by Ray Garton
No longer laughing. Billy looked at Mr. C. seriously and said, “We’re here on business. We gotta see Diz. I just got distracted by the dogs, assall. Sorry about surprisin’ you like that.” It was the most alert and articulate he had been all day.
“On business, huh?” His eyes moved back and forth between Adam and Carter. “You sure these two’re okay?”
“Oh, yeah, Mr. C.,” Billy said, nodding fast. “I’ve known ’em for years, Mr. C., I’d, um, I’d put my life in their hands.”
Mr. C.’s right eye narrowed and he plucked the cigarette holder from his teeth. “Are you two Hollywood? I know Billy’s Hollywood. You Hollywood?”
“My dad’s a screenwriter,” Adam said as Carter nodded.
“I wanted to go the Hollywood route,” Mr. C. said, nodding. “You know, make some low-budget teen sex comedies, maybe a slasher flick or two. I didn’t have no delusions, I wasn’t after an Oscar, nothin’ like that. But in Hollywood, you gotta have the right look, the right clothes. You gotta be the right age, know the right people. Gotta have the right color eyes. They never let me join in any of their Hollywood reindeer games.” He tipped the bottle back, emptied it. Handed it to Billy. “Get ridda this and get me another one.” Billy took the bottle and rushed out of the room. “But now? Hell, now I got alla Hollywood connections I need.” He grinned and his dentures clacked. “I got Hollywood connections comin’ outta my ass.”
“You...do?” Adam asked cautiously.
“Oh, sure. Lotta big Hollywood players buy my tapes, my CD-ROMs.” He became animated, gestured with his arms, cut trails of smoke in the air. “They want boy porn, they come to me ’cause I’m the best.” He turned to Dougie and Brandon and said, “Hey, you two hit the shower. And tell Eric and Tony and, uh, lessee, Sean, tell ’em to come in here, ’kay?” To Adam and Carter again: “Some of ’em even rent my boys once in a while. Now that, see, that wasn’t even my idea. I wasn’t inta that. I play it safe, and that’s a treacherous trade, the meat trade. But all these big Hollywood agents kept showin’ up, flashin’ their cash, tryin’ to get me to let some of the boys go to this party, that party, in Malibu or Beverly Hills, whatever, and pretty soon they convinced me. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the big names I do bidness with.”
Without missing a beat, Adam nodded and said, “Yes, I would.”
“The fact is, we’re in the same bidness, Hollywood and me. Difference is, they do their work out in the open, and I’m out here in the fuckin’ Mojave desert with the kangaroo rats and the fuckin’ sidewinders and tarantulas I have nightmares about every fuckin’ night. Well, that’s one difference. Another’s that I’m honest about what I do, I’m not a fuckin’ hypocrite. And I got less overhead and a bigger markup. And best of all, I got a lotta Oscar-worthy material in my archives, I can tell you that. You know what I’m sayin’? Huh?” He grinned and his dentures shifted. Voice lowered, became gravelly. “So, if there’s somethin’ about you two that my friend Billy doesn’t know, and you’re plannin’ to hand me over to the feds, you keep that in mind, okay? I go down, everybody goes down. Understand? Everybody.” He held the cigarette holder like a pen and pointed the cigarette’s ashy tip at them. “That might include somebody you know. Somebody you love.” He coughed up a cold chuckle, pointed the cigarette between Adam’s eyes and grinned. “Ya just never know with them Hollywood types.” He smiled at Adam for a long moment, with no friendliness, no humor.
Billy jogged back into the room, handed Mr. C. a new bottle of gin. Said, “Well, um, we should, uh, find Diz. You know where he is, Mr. C.?”
Mr. C. waved his cigarette again. “I dunno, he’s around someplace, I think.”
Billy looked at Adam and Carter, gestured toward the door. “Okay, um, guys, less go find Diz, huh?”
Mr. C. stopped them as they were leaving the room. “Hey, you boys, you ever wanna make some extra cash, I got work for ya. Two hundred bucks a session. You’re just what I’m lookin’ for,” he said to Adam. Then, to Carter: “And I gotta line of chubby videos you’d be perfect for.”
“Chubby videos,” Carter said. “Imagine that.”
Adam said, “We’re straight.”
“Fine, just whack off in fronta the camera. Pays the same either way. Nobody does nothin’ they don’t wanna do, know what I’m sayin’? Just as long as we get a pretty dick in fronta the camera. This is a very friendly operation we got here, and everybody’s happy. Like a big happy family.”
“Well, um, they’ll think it over, Mr. C.,” Billy said, nodding. “See ya later.”
In the hall, they followed Billy. Adam was so angry, his hands shook. Drugs, guns, and explosives were bad enough. But minors being used in pornography in an isolated desert compound was more than he could take. Over the throbbing of his heart in his ears, Adam listened for the sound of helicopters overhead. Doors being smashed open by FBI agents, machine guns spraying bullets.
“Hey, thanks, Billy,” Carter whispered. “But could we, like, not get separated in the future? Okay?”
“I want out of here,” Adam said.
“Oh, well, we can’t leave yet,” Billy said, ‘“cause we haven’t found Diz.”
The kitchen was very roomy, separated from the dining area by a long, broad bar. Trays of sandwich sections, raw vegetables, and potato chips were arranged on the mosaic tile top. A large chrome industrial refrigerator and freezer were set into a wall. Another camera watched from a corner overhead.
A thin olive-skinned boy of about fifteen stood at the bar eating chips, sampling the dips. He had stoned eyes, wet hair, and wore only a pair of boxer shorts.
“Heya, Tony,” Billy said.
“’Sup, Billy?” the boy said with a smile.
“Brandon said Mr. C. wants you on th’set.”
“Shit, I gotta dry my hair.” He grabbed a fistful of chips and started out.
Adam stopped him. “Hey, Tony. Are you...well, you know, are you all right?”
Tony looked at him with narrowed eyes and a smartass smirk. “All right? The fuck you talkin’ ’bout, dude?”
“Well, I mean...being here. Doing this. Wouldn’t you rather, you know, go back to school?”
Tony grinned. “What, and leave show business?” He hurried out of the kitchen laughing, disappeared down the hall.
“You guys, um, stay here,” Billy said. “I’m gonna go find Diz.”
“Hey, Billy,” Adam said. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Billy pointed to an open doorway. “Straight through there, end of the hall.”
“Thanks.” When Billy was gone, Adam turned to Carter. He was eating a sandwich. Adam slapped the back of his head with a loud smack.
“Hey, what the hell’s your problem, man?”
“Your friend Billy is a retard, Goddamnit, that’s my problem.”
“I can’t believe you hit me. And he’s not retarded. He’s just...slow.”
“Maybe he had a lobotomy, ever think of that? What did I ask Billy in the car? Huh, Carter? What did I ask Billy?”
Carter thought about it. Closed his eyes a moment and nodded. “If there was anything else we should know.”
“Right. Like pit bulls and child pornography!”
Carter took another bite. “That’s not really child pornography, is it?”
“They’re minors. These guys are fifteen years old tops, people go to prison for this shit! Who knows how young the other ones are? Doesn’t that bother you?”
Carter shrugged, chewed. “Yeah, it’s illegal. But a lot of things are illegal.” He sucked his teeth for a few seconds. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s putting a gun to their heads, does it? You were making all your own decisions at their age, weren’t you?”
“That’s not the point. It’s just...wrong.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, it’s probably wrong.” He finished the sandwich and said, “Have one of these, they’re great. Some kinda sandwich spread.”
Adam’s surprise registered on his face.
“What? Why’re you staring?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m going to the bathroom.” He walked down the hall, less upset by Carter’s apparent acceptance of Mr. C.’s livelihood than by his own. He was about to do business with Diz. That was a form of acceptance.
At the end of the hall, the bathroom door stood open a foot. Adam stepped inside and said, “Oh, my God.”
A mountainous woman stood facing the rectangular mirror above the sink. Well over three hundred pounds, Adam guessed. Black leather straps studded with shiny silver crisscrossed her body. White rolls of flesh stuck out between the straps and waggled like useless limb stumps when she moved. An intricate dragon tattoo emerged from the crevasse between her great breasts. Perhaps gulping air. She applied the last of her lipstick and smiled at him in bright red, face as big around as a medium pizza.
“Hi, there. You new? I don’t think I’ve seen you around.” She spoke with an inelegant southern accent.
Adam’s mouth moved a few times before anything came out. “I-I’m here with Billy. A friend of Billy’s. I am, I mean. Billy and I are friends. And we’re here.”
“Well, I’m Mrs. C.,” she said. “Is my Biwwy here? My widdoo-biddy Biwwy?”
The baby talk made him afraid she was going to squeeze his cheeks hard.
Mrs. C. dropped her lipstick into a small black bag and zipped it closed. “The room’s all yours. I gotta show comin’ up. You tell my widdoo Biwwy I said hi!”
Adam had to step into the hall and stand in the open doorway of a bedroom to let her pass. In the bathroom, Mrs. C. had left behind perfume fallout that smelled like Fruit Loops. In sour milk.
He turned on the ventilation fan and closed the door. Locked it. After emptying his bloated bladder, he washed the dust from his hands and face. Raised his head and watched droplets of water fall from his eyebrows onto his cheeks in the mirror.
Am I really doing this? he thought. It appeared that he was. And he was doing it out here in the fuckin’ Mojave desert with the kangaroo rats and the fuckin’ sidewinders and tarantulas.
Overhead, a camera watched him with a shark-like eye.
TWENTY-FIVE
When Billy introduced Adam, Diz extended his right arm to shake. All that remained of the hand were a mangled section of palm, an index finger, and a thumb. A little boy’s make-believe gun.
“’Sup, m’man?” Diz said. His grip was strong, for a thumb and finger.
Adam struggled to keep it off his face, but a cold shudder ran up his body when he closed his hand on what remained of Diz’s.
Diz was lanky, with long basketball legs, in jeans and a faded old blue Predator T-shirt. He seemed Adam’s age or so, but it was difficult to tell with all the damage. Except for the softness around his middle, he was lean and tall. A black patch covered Diz’s right eye with a round, panicky cartoon eye painted on the front, the pupil a tiny dot in the middle of all that bloodshot white. Scar tissue gnarled the right side of his narrow bald head. A jagged hole in his right cheek exposed his gums and broken molars. And there were his eyebrows, of course.
They had been removed from—probably blown off—his forehead, then reattached in segments. It looked as if spare parts of other eyebrows had been added to lengthen Diz’s. They were crooked, far too long and high. From just above the outer corners of his eyes, they arched upward, then plunged downward sharply, almost meeting over the bridge of his nose. They created an odd hybrid expression of pleasant surprise and savage rage.
“Billy-boy tells me you lookin’ for my services,” Diz said. He perched on a stool at the bar in the dining room. Billy brought him a can of beer. Diz popped the tab, raised the can in a toast and said, “It’s the fuckin’ king a beers, man,” and took some big, long gulps, the can between the thumb and two middle fingers of his left hand. He pressed the remnant of his right palm over the hole in his cheek to keep beer from dribbling out of his face. Eyes closed, eyebrows high above them, unmoving, as if drawn there in Diz’s sleep by a child.
This is like a Night Gallery episode, Adam thought.
“Uh, yeah, but actually—” Adam cleared his throat, “—we’re not sure exactly what your services include.”
“You tell me what you want,” Diz said, “I tell you if my services include it.” His voice sounded hollow and nasal when he did not cover the hole.
“Um, from what I can tell,” Billy said, “they got somethin’ they wanna blow up.”
“Let ’em answer, Billy-boy,” Diz said good-naturedly. Finished off the beer. “Get me another beer. And get beers for your buddies, too. C’mon, guys, pulluppa stool, sitcher asses down and have a brewski, huh?” Diz wobbled on his stool a bit as he smiled. He was missing a few teeth in front, top and bottom.
Carter did not hesitate to get up on a chrome-legged stool. Plucked a carrot stick from one of the trays and bit it in half with a dull pop. He left Adam with only one stool between himself and Diz.
Adam pulled the stool away from the bar, set it beside Carter, and sat facing Diz.
“You hungry, Adam?” Diz asked, waving a disfigured hand toward the food on the bar. “We got plenny a food. Mom and Pop always got plenny a food around for everybody. Prob’ly why I been puttin’ onna mothafuckin’ pounds, know what I’m sayin’?” He patted his belly and laughed, and the hole in his cheek made it sound somewhat seal-like: Yorp! Yorp! Yorp!
What there was of his left hand fished a crumpled pack of Camels and a butane lighter out of his pocket. He lit up using both hands, then pulled a small glass ashtray down the bar. Although not by choice, Diz held his cigarette like a black-and-white movie Nazi, between thumb and forefinger. Errant smoke oozed from the hole in his face. “Tell me, Adam, whatchoo wanna blow up?”
Billy brought beers for all of them.
Adam took a deep breath to steady his voice. “Actually, I...um, see, I’m not sure I...” He turned to Carter for help.
“Hey, don’t look over here,” Carter said. “You still haven’t told me dick, I don’t know what the hell you’re up to.”
Adam had forgotten he hadn’t told Carter his whole plan. He didn’t even have a whole plan yet. He turned to Diz and said, “A boat.”
“A boat, huh?” Diz nodded. “What kinda boat?”
“Well, actually, we were hoping we could—”
“You say ack-shully a lot, don’tcha?” Diz grinned. “What the fuck’s ’at mean, anyway? That ack-shully word?”
Adam looked around the dining room for an answer, thumbed through his internal dictionary and thesaurus. He came up with nothing. It was just something people said when they were unsure of what they were going to say next. He looked at Diz and shrugged helplessly. “Nothing. Far as I can tell, it means absolutely nothing.”
“Then why use it?” Diz said with laughter in his voice. “Huh? I mean, shit, if it don’t mean nothin’. ’Cause I gotta lotta respect for people who say what they mean.”
Adam’s shoulders and back chilled. He was sure that was some kind of half-veiled threat, but the specifics eluded him at the moment. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. No point in using it if it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Attaboy. Now. What kinda boat?”
“We were hoping we could...buy the explosives, you know? From you. Then we could...bluh-blow it up ourselves.”
A laugh exploded from Diz while he dragged on his Camel. Smoke burst from his mouth and the hole in his cheek. He rocked on his stool as he laughed, slapped the bar a couple times.
Gooseflesh crawled up Adam’s back. When Diz laughed—eyebrows high and sinister, smoke curling out of his face—he looked like a drug-induced hallucination. An image from a silent horror movie, Lon Chaney revived from the grave, wearing excruciating face-twisting appliances. Diz looked so convincingly—and yet, surrealistically—deranged that Adam wanted to run from the house.
“Do I look like the kinda guy’d hand a loaded gun to a fuckin’ monkey with rabies?” Diz asked. He laughed some more, but watched Ad
am, waiting for an answer.
Adam said, “I’m sorry, but...I-I’m not sure how to respond to that.”
Diz stood and nodded at a camera high in the corner. “Lesstep outside, take a walk around the ranch. I don’t like bein’ on that sick fuck’s tapes, y’know what I mean?”
Adam knew.
Mr. C. came into the kitchen, took a handful of potato chips from the bar.
As the others stood, Diz turned toward the kitchen and called, “Hey, Billy-boy-blue, we takin’ a walk. You hold the fort.”
“Where the fuck’re you goin’?” Mr. C. asked around a mouthful of chips.
“We’re gonna go sacrifice a live baby in the sunlight, then jerk each other off with bloody hands,” Diz said.
Mr. C. grunted.
Diz led them out the back door into the dry, hot desert air. The hill rose abruptly before them, humped with shrubs. They started up at a slow pace.
Everything was taking longer than Adam had anticipated. If all had gone the way he had hoped, they would be on their way home by now. Even walking around outside was eating up way too much time. A feeling of urgency clutched him, and it had nothing to do with his bladder.
“No cameras back here,” Diz said.
The ground crunched beneath their feet as they went slowly up the hill.
“Did Billy-boy tell you I sell explosives?” Diz asked.
“Oh, no,” Adam said. “But we got that impression.”
“You here by mistake, Adam? Zat the problem?”
“Only if you won’t sell us the explosives.”
He laughed again.
“Look,” Adam went on, “it’s not Billy’s fault. He specifically said you don’t sell explosives. It’s just that—” He lowered his voice.”—he didn’t say that until we were on our way here. But now we’re here, and I’m just hoping you’ll—”
