Those to be Forgiven

Published: 25 Jan 2018

In your report for us you state that it was you who took Ives life: in self defence.

I didn’t want trouble for the kid. He’d been through enough in the fifteen miserable years he’d had on this planet so far. To tar him for taking the life of his captor… it didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem fair.

I understand that Mr Quaid but it’s not the first time you’ve changed the facts of the story.

You calling me a liar?

Maybe not a liar. But the differences between your report and your account to me here today are… inconsistent.

Sounds alot like you’re calling me a liar.

I understand why… the parts that you felt weren’t important so missed out… protecting the boy… But it does make it difficult for me to trust your account. And we need to absolutely clear here Mr Quaid. You need me to trust your account.

When you make out your reports… I assume you make out reports?

Every organization requires a certain amount of paperwork.

When you make out your reports do you find yourself having to present… alternative facts?

It depends entirely on the situation but yes. At times it’s necessary. I present as much of the facts of any given case as is required for understanding.

So you lie.

I wouldn’t calling it lying.

Misrepresenting the facts maybe?

I wouldn’t call it that either.

A prevarication then?

Perhaps there are times when a certain evasiveness is required.

So you take my point.

I take your point.

By claiming, as I did in the report, that I had defended myself against Ives I wasn’t lying. I was and had been defending myself. I just wanted to keep Mike out of it as much as possible.

Who do you think that you’re protecting the boy from Mr Quaid?

Well I still don’t know a great deal about you do I?

I would hope that you know enough to realise that we pose no threat to you or Mike.

I would hope that too but while we’re being honest with one another let’s not pretend that you and yours have been exactly… honourable in your dealings with me.

If you’re referring to…

You know exactly what I’m referring to.

(…)

But we’re not there yet are we?

(…)

(…)

So what happened next Mr Quaid?

It took me a little while to pull Mike out from the shock. I walked him outside and sat him on one of the sofas – grabbing him a can of Coke from the refrigerator in the makeshift shed. He mostly just stared forward for a little while, as I used a moist towelette from the kitchen of Johnny’s trailer to wipe the specks of blood from his hands and cheek.

The kid was strong. I mean, he had to be to endure what he had already for the last five years. But doing something like that. Taking a life. Even the life of a monster like Johnny Ives will leave a body shaken.

“I’m sorry.” He said eventually as he pulled himself out from the shadows that were cast behind his eyes.

“You’ve no need to feel sorry. You saved my life.” My voice was a little raspier than usual thanks to Ives’ grip and I rubbed at my red raw throat as I looked in the driver’s side window of the truck – seeing the marks left from his hands. I also saw that he had left the keys in the ignition.

Mike looked up at me, can of Coke in hand; wide wet eyes.

“Johnny Ives deserved worse.” I meant it. Even if I felt a little uneasy casting myself as someone who could pass moral judgment on others.

“What’ll happen to me?”

“I guess that’s up to you.” I took the Coke from his hands and sipped at it gingerly before handing it back and sitting down beside him – my hand resting on his shoulder. “You’re old enough that I don’t feel the need to tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing.”

“Should we go to the police?”

I found it difficult to fathom a world where Johnny Ives did what he did and got away with it for so long without the knowledge of someone in law enforcement. Making Mike go to the cops seemed less like a solution and more like an invitation to retribution. Besides; the hooded men he had spoken about earlier… the Hurdy Gurdy Man… I still had no clue as to who they were or what their involvement with Ives led to; to what sort of world it would open up.

“Maybe I can stay with you for a day or two? Until I figure something out?”

“You hardly know me kid.”

“I know you’re a good man.”

“That’s a subjective notion.”

“A what?”

I smiled and shook my head: “I didn’t do anything most other people wouldn’t have done in my shoes.”

“You and your friend… you rescued us. Me and the other boys I mean. I know that you didn’t have to. I know that you help people. Which is more than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

Funny how someone who had absolutely no reason to trust another human being ever again could so quickly put his faith in a stranger. I stood and moved my hand from his shoulder to the back of his head.

“What now?” He asked looking up at me.

“Now we empty Ives trailer into his truck. Anything that might be useful. Then we find Pickman in Goldsboro.”

We loaded up the 8mm film canisters, the VHS tapes, a handful of DVD’s and Ives’s laptop into the truck. I took his notebook and pocketed it into my jacket; the one with the almost vowelless writing and the profane childlike sketches.

Stepping over Ives body I gave him a final look before leaving, while Mike got into the passenger’s side of the vehicle. I don’t know what I was expecting. If he was as old as he claimed and some sort of magic or whatever was used… I mean I really don’t know what I was expecting… like maybe he was supposed to age before my eyes and in death become the fifty or sixty or hundred year old man he really was in life… maybe he would crumble to dust like Vampires do in old movies… But Johnny Ives stayed put on the floor, the kitchen knife through his neck and the puddle of blood around his head, black in the loursome light, twenty-something years old. Believing that he was anything else than what he looked like really didn’t seem like an option.

We drove back in silence to Penny’s Diner in Goldsboro. I had the radio tuned to a local news station wondering if one of the boys Pickman had taken to the hospital would have given the game away. But Mike was as good as his word. The kids had kept quiet.

I parked up beside Pickman’s shitty Ford Pinto at the disused factory building, where we had watched and waited for Ives, happy that he hadn’t used the Diner’s carpark.

“You hungry?” I asked the kid.

He thought for a moment; “Not really.”

“You should eat.”

“I keep thinking… about what I did to Johnny.”

“That’s not going to go anywhere anytime soon.” There was no point sugarcoating it. “Probably not for a long time. Doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat though.”

“Don’t it bother you?”

I sighed and thought. Really thought. Should I have been more upset than I was? A man died on top of me. I saw him killed and his blood splash my face. But I kept thinking about the kind of man that Johnny Ives was. What his life had cost others… it was like Roland Burgess had said back in his office: ‘The world will not weep for Johnny Ives’.

“It bothers me that a man lost his life tonight.” I answered finally. “But you said it yourself back at the trailer park. He deserved worse. What you did in taking his life saved a whole lot of others.”

My phone buzzed on silent in my pocket. It was Pickman. When I slid to answer I saw him crossing the road and jogging toward us waving. I hung up, put the phone back, and got out of the truck.

“I was about to give up on you.” Pickman had his hand on my shoulder.

“Took a little longer than I had planned is all.”

“Jesus Christ Ramsay! What in the fuck happened to your neck?” Pickman tilted my head upwards so he could get a better look.

“Turns out you can’t tie knots for shit.” I said smiling. “Do me a favour and open your car.”

“That was my best clove hitch!” I walked with him over to his car. As soon as he unlocked it I reached into the glovebox. “Dude must’ve been crazy strong.”

“Well he wasn’t exactly a feeble old lady.” I downed what was left of the whisky with something akin to gusto. Throwing the empty bottle back into the car when done.

Pickman pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one as he noticed the kid looking out at us from the truck: “Ramsay? What’s with the kid?”

“He’s going to tag along with us for a couple of days.”

“To New York?”

“Just for a couple of days.”

Pickman looked unsure. “You know what you’re doing here?”

I looked back at the kid who suddenly turned away from us as if caught staring. “I thinks so.”

We stood for a moment the two of us in the night – the lamps from across the street our only source of light. Pickman smoking nervously, me staring at the parking lot across the road from us.

“You get the kids to a hospital OK?”

“Yeah. They’ll be fine.”

“Good.” My hand landed on his shoulder. “Your good deed for the day might just wipe off some of your debt to the man upstairs.”

He snorted: “If there is a man upstairs and he allows guys like Johnny Ives to do what they do… then I don’t owe him shit.”

Pickman and the kid transferred the contents from Johnny’s truck to the trunk of Pickman’s Pinto while I wiped down anything that my hands touched with another moist towelette. I instructed Pickman to drive out onto the road as Mike got into the backseat. Once on concrete I kicked at the dirt his car driven over. Trying to clear away any tracks from his wheels.

“You think that we could maybe get a motel or something?” Pickman asked after I jogged to the car and slid into the passenger’s seat. “We’ve been on the go since you woke me yesterday morning.”

The idea appealed. From being dragged to Keena’s club, to meeting Christian Christiansands, to trailing five hundred miles to find Johnny Ives; I’d had maybe four hours sleep in the last seventy-two hours.

“Okay. But not in Goldsboro.”

We got as far as Rocky Mount before I felt comfortable enough to call it a day.

The Motel was fine, if exactly what you would expect. Basic. We took two rooms. A double for Pickman and a twin for me and the boy. When I tried to get him his own room Mike had asked to share with me. I guessed that somehow he maybe felt safer that way.

While Pickman disappeared into his room next to ours, not to be seen until the next morning, I headed across the road to an all night convenience store and bought some chips and soda for Mike and a bottle of Jim Beam Black for me. The clerk took one look as I entered: hand in a cast, two shiners, band-aid over my nose and throat choked raw and I saw him reach under his desk to make sure his ‘protection’ was to hand.

When I got back to the room I found Mike sitting cross-legged on one of the beds watching some cop show from the seventies. It was all blaring sirens and speeding cars. I tossed him the chips and soda and then slumped on my own bed. As soon as my ass hit the surprisingly comfortable mattress I realised how bone tired I was.

“You should get a shower and hit the hay.” I unscrewed the cap of the whisky and took a sip. “I won’t be far behind you and we probably shouldn’t hang around for any great length of time.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.” Mike was looking across at me, unopened chips and soda in his lap. “For what you’ve done I mean.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” I kicked off my shoes and crawled up the bed.

“Earlier… You said that you had a husband…” The kid was being cagey while prodding at the corners of my life. “Is he in New York?”

“Seattle.”

“You don’t live together?”

I laughed. “Sorry, no. He’s in Seattle on business. For his job. We live together.”

“Does he know… what you do?”

“The Private Investigator thing?”

Mike nodded.

“Yeah. He knows. This would piss him off though.”

“Being in here with me?”

“No. Traipsing around the country without telling him.”

Mike stood and kicked off his sneakers. Sat back down and pulled off his socks. “Why’d you not tell him?”

“He’d worry.” I took another slug of whisky and kept my eyes on the television: the old NYPD black and whites hurtling around the streets. “It’s best that he doesn’t worry.”

As I turned on the bed I felt something digging into my hip. When I reached to find out what it was, I pulled out Johnny Ives notebook from my pocket. I’d forgotten I had it. Sitting up I took off my jacket and tossed it over a nearby chair. I put Ives’s notebook on the side table between our beds and unbuttoned my shirt. Noticing Mike’s eyes on me, I smiled at him.

“Go shower. Then bed.”

He stood and pulled off his basketball vest. I thought that given the opportunity I should maybe buy him a couple of new shirts. Maybe a pair of jeans. Some new sneakers…

I know that my eyes were resting on his skinny torso for too long. He looked good with his shirt off: tight packed muscles and a high smooth chest. Not a hair on him other than dark glistening patches in his pits..

My eyes stayed on him as he dropped his black basketball shorts to the floor: Smooth tan thighs and just enough sparse dark hairs on his calves to show that he wasn’t exactly a little boy any more.

Standing in just his loose fitting plaid boxer-shorts he watched me watching him until I caught myself and looked away – taking another slug of the Jim Beam.

“You should shower. There are towels hanging by the wash basin.”

He nodded unsure and disappeared into the bathroom.

When I heard the shower start running I checked my phone to see two missed calls from David. I should have called him back – but it was late and I was tired. I sent him a text to ease any worries he may have been having, telling him I’d call him the next night and switched my phone off.

I lay on the bed for a while still trying to process the last few days. The case of the missing kid Donny Baldwin had grown into something that was stranger than I could ever have foreseen. The addition of this cult element was only muddying the waters further. It’s strange, I thought. I could just about process the horrors that humans visit one another but when you throw in something like Johnny Ives, a man who should have been at least in his fifties looking like he was twenty-five…

Another glug of whisky and I reached for Ives’s notebook from the side table. Leafing through the pages I could see that it was intricate. That it was considered. That he had spent an inordinate amount of time and effort on it. But it still made very little sense. The few words of English in there seemed to be translations of a few lines Nothing else in any other language that looked even vaguely familiar, The infantile drawings, when just recognisable shapes, could easily have been the doodles of any one of us while we sit absentmindedly on the phone. The more intricate sketches though: that was shit torn from nightmares. As well at the mouth covered oozing penis were drawings of creatures so bizarre that their existence would have been physically impossible. Foul and distasteful, fish looking men with oversized erections, something that looked like a toothed virgina with short kneeless legs… If Ives’s rantings and ravings back at his trailer hadn’t made me believe he operated on a different level of sanity to the rest of us, then that damned notebook of his had. I made up my mind to take it to occult store I knew in Lower Manhattan. The old woman who owned it had helped me out once when I was trying to track down a guy who had been fencing stolen books. I reminded myself that I also had to search out more information on the two Stephens: Sisk and Crops. Everything had moved so fast since Roland had given me those names three nights ago that I hadn’t had the opportunity to look into them properly. I was also waiting for Christian Christiansands man to call with any leads he had on The Dutchman Daan Dieprink… I know I was dog tired but my head was kind of spinning with all that was still to do.

While looking through the notebook I hadn’t heard the shower shut off or Mike return. It was his cough to get my attention that made me look up at him.

He stood in front of me – at the end of my bed; his dark hair damp; beads of water dappled across his tan chest and shoulders; a far too small towel slung far too low around his waist – barely covering the tops of thighs and displaying the top of a dark bush of pubic hair. I’m positive that he heard me catch a sharp intake of breath as I looked over him.

“Good shower?” I finally coughed out as I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

“Yeah.” he was blushing. “I feel much better now. Thanks.”

He stood there, watching me watch him. There was no doubt as to my attraction to the boy. And he knew it.

You asked me why I fudged certain facts in the report that I gave you. Well we all want to be thought of as better men than we truly are. And while I had never so much as looked at a kid Mike’s age in the past I won’t deny that the case was fucking with my head. I told you that already.

“I should probably shower too.” I stood up only for Mike to step forward to me. To place his hands on my elbows…

“I… I want to thank you for what you’ve done.” He stood up on tip toes and kissed my lips. He kissed my lips and I let him. I even found myself returning that kiss as my good hand found his hip and ran up the soft clean skin of his bare back, finally resting at back of his head, my fingers going into his still wet hair…

Thankfully I found the presence of mind to pull apart from him.

“No.” My hands on his bare shoulders gently pushing him away from me. “I can’t… We can’t.”

“But…”

“No. You’re far too young. You’re vulnerable… I’m married. I love my husband.” I don’t know who I was listing off the reasons for; him or me.

“I see the way you look at me. You like me. You like looking at me. I want to thank you.”

I let go of his shoulders as he stepped forward again; this time I brushed past him. “That’s not how people thank each other.”

As I reached the bathroom door I heard him sobbing. I won’t pretend to understand it. The circumstances that led to him defining how he interacted with other people by the sexual favours he could offer them. That’s not how fifteen year-old boys are supposed to be. Wherever Johnny Ives soul went after death, it had a lot to answer for.

I left him sobbing on his bed, wrapped a plastic bag around the cast or my left hand, showered… and jacked off thinking about him. Thinking about his body. The kiss he had given me…

Yeah. I hated myself for that; during and after. I still did it though.

What?

You wanted to know the truth. If you don’t like it, don’t ask!

After about twenty minutes I went back through to find Mike asleep under the covers of his bed. Or at least pretending like he was.

I shut off the television. Switched off the bedside lamps. Took another couple of shots of the whisky and went to sleep. Christ did I need it.

You asked me about my dreams; they had been fucked-up since I began working on the case: Images of Donny Baldwin flickering behind the click-clack of a reel to reel film projector. Me taking photos of him, Me stroking my hands over his smooth tan legs and up his thighs until my fingers grazed the white cotton of his tighty whiteys. Snatches of The Hurdy Gurdy Man playing in and out from behind locked doors. The smell of vaseline, of incense; of ash; of pork fat crackling on a fire.

That night I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and the dreams seemed to come the moment my eyes were closed: Johnny Ives was a ringmaster in a circus, a dank smelling thing, sweaty socks and semen… A endless parade of boys danced around him to the strained bourdon of a tambura. I sat alone in the audience, my hand down the front of my slacks touching myself. Ives called Donny to the centre ring and the boy stepped out from behind a set of curtains, from spotlight to spotlight but once beside Ives it was Mike who came. Dressed in his Tar Heels basketball vest and black shorts, bare feet coated in specks of sawdust from the floor. Ives proceeded to molest the boy for my entertainment. His hands fondling the Mikes body, his words little more than a wolf’s howl or a lions roar in my ears… Then everything went black. Then a spotlight on Donny who was Mike but suddenly Donny again under the sheer glare. The Hurdy Gurdy Man once more. But sung in that vile language that Ives had spoken at his trailer park. In my dream I vomited on myself while I continued to masturbate… You got any psych books that will explain that one?

When I woke up the light was streaming through the thin pieces of material that passed for curtains and Pickman was banging on the door calling my name. I also found that Mike had crawled into bed with me and positioned himself as the little spoon with my arm draped over him.

In the half light I blinked unsure that I wasn’t still dreaming, but Pickman bursting through the door after eventually trying the handle put pay to that theory. He stopped in the doorway staring at us with his mouth agape.

“It’s not what you think it is!” I said pulling myself away from Mike who was just waking from his slumber. I sat up and told him: “Close the door before someone walks by and gets the wrong idea.”

Pickman closed the door as Mike shot up out of the bed.

“Did you two…”

“No!” I shut him down quickly.

“Look, I don’t… well I don’t think I don’t mind… but…”

“Pickman! Nothing happened.”

Mike was quick to speak up once fully awake. “He’s telling the truth. Nothing happened. I woke up kinda frightened and crawled into bed with Ramsay. He wouldn’t do that. He’s too good a man.”

Suddenly remembering what I had done in the shower the night before, I didn’t feel like I was.

I stood up and pulled on my slacks and shirt: “What are you doing banging on the door anyway? What time is it?”

“It’s a little after eight.” I’d managed about seven hours sleep. Pickman was already quickly moving over to the television and turning it on. “I came as soon as I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

I nodded to Mike, motioning for him to put his clothes on while Pickman skipped through the channels. Eventually he landed on a local news station.

“…discovered by law enforcement officers in the early hours of this morning. The man, suspected to be a Goldsboro resident, was found with a kitchen knife through his neck on the floor of his trailer…”

Pickman looked from the woman reading the news in her monotone voice to me and then back again. I looked to Mike as he pulled his shorts up over his thighs. He stood there, vest in hand kind of dumbfounded.

“…While official sources have released little information to the press at this time it is believed that as yet local police have no suspects for what appears to be a grisly murder scene…”

“No suspects!” Pickman looking a little relieved.

“We should go. Get back to The City as soon as possible.”

I looked at Mike, now dressed and sitting on the side of his bed. “How long before one of the kids breaks?”

“You mean says something?”

I nodded.

“They’ll keep quiet.”

“But if the cops put two and two together and tie the sudden appearance of nine kids at a hospital not twenty miles away from a perverts murder scene…” Pickman was up and about to break into full jitters.

“It was self defence.” Mike interceded.

“They didn’t mention the wealth of kiddy porn so they’ve not told the press. Assuming that the cops didn’t have a relationship with Ives they’ll connect the dots to the other kids once they go through the other trailers. Providing that they haven’t done so already.” I looked at the bottle of whisky on the side table between the two beds. It was too early. Even if I was starting to feel the same pangs that Freddy Bianchi must feel every morning. “We need to put as much distance between us and Goldsboro as possible.”

“The waitress…” Pickman looking to me. “At the Diner. She’ll tell them it was us asking for him.”

“The card I showed her wasn’t a real one. A pseudonym with a telephone number for a dry cleaners in Queens.” I pulled out one of the fake cards from my jacket pocket for Pickman to see. “Even if she can remember the details they’ll be chasing a man named Rolo Exley.”

“She’ll recognise our faces though. What about security cameras! Shit! Shit! Shitshitshitshitshit FUCK!” Pickman was pacing.

“There were no cameras anywhere near the diner… we’ll be fine… Saying all that though, with only sixty miles between us and the crime scene we should get moving.” I was tying the laces of my shoes. “They’ll widen the search. Getting back to The City as soon as possible and hiding your heap of junk ride for another five or ten years is the priority.”

It didn’t take us ten minutes before we were out in the car and driving through Rocky Mount. The sooner that we got back to The City the better.

To Be Continued…

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