on the street, Dan opened the car door and shoved the kid inside. He checked to see that no one was following or writing down the licence plate number then got in the driver’s side. The boy sat with his arms wrapped around his chest, pouting. “I don’t want to go.”
“Too bad. You’re coming with me. And don’t try jumping out at the light,” Dan said. “I’m a fast runner.”
He started the car. Traffic was light on Danforth at that hour. It was a good two minutes before the boy spoke. “I don’t want to go home. Please! Don’t take me in.”
“I have to — you’re underage.”
“Please! Don’t make me go back.”
Dan stopped the car and put it in neutral. He sat there silently considering.
A calculating look came over the boy’s face. “I’ll give you a blow job if you let me go.”
Dan was surprised by the vehemence of his reaction. “Listen, you fucked up little asshole. What you’re doing is illegal and stupid!”
The kid cringed in the same way Ralph had when Dan kicked at him. He softened when he saw Dan wasn’t going to hit him.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about those guys and their movies,” Dan said, “but you could have sent them to jail for about a million years for lying to them about your age. Do you want to do that? Huh?”
Richard began to cry. “Don’t take me back home. You have no idea what it’s like…!”
“Then what should I do with you? Just let you go?”
“Please? I’ll get a job,” the kid sniffled.
Dan considered this. He thought about what might happen to this kid if he ended up back home. “Would you stick with it if I did?”
The kid eyed him sullenly. The rebellion returned. “Would you?”
Wrong answer, Dan thought. This kid definitely didn’t know how to play his cards. “You’d probably have to, considering I just put you out of business. They won’t touch you now they know your real age.” He was right — the kid’s life was going to be fucked up no matter what he did. “The only thing keeping me from sending you back right now is I met your mother and her charming husband.”
“You met them?”
“Yes, I met them. And I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, dead or alive. So you’ve got that going for you. What I want is a guarantee you’re not going to end up dead on some street corner a month from now.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you care?”
Dan stared at him. What to tell this kid about what he’d seen and done? “Tell me — do you like what you’re doing?”
“What? The films?”
“The films. Hooking. Hustling. Selling your body. Are you even gay?”
A spark of self-respect stole into Richard’s face. “Yes, I’m gay,” he said.
“Congratulations — at least you know that,” Dan told him. “Do you like having sex with guys for money?”
The kid looked out the window. “Not really.” His voice faltered. “I got raped once.”
“Have an HIV test?”
“Yep. It came back clear.”
“Bet it was scary waiting for the results, wasn’t it?”
The defiance returned. “Yeah. So what?”
“So what? You’re asking me ‘so what?’ Do you want to spend your life having sex with guys who might rape you and infect you with a disease so you can die painfully and early?”
A hesitant shrug was followed by a long pause. Then, “No. I don’t want to die.”
“Okay. Fair enough. Then I’ll tell you why I care.” Dan waited till the kid turned to look at him. “I care because twenty years ago, I was you.”
Richard looked long and hard at Dan, his eyes suspicious but curious. “What do you mean?”
“Boys Town — Bay and Grosvenor. That was my corner.”
Richard shot him another look, one of skepticism mixed with awe. “Really?”
“That’s right. Only I met a guy who helped me out. Otherwise I might still be there. Or dead.”
Richard sat back in the seat and stared out the windshield. He nodded, as if convincing himself of something. “Okay, so what then?”
“Ked, this is Lester.”
“Hi, Lester.”
Dan eyed his son. Was this too much to spring on him unannounced? “Lester needs a friend right now. You fit the bill.”
Ked’s face showed something like pride and pleasure all at once. “Cool.”
Dan turned to Richard, who was now Lester. “You’ll stay here with us. It’s only temporary, until I figure out what I can do for you.”
Lester nodded. His eyes expressed gratitude, but his tongue was clearly tied in knots at that moment.
“There’s a spare bed in my room,” Ked said. “Where’s your stuff?”
Lester looked perplexed. “I, uh, don’t have anything.”
“That’s okay.”
A howling came from outside. Ked’s head swivelled toward the window. “I forgot Ralph in the backyard!”
Ked ran to the door. The dog came bounding in, nearly knocking Lester over. The boy leaned down and wrapped his arms around Ralph’s neck, hands plunged in the gingery fur. “Hey, boy!”
“Lester, meet Ralph,” Dan said.
Lester looked up at Dan with the first real smile he’d given all evening. “He’s gorgeous!”
Dan stole a look at his son. Ked winked back.
Twenty-Three
Stalking Cool Blue
The bedside clock read 3:13 a.m. He’d been lying awake for nearly an hour. It was no use — he wouldn’t get back to sleep with all the thoughts pursuing him. How had Craig Killingworth vanished without leaving tracks? The poor could vanish without a trace, no banks to chase after them, no tax office to care about the millions in unpaid revenue receipts. Abducted children disappeared, grew up and changed appearance, even became someone else’s child, perhaps without knowing it. The aged and infirm simply became invisible. But how could a well-known man of influence just leave the earth, never to be heard from again?
A man’s life consisted of certain humdrum routines — getting up and going to work, socializing on weekends, having supper with friends and colleagues, and a million variations on the same themes. You didn’t just drop out and vanish without leaving a trail or at least establishing a new routine elsewhere. The more Dan thought about it, the more he was convinced Craig Killingworth was dead. Wherever he’d gone after getting off the ferry, he probably hadn’t lived long enough to tell anybody about it.
He went into his office and opened the file. Sometimes repeatedly going over the details of a case drummed something into his brain that he would otherwise have missed. The words here still told him nothing. If there was a clue, he lacked the key to unlock it. He turned to the photographs, scrutinizing them with his magnifying glass. The shot of the stables held his interest. Was it the light in Killingworth’s eyes? The hand on the gelding? No, that wasn’t it. He turned his attention to the background. With a jolt he recognized the container of rat poison on the window ledge — the one he’d seen on his tour of the barn last month, only twenty years younger in the photograph. If he blew it up large