I couldn’t sleep. Big surprise. I pulled the two boxes of photos out of my bedroom closet and brought them out to the living room. I dumped them all on the dining table. I divided the photos into stacks and separated them into three simple categories: safe, semi-dangerous and dangerous. In the safe pile went all of the landscapes and cityscapes taken at a distance—it was hard to blackmail a tree or a building. In the semi-dangerous pile I put anything with a person in it, just in case. Most of the “artistic” nudes went into that pile, figuring they weren’t graphic enough to blackmail anyone over. The dangerous pile was the smallest. In it, I put all of the artsy photos of the Rodney King-like beating and a couple of other explicitly sexual photos which, depending on who they were of, could be used for blackmail.

Of course, there was the box I didn’t have. The box that Guy’s sister was about to dump into the garbage. Seeing that I’d taken the others, she might have kept it. Or, she might not have. And for all I know, every single photo in there could be used to blackmail someone.

I went back to the artsy photos of the white guy being beaten. Guy had told me to be afraid of the police. Well, no, he’d said they’d kill me if I knew too much. Did these photos constitute knowing too much? I spread them out and studied them. I looked at all the faces. I didn’t recognize anyone. There seemed to be floodlights behind the camera giving the photos a very ‘shocking’ look. All they needed to be a fashion shoot was a couple of models in satin dresses wandering around amid the violence.

I finally fell asleep at the table while studying the photos, at about four in the morning. Six hours later, I woke up with an eight by ten stuck to my face and someone knocking on my door.

Opening the door, I found Marc and Louis standing there in well-tailored dark suits. Louis raised his eyebrows when he saw me—gym shorts, wife-beater, a terminal case of bedhead.

“You’re not ready.”

“Oh, gosh, maybe you guys should go without me.”

“Don’t be silly. No one’s going to slap our wrists if we’re a little tardy,” Marc said.

“Get in the shower. I’ll make coffee,” Louis added as they pushed by me into the apartment.

Reluctantly, I went to get ready. Fifteen minutes later, I was showered and shaved. I pushed my hair around until it almost looked styled.

Standing in front of my closet in a towel, I studied my meager choices. The only suit I had was the one I wore to Jeffer’s funeral. I’d sworn I would never wear it again. A promise that might have been easier to keep if I’d given it away to charity. My other options were limited. I could go with a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt, but that was more appropriate for joining a motorcycle gang than attending a funeral.

I had two jackets: one was black with a windowpane pinstripe and the other was chartreuse. Both were from the late eighties and had gigantic shoulder pads. Chartreuse was wrong for a funeral. In fact it was wrong for most things. When I bought it Jeffer asked if I had dreams of becoming a pimp. I did not. I think I wore the jacket once.

Louis stuck his head into the bedroom. “Knock, knock, I hope you’re decent.” He set a cup of coffee onto the built-in dresser that took up most of the wall behind the door. “There was some Kahlua in your cupboard, so I spiked your coffee.”

He retreated, closing the door behind him. I went and retrieved the coffee. There was no other option. I was going to have to wear the black-and-white jacket with the shoulder pads. I put on the black jeans, a white oxford shirt, a silver tie and the offending jacket. It was best I could do. My shirt needed ironing and my shoes were scuffed, but I was ready.

I drank the rest of my coffee, as I stepped out into the living room.

“What are you doing with the photos?” Marc asked.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I looked through them.”

“See anything interesting?”

“Not really.”

I couldn’t mention that the meaning of the photos was now very different. There was some danger there I wasn’t seeing. A danger I didn’t want to include them in.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Marc looked at me quizzically. “Aren’t you going to do your hair?”

“Oh, God.”

After I spent another five minutes prodding and coaxing and pasting my hair so that it looked deliberate, we left. Louis drove a two-year-old beige Honda something or other with velour seats and a sunroof. We could have taken Marc’s Infiniti, but they didn’t want to add unnecessary miles to the lease. I sat in the backseat and watched the city go by for a few minutes. When he pulled onto the 101 going north, I asked, “Where is the memorial?”

“It’s at a funeral home in North Hollywood.”

“North Hollywood? Why?”

“I imagine they had trouble getting it. It’s kind of a busy weekend for funerals.”

I hadn’t thought about that. The death total for the riots was now more than sixty. And of course that didn’t include the stress-related heart attacks. Those weren’t counted and published in the newspaper. Funerals had to be happening all over the city at a breakneck pace.

“Louis, tell him the name of the place we’re going,” Marc said.

“International Funeral Home of Pancakes,” he said, cackling.

“It is not,” I said.

“No, but it’s close. It’s something like International Funeral Homes of America.” That was nearly as bad. How something could be international and national at the same time was beyond me.

We were heading through the Cahuenga Pass, when Louis asked, “Noah? Do you think they cremated him?”

“Oh, Louis,” Marc said.

“All right, this is stopping before we get there. You cannot crack jokes at this thing,” I said.

“Not even if I whisper?”

“Even if you whisper.”

When we got to North Hollywood, the funeral home was something of a shock. It was a single story building with no windows, a double Mediterranean front door and a “decorative” wall made out of concrete blocks. The parking lot around the building was cracked, with weeds growing through the cracks.

After he finished parking, Louis looked over the front seat and said, “The VFW hall must have been booked.”

“Louis,” Marc and I said at the same time.

We got out of the car and made our way into the funeral home. There were three separate rooms: Serenity, Eternity and Tranquility. The Peterson Memorial was in the Tranquility room at the back of the building.

As we entered, there was a large photo on an easel. It was Guy Peterson’s high school graduation photo. He looked awkward and a little feral. His features hadn’t yet morphed into the attractive man he’d become. The high school picture seemed an odd choice for the Petersons to make. Perhaps they wanted to use a photo from a time when he was completely theirs. But still, it made it seem we were attending a memorial service for a teenager. A tragedy much worse than this one.

Though I didn’t know who we were really memorializing, I didn’t think it was a teenager. Given Guy’s fear of the police, I’d say the dead guy was a policeman. I tried to remember if I’d seen anything about a missing policeman after the riots; I knew there were missing people, well over a hundred. Was one of them a policeman? Or some kind of informant? And what was Guy’s real connection to the police?

The room was half full. On one side of the room there was a collection of familiar looking guys, neighborhood guys who might have been Guy’s friends (or tricks) and also rented videos from me. On the other side of the room were Guy’s parents standing with a young woman in an off-the-shoulder black minidress. I wouldn’t have recognized her except for the way she glared at the obviously gay men on the other side of the room. It was his sister, Cindy.

She cleaned up better than expected, though when I looked close I noticed the toughness I’d seen earlier. She was a little too tall—and her three-inch heels just made things worse—and too wide to wear that dress. She looked like the kind of woman who carried a shiv in her purse, next to the blood red lipstick.

“There’s no coffin,” Marc said.

“I told you—”

“Shut up.”

“It’s a memorial,” I said. “Memorials happen without the body.”

“So where is his body?”

Just then Javier O’Shea walked in. I said, “I don’t know, let me try to find out.” And I walked to the back of the room.

“I thought you barely knew Guy Peterson?” O’Shea said when I got over to him. His eyes were a dusty brown, about the same tone as his skin. In combination with his ink-black hair they were far too distracting.

“Guy was an acquaintance. Is there some Miss Manners rule I missed about attending a memorial for an acquaintance?”

“It’s just odd, that’s all.”

I studied him for a moment then said, “Wait, I’ve seen this in a movie. The police go to funerals because they think the killer will, too.”

“And usually the killer walks up to the policeman and says something almost exactly like that.”

“I can guarantee you, I didn’t kill Guy Peterson.” I said, with absolute confidence.

“I don’t think you did.”

“So, there’s no coffin,” I mentioned, the point of my walking over.

“We haven’t released the body. When we do we’ll send it to Fresno and the Petersons will have a graveside service.”

“May I ask why you haven’t released the body?” I asked, though I knew it might have something to do with Guy’s being in my bedroom just a few hours before.

“No you may not, but I’ll tell you anyway. We’re waiting on dental records. In case you haven’t heard, there were over sixty deaths in the last week and a half. We’re not prepared for that kind of caseload.”

“I have to say, I’m surprised the Petersons are doing this. They’re not exactly friendly.”

“We asked them to. We’re still interested in talking to as many of Guy’s friends as we can.”

I glanced around the room again. I couldn’t tell you whether these were Guy’s friends or not. They could easily be gawkers.

“If you want to talk to Guy’s friends, you’d do better to go to Detour tonight around ten o’clock.”

“Are you telling me he was a whore?”

“You don’t have to be a whore to go to Detour.”

“No. But you do if you want everyone in Detour to know your name.”

Something about his saying that set off my gaydar like a five-alarm fire. A straight policeman would assume all gay guys were whores. Javier O’Shea didn’t do that.

“Where’s your partner?” I asked.

“Busy. The partner thing is kind of casual. On an ‘as needed’ basis.”

“I see. It took two of you to talk to me the other day, but one of you can handle an entire memorial service?”

“There are a lot of factors involved, geography, caseload. But you’re not really interested in my job, are you?”

No. I wasn’t. I was interested in knowing if he was as dangerous as Guy said. And I was interested in knowing why he was dangerous. Other than that I didn’t really care too much about his job.

“If you’ll excuse me, I should get back to my friends.”

“Did they know Guy Peterson?”

“Never met him,” I lied.

He nodded and I walked away. Right after I got back to Marc and Louis, Pachelbel’s Canon in D got pumped in over the speakers. That seemed to be a cue for everyone to sit down.

As the music was playing, Louis leaned over and asked, “Who was that you were talking to?”

“Policeman. They haven’t released the body yet.” And wouldn’t since Guy wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t safe to say that. “They’re waiting on dental records.”

“They’re not even sure Guy Peterson is dead?” Louis asked. Marc shushed us.

A minister from some sort of generic Christianity appeared in front of us and began the memorial. There wasn’t much to it, fortunately. The minister spoke about Guy for a few minutes, though it was obvious they’d never met. Then each of his family members got up and said a few words. His mother told a story about what a clever toddler he was. His father talked about his days as a Frontier Scout. His sister about her big brother standing up for her when she was bullied in school—though, I found it hard to believe she’d ever been bullied. I wondered if they were reading from scripts, and not just because their stories didn’t fit with the man I’d met. Their stories barely fit with who they seemed to be.

When it was over, we all stood and awkwardly began shuffling out of the stuffy room.

“Your policeman is sexy,” Louis said.

“He’s not my policeman.”

“Maybe he should be,” Marc said.

Great, I thought, they’re trying to fix me up with the most dangerous person in the room.