taunting messages get to me. The new card was addressed to Benjamin Virus Justice. I checked the postmark, which, like the others, indicated a 90046 zip code a few miles northeast, within Los Angeles city limits.
I turned the postcard over to read the message, but there were no words. Just a crude graphic: my photo, cut from the dust jacket of my book and pasted down, with the word AIDS drawn in red ink across my face. Most people probably thought AIDS was no longer a serious health crisis, but I knew better. It was still spreading, particularly among minority communities, and was a raging epidemic in the third world. Each year, several hundred people died in L.A. County from AIDS-related complications and an unknown number from the side effects associated with the toxic drugs used to suppress HIV, deaths that rarely showed up in the HIV mortality statistics. So to see the word AIDS scrawled in bloodred ink across my face meant something.
Maurice appeared on the front porch, urging Fred to come in out of the sun. When Maurice saw me seething as I studied the postcard, he suspected what it was and joined me, asking to see it. I held the card up, showing him the graphic on the back.
“This has gone quite far enough, Benjamin. It’s got to stop.”
He took the card and studied the familiar handwriting on the front.
“I should have gotten that old letter for you,” he said, “the one I promised to find weeks ago. I’d forgotten all about it. Let me get Fred some lunch and then I’ll attend to it.”
I told Maurice I’d begin looking for the letter myself, and he said he’d join me as soon as he could.
* * *
The boxes containing the research material I’d saved through the years were stacked neatly in a far corner of the double garage, sharing space with a 1960 turquoise and white Nash Metropolitan convertible.
Ever meticulous, Maurice had marked each box by topic—story files, article clippings, correspondence, and so on—with the papers inside separated into individual files, where they were arranged alphabetically. He’d salvaged much of the material on my behalf during the years following Jacques’ death and the collapse of my career, the lost years I’d spent drinking obscene amounts of tequila, before Maurice and Fred had intervened to rescue me from myself.
I kneeled and started in on the box marked “Correspondence,” but hadn’t gotten far when a file slugged “Pulitzer” caught my eye. Inside were three formal letters sent to me in 1990 by the Pulitzer committee. None pertained directly to what I was looking for, but I couldn’t pass by them without at least a glance. The first was a letter officially notifying me that I’d won that year’s Pulitzer in the feature-writing category, for my series in the Los Angeles Times chronicling the devotion of two gay men for each other as one died slowly from AIDS complications. The articles had been based loosely on my own experience with Jacques, but with the names changed and essential facts altered to create a rosier version of the truth, one that I might live more comfortably with. The second letter came a few weeks after the first, informing me that the committee had been tipped by an anonymous source that the two men featured in my series of articles did not actually exist as depicted, that many other elements in the story had been made up, that an investigation was under way, and that my full cooperation would be appreciated. The third letter had arrived not long after the second, thanking me for my cooperation during the investigation, expressing regret at the outcome, and informing me that my Pulitzer had been rescinded, with a public announcement soon to follow. By then I’d already informed my editor, Harry Brofsky, of my unforgivable betrayal, quit the Times, and gone into seclusion, anticipating the news coverage soon to follow.
As I reread the letters now, it wasn’t difficult to envision the first line of my obit when it
I turned the postcard over to read the message, but there were no words. Just a crude graphic: my photo, cut from the dust jacket of my book and pasted down, with the word AIDS drawn in red ink across my face. Most people probably thought AIDS was no longer a serious health crisis, but I knew better. It was still spreading, particularly among minority communities, and was a raging epidemic in the third world. Each year, several hundred people died in L.A. County from AIDS-related complications and an unknown number from the side effects associated with the toxic drugs used to suppress HIV, deaths that rarely showed up in the HIV mortality statistics. So to see the word AIDS scrawled in bloodred ink across my face meant something.
Maurice appeared on the front porch, urging Fred to come in out of the sun. When Maurice saw me seething as I studied the postcard, he suspected what it was and joined me, asking to see it. I held the card up, showing him the graphic on the back.
“This has gone quite far enough, Benjamin. It’s got to stop.”
He took the card and studied the familiar handwriting on the front.
“I should have gotten that old letter for you,” he said, “the one I promised to find weeks ago. I’d forgotten all about it. Let me get Fred some lunch and then I’ll attend to it.”
I told Maurice I’d begin looking for the letter myself, and he said he’d join me as soon as he could.
* * *
The boxes containing the research material I’d saved through the years were stacked neatly in a far corner of the double garage, sharing space with a 1960 turquoise and white Nash Metropolitan convertible.
Ever meticulous, Maurice had marked each box by topic—story files, article clippings, correspondence, and so on—with the papers inside separated into individual files, where they were arranged alphabetically. He’d salvaged much of the material on my behalf during the years following Jacques’ death and the collapse of my career, the lost years I’d spent drinking obscene amounts of tequila, before Maurice and Fred had intervened to rescue me from myself.
I kneeled and started in on the box marked “Correspondence,” but hadn’t gotten far when a file slugged “Pulitzer” caught my eye. Inside were three formal letters sent to me in 1990 by the Pulitzer committee. None pertained directly to what I was looking for, but I couldn’t pass by them without at least a glance. The first was a letter officially notifying me that I’d won that year’s Pulitzer in the feature-writing category, for my series in the Los Angeles Times chronicling the devotion of two gay men for each other as one died slowly from AIDS complications. The articles had been based loosely on my own experience with Jacques, but with the names changed and essential facts altered to create a rosier version of the truth, one that I might live more comfortably with. The second letter came a few weeks after the first, informing me that the committee had been tipped by an anonymous source that the two men featured in my series of articles did not actually exist as depicted, that many other elements in the story had been made up, that an investigation was under way, and that my full cooperation would be appreciated. The third letter had arrived not long after the second, thanking me for my cooperation during the investigation, expressing regret at the outcome, and informing me that my Pulitzer had been rescinded, with a public announcement soon to follow. By then I’d already informed my editor, Harry Brofsky, of my unforgivable betrayal, quit the Times, and gone into seclusion, anticipating the news coverage soon to follow.
As I reread the letters now, it wasn’t difficult to envision the first line of my obit when it
Similar Books
