk to Robert August.  Do it tomorrow.  Before it’s too
late.”

Diamond reached for the door.  “I won’t wait until tomorrow.”

Linda let him exit almost completely before she spoke again.  “Why
do you think Marshall hired you, Lou?”

Diamond turned back to her.  “I’m his brother.”

“And you’re supposed to close this case up fast,” she said evenly. 

Evenly enough for Diamond to walk back into the room and regard her with
a frown.  “What are you saying?”

“I like you, Lou,” she said, and again, something in her voice made him
believe her.

“I like you, too, Linda.  Now what are you saying?”

Linda looked like she wanted to continue.  To fess’ up, he mentally
interjected.  To come clean?  Her expression seemed to say as
much.  But then it was gone.  That flicker in her eyes that seemed to
want to share completely with him, fizzled out.  “Nothing.”

“You still think this is a game?” he asked.

“No,” Linda said, and this time a shudder went down his spine.  “Far
from it,” she said.  “Talk to August.”

Diamond nodded.  “I’ll do that.”

He turned and walked out of the room. 

TWENTY-ONE

It was not yet midnight and the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to
Santa Monica was jammed wall to wall with traffic.  Inertia, restlessness
and just plain damn irritation with himself caused Diamond to squirm in his
seat, occasionally hitting the steering wheel with half-hearted disgust.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he found himself muttering as he
inched along in the traffic with the full moon blazing down on the line of cars
stretching out to the horizon.

Thinking with your dick, the old expression appeared.  Yep, old
badger, thinking with the old Peter, instead of the noggin’.  Just the
thing to be doing on a multiple homicide case with more holes in it than a
pound of swiss.

The recriminations came hard and fast.  She’s your number one
suspect, he told himself, his mental chiding momentarily cool and
incisive.  She’s a damn smart attorney and a bit of a twisted sister in
her own way ... and she likes games.  You know she’s lying; if not about
the murders, then about something.  She knows Marshall is lying about
something.  And she knows
you
know everyone’s lying. 

Bugger.  Idiot.  Left your best work in the sheets, didn’t
you? 

Diamond closed his eyes.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he muttered again.

Traffic began to move again and within a few minutes the five mile an
hour crawl had increased to ten, then twenty, finally to a cruising
forty.  He would be in Century City in fifteen minutes.  He would be
outside of Robert August’s high-rise condominium one minute later.

Diamond couldn’t shake the last few minutes with Linda.  She was
trying to tell him something, he was sure of that much.  In her
convoluted, damning, circuitous way ... but there was sincerity in her
attempt.  What was she afraid of?  Why was she holding back? 

What the hell did she know?

The PCH turned into the Santa Monica Freeway East.  Diamond hit the
accelerator and put the siren on top of his car, racing through highway traffic
to the National Boulevard exit into Century City.

Robert August.  Perhaps he was the final piece to the puzzle, the
bad guy he was looking for.  In an instant, Diamond knew this was probably
not completely true.  It could never be that simple.

Could it? 

No. 

Because as he told Linda ... it was
never
that simple.

TWENTY-TWO

The boy was young, but not
too
young, and that was a good
thing.  Still fresh, still vital, with a fine ass that showcased a
tattooed lion on each cheek—but not jailbait.  That would have made him
feel old … and desperate.  At the age of thirty-one, with a body that enjoyed
two hour workouts at the Bali gym every morning, attorney Robert August did not
want to feel old and desperate.

“Can I have more wine?” the boy asked, unbuttoning his shirt and rising
from the sofa where Robert and he had been sitting, or more accurately, kissing
and fondling for over twenty minutes.

“Sure, help yourself,” August said winking.  The boy walked over to
the bar counter that bordered the kitchen.  The boy had a name, August
recalled.  Ah, yes.  Tim.  Timmy.

“You like Tim or Timmy better?” Robert asked, not really giving a flying
fuck, but giving a stab at conversation as the boy poured Merlot into his empty
glass.  What he
really
wanted to do was get Tim or Timmy into bed,
fast, then get him out fast, so he could finish a brief that was due to
opposing counsel by the following afternoon.  A brief for the Big Boys at
Arc-Link.

The Antichrists.  You remember them, right?

Right.  He wished he had never heard of Arc-Link.

“Tim or Timmy, I don’t care,” the boy replied, moving back to the sofa
and sitting down again.  “Whatever you like.  Whatever gets your cock
hard.”

Now we’re talking, August fairly trembled with joy.

He kissed Timmy (yes, Timmy was far better…), and reached for the
latter’s crotch.

August had been restless today—in fact, he’d been restless ever since
Jason and Marianne were murdered two nights ago.  He had wandered over to
the Mother Lode on Santa Monica Boulevard earlier than most nights, hoping to
find some reasonable action with a minimal amount of conversational
preamble.  In short, he needed to fuck.  And the Mother Lode, short
of picking up some skanky trick down near Western, was the best possible
hunting ground for suck necessities.  He had ceased to feel resentment
over his homosexuality as he once had in the not too recent past; nor did he
feel the attendant shame coupled with the compelling hunger that drove him out
nightly to quench his lust.  With his father’s death—the last parent—he
was free from the Catholic incarceration of self-recrimination and guilt. 
He was out now.  Free at last.  The past year had been the most
profoundly joyful and liberating in his life, both personally and
professionally.  All had been going well.

Until Jason was found murdered in the law library and Marianne Simpson a
bloody wreck lying nearby.

He felt bad for Jason, he had really liked the man.  He
knew that Jason dug the switch-hitting thing vis-à-vis sex on both sides of the
fence.  That hadn’t bugged August a bit.  Well, it hadn’t before
Jason went off and got himself pole-axed while sticking that icy little
fish-bitch Marianne.  He could deal with the bi-sexual thing that Jason so
desperately craved.  Hell, we all have cravings, August thought to
himself.  We tend to make do and forgive those cravings in others. 
He wished with all of his remaining Catholic guilt and love for his fellow man
(or woman, as the case may be) that he could have found it in his heart to
forgive Marianne Simpson.  But he could not.

The stupid, adulterous bitch.

Now
there
was a woman that angered August.  She
was trouble from the word go, and August knew it.  He knew her husband was
not only a drunk, but a violent one at that.  Jason was smart and should
have known better.  But August knew that when a woman wanted something
badly enough—she would have it, at all costs, and damn the consequences. 
By all accounts, it appeared that her husband had finally said ‘enough is
enough,’ went and got himself a big old gun, and then took matters into his own
hands.

By all accounts.

But August wasn’t too worried about the hubby.  He was worried about
Arc-Link.  Or more specifically, the people who
ran
Arc-Link. 
And most specifically, about his direct involvement with Arc-Link and the
ramifications of such an association on a deeply, personal level.