He called his own house, and got his own answering machine, which always made him feel funny. But he left a message for Dylan, telling him he might be tied up with a stakeout or some similar sort of foolishness, and he wouldn’t be back until later. That made him feel slightly wistful, although he wasn’t sure why at first. Maybe it was just the idea that he might actually have someone to come home to; he’d gotten accustomed to coming back to an empty house. It was one of those good news/bad news propositions, in that it was kind of nice, and yet also kind of a pisser. It pretty much depended on his mood.

He drove out towards the boulevard, but actually parked his bike in the underground parking garage of the nearby hospital. He told the security guard he was visiting a patient, ducked into the elevator, and let it take him to the ground floor, where he walked out of the lobby and two and a half blocks over to the boulevard. Well, he’d be damned if he’d park his bike on the street in this area.

It was a relatively nice time for a walk, early evening, the air carrying a hint of chill, and he was only solicited by one drug dealer and two prostitutes. He took that as a sign he didn’t look much like a cop anymore, which was a good thing. It also meant new hookers and drug dealers were hitting the streets, and that wasn’t so good.

Holden’s hair was so impossibly white blond that it seemed to glow under the streetlights just coming on, making him easy to find. He was on the boulevard, standing between the pawn shop and the barber’s that usually had an illegal craps game going on in the back after six, and he was talking to someone he couldn’t see until he came up. “I hope I’m not too late,” he said, and then saw who Holden was talking to.

Well, if this wasn’t a hustler, he was a straight man.

The guy standing with Holden looked fairly young, a wide eyed brunette with a generous mouth and a somewhat innocent look that you just knew was a total fucking lie. In spite of the weather, he wore worn, old jeans with strategic rips and tears in it, and a black fishnet shirt that showed an almost concave stomach and a nearly hairless chest, his pierced nipples so erect from the cold that they looked like they could have cut glass. He was so skinny it looked like you could use him to jimmy a door open. He also wore a black leather motocross jacket that looked relatively butch, but not very warm. Upon seeing him, the boy’s hazel eyes widened even further - which seemed impossible; he started looking like a sad eyed waif you might find in a black velvet painting - and he gasped. “Oh my god, are you the lion guy?” the kid said, in a light voice that left little doubt that he was as queer as a three dollar bill. He even had the slightest hint of a lisp. “Wow, Fox was right - you are cute.”

Holden half-smiled in a lopsided way, pretending to be embarrassed when he really wasn’t. “Roan, this is Kai. Kai, this is Roan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Roan said, trying hard not to think about what Holden had told him. That this kid had been a nearly lifelong victim of sexual abuse, and now was continuing his own exploitation, only now he was getting paid for it. It made Roan want to shake him for being such an idiot, and then run off with him, stash him in a nice, upper class psychiatric hospital until he realized he didn’t have to do this anymore. He both felt sorry for him and infuriated by him. Not all hookers and hustlers had been sexually abused, but more than half had in his general experience on the street beat. They learned early that all they were worth was whatever their sexuality could buy them, and otherwise they had no worth at all. It was a self-perpetuating tragedy.

Kai reached out and touched his hair, an inappropriately close bit of contact he didn’t like. Roan backed up, scowling a warning, but Kai ignored it, as he was staring at a tress of his hair. “Wow. That’s a real color? It’s almost the color of old blood, isn’t it?”

Holden chuckled faintly as he grabbed Kai’s arm and lowered it, pulling him away from Roan. “Yeah, it kind of is, but Roan isn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy, okay?”

Kai looked at Holden curiously, then seemed to understand what he was getting at, and turned back towards Roan. “Oh, sorry. I sometimes don’t know my own personal space very well, y’know? Most of my friends are hookers and just don’t give a shit.”

Roan nodded, careful not to let his pity show on his face. He bet Kai wouldn’t like it, if he’d even acknowledge it. Roan was sure he was on something, but below the scents of deodorant, hair mousse, and the spearmint gum he was chomping on, all he picked up was a scent he usually associated with antidepressants. Was he on a prescription mood elevator? He thought those had sexual side effects more often than not. Maybe he took other pills to counteract that.

As soon as he got the chance, he pulled Holden aside, and thy went back to his car, parked on the side of the street a bit farther down. Cars that parked here were often subjected to a variety of indignities by the people who lived and worked on the boulevard, but not Holden’s car. Holden was still beloved here, and he was one of the few that could get away with it without getting keyed or having a window broken.

Once they were in the Eclipse, behind the safety of closed doors, Roan snapped, “Get that kid off the fucking street! Even if our sadist doesn’t pick him up, he’s gonna get himself killed.”

“He’s tougher -”

“ - than he looks. Yeah, you used that one on me already. I don’t buy it, and I don’t give a shit either way. Is he on fucking Prozac?”

Holden’s eyes widened in genuine shock. He’d caught him off guard. “What would give you that idea?”

“Don’t even try and bullshit me, Holden. I could smell it on him.”

He scoffed, hoping he was making a joke of it, but his encouraging face fell quickly. “You’re serious? You can smell anti-depressants?”

“They have a certain smell once they’re processed by the body. So what the fuck’s he on, and why is there a guy on prescription meds selling his ass?”

Holden held his hand up briefly in a gesture of surrender, but it also gave him a moment to come up with an answer “Okay, look … it’s part of his anger management program.”

This kept getting better and better. “What?”

He rolled his eyes, like this was so minor he had no idea why they were talking about it. “Last year, he got in a … thing with a client.”

“A thing? You really think you’re getting away with that?”

Holden sighed and frowned at him, like he was being the difficult one in this scenario. “This client wanted Kai to call him “Daddy” -”

“Oh holy shit.” Roan was pretty sure he knew where this was going.

“- and Kai refused. The client got insistent, and Kai kinda … flipped out. He threw a chair through a hotel window, and did some damage to the room, as well as scaring the hell out of his client. I talked to the hotel and was able to arrange payment for the damages, and I got the charges plea bargained down to disturbing the peace, but the judge still sentenced him to attend a mandatory anger management class.”

Roan gave him a look that he hoped bored a hole through his skull. “It’s not an anger problem. It’s called post traumatic stress disorder, and he needs intensive therapy. Get him the fuck off the street, Holden.” He didn’t comment on how impressive it was for Holden to waltz in and manipulate the legal system the way he did. If only all arrested gay guys had access to Holden and his silver tongue and canny brain.

“You don’t think I’ve tried? I know how Kai looks - and sounds - but trust me, this guy’s as stubborn as fuck. He’s been on his own since he was fifteen, and he no longer trusts people to have his best interests at heart. He lives alone in an apartment on 1st Street, with four cats and a Siamese fighting fish. He doesn’t date; he doesn’t have sex beyond his job; he doesn’t socialize beyond his job. His days off he spends all day in his place, watching TV and playing Resident Evil 4. He has stepped out of life, and it’s hard to blame him. He never graduated high school - he dropped out and ran away, remember? - but I can’t convince him to go get his GED. He doesn’t see the point. He doesn’t see himself living much beyond thirty, and if you were to ask him, he’d say he has no talent or desire to do anything. Guys will pay money to have sex with him, and they pay good money, more than he’d ever make flipping burgers or selling lattes. You tell me what I have to say to him that will make him want more than he has. All he ever wanted was for people to leave him alone and to have a place of his own, and he has it. As far as he’s concerned, he’s living his dream.”

Holden looked at him expectantly, frustration obvious in his eyes and his voice, and Roan just shook his head. Okay, so Holden clearly had tried, but Kai was also very clearly damaged to the point where he may have been unreachable. As much as Roan didn’t want to give him that, he probably had to. Not everybody could be saved; not everybody wanted to be saved. “I don’t like putting vulnerable people out there.”

“I know. But he’s not as vulnerable as he looks.”

“Yes, he is. Just because he taps his voluminous rage whenever someone brings up the specter of his abuser doesn’t make him not vulnerable, Holden, it makes him ill. You know that.”

He grimaced, conceding the point without nodding. “He wants to help. I didn’t see the point of telling him he was too fucked up to help.”

“Are the anti-depressants helping him?”

Holden shrugged. “He says they make him feel numb. He considers that a good thing.”

“Jesus.” Roan looked out the windshield, to see that Kai had taken a seat on the bus bench where he’d last seen Cowboy, posed with a studied nonchalance. Already an old Ford truck was pulling over. Holden reached in his coat pocket and plugged a device into his ear. “Is that a microphone receiver?” Roan wondered.

He nodded distractedly. “Kai’s wearing a microphone inside his jacket. This way I can hear what’s going on. If he thinks he’s in trouble or going to be, we have a safe word: midnight. He says that, we get him out of there.”

“Where the hell did you get this audio set up?”

“That spy store on Pacific Avenue. I was sure you shopped there all the time.”

“Not all the time,” he protested. Oh sure, he picked up some night vision filters there, but who didn’t?

Holden listened for a moment, then clicked his tongue in what could have been disgust. “Aw fuck, it’s Tobacco Joe.”

“Who?” Roan asked before he could stop himself, and that was a shame, as he’d already decided he didn’t want to know.

“A regular on this street, for about … shit, six years now, I think. He claims to be a straight guy, but he says only guys give decent blow jobs. He never takes long.”

“Oh please stop,” he blurted, rubbing his eyes.

“Too much information?”

“Yes. I don’t want to know about the customers, okay? Not unless they’re our psycho.”

When he glanced over at him, he could see Holden giving him his patented sly smile, his blue eyes twinkling with trouble. “You’ve never paid, huh?”

“No, I haven’t. I think it’s horribly demeaning and depersonalizing for everyone involved. Sex as a business transaction. It becomes mechanical, detached. It’s supposed to be sexy, fun, life affirming, not something you pick up after work like a bucket of chicken.”

“It can be sexy! You have had sex, right?” Roan just glared at him, which made his smile even broader. “Did you buy a bad lay or something?”

“No.”

“Then how can you knock it if you haven’t tried it?”

He sighed in irritation, flashing him a look he knew he’d ignore. “Holden, I met a lot of hookers when I was a cop, and none of them ever seemed happy. As a detective, I’ve seen lots of men visit prostitutes for quick fucks, and it couldn’t be a more depressing thing to watch. I can’t imagine hating myself so much that I’d buy someone else.”

Holden shifted in his seat, grinning like a loon. “So you like to watch?”

Roan’s answer was simply to flip him the bird, and that made him laugh, like he thought this was all great fun. Roan could feel a headache starting to build behind his eyes, and wondered if he’d had enough caffeine today. It was possible there wasn’t enough caffeine in the world to deal with Holden in one of his giddy moods. “I think I’m going to get my own car for surveillance.”

“Oh, don’t be that way, I was just teasing. I’ve never met anyone who hated prostitution.”

“I don’t hate it, I just think it’s sad for everyone involved.”

“You’ve never been that lonely or desperate?”

He fixed him with a harsh stare. “I’m a gay man. If I’m not overly picky, I can show up at a club and hook up with someone pretty quickly. No need for money to come into it.”

“Yeah, but you’re hot. What about guys who aren’t so hot? Or aren’t confident enough or out enough to venture into the club scene? That’s who we’re there for. Although you know, I’ve had some reasonably hot clients. Of course, they usually self-identify as straight, but who am I to judge?”

Roan shook his head and looked out at the street. Holden had tinted windows, so it would be difficult for anyone to see that they were inside, making it excellent for a stake out. But it also made it impossible for a couple arguing on the sidewalk to notice they were being observed. “So you’re saying hustlers are necessary for closet cases?”

“Basically, yeah. Before you came out, didn’t you wonder how you were ever gonna hook up with anyone?”

“I’ve been out forever, so no.” Roan was staring with interest at the argument now. It seemed to be between a pimp and a female hooker. The pimp was a white guy or at least a light complexioned guy with greasy black hair slicked back in a deflated pompadour, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a jeans jacket, with an acne scarred face as pockmarked as the moon. The only sign that he made any money at all were the ridiculously overpriced Nikes he wore, which seemed to glow with an almost supernatural whiteness. The woman was a foot shorter than he was, even in precarious high heels, and wore a short blue skirt and a tight red top that showed off both her breasts and a slight bulge in her middle. He wasn’t sure if that was a few extra pounds, or if she was pregnant.

“What do you mean you’ve been out forever?”

“I stopped hiding it in high school. I think I was fifteen.”

“Holy shit. Really? I thought coming out at sixteen was brave.”

“Brave never came into it. I was an infected foster kid nerd - there was no way the school bullies could hate me more than they already did.” The fight was getting more angry as it drifted closer to the car. He mentally commanded the greaseball to get just a couple feet closer.

“So when did you know?”

“I was gay? At about eight, I think, even though it took me a year or two to figure out what it meant. Some of the guys in the group home had shoplifted a girly magazine, not Playboy, one of the knock-offs, and they were all drooling over the pages of these airbrushed women with gigantic breasts that I just found grotesque. What was so exciting about that? It did nothing for me. But while they were flipping pages, there was this ad for a lame erotic thriller - it was during the time when Hollywood was churning them out at the rate of one a month - and it basically just pictured a man’s torso, a well muscled six pack kind, and a woman had her arm around him, holding a knife. I really liked that guy’s chest - I mean really. I was disappointed when they turned the page and there were more beach ball sized tits. The next time I was in a store, I noticed all the muscled guys on the covers of various magazines, and I realized that, if I had a chance to shoplift something, it would be those. It still took me a bit more time to figure out that meant I was gay. I wasn’t always the smartest guy in the bunch.” The arguing pair had drifted closer still, and finally, after cussing her out (he seemed to think she’d both stiffed him some money and stole some of his drugs), he smacked her across the face. To her credit, she shoved him hard, and sent him straight towards them. Terrific.

Roan opened the passenger door, and hit the guy with it as hard as he could. The guy impacted it with a thud and sprawled on the sidewalk, cursing. Roan got out, saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“Motherfucker!” the guy spat. God, he reeked. He had the medicinal smell of meth in his sweat. “I’m gonna kick your fucking ass -”

He reached into his coat pocket, but Roan quickly grabbed his arm and yanked it out, twisting it just a moment or two from the breaking point. When he reached up with his other hand, Roan grabbed that wrist and twisted it too, and then stepped on his upper right thigh, keeping him effectively pinned down on the filthy sidewalk. He looked at the hooker, who’d simply been watching this, and told her, “Leave.”

She stared at him a moment, like she couldn’t believe he was insane enough to do this, but then took off, deciding her pimp could kill the lunatic while she got clear.

The asshole was still cursing at him, trying to squirm away, and then he attempted to kick him with his free leg, and Roan twisted his wrist a bit more, bending his hand back painfully until the guy turned red faced and had to stifle a scream. Roan stared straight down at him, and said, “I’d perform a citizen’s arrest here, but you’d be booked and bounced in no time. You’re a petty piece of shit in a toilet overflowing with shits of all sizes, so nobody really cares. If I hurt you, you’d just heal and go on beating women, as that’s pretty much the only thing a scumfuck like you can do. Me beating the shit out of you would solve nothing. But it would make me feel better.”

The greaseball kept cursing him out, and called him a faggot, which was one of his favorites. Roan closed his eyes and summoned up the rage, which was always just sitting in the dark corner of his mind, waiting for an opportunity to come out. He opened his eyes and stared down at the pimp as he did his best to will a partial change. “Keep making me mad,” he growled, feeling his muscles spasm in his arms and in his jaw, his eyes suddenly losing focus and gaining it again as pain lanced through his jaw and he tasted blood in his mouth. “Come on. Let’s see what happens.”

He lost the ability to speak, he could only growl, but that probably helped. The pimp was now looking up at him in wide eyed fear, his mouth working but no sounds coming out. Finally he found his voice. “What the fuck kinda freak are you?”

Roan let him go, took his foot off of him, but otherwise didn’t move, just kept his head down and his eyes focused on the man, who suddenly had lost all will to fight. He scrambled away desperately, his eyes frozen on him, and only when he hit the newspaper machine near the corner did he hastily scramble to his feet and take off running.

Roan closed his eyes and turned away, forcing his anger back, which was always harder than calling it up in the first place. But he had to get better at it. If he could do this, then he had to learn how to make it work for him.

He was wiping the blood off his face when he heard Holden say, “Well, I was going to ask if you needed help, but that’s a stupid question.”

His back was to the car, so Holden couldn’t see how far he’d transformed. He walked down the street and spit blood into an open sewer grate before walking back. He felt like he was back to normal, but needles of pain had settled deep into his brain, and his gums felt like they had been cut with sharp dental implements. “Your concern was laudable, but unnecessary. The day I can’t handle a dickwad like that is the day I deserve to get my ass kicked.”

Holden smiled slyly at him over the roof of the car. “I am so turned on right now.”

“Shut up,” he snapped, getting back in the car. He hoped that Holden had some kind of painkillers, but truth be told he was almost afraid to ask.