blue. She was Anybody’s Girl. She looked at Dan and flashed a smile: Our Little Secret. Dan smiled back. Why be unfriendly?
Cosy and comfortable, Woody’s favoured décor over theme. Drag routines on slow nights and amateur strip shows mid-week, the bar managed to keep its clients happy without leaving them awash in Gwen Stefani and Britney Spears videos. For a while it was known as the bar in the American Queer As Folk series. Woody’s also held a record for selling more beer than any other bar its size in the city. Despite this, breweries were reluctant to make a showing at Pride in the years before it became a sell-out and everybody wanted in on the advertising opportunities. Woody’s stood up and got counted. “No Pride, no beer.” It became a mantra repeated cheerfully to every brew-master within hearing. Next Pride Day, all but the most uncooperative contributed to Woody’s float. You might not wring respect from a bigot, far less a corporation, but money had a way of leaping over personal qualms and setting its own rules. That move had earned the bar Dan’s everlasting respect.
By light of day, the glamour faded and Woody’s became just another dingy pub with a surprisingly small stage considering the number of drag queens who managed to crowd onto it any given Sunday. The interior was always dim, as though the aura of false twilight it carried was a prize feature. Dan padded through the wood-lined interior to see who or what lay inside.
A bartender called out hopefully. “Hey, sexy dude.” It was probably the same name he had for half the guys who came into the place. He was short, twenty-two-ish, and filled his Baby Gap T-shirt in a way that left few questions unanswered, at least about his top half. “Good to see you again!”
Dan walked up to the bar and sat, knowing the last time he’d set foot in the place this particular bartender probably hadn’t even applied for a position or slept with the right someone to get it. Or maybe even graduated from high school. “A pint of Rickard’s Red,” he said.
The boy pulled the tap, watched disinterestedly as the glass filled, flicked off the head, and pulled the tap again. He slid the glass forward. Dan slapped a ten on the counter, Sir John A. side up. There he was, father of the country with his steadfast stare, snowy curls, and not a hint of the alcoholic about him. Dan pushed the change back and took the top off his drink.
“I’d like some information,” he said, retrieving the photograph from his briefcase. He flashed it at the bartender. “This kid ever come in here?”
The boy picked it up and looked it over carefully. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I go for blondes, so I may not have noticed him even if he was right under my nose.” He grinned. “Sorry.”
Dan tried two other bartenders. No one gave him a positive ID. The tattooed bald-headed guy at the front bar just shrugged. “I see fifty variations on this kid every time I work a Saturday night,” he said, looking back at Dan. “Now you I would remember. In fact, I do, though you haven’t been in for a while. You’re a Scotch drinker.”
Dan smiled. “Only on a rough night,” he said.
“Best kind of night there is. I didn’t know you were a cop.” His face suggested he might be willing to be handcuffed and frisked at a moment’s notice.
“I’m not. Sorry to disappoint you.”
The man’s expression hovered between mirth and skepticism. “I doubt you’d disappoint anyone.” He waited a beat, but Dan didn’t pick up his cue. “Come back in sometime when you’re looking for someone a little older — say, my age. I’ll be willing to help in any way I can.”
Dan laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.”
He ran into the same story all up and down the strip. Either no one recalled the kid or they recalled a hundred just like him. He was about to give up when he saw a slim figure up ahead. For a second, Dan thought it might be Richard Philips. The boy sauntered past Starbucks and stopped to check his reflection in the storefront of Eyes On Church.
He had the same wary eyes and disappointed mouth as Richard. His scrawny build and jerky walk cut a swath ahead of him, while his hands busily defined the air. Even at a distance Dan could see the wear and tear he’d picked up on the streets. But it wasn’t Richard. Just another street kid with ill-fitting jeans and a growing attitude. At fifteen, he’d be considered desirable by a certain crowd. That had probably been enough to make him head full-tilt down the wrong road. From the looks of him, he was now seventeen or eighteen. By twenty he’d be too disease-ridden to sell for over-ripe fruit, though there’d always be some fetishist willing to use him as a human ashtray in exchange for a place to stay when no one else wanted him. Still, he wasn’t Richard. But give it a few years and he would be.
The boy had seen Dan. He turned and headed over. If Dan had been as forward during his time on the street, who knows where he’d be now?
“Hi, sir,” the boy said. “Have you got the time?”
“Sure, I’ve got time,” Dan said.
The boy’s eyes darted up and down the sidewalk while he talked, as though afraid he might miss something. The jerky mannerisms continued. His pupils were so black, Dan felt it was like looking into a void. He had that intense sexual vibe street kids seemed to exude effortlessly, their inner antenna always attuned to someone else’s desire.
“Let’s go somewhere,” the kid said, cocky now, as though he’d just lucked into a good thing.
“Not that kind of time.”
The eyes turned suspicious. “What do you want then?”
“I’d like to talk.”
“What about?”
“You legal?” Dan asked.
“I got ID,” the kid said, puffing up his scrawny frame.
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.
