Fatal Shadows

The phone started ringing before I could relock the front door. For a moment I thought it was Robert calling in sick again.

“Adrien, mon chou,” fluted the high, clear voice of Claude La Pierra. Claude owns Café Noir on Hillhurst Ave. He’s big and black and beautiful. I’ve known him about three years. I’m convinced he’s a Southland native, but he affects a kind of gender-confused French like a Left Bank expatriate with severe memory loss. “I just heard. It’s too ghastly. I still can’t believe it. Tell me I’m dreaming.”

“The police just left.”

“The police? Mon Dieu! What did they say? Do they know who did it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What did they tell you? What did you tell them? Did you tell them about me?”

“No, of course not.”

A noisy sigh of relief quivered along the phone line. “Certainement pas! What is there to tell? But what about you? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think.”

must be in shock. Come

want to vomit. “I — there’s no one

have to eat, Adrien. Close the shop for an hour.

think about it,” I

Claude than the phone

my hands. Outside the kitchen window I

images flashed through my brain in a macabre mental slide show: Robert at sixteen, in his West Valley Academy tennis whites. Robert and me, drunk and fumbling, in

up. No chance to say goodbye. I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve, listened to the muffled ring of the phone downstairs. I told myself to get up and get dressed. Told myself I had a business to run. I continued to sit there, my mind racing ahead, looking for trouble. I could see it everywhere, looming up,

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was good. Life was good. But especially business was good. So good that I could barely keep up with it, let

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rose from the sofa, went into the bathroom to finish my shower and shave, which had been interrupted by the

hot water. In the steamy surface of the mirror I grimaced at my reflection, hearing again that condescending, “But you are a homosexual?” As in, “But you are a lower life form?” So what had Detective Riordan seen? What was

Maybe there really was a straight guy checklist. Like those “How to Recognize a Homosexual” articles circa the