Chapter Fifteen
For the first time in months there were no demands on my phone from Eleanor the next morning. Once I’d had my coffee and a shower, I sat down at my laptop and had another look at the video, trying desperately to place the kid. I was sure I had seen him before. I started searching. For the next several hours I trawled through all the social media and gossip sites that I knew of. When I finally found him I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug. I knew I’d seen him before. He had been hanging around on the outskirts of some of the paparazzi packs which stalked stars like Eleanor Channing. I saw them so much they had become like the scenery in the background. From what I could remember this kid was new. I remember thinking at the time he was out of his league, but there he was.
Once I worked out where I’d seen him, I needed to find out where he was. Looking at the video, the guy obviously thought of himself as a bit of an entrepreneur. He had the whole cocky swagger going. In this day and age every kid was on social media and if he thought he was going to crack it in the paparazzi big leagues, he was going to have to get his name out there. I mean, look at the name he gave. Roberto. The kid was skinny with freckles and red hair. I was pretty sure Roberto wasn’t his real name. In that case he’d decided to create a brand.
Hollywood is a town where everything is about your brand. This kid lived here and I would bet money he was absorbing everything that he could learn about this place. Part of that would be his brand, so I went hunting for it. After going through every site I could find, I finally found him. He’d been sending in photos with the GPS coordinates on them this morning. Those photos told me that our mystery photographer was, at this very moment, looking out over Venice Beach. I closed the laptop with a satisfying click and smiled. I needed to have a talk with Roberto and now I knew where to find him.
Venice Beach was a little quieter than usual. When I got the chance I enjoyed coming down here. It didn’t take long for me to find the young boy taking random shots with his phone. I sat down on the bench beside him.
“Hello, Roberto,” I said. He looked like he was about to run.
“I’m not here to hurt you, I just want to talk,” I said.
“What do you want?” the kid asked with the kind of bravado that only a teenager can muster.
“I want to know about how you know Ryan Hendricks and why you were blackmailing him.”
“I wasn’t blackmailing him,” Roberto said defensively. “We were just trying to work out what the situation was and how we could make it work for our mutual benefit. Why lady, are you looking at getting in on the action too?”
I looked at him and all of a sudden I felt old.
“Hey kid, when did you eat last?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, but his eyes had lit up.
“Let’s get you some food and then maybe we can have a talk,” I said.
We found a little diner and the two of us settled into our booth.
“What can I have?” asked Roberto, and I couldn’t help but feel bad at the fact that he felt he needed to ask that question.
“Just have what you want from the menu,” I said. “I’ll cover it.”
Roberto put down the menu. “What exactly am I going to be doing to pay for this meal?” he asked, suspicion in his eyes.
Okay, that made me feel lousy. How many times had this kid had to ask that question? I wanted to give him a hug but realized that any physical contact at this stage was not going to be welcome.
“Nothing,” I said. “I have some questions about the photos you took that you sent to Ryan Hendricks, but you can choose whether to answer those questions. If you would prefer, you can have your meal and we will talk later. If you don’t like the questions I am asking or you just don’t want to talk about it, you can walk out of here, no harm, no foul.”
“Okay,” he said.
He then proceeded to order a massive meal that made me worry that he was going to be really sick by the end of it. Table manners seemed to come in secondary to the need to put as much food into his mouth as necessary. I touched him on the back of his hand softly to get his attention.
“There isn’t a time limit,” I said. “We can stay here a while if you want to take it slower.” He grunted at me but slowed down. I had a brother so I knew how much a teenage boy was capable of eating. After what seemed like forever, Roberto sat back with a satisfied look on his face.
“So,” I asked, “are you going to stay and talk?”
He stretched his arms out behind his head.
“Sure, babe,” he said.
I cocked my head. “Don’t call me babe. I really don’t like it.”
He grinned at me and in that moment I saw the cheeky spirit that he had.
“What’s your real name?” I blurted out.
Not on the list of questions that we had but all of a sudden it seemed to be important to me that I knew who this kid was. Roberto looked disconcerted.
“I’m not going to turn you in to anybody,” I said. “I just want to know who I’m talking to.”
Roberto looked around and in that moment I could see uncertainty. “My name is Roberto,” he maintained stubbornly.
“Any last name, Roberto?” I sighed, willing to accept what he was saying, at least temporarily.
“Not that I’m giving you at the moment,” he said.
Okay, boundaries had been set.
“When did you get those photos that you sent to Ryan?” I asked.
“A couple of weeks ago,” he said. “I was just hanging and I saw them together. No one else was around and I saw the woman and knew she was Ryan Hendricks’s girl. She pretty much had her hand down that guy’s pants in the middle of the street so I thought I’d follow them.”
“Taking photos of them having sex seemed like a good idea?” I asked.
“Course it did. I bet you would have done the same thing,” Roberto said defensively.
“Honestly, I’ve got to say, I also walked in on them having sex and my first instinct was to get the hell out, not to whip out a camera phone and go all art house porno on them.”
“You’ve got to get in the game,” Roberto said.
“No, I really don’t,” I said. “Why did you go to Ryan with the blackmail instead of Emily? She’d probably have deeper pockets and more reason to pay up.”
“I didn’t go to him to blackmail him,” Roberto said indignantly.
“Then why did you go to him?”
“I thought he should know that his old lady was stepping out on him and what the guy was like. What?”
He’d caught my smile which I was working very hard to quash.
“You were trying to do the right thing,” I said.
“I was not.” Roberto sounded defensive. “I just thought maybe he could help me with an exclusive one day if I did a solid by him.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You gave up a guaranteed payday to help someone out. That says something about you.”
I grinned broadly at him. He slumped back in the booth, crossed his arms and if he’d been a little bit younger he would probably have poked his tongue out at me.
“I spoke to the dude a couple of times. He didn’t seem too broken up about it, so we just kind of left it at that. Heard he died last week so I figured the whole thing was over and done with. Why are you asking questions?”
He stopped and went rigid as if he had a sudden thought.
“Are you a cop?”
“No, why do I act like one?”
“Nah, you’re too nice to be a cop. Cops kind of get too focused and go over the top of people to get what they want.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said, thinking of one particular cop. “Well thanks, Roberto,” I said as I got up. “You’ve been a real help.”
“Are you sure that’s all you need?” he asked, his voice suddenly small. I sat back down.
“Do you want me to take you somewhere?” I asked.
“Nah, I
’m good,” he said, pulling his bravado around him.
“Do you have a home to go to, Roberto?” I asked gently.
Roberto’s head dropped. “No, my mom’s new boyfriend kicked me out last week. Said I was useless and he didn’t want me sponging off him anymore. Mom let him do it.”
In that moment my heart broke a bit.
“Where have you been staying?” I asked.
“Here and there.” He avoided my eyes.
“How old are you, Roberto?” I asked.
“I’m sixteen,” he said. “Plenty old enough to be on my own.”
There it was again. He tried to act and look tough but all I could see was a teenage kid who looked younger than he was. The thought of what could happen to him on the streets, what may have already happened to him, broke my heart. In that moment I decided on a course of action that Griffin would have called boneheaded.
“Come home with me. It isn’t much but I can offer you a warm place to sleep on my couch and food, just for tonight. We’ll try to work out someplace for you to go which is safe after that.”
“Why would you do that?” he said, his eyes wary.
“Because if you were a puppy I’d have loaded you in the car by now and taken you home. You think I’m going to do less for you than if you were a puppy.”
He cocked his head, very puppy like behavior I thought, as he considered what I was offering. He may also have been trying to work out the safest way to get away from the crazy woman who invited street kids into her home.
“What do you want in return?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said. “Just get a good night’s sleep where you can feel safe and then tomorrow you can go where you like.”
“You know lady, you are nuts,” he said. “Do you know how dangerous it is to open your home to some strange homeless kid?”
“Actually I do,” I said. Pretty much everybody, including my cop fake boyfriend, would be appalled. Sometimes the right thing is taking a chance based on instincts, and my instincts were telling me that Roberto was a good kid who was having a rough time.
“Look, it’s your choice. I’m just offering a place to stay for the night. If you’re looking to steal something I’m the wrong person. I’ve only been in America for a few months. I travel light so unless you think you can get a good price for cheap sensible shoes on the black market, I’m not a good mark. I’m not going to try to sell this to you. I’m giving you a choice, just like I gave you the choice to walk out before. I’m leaving now. You can come with me if you want.”
As I left the booth, I could see that he was hesitating. After getting abandoned by his own mother, I didn’t hold out much hope for him believing a stranger was willing to help. I wasn’t going to beg him to take my help. By the time I got to the door he was behind me.
“Good choice,” I murmured.
“I certainly hope so,” he said.