“Are you tuned in?” She nodded. “Good,” Bruner said. “Bring Lieutenant Hammond and his friend another drink and then leave us alone until one of us calls you over. If none of us calls you over, Peppi, stay the fuck behind the bar. If you don't, we're going to strain you through those stockings and use you to make chicken stock.”
Peppi nodded slowly. “What I need,” she said, “guys with balls you couldn't get through a basketball hoop.” Bruner gave her a gentlemanly smile. “Drinks coming up?” he said.
“On the way.” She pivoted and marched to the bar, her legs muscular and bunched in the mesh stockings.
“Caliban in the net,” I said to myself.
“Ah,” Bruner said, ” That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him.’ ” He raised his soda to his lips. “Or, in this case, her,” he added.
“ ‘Him’ will do,” Hammond said. He was not noted for his sensitivity toward those who belonged to minority sexual genres.
“ The liquor is not earthly,’ ” I quoted back at Bruner. I took a swallow. “In fact, it's demonic.”
“Poor Caliban,” Bruner sighed. “Running away from a stern father figure and falling into the clutches of a couple of drunks. It happens all the time.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Hammond demanded.
“Who are the monsters?” Bruner asked. “The parents who make the kid run away, the ones who prey on the kid, or the thing the kid becomes?”
“Glad you guys are getting along,” Hammond said, feeling left out.
“The pimps are the worst,” I said, giving vent to my newest grudge.
“They get my vote,” Hammond said.
“They're the easiest ones to hit,” Bruner said, sipping again at his soda. “Who's going to file a complaint because you smacked some pimp? Nobody cares, or if they do, they'd just as soon hand you a bouquet. But who are the pimps? Half the time they're just the kids who were lucky enough to get old enough to get managerial. Being this kind of cop is like raising wolves. You try to protect the young ones from the old ones, and then when the young ones get old, you try to protect the new young ones from the ones you tried to save in the first place. There are times when you just want to let them eat each other.”
“Wolves don't kill their young,” I said.
“Sorry,” Bruner said, sighing again. “It was a metaphor.”
“What's a metaphor?” Hammond said.
“It's like an allegory,” Bruner said as Peppi, acting huffy, put fresh drinks on the table.
“And what's an allegory?” Hammond asked stubbornly. He looked like a man who needed his blood pressure taken.
“A dangerous amphibian,” Bruner said. “Like Caliban.”
“Jesus,” Hammond said, putting his glass down sharply. “Thanks for inviting me to the class reunion. I think I'll find someone who speaks English.” He got up and went to the jukebox, parting the sea of dancers before him like a shark in a school of cod.
“Anyway,” Bruner said, watching him go, “the pimps just fill the vacuum we've created. It's classic capitalism.”
At the jukebox, Hammond fished around in his pockets and pulled out the roll of quarters that he usually saved for wrapping his fist around, opened it, and fed coins into the slot. He punched some buttons. When the machine didn't respond quickly enough, he kicked it.
“What do you mean, they fill the vacuum? Surely they help to create the vacuum in the first place.”
Bruner shrugged his elegantly clad shoulders. “There are always going to be immature men who want immature sex partners,” he said. “Whether they're straight or gay, they're not able to handle another adult. They need someone they can dominate, someone who's physically smaller, someone who makes them feel powerful for a change. Child prostitution is an international trade, like coffee or oil. But we make it worse here. We contribute to the vacuum.”
“How?” I finished my drink and looked for Peppi. Hammond's invariable first choice, the Iron Butterfly's “Inna-Gadda-da-Vida,” pumped through the loudspeakers.
“We're so very progressive,” Bruner said. “Child labor? Unconstitutional. Cruel and unusual punishment. There's no legal work a kid can do without his or her parents' permission. So for a kid who's run away, what's left? Illegal work. And of all the illegal ways for a kid to make a living, none pays better than hustling.” He picked up his soda water and sipped it distastefully, then chewed two more Maalox tab- lets. He had little flecks of yellow foam at the corners of his lips.
“They can't work at McDonald's,” he continued. “They can't even sell their blood. So they wind up with their thumbs out on Santa Monica or Sunset, trying to make enough money to buy some anesthetic.”
“Are most of them abused?” I asked, thinking of the knots of muscle at the corners of Daddy Sorrell’s jaws.
“You mean sexually? Physically? It depends on what you mean by being abused. They almost all come from strict homes. Spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child stuff. This will hurt me more than it does you. Their parents say they love them, and they express their love by whaling the tar out of the kid every time the kid does something that isn't covered by the Ten Commandments. When we talk to them, they deny that they ever beat the kid. Just disciplined him for his own good. ‘We spanked him, but we didn't
Hammond returned and sat down. He looked around the room. “Sure an exciting bunch of people,” he said.
“You spank someone with your hands,” Bruner said. “You beat someone with an object. Lamp cord, coat hanger, wooden spoon. Baseball bat.”
I pushed the little picture of Aimee across at Bruner. “Aimee Sorrell,” I said. “From Kansas City. Will you have your guys keep their eyes open?”
Bruner looked at the photo and chewed at the inside of his mouth. “Sure,” he said, “but you want my guess? If she hasn't showed up at the Oki-Burger, the place she landed first, she's either left L.A. or she's dead.”
“What do you know about this?” I handed him the Polaroid.
He studied it for a moment and then looked up at me, his eyes wearier than Ashley Wilkes's ever had been.
“I think she's dead,” he said.
8
Easter Sunday was ninety minutes away as I lurched through the front door of the Red Dog into the drizzle and aimed myself unsteadily east, looking for Alice. As far as Hollywood Boulevard was concerned, it was just another Saturday night.
The Boulevard was bumper-to-bumper, and the sidewalks were packed wall-to-curb. Neon made little zetz sounds overhead. Drum machines accompanied amplified grunts from the rolled-down windows of wet cars jammed full of kids. The street and the sidewalk were slick with mist. A cop's blue and red lights flashed ahead of me and two patrolmen, one of them a patrolwoman, braced a couple of sagging Mexicans against the side of their dented Toyota. This was what we'd come to: a female patrolman under artificial daylight frisking a stoned Mexican against a Japanese car to the beat of synthesized music. The future had arrived while I wasn't looking.
My head was turned back, my eyes on Jack's, when I stepped up onto the curb and bumped into somebody who was very hard. “Excuse me,” I said to whoever it was, and faced front to find myself looking at a phone kiosk. A skinny girl about Aimee Sorrell's age giggled wisely and said to her friend, “Scope
“That's what they're for,” I said with great precision. “They're less interesting than talking to you, but that's what they're for.” The girls looked at each other uncertainly. I attempted courtliness. “Does either of you have a breathalyzer?”
