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the premises evoked an aura of pain inflicted in lieu of pleasure. Dan considered physical abuse the dull side of the sexual imagination. He’d stopped going there when one too many pickups expressed disappointment at his gentle touch.
“Do you want to strangle me a bit?” one suggested, after a few minutes of foreplay. “It might make it more exciting. Besides, you look the type.”
“I’m outta here,” Dan said, the door slamming behind him before the man could even protest.
“How come a big hunk like you is so sweet?” another asked, clearly disappointed at not having his endurance limits tested. “I was hoping for a little abuse.”
Dan flexed his biceps. “Who said abuse was free? Usually I get paid to hurt guys like you.”
The man pulled a face. “I’m only thirty-three. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to pay for sex!”
Dan retrieved his underwear and pulled it on. “Ever been to a bathhouse?”
The man gave him an odd look. “Of course.”
“Then you’ve paid for sex.”
In the bar on the main floor, heavy metal music ground through the speakers. The place was empty apart from a shirtless bartender who looked like a double for Jim Morrison right before his drunken downward spiral. He looked Dan over approvingly.
“Hi there.”
“Evening,” Dan said, to put things on a formal level. “You Charlie?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
Dan pulled the picture from his case and laid it on the bar. “Ever see this kid in here?”
Dan could see him calculating whether he was a cop. The bartender shrugged — it wouldn’t matter either way so long as the kid wasn’t in there now. “He looks pretty young. I doubt I’ve seen anyone under twenty in here yet.”
A few doors up the street an early crowd had gathered in Woody’s. Heads turned at his approach. Woody’s was an upscale pub, a preppy bar for kids with clean good looks. Dan seldom rated more than a passing nod from this crowd. From experience he knew he looked like one of two things: rough trade or a hustler on the make.
Inside, he almost ran into a drag queen. Bricklayer hands and Maybelline eyes. Forget-me-not blue. She was Anybody’s Girl. She looked at Dan and flashed a smile: Our Little Secret. Dan smiled back. Why be unfriendly?
Cosy and comfortable, Woody’s favoured décor over theme. Drag routines on slow nights and amateur strip shows mid-week, the bar managed to keep its clients happy without leaving them awash in Gwen Stefani and Britney Spears videos. For a while it was known as the bar in the American Queer As Folk series. Woody’s also held a record for selling more beer than any other bar its size in the city. Despite this, breweries were reluctant to make a showing at Pride in the years before it became a sell-out and everybody wanted in on the advertising opportunities. Woody’s stood up and got counted. “No Pride, no beer.” It became a mantra repeated cheerfully to every brew-master within hearing. Next Pride Day, all but the most uncooperative contributed to Woody’s float. You might not wring respect from a bigot, far less a corporation, but money had a way of leaping over personal qualms and setting its own rules. That move had earned the bar Dan’s everlasting respect.
By light of day, the glamour faded and Woody’s became just another dingy pub with a surprisingly small stage considering the number of drag queens who managed to crowd onto it any given Sunday. The interior was always dim, as though the aura of false twilight it carried was a prize feature. Dan padded through the wood-lined interior to see who or what lay inside.
A bartender called out hopefully. “Hey, sexy dude.” It was probably the same name he had for half the guys who came into the place. He was short, twenty-two-ish, and filled his Baby Gap T-shirt in a way that left few questions unanswered, at least about his top half. “Good to see you again!”
Dan walked up to the bar and sat, knowing the last time he’d set foot in the place this particular bartender probably hadn’t even applied for a position or slept with the right someone to get it. Or maybe even graduated from high school. “A pint of Rickard’s Red,” he said.
The boy pulled the tap, watched disinterestedly as the glass filled, flicked off the head, and pulled the tap again. He slid the glass forward. Dan slapped a ten on the counter, Sir John A. side up. There he was, father of the country with his steadfast stare, snowy curls, and not a hint of the alcoholic about him. Dan pushed the change back and took the top off his drink.
“I’d like some information,” he said, retrieving the photograph from his briefcase. He flashed it at the bartender. “This kid ever come in here?”
The boy picked it up and looked it over carefully. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I go for blondes, so I may not have noticed him even if he was right under my nose.” He grinned. “Sorry.”
Dan tried two other bartenders. No one gave him a positive ID. The tattooed bald-headed guy at the front bar just shrugged. “I see fifty variations on this kid every time I work a Saturday night,” he said, looking back at Dan. “Now you I would remember. In fact, I do, though you haven’t been in for a while. You’re a Scotch drinker.”
Dan smiled. “Only on a rough night,” he said.
“Best kind of night there is. I didn’t know you were a cop.” His face suggested he might be willing to be handcuffed and frisked at a moment’s notice.
“I’m not. Sorry to disappoint you.”
The man’s expression hovered between mirth and skepticism. “I doubt you’d disappoint anyone.” He waited a beat, but Dan didn’t pick up his cue. “Come back in sometime when you’re looking for someone a little older — say, my age. I’ll be willing to help in any way I can.”
Dan laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.”
He ran into the same story all up and down the strip. Either no one recalled the kid or they recalled a hundred just like him. He was about to give up when he saw a slim figure up ahead. For a second, Dan thought it might be Richard Philips. The boy sauntered past Starbucks and stopped to check his reflection in the storefront of Eyes On Church.
He had the same wary eyes and disappointed mouth as Richard. His scrawny build and jerky walk cut a swath ahead of him, while his hands busily defined the air. Even at a distance Dan could see the wear and tear he’d picked up on the streets. But it wasn’t Richard. Just another street kid with ill-fitting jeans and a growing attitude. At fifteen, he’d be considered desirable by a certain crowd. That had probably been enough to make him head full-tilt down the wrong road. From the looks of him, he was now seventeen or eighteen. By twenty he’d be too disease-ridden to sell for over-ripe fruit, though there’d always be some fetishist willing to use him as a human ashtray in exchange for a place to stay when no one else wanted him. Still, he wasn’t Richard. But give it a few years and he would be.
The boy had seen Dan. He turned and headed over. If Dan had been as forward during his time on the street, who knows where he’d be now?
“Hi, sir,” the boy said. “Have you got the time?”
“Sure, I’ve got time,” Dan said.
The boy’s eyes darted up and down the sidewalk while he talked, as though afraid he might miss something. The jerky mannerisms continued. His pupils were so black, Dan felt it was like looking into a void. He had that intense sexual vibe street kids seemed to exude effortlessly, their inner antenna always attuned to someone else’s desire.
“Let’s go somewhere,” the kid said, cocky now, as though he’d just lucked into a good thing.
“Not that kind of time.”
The eyes turned suspicious. “What do you want then?”
“I’d like to talk.”
“What about?”