some tastes inconceivable to most human beings.
This no-man’s-land was where Tiger’s body had been found, and where Barrie was headed next. She knew Tiger ran with another young prostitute who called himself Phoenix, and he would be her best bet for information. The street kids often banded together for protection and community; Tiger and Phoenix had cribbed together, sometimes in one of the appalling motels that lined the side streets of Hollywood, sometimes on the stoops of shops or warehouses late at night. Whether the boys’ intimacy translated to actual sex was an open question; Barrie suspected the two had been lovers as well, in some ambiguous way, but drugs often killed any real sex drive. Phoenix was a shifter, too, but nowhere near as skilled as Tiger was. She reflected that it was a talent a bit like acting, in a way. Some had a little; only a very few were stars. Tiger had been a star. Not that it had helped him, apparently.
She found Phoenix in a foul but atmospherically lit alley where she knew a lot of the street kids congregated in between tricks to recover, dose and socialize. He was sitting on a dirty stoop, smoke from a cigarette curling around his head. A perfectly cinematic shot, if not for his obvious agony. He was ravaged with weeping, and broke down again when he saw Barrie. All he managed was “You heard,” before his words dissolved in tears.
She had delivered Phoenix to the Out of the Shadows shelter at the same time as she’d taken Tiger there; the two youths were joined at the hip, so to speak. She’d suspected at the time that Phoenix, by far the weaker of the two, would be back on the street in no time. She’d had higher hopes for Tiger.
She sat beside him and rubbed his back lightly as he cried, careful not to touch too hard, too much.
“He was working again?”
“Not the street!” Phoenix said defiantly. “He was moving up. Building a real list.”
Barrie bit her lip to suppress an outburst, considering that a “list” was basically a collection of sexual predators. What there was about prostitution that could be considered “moving up” in any way was so far beyond her that she couldn’t even begin to process it, but she didn’t want to insult or alienate Phoenix. She wasn’t about to denigrate any bit of pride the boy could take in his profession. And pride was what Phoenix was expressing, as his words spilled out about his friend.
“Tiger was good. He could do anyone. Jimmy, Kurt, Jim, Heath, Johnny. He was goin’ places.”
Phoenix meant that Tiger could change his appearance to look like the dead stars Phoenix named. Barrie realized with a shiver that they were all stars who’d died tragically young, either from addiction or their own reckless behavior, shooting stars who burned out too fast on their talent and lifestyles: James Dean in a car wreck at twenty-four, Kurt Cobain a suicide at twenty-seven, Jim Morrison of a heroin overdose (hotly disputed) at twenty-seven, and the youngest of all of them, Johnny Love, a sixteen-year-old movie idol who in the 1990s had burned up the screen in cult classics like Race the Night and Youngbloods and then died shooting up a lethal speedball at sixteen, just after the huge success of his last movie, Otherworld.
Barrie thought uncomfortably, and not for the first time, how chillingly easy it was to become what you pretended to be. Now Tiger had joined the list of his dead idols.
She shook her head and tried to focus on the boy beside her. “Was he working for someone?” She avoided the word “pimp.”
Phoenix straightened his shoulders, clearly proud of his dead friend. “He was doin’ it himself. He hooked up with someone big. Real big. He had a regular date with someone in the movies, really connected, who was into shifters big-time. And he was paying big money for Tiger to shift.”
Barrie’s heart started beating faster. “Someone in the movies? Do you know who?”
Phoenix shook his head. “Someone who was going to do things for him. Get him parts. Tiger was really high about it.”
Could it be? A connection between Tiger and Saul Mayo? Barrie had the strongest feeling, an almost psychic hit, that she was on to something. Maybe something huge.
“A producer? Director? Actor?” she asked, trying to be casual.
“Tiger didn’t say much.”
“Did you ever actually see this guy?”
Phoenix shook his head. “I saw his car once. A limo.”
Not helpful. Every third car in this town was a limo.
“If that person—or anyone—comes around looking for Tiger, can you let me know?” She gave Phoenix a card; he looked down at it listlessly and shrugged. Her heart tore. “Phoenix, I can drop you at Out of the Shadows. You know Lara would be glad to have you.”
His eyes grew hooded. “Maybe I’ll cruise over later.”
She sighed. It was so hard to get the kids out of the life. It was abuse, but for them it was abuse on their own terms. She touched his arm.
“You call me if you need anything, Phoenix. I’m so very sorry about Tiger.”
Mayo’s body had been discovered at the Chateau Marmont. The hotel was a Hollywood institution, built in the 1920s and modeled after a French castle, with one elegant old main building towering over a spread of luxury bungalows that fairly dripped old film studio elegance. It was known for its beautiful views, ornate turrets and tiny wooden elevators, the junglelike pool area, and the young celebrity clientele populating the hopping cocktail bar.
Barrie pulled into the side alley where the front entrance was tucked away and looked up at the Gothic palace on the hill. Its aura had been paid for in blood, the hotel being the site of several legendary tragedies: John Belushi’s death from a drug overdose, and the near death of Jim Morrison, who used to joke that he used up the eighth of his nine lives when he fell headfirst onto a garden shed while trying to swing from a drainpipe to his window at the Chateau.
And tragically, sixteen-year-old Johnny Love.
Barrie recalled uneasily that Phoenix had said Johnny was one of Tiger’s favorite shifts.
And Johnny Love had died of an apparent overdose in his teens.
Just like Tiger, Barrie thought. So much like Tiger.
It was not much more than the cruel chance of Hollywood that one had ascended to iconic superstardom and the other had died anonymously in an alley.
She frowned as something prickled at the edges of her consciousness, some fact that she knew was important but that she couldn’t quite get to.
As she was grasping for the thought, she was distracted by the sight of a hearse pulling up, a Hollywood Ghost Bus loaded with tourists out to see “the darker side of Tinseltown.” Barrie grimaced; it was all oh-so-edgy and cool from the outside, but tonight she couldn’t see anything even resembling humor.
And now, she realized, the movie mogul Saul Mayo would be part of the tour, maybe even more of a celebrity in death than he had been in life. It was outrageous, enraging. And so very, very Hollywood.
Barrie breathed in to calm herself. Then she gave up her Peugeot to a valet and walked into the hotel through the side alley entrance.
As she entered the dim, elegant, edgy lobby, her mind was going a mile a minute. She knew she was going
