Runaway Model (20 page)

And Stoney was already drunk. There were several glasses in front of him that nobody had bothered to clear away. He wore a New York Yankees ball cap pulled down to a pair of wraparound shades dark enough to prevent snow blindness on a trek up Mount Everest. It was a wonder Stoney could see his hand in front of his face.

No sign of his security team. Stoney had given them the slip.

"Hello, mate." Kyle hated the uncertainty in his voice. But they hadn't ended well, had they? Stoney told a staffer to send him away. He hadn't had the stones to tell him to his face.

"Hello, Kyle. Have a drink."

Kyle wouldn't put his lips to a glass in this place if you held a gun to his head. He fetched a bottle of Bud Light from the bar. Cracked the cap himself.

Stoney looked at Kyle's hand. Saw the ring. "So you're still wearing it?"

Kyle waited.

"I never saw it in the magazine spreads."

"The photographers think it's tacky. It is tacky."

"You could sell it."

"No, I couldn't. It isn't mine to sell, mate. We both know that."

Another awkward silence. Someone had to say something. Kyle supposed it might as well be him.

"It's yours any time you want it back, mate. It were always yours, Stoney. I don't know why I took it. I were underage that time. I wanted you. I worshiped you. You were me hero. But I couldn't... do that to you. If anyone ever found out you were with an underage boy... I couldn't do that to you."

"So you stole my ring."

"I've regretted it every day. Every. Single. Day. I wear it now to remind me I can never, ever steal again."

Kyle took a swallow of his beer. Stoney went to the bar for another bourbon and Coke. Not much Coke, from the look of it.

"I started this wrong. I'm always wrong." Stoney slurred his words. Just a little. But enough. "I didn't ask you here to rag on you about the ring."

"I figured."

"I'm sorry about how it all went down in San Antonio."

"Are you?"

"Look, Kyle, I know you've asked for VIP backstage access to my final concert. My team has some concerns."

"I've never asked you for a fucking thing. It were me stupid agent, innit?"

"Kyle."

"You made it plain I have no place in your life. No place in your fandom."

"I made a mistake. But in my defense, you stole from me, Kyle. I thought you were just another user. I even wondered if the whole attack on you was staged. The timing seemed to work out awfully well for you."

Kyle the Klepto. It's your own fault Stoney doesn't trust you.

"And then my advisers had all this... advice. I didn't know what to believe."

All my own fault.
But it still stung. "Believe what you want to believe, mate."

He stood up. Pushed himself away from the scarred table.

"Kyle, wait."

Kyle did pause. Just long enough to twist off the pink star sapphire for the last time. It bounced on the scarred table and collided with an empty glass to make a tiny ping.

It was the final bell tolling on his abortive friendship with Stoney Rockland.

"Good-bye, Stoney."

"Kyle!"

As he'd done so many times before, with so many men before, Kyle walked out. Walked... and then ran.

"Mister, you OK?"

A circle of black kids, six or seven of them. At first Kyle thought they meant to mug him. He cursed himself for being careless. For allowing himself to be surrounded.

He was never careless. Not any more.

But Stoney had done a number on his head.

"I'm fine. I'm just in a hurry, innit?"

"English." They giggled. Younger than he'd thought at first. "English, there's a man following you. You know that, right?"

Stoney Rockland. Kyle could smile at the irony of being stalked by the rock star. That's if he still remembered how to smile.

"Give us a hundred bucks and we'll distract him."

"You lads must think I just fell off the boat. I'm from Vegas. Twenty bucks."

"You sound real Vegas, mister. Fifty bucks."

He pulled out a bill with the face of US Grant on it. What the general was famous for other than his drinking Kyle couldn't have told you.

"Go."

Kyle knew he shouldn't look back but he couldn't resist. The boys had already melted away. Money for nothing probably.

Maybe he should have let Stoney catch up to him. Maybe he shouldn't have left it like that.

But he'd had his heart broken. He really had. He was Stoney's biggest fan. He'd made some mistakes along the way but he'd been a runaway teenager when he'd made them. He couldn't help feeling the slightest bit of disappointment in who Stoney turned out to be.

A brilliant performer, yes. He'd always be that.

A lovely singer.

A deft lyricist.

But, at the end of the day, an imperfect human being who let drink and his advisers make his decisions for him.

***

"W
hat did Stoney Rockland want? I'm all ears."

Kyle twisted the blank space on his finger. "He wanted his ring back."

Chance's face fell. "Fuck."

"I'm over it, mate."

It was starting to feel like the truth.

***

K
yle's mobile chimed. "Michel?"

Someone said something in French. Canadian French. Kyle didn't catch a word.

"I'm sorry, mate. I'm English. English.
Parle anglais.
"

"Ah. I am Torrance Tremblay."

Kyle was tempted to hang up. Was it about Michel? Kyle was afraid to say the wrong thing. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Are you Kyle Marchane?"

Kyle couldn't see any advantage to denying or confirming the information. Let him get it from the damn mobile. He waited.

"Kyle, Michel Damera has been arrested for the murder of Warren Manderlane."

"There's been a mistake, mate."

"
Non
, Kyle. There is no mistake here. Your friend is in a world of trouble. Me, I am the attorney assigned to defend him. The trouble is that Michel is not cooperating. Right now he is not speaking to anyone at all."

"You have Michel locked up?"
In a cage?

"He is OK. He will be safe. We have him on twenty-four hour suicide watch."

Suicide watch? Prison? Murder?

None of this made any sense.

"This isn't amusing," Kyle said.

He swiped the red button. Put the mobile down.

This wasn't funny.

This wasn't happening.

***

K
yle was running in Central Park. His agent had banned his trainer from involving him in any activities that built a lot of muscle. Slim and sleek was the look the high fashion clients were paying for. You could get bulked-up cage-fighters anywhere.

But running was OK.

When he first started running there, he used to listen hard to the sound of the feet behind him. He was forever on guard against letting anyone come up behind him. But the park was too popular for that. Slowly Kyle came to accept that there were always people around. He'd learned to relax a little and enjoy the one time of day when he was just another man jogging in a crowd.

Afterward he stopped at a cart to buy a Zevia. The sugar-free drink seemed perfect for a model. He felt the shadow of the man next to him before he saw him.

"Kyle."

"Stay away from me. I'll have you arrested."

"Arrested for what?"

"The attack in Des Moines."

"The attack you never reported to police? The attack that never happened? That attack?"

"Stoney's security are witnesses."

"Rockland's people will testify to sweet fuck-all if it means bad publicity for Rockland. We both know that."

Kyle walked away quickly from the drinks cart. Nigel walked just as quickly, sticking to his side like glue.

"Fuck off. I have nothing to say to you."

He thought about calling for help. But the man never quite touched him. Never quite said anything actionable.

As always, Roman Nigel knew exactly what he could get away with.

"It doesn't have to be this way, Kyle. I was never going to hurt you. I was never going to touch you. I was going to keep you safe."

"You drugged me."

"Did I drug you? Or might it be someone else? You were falling in with the wrong crowd, lad. You needed rescue."

So the bastard wouldn't even admit to that.

"I don't need anything from the likes of you."

"I've only ever wanted to keep you safe. You are the one perfect boy in this sad and sorry world."

"You are mad. Perfectly mad."

"You don't know how you've hurt your mother."

Kyle crumpled the empty can and tossed it in a passing bin. He didn't remember drinking it. "I couldn't stand by and let her marry a perv who just wanted her for her son."

"I didn't know another way to protect you."

"To protect me? From what?"

"From growing old and fat and sweaty like everybody else."

"You are mad. You want to collect me. Like an object."

"I want to keep you safe from the ugliness of this world."

"You're a fucking piece of work."

"Let me help you. You're only hurting yourself by trying to live out here on your own."

"Fuck you. Fuck off." No one was looking at them. In all this crowd of people flowing past, no one so much as glanced their way. Did they look so much like two normal men walking down a street?

A father and son having an argument?

It was disturbing thought. If he wasn't safe even in a crowd...

"I promised your mother I would find you and bring you home. It's past time for you to let me keep that promise."

"I'll never go home while you're there."

"You have to go home at some point, Kyle. You need an education. There's no future for a drop-out in America or England or anywhere really, is there?"

Kyle felt he was doing quite well for a drop-out actually. But if the bastard didn't know he was an up-and-coming model, far be it from Kyle to tell him.

He stopped dead in the street and turned to look Nigel directly in the eyes. "I'm too old for you now, mate. I know how it works with you pervs. I were fourteen when you found me. I'm eighteen now. Too old. Way too old. So get the fuck out."

The bastard didn't even blink. "It wasn't your youth that attracted me, Kyle. It was you. It was always you."

"Oh fuck me. Does that mean I'll never be rid of you?"

"I love you. A pure love that wants to protect you. One day you'll understand that."

"If that's love, fucking get it the fuck away from me."

Kyle ran.

How had Nigel found him? He didn't seem to know Kyle had found work as a model. He still thought of him as a teenybopper music blogger.

Kyle stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Hey, watch where you're going, asshole. Some of us have places to go."

"Fucking tourists, man."

The voices were no more meaningful to Kyle than the distant shrieks of the gulls in the harbor.

The meet with Stoney. That's where Nigel picked up the trail again.

Nigel had been following Stoney. For how long?

The man the kids saw following Kyle after the meet... it had never been Stoney. Of course not. Stoney wouldn't care enough to follow the likes of Kyle.

It was Roman Nigel.

***

L
ive by TMZ, die by TMZ. Chance had his hands in his face when Kyle walked into his office that afternoon.

"Did you know about this?" he asked. "Did you know that Michel stabbed his stepfather twenty-seven times and left him to bleed out?"

"No, actually no, not really. I knew he screamed in his sleep. But I didn't know it was anything... like this."

Kyle had managed not to hang up the second time Torrance Tremblay called. But it had taken all his strength.

"Twenty-seven times! We had a bitch under contract who stuck a knife in a man and pulled it out and stuck it back in twenty-seven times!"

Kyle closed his eyes. Must Chance be so graphic? "Michel had a reason. You don't know what he went through."

"We have to pray they can keep his name out of the gutter press. Right now they're just saying the accused is rumored to be a famous male model."

Michel was hardly famous. Although his crime might make him infamous.

"He were thirteen. He were raped from the time he were six." Kyle would have never learned the truth from Michel. But his defense attorney had spared him nothing.

I know it's hard to listen to, Kyle. But it was harder to live through. And you need to know what we're up against. Michel stabbed this man. The evidence is undeniable.

"Finally he had enough," Kyle said. "Anyone might have done the same."

"Kyle. I'm not concerned with Michel's defense strategy. I actually have something to say about how this impacts the agency."

"I'm listening, mate."

"He was underage and a victim of sexual abuse at the time of the attack. If everybody respects Canada's privacy laws concerning rape victims, we'll be OK."

"But."

"But if somebody cracks, if somebody decides to make a few bucks by revealing his name to the tabs—"

"It won't be me, Chance. Will it be you?"

"I stand to lose everything for signing him. TMZ can't pay me enough."

"I won't betray my best friend for any amount of money. Any amount." Kyle looked directly into Chance's eyes, trying to read if there was anything there other than self-interest.

"If he'd surrendered when he was thirteen, they would have tried him in juvenile court. Worst case, he's out at age eighteen. He'd be a free man today." Chance never wrote with a pencil. But sometimes he chewed on one. Maybe he'd once been a smoker.

Kyle felt like chewing up something himself. How had Michel come to the attention of the authorities after all this time? Maybe he'd ripped off the wrong man in a club. Probably they'd never really know. All Kyle knew is that Michel had been picked up in Manhattan and extradited to Québec in less than twenty-four hours. When they'd arrested him, they'd already known where he was going.

Chance was still thinking aloud. "The option of being tried as a juvenile is closed to him now. He's nineteen. They're only protecting his name because of the sexual abuses. But if he's convicted, it will all be a matter of public record."