by Andrea Speed
“I don’t want a report, just when she was found.” He knew when she was in this mood, he shouldn’t push his luck.
“Three days ago.”
So fairly recent. That wasn’t good. “Strangled like Smith?”
More pointed silence. “How did you know that?”
“I was talking with Holden, he—”
She groaned in disappointment. “Fox. I shoulda guessed.”
“It’s all over the street. They know about Roman.”
“And how the fuck do they know? That information wasn’t shared.”
“How the fuck do they know anything? Nine out of ten times they know when a drug bust is going down, and I assume vice isn’t advertising that. It’s just one of those weird things.”
“Why a hustler, Roan? This isn’t something I should be worried about, is it?”
“What? Holden’s an assistant investigator now. I thought you knew that.”
“And that bothers the hell out of me. They aren’t the most well adjusted people in the world, you know.”
“Neither am I, so that works. Will you at least tell me if you have a suspect in either killing?”
“No suspects. How can there be? We can’t even get a decent timeline tracing their last known whereabouts.”
“What about Kevin? He got anything for you?”
“He tried, but all we have is that Smith may have been seen hustling near Antique Row about a day before his probable death, or he was seen hitchhiking out of the city near a freeway overpass. Both are impossible to confirm.”
This was where Holden could come in handy. Either no one knew for sure and the cops had heard two different stories, or someone knew and was deliberately not telling the cops. Holden wasn’t a cop, so he’d be in at a chance for the truth. And it would make sense that Smith might be at Antique Row as, in spite of its name, a lot of young male hustlers did business down there. “If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”
“You better.” That almost sounded like a warning, and probably was.
Downstairs, he found Dylan brewing tea and looking unusually snazzy in a pale-blue button-down shirt and neat black jeans that could have passed for classy. That’s when Roan remembered, “Oh yeah, you’re going to interview for Silver today.” Silver was an upscale restaurant/bar that had recently opened but also had a vacancy in its bartending staff.
Dylan looked almost embarrassed as he took a bite of his toast. “Yeah. Is it wrong that I might go work for hets just because they’re offering dental?”
“You know, I’m sure there’s a dirty joke somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it.”
Dylan grimaced and gave him a dirty look, but there wasn’t much anger behind it. “Thanks for the support, hon.”
“Hey, I’ll support you ’til you can’t stand anymore.”
That got a small, reluctant snicker out of Dylan. “You’re horrible, you know that?”
“Says it on my business card.”
He helped himself to toast and tea and flipped through the paper, scanning it, wondering how Karen’s death fell through the cracks. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe her body was found on a busy news day, and report of it just got bumped. It could happen.
After a moment, Dylan said hesitantly, “Did you read the thing on the new domestic partnership registry?”
“You mean the ‘no marriage for you, fags’ act? Yes, I did. Why?”
“Well, um, it says it covers hospital visitation, you know, meaning a doctor would have to let your partner see you like they were actually family or something. I was thinking maybe that would be something we should look into. I mean, we’ve been lucky so far, what with Dee’s friends and the fact that most of the hospitals know you already, but what happens if we run into some stickler for regulations who just doesn’t care who you are or who you know?”
“Like Nurse Ratched.”
“Exactly.” He paused briefly. “Do I add that to your movie reference list or your book reference list?”
“Could go either way. You pick.” He considered what Dylan was saying, and what he actually meant. What he meant was “what if they won’t let me see you if you’re hospitalized again?” and that was a concern. If he was going to be unfair to Dylan by possibly dying on him in his sleep, he owed him at least that much. “Does it say what dreary government office we trek to, to do this?”
“Umm, I don’t know. You want to do this?”
“I do. Find out where we go, and we’ll go.”
“How do you know it will be a dreary office building?”
“Because it’s an unwritten law that all government bureaus should be bleak hellscapes straight from Kafka’s or Orwell’s worst nightmares. And yes, that’s two for the literary reference pile.”
Dylan gave him a disarming, sweet grin, and Roan instantly felt bad for him. He should have had better taste in men than Roan. Talk about taking up with a lost cause.
Dylan left cheerful, which Roan figured was the least he could do for him, and only then did he put in a call to the Selfridges. He was prepared for a machine, but the mother picked up. (He knew from looking at Brittney’s school records her name was Elizabeth, but he wasn’t going to tip his hand so early on.) “Hello, Mrs. Selfridge? I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective, looking into the disappearance of Jordan Hatcher, and—”
She interrupted him with a disdainful snort. “Oh, she ran off with him, did she? I’m not surprised.”
“So Brittney’s gone?” He actually knew from the school records that she had missed two days in a row, unexcused. He’d guessed she was gone, but again, it was safer to pretend he was an idiot. People generally opened up more to idiots than to know-it-alls.
“Of course she’s gone. And good riddance. Mouthy little brat.”
Wow. Bad relationship there, huh? “How long has Brittney been gone?”
There was a noise like a drag off a cigarette before she said, “Three days, Mr. McKichan. After we got her out of her last shoplifting charge. And before you ask, no, we have no idea where she ran off to, and I can’t say I much care. I’m sure you think I’m a horrible mother, but ever since she turned sixteen, she’s been out of control. Drinking, drugs, shoplifting, and going out with boys she knows damn well her father and I won’t approve of. She’s trying to make us angry, and why? We give that ungrateful bitch everything, and she only gives us headaches.”
“Teens rebel. They’re good at that.”
“Perhaps, but she doesn’t have to be so obnoxious about it. The only thing she’s actually dedicated herself to over the past year is pissing us off. If only she’d work so hard at her studies.”
“Has she run off before?”
“Once, but that was just to her aunt’s in Santa Clara. She was packed up and sent home within a day. Kate can’t stand her anymore.”
“So she’s unlikely to have gone there again.” Not a question, but she seemed to take it as such.
“No, I’d have had an angry phone call by now if that was the case.”
“Can I have her name anyways?”
She sighed heavily, as if just talking to him was a burden. “Katherine Norris. But she’s not there, and there’s no way in hell she’d take that dirtbag boyfriend of hers down there.”
“You don’t like Jordan.”
“He’s an idiot. I know his father is supposedly some kind of genius, but it must not run in the family. That boy’s as dumb as a post, and as close to white trash as you can get for a pampered rich boy.”
That just confirmed a suspicion on his part, and he wanted to say the father had an air of white trashiness about him too, but didn’t because it didn’t matter. “So you really don’t have any idea where they might have gone?”
“No, I do not, and you know what? I don’t care. I hope for your sake you find Jordan, but if you find Brittney, don’t bother letting us know.” And with that, she hung up on him.
Well then—two poor little rich kids who hated their families. (And vice versa?) If that
wasn’t a recipe for runaways, he didn’t know what was.
6
D Is for Dangerous
Holden sat in one of the saddest motel rooms he had ever seen, and considering he was a hooker, that was saying something.
A tiny television that probably dated back to the ’80s provided the only light in the room, a flickering, inconstant illumination that scudded by in eerie silence. It looked like a game show. The whole room smelled like bong water, body odor, dust, and failure.
Holden sat in the small room’s only chair, as Javier sat on the bed in his underwear, black shorts that he preferred because they hid the stains and could go a couple days without being washed.
He was a bit on the short side, but slender and wiry, and he looked fragile and much younger than he was. He said he was seventeen, but he was actually twenty-four and starting to show it around the eyes. He usually shot drugs between his toes or in other visually inaccessible places. He had a few track marks on his legs that he usually hid with Band-Aids, but they had all fallen off onto the messy bedspread like pieces of sunburnt skin. He scratched his slightly sunken chest before picking up the bong he’d made out of an empty Coke can, and his red plastic lighter. He often shaved his chest, but even when he didn’t, the few hairs that grew in were wispy and almost pubic, gathering just beneath the hollow of his throat like a clutch of crabgrass.
Javier—real name Brody Walker—held the flame briefly to the tiny hole in the center of the can where the dried lump of pot sat and took a deep breath of smoke through the mouth of the can. He held it until his coughing became convulsive, and then it all came out in a single spasmic cough. He then held out the can, his brown eyes glazing over, and asked in a harsh voice, “Want some? This is good shit.”
Holden shook his head. “Nah, I don’t like to mix booze and pot. Gets me too fucked up.” He hadn’t been drinking, but he wasn’t interested in getting high right now. He was on a mission.
He was also on painkillers. Being stabbed in the stomach at least got you that, even though these were so mild he bet Roan could down the whole bottle and think they were Flintstone’s Vitamins.
Brody nodded, and Holden pretended not to notice the glass meth pipe sitting on the nightstand, right next to the potato chip bag and crumpled pack of Camels. No one became a hustler if they were overly concerned about their health, or had any other way of getting the money they needed. A good thing in Brody’s case, as right now he looked like a corpse waiting to happen, propped up on a messy motel bed. “Cool. More for me.”
“So Cowboy told me you’d been working gigs with Coyote.”
“Some, not a lot. I wasn’t with him on the last one.”
“I assume not. Do you know what it was?”
Brody took a swallow of his energy drink (Wouldn’t that be a counter to the pot?), and had a potato chip before telling him, “Couldn’t do it. I’m not into group sex.”
“So it was a gang bang gig?” That tracked with what he'd seen on the snuff site.
“Yeah. Not my thing, even though it mighta been a way into movies.”
“So it was a porn gig?”
“Nah.” He paused, frowned. “Maybe. It was hard to say.” Holden didn’t know if the pot had made Brody’s natural inclination toward vagueness any worse than it already was. Even though he had been born and raised somewhere in Kansas (he refused to name the city, saying no one had heard of it anyways), he always spoke like English was a foreign language to him, like he wasn’t sure what half the words actually meant.
“Who was the gig for?”
“Dunno. Some guy he met on Craigslist.”
“Coyote had a Craigslist ad?”
He was taking another hit, so he simply nodded and didn’t speak until he let the smoke out. “Yeah. He said he was tired of doin’ it curbside, that there was more money doin’ it online.”
Not a bad idea actually. Although cops had started cracking down on Craigslist prostitution ads, they mostly focused on underage and female. They didn’t seem to give too much of a damn about male prostitutes. Maybe because no one wanted to be seen doing “faggy stuff” like that. “Do you know what Coyote’s e-mail address was?”
Brody’s glazed eyes settled on the television, which was now running an ad for “natural male enhancement.” Also known as boner pills. It was hilarious really. They couldn’t cure cancer, HIV, infection, or the common cold, but goddamn, they could give eighty-year-old men who really shouldn’t be having sex anymore hard-ons until the day they died. What was extra hilarious was that this also solved the boner problems of male prostitutes—now they didn’t have to pretend to be into it, they could just use pharmaceuticals to fake attraction. Coincidence? “Umm, yeah. It was—” He scratched his head, and used his foot to scratch an itch on his opposite leg. Considering how stoned he was, that was an amazing bit of coordination. “—Coyote404 at, umm… I wanna say ‘sexmail’? But that ain’t right.”
Holden had to think about that for a moment. “You don’t mean ‘hotmail’, do you?”
He snapped and pointed at him, a stoner’s lazy smile creasing his face. “Yeah, man, that’s it. He gave it to me in case I wanted to get in on the Craigslist stuff with him, but I dunno. I mean, it sounds good—God knows I don’t like street cruisin’— but… fuck it. Seems like work. And I don’t wanna hang around some public library so I can answer e-mails from ugly dudes who can only get it over a computer, you know? Maybe I’m old-fashioned.”
“How many cute clients do we get on the street, Jav? Last I counted, it was between zero and minus two.”
That made him chuckle and nod knowingly. “Yeah. Ain’t like the movies, is it?”
“Depends on the film.” He wanted to make a joke about a horror movie, but didn’t. “You stayin’ here for a while?”
He nodded. “Coupla days. I needed a break, you know? So I’m havin’ a vacation.” He snickered at the idea. “It’s over when I run outta money.”
Brody was homeless. Not really a shock. People would probably be surprised to learn how often male prostitutes were homeless, or at least constantly in housing flux. It was a hard life, especially if you were supporting as many addictions as Brody was. “If you need a place to crash for a while, I can find you something.”
He shook his head again. “Naw. After what happened to Coyote, I’m moving on. Place seems dangerous, you know? I heard from this guy I know that Salt Lake City has a desperate need for boys, so I thought I’d check it out.”
“Makes sense. Ultra-repressed Mormons probably can’t wait to suck a dick.”
“That’s my theory.”
“Go where the repression is. That philosophy of life has never steered me wrong.” Holden reached into his coat pocket and hesitated. If he gave Javier this, he had no guarantee he’d spend it on what he asked him to; he could turn around and spend it on more drugs. But what if he did? He had a shitty life, and one of his friends was just murdered (online for all to see, although he was unaware of this, and Holden wasn’t going to tell him). Let him have all the fucking drugs he wanted. He pulled out the money—two twenties and a couple of fives—and stood up, putting it on the nightstand beside the ashtray. “Buy a bus ticket, get something to eat that doesn’t come out of a vending machine. Okay?”
Brody’s eyes seemed to move slowly and deliberately to the money, and then up to his face. “Thanks dude. Wanna come with me?”
“No, I have enough clients as it is. But if it ever dries up, I just might.”
“Awesome.” Holden turned toward the door, and Brody said, “Hey, you leavin’? You don’t hafta leave. I wouldn’t mind the company.” He gazed at him with soft eyes, putting a hand on the empty side of the bed, in case he didn’t realize this was a come-on. It was much, much subtler than his last one.
Brody didn’t talk about his past or himself ever. What Holden knew about him was the sum total of what everyone else knew: he was from Kansas, had a stepsister in a wheelchair for some reason (undisclosed), and ended up
on the West Coast because he wanted to get as far away from Kansas as humanly possible before falling in the ocean. That was it. But Holden didn’t need Brody to acknowledge he’d been sexually abused in his life, from a young age and often. Sometimes you could just see it, the empty hunger of the walking wounded, but it was more the way they treated sex. For some, like Brody, it was the equivalent of a handshake: there was no pleasure in it, it was expected, and they obliged because that was all anyone ever wanted from them.
The funny thing was, Holden was pretty sure Brody wasn’t gay. He wasn’t straight either. He had no sexuality whatsoever; it had been robbed from him along with nearly everything else. He was asexual, but could fake sexuality with anyone, because it meant nothing to him. Not now, not ever. Maybe that’s why he always felt bad for Brody. His abuser had left him hollow, and he’d never recovered from it. He was a doll always waiting to be posed. “I have a gig in a half hour, but thanks.”