Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (10 page)

He shook his head, closing the discussion, and resumed
eating. We finished our meal in silence.

We recovered a little amicability during the course of the
evening. Guy was grading essays and I was watching some cheesy flick on the Sci
Fi Channel -- nothing like a little CGI horror to put your own problems into
perspective -- but eventually he was lured over to the sofa by my commentary.
Before long he was playing Siskel to my Ebert.

That was one of the nicer things about Guy: he didn’t hold
grudges. My first adult lover, Mel, had been a gold medal winner in the
long-distance silent treatment. And even Jake had a tendency to revert to terse
monosyllables when he was
really
irritated with me. Guy fought like a civilized person. He didn’t shut me out,
and he didn’t try to thrash me into submission.

When we finally went into bed, Guy leaned over me, his mouth
finding mine. He tasted like toothpaste with a hint of the plum wine he’d had
for dessert. His mouth moved over mine with more insistence than he’d shown
recently.

I kissed him back. His long hair feathered lightly across my
face and chest. It tickled a bit.

“What do you want?”

What I wanted was to go to sleep -- but I knew how that would
go over after our earlier argument. I kissed him back, and tried to put a
little energy into it.

His mouth delved mine, his tongue slipped inside, and he
murmured something soft and urgent. I murmured in return, stroked his back. His
cock pressed into my abdomen, and I reached down to fondle his balls. I could
practically feel the rush of heat beneath his skin, and I began to consider
strategies for bringing him off fast.

He thrust against me. His hand stroked my hip and groin --
and he’d have had to be fairly oblivious not to notice I wasn’t as interested
as I ought to be. One thing Guy was not was oblivious.

His hand slowed. Stopped. He leaned back from me, staring at
my face, trying to read my expression in the lamplight. He said, “We haven’t
made love since you got out of the hospital.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I felt his erection wilting against me,
and felt worse. “I’m just tired.”

He said wearily, “I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to
want me the way I want you.”

“I do.”

He stared intently down at my face. I turned my head and
coughed. “I do,” I said, turning back to him. “I’m just not back to normal
yet.”

He raised his brows.

“Normal for me,” I clarified.

Finally he sighed, reached behind himself, and turned off the
lamp.

We lay there side by side not speaking.

Chapter Eight

Supposedly the elegant entrance gates to Forest Lawn in
Glendale are the largest wrought iron gates in the world. I’m not sure. I think
the gates at Porter Jones’s Bel Air mansion might have given Forest Lawn a run
for their money, but the cemetery entrance was admittedly impressive.

And brought back a number of memories. My father is buried at
Forest Lawn; I actually remember childhood trips to the cemetery better than I
remember him. Lisa tells me I’m a lot like him, although there were presumably
a few crucial differences. In any case, when I attended Porter’s funeral on
Thursday, I decided to visit my father’s gravesite.

The grave was on a hillside with a number of other graves
marked “English,” and I realized -- belatedly -- that I had quite a bit of
family interred in these stately green parklands. It was an odd feeling. So was
staring down at the bronze memorial tablet and realizing my father had been
younger than me when he died.

It occurred to me I should have brought flowers or something.
I hadn’t been to his gravesite since I was small enough to play on the bronze
statuary by the lake with the Heron Fountain -- Lisa strangely indifferent to
decorum on those long-ago field trips.

I wondered if my old man and I would’ve got along -- if he’d
have been all right with the fact that I was gay. I wondered in what ways I’d
have been different if he had lived -- besides my sexuality. Jake had been
convinced my pop’s premature departure from the mortal coil during my formative
years was responsible for my inverted orientation, but I’d known I was
different before I was an adolescent. Nor did I consider my orientation
inverted. But that was just one of many areas in which Jake and I disagreed.

* * * * *

I couldn’t help but think of Evelyn Waugh’s
The Loved One
as I stood near the back of
the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather and listened to Porter Jones’s nearest and dearest
send him off with fond recollections and anecdotes.

From the jolly time everyone was having, it sounded like
Porter was headed for that grand Opening Night in the Sky, and although he was
not precisely a celebrity, he drew a reasonably full house. I recognized more
than one familiar face -- not including those cast and crew members I’d already
met.

Paul Kane was there, naturally, and he spoke eloquently and
amusingly about Porter and their long association. They had apparently met
through a mutual friendship with Langley Hawthorne. I recalled Ally mentioning
something about Langley Hawthorne, and I made a note to see what I could find
out about him. He sounded like another Hollywood mogul.

I had to admit -- grudgingly -- that I learned more about
Porter Jones from Paul Kane’s eulogy than I did from anyone else’s
reminiscences. Kane managed to cover the fact that Porter donated to numerous
charities, gambled on small, noncommercial but deserving indie projects, and
served on many industry committees and scholarship boards -- while poking
gentle fun at Porter’s passion for deep-sea fishing, modern art, and gourmet
cooking. According to Kane, Porter had his sensitive side: he had always wanted
to write, and penned terrible screenplays in addition to several attempts at
writing his memoirs -- but he had also been loud and crude and more than
capable of drinking anyone or anything under the table. But most tellingly, in
Paul Kane’s opinion, was the fact that Porter stayed friends with everyone.

Porter’s first wife, Marla Vicenza, was a well-preserved
sixty-something. She looked like a bargain-brand Sophia Loren; I recognized her
from too many late nights spent watching TV. She confirmed that Porter was a
hard man not to like. Even when he had broken it to her that he was ending
their thirty-year marriage and replacing her with a blonde trophy wife, he had
apparently done it in the most charming way possible. By which, I gathered,
he’d given Marla one hell of a generous settlement.

Marla seemed pretty easygoing herself. She sat next to Ally
in the front pew of the chapel, and they seemed -- from where I stood -- to be
on friendly terms.

Ally was apparently too overcome with grief -- or guilt -- to
speak. She wore one of those flimsy black dresses that looked like it was
designed for use while consuming apple martinis and bacon-wrapped scallops, and
she leaned heavily on the arm of a short, brawny, and very good-looking young
man. Maybe he was her brother. Because showing up on the arm of someone who
wasn’t her brother was surely flying right in the teeth of LAPD -- and the
teeth were very much in attendance.

Both Alonzo and Jake stood in the back of the Wee Kirk o’ the
Heather -- on the opposite side of the door from me. Alonzo kept grimacing and
tugging at his tie. Jake looked grave and distant in a well-cut dark suit,
although I knew he was observing closely and taking mental notes on the
mourners and homicide suspects. Even so, I couldn’t help but notice he smiled
frequently during Paul Kane’s eulogy.

Not that I was watching him or anything.

I nodded hello to Al January, who also did not choose to
reminisce in public about the good times with Porter. He paused long enough to
invite me to lunch the following day, so Kane had been as good as his word.

I recognized a few other faces from Kane’s party -- or from
television and film roles. Valarie Rose didn’t recognize me when I said hello
after the service finished and we all filed out into the little courtyard. Paul
reintroduced us; she was friendly, if preoccupied.

“I’ve told Valarie you’ll want to talk to her,” he said.

“Oh. Right.” I smiled at Valarie and she smiled politely
back. I could see she thought this idea of Paul’s was lunacy. I was beginning
to think she was right, though not for the same reasons.

Paul made one of those rueful, charming faces. “You’re not
going to bail on me, are you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Paul, you’re putting Mr. English in a really awkward
position,” Valarie said.

Something in the way she stood brushing shoulders and arms
with Paul told me that they were -- or perhaps had been -- lovers. Kane had a
reputation for playing the field, and certainly Jake was not in a position to
complain about double-dipping, but I wondered as I saw him approaching us.

“Not at all,” Paul said. “Adrien and I are very much alike.
We both enjoy puzzles.” He added, eyes on Jake, “And other things.”

My gaze met Jake’s -- locked -- and I felt a flush of heat.
Then again, I was standing in a stone courtyard with the bright June sun
beating down on my head. I deliberately moved my gaze to Alonzo, who was
staring at me with that amorphous hostility. His suit was dark olive and the
finish looked shiny in the bright sunlight; for some reason I found that
comforting.

As Jake and Alonzo drew within earshot, Paul said
conversationally, “Has anyone ever told you your eyes are just the color of the
Mediterranean?”

I noticed, tardily, that he was speaking to me. I could feel
Valarie, Jake, and Alonzo all gazing at me, and I realized that while Paul Kane
and I might both enjoy puzzles, we did not share a love of all the same games.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said, and I squeezed his arm in
friendly farewell, moving away into the crowd.

“That
dress
. Oh my
God
. What was she
thinking
…?”

“He must have paid for his plot back in the seventies…”

“Please. Memorial Property…”

I stepped around the snickers and whispers, keeping an eye
out for Ally and her stalwart escort as I listened in on the conversations
floating around me.

“Sudoku? The
New York
Times
provides all the mentalrobics I need…”

“Funny no one mentioned how he had no problem pulling
financing when the mood suited him…”

As I joined the line of mourners straggling down the shady road
to Porter’s gravesite, I zeroed on the dialog behind me.

“I’m surprised Valarie would work with him after the way her
torpedoed her last project.”

“If Paul Kane told Valarie to jump, she’d be the first one on
the ledge.”

I missed the next comment or two as a black limousine rolled
slowly past and we all moved to the side of the road.

“It’s ironic, really. He had so little time left.”

That was the woman walking ahead of me. I considered the
elegant line of her black-clad back -- the glossy brown bob -- and I recognized
Marla Vicenza, the first Mrs. Jones. From behind she could have been a woman
half her age. Like so many actors, she spoke in a slightly louder than normal
voice.

I unobtrusively picked up my pace.

“Do the police know that he was ill? Maybe it
was
an accident?” Her companion was an
older woman in a dark pantsuit.

“Apparently not. It was some kind of heart medication. Not
the kind of thing someone takes accidentally. Anyway, Jonesy was always careful
about things like that.”

“That alone should tell the gestapo that it couldn’t have
been anyone who really knew Porter -- as if anyone who knew Porter would want
to hurt him.”

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” the Vicenza woman said. “No
one would want to hurt Jonesy. Jonesy was a lamb.”

“What about that slut?”

“What would the hurry be? She’d have had everything in a few
months anyway.”

They nattered on, but after a bit I stopped paying attention.
It was obvious neither of them had any idea who would want to kill Porter
Jones. Just as it was obvious that there had been no need to kill him. He had
already been dying.

So the question was: who couldn’t wait for Porter to die?

* * * * *

“How was your funeral?” Natalie asked when I got back to the
bookstore later that afternoon.

“Well, when you put it like that, I was hoping for better
music.” I popped open a can of Tab from the office fridge.

She laughed. “It can’t all be Verdi’s ‘Requiem.’ You should
let Warren pick the music.”

Over my dead body. I took a swallow of Tab. Caffeine. Ah,
yes. I remembered it well.

She asked suddenly, “Hey, what are you wearing tonight?”

“Is this a trick question?”

She gave me a look of sisterly exasperation. “The family
portrait? The one Lisa’s been talking about for over a month?” She burst out
laughing. “Oh my God, your expression, Adrien!”

Too bad the cameras weren’t clicking right then. I asked,
“What time and where?”

“At the house. Seven o’clock -- but I think Lisa is expecting
you to come for dinner.”

“I don’t know about dinner,” I said.

“We noticed! That’s why she wants you to eat with us.”

“Funny.”

Natalie seemed to think so. I left her chortling and went
upstairs to change out of my funeral wear. I donned Levi’s and a black T-shirt
from the Santa Barbara winery, which Guy and I had visited last year. For a
moment I studied myself in the mirror behind the bedroom door. I looked all
right. Thinner than usual -- okay, maybe my Levi’s hung loosely off my hips in
disconcertingly gangbanger fashion -- and I definitely needed some sun. A
haircut wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I’d totally forgotten about the damned
family portrait.

I went downstairs and, for a change, it was halfway quiet
while the construction crew knocked off for lunch. Natalie was special ordering
some small press titles for a customer; I grabbed the phone book and settled
down in the office flipping through, searching for Markopoulos Investigations.