Epsode 2, part 13

“Where is Officer Bronsky?”

Scepter sat at his desk calmly. “Do you see him here?”

“Answer the question, Doctor.”

“I am,” came the annoyed reply. “Officers, I have answered all your questions, and either you don’t like them or don’t believe them. But you’ll get those answers over again just the same, however many times you ask.”

“We know he came here—“

“Yes,” Scepter replied. He was in contact with all their minds, and saw the questions coming. And what answers to give. “And he was here. But I have a lot of transcription to do. I got caught up in it when he came in.”

“He’s your patient?”

“No. I told you,” Scepter said, now putting on a very good show of being very annoyed. “He takes me home because I am congenitally blind.” He took off his glasses, showing two solid white eyes. He sensed revulsion in some of the officers. “My place is on his way back to his place.”

“But you sent him away?”

“I’m not helpless, thank you,” Scepter shot back. “I can find my way to the bus station perfectly well. It’s just nice to have a friend take me back home. I know I’m not going to be patronized, looked down upon, or taken advantage of because I can’t see.”

Ouch.

“Fine. So he left. Where did he go?”

“To the Moon,” Scepter snapped. “How should I know?” He crossed his arms. “You’ve broken into this building and into my office, and if I am not mistaken, you are pointing guns at me right now. Am I under arrest?”

There was a pause. “Not yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Step away from your desk, Doctor.”

Scepter scowled for a moment, but rose and did as he was asked. He heard, and sensed, a man take his seat. “What are you doing? I haven’t saved my transcriptions! Stop that!” But he was ignored entirely. ROM, please be as good as I think you are…

“There’s nothing here, sir. The most recent thing was a Google search.”

“For?”

“The Lincoln Bedroom, sir.”

Oh, hell, Scepter thought.

“Can you explain that, Doctor?”

Scepter crossed his arms again. “No idea. Can you explain why you just asked a BLIND man over an IMAGE search?” He hadn’t put his glasses back on. But even with dead eyes, his indignity was obvious. “Officer, I cannot even see you, much less anything in the Lincoln Bedroom. I have no idea why that is there, but I don’t lock my door during the day. Anybody could have come in and done a search. Even you could have.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning since I can’t see, I have no idea one way or the other if you are trying to plant something.”

“We don’t do that, Doctor.”

“Of course you don’t,” Scepter muttered. “In case you don’t know, I’ve worked with the SFPD several times over the years. I think that by now I would have proven myself. If I have not, perhaps that is due to your paranoia, and not my ability.”

He sensed a change of tactics. “We have reason to believe that Officer Bronsky has broken the law.”

“Mr. Goody Two-Shoes?” Scepter asked, almost laughing. “Please. I know that man. He doesn’t even jaywalk.” Which was actually true. “Is he what this is all about?”

Silence. Verbally.

“Because if it is,” Scepter said, scanning their minds, “he is not here. Not for some time. The sun was still up when he left.”

“And how do you know that.”

Scepter sighed. “It sets behind me. I could feel the heat on my back when he left.”

Slick shrink. “Did he say where he was going?”

“Oh, for the love of…NO. I told you that,” Scepter replied. “I’m going to ask again: What is this all about? What did he do?”

“We’re not at liberty to say.”

Bullshit, Scepter thought. Some of the men here were very well trained. Their minds were very cool and disciplined…but not blocked from him. At the same time, even a complete neophyte knows when another enters their mind. He received each mind easily, but reading was more direct, more intrusive. In the meantime, Scepter took a backseat and Dr. Manny Veracuz took over.

His questions and responses were purposefully indignant and evasive.  The more irritated the SWAT boys got, the easier they were to read, bringing even the deepest thought to the surface. After that happened, it was a simple matter of picking up the thought. He was playing them, but only as long as he could get away with it. It was clear that they had been ordered to retrieve him but did not know why.

Scepter focused on the captain. So who ordered you? Oh, man. The police commissioner. Oh jeez.

Episode 2 Part 12

Time stopped—

“Say what?” Paine asked, his voice trailing upwards.

—and then started again

“They followed me?” Orbis asked, incredulous.

“They were probably watching everybody in that investigation,” Mirrorball said.

“Oh, hell,” Bang grunted, going to the window and scanning.

“We are leaving, now!” ROM said, grabbing Scepter.

“When will they get here?” Paine asked, moving towards the door.

“Uh, now,” said Bang, who saw them, and Scepter, who sensed them.

“Now?” Paine bleated.

“And they really want to get their hands on you,” Scepter added to Band. He reached out his mind. Still too far to read clearly. Still too diffuse for anything specific.

“How do we get out of this?” Tug-of-War asked, panicking. “How do we get out of here?”

“We can fight our way out easy,” Bang replied. “We have two of our strongest here, me and Tug. We can blast them long distance—“

“He really is blood-thirsty,” Paine remarked to Mirrorball.

Mirrorball shrugged. “That’s my guy.”

“He’s really nuts, that’s what he is! Attack a SWAT Team?” Orbis asked aloud. “Listen to what you are saying! That’s giving them free reign to shot you dead on the spot!”

“All of you, get out. I’ll handle this,” Scepter commanded, pushing them towards the door. “All they probably know is that Orbis came here to my office. They don’t know about you guys yet.”

“You called us—“ Pain began.

“I’ll make an excuse if they check the phone” Scepter replied. “I’m a telepath. One of the best. I’ll know their thoughts as they think them. Besides,” he said, pointing to where his “third-eye” would glow on his forehead, “I have a few tricks, myself. Take the second elevator to the mezzanine. Turn left and take the stairs. It’s the back entrance to a little park where we all have lunch. It has a loading alley to the side street. Run like hell. Go.”

“But—“ Mirrorball said.

Bang threw him out of the office. “Argue later! ROM!”

“Hold up!” she shot back. Her fingers were racing across the keyboard. “I’m locking all the doors and gates...and there!”

“You hacked the building?!”

Mirrorball looked at the woman admiringly. “Boy, she does that fast.”

“I am so going to have a talk to e-security,” Scepter muttered.

“Don’t be hatin’,” ROM mused as she ran out.

Minutes later, sitting at his desk, Scepter found himself staring, blindly, down the barrels of several automatic weapons. “Who’s there? I am Dr. Emmanuel Veracruz. May I help you?”

“Shit!”

“What alley was he talking about?”

“How ‘bout this locked one?”

“What do you mean, ‘locked?’”

“Shitity shit shit!”

“Outta the way!” Orbis grunted. It was a simple door made of chain-link fencing covered with wooden planking He gave the lock, a simple, store-bought key-model, a quick glance and smiled inwardly. He head up one finger, and, holding out one finger, activated the swirling psycho-kinetic orbs that were is namesake. Spinning at near the speed of sound, hard as diamond, it could grind through anything. And, with a brief metallic bzzt! sound, the lock fell to pieces. “Definitely comes in handy.”

“Move!” ROM hissed, shoving her 5-foot frame by.

“You heard the pixie,” Bang observed.

“And I heard that!”

So too, apparently, did the two very surprised but very well-armed SWAT officers, on the other side of the door.

For the shock of both parties, it was amazing that not the SWAT team, or Orbis the Navy SEAL, that reacted first. It was Tug-of-War.

Whirling his right side about, Tug unleashed two beams of pure black energy that threw both men right off their feet, across the street, and into the wall of the opposite building. After two sickening-but-hopefully-not-lethal thuds, both men slumped to the sidewalk.

It could not have been more than five seconds at the most.

“Ooh, that can’t be good,” ROM gulped.

“And not one word about assaulting an officer,” Tug muttered to Orbis, who was aghast.

The group slid unnoticed into the street and ran like hell.

Episode 2, Part 11

Orbis reacted as if he had been punched in the gut. “WHAT?”

 “Huh?” ROM asked. She had been standing next to Orbis, nearly started out of her skin at his reaction. “Where’s da Lincoln Bedroom?”

Mirrorball replied quietly. “The White House.”

“The mutha-fuckin’ WHITE. HOUSE.” ROM was sure she hadn’t heard it right.

“In the guest suites, to be exact,” Mirrorball replied.

“Oh, shit,” Bang gulped. “Ooooooooh shiiiiiiiiiiit.”

“Where’s that vodka?” Paine asked weakly.

“Right here,” Scepter said, handing him the bottle.

Paine didn’t even bother with a glass and took a deep swig right from the bottle.

“Gimme,” ROM said, doing the exact same thing. “Now, you,” she commanded to Mirrorball. “Get up. Lemme at it.” She motioned to the computer. Right now, she far preferred its company to humanity’s.

“Sure. Where’s that booze?” He hand to giver her credit—she recovered fast.

“Out,” Scepter said. “Getting the gin…”

“How much sauce does he have here?” Bang wondered out loud.

Scepter tossed the bottle to Mirrorball in one of those unnerving examples of being blind but knowing where everybody was in the room. “I spend my day helping people with their problems. And, Madre de Dios, you’d be amazed. Sometimes my characteristic tranquility needs a little help.”

ROM undid a pouch on her belt, pulled out a needle attached to a USB cable, linked the ports, and jammed the needle into her arm.

“It is so freaky to see her do that,” Paine muttered.

ROM’s eyes flashed and glazed as she extended her mind into the computer.

 “What’s she looking for?”

ROM replied, her voice strange and far away. “Jus’ checkin’ a few things.”

“I think we can safely say that a conspiracy is underway, here,” Orbis observed, turning from ROM. “Merryman’s death. My informant’s death. The picture of Vagabond as a child naked and bound in the White House during Bush #1. Talk about having something to hide.”

“No wonder somebody wanted this buried,” Mirrorball acknowledged. “No wonder Vagabond buried it.”

“If he’s from Germany, where’s the accent?” Tug-of-War asked suddenly.

“He was 6. Probably just lost it between then and now,” Paine responded. “My grandparents say my parents don’t sound anything like they did back when they were in India.”

            “You know, Vagabond lashes out like a kid,” Mirrorball added. “Like he never matured. He’s older now, but no one ever, you know, raised him.”

            “He’s older than all of us combined,” Tug replied. “God. A human trafficking ring?”

“This is bigger than Vagabond,” Paine groaned in a sing-song voice. “We just uncovered the cover-up of the century.”

“Guys…” ROM muttered.

A breath of reality, or, at least, practicality, came from Mirrorball, always the most level-headed of them provided he wasn’t he wasn’t in a fight at the time. “But what, really do we have to go on?” he asked. “A photo of a tied up kid who looks like Vagabond on what looks like the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom. Maybe it really is Vagabond. Maybe not.”

“It is the Lincoln bed,” ROM confirmed, out of nowhere.

“What?” Scepter asked.

She held up her tablet computer. “I compared photos. The one you have and the official one from the White House. Had my computer to a compare and contrast. It’s the exact same bed.”

“And there you have it,” Tug finished. “Lady and gentleman, we have a conspiracy.”

“And all the other corroborating evidence is either being swept under the carpet or lying cold in the city morgue,” Orbis muttered.

“We don’t need to convince a court,” Bang reminded him. “All we have to do convince Vagabond. And even if he’s repressed it all, that photo should jar something. Best case scenario? He remembers everything and goes off on his merry rampage. If it really is a dead end, no harm done. We tried.”

“Guys?” ROM asked.

“Oh, come on,” Paine exclaimed, exasperated “What, we just sit on this and tell nobody else except Vagabond? He wasn’t the only one kidnapped! How many human trafficking rings traffic one human? There must be dozens of kids! We have to go to the authorities. If not the SFPD, why not the FBI or Interpol? Hell, the German Embassy! I doubt he ever officially became a citizen.”

“Hey, does that mean we can report him to Immigration?” Bang asked hopefully.

“YO! HONKIES!” ROM shouted.

“Excuse me?” the Mexican-American Scepter harrumphed.

“Yee-ha!” Bang gabbled, starting. “What is up with you?”

“We got shit comin’ fast!” ROM said. Her fingers were a blur over the keyboard.

“What are you talking about?” Paine asked for all of them.

“I hacked the SFPD—“

“You what?” Orbis yelled at her. “You…that’s—“

“That’s my computer!” Scepter shrilled.

“You,” she said to Scepter, “relax yo’ ass. I covered my tracks. You,” she said to Orbis, “don’t get all moral! You stole evidence.”

“Busted,” Bang said, looking at the officer.

“Touché,” Orbis muttered, beaten.

“A SWAT team is coming here!”

Episode 2, part 10

“Aaaaand let’s not forget that how serious stealing evidence is,” Scepter reminding them all bluntly. “We can all rag on him later, but this isn’t lifting a candybar out of a supermarket.”

“So he overcompensated,” Bang remarked off-handedly. “You rock, Bo.”

Scepter, annoyed, sighed more than a little theatrically. “Just to bring you pricks up to speed, a pedophilia case was swept under the carpet, and Bo stole files to keep it alive. Not only did he go against orders of the SFPD to drop it, he has put himself squarely in the sights of whomever gave the order.”

“You don’t think they are in the SFPD, do you?” Mirrorball asked.

“Who knows? Even if they aren’t, they still have the ability to boss the police around and get away with it. Somebody called somebody and poof! There goes the investigation,” Orbis replied. “I can’t even show probable cause, must less make an arrest, without evidence.”

“Any way you could arrest ‘em all and then we tell Vagabond?” Paine asked.

Orbis glared at him, annoyed.

“There is evidence,” Scepter replied. “There is that photo, plus the others you have.”

“Which would vanish as soon as I turned them in,” Orbis replied. “Even if I dumped them on a newspaper, everybody would just deny everything. Somebody would call or lean on somebody and it would never be reported. And say it actually made it to trial. Can you honestly see Vagabond on a witness stand?”

“Like he could hold it together for a trial,” Bang said, seeing where it was going. “Any jury will see he’s a raving lunatic and think he made it all up.”

“And starting an investigation on the photos I have is iffy. The photo of Vagabond is twenty years old,” ROM added. “Nobody looks exactly like an age-progressed photo.”

“We are sure that photo is of Vagabond, right?” Paine asked.

ROM glared at him. “You think I made this shit up?”

“No,” Paine said, well aware how dangerous it was to question ROM on her abilities. “Maybe that photo really is the Metz kid. We don’t know, not really, if the Metz kid is Vagabond. I’ve seen some pretty good look-alikes in my time.”

“Oh, Gawd, not square one again,” Bang muttered.

 Orbis looked at the photo. “Let’s just assume that it is. For now. With the all the confessions and shit destroyed, and the informant dead, there is no way the SFPD, or even the FBI, could start up a credible investigation,” Orbis sighed. “And even if they could, that takes months or even years before anything gets in front of a jury.”

“So we either do nothing,” Paine summed up, “Or unleash the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse.”

“And sell tickets,” Bang added. He hadn’t budged from letting all hell break loose. And wasn’t going to. Always the most confrontational of them all, everyone knew when Bang dug in his heels. This was the man the man that held a press conference to tell his family to “suck his throbbing, fat, gay cock” after they cut him off when he came out of the closet. A true Punk, unapologetic, and defiant, Bang sailed headlong into everything he did…and did not like being beholden to anyone else. The sooner Vagabond was out of his life, however it was done, the better.

“Correction,” ROM said, annoyed, “’Or unleash the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse on Tug-of-War.”

Bang set his jaw. “Right, right…”

“I suppose we couldn’t first extract a promise for him not to kill—“ Tug-of-War began, and then shut up when six pairs of eyes turned to him, ridiculously wide. “…just putting it out there. Jeez…”

“Oh, shit.” The others looked up at the expletive. It was Mirrorball. While the debate raged, he had wandered off and set himself up in front of Scepter’s computer.

“Whatcha looking for, babe?” Bang asked, draping his arms on Mirrorball’s shoulders.

“The photo of this child. It looks familiar.”

Bang blinked. “It does? You’ve seen it before?”

            “No, no, no” Mirrorball said hastily. “The style of bed the boy is on. I’ve seen it before.”

            Bang picked up the photo. They were so focused on the child they didn’t pay any attention to the background. Not that there was much of one. Just the headboard of a bed. A rather elaborate one, carved, stained a rich, warm chocolate brown. Victorian, maybe. Some lace was hanging down off the side. A canopy bed? “You know the bed? You been on it?”

            “So not the time!”

            “OK, OK. What’s the deal with the bed?”

            “Is it that bed?”

Now the others were curious and huddled around Mirrorball, his face eerily blue from the glow of the computer screen.

Bang looked at the photo on the screen, then the photo, then back again. He scowled. “Um. Yeah. Could be, actually. Where’s the bed?”

Mirrorball stared straight ahead at the screen. “In the Lincoln Bedroom.”

Episode 2, part 9

Bang looked at Orbis, “You could have told us that sooner! We wouldn’t have given you such a hard time!”

“I’m trying to give you as little information as possible,” Orbis replied, then winced as soon as it came out for its stupidity.

“What?” Mirrorball asked.

ROM was more direct. “Now you sound like Vagabond.”

“What he means,” Scepter said, stepping in, “Is that it’s clear that this trafficking ring is also willing to kill to keep people quiet, if they get a good case of the morals.”

“We’ve taken on worse,” Bang replied coolly.

ROM shook her head, ox-horns bobbing. “We’ve taken on what we see comin’. Can’t see no sniper’s bullet comin’, baby.”

Mirrorball picked up the horrible photo of Vagabond bound, his young life just about to be ruined, and wandered away from the group. He had grown up on a hippie commune in the Arizona desert. Sure, he had heard of things like this, but never in a million years thought he would be involved in one so directly. Then he frowned.

“Not to be a downer or anything,” Tug-of-War piped in, “But has anybody thought what Vagabond is going to do once we tell him we not only cracked the case, but also cracked his secret?”

Scepter scratched his temple.

Orbis rolled his eyes.

“Well?” Bang tapped his foot. “Perfectly good question.”

“If you are asked a medical professional,” Scepter said, “He’ll puree everybody involved, including us.”

“I don’t think I like that answer one bit,” Bang said in an acidicly cheery voice.

Manny shook his head. “He’s going to kill them because they killed Paul, and turned Vagabond into…well, Vagabond. As for us making him see reality, he’ll never forgive us. The fantasy is the one thing he has left, and Fate won’t even let him have that. He may kill the messenger.”

“Is this a joke?” Paine asked, astounded.

“We have a plan, though,” Scepter said hastily. “We don’t tell him.”

“How is that a plan?” Tug-of-War demanded.

“You tell him,” Scepter’s sightless eyes looked to Tug.

The color drained from Tug-of-War’s already pale face. “How is THAT a plan?! ME? Why me?”

Scepter crossed his arms. “Because you are the only one us who has his sympathy…or what passes for it.”

Tug-of-War caught on fast. “The Lab. Because I’m a clone.”

“The Lab,” Scepter repeated. “Because you are a clone. Your life isn’t yours. Same with Vagabond…to a point. His life, whatever it may have become, was taken from him. On some level, he sees a comparison. That’s not the telepath Scepter speaking. That’s Dr. Manny Veracruz.”

“Hold up,” ROM interjected again. “Les’ just remove ourselves fo’ a minute. You realize we’d be settin’ Vagabond off on a massacre.”

“So he’d be killing a load of pedophiles,” Bang said, bluntly. “Go, Vagabond!” He chugged his fists in the air.

“As much as we all like the sound of that,” Paine said, “don’t normal people—you know, like US—bring them all to trial? These rings are like cockroaches: just because you lop off the head doesn’t mean you kill it. A trial, a full investigation—“

“But there is no evidence,” Orbis reminded him, shaking his hands with each word. “Not anymore. The SFPD was ordered to bury it, or destroy it.”

“Jesus,” ROM said, holding her hands to her forehead. “What about those files you swiped?”

“’Swiped?’” Paine deadpanned. “The goody-goody stole something?”

Mirrorball and Bang turned to the man.

Orbis waved his hand. “I nabbed a few files out of dozens. Not nearly enough to…”

Everybody stared at him in silence.

“Oh, FINE. Yes, I stole files! I broke the law! It was for the greater good! There! You happy?”

“Welcome to the Dark Side, young padwan,” Tug-of-War muttered.

Episode 2, Part 8

“An’ Merryman had a record,” ROM said. “No convictions, but charged for messin’ with teen-age boys. There were a few restraining orders on his ass.”

 “Fucking hell,” Bang groaned.

“And,” Scepter said, picking up the narrative, “at this stage, Vagabond had to have discovered his powers, although he may not have known what they were. I was picking up people’s thoughts and emotions, and influencing people with my own thoughts and emotions, long before I realized I was the only one around who could do that. I didn’t even know I was doing it. He probably had Merryman under his control and didn’t even know it.”

“That’s more than a little speculative,” said a very dubious Paine. “There isn’t a standard boiler-plate for telepaths.”

“Which is what I thought,” Scepter admitted. “But it makes sense. Just hear the theory. Let’s just assume that how my powers emerged happened to him. Vagabond gets…purchased,” he shuddered, “but on some level wants his buyer to love him. Or, rather, anybody to love him. He must have known he was an ass with a man attached. At that point, Vagabond may have equated being bought, or rented, with being loved. It goes without saying that he was already damaged at this point. And who knows? Maybe he was just one of those people, like Jeffrey Dahmer, who were born broken.”

“Ouch,” Mirrorball muttered.

“So,” Scepter went on, “Vagabond is radiating ‘Love me, love me’ to Merryman and presto! It’s like a mutual post-hypnotic suggestion. Merryman falls head over heels for Vagabond, who, in turn, falls head over heels for Merryman as the only person who ever loved him, neither of them knowing that it was all Vagabond’s doing in the first place.”

“My head is going to explode,” ROM interjected.

“Yours and mine,” Bang said.

Orbis continued the line of thought. “As his powers surfaced, he slowly brought Merryman under his influence, and eventually, control. And it must have been like magic! He thought something, and Merryman did it! OK, so there was a 20-year age difference—at this stage of the game, Matt must have been so starved for true affection that he took whatever he could get. ” He paused. “I can’t even begin to imagine how broken he was at this point.”

“Not as much as later on,” Scepter responded. “Vagabond got what he wanted all along. Now, he must have known he was a sex slave. Merryman didn’t buy Vagabond his freedom, just his sexual exclusivity. But when Merryman seemingly became his Mr. Perfect, Vagabond then goes into a deep denial of his past. He may have blotted it out completely, even as to how they met. He basically threw a pretty wrapping over a cesspool.”

“But then it gets interesting,” Orbis said, wagging a finger to the ceiling. “He wanted some satisfaction of justice. Consciously or unconsciously, he psychically prodded Merryman into coming clean. Maybe not about the two of them, but about the ring.”

 “Merryman must have made public going public to other members of the ring.” Scepter inhaled. “And they just couldn’t have that.”

“So they iced him?” Tug-of-War finished the thought. “A touch of overkill, don’t you think?”

“You’d be amazed at what lengths people go to keep a secret,” Scepter said. “I say that to a room full of gay people.”

“Not even remotely similar!” Paine admonished. He crossed his arms hard.

“Whatever. They also iced the guy who provided this photo of boy-Vagabond. With the same gun that killed Merryman. This morning,” Orbis said, not a little smugly.

That brought everyone to the same page fast.

“Ooh, shit,” ROM muttered.

“That about sums it up, yes,” Scepter responded.

“A conspiracy,” Pain thought aloud.

Episode 2, Part 7

Orbis froze to the spot where he sat. “You found him?”

Manny paused in mid-sentence.

“Where you at?”

“At Manny’s office.”

“Good. Already in da Castro. See you in 30.”

“Wait! What did you find?”

“He’s German,” ROM announced definitively. She slapped down a picture of a smiling blond boy with bowl haircut. It was the same boy in Orbis’s photo. “Meet Matthäus Metz, age 6. Son to Karl and Sybille Metz. He’s got an older sister, Bettina. This photo was taken right before he vanished twenty-two years ago from a market in Essen, Germany.” She looked quietly at Orbis. “And your pic musta been right after he vanished.”

“I really wish you could see this,” Orbis muttered to Scepter.

“So do I.”

Mirrorball, Bang, Tug-of-War, and Paine came into the light shone from the single desk lamp. Paine spoke first. “I’m not sure I understand all this.”

“I’m not sure I buy it,” Bang continued.

“It’s just so speculative,” Mirrorball summed up. His muttonchops, flowing like two party streamers down his chest, glowed in the fading light. “You’re taking a huge leap of faith off of other leaps of faith.”

“I know it sounds far-fetched,” Orbis replied. He had shown them the photo he stole from evidence, and ROM’s age progression of it. “Yes, this kid is blond and Vagabond is black-haired—“

“I know a dye-job when I see one,” ROM said, the African-American pointing to her neon-pink ox-horns. “’Sides, he didn’t dye everything.”

“Moving on!”

ROM tossed her head, “Meant the pit-hair, guy.”

“The point is,” Orbis said, veering the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Is that the working theory goes like this: Vagabond-Matthäus gets kidnapped into the ring. Now, I’m not going to go into the gory details of what probably happened to him, but I think we can all imagine. This goes on until he’s in his mid teens, when Paul buys him.”

“’Buys?’” Mirrorball looked aghast.

“That’s usually how it works,” Orbis sighed.

ROM added, “I hacked his records. Everything I could find. His bank accounts were perfect.” She paused. “Too perfect. As soon as I connected my mind to the database, I found traces of another hack. I’ll bet you money they were cleaned up after he died. But there is this time when suddenly Merryman starts paying bills and shit at the minimum. The year before that, he began dumping a ton of stock. Paid out in cash each time.”

“How much?” Bang asked.

“All of it? Around 12 grand,” ROM replied. “In cash.”

“$12,000 in cash?” Mirrorball and Tug-of-War asked in unison.

“God, I get nervous walking around with a $100 in my wallet,” Paine remarked.

ROM shook her head. “This guy had money all over the world. Cashed shit out in New York, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, some place called the Isle of Man…”

“Merryman traveled for his job,” Orbis went on. “And he lived high on the hog. It looked like he was preparing a pool of cash to wait for him at whatever location he was at. He was already part of a financial circuit that believes in discretion.”

“But what does cash mean?” Tug-of-War asked.

Bang eyed him. “You’re an escort. You know. Untraceable. Untaxable.”

“You don’t charge another human being on ‘Visa,’” Orbis replied. “I’m betting that he was getting ready to buy Matthäus, who was well into his early teens at this point.”

“Merryman was probably an ephebophile,” Scepter supplied.

“A what?”

“Basically, pedophiles go for pre-adolescents,” the psychologist replied. “Ephebophiles go for teen-agers, which is what Vagabond would have been at the time. And lets face it: then and now, he’s a particularly handsome guy. Must have been a hot commodity from day one.”

“I feel sick,” Tug gurgled.