I glanced over my shoulder and caught Everett staring at me. My question had brought an unexpected longing to his face. It seemed as if he wanted to know the answer as much as I did.
He looked away from me quickly. Maybe he had glimpsed the horror I was trying to conceal and decided he had no use for it.
"How often?" I asked.
"What?" Cale snapped.
"Twice a month," Everett said from behind me.
Cale shifted in his seat. "How much longer, Everett?"
"Ten seconds. Maybe."
Jimmy had been right. Joseph Spinotta was in hiding somewhere, and he was broadcasting his product with a wireless signal that clearly had the strength to travel across a great distance to the computers of his paying customers. The man sitting next to me was one of those customers.
He clutched my hand in his as if the two of us were about to witness a birth.
A second password entry blank appeared. Everett responded with a series of keystrokes. The entry blank vanished and Martin Cale interlaced his fingers in mine. I heard a soft sound behind us and realized that Everett had sprawled himself out on the bed.
On the television screen above, the blackness materialized into heavy tree branches shifting in a slight wind at nighttime. The camera tilted down to find a small dirt trail that cut through the dense greenery. The trail was bathed in a viciously bright light, so bright I almost didn't see the young boy stumbling toward us.
The boy gained definition as he approached. He wore a white T-shirt and white boxer shorts.
His hair had been cut short and bleached blond. His arms were outstretched in front of him. I saw the white blindfold that covered his eyes.
"Beautiful," Martin Cale whispered.
My vision blurred. I blinked madly and got it back.
The boy reached out toward us, his fingers almost grazing the camera lens. The image faded to black and the words Bobby is lost . . . scrolled across the screen. Another few seconds of darkness, then a second set of words appeared. . . . Bobby is found.
Then I saw a white backdrop and a spread of pillows. I recognized the drab milk-colored carpeting that lay between the pillows because I walked on it every day.
In the seconds before the camera focused in, I glimpsed the patch of ceiling above my queen-size bed and saw that the white backdrop was a bedsheet taped to the black Oriental screen that I never used, the one that had been opened and placed next to my bed during my blackout.
I made myself breathe.
The same boy we had watched stumble down a dirt path was lifted into the frame gently, by a gloved hand that held the back of his hair. Melissa was right; he had the face of an angel. His full lips parted, his chubby cheeks flushed red with whatever drug had added ten pounds of weight to his eyelids.
A small voice spoke to me through the riot of screams inside my head. It was small and quiet but persistent. It was telling me that the screams were lying to me. I was watching the exact same ritual Melissa Brady had described to me the day before.
The image dissolved. Now the camera shifted back several feet, and the boy lay on his back on the bed of pillows, his head toward the camera. When I saw that he was nude, I closed my eyes and tried to suppress a shudder. I failed. Martin Cale mistook it for desire and squeezed my hand.
Behind us, I heard Everett shifting as he moved in for a closer look.
A man entered the frame. He was wearing the leather jacket I had on at that very moment.
There was a black leather mask over his face; it had tiny inverted triangles for eyeholes and a leering grin composed of fat, sculpted lips outlined in gold paint. The man had my height, my build, and my straw-colored hair. He was naked except for the jacket.
I focused on his nudity and not the young boy's. I zeroed in on precisely what Melissa Brady had seen, the very details of anatomy that had led her to throw her computer out the window when she had watched this same video.
The man in the video, the man who had violated a young boy in my apartment, was a marine helicopter pilot named Daniel Brady.
He was my height; he had my build, my hair. Even without a leather mask covering his face, he and I had looked remarkably alike. I had paid too little attention to these similarities between us, seen them as nothing more than proof that Corey had desired both of us at different times.
I was on my feet. Cale's fingers grazed my back, but he was too riveted by the screen to pay much attention to my sudden withdrawal.
I walked toward the cabin windows, listening to my long exhalation of breath, which anyone could have mistaken for a sign of sexual pleasure. The light from the master suite fell across the water outside in a gentle undulating wave.
I could feel the truth behind this scenario revealing itself.
The previous Wednesday night, I had slept in an alcoholic stupor as a marine helicopter pilot named Daniel Brady violated a young boy on the floor of my apartment. I knew Corey could not have filmed the video himself. Daniel Brady would never have agreed to take part if that had been the case. I figured the gloved hand that had lifted the young boy's face into the frame belonged to Scott Koffler.
Martin Cale was riveted. He could not tell that the man on screen was not me. If Melissa Brady had not described the very same video to me the day before, if I had never set out in search of the truth behind Daniel Brady's visit to West Hollywood, would I have mistaken the masked man on the television screen for myself as well?
"They don't move," Cale whispered in paralyzed ecstasy. "They don't arch their backs like a cat. They don't sneer like some little porn star. Their bodies don't know how to resist."
On the bed just behind Martin Cale, Everett sat forward on his knees, his brow furrowed, his eyes squinting, and his lips parted. He had removed the silver bicycle chain from around his neck and crossed his arms over his chest. One end of the chain dangled from his right fist. He was studying the events on screen with a focus I couldn't muster.
His eyes slid to meet mine. "It's not you," Everett whispered. He knew. He had handled the evidence a few days before when he had pawed me outside Billy's front gate.
"You're right, Everett," I said under my breath. "It's not me. But Billy thinks it's me, doesn't he?"
"Quiet!" Cale barked. The man had not heard a single word we said.
"It's really not you," Everett whispered, as if he needed to say the words again to convince himself of their truth. He seemed to be feeling a betrayal as deep as my own.
"Shut up!" Cale roared. "Both of you!"
Everett flinched. Cale shot me a ferocious look, his teeth bared. Behind him, Everett lifted his silver bicycle chain in both fists and spread his knees slightly to steady himself. He jerked both ends of the chain. The spokes shifted and formed a single sharp edge.
Cale settled back into his seat. I watched, dumb and motionless, as Everett brought the chain around the man's throat. "Why don't you shut up?" he whispered. He snapped back on both ends of the chain.
I heard my back slam into the window behind me, and then I felt the impact a second later. I watched Martin Cale's mouth fall open and his hands rise to the chain wrapped around his throat.
Everett pulled back more on the chain, and the man let out a nasal squeak. Cale's grasping hands fell short of their goal. He pawed at the quilt of red that was sliding down the front of his shirt, summoned some last reserve, and bucked his hips out of the chair.
Everett removed the chain from Martin Cale's neck, holding it out to one side as if it were a piece of wet laundry before he dropped it on the bed. Then he gave the back of Martin Cale's head a gentle shove and Cale fell facefirst to the carpet.
I was whispering a stream of curses into my palms.
Everett was still kneeling on the foot of the bed, his arms at his sides, his fingers slick with blood. He stared down at Martin Cale's body with a wide-eyed intensity and a look of surprised disappointment, like a kid who opens a shiny Christmas present and finds socks inside.
Murdering the ma
n had not given him the release he had hoped for.
The movie continued to play. I caught a glimpse of a close-up shot and groped for the back of the laptop computer. I yanked out the cord and the screen went gray. I grabbed the miniature satellite dish and shoved it into my jacket pocket. When I reached for the LED keypad, the box cutter slid out of my sleeve and bounced on the carpet.
Everett gave me a dull look that had madness flickering behind it. I held his eyes as I shoved the keypad into my jacket pocket, then just stood there, my heart roaring. The two of us listened to the water lapping against the boat's hull.
"What was supposed to happen out here tonight, Everett?" I asked him.
"Get off the boat," he said in a voice struggling for aggression. Whatever plan he had been given by Billy had been destroyed by the revelation that I was not a performer in the film we had just watched.
"What did Billy tell you to do?"
"Get off the boat," he said with building anger.
Everett got to his feet and started toward me. He grabbed the bloody chain, strung it between his fists, and raised it in front of him. I stumbled backward into the main cabin.
"Billy told you it was me on that tape," I said. "Billy believes it's me on that tape, doesn't he?"
Everett kept advancing toward me across the room, his jaw quivering. My back hit the door to the back deck. It swung open behind me and I had to grab the frame to keep from losing my balance. I heard something hit the floor next to my feet and saw the miniature satellite dish dancing across the carpet away from me. Everett ignored it.
"Were you supposed to kill both of us?" I asked him. He didn't answer, which was an incriminating answer. He was still advancing, the chain level with my throat. I could either get off the boat as he asked or knock the boy off his feet and try to get the answers I wanted out of him.
"Where are you from, Everett?" I asked.
He sprang toward me and I went skittering backward across the deck. The boy worked for Billy Hatfill, and he had just murdered one of Billy's customers. He moved and spoke like a hollowed-out suggestion of a child. He carried a weapon unlike any I had ever seen before.
Nothing about the young man computed with what I had just learned about Joseph Spinotta, and I wanted to find out why. But I had just escaped the death of my spirit, and I would not stick around to risk the death of my body.
I climbed into the dinghy and untied the line with fumbling hands. Everett watched at the top of the metal ladder. Once the line was loose, the boat began to drift away from the back of the yacht.
Everett's face went lax. He disappeared inside the main cabin. I pulled the rip cord on the outboard motor and the boat beneath me jerked and shot forward so fast I nearly tumbled out. It took me a minute to steady it, then to angle it toward the dark slopes of the Malibu coastline.
Behind me, I heard a dull roar, as if some creature was rising out of the depths. I glanced back and saw a maelstrom of froth shoot up behind the yacht as it swung to face the open ocean.
It headed out to sea, leaving me with only the grating whine of the outboard motor I was struggling to control. The wind tore the tears from my eyes as I watched the shoreline swell before me. Billy Hatfill had been double-crossed and he didn't know it. I planned on telling him.
As I neared the shore, the brutal whitecaps almost threw me from the boat. The near plunge reminded me that I was carrying Martin Cale's keypad and Corey's drawing of a young man named Reynaldo Reyez. I cut the motor and let the surf carry me in like a piece of driftwood. I made landfall on a wide beach lined with post and beam mansions that sat right on the sand, just yards back from the surf line.
From a gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway, I called a cab. I gave the driver the address of a glass and steel house in the Hollywood Hills. He gave me a helpless look in the rearview mirror. I assured him I would give him more specific directions as soon as we reached the winding hillside streets above the Sunset Strip.
The gate to Billy Hatfill's property buzzed when I was still several feet away from it. He had probably watched my approach on security cameras I couldn't see. The silver shades had been lowered over the house's glass walls, but I could see a vague light beating against them in the foyer and living room. The gate was unlocked. I stepped through it. Buried lights threw interspersed triangles of white across the empty lawn. Beyond the infinity pool, the skyline of Century City loomed in sharp relief. Streetlights twinkled in the expanse of treetops that was Beverly Hills, making the city below look like an inverted night sky.
In the living room, Billy Hatfill stood in front of the flat screen television on the other side of the massive sectional sofa. The security cameras had given Billy time to conceal his reaction to my resurrection. He held a small black pistol in both hands, aimed in my direction. His arms were awkwardly bent. He had adopted a pose he had learned from movies that I doubted he would be able to maintain under assault. His eyes were sharp under his brow, his lips parted. He knew his plan had failed, but he didn't know how.
"Corey came to you and told you he knew Spinotta was operating some kind of child porn ring and that his uncle was a customer," I said.
"Yes," he said in a breathy but controlled voice.
"Then what happened?"
"I told you already. He wanted to teach you a lesson. He said your mother's death wasn't going to be enough. He said he could get me a tape, and if I didn't broadcast it, he would bring the whole operation down."
When I reached for the zipper on my jeans, Billy made a small, frightened sound and jerked the gun up several inches. "Did you watch the tape?" I asked.
"Adam, let's—"
I pulled my jeans and my underwear down past my waist. "Did you watch it?" I rounded the corner of the sofa. The answer was on his face. I saw a riot of emotions fighting for control of his eyes as he scrutinized what I was showing him and realized what it meant.
When he saw I was forcing him to back up by several steps, he straightened his arms. I zipped myself back up and he blinked several times. Dazed.
"It wasn't me," I finally said. "You asked Corey to make the tape, and he used a body double.
A marine helicopter pilot named Daniel Brady. An old friend of his. A pedophile. A real one.
Daniel Brady killed himself a week ago, Billy. Corey sent a copy of the video to his wife—the same video I saw on Cale's yacht. She knew it was him, and she confronted him about it. So he flew his helicopter into the Pacific Ocean."
I started approaching him again. Billy backed up into the glass wall behind him. Helpless fury stuttered his breaths.
"Corey duped you," I said.
"Bullshit."
"Come on, Billy, you know it's the truth. Otherwise I'd be dead. See, Everett watched the tape tonight as well, and he knew it wasn't me. He saw the evidence up close and personal the other day, right outside your front gate. That's why he didn't kill me. And you did order him to kill me, didn't you?"
He leaned his head back against the glass. His eyes were filmy, but he kept the pistol aimed at the center of my chest.
"Put the gun away."
"Why?" he asked, a new edge to his voice.
"Because I've got a new boss. And he figured you out before I did. If I turn up dead, all roads will lead to you."
"What if you don't turn up at all?"
"Corey wanted something from you," I said. "He had information that could have sent you to jail for the rest of your life. But you forced him to deal. How?"
"He wanted to know where they were," he said.
"Joseph and the Vanished Three?" I asked.
He gave me a small nod.
"Why?"
"He didn't say," Billy answered. "And I didn't know where they are. I still don't know. I never will. That's how they want it. I said it enough times that he finally believed it." He sounded childishly indignant that the Vanished Three had left him out and that Corey had doubted his truthfulness. "Then I told him that I could think of one person who could find
them. One determined little reporter with a big drinking problem. And I knew of a way to send you after them without you going to the authorities."
"Set me up," I said. "Make me believe I had raped a child."
"No," he corrected me. "Make you rape a child! He said he could do it. He said all he would have to do is put a few drinks in you and you'd be down on all fours, begging to please him. But I knew what he really wanted. He didn't have to say it. He wanted to teach you a lesson. I could see it in his eyes. I could see that we were both going to teach you a lesson."
"Even you?"
"Yes," he said. "You think you're different, Adam. You think you're better. You think you can live a normal, sober life. You're trying so hard it's almost touching. But you're wrong. We are as sick as everyone else thinks we are. We lose our youth and then we take it from someone else. That is what faggots do, Adam. And you're one of them." A flicker of panic under his hard voice told me that he had been desperate to believe this proclamation for some time now.
"You're just a whore, Billy," I said. "You're just a whore trying to defend your best customer."
His lips pursed.
"If Corey wanted to teach me a lesson, why didn't he use me instead of Brady?" He didn't answer. 'Why did he want to know where Spinotta was?"
"He was desperate," he hissed. "He was more of a vigilante than you are. He was going to take us all down in a blaze of glory. That special kind of glory you dream of when you're a white-trash piece of shit from nowhere."
"Bullshit," I whispered. "You never wanted to teach me a lesson. You knew the minute Corey came to you that you would eventually have to get me out of the way, too. You knew the minute he disappeared that I would come looking for him, so you figured out a way to drag me into it. You want to be evil, Billy, but you try too fucking hard."
"That disappoints you, doesn't it?" he asked.
"What happened when he gave you the tape?"
He removed his left hand from the pistol's handle and dug into his pants pocket. He tossed something at me. It thumped against my chest and hit the carpet at my feet.
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