Simple Justice by John Morgan Wilson Page B

time eyeing handsome young men as they sauntered by in the crosswalk, their brown faces stained with the sweat of a hard day’s work performed for dog’s pay, yet somehow radiant with optimism and laughter. All around me on the sidewalks were mothers with children, old people with children, children with younger brothers and sisters, and yet I neither heard nor saw a child crying. It made no sense or perfect sense, depending on how you looked at it.
    On the car radio next to me, I heard a Selena tune end and something by Luis Miguel start up. The light changed and traffic moved haltingly again, snaking past potholes deep enough to plant trees in and patches of asphalt made soft like cheese from the heat.
    I edged along until Echo Park was behind me and I was into the Silver Lake district. When I saw the side street I was looking for, I forced a left turn through the stream of vehicles and found The Out Crowd a few blocks later.
    As I parked across the street, I glanced at the Mustang’s odometer and clock: The trip had covered 2.2 miles and taken seventeen minutes and change. I figured that late on a weeknight, when the streets were nearly empty, Gonzalo Albundo could have reached the bar from home in less than half that time and driven back just as quickly. It also occurred to me that his brother Luis could have made the same trip, carrying with him all his homophobic rage, and maybe the .38 revolver that had been used to kill Billy Lusk, but never found.
    The Out Crowd was an inconspicuous, single-story place, painted flat black, situated near the end of a long block of warehouses and body shops. Directly behind it, a hard dirt cliff covered with clinging cactus stretched a hundred feet to its rim, where older homes perched precariously, looking out on Hollywood and the more affluent communities beyond. On a rare day like this, when westerly winds blew the basin clean of smog, the clifftop residents could see all the way across the Promised Land to the sea, where the exiled pollution hung like dirty linen on the far horizon.
    I sat for a moment in the Mustang and surveyed the crime scene. Strips of yellow tape cordoned off the main parking lot, which was located on the bar’s north side. A narrower section wrapped around behind, up against the hard slope. It was on that narrow stretch of asphalt forty hours earlier that Gonzalo Albundo had been spotted bending over the victim’s body, before fleeing into the darkness. Or so the witness had told the police.
    I wasn’t the only one interested in The Out Crowd that afternoon.
    As I crossed the street, Senator Paul Masterman stood on the sidewalk just outside the yellow tape, preparing to read lines off cue cards while a handheld minicam recorded his latest anti-crime message.
    Masterman had removed his jacket, loosened his necktie, and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt to reveal thick forearms burnished with graying hair and a Rolex watch that must have set him back a thousand dollars or two. Under the watchful eye of the director, a female assistant carefully arranged the folds of Masterman’s jacket, which he’d hooked on one finger and slung casually over his shoulder. With his luxuriant waves of silvery hair, broad shoulders, and sharply cut jawline, Senator Paul Masterman was a man worth looking at, and he knew it.
    My eyes moved from the senator to an intent young man nearby, who looked away from the activity only long enough to jot notes on a clipboard. Although he was on the wiry side, rather than broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, the resemblance to Masterman was unmistakable. The younger man had the senator’s strong facial lines and flinty green eyes, and the same erect bearing that suggested an ease of confidence and authority.
    Like Senator Masterman, he’d rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie, and opened the top button of his shirt. A few strands of golden-brown chest hair curled teasingly at his neck, promising more but not too much. I had