“I don’t doubt that. But are you saying Reynaldo wasn’t a drug dealer?”
“Whatever he was into, it was small potatoes. Rey was not some big mover of contraband. At most, maybe he was a pot smoker who…who proselytized. In his backpack, he kept some herb in a plastic camera film container; I can remember the smell of it. Tell me, who on earth murders a seventeen-year-old, five-foot-five kid for three joints?” She kept walking but her eyes blazed with age-old indignation.
“What about Reynaldo’s gang? They took Emil down.”
“It wasn’t a they, it was a he, a person with a name—Frederick Castillo. Just some psycho trying to get into Sureños. He wasn’t even in the fucking gang.”
“So it wasn’t—”
“Sick piece of shit just used my cousin as an excuse to slay Emil and make a name.”
She had stunned me quiet—we walked in silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “as you can see it’s still fresh for me. My world caved in the day they told me Reynaldo was gone. Everything after that morning has been one long aftermath.”
“So if it wasn’t a drug deal—”
She stopped under the arches of Bunche Hall. “It was a lover.”
“A lover?”
“Absolutely. Or a jealous spouse—of course it was.”
“But who?”
“My cousin was handsome, like a Latino Monty Clift—with dazzling eyes. He was a powerful drummer, too—all muscles. And he had serious game—too many conquests for me to keep track. But he told me stories—to entertain me, and to make me jealous.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Oh, there were local girls and high school girls. In junior high, he screwed his art teacher, Mrs. Nicola. And there were others.”
“Do you think he was sleeping with Cynthia Persky?”
“I know he was sleeping with her mother.”
“Marjorie Persky?”
“Yes. And he told me he couldn’t shake her off. He was fond of expounding on the hypocrisies of married women.”
“But—she told me she barely remembered Emil even had a band.”
“Yeah well, she lied to you, okay? How could she not know? Madame Persky was a mover and shaker in the music biz. She used to be a teen DJ or something on KHJ.”
“And she had an affair with Rey?”
“That’s a stone fact. I don’t say she killed him, not with her own hands anyway, but she was having her way with him and not just once. I think she even conducted a little three-way with Rey and the singer.”
Professor Durazo turned into the giant building and I followed her, upstairs, down the fresh-mopped corridor reflecting dreamy sunlight. The hallowed halls. She stopped at an office door that bore her name.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have papers to grade. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“Professor—who do you think killed your cousin?”
“Somebody killed him. Somebody that went unpunished.”
“Okay, but—”
“But nothing. Reynaldo’s death tore my family apart. Nobody was ever the same again, least of all me.” She glanced down the hall bitterly. “Sometimes I wonder what he would have become if he had lived. For all I know, he would have been an alcoholic FDA inspector like his dad. Or a valet attendant who sleeps with old white ladies for cash. That’s what I tell myself to get through the night.”
“But you think that he might have been sleeping with Marjorie Persky and—”
“Why not? Read the history books—her husband was lavender as they come.”
“What did Reynaldo say about her?”
She shrugged. “We were kids. We were into La Revolucion and Rey-Rey just embodied it, because he was so free-spirited. I think this lady was part of that—showing a grown-up white woman what’s what.”
“So,” I said, “you think her husband might’ve caught Rey and—”
She smirked with displeasure, her back to the door as if she was blocking my entrance. She said, “You think it’s funny.”
“That isn’t true.”
“No—but what I mean is, if he hadn’t been murdered, you would think it was funny.”
“Why? What makes you say that?”
With an angry yank, the professor hoisted the valise over her shoulder and opened the door. “The young Mexican hombre and the horny gringo lady, the MILF. He brings around the loco weed, she seduces him. It’s like a bad eighties movie.”
“When you put it that way—”
“But it’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. Don’t you see, that is where the crime begins.”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe I don’t see. How does murder start there?”
“Because whoever she was, she had all the power. A young, short guy like Reynaldo, with his whole being tied up with machismo, Mister Drummer Man, the Mexican Keith Moon, out to prove—no, don’t make a face. I have thought about this for years now, decades. I don’t know if Mr. Persky killed him or some other goon did or what. Just because Herbert Persky was gay doesn’t mean he wasn’t possessive—she was his wife. Or maybe it was the daughter, Little Miss Cinnamon, the band’s little mascot. Or the singer—not a well man. But whoever, however—Rey-Rey was already put in a compromised position just being there and that is on Mrs. Lily White. She was no grown-up. She didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to my cousin the minor. She just did the white person thing and said, ‘My pleasure comes first.’ He was her gardener, literally—at your service.”
She opened the door and stepped inside. “That’s right,” she said over her shoulder. “The expendable amigo—she set him up for the kill.”
“Professor,” I said. “Ms. Durazo. Devon Hawley Junior was murdered last night. I went to see him, I…found his body. The police are…I was questioned, they…”
She stared me down, near frozen—her upper lip trembled once.
Then she slammed the door in my face.
14
On Thursday morning, I went to Devon Hawley Junior’s funeral uninvited. From the nearest faraway bench on Forest Lawn’s long green slope, I peered through mini-binocs over my shoulder as little black-clad bodies gathered on the tilted horizon, nestled by a very man-made running rock stream. The day was hot but overcast and the crowd was light—maybe twenty people in all. All I could see were the unfocused backs of heads. The black-robed priest gesticulated like a listless car dealer, pitching his prayer like he was selling the extra-long black box. For a man who loved miniatures, Devon Hawley had been a giant. Maybe that was the point.
