Sex and Violence in Hollywood (26 page)

“My next right?” Adam asked. “I haven’t seen a right or a left since we got off the freeway.”

It had been a long trip. They had made only one stop, at a convenience store in the small town of Baker, to get something to drink and use the restrooms.

The desert surrounding Baker was humped with a scattering of large dunes in the distance on either side of the road. Wildflowers and the blooms on several different kinds of cacti and bushes provided bright colors in the shade of ironwood and yucca trees, and the occasional screwbean mesquite and desert willow. Creosote shrubs were everywhere, rising up in dark green clumps as high as ten feet.

After Baker, Billy had directed Adam to take a right off the freeway. They’d gone miles and miles, seeing nothing but desert. The road’s rough pavement ended abruptly, and they went miles more along a dirt road. Adam had bought a bottle of cranberry juice at the convenience store and finished it quickly. By the time they reached the dirt road, he had to go to the bathroom.

After a good twelve, maybe fifteen miles, the dirt road dwindled to no more than two ruts worn into the ground and meandered for miles more, going around hillocks and between trees, on through the desert toward a large hill.

“Dammit, I need an SUV,” Adam said. “This car isn’t even mine!”

“And for that,” Carter said, “you should be thankful.”

The ruts led them around the hill, and what Billy had referred to earlier as a “compound” appeared as if from nowhere. It was difficult from Adam’s point of view to tell how many trailers were grouped together in an especially lush part of the desert. A dozen, maybe fifteen. They were all a sandy brown, and probably blended well with the landscape when viewed from the air. A tall Cyclone fence enclosed the block of trailers, with barbed wire stretched around the top. Just beyond the trailers stood a long, tan, metal building with no windows. It was all nestled in the crook of a U-shaped crop of hills.

A small guard booth stood just inside the fence on the right side of the gate. Someone sat slumped inside.

“Stop at, um, th’gate,” Billy said, “and I’ll get us in.” He rolled down his window when Adam stopped, leaned out. “Jesus!” he shouted. “Jesus!” Billy sounded like he was taking the Lord’s name in vain.

The figure in the booth stood and stepped out. A muscular shirtless Mexican guy in cutoffs, no older than twenty, squinted at Billy.

“It’s me! Billy! I’m here t’see Diz. Let us in.” Jesus nodded, satisfied, stepped back into the booth. The gate slid open slowly. “Checkpoint Charlie,” Carter said.

Adam looked over his shoulder at Billy. “Shouldn’t that be pronounced, Hay-soos instead of Je-zus?”

“Yeah, s’posed to be,” Billy said with another of his almost embarrassed smiles. “But Jesus likes everybody t’call him...um, well, Jesus. ’Cause it pisses off his mom.”

As he drove past, Adam glanced into the booth. Several rifles were on racks on the back wall.

“Okay, um, just go along there,” Billy said, pointing.

Adam drove along one side of the block of trailers. They were in mint condition and stood on concrete foundations, but were closer together than they would be in a legitimate trailer park.

“Jus’ park in front of th’house,” Billy said.

Adam asked, “What house?”

Past the trailers, a large ranch-style house appeared, cozy at the foot of the hill. The desert was its yard, and a natural-looking path of flat desert rocks led to the front door from a crude circular driveway made of ruts driven into the ground.

“This is unreal,” Carter mumbled as Adam killed the engine in front of the house.

Adam looked at Billy very seriously. “Okay, Billy, now think. Is there anything else we should know before we go in there?”

“Um...” Billy bowed his head for a moment, shook it. “No. Juss, um...well, y’know, don’t mention Diz’s, um, face or hands, okay? Or eyebrows.”

“Eyebrows?” Adam said.

Carter cleared his throat and asked, “What would he do if we were to accidentally mention his face or hands or eyebrows?”

Billy’s face darkened with a frown. “Oh, he don’t take it too well, not Diz, no. ’Specially the eyebrows.”

Adam looked at Carter and said quickly, “I think we can handle that, don’t you?”

“You won’t hear about it from me,” Carter said.

As he emerged from the car, the heat burned his lungs, dried up his mouth and throat. The car had grown a skin of dust.

Billy led them along the stone path. Halfway to the door, Adam heard unsettling sounds behind him. Quick, heavy padding sounds on the ground. Adam turned and cried, “Shit!”

One, two...three...four pit bulls ran through an open gate in the Cyclone fence, toward them. Squat legs kicked up clouds of dust as thick muscles rippled. Pink tongues lolled between glimmering sets of bared fangs. All four dogs silent as death.

TWENTY-FOUR

Certain they were about
to sustain serious physical injuries and possible permanent disfigurement, Adam and Carter ran for the house. Adam cried, “Holy shit, holy shit!” as Carter cried, “Fuck me! Fuck me!” They ran with arms stretched out rigidly ahead of them, like characters in a Scooby-Doo cartoon running from a mummy. Together, they slammed into the heavy dark oak door and pounded it with their fists as they screamed.

Adam: “Openthedoor openthedoor openthe—”

Carter: “Fuck me fuck me fuck me—”

Adam glanced over his shoulder. Stopped shouting and did a double take.

The pit bulls jumped up on Billy, paws leaving dusty tracks on his clothes as he talked to them cheerfully. “Hey, guys, how’s it goin’, huh? Huh?” Grinning, he roughed them up, let them chew playfully on his hands.

“Hey,” Adam said as he poked Carter with a knuckle.

Carter stopped screaming, turned. He and Adam watched the playful dogs for a moment. Caught their breath, waited for panic to recede.

Billy shook his head and laughed at them. “Y’know, I like you guys. But you’re, like, way big pussies.”

The oak door opened as a few harsh, wet coughs sounded from behind it. Wheezy, rattling coughs. A man’s voice said, “What in theeee fuck is going on out here?”

A narrow head peered around the edge of the door wearing what appeared, at first, to be a furry cap. It was, in fact, a black toupee sparkling with a few strands of silver. The face beneath it was in its late sixties, but the voice was older. Strings of smoke rose from a long cigarette in a short, shiny black holder clenched between his teeth. His gray eyes moved up and down their bodies one at a time.

“You all right?” he asked. “Sounded like somebody was bein’ circumcised out here, Jeez-iz.” He stepped out from behind the door wearing only a white towel around his waist. Beneath it, an erection pushed willfully at the terry cloth.

Oh, terrific, wonderful, Adam thought. We’re never gonna be seen again.

Adam said, “Sorry to drag you out of the shower, but we—”

“Nah, I wasn’t in the shower,” he said, wheezing with asthma or emphysema. “I was workin’. I’m always workin’. Well, come on in.”

Adam looked back at Billy, who was still romping with the pit bulls. “Hey, Billy?” he called. Billy had forgotten all about them. He was remarkably talented at making masks and prosthetics, but he did not give the impression of being one who engaged in a great deal of critical thought.

The man held his cigarette holder between two knuckles as he stepped back and waved them into the house. He was short and wiry, but his pasty complexion gave him a look of ill health. The nicotine-yellowed silver hair on his sagging chest and belly did not match his toupee.

Adam and Carter looked at one another. Carter shrugged. Adam gestured for him to go first.

“You been here before, or what?” the man asked.

Adam replied, “Well, we just came with—”

“I got so many comin’ in and out now—you know, this bidness has just gone through the roof. I got six websites, I can do two-three videos a day, every day if I so fucking choose. I could do a lot more, but my doctor tells me to slow down a little ’cause of my pump. But still I got boys comin’ and goin’, I can’t keep up with all the boys around here.” He closed the door and turned to them in the foyer, laughing. “But we can always use some more!”

The foyer walls were bare. A small surveillance camera watched from an overhead corner. Looked directly at Adam.

The man stepped between them, put his arms across their backs, cigarette holder clamped between his teeth like Franklin Roosevelt. Led them around a corner and down a hall, his erection pointing the way. He smelled of gin.

Another camera watched the hallway.

The man said, “I seen you boys around here before? Who sent you?”

Adam gulped before saying, “We came here with—”

“You want something to eat?” the man asked. “I got all kindsa sammiches and snacks in the kitchen. Beer, soda, milk, whatever you want.”

Adam said, “Uh-uh.”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Carter said. His voice was dry and coarse. Neither of them had recovered yet from the pit bulls.

“Right in here.” He pushed them through a door.

It was a long room, and a camera high in the corner kept an eye on it. A wall had been knocked out between two bedrooms. Four digital cameras stood on tripods facing four small, spare sets, one in each corner. The first was a sofa with an end table and lamp at one end, a simple wooden coffee table in front of it, and a velvet painting of John Wayne in cowboy hat and kerchief on the wall. A half-empty fifth of gin stood on the end table. The next set looked like an adolescent boy’s bedroom, then a Jacuzzi, a weight room, all separated by cheap divider screens. Near the Jacuzzi, two naked boys—fourteen, maybe fifteen—shared a fat beanbag chair, leaned on each other as they passed a joint between them. They sat up when the man walked in.

He puffed on the cigarette compulsively and a cloud of smoke encircled his head. “Dougie and Brandon,” he said, gesturing to the naked boys as he went to the end table and retrieved the bottle of gin. Took a healthy swig. “They just finished a live show on the ’net. You boys ever done anything like this?”

“That’s illegal,” Adam muttered, frowning at the underage boys. He had not intended to speak the thought out loud and regretted it instantly.

“Illegal,” the man said, voice hard as steel. “Did you just say ‘illegal?’ That’s what I just heard you say, right? ‘Illegal?’ In my house you said that?”

This is really bad, Adam thought. He and Carter stammered over each other a moment. “This is a mistake,” Adam said, “a terrible, awful mistake, we came with Billy, we’re here to see—” His mind blanked and he turned to Carter, snapped his fingers rapidly. “What’s his name, what’s his name?”

Billy hurried into the room. “Sorry ’bout that, guys,” he said. “Hey, Mr. C.”

“Billy.” Mr. C.’s suspicious eyes never left Adam. He took a couple more swallows of the gin, nearly finished it. Clamped the cigarette holder between his teeth. “I can’t believe you brought somebody into my house who’d say the word ‘illegal,’ Billy. And in my fucking presence!”

No longer laughing. Billy looked at Mr. C. seriously and said, “We’re here on business. We gotta see Diz. I just got distracted by the dogs, assall. Sorry about surprisin’ you like that.” It was the most alert and articulate he had been all day.

“On business, huh?” His eyes moved back and forth between Adam and Carter. “You sure these two’re okay?”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. C.,” Billy said, nodding fast. “I’ve known ’em for years, Mr. C., I’d, um, I’d put my life in their hands.”

Mr. C.’s right eye narrowed and he plucked the cigarette holder from his teeth. “Are you two Hollywood? I know Billy’s Hollywood. You Hollywood?”

“My dad’s a screenwriter,” Adam said as Carter nodded.

“I wanted to go the Hollywood route,” Mr. C. said, nodding. “You know, make some low-budget teen sex comedies, maybe a slasher flick or two. I didn’t have no delusions, I wasn’t after an Oscar, nothin’ like that. But in Hollywood, you gotta have the right look, the right clothes. You gotta be the right age, know the right people. Gotta have the right color eyes. They never let me join in any of their Hollywood reindeer games.” He tipped the bottle back, emptied it. Handed it to Billy. “Get ridda this and get me another one.” Billy took the bottle and rushed out of the room. “But now? Hell, now I got alla Hollywood connections I need.” He grinned and his dentures clacked. “I got Hollywood connections comin’ outta my ass.”

“You...do?” Adam asked cautiously.

“Oh, sure. Lotta big Hollywood players buy my tapes, my CD-ROMs.” He became animated, gestured with his arms, cut trails of smoke in the air. “They want boy porn, they come to me ’cause I’m the best.” He turned to Dougie and Brandon and said, “Hey, you two hit the shower. And tell Eric and Tony and, uh, lessee, Sean, tell ’em to come in here, ’kay?” To Adam and Carter again: “Some of ’em even rent my boys once in a while. Now that, see, that wasn’t even my idea. I wasn’t inta that. I play it safe, and that’s a treacherous trade, the meat trade. But all these big Hollywood agents kept showin’ up, flashin’ their cash, tryin’ to get me to let some of the boys go to this party, that party, in Malibu or Beverly Hills, whatever, and pretty soon they convinced me. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the big names I do bidness with.”