Nobody Rides For Free

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “We card everybody here,” Lester said as he handed the photo back to me. “You’re not twenty-one, you can go find some other bar to hang around. Cruz has to settle for legal twinks here.”

  “He comes around often?”

  “He’s a Saturday night special. Once or twice a month he shows up at two or three in the morning when the lights are low and the boys are nervous. He can usually persuade someone to go down on him or go home with him.”

  “He been here lately?”

  “Couldn’t say. I haven’t worked the late-late shift in a while.” He lounged against the wall.

  I noticed how his tight shorts pulled against his body when he leaned back, and I remembered what kind of weapon he had there.

  Did I want to get back together with Lester? He was a sweet guy underneath all those muscles, and he made me feel safe and protected when I was with him. Like I could forget I had a gun and a badge and just be a guy. My brief flirtation with Shane McCoy had reminded me what it could be like to be with someone else.

  Focus, Angus. I pulled out the photos of Dimetrie, Ozzy, and the guy Dorje had called Frank. “Recognize any of these?”

  “This is turning into a regular interrogation,” Lester said, but he took the pictures and looked at each one carefully.

  He handed back the photo of Ozzy. “No.” Then the one of Dimetrie. “No.”

  He looked at the one of Frank for a while, then finally gave it to me. “Maybe. Hard to say because he looks like a lot of other guys. But if he has been here, he hasn’t been in often enough to make an impression.”

  Lester stood there staring at me, and I couldn’t read his expression. Was he angry at me? Still interested? All I knew was that his stare was getting me hard, but I had investigating to do.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” Lester asked, with his arms crossed over his massive chest.

  “Is there any bar in Fort Lauderdale that isn’t so careful about IDs?” I asked. “Some place that might be more to Antonio Cruz’s liking?”

  The shaft of light that illuminated Lester’s face showed his strong jawline and deep, dark eyes that were part of what attracted me to him. “I wouldn’t know.”

  I stood there for a moment, my eyes locked on him. The sexual tension was zinging in the air between us. I sure as hell felt it, and I was sure Lester did, too.

  “Check with the bartender,” he said finally. “Tony. He’s worked at every gay bar in town, usually in short stints. He might know.”

  I wondered about the “short stints” comment, but I thanked Lester and walked over to the bar. Tony was a skinny, balding guy in his late fifties or early sixties, wearing a Hawaiian shirt patterned with palm trees and surfer boys.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked.

  Eclipse had the same frozen drink machines as Lazy Dick’s, so I knew the margarita would be weak, and I ordered one. I watched as Tony worked; his movements were quick and rabbity, like someone very hyper or on uppers.

  “I’m Angus,” I said, when he brought the drink back. I reached out to shake his hand, which was cold and clammy.

  “Tony. Saw you talking to the bouncer. He’s a hunk, isn’t he?”

  “He sure is. He’s a friend.”

  He eyed me appraisingly. “Nice to have friends like that.”

  I nodded, then pulled my badge out of my wallet and showed it to Tony. “He can vouch that I’m a good guy,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what Lester would say about me. “I’m investigating a case right now where some teenage boys are being exploited for porn.”

  “Whoa. I don’t know nothing about that. My interests are strictly age-appropriate.”

  “No worries, I’m just nosing around trying to find places where guys might be taking advantage of underage boys. Lester said you know every bar in town.”

  “I do,” Tony said, nodding proudly.

  “So which bars aren’t so careful about checking IDs?” I asked.

  “I always do my job,” he said. “Most places I work there’s a bouncer who cards everybody when they walk in.”

  “And the places that don’t?”

  He stared at me and curled his lip. Then he leaned in close. “You didn’t hear it from me, but there’s a dump on Flagler Drive south of Sunrise called Second Star. No signs out front—just two neon stars above the door.”

  Someone called to Tony from the other end of the bar. “You get there in about an hour, you’ll hit the primetime,” he said, then he walked away.

  As I expected, the margarita was watery and tasteless. I pushed it away, pulled out a ten-dollar bill for the drink and tip, then walked back to Lester. I waited while he IDed a couple of guys who looked barely old enough to drink.

  “Tony able to help you?” he asked, when they were gone.

  “He suggested a bar called Second Star on Flagler Street. You ever heard of it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning?” I asked. If he knew the Casablanca quote he might know the one from Peter Pan, too.

  But he cocked his head slightly. “Huh?”

  “It’s how you get to Neverland, where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys live,” I said.

  “Well, that’s creepy.” He leaned in close. “Be careful out there, G-Man.”

  “I will be.”

  At that moment, a busboy dropped a tray of plates and glasses on the concrete floor with a sharp bang, and my whole body tensed. I reached for my gun as Lester put his arm around me and pulled me close to him.

  My pulse raced and my body shook. I stayed in his embrace for an extra couple of beats until I pulled away. “I guess I’m not fully recovered,” I said. “But don’t tell the Bureau shrink or she’ll pull my leash.”

  “You’re OK with me,” Lester said. There were a lot of different ways to take that statement but I shelved considering them until later. He stepped back a couple of paces so that there was more distance between us. But that sexual tension continued to zing.

  24.

  Second Star

  When I walked outside, I called Shane. “Do you know a guy named Antonio Cruz?”

  “Name sounds familiar. One of our donors, maybe?”

  “Yup. You ever met him?”

  “Not that I can recall. Why?”

  “Something I’m looking into. You ever hear of a bar in Fort Lauderdale called Second Star?”

  “No. Another thing you’re looking into?”

  “You got it. Can you ask the boys about Cruz and the bar and then call me back?”

  While I sat in the parking lot and waited, I pulled up a map of the area on my phone. The Florida East Coast railroad tracks ran through the center of the neighborhood, with low industrial buildings on either side.

  A couple of minutes later, Shane called back. “Nobody recognized the name Antonio Cruz. I looked him up online and he looks vaguely familiar but I can’t say where I recognize him from.”

  “How about the bar, Second Star?”

  “It took some arm-twisting but Yunior admitted he’s been there before.”

  I remembered Yunior, the fey young kid with coffee-colored skin and shoulder-length hair. “I need to talk to him about the place. Can I come over now?”

  He agreed, and I asked, “Pizza to sweeten the boys up for information?”

  “Always. But what’s this about?”

  I explained that I’d heard a rumor that Second Star attracted chicken hawks and wanted to find out what I could about it.

  “I’ve heard there are places like that but nobody’s ever fessed up to going to one,” he said. “It’s amazing what a weird underworld there is out there.” I agreed with him, then called in an order for pizza.

  • • •

  When I arrived at Lazarus Place, carrying two boxes of pizza, Yunior met me at the door and squealed with delight. “Hey, sugar!” He took the pizzas from me and then kissed me on the cheek. “We love it when you come visit.”

  I followed him into
the living room, where a half-dozen kids dove into the pizza and the two half-gallons of soda I’d brought. “They’re going to be wild on the caffeine,” Shane grumbled, but he took a big glass for himself.

  After I’d devoured a slice of pizza dripping with cheese and oily pepperoni, I wiped my mouth with a napkin and said, “Shane told you guys I’m interested in a bar called Second Star, right?”

  “What you want to go there for, sugar?” Yunior asked. He was sprawled elegantly on the couch, in denim shorts and a skin-tight tank top that showed off all his assets—from his long, tanned legs to his basket and booty. Everything I could see of his body was hairless except for his head, which was topped with an exuberant mop of gelled hair. “You’re too old to cause a stir and you’re too young to fit in with those wrinklies.”

  “I’m not looking to pick anyone up or get picked up. But I’m worried that it might be a place where boys like you all can get into trouble.”

  “Ozzy went there,” River said, looking down at the ground and speaking softly.

  “You didn’t tell me that before,” Shane said. “You said he met a guy by the beach.”

  “He didn’t want you to know what he was doing.”

  “It’s OK, I’m not mad,” Shane said, though he sure looked angry to me. “I want you guys to know you can trust me. With anything.”

  There was a mumbled assent from the crowd.

  “You can trust me, too,” I said. “I know you guys don’t know me, and sometimes the suit and the badge can throw you off, but I’m on your side. It wasn’t that long ago that I was your age and I guarantee you I was as confused and scared as you.”

  “I ain’t scared of nothing,” the heavyset boy I remembered as DeAndre said.

  “You should be scared,” I said. “There’s a shitload of people out there who want to hurt you, because you are who you are. Because you dare to be honest, to look and talk and act like you do. Bible-thumpers and closeted assholes and drunks with two-by-fours. Not to mention homicidal maniacs and people who think they can text at the same time as they drive. Fear is good. It strengthens your senses and makes you pay attention to the world around you. Don’t let it hold you back, but don’t ignore it either.”

  I sat back. “Sorry for the sermon, but in my job, you see a lot of bad shit.”

  The room was quiet for a moment. “I am scared of my stepdad,” DeAndre said. “He’s a mean mother and he has guns. Reason why I left.”

  “Thank you for being honest.” I waited a beat. “Now, back to Second Star. Anything?”

  “Like I told Shane, I been there,” Yunior said. “It’s a dump. Creepy old guys who look like they want to eat you up.”

  “You have a fake ID?”

  “Like duh,” Yunior said. “But don’t matter. Bartender can’t see it in the light. And if you ain’t got money, you just got to look around and one of them guys will pay.”

  We went around the room and no one had anything more to add. “Thanks guys,” I said. “I’m going to go over there myself and see what it’s like.”

  “You can’t go in there looking like you do,” Yunior said. “You too young.” He stood up. “Come with me. Yunior fix you up right.”

  I looked at Shane, who shrugged. I followed Yunior down the hall and he stopped at the bathroom. “You go in there and take that pretty shirt off,” he said. “You don’t want to get makeup on it.”

  “Makeup?”

  He made a shooing motion. “Go on.”

  I took off my shirt and white undershirt, then wrapped it around my waist to cover my holster. I looked at my chest in the mirror. I was nowhere near as built as Lester, but I was proud of my muscles. No scars from the bullets that had hit my vest, and the purple bruises over my fractured rib had faded, but when I touched the area I still winced.

  Yunior came in and I quickly plastered a smile on my face. He carried a hard plastic case covered with sixties-style decals of brightly colored flowers and butterflies. When he opened it, I realized it was filled with makeup and brushes. “Now usually we do this so we don’t look like we just walked out of middle school,” he said as he dipped his index finger into a jar of cream. “But the idea’s the same for you. And the bar is dark so you have to make an impression.”

  I stood there patiently as he smoothed some of the cream over my face, then dipped a brush into something darker and drew a couple of lines across my forehead and under my eyes. “That tickles,” I said, as I squirmed.

  “Hold still, sugar.” Yunior put his finger under my chin and shifted my face. I had a powerful moment of wanting it to be Lester who touched me that way.

  Yunior blended the colors in for a couple of minutes. When he was finished, he turned me to the mirror so I could see myself. “What do you think?”

  “Holy crap. I look like my grandfather,” I said.

  “Yeah, you do. But your chest is way too fine for an old guy.”

  “I can handle that,” I said. “I’ve got my Kevlar vest in my trunk.”

  “Oh, I love it when you go all FBI on us,” Yunior said. “I’d give you a kiss but I don’t want to smudge your makeup.”

  I waited for Yunior to leave before I put on my tee and shirt because I didn’t want him to see my gun. Then I walked back to the living room. “Holy cow,” Shane said. “You look twenty years older.”

  “Yeah, not a look I’m going to practice when I go out clubbing.”

  I thanked Shane, Yunior, and the rest of the kids and when I got to my car I took off my shirt, and put my vest on over my tee. The vest was a new one, issued to replace the one with the bullet holes in it. Since getting shot, I kept it with me all the time as a good luck charm. By the time I slipped my shirt on over it, I looked and felt bulky. Protected, but also weighted down.

  Even with the air conditioning on high, I sweated profusely in the car as I drove the few blocks to the bar. I parked in the lot of the dry cleaners next to Second Star. As Tony the bartender at Eclipse had said, there was no sign outside the bar, just a pair of neon stars. The windows had been blacked over and so had the glass door.

  There was no bouncer at the door and I walked unchecked into the small room, which was lit only by a couple of neon beer signs and some dim bulbs hanging on wires overhead. The two high stools on the left side of the bar were taken by middle-age men, who turned to look at me as I walked in. When they realized I was over the age of majority, they went back to their drinks.

  I walked past five small round tables. Only one was occupied, by a grizzled-looking man and woman who were probably neighborhood regulars who didn’t care what went on around them. No one around appeared to be underage.

  The bartender was a bald-bear type in a T-shirt that stretched across his ample belly. Behind him was a scant rack of bottles I recognized as cheap, well brands because of the years I’d spent behind the bar while I was in college. “Gin martini, rocks,” I said, leaning against the bar on the other side from the two men. “Two olives, if you’ve got ‘em.”

  He poured the drink without any particular grace and slid it across the bar to me. “Seven-fifty,” he said.

  I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and laid it on the bar. “Slow night?” I asked. “Or things get busier later?”

  “You want action, there’s plenty of bars downtown,” he said. “This is a neighborhood place. And there ain’t no later for us. We close at midnight.”

  He smiled, revealing a chipped front tooth. “Got to get my beauty rest, don’t I?”

  The door opened and I sensed the attention of the bar shift in that direction. A young guy in a polo shirt and skinny jeans hesitated on the threshold, and one of the men at the bar said, “Come on in, we won’t bite.”

  The man next to him added, “Unless you want us to,” and both of them laughed.

  That invitation seemed to clinch it for the guy in the doorway, and he walked in. As he passed me, a shaft of overhead light showed that he was a lot younger than he appeared at first. He walked with the coltish aw
kwardness I remembered of my own teen years, soon after my growth spurt, when my arms and legs were so much longer and I didn’t know what to do with them.

  He stepped up to the bar between me and the two men. “A Bud Light draft,” he said to the bartender.

  “You have an ID?” the bartender asked.

  He pulled a plastic card out of the back pocket of his tight jeans. It had to be a fake; there was no way this kid was even eighteen, no less twenty-one. I watched his Adam’s apple pulse as the bartender glanced at the card, then handed it back. He pulled the beer, handed it to the kid. “Five bucks.”

  The older man closest to the boy said, “Put it on my tab.” He turned to the boy. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

  Though they were talking quietly, there was no music on and I could hear everything they said.

  The boy sipped his beer. “My first time.”

  “A virgin!” the man crowed, and the boy blushed.

  “Ah, he’s just kidding you,” the man’s friend said. “I’m Virgil and this is Flip.”

  “K—Kyle,” the boy said, stuttering a bit, and I wondered if that was his real name.

  “Come on over here between us,” Virgil said, and they scooted their stools apart. Virgil pulled a third stool between the two and Kyle joined them.

  I sat at the bar by myself, listening to their conversation, laden with humor and sexual innuendo, and I fought against the instinct to pull my badge out and drag Kyle away. But if I did, I’d lose any chance of learning something that might lead me to Ozzy and Dimetrie.

  Kyle didn’t look like he was being forced into anything he didn’t want. His posture had relaxed and he was laughing along with the two men, though I was reminded of the way lions circled a single gazelle on the savannah.

  The door opened and closed a couple of times as patrons came and went. A skinny guy who looked like he might be homeless got a plastic tumbler of water from the bartender and was then shooed away. Another pair of older men came in, ordered drinks, and sat at a table after eyeing Kyle with Virgil and Flip.