Justice at Risk by John Morgan Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

to stand on the porch of the old cottage and wait for the police to arrive.

Chapter Four
     
    I didn’t mention seeing Cecile Chang’s earring to the cops who answered the call at the Sunset Tiki Motel, or to anyone else.
    I figured it was police business now, not mine. My business was getting my life back on track, earning a paycheck, and I didn’t need a stranger’s errant blood and unknown whereabouts distracting me.
    The opportunity I’d been handed by Chang was like a gift from heaven, a dream job for a washed-up reporter like me. Out of nowhere, I suddenly had the chance to turn the corner, maybe develop a new skill and even a refurbished reputation that could lead somewhere. I didn’t like admitting the need for that, but I’d hit the big four-zero, and my perspective had shifted. I wanted self-sufficiency again, and nobody’s pity. It was as simple as that, and I wasn’t going to blow it by sticking my nose where it didn’t belong.
    That night, after driving Graff back to his Venice apartment, I sat up studying the show bible Chang had given me for the bareback sex segment, reading by a table lamp in the living room of the little house on Norma Place. My elderly landlords, Maurice and Fred, were on a second honeymoon in Europe, financed by an inheritance Maurice had received unexpectedly that fall from the modest estate of an older sister, who had been his last surviving relative when she passed. It was Maurice’s idea to cruise down the Rhine with Fred, feeding him cheese and wine and pointing out the magnificent German castles on the hilltops, before the water got too low for passage. They would then continue touring by rented car, until they ended up in France in time to spend April in Paris, where Maurice intended to have his picture taken kissing Fred atop the Eiffel Tower—something he had wanted to do, he’d told me, for more than forty years.
    For another month, possibly longer, I was to stay in their house instead of my usual place in the small apartment over the garage out back and care for the pets. It felt unusual, living in homey comfort, a place with a sense of permanence, after so many years without an anchor. As I sank into the deep couch with the two cats beside me and the dog nearby on the braided carpet, my slippered feet propped up on the divan, I had to concede that it didn’t feel half bad. There would be some who would say I was going soft, losing my edge, selling out to the conforming notion that there was no place like hearth and home. But I’d sown my wild oats, taken my walk on the wild side, been as much a libertine as any of them; I’d also seen and experienced my share of heartbreak and senseless death along the way, and I’d had enough. Now I was ready for something different, more careful choices, something—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, couldn’t quite name, but that I wanted nonetheless.
    That notion—making careful choices, leading a safer, saner life—was at the heart of the bareback sex issue I’d just been hired to write about. On one side were those men who proclaimed bareback sex with multiple partners to be an individual right in a free society and a bold stand against puritan forces determined to oppress gay sexuality. On the other side were those who felt strongly that in the age of a deadly virus like AIDS, unprotected sex with multiple partners was irresponsible beyond description, destructive not just to individuals but to an entire community, particularly the young, who had so much to lose but were often without the foresight to see it. That was the basic schism, at least as I understood it, with countless related issues to be considered. How I was going to explore it, tell the story, remained to be worked out.
    I sipped coffee in the lamplight, studying the sample scripts Chang had given me to get an idea how such things were put together and what specifically would be expected of me, line by line, page by page. Then I leafed