Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [49]
No one would connect a Beverly Hills matron’s death with a GP killed in a car crash in the rural Midwest.
I switched off the glaring makeup light and the room subsided into shadows. I pocketed the bit of newspaper and carried the jewelry out to the dressing table. Now it hardly mattered whether anyone stole it before the funeral. Maybe one of these days, another pack of thieves, less discriminating, would steal the fake Cézannes and tie up that loose end.
The family didn’t know. And they never would, not from me. As I said, in Beverly Hills, the police don’t talk. The victims don’t talk. And I am my father’s daughter. Why should I?
OVER THIRTY
BY CHRISTOPHER RICE
West Hollywood
The bus bench at the intersection of Santa Monica and La Cienega was empty, which meant that Jawbone was probably holed up in a shelter somewhere, possibly drying out from the combo of malt liquor and meth that kept him shouting at passing traffic for days on end. It was Ben’s lover Ron who had given Jawbone his nickname, a nod to the fact that the guy’s face was so wasted from drug use that the only solid thing left in it was his mandible. The intersection had been Jawbone’s turf for years now, and the fact that he had chosen this night to go on hiatus made Ben feel all the more shameful as he walked home from a sleazy gay bar at a little after 2 in the morning.
For most of the night he had guzzled weak vodka tonics. Then he had made the mistake of buying a tab of ecstasy off a nineteen-year-old tranny that had turned out to be spit and aspirin. Because he was slightly numb and seriously nauseous, it took Ben a few seconds to realize that he recognized the giant face staring down at him from the billboard for some new cop show that had just gone up over the intersection that afternoon. Ben had slept with the handsome actor right after moving to L.A. They had shared the same agent and the same cosmetic dentist and, to Ben’s disappointment, the same taste for throwing their ankles skyward in the bedroom. Now that he was being prepped for prime-time glory, it was a safe bet that the star-to-be, who had apparently changed his name from Peter Lefkin to Peter Lowe, no longer sped around West Hollywood in his Porsche convertible with Leontyne Pryce blasting from the stereo and a vial of coke tucked inside the pocket of his white jeans.
For a while, Ben just stood there, staring up at his former lover. Peter Lefkin Lowe had been given all of the same opportunities as Ben, and had adopted a few vices that Ben had never been forced to reckon with, and there he was, towering over the intersection of Santa Monica and La Cienega, while Ben, thirty-five and a year from his last acting job, stumbled home from a night spent watching adolescent go-go boys dance on top of a dirty bar.
He was supposed to be in Palm Springs getting wined and dined by his agent. But earlier that evening, an hour before he was supposed to brave rush hour traffic, Ben had taken a good hard look at the evidence and realized that his agent’s idea for a weekend getaway was probably a separation hearing. He hadn’t worked in over a year, not since being booted from the cast of A Passing Wind. Never mind that his four-year stint as alcoholic, sexually compulsive corporate attorney Arthur Bowden had earned him four Daytime Emmy nominations. Never mind that he had spent years training to be the kind of actor who didn’t have to hit the gym three times in a single day to make up for his lack of talent. The minute Ben Campbell started to grow a belly, Arthur Bowden’s life ended in a fiery helicopter crash, and now Ben Campbell was considering commercial work for the first time in ten years.
The bungalow he shared with his lover was the kind of tiny, absurdly expensive property that real estate agents referred to as charming and upwardly mobile gay couples referred to as transitional. Still, Ben felt a surge of pride as he approached it; this was the only real accomplishment