Sunday, February 7, 1988
8:08 pm
A flap of black cloth peeled back from the small window next to the warehouse door, and Frank got a glimpse of the guy who was checking him out. It seemed like just the sort of little weasel he'd expect in a place like this -- narrow face, beady black eyes, a wisp of greasy black hair falling across his forehead. He looked like a character in one of those goofy art-house films Joanne used to drag him to, Fellini or some shit. A moment later the steel door creaked open a few inches and the face appraised him warily.
"You Russo?" it asked.
"Yeah," Frank said. "Joe Russo. Rusty Meyers says hello."
"OK," the face said. "C'mon in. Gerry's over there lighting the set. I'm Phil."
"How you doin'?" Frank said with complete disinterest, as if to say, who gives a shit, Phil? He stepped into the corrugated steel building, which was only marginally warmer than outdoors, and shrugged out of his overcoat. Phil politely took the coat and draped it carefully over a folding chair, ushering Frank forward with deference. In fact Phil did everything but bow and scrape, which told Frank approximately how much juice this Rusty Meyers must have.
It was more information than he had coming in, actually. Other than what he got from the rap sheet, Frank didn't know shit about Rusty Meyers, or Joe Russo either, for that matter. All he knew was Joe Russo worked for Meyers in a pretty big kiddie-porn operation and had been busted about eighteen hours previously.
It looked like Joe was going to roll over on old Rusty rather than do the boatload of time the Feds hung over his head and so they were keeping a lid on his arrest as long as possible while they questioned him. Frank wouldn't even know that much except his cop pal Tony knew a guy who knew a guy who had worked backup on the arrest, and thanks to the grapevine Frank had himself a nice cover.
Joe Russo was a name these low-lifes could check out with Detroit and confirm that he was, indeed, Rusty's leg man who was, indeed, in Chicago buying kiddie porn. Frank had played it cagey when he called the number the hustler provided and was able to determine that these particular pornographers had never met Joe Russo face-to-face, and so the whole scam came together rather nicely.
He stepped forward into the gloom and surveyed the cavernous warehouse. In the middle was a small movie set, brightly lit with low-end professional lighting equipment on folding floor stands. A husky man with lots of salt-and-pepper hair was up on a step-stool fiddling with the "barn doors" on one of the lights, four black shades that could be positioned various ways to control exactly where the light fell.
The set itself consisted of three canvas flats painted to look like the walls of a bedroom, within which sat a twin-size bed and a dresser with a mirror tilted downward so as not to reflect the lights. At the foot of the bed was a tripod on wheels, atop which was mounted a fairly impressive video camera -- at least a step or two better than the top-of-the-line camcorder from Sears. Behind that was a wheeled cart with a large video monitor, a couple of fancy VCRs with digital readouts and lighted volume meters, and some other electronic equipment Frank couldn't immediately identify.
This was an operation designed to make money, Frank knew, as opposed to pedophiles making stroke flicks for their own enjoyment. When money is involved people tend to be very serious, so Frank would have to play his charade carefully.
Off to the left four boys sat on folding chairs, wrapped in blankets and semi-circled around a portable heater. Their bare legs were visible below the blankets as they waited naked between takes while the director doubled as chief lighting assistant. On a Hollywood set that position would be called "Best Boy," but Frank supposed such a term would have a completely different meaning here.
The kids giggled and fooled around just as if they were hanging out at the mall on their way home from junior high. Frank hadn't exactly expected to find drug-addled sex-slaves but these boys were decidedly more chipper than he'd imagined they'd be. Two were young, eleven or twelve maybe, and the others a little older judging by one's cracking adolescent squawk and the other's deeper, middle-teen voice. One of the younger ones reached under the oldest's blanket and apparently tweaked his cock, and when the older boy jumped in surprise loud laughter burst forth from them all.
"Gerry!" Phil hissed, and the director turned and became aware of Frank for the first time.
"Ah, our visitor!" he beamed, backing down the ladder and striding toward Frank, his hand already offered to shake from fifteen feet away. "Gerry Gordon," he said.
Frank shook. "Joe Russo. I'm told you make the best product around."
"I make films," Gerry said pompously. "It's somebody else's job to make them product."
"Well, that would be me," Frank said, trying to smile.
"If you don't mind my saying so you don't look much like a Russo," Gerry said, tilting his head and examining Frank's face with interest. Frank half-expected him to make a frame with his fingers to look through.
I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
He forced a chuckle. "My Mom was a Flanagan. Nana Russo never did get used to that."
"I can imagine," Gerry said, and then there was a pregnant silence.
"You should have seen me as a kid," Frank said, filling the void. "A regular carrot-top."
Gerry sized him up, glancing all over his body. "Yes, I wish I had seen that," he said, and Frank was immediately revolted to realize that this guy was imagining him as a child, probably naked. He fought off a strong impulse to belt him.
"So, you're buying for Rusty Meyers, eh?" Gerry asked, disengaging from his fantasy and turning a little too casually to the video monitor. "What happened to Pete Simon? I thought he was the buyer."
Frank thought fast. Was this one of those tests like they have in bad movies? Was he supposed to say, Oh sure, good old Pete, only to have this guy go Aha! There is no Pete Simon! Bad movies was a clue, though, wasn't it? This Gerry was immersed in bad movies. They were his life, and so a test like that is exactly the sort of thing he'd do.
Frank shook his head and looked confused. "Who the hell is Pete Simon?"
Gerry turned back and did an exaggerated Oops! expression. "Oh, Christ! What am I thinking of? Pete Simon edits video for Tommy Corman out in L.A.! Let's see, who used to buy for Rusty?"
"Well, me for the last nine years," Frank said, trying to sound indignant.
"Yeah, yeah, of course," Gerry shrugged. "You have to forgive us creative types. I normally leave all those contacts to my partner, who is on a beach somewhere about now surrounded by cabana boys. I never did have a head for the business side of it."
"Fortunately I do." Frank was pleased to get a slightly intimidated look back from the director. Still, to get what he came for he needed to be a wise guy, not a wise ass, so he decided to suck up a bit to this low-rent Spielberg. "So what are you working on?" he asked with as much interest as he could fake.
"Super low-budget shit," Gerry said with disdain. "Big dicks, tight butts, no plot. And it's a shame, too, because this is a pretty talented cast that could do a lot more. These kids could handle dialogue, if there was any."
"So why not give them some? You're the man with the vision."
Gerry took the compliment like Fido catching a Milk Bone. "This is a custom job for... for somebody who shall remain nameless," he caught himself, smiling. "This is what he wants and this is what he can sell, so this is what I shoot. A guy's gotta make a living."
"Too bad," Frank said. "I was looking forward to watching you work... I mean really work." Gerry smiled warmly and Frank knew he was in -- at least as far as Gerry was concerned.
"So is that what brings you here?" Gerry asked. "My reputation?" He didn't really sound suspicious, just aware that this was hardly enough reason for a guy like Joe Russo to visit.
"Well, not entirely. Rusty has a special request of his own and it's kind of a rush job, so he asked me to swing by and see if you can handle it in the next few days."
"Well, this piece of shit should wrap tonight," Gerry said. "If it's simple enough I might be able to swing it. But listen, I'm burning kilowatts here. Do you mind if we talk about it over the dinner break? You got some time?"
"Sure," Frank said. "I'm early for my next meeting anyway. I'll just watch from over here."
"All right you guys!" the director called, clapping his hands to get the boys' attention and, Frank knew, to impress the visitor. "Mark, Ronny, we're gonna pick it up from where you jump from the sixty-nine into the fuck. "C'mere and look at the playback, so we can get your position right for continuity."
The smallest boy -- the one who had goosed the oldest -- and the squeaky-voiced adolescent stood and dropped their blankets onto the chairs. As predicted they were buck naked, the little blond one completely undeveloped and sporting a full-on stiffy. The adolescent's body held no surprises except for a very impressive hang for a kid with only a couple of tufts of sparse black pubic hair.
They hurried over to the warmth of the lights as the director popped an oversize videocassette into one of the machines and touched a button. Frank stepped closer as well, as did Phil and the other two boys still wrapped in their blankets, and they all gathered around the monitor. In a second an image appeared on the screen, which, despite Frank's worldliness and his mental preparation, shocked him speechless.
The two boys were on the bed, the adolescent on his back and the little one straddled over his face in classic sixty-nine position. This in itself was not so shocking, but the sight of the small boy's mouth stretched wide with what had to be seven inches of teen cock, and the ravenous look in those bright blue eyes as he devoured it, was a first for Frank.
Standing there watching himself perform the little one smiled over at his co-star and reached for that big dick, pulling and squeezing until it inflated again to the impressive proportions now gracing the screen. The adolescent smiled as his younger friend worked him. Both on screen and off these two looked for the world like they were enjoying the hell out of what they were doing.
"OK, now here's where Mark makes the move..." Gerry said, as the boy on the screen literally launched himself forward on the bed, straddling Ronny's slim hips and landing his ass forcefully right on his crotch. Frank couldn't suppress a small gasp, but on screen both boys were laughing and Ronny was pretending severe pain, and in a second it was clear that Mark had not actually impaled himself but had only leaped forward onto Ronny's pubes.
"Now through the magic of editing," Gerry said directly to Frank, "we'll make it look like Mark really did land right on target, pole in the hole!" The director put an arm around Mark's bare shoulder. "Now you're sure you can take it in one fast plunge like that? We can use all kinds of tricks to make it look good if you can't."
"I think I can do it," the boy piped in his clear, unchanged voice. "Just grease me up real good and let him open me up first."
"OK, you heard the man," Gerry said, and the two boys eagerly jumped onto the bed, giggling. Ronny flipped Mark onto his back and quickly rolled his legs over his head, exposing a disturbingly well-used orifice.
"Grease 'em up, Phil!" the director barked, and the little weasel who had answered the door scurried in with an economy-size tube of lubricant and began working the goop into Mark's hole. Frank grimaced as two bony adult fingers pushed into that little bottom, but Mark evidenced no discomfort at all, just grinned his chipped-tooth grin and joked with Ronny. Phil withdrew his shiny-slick fingers and squeezed out some more lube, applying it liberally to Ronny's big hard-on and jacking him off ten or twelve strokes.
Ronny said something Frank couldn't quite hear and laughed, and then little Mark pulled his buns wide apart with both hands and commanded, "Stick it in me, Ronny! Fuck me good!"
The older boy didn't hesitate. He scrambled to his knees behind his wide-open partner, aimed that big cock like he'd done it a thousand times and pushed easily into Mark's willing body.
Frank looked on in stunned fascination, as if rubbernecking a fatal car crash. He knew he was supposed to be horrified but he didn't know if that was exactly what he felt. He was transfixed, staring without so much as a blink. His heart pounded and he felt guilty for not hurling himself forward to drag these misguided kids apart by force, but on another level he knew that preserving his cover story was not the only reason he didn't. He couldn't even look away, much less stop it.
"Oh, yeah!" Mark sighed as Ronny worked above him. The look on the boy's face could not be mistaken. He was in rapture, not misery. His eyes closed dreamily as he concentrated on the sensations, and his mouth opened in sigh after contented sigh. After a few minutes of gentle screwing Ronny let out a gasp and paused, in to the hilt. Mark's slim legs wrapped around Ronny's waist and held him tightly and Ronny's face registered the delicious result.
"Don't forget what you're doing this for," Gerry said. "Deep-dick him a few times and get that lube spread around good."
Soon Ronny was thrusting steadily, his full length disappearing into Mark's impossibly small pink-brown cavern, like one of those magic tricks where they put a six-foot hat stand into an eight-inch top hat. Mark never lost his own erection and Frank remembered what the cons used to say back in the joint. Any poor fool can end up fucked in the ass, but if the bitch gets a hard-on it means she likes it.
"OK, OK!" Gerry yelled. "Enough already! You shoot before the tape is rolling and I'll kick your ass!" It took Ronny a few more strokes for the threat to sink in and then he began to disengage. Mark looked nothing but disappointed.
"Clean 'em up, Phil," Gerry ordered. "We can't have any visible grease on either one of them."
The weasel scurried back in and cleaned them both, removing virtually all of the lube from Ronny and carefully cleaning Mark's butt cheeks, perineum and scrotum. He then patted Mark down with a bit of baby powder, evidently to reduce the shine. He didn't powder Ronny, probably afraid it wouldn't slide in with powder on it.
"OK, Ronny, on your back," Gerry said, "and put your arms like this..." The director took both of Ronny's forearms and positioned them exactly like the still-frame that showed on the monitor. "Mark, we need you just above his cock," he went on, consulting the screen. "Your knees are not quite down to the bed, feet kind of splayed out..." He turned and looked for the weasel. "Phil!" he called. "Mark's not going to be able to hold himself like that. See if you can hold him up until we're rolling, and keep your shadow out of the shot!"
Phil came to the side of the bed and gripped Mark under the arms, but it's hard to hold even the slight weight of a young boy at arm's length and so he moved in closer and then his shadow fell across Ronny's belly.
"No, that's not working," Gerry said. "I could move the lights but that would take time. Maybe we could rig a sling from the ceiling?" All eyes turned upward but the ceiling was a good thirty feet above their heads and that clearly was not viable, either. "Joe," Gerry said, surprising Frank, who took a half-second to remember that `Joe' meant him. "As long as you're here can you give us a hand? You always wanted to be in pictures, eh?"
Frank felt his pulse vault into triple digits. It was one thing to observe from fifteen feet away but coming so close made him decidedly uneasy. Even more to his horror he was going to have to participate, at least in a small way. He tried to smile but his heart was in his throat as he made himself step to the bed.
"If you can hold his left arm," Gerry said, "Phil can hold his right and that should be OK. If you put one hand under his armpit and hold his hand with the other he should be able to steady himself. C'mon, let's give it a try."
Frank reluctantly put his right hand into the soft, warm hollow of Mark's armpit, forcing himself to return Mark's boyish smile as he made contact, and locked hands with the boy with his left. He sensed Mark's warmth and openness and he couldn't help but find it affecting. The weasel adopted the same position on the other side and between them they easily held Mark's eighty pounds over the rigid shaft that would soon impale him. Satisfied there were no shadows, Gerry put the camera into position and fiddled with the zoom and focus for nearly a minute.
"OK, quiet on the set!" he yelled. "Ronny, are you lined up OK?"
"Yeah. I'm just barely touching him."
"OK, we're rolling..." Gerry said, his eye glued to the viewfinder. "And...action!"
Frank and Phil let go abruptly and the small boy dropped with a loud grunt of pleasure and pain. Frank could hardly believe it but that big teenage dick shoved into Mark's experienced bum without a hitch, and the look on Mark's face was even more blissful than when he was getting deeply fucked a few minutes before.
"Oh, Jesus!" Mark wailed, his head thrown back, mouth open, eyes closed. Beneath him Ronny groaned his own pleasure and he reached up to hold Mark by the sides and steady him. Gerry tilted the camera upwards to record the rapture on Mark's face.
"OK, hold your positions for the next setup," the director said, then as a grinning aside to Frank, "That was the only interesting sequence in the whole film and I think it's gonna work great!"
The boys tried not to move but couldn't help moaning and wriggling slightly. Mark's narrow chest rose and fell heavily and he murmured, "God, that's so incredible..."
Frank remembered arguing with Charlie about whether a boy could really enjoy being used for sex, and how he'd insisted that Charlie was just rationalizing so he could live with what he'd done, but now Frank just might have to reconsider. Even though the active partner here was just a boy himself, seven inches is seven inches regardless of the age of its owner, and this kid Mark obviously loved having it inside of him. Nobody is that good of an actor.
As Gerry repositioned the camera Frank sensed a presence close beside him and turned to find the second-youngest boy wrapped in his blanket. This kid was stockier than Mark and probably a year older, with light brown hair falling across intense, ice-blue eyes. His round face wore a lewd grin as he indicated the action on the bed before them.
"Pretty hot, huh?" the boy said in a husky rasp, unchanged but not high and clear like Mark's choirboy voice.
Frank had to play his part. "That kid can really take it."
"He digs it," the boy said. "Me, I can get into it sometimes but mostly I like to be the one doin' the fucking. We did a scene this morning where I got to do Mark doggy-style. Too bad you missed it."
"Yeah," Frank said, averting his eyes from the boy. "Too bad." For just a second he imagined the two of them coupled on the little bed, both of them moaning their pleasure, then he forced the image from his mind.
"A little later I have to let Ricky plug me," the boy went on. "I'm not so hot for taking it like Mark is," he said. "Especially with a fat one like Ricky's."
The boy was so close to Frank now he could feel his warmth and the soft brush of the blanket against his arm. Frank had been in a million close scrapes in his life but he'd never felt quite as uneasy as he did standing next to this naked little boy.
"Listen," the kid said more softly, "there's a sofa in the office over there. You wanna go fool around a little? No money or anything, 'cause you're a friend of Gerry's. It'll just be for fun. You wanna?"
Frank swallowed. He couldn't believe the kid was coming on to him this way. Was this another test Gerry had put the boy up to? Jesus Christ, he couldn't actually do anything with the kid! Watching was one thing but actually doing it was way too much. If it was a test he was going to fail, because shit, there was just no way Frank was doing anything to a little boy! He had to think.
"C'mon, man! We can't waste Ricky's jizz before the filming and Gerry and Phil are busy!" The kid was practically whining, as if he was imploring his Dad to stop for Dairy Queen. Frank watched Gerry fiddling with the camera, engrossed in his work and paying absolutely no attention to the little drama playing out in the shadows, and decided this was not a test after all. Hard as it was to fathom this was really a young boy so hot for sex with a grown man that he was begging for it.
"I'm sorry, kid..."
"Steve," the boy said, looking up with puppy dog eyes.
"Steve. It's not that I don't like you or anything..."
"Oh, you gotta like this!" Steve said, and threw open the blanket with a grin.
Frank smiled in spite of himself. The kid was sure enthusiastic. He had an inspiration. "Look, I'm a businessman," he said. "I can't be getting it on in front of Gerry and Phil, no matter how tempting the sweets."
Steve pondered for a second then looked up at Frank, rather flattered it appeared. He closed the blanket again, still smiling. "You gotta protect your reputation, right?"
"Yeah, that's it," Frank smiled at the boy. "I need to command respect."
"OK, I get it," Steve said. "How about later, then? At your hotel?"
This kid didn't take no for an answer. "I don't think so, pal," he said. "I've got business tonight."
"Shit," Steve said, disappointed but still smiling. "Oh, well. I'll be right over here if you change your mind."
"OK," Frank chuckled, genuinely amused. He decided he liked this kid, and as he watched Steve saunter back to the folding chairs to sit with his well-endowed co-star Frank wondered if he couldn't somehow save these boys as well as Andy. But save them from what? They seemed to like things perfectly well just as they were.
Filming went on for another hour with Frank watching quietly. It was mostly boring stuff, Gerry moving lights and the camera for various shots with names like "master", "insert", "cut-in", and "reverse." In between setups were short bursts of graphic sex.
Mark bounced on Ronny for at least half an hour off and on before Gerry gave them the go-ahead for the money shot. Ronny helped the boy bounce faster and faster until he suddenly huffed, "Now! I'm cumming now!" Mark scrambled off just as three fierce blasts of creamy white splashed up onto Ronny's smooth, pink belly. Frank wasn't even disgusted when they shot a close-up of Mark scooping up the cum with his finger and dripping it onto his outstretched tongue. After all this he was getting used to it.
"Cut!" Gerry yelled, and immediately Mark and Ricky began to giggle and joke as they uncoupled themselves. The weasel handed each a washcloth and towel and then went around snapping off the lights. Steve had sidled up to Gerry and was batting his eyelashes up at him, saying something Frank couldn't make out.
"Dinner break!" Gerry announced. "One hour, everyone!" He began to walk Steve toward the office -- and presumably the sofa therein -- and said to Frank over his shoulder, "We can talk in about ten minutes, OK? You understand."
"Oh yes," Frank said, "I understand."
As Gerry and Steve disappeared into the office Phil stepped up and said, "We have sandwiches and coffee over here if you want some."
"Yeah, thanks," Frank said, and followed to a table laid out with food and drink. The three remaining boys were climbing into their clothes, which rather surprised him.
Mark noticed him watching and said with a friendly smile, "Blankets are a pain 'cause you have to hold 'em up."
"Makes sense," Frank said, smiling back at the boy. He watched Mark take a tuna sandwich, a bag of chips and a can of pop and sit with the others to eat. Frank took a roast beef and coffee and sat next to Mark, who looked up in mild surprise.
"Are you some kind of a big shot?" Mark asked, smiling as the older boys giggled.
"Who told you that?" Frank smiled back.
Ronny laughed, "Gerry and Phil ran around like a couple of old grannies getting ready."
"Well, we spend a lot of money, let's just say that," Frank said, mainly because he didn't have a clue what to say about Joe Russo and Rusty Meyers.
"Wanna spend some on me?" Ricky asked, only half-joking. He was posturing for Frank, trying to look sexy, as if it needed confirming that these boys were prostitutes when they weren't busy being movie stars.
"I'll bet he likes 'em little, like me," Mark grinned, speaking to Ricky but obviously for Frank's benefit.
Frank saw an opportunity. "You are definitely a cute boy," he said, placing a hand gently on Mark's shoulder. The two older boys looked disappointed and peeved while Mark's grin widened. "You want to hear what I'd really like to do?" Frank asked, putting on a naughty smile.
"Yeah, sure."
"When I was about your age there was this neighbor boy down the block named Randy. I thought he was really cute, you know? He was eleven years old and kind of strong and athletic," Frank said, trying to remember exactly the way Charlie had described Andy. He wished he could just show the photo, but if the boys did know Andy it would seem way too suspicious that some guy showed up carrying his picture.
"He had a great little body, you know? He was almost five feet tall and he had long brown hair, like, over his collar in back and he had a scar on his lip where he fell off the swings when he was little."
Frank hoped he wasn't laying on the school-girl gushiness too thick. He only had Charlie as a model for what a boylover should sound like and he had never exactly encouraged him to speak freely. The boys seemed to be accepting it, though, so he forged ahead.
"I always wanted to mess around with him but I didn't know how to ask, and then one day his family moved away and I never saw him again," Frank said wistfully. "Ever since then I've always wanted to find a boy who looks like Randy, and I'd pay big bucks for him, too. If one of you guys knows someone like that I'd pay you a hundred just to lead me to him."
Mark practically jumped out of his chair in eagerness. "I know a kid who looks just like that!"
Frank's heart swelled, and he grinned. It wasn't a sure thing, of course, but it was a lead. "Great! Can you set me up with him?"
"Sure!" Mark said with a wave of the hand. "Any time you want."
"How about tomorrow night?" Frank asked eagerly. He hated to wait the extra day but he had already told Steve he was busy tonight and they might compare notes.
"You said something about a hundred..."
"Well," Frank laughed, "you seem like a nice kid and all but I'm not an idiot. You get the money when I see the boy."
"That's fair," Mark said. "Just give him three hundred, then. A hundred for me and two hundred for him. Is that OK?"
"Cool," Frank said. He pulled a matchbook out of his pocket from Charlie's cheesy little motel near Midway Airport. He quickly wrote the room number on the inside. "Ten o'clock?" he asked, tossing Mark the matches.
"Johnny will have him there," Mark said.
"Johnny?" Frank asked, hoping his interest seemed casual.
"Yeah," Mark said. "I thought all the big shots knew Johnny."
"Maybe not the big shots from Detroit," Frank said and smiled. He wasn't going to get tripped up even if this wasn't a test. He was about to ask another question when Gerry came out of the office straightening his clothes. Frank excused himself and stepped over to meet him, anxious to set his other plan into motion as well.
"Whew!" Gerry sighed with a grin. "The kid's a tiger!"
"Seems like he knows what he's doing, all right." Tension swept over Frank as he realized that it was getting a little too easy to play this part, and he resolved to finish up quickly and get the hell out.
"OK, so what can I do for Rusty Meyers?" Gerry asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
"A client threw some money at us and said he wants a film starring a boy who meets a certain description: White boy, eleven years old or so, long brown hair, brown eyes, about five-foot, cute, with an athletic build. And get this, he wants the kid to have some facial scars, like on his cheeks and lips." He watched Gerry's eyes for a sign of recognition, but there was none.
"Don't know what the fuck he wants this for and I didn't ask," Frank went on. "Like you said, a guy's gotta make a living. So, you think you can find somebody like that pretty quick, say a few days?"
"I can try," Gerry said. "What kind of action in the film?"
"I'm not sure. You find the kid and I'll get the details from Detroit."
Gerry's eyes grew stern. "I don't like that stuff about the scars," he said. "Guess I could do it with makeup, but I don't do anything that hurts a kid. I'll fake violence if absolutely necessary but real pain is out of the question."
"Don't worry," Frank said. "Nothing like that, I'm sure."
"Just so we understand each other," Gerry said. "I don't hurt kids even if Rusty never buys another film from me."
"I said don't worry," Frank said, narrowing his eyes and coming on more like the tough guy he was supposed to be.
"Yeah, yeah, OK," Gerry said, backing off. "Just so you know, that's all. Uh, where can I reach you?"
"I'll reach you," Frank said. "Listen, thanks for letting me watch you work. It was interesting, but I've got to get to an appointment."
"Glad to have you," Gerry said, obviously relieved that his honored guest was getting the fuck out. "Phil!" he called, and in a second the weasel was there with Frank's overcoat.
They exchanged a few more words and the boys smiled and waved goodbye, then Frank stepped back into the cold Chicago night. He was pleased that he had one new lead to Andy and another working, but his mind was a murky whirl of thoughts about the whole subject of men and boys and love and sex. Things he'd known for certain his whole life were suddenly questionable, and for the first time in ten years he found himself thinking that Charlie Topps might not be a total scumbag.
He climbed into the Chrysler and immediately reached under the seat. Where the hell was that pint of Maker's? After the weirdest two hours of his life -- which included the time he photographed a soon-to-be-divorced husband blowing a Labrador Retriever -- he needed a drink.
The scene in the warehouse kept playing in his head and he couldn't seem to stop it; the ecstatic look on little Mark's face when that big goddamn cock rammed into him; Steve coming on to him like gangbusters and then happily going off with Gerry. These were not ambiguous signals.
Frank had no choice but to admit that at least one thing Charlie said was true: there are some boys in this world who really do want it. How they got that way is another question, and he would still bet dollars to donuts that every kid who ended up like that had a manipulative adult pervert in the woodpile somewhere. But Christ, these kids sure looked like they were having a good time.
Frank took another slug of whiskey and made up his mind. These people were too goddamn weird. He resolved to find Andy as fast as humanly possible, working twenty-four-hour days if necessary, so that he could turn the kid over to Beverly and wash all this perversion off his hands.
Tomorrow night was too long to wait. He would stay right here and stake out the warehouse until Twentieth Century Fucks was done filming and then follow Mark. With luck he'd lead Frank right back to Johnny, and with more luck Andy would be there, too. OK, so it called for a lot of luck, but he had to do something so he could be finished with this and get his life back to normal.
Normal.
He chuckled aloud and took another drink. What the hell did normal have to do with his life? He'd been pretty normal once, he guessed.
Frank was a city kid, a "deez dem doze" kind of guy from 103rd and Halsted back when it was all Irish instead of all black. Like every other red-headed hellion in the neighborhood he seemed born to be either a crook or a cop. Funny how it turned out that he was actually both.
Frank's father worked in the Pullman rail yard for thirty years and never had ten bucks left over at the end of the month. Even so, Frank and his four siblings always had clothes on their backs and food on the table and never doubted for a minute that their parents loved them. Not like that poor kid Andy. Sure, Frank sometimes got spanked when he was little and rapped across the mouth when he got bigger, but he couldn't remember a time it had been delivered with malice.
Joanne married far beneath her station. Frank had always known that. Her father was a businessman and a town councilman in the tiny burg she grew up in fifty miles from the city. Not that Frank was impressed, mind you. He thought his father-in-law was a pompous jerk. They were wealthy by rural hamlet standards and she never knew what it was like to go without. She was an only child, her mother's little darling and her father's little princess, and grew up with frilly dresses and porcelain dolls and a quarter for the Sunday School envelope every week.
Joanne was a Humanities major at DePaul when they met. Frank was a third-year cop working a beat out of the Belmont precinct. He spotted her cute, pixie haircut and her country fresh face waiting in line for one of the trendy music clubs that spring up around colleges and fold again within months. Something sparked when he gave her charming shit about being too young for a club that serves alcohol and they made a date for the following Saturday right there on the spot.
Two movie-and-pizza dates later she spent the night at his apartment, throwing him a fuck that curled his toes, and by morning he was reeled in and landed. She still played it cool, seeing college boys even more often than she saw Frank and making no secret of her visits to other beds than his. He was in love, though, and both of them knew he needed her more than she needed him. She had beauty and money and brains and was quite used to getting what she wanted, and he knew good and well that if he ever failed to make her happy she'd find someone else in a heartbeat.
In the middle of her senior year she turned up pregnant, pleasantly surprising him by saying yes to his marriage proposal. In three months he was a drunkenly happy groom with a beautiful wife in a maternity wedding gown and a new father-in-law openly bad-mouthing him at the reception. The checks from Daddy stopped immediately, but Frank Junior was born with ten fingers and ten toes and everything looked like roses as long as the in-laws stayed the hell out in the sticks.
Frank made Detective second-grade and traded his blue monkey suit for polyester sport coats and loud ties, and Joanne got a half-time job at a bank in Uptown. They were doing OK by Frank's measure but Joanne was used to money and arguments came often. He'd storm out to escape her shrieking and the baby's squalling and end up in one of the many corner taverns in the neighborhood, alternating them so the regulars wouldn't notice the frequency of his visits.
Joanne was an expert at pushing his buttons. She could make him mad with a single word if she wanted to -- most wives seem to have that skill -- but the other part was far more dangerous. She could contrast that horrible, harping bitch-creature from hell with an angel of love and sex, wrapping those long, beautiful legs around him and letting him nuzzle those milk-white tits until he was ready to buy her the Sears Tower.
Of course it was far more than sex. It was their entire relationship. It was so wonderful when she was nice and so terrible when she wasn't that his life became one long quest to satisfy Joanne, and as time passed it took more and more to do that.
She wanted to quit her job, and though they paid nothing for child care with Frank's mother gladly watching the baby every afternoon Joanne insisted having a full-time Mom would be worth the lost income. They were barely keeping the kid in Pampers as it was, so after an argument and a bender and his favorite dinner and tremendous sex Frank agreed to work double shifts a few nights a week to make up the difference.
That was cool for a few months until the Department cut back on overtime and he could only get one double every few weeks. Then a friend told him about his sideline as a Private Investigator, and since money was tighter than a thousand-dollar whore Frank got his license and started doing assignments for divorce lawyers around town. He took some razzing from the guys at the precinct but most of them knew about raising a family on a cop's salary.
There were no budget cuts to worry about as a P.I. and it was easy work to follow some cheating husband and snap his picture going into a cheap motel with a girlfriend or a hooker or sometimes a boyfriend wearing a dog collar and a safety pin through his eyebrow. Another friend showed him how to make even more money by cutting the lawyers out of it, so he got himself a Yellow Pages ad and started taking cases directly from the suspicious wives and cuckolded husbands, and if he got something on the cheater he'd refer the case to whichever lawyer gave the biggest kickback. This paid remarkably well and soon he was bringing home more money than he ever dreamed he would.
Working all those hours, though, was getting tough. It wasn't uncommon to work his whole day shift at the cop shop then go out tailing the prospective exes until four in the morning. Then of course it was back to work at eight bells whether he'd had any decent sleep or not. Joanne was getting used to money again and spending it faster than he could make it so cutting back wasn't going to happen.
Then one day he and his partner rousted a high school kid hanging around a known drug-seller's corner and a bag full of White Crosses fell out of his pocket right in front of them. The kid begged and pleaded, and it was almost the end of the shift and neither of the cops wanted to spend two hours doing paperwork, so they confiscated the speed and let the kid go.
Frank said he'd take it home and flush it but that night he was so goddamn tired he couldn't stand the thought of following some fuck-stick to another motel instead of sleeping next to his beautiful wife where he belonged. He had no choice, though, so he took one of the pills and in an hour or so he felt pretty good and got through the night OK.
He told himself he'd only use them in emergencies when he just couldn't make it on his own, but night after night they called to him and night after night he said "Just one more time." He ran out of pills in two weeks but by then he couldn't function without them, and soon he was buying drugs in alleys just like the scumbags he busted every day.
Meanwhile Joanne was happy as a bookie on payday with all the extra money coming in. When she realized he was making more as a P.I. than as a cop she began to use her patented techniques to get him to go into it full-time. He resisted for nearly a year but Frank Junior was getting big and needing pre-school tuition and big boy toys, and Joanne was nagging him that they needed a house in a decent neighborhood because the kid shouldn't grow up in an apartment, and with all the damn promotions going to minorities so the Mayor could look Politically Correct and with police work seeming less and less relevant to the goal of making the world a better place, it began to look like the thing to do. He turned in his shield, rented a dingy storefront in Bucktown and officially became Sam Spade.
He was still working the late nights, of course, since then and lunch time are when most of your wayward husbands are getting their wicks wet, but at least he wasn't doing those short turnarounds to be on the job again bright and early. Getting off the pills wasn't as easy as he thought it would be and so he bought some downers to counteract the uppers. He was a cop, for Christ's sake, and knew exactly where this was heading, but he kept telling himself he could handle it, that he was stronger than the people who got hooked on this shit.
Right.
Other than the pharmaceutical merry-go-round life was pretty good. He was getting so much work he had mentioned to Tony possibly taking him on as a partner, though Tony kept putting him off. Joanne was the sexy angel most of the time, doing things like showing up unexpectedly at his office in Victoria's skimpiest Secret and balling his brains out right in his second-hand leather swivel chair. Frank Junior was a sweet pre-schooler playing happily on the living room rug and already reading Babar the Elephant two months before his fourth birthday. It seemed like Frank had it all.
Including a monkey on his back. White pills to wake up, red pills to go to sleep, and Johnny Walker's to wash them down. He told Joanne he was putting money away for their dream house but in reality whatever didn't go to Nordstrom and American Express was going to the dealers and the bank account was damn near dry. He was working harder than he ever had in his life and getting nowhere. It felt like he was running in quicksand, and when he saw the chance to rip off that heroin deal he thought it was the answer to his prayers. Apparently you really need to be careful what you pray for.
The door of the warehouse came open and Frank was suddenly back in the Chrysler. His watch said eleven-thirty, nearly two hours since he'd started his nostalgic stroll down Misery Lane. The four boys emerged laughing and joking and began walking in Frank's direction, but on the other side of the street.
He let them get half a block past him before he swung out of the parking space and did a U-turn onto Clybourn. There was no traffic at eleven-thirty on a Sunday and he managed to pace the walking boys without drawing their attention.
Two blocks down the tallest boy pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked an old two-door Cougar. Ricky was at least sixteen, apparently. The two smaller boys climbed into the back and the big ones sat in front, and the car rumbled onto southbound Clybourn in a cloud of gray exhaust. Frank had to pull another U-turn to follow, but he figured the kid couldn't see anything behind him with half a quart of oil going up in smoke like that.
They drove aimlessly, it seemed. He remembered his own teen years when cruising was absolutely the thing to do. Just being mobile was in itself a liberating experience, though he didn't see how these particular kids could be any more liberated than they already were. In the light of the street lamps Frank could see them passing a joint back and forth. Yeah, OK. He and his friends passed a few of those in their day, too, but he wasn't eleven or twelve at the time like Mark and Steve.
They were heading south on State just crossing Grand when Ricky suddenly pulled over to the curb. Frank cruised by at normal traffic speed and casually stopped a half block ahead, watching in the mirror. Ronny jumped out and held the seat forward as Mark climbed out of the back. They waved some friendly goodbyes, giving Mark some shit about going home so early, and then Ricky pulled away before Ronny was even back in the car securely and Frank heard the boys laughing as the kid fought to get the door closed. Mark paused only long enough to zip his coat up to his chin and immediately started down into a subway entrance.
"Shit!" Frank said and jumped out of the Chrysler. He hoped it was a legal parking spot. He ran back to the subway steps and peered down. He couldn't let Mark see him since the kid knew his face. The steps were clear so he hurried down, frowning at the sound of a train already roaring into the station.
He jogged onto the platform and scanned the small crowd, quickly spotting the boy's blond head as he boarded the train several cars ahead. Frank jumped onto the last car just before the doors closed and made his way forward to the car just behind the one Mark was in. He watched him through the glass, the boy sitting primly, hands clasped in his lap, in one of the sideways-facing seats next to the doors. His eyes were tiny slits and his head nodded. This was one tired and stoned kid, which promised to make him easy to follow.
The train was a southbound Jackson Park headed through the Loop and on to the south side. It surprised Frank a little that Johnny would live south. For some reason boy prostitution struck him as a north side sort of thing. If it was girls then sure, south, but boys seemed to fit better up north. It was a goofy theory, of course, and he smiled at his own absurdity.
In less than a minute the train pulled into the Washington Street station. Mark didn't budge and Frank picked up a newspaper he found on the seat and partially shielded his face with it, keeping one eye on the boy while pretending to read. It was another short hop to the Monroe Street station, and again the boy didn't move as the train sat with the doors open. Frank had just glanced back down at the paper when suddenly Mark jumped up and darted out through the doors just before they closed.
Frank's heart jumped and he turned astonished to the window to see Mark jump onto the northbound train waiting on the other side of the platform. Frank's train was already moving and there was nothing he could do. He didn't say the swear words that came to mind, just stared after the little shit as long as he could see him. It mattered a lot if Mark had spotted him following and therefore took evasive action, or if he was just one careful little guy who always made sure he wasn't being followed. Mark was not looking back as if to confirm that his dodge had worked. He just sat there as the other train pulled away, hands in his lap and nodding away. Maybe he just always did that trick, just in case. At least Frank hoped so.
As his train plunged back into the dark tunnel and Frank lost sight of Mark for good he took some solace in the fact that even though the Great Detective had just been neatly snookered by a wisp of a lad, his north side/south side theory apparently held water.
Next time:
A man named Johnny.
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