“Henry, this is
Sandy Blenheim,” Larry said.
I shook Blenheim’s
hand. It was soft and moist but he compensated with a grip that nearly broke my
thumb. Before I could say anything, Blenheim started talking.
“Look, Henry, I’m
running a little late.” He jabbed his hand into the air, as if to ward off time’s
passage. “So if we could just get down to business.”
“What business is
that?”
“I’m an agent. I
have a client who’s interested in buying the rights to the trial.”
“Jim’s trial?” I
asked.
Blenheim gave three
rapid nods.
“Why?”
“To make a movie,”
Larry interjected.
I looked at
Blenheim. “A movie?”
“It’s great. The
whole set-up. Gay kid exposed. We could take it to the networks and sell it
like that.” He snapped his pudgy fingers. “We tried talking to the kid’s
parents but they won’t deal. The kid won’t even talk to me. So you’re our last
hope.”
“I really don’t
understand,” I said.
Blenheim spread his
hands. “We buy your rights, see, and if you can bring the kid and his folks
around, that just sweetens the deal. What about it?”
“It’s a bit
premature, don’t you think?” I said. “There hasn’t actually been a trial.”
“But there will be,”
Blenheim insisted. “We can give you twenty,” he continued. “Plus, we hire you
as the legal consultant. You could clean up.”
“I’m sorry,” I
began, “but this conversation is not—”
“Okay,” Blenheim
said, affably. “I’ve been around lawyers. You guys are cagey. Tell you what,
Henry. Think on it and call me in a couple of weeks. Larry’s got my number. See
you later.”
He turned, waved at
someone across the room, and walked away. I looked at Larry. “Have I just been
hit by a truck?”
“No, but you might
check your wallet.”
“What was that all
about?”
“Just what the man
said,” Larry replied. “He wants to make a movie.”
“About Jim? That’s
a little ghoulish, isn’t it?”
Larry shrugged. “He
gave me a check for five hundred dollars for Jim’s defense,” he said. “I figured
that was worth at least a couple of minutes of your time.”
“Okay, he got his
two minutes.” I looked at Larry; he was pale and seemed tired. “I think we
should get you home.”
“Fein’s invited us
for dinner,” he replied. “There’s no tactful way out.”
“Then let’s not be
tactful,” I said.
He began to speak,
but then simply nodded. “I am tired,” he said.
Fein accepted my
excuses with a fixed smile and later when I said good-night he looked at me
seemingly without recognition. But the boy who had parked our car remembered
me.
“Enjoy yourself?”
he asked, opening the car door for me.
Thinking of Fein
and Harvey Miller and the fat agent, I said, “It wasn’t that kind of party.”
One late afternoon
a week after our first interview, I said, “Tell me the last thing you remember
about that night.”
His blue gaze
drifted past my face. “I was at the bar.”
“Before Brian got
there.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember
seeing him arrive?”
Jim shook his head.
I drew a zero on my legal pad. A blue vein twitched at his temple. His eyes,
the same throbbing blue, scanned his fingertips.
“Did Brian ever
threaten you?”
He looked up,
startled. “No.”
“Demand money?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him
to meet you at the restaurant that night?”
His eyes were
terrified. “No.”
“Did he tell you he
was coming there?”
“No,” he replied,
drawing a deep breath.
“But once he got
there you assumed it was to see you, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“What I thought.”
He shifted in his seat.
I drew another zero
on the pad. “Tell me about the guy who picked you up the night Brian saw you in
the car. Had you ever seen him before?”
“No,” he replied.
“What did he look
like?”
“That was a long
time ago.”
“You must remember
something,” I snapped.
He slumped in his
chair. “He was old,” he said finally, and added, “Like you.”
Ignoring the gibe,
I asked, “Was he tall or short?”
“Average, I guess.”
“I’m not interested
in your guesses. What color was his hair?”
“Dark.”
“What about his
eyes?”
He was quiet for a
moment, then he said, in a voice that was different, almost yearning, “They
were blue.”
“Like yours?” I
asked.
“No, different,” he
replied in the same voice. He was seeing those eyes.
“Tell me about his
eyes,” I said, quietly.
“I told you,” he
replied, the yearning gone. “They were blue.”
“How did you end up
in his car?”
“He told me to meet
him.”
“Where?”
“In the lot behind
the restaurant.”
“Then what
happened?”
He stared at me,
color creeping up his neck.
“You got in the car
and then what happened?”
“We talked.” It was
almost a question.
“Is that what you
were doing when Brian came up to the car, talking?”
He shook his head. “He
was — sucking me.”
“That’s what Brian
saw?”
“Yeah.”
“What did Brian do?”
“He opened the car
door,” Jim said, talking quickly, “and yelled ‘faggots’. Then he ran back
across the lot of the restaurant.”
“What did you do?”
“I got out of the
car. The guy drove off. I went home.” “Did he tell you his name?”
“No.”
I looked at him.
No, of course not. Names weren’t important.
“Brian threatened
to tell your parents,” I said. “Did that worry you?”
“Sure,” he said, “but—”
He stopped himself.
“But what?”
“He didn’t.”
“The D.A. will say
that he didn’t because you killed him. What’s your explanation?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Why didn’t he tell
your parents?”
“I don’t know,” he
replied, his voice rising. “Ask him.” “He’s dead, Jim. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.
Why aren’t you trying to find the guy that killed him?”
“Why don’t you tell
me the truth?”
“Fuck you,” he
replied.
“This isn’t getting
us anywhere,” I observed in a quiet voice. “Are you sleeping better?”
“They give me
pills,” he said, all the anger gone.
I frowned. I had
had Jim examined by a doctor to see what could be done to relieve his anxiety.
Apparently the doctor chose a quick fix.
“How often?”
“Three times a day,”
he said.
“I’d ease up on
them,” I cautioned.
He shrugged.
“You need anything?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll see you
tomorrow, then,” I said.
His face showed
what he thought of the prospect.
*****
There was a knock
at the door. I got up from the desk and went downstairs. It was Freeman Vidor,
whom I had been expecting. I let him in, found him a beer, and led him up to
the study.
“Nice place,” he
commented, sitting on the sofa and looking around the room. He glanced at the
piles of paper on the desk. “How’s it going?”
“The good news is
that there won’t be any surprises from the prosecution at trial,” I replied. “The
bad news is that they don’t need any.”
He lit a cigarette
and looked around for an ashtray. I gave him the cup I had been drinking coffee
from.
“What about you?” I
asked. “Any surprises?”
He dug into the
pocket of his suit and extracted a little notebook. He flipped through pages
filled with big, loopy handwriting. “Maybe.”
“Fox?” I asked,
setting a fresh notepad on the desk in front of me.
“Uh-huh,” he said,
and sipped his beer. “There’s a private security patrol in the neighborhood
where his folks live. Seems about a year ago they started getting complaints
about a Peeping Tom. They kept a look-out and, lo and behold, they find Fox in
someone’s back yard. There’s a girl lives there he went to school with. It was
just about her bedtime.”
“What was his
story?”
“He wanted to talk
to her,” Freeman said, dropping his cigarette into the coffee cup and pouring a
little beer over it. “Only they caught him with his pants down.”
“What?”
“Jerking off. He
said he was just taking a piss.”
“Anyone press
charges?”
“Not in that
neighborhood,” he said. “Security took him home and told his parents.” He
belched softly. “Excuse me. There was some other stuff, too,” he continued. “Seems
like Brian was the neighborhood pervert.”
“I’m listening.”
Freeman shrugged. “Now
these are just rumors,” he cautioned. “He spent a lot of time with kids who
were younger than him — thirteen, fourteen.”
“Boys? Girls?”
“Both,” he replied,
and finished off the beer. “‘Course, less time with little girls because their
folks got kind of suspicious that a high school senior was hanging around them.
So mostly he was with the little boys. They thought he was kind of a creep.”
“And why is that?”
“A couple of them
came over to his house to go swimming when his folks were gone. He gave them
some beer and tried to get them to go into the pool naked.”
“What happened?”
“They split,” he
replied and thumbed through the notebook. “After that, they all pretty much
avoided him.”
“Did they tell
their parents?”
He shook his head.
An interesting
picture was beginning to develop. I asked, “What about kids his own age? Did he
have a girlfriend?”
“Nope,” he said. “Didn’t
go out much with girls. He was kind of a loner except for his computer buddies.”
“The stories in the
papers make him sound like the most popular kid in his class,” I observed.
Freeman lit another
cigarette. “The kids didn’t write those stories, grown-ups did. They see a
young guy, not bad looking, smart enough, killed by some — excuse the
expression — faggot. What do you think they’re going to make of it?”