The Burning Plain Read Free Page A

certain,” Richie grumbled. “Death, taxes and Joel Miller.” He grabbed one of the transcripts piled on the coffee table. “People versus Bailey. Pearl? Beetle? F. Lee?”
    “None of the above. It’s an appeal from a murder conviction.”
    “Oh,” Richie cooed, excitedly. “Was the victim famous?”
    “No, a domestic dispute. Mr. Bailey killed his wife.”
    “Breeders are so literal-minded. Hasn’t anyone explained to them you can torture your spouse without ever laying a finger on them? Every fag knows that.” He lit another cigarette. “Of course, I blame it on the schools. Instead of forcing high school kids to read Romeo and Juliet , they should assign them Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Because, really, Henry, which one of those two great works of literature do most marriages resemble? I’ll give you a hint, Liz Taylor played me in the movie.”
    I grimaced. “I know it’s considered liberated to throw around the words ‘fag’ and ‘faggot,’ but they’re still hate words to me.”
    He stiffened slightly at the correction. “People can pack as much hate into ‘gay’ as they can into ‘fag.’”
    We had covered this terrain many times. Richie’s lacerating wit was more often than not directed at other gay men with a contempt that would have infuriated him had it come from a straight person. He never saw the contradiction. I did.
    “Let’s not argue,” I said. “Not today.” I pointed to the mantel. “Today, Josh came home.”
    He went to the fireplace, picked up the urn. “You beat his parents in court.”
    “It wasn’t a battle I would have chosen.”
    “They picked it,” he said, putting the urn on the mantel.
    I smiled. “No, actually I think Josh did by not telling them he wanted to be cremated.”
    “You’re so right about that,” he said, lighting another Marlboro.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I was in the hospital with him, Henry. He was always worse after his parents visited him, especially that father of his.” He made a face. “Like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments , that one. He laid the guilt on so thick the room had to be fumigated.”
    “Josh never mentioned that to me.”
    Richie arranged himself on the couch. “He thought you had enough to worry about.”
    I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth or inventing what he considered a consoling story. But the story was not consoling if true, and if not, it was a terrible thing to say. At such moments I remembered that Richie was not, as he liked to say, “your old Auntie Mame.” His wealthy family had institutionalized him when he was a teenager to cure him of homosexuality. When that failed, they cast him from the hearth and paid him to stay away. The experience left him with a corrosive rage.
    “If I were you,” he was saying. “I would’ve taken Josh’s ashes and thrown them in his parents’ faces.”
    I remembered Selma Mandel’s piteous “Oh,” when the judgment was announced. “Jesus, Richie. They aren’t evil. They loved him.”
    “That’s always the bottom line, isn’t it?” Richie said, venomously. “Your family fucks you up seven ways to Sunday, but it’s all right because they love you.”
    I shrugged, changed the subject. “Is this just a social visit, Richie?”
    “I have a friend who needs a lawyer,” he replied, abruptly all business.
    “Because?” I prompted.
    “Because he was arrested last week for something with a gun.”
    “Something with a gun?”
    “I have the arrest report,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket.
    It never failed to impress me how quickly Richie could shuck aside the queeny manner when it no longer served his purpose. Even his posture changed, the languid pose abandoned as he leaned emphatically forward.
    “Does the client have a name?”
    “Alex Amerian,” he said, handing me the arrest report.
    I scanned the cover sheet. The charges were PC sections 245 and 12022.I ; assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a