The Burning Plain (46 page)

The day before his arraignment, Duke Asuras borrowed the private jet of a movie-star friend and flew to Brazil, a country that, conveniently, had no extradition treaty with the United States. By week’s end, an arrest warrant had been issued for him. This was followed by a report that, between the time the indictment was announced and his departure, he had transferred most of his wealth outside the country. A state bar committee was convened to investigate whether his lawyers had knowledge of his plan to flee. The results were inconclusive. Equally inconclusive was the Attorney General’s attempt to indict the movie star for aiding Asuras’s flight. The movie star later made a substantial contribution to the AG’s gubernatorial campaign. From somewhere in Brazil, Asuras issued a press release in which he said that he was the victim of a homophobic, right-wing, religious zealot—the Attorney General—in a country “where gay people, such as myself, are routinely persecuted by the same legal system that is supposed to protect us. In the current climate of hatred and discrimination against gays, I have no confidence that my innocence, and I am completely innocent of these ridiculous charges, could be proven. Therefore, rather than risk conviction for a crime of which I am innocent, I have chosen to exile myself from my country until such time that I can be sure, as a gay man, of receiving a fair trial. God bless America.”

“Can you believe it?” Serena said to me. I was sitting in her living room, Hekate purring on my lap, having just watched Asuras’s statement being read on TV.

“He’s trying to turn his case into a discussion of homophobia the same way Simpson turned his case into a referendum on race. I guess it’s not surprising. They have the same lawyers.”

Serena switched the TV off. “Why not go the whole nine yards, then, and stick around for the trial?”

“Because, unlike Simpson, Duke couldn’t count on any sympathetic jurors. I mean, he
is
right about how hard it is for gay people to get a fair hearing from the cops and the courts. You know that better than anyone.”

She picked up her beer. “Yeah,” she said, “and I also happen to know that there are death squads in Brazil that routinely murder gay men. Quite an improvement over the old US of A.”

“He can’t be extradited,” I reminded her. “I think that was the attraction.”

“So we’re going to have to listen for the rest of our lives about how Duke Asuras, who murdered four gay men, was driven into exile by homophobia.”

“Chalk it up to life’s little ironies.”

Six months after he fled California, Asuras was appointed special assistant to the minister of culture in Brazil for the express purpose of encouraging movies to be filmed in that country. His old friend, the director Cheryl Cordet, immediately announced that she would make her next movie in São Paulo as a gesture of solidarity with Asuras.

Duke Asuras was beaten to death in a Rio de Janeiro hotel by a hustler whom he’d picked up at the beach. The hustler was ultimately convicted of Asuras’s murder but, owing to Brazil’s extremely lenient sentencing laws, served a total of eight months. In handing down the sentence, the judge observed that the deceased was a homosexual and therefore at least as culpable for his own death as his killer.

Asuras’s body was eventually returned to Hollywood and interred at the Westwood cemetery, where his neighbors included Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote. His memorial service was canceled when it became clear that no one of any prominence in the Industry intended to show up for it.

One morning a few days after New Year’s, my phone rang as I was working in my office. I picked it up.

“Hello, Henry?”

The voice was familiar, but it took me a moment to place it, because I had not expected to hear it again. “Rod?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Rod Morse.” He sounded older, almost adult.

“Where are you? How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Really good.” He paused. “I’m calling to Christian witness you, Henry.”

“To what?”

“I’m calling to tell you that homosexuality is not part of God’s plan and to beg you to turn from your sinful ways and receive Jesus in your life.”

“Is this a joke, Rod?”

“I’m deadly serious,” he replied. “You could be a good man if you would open your heart to Jesus.”

“What happened to you, Rod? Did your parents send you to the Foster Institute?”

“What happened to me is that I surrendered myself to Jesus,” he said. “You can, too. Henry, in
I
Corinthians
6
, Paul tells us that no homosexual will possess the kingdom of God.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rod. The word ‘homosexual’ didn’t even exist until the nineteenth century.”

“And in Leviticus,” he continued, gathering steam.

“Stop, Rod. I know all the passages, I know what they say, I know how they’re used and I’m not impressed. Did you hear Asuras was killed in Brazil?”

There was a pause. “I read about it,” he said, grudgingly, then added, “The wages of sin are death.”

“I’ll admit he did a lot of evil and there was a certain poetic justice to his death,” I said.

“You do believe in evil,” Rod said, triumphantly.

“Not the kind you’re thinking about,” I said. “Not Christian evil. That’s more of a political category than a moral one, but yes, after Duke Asuras, I definitely believe in evil.”

“Homosexuality is evil,” he said. “It’s an abomination condemned by God. He sent the plague of AIDS as a judgment on your lifestyle.”

In my appointment book was a plane ticket to San Francisco where, on Sunday, I would be attending a memorial service for Grant Hancock.

“Someday, when you realize what you’ve just said, you won’t be able to forgive yourself.”

“I meant it.”

“You can’t run away from yourself forever,” I said. “You can’t hide in someone’s Bible for the rest of your life.”

“It’s not someone’s Bible,” he corrected me. “It’s the word of God.”

“It’s a book written by human beings about a God they imagined and any God that any human can imagine is imperfect. Don’t look for God in the sky, Rod. Look at what’s inside of you.”

“I feel sorry for you, Henry, because you’re going to hell.”

“Hell’s not a place, Rod, it’s something people do to each other.”

“I’ll pray for you.”

“All right,” I said, “but hang on to my number because someday you may want to call me again. When you stop running.”

He hung up.

That afternoon, I made my weekly visit to Josh’s grave. I walked up the steps of the Court of Remembrance, past the tomb of Bette Davis to the Columbarium of Radiant Destiny. As I approached the grave, I saw a woman in late middle age, her back to me, running her fingers across the raised surface of the lettering on the marker.

“Selma?”

She turned. It was Josh’s mother.

“Hello, Henry,” she said. Her heart-shaped face was careworn and showed signs of recent tears, though it was dry now.

“Is this your first time here?”

“I’ve been coming since we got your letter telling us where to find Josh,” she said. “I thought we would probably run into each other.” She turned back to the plaque and read, “‘Little friend.’ What is that?”

“An endearment.”

“I see,” she said. “Did you have to put it here?”

“I’ll leave you,” I said. I gave her the rose I’d brought. “Will you put this in the vase?”

She took it, looked at me, seemed to thaw a little. “I don’t mean to run you off, Henry.”

“I’ll come back later,” I said. “I’m usually here on Tuesdays, around this time.”

She nodded. “I’ll try to remember.”

“Goodbye, Selma.”

But she had already turned away from me again and was replacing the wilted rose in the vase by Josh’s marker with the fresh one.

I got into the car and started down the long, winding drive out of the cemetery. A fleet of trailers and trucks turned into the front gate. I pulled over and let them pass, equipment trucks, caterers, performers’ trailers, a caravan that could mean only one thing: someone was making a movie.

I
WANT TO THANK
the following people: Katherine V. Forrest, for her sage advice and valued friendship; Charlotte Sheedy, agent and advocate; Neil Nyren, conscientious editor; Paul Reidinger, for the free lunches and long conversation about this craft of writing; Rob Miller, Dan Edelman, the people at Paramount, for movie and legal lore (and if I got it wrong, my apologies); Phyllis Burke, for her book
Gender Shock
(a crucial work); and of course the Daughters of Darkness, who kept me company.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Henry Rios Mysteries

T
HE WALLS OF THE COURTROOM OF THE COURT OF APPEAL
on the third floor in the Ronald Reagan State Office Building were paneled in gray-green marble the color of money while the justices’ dais and the benches in the gallery were gleaming wood that had been stained the deep, coagulated red called oxblood; the same red as the tasseled loafers of the big-firm lawyers who regularly practiced in this venue. The $350-an-hour crowd were set apart not only by their shoes but also by their haircuts, which appeared to be the result of a microscopic process by which every hair was, in fact, individually cut. Needless to say, these lawyers were in civil practice. We in the criminal bar were incapable of the insouciance that seems to be issued with platinum credit cards and corner offices. We tended to be solitary creatures, easily identifiable by our bulging files, tattered briefcases, hair in need of cutting, suits in need of pressing and attitudes of weary cynicism. The deputy attorneys general who filed down from their offices on the fifth floor to represent the state in criminal matters were mostly kids a few years out of law school who produced earnest, moot-court-style briefs but with the law largely on their side; in the defense bar, we joked that they could have submitted photocopied pages from the phone book and still won. They slouched into the courtroom in off-the-rack suits, carrying cheap leather briefcases stamped with the Great Seal of the State of California: a woman warrior clad in a Princess Xena breastplate pointing at San Francisco Bay and presumably exclaiming the state’s motto, Eureka! I have found it. She represented the mythical Queen Calafia, whom Spanish explorers believed had ruled over the race of Amazons in the land that now bore her name. Perhaps, I thought, studying the Great Seal on the wall above the dais, she was actually pointing to Oakland, home to a large lesbian population, including my sister, Elena, and her partner.

I wasn’t usually so dyspeptic this early in the day, but I had the world’s worst heartburn, undoubtedly the result of a breakfast that had consisted of four cups of coffee, a bagel that was half-burned and half-frozen—I really needed a new toaster—and a handful of vitamins. The bitter aftertaste of the pills lingered at the back of my throat. Also, now that I noticed it, my right arm was throbbing. Great. When I was a teenager, I’d suffered through growing pains; at forty-nine, I was suffering through growing-old pains.

The young deputy A.G. beside me pored over his notes and muttered to himself, as if he were about to argue before the United States Supreme Court rather than a three-judge panel—two white-haired white men, one graying black lady—of the intermediate state appellate court. His knee knocked nervously against mine and I glanced at him. He was a handsome boy with that luminous skin of the young, as if a lantern were burning just beneath the flesh.

“’Scuse me,” he murmured without looking up.

“Your first appearance?” I asked.

Now he looked. His eyes were like cornflowers. “Is it that obvious?”

“Don’t be too anxious,” I said. “They’ve already written the opinion in your case.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I said. “Oral argument’s mostly for show. It’s hardly worth bothering to show up.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m a criminal defense lawyer,” I said. “Tilting at windmills is my specialty.”

He smiled civilly, then returned to his notes.

“We will hear
People
versus
Guerra,”
the presiding justice said.

I pulled myself out of the chair and made my way to counsel table. The young A.G. beside me also stood up.

“You’re Mr. Rios?” he said as we headed to counsel table.

“None other,” I replied.

He held open the gate that separated the gallery from the well of the court where counsel tables were located, and said, “Great brief. I had to pull an all-nighter to finish my reply.”

I remembered his brief had had the whiff of midnight oil. “Thanks. You did a good job, too.”

I set my file on my side of the table, and was gripped by a wave of nausea so intense I was sure I was going to vomit, but the moment passed.

“Counsel?”

I looked up at the presiding justice, Dahlgren, who was not much older than me and quite possibly a year or two younger.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

“Your appearance, please.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I grunted. “Henry Rios for defendant and appellant Anthony Guerra.”

“Mr. Rios,” the lady judge, Justice Harkness, spoke. “Are you all right? You went white as a ghost a second ago.”