"Another time I quit screaming and another time I quit crying. I don't mean I ceased to scream or cry. I was angry, so I quit, and I was weeping, so I quit, but then each time I calmed down and decided to stay. Every day I see something that makes me want to walk down the street and grab every person I meet and shake them all and tell them what's going on. Every day I learn another of the things you say I don't want to know about. One of the three buildings at the Old Testament House is our HIV wing now, did you know that? All the boys there have tested positive for the virus. They're all under twenty-one. You have to leave here when you're twenty-one. Most of them will never have to leave because they'll be dead by then. You think there's something you can't tell me? You think you know something worse than that?"

I said, "The reason I think the older boy is dead is I saw a film he was in with a man and a woman. At the end of the film they killed him. I think the younger boy is either dead or in danger because last week I saw him with a man who I think was one of the performers in the film."

"And you drew these sketches."

"I couldn't draw water. A police artist did these."

"I see." She looked off to one side. "Are there many movies like that? Is it very profitable to make them?"

"I don't know how many there are. And no, I don't think it's particularly profitable. I think these people made the film for their own amusement."

" 'For their own amusement.' " She shook her head. "There was a figure in Greek mythology who devoured his own children. Cronus. I forget why. I'm sure he had a reason." Her eyes flashed at me. "We are devouring our children, a whole generation of them. Wasting them, trashing them, throwing them away. Literally devouring them, in some cases. Devil worshipers sacrificing newborns and… and… cooking them, eating them. Men buying children on the street and having sex with them and then killing them. You say you saw this man, you saw him with the younger boy? You actually saw him?"

"I think it was the same man."

"Was he normal? Did he look human?" I showed her the sketch. "He looks ordinary," she said. "I hate that. I hate the thought that ordinary people perform such awful acts. I want them to look like monsters. They act like monsters, why shouldn't they look like monsters? Do you understand why people do such things?"

"No."

" 'I envy you,' Father Joyner said. 'I envy you, I wish to God I could quit myself.' Afterward I thought, well, Buster, that was a pretty well calculated way to get me to stay. That was pretty crafty. But I don't think so. I think he meant it, I think it was the literal truth. Because it's true for me. I wish to God I could quit."

"I know what you mean."

"Do you?" She looked at the sketches again. "I could have seen them here, the boys. I don't recognize them but it's possible."

"You wouldn't have seen the older one. You said you've been here ten months, and I think they'd already made their picture by then."

She asked me if I'd wait for a moment and disappeared into the building. I stood there while a couple of kids entered the building and a few others left. They just looked like ordinary kids, not streetwise like the ones on Forty-second, not as woebegone as their circumstances would warrant. I wondered what had driven them out of their homes and into this crumbling city. Maggie Hillstrom probably could have told me, but I didn't much want to hear it.

Brutal fathers, negligent mothers. Drunken violence. Incest. I didn't have to hear it, I could figure it all out for myself. Nobody walked out of The Brady Bunch and wound up here.

I was reading the rules again when she returned. No one recognized either of the sketches. She offered to keep them and show them around later. I told her that would be good, and gave her extra copies of both. "My number's on the back," I said. "Call anytime. And let me give you some copies of the third sketch, the older man. You might want to show those around and tell your kids not to go anywhere with a man who looks like that."

"We tell them not to go with any men," she said. "But they don't listen."

Chapter 12

"Father Michael Joyner," Gordie Keltner said. "I get mail from him, I suppose most of the free world gets mail from him, but I'll receive his newsletters forever because I sent him money once. 'I can save a boy for twenty-five dollars'- that was the headline of one of his fund-raisers. 'Here's fifty,' I wrote. 'Save two of them for me, won't you?' And I sent it back with my check for fifty dollars. Have you met the good father?"

"No."

"Neither have I, but I caught his act on the tube. He was telling Phil or Geraldo or Oprah all about the danger of adult males who prey on lost youth, and the nasty role of pornography in inflaming all concerned and creating an industry that exploits the kids. All of which may well be true, but I thought, Oh, Michael, aren't you playing it the least bit heavy? Because I swear the good padre's as gay as a jay."

"Really?"

"Well, you know what Tallulah Bankhead said. 'All I know is he never sucked my cock, dahling.' I haven't heard any stories and I haven't seen him around the bars, and he may be perfectly celibate, although you don't have to be when you're Episcopalian, do you? But he looks gay and his energy is gay. It must be hell for him, living among all those hot kids and making sure he keeps his pants zipped. No wonder he doesn't have too many kind words for those of us who aren't such good little boys."

I first met Gordie years ago when I was a detective attached to the Sixth Precinct in the Village. The station house was on Charles Street then- it's long since moved to West Tenth- and Gordie was working part time behind the bar at Sinthia's. Sinthia's was gone now- Kenny Banks, who'd owned it, had sold out and moved to Key West. Before that happened, Gordie and a partner had moved to my neighborhood and opened Kid Gloves in the room on Ninth Avenue where Skip Devoe and John Kasabian had had Miss Kitty's. Kid Gloves didn't last too long, and now Gordie was working in a joint that had been warehouse space back when I was carrying a gold shield. It was down in the southwest corner of the Village at Clarkson and Greenwich, and it had called itself Uncle Bill's when it opened a few years ago. Since then it had been reborn as Calamity Jack's, with a western motif.

It was late afternoon and Gordie had plenty of time to spend with me. I was one of three customers in the place. An older man in a suit was drinking Irish coffee and reading a newspaper at the end of the bar, and a stocky man in jeans and square-toed black boots was playing bumper pool. I showed Gordie my sketches, as I'd shown them in other Village bars, and he shook his head.

"They're cute, though," he said. "But I never had a taste for chicken, my campy remarks to Father Mike notwithstanding."

"Kenny liked them young," I remembered.

"Kenny was incorrigible. I was a sweet young thing myself when I worked for him, and I was already too old to catch his eye. But you won't find much chicken around the bars, Matt. Not the way you used to, not since the drinking age went from eighteen to twenty-one. A fourteen-year-old could pass for eighteen in dim lighting, especially if he was tall for his age or could show some convincing fake ID. But you'd have to be seventeen to pass for twenty-one, and by that time you're past your prime."

"What a world."

"I know. I decided years ago not to be judgmental, and I know most young boys are eager participants in their own seduction. Sometimes they even initiate it. But I don't care. I'm turning into a moralist in my old age. I think it's wrong for a grown-up to have sex with a child. I don't care if the kid wants it. I think it's wrong."