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  After we were done setting all that up, we ate supper. Everybody had lots of questions about my meeting with Singleton. I edited out some of the stuff. I also mentioned I had to talk to one of the students about Kyle at nine. I didn’t explain about Frank Boyer or the Drive In. In the general glow of my newfound fame, nobody expressed any reservations about my tooling around on a school night. I told Mom and Dad about the animals and the sadder parts of the story about Kyle but none of the gay stuff. They were glad I was taking the time to write something meaningful that didn’t involve sports. I guess I can get a little obsessed with athletics.

  After supper, I immediately sat down and wrote all I could remember from the pet shop, and anything else I’d learned that day. I’d taken a few notes as I talked to different people, but I’d learned to always write out any notes and memories as soon as possible after any kind of interview.

  I called Darlene and Jack and gave them the story. They expressed surprise about the pet shop. Darlene urged me to talk to Boyer but to be careful. Jack also urged extreme caution. I counted on Frank’s memory of our tutoring sessions to be an in for talking to him. I’d never crossed him. On the way over I found myself less confident than I had felt earlier. What could this guy really tell me?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tuesday 9:00 P.M.

  Frank Boyer sat on the hood of a black pickup truck in the Burrito Palace parking lot. A woman clung to him. She wore heavy makeup, a short, tight leather skirt, and a leather vest. The bright neon lights weren’t kind to her because up close she looked maybe fifteen years older than Frank.

  Other teenagers hung around, sitting on car hoods, or lounging at the outdoor tables. It was maybe forty-five degrees out with no wind. All of them wore their jackets unzipped, showing thin T-shirts, mostly emblazoned with the names of heavy metal bands, popular twenty or thirty years ago. None of them seemed to be in a hurry to get out of the chilly night air. One group of seven was jammed into a booth inside the restaurant. They all wore silk jackets that had purple sleeves. I wondered if they were gang colors. I didn’t intend to ask.

  I walked up to Frank and the woman. She smiled at me and let her eyes rove over my body, lingering at my crotch. I blushed. She smiled wider.

  Frank didn’t notice this attention. He grinned at me, which was better than his usual snarl. Frank wore leather pants, black boots, a studded belt, a leather vest under a leather jacket, both wide open revealing a hairless chest and a stomach, which was a large number of beers short of solid muscle. “Wendy, this is the guy who tried to teach me stuff last year.” Frank poked the woman next to him when he said Wendy.

  “He’s got nice muscles,” Wendy said, “and I like the bulge in his jeans.”

  Frank lost his smile. “I got all the muscle you need anywhere.” She patted his arm. He continued, “I hear you’re real famous now. Saw your picture on TV.” He scratched his head with fingers that had dirt encrusted under the nails.

  By a fluke last baseball season, I’d completed an unassisted triple play. That put my picture in the school newspaper. In the middle of tagging the last guy, I’d looked like a dork with wings, and the Riverside Tribune ran it, and some wire service picked it up. Somebody caught the action on their cell phone camera and that got picked up by one of the L.A. television stations. Then it got plastered on the Internet, YouTube, and that kind of crap. It got a zillion hits. My mom was real proud. She sent copies of the picture to every relative on the planet. Some she hadn’t ever met.

  “And you made all state basketball or something,” Frank said. “Wendy, this guy’s a celebrity.”

  I said, “Baseball actually, only second team.”

  “All state is all state, pretty damn good.”

  I cleared my throat. “I saw you toss Ashcroft across the room yesterday morning.”

  He grinned at me. “That was great, wasn’t it?”

  “Took more nerve than I’ll ever have.” Which was true.

  He laughed at my admission. Maybe he took my remark for comradely good fellowship, or that I agreed with what he had done. Whatever, it must have been the right thing to say, because when I asked if I could talk to him, he said to Wendy that he’d see her again in a couple of minutes. She jumped off the car, walked up to me, unzipped my jacket three quarters of the way, and ran her finger over my T-shirt to my left nipple, which she pinched. This didn’t do a thing for me. She patted my face and strutted away.

  “Wendy likes you.” Frank patted the space next to him on top of the hood. I hopped up beside him. I noted the large yellow eagle painted on the hood. I rested my bottom on its beak. Close up, Frank smelled of leather, of course, but I was surprised by an intense reek of cologne. I was close enough to be able to see the faint traces of acne scars under his beard stubble.

  I told him I was working on a story about Kyle for the newspaper.

  He said, “You be sure to tell the truth about him, what a loser he was, what an asshole he was. People like that screw it up for the rest of us.”

  What he said pissed me off, but he was talking, so I didn’t interrupt.

  Turned out Frank and Kyle grew up in the same mobile home park, not fifty feet from each other. Frank unabashedly admitted bullying Kyle for as long as he could remember.

  “He wasn’t as dumb as he let on,” Frank said. “He never dared tell his parents what I did to him. He tried everything to get me to stop, until the end of fifth grade. One day at my house, I forced him…” He hesitated then added, “To do me some special favors.” Frank winked at me, leaned back on the windshield of the car, thrust his hips out, entwined his fingers behind his head and sighed.

  Painful as it was, I kept a neutral, pleasant look on my face. I wanted information.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess from Frank’s oblique reference and crude body language that it had been something sexual. Frank confirmed this somewhat as he continued, “Don’t know why I decided to let him do that. It felt good. He liked it, and after that he didn’t try as hard to make me stop picking on him.”

  I decided to be a little bold. “What were the special favors?”

  He glanced around, sat up for a moment, and scanned the kids nearest us. He nodded in satisfaction. None of them were close enough to hear.

  “I guess I can trust you. You were a good guy when you helped me. I didn’t learn nothin’, but you were decent about it.” He leaned back on the windshield, licked his lips, leered at the sky above, and said, “You know how the world works. You know what guys need. He did favors. I ain’t queer, but Kyle could work wonders, even in the fifth grade. I got dick hair earlier than most. I discovered girls a couple years later, so then I had less use for his services.” He smiled at the memory, thumped the truck hood with a ham hand. “Girls are better for loving, but Kyle was an expert, so I went back to him every once in a while.”

  Why was this guy revealing contacts with a gay guy to me? He was that confident of his sexuality, or of his ability to beat the crap out of anyone who dared try to sully his reputation? He didn’t care what I thought? He thought I agreed with him? He trusted me? He was a moronic blowhard with an idiot wish? He was too stupid to live? A team of therapists might not be able to figure it out.

  “He never fought back?”

  “Kyle Davis was a fag. They’re only good for one thing. He never complained.”

  Maybe the only warmth and human contact Kyle had ever had, and it was from some bully. Maybe for Kyle a bully was better than nobody. I hated Frank.

  Boyer continued, “He loved it so much. He couldn’t get enough. Know what he did?”

  I didn’t, but Frank proceeded to tell me. According to him, Kyle would often hang around the orange groves at night. He’d offer to perform sex on guys out doing some illicit drinking and/or drugs. Sometimes Kyle got laughed at. A few beat him up, but Kyle usually got away before that happened. He wasn’t athletic, but he knew his way around the groves. Some guys demanded money before they let him touch them. Mos
t never talked about it and never returned. Some guys came back by themselves without their friends for more action.

  Why would Kyle have confided in him? I asked, “How’d you find this out?”

  “You never heard about the “orange sucker”? I thought everybody had. One night last summer a bunch of us snuck up on some fourteen-year-olds who were drinking out on Hawardin Drive. We wanted to steal their booze and scare the crap out of them. Kyle surprised them before we could. Soon as I saw Kyle, I put it together that he was the one blowing guys in the orange groves.”

  His body squirmed. He continued, “At first the kids told him to go away, but one of them wanted to try it. We waited until they had their pants down then we jumped out at them, got their clothes, and kept them. They had to drive away naked. Then I made Kyle service my buddies.”

  He laughed uproariously.

  I stared at him in stony silence. I don’t know how I stopped myself from launching myself at him to pummel him until his brains and blood ran down the windshield, but my unresponsiveness didn’t please him either.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked. “You a fag too?”

  The battle between telling and hiding tore at me. I would never confide any secret to this creep. I was amazed at my bravery when I told him, “You’re a shit.” I’d have been happier with myself if I’d said, “Yes, I’m gay, and don’t ever touch me or one of my gay brothers or sisters again.”

  His reaction to my disapproval was probably the same whichever way I chose to try sticking up for Kyle.

  He grabbed me by the T-shirt and shoved me off the hood. My foot landed wrong on the cement safety bumper. I twisted my ankle and fell to the ground.

  Frank jumped off the truck and loomed over me, fists ready to strike. He was plenty of inches taller and pounds heavier, but I knew I was in better shape and if he thought he had another wimp who wouldn’t fight back, he’d made a major miscalculation.

  Thankfully, I’d been working out for years. I’d had a little training in self-defense in gym classes at school. My dad had drummed a few lessons into me about how to handle a bully. One was to look for a weakness.

  The position Frank had assumed was his biggest mistake. He towered over me, and his crotch was vulnerable to my fist jamming into his nuts. I punched up as hard as I could.

  He doubled over, howled, and grabbed his crotch.

  I staggered to my feet, limped over to my car and got in. Some of the kids stared at me. I saw Wendy draped over another boy who was leaning against a nearby van. She winked at me as I hopped into my car.

  I heard Frank’s bellow as I started the car, “You’ll be sorry, faggot.” I left him clutching his nuts.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tuesday 10:02 P.M.

  I needed to calm down from the confrontation. The adrenaline racing through my system dueled with the anger I felt at myself for not telling him I was gay, or that he shouldn’t pick on gay people, and for not just beating the crap out of him. He’d been vulnerable there at the end.

  A part of my brain kept repeating that I’d gotten in a lucky first punch, and I’d have more than likely gotten the worst of any physical confrontation. Another part tried telling myself that this hadn’t been the greatest opportunity, and Frank was an idiot who wasn’t worth the time.

  I knew I was beating myself up, and the part about fighting him was immature, but I really would have loved to pound him into the ground and watch him suffer for what he did to Kyle.

  The one punch I did get in was satisfying.

  I found myself drifting up Van Buren in the direction of the orange groves. At Victoria I turned northeast and let the car meander toward the place Kyle died.

  Maybe Frank Boyer killed him for a bit of fun. Maybe a group of kids frightened by what they let Kyle do had decided to kill him before he could tell, or maybe some guys were trying to scare him, and it got out of hand. Or when Frank let his buddies get sex from Kyle, it was too much for Kyle. He didn’t see a way out and decided to end it. Or maybe it was some gang hanging around waiting for a victim to come along. Or Kyle made an offer to a guy or guys who just decided to kill him. Or Kyle didn’t make any offers, and he ran into a psychopath who enjoyed killing. And all those evil people in whatever combination of possibilities just happened to have handy a step stool and rope? It didn’t make sense.

  I didn’t want to go home yet. I didn’t want to tempt the parental radar nor count on being able to hide my upset. My parents could range from oblivious, to doting, to interfering. I’d rather not chance a confrontation tonight.

  I drove past the lane down which Kyle had been found. The road I was on twisted a bit, turned into a gravel road, then a dirt lane. It stopped at the irrigation canal. I parked as close as I could to a stand of bushes. I preferred not to be seen.

  I turned off the motor and the lights. The moon hung high over the hills to the east. The water in the canal burbled by.

  I got out and sat on the car’s hood. I felt the warmth through my jeans, bearable, almost soothing. The stars and the moon and the quiet felt peaceful.

  I was calmer now about hitting Frank. I’d begun to worry about what my parents would say if they found out. Although they probably wouldn’t. Frank certainly wasn’t about to tell. His parents didn’t buddy around with mine.

  I wasn’t too concerned about what he could do to me physically. I had friends on the baseball team, strong enough to fight off any challenge from Frank and his cronies. I mused on this for a few minutes and realized it was kind of a little kid idea, like my gang can beat up your gang. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life.

  I was too old to pass off what happened as a kid’s fight. With luck maybe Frank would get arrested and sent to prison. Maybe when he was locked up, he’d find guys tougher than Kyle who wanted to be serviced the way he had done to Kyle, and who were maybe big enough to make him.

  I just didn’t want to be the victim of whatever crime Frank did to put himself in prison.

  I shook my head, then shut my eyes for a minute. I’ve always found nighttime soothing. I scooted back, leaned against the windshield, sprawled my legs over the hood, my head propped on the glass, and feet flat on the hood.

  I moved my left foot carefully. My ankle didn’t hurt too much from earlier, but I figured I should put ice on it when I got home.

  After my musings were over, I’d made several decisions.

  I was definitely going to tell Jack and Darlene about my orientation. I was ready for the secret to stop being a secret.

  For Jack, I’d just relate what had gone on between Frank and me and tell him why I got angry about Frank picking on a gay kid.

  Darlene, I wasn’t too apprehensive about. We’d worked together a long time, and like I said earlier, I think she already knew, but I wanted it stated clearly.

  Telling my parents? I didn’t know how they’d handle it. I didn’t want to alienate my family. Sometimes they drive me nuts, but I love them.

  The baseball thing was another issue. No active player at the professional level had come out. Sure Jason Collins, but he was at the end of his career, and a few swimmers while active and maybe a tennis player or two, but I wasn’t Jackie Robinson kind of brave. I didn’t know how all that would work out, or if I was even good enough to play at that level.

  I heard the crunch of tires on the dirt road. I sat up and glanced in each direction. About thirty feet away to my right the canal began a long slow curve. A dirt road followed the canal. The bushes I’d gotten close to when I parked hid me pretty well from the other car.

  A convertible stopped in the middle of the turn. Its lights were off. Teens having an innocent tryst or dangerous killers? I thought I saw two silhouettes. Could they see me?

  I heard a couple of faint giggles. A male teenage voice said, “Wait, I’ve got another blanket in the trunk and a condom somewhere.”

  Okay, they weren’t thinking about me. A few more giggles and the door clicked open. There was a brief flare
of light. A guy jumped out. He wore a sweater beneath which his shirttails peeked out. Then there was a bit of his naked thigh and leg. Before I could get a glimpse of anything interesting, he reached down and yanked up his pants and shorts. He dashed to the back of the car, popped the trunk, reached inside, came out with a blanket, then slammed the trunk, and returned to his business in the car.

  I began easing myself off the hood. Who was I to disturb the prospect of true love? I paused, my foot above the ground. Even if I left the car lights off, the dome light would go on when I opened the door, and they’d probably hear the engine start.

  It was getting late, and I needed to get home. I couldn’t wait for them to finish.

  I hopped off the car. I hit my left foot/ankle just wrong. I should have thought about the pain before I moved. A bit of a gasp escaped before I could stifle it. I fell to my knees and lurched toward the canal. I wasn’t interested in a brackish bath, so I stuck my hands out. I came to rest staring into the water. The moonlight glittered on something metallic just below the surface.

  I leaned as far over the edge as I could. My head was about six inches from the tepid flow. The metallic mass was definitely somebody’s bike. I saw bright red reflector tape around a large flashlight. Morty Gold had described Kyle’s bike as having such a device. Bracing myself, I reached for the handlebars.

  I eased the dripping vehicle out of the water. The spokes in the front wheel were all twisted and bent. Kyle had run into something or someone had been trying to smash it to pieces. What was Kyle’s bike doing here? Why smash the spokes and toss it in the canal? Why was it so far from where the body had been found?

  An obvious answer was that if someone killed him, they threw it in here to conceal evidence. Maybe I’d just committed a forensic faux pas and screwed up clues that could lead to a murderer, or my fingerprints would now be on the bike. Like the idiot who comes upon a dead body in badly written movies and picks up the bloody knife or the smoking gun, which turns out to be the exact moment when the police show up.