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tweed jacket and went to an expensive barber. The camera dollied in on Daisy Flynn. She said, “Today we’re talking with two leaders of the local gay community, Richard T. Nowell, who began his work in 1953, and Cliff Kerlee, founder of Gay Action.” Smile. “Gentlemen, I know your reactions to Police Chief Ben Orton’s statement that we’ve just seen differ. How and why? Dick Nowell, will you start?” Cecil yelped from the booth. The film streaked past.
    Dave lit a cigarette in the dark and groped for and found the flip-up metal lid of a little ashtray in the arm of his seat. The screen took color again. The setting was as he’d remembered it—brown hump hills in the distance, in the foreground half-grown shade trees, plaques in the grass, long lines of uniformed men standing at attention, women in quiet clothes and gloves and hats, seated on metal folding chairs that faced a gunmetal coffin blanketed by a flag. Wreaths on easels. White wicker holders for tall sprays of gladiolus. A rank of rifles raised, jerking puffs of smoke. A bugler wincing into a twist of brass. The long, involved ceremonial folding of the coffin flag, its delivery into the hands of the widow. Uniformed son standing woodenly behind her chair. Tears leaking from under his dark glasses.
    Dave thought, Christ, I don’t even know what he wants. To be buried? Where? Maybe Amanda knows. No. He’d never talk death to Amanda.
    Dave called to Cecil, “Can you stop it there?” It stopped. A blond young woman on a chair next to Louise Orton had lifted her hand, turned her head, raised it slightly. “Now can you roll it very slowly?” It jerked ahead, frame by frame. The young woman’s hand inched upward. It found Jerry Orton’s hand, which rested on his mother’s shoulder. The young woman’s look searched the young man’s face. It was a tender look. “Hold it there, please?” The film stopped, the screen went dark. Cecil came out of the booth. Dave asked him, “That woman—do you know? Was that Anita Orton?”
    Cecil shook his head. “No way.”
    “It’s a big school,” Dave said, “and very white.”
    “That’s how I know. Black, you know all the blacks. I don’t mean know, but know—you know? And year before last, Anita Orton went with a black boy.”
    “Lester,” Dave said.
    “Lester Green,” Cecil said. “He made a mistake. Not a little mistake, a big mistake.”
    “And ended up in prison at Soledad,” Dave said.
    “She was nobody to fool with. Lester said, ‘I’m not fooling.’ Neither was her daddy. Five years for possession. Shit, Lester never blew pot. He wouldn’t stay in a room with it. No, that is not Anita Orton.”
    “I didn’t think it would be.” Dave stood up. “How crazy was he?”
    Cecil twisted his face. “Crazy? Lester? He was so square he couldn’t turn over in bed.”
    “He never wanted to burn it all down?”
    Cecil faked indignation, popped his eyes, flared his nostrils. “‘Listen to me, man—I am a law student.’” He made his mouth very round on the word. “‘The law is it —understand me?’”
    Dave said, “He didn’t know there were two kinds?”
    “One for the rich and one for the poor? He does now,” Cecil said.
    “Maybe it changed him. Where did he live—family?”
    “La Caleta. Mama was all, far as I know. The kind that tied her hair up in a rag and scrubbed white folks’s kitchens so Lester could become Thurgood Marshall.”
    “I appreciate your help.”
    “Any time.” Cecil started for the booth. “He out?”
    “Five years can mean two”—Dave pushed the door—“with good behavior.”
    “Oh, Lester would be good,” Cecil said.
    “And you?” Dave held the door. “Miss Flynn thinks there’s a news story in this. Don’t get her excited.”
    Cecil stood in the projection-booth doorway. The light was behind him but his teeth showed. “If it’s a beat,” he said, “it’s my beat.”
    “It’s not a beat,” Dave said. “Not yet.”
    He let the