Simple Justice (10 page)

I pressed the buzzer outside apartment 220 and heard the yip of a small dog within.

Moments later, Derek Brunheim opened the door. Under one of his corpulent arms was tucked a squirming ball of fluffy white fur with just enough meat on it for a good sandwich.

I told him who I was. He looked me over.

“You’ll do just fine, dear,” he said, and showed me in.

Brunheim was even bigger in person than he’d appeared during his TV interview, roughly the same height and heft as Jefferson Bellworthy, but without the muscle tone.

A pair of unpressed Bermuda shorts and a faded “Queer Nation” T-shirt barely covered the bulkiest sections of his furry body. His feet were tucked into a pair of blue bunny slippers, and I noticed several purple lesions on his hairy shins. Thick dark curls massed in uncombed tangles around the widening bald spot atop his large head. A dense carpet of beard, probably only one or two day’s growth, helped camouflage the craters of his pockmarked face.

As he led me into the apartment, it was with the uninhibited manner of a man who had long ago accepted the effeminacy he was born with, and had no intention of apologizing for it to anyone.

“Forgive the mess,” he said, with a wave of one hand across a room that was cluttered but carefully arranged.

He gathered up a stack of bills from the dining room table, along with a set of personal checks designed in pastel floral print.

“I haven’t tidied up since Monday,” he said, tucking the checks quickly away. “Ordinarily, I’m quite the little housekeeper. But tragedy tends to interrupt one’s routine.”

We stepped into a musty living room crammed with antique furniture. Crystal or china bric-a-brac filled every nook and cranny. Where there weren’t oil paintings and mirrors in grandiose frames, the walls were covered with gay lib posters stretching back to the early Seventies and more recent placards bearing references to ACT UP, the Minority AIDS Project, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

I felt like I’d entered a gay-owned collectibles store on a low-rent stretch of Melrose Avenue; the only thing missing was the Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.

“Those are from my formative years as a flaming firebrand,” Brunheim said, when he saw me looking over the posters from the early Seventies. “Kicking down the barricades before it became fun and fashionable.”

“You don’t look old enough to have been involved in the early days of gay lib.”

“Bless you, darling.”

He threw me a kiss and led me deeper into the apartment. Heavy curtains were drawn closed over the windows, and dim bulbs in ornate lamps cast the room in funeral parlor light.

“In fact,” he said, “I was marching in the streets before I turned seventeen. Maybe it was the sight of those hunky cops in those sexy uniforms, as they pummeled us so passionately with their phallic batons.”

He motioned me toward a floral print sofa that reminded me of the personal checks I’d glimpsed a moment ago. Hand-embroidered doilies covered both arms, and dainty satin pillows were laid out diagonally against the back like slices of buffet cheese.

“Please, have a seat. Something to drink?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

He lowered his big body into a hand-carved teak chair that creaked beneath his weight, and placed the dog in a cushioned basket on the floor near his feet, where it stared at me with eyes like shiny black beads.

Brunheim hooked one hairy leg primly over the other, then laid his two hands delicately, one under the other, atop the highest knee.

“I’ve heard that many people go into a paroxysm of house-cleaning when they lose a loved one,” he said. “A defensive reaction against grief, something to keep them busy. I used to do that in the early days of AIDS, when friends began to drop like flies. But Tuesday morning, when they called me about Billy, I didn’t react that way at all.”

Tears brimmed in his puffy eyes, and his voice quavered.

“I went quietly into his room, sat on his bed, and looked at his things. I wanted to see them all one last time, before his mother came and took everything away.”

“Margaret Devonshire.”

“Yes, Margaret Devonshire.” He etched her name with acid. “She was here before noon, the same morning he died. Can you imagine? You learn that your only child is dead and all you think about is raiding the home of the person who put him up rent-free for three years and paid half his bills!”

I’d hoped to look through Billy Lusk’s personal belongings; hearing that they were gone was a serious disappointment.

“She took everything?”

“All but a few photos,” he said, “and I had to fight for those. Every stitch of his clothes, the stuffed toys I gave him, his electric razor, which was actually mine. The sheets off his bed, come stains and all.”

Then, seething: “She even got the picture of Billy and Sam.”

“Sam?”

“Samantha Eliason. Billy’s best friend. At least, until recently.”

“Samantha Eliason, the tennis player?”

“The closet queen of the courts.”

Reporters are invariably better off revealing as little as possible about how much they already know, at least until the questioning gets deeper and tougher. I saw no need to tell Brunheim of my tenuous connection to Samantha Eliason through my freelance work at Queenie Cochran’s public relations agency.

Instead, I lobbed Brunheim a softball.

“How did Billy happen to be best friends with an internationally ranked tennis star like Samantha Eliason?”

“They met almost ten years ago,” Brunheim said, “during the first of Billy’s several ill-fated enrollments as a Trojan. I’m referring to the university, not the condom, though, God knows, he’s gone through his share of those. Sam was a senior, captain of the women’s tennis team. Billy was an eager-beaver freshman, out to meet people and have a good time. I believe they met through a lesbian friend of hers, and I guess they just hit it off.

“Over the years, they spent more and more time together. Billy could play it straight when he had to, and there are those times when a dyke in the public eye needs a male escort to keep the right people fooled. If it had become public knowledge that Sam was a muff diver, she would have lost millions in endorsements.”

Brunheim rolled his eyes theatrically.

“Look what happened to Martina! She made millions on the court, but where were all the major endorsement deals? That girl paid dearly for being honest, but at least she has her pride.”

I mentioned the photo Brunheim had referred to a minute ago.

“It’s a cute shot of Sam and Billy together,” he said. “I would have liked to have one, now that he’s gone. But they only made two copies, and Billy’s mother snatched his off his nightstand when she was here. Sam’s got the other one. So that’s one keepsake I won’t have.

“But at least I salvaged the pictures Billy wanted me to have. They’re what really matter.”

I followed Brunheim’s eyes to a corner Queen Anne tea table, basking like a shrine in the illumination of a Tiffany lamp. Arranged carefully at the lamp’s base were a dozen framed photographs of Billy Lusk, posing in dress that ranged from a string bikini to a formal tuxedo. His hair was styled differently for each photo, and tinted varying shades of blonde, but the pretty face was unmistakable, particularly the distinct, upturned nose. It wasn’t a face I particularly liked or would have trusted. His eyes seemed earnest but false; they reminded me of billboard blue sky, all surface, with nothing behind them but old advertising.

Each shot was of professional quality, framed in finely crafted silver plate or well-cut crystal that must have cost Brunheim plenty. Yet Brunheim appeared in none of them. In each Billy Lusk was alone, transfixed by the camera’s loving eye.

“His mother tried to take those, too,” Brunheim said, anger edging back into his voice. “I said, ‘Excuse me, Mrs. Devonshire, but Billy gave those pictures to me!’ She was gathering them up when I grabbed them away. It got very nasty. We both ended up in tears, screaming terrible things.”

“I take it you two weren’t fond of each other.”

“She hates me. Hated all Billy’s queer friends. Couldn’t stand the idea that her son was a fag. As if children are born into this world to be exactly what their parents want them to be, instead of the unique creatures God intended.”

“There’s nothing else of his I might look through? Nothing at all?”

Brunheim smiled mischievously.

“Well, there is another set of photos that I hid away. Billy’s ‘personal’ collection.”

He glanced pointedly at my notebook.

“This can’t be for the paper,” he said.

I folded my notebook away, and he resumed.

“As you know, Billy wanted to be a model. Or an actor, he didn’t know which. You know what they’re like, those kind. Incredibly vain, but paralyzed with insecurity at the same time. So he went through men the way I go through cherry-filled chocolates.

“The more he had, the better he felt about himself, especially if he was able to seduce a breeder. Of course, it lasted only until the man of the moment was gone. Then Billy needed someone new for reassurance. With Billy’s looks, he had no trouble finding willing partners.”

“That didn’t bother you?”

“My only rule was, never bring them home when I’m here. At least have the courtesy to call ahead, so I can go out.”

“There were quite a few, then?”

“He did it with anyone and everyone, dear.” The smile that formed on Brunheim’s lips seemed shaped by decades of loneliness. “Except, of course, with
moi
.” He reached down for the dog and pulled it into his lap. “Even before I tested positive, when disease wasn’t such an easy excuse.”

He looked away, fighting his emotions.

“He told me he loved me, of course. Especially when I gave him things. But he said I just wasn’t his type.”

He found a tissue and dabbed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Derek.”

His head whipped back in my direction.

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Mr. Justice! I grew up being an effeminate sissy. I got beat up and called every name there was. I heard the whispers and the giggles behind my back. I was shunned and ridiculed as far back as I can remember—even my parents did cruel things, even if it was unintentionally. And when I got to high school, I had the double curse: a fern with a raging case of acne, a regular Clearasil Queen.

“At that point, you either kill yourself or you get stronger. And, obviously, I’m still here.”

I shook my head with admiration.

“You certainly are.”

My remark caused him to smile grandly, and his hands fluttered upward.

“Don’t pay any attention to me. I go off like that every now and then. I’m just a diva without a stage. Babs without her key light. Bette without the baths.”

I glanced at a clock on the wall behind him. It was a few minutes past noon. I needed to hurry him along.

“A moment ago, you mentioned Billy’s collection of personal photos.”

“Just between us girls?”

“Absolutely.”

“Billy had this thing about taking a Polaroid snapshot after every new sexual encounter. Shots of each vanquished lover lying naked on the field of conquest. He’s done it for years, and showed me a few of the early ones.”

“And these men allowed it?”

“Some wouldn’t, especially the straight ones Billy prized so highly. But Billy was nothing if not charming. He told me he made a joke of the whole thing, got them laughing, then snapped a picture off quickly. Or else took a shot of them as they slept in postcoital bliss, totally unaware.”

“And where are these photos now?”

“In my storage cabinet in the garage, where his mother can’t get at them.”

“The spoils of war?”

Brunheim hauled himself up out of the chair and went to the tea table to look down at the framed photos, clutching the dog under one arm.

“You may not believe this, Mr. Justice, but I didn’t keep Billy’s dirty pictures for myself. Looking at his numerous sex partners causes me no great joy, I can assure you.”

He swept his hand like a wand across the photos in front of him.

“I’d rather remember Billy like this. Look at that face, that smile. What an angel. He reminds me so much of the first boy I ever fell in love with, back in the third grade. Back when everything was so…different.”

“If you didn’t keep the other photos for yourself, why did you hide them away?”

Brunheim laughed distantly and stroked the dog.

“To spare his mother the pain of seeing them.”

He glanced my way.

“Crazy, isn’t it? I can’t stand the bitch. For three years, she did her best to insult me, even when Billy had terrible sinus damage from all the cocaine he put up his nose, and I was tending him day and night.

“But as much as I detest her, I still share her grief. And I wouldn’t want a mother to have to find photographs like those among her son’s things, particularly not at a time like this.”

He pressed his face into the dog’s fleecy fur. “I may have a sharp tongue, Mr. Justice. But I’m not an unkind person.”