Simple Justice (11 page)

The clock in Derek Brunheim’s living room chimed once.

I’d hoped to be at the
Sun
before the afternoon was gone, but Brunheim was loquacious and highly emotional, and controlling the interview was proving difficult.

I opened my notebook and asked him to tell me how he and Billy had met. I hoped to direct him back to the subject of Billy’s private photo collection, without seeming too anxious about it.

Brunheim eased his bulky body into the chair opposite me. The little dog hunkered down in his lap like a pile of white feathers settling, and followed my every move with its beady eyes.

“It was three years ago, a Sunday afternoon tea dance in Newport Beach,” Brunheim said. “One of those twinkie conventions where they raise a little money for AIDS and the gym boys parade around, secretly studying each other’s pectorals. After a while, I got tired of all the chatter and took some air on the patio. Billy happened to be out there, and we just started talking. He was adorable beyond description. I would have kept talking to him if the place were burning down.”

“Infatuation at first sight?”

“It wasn’t just his looks, Mr. Justice. Billy loved to talk and had a wonderful sense of humor. He also had a vulnerable quality, this deep need to be taken care of. I felt close to him right from the start. And before I knew it, he was living with me.”

“Considering your feelings, it must have been frustrating, never being intimate with him.”

“My relationship with Billy may have been platonic, but it lasted. To me, that’s far more gratifying in the long run than enjoying him carnally for a night or two of passing pleasure. Contrary to popular opinion, not every homosexual man behaves like a dog in heat.”

He bent to kiss the dog’s fluffy white head.

“No offense, Sugar.”

“I take it Billy was between jobs.”

Brunheim laughed. “Yes, for several years.”

“Was he dealing cocaine?”

“If he had been, would you really expect me to tell you?”

“How did he get by?”

“His mother gave him money. And Billy was always able to find someone like myself who was looking for a needy young man to take care of. I just happened to be the last person in his life to fill that role.”

He added quickly, “I know what you’re thinking. That Billy used me. And maybe that’s true. But I used him, too.”

He glanced again at my notebook.

“I’d rather you not write this down.”

I folded it up, and he continued.

“When we’d be out together, in a club, a restaurant, the opera, people would stare at us. First at Billy, of course, and then at me. Wondering why someone as gorgeous as Billy would be out with such an ugly old queen. But Billy never cared about that. He even held hands with me in public. For all his vanity, he didn’t mind that people thought we might be lovers.

“That’s what Billy gave me, Mr. Justice. A moment in the spotlight, when I could pretend I was desirable too.”

He held his head high and looked at me down the bridge of his long bumpy nose. His voice trembled.

“I’ll remember to my dying day what that felt like, Mr. Justice. And I owe it to Billy.”

He reached for a tissue, wiped away tears, and blew his nose.

“Now, ask your other questions, and I’ll try to be more succinct in my replies. I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to my life story.”

I glanced at the clock, then at the list of questions I’d prioritized in my notebook.

“Do you recall anything unusual about Monday night, particularly in the hours leading up to Billy’s death?”

“Nothing special. I cooked a nice dinner for us, as I often did. Then did the dishes while Billy napped before going out. He got a phone call around eleven, when I was getting ready for bed. We slept in separate bedrooms, of course.”

“Do you recall who it was?”

“They didn’t give a name.”

“Man or woman?”

“It’s funny, but I can’t really say. Deep enough for a man, but it could certainly have been a woman with a few extra hormones.”

“Samantha Eliason?”

“Possibly. She’s rather deep-voiced. But it’s difficult to be sure. The voice was indistinct. A bad connection, perhaps.”

“Muffled?”

“Yes, I guess that would describe it. Why?”

“No special reason. Just trying to piece together Billy’s last night.”

“If you could, try to put in your story…”

“I won’t be writing it. I’m just gathering background.”

“Whoever does write it, if they could mention that Billy and I had a nice dinner that night, and spent a quiet final evening together. If they could do that, it would mean a lot to me.”

“I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

I glanced at my watch. “Well, I should get going.”

I stood and he did the same.

“Oh, one other thing. Would it be possible for me to see Billy’s photo collection—the Polaroids?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Justice …”

“At the very least, they would indicate the type of man he was attracted to. It might help me know him a little better.”

“I suppose it can’t hurt. As long as they aren’t published.”

“Even the
Sun
wouldn’t print photos of naked men, Derek.”

“I’ll look for them after lunch.” He kissed the dog between its ears. “Right after Sugar and I take our afternoon walk.”

As I heard Brunheim lock his door behind me, I caught the sound of another door being unlatched down the hall.

Mrs. Ashburn peered out from Number 216.

“Apparently you and Mr. Brunheim enjoyed a nice visit. Nearly two hours, isn’t it?”

“He’s rather talkative,” I said.

She glanced in the direction of Brunheim’s door, then lowered her voice.

“I don’t suppose he mentioned the arguments.”

“Only in passing,” I lied.

“It’s not something one would want to remember at a time like this. And it’s no one else’s business, anyway.”

“I suppose not.”

“They fought all the time, you know. They could really raise their voices, those two. Especially Mr. Brunheim.”

“I don’t imagine you could make out the nature of their arguments, not from two doors away.”

“A time or two, I put my ear to their door. Just to be sure William was safe, of course.”

“It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

“Mr. Brunheim had quite a jealous streak. He couldn’t understand why William spent so much time with all those other men, doing whatever it is he did with them, which I certainly wouldn’t know about. And not give more of himself, so to speak, to Mr. Brunheim.”

She leaned toward my ear.

“I believe the issue was
S-E-X
.”

“How would you characterize these arguments, Mrs. Ashburn? On a scale from irritated to violent?”

“I’ll put it this way. There was a time or two when I considered calling 911. Especially that last one. Now, that was a terrible row.”

“When was that, exactly?”

“Why, late Monday night, just an hour or two before William was murdered by that gang of Mexicans. That’s what makes it so awfully tragic, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I doubt Mr. Brunheim even had a chance to apologize and make up. Can you imagine the guilt he must feel?”

*

I rode down in the elevator jotting notes and paused in the courtyard to complete them. As I scribbled, I sensed movement in a second-floor window, and looked up to see a figure quickly draw back and a curtain fall closed.

I assumed at first that it was Mrs. Ashburn, but when I counted windows from the left, the one with the watcher turned out to be in the apartment of Derek Brunheim.

Out on the street, I climbed into the Mustang and headed toward Wilshire Boulevard.

At the end of the long block, a flashy Celica sedan passed me going the other way. It was new enough that its temporary registration was still affixed to a corner of the windshield.

Behind the wheel, Jefferson Bellworthy drove with such concentration that he didn’t notice me.

I swung the Mustang around and followed, stopping at a distance when he parked.

Bellworthy set the car’s locks and alarm, then crossed to Derek Brunheim’s building. Moments after he spoke into the intercom, someone buzzed him in.

I had a feeling it wasn’t Mrs. Ashburn.

I arrived at the
Sun
at half past two.

Billy Lusk had been dead for roughly sixty-two hours, and Gonzalo Albundo had already been arraigned in superior court, and a trial date set.

Funny, I thought, as I passed the usual cluster of nicotine addicts outside the
Sun
, how the authorities never seem to arrest and arraign wealthy suspects with quite such expediency.

Harry was in the basement composing room, checking early pasteups for tomorrow’s pages, but he’d cleared me with the guard. I caught an elevator to the third floor, where I took a seat behind his desk to make phone calls.

In front of me, that morning’s
Sun
was open to the story Templeton had knocked out quickly the previous day while I’d begun gathering background on the Billy Lusk case. It was a routine account of a heist in the downtown jewelry district, running twelve inches on page three. Her lead could have been tighter and more to the point; otherwise, it was another solid piece of work.

As I punched in a phone number, I noticed a reporter staring at me from his computer pod through the glass wall of Harry’s office.

Apparently, word had gotten around that Harry had me doing some freelance work, because a passing copy messenger sneaked a glance at me as well, before moving on to make her deliveries.

I hung up the phone and stared back at the reporter hard enough and long enough to give him a case of nervous eyes before he looked away. Then I redialed Billy Lusk’s mother, Margaret Devonshire.

Once again, I got the Devonshires’ answering machine, with a message instructing me to leave my name and number. I didn’t want to leave Harry’s number, and my new home number was useless until my phone was installed. I hung up again without leaving a message.

My next call was to Southland News Service, which supplied breaking news leads to every significant media outlet in Southern California, both print and electronic. SNS covered the police beat around the clock from the Parker Center press room and had been the first news organization to look into the Billy Lusk murder.

Using Harry’s name, I connected with a helpful SNS assistant editor and learned the following: One of their cop shop reporters had arrived for the graveyard shift Monday night at 10 p.m., as scheduled. He’d first learned of the murder around 12:30 a.m., when he’d heard the police radio call come over his squawk box, which had channels for the police, sheriffs and city and county fire departments. Much bigger stories had broken that night, including a major drug bust in the Valley and a four-alarm fire in the downtown garment district, taking most of the reporter’s time and attention. He’d gotten back to the Billy Lusk case just before 6 a.m., when his replacement had come on for the morning shift.

She’d checked further with detectives upstairs shortly after seven, but details had still been sketchy; the investigating officers hadn’t yet released the identity of the victim or identified The Out Crowd as a gay bar. At 8 a.m., with little more information available, she’d filed a news brief with the SNS main office stating only that a man who appeared to be in his twenties had been fatally shot outside a Silver Lake bar shortly after midnight, and that a suspect was in custody.

The SNS desk editor had put the news tip on the wire a few minutes after that.

At that point, with so few solid details, it had still appeared to be nothing special in terms of news value, just another tawdry murder in a city that averaged two or three a day. Its ethnic, working-class location—“cheap” was the term some editors used—had rendered it even less important. It wouldn’t be until hours later, when the victim was identified as white and from an affluent background, that it would be considered worthy of serious coverage.

When I hung up, I found Alexandra Templeton leaning casually against the doorway to Harry’s office, watching and listening. A little too casually, to my eye.

She held a big handbag in one hand and a tape recorder in the other, and the odd tension in her face and posture suggested a scene to follow that she’d probably rehearsed.

“Is all this research really necessary, Justice?”

The edge I’d heard in her voice yesterday, and again last night, was gone. She sounded almost playful.

“The story’s always in the details, Templeton.”

“I think I heard that from Harry. About a hundred times.”

“I’m sure you’ll hear it a hundred more.”

She threw me a smile, which also felt planned.

“Perhaps,” I said, “you can tell me how the Billy Lusk story evolved here at the
Sun
.”

“I have to write up the Albundo arraignment. But I guess I can give you a minute or two.”

She set her handbag and tape recorder on the floor beside the visitor’s chair, and slipped into it.

“From what I understand, the first mention of a gay connection came across the SNS wire just before noon. Harry called me in right after lunch, cleared my schedule for the afternoon, and put me on it.”

“Before or after he knew that Billy Lusk had a famous stepfather?”

“Before.”

“Good for Harry.”

“I made a call to the Rampart Division for some background and was on the crime scene within the hour. Talked with a detective, got a couple leads.”

“Bellworthy?”

“He had the day off. I tried calling him at home, but he was out.”

“And after that?”

“I did a couple of phoners from my car, got a statement from Phil Devonshire’s publicist. When he realized I was writing the story, he wanted me to mention a new line of golf clubs Devonshire’s endorsing.”

“The tragedy obviously touched him deeply.”

“I filed my first draft some time after six, about the time Harry got back from visiting you. We went over my copy, I got a bite to eat, did a rewrite, then gave my revision to the copy desk a few minutes before eight.”

“Is that early or late here?”

“Our general deadline for the morning edition is eleven-thirty, but we don’t have out-of-state deliveries like the
Times
, so we can do makeovers as late as one or two on breaking news, if we have to.”

“Nice to have that extra cushion.”

“When you need it.”

“Harry tells me you haven’t leaned hard on a deadline yet.”

The hint of a smile appeared on her lips, hiding more than it showed, and when she spoke again, it was almost a purr.

“What else did Harry tell you about me?”

“Not a lot.”

She draped one of her shapely brown legs over the other and adjusted her skirt only slightly.

“Did he tell you that I’m single, unattached, and extremely adventurous in the area of relationships?”

“Harry doesn’t talk much about the personal lives of his reporters,” I said.

“I guess I’ll have to speak for myself, then.”

“I’d say you already have.”

“Is there anything more you’d like to know?”

She was apparently too new to Los Angeles journalism circles to have heard much scuttlebutt about my private life. Or maybe she really was adventurous and didn’t give much weight to sexual preferences.

“Just one thing,” I said.

“And what would that be?”

“Can you get me an intern in the next five minutes, cleared for assignment?”

The coy smile disappeared; she uncrossed her legs. “An intern,” she said.

“The best you can find.”

She sat up straight, very businesslike, though clearly not happy about it.

“To do what?”

“Make a few dozen phone calls,” I said.

“For the feature we’re doing? I’m not sure it’s warranted.”

“Harry said he plans in-depth coverage on the Billy Lusk case.”

“Yes, but…”

“Is there some reason this story deserves less than our best effort, Templeton?”

“A limited effort. There’s a difference.”

“And why is that?”

“Phil Devonshire’s not that big a name. Billy Lusk was his stepson, not blood kin. And the victim wasn’t noteworthy in his own right.”

“I don’t see celebrity as the angle.”

She frosted over, right before my eyes.

“I’m not sure it’s your place to decide what the angle is.”

“Tell me, Templeton. If this assignment were about a bunch of racist white kids killing a black man outside a bar in the Crenshaw district, would you dismiss it so lightly?”

She squared her shoulders and folded her fingers primly in her lap, the way she had the first time we’d met.

“I don’t think that’s fair. Making a comparison between…”

“One brutal hate crime and another?”

“Let me rephrase myself.” She looked uncomfortable now, trapped. “I don’t know that Harry will give us an intern for that much work on this particular assignment. Not with all the election campaigning that’s going on.”

“Don’t worry about Harry. I’ll handle Harry.”

She rose quickly.

“You’re all business, aren’t you, Justice?”

“When it feels necessary.”

A few uncomfortable seconds passed. Then, she said, “I’ll get you your intern.”

She pivoted furiously and disappeared back into the newsroom. I punched in another phone number, working down my list.

Harry entered with a cup of coffee while I was on the phone to the campaign headquarters of Senator Masterman.

“Java time,” he said, as he had in the old days, and set the coffee near my elbow.

The senator was out campaigning, I was told, and his schedule could not be given out over the phone to just anyone.

“You understand,” said an assistant in the publicity office. “Security concerns.”

I explained that I was calling on behalf of Harry Brofsky at the
Sun
. I gave her Harry’s number, asked her to call him directly, and hung up.

“What the hell’s going on?” Harry asked.

The phone rang as I pried the lid off my coffee.

“Tell her we’re looking for a photo op, but we only have a photographer available for the next two hours.”

Harry gave me a look as the phone rang again.

“Please, Harry, just do it.”

I picked up the phone and held it out. He muttered under his breath, took the phone, spoke to the assistant, and jotted down information in the narrow pages of an Eastman Reporter’s Notebook.

A minute later he hung up.

“Coffee to your liking?”

“Fine.”

“I could get you more sugar.”

“It’s perfect, Harry. You were always very good with coffee.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Benjamin. To serve your every need.”

“You want to tell me what you found out?”

He pinned me with eyes that reminded me his patience had limits, but he opened his notebook.

“Masterman’s giving speeches in Orange County through the afternoon. Then he’s shooting one of his TV spots in Little Tokyo, at a store that got burglarized last week. They’re still setting up equipment but figure to shoot late afternoon, early evening.”

He looked up from his notes.

“Now, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

I held out my hand, open palm up.

He ripped the page from his notebook and handed it to me. On it was an address in Little Tokyo.

I redialed Masterman’s headquarters and turned the phone over to Harry again.

“Now tell her you’ve changed your mind, that you’re not sending a photographer after all. Before she contacts anyone higher up.”

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“It’s ringing, Harry.”

He put the receiver to his ear, got the publicity assistant, asked her to ignore their previous conversation, and hung up again.

“Now that we’ve finished that little exercise,” Harry said, “perhaps you’d like to fill me in.”

I sipped some coffee and asked him what he was doing for dinner.

“The same thing I always do for dinner. Grabbing some Wendy’s and watching CNN.”

Templeton entered the office with an intern in tow.

“Not tonight,” I told Harry. “Tonight you’re taking Templeton and me to dinner at the Mandarin Deli in Little Tokyo.”

“I have a date tonight,” Templeton said.

“Cancel it.”

She glanced at Harry for help.

Before he could say anything, I said, “Harry, you look like you need a smoke.”

“I’ll decide when I need a fucking smoke!”

He immediately muttered an apology to the intern for his language. She was a plump, bespectacled college student who’d arrived in Harry’s office with a yellow legal pad and a pen already in hand. It was a good sign.

“Katie Nakamura, this is Benjamin Justice,” Templeton said.

Nakamura pumped my hand enthusiastically.

“One of your articles was in a textbook we used at Northwestern. It was really good.”