Light Before Day, Page 2

  I saw my mother as she had appeared in the crime scene photos I had forced myself to look at. She was lying facedown in the middle of Dumaine Street in the French Quarter. Her platinum hair was fanned forward from her head, and her right arm was extended as if she was pointing in the direction of the cab that had run her down at forty-five miles an hour.

  "Or are you still caught up with your stud from the car wash? What's his name?" Tommy asked.

  "Corey."

  I could see Corey Howard so sharply he might as well have been looming over Tommy's shoulder. He was six-foot-four, with briskly combed jet-black hair and hard plates of muscle armoring his chest, shoulders, and arms. Everything about the man was unyielding until you got to his dark eyes, deeply set beneath the hard line of his brow. I felt the man's breath in my ear, felt one of his hands pinning me to my mattress by my bare chest, urging me to relax. Tommy could read my face. "I guess it didn't end well."

  I didn't answer. "Emilio Vargas didn't want to do the interview because he was afraid of disgracing his mother's name. The same mother who threw him out when he was sixteen because he was a fag. She went to her grave without saying another word to him. That's what I had to talk him through to get him to sit down with me today, Tommy. Any idea what I should say to him now?"

  "Yeah," Tommy said. "Tell him to get a stylist."

  I shut my eyes briefly and reminded myself why I worked at Glitz magazine. My position allowed me to avoid doing the legwork required to become a real journalist. I just had to find a subject who looked like an Abercrombie & Fitch model.

  I was almost out the door when Tommy called out to me. He was standing over his desk. He handed me a computer printout of a Los Angeles Times article that I saw was almost two years old. The headline

  read: GAY COMMUNITY BELIEVES SERIAL KILLER IS BEHIND DISAPPEARANCES.

  I scanned the article as Tommy stood over me, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Some twenty-two months earlier, three model-perfect gay guys had vanished without a trace from West Hollywood. Local activists with too much time on their hands had become convinced that a serial killer was at work, even though there wasn't a shred of forensic evidence to support such a theory. Since then, the Slasher had become a punch line to an old joke.

  Shortly after I moved to LA, I attended a Halloween party where one of the guests had come dressed in a black ski mask and a black sweater. He carried a bottle of Cristal champagne by the neck, its shattered base smeared with fake blood. He had pinned pictures of the three alleged victims to the back of his sweater. The real Ann Coulter would have received a warmer reception from the other guests.

  "The West Hollywood Slasher?" I asked in disbelief.

  "The guys who disappeared," Tommy said. "They call them the Vanished Three. Have you seen their pictures? They look like God's gift to the Undergear catalog. There's some little memorial to them online. I can give you the web address if you want it." I didn't respond.

  "Anyway, they're superhot. I'd put all three of them on the cover. Twice."

  "That's the only reason anyone cared when they went missing," I said. "Guys vanish from West Hollywood all the time and nobody pays attention."

  "So I guess you're not interested?" Tommy asked.

  "It's ancient history, Tommy. These guys went home with the wrong guy and there was never any evidence that it was the same one. Why don't I just try out Bigfoot instead?"

  Tommy let out an exasperated sigh and sank down into his desk chair. I folded up the article and shoved it in my pocket.

  "I'll see you at nine tomorrow," Tommy said. "I need you to stuff boxes for that promotion we're doing in P-Town." I turned on my heel. "And leave the hangover at home this time, please."

  My apartment building sat a block below the Sunset Strip. It had stucco walls painted dark gray and one story of south-facing units above a row of driveways. Every night, the city of West Hollywood raised three concrete columns in the middle of my street to keep the traffic on the Strip from spilling over into the residential blocks below.

  The liquor store several blocks away was made famous when an Oscar-winner-to-be slammed her car into its side wall. I stopped off there on my way home from the office and left with a bottle of Crown Royal, a six-pack of Diet Coke, and two bottles of cheap Chardonnay that I managed to convince myself were for guests. I had never hosted more than one guest in my tiny studio.

  My bed was a mattress that sat on a short platform next to the living area, and I had placed a love seat in front of the television because I wanted room for an Ikea desk station I had never finished putting together. The vertical blinds were so old and tattered that I had purchased an Oriental screen to block out the morning sunlight. It was heavy, and on most nights I didn't feel like dragging it across the pseudo-shag carpet, so it rested on the wall just inside my front door, and I would awake in the morning squinting. From my tiny balcony, I could see all the way to that grounded UFO called downtown LA.

  Before I poured my first drink, I shoved the LA Times article on the West Hollywood Slasher into my desk drawer and pushed my desk chair out onto my balcony. Across the cascade of rooftops, a police helicopter circled lazily above Santa Monica Boulevard, its searchlight stabbing the lingering haze.

  Instead of calling Emilio Vasquez and breaking the news about the failed feature, I left a message for my friend Rod Peters. I didn't tell him what was wrong. Rod was an assistant to a celebrity manager and on the fast track to getting his own desk, which meant he didn't have the time for the land of self-obsession and drug use that I did. The last time we had seen each other, Rod had come to pick me up from a gas station in Silverlake after I emerged from a brownout with a dim memory of being tossed from some guy's pickup truck because I had made fun of his Daisy Dukes. I told myself that if he called me back within twenty minutes, I would fix myself one bourbon and Coke, then pour the rest of the bottle down the sink.

  Rod didn't call. I remember pouring my first drink. I remember hearing the police helicopter I had watched earlier fly so low over my apartment building that it rattled my sliding glass door against its frame.

  I remember composing part of a letter to my sister, Candace, a letter that thanked her for asking me to be in the room during her C-section and allowing me to witness my niece's first breath. A letter that tried to explain that I hadn't called her in the weeks since our mothers death because when our parents had divorced, she had picked the parent who didn't call you screaming in the middle of the night because the nightmares were back and you were in every single one of them. She had picked the right side, the side that had lived, but I still thought I deserved a medal for sticking with the side that had withered and died.

  I remember balling up the letter and tossing it in the wastebasket.

  To this day, I do not remember anything else about the night of Wednesday, June 2.

  The next morning I woke up staring at a geisha's gold-leaf face. The Oriental screen I rarely touched had been opened and placed next to the bed. I was tucked neatly under the covers in boxers and a T-shirt, and the top sheet had been folded back over my comforter. It was seven A.M. and I still had two hours to get to work.

  When I got to my feet, my butt knocked the screen and it went over. I heard a crash and saw pieces of the Crown Royal bottle dance out from under my coffee table. The vertical blinds were closed. To avoid cutting my bare feet, I walked the screen like a plank and then hopped to the carpet on the other side. It was a huge mistake. My stomach rose into my throat and my ass hit the floor. For a long while, I just sat there, fighting down bile, gazing dully at the poster for the Krewe of Dionysus on the wall above my love seat. It was one of the larger and more popular New Orleans Mardi Gras parade organizations, and my father had been a riding member since before I was born. If my mother had not given it to me as a housewarming present, I never would have hung it on my wall. My father and I had barely exchanged a word since their divorce. The poster featured a cartoon rendering of the god of wine lift
ing a golden goblet full of plastic Mardi Gras beads toward his leering mouth. I figured it was time to replace him with a picture of Bill W. When I was a senior in high school, my parents had purchased a condo on Florida's Gulf Coast, just a few hours' drive from where I grew up in the Lakefront area of New Orleans. On our first trip there, my mother threw a drink at my father because he refused to leave four days earlier than we had planned. This single act effectively ended a marriage that had been dead for years. On my mother's orders, I had helped pack all of his belongings before we left. I'm still not sure if she wanted him to follow us in pursuit of his shorts and polo shirts or if she just wanted to punish him for not giving in to her demands, as I had done. A few hours later, I was following my mother east on I-10, through a pelting rainstorm, when my father called her cell phone to tell her that their marriage was over.

  Later, my mother and I were eating dinner at a Cracker Barrel in Mississippi when she came out of her daze to give me her opinion on the day's events. "I hope you never know what it's like to have a life you can only get rid of," she told me.

  Now, as I sat paralyzed by nausea on the floor of my apartment, I realized that my mother's hope had been dashed. I was a twenty-six-year-old blackout drunk. I had grown accustomed to checking my Jeep for dents and bloodstains every other morning, studying the call log on my cell phone to see if I had given anyone a piece of my alcohol-soaked mind the night before.

  I had a life that I could only get rid of.

  I spent an hour throwing up, then another hour trying to slide into clothes that didn't put too much pressure on my abdomen. I made it to the office right on time. Tommy was at his desk looking through photo proofs of fashion models. He took one look at me and his nose wrinkled.

  "I'm quitting drinking," I said.

  "Fabulous," he mumbled, then went back to work.

  Later that day, after the nausea had abated and the overwhelming sense of self-hatred had turned into a slight dizzy feeling, I was grateful for the fact that I hadn't told my boss just when I was going to quit drinking. I had just told him that it was in the cards.

  The next night, Friday, I was sitting in a bar sipping a cosmo on the rocks. My date for the evening was supposed to be a handsome TV weatherman named Dave Bolter. He had a nice house in the Norma Triangle section of West Hollywood and an ass that could stop a war. I had called to tell him that while I had decided to quit drinking, I was tapering off slowly. This seemed to intrigue him. He sounded interested in spending a night with me that didn't feature hours of cocaine and pornography, as our previous two get-togethers had. Tonight he was already an hour and a half late.

  People in West Hollywood still talk about the days when The Abbey was just a coffee shop.

  It used to be the place to go if you wanted to pick up on fresh-faced young men who didn't have the fake IDs to get into the clubs along Santa Monica Boulevard. Several years and a liquor license later, it is West Hollywood's most popular gay bar. Several griffins guard the entrance, and a statue of Saint Francis stares out at the crowd like a closeted missionary who has grown too comfortable with his potential converts. At ten P.M., the Friday-night crowd was swelling. It already featured a surprising number of men who had appeared on popular reality television shows.

  A hand slid under my leather jacket and tweaked my right nipple. "Cool jacket," a vaguely familiar voice whispered into my ear.

  Nate Bain gave me a broad smile that revealed teeth even as piano keys. The last time I had laid eyes on the guy, I had been sitting on the couch in my apartment with my pants around my ankles, wilting from the realization that once again I had inadvertently rented a porn film with someone I knew in it. Nate had a short, broad-shouldered body, and his white tank top set off his sculpted arms. A U.S. Marine Corps baseball cap concealed a spiky crop of jet-black hair. I had encountered him at various parties over the last year, where his sheen of sweat and nonstop conversation told me that he was amped up on something stronger than cocaine.

  Now Nate's cheeks looked sunken, and his wide eyes were bloodshot. A welter of red dots disfigured his right arm, which told me he had spent some time picking at the skin. June Gloom had brought chill to the night air, but he looked feverish. He saw me notice these things and his smile waned.

  "Where'd you get it?" he asked.

  "The jacket?" I asked.

  He nodded, his eyes darting past me as if he thought he had been followed. "I ordered it from the J. Crew catalog back when I was in high school." I heard the slight slur in my voice and steadied myself with a deep breath. "Back then, ordering anything leather seemed like an act of rebellion. My first boyfriend always said it smelled like vitamins."

  "What was he like?" Nate asked.

  "He was a patrol cop in Jefferson Parish," I said. "He almost succeeded in keeping his wife and me from finding out about each other."

  "Where's Jefferson Parish?"

  "Outside New Orleans. Where I'm from. Is there something I can help you with, Nate?"

  The bite in my voice made him flinch. "I need to talk to you," Nate said in a low voice. His smile had vanished and his tone was suddenly so serious I thought he was about to tell me I had three hours to live.

  "Can it wait?" I asked. "I'm on a date."

  "The weatherman?" he asked. "He dates everyone. You can do better, Adam."

  Just then, Nate's eyes darted past my shoulder. I turned, expecting Dave Bolter to give me the kind of smile that made television viewers across the Southland fall in love with terms like marine layer and offshore flow.

  I found myself eye to eye with a barrel-chested guy in an Abercrombie & Fitch tank top. He had sprayed his bangs straight up and moisturized himself back into his thirties. The glassy sheen in his round eyes reminded me of old heavy metal album covers. He smacked his gum as if he were working his way to a piece of solid gold in the middle.

  "I want my shirt," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You don't even remember me, do you?" he asked.

  "We were having a conversation," Nate chimed in, sounding like an irate third grader.

  Our new companion gave Nate a dull stare. "Love your work," he said. Then to me he said,

  "Seriously. I want my shirt. It's Prada."

  "You better cut those bangs before you catch a bird," I said. I tried to return my attention to Nate, but the guy grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.

  "Let me refresh your memory. You made me drive you to Silverlake to see my dealer, then you spilled all my fucking cocaine, then you were too busy crying about your drunk mother to do any of the things you'd promised to do on the ride back to your place." He let this sit for a few seconds. "I want my fucking shirt."

  "This is bullshit," I heard myself whisper. But I wasn't talking to the man in front of me. I was talking to myself.

  Nate seized my elbow and pulled me away from the bar. Some reflex led me to pick up my pint glass and take a slug from it as Nate dragged me into the crowd.

  "What the fuck is your problem, dude?" the guy shouted after us. "Did your mom get loaded and mistake you for your dad?"

  My feet turned to concrete blocks. Nate said my name in a low voice that he hoped sounded authoritative. I turned. The guy was standing several feet away, his fists balled at his sides.

  Several heads had already swiveled to stare at us.

  The next thing I knew, my pint glass was sailing through the air in front of me at a speed that didn't seem possible. I heard screams that were too loud to be mistaken for drunken laughter.

  The guy hit the deck on all fours and the glass smashed into a rack of tea candles on the wall behind him.

  Nate swore, grabbed my shoulder, and pulled me into the throng of men. The two of us were halfway across the patio before two muscular arms grabbed me. One bouncer pushed Nate off to the side while the other gripped the back of my neck, forcing my head into a bowed position. I saw the crowd before us parting like the Red Sea gone pink, and then I hit the sidewalk in front of the entrance on all
fours.

  "What was that shit?" one of the bouncers barked.

  I thought if I got to my feet we might have West Hollywood's version of a Rodney King moment, which meant they would flog me with Glo-sticks. Nate started to explain in a frantic high-pitched voice, but one of the bouncers silenced him.

  "Domestic dispute," I groaned.

  "Let me take him home," Nate pleaded.

  There was a silence from above and I could feel a thousand sets of eyes on me through the patio's front gate. Shame misted my eyes and clogged my throat. One of the bouncers told Nate that I was forever banned from The Abbey, then shouted the same thing down in my direction just to be clear.

  Nate pulled me to my feet and suddenly we were walking against the tide of pedestrians toward Santa Monica Boulevard. "It's over," I said.

  'What?" Nate asked.

  "Nothing."

  'Where do you live?"

  I pointed uphill. In the low fog, the lights of the Sunset Strip were a milky mist that obscured the foothills, turning the lights of their terraced houses into dusty floating pearls. Nate took my hand and tried to pull me onto the sidewalk.

  "This hasn't been my night, Nate."

  "Just come with me, Adam. Please." I averted my eyes from his. They were still moist.

  "Come on! I just saved your ass from a night at the sheriff's station."

  "Thanks."

  A silence fell.

  "I hear you're a real reporter now," he said. I didn't refute this charge. "I've got a story for you."

  Chapter 2

  As soon as Nate and I got back to my apartment, I went into the bathroom and washed my face. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. Nate was waiting for me on the love seat with a cup of instant coffee. I was surprised to hear myself thank him. Humiliation was sobering, and with sobriety came better manners. I took a seat on the love seat next to him as he channel-surfed.

  "You still work for that magazine?" Nate asked.

  "Are you angling for an interview? We don't usually cover porn stars, but I guess it's not that much of a stretch."