Killing Hour

I jumped in and said, ‘The police . . . they just seem to have washed their hands of all this. They want to get rid of the case as quickly as they can. Maybe it’s because my brother and sister-in-law aren’t important here. They live on welfare. To be frank, they’re concerned that because they draw their income from the state, everyone’s just stonewalling them in the hope it will all just go away. They’re convinced they have no right to look into their son’s death.’

The reporter glanced at her cameraman, basically asking, You getting this?

‘Look, I’m a doctor for God’s sake,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you want to know how a twenty-one-year-old kid goes from twenty-four-hour suicide watch in a locked cell to an unprotected halfway facility in just a matter of days – and then ends up at the bottom of a six-hundred-foot cliff?’

At this point, I no longer cared whose feet I was stepping on.

‘All they’re getting from everyone is just, We’re so sorry. That’s tragic. Well, sorry simply isn’t enough. They want someone to take responsibility. They want some answers. You’d want that if it was your family, wouldn’t you, Ms Rodriguez?’

‘Yes, I would want that.’ The reporter nodded, the cameraman shifting to get her reaction. I could see it was affecting her too.

She asked us for names. And we gave them to her.

The doctor, Derosa, who was clearly ducking my calls. And Anna Aquino, who ran the care facility Evan had been dumped in.

And Detective Sherwood.

She promised she would contact the hospital and speak with officials there.

‘God bless you.’ Gabby wrapped her arms around her and thanked her. ‘For whatever you can do.’

‘I want them to know they can’t just shit on us,’ Gabby said after they left, coming up and giving me a grateful hug. ‘We may be poor, but our son deserves some answers too.’

Charlie sat there, distracted, unconvinced. He picked up his guitar and strummed a few chords. ‘You’re going to go home, Jay, but we’re still here. These people own us. Maybe we just should have let it lie.’

Chapter 14

That night, Gabby asked me over for dinner.

I came up with maybe a dozen reasons why she shouldn’t go to the trouble, but she insisted.

‘You are here, Jay, and I’m allowed to invite you to our house. Maybe it’ll take my mind off everything.’

Sherwood had called earlier, saying we could come and look at Evan’s body tomorrow, which didn’t exactly elevate the mood.

In spite of it all, she threw together a pretty good meal.

A paella of chicken, sausage, and shrimp on a bed of yellow rice. I bought a local sauvignon blanc from a store called Scolari’s Market.

‘What the hell,’ Gabriella chortled, pouring a glass for herself as well. ‘I think tonight God will forgive me if I drink a little too.’

We ate and polished off the wine, and despite all that was going on, the mood managed to stay upbeat and light. We talked about Kathy and my kids. How adult they had become. I always tried not to build them up too much. Sophie and Max, who took AP courses, played on the lacrosse and field hockey teams, volunteered at food banks, went to the Bahamas on spring break. Even in their most ordinary moments, they had more to show than Evan had accomplished in his life.

Sooner or later, as it always did, the conversation came around to our dad.

Leonard the Good and Lenny the Louse, as he always referred to himself.

You never quite knew which one you would get.

No one could charm a room like my father. No one could be warmer or more captivating.

And no one could cast you out as quickly when he suddenly felt betrayed.

He always surrounded himself with a constantly shifting circle of wealthy, influential people: models, Wall Streeters, retail executives, movie producers, not to mention his inner circle of rakes and hangers-on, who eventually sucked him dry.

Dad’s charisma was boundless, but his temper was even larger. And it always seemed to rear up after a couple of scotches. He would elevate brand-new acquaintances as his closest friends in the world – true geniuses, movers and shakers, even those who it was clear only wanted something from him.

The same people, down the line, who, when the tide eventually turned – and it always did – were banished from his sight.

His biggest customers – not just lowly buyers but upper management, even store presidents – loudly thrown out of his showroom and told to never come back. His panicked salesmen scurrying after them, feverishly apologizing. They even came up with a logo that poked fun at his legendary outbursts: Lenny Didn’t Mean It, it was called.

He would introduce me to his pals as ‘the Remarkable Dr Jay’, even as a kid. And I had to admit it always made me feel like the most important person in the world. Growing up, he would take me out for dinners with his drop-dead girlfriends at Gino’s or to sit at the bar with his Irish bookies at PJ Clarke’s.

Then he wouldn’t call for weeks, completely forget important events. Disappoint me terribly.

I never understood what was behind my father’s rage. The truth was, if he were diagnosed today, maybe we would know. He ran away from Brooklyn in the forties and headed out to Hollywood, where he took up with starlets and ingénues and managed to become the right-hand man of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. His homes were always filled with bikinied beauties in the pool and glamorous people dropping by. Opera blasted over the beach on the stereo.

He made millions over the years – and gave back every penny.

At the end, his business partners grew shadier and shadier, as the glamour crowd wanted nothing to do with him. The Wall Street honchos became shiftier and the retail bigwigs turned into low-priced discounters.

There was the suspicious fire in his warehouse in Brooklyn. The SEC was on his back over cash that had disappeared from the firm, as well as the IRS over back taxes.

He became sort of a sad figure, driving around in his ten-year-old Mercedes, scrounging around the city’s flea markets, arriving unexpectedly at the house with some bizarre new ‘find’: paintings no one wanted or retro board games for the kids missing the key pieces. ‘Lenny Presents!’ they grew to call him.

We managed to become close in those years.

Ten years ago, he downed his usual two Rob Roys at a local watering hole in the Hamptons, where he still had a small house near the beach. The bartender remembered him going on about some new idea. A couple of women were at the bar, but they didn’t want to be bothered by him. He threw a twenty on the table and waved good-bye.

The next morning they found his car at the bottom of Shinnecock Bay.

After dinner, we sat around the living room, Charlie strumming on the guitar. ‘Evan was getting pretty good himself,’ he said with pride. ‘Even better than me!’ He picked through versions of ‘Get Back’ by the Beatles, The Byrd’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, ‘White Room’ by Cream, Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’.

‘Jay . . .’ His eyes lit up. ‘You remember this?’ He sang, ‘Just when you say your last good-bye / Just when you calm my worried fears . . .’

I did recognize it. It was the song he had recorded back in LA. More than thirty years ago. ‘One Last Thing’.

‘Just when the dawn is breaking / There’s always one last thing . . .’

He always played the same two verses. Only them. To this day, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard the whole thing through.

Charlie cooed, happily. ‘Ooooh, girl, it’s always one last thing . . .’

He put down his guitar. ‘You know it got to number twenty-nine on the charts,’ he said with his ground-down grin. ‘In 1973. Of course I was crazy as a loon back then. Not to mention I was taking LSD like vitamins. I got to thinking my record company was trying to screw me. Hell, I thought everybody was trying to screw me then . . .’ He cackled, a glimmer in his eye.

‘Hey, check this out, Jay!’ He went over to the chest against the wall and came back with a bulging photo album. It was stuffed with artifacts from his past: pictures of him, of him and Dad in happier days at his beach house. Charlie growing up in Miami in the sixties, before his crazy hair and wild eyes.

He laughed, ‘I was so deluded on acid I told them I would burn down their fucking building if they didn’t send me out on tour. And you know what they did? They pulled the record! Right off the fucking airwaves.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that! And you know what? I could hardly blame them. Who would put a nut job like me out on the road?