Light Before Day (17 page)

I leaned forward, my face close to his chin. "For decades,
your
people went into every gay bar you could find, beat the shit out of most of the people inside, and then published their pictures in the paper so you could ruin their lives," I said. "If you're genuinely interested in working on this relationship, Detective, you might want to start with some better manners."

Without taking his eyes off mine, Dwight said, "You going to let him talk to me like that, Jimmy?"

"Yes."

Dwight got to his feet and forced an official smile onto his face. "Stay out of trouble," he said.

I waited until Dwight was gone. Then I said, "He's an asshole."

"Of course he is," Jimmy answered. "Who else would agree to help me? The same might be said for you, little man. And I've got a feeling your bad mood has more to do with the fact that Joseph Spinotta might have raped a fifteen-year-old."

I felt put on the spot and ended up verbalizing an emotion I had not yet fully articulated even to myself. "There's a gay kid in Wisconsin who's fingering a box of razor blades right now. You write a book about a bunch of wealthy gay ephebophiles assaulting fifteen-year-olds, and you're giving ammunition to the assholes who shove him in a locker each day."

Jimmy bristled. Without meaning to, I had made my words sound like an accusation, and I wished I could take them back.

"Are you willing to deny the existence of criminals simply because they conform to a hateful stereotype?" he asked.

"No."

"Good." He got to his feet and gestured for me to do the same. "Don't worry about Dwight. I own his soul and he knows it."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Just trust me," he said.

Jimmy had introduced Dwight as the real Joe Ring, but he had said nothing about whether the detective had been involved in the murder of a porn star named Jenna Hartt and the subsequent novel that had almost cost Jimmy his life.

"I want you to talk to this Brian Ferrin kid," Jimmy said. "It's been a few years since what went down at the Spinotta house. Maybe he's ready to spill the beans. Especially to a charming and handsome young man like yourself who is going to do everything in his power to put him at ease." "Any reason Dwight didn't meet us back at your house?" Jimmy paused next to the Cadillac's passenger door. He rested both hands on top of his cane and twisted his lips as if he were cleaning a sticky film from his front teeth. "Yes. And if you haven't noticed, I've put off introducing the two of you as long as possible."

He didn't have to tell me he was referring to his wife.

As soon as we got back to the Wilton house, I called Brian Ferrin. He shared an answering machine with a female roommate whose greeting message was so curt it made me feel like a busboy who had interrupted a heated dinnertime conversation. I didn't leave a message. I cut the photographs of the Vanished Three from the computer printout I had showed Jimmy that morning and stuffed them in my wallet.

The San Fernando Valley has a greenbelt of affluent communities that hug the base of the foothills. Their names have become the punch lines of jokes, but they still typify suburban perfection on television sets around the globe. Ventura Boulevard is the artery that connects them all, and it's lined with enough retail chain stores to keep Middle America stocked up on Gap jeans and venti lattes for centuries to come.

Brian Ferrin and his easily inconvenienced roommate resided in a low-rise stucco palace a few blocks south of the 101 Freeway. A sign on the front lawn assured me that they enjoyed luxury living. Reading closely, I learned that luxury living was defined as having wall-to-wall carpet and air-conditioning and tolerating other people's pets. According to the call box, the roommate's last name was Martin. I wondered if she was the concerned friend who had visited the Santa Clarita Sheriff's Station almost three years earlier.

I slipped in the entrance door behind someone else. The girl who opened the door to unit 204

had a tiny face with a pageboy cut she had dyed coal. She gave me a resigned look, telling me that guys my age often came to her apartment for reasons that had nothing to do with her.

I smiled and held up a Visa envelope that had the word URGENT stamped in red on it.

Thanks to Jimmy, I would be mailing my delinquent payment at the end of the week. I had typed Brian Ferrin's name and address on a piece of paper and taped it inside the address window.

"This was in my box by mistake," I said.

She reached for it and I pulled it away "Would
you
want everyone to know
your
credit history?"

Her eyes narrowed a little.

"I'm on my way out," I said. "Does he work nearby? Maybe I could—"

"I don't read other peoples mail!"

"How am I supposed to know that?" I asked with a bright smile.

"You're not," she said. "You don't need to."

I just smiled, hoping she would hear her own anger. "Looks like we've both got Brian's best interests at heart."

The apartment behind her was dorm-room chic: an array of Ikea furniture, a plain brown sofa that looked like a rental, and an entertainment center that one of their parents had sprung for.

"You're not supposed to date people who live in your building," the girl said flatly. "It's like dating someone at work."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Just intuition," she said. "So you want me to tell you where he is so you can stalk him?

What's got
you
hooked? Is it his puppy-dog eyes or the fact that he doesn't give up the goods after five minutes like the rest of his friends?"

"You're protective of him," I said. "That's sweet."

She rolled her eyes and leaned against the edge of the door. "Yeah, I guess." I gave her time to elaborate. Instead she said, "Can you, like, do something violent so I have an excuse to call the police?"

I pretended to consider this. Then I lifted the Visa envelope in both hands as if I was going to tear it down the middle. She gave me the name of a record store in Sherman Oaks, called me a jerk, and slammed the door.

The record store was on Ventura Boulevard, right next to a mini-mall that housed a Starbucks with a gaggle of aspiring screenwriters sitting out front, pecking away on laptops and talking into their cell phones at the same time. If any of them were actually studio-employed, I figured we had cellular technology to blame for the sorry state of mainstream cinema.

Back Beats was a narrow corridor with a high ceiling and famished shelves that told me the place was bleeding business to the Virgin Mega-store. The minute I stepped through the front door, I was hit by a blast of whiny frat rock reminding me that straight white guys still think they've got it worse than anyone else. I told myself I shouldn't judge; my gay brothers appropriate the vocal stylings of black women because they're under the impression that not getting a call back from the drunk straight guy who used you for a night of release can crush your soul as surely as separate water fountains for whites and coloreds.

There was only one male employee, shelving CDs in the soundtrack section. He was about five-six, with a slender, broad-shouldered body, brown curls, and a ruddy complexion. When he glanced my way, I saw his big brown eyes and baby-fat-padded face. At eighteen, he looked sixteen, which meant I didn't want to think about how old he had looked when he had attended one of Joseph Spinotta's blowouts.

I cruised past him toward the dance section, the gay Grand Central at any record store anywhere across the country. I scanned the racks of CDs with psychedelic covers gone digital, then picked one up as if I were considering buying it.

A voice behind me said, "It's new."

Brian Ferrin had dragged his pushcart over, and when I smiled at him, he started shelving into the racks next to mine. There were still stacks of soundtracks on the top shelf of his cart, but apparently he had decided to switch sections.

"This?" I asked, holding up the CD.

"No, the section," he said as he worked. "I finally convinced my manager to start stocking this stuff. It's not like it's as good as Virgin or anything. But it's a start, right? So what are you into? We've got all the basics, like Junior and Paul Oakenfold. Personally, I like more vocals."

"Me too," I said. "I'm more of an ambient guy."

"Like Moby?" he asked, shooting me a smile. "Or as I like to say, Moby who never performs without the obligatory swaying black women in the background."

I didn't have to fake my laugh.

The phone at the front counter rang. The cashier put down her copy of
High Times
and answered it. "Brian!" the cashier shouted. "It's for you."

"Who is it?" he called without turning.

I knew exactly who it was, so I said, "I'm more of a compilation guy. That way, I don't have to commit myself to a certain DJ—"

"It's your roommate," the cashier shouted. "She says watch out for the guy with the baby face."

The cashier giggled and hung up. Brian raised one eyebrow and placed a hand on his hip. He was trying to remain playful, but the warning had rattled him.

"I kind of snuck my way into your building this morning," I said sheepishly. I took out the Visa envelope and showed it to him. "See. You're past due." His eyes moved from the envelope to my face. "I live a couple blocks from you."

"Uh-huh," he finally said.

I let out a pained breath and shook my head like a little boy shamed. "I got dumped a few weeks ago. Hard. Bad relationship, bad breakup, that kind of thing. A friend of mine told me if I wanted things to change, I had to be more assertive. Looks like I overshot the mark. Sorry."

I could see that he was trying to overcome his trepidation, that he wanted to believe my story, and it made me feel dirty. I told myself that I would make my real intentions clear to him as soon as I got him over the hump. I wasn't sure what the hump was and when it would flatten out, but it was a good enough rationalization for now.

He returned to his work. "How long?"

"I'm sorry?"

"This relationship," he said. "How long did it last?"

"Too long," I answered.

"Was he cute?" he asked.

"Too cute," I said, my eyes locked on his face to tell him he fit the same bill. "It's my weakness."

"Isn't that, like, everyone's weakness?" he asked with a sideways glance, but he was blushing.

The clerk behind the counter announced to everyone and no one that she was going on break and walked out the front door with her pack of cigarettes in hand.

I held up the CD and said, "I'm going to buy this."

Brian followed me to the counter, where he took too long to punch his security code into the computer. "I'm sorry if I freaked you out," I said.

"Sneaking into my building isn't assertive," he said, eyes on the screen. "It's aggressive." He stuck one hand out for the CD and met my stare. "And I don't have a Visa card."

"It's not like I don't understand," I said. "I've been stalked by my fair share of freaks."

I pulled my credit card out of my wallet. The photo of Roger Vasquez was stuck to it. I separated the two, but before I could tuck the photo back in my wallet, Brian Ferrin grabbed my wrist. He plucked the picture from my fingers and took a step back from the counter as he studied it. A look of pained longing came over his face. Then he remembered I was standing there.

"How do you know Roger?" he asked, breathless.

"Roger Vasquez?"

He flinched. "That's his last name? Vasquez?"

"He's missing, Brian."

His eyes shot to mine. I wasn't sure how he didn't know—hadn't he seen the posters all over Boystown?—and then I remembered that he had spent his last two years of high school at an unnamed boarding school on the East Coast.

"He's been missing for two years," I said.

"What?"

"Just what I said."

"Why do you have his . . ." He thought better of the question and one of his hands went up as if to hold me in place. His mouth opened and closed several times before he found his words.

"You need to go, dude." He stepped out from behind the counter and hurried past me.

"Look, Brian. I shouldn't know what happened to you, but I do."

He spun around to face me. His upper lip was curled. "What are you, like some fucked-up guidance counselor or something? Do you track down all the guys Roger met online and ditched at parties? I bet they're a lot, right?"

I recalled a detail of his story I had forgotten. Brian Ferrin had gone to Spinotta's party with someone he had met in a chat room. I also knew that Roger Vasquez didn't have Internet access, which meant he had used someone else's online service to make Brian's acquaintance. I could feel pieces falling into place, but I didn't want to knock any of them out of alignment by arranging them too soon.

"I'm not stupid, all right?" Brian Ferrin hissed. "I wasn't stupid then. And I'm not stupid now.

It just would have been nice if he had called, that's all."

I took note of the confidence he held in his sixteen-year-old self. It told me to proceed with caution. "Why do you think he didn't call?" I asked.

"I don't know," he snapped. "Don't most guys at least try to sleep with you before they screw you over?"

"He didn't try to sleep with you?"

"No," he said. "He was totally . . . nice. We talked on the phone a few times. We even went to the movies once. I didn't have my license yet, so he drove all the way out to my mom's in Santa Clarita."

He turned and headed for the dance section again. I followed him. He started shelving CDs again, with too much speed and too much force.

"And then he ditched you at a party," I said.

"We were chatting online one night and I told him that my date for the prom had bailed on me. Carrie McNey. What a bitch. After she told me she would go with me, she took me aside at lunch and gave some speech about how she couldn't be my date because she thought it would ruin our friendship. Whatever. We didn't have a friendship. I just asked her 'cause I thought she was nice. Boy, was that a fucking mistake. She took me aside in the cafeteria to break the news, with like, all her friends sitting a few feet away. She must have thought I was an idiot. Like I didn't know that someone had told her I used to con my way to the back of the line during PE