Choice of Evil

soon as they came Inside. And as long as they were on the line with the press, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to dump on their Hispanic counterparts.

So the Latin Kings demanded equal time. And the newspapers were eager to comply. Each reporter dutifully printed the usual rant about how the gangs were community-improvement and racial-pride organizations. Sure, they could be violent, if they were forced to, but their purpose wasn’t crime, it was. . . uh, you know, political.

Sure. The papers, especially the columnists, provided a perfect forum for the Bloods and the Kings to death- diss each other publicly. All the leaders ended up in total lockdown, but the slashing continued Inside. And the publicity only got more kids wanna-being.

The Mayor pledged to wipe out the new scourge, convinced that winning the last election against the lamest candidate the Democrats had come up with in half a century made him a national model for city management. Yeah. Like the ATMs in New York City strip bars are proof of our “economic revival.”

Sure enough, the cops started finding Crips too. No, not the Compton Crips. This crew was mostly crack dealers flying colors.

Perfect. Now you had Hispanic kids approaching black kids, asking, “You a Blood?” and slashing away no matter what the answer. You had some kids afraid to wear red or blue, while others proudly flew the colors without the credentials, risking attack from both sides.

So, when the freak’s house got burned down, it wasn’t a big surprise that whoever wrote to the papers bragging about doing it signed off with “HE Rules!” Not pretending to be him, just with him.

Then the gates opened again.

The first four seemed unrelated at first. A stockbroker in his twenties, a middle-aged manager of the service desk at a car dealership, an unemployed guy who lived alone but wasn’t on welfare, and a woman who had once run a day-care center on the West Coast.

They all had two things in common. Each had been shot in the head at close range, in their own home. The papers weren’t saying, but the implication was that it was the same weapon too.

The other common denominator was computers—they’d all been involved in freakish cyber-stuff.

The stockbroker and the unemployed guy were after boys, haunting the chat rooms. The manager liked little girls. They didn’t find any evidence that he did any more than collect pictures of them. He was trading the pictures too. But if the cops learned the identity of any of the kids in the photos, they weren’t saying.

The woman was looking for “models.” Said she ran an agency, and promised girls big bucks for a few hours’ work. All she wanted was teens or younger. “Hairless” was her favorite description for the merchandise. One exchange the cops pulled off her computer’s hard drive was between her and a twelve-year-old who’d already been “posing” for a year. The girl had a little sister, and was negotiating a price for her, seeing her own market value dropping with age, moving up to agent status.

This time, as soon as he spoke up, the papers didn’t wait to print what he had to say.

Impostors beware! I do not seek converts. I am a hunter, not an evangelist. Those last four were all targeted for their crimes against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. A warning here: I am well aware that two of the targets met their victims through so-called “homosexual” chat rooms. This perversion will not be tolerated. Anyone who links homosexuality to pedophilia will be dealt with. Anyone. The other two were dispatched because their conduct fuels the fires of discrimination and violence against us. Finally, no crimes are to be committed in my name. None. Should my name be linked, in any way, to an incident of violence, the perpetrators will be viewed as antithetical to my mission. For all I know, the pedophile whose house was burned was targeted because of a misperception that he was “homosexual.” I have gone to great lengths to disabuse the world of the notion that molestation of children is “homosexual” even if committed by perpetrators of the same gender as the victim. That myth is homophobic. Homophobia breeds gay-bashing. And gay-bashing now brings death. The equation is simple. The rules have been explained. Unless a public disavowal of self-identification as “homosexual” by major pedophile organizations is forthcoming within the next two weeks, escalation will occur.

So he was here. In the city. Had to be. No way to do all those close-up hits without having someplace local to disappear into.

I spent a lot of time thinking. Almost like being back Inside. Only I wasn’t thinking about getting out, I was focused on getting in. Into him.

He wasn’t a chess player, not that kind of killer. No, he played outside the lines. Made the rules. So I went outside the lines myself. Off the chessboard. Considered what nobody seemed to be thinking about: All we had was the letters. And the murders. Did it have to be a man? Or even one man? There was nothing to show one man couldn’t have done everything he’d pulled off. . . no simultaneous murders in different parts of town, nothing like that. The letters were all in the same voice. No question about that. As distinctive as a fingerprint—egotistically individualized beyond the ability of any group-composition effort, no matter how shared their rhetoric. And too concise to be group work anyway. But if he did have partners, he’d know how to keep that off the screen.

And why respond to that “velociraptor” bait at all if he didn’t want to. . . what? He already had the biggest forum anyone could hope for. All the newspapers published his letters the minute they came in, usually on the front page. I knew they were translated into other languages too. Fan pages on the Internet. He wasn’t threatening anyone if they didn’t publish, like that Unabomber maniac. He didn’t have a fucking “manifesto” he wanted in print. And he sure as hell wasn’t looking for a book-and-movie deal.

I couldn’t make it work. But I had to work from someplace, so I settled on three assumptions: he was working solo; he was based here; he was willing to talk to me if I was the real thing—not a cop, from the other side of the line.

And if Wesley’s name didn’t prove that to him, I was out of luck.

A few days passed. And when the pedophile organizations didn’t produce the public statements he wanted, didn’t admit they were not “gay,” but just child molesters, he went even farther off the board.

“KIDDIE SEX TOUR” PLANE

EXPLODES OVER PACIFIC!

Some version of that headline blazed across the front page of every paper in the world. For once, the TV networks were ahead in the race—this time they had footage, and video beats print every time. But the footage wasn’t much. . . mostly of the futile rescue efforts.

There had been no irregular communication from the plane just before it vanished from the radar screens. No warning, no hint. No nothing.

But though nobody expected a bombing, the anchorman made it clear that his network had known about the flights for a while. I tuned in somewhere in the middle of his somber-voiced speech:

At the time of the crash, our In-Depth Investigative Team had already been working on the shocking story of “kiddie-sex tourism” in Southeast Asia. The changing economic climate in that region has paralleled a change in child prostitution practices. Thailand was originally considered the worst offender, but Thai brothels are now largely staffed with women and children brought across the border from Myanmar, while Goa, Sri Lanka, and especially the Philippines are all significant purveyors. The ID Team has learned that the charter service, which had advertised under the name “Budding Blossoms,” has been in operation for several years. We now go to Mary Jo Sanstrom, on board a SEATO vessel which is part of the search-and-rescue operation. Mary Jo. . .

A woman wearing a khaki jumpsuit and a camouflage cap standing against a backdrop of endless sea. . .

John, there are no apparent survivors of the devastating explosion. The activity you see behind me has been under way for several hours, but we are told the search is now concentrated on recovering the black box, although helicopters are continuing to work close to the ocean surface, hoping against hope. The passengers had all apparently purchased “package deals,” the specifics of which are not known at this time. However, UN-agency sources state bluntly that the tours were exclusively for pedophiles who wanted sexual access to child prostitutes in an environment free of danger from prosecution.

They cut away to a tall, lanky man with a beard and glasses, standing in the middle of a small office with haphazard piles of books everywhere. He looked like a professor. Talked like one too:

Sure, the government says that child prostitution is illegal, and claims that offenders are always prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But virtually every international agency concerned with the protection of children from