by Andrews
I knew from police work that the boy had probably been harmed before by many men. In fact, he was what older gay and bisexual men called chicken—fresh meat. But I chose not to tell Callie that.
"Teague..." Callie's voice was strained. I handed her Elmo's leash, telling her to hold him and get back out of sight. I charged the door, more out of frustration of being drawn into this drama than any idealistic view that I could save this kid. I banged on the door loudly with my fist and lowered my voice.
"Vice Squad! You've got five seconds to open this door! One! Two! Three..."
There was silence, and I jumped back out of sight. The door blew open suddenly and the young boy flew out of the room, his shirt hanging off him and his pants in his arms. He looked terrified, perhaps by Sterling Hackett or perhaps by the specter of the vice squad. I ran after him and caught him by the arm.
"You okay?" I asked him, panting slightly from my short sprint.
"Yeah." He ducked his head.
"What are you doing here?" I pulled him out of sight of Sterling's hotel room door.
"Nothing. Visiting," he said.
I pushed him ahead of me down the hallway and into a small linen closet. Callie and Elmo followed. "You're going to talk to us about what's going on around here. Who do you work for?"
"Whoever pays me," he said.
"To do what exactly?" I pressed.
He started to bolt, but I had him in a grip he couldn't escape. "I will turn you in to the police unless you talk to me for five minutes. What's your name?"
"Joey," he muttered. And suddenly I remembered him. He was the young kid who had served as our guide, leading us to Rose Ross the first night we'd arrived and had gone to the theater to meet her. He was Desert Greeter Joey! And it appeared he'd been giving folks a hell of a hello in his new role as boy prostitute. He was a small-boned boy, blond, rumpled hair, a little too boney. Feminine hands. Nice eyes. Just a boy.
"Okay, Joey, you went to that guy's room for what reason?" I said.
"To entertain. I'm an entertainer," he said.
Callie put her arm on mine to signal that she didn't want me to be too rough on him, but I ignored her.
"You do a lot of entertaining with your pants off?" I asked, and he blushed, letting me know that whatever sexual activity he was participating in, he hadn't been at it that long.
"No," he said. "I work backstage at a couple of shows. This one here too. When I get to be eighteen I can go into the review."
That's good," Callie said. "You'll be very good at it."
"So blow jobs for old guys... is that just to pay the rent?" I asked. Callie winced and Joey looked at the floor.
"Lot of guys do it," he said.
"What guys are those?" I asked.
"The guys in the shows," he replied.
I asked the kid how he'd found out this form of extracurricular activity was even an option. He said the older guys put him onto it. When I tried to find out more, all he knew was that he came to the hotel and hung around in the lobby and sometimes one of the staff would come up and tell him if he wanted to make some money he should go to a particular room. I realized I wasn't going to get much more out of him, and Callie was squirming. She asked what year, time, and day he was born. She said she wanted to do his astrological chart. He replied that he didn't know. He grew up with a relative and had no idea where he was born. She looked at him for a moment and then asked if she could place her hand on his hand. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Suddenly she smiled. "Before you are eighteen, you are going to meet someone who is going to help you change the direction of your life. He will give you the things you have lacked. You will find love." She opened her eyes and smiled at him. He smiled slightly, briefly. I opened the door for him and he left.
"That kid's not old enough to be working anywhere. At least not the kind of work he can tell his mother about," I said. "He may be wearing a name tag, but he's lying about having a job here."
Chapter Fifteen
I lifted Elmo's front paws up on the edge of the bed, then grabbed his hind legs and gave him an alley-oop into the middle of the bed. He was tired of the hard floor and was very appreciative of a day in bed. He gave a deep shuddering sigh and collapsed in a heap. I kissed the top of his head and told him we'd be back in a little while. I rang the theater asking for Sophia Pappagallo, but the man who answered said she was out and they weren't allowed to give me her cell phone number. I rang Rose Ross, got her answering machine, and left a message for her to call but didn't say why—suspicious now of someone's overhearing and diverting her messages.
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
The theater lobby looked like a morgue. The theater entrance was draped in black, and a large display of personal and show-biz items honored the life of one of its longtime performers. There were Joanie pictures resting on easels draped with flowers, tributes posted on the walls, and young gay men passing by to read what others had written. It was mourning Las Vegas-style for Joanie Burr.
"As long as we're depressed, I think we should go down to the morgue and have a look at Joanie," I said, and Callie wrinkled her nose in protest.
"Why? We know she's dead." Callie was trying to squirm out of going.
"Yes, but she slipped and fell. That's the part that's bothering me. Performers as trained and athletic as Joanie Burr don't fall on their own patios and die."
My cell phone rang. It was Barrett asking if I could make a meeting late in the day in L.A. with Jeremy Jocowitz.
"We've done this, Barrett," I said, irritated.
Barrett spoke so loudly that Callie could almost hear her, so I tilted the receiver to let Callie lean in and listen.
"Look, I was wrong. I was reaching for anything to pitch him and keep him interested in your work, and frankly, without you here, I couldn't remember what all you were working on. Excuse me for that, but I only work with about fifty writers. The fact that I'm pitching my balls off for you should say something, I would think. Do you know how many women would give their right tit for me to be pitching them to Jeremy Jocowitz?" I glanced over at Callie, who shrugged and rolled her eyes as if to say, "big deal."
"Whatever," I said.
"Whatever? What-the-fuck-ever? Is that what you're saying to me? Well, dear," her tone was suddenly acrimonious, "I have Jeremy lined up at four this afternoon in my office to hear you pitch whatever in hell turns you on. How about that? Whatever in hell turns you on! Why? Because he likes you, and he likes your talent, and he's just begging for some story that he can relate to. Do you think you can handle that? Do you want me to cancel?"
"I'm still in Vegas. I would have to leave now—"
"Yeah, and quit balling the blonde for a brief moment to get back to your career..."
I pulled the phone away so that Callie couldn't hear any more. "One more remark like that and you can stick your meetings up—"
"Okay, okay, okay, sorry!" There was a long pause while both of us breathed.
I looked at Callie, covered the phone, and mouthed, "I'm not going unless you go with me. We can drive back right after the meeting... round trip eight hours, plus a two-hour meeting."
Callie paused, then nodded.
"Okay, Barrett, but move the meeting to two, because I'm turning around and driving back. I have work here."
"See you at two," she said, and hung up.
"He must really like your work," Callie said.
"If Barrett's just fucking with me, I'm going to kill her," I said.
"I don't think she is. We'll have to pack everything and take it. I don't trust leaving anything here. Especially you, Elmo," she teased as if we'd even consider it.
"I'll buy him an In-N-Out Burger on the road," I said, marveling at a franchise that could get a name like In-N-Out approved at a board meeting. "What about Rose?" I asked Callie.
"We'll only be gone for the day. Maybe we'll come up with something while we're driving. We certainly haven't thought of much while we've been here."
"We love traveling with you," I said, after she'd handed me my third cup of coffee.
"You are the most needy driver I've ever met." She smiled sweetly.
"What? Am I annoying you? I'm sorry. I thought the fact that I am steering us safely through the desert at eighty miles an hour, shoulders tense, eyes glued to the road, senses alert to protect you, would be worth your having to hand me a few things," I said.
She slid her hand between my legs, and I jumped and took my foot off the gas. "Don't be doing that if you don't want to spend the night upside down in a sand dune," I warned, and she leaned over and began nuzzling me in a sensual crawl of kisses that spread from the base of my shoulder up my neck and behind my ear. I whined about her timing. "You are intentionally doing this when I can't do anything about it."
"No, I'm getting you ready for your pitch. Do you even know what you're going to pitch?"
"I'm going to pitch him a lesbian love story. One of the women is preparing to enter monastic life, and the other is married to an abusive husband, and they fall in love. It's a true story. In fact, I've always wanted to do it, but I just thought it was a bit ahead of its time for the general viewing audience."
"Oh boy!" Callie laughed. "If you thought he was ordering gin and tonics during your royal love story, he'll be sending out for a case of vodka by the time this is over."
We both got the giggles and couldn't stop. The idea of pitching the lesbian love story to Jeremy was almost a lark and not a pitch, maybe just a way of letting off steam, doing one's career duty, but not. Getting back at him for his short attention span. It didn't matter. We didn't really care. We just wanted to be together on a cool fall day, laughing and driving and singing along with a song about there being gold in a bank in Beverly Hills in someone else's name. And why that was something to sing about was beyond me.
As we came to a small desert town, I could smell burgers in the air. Elmo woofed loudly, signaling me to pull off and head for the drive-through. I ordered four hamburgers: two with everything but onions and two with meat and bread only. When we pulled through and the cute gay girl handed me the first plain burger, I unwrapped it, tore it in half, and put it on the sack for Elmo to eat in the backseat. He ate it while the lady at the drive-through window watched.
"He loves your burgers," I said, "and he's eaten every burger ever made. These are his favorites." Elmo woofed loudly, and I gave him the second one. He gulped it, looked up at the window, and belched for the girl. She laughed and we drove on.
"What does In-N-Out Burger really mean?" I asked Callie. "Is it the burgers that go in and out, or the people who eat the burgers who go in and out, or is it the cars that go in and out, or is it some more esoteric message..."
"Do you want me to drive? I think you could use a nap."
Watching Elmo devour his drive-through lunch must have reminded Callie of the hotel's food. "I don't think we should eat any of the food that comes through room service," she said. "Buffet's okay because they can't poison everyone, but no more room service in light of what's going on."
I couldn't disagree and wondered why I hadn't thought of it. I told her as long as we were on the topic, I wanted to go over what we knew about the case and focus on what we needed to know. I recapped for Callie that she'd gotten a call from Rose Ross's dad saying a man had warned him his daughter was going to die. Rose then called her dad and told him she was on a ghoul pool list and that was the last frightening straw. He called Callie for help. We came riding to the rescue, located the damsel in distress, and she seemed to think everybody overreacted. Silly her for upsetting people! She said all this in front of Joanie Burr. Later she tracked us down outside the hotel and admitted she thought the money left for the ghost wasn't just a superstition but had something to do with a boy porn ring. In fact, she thought Joanie was going to talk to the police about it, but before Joanie got the chance, she conveniently slipped and fell and died. We learned Bruce Singleton was about to come over to the hotel to run the Boy Review and then he accidentally drowned in the desert. Coincidentally, he was on the ghoul pool list.
As I paused to collect my thoughts, Callie interjected that we shouldn't forget about the ring. The ring on the dead man in the tub— the dead man who turned out to be Bruce Singleton with a white mark on his pinkie finger where the ring used to be...or where some ring used to be. Then there was the newspaper article left in our room about a boy who twenty years ago was killed in the hotel. Not to mention someone tried to kill me with his car, knife her, print a hit list on my palm, and then Elliot tried to smash us with a flying dummy.
"It's obvious that someone or several people are trying to protect the boy ring at any cost," Callie said. "But why would you warn people they were in danger of being murdered by putting them on a ghoul pool death and dying list?"
"Maybe not all of them are in danger. They don't all die. Maybe it's a warning to a select few, to keep them in line."
We both drove in silence for several minutes, trying to piece things together.
We pulled into my Valley house, turned the alarm off, and made Elmo comfortable. He drank some water and plopped into his giant wicker basket with the padded mattress as if to say hotels were hell. I picked the mail up off the entryway floor where it lay scattered, having been deposited through the slot in the door while I was gone. I also retrieved the phone messages from my answering machine. Mary Beth's voice seemed exceedingly loud as she said, "Teague, I hope you're back and that you didn't get married! I've missed you. This is Mary Beth—" I hit Erase so fast that my finger hurt from jamming it into the button.
"Who is Mary Beth?"
"Salesperson," I lied.
"What did she say about getting married?"
"I think she's getting married or wanting to get married or something," I lied again.
"I hope you're not buying anything she's selling," Callie said knowingly.
"Nothing," I said, guilty with no reason to be other than Callie's piercing eyes staring at me. I broke free from her to go into the bedroom and get dressed for the pitch. We'd made record time and didn't have to leave for our appointment for an hour. It only took me twenty minutes to clean up and change into a nice double-breasted suit.
"You look very sexy," Callie said as I came down the narrow hallway from the bedroom.
"Well, thank you." I tried to move past her, but she trapped me up against the wall and kissed me. Her kisses were so hot that I could barely stand up.
"Are you trying to wrinkle my suit?" I whispered. Her mouth never let go of mine, her tongue searching and stroking as her hands deftly unbuckled my belt and unzipped my slacks. She skipped all the foreplay and slid her hand inside me, suddenly pinning me back against the wall and making me gasp. She was leaning fully against me, kissing me hard and long and making me weaker and wetter—her hands stronger than I had imagined they could be—moving inside me urgently as I moaned. I could no longer stand, but she held me like steel against the wall as I sank into her and let go, no longer trying to figure out how a person makes love against a wall, but just doing it—until there was no wall.
"I am ruined," I said afterward, breathless.
Still kissing me, she pulled my slacks up, buckled my belt, straightened my shirt, and said, "That should take the edge off," and grinned mischievously.
"I'll never think of this wall in the same way again. Perhaps a wall is nothing more than a vertical bed," I said.
"Hmm." She grinned and kissed me again. I began unbuttoning her blouse, but she stopped me. "Come on, we'll finish this later. You'll be late."
"But I..."
"It will give us both something to look forward to." She gave me that businesslike kiss that meant we were moving on, and I tried to pull myself together for my meeting.
I w
ent into the bathroom to repair my makeup and caught sight of myself in the mirror. "I look so had," I said out loud into the dreamy green eyes that stared back at me. I practiced furrowing my brow and focusing my vision to a more businesslike look and finally gave it up. "Now I simply look like a business person who's been had."
As we drove, hand in hand, to the Marathon Studio gates, I contemplated Callie's beautiful profile. "You know, for a woman who only a short time ago couldn't let herself go in bed, you're definitely making up for lost ground."
"And your complaint would be...?" She grinned at me.
We hadn't been to Marathon Studios since our infamous entanglement with Robert Isaacs, months ago, which had ended in his being arrested, along with half a dozen studio personnel. Barrett had survived to continue in her position as Executive VP of Worldwide Talent, which I assumed meant if your talent was only continental, Barrett wasn't your gal. The guard at the gate had been alerted to our arrival. He took our names, barely bothered to locate us on the list, and waved us through.
"Feels oddly familiar, doesn't it?" I asked Callie.
"More pleasant this time," she replied.
"That's due entirely to the sexual prelude," I said. "By the way, did you make love to me because we're seeing Barrett and you wanted me to keep you top of mind?" I teased.
"It's not a competition." Callie smiled serenely, then paused and added impishly, "But if it were, I would win hands down."
Barrett's gay male secretary swooned when we came in, rising from his seat in awe and respect. "Long time no seeeeee. Let me tell her you're here," he said, veritably dancing into her office and returning to tell us we were welcome to go inside. I had personally noticed that Hollywood Studio greetings could range from rude, when I wanted something from the studio, to orgasmic, when I had something the studio wanted. Today was an orgasmic day, as if everyone on the lot had gotten the memo: Be nice, they have something we want. As we entered ahead of him, the secretary jogged in place in the doorway, demonstrating his desire to swiftly dash over to the commissary and get us any special drink we might require. We declined, and he jogged on.
