Thursday's Child (21 page)

Dixon wasn't smiling anymore either. “Hunt left the bar with a boy last night. Nobody knew him, and it looked like he was underage, but since the kid wasn't drinking anything but Coke, nobody made a fuss. This is all according to the bouncer.”

“Can I show him the photo?”

“Be my guest.” Dixon turned to talk to a woman from forensics.

Gar made his way through the small army that had descended on the parking lot. A massive young man with a long ponytail was standing in the doorway of the bar, smoking nervously.

“Helluva thing,” he said to Gar.

“Sure is,” Gar agreed. “You told the detective that the victim left the bar with a young boy, right?”

“Yeah. I never saw him before and I know most of the hustlers who work this area.”

Gar didn't really want to do it, but he held the picture out. “Is this him?”

The bouncer stared at the photograph, then nodded decisively. “That's the kid. You don't think this boy killed Mr. Hunt, do you?”

Gar just shrugged. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Afraid not.”

“Well, thanks for the help.”

“Sure. Helluva thing,” he said again.

Dixon was still standing by the car. This time, he held up a bag with a switchblade inside. “Hunt tried to get the drop on his killer,” he said.

Gar didn't say anything.

“So?” Wally said, with a nod toward the bar.

“He just ID'd Beau Epstein.”

Dixon shook his head. “This is getting pretty involved. For what started out as just another runaway kid.”

“This,” Gar said, “is a totally fucked-up mess.” They watched in silence as the loaded body bag was carried by. “Damn it,” Gar said to no one.

Dixon looked at him. “Your boy seems to have become a sort of Judas goat,” he said.

Gar just sighed.

Mostly because he couldn't think of anything else to do at the moment, he followed Dixon again, this time to Hunt's apartment. There was already a squad car in front of the building. The young uniformed officer got out and walked over to them. “We talked to the boyfriend,” he said with a mild smirk. “Seemed pretty broken up about it.”

Dixon just looked at him. “Thank you,” he said flatly.

Camden Hunt had liked to think of himself as a respected antiques dealer, and he lived the life to fit that image, including a fancy address. But that he hadn't managed to cast off his roots completely became obvious when the door of his apartment opened.

The young man standing there looked about two weeks off the street. He was maybe twenty, wearing tight black jeans, a sleeveless black T-shirt, and a hostile expression. Whatever grief he'd felt at first hearing the news seemed to have diminished.

Without saying anything, he led them into the living room, They all sat on a vast curved velvet sofa. “What's your name?” Wally asked.

“Jimmy Lee Hoskins,” he mumbled, lighting a cigarette. “That other cop already told me that Cam is dead. What else is there to say?”

“How long have you known Mr. Hunt?”

“Three months.” He glanced around the fancy living room and sighed. “Three fucking months of the good life. I guess it's over now.”

Dixon smiled slightly. “Unless he put you in the will, Jimmy Lee.”

Hoskins snorted.

Gar hadn't said anything yet.

“Do you know why anyone would want to kill your benefactor?” Wally asked.

“My what?”

“Your meal ticket.”

Hoskins shook his head.

“You
do
know about his business? Not the antiques, the other stuff.”

After a moment, Hoskins nodded. “But Cam was a good guy,” he said with sudden heat. “Nice, no matter what he did.”

“Just a nice neighborhood fence who took in strays, right?”

Hoskins shot Dixon a dirty look. “What the fuck do you know about it?”

Gar stepped in finally. He held out the picture. “Do you know this kid?”

A quick glance. “No. Should I?”

“Hunt left the bar with him last night.”

“Yeah? Well, I don't know the kid. And I don't think Cam was up to what you think he was. Cam was getting everything he needed here.”

“Did he seem worried lately? Scared?”

“No.” Hoskins stared at the smoke trailing up from his cigarette. “There was one thing,” he added. “Some guy Cam used to know was bugging him. Cam told me the guy was just out of jail and he was trying to work some kind of a deal. Cam wasn't very interested.”

“You know this old pal's name?”

“No.”

Dixon asked a few more questions, none of which gave them much more than what they already had. Then Hoskins walked them to the door. “Shit,” he said. “When do you think I'll have to clear out of here?”

Wally shrugged. “Talk to a lawyer.”

Hoskins didn't seem too thrilled with that answer.

Riding down in the elevator, Gar took another look at the photograph. He was suddenly struck by how damned sad the face in the picture was. It seemed to him that a child this sad could get into a lot of trouble just trying to find a little happiness. Realizing that didn't make him feel very good about how this case was liable to come out.

2

Beau had decided to start smoking.

Cigarettes, that was. “I used to do grass back home,” he said. “But my folks, they were really down on tobacco.”

Robert greeted the news with a shrug and pushed his lighter and cigarettes across the table. “It's your funeral” was all he said.

Beau shook one cigarette out of the pack and lit it, then looked around the café to see if any of the other late breakfasters had noticed. No one had. “Actually,” he admitted, “they weren't all that thrilled with me doing grass either, but they figured it was just a phase I was going through.”

Robert looked at him for a moment, then shook his head slowly and returned his attention to the newspaper. “I catch you smoking anything but tobacco,” he said mildly, “your ass is back on the street. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

He turned the page of the paper and instantly felt his heart fall to somewhere down around his ankles. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said.

Beau took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” Robert said grimly. “I'd say something is wrong.” He shoved the newspaper toward Beau. “They've got your fucking picture in here.”

“For real?” Beau smoothed the page. “Shit.”

“You didn't tell me that your grandfather was Saul Epstein.”

“I didn't think it mattered.”

“Oh no? Christ, he's probably got the whole goddamned FBI out looking for you. He and J. Edgar were good buddies, I heard.” Abruptly, Robert shut up and looked around the small café. Nobody was paying them any attention at the moment. He took off his baseball cap and sunglasses. “Put these on,” he ordered.

Beau did.

“Now let's get the hell out of here.” He paid the check quickly and they went straight to the car. Safely there, he opened the paper again for another look at the picture. “Jesus, Beau,” he said, “I don't believe this.”

“I'm sorry,” Beau said in a low voice. “I didn't know the old man would do anything like this.”

“Saul Epstein. Richer than God and just as powerful around here.”

Beau took off the sunglasses and looked at him with worried eyes. “What are we going to do, Robbie?”

Robert thought for a moment, then started the car. “Can't do a damned thing about what's already happened. But we can make sure nothing else does.”

He drove several blocks to a drugstore, told Beau to wait in the car, ignored Beau's question about what he was going to do, and went into the store.

After a brief tour of the aisles, he picked up some brown hair color, battery-operated clippers, and another pair of sunglasses. At the last minute, he added a cheap baseball cap with a Batman logo on the front to his purchases. He also picked up a couple packs of cigarettes, figuring that if somebody else was going to keep bumming them, he'd run out pretty fast.

Beau looked very relieved when he got back into the car; what did the idiot think, that he'd been planning to duck out the back door? Not that it didn't sound like a pretty good idea, in fact. “What'd you buy?”

“We're going to transform you.”

“What's that mean?” Beau asked warily.

“You gotta lose the hair, Tonto. And we're changing the color.” He opened the sack and took out the sunglasses and hat. “And from now on, you don't go out without wearing these.”

“Okay.” Beau pointed at the paper. “It says in there that some private detective is looking for me.”

“Yeah, well, some stupid rent-a-dick is the least of our problems.” But Robert wondered, hearing this, if maybe the sense of being observed that had come to him at odd moments over the last couple of days had to do with the fact of that detective. It made him nervous.

Beau leaned back, chewing on his lower lip.

At home, Beau stripped off his shirt and stuck his head over the kitchen sink while Robert poured the thick coloring gel onto his hair and rubbed it in. They didn't talk much for ten minutes, waiting for the color to take, then Beau rinsed it out as Robert had a beer.

He emerged from the sink with dark-brown hair. A few reddish streaks. Already he looked like a different person. Maybe this was going to work. They went outside to the patio. A high row of shrubs gave them lots of privacy. Beau perched on a redwood chair and Robert applied the clippers to his nearly shoulder-length hair.

He had the haircut looking like something straight out of the 1950s by the time he finished. It was just at that moment that the silence was broken by the sound of a completely unexpected voice. “Hi, Bobby,” Maureen said.

He almost dropped the damned clippers, then recovered and turned to look at her. “Maureen,” he said in a neutral voice.

Beau just sat very still.

“You haven't answered any of my messages or called, so I decided to just come by and see if you were okay.” She paused. “I guess you are.”

“I'm fine, yeah.”

“So I see.” She peered around him at Beau. “So, you working as a barber now in your spare time?”

“No.” Robert glanced over his shoulder. Beau, from somewhere, had produced the new sunglasses and slipped them on. With the short brown hair and glasses hiding his blue eyes, he didn't look like himself at all—Robert hoped. “Go inside, Tonto,” he said.

Without a word, Beau disappeared into the house. His parents, weirdo hippies or not, must have brought him up right; most of the time, he obeyed orders.

“Who's that?” Maureen asked.

Robert started to sweep up the hair. “Just a friend of mine.”

“Oh. I thought maybe he was another long-lost brother or something.”

Robert looked at her sharply. “I only had one brother. This is just a friend.”

She nodded and swept her hair back. “So you have a friend visiting. Is that why you haven't gotten in touch with me?”

He shrugged. “I've been busy is all.”

She seemed to digest that. “Okay.” Her eyes moved over him slowly, thoughtfully, and finally she nodded. “I probably shouldn't have bothered to come. Obviously, we're a thing of the past. Right?”

Robert nodded. “This happens,” he said.

When she spoke again, there was bitterness in her voice. “Thanks for letting me down so easily.”

He didn't say anything to that.

She gave a sniff and tossed her head. “You're a real bastard, Bobby.”

“I'm sorry.” He realized that maybe he should have felt something—pity, at the very least—but he didn't.

“No, I don't think you are.” She smiled a little. “I'm sort of surprised that I never noticed that before.”

“What?”

“How cold your eyes are. You really do have very cold eyes.”

He only shrugged.

Maureen turned around and walked away.

Robert threw the shorn hair into the trash can before going into the house. He stopped in the kitchen long enough to take a can of beer from the refrigerator and then walked on into the living room.

Beau was stretched out on the couch, watching CNN and smoking. It was a mild shock to see him looking so different. The short brown hair made him seem older and somehow harder. He glanced at Robert. “That your girlfriend?” he asked.

“Used to be. Not anymore.”

“How come?”

Robert took a gulp of beer and then held the can out. “Want some?”

Beau took a quick swallow, but he hadn't forgotten the question. “So how come she's not your girlfriend anymore?”

“I'm tired of her is all. Besides, we're too busy right now to bother with broads anyway, right?”

“Right,” Beau said cheerfully.

Robert started to take another swallow of beer, then lowered the can, staring at the television. “Fucking grandfather,” he said.

Beau looked at the screen again and saw his own face staring back at him. He pushed himself back into the sofa.

They listened to the short piece—grandson of movie mogul missing, feared kidnapped, et cetera—and when the smiling anchorperson went on to the next story, Robert used the mute button on the remote control. “This is getting too hot too fast,” he muttered. “I have got to make the hit on Boyd and then get out of town for a while.”

Beau looked at him, but didn't say anything.

“I'm going out tonight,” Robert said. “Talk to some people.”

“About Boyd?”

“Right. You can come if you want to or stay here. Whatever.”

“I'll come,” Beau said promptly.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Beau sucked in smoke, held it, and then exhaled noisily. “I need to be there. Just in case.”

Robert sat on the back of the couch and looked down at him. “Just in case what?”