Nobody Rides For Free

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I sipped my watery martini slowly. I was considering another when the door opened again and a single middle-aged man walked in.

  He went up to the bar and greeted the bartender, Virgil, and Flip. “Nothing for me, can’t stay,” he said to the bartender. “Just stopped in to check out the scene.”

  He turned to Virgil and Flip. “Who’s your new friend?”

  “This is Kyle,” Flip said. “Kyle, you stay away from Frank here. He’s too old for you.”

  Frank.

  A common name, of course, but was he the Frank I was looking for?

  “Ha!” Frank said. “I was still in short pants when Flip started sucking dick.”

  Virgil laughed. “Yeah, but you were sucking right along with him.”

  Kyle kept looking back and forth nervously, and Flip put his arms around the boy’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry, they’re just messing around.” He licked his lips.

  Yeah, and he and his buddy would be messing with Kyle before the night was out. But if I said anything, did anything, I’d spook this guy I thought was Frank. The more I looked at him, the more I thought he resembled the man in the porn videos.

  “Anyway, I got shit to do,” Frank said. “Later, losers.” He turned and strode toward the front door.

  I left two singles for the bartender and grabbed the rest of the cash, waited a beat or two, then followed Frank out.

  When I got outside and I was relieved to see Frank’s back was to me as he walked to his car. I stayed in the shadows and watched him get into a Japanese convertible and let the top down. I wasn’t about to tail him in the dark and on my own, but as he backed out of the spot, I got a good look at his license plate number, which I memorized. Once he’d driven away, I pulled out my phone and dictated a note to myself with the plate, color, and make.

  I was about to get into my car when the door to the bar slammed open and Kyle rushed out. Virgil was right behind him. “Come on, Kyle, we was kidding,” he said. “Come on back in the bar, have another beer.”

  “I gotta get home,” Kyle said, scurrying through the parking lot like a frightened mouse.

  “Ah, fuck you, you little faggot,” Virgil called, then went back into the bar.

  I watched as Kyle reached the street. He stopped and looked left, then right, as if unsure which way to go.

  “Kyle, my name’s Angus,” I called to him. He turned to look at me. “I’m going to hold up my ID in the light here. You can come over and look at it if you want. I’m a Federal Agent.”

  He looked at me but didn’t say anything.

  “If you stay there, I’ll come over and show you my ID. I don’t want to hurt you or take advantage of you.”

  He waited, and I walked slowly over to him.

  He stepped into the light of a street lamp and I showed him my ID. He looked at it, then at my face. “You look a lot older than this picture.”

  “It’s makeup,” I said as I grabbed a tissue from my pocket and wiped at the lines Yunior had drawn into my forehead. “See?”

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “I’m undercover,” I said. “Looking for places where older men prey on young boys.” I paused. “Like you.”

  “I can’t stay here. I have to get home.”

  “I’m happy to give you a ride, wherever you want to go,” I said. “Look, I’m twenty-eight. I was your age not that long ago, and I was scared and confused about being gay and I did a lot of stupid things, but I was lucky nothing turned bad. Let me help you.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not gay.”

  “What you are or aren’t isn’t my business.” I held up my keys. “My car’s the Mini Cooper over there.”

  His posture relaxed a bit. “Cool car.”

  I beeped the doors open and slid into the driver’s seat. Kyle got in beside me as I turned the engine on.

  I took a deep breath and tried to remember what it was like when I was still a virgin, as I was starting to put a name to my feelings. How did I know, after all? Was it as simple as getting a boner in the locker room? Crushing on some other guy and wanting him to be my friend?

  “Are you gay?” Kyle asked.

  I put the car in gear and backed out of the space. “Yup.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When I was about fourteen, I found some porn magazines. They were real hardcore, not Playboy or anything. Lots of men and women having all kinds of sex.”

  I remembered it well. One day I was home sick from school, all alone in the house, and I got nosey—snooping around in my stepfather’s drawers. I found this stash of porn magazines in the bottom. I saw stuff there I’d never seen before. I was fascinated by the variety in male dicks. One was short and stubby, another long and skinny. I peered at the uncircumcised one for a while, comparing it to mine.

  “The naked women didn’t do anything for me. But there were a couple of photos of naked men with hard-ons, standing by the women, and those really floated my boat.”

  “So that makes you gay? Getting turned on by dicks?”

  “It didn’t make me gay,” I said. “It made me realize that I was gay. It was a couple of years later before I had the chance to try anything out.”

  I turned south on Flagler Street, heading toward downtown Fort Lauderdale. Something about Kyle said “suburban” to me and I figured he’d want me to drop him at the bus terminal on Broward Boulevard.

  “I was at the beach with my family,” Kyle suddenly said. “I had to go pee so I went to the men’s room and this guy was there. This older guy, like my dad’s age.”

  We stopped at a traffic light, and in the glow of a street lamp I saw Kyle’s face, caught up in the memory.

  “He was peeing at the urinal next to me, and I saw him looking down, and I felt, like I don’t know what. I got hard and I had to pull my trunks up fast.”

  He looked over at me. “He was really nice. We were the only two guys in the bathroom then, and he said not to worry, that it happened to him all the time—getting hard when he peed. He even showed me he was hard himself.”

  The light turned green and I moved forward.

  “I went to wash my hands and he said something like he remembered what it was like getting hard all the time when he was my age. He said he jerked off like three or four times a day and asked me if I did too.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said yeah, I did, too. And then he said that sometimes a buddy helped him out, and that felt good, and asked if I wanted to be his buddy?”

  I realized that I didn’t want to hear anything more about what had happened in that bathroom, even if Kyle needed to tell someone about it.

  “How’d you end up at Second Star?” I asked.

  “He told me that if I ever got a fake ID and wanted to go somewhere to meet nice guys like him, I should go there. We have a laminator in our computer classroom and a friend of mine showed me how to make an ID.”

  “Are there other gay kids at your school?”

  He looked down at his lap. “A couple. But kids make fun of them and call them names. I don’t want to be like that.”

  I remembered Tommy Carlton.

  “There’s all different ways to be,” I said. “You don’t have to be out at your school if that makes you uncomfortable. But you could, you know, reach out to one of those other boys, on the side. Not necessarily to be your buddy, if you know what I mean. But to kind of, keep you out of trouble.”

  “Keep me from going to bars, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Gay kids are going to prom with their boyfriends now. When you get to college, there’ll be gay clubs you can join so you won’t feel alone. And someday, you’ll find a boyfriend, somebody special.”

  I remembered Lester then. He was special to me. Had I screwed things up completely? Or was there a chance he and I could get back together?

  “Hey, there’s the bus station,” Kyle said. “Can you drop me here?”

  “Sure.” I turned into the parking
lot and pulled up. I got a card from my wallet and handed it to Kyle. “If you ever want to talk to somebody, give me a call,” I said. “You ever heard of Lazarus Place?”

  He shook his head.

  “Look it up. It’s not far from here. It’s a shelter for LGBT kids, but you don’t have to be homeless to go there and hang out. A lot better place for you than Second Star.”

  He took the card from me. “Thanks, Angus. You’re sweet.”

  “I try.” He got out of the car and I watched him walk up to a waiting bus and get on.

  One lost boy rescued from Neverland, I thought, and then I went home.

  25.

  Rewards

  Jonas was in the living room when I walked in. “Holy shit! What happened to you?”

  It took me a moment to remember the makeup Yunior had put on me. I struck a pose and asked, “You don’t like my new look?”

  Jonas covered his face. “Please, make it stop.”

  I went into the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror. In the bright light it was easy to tell it was makeup, but if I narrowed my eyes and stepped back I could see that Yunior had done a good job of making me look like I was in my forties. Especially bulked up by the vest under my shirt, I made a convincing older guy.

  I took a long shower, partly to get rid of the makeup and partly to wash away any trace of Second Star. What an awful place, I thought. Somebody needed to shut it down.

  Not me, though. An underage boy had showed a fake ID, and two older men had said something to him that got him scared enough to run. But it was not a case for the FBI.

  I could make a complaint to the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverage and Tobacco. They’d have to open an investigation and send operatives undercover. But if I shut down Frank’s operation, that would probably scare the guys away from Second Star anyway. Rats tend to scurry away any time you shine light on them.

  The word would spread, and kids wouldn’t go to Second Star anymore either. Maybe that boy, Kyle or whatever his name was, would be motivated to find sex among more age-appropriate guys, and he’d tell everyone what a scummy place the bar was, and abuse of teens would go on a downward slide.

  Yeah. Soon I’d be clapping my hands to save Tinkerbell and all the other fairies, too.

  • • •

  Friday morning I went to the gym before Jonas woke up, and I was at my desk by eight. I pulled up the notes I’d made the night before, with the color, make, and plate number from the car in the Second Star parking lot. I put the information into the system and crossed my fingers.

  A moment later, I learned the plate was registered to a Frank Cardone at the same address as the house where I’d seen Dimetrie Beauvoir and Ozzy Perez go in with Eric Morozov.

  I opened a new FD302 and started typing my notes. Frank Cardone had a police record—two misdemeanor arrests for exposure of sexual organs under the terms of section 800.03. According to what I read, charges for the first were dropped, and he received a fine and hours of community service for the second.

  I added that information to my FD302 then went to see Roly and fill him in on what I’d discovered the night before.

  “It’s like a lot of small pieces of a big puzzle,” I said. “But I’m not seeing the whole picture yet. Frank Cardone’s car is registered to the house where I think two of the runaway boys are living. But I haven’t made any connection to the flakka yet.”

  “And you can’t get inside without a search warrant,” Roly said. “You don’t have enough to get one yet, do you?”

  “Nope. Alexei Verenich’s murder took place on his boat, and my only connection between Verenich and the property is that he was the agent for the LLC that owns the house. So I couldn’t include the house in the subpoena materials I prepared.”

  “Then all you can do is what you’ve been doing. Keep picking at threads and see where they lead you.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “Could I put Cardone under surveillance?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve heard that he recruits underage boys on Fort Lauderdale Beach. If I watch him this weekend, maybe I’ll see him make contact with a boy and bring him back to the house.”

  “That’s a shaky premise,” Roly said. “Do you have any reason to believe that he will go to that place, this weekend, for that purpose?”

  I shook my head.

  “The only video you’ve seen was filmed in a locker room, right? Do you have anything that you could link to the house?”

  “I e-mailed you the photo of Ozzy that’s being used on the webcam site to advertise his services. The picture was taken indoors.”

  He opened the picture I’d sent, and looked at it, then he shook his head. “There’s nothing here that connects the picture to that address.”

  I felt like a small child being chastised by the principal.

  “So even watching the exterior of his house would be a fishing operation,” Roly said. “Review the Fourth Amendment, Angus. People have the right to be secure in their homes against unreasonable search and seizure.”

  “I know. And I need probable cause supported by oath or affirmation in order to get a warrant.”

  “I’m not trying to bust your chops, Angus. You’re eager and dedicated, and you know the rules. But you need to learn how to operate effectively within them.”

  He looked at the clock, then pushed back his chair. “It’s close enough to quitting time. You know where the Fort Lauderdale police department is on Sunrise Boulevard?”

  “Sure. I drive past there all the time on my way to work.”

  “I’ll meet you there and we’ll scope out the neighborhood around your house together. You can leave your car in the police department lot.”

  • • •

  We met there about forty-five minutes later. My Mini Cooper was not exactly a surveillance vehicle. I’d chosen the British Racing Green paint job because, well, my name was Green. And I thought it looked good with my red hair and pale skin. But it stood out, and Roly’s big black SUV didn’t.

  “Where am I going?” Roly asked, as I got in.

  I gave him the address of the house. “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  “The screenshot from the webcam you sent me included a pair of sliding glass doors that looks out to a patio, right?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  “So I wonder whose backyard looks out at that patio. And whether you can see inside this house from the neighbor’s.”

  “You think maybe we could watch some porn being filmed?”

  “I don’t know. If we can see into the living room, we might be able to take some photographs and match them to the furniture in the webcam screenshot. Or maybe we’ll see lights and cameras set up. That would be unusual in an ordinary house.”

  “Maybe one of the neighbors has seen something,” I said.

  “There you go,” Roly said.

  We turned off Wilton Drive as I had when I was following Eric Morozov the other day. “That’s the one,” I said, pointing ahead of us. “That one-story with the faded gray paint.”

  “OK.” He continued down the street, looking around, then turned left and made a complete circle around the block. When we got back to the house, he asked, “What did you see?”

  “Lots of mature trees,” I said. “Privacy.”

  “Good. What else?”

  I leaned forward and looked out through the windshield. “There’s a two-story apartment house over there,” I said. “I wonder if any of the apartments there look out at the house.”

  “Describe the building for me.”

  Why did he want me to describe it when he could look right at it?

  “Looks maybe fifty years old,” I said. “Two stories, like I said. Flat roof. Parking lot.”

  “How do you get to the second floor?”

  “Exterior staircase to a catwalk. Oh.” I realized what he was trying to show me. Anybody climbing the stairs to the second floor, or hanging out on the catwalk, might
have gotten a glimpse of the house.

  “You know what you have to do now?” Roly asked.

  “Yup. Come back here this evening and knock on doors.”

  Roly dropped me at the police department parking lot, and I called Katya. “You busy this evening?” I asked.

  “Nothing I can’t get out of easily. What’s up?”

  I asked if she could help me with the surveillance. It was a big building and I wanted to cover as many apartments as I could as quickly as possible.

  “Tell you what,” Katya said. “I’ll help you tonight, and even tomorrow, if we can’t get any answers, and then you come with me to Krasotka tomorrow night.”

  “Sure. I can talk to Lyuba again, see if she’s heard anything about Verenich’s murder. Have you been able to find out any more about Kurov?”

  “He’s been very careful to keep his name out of any public records,” she said. “A lot of people I spoke to say it’s common knowledge, for example, that he’s the developer behind the Valentina, a big triangle-shaped building at the north end of Sunny Isles Beach. But I can’t find his name on any of the paperwork.”

  “Maybe we’ll learn some more tomorrow night.”

  We made plans for her to come to my house around five this evening so that we could be in place for folks coming home from work, as well as catching those who might be working a late shift.

  I had about an hour to kill, and I drove around the neighborhood a couple more times, looking for anything I might have missed. If I did get to set up surveillance on Frank Cardone, where could I park? If my car was too visible, where could I position myself?

  Eventually, I went home, changed into something more casual, and met Katya at the front door when she rang the bell. “Very boys-just-out-of-college,” she said, surveying the living room.

  “Hey, it’s a rental,” I said. She wore a loose coral-colored top over a pair of jeans, with espadrilles and a shoulder bag in the same color. She followed me back out to my car.

  We drove past the porn house first, and since there were no cars in the driveway and there was less chance we’d be spotted, we decided to begin with a canvas of the surrounding houses. I parked at the far end of the street and Katya took one side, while I took the other.