Simple Justice (15 page)

Early Friday morning, I was jolted awake by someone pounding on my door.

At first, half asleep, I thought it might be Jefferson Bellworthy, back to get me after all. Or Luis Albundo, ready to finish what he’d started on the street in Echo Park. Whoever it was banged again, harder.

“Open the fucking door, Benjamin!”

It was Harry.

I nudged an empty wine bottle under the bed with my foot, slipped into some pants, and opened the door to the shock of sunlight and the sound of Harry’s raspy cough.

He barged in past me.

“Where the fuck do you get off giving Templeton an assignment?”

“If you’re going to visit so early, Harry, the least you could do is bring coffee.

He followed me to the kitchen, where I turned on the tap and flooded my face with cold water.

“Paul Masterman is a U.S. senator!”

“You woke me up to tell me that?”

“Don’t get cute, Benjamin. I’m not in the mood.”

I dried my face with a dish towel that was borderline filthy. I was flat broke, and my dirty laundry was piling up. I made a mental note to call Kevin at the agency and ask about my sixty dollars.

“First of all, Harry, I didn’t give an assignment to anyone, least of all Alexandra Templeton.”

“That’s not the way she tells it.”

“Templeton doesn’t take orders from me. We work together. We mutually agreed that hanging out with Masterman’s campaign for a couple days might be a good idea.”

“Did you, now?”

Harry fumbled for a cigarette, found an empty package in a pocket, crumpled it, and threw it angrily in the direction of an overflowing trash can.

I went back into the other room to find a shirt, searching through a pile of soiled clothes.

“Masterman used the scene of Billy Lusk’s murder as a location in one of his TV spots.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Harry said.

“We figured a story on Masterman, framed around that particular TV ad, might make an interesting follow-up piece in Templeton’s series on Billy Lusk, or at least give us a hook for one.”

“I’d say that’s reaching for material,” Harry said.

“At the very least, Harry, you’ll get a timely feature out of it on the Masterman campaign.”

“Templeton’s a crime reporter. I’ll catch hell on this from the guys on the political beat.”

“You can tough it out, Harry.”

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot fucking do. That’s not how this works.”

I found a T-shirt that didn’t look too bad, and sniffed the armpits. “You wanted me to get involved, Harry. It was your idea, not mine.”

“I wanted you to write a sidebar. Work with Templeton on the Billy Lusk story. Not go after a U.S. senator for reasons that seem to be known only to yourself.”

“Give me some leash on this, Harry. I’d like to pursue some leads.”

“The Albundo kid signed a confession, Ben. It’s been three days since Lusk was murdered. I should have had a story from Templeton by now.”

“A couple more days, that’s all we need.” I slipped into the T-shirt, tucked it into my faded jeans. “I promise we’ll make it worth the wait.”

“I want to know what you’re after, Ben.”

“I’m fishing, Harry.”

I went into the bathroom to pee, talking to him over my shoulder.

“Remember how you used to encourage us to go fishing?”

“We could get away with it then,” Harry said.

“Meaning you work for a paper now that doesn’t have any guts?”

“Meaning you’re damaged goods, Ben. Meaning I’m taking a chance on someone who’d be lucky to get a job writing classified ads at a suburban weekly.”

I flushed the toilet and watched the water swirl down.

“Then why did you ask me to come back?”

“You know why.”

I glanced in the mirror, where our eyes met.

“But it’s got to be done slowly, Ben. Nothing too big. I made that clear when we first discussed it.”

“You used to have balls, Harry.”

“If I lost ’em, the scalpel was in your hand.”

I brushed past him, sat down on the bed, and pulled on sweat socks. He followed and sat down beside me.

“I’m just asking you to take it a little easier, Ben. Don’t call too much attention to yourself. I’m risking a lot here.”

Three days ago, Harry had come to this apartment and stuck the knife of guilt into me. He’d twisted it until I’d agreed to work with him on the Billy Lusk story. Now, he was losing his nerve. It made me sick.

“Risking what? An editor’s slot at a rag that’s not worth the recycled paper it’s printed on? I thought you wanted to shake things up, Harry. Give the
Sun
some credibility.”

“Down the road, when you’ve settled in, you’ll be a part of all that.”

“Or when I’ve groomed Templeton to replace me, in case bringing me back doesn’t work out?”

“I thought that was how you wanted it, Ben.” I leaned down to look for a pair of running shoes, and to avoid Harry’s eyes.

“I’m not sure what I want anymore.” I retrieved the shoes from under the bed and shoved my feet into them.

“I take that back. I know exactly what I want.” I tied one shoe, then the other, careful not to break the frayed laces. “I want to find out who killed Billy Lusk so an innocent kid doesn’t spend his life in jail for something he didn’t do.”

“I don’t get it, Ben. What is it you see that the rest of us don’t?”

I stood up and paced the room, craving caffeine, wanting to get out.

“Loose ends. Pieces that don’t fit. Dark motives. Suspicious timing. Troubling questions. Lies.”

“Things the cops don’t see but you do,” Harry said.

“Things the cops aren’t interested in because they’ve got a kid from a poor part of town whose family can’t afford a high-powered defense team. Which means the D.A. can get a quick plea and the cops can close the file and everybody can move on to more important matters.”

I turned toward the door.

“You want me to walk away from it, Harry? Because if you do, just say the word, and I’m gone.”

He stared at the floor, elbows on knees, fingers pressed together.

He knew that if I disappeared again, it might be for good. He knew that I was his only lifeline back to something he desperately wanted but was too weak to reach on his own.

“Just be sure you’re on solid ground, Ben. I know you like to take risks. I know you need that excitement.”

He looked up with plaintive eyes. He’d grown so old in six years, and so scared.

“You’ve got nothing to lose,” he said. “But this job is all I have. At my age, you don’t get another chance. Don’t screw it up for me. Help me make it work.”

“I need some coffee, Harry. You want to spring for a cup?”

“You can be a cold bastard, Ben.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

He got slowly to his feet, letting out a sigh like a punctured tire.

“I have to get downtown.”

He reached inside his coat and pulled out an envelope.

“Here.”

I listened until I heard the last of his heavy footsteps on the stairs. Then I ripped open the envelope.

Inside was a check for $400 from the
Sun
’s payroll department, an advance for my work on the Billy Lusk case.

Harry’s way of giving me a little leash.

I cashed my check at a bank down on the boulevard where I’d kept my account open, then used a pay phone to call the home of Margaret Devonshire.

When I got the answering machine again, I decided Billy Lusk’s mother simply wasn’t picking up, and that calling again would be futile.

Down the block was a coffee bar run by a former priest who’d counseled young parishioners about sin until he’d been caught committing one with a teenaged acolyte. West Hollywood had more than its share—both coffee bars and former priests. I stopped in, grabbed a muffin with more grain in it than a walnut table, and washed it down with two cups of Vienna Roast strong enough to wake the dead.

Then I decided some exercise was in order, specifically a hike in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, just west of Doheny Drive.

By the time I passed the sign marking the southern entrance to Trousdale Estates, I was panting from the climb, and my legs were getting heavy. I passed lushly landscaped homes with circular driveways and tennis courts that covered more square footage than the average apartment. There wasn’t a piece of litter or even a trash can visible at the curb, and no children to be seen in the yards, not even toys.

A private guard passed in a patrol car, looking me over in his rearview mirror before disappearing up the hill. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the rattle of a gardener’s gasoline-powered leaf blower. Otherwise, the neighborhood was quiet and the streets vacant, carefully sealed off from the untidy world below.

According to Templeton’s notes, the Devonshires lived on Sky Vista Drive, a half mile up the hill. I found the street sign and turned, climbing for a short distance as Sky Vista curved west, opening up to city and ocean views that were now obscured by choking yellow smog.

The Devonshire home spread out across a plateau on the left side of the street. It was a one-story modular place that showed a touch of Streamline Moderne from the Thirties, with a white stucco exterior and the most verdant lawns chemical fertilizer could produce. Along the north-facing walls, the lace-covered stems of Australian tree ferns stretched imploringly for sunlight. At their feet, beds of obedient impatiens spilled over with blossoms of red, pink, and white.

For all its thriving vegetation, the Devonshire house had an antiseptic look, all the rough edges manicured away as if the people who lived there were afraid of life happening on its own.

I slipped into the shade of a ficus tree across the street and watched the windows. For several minutes, there was no visible movement in the house.

Then a woman in a white dress passed behind a bank of windows.

As I crossed to the house, she reappeared and began washing the glass, holding a bottle of window cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other. From the edge of the drive, I could see that she was young, short, and brown, and that the white dress was the standard uniform of a housekeeper.

Her hand moved the rag in circular motions on the glass until she saw me, when it stopped in mid-motion, upraised as if she were waving.

Behind her, the silhouette of another woman, thin and taller, passed like a shadow against the glare of the windows on the south side of the house. As I approached the front steps and rang the bell, the housekeeper kept watch. So did an electronic eye mounted above the door.

Moments later, the housekeeper opened it a crack, keeping the chain hooked. I asked to speak to Mrs. Devonshire. “She not home, sir.”

I heard the soft crunch of tires rolling to a slow stop on the street. The patrol guard sat behind the wheel of his car, peering at me across the wide, cobbled driveway.

“I believe she is home,” I said.

Then: “
Por favor. Quiero hablar con la Señora Devonshire. Es muy importante
.”

“She not home, sir.”

A car door slammed like a warning. I looked again toward the street.

The private guard stood with his arms folded across his unimpressive chest, eyeing me from behind his dark glasses and trying to look tough. He wore a gray uniform with yellow patches and had the unmistakable air of a police academy reject.

By the time I turned back, the door of the house was closed. The housekeeper reappeared at the window and started cleaning another pane, pretending not to watch me.

I sauntered down the driveway and turned back up Sky Vista Drive. The security guard stood rigidly with one hand on the baton hanging from his belt. He looked stiff and uneasy, like a figure at the Hollywood Wax Museum, except that he wasn’t famous.

“Going someplace special?”

“Out walking,” I said.

“You live up here?”

“Unless I’m mistaken, these are public streets.”

“They’re public.”

“And so well maintained.”

I continued hiking, knowing his eyes were on me every step of the way. When I reached the sharpest part of the roadway’s curve, I took off in a sprint and was out of his sight within seconds.

I heard the car door slam and then peeling rubber as he smoked his tires. I ducked behind a thick stand of pink-flowered oleander that rose up from a carpet of ivy. Another second or two passed before the guard sped by, shooting up the hill just the way real cops do but without the siren.

When he was around the bend, I dashed back down to the Devonshire house, slipping up on the west edge of the property, where the housekeeper wouldn’t see me from the front windows.

A path of stepping stones led to a gate no more than four feet high. I was over it and hidden before the patrol car came speeding back.

The guard climbed out, looking around the property from the roadway, then up and down the hill. After a while, he got back in, wheeled the car around, and disappeared up the street again on squealing tires. It was probably the most excitement he’d had in a long time.

I found myself in a small area of several large recycling bins. Beyond that was a potting table, where the carcasses of dead plants withered in plastic containers from lack of water, as if purchased on a whim and then forgotten.

I worked my way through to a small gate that opened into the rear yard.

On an expansive patio of polished terra-cotta tile, a woman I took to be Margaret Devonshire sat alone staring out vacantly at a sea of pollution. She clutched a photo album in her lap and, beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat, appeared as tastefully dressed and carefully manicured as her home.

“Mrs. Devonshire?”

She turned her head slowly, as though she no longer had the energy to be startled.

“My name is Benjamin Justice. I’m from the
Los Angeles Sun
. We’re doing a story about Billy’s death.”

She removed the hat to see me better, exposing herself to the cruel light.

It revealed a painfully thin, once-beautiful woman with a face pulled grotesquely taut from too many facelifts. Her nose, upturned and petite, reminded me of the photos I’d seen of Billy Lusk. Apparently, that much of her face was natural.

“You’re trespassing,” she said, her voice less fearful than weary. “And I have no wish to speak with you.”

“I called several times, Mrs. Devonshire, but only got your machine.”

“You left no message.”

“I wasn’t where I could be reached.” I took a step closer and removed my dark glasses. “I realize this is a difficult time. I just have a few questions.”

She glanced over my outfit, which looked more suitable for collecting garbage than reporting, although I’m not sure she appreciated the difference.

“Do you have credentials, Mr. Justice?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m freelance.”

Her weariness finally gave way to reality: She was alone with a strange man who was in her yard without invitation, and who did not appear to be what he said he was.

“I don’t think your coming here like this is at all appropriate.”

The haughty displeasure in her voice was at odds with the fear that had crept into her rheumy eyes. She turned her head toward the house, keeping an eye on me at the same time.

“Francesca!”

The housekeeper scurried out, reacting with alarm when she saw me.

“Francesca,
por favor quédate conmigo
.”

Francesca, please stay with me.

Mrs. Devonshire apparently expected her housekeeper to lay down her life for her employer for five dollars an hour, the kind of thinking that would make sense only to the very rich and the very poor.

The older woman picked up a portable phone on the table beside her, pulled up the antenna, and punched in numbers.

“You can call the patrol or the police if you wish,” I said. “But I think you’ll only hurt yourself in the long run.”

She put the phone to her ear and refused to look at me.

“I’ve already spoken with Derek Brunheim,” I said.

When she heard his name, she dug her frosted nails into the armrest of her chair so hard I thought they might snap.

“I think it only fair that I get your side of things, Mrs. Devonshire. It would be a shame to quote Derek Brunheim at length, with nothing from you but a ‘no comment.’”

She looked at me as one might a garden slug.

Then, into the phone, she said, “I’m sorry. I must have misdialed.” She pushed the antenna back into the phone and laid it aside. “Thank you, Francesca, it’s all right.”

“¿Sí?”

“
Sí
. Please bring iced tea.
Dos, por favor
.”

When Francesca had gone, Mrs. Devonshire said, “Please sit down, Mr. Justice. There’s no reason both of us should exhibit poor manners.”

She slipped on a pair of dark glasses and turned her gaze back out at the smog-shrouded skyscrapers of Century City. I took a chair next to her, found a pen, and opened my notebook.

“I’ll talk to you on one condition,” Margaret Devonshire said. “That every word I say is off the record, unless I signify otherwise. Then you may write it down.”

“Fair enough.”

“Also, before the article is printed, you will submit it to me for my approval.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

She stiffened, peering sharply at me over her surgically shaped cheekbones.

“And why is that not possible, Mr. Justice?”

“Someone else will write the article, so it’s not my call. But I can tell you that no self-respecting journalist would ever submit their copy for a subject’s approval.”

“Are you sure you work for the
Sun
, Mr. Justice? I didn’t think it had standards.”

“I’ll be happy to check quotes with you, Mrs. Devonshire. But that’s as far as I’ll go.”

She sighed like someone who was still adjusting to the insubordination of a rudely changing world.

Francesca appeared and served us iced tea in goblets of Waterford crystal, with wedges of fresh lime on the side.

“Drink your iced tea while it’s cold, Mr. Justice.”

I did as I was told. When Mrs. Devonshire spoke again, much of the superiority was gone from her voice.

“First, you need to know that Billy was my only child. Do you have children, Mr. Justice?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand. Especially for a mother, I think, losing a child goes beyond common grief. But to lose your only child…you feel that your entire world is gone. That every support, every prop that’s held you up has suddenly been pulled away.”

She glanced around at the house and the expansive grounds, then at the costly crystal in her hands. “You also take sum of your life, and realize it doesn’t add up to an awful lot.”

“I think I can understand that.”

“You’ve lost someone who meant that much?”

I nodded.

“Then perhaps,” she said, “we share something in common after all.”

She smiled artificially, without a trace of sincerity, the way she’d probably smiled thousands of times during her life.

“Billy’s father died when he was eight. I remarried much too quickly, within the year. I’m not the kind of person who’s comfortable on her own. I like a life that’s predictable from day to day, moment to moment. Instability unsettles me to a serious degree.”

“You and Phil Devonshire have been together close to twenty years, then.”

“Yes. It’s been a good arrangement. Phillip is much like myself. Orderly, disciplined, very much in control. Although a more—how shall I put it—commanding person.”

She stopped, as if she’d just realized how much she was telling me. She took another sip of tea, then put her drink aside.

“What exactly did Derek Brunheim tell you?”

“He told me that Billy was charming and a loyal friend in many ways.”

“Go on.”

“That you and he didn’t get along.”

“That much is certainly true.”

“He also said that Billy hadn’t worked for some time. That he had a serious cocaine habit. And that, sexually, he was rather promiscuous.”

She gripped the chair’s armrests again, and a bit of color seeped into her ghostly face.