Everyone Has Secrets Read online

  “Sounds like you’re good to go,” I said.

  “Yep. The only problem I see is what I’ll do once I’m in with a kid. For damned sure I’m not going to have sex with him, but if I don’t, he’s going to think I’m weird and maybe say something to whoever is in charge.”

  “Tell him you get off on watching him play with himself,” Lorne said. “Not just masturbating but, well…” He turned bright red, looking away from us.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed,” I told him. “We’re all adults here.”

  “I know, but…” Lorne took a deep breath.

  “You’ve watched one too many porn flicks where guys did that?” Gavin asked, obviously trying not to grin.

  “No! I never…” Lorne’s shoulders slumped.

  “Never what,” I asked quietly. “Watched any porn?”

  Lorne gulped. “Never had sex with anyone, either, except twice when I was in college.”

  “You didn’t like it?” Gavin asked, sounding as if he didn’t believe that was possible.

  “I did. I…I wasn’t out, despite Kyler doing his best to convince me that when people found out they’d be okay with it, especially since I was in the arts.” He smiled wryly. “I’d seen what happened to guys I knew in high school, and even to a couple at the college when they came out. I wasn’t about to put myself through that.”

  “Well, someone must have known, for you to have had sex a couple of times,” I said.

  “I went to a gay bar I’d heard about, in a town about thirty miles from the college. Met a guy there. I went home with him, then again the next time I was there. The third time, he didn’t show up. I hung around until they closed, turning down other guys who came on to me. I know, it makes me seem stupid maybe, but I wasn’t going to go into the restroom for a quickie.”

  “More like smart, if you want my opinion,” I said—this coming from the man who will sleep with anyone at least once. Something I didn’t bother to point out to Lorne. I didn’t think it would make him feel any better.

  Gavin apparently took pity on him because he turned the conversation back to Lorne’s original suggestion. “I could probably get away with wanting to watch a kid getting himself off. It beats the hell out of my screwing him.” He shuddered when he said that, which earned him bonus points in my book.

  “One thing to ask him while you’re there,” I said. “Do the kids live in the rooms until the management decides it’s time to move them to another of Durant’s motels? If they do, maybe they, well, the one you’re with, has heard something which would lead us to Kyler’s killer.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Gavin replied. “I suspect their only contact with people working there is when the room is cleaned, or their meals brought to them, if that’s how it works.”

  “True.” I got up to pace the room. I had an idea. One which might bring the killer out of the woodwork—whether it was Durant himself or one of his hirelings. The problem was, I knew neither Gavin nor Lorne would go along with it. I decided I’d wait and see what happened tonight before letting them know my plan. I wouldn’t even have done that except backup would be nice if it worked. But first, we had to gather proof that the motels are being used for prostitution—this one and hopefully the others as well.

  “Are you going to be wired tonight?” Lorne asked Gavin.

  “No. I can’t take the chance they may have equipment to locate a wire if I wore one.”

  “But won’t you need proof of what’s said while you’re there?”

  “Of course. That’s why I brought a parabolic dish with me. Brant will take me to the motel, then wait behind it with the dish to record what’s said in the room.”

  “I’m going with him,” Lorne said firmly.

  Gavin glanced at me then agreed. “It would be great if I ran into someone else taking advantage of what they offer and could get them talking about the place while we’re in the hallway, but that probably won’t happen. Talking to the boy should do the trick if I can get him to tell me how he ended up there in the first place, and anything else he knows about how the people who are running the sex ring.”

  Lorne nodded. “Tying the motels to the homeless shelters.”

  “Exactly. We have the list Brant got us of the men who frequent the motel here in town.” He looked at me. “What are the chances you get the same kind of list from some of the other motels? That way Durant can’t claim he had no idea what was going on at this one.”

  “It’ll take time, but I should be able to,” I replied. “I’ll do it as soon as we get back home. My laptop’s not set up for that kind of hacking.”

  “Okay. Now comes the big question. What are we going to do to keep busy until tonight?”

  “I’ve got a rental car, so we can play tourist,” I suggested.

  “Got to the mountains?” Lorne seemed excited by the idea. “The closest I’ve been to ones like these is the photos Kyler took for one of his assignments.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Gavin replied.

  So we did, stopping for a late lunch in a small town along the way. We got back to our motel around six, at which point Gavin got ready for his visit to the Rotunda and its executive suites.

  * * * *

  As planned, we drove Gavin to the Rotunda. Then I found a parking space in the lot behind the motel, at the end where the executive suites were located. Gavin had given me instructions on how to use the parabolic dish and record everything I heard. Something I already knew, which I suspect he was aware of. But of course Lorne wasn’t, so Gavin did it for his benefit—and to cover my ass. I would turn it on, trained toward the hallway, as soon as he was inside. When he got to the room he would look out the window long enough for me to know exactly where he was. Then I could fine-tune the dish to pick up just his conversation with the kid in the room.

  The first thing I heard was two men, neither of them Gavin, talking in what I presumed was the executive suites’ hallway. One of them was bragging about how often he came there.

  “I get off on fucking under-aged kids. Something I can’t safely do anywhere else.”

  “I know,” the other man said. “I’d be here every night, if I could, but the wife…Well, you know how that is.”

  “Nope. Not married.” The first man laughed.

  Then they stopped talking and I heard doors open then shut. I thought about recording what went on when they were with the kids and might have if Lorne hadn’t touched my arm then pointed to one of the windows. I nodded, zeroing in on Gavin’s room.

  It took him a while, but Gavin was able to get the kid talking about more than what he could offer Gavin in the way of sex. I glanced at Lorne, who was listening in on a second pair of earphones. He seemed to accept what the kid was saying without flinching until the boy told Gavin he could beat or spank him—“Because the room is sound proof so no one will hear me yell, if that’s what gets you off.”

  “What the fuck,” Lorne said angrily.

  “Unfortunately, that’s part of what happens with some johns,” I replied.

  “Yeah, I know, I guess, but damn.”

  Gavin finally told the kid that he preferred watching while the kid played with himself. He went into detail about exactly what he wanted the boy to do, which had Lorne blushing.

  “How did you end up here?” Gavin asked quietly when the kid had presumably begun doing what Gavin had asked him to.

  “None of your business,” was the kid’s immediate response. “Why do you…” There was a pause and a small moan before he asked again, “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m curious. You could be doing something with your life, instead of being a prostitute.”

  “I wish,” the kid muttered. “I’m homeless and don’t have much education.”

  “So you decided to work here to make money?”

  The pause was much longer, while the kid moaned and groaned as he worked on getting himself off. I have a vivid imagination so I could picture what he was doing
. It had my libido going into high gear, which didn’t make me happy. I’m not into kids—never have been, never will be—and yet I was beginning to respond to what I was hearing. I hoped Lorne wasn’t aware that I was. I bit my lip hard enough to hurt, willing my cock to behave. It did.

  The kid didn’t answer Gavin’s question until he asked it again, once the boy had come. “Do you need money badly enough you wanted to work here?”

  “Not even,” the kid responded. “I mean, yeah, I sometimes made a few bucks on the street by giving blowjobs. We all do. Then, well I was staying at a shelter and this dude who works there talked to me about how I could make some decent cash at a place he knew about. He convinced me to talk to another guy.” He sighed deeply. “I shouldn’t have. The guy brought me here late one night and…”

  When the kid didn’t continue, Gavin asked softly, “You can’t leave?”

  “Yeah. I mean, look at me.”

  Gavin chuckled. “I have been.”

  “What you saw me wearing when you came in is all the clothes I have,” the kid replied angrily. “Damned briefs and nothing else. It’s the same with all the guys who work here. We’re locked in our rooms. We can’t even leave to eat. They bring us our food, and not on a damned silver platter.”

  “So you’re sex slaves.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” From the tone of his voice, the kid was close to crying at that point. “How come you didn’t know all this?” he asked a second later.

  “This is my first time here. It might be my last.”

  “Uh-huh. You like under-age kids, like every other man I’ve…I’ve…”

  I could envision Gavin shrugging, trying to hide his real feelings, as he replied, “I do, but not when they’re forced to do things I wouldn’t expect an adult to put up with.”

  “Right—not,” the kid said defiantly. There was a brief pause, then he said, almost begged, “Please don’t tell anyone what I told you. I should have kept my mouth shut but no one’s every cared enough to ask before and it just came out and you know, so please…If they found out, I’d be dead meat.”

  “I won’t, I promise. I suppose I’d better get out of here since my time is up.”

  “Yeah, it is. Hey, you don’t have to do that. They won’t let me keep it.”

  “What they don’t know won’t hurt them. Hide it. Use it if you can figure out how to get away from here.”

  “I…I will.”

  I heard the door open and close, then silence except for soft sobbing from the kid.

  “I wish we could call the cops,” Lorne said angrily.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll find out what’s going on. We’ll make sure of it,” I told him. “But not until we find out who killed Kyler.”

  “Which might never happen,” Lorne replied dispiritedly. “At least we can shut down Durant’s operation, which is what Kyler would have wanted.”

  I nodded, started the car, and then drove around to the front of the motel to pick up Gavin.

  * * * *

  When we got back to my motel room, we listened to what I’d recorded. When we finished, Gavin said, “That poor kid. If I could have figured out a way to take him with me I would have. He didn’t look more than fifteen, if that, and I’m sure it’s the same with the other ones working there. How the hell do the people who run the operation live with themselves?”

  “No conscience and a lust for the money they’re making,” I said.

  “Yeah. Well, this should go a long way toward shutting them down.”

  “Maybe we should go back tomorrow night and do some more recording?” Lorne said. “The more evidence we have, the better.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Gavin agreed. “Right now, though, I’m exhausted. Talking with the kid, listening to what he’s been through, took a lot out of me. And God only knows I’ve seen some bad stuff while working for the Feds.”

  Lorne didn’t hesitate. He hugged Gavin hard. “Just listening to it was bad enough. I can’t imagine sitting there with him as he talked to you.”

  Gavin hugged him back, shooting a look at me over Lorne’s shoulder. I know it was nothing other than Lorne’s giving Gavin the support he thought he needed at the moment, but it didn’t sit well with me, much to my shame—and Gavin picked up on that.

  He gently disentangled himself from Lorne’s embrace. “Thanks for the hug. I’ll be fine once I get some sleep. We all need to. Tomorrow we have to figure out how to get the proof we need that Durant was responsible for Kyler’s death.”

  “Murder,” Lorne said tightly. “He was murdered.”

  “I know. Sorry.” Gavin gave him a brief smile then left my room.

  “We are going to prove it, aren’t we?” Lorne said as he headed to the door.

  “We will, one way or another, I promise,” I replied.

  All it would take was my putting myself in the line of fire. Something I had no intention of telling him, or Gavin, until I figured out exactly how to do it.

  Chapter 9

  “Something’s bothering you,” Gavin said to me Sunday morning. The three of us were at a diner, having decided we wanted more than the Continental breakfast the motel offered. I was uncommunicative, listening to them as they talked without putting my two-cents in most of the time.

  “I’m putting together a plan, maybe,” I replied. “I’m not going to talk about it here, though.”

  “Then let’s go back to the motel.”

  “No. Let’s take a drive. We’ll find somewhere safe where no one can overhear us.”

  Gavin glanced at Lorne, who shrugged, and they nodded. We finished eating and took off. A few minutes later I saw a park off to our left and pulled into the lot along one side. There were the usual walkers and bicyclists going along the paths, despite how chilly it was, so we joined them until we found a picnic table set in the trees off to one side.

  “Okay, lay it on us,” Gavin said when we were seated, me across from them.

  “What if someone cued in Mr. Thorne, my boss, that I’m a ringer?”

  “Not happening. You’d be dead before you could get out of there,” Gavin replied, shaking his head.

  Lorne was a bit more adamant. “There’s no way in hell we’ll let you set that up. I mean it, Brant. He’s right, they’d kill you the same way they did Kyler.”

  “I’m not planning on going out on a tenth-story balcony,” I said with a brief smile. “Besides, the motel is only two stories.”

  “That’s not funny,” Lorne muttered.

  “I know. Sorry. The thing is, I don’t think they would kill me. Not until they found out who sent me. I doubt they’d even come after me at the Rotunda. They’d wait and waylay me somewhere else, like on my way back to our motel.”

  “I disagree,” Gavin said. “They have the perfect place there to interrogate you, if the kid last night was telling the truth, which I think he was. The suites are soundproof.”

  I nodded. “Good point, and better for what I want. Doing it on the premises would further implicate whoever’s involved. It could be Thorne; it could be someone else I haven’t met yet. The most likely scenario is that they’ll bring in the same person, or persons, who were sent to deal with Kyler. Durant’s enforcers.” I looked at them. “We don’t know that they didn’t try to get him to talk before they shoved him off the balcony. When you hit the ground from that height, any breaks or bruises will be put down as the result of falling that far, especially since the cops think it was suicide.”

  Lorne sucked in a breath and I knew he was envisioning his brother’s death, but he didn’t debate what I’d said.

  “How do you expect to survive if that happens?” Gavin asked.

  “I’ll have you and Lorne as back up. Wire me. Sure, they’ll find it, and the belt camera, but that will clue you in that they have me. Do what Lorne and I did last night. Record everything.”

  “Uh-huh. Including them putting a bullet in your head when they’re finished,” Gavin said acidly. “I’d rather you came ou
t of it alive and I don’t see how we can manage that. To start with, getting into the executive suite area requires a keycard, in case you’ve forgotten, as does entering any of the rooms there.”

  “I know. You’re going back again tonight. While you’re there, use the bathroom and clog the drain in the sink or shower. I mean really clog it so that it can’t be fixed using a plunger. That’ll mean I have to go in to fix it tomorrow and I’ll have the keycard to get into the hallway.”

  “It won’t do you any good since you’ve got to return it when you’re finished,” Gavin said.

  I smiled. “I have to return a card. I’m willing to bet they have more than one, unless someone escorted you upstairs and opened the door for you.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Stupid of them, but good for us. Take a photo of the card, back and front, with your phone and send it to me as soon as you do. I can print it out then find a copy shop where they have a laminating machine. After I finish unclogging the sink, I return the facsimile when the clerk is busy. My bet is he, or she, will put in back where they keep the others without looking at it, and I walk away with the real one. Then—” I looked hard at them, “—tomorrow night one of you calls the motel, asking to talk to the manager. You drop a bug in his ear that I’m not what I seem, and we take it from there.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lorne said. “You’re putting—”

  “My life in danger. I get that, Lorne, I really do. Which is why you and Gavin have drop me off at the Rotunda then get in place before I go inside.”

  “It could work,” Gavin said after thinking about it. “The only catch I can see is what if we’re wrong and they do take you somewhere else, either inside the motel, or off site.”