I took a few more stabs at getting a better answer from Alicia Cox, but all she would say was that it was Guy who told her the photos were ‘true.’ And that that was half the reason she decided to show them. I couldn’t decide whether he was being artistic with the comment—certainly there was ‘truth’ in all art—or whether there was more to the message he wanted the photos to convey. The most obvious connection was the Rodney King beating. But that didn’t seem strong enough to shut the exhibit down.

Driving north on Vermont, I turned at Los Feliz. I took Miss Saigon out of the cassette player and put in Les Miz. I’d seen Les Miz at the Schubert in Century City with Jeffer. I’d thought it was terrible, though, I still liked the music. Actually a little better than Miss Saigon.

Driving down Los Feliz, I glanced over at Guy’s building and noticed his mother and father standing next to some kind of dusty Ford truck with an extended cab, parked illegally. Cindy was walking out of the building carrying a plastic pail with a mop sticking out of it.

I screeched to halt and parked in front of the building, also illegally. Just in case, I put my flashers on before I ran over to the Peterson’s.

“Hello.”

“What do you want?” Cindy said, putting down the bucket. I got a whiff of soapy bleach. I guessed they must really want Guy’s security deposit back.

“I have a couple of questions I wanted to ask your father.”

“Why should he answer them?”

“Do you care at all about what happened to your brother?”

“Of course we do. But you’re not anybody. You’re just the video guy.”

“And somebody threw your brother into the dumpster behind my store,” I said defiantly.

Guy’s mother squeaked. Well, that was nice, I thought. Somebody gives a crap about him.

“Mr. Peterson, you identified the wrong body. Can you tell me how that happened?”

He seemed to shrink as he formulated his answer. “They confused me. I mean, they said it had to be Guy. I mean, the thing they showed me, with all its skin burned off… It could have been Guy. It could have been anybody.”

“Who were they?”

“Those policeman. Percy and the other one.”

“It didn’t bother you not to know for sure?”

“No, it didn’t. They were sure. Percy was sure, that was enough for me. And they said they was gonna do some tests.”

“But you went through his things. You had a memorial.”

“Stop talking to him like he’s done something wrong,” Cindy growled at me. “What about Guy? Huh? Where was he? Why didn’t he let us know he was alive? Did you ever think of that?”

“Guy was in hiding because he thought the police were going to kill him, and you know what? They probably did.”

Out of the corner of my eye, a black-and-white went buy. I ran back to my car as fast as I could. Up in front of me, the black-and-white was slowing down. He saw me get into the car and sped up. Thank God. A traffic ticket was the last thing I needed.

When I looked in the rear view mirror, I saw that the Petersons had piled into their truck and were driving away. I pulled out into traffic and drove down to the next street and turned right. A few minutes later I was on Hyperion and turning into the parking lot for Pinx Video.

The first thing that happened after I walked through the employee entrance was Mikey telling me that Lainey had quit.

“I told you not to be so hard on her,” I said.

“Noah, she quit because the police were asking questions about you. Her parents wouldn’t let her keep working here.”

“Why did they question Lainey?”

“They’ve questioned everyone.”

“Well, they’re not going to find out anything. They’re wasting their time.” Of course, if they were the ones who killed Guy they would want to waste time, wouldn’t they?

There were a lot of returns that needed to be input into the computer and then re-shelved. I volunteered to do that while Mikey dealt with some new videos that had come in: re-orders on The Fisher King, Dead Again and Madonna’s Truth or Dare. In a second box we got new additions to the classics shelf: The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday.

As I worked, I kept thinking about Guy Peterson. Was there a way to just stop all of this? A way to pull myself out of this mess? If there was I couldn’t see it. It really seemed like Percy and O’Shea might be trying to pin this on me. Obviously, it wasn’t going that well if they couldn’t even get a search warrant, but that didn’t mean the tide couldn’t turn. If I did nothing they might succeed. I had to keep trying to understand what was going on, right?

I was almost finished with the input when I realized Mikey was standing next to me.

“Yes?”

“Bob Diamond called. You haven’t given him all the tax information.”

“Crap.”

Bob Diamond, CPA was the store’s accountant. He’d filed an extension for our 1991 taxes but not without a half-hour lecture cataloguing all the reasons I needed to finish ASAP. It had been almost a month and I’d done almost nothing.

“You have to pay attention to things like that,” Mikey said, using an embarrassingly parental tone.

“Um, I know. I’ve just been a little busy lately. I mean, you did notice the dead body in the dumpster yesterday.”

“I’m not just talking about taxes. Noah, I know how much you’re making. You really could make a lot more with just a little push.”

“Okay, I need to go pull info together for Bob Diamond. I’ll do it. I promise.”

“Lube.”

“What about lube?”

“Lube. We should sell lube. To go with the porn. One stop shopping.” He gave me a look and said, “Or do you not understand how masturbation works?”

“I understand just fine. I don’t know, Mikey, I mean half our customers are straight. I don’t want to offend—”

“Straight people masturbate.”

“Yes, I knew that.”

The bell over the front door rang. I turned around to see Detective O’Shea standing there. He wore a shapeless gray sport jacket over a light blue oxford shirt and a pair of tailored jeans. He had me locked in his sights.

“What was at Cox Gallery?” he asked, when he got to the counter.

“Mikey, would you put these back on the shelves.” I handed him a stack of empty cardboard video boxes. Then I waited for him to be out of earshot. “You followed me?”

“It is my job.”

“Because I’m a suspect?”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. You have something to do with this, though, and I’d like to know what. What were you doing at Cox Gallery?”

“This won’t come as much of a surprise. The owner told me you and Percy stopped by and made sure Guy Peterson’s show got canceled. Why did you do that?”

“He’s lying.”

“She. The owner of the gallery is a she.”

“Okay. She’s lying.” He frowned deeply at me. “So, Peterson was supposed to have an exhibit there but it got canceled? Why do you think that’s important?”

I decided not to answer. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to talk to him about the photos. Actually, I wasn’t sure it was safe to talk to him at all.

“Did you see me talking to the Petersons?”

“You should maybe leave them alone. They’re grieving.”

“You coerced Mr. Peterson into saying Mr. Crispy was Guy when he clearly wasn’t.”

He smirked. “Mr. Crispy. That’s dark. Funny, but dark. You could have been a cop. You’ve got the gallows humor down.” I decided not to tell him it was Louis’ joke.

“And what about Detective Gaines?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“He’s missing. Have you checked to see if he’s Mr. Crispy? Could the body from the camera store be Gaines?”

He was very thoughtful for a moment. “Gaines was Nino’s regular partner. How did you know Gaines is missing?”

“It was in the newspaper.”

“Oh. I’ve been a little busy. I didn’t know they’d released that information. You know this isn’t how this is supposed to work.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I’ve asked three questions and you’ve asked about ten,” he said.

It wasn’t that bad. Though, I will admit to being an inquisitive sort.

He took a good long, uncomfortable look at me. “We’re looking for Ted Bain. Do you know where he is?”

“Why? Why are you looking for him?”

“No. The way this works is, I ask a question and then you answer it. Where is he?”

He waited. When I didn’t say anything, he said, “You know things you’re not telling me.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Where is Ted Bain?”

“I’m not saying anything about Ted Bain, unless you tell me why you’re looking for him.”

“You have to trust me,” he said, his puppy dog eyes looking extra sincere.

“No, I don’t.”

* * *

Actually, I really wanted to know where Ted Bain was myself. It had only been twenty-four hours since I’d tipped him off that the police knew about him, but I’d have appreciated a phone call. I wondered how I might find him.

After Detective O’Shea left I took a stab at organizing the accounts in my windowless office. It was an effort that didn’t last long. I went back up to the front and checked out customers until there was a lull.

“I didn’t need you,” Mikey said. “It’s really okay if people wait in line for a minute or two.”

“Sorry,” I said, apologizing for working in my own store. “You knew that Ted and Guy were boyfriends. How did you know that?”

Mikey blushed, something he almost never did. “Well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Did you have sex with Ted?”

“No. Randy did.”

“While you were together?”

He nodded. “It was a long time ago. I mean, we almost broke up, but then Ted came into the store and there I am looking at him, thinking, ‘I would have sex with him in a heartbeat.’ So then I couldn’t be mad at Randy anymore. Except for the fact that he got to screw Ted Bain and I didn’t. I still hold that over his head.”

“Do you know much about Ted? Do you know any of his friends?”

“Do you want go out with him? Obviously he’s single, but you should maybe wait. At least a couple of weeks.”

“Seriously?”

“What?”

“Ted is hiding from the police.”

“Oh. I guess that would make him hard to date.”

“And I’d like to talk to him.”

“Okay. Let me put on my thinking cap.” He started to think. It made him frown.

Meanwhile, a young guy came up to the counter, so I checked him out. He was renting two Falcon Videos, Plunge and The Big Ones. Most guys rented a regular movie at the same time just so they didn’t seem like complete pervs. I had to admire his boldness.

As soon as he walked away, Mikey said, “He has this close girlfriend. She lives in the same building with him. But that’s all I know.”

“Does she rent videos from us?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve seen her here.”

“Let’s do a look-up on his address and see if she comes up.”

“We can do that?”

I was surprised he didn’t know, though we usually only looked people up by name. And, I was the one who got the demo when we had the system put in.

“Yeah, you can search on any field. It was a selling point when we bought the system. Though, I don’t remember needing to look anyone up by their address before.”

Mikey got on the computer and quickly navigated to the correct field. He put in Ted’s address on Lafayette. Two records came up. Ted’s and a woman named Ivy Bell.

“Do you want to call her?” Mikey asked.

“Yes, let’s.”

He picked up the phone and dialed. I wondered what he was going to say if she answered. Would he say, “Hello, I have Mr. Valentine calling?” or was he going to carry on the entire conversation himself?

Looking over his shoulder, he said, “Answering machine.”

“Don’t leave a message. I’ll drive over.”

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting outside Ted Bain’s apartment building. It was a five-minute drive, but I’d had to zigzag all over the neighborhood to make sure I wasn’t followed.

The building was a filthy white, slab-like affair from the late fifties. It climbed a slight hill in three separate levels. Ted and Ivy lived next door to each other in the middle level. There was no security and I only had to find the right set of stairs to reach the second floor. Ivy was in apartment D and Ted in C. I reached Ivy’s door first.

I knocked. Several times. There was no answer, but then I wasn’t sure I was expecting one. Before I left Pinx Video, I’d written out a brief note asking that Ted call me. I slipped it under the door.

My errand complete, curiosity led me down to apartment C. I knew Ted wouldn’t be there. Still, I knocked. Well, tried to knock. As soon as my knuckles hit the door it fell open. I looked down at the doorknob and saw that someone had kicked the door open and then pulled it shut later on. The molding inside had broken and needed to be replaced. The lock was in pretty bad shape, too.

The apartment was shotgun style. There was a living room, a dining area, a kitchen you walked through to get to the bedroom in the back of the apartment. I didn’t immediately see exactly where the bathroom was. I was too busy looking at the mess in front of me.

Ted Bain liked books. Looking at him you wouldn’t think so. Pretty people have a reputation for not exactly being smart, so it was something of a surprise to find that the center of his living room was one gigantic pile of books. Someone had knocked over three bookcases, which had, presumably, been full. The sofa was overturned, its cushions tossed around, and the TV face down on the floor. Looking down the hallway I could see that his closet had received the same treatment, and the bedroom was littered with his clothes.

Amid the debris, I noticed that a box of headshots had been opened and dumped so that there were many, many Ted Bains looking up at me from the floor. In the kitchen, all the cabinets had been opened and what cookware there was pulled onto the floor. In the middle of that mess was a green button down shirt that said Bennigan’s over the heart.

Adding it all up, Ted Bain was a wannabe actor/model who worked as a waiter. An American cliché. Someone who normally wouldn’t be that interesting. Except now he was. He was a fugitive, and they were always interesting.