Limits of Justice, The (15 page)

I was surprised at how young some of the kids were who eyed me from the corners as I drove slowly past. Fourteen, fifteen, some of them, maybe younger, and more Hispanic kids than I’d ever seen before. A few had skateboards and all of them wore those fancy, high-topped shoes professional basketball players hawk on TV, but not one of them looked like he was having any fun out there. I drove up to the boulevard and there were more of them, sauntering along the stars on the Walk of Fame or hanging back in the shadows, just out of the garish neon glare. Girls and boys both up here, runaways, street kids, kids from bad homes out for a night of action, drugs, sex, money, whatever came along that got them to Sunday.

Then I saw Mike. He was sitting on a bus stop bench outside a pizza stand across the boulevard from Frederick’s of Hollywood, the lingerie place. He was still young enough that he could display himself directly under a streetlight like that, hands thrust into pockets, legs stretched out to show potential customers how slim he was, his head and mop of stringy golden hair tilted purposely back to reveal his boyish, almost-pretty face. I glanced around and into the rearview mirror for cops, then pulled up in the bus zone, leaning across to roll down the window.

“Hey, Mike.”

He sat forward on the bench, peering in.

“Hey, what’s happening?”

He didn’t recognize me as the guy at Horace Hyatt’s studio that morning, and must have thought I was a trick from the past who remembered his name, one of those men who makes a studied habit of remembering names, trying to fool kids into thinking they have a friend.

“You working tonight?”

“I might be. You a cop?”

“I’m the guy who watched Horace Hyatt photograph you this morning.”

A little smile formed on Mike’s cracked lips.

“Oh, yeah. No shit. Sorry.”

“You headed somewhere?”

“I could be.”

“You hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

“Hop in. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I don’t know, man. I gotta get me some scratch tonight.”

“What happened to the cash Horace gave you?”

“I went to buy somethin’ with it. Some guys rolled me. Kicked me in the nuts, took all my money.”

“Have dinner with me, answer a few questions. I’ll pay for the dinner and give you fifty bucks.”

“That’s all? Just have dinner with you? ’Cause if you got somethin’ weird in mind, some really weird sex or shit, I can handle myself, you know.”

“Just dinner and some questions.”

“I carry a knife, man.”

“Hop in, we’ll talk about it.”

A horn blasted behind me, loud enough to rattle the memorabilia in Frederick’s Hollywood Bra Museum. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw two enormous headlights, spaced wider apart than my car. The horn sounded again, twice.

“Come on, get in before that bus flattens me.”

*

When we were moving, heading east along Hollywood Boulevard, I asked Mike where he wanted to eat. He named a twenty-four-hour coffee shop down on Santa Monica Boulevard, saying they had great cheeseburgers. Maybe they did have good cheeseburgers, but I knew the place, knew it would put Mike closer to Boy’s Town and the heart of hustler’s row, a neighborhood where the streets were nominally safer and the prices generally higher. It was the kind of coffee shop that got especially busy late at night, where a kid like Mike could sometimes pick up a john just sitting on a stool at the counter, munching french fries and making a lot of eye contact.

I had the radio on to KLON-FM, the city’s premiere station for straight-ahead jazz. As I swung left onto Highland Avenue, Mike reached over without asking and turned the dial to a hip-hop station that filled the Mustang with pounding rap. It was loud enough that there was no reason to talk, so we didn’t, and fifteen wordless minutes later, we were sitting in a booth at the coffee shop of his choice, where I drank coffee and Mike ate a cheeseburger and fries while his eyes never rested, particularly not on me.

“So tell me about Horace Hyatt.”

“He’s a weird dude, but he’s pretty cool.”

“Cool how?”

“He treats us OK, pays us good.”

“He’s photographed you before?”

“Once, I think it was. Maybe two times, I’m not sure.”

“Does he ever want sex from you or the other boys?”

“We don’t even gotta take our pants off, man. The first time I met him, when he saw me on the street and said he wanted to shoot some pictures, I figured, yeah, right, and then put your dick up my ass, you old fruit.”

“But he never tried?”

“Naw, like I said, he’s real cool. Just the stuff with the camera, that’s it. He likes to shoot guys before we get too old, you know, like nineteen, twenty.”

“Over the hill.”

Mike laughed uneasily.

“Yeah, I guess. So how come you want to know all this stuff about Horace? You sure you’re not a cop? I don’t want to get him into no trouble.”

I told him I was a writer, gathering research for a possible book.

“A writer, huh? I thought about doin’ that. I might write a book one of these days. I don’t know, maybe not.”

“Aren’t you curious what my book is about?”

He shrugged, chomped on his cheeseburger.

“Have you ever heard of a movie star named Rod Preston?”

“Naw. Is he famous?”

“He was before he died.”

“Never heard of him. I don’t go to that many movies. Video games, that’s what I like.
Doom,
man, that’s the coolest. Bam, bam, bam.”

“Maybe I could try a few other names on you.”

“Sure, you’re the one with the money.”

“Edward T. Felton.”

“Nope.”

“Freddie Fuentes.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

“Mandeville Slayton.”

His nervous eyes stopped roving for a moment, landed on mine, skitted quickly away, down to his greasy pile of fries.

“I don’t think so.”

“You sure?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

He shook a bottle of ketchup several times, then unscrewed the cap and dumped half the bottle on the fries.

“You must have heard of Mandeville Slayton, Mike. He’s a popular singer.”

“Yeah, maybe, from his singing. But that’s it.”

He grabbed his Coke so fast he almost knocked it over, sucked hard through the straw.

“I’m not paying you to lie to me, Mike.”

“Hey, come on, man, you said fifty bucks if I had dinner with you.”

“And if you answered my questions.”

“I told you, I don’t know any of those guys.”

“I didn’t ask you if you knew them, Mike.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t, OK? And I never heard of them, neither.”

“Except Mandeville Slayton, because of his records.”

“Yeah, maybe him.”

The waitress arrived to warm my coffee and ask if we wanted anything else. I told her we were fine and she laid the check on the table. I put a dollar on it, then pushed it across to Mike.

“What’s this, man?”

“That’s the bill for your dinner. The dollar covers my coffee.”

I slid from the booth and stood to go.

“Come on, man, you can’t stick me with this. I told you, I got no money. They know me in here. They won’t let me come back if I eat and run.”

“Come back to hustle tricks after hours?”

“Whatever. I just can’t pay it, so come on.”

“Talk to me, Mike. Answer my questions. What about Mandeville Slayton? I saw your eyes when I said his name. I saw how you reacted.”

He glanced up a moment, imploringly.

“I don’t want to get into this shit, man.”

I slid back into the booth, facing him again.

“What shit is that?”

“You don’t even know, man. I’m telling you.”

“Tell me about Mandeville Slayton, Mike. You do that, I pick up the check.”

“Jesus.”

He grabbed his Coke and sucked down more. He thought for a moment, then lowered his voice and leaned his head so close it was over my coffee.

“Here’s what I know, but you can’t say to nobody that I ever told you this.”

“Fair enough.”

“Slayton, the singer, the big fat black guy? He digs guys like me, you know, blond guys, blue eyes, only younger.”

“How much younger?”

“I had sex with him a bunch of times when I was like twelve, maybe thirteen. He likes to party after his concerts with plenty of chicken around; it’s a real high for him. You know, all those people in the audience screaming and shit, and then he likes to get his friends together and snort some snow and make out with young guys. Once a kid he was with OD’ed on some drugs. Slayton freaked, man. He was afraid it would get out, you know, that he’s a chickenhawk. He couldn’t take the kid to a hospital, so he called some doctor who came up to Slayton’s house and took care of the kid.”

“Did this doctor have a name?”

“We never knew nobody’s name at those parties. ’Cept for Slayton, ’cause he was so famous, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“This doctor, can you describe him?”

“Short guy, glasses, weird clothes. He wore this stupid little tie, not like a regular tie, which is stupid enough.”

“A bow tie?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what you call it, a bow tie.”

“Wide lapels on his jacket, cuffed pants?”

“Yeah, just like that, that’s the guy.”

“You did drugs with Slayton?”

“He got me started, man.”

“Cocaine?”

“Crystal, man.”

“Methamphetamine.”

“Yeah, meth. Then the fucker dumped me back on the street with a habit. I thought about goin’ to those tabloid newspapers or the TV shows and makin’ some big money. Then I figured they’d never believe some guy, like, from the streets, strung out and shit. So I just let it slide.”

His eyes dropped away, troubled.

“Then I heard some other stuff, and I just figured I was lucky I got out alive.”

“What other stuff was that?”

“I told you about Slayton, that was the deal.”

“Why did Slayton stop taking you to the parties?”

“Like I said, he got scared after that other kid almost croaked. I guess he eased up for a while.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“The doctor took him away, took care of him. That’s all they told us.”

“And Slayton dumped you at that point?”

“Yeah, that was the last time I had to suck his big black dick. Later, I heard he’d stopped pickin’ up tricks on the street, that he’d found some other way to get kids that was safer.”

Mike shrugged, smiled lamely.

“I was about to turn fourteen, anyway. Too old for most of those guys, you know?”

“Why’d you go with Slayton in the first place? Were you attracted to him?”

“No way, man. I like chicks.”

“Why, then?”

“You know, man.”

“Tell me.”

“Easy money.”

He said it like I’d asked him the stupidest question in the world.

“So where would Slayton and his friends find boys, Mike, if not on the street?”

He drew back, picked at his ketchup-smothered fries.

“I don’t know, man. You’d have to ask him that.”

“You’ve been around. You must have heard something.”

He leaned back toward me, his eyes getting angry.

“Look, I told you everything I’m going to, OK? I don’t care if I have to pay for the fucking food or not. I’m not saying no more.”

“OK. I didn’t mean to push so hard.”

His face and eyes softened a little.

“You want to know the real story?”

“I think you know I do.”

“Then you need to find a guy named Prettyboy. A Mexican guy—his real name’s Chucho somethin’, Chucho Pernales, I think it is. He’s got a pretty weird story to tell, man, pretty fuckin’ weird.”

“Where can I find this Chucho?”

“Last time I saw him, he was down in Tijuana, workin’ the gay bars. I went down with a couple older guys last year; they paid for everything, you know? We had an OK time. I made it with a Mexican chick down there. She dug it, too, you know? I know how to treat a chick.”

“You ran into Chucho down there?”

“Yeah, in one of the gay bars, turning tricks and stuff.”

“And Chucho knows where Mandeville Slayton and his friends get their boys for sex?”

“If he wants to tell you. He’s not real cool with American guys no more, especially older guys.”

“Why’s that, Mike?”

“He had some bad experiences, like really scary. Hey, he may not even be alive no more. He’s got HIV; maybe AIDS by now, so for all I know, he’s dead.”