He considered it and changed the subject slightly. “They’re already watching.”
“Come again?”
“I told you they would be. Haven’t you seen the paper?”
“I don’t get one.”
“Hold on.” He got up and went into the back of the house, and I heard Alan’s inquiring voice before Christy reappeared with a folded copy of the Times in his hand.
MURDERED MAN WAS TV STAR read the headline. Bottom right corner of page one. Not bad for a gay murder; the Times is so conservative on some issues as to be fundamentalist.
A West Hollywood man who was murdered on Tuesday was a popular television star in the 1950s, the story began. Max Grover, 77, who was brutally beaten to death in his home by an unknown assailant, starred in a top-rated series, Tarnished Star, under the name Rick Hawke.
“They finally woke up,” I said. Nothing about the mutilation, nothing yet about the serial angle.
“Well,” Christy said, the soul of reason, “Max kept it pretty quiet.”
“All the more cause for you to talk to a reporter before you go in.”
Reason went out the window and truculence came in. “I’m not going in.”
“Shush,” I said. I’d seen a name toward the bottom of the story.
Grover’s longtime agent, Ferris Hanks, told the Times that Grover had lived quietly since abandoning his career toward the end of the fifties. “Max could have been a major star,” Hanks said. “He was a great talent. When he quit, he could have had his pick of the networks.”
“Ferris Hanks,” I said.
“Oh, how Max loathed that man,” Christy said. “Said he was inverse proof that the good die young. Eighty-two-he says — and still doing mischief.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“ Meet him? We wouldn’t go near him.”
“Before Max, I mean.”
“Of course not. Hardly my circle.”
“But Max talked about him.”
“Like you’d talk about an operation you once had. And he called a couple of times.”
“What about?”
“He never gave up. He wanted Max to go back to work, can you imagine?”
That took me by surprise. “I thought he hated Max.”
“He was terrible to him for years. The old ‘you’ll never work in this town again’ stuff, as though Max cared. And then, just like nothing had happened, there he was on the phone, offering work. I ask you.”
“But Max said no.”
“Max, work for Ferris Hanks? Of course not. An unbelievable man. Absolute sewage.”
“So everyone says.”
“And for once, everybody is right.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems to me that a community is usually right when it passes judgment. Look how people felt about Max.”
“And how they feel about me,” Christy said, using my least favorite of his repertoire of tones.
“People don’t think badly of you,” I said. “They just wonder when you’re going to do something on your own.”
It startled him. Everyone was being nice to him, and here I was, kicking him in the shins. “Like what?” he demanded. “How much time-”
“I know all about that,” I said, “and you have no idea how much time you have. You could live for years. You’re going to have money. What are you going to do, Christy?”
“How would I know? I haven’t thought about it.”
“Start by going to the cops.”
“Why? Why should I do that?”
“Well, they’re looking for you, for one thing. You can’t hide with Robert and Alan forever. You get caught, they’re going to be in trouble, too.”
“I’ll go somewhere else,” he said.
“And you can’t help me until you’re free to move around.”
“Help you?” He sounded skeptical. “You think I can help you?”
“Of course you can. I’ve needed to talk to you a dozen times in the past two days, and I didn’t know where you were. And even now, now that I do know, I can’t call you from home because the cops might be monitoring my phone. I need to get into things, like Max’s safe-deposit box, that I don’t have access to without you.”
“What’s in the safe-deposit?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “until I look.”
“Don’t you think the cops will look there?”
“Same answer.”
He got up and did a circuit of the room. His clothes sagged on him, but it wasn’t until he turned his back and I saw the buckle on his pants that I realized he was wearing Alan’s. They made him look even thinner than he was. At the mantel he stopped and picked up one of the black cats. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Do it for Max.”
The cat got folded into half and then into quarters. Christy wasn’t looking at it; he seemed to be studying the face of the grandfather clock. “What kinds of questions did you have?” he asked at last.
“Marta Aguirre, for example. She’s not around.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“So why not?”
He tore the cat in half. “What does it matter?”
“Is she legal?”
“No. Her cousin is. That’s where she lives, with her cousin. Max hired her because she wasn’t legal. His way of helping out, as usual. And she spied on us. She stole from us.”
Ah, Marta the thief. “What kinds of things?”
“Little stuff. A couple of Max’s rings. A gold chain Max gave me. Stuff she could put in her pockets.”
“Max knew?”
Christy rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Max gave her a raise. Said she must not be earning enough.”
“What days did she work?”
“Mondays and Thursdays.”
“My, my,” I said. “Mondays.”
Christy paused in the act of ripping the cat into quarters and stared at me. “The day before-”
“Do you have her address?”
“No, but her cousin’s listed. Elena Aguirre. In Reseda, in the Valley. That’s where we had to call if we wanted her to come in on an off day.” He looked down at the scraps of paper in his hands and searched the room for a place to put them.
“What does she look like?”
“I’m no good at describing people.”
“You’re very good, though, at identifying things you’re not very good at.”
“She’s tiny,” he barked. “No more than five feet, and she’s got short gray hair cut at the ears like a helmet, and one shoulder higher than the other.”
“Any tattoos?”
“How should I-” He stopped and worked his mouth into a tight little knot, and then he smiled that same sweet smile. “That was a joke,” he said. He suddenly looked doubtful. “Wasn’t it?”
“More or less. Are you going to go to the cops for me, Christy? For Max?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, stuffing the cat into his pocket, along with the remnants of the smile.
I gave up. “Are you going to stay here, then?”
“Maybe.” He sounded all of sixteen.
“Then I need to talk to Alan and Robert,” I said. “There are some things they should know.”
He looked stung. “You think I’d keep anything from them?”
“I don’t know what I think, Christy. You’re not willing to do the one thing I need you to do.”
“I haven’t said no yet.”
I got up and crossed the room and knocked on the door through which Alan and Robert had disappeared. The door opened into a den, furnished in Intensive Cozy: quilts and lap rugs flung themselves aggressively across overstuffed furniture. Potted plants flourished in terra-cotta containers. Robert was watching television, wearing earphones, and Alan was reading a detective novel with a startlingly lurid cover.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I need you in the living room.”
“I’m here,” Christy said sulkily from behind me.
“Robert?” I said, miming removing headphones. Robert pulled his off, looking faintly surprised.
“What is it?” Alan asked.
“The two of you are in danger,” I said, “and I thought somebody should tell you so.”
“We’re not afraid of the police,” Robert said.
“I’m not talking about the police.”
Alan drew in the corners of his mouth, looking like a schoolteacher weighing the punishment for some poor kid’s spitball. “What, then?”