“What I don’t understand,” Freddy said, “is why Lucas didn’t try and track Brent down? If he loved him so much.”
“After Lucas left SwordFight, he went to work for lower-rent production companies. He also got into heavier drugs, reckless partying, a real downward spiral. He eventually wound up in rehab and got off all the shit he was putting into his system. He says he also got a lot of counseling and insight into his ‘issues.’
“Brent heard through the grapevine about Lucas’s troubles and that he’d entered treatment. He was sympathetic. He even felt partly responsible—after all, he was the one who complained to Mason about Lucas’s ‘stalking’ of him.
“Brent wanted to leave SwordFight. I’m not clear why. But he felt the company had a legal hold on him. He was worried they’d sue his ass into oblivion if he didn’t continue making movies.
“The only person he knew who’d left the company was Lucas. Having heard that Lucas cleaned up his act, Brent felt there was enough water under the bridge to call him for advice. That part didn’t turn out to be too helpful. While Lucas had signed up with a competing production company behind Mason’s back, Mason wasn’t sorry to see him go. By that point, Lucas was looking strung out from his drug use and his behavior was increasingly bizarre. So, unless Brent was willing to either fake or actually have a breakdown, both of them doubted Mason would be as forgiving about his leaving.
“While that wasn’t good news, as far as Lucas was concerned, the reunion was a success. Now that he was sober and had some insight into his behavior, he told Brent why he’d acted so weird when they first met. Brent was really touched. He was also relieved—he’d always found Lucas attractive. Now that he knew Lucas wasn’t crazy, he felt a lot freer to act on it.
“So, they began an affair. Maybe even fell in love. Certainly, Lucas did. But a week before Brent dropped out of sight, he told Lucas he ‘needed a break.’ He felt bad seeing Lucas behind Charlie’s back. He said he needed time to make a choice. But he couldn’t do that while he was sleeping with Lucas—he was afraid the guilt he felt was sabotaging any chance they had for building a good relationship.
“Hmm,” Freddy observed. “The old ‘I have to stop seeing you so I can keep seeing you’ line. I may have used that once or a hundred times when I wanted to dump someone.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, maybe not that much. I mean, you know me. It’s not like I ever did the ‘dating thing.’ More of a ‘one night stand’ kind of guy. Or, ‘one nooner.’ Or, ‘that morning in a crowded subway car when the lights went out and—’ ”
“I get it, I get it,” I said. We could have been there all night.
“Fine,” Freddy said testily. “I’ll skip over the hot-air balloon, the opening-night line for the last Twilight movie, and the various Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormon missionaries who showed up at my door thinking they’d convert me.”
I circled my hand in the universal gesture for Get on with it.
“My point,” Freddy said, well, pointedly, “is just because I knew I wasn’t interested in anything serious didn’t mean they knew that. So, one learns to be diplomatic, darling.”
“Maybe you’re right and Brent was trying to let Lucas down easy. But Lucas didn’t think so. He thought Brent would choose him.”
“Ah,” Freddy said wistfully, “they always do, the dear things.”
“He was beginning to lose faith, though. Before the ‘time-out, ’ they were constantly in touch. Texting, on the phone. Brent’s director, Kristen, told me he’d seen Brent on the set making private phone calls—turns out he was right. Kristen thought the calls were to another production company, though, not another lover.
“When Brent said he needed some space, Lucas assumed it’d be a week or three. As it stretched into months, he became increasingly worried. Not that anything had happened to Brent, mind you. More that maybe Brent hadn’t chosen him after all.”
“Why didn’t Lucas just call him?”
“He promised not to. He’d already made the mistake of pursuing Brent too aggressively the first time around. He even thought Brent’s not calling might be some kind of test.”
“Lucas could have made the whole thing up,” Freddy offered, raising his hand to call over the cute waiter. The dark-haired, dark-eyed Latino was taking an order at an adjacent table. The waiter held up his index finger. One moment.
“Maybe he never did get back together with Brent. It could have been another of his fantasies.”
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, Lucas knew something about Brent that I’d asked everyone and nobody could answer. Not even Charlie.”
“What was that?”
“His real last name. Richie’s last name. Dawson. He even had the phone number and address of Richie’s parents in Queens. Look.”
I took out from my backpack a picture of Brent’s that Lucas had given to me. It showed Brent, a girl a few years older than him, and his parents at Disney World, the four of them smiling like every other family smiles when you point a camera at them in Disney World. Brent looked like he was nine or ten at the time.
On the back, Brent had written his parents’ names and all their contact information. He also wrote a note:
Dear Mom and Dad,
If you ever get this, know that I
forgive you. I will always love you.
Your son,
Richie
“Why would Brent have given this to Lucas? Why not just send it to them himself?”
“That part’s weird. . . .” I began.
“Yeah,” Freddy said. “Thank god the story’s finally getting weird. Because the whole porn-star-hooked-on-drugs-and-sleeping-with-a-guy-who-just-happens-to-look-like-his-brother part was so wholesome I was getting bored.” He glared at the waiter, who gave an apologetic shrug and repeated his earlier gesture.
“I’m about to give him a finger, too,” Fred growled. “But a different one. Sorry, darling. You were saying . . .”
“Lucas said that for a few weeks before Brent’s disappearance, Brent seemed distracted. Moody. A little worried. At one point, he told Lucas he had the feeling something—or someone—was after him.”
The waiter came over. I got my first good look at him, and I suspected Freddy’s motivation for beckoning him over may have gone beyond just wanting to place an order. The server really was kind of spectacular. He had the smoldering looks of an Argentinian soccer player you’ve never heard of who then winds up modeling for a Versace campaign and dating Miley Cyrus.
“I am sorry to have been detained,” he said in a velvety Spanish accent. “How may I be of assistance?” His eye contact with Freddy promised a main course of polite attentiveness with a side order of flirty innuendo.
Little did he know subtlety wasn’t on Freddy’s menu.
“I hate to bother you,” Freddy said. “But my friend thinks this is disgusting. What’s your opinion?”
Freddy picked up his bowl and gave it another long, sensuous lick. It was a mortifyingly vulgar display that only he could pull off, and just barely at that. He finished with a final wipe around the rim with his finger, which he sucked into his mouth with the subtly of a voice mail from Mel Gibson.
“I think,” the waiter said thoughtfully, taking out his order pad, “you should have this.” He wrote ten digits followed by his name.
Freddy tucked the paper into his front pocket. “Bring me another bowl of this and I might call,” he said.
“Right away, sir.” He scurried off, with a more obvious wiggle to his butt than before.
“Another?” I asked incredulously.
“Waiter or dessert?” Freddy asked. “I’m not sure which indulgence you’re objecting to.”
“I’m talking about what you’re going to eat.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down, honey.”
I rolled my eyes and snorted.
“Lovely,” Freddy observed. He reached into his pocket and handed me the waiter’s number. “Here. J
ust in case you ever need to piss off Tony.”
“You’re not going to use it?”
“I have Cody,” he said nonchalantly.
Wow. This from the guy who didn’t do the “dating thing.” I decided to let it pass. This might be a stage in Freddy’s evolution that went better unrecognized. At least by him.
“So,” Freddy said, “Brent had a bad feeling, huh? He wanted to give Lucas his parents’ number in case something happened to him?”
“No,” I said. “That’s just it. Brent was almost completely estranged from his family. His father wasn’t just antigay, he was rabidly homophobic. He kicked Brent out of the house when Brent was still a teen. They had no contact at all.
“A few weeks before he went missing, though, Brent got something in the mail that worried him. Someone sent him an article in the mail. Anonymously. It was clipped from a fundamentalist magazine Brent knew his parents subscribed to at home. It was about an extreme form of reparative therapy.”
“Like, for a shoulder injury? ’Cause, if so, I’d like to see it. I was doing flies at the gym the other day and—”
“No, not that kind of therapy. This was for repairing homosexuality.”
“Like, making it even better?”
“No, you nut, like making it go away.”
“Oh,” Freddy said. “Like that scam Harrington’s son was running.”
Freddy and I had come across a similar program when my friend was murdered.
“Kind of,” I answered. “But that one, at least, was voluntary. Unethical, sure, but no one was forced into it. It was also kind of New Agey and based in psychology.
“The one sent to Brent was worse. It regarded homosexuality not as some kind of undesirable lifestyle but as a cult. It was a deprogramming program. The ‘patients’ are kidnapped. They’re subjected to confinement, mind control, and mental abuse until they conform.”
After Lucas told me about the letter Brent had gotten, he showed me some papers from Web sites he’d printed out about these kinds of programs. Deprogramming forces people to abandon their participation in a religious, political, or social group. Since the believer is unlikely to volunteer for this kind of change, deprogramming involves kidnapping and arm-twisting.
Often, deprogramming is arranged for and paid by relatives. Most typically, it’s the parents of adult children who foot the bill. They claim they want to help their children, but where do you draw the line? Is it an act of love to take someone against his or her will? Are you saving your child, or is it just another way in which parents seek to control him or her?
On the other hand, some cults are dangerous and are manipulative themselves. They prey on the insecure and weak, exploiting their alienation by promising acceptance for allegiance.
It’s a dull cliché, but you have to ask yourself: Do two wrongs make a right?
In this case, obviously not. Being gay is natural for some people—it’s who we are. No one had to coerce me into liking dick. I had that one covered by myself.
Freddy looked appalled. “Is that even legal?”
“Not as far as I know. It’s been challenged in the courts and hasn’t fared well. But that doesn’t stop some people from trying.”
“So, did Brent ever figure out who sent him the article?”
“He figured it was his older sister. The father is very controlling, and he made it clear that no one is supposed to be in touch with Brent—he’s exiled until he’s willing to change. Anyone who breaks the dad’s rules is subject to equal banishment.”
“Nice guy,” Freddy observed.
“Brent’s older sister is the only one who dares to buck her father’s edicts. Not too much—Christmas here, birthday call there. She didn’t sign the article, but it was postmarked from her town. Brent figures it was her way of warning him without getting in trouble with their dad.
“Bottom line: Brent didn’t want Lucas to call his parents if something happened to him. He wanted Lucas to call the police and tell them it was probably his parents who did it. And then he wanted Lucas to send them the picture.”
Whether Brent’s sentiment of love and forgiveness was sincere, or if he just wanted to make his parents feel remorse for what they’d done, I didn’t know. Maybe a little of both.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
“Oh my god,” Freddy said. “That’s like, the worst thing ever. And I thought my parents were evil when they wouldn’t buy me a pony for my fifteenth birthday.”
“You still wanted a pony when you were fifteen?”
“Did I say ‘pony’?” Freddy asked. “I meant to say ‘subscription to Playgirl.’ So, now that Lucas knows Brent’s gone missing, did he call the cops and rat out Brent’s folks?”
“No. Two days after Brent told Lucas about the letter, he told him not to worry about it. He no longer thought his parents would do that to him.”
“What happened?”
“Brent never said.”
“So, why doesn’t Lucas call the cops anyway?”
“Like I said, Brent was sure his parents had abandoned the idea. But if they found out Brent heard they’d looked into it, they’d know the sister was the one who gave him the heads up. He loved her too much to get her into that kind of trouble.”
The waiter came over with another dessert for Freddy.
“This one’s on me,” he purred.
“Maybe later, I really will put some on you.” Freddy winked. “With some whipped cream, too.”
The waiter walked away with a big grin.
“I thought you weren’t going to call,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t flirt,” Freddy said. “He did give me free ice cream after all.”
“That does look good,” I couldn’t help admitting. “Think I could score some, too?”
“That depends,” he deadpanned. “What are you willing to do for it?”
“Ask nicely?”
Freddy handed me his spoon. “Dig in, baby.”
“That’s all it took?”
“After tonight’s conversation, yeah. Life can be ugly, sometimes. Friendship’s like me—it makes the world a little prettier.”
33
Top Secret
The next day, I found out what wasn’t pretty. Me. At least, me aged and uglied up via the expert application of latex and makeup by Steven Austen.
It was the day I’d been trying to avert but couldn’t avoid. In two hours, my mother and I had an appointment at Families by Design, where we’d be posing as the world’s worst candidates for adoptive parenthood.
Making me appear older involved adding heavy jowls, deep wrinkles, and an ashy complexion. Steve dulled my natural blondness to a mousy brown, then threw in some gray streaks for good measure.
In the mirror was an unflattering combination of myself, my father, the guy who played the father on Happy Days and Gollum from Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t a good look for me.
Was it convincing? I wasn’t sure.
“I couldn’t go as heavy on the makeover as I would have if we were working on film,” Steven explained. “The camera and lighting can be manipulated to hide a multitude of sins. But this is real life, and you’re going to be meeting people face-to-face. So, I had to be more subtle with the appliance work.”
“What do you think?” I asked Steven.
“I think . . .” Steven paused, searching for a tactful way to put it, “you look more like someone who’d be involved with your mother than you did before.”
Which I took to mean that while Steven hadn’t managed to make me look quite as old as my mother, I was at least believable as prey for an energetic cougar.
Speaking of which . . .
“Darling,” my mother cried, entering the room. Steven had done what he could with her earlier; now she was emerging from the rest of her makeover.
Steven had done a better job with my mother than he had with me, proving that subtraction is easier than addition. He’d used putty to fill in the lines
in her face and a thick foundation to cover all but her deepest wrinkles. A pinker-than-usual tone in her makeup and thick false eyelashes made her look noticeably younger without being so obvious as to cross her over into drag queen territory.
Further enhancing the illusion was the new hairdo. The beautician had covered my mother’s hair, which she always wore in her signature beehive, with a red wig shaped in a more youthful bob. It was a convincing, well-done job.
Lastly, the show’s stylist, a young straight girl who’d been dying to make my mother look more contemporary since the show’s first day, really went to town. She dressed my mother in a chic cream-colored Donna Karan jacket and matching skirt that was slimming and flattering. It wasn’t obviously flashy or trying-too-hard, but it was somehow much hipper than my mother’s usual matronly pantsuits. It also looked outrageously expensive, which was an impression we were shooting for.
The stylist accessorized my mother’s neutral outfit with bold jewelry and a bright gold belt. They attracted attention without being overly ostentatious. It was a smart move, as anything that drew someone’s eye away from our faces was bound to help.
One of the problems we had was making sure no one recognized my mother as the star of Sophie’s Voice. Her image was getting pretty well known. While having someone—anyone—other than her pull off this sting would have made this easier, she insisted on doing it herself.
“They don’t,” she explained, “give Diane Sawyer an Emmy for someone else’s investigation.”
With her new makeup, hairstyle, and clothing, I had to admit my mother was probably suitably unrecognizable as the Long Island hausfrau hostess. We tried to get her to tone down her distinctive New Yawk manner of speaking, but no matter what we did, she sounded like Madonna after the pop star weirdly acquired an English accent. So, we let that pass.
As for me, I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing there. For some reason, my mother had decided I’d be the perfect person to help her pull off this stunt, and whatever Mama wants, Mama gets. At one point, I pulled her aside to ask if she didn’t think she’d be better off accompanied by a professional reporter (not to mention one closer to her age).
Third You Die (Kevin Connor Mystery) Page 25