Those to be Forgiven

Published: 14 Dec 2017

So you helped your friend?

Pickman’s not a friend. He’s an associate.

Like junkies have? Did you plan on stabbing him in the eye?

Maybe he was a friend.

And you helped him?

He was useful, of course I helped him.

Do you grade all your friends on their “usefulness” to you?

I’m not a complete sociopath.

How was David “useful” to you?

Excuse me?

Peter Pickman, Darnell Cooper, Freddy Bianchi… people you’ve called your friends or your family (or as close as) seem to all have uses for your work. I just wondered if you had thought about your husband in those same terms.

Fuck you!

There’s no need to be unpleasant Mr Ramsay.

Fuck! You!

Well how about we come back to that observation…

You know something? I’m here because I was invited, right? You think that I may be of some use to you and… whatever game you’ve got going here. This isn’t a deposition and I can stand up and go anytime I like. I’m here by my own good graces. You keep up this combative bullshit and you can watch me walk out of that door…

I’m merely trying to…

You’re “merely” aping some Doctor Phil crap you’ve seen some fringe science quack spout on TV. What you’re asking has little to no bearing on the case you want me to talk about.

If you’ll let me finish Mr Quaid…

(…)

I’m merely trying to learn more about you. It helps me understand some of the conclusions that you’ve drawn and as I have said before may go some way to explaining some of the choices that you had made over the course of this case. The mention of these new characters… Christian Christiansands and Daan Dieprink… they don’t make it into your report… Well one of them doesn’t.

Because he had no bearing on the outcome.

So why mention him now?

Because you asked for a fuller account. You want to know the things that was running through my mind at the time, what I was dealing with… this is what I was dealing with.

What about the old woman and her son you mentioned. How did Peter Pickman describe it to you?

Pearls before swine.

Pearls before swine… I understand why you mention it now but I don’t think I fully understand why you felt the need to go to that extreme. Would it not have been better to go to the authorities?

I don’t see what this tells you about the missing boy.

It tells me nothing about the missing boy Mr Ramsay. But it does tell me about you. So I’ll ask again: would it not have better to go to the authorities?

If I’d have involved the cops the old girl would have found out that her son had OD’d.

And?

And she was sweet if misguided. There are thousands of different reasons why kids become junkies. Nature and nurture are your starting points but they spiral off from there. She would have hated herself to lose her son. At least this way she was still left with some hope…

And when he doesn’t return to her clean and drug free? What then?

Then she keeps hoping that he’ll knock on her door one day. Better to live with hope than none at all.

Even when it’s a lie?

Even when it’s a lie.

And have you ever… needed the services of the pig farmer since?

Would you like me to lie to you?

(…)

You asked about the authorities. Why I didn’t go to them. Would you have?

This isn’t about me Mr Quaid.

No but I’d like an idea of who I’m talking to.

We don’t… we don’t really deal with the authorities here Mr Quaid. Absolutes like black and white and right and wrong don’t have a place in our line of work. We like to think outside the box. Like you do.

So, personally, if you were in the same situation? You would have done what I did?

Maybe not in the same way but the end result would probably have been the same.

See! You’re not such a disagreeable asshole after all.

Back to the case now please Mr Ramsay. The next day, that would have been the Thursday? The next day was when you received the email?

Yeah… but… but not until later that night…

I had stayed up late on the Wednesday night.

After meeting with Pickman I went to the office for all of an hour but with all this talk of Christian Christiansands I was feeling restless and wasn’t getting any work done. So I walked the City for a couple of hours. Every out of place noise: every backfiring car or shout of anger had me looking over my shoulder. Eventually I went home to David.

Walking through the door of our apartment and seeing him sitting on the sofa with a mug of his herbal tea steaming in hand and reading work papers that were scattered all over the coffee table – I had felt some comfort in the normalcy of it. Like getting a hug I guess. He didn’t hear me come in. Too caught up in what he was reading. I hung up my coat, put down my briefcase and, crossing over to him, kissed the top of his head – which was returned with a startled little yelp and a slap to my shoulder.

“Jesus Ramsay! I’m too young to have a heart attack!” He put down his mug on the table and leant over the back of the sofa, wrapping his arms around my waist.

I kissed his crown again and hugged him back: “Sorry. You looked busy.”

“Nothing that can’t wait a few minutes.” He lifted his head and I leaned down – we shared a soft open mouthed kiss, the kind that both parties smile into with a breathy sigh.

“Have you eaten?” I asked him.

“I had something at the office. Thought that it was getting late. There’s some lasagne in the fridge though if you’re hungry,”

“Not really.” I sat down next to him put my arm around his shoulder, pulling him into me. “What are you working on?”

“Nothing terribly exciting. Just going through some papers ahead of a meeting tomorrow. How about you? How was… Pickman?” I could hear the distaste for that name in his voice. They had met a handful of times and once or twice Pickman was buzzing when they did. I tried to keep them apart but the little weasel had popped up a few times while David and I had been out at dinner or a bar.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just… he’s just Pickman. There’s always a certain amount of excess stress on Pickman days.”

“And tomorrow there will be weather!”

“And tomorrow there will be weather.” It was something we’d say to each other whenever feeling slightly exasperated by the world around us. Particularly the people in that world. Our little way of reminding the other there are always constants. That we were each other constants.

“I did meet up with Darnell this morning.”

“Oh?” David’s hand snaked to the inside of my thigh and the pads of his fingers ran circles, his knuckles grazing my balls. “And what were you doing with the handsome Mr Cooper?”

“Computer problems. I left him my laptop. He’s looking forward to dinner on Saturday night. Say’s you promised him Risotto…”

“You know my seafood risotto is famous!” I closed my eyes and felt him nuzzle into my chest.

“Only to be made when trying to impress handsome guests though.” I smiled as his hand worked up and over the hardness that had formed in my slacks. He massaged me there and I spread my legs a little further apart.

“Are you jealous?” His fingers ran the length of my constrained erection.

“I’m jealous I don’t get your seafood risotto more often.”

“You’d be bored of it I made it every week.” He sat up, kissed me quickly on the lips and then stood – gathering up his papers.

I looked from him to the tent he’d given me in my trousers and back again. “Hey! Are you gonna finish what you started?” I smiled up at him and nodded my head to my crotch.

“Later.” He leant in and kissed me again. “I’ve got to get these notes prepared for the meeting.”

“You don’t have to go. I’ll go to the office…”

“It’s fine. I’ll work in the bedroom, you stay here and wind down. After hanging out with Pickman I’d dare say you could use it.” He leant down once more and kissed me deeper, his tongue dancing across the tip of mine. “When I’m done, we’ll work off that ‘excess stress’ together.” He winked at me and left.

I kicked off my shoes and put my feet up on the coffee table while reaching for the remote. There was nothing that really held any interest for me until I stumbled across some ‘greatest albums of the last century countdown’ on VH1. They were just wrapping up on “The Miseducation of Lauren HIll” when the number 36 flashed over the screen: ‘Off the Wall’ by Michael Jackson.

It didn’t hit me straight away. Not until the annoying voice over talked about the album’s long production from ‘78 to ‘79 and release in August that year.

I stared at the screen a little while longer before jumping over the back of the sofa and grabbing my briefcase. I pulled out the manilla envelope and the photos of young Donny Baldwin bound and gagged on the bed. And there on top of the stack of albums on the floor was the vinyl of ‘Off the Wall’.

Now usually I’m a little quicker to piece things together but it took me few moments. Donny Baldwin, thirteen years-old, had been kidnapped from Caswell Avenue at around six thirty am on the 31st of July 1977… Donny was still alive two years after his kidnapping. Two years of enduring whatever… whatever this was!

I went back into my case for the police file and pulled out school photo of Donny taken only a few weeks earlier and lay it beside the less savoury images. Two years! Two years had passed between the photo’s being taken. Not only had the kid been alive longer than I would have guessed. He seemingly hadn’t aged a day…

I looked over the photo’s again – trying to find anything that I might have missed – any clue for a date and location… but there was nothing. And my eyes kept being drawn back to the boy’s lithe tan body.

You know there are things that shouldn’t excite you. Things that should make you feel ill – things that you’re convinced that everyone else would recoil away from in disgust if confronted with. I’m a grown man, with no history of such feelings or desires darker than a maybe a little firmer slap and tickle with my husband… but there I was… staring at the photo’s that I’d spread out across the coffee table and stroking my erection through my pants.

I don’t know how long I’d been looking at those photos but it was during the watery bass arpeggio intro on Nirvana’s “Come as you are” that I was pulled back out. Cobain’s voice croaking that false unconditional invitation of judgement free kinship while each response line contradicted the first – hiding a secret agenda – his motivation never less than clear… When I looked up to the screen I saw that they’d reached number two in their countdown. Just over an hour… Just over an hour I’d been staring at those photo’s…

Shaking my head I threw the photo’s back in the briefcase with little care and grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen. Two, actually.

When I poked my head around the bedroom door I saw David asleep on the bed – his papers scattered all around him on the sheets. I remember thinking that I could wake him – get him to pick up the tease from earlier, instead I collected up his notes and put them on the bedside table – covered him with a blanket and went through to the home office.

I fired up the desktop and opened my emails. The cable bill was due, Netflix had just added a film I might like and my Dad had sent me six more photo’s of his new husky puppies… and there was the link that Darnell had sent me…

I clicked it and opened the porn site. Immediately the video of the two teenagers started playing: “Cine Boys No. 32”. As “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” struck up again I sat back in my chair… They were good looking kids. And they seemed happy to be there. Whether they were putting on a show or genuinely into the scene I’m not going to speculate. The idea that I had in my head about that sort of thing… about what the kids made to do those sorts of films reactions and expressions would be – wasn’t evident.

I must have watched seven of the video’s on that site that were also labelled as “Cine Boys” films. Doing as Darnell suggested and following the links through the similar video’s tab I found more boys too young to be on there: too young to be doing the shit that whoever was behind the camera had them doing.

Of the video’s that I watched they were all of a style. They boys never older than what? Maybe seventeen at the most – the youngest I would have put at about twelve or thirteen. All were healthy and tan. All were smiling and seemingly enjoying what they were doing. All were just kids… I went back to the first one that I had loaded up: The two brunettes at the poolside. The older one lay on his back – his hands on the hips of the younger who sat astride his lap. The camera focused on his slicked up cock as he penetrated his partner’s hole… The look on that kids face… you could tell it was his first time…

Why am I telling you this?

I don’t… I don’t fuckin know… There’s nothing to be gained here from sugar coating what was happening to me while I was on this case. And you were right. I did find the pictures of Donny arousing. I shouldn’t have said that I didn’t. I found these video’s arousing too…

I must have spent a couple of hours just watching. The digitised 8mm film loops flickering on the screen in the dark of the office.

Eventually something in me clicked and I realised that I was watching these video’s with a less than investigative eye. So I went back through to the kitchen and grabbed another couple of glasses of water. My hands shaking as I stared at my reflection in the window and tried to pull focus. You ever do that? Catch yourself? That Naked Lunch moment where time freezes and you truly see what’s on the end of your fork?

I went back to the office with renewed focus. I made notes: the number of boys, the various locations… Anything that I thought might have been useful. Donny wasn’t in any of them but the garden with the pool and the mosaic patterned wall featured a few times. There were lots of bedroom interiors and what I assumed to be a static trailer that featured in four of the videos. Most of the films had a run time of about twenty five minutes, each featuring two to three scenes of different boys in different locations. The one that I started with: the two boys on the grass. That had a runtime of twenty three minutes on it’s own. No other scenes involved.

Within all the clips there were four boys, that as far as I could tell, had made more than one film and a total of eighteen kids across fourteen scenes.

About a third of the scenes were just one kid jerking off on his own – all of them had a sort of questioning and distant look in their eyes while they stroked their cocks or played with their asses… A few smiled. Of the duo’s and threesomes I have to admit that the boy’s didn’t look coerced. Their sticky juvenile fumblings were the sort that I remembered well – having done them with David at that age – all exploring hands and nervous giggles and little idea of what actually went where.

I looked over the list I had made. Eighteen boys…

A quick internet search for “Cine Boys” turned up surprisingly little. Did you know that there’s a K-Pop band called Cine Boys!!!? Three exclamation points! I watched a youtube video out of interest. Not my thing but the guys were cute. When I added in ‘gay’ and ‘porn’ into the search bar I just found a bunch tumblrs filled with fanfics about said Korean band. On about page fifteen of the search it started to open up into links to the site I had just been on and a few inactive torrents. There were a couple of newsgroups that wouldn’t load when I clicked them but beyond that, nothing.

When I noticed that it was nearly five in the morning, where that time had gone I don’t know, I cleared the computer’s history and shut it off.

David was still asleep in his clothes on our bed. I stripped, got under the covers and after about half an hour fell into a restless dream filled sleep. I don’t remember them well from that first time – snatches of the film clips I’d viewed that evening – Donny on the bed bound and gagged – me standing over him with the camera…

I only woke up because I heard David drop his aftershave bottle, after dressing, and swearing like a sailor. Freshly showered he looked especially handsome in his best suit – the dark blue one he reserved for important meetings. When he saw me sit up and rub the balls of my hands into my eyes he came and sat by me on the bed and kissed me softly – his hand on the side of my face – his thumb gently stroking my cheek…

“You could have woken me last night…”

“You looked so peaceful. And you needed your rest for this morning.”

“It’s not so important.” he kissed me again.

“That’s why you’re wearing your best suit?”

“OK. Maybe it’s a little bit important. What time did you get to bed last night?”

“After I saw you sleeping I went and did a little work in the office… it was late.” It was me who leant in and kissed him that time. Pulling him into me and parting his lips with my tongue. My hand went to his bicep and he flexed it under his jacket. I giggled a little into our kiss and could feel him smiling back at me.

“When I come home tonight,” he began, standing up and brushing the creases out of his trousers, “you and I are going to catch up on what we missed last night!”

I was hard at the mere thought and I pulled the blankets down over my thighs to show him.

“How much time do you have now?” I winked at him and saw the front of his dress pants tighten in response. You have any idea how lucky I felt that after twenty years together we still had that immediate a physical response to each other?

“Not enough, unfortunately.” he adjusted himself through his pants. “Tonight though… all night…” he leaned in and kissed me again – his hand gripping my hard cock to give it a little tug.

I stayed sitting up in bed until I heard the front door of our apartment close. Then I pulled the sheets up over my head and went back to sleep.

It was ten o’clock when I woke up because my cell was ringing: Pickman was calling from the same burner he had dialled from the day before.

“What?” I growled into the phone.

“You figured out what we’re going to do about this ‘thing’?”

“I’m trying to sleep!”

“Not to harass you or anything but it’s kinda time sensitive here.”

“It’s time sensitive to you. Not to me.”

“You’re a real prick you know that?”

I sat up in bed as a thought occurred to me. If I was going to try and help him out with his ‘thing’ maybe he could help me out with mine: “I’ll do it, just give me time. First I need a your help with something.”

“What?”

“Quid pro quo!”

“Over the years there’s been a lot of quidding from my direction and very little quoing from yours…”

“Do you want my help or not?”

He was silent for a moment before I heard him sigh into the receiver: “What do you need?”

“I need to find out about some porno?”

“The internet is filled…”

“No! I need to find a… specialist I guess. Someone who knows about the production of old films.”

“What kind of films?”

“Old 8mm film loops. The er… less than regular kind.”

“You need to be more specific. I can’t quid if you don’t give me all the information.”

“Underage boys.” I could feel him hold his breath on the other end of the phone. “Old 8mm film loops featuring underage boys. I need to know about their production. Anyone out there that might be able help me?”

“Is… Is this for a case?”

“Of course it’s for a fucking case.”

“Oh! OK then!” He sounded unsure, like something he suspected about me all along had finally come to fruition. Maybe I was still a little paranoid. “Roland Burgess. You’ll need to see Roland Burgess.”

“And where will I find Roland Burgess?”

“Soho.”

I reached for the pad of paper and pen from the bedside table drawer and wrote down the address and telephone number that Pickman had pulled from his memory.

“You think you could set up a meeting for me?”

“What? Your fingers broken? You can’t dial the number yourself?”

“Pickman?” Speaking to the weasel was sometimes exhausting work. “Will you please set up a meeting for me?”

“OK OK… I’ll call him up after I get off the phone with you. He’s… he’s an interesting guy.”

“Interesting? Interesting in what way?.”

“You have your idea’s about people and what they should be like based on what they do for a living or what they’re into… Roland is… different.”

My interest was piqued. I don’t think Pickman had ever warned me about a contact he’d set me up with before… After promising to call him later in the day with an aim to find him a new hiding spot and getting the Dutchman’s card to Christian – I hung up, pulled the covers over my head once more and went back to sleep.

I woke up naturally a little after one in the afternoon. I went to the bathroom took a leak and walked naked to the kitchen where I made myself a coffee and stuffed a few of Mrs Bonelli’s Bombolonas into my mouth. Healthy breakfast huh?

While I showered I kept thinking about the video’s that had kept me up til morning and seeing as we’re past the point of fudging the truth, I’ll admit to chubbing up while I did so. I promise you that the thoughts that were crossing my mind then had not even entered my mind before I took the case.

After dressing I texted David to ask how his meeting went and headed out to the office. He replied as I opened the front door to leave with a gif of Wylie Coyote falling off a cliff.

In my office I sat with a paper cup of coffee for a few minutes: letting the facts of the Donny Baldwin case file out in my mind. I wrote down the timeline as I knew it. I do that. It’s a hangover from studying at Ithaca. Helps me straighten things out.

Donny was last seen on July 31st 1977 by Mikey O’Hare at around six thirty am talking to a man with glasses and a soul patch, sitting in a silver Ford LTD on Caswell Avenue – the car had Iowa plates. His bike, his truck of papers… left at the side of the road. The police wait seventy-two hours and then perform a perfunctory search of the area and turn up nothing. During those seventy-two hours the locals search the area. The case is closed and marked as “report filed in error” a few days later. Donny Baldwin was a suspected runaway to all but those who knew him. In the Summer of 1979 the officer in charge of the precinct at that time, Assistant Chief Raganella, shoots himself in the neck in his backyard. At some point after August that same year Donny is photographed bound and gagged on a bed. Either before or just after that he turns up in an 8mm film loop with two other boys. The location of that film had been used in several pornography loops labeled “Cine Boys”.

See? Straightens things out!

I searched online for reports about Assistant Chief Raganella but could find little. He was a decorated Vet who’d served in Korea but was too old when Vietnam came around. Moving straight from Armed Forces to Beat Cop it took him twenty years to climb the ranks and reach the dizzying heights of Assistant Chief. Shaolin was his first and last high profile appointment.

A few blogs mentioned that there was corruption in his record. Nothing so grand as links to organised crime but a bad habit of averting his eyes while certain rank and file officers fucked up the PD’s good name. His nephew and three cousins were under his command – all had brutality charges filed but all had been dropped.

The way that Freddy had spoken to me the day before I knew I wasn’t going to get any more out of him just yet so I’d need to find other avenues to pursue. But the apparent suicide of Assistant Chief Raganella kind of stuck in my mind. Call it a hunch. So much of this kind of work is… hunches and gut feelings. But you do get a feel for what’s right and what isn’t. No… not right. True!

I called the brother, Thomas Baldwin, at his office at Burroughs, Cooper and Mishima.

“Have you… have you found anything Mr Quaid?” He sounded sick as a dog to hear my voice.

“Not yet. I just wanted to ask you a question if that’s OK?” Thomas didn’t say anything so I took that as an affirmative. “Can you remember who the investigating Officer was when Donny went missing? Who came round to the house and stayed in touch with your parents?”

“Yeah… It was… shit! Why can’t I remember his name? It was Italian… Youngish guy… Mom thought he was lazy and out of his depth but when he came to the house he always brought me a candy apple or something… Ed… Eddie Rossi… No…”

“Russo? Eddie Russo?” I looked at the name on the screen of my notebook in front of me.

“That’s it! Eddie Russo!”

Assistant Chief Raganella’s nephew. The name that didn’t make the police report. “Thank you Mr Baldwin. I’ll be in touch when I have something for you.”

After hanging up with Thomas Baldwin I dug around online and found that Russo was still with us and living in Brooklyn. He had started his own private security firm in 1986: Russo Securities – that he had passed on to his son while he lived in a state of semi retirement. He would be seventy two in December, which meant that he was only thirty-one when he was the Baldwin’s primary contact with Shaolin P.D. Finding his social media wasn’t difficult, so I fired him an email and asked if I could speak with him. I didn’t say what it was in relation to – just that I was investigating something that I thought he might be able to help with.

I spent the next couple of hours raking through the web – looking for anything relating to Donny Baldwin. I read through articles printed at the time of his disappearance and a ton of blog posts from true crime nuts and conspiracy theorists. I mentioned to you before that there were some really ‘out there’ idea’s on what had happened to the kid… most were pure fantasy: one that seemed to have been doing the rounds a few years ago was that he was alive and had gotten himself plastic surgery, now living in Austin and working as a senior aid to a Texas Senator. I mean… can you believe that? I often wonder about the sanity of these people.

The prevailing theory, the one that actually held a little traction given what I knew already, was that he had been sold to a peadophile ring that operated out of Florida. They didn’t provide much in the way of evidence but I guess that they hadn’t seen the photo’s or video clip that were sent to the brother. The tie that they used to hold the threads together was a police raid in ‘84 at the home of a man who went by the name of Glenlea.

You remember the Satanic Panic that gripped America in the eighties and early nineties? The McMartin preschool trial and the like? The raid on Glenlea’s home was part of all of that. Not directly linked but it rose out of those same fears. Anyway… Whereas the McMartin case was this whirlwind of paranoia filled with half truths, misremembered fact and local agency interference; the Glenlea case was a little more cut and dried.

Washington Glenlea was a maths teacher who had been working out of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School in Sanibel Florida, he was also the head of the local chapter of the Church of Satan. I say that like it’s almost impressive but he had four followers and operated out of his basement.

After a tip off from a kid at the school, later verified by a few more, that Glenlea had been talking openly to some of his more suggestible students about his religious interests – the local P.D. and the FBI became involved. The raid was timed perfectly and the cops bust open his front door while they were holding one of their rituals – slaughtering a neighbor’s dog on an altar made out of an old workbench and the bones of roadkill. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… people are the fucking worst.

So they arrest Glenlea and his followers and while turning over his house find of a stack of child pornography and a couple of albums filled with pictures and newspaper clippings of missing kids. Including Donny Baldwin. One of the recurring photos on a couple of the blogs shows an FBI man and a local sheriff opening the pages of one of the albums for the gathered press; just so happens to be on clippings of Donny Baldwin. I made notes about this… Glenlea and his involvement… but I thought he was closer to a fantasist rather than a possible suspect. He was a scumbag, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t think he was the scumbag that I was looking for.

As I was looking through all this I had a response email from old Eddie Russo: he was more than happy to help me but wondered what I was investigating. I followed up with that it was a case he was assigned to in the late seventies but didn’t give him any more details than that and asked if I could meet him at a coffee shop in Jersey near one his business offices. He responded straight away in the affirmative and a meeting was set for eleven in the morning the following day.

Looking at the clock on the wall it was close to five and I realised that I hadn’t gotten back to the Pickman Predicament. In my head I couldn’t think of any way that I could help him hide that he couldn’t do himself. I didn’t have his resources or his wealth of contacts. He was right with what he was saying though. If he’d approached any of his usual associates for help they’d have handed him over to Christian quicker than a whore’ll disappear at a GOP convention. What I could do for him though was get the Dutchman’s card to Christian. Even if it meant delivering it myself.

When I arrived at his safe-house it was a little after six.

“You were supposed to call or come by earlier!” He said grabbing the bags of groceries from my hands.

“You need to stock your places better. At least some dried pasta and a few tins of tomatoes.”

He rifled through the bags, emptying them out onto the counter in his kitchen. He didn’t seem happy until he found the tub of cookie dough ice-cream and a six pack of German beer. Grabbing a spoon from the drawer he dived straight in.

“You know I paid for that right?”

“Bill me at the end of the month!” He sat across from me at the folded out card table by the window and tossed me one of the beers.

“So I decided that I can’t help hide you any better than you can hide yourself. But… I can and will put the Dutchman’s card into Christian’s hands for you.”

A raised eyebrow and slurp of beer with a mouthful of ice-cream.

“Don’t be shocked! The only thing I could offer you is the spare room at my office. But then that risks Christian or the Dutchman turning my place over. Which isn’t an option.”

“I could stay with you and David!” Something like the hopeful eyes of a child. An ugly child but a hopeful one nonetheless.

“David hates you. That also isn’t an option.”

“Hates me?” He thought for a moment about what he could possibly have done to earn my husband’s ire. His constant pestering and ability to turn up at the most unhelpful times dawned on him eventually. “OK, fair enough.”

While I sank the beer I explained to him what I had decided: “First of all you need to give me the details of how to contact Christian. Who your contact is and the best way to reach out to him. Then you need to give me the card and let me hand it over. I’ll explain that you’re an idiot and had no ill intention; that what happened to Christian’s men wasn’t on you and that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to find yourself in his good graces.”

Pickman’s jaw dropped, cookie-dough ice-cream dribbling over his chin.

“No! Don’t give me that look! If you want to stay in the City and stay in business, then you need to be square with Christian. If you approach this thinking that you can continue to operate without a black mark against your name in Christian’s book after I hand over the card for you… then you’ll be dead within a week of going about business as usual.”

That seemed to sink in. He narrowed his eyes at me and knitted his brow. He knew what I was telling him was right. Even if he didn’t like it. Pickman loves doing what he does and he makes too much good money from it to want to quit.

“Once I get the card to Christian I’ll see if I can’t negotiate some sort of settlement for you. You’re going to have to be prepared to give something up. Or to be Christian’s bitch boy for a little while. Don’t be surprised if it’s a little of both.”

“Jeez Ramsay… you sure are making all this sound like it’s going to lead to a swell outcome.”

“You want my help or not?” I finished the bottle of beer and popped it onto the card table. “If you like I can just walk away and you can do this shit by yourself!”

“No! No… it’s… it’s fine.” Pickman dropped the pint of ice-cream and pulled the Dutchman’s card out of his pocket. He handed it over to me. That same sense of unease hit hard – that feeling not dissimilar to vertigo – as I looked over the card in my fingers. I quickly pocketed it.

“So… Do you have a name for me?”

“A name?”

“Someone that I can hand the card over to. Someone who’ll listen to the story and put the card in Christian’s hand?”

“Marko. Marko Keena.”

I jotted it down in the A6 Reporters Moleskine I keep in my pocket. Pickman gave me a number to call and the address of a bar that Marko Keena operates out of. His advice was just to go to the bar. That phoning ahead wasn’t going to yield a meeting.

“You’re gonna do right by me yeah?” Pickman back to fidgeting.

“Of course.” I stood up and put the chair under the table. “You’ve done right be me more times than I can count.”

Pickman seemed a little relieved. Like despite asking for my help because I was the only one likely to help him, I’d still try and screw him over if the opportunity presented itself. I guess it’s difficult to trust people in his line of work. I guess the Dutchman proved that. I guess I’ve never done or said anything in the past to really make him think that I wasn’t just like everybody else.

As I slipped my coat on and headed for the door Pickman suddenly spoke up: “I spoke to Roland by the way. He’ll see you tomorrow night. He only meets at night?”

The perv who knew about the kiddie porn! “What? Is he a Vampire or something?”

“It’s just easier for him to keep ‘office hours’ after dark.”

I thanked him and told him that I’ll be in contact in the next couple of days after I’d addressed his predicament.

I walked the streets for a little while. Clearing my head of Pickman, Christian and Donny Baldwin. I find that it helps shift the things that clasp on to the edges of my thoughts and don’t allow for a warm welcome when I get home to my husband.

By the time I got back to my apartment it was a little after eight and I found David looking flustered in our bedroom; packing a suitcase.

“You leaving me?” I asked leaning against the door frame.

He spun and smiled. “You’d have to kill me first.” He walked over to me, wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me softly on the lips. “The meeting this morning… turns out I need to go to Seattle for a few days.”

“Shit! What?”

“The client is about to close down half of the stores that they brought last year and wants me at their headquarters while they ride out the inevitable shit storm of laying off about a thousand people.”

I pulled him a little closer. “What time’s your flight?”

“I gotta be at JFK in an hour.”

“That’s no fun.” I did my best pouty lip.

“And tomorrow there will be weather.” He kissed me softly once again.

“And tomorrow there will be weather.” I parroted before kissing him back.

After a brief discussion about whether I should go to the airport with him he ran out the door for his taxi with a promise to call when he hit his hotel room in Seattle the next morning.

We’ve been apart before. Not just when we went to separate colleges. Sometimes his work takes him away from the City, sometimes mine does too. But the absence of him is always keenly felt. Even if it’s only for a few nights.

So I killed time in front of the television for an hour, flipping channels and not really settling on one thing or the other. I played a little of ‘The Lurking Terror’ online. I always play as the Private Investigator… Even made him look a little like me but I aged him about ten years older. When for the third time that night I’d been swallowed into the floorboards by whoever was playing as one of the unseen monsters (a particularly gruesome fate as you have to sit and watch as the wood splinters tear your skin from your body while your character kicks in panic and screams in agony) I turned off the Play Station and made myself a sandwich.

After a while I went through to the home office and switched on the computer. I wanted to go back to that tube site. To look at the video’s that had occupied most of my attention the previous night. You want me to be honest with you? Yeah I wanted to jack off. My husband was out of town and I wanted to jack off. I didn’t though. You’ve gotta give me that!

Instead I fired up the emails.

And yeah. First one was from him… from TiCK ToCK.

At first I thought it was Darnell messing around with me… The name TiCK ToCK was in the sender’s line and the subject line was empty. But when I opened the body of the mail I knew it was real.

You’ve seen the hard copy? I printed it off and included in my report. “In histories of ages past, Unenlightened Shadows cast, Down through all eternity, The crying of humanity. ‘Tis when the Hurdy Gurdy Man comes singing songs of love.” That was all it said. A few lines from that fucking song. Well that and a smiley emoticon. I’m not easily spooked but I was a little just then. That’s me being honest with you just like you wanted. I was nervous… The photo… I mean if it was an attachment I wouldn’t have opened it but it was part of the body of the mail. Little Donny Baldwin… Thirteen years-old and sitting posed in nothing but a pair of short blue nylon shorts that barely covered the tops of his thighs… at a kitchen table… his hands in his lap… nothing but fear in his eyes.

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