Goldenboy (26 page)

“You and Freeman
were partners?” I asked, as we squealed to a stop just below Sunset.

“That’s right,” he
said, “and even then Vidor got these hunches and dragged my ass all over town.
Right, Freeman?”

“Hey, you’re here,
aren’t you,” Freeman replied, as we accelerated forward.

“Maybe,” he said, “depending
on what happens. If nothing happens, I was never here. This isn’t police
business yet.”

The night sky was a
dull red and there wasn’t a flicker of natural light to be found in the
heavens. Though New Year’s Eve was four nights away, it was warm and gritty. We
turned east on Hollywood Boulevard, a couple of cars behind the Fiat which now
turned onto a side street and into the parking lot for the

Chinese Theater.
Freeman followed but went past the lot, pulled up to the curb and parked. A
couple of minutes later, Zane emerged from the lot and walked back toward the
boulevard.

“You’re sure he’ll
be coming this way?” I asked.

Freeman said, “He
did before.”

He switched on the
radio to a classical music station. Cresly tossed his cigarette out the window
and whistled beneath his breath. The dark, palm-lined street was deserted. The
city looked like a gigantic backlot for Day of the Locusts. All that was needed
was for someone to say “Action.”

Headlights appeared
in the rear-view mirror as a car crossed Hollywood Boulevard. When it passed, I
saw it was an Escort bearing the sticker of a car rental agency on its back
window.

“That’s him,”
Freeman said, cutting off the last movement of Brahms’s Third Symphony.

Cresly, who had
been whistling the melody, sat up. “What are you waiting for?”

“This ain’t a
parade, Phil,” Freeman replied.

Cresly spat out the
window and muttered, “Feets don’t fail me now.”

When the Escort
crossed the first intersection, Freeman started after it. At Santa Monica
Boulevard, we turned right. Santa Monica was brightly lit and there was heavy
traffic on the sidewalks, young men and boys standing on either side of the
street, at bus stops and in doorways, watching the passing traffic. The Escort
took a left at La Brea. Freeman let a couple of cars pass before he followed.

Our next turn was
left onto Willoughby, a big street about four blocks south of Santa Monica.
There were houses on the south side of Willoughby, but on the north side were
the gloomy backs of industrial buildings.

“What’s in there?”
I asked, pointing at them.

“Office buildings,”
Freeman said. “Warehouses. Lots of dark places and no one around. That’s where
Zane takes his pick-ups.”

“We’re in West
Hollywood now,” Cresly said.

“This is a crazy
place,” I replied. “One minute you’re in L.A. and then you cross the street and
you’re in West Hollywood, but if you jog north you’re back in L.A.”

“L.A. surrounds
West Hollywood,” Cresly said, “and it’s the sheriffs’ turf.”

At Highland, the
Escort turned left, back up toward Santa Monica Boulevard, and, at Santa Monica,
took another left back toward La Brea.

“He’s going in
circles,” Cresly said.

“He’s cruising,”
Freeman replied. He pulled off Santa Monica at Orange, the last cross-street
before La Brea, and parked.

“Why are we
stopping?” I asked.

“No point in
getting him suspicious,” Freeman answered. “He’ll go around again, to get a
good look at what’s available, then he’ll make his move.”

I looked out the
window. Two boys in tank tops sat on the bottom step of the entrance to a bank.
Their collective age didn’t add up to mine. One of them looked back at me, then
at Freeman and Cresly. He nudged the other kid. They talked, got up and started
moving away.

I pointed them out
to Cresly. “They must think we’re cops,” I said.

“Probably they just
think we’re trouble,” he replied. “Shitty life they got.”

“Yeah,” I said. “If
Zane’s been out here beating people up, wouldn’t word spread?”

Freeman glanced at
me over his shoulder. “He uses a different car. And he knows how to disguise
himself.”

“Anyway,” Cresly
added, “these kids come in by the busload every day, it seems. There’s always
some poor fucker willing to take a chance.”

“There he is,”
Freeman said. I looked out the window to the other side of the street. The
Escort was coming to a stop at the corner across from us. A dark-haired boy in
tight jeans and a black jacket paced in front of a recording studio. He wasn’t
wearing a shirt beneath the jacket and when the Escort stopped, he flexed his
arms, exposing his torso. He was a nice-looking kid. His dark hair made me
think of Josh.

The boy stuck his
head into the window of the Escort. A minute later, he straightened himself,
opened the door and got in. Zane signaled a right turn onto Orange. When he
completed it, Freeman turned his key in the ignition. The engine whined,
sputtered and died.

“Jumping Jesus,”
Cresly said.

I looked across the
street. The rear lights of the Escort were just visible as Zane signaled a left
turn into the warehouse district. Freeman grunted and turned the key again.
There was a low roar and then nothing. The third time he tried the key, all we
heard was a click.

“You flooded the
goddam thing,” Cresly snapped. He swung his head around to me. “Come on, Rios,
let’s go.” He opened the door. “You,” he barked at Freeman, “try to get this
coon-mobile working.”

“Fuck you,” Freeman
shouted as we got out of the car. When there was a lull in the traffic we ran
across the boulevard to the corner where Zane had picked up the hustler. We ran
down Orange.

“He turned right at
the first street,” I said. A yellow junkyard dog sprang out of the shadows from
behind a wire fence and chased us, barking and snarling. We reached the
intersection and stopped. The street was empty.

We were surrounded
by low, dark buildings, fenced-in yards filled with machines, trucks, and
stacks of wooden pallets, deserted parking lots and narrow alleys. Scattered
streetlamps drizzled yellow light into the darkness. As we stood there, the
loudest noise I heard was Cresly’s labored breathing. He was in pretty bad
shape for a thin man.

“Let’s split up,”
he sputtered, and started walking down the street we had come to. I started off
in the opposite direction. I glanced at my watch. It was a little after
midnight.

Ten minutes later I
was walking through an alley, checking the dumpsters and piles of lumber for
the kid’s body. Out of the darkness beside me, I heard a car start up. I looked
toward the direction of the noise and saw a covered garage, open at either end,
running the length of a brick building. At the far end of the garage the
headlights of a car flashed on and it rolled toward me. I threw myself against
the wall into the shadows and watched the car roar into the alley, skid a turn
and race out. It was the Escort. There was one person in it. Zane.

When the Escort
turned out of the alley I ran down the garage to where the car had been parked
and found another dark street. Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned, my hands
clenched into fists. It was Cresly.

“You hear a car?”
he called, running toward me.

“Yeah, it was
parked here.”

We stood on the spot
and looked around. There was an ivy- covered wall in front of the photo
processing lab across the street. The iron gate set into the wall was slightly
ajar. I glanced over at Cresly. He was also staring at the gate.

“Over there,” he
said in a soft voice.

We crossed the
street to the gate and pushed it open. Between the wall and the building behind
it, there was a grassy courtyard centered around an elm tree. A body lay
beneath the tree, a male body, clad only in a black coat. As we approached him,
a strong chemical odor drifted toward us. I had smelled the same odor, though
fainter, in Tony Good’s bedroom. I’d been wrong. It wasn’t amyl nitrite.

“Smell that,” I
said to Cresly.

“Yeah,” he replied,
sniffing the air. “Ether.”

The boy lay on his
stomach. Cresly extracted a pen light from his pocket and flashed it as we
knelt down beside the kid. Blood and semen trickled from his anus down his
thigh. Cresly pressed his thumb into the front of the boy’s neck.

“He’s alive,” he
said, “just knocked out. Let’s turn him over.”

We rolled him over
and Cresly focused the light on the boy’s face. Close up, he had a faint
resemblance to Josh. His lips were bloody and a slight discoloration was
beginning to show beneath his right eye. A shallow gash bisected his chest
below his nipples. Cresly opened the boy’s jacket and with unexpected delicacy
pressed his fingers along the boy’s sides.

“No broken bones,”
he grunted and stood up. “Shit, what a mess.”

“We’ve got to get
him to a hospital,” I said, also standing.

Cresly switched off
the pen light.

“Did you hear me?”
I said.

“Yeah, I heard.”
Cresly looked around and walked away, returning with the boy’s pants and shoes.
He set them on the grass beside the boy. “Help me get his pants on him.”

We struggled with
the jeans until we got the boy dressed. Cresly unbuttoned the flannel shirt he
was wearing, took it off, and told me to help him get the boy into it. When we
finished, Cresly said, “If we go to a hospital I’ll have to flash my badge
around to get him admitted.”

I looked at him,
shivering in his undershirt. “So?”

“I want to know
there’s been a crime before I do that.”

I stared at him,
slack jawed. “Rape?” I suggested. “Battery? ADW?”

“The kid’s a whore.”

“Goddammit, are you
telling me that this is just an occupational hazard?”

“I’m telling you,”
he said, “that I’m not about to accuse the star of a fucking cop show of
anything until I talk to the kid.”

“That’s the
craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

“You don’t have to
like it,” Cresly said. “That’s the way it is.”

“You want to just
leave him here, then?” I demanded.

Cresly shook his
head. “Your buddy lives around here, doesn’t he?”

“Josh? Yeah “

“Let’s take the kid
there. I’ll get a statement and then decide about a hospital”

“He needs a doctor
now.”

“Yeah, I’ll take
care of that.” He dusted off the knees of his trousers. “You stay here. I’ll go
see if Vidor got that car started.” He started out the gate. “Trust me,” he
said.

“Sure,” I muttered.

*****

The boy’s name was
Robert and he claimed to be twenty, but I would have staked my bar card that he
was no more than seventeen. We got him into bed at Josh’s apartment where he
was examined by an unshaved and slightly inebriated coroner — the only medical
type to whom Cresly had ready access — who pronounced him alive and, except for
superficial wounds and bruises, in good shape.

Robert said that
after Zane picked him up “we drove around and smoked some grass. Then he parked
and started getting all lovey, you know. Deep-kiss, that shit. I didn’t go for
that ‘cause I’m not a queer but he said it was his money, so...” He sipped some
water. “Then he goes, there’s a place around here where we can go. We went to
that place where you found me. He tells me to take down my pants ‘cause he
wants to suck me off. But he wants them all the way off. I’m getting kinda
nervous ‘cause this guy’s way too good-looking to be a trick. I’m thinking he’s
a cop or something so I tell him, let’s just forget it, man. Then he punches
me, real hard, and knocks me on my ass. Next thing I know he’s sitting on top
of me with this switchblade, big mother, too.”

Robert’s hands
trembled as he lifted the water glass to his lips and then set the glass down
again. “He goes, shut your fucking mouth or I’ll kill you Sure, I go, just don’t
hurt me. Then he cuts me here,” the boy touched the scar across his chest. “He
says, take off your pants. I take them off, still lying there on the ground.
Then he goes, turn over. The next thing I know he’s fucking me, not using any
lube or nothin’, just sticking it in. Jesus, that hurt, but if I scream or
something he stops and pushes the knife into my neck, so I just bite my lip.”
The boy bit his bruised lips, flinched, and then continued. “He’s really
hurting me. It’s like he’s just fucking me to hurt me, not to get off or
anything. I guess he came or something ‘cause he was lying there on top of me.
Then he starts saying these crazy things like, I’m going to cut off your balls,
and, I’m going to shove this knife up your ass. Shit like that. But it sounds
like he’s gonna do it, really. So I start crying.” Robert stopped and looked at
us. “He turned me over, still sitting on me and he’s got the knife and I’m
telling him, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.”