Friday night, Gino's was crowded with lithe and feral manboys. Brad-boy actually got off the bike and went in. Matty followed him while I spoke privately to Gino. I flashed one of the P.I. cards I hadn't given back to Georgia. Either she hadn't noticed that or she had. I wasn't sure if I should let her know what I was up to. She was probably in enough trouble already. She probably already knew anyway. No, I'd wait until I had something.
Gino glanced at the card unsurprised, looked at me, and said, 'What do you need?'
'I heard you're the go-to guy.' He looked blank, he didn't recognize the term. 'The go-to guy. The guy to go to… if you have the clap and need the name of a doctor, if you need a letter from a shrink to stay out of the army, that kind of stuff.'
'I know some people,' Gino said. Dr. Ellis was due to be murdered by a hustler-boy. Scotty would be implicated in a different murder and YMAC's new location on La Brea would be raided. In a couple of years. 'What can I do for you?'
'You know your regulars, right? You know who's solid and who's flaky. If someone new shows up, you read them the rules before you let them in. Do you ever notice who folks leave with?'
'I see a lot of boys come through here every weekend - '
'Brad Boyd. Do you ever notice who he leaves with?'
'Hard not to. He always revs his engine and roars out of here, leaving a stinking cloud of smoke behind. I've asked him not to - '
'Could you keep an eye out?'
'Who are you working for? His parents?'
'No. This isn't that kind of a case.'
'What kind of a case is it?'
'This kind.' I pushed a fifty-dollar bill into his hand. I had another ready in case one wasn't enough.
Gino glanced down only long enough to check the denomination. 'You got the size right.' He tucked it into his pocket.
I leaned forward, whispered, 'This kid's life might be in danger. I think he's being stalked. But I don't have any hard evidence yet. Help me out, I'll give you another one of those.'
Gino shrugged. 'I have a club to run. Weekends are busy. I can't promise anything. But if I see something, I'll let you know.'
I passed him a card. No name, just a phone number. 'If no one answers, there's an answering machine. You can leave a message.'
Gino looked impressed. Code-A-Phones were expensive. I didn't tell him it belonged to the Harris Agency-and that any day now I expected Georgia to request its return.
I found Matty in the shadows next to the jukebox. Brad was playing pool in the corner. I pulled Matty farther back and we pretended to be only casually interested in the pool game. So far, it looked like Brad was only here to play pool. He had a nasty style of slop shooting. It looked like he was just casually slamming the balls around; but he'd been playing barroom pool long enough, he knew what he was doing. He kept winning. Three, four, six games and he still hadn't been beaten.
'Whyn't you go play him?'
'Uh-uh. I might interrupt something or someone. We need to see who he picks up - or who picks him up.'
'Is it tonight?'
'Tomorrow. I have a feeling-I could be wrong-but I have a hunch that our subject might be here tonight as well. Whatever he's feeling, it has to be building up. Building up over time. If Brad is his first, then maybe this is the night that triggers his urge, but maybe he isn't quite ready to act. Something happens tonight. He gets his-whatever it is he gets. His courage. And tomorrow is the night it gets real enough for him to actually do something.'
'What if he picks someone else?'
'I don't think so. I think Brad is the first because Brad is the easiest. I don't think our fellow has learned how to cruise yet. He might not have picked Brad out, but I think he's in this room. Here's what I want you to do. You go one way, I'll go the other. We'll both walk around, just looking-cruising. See if you see anyone who strikes you as wrong.'
'Wrong in what way?'
'Any way at all.'
'Too old? Too ugly?'
'No. Brad is a slut, but he isn't a whore. Like all the rest of you girls, he wants someone young and cute. So watch out for anyone who looks like his type, but possibly nervous, uneasy, uncertain-someone who doesn't look like he's having a good time. His clothes or his haircut might look a little weird, like he doesn't understand the current styles. He's probably hanging back, just watching; he might have a very intense look, or he might even look perfectly normal. But I'll bet he's someone new, someone you haven't seen before, so watch for that. Just look at every unfamiliar face closely and see what you see. Okay? You go this way, I'll go that. Three or four times around, then meet back here.'
There was something else to watch out for, but I didn't tell Matty. It was baggage he didn't need to carry. I didn't like having him do this, but I needed his eyes. He had experience here. He could read these people. I couldn't. Not very well. There was an overlay of-I didn't have a word for it-but there was a map to this territory that I didn't have.
I'd given him one clue. Watch out for someone who's out of style. But he wouldn't have heard what I was really saying-I think we're dealing with a freelance time-hopper, someone who's riding the quakes. He's probably from the past, maybe ten or twenty years; I doubted he was from the future, the future is a little friendlier to queers, but I didn't rule it out-maybe the cultural shifts were stressing him out.
But if I had to put money on it, I'd bet that this was a guy with a very bad jones in his Johnson. He wanted sex with young men, but afterwards he was so ashamed at what he had done, he had to destroy the evidence. Even if that meant murder.
In the movies, murderers always have a look about them. That's because the director puts the actor in a hotter or colder light, making him stand out just a bit from everyone else around him; and the makeup man will do something around the actor's eyes, making his face look sallow or drawn or gaunt; and the camera angle will be such that everyone else in the crowd will be turned away, or in shadow, or simply two steps back. In the movies, it's easy to spot the bad guy-the director tells you where to look and what to notice.
In real life… real life stinks. Murderers look just like everybody else. Sick and tired and resigned. Beaten up and beaten down. Everybody looks like a murderer. So nobody does.
In here, they looked-they looked like queers, but once you got past the part that was queer and you looked at the people, they looked like people. Soft boys, girlboys, manboys, wild boys, wilder boys, feral boys. None of them looked like men. But that's what I was looking for. Someone who wasn't a boy anymore. A man? Maybe. Someone who'd passed through boyhood without ever finishing the job. But the only one in here who looked like that… was me.
For a moment, I envied this confetti of boys and their flickering schoolgirl freedom. Because at least, while they were here, flirting and gossiping, nattering and chattering, they had a place of their own, a place to belong. If I'd ever had a place to belong, it must have been closed the night I passed by.
Circled four times, five, breathing faint smells of marijuana, Aramis, Clearasil, and Sen-Sen. Passed Matty going the other way, kept going, searched faces, all the faces-some of them searched back, wondering if they could find comfort in mine. That wasn't possible. I don't do comfort. They got it and looked away.
And then finally, we came back to the dark corner next to the jukebox and compared notes. Matty shook his head. 'A bunch of frat-boys from the ZBT chapter at UCLA, checking out the scene. A guy who says he's only here doing research for a book; yeah, like I believe that. A couple fellows up from Garden Grove, one from San Francisco. A guy who looks like a cop, but Gino didn't flash any lights, and you don't put the red bandana hanging out of your front pocket anyway. And Uncle Philsy. That's what everybody calls him.'
'Which one is Uncle Philsy-oh, him.' The troll. Short. Bald. Fiftyish. Tending to fat. Disconnected predatory grin. Wandering aimlessly through the boys, simply enjoying the view. Sweet and repulsive at the same time. But harmless.
'Gino knows him. Says he's okay.'
'What was that about a guy doing research for a book? Don't trust him. Writers are all creeps and liars. And what about the other guy-bandana man?'
