Paramount, where Leon worked, was only a few blocks away from my apartment with its main entrance on Melrose. I was to get there just before noon. I’d called Mikey and told him I’d come into the video store a few hours later. I dressed in my most business-like clothing: a pair of khakis, a button down shirt and a tie that was a bit too formal for either—the only one I had. Well, that’s not true, I did have a black bowtie from when I worked as a waiter, but that wouldn’t have worked either. Not to mention a black suit I swore I’d never wear again.

I’d bought a nine by twelve manila envelope at Office Depot and put Guy’s photos of Rex inside along with the negatives.

Leon had wanted to hold out one of the photos for himself, saying, “It’s for my collection.”

“You have a collection of famous people ejaculating?”

“Maybe.”

I held my ground and wouldn’t give Leon any of the shots. If I was going to give Rex back the photos, then I was going to give him back all the photos.

When I pulled into the ornate double gate, there were two cars in front of me. The marine layer was in full effect, a thick layer of clouds forming each morning that kept the temperature in the mid-sixties. We might see some sun in the afternoon when the clouds burned off, but there was no guarantee.

The first car was allowed onto the lot and we pulled forward. My palms started to sweat and I wiped them on my khakis one at a time. This was stupid, I thought. I should back up and leave. Except, I couldn’t. There was a black BMW behind me.

What was the worst thing that could happen? The guard would tell me I couldn’t come on the lot. It would be embarrassing, but that would be it. And the worst thing Rex Hoffman could do to me was have me thrown off the lot. I could survive that. No big deal.

Why was I bothering, though? Why was I risking anything, even embarrassment, for someone I barely knew? The only answer I could think of, and it came to me rather quickly, was that no one else was. I think if I could believe that someone else was going to try to find out what happened to Guy, I’d stop.

The next car pulled onto the lot and it was my turn. I pulled forward. The guard was black and middle-aged. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.

“I’m Noah Valentine. There should be a drive-on for me.”

The guard looked at a clipboard he was holding. Almost immediately he said, “There’s no Valentine. Who was supposed to call it in?”

That wasn’t good. I couldn’t give him Leon’s name. Actually, I didn’t even know his last name, so if I wanted to I couldn’t.

“You know, they’re really busy, could you just look again.”

It annoyed him, but he did it anyway. As he looked down the list his expression changed and he said, “Hmmm…” Looking up at me he said, “Nora Balentine?”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” I wondered if Leon had done that to me deliberately.

“Okay. Visitor parking is straight ahead. You’re going to stage eleven, which is across from the Crosby Building on Avenue L.”

None of that made sense to me, but it didn’t matter. I was getting onto the lot. If it took all day to find Rex Hoffman, then it took all day.

I found a place to park, got out of the car, and, of course, I walked off in the wrong direction. But the stages—which were all about four stories tall and came in various sizes—had gigantic numbers painted on them. So when I found myself standing in front of Stage 14, I knew I’d made a wrong turn, or hadn’t made a turn at all.

Since I didn’t have cable, I knew almost nothing about Rex Hoffman’s show Countdown Four-Oh! other than he spent two hours introducing the top forty videos.

I walked past the Zukor building. Stage 12 was on my left and Stage 7 directly in front of me. I took a left turn. As I walked, I tried to think of the earliest Paramount film we had at Pinx. I was pretty sure we had a copy of Wings, which I thought might be from that studio. That and Napoleon were our only silent films.

Stage 11 was coming up on my left. Just as Leon had told me, there were a couple of small travel trailers sitting across the street in front of the Crosby building. The second trailer I looked at had a piece of masking tape stuck next to the door that read, REX HOFFMAN, in blue marker.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Following Leon’s suggestion, I tried the door. It opened so I walked in. I stood just inside the door waiting for someone to run up and scream at me for letting myself in, but then I realized if anyone had noticed me entering the trailer they might assume someone inside had yelled, “Come in.”

It was a standard travel trailer, except there was a case of Evian on the counter, next to a portable TV/VCR combo and a boom box with a CD player. There were CDs and videocassettes everywhere on the dinette table mixed in with newspapers, trade papers and magazines.

The newspaper on top had an article about the riots. Skimming through I saw that it included numbers similar to ones I’d seen before: 58 people were listed as dead, more than 2,000 injured, and nearly 200 missing. It broke the numbers down further: who was white, who was black, who was Latino. None of the dead were policemen. The article went on to talk about how the police were seen abandoning whole neighborhoods to the rioters. Which explained—

“Well. Hello?”

I looked up and there was Rex Hoffman. He looked different with his clothes on, smaller somehow and, of course, not as “friendly.” He was also noticeably older.

“The door was open, so I came in to wait.”

“You shouldn’t just barge into people’s trailers. It could be taken the wrong way.”

“You could have locked the door.”

He ignored that. “So, who are you?”

“My name is Noah Valentine. I am, or was, a friend of Guy Peterson. I brought some pictures—”

“Oh. I see. Look, as I explained to Gary—

“Guy.”

“Whatever. I don’t pay blackmail. If you bought those pictures hoping to make a killing you’ve been conned.”

“Guy was blackmailing you?” I asked, surprised.

“No. He was trying to blackmail me. There’s a difference. I said, ‘Go ahead, publish the photos if you want. I’ll just explain that I was young and stupid and broke. If Vanessa Williams can live down her nude photos, I can live down mine.’”

“How long ago was this?”

“A couple of weeks, I guess. A month? Out of curiosity, how much did you pay for the pictures?”

“I didn’t pay for them. Guy died.”

“Well. I would shed a tear, but I’m not that good an actor.” He looked me over. “So, if you’re not here to blackmail me, then why are you here?”

To find out if he’d murdered Guy was the answer, but I could hardly say that. “I want to give you the pictures and in return I’m hoping you’ll answer a few questions.”

“Answer a few questions? You are blackmailing me, aren’t you? Just not for money.”

“I don’t really see it that way,” I said.

“Well, no, you probably wouldn’t. What do you want to know?”

“Why did Guy have the pictures in the first place?”

“I told you. I was young and stupid and broke.”

“Guy didn’t have other photos like that.” There were nudes, but none as explicit as the ones with Rex. Of course, there was that whole other box his sister wouldn’t give me, so I was making an assumption.

“I don’t know what he did or didn’t do with other models.”

“And they were never published.” If they’d been published Guy would never have tried to blackmail Rex since there would be hundreds, even thousands of copies.

“No, they weren’t.”

“Guy wasn’t in that business, was he?”

“All right, fine. We were together for a while and just took the pictures for fun one day. I should have asked for them when we broke up, but I wasn’t exactly thinking ahead. Is that all you want to know?”

“When did you become a VJ?”

“Two years ago.”

I nodded. “How much money did Guy ask for?”

“Why does that matter?”

“If he was just greedy he’d have come to you as soon as you showed up on TV. So, he must have needed the money for something specific. Maybe he was just asking for what he needed.”

“And maybe he just woke up one day and decided to be a scumbag.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“He wanted thirty thousand.”

“Did he say why he wanted the money?”

“Blackmailers don’t explain themselves.”

“But, you were friends once.”

“Sure. He said he was in a little trouble and needed money. I didn’t care to know more.”

“So you said no on principle?”

“Not just principle. Video Hits is kind of a new channel. This job pays scale. It’s an okay living, but I don’t have wads of cash lying around, you know?”

Something was getting clearer for me. Guy could have outed Rex. He could have admitted their relationship and used the photos as proof. Maybe he wasn’t quite as bad as Rex thought he was. Or maybe he was planning to blackmail Rex in stages.

“Have I answered all your questions?”

“Where were you last Thursday afternoon?”

“During the riots? At home with the door locked and the shades drawn.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I made a couple of long distance calls. I didn’t want people to worry about me.”

“People?” I asked.

“My sister mainly.” He blushed as though talking to his family was the worst thing he’d admitted. Of course, he could be lying about that. It would take weeks to get a copy of his phone bill—if he was even willing to show it to me when it arrived.

I was out of questions. I pushed the envelope across the dinette toward him. “I found the negatives. They’re in there, as well.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, I should let you get back to work.”

“I’m on break. Would you like to give me a blow job?”

“Oh, um, well, thank you for offering. But, no.”

Years ago, before Jeffer, I might have taken him up on the offer. But things were different now. There were a lot of reasons not to have sex with him, not the least of which was that he might be a murderer.

* * *

Marc and Louis were spending the evening watching a four-hour opera at the Dorothy Chandler, so they weren’t in the courtyard when I got home. I had promised to call Leon, though, so when I got into my apartment I poured myself a glass of chardonnay, put on a Chet Baker CD, and sat down at my desk. For a moment, I sipped the wine and looked out at the city at night. The lights were sparkling again and it gave me the eerie feeling that nothing had happened; that people hadn’t been killed, that buildings hadn’t been burned. I called the number Leon had given me.

“Ye-ays?” he answered.

“Leon, it’s Noah. I saw Rex Hoffman.”

“You did. Wonderful. And no one threw you off the lot?”

“No. He didn’t even ask me how I got onto the lot.”

“So what did you find out? Do you think he killed your friend?”

“I’m not ready to take him off the list yet, but I think it’s less likely.”

“Hmmm…did you find out anything interesting?”

“Yes. Guy was trying to blackmail him.”

“Really?”

“He thought that’s what I was there to do.”

“Well, you do look like a blackmailer.”

“Very funny. The thing is, I think Guy needed money for something.”

“You don’t think he might just have been greedy?”

“If he was just greedy, why wait? Rex has been on TV for a couple of years.”

“What do you think he needed money for?”

“I don’t know. He asked for thirty thousand dollars.”

“Down payment on a condo? Or maybe a brand new BMW?”

“No, I think it’s something more immediate. If he wanted a car he could have gone to Rex sooner. This is something he needed thirty thousand for now.”

“Like he needed surgery?”

“Or someone else did.”

“Hmmm. Did you give Rex a blow job?”

“What? No? Why would you—”

“Relax. Rex is famous for that. That’s half the reason I got you onto the lot, so you’d tell me all about it.”

“I said, no.”

“Well, that’s boring.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know I was this evening’s entertainment.”

“You know Marc and Louis are dying of curiosity. You never bring anyone home. You don’t even stay out late. They’ve decided the real mystery here is your sex life.”

This was very uncomfortable. I didn’t want to discuss this with anyone, no less Leon Whose-Last-Name-I-Didn’t-Even-Know.

“Well, I have to go. But, um, by the way, at the gate they were expecting Nora Balentine. That wasn’t deliberate, was it?”

“What? Moi?”