Limits of Justice, The Read Free Page B

last year in Gentlemen’s Quarterly. ”
    “Oh, yes, Templeton’s famous GQ piece.”
    “I found an old copy and read it again. Once I understood more about you, about what was behind the Pulitzer scandal, you seemed like the ideal candidate.”
    “I know the gay world, from which Randall Capri presumably springs.”
    “That was part of it, along with your journalistic experience.”
    “And the other part?”
    “I figured you’d be in need of work and thus affordable. I can’t exactly get Woodward and Bernstein for fifty thousand dollars, can I?”
    “So you contacted Alexandra at the Times, hoping she’d put you in touch with me, which I’m sure she was delighted to do.”
    “She was very helpful. She said you’d be perfect for the job.”
    “And you don’t have to worry that I might molest you.”
    Charlotte smiled again, looking almost childlike for a moment. I’d started liking her, even though her naïveté scared me a little.
    “I didn’t really think about that, but I guess it’s another plus.”
    “There may be expenses.”
    “I’m fine with that.” She sat forward eagerly. “We have a deal then?”
    “I’ll need a cashier’s check for the advance.”
    “We can go straight to the bank this morning, if you’d like.”
    “Also, a contract.”
    “I’ve already taken care of that.”
    She rummaged in her tote bag again. Half a minute later, a formal contract lay before me on the table, setting down the terms in precise detail.
    “You come prepared, Charlotte.”
    She nodded toward the accordion file.
    “You’ll find several more individual files in there that should help you get started, along with various notes and documents, arranged by subject. I’ve also tucked in a card of my own, with my home address and phone number. I’ll be available for whatever you need.”
    “I can see you’re very organized.”
    “I try to be, especially when a project means so much to me.”
    She paused as her left hand formed her signature neatly on the bottom of the contract, then leveled her eyes on mine.
    “You do understand how important this is to me, don’t you, Mr. Justice?”
    I told her that I did. Then I suggested she take a stroll through the neighborhood, checking out the quaint little houses along the tree-lined streets of the Norma Triangle, while I cleaned up and changed clothes before we went to the bank.
     
    *
     
    When Charlotte Preston was gone, I climbed into the shower and let the hot water stream down on me, and began to shake all over.
    I’d tested positive for HIV roughly a year before and still hadn’t pulled myself back together—still hadn’t come to terms with the stark realization that the virus was in my system, that there was nothing I could do to turn back the clock, undo the damage. When the test results came back on that life-changing afternoon, my reaction had been to plunge into a six-month drinking binge of blindness, fury, and fear. My tequila holiday had ended abruptly half a year later with the death of Harry Brofsky, once my editor and mentor at the Los Angeles Times, whose career I’d ruined along with my own. He’d withered away after a paralyzing stroke and finally died in his sleep without my saying good-bye because I was locked up in my apartment with the shades drawn and my phone off the hook, feeling sorry for myself while I worked my way to the bottom of another bottle. The shame of that had jarred me off the booze, but when the blessed alcohol was gone, I was left with little more than the growing awareness of the virus inside me, slowly devouring my immune system cell by cell, and a life in front of me that veered wildly in my fevered imagination between hopelessness and horror.
    So I’d remained locked up in the same apartment where my lover Jacques had slowly died not quite a decade ago, from the same virus that now coursed through my veins. Month after month I’d stayed shut in alone, losing weight, enduring minor rashes and low-grade