Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (11 page)

Dan resisted the urge to laugh. “I just wondered if we could go into a bar to talk.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.” The boy led the way.

They wandered into Zelda’s — probably the only trailer park–themed restaurant in the country. At the door, Loretta Lynn’s transsexual cousin met them in a red-and-white gingham dress with a large bow on the back. She showed them to a table before flouncing away to feed her flock.

The boy eyed Dan. “What’d you want to talk about?”

“What’s your name?”

The eyes narrowed. “Grady.”

“Hi, Grady. Mine’s Dan.”

They shook. The boy smiled. This might be going somewhere after all.

“What are you drinking, Grady?”

The boy cocked his head as though it were an odd question. “Whatever.”

Dan handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Go get yourself a whatever and keep the change. But make sure you come back and talk to me, right?”

The boy walked off to the bar. Dan didn’t bother to watch. He knew the kid would be back. He was the only source of available cash at the moment.

Grady came back with a local beer, bill still in hand. “You said I could keep the change, right?”

Dan nodded.
Smart boy,
he thought. “It’s yours.”

The boy sat next to him and leaned in close enough for Dan to smell his body odour. Pungent, but it had an appeal. He rubbed his knee against Dan’s. “So what do you wanna know?”

Dan fished out the photograph of Richard Philips. “I’m looking for this kid,” he said.

The boy took the photograph and scrutinized it. Dan saw something in his face when he looked up. “He in trouble?” Grady said.

“He’s not in trouble for anything he’s done, but he might be in trouble wherever he’s headed. I’m trying to find him to see if he needs help. I’m not asking you to rat on him.”

The boy nodded and looked back at the photograph, running his tongue over his lower lip.

“His name’s Richard,” Dan said. “If that helps.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe it was. His name’s Lester now.” The boy grinned. “If that helps.”

Dan handed over another ten. “It helps a lot. Do you know where he is or where he might work?”

Grady pocketed the bill. “You sure you’re not a cop?” he said, eying Dan squarely.

“No. I’m not a cop. And the boy’s not in trouble, as I said.”

“’Kay,” the kid said. “I don’t wanna rat on anybody. So yeah, I know a bit about Lester.”

“How do you know him?” Dan asked.

Grady took a long drink and set the bottle down with a satisfied sigh. He looked around the bar as though afraid of being overheard, but his volume increased rather than diminished. It was probably how he advertised, Dan realized.

“We worked together — not long ago.”

Dan nodded. “On the street?”

The boy shook his head impatiently, anxious to disabuse the idea. “We did a flick. A porno. All good-looking young guys,” he said, as though to distinguish it from the ignominy of being in a film with old trolls. He took another long swig from the beer. It was two-thirds empty now.

This time Dan held out a twenty. “Where?”

The boy clutched the bill and drew it slowly through Dan’s fingers. “Place out on Danforth.”

“Name? Address?”

“I really don’t remember the number,” the boy said. “But it’s across from the Canadian Tire. Moonlight Cinema or some shit like that on the door.”

“Thank you,” Dan said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

The boy was watching him carefully. “There’s more,” he said.

Dan waited. “I’m out of cash,” he said.

“Why don’t we go to your place? No charge.” He rubbed Dan’s thigh, letting his fingers slide up to his crotch. “You look tough, but I can tell you wouldn’t hurt me. I know guys.”

“I’ve got a son at home who’s not much younger than you.”

The kid withdrew his hand. “You’re not straight though,” he said, shaking his head. “I can tell.”

Dan shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“But you think it would be weird to sleep with someone who reminds you of your son?”

“Something like that,” Dan said. The kid was sharp.

“Too bad,” the boy said, pushing back his chair. “Even soft I can tell you got a nice dick.”

“So what else do you know?”

Grady nodded and looked around, as though taking stock of his prospects for later. The bar was dismal. He turned back to Dan. “They called me for a sequel,” he said. “For a couple weeks from now.”

“You going to be in it?” Dan asked.

The boy cocked his head. “Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got a date with this rich guy from Montreal. He’s taking me to Cuba.”

Lucky you,
Dan thought.
Turning down a starring role in a film for a private performance.
He wrote down the details, wondering if Lester was really the boy he was looking for or if Grady had told him anything remotely like the truth. His gut said yes. They shook hands again and Dan wished him luck.

Outside, the street was filling with the usual mid-week crowd. Cars slid past. The air was fine. It would be busy soon, another prime evening on the strip. Dan wouldn’t be sorry to miss it.

On the way home, he swung by the place Grady mentioned. He found the production house above a fruit and vegetable shop in a row of dreary two-storey buildings across from the inverted orange carrot of the Canadian Tire logo. An arc of light beamed above the door, a lone moth drawn to its promised glitter, the fool’s gold of the insect world.

From outside, Moonlight Cinemas looked like a regular business: a place that videotaped weddings and bar mitzvahs and put its trash out on the street along with the other businesses. There was even a plastic plaque over the door. Then again, Dan thought, why shouldn’t it be? Unless someone nabbed them for using underage models.

He got out of the car, trying to be casual as he strolled past. All the second-floor lights were off. Or, more likely, the windows were permanently blacked out. Above the mail slot, a smaller handwritten sign with letters in faded marker read, “Now auditioning. Call back during business hours.”

Eight

Do You Have a Dress Code?

The house was dark and still with the sound that empty houses make. Dan looked for the telltale blink of the answering machine from the end of the hall, but found none. He flicked on a light and set his laptop down with the mail. In the kitchen, Ralph’s tail wagged a hesitant welcome, as though waiting to see what kind of mood Dan had arrived in before going all out. At least there were no messy presents, despite his having been gone most of the day. Usually the dog behaved for a few days after being yelled at. More proof he knew what he was doing.

“Good boy,” Dan said.

The tail thumped harder, but Ralph stayed put.

“We talked about you today,” Dan said. “Martin and I, I mean. I assured him you were a very smart guy. He’s not so sure about me.”

He draped his coat over the back of a chair. With Ked at his mother’s, he could afford to be lax. These days Kendra had him almost as much as Dan did. Maybe she was afraid he’d grow up thinking she didn’t care about him. It wasn’t true. She loved Ked as much as Dan did but with a detached edge, the way she loved all things. It was as though he’d never really been a part of her body, whereas Dan felt Ked had always been inside him, waiting to emerge.

So far Ked hadn’t shown any signs of troubled behaviour that children of divorced parents exhibited, perhaps because his parents had never been together, either in memory or before. He was a happy accident rather than the spoils of war. And since his parents got along, Ked seemed to think it fine that he had two homes to go to, two bedrooms to mess. No one fought over Christmas or other holidays. Double birthday celebrations at two different addresses guaranteed double gifts and two cakes. No complaints there.

Dan cast his eyes around. The house was in reasonable shape. When Bill got around to returning his call, Dan would entice him over with a promised romp. A few softly murmured dirty words were usually all it took. Dan didn’t mind if Ked was home when Bill came by for his infrequent visits, but he preferred he wasn’t. At first he’d fooled himself into thinking he didn’t want Ked to overhear the crescendos of their sweaty sex romps — and Bill certainly liked to vocalize his pleasure — but in fact Dan didn’t want Ked there because Ked looked down on him for dating Bill. He should have found that amusing, but it made him uncomfortable knowing his son thought less of him for his choice of romantic partners. Though admittedly there was really nothing romantic about Bill.

He went upstairs with his laptop and emptied his inbox with a few quick replies. Done, he tossed some ice in a glass and poured a tumblerful of Scotch, priding himself on having waited that long. When Ked was around he stuck to beer, but tonight he was alone. He sat in the living room and looked out at the street. The birch in the front yard hid the window from view but allowed a bird’s eye view of anyone passing. He flicked on Jazz FM and caught something dark and rhythmically complex. He had no idea who it was. Donny would, of course.

His second glass had less ice, more Scotch. He returned to the chair. Outside, the street was empty apart from an occasional car stirring up leaves before passing from view. The program switched over to Jeff Healey’s
My Kind of Jazz
and his archive of treasures from the twenties and thirties. The old, growly blues records — wonderful stuff — bringing to life voices and musicians from nearly a century ago. And then it was time for another drink.

In the kitchen, the dog stared as Dan cracked the ice tray and filled his glass. He tried to recall if he’d let Ralph out when he came home. He rubbed his eyes and blinked. The room turned blurry for a moment then cleared again.

He remembered Ked’s injunction on speaking to Ralph. “What do you want?” he said, opening his arms wide the way Ked had done.

The dog whimpered but didn’t move.

“What do you want? Show me what you want.”
I’m talking to a dog,
Dan thought. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Ralphie?” he said in exaggerated tones.

The dog scampered up, racing to the front door.

“I guess you do.”

Ralph whimpered worriedly as Dan fumbled with the leash and struggled with his windbreaker. Outside, it was a cloudy, moonless night. Leaves littered the sidewalks. The dog lunged down the walk. Caught off guard, Dan lurched into the fence. He heard a loud crack as his knee connected with a fencepost.

“Goddamn it!” he bellowed.

The dog looked back, straining to keep as far from Dan as he could. “Stop pulling!” Dan yelled.

He felt around with his fingers. No pain. It had been the fence post rather than his leg he’d heard cracking. They continued to the street, Ralph dragging him along.

“Stop it!” he commanded. The dog stopped and waited, then sprang forward as soon as Dan moved. Dan yanked on the leash and Ralph yelped. He cowered as Dan came toward him. “No, it’s okay,” Dan said gently. “Just stop pulling.”

They continued at a slower pace. Ralph seemed to like to lead, so Dan gave him some distance. He trotted proudly, looking back once in a while as though checking in or encouraging Dan to walk faster.
You can do this,
Dan told himself.
You can walk the dog without getting angry
.

They reached Danforth Avenue and turned left. Outside various halal shops, bearded men in white thobe robes sat looking otherworldly, smoking mysterious-smelling herbs and muttering strange syllables, as though they knew secrets they shared only among themselves. In a Greek butcher’s window, trussed lamb and goat carcasses hung down, skinned and venous. Ralph sniffed at the doorstep, a biblical angel checking for smeared lambs’ blood, and lapped at a dark spot on the sidewalk.

Dan’s head was losing its fuzziness. He thought of the drink he’d poured and forgotten. They turned back at the borders of Riverdale and headed south again. Arriving back at the house, Ralph trotted up the walk and curled up on the rug in the living room.

The ice had melted in Dan’s glass where it sat perched on the arm of the chair. He had no idea why he’d placed it there. Maybe the idea of balancing it on the arm had appealed to him. In any case, Scotch was for drinking, not for balancing on chair arms.

He took a slug, waiting for the slow burn in his throat. His father had been an angry, frustrated man most of his life. The irony was he was nicest when he drank, as though alcohol allowed him a bit of headroom on the tight leash on which he kept his emotions. But nothing ever brought his father closer. Dan had filled the mantle with athletic trophies from school, but his father hadn’t cared. He’d done the housework, but his father seldom noticed. Even when his Aunt Marge pointed it out, praising Dan in front of him, his father only grunted in his usual incoherent manner, as though it made no difference to him whether dishes got washed and beds made, whether the garbage was put out on the curb or left to stink up the house.

Dan took another swallow and felt the warm release, wondering if this was what his father had felt when he drank. And this was always, always when he thought about Bill. The images jutted like a loose floorboard he’d tripped over and couldn’t resist pulling up to see what lay beneath. Only with Bill there was never really much there.

They’d met at Sailor’s on a Saturday night when the bar was crammed. Dan seldom went out to bars and, if he did, almost never on a Saturday. Crowds made him claustrophobic, but mostly he disliked being jostled and touched. There were also too many slight, pimple-faced youngsters who reminded him not a little of Ked a few years on — boys who tried too hard to be desirable when in truth they were simply awkward, thin and insecure.

Dan knew boys like that. They wanted Jake Gyllenhaal, but they’d settle for a guy like Dan who could make their hormones twitch with a glance. Especially once the bar lights came up and they found themselves alone again. But those boys required work once you got them home, made them feel safe, fucked them till they grinned, and then hoped they’d leave so you could get some sleep and forget you’d just bedded another twenty-year-old who had pleaded for your number but would never call. The next time they saw him in a club, they turned their heads and pretended not to notice him for fear he’d assume there was anything between them.