Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (26 page)

An
intercom clicked on and Karla's voice asked who was at her door. I apologized
for not calling in advance. The door swung open immediately.

"Gio's
crying over that fag." Karla grimaced, already steeped in gin. "And I
am once again alone. Come in, come in."

I
had lost all sympathy for Karla in light of her handling of the sex video, so I
canned the small talk, telling Karla we wanted to talk to her about the young
boy in our hotel whom we'd rescued. As I described him and the incident, Karla
still managed to stay a step ahead of me. "Must be the kid they found near
the hotel half dead," she said.

I
told her it couldn't be the same kid, although I didn't know whether it was or
wasn't; I just didn't want it to be. Karla turned on the TV to a news channel
and said the story had been broadcast all day. In minutes, there he was: Joey
Winters, the young boy we'd rescued from Sterling Hackett's room. He'd been
beaten to a pulp and scooped up off the pavement like roadkill. Callie and I
were both in shock. Callie asked Karla if she could use her connections to help
find the perpetrator, referencing her unspoken mob ties.

She
waved her hand to dismiss us. "Too many kids and too much trouble. I ain't
Mothah Teresa. They don't have to, if they don't want to, and they get paid to,
don't they?" Karla said and took another shot of her gin and tonic.
"Look, honey, sex with young boys has been happenin' since before the
Greeks. How do ya think they came up with the Greek position, ya know? Boys are
horny little bastards; if they weren't doin' it with some ole guy, they'd be
doin' it with each other."

"You
know," I said, mentally editing entire paragraphs from my reply in order
to avoid shouting at her, "somebody at the hotel told me that there was a
sex ring going on." Normally, I didn't shout unsubstantiated evidence at
potential criminals, but Karla was pushing all my psychological buttons.

"Listen,
chickie, it wasn't my deal. Big shots would fly in and want special services.
Mo would get somebody to provide. Pretty soon word got around that if you
wanted the hottest young hoofers, stop by the Desert Star Casino. I don't think
they had any idea what people would pay. Ya know, Mo and Gio was mob guys, and
hookers was hookers, and they didn't bring that much, but here these kids was
bringin' a shitload. It got really big, and then some pervert offed one of the
boys."

That’s
what the old newspaper article said. That’s what Sophia was trying to tell us.
Callie and I exchanged looks.

"Made
the papers. Of course, not like it really came down, but cleaned up for citizen
consumption, as Mo used to say. After that, I tried to stop it, but Mo wouldn't
hear of it. He said the mob would kill him if he tried to break it up. After Mo
died it all stopped. Those was the old days. Today, if Hackett had some kid in
his room, his own people set it up. What's goin' on now is just the leftovers,
ya know? Few clients probably still show up. Most of 'em probably can't get it
up. What's a blow job for ten thousand bucks?" She shrugged. "Done it
myself."

There
was no point in arguing with Karla. Her background led her mind to its present
position. She walked over to the bar and poured herself another drink.

"The
ring isn't leftover; it's in full swing! Guys come up to a dealer—a dealer with
a special ring on his finger—and they put 10K down and give him a number; it's
always a number under seventeen, and a boy that age is taken up to the man's
room." I paused, breathless, having blurted out my thoughts without
editing them.

She
turned and stared at us for a long moment and then abruptly laughed. "Now
that'd be a trick, wouldn't it? Does the dealer stop dealin' right there and
say, 'Sure, number seventeen, right away, sir. Would ya like a pizza with
that?'" Karla could not have been more derisive, trying to embarrass me
out of the notion of a porn ring happening out in the open, but I was convinced
that was why it worked—because it did happen out in the open.

"That's
just how they place the order. The delivery time is woven into small talk,
stuff like, 'Front desk is so busy, I'll be lucky to get checked in by one
a.m.,' or 'Think I'll hit the sack now and call it a day.' The dealer changes
shifts right after the order and passes the word to someone in the hotel. We
haven't figured out who that is yet," Callie said.

"Well,
tell you what, Sherlock, you keep at it and you let me know. 'Cuz the minute I
know, they'll be lucky to be fired instead of fired upon." She downed her
drink, locked eyes with me, eyes that said she meant every word she was saying.
"You think I don't get it. Well, I get it. I've tried to clean up this
place from day one; constant battle since Mo died. It ain't worth it to me.
Fucked-up boys, dead boys. Those are my choices. I'm done with it. So you have
at it."

"And
who do you think causes their deaths?" Callie asked.

"The
cosmos." She smirked at Callie, and suddenly, the other Karla surfaced,
the one who wasn't happy to see anyone, the one who wanted us to get the hell
out now. We were on the street in no time.

"She
talks in circles. How'd she know it was Hackett who had Joey in his room?"

"Because
she owns the hotel?" I asked.

"So,
someone at the hotel told Karla that Joey got sent to Hackett's room. Joey was
in the same kind of trouble the kid in that old newspaper article was probably
in. It makes sense. If the old energy is back, then it brings with it the same
old issues," Callie said.

"But
it didn't make the papers—that's what was written on our article—yet she said
it
did
make the papers." I thought about that. "I guess a
cleaned-up version for 'citizen consumption' got printed."

"She
also said it was ten thousand for a blow job. How would she know that unless
she's seeing the profits from a porn ring?" Callie wrinkled her nose in
distaste.

"Like
the lady said, done it herself."

Callie
insisted we head for the hospital. We might have gotten Joey into a situation
that caused him to be beaten. After all, he'd left Hackett's room, but only
after the fake vice squad presumably appeared.

How
would anyone have seen or known that? There was no one in the hallway, no one
in that linen room.

Once
we'd made our way to the ICU, I adopted a calm but concerned demeanor with the
nursing station.

"We're
his aunts from Pittsburgh," I told the nurse.

"He's
very ill. Only one of you at a time," the nurse said.

"You
go," Callie said, unable to bear looking at him.

A
nurse sat beside Joey. He had tubes in him and his face was blackened nearly
beyond recognition.

"I'm
his aunt," I said to the nurse at this bedside.

"He
can't talk," she said.

One
look at Joey, and it wasn't hard to pretend to be grieving over him. This kid
had been done in, and from the looks of him, who knew if he'd ever get out of
this hospital alive.

"Joey,
who in the world did this to you, baby?" I exclaimed.

"The
police came but he couldn't talk any," the nurse reiterated.

I
looked into Joey's eyes and I knew Joey wasn't trying to communicate, because
he didn't trust anyone. His eyes connected with mine. I gave him a slow,
knowing wink.

"Joey
and I have always had a special communication, haven't we, honey? I wish I knew
who did this to you. I would box their head for them!" I said like a
kindly old aunt.

Joey
raised his small, frail hand and brought two fingers together against his
thumb, once, then twice and then dropped his hand to the bed, unable to exert
any more energy.

"I
think he's saying goodbye. He's tired," the nurse said.

"Joey,
remember what your other aunt Callie told you. By the time you're eighteen,
you're going to meet someone special and your whole life will change for the
better, which means, young man, that you will be alive and well at eighteen. So
you'd better get out of here." I kissed him on the forehead and left the
room.

I
stopped by the waiting room and got Callie, who was squirming over the dark
energy in the hospital. "People die and don't move on. They wander the
corridors, and it just leaves you open to walkins and attachments." I
apparently gave her an odd look because she added, "Walkins and
attachments easily access weakened energy fields... that's why drunks and drug
addicts and even the terminally ill can have someone take over their
bodies."

I
raised my hand in the air to signify that I couldn't take any more.

She'd
have to save some of her way-out-ness for later. I was depressed over something
more tangible—Joey Winters.

"How
is he?" she finally brought herself to ask.

"I
think we got him beaten up. He talked to us and someone knew," I said.

"Who
knew we were talking to Joey?" Callie seemed to be asking the cosmos.

"Maybe
the room is bugged," I said. "But then how much more bugged can you
get than people videotaping you? Besides, Joey was never in our room."

"Maybe
we talked about him after we got back to our room."

"I
feel like my freakin' underwear is bugged! Everybody seems to know everything
we say or do. Let's go back to the room and take the place apart just to make
sure we haven't missed anything."

We
drove back across town to the hotel in a depressed state and went up to our
room. We clicked open the hotel door and said nothing to Elmo, but merely patted
his head. Whoever was listening might think it was merely a maid entering to
clean. Carefully, we began looking in drawers, under beds, along window ledges,
inside phones, overhead in vents, and finally in the pockets of the clothes we
were wearing the night we'd talked to Joey. Elmo watched us with intent
interest. We sat down on the edge of the bed, our eyes scanning the room for
anything that might have been moved or added, anything we'd missed, any place
where a microphone could be concealed.

Elmo
sobbed and clawed at his collar, as if scratching at a flea, and suddenly
Callie knew. She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a note to me:
Elmo! They
had Elmo for several hours downstairs, and he was with us in the linen closet
with Joey!
We both knelt beside him and felt his body everywhere, and then
Callie unbuckled his collar. Right where all the dog tags hung and the collar
got bulky, someone had sewn on a small directional microphone. I took scissors
and started to cut it off but then stopped. I went over to the door and opened
it loudly, then closed it as if we were entering and greeted Elmo.

"You
know what?" I said out loud. "This hound of mine is starting to have
a doggie odor. I think he could use a bath."

"Don't
think the spa offers that service," Callie said.

"The
tub. He'll love it! Come on, Elmo. Let me take your collar off. It's wet; did
you put your head in the shower? I'm going to put it over here to dry." I
wrapped the collar up in towels to muffle the sound. I looked at Callie, anger
in my eyes, as I dragged the three of us into the bathroom and turned on the
shower. "Okay, buddy, we're going to scrub you up and then let you air
dry. That should only take a couple of hours with this thick coat." I
closed the bathroom door loudly.

"What
have we said in front of Elmo since we got him back from the manager's
office?"

"Everything!
I can't imagine anything we haven't talked about in this room," Callie
said. "And if we haven't talked about it here, we've talked about it while
we were walking him."

"A
directional mike can pick up more than a hundred feet away if it's line of
sight," I said.

"Wouldn't
his jangling collar and his breathing drown out any conversation?" Callie
asked.

"Elmo
rests a lot so they've undoubtedly gotten plenty of conversation. They probably
have people staked out with gear throughout the hotel, which means someone in
Valet Park probably is in on it and they put the receiver into our car so they
can hear us around town."

"Could
they hear us on the road trip to LA.?" Callie asked.

"We'd
be out of range after about a mile. We'd better check on Rose. Our
conversations have probably put her in the same kind of danger Joey
encountered," I said.

Callie
rang Rose's number. No answer. She rang the theater, and they said she'd taken
a few days off and her understudy would be performing tonight.

"So
did she take a few days off, or are they going to off her in a few days? That's
what we don't know and we've got to find out," I said darkly. "I
think we have to use their own surveillance equipment to set a trap for them.
We'll need to think about how that trap might work. We can leave that mike
muffled for about twenty-four hours and get away with it. They'll think his
collar's drying and we just forgot to put it back on him, but after that we'd
better have a damned good plan or we're in real trouble and so is Rose
Ross."

“I
should have remembered this," Callie said, slamming shut the book titled
Rules
of Ruler ship.
"The Eighth House includes death and legacies of the
grandfather of a woman." She examined the chart again. "But what
woman? And who is the grandfather? We need to go see the last place Mo was
before he was killed." And with that, Callie took us back to the theater. I'd
been in the theater so many times I was starting to get the itch to play a
role.