Simple Justice, page 7
“I enjoyed talking with you,” he said. “It’s always nice to get a fresh perspective.”
“Perhaps we’ll have the chance to do it again.”
“I hope so.”
I watched him climb into the big Buick with his father, and pull the door closed without looking back. Then he was gone, like all the other men I’d bumped into in my life who might have meant something but never would.
I went into The Out Crowd to talk to the witness who had fingered Gonzalo Albundo for the murder of Billy Lusk, feeling more than a little unsettled by my encounter with Senator Masterman and his beautiful married son.
Chapter Ten
Jefferson Bellworthy was the kind of man who created an instant and indelible visual impression.
Like Alexandra Templeton, he was African-American, but even darker; his skin had the rich, lustrous look of fine ebony, as if God had performed the final polishing.
Bellworthy looked to be in his early thirties, with a good face, and he stood an inch or two over six feet. His powder-blue nylon running shorts were split up the sides to accommodate massive, muscular thighs, and an apricot-colored tank top showed off a gym-sculpted upper body that could justifiably be called magnificent.
My personal taste ordinarily ran to men with lighter frames. Had he shown the slightest interest, however, Jefferson Bellworthy would have been an easy exception.
He was behind the bar when I entered, toweling glasses that looked tiny and inconsequential in his big hands.
The Out Crowd was air-conditioned and cool, with walls painted flat black, like the exterior. Here and there, a poster promoted an AIDS fundraiser or some other event of special interest to the gay community. A George Michael tune played over the sound system, and at opposite ends of the long bar, two older white men nursed drinks. In a side room, a well-dressed Asian man, thirtyish and nice-looking, practiced pool shots alone, sending balls about the table with clean, graceful strokes. Otherwise, the place was empty.
I slipped onto a bar stool. Bellworthy nodded amiably and asked what I wanted to drink. My rule was no alcohol before 5 P.M. It was close enough. I ordered white wine and turned my attention to the dapper, dark-haired pool player.
He was close to my height and slender as a reed, wearing a dress shirt and pleated slacks that appeared to be tailored meticulously for his supple body. His necktie, a rarity in any Los Angeles gay bar, was neatly knotted inside a starched collar. As he moved around the table, deftly making his shots, his smooth, angular face remained expressionless. I guessed his background as Korean or Chinese, but I couldn’t be sure.
“You a rice queen?”
I looked over. One of the older men had slid onto the stool next to me. He was bald and paunchy, with mottled skin on the backs of his hands and tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears like cotton. He smelled like scotch ordered cheap from the well.
“Rice queen,” he repeated. “You know, partial to Asian boys.”
Bellworthy placed a cocktail napkin in front of me and a glass of Chablis on the napkin. I laid three more of Harry’s dollars on the bar. Bellworthy took two of them away.
“Or maybe you go for older guys,” the drunk said, examining me up and down with bleary eyes the way a chef might study a side of beef hanging in a meat locker. “I could sure go for you.”
He leaned closer and reached for my knee. I pulled it away, and he caught hold of the rail to keep from falling.
I drank half my wine, slipped off my stool, and carried my glass around to the middle of the bar, where Bellworthy was putting the two dollars I’d just given him into the register.
“I’m Benjamin Justice,” I said. “I called earlier today. From the Sun.”
“Oh, yeah.” He looked me over quickly. “I’m off in a few minutes. We can talk then.”
I finished my wine, set the empty glass on the bar, and wandered over to the pool table. The player barely glanced up, continuing his solitary shots. I noticed two empty beer bottles nearby, and next to them, one that was half finished.
He took another shot and looked my way.
“You play?”
“Not really.”
He finished clearing the table, caught the cue ball before it dropped, and slipped a quarter into the slot. When the balls clattered down, he collected them, racking them quickly and precisely.
He tipped and drained his bottle, put it aside, and drew the stick back to make another of his perfect strokes. The break was almost surgically clean, scattering balls in all directions and dropping one or two.
“I do not think I see you here before,” he said as he moved around the table, sending balls into pockets. Though his English was fairly good, his accent was heavy, softening his diction to an interesting verbal mush.
“I don’t get out to the bars much.” I added that I was there on business. Not surprisingly, he didn’t pry.
A minute later, he asked if he could buy me a drink. It was spoken like proper etiquette, without a hint of sexual interest.
“Thanks. White wine.”
His eyes, already sparkling from alcohol, registered surprise.
“You do not look like the kind of man who like the white wine.”
“I’m not,” I said. “That’s why I drink it.”
He went away thinking about that and returned a minute later with my wine and a fresh beer for himself.
“To your good luck,” he said, and finally smiled a little. His cheekbones arched so high that his eyes seemed to rest on them like dark moons rising over hilltops.
We toasted, touching bottle to glass.
“My name Jim,” he said, like someone meeting formally for business. He put out his hand and we shook.
“Jim Lee.”
I told him my name, and that I thought he was very handsome.
“You very forward.” He laughed uneasily and picked up his pool stick. “Americans, they very forward.”
Then, diplomatically: “That can be good, sometimes, I guess.”
He began circling the table again, chalking his stick between shots, which he continued to make routinely.
I asked him if he came to The Out Crowd regularly.
“I come maybe two or three days in week.” The alcohol had begun to erode his diction further, and to loosen his tongue. “I not like the West Hollywood bars. I think here is more friendly.”
“Monday nights?”
“Sometimes. Not many people here Monday nights.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“That depends on what you want, I guess.” He bent over to better see the line of his next shot. “Sometimes, I like to shoot pool in the day, when it more quiet. At night, they turn the music up very loud.”
As he leaned over the table, the thin fabric of his suit pants stretched tight across his backside, revealing the form of his lower body. I imagined my hands around Jim Lee’s narrow waist, or sliding up his slender frame.
When he’d taken the shot, I asked casually, “Did you happen to be in on Monday night?”
His eyes searched the table for his next shot, taking longer than before.
“You ask many questions.” He glanced over, not so friendly this time. “You policeman?”
“No.”
“You say you here for some business.” His eyes turned back to scan the pool table again.
“I’m gathering some information for a newspaper. The Sun. Do you read it?”
“I read only the Korean papers.”
“Yet you speak English quite well.”
“I am in this country since I am sixteen. But in our house, we were permit only to speak Korean.” He took a shot. His sure stroke was gone, and he missed by an inch or two. “My father, he want to preserve the Korean ways.”
“Did you know someone was killed in the parking lot early Tuesday morning? A customer named Billy Lusk?”
“Yes, I hear.”
He took another shot, missing badly.
“I just thought you might have seen or heard something.”
He stood up, ramrod straight, his head held high. There was an unwavering sense of decorum about him, even if he was unable to look me in the eye, and even while he was on the verge of being drunk.
“As I say before, I not here Monday.”
He unscrewed his stick into two sections and placed them in a narrow leather case, which he zipped closed.
“Did you know Billy Lusk?”
“We play pool.” He slipped into his jacket and slung the leather case over one shoulder by its strap. “One or two times only.”
“Yet you remember his name.”
“It the polite way, to know man’s name.” He shook my hand and said, “Excuse me, please, Mr. Justice. I go now.”
I thanked him for the drink, but he was already gliding out. He passed Jefferson Bellworthy coming my way, looking even bigger and more imposing now that he was loose from behind the bar.
“I can talk now,” Bellworthy said. I watched Jim Lee slip through the heavy curtains that protected the entrance to The Out Crowd from the late afternoon sunlight.
A sudden sliver of brightness, and he was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Billy come in sometime after eleven,” Jefferson Bellworthy said. “Sat at the bar, like usual.”
We faced each other on metal folding chairs in The Out Crowd’s office, which occupied a corner of the storage room in the back.
I noticed a gym bag resting atop stacked cases of Bud Light and, next to it, a popular self-help book on anger management.
Bellworthy leaned slightly forward, placing his big hands on the knotted muscles that ran like a network of iron cord through his upper legs. His hands were dark on top, with palms the color of cooked salmon.
“Did you know him very well?”
“So-so,” Bellworthy said.
“What was he like?”
“Pretty-boy type. The kind you see more of in Boy’s Town. You know, real taken with hisself. Always lookin’ around, makin’ sure people are lookin’ at him.”
“Were you attracted to him?”
It wasn’t hard to see he didn’t like the question.
“He wasn’t my type,” Bellworthy said, tersely. “Not even close.”
“You said he sat at the bar.”
“Yeah. Near the light, like always, where everybody could get a good look at him. Only this time, he kept lookin’ at his watch.”
“Was that unusual?”
“I’d say it was. Billy was more interested in lookin’ at other dudes and havin’ fun. I don’t think time meant a whole lot to Billy.”
“Maybe he had an appointment. Or a date.”
“Maybe.”
“Did he hustle, sell drugs?”
“If he did, he didn’t do it here. We don’t allow that shit.”
“You see him talk to anybody in the bar?”
“Sure. He knew people, he was a regular. And guys were always hittin’ on him, he liked that. You know, a tease, a regular little heartbreaker. But you never saw Billy leave the bar with nobody. He was funny that way. He liked to keep his affairs private-like.”
“According to the police, he got a phone call right around midnight and left the bar shortly after that.”
“That’s what Randy told ’em.”
“Who’s Randy?”
“The night bartender.”
“You weren’t working that night?”
“I was on the door. That’s my usual job. They like a big dude at the door, ’case there’s trouble. Not so much from the customers, but from the street.”
“They let you tend bar during the day?”
“Right, to learn my drinks. Sometimes I help Randy out at night, if it’s busy. But Monday’s our slowest night.”
“So you work double shifts?”
“Pretty much. I can use the bread.”
“And you work out at the gym, too?”
He ran one of his hands over a bicep the size of a healthy cantaloupe.
“That’s where I’d be now if I wasn’t talkin’ to you.”
“You must be pretty tired when midnight rolls around, maybe not as sharp as you might be otherwise.”
“I can handle it,” he said, bristling. “I know what I heard and saw that night.”
“OK, after Billy got the phone call, what then?”
“I took a break while he was still on the phone. Passed by him on my way to take a leak.”
“That was a few minutes after midnight.”
“Must have been.”
“What next?”
“So I’m standin’ at the urinal, shootin’ a bunny. And I hear the gunshot.”
“How did you know it was a gunshot and not a car backfiring? Or a firecracker?”
He snorted a little, faintly derisive. “Where I grew up, you learn the difference real quick.”
“And you could hear the gunshot over the loud music?”
“The music ain’t so loud back there, especially if the door’s closed.”
“If the door was closed, how were you able to hear the gunshot?”
He suddenly stood up, glaring down at me.
“What is this, man? The fuckin’ third degree?”
“Just questions, Jefferson.”
His eyes flickered furtively toward the book next to his gym bag. He drew in a deep breath, followed by another, as if he’d practiced it.
He sat back down and took one more deep breath, exhaling slowly.
“OK, ask your questions. Whatever you want.”
“Do you have a problem controlling your temper, Jefferson? A history of violence, maybe?”
He tensed, though not as visibly as before. “You could say I’ve had some problems in that area. I’m workin’ on it.”
“You feel any special animosity toward Latinos?”
He glared this time.
“No.”
“You sure about that?”
His next words formed a question that provided an answer but also carried a warning.
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“OK. So tell me how you were able to hear the gunshot clearly from the closed restroom.”
“There’s a little window in there. It opens right onto the place where Billy got wasted.”
“What happened after you heard the shot?”
“I shook my dick a couple times and zipped up and ran out the back door to check it out. When I got outside, I saw the Mexican kid, whatshisname…”
“Gonzalo Albundo.”
“Yeah, Albundo. I saw him down on one knee, bent over Billy, with his back to me.”
“Was he on his left knee or his right knee?”
“His left knee, the one they found the blood on.”
“How did you know that?”
His body coiled, and I saw his meaty hands tighten into lethal-looking fists.
“I read it in your newspaper. OK?”
“Glad to see somebody’s reading it.”
He didn’t smile.
“You got any more questions? ’Cuz I got things to do.”
“Just before the gunshot, did you hear anything? Something that sticks out in your mind?”
He hesitated, his eyes restless with uncertainty. “Yeah, sort of.”
“What was that?”
“I heard Billy, at least I think it was Billy, cry out somethin’.”
“Cry out what?”
“It was like, ‘Hey, what are you doin’? Come on, man, I wasn’t serious, man!’ Somethin’ like that. You know, real scared. Begging, like.”
I sat forward on my chair.
“Did it sound like he knew the other person?”
Bellworthy cocked his head, surprised.
“Yeah, sort of. Like he was…”
He broke off, unsure of himself.
“Like he was what, Jefferson?”
“I don’t know. Like he was…”
“Take yourself back to that moment. Listen to Billy’s exact words in your head.”
He closed his eyes.
“Like he was what, Jefferson?”
A half minute passed.
Then he opened his eyes and said, “Like he was tryin’ to talk his way out of somethin’. Somethin’ he’d maybe got hisself into. Maybe too deep.”
“Did you tell the police that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged his huge shoulders.
“They didn’t ask.”
Chapter Twelve
I followed the undulating motion of Jefferson Bellworthy’s muscular buttocks through the rear door of The Out Crowd and back into the relentless heat.
It radiated off the asphalt, even in the building’s shade, and even as the sun was going down.
As we stepped out, my nose caught the sweet aroma from floral bouquets placed by friends and relatives near the spot where Billy Lusk had died.
On the back wall of the restroom was a tiny window right where Bellworthy had said it would be.
“That’s where Billy got it,” he said, pointing to the powdery white outline of a human form.
At the edge of the chalked head was a bloodstain the size of a basketball, barely visible after seeping into the gritty blacktop.
“He took it right in the face, straight on,” Bellworthy said. “Lookin’ right at death when it came at him. He shit his pants, he was so scared. The cops told me that.”
I asked a few more questions, and he provided additional details about the night of the murder, but nothing that got me too excited.
“There’s one more question I have to ask,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Do you own a gun?”
He looked at me hard, more with contempt, I sensed, than anger.
“You think every dude who’s black owns a gun?”
“No. Just asking.”
“I don’t own no gun.”
I went back inside and talked to Randy, the night bartender, as he dumped ice into a small sink behind the bar.
He was a lean, well-chiseled 501 clone pushing forty, with short-clipped reddish-brown hair and a trim, thick mustache. He didn’t tell me anything new at first, except that Billy had seemed tense, even upset when he’d talked on the phone shortly before he was killed.
