Simple Justice (14 page)

“I didn’t shoot my father, Templeton.”

She gave me an odd look.

“I emptied his revolver into him. Then I beat him with the butt end of it until his face was a bloody pulp and I couldn’t stand to hear my mother screaming anymore.”

I drove Templeton home, straight out First Street, watching the pillars of skyscraper light recede in my rearview mirror.

We heard the lonely sound of cars rushing by above us as we passed beneath the freeway, just before First Street merged into Beverly Boulevard and an outbreak of graffiti that lasted for several blocks.

The street dipped and rose and dipped again as it took us through the well-kept neighborhoods of Filipinotown. We passed Tommy’s Original Hamburgers with the usual line out front, then crime-ridden Western Avenue, then the quaint Larchmont district near Paramount Studios. Then we were gliding past CBS and the kosher shops in the Fairfax district and the Hard Rock Cafe and angling through the monied elegance of Beverly Hills and over to Santa Monica Boulevard for a straight ride almost all the way to the beach.

We rode with the top down, without speaking.

I tuned the radio to 88.1 and picked up KLON-FM. Miles Davis was blowing an easygoing version of “Bye Bye Blackbird” from the Fifties, with Thelonius Monk on piano.

Templeton tapped time on the cracked dashboard with her long nails, maybe out of feeling for the music, maybe out of nerves over what I’d told her back at the Mandarin Deli.

There was a lot more I could have told her, details she wasn’t likely to find in faded press clippings: how I’d tried to stop the police department from giving my father a cop’s funeral and when I couldn’t, how I’d shown up at the cemetery drunk and cursed my mother for being there, and urinated on my father’s coffin until my high school coach and some teammates pulled me away. How I’d finished the wrestling season undefeated, all the way through the state tournament to the final round, tearing through opponents with insane rage; how I’d suddenly walked off the mat, just before my last match was to begin, flipping my finger at the jeering crowd, forfeiting my chance to be state champion. How I’d kept walking, through freezing winds all the way to the Greyhound station, and disappeared on a south-bound bus, finishing my senior year in another state where no one knew my real name. How I’d never gone back to Buffalo, not even for Elizabeth Jane’s funeral eight years later, after she’d plunged a hotshot of brown heroin into her veins one lonely Christmas Eve on the roof of a seedy hotel in New York’s East Village, where they’d found her body shrouded in snow.

I should have been with Elizabeth Jane that Christmas. I should have been with her instead of putting together another story and dreaming of another byline, as I tried to hide behind a blizzard of facts and figures and other people’s clever, quotable words.

I should have been with her every holiday, just as I should have stayed with her after my wrestling season ended so self-destructively, protecting her as she grew up, instead of running away forever. But I was a kid then, and when you’re a kid you do things sometimes not because they’re logical or proper but because you feel overwhelmed and confused, and most of all afraid, and nothing else seems possible, even if you can’t explain why to anyone, even to yourself.

Maybe that’s why I understood what Gonzalo Albundo was doing by falsely confessing to the murder of Billy Lusk when no one else understood, or wanted to.

But I didn’t tell Templeton any of that, either.

I’d never talked about personal matters with anyone but Jacques, and then only after knowing him for years, and forcing him to suffer the kind of cold, confusing distance to which my father had subjected all of us. But Jacques had been a patient and forgiving man, most of all in matters of the heart; he had waited for me to find the courage to open up to him and risk feeling again, the bad with the good, and when he’d died, four days before his thirtieth birthday, he’d taken all my darkest secrets with him.

As we neared the beach, I turned right off Santa Monica Boulevard at Fourth Street, and left again onto Montana Avenue.

The real money in Santa Monica was north of Montana, with mere affluence and comfy yuppiedom confined largely to the south. Templeton straddled both by living directly on the street of demarcation, though on the north side, which put her just a little closer to the kind of wealth she was accustomed to.

She kept a three-bedroom condominium in the Montana Towers, with a view from her sixth-floor balcony of Palisades Park and the ocean beyond. It was worth roughly half a million, even after the real estate crash of 1990, well beyond the financial reach of newspaper reporters, particularly those at the impoverished
Sun
. Templeton’s father, who’d started his career with civil rights cases but was now a corporate attorney, had presented the condo to his daughter as a college graduation gift, with the stipulation that she go on to earn a master’s degree from a graduate school meeting his approval. She’d chosen Columbia University, which had been at the top of his list, and become a well-endowed property owner the moment she’d been accepted.

I learned all this in the last few blocks of the trip, as Templeton hastily tried to reveal some of her own personal background, perhaps in an attempt to level things between us.

She went on and on, sounding nervous and defensive, until I grew tired of it.

“Don’t blame yourself for having a rich father, Templeton. It can happen even in the best of families.”

She stopped jabbering after that and directed me to the Montana Towers. It was a ten-story building that looked like the kind of cushy hotel I’d stayed in only when I was on an expense account. Lush ferns were bathed by amber outdoor lights, and the street was lined with manicured palm trees that stretched several stories high. Even the sidewalks looked freshly scrubbed.

As I pulled to the curb, we could smell the salt air. She told me that her favorite time was winter, at high tide.

“In the middle of the night,” she said, “when it’s really quiet, you can hear the waves break.”

“That’s nice, Templeton.”

I was weary of being with her, wary of more prying. I wanted to get away as quickly as I could. I wanted a drink.

“Would you like to come in for awhile? I could make some coffee.”

Then, as if she’d read my thoughts: “Or pour you something stronger.”

“Thanks. I’m kinda tired.”

She reached for the door handle but didn’t open it right away.

“Tell me, Justice. Do you ever date black women?”

“Never.”

Her eyes flared.

“I see.”

She opened the door quickly and climbed out.

“No, Templeton, I don’t think you do.”

She shut the door hard and peered down at me.

“And what does that mean?”

“I’ve never dated a black woman,” I said, “but I have been involved with a black man or two.”

Alexandra Templeton was not the kind of person to be easily caught off guard, but that night she looked it.

“You’ve never been involved with a woman?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you have no romantic interest in me.”

“It would complicate things unnecessarily. In a lot of ways.”

An older couple strolled past, walking a poodle on a pink leash studded with rhinestones.

“You’re really quite beautiful, Templeton. Interesting as hell. Sharp as a tack. The whole package.”

“But.”

“But there’s something I need from a man that I just don’t get from a woman. Please don’t take it personally.”

Given her beauty, as well as her numerous other assets, Templeton probably wasn’t accustomed to being rejected. My frankness didn’t seem to sit well with her.

“Obviously, I overreached.” Her smile was as brittle as her voice. “Thanks for the lift.”

She sauntered away rather than hurrying, putting her composure on display.

A uniformed security guard opened the door to the Montana Towers, tipping his cap. She disappeared inside without looking back.

“Wonderful,” I said. “Just wonderful.”

The time was 8:45, well past my usual drinking hour but early enough to have a chat with Jefferson Bellworthy, if I could find him.

I drove over to Santa Monica Boulevard through a stream of complacent-looking yuppies headed for chic stores and trendy clubs on the Promenade, and found a pay phone. I called The Out Crowd and got Randy, the night bartender. It was Bellworthy’s day off, but I learned that he worked Thursday evenings as a private trainer, and where.

As I climbed back behind the wheel, Peggy Lee was on the radio, singing “Is That All There Is?,” so perfect a match between performer and material that it begged to be listened to.

But it was Templeton’s warning over dinner that echoed in my head:
For God’s sake, be careful.

I pulled back onto Santa Monica Boulevard, which seemed to run like a thread through my life, and pointed the Mustang toward West Hollywood.

Le Gym was probably the only fitness emporium in Southern California that featured fresh-cut flowers in the espresso bar, Donna Summer disco classics piped into the Jacuzzi and, in the men’s locker room, side-by-side cologne and condom dispensing machines.

The sign above the check-in desk read: 2-
FOR
-1 B
UDDY
S
PECIAL NOW THROUGH
A
UGUST.

A man and a woman, both young and blandly attractive, checked membership cards as hard-bodied men passed through with gym bags, some in pairs and holding hands. A few women came in as well, but they comprised a distinct minority.

I told the woman behind the desk that I was there to see Jefferson Bellworthy. She checked, told me he was working with a client upstairs, and asked me to wait in the lobby.

I took a spot next to a well-fed Kentia palm, surrounded by wall-to-wall mirrors and bombarded by disco music from an adjacent aerobics room. From time to time, men with forty-dollar haircuts and hundred-dollar gym shoes stopped to appraise their body definition in the spotless glass.

“You decide to tone up?”

I turned to find Jefferson Bellworthy standing over me, his powerful body packed into a skintight spandex gym suit that revealed every curve and bulge.

I told him I had a few more questions. He quickly glanced around, then asked me to bring my questions to a downstairs locker room while he changed.

He led me down carpeted steps, past a few dozen naked men in the main shower and sauna area, where there appeared to be less body fat than on Mount Rushmore. He stopped at the door of the executive locker room and punched a code for entrance.

I knew the executive section in a gym was more private and more costly than the general facilities, especially at a place like Le Gym, and wondered how he paid for it. Or, for that matter, how he could afford the sharp-looking new Celica I’d seen him driving that afternoon on his way to visit Derek Brunheim.

We went inside, passing a towel-wrapped man on his way out. I settled on to a bench while Bellworthy kicked off his shoes.

“For someone working double shifts to make ends meet,” I said, “you seem to be living pretty well.”

“My membership here’s free,” he said, spinning his combination lock, “long as I bring in payin’ clients.”

As he opened his locker, his book on anger management toppled out, along with several loose checks already made out. He ignored the book to hastily gather up the checks, but not before I recognized the pastel floral print from the checkbook I’d seen in Derek Brunheim’s apartment. One check landed near enough my feet that I could make out Brunheim’s signature at the bottom and a notation above for a hundred dollars.

There were two other men in the room, both middle-aged but with the tight, defined bodies of athletes twenty years younger. They drifted off with towels toward the showers as Bellworthy peeled off his one-piece gym suit.

“I did some checking, Jefferson.”

“Checkin’ on what?”

“Your background.”

He dropped the gym suit to his ankles and stepped out of it, then did the same with his support brief. I did my best to keep my eyes on his face.

“I found out you have a criminal record, Jefferson.”

He turned and straddled the bench, his pumped-up arms hanging at his sides like slabs of beef. I found myself at eye level with the rippled muscles of his furry abdomen, and glanced up into his unhappy face.

When he spoke, his voice suggested a man fighting hard to control himself, and close to losing.

“What reason you got checkin’ on me?”

“Routine research.”

“Billy Lusk?”

I nodded.

“Don’t seem so routine to me.”

“You did six years in prison, Jefferson. For attempted murder.”

He glanced around, saw that we were alone, then pointed a finger an inch or two from my nose.

“That’s right, man. I did my time. And I stayed outta trouble since.”

“Stayed out of trouble? Or avoided getting caught?”

“I got me a new life, man. You wanna fuck it up? Is that what you want?”

“Not at all.”

“If anybody at The Out Crowd finds out about what I done, I got no more job, man. They won’t keep no ex-con on the door or handlin’ money back of the bar. Anybody finds out around here, I’m gone. I don’t know why you got to hurt a man that tried to help you out.”

“I’m just trying to find out the truth.”

“Find out what truth, motherfucker?”

“You told me you don’t hate Hispanics.”

“That’s right.”

“But the man you nearly killed was Latino.”

His eyes shifted uneasily.

“There was no hate.”

“It must take a lot of hate to hurt someone as badly as you hurt Jorge Sandoval.”

His eyes drifted away from mine and stayed there awhile.

“I didn’t hurt him ’cause I hated him.” His voice went soft, and there was shame in it. “I hurt him ’cause I loved him.”

He stepped back over the bench and faced his locker, stuffing workout gear into his gym bag while he talked.

“He was the first dude I ever got it on with. You know what it’s like, the first time? You go a little crazy, man. You think it’s love. You think it’s forever, that there’ll never be nobody else, like he’s your whole world.”

“Only, he didn’t feel that way about you?”

“I caught him goin’ down on another dude. Right in the same bed where he’d done me. And I just went off, you know? There was a blade there, kitchen knife. I grabbed it and used it on him.”

“You tried to kill him,” I said.

“I didn’t want him dead. But I was blood crazy over what he done to me. That, plus I guess I didn’t want nobody else to have him.”

He shook his head again and again, as if trying to shake away the memory.

“I loved that dude so much, man, I can feel it even now.”

He resumed stuffing the gym bag, and it occurred to me that there might be a weapon inside. He looked over at me.

“Hate Hispanics, man? That may be how it is with some brothers, but it ain’t that way with me.”

“Why didn’t you explain some of this in court? It might have gotten you a lighter sentence.”

“I was in pro football! I was carryin’ the ball for the motherfuckin’ Pittsburgh Steelers! Most of the dudes I hung out with was either jocks or from the neighborhood. You don’t all of a sudden go sayin’ to the world that you suck dick, man. You don’t go tellin’ everybody you take it up the ass.”

“You’d rather spend an extra year or two in prison than admit you’re gay?”

“Back then, yeah. It woulda been in all the papers and on all the TV shows. That ain’t so easy. Not when you just been findin’ out about yourself and can’t even say no word like
gay
, or any of that shit. You just keep it inside, man, and take what you gotta take.”

The thought struck me:
Just like Gonzalo Albundo
.

A laugh escaped from Bellworthy. It sounded bitter.

“If I’d killed a woman, ’stead of a man, I mighta done a year or two for attempted manslaughter and been back playin’ in the pros. Ain’t that rich?”

He grabbed a towel, then went through his gym bag until he found shampoo.

“Jefferson, why didn’t you tell me you knew Derek Brunheim?”

“What the fuck business is it of yours?”

“What do you have to hide?”

He stood there breathing hard and fast, as if deciding whether to talk to me or kill me. Then he slowed and deepened his breathing, relaxing a little.

“Every now and then, Derek come to The Out Crowd with Billy. I’d talk to him while Billy flirted with other guys. I liked Derek, I thought he was a funny dude. He was real fern, yeah, but he was OK.”

“You went to his apartment this afternoon.”

“Law against that?”

“Did you know that he had a violent argument with Billy the night he was murdered?”

Bellworthy’s eyes began moving restlessly again.

“Yeah, I knew it.”

“How?”

“Because he told me, motherfucker! He felt real bad about it, remorseful and shit. That’s why I went to see him today. Just to tell him it was OK, he had a friend. He was hurtin’, man.”

“Jefferson, did Derek Brunheim pay you to kill Billy Lusk?”

He dropped his towel and clenched his right hand into a fist as big and hard as a softball; the muscles of his upper body tightened like steel bands beneath his dark skin. If he had a weapon in his gym bag, he didn’t need it; he could have killed me with just his fist, probably with one blow.

He opened his hand, turned, and slammed the flat of his palm hard enough against his locker door that the other lockers rattled all the way to the end.

“Damn!” He whirled back around so fast that his thick penis swung with him, slapping against his thigh.

Then he sank to the bench, bent his head, and cried; he didn’t make much sound but the tears rolled unchecked, splashing into the cradle of his thighs and onto his private parts.

After a while, he picked up the towel and wiped the snot running from his nose. We were at eye level now as he looked at me.

“You think ’cause I’m a brother, I can’t have no soft feelings for another man? Can’t go to him when he’s hurtin’ and needs somebody strong to hold him? You think I ain’t got feelins as human as you?”

We both heard a door swing open. Bellworthy quickly wiped his tears away.

One of the middle-aged men returned from his shower, rubbing body oil into his Mount Rushmore chest. He nodded at Bellworthy like he might be a client.

There was fear in Bellworthy’s eyes now as he waited to see if I’d say something that could tear down the life he’d just started to rebuild.

“No,” I said.

I stood up.

“I don’t think that, Jefferson. I don’t think that at all.”

I still had questions about the checks from Derek Brunheim, but they could wait.

I went out remembering why, too many times, I’d hated being a reporter.