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Was I looking at jealousy? Or was it reverence? It might have been lust. The copies I was looking at were larger than the photos in the newspaper. I could see the pattern of the dots used to make up the images. That meant the quality wasn’t good enough to come to a real decision about what I was looking at.
It was about then that I realized who Coach Carrier reminded me of… John Gavin. A younger John Gavin, I guess. I wasn’t entirely sure how old the real John Gavin was in the nineteen seventies. Coach Carrier was in his early fifties then. Were they the same age?
Gavin was good-looking enough that Hitchcock didn’t really have to explain why Janet Leigh would steal a bag full of money in hopes of living happily ever after with him. I remembered the first time I sawPsycho. I would have stolen the money too.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that a gay teenager might have a crush on Coach Carrier. That raised a lot of possibilities about Pete’s murder. John Hazeltine could have imagined something going on between Pete and the coach, and killed him because of it. Maybe somethingwasgoing on between John and the coach, or maybe not. It almost made sense that nothing was going on. Murder was delusional, it didn’t have to be based on much.
On the other hand, there could have been something going on between the coach and one, or both, of the boys. It was the seventies. Things were different. Gay sex was illegal in most places and frowned upon where it wasn’t. That meant guys didn’t stop to wonder if it was okay to have sex with a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old kid. There wasn’t much difference between having sex with them or a twenty-one-year-old. Either way it could land you in jail and ruin your life. And teenagers certainly didn’t think about things like that.
I’d known a couple of guys who lost their virginity early with guys in their twenties and thirties. I remember one of them said, “I wanted him and there was no way I was taking no for an answer.” He was fourteen when he made that decision.
Of course, this was all before the McMartin trial, and before people began accusing Michael Jackson of having sex with preteens on a regular basis. Gay guys thought of things differently after that. Or at least most of us did.
So maybe there was something going on between Coach Carrier and John Haseltine. Or even Coach Carrier and Pete Michaels. Something that eventually got Pete killed. Something I was going to find out about.
Before I left the main library the day before, I used their rack of phonebooks to find all the John Hazeltines in the Los Angeles and South Bay areas. There was one in Inglewood, one in Compton and two in Downey, one of which was a Jr. I had a strong feeling John Haseltine Jr. was the man I was looking for. I wrote down his number and address—along with the others just in case.
I drove out to Downey, for the second time in one day, and found Hazeltine’s apartment building on the corner of Dinwiddie and Old River Road. The two-story building was flesh-colored with cheap metal windows that looked crooked. The intersection was busy and parking tricky. I found a spot about two blocks away and walked down. When I reached the building, I found that the security door was broken and standing open.
Haseltine lived in 2E. As it was around five-thirty, I wasn’t expecting to find him home. The majority of people in Los Angeles County did not live near their work. He was probably still fighting traffic to make it home. Of course, I had no idea what he did for a living, if he indeed did anything.
Reaching 2E, I knocked. Looking around the courtyard, I thought, Ronnie would be appalled. While the co-op he wanted was hardly perfect, this place was shabby and had none of what he called ‘good bones.’ Its only real hope was to be torn down and built again.
Surprisingly, the door opened. A man in his late thirties stood behind a screen door. He was pale, freckled, had at least two cowlicks in his thick brown hair, and looked like he could use a good meal or two. He squinted at me, and said, “Yeah?”
“Are you John Haseltine?”
“I am.”
“And you were on the tennis team at Downey High in seventy-four?”
He eyed me suspiciously, and asked, “Who are you?”
Not having had time to prepare a cover story, I went with the truth. Well, sort of the truth. “I work for the attorney representing Larry Wilkes. I’d like to talk to you about Pete Michaels’ murder.”
He didn’t respond.
“Could I come in for a few minutes?”
He thought about it, then stepped out of my way. Once inside the dark apartment, my eyes adjusted and I saw that the small living room was lined with shelves, shelves that were crowded with toys. Many of the toys were still in their original boxes. A quick glance told me that he was especially interested in movie tie-ins, particularly sci-fi:Star Wars,Star Trek,Krull.
“You like toys,” I said unnecessarily.
“It’s how I make my living. I used to go to a swap meet every weekend. Now I sell on the computer. AuctionWeb.”
He didn’t offer me a place to sit, there were very few, or a glass of water. So standing there in the center of his living room, I asked my questions. Haseltine lit himself a cigarette and sat down in front of his computer.
“Did you like Pete Michaels?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I just didn’t.”
“I heard he was a popular guy.”
“He was. I just didn’t like him.”
