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.

Episode 2, Part 6

“Didn’t quite go as planned, huh?” Manny said, handing Bo a very much needed drink. Which, in Orbis’s case, was soda water. It was the end of the day. The sun was setting over the Pacific, bathing his office in a glorious golden glow. “ROM’s going to kill you for telling her she did something wrong, you know.”

Bo downed the water and handed the glass back so fast Manny didn’t have time to sit down. “Whatever. I can’t believe he’s not in Missing Persons.”

“Hm.”

Orbis looked at Manny, and the blind man needed not his eyes, nor his telepathy to know the resolve the man felt. “Manny, I am right about this. I am right!”

“Fine. But you hit a dead end. What else do you have?”

The other man, a bundle of nerves, sighed and somehow managed to relax enough to sit down. “We have the ballistics from the bullet that killed Merryman—“

“Which neither we nor the SFPD have been able to trace to the gun that fired it.” Manny sat down next to the man, his hands on the Orbis’s wide shoulders.

 “The gun that killed Merryman was the same gun that killed the informant that gave us the photo of Vagabond.”

Scepter froze.

“It was a hunch. I already had the photo,” Orbis said. He sounded very tired. “I’m just a rookie cop. I was never involved enough to know all the details, but I’m a Navy SEAL. I knew it was going on. When the informant was killed, it just so happened that I was one of the officers on the scene. Did a real number on the guy. Pulped his whole head, practically.”

“Ok, ew.”

“It goes to show these people mean business. Completely professional hit.”

“’Professional?’”

“I’m a SEAL. I know a sniper when I see one,” Orbis sighed, sitting back. “It wasn’t until today I found out who he was. When I heard the investigation was being disbanded a few days ago, I stole the photos and by pure chance found Vagabond. When the informant ended up on the slab, I put the pieces together. Headed over to ballistics and pulled the files on Merryman. They confirmed it for me on the spot. Same gun. The informant was killed in the AM. In the PM, my department was told to bury this case. They were half-way through the autopsy. That’s confidential all, by the way.”

 “You serious?”

“Yes, I am,” came the reply.

Scepter was quiet for a minute. “Did anybody see you take that photo?”

“Huh?”

“Are you in danger. Of being targeted yourself.”

Orbis looked up at the man. “I…I don’t think anybody saw me.”

“Who else knows you are here?”

“Um. ROM, does. Miss Gwen, probably. ROM probably told her—“

Scepter got to his phone and started dialing.

“Who are you calling?”

“Everybody I can reach. This isn’t about Vagabond anymore. It’s about you…Alastair, hi. It’s Manny…”

Then Bo’s cell went off. ROM. Probably to rail into him. “Hi, ROM, look, I'm sor--”

“I found him.”

Episode 1, Part 5: The Poor Wandering One

“Don’t get all shrink-speak on me.”

“Funny.”

“Look, don’t some abuse victims do a 180 and embrace their abuser?”

“Yes, of course—“

“And don’t some abuse victims just blot out the whole thing, deny that it ever happened?”

“A fugue or pathological denial or disassociative state, yes, but—“

“So what if with Vagabond, it was both?”

Now Manny was curious. “So what you are saying is that Vagabond pathologically embraced his abuser but pathologically repressed the abuse?”

“Bingo.”

“And convinced himself that it was a healthy, loving relationship, thereby attaining some measure of normalcy in his damaged mind.”

“Double bingo.”

The ball began to roll. “And when that relationship ended, the normalcy also ended, and Vagabond went on a revenge rampage, but the original repression of the abuse remained intact. He can’t admit he knows who the killer is, or suspects who it is, because it would mean having to face the true nature of being abused, of being trade, so he’s been running in place for the last two years.”

“You win a brand new refrigerator! The part of him that wants the fantasy won’t let him divulge all that he knows, therefore, the part of him that wants revenge is hamstrung. 49% wants revenge, 51% wants the fantasy. Part of him wants us to find the killer, and part of him wants us not to.”

Manny turned, scratching his head. “If that were true.”

“We have to confront Vagabond. It’s the only way.”

Manny snapped his head to the other man. “’Confront him?’ You are out of your mind, Bo! I’m a psychologist, and I am telling you that is nuts.”

“If it’s the truth—”

“That’s a joke, right?” Manny asked, incredulous. “You don’t need me to know that Vagabond is psychotic. He has all the hallmarks of a man who is deeply criminally insane. He makes John Wayne Gacy look like a smurf! And he has more rage than I have ever sensed in a man. He will kill and has killed without remorse or even provocation. If what you say is true, the only thing that, to Vagabond, is more sacred than finding Paul Merryman’s killer is the fantasy of Paul Merryman. Shining daylight on the magic could make Vagabond self-destruct.”

“That a bad thing?”

“It does when you have the power to take out half the city and all of you.”

Orbis grunted.

Manny grew thoughtful. “What exactly is in this photo you found?”

“A boy naked and tied up.”

“…Jesus.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Manny put his had to his forehead. “You’re going to need something more. Something irrefutable. Something he can’t run away from.”

“The photo—“

“—could be doctored. And let’s face it, age progression is never exactly dead on. He’ll just deny it…at best.”

“Why do people deny it?” Orbis asked thoughtfully.

“Pride. Humiliation. Sometimes the mind can’t take it. Hell, it could be out of habit! It can be any number of reasons. For Vagabond, it may be to keep the fantasy intact. But again, if any of this is true. You have a theory, and it is outlandish at best.”

“ROM is trying to find who he really is. Maybe find his family.”

“His family is dead.”

“That’s only what he told us.”

A pause. “I’ll give you that, but ROM’s could be in for a wild goose chase. Another one, by the way. Speaking of needles in haystacks. How the hell is she going to do that?”

“Missing Persons.”

“Why can’t you do that?”

“Because I’ll be watched.”

“Come again?”

Orbis was silent.

“Orbis…what aren’t you telling me? I can find out easily enough, you know.”

“The SFPD was told to drop this investigation and destroy the evidence.”

Scepter was suddenly very serious. “You stole that photo.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve gone against a direct order.”

“Yes.”

“And this…ring, you think it probably has very powerful members.”

“Yes.”

“Even in the SFPD?”

Orbis exhaled. “Yes.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Yes. Or maybe not. Maybe the force is clean and was just ordered to do somebody else’s dirty work.”

Manny sat down. “Orbis, you are putting yourself directly in the line of fire of somebody who can not only boss the SFPD around, but get away with it. You could get thrown off the force for this, or worse. You’ve already stolen evidence. That alone is a crime.”

“I got thrown outta the SEALs, too. Why not make it a set?” At which point, Orbis’s cell went off. ROM. Manny was momentarily forgotten. “What did you find.”

“A whole lot of nothin’. Plenty of blonde pretty boys. None of him.”

“What? Did you check Missing Persons—“

“Yes, I did! And he ain’t there!”

“Then you did it wrong!”

“Excuse me?” ROM did not like to hear that accusation.

“ROM, he was kidnapped. Expand the search. Other countries.”

“You shittin’ me? That’ll take forev—”

Orbis clenched his free fist. “We’ve all seen him naked! He’s blonde, blue-eyed and uncut! That means northern Europe! Think! You have the brains to install a supercomputer in week and call it ‘paradise!’” He all but threw the phone across the room. “Damn. Damndamndamn!”