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!”

Episode 1, Part 4: The Poor Wandering One

ROM squinted. “What?”

“Vagabond was kidnapped into sex ring. Probably grew up in that ring. If Vagabond hasn’t bullshitted us completely, Merryman is the guy who bought him. Instead of just renting for the hour.”

            That slapped the woman so hard she sat back, hard, in her chair. “Wha--? A sex ring? Where’d you get that?”

            “It’s the case file I stole all this from,” Orbis said, still raving. “A pedophila network.” He turned and—

            ROM rose, and grabbed his hand. “Don’t you go after Vagabond.”

            “That’s exactly what I am going to do.”

            “Jus’ wait. Think! Why didn’t Vagabond say anything about this? Ever think about that?”

            “Because the man is crazy!”

            “Yeah,” ROM said, calmly. “He is. And that means he’ll fry you as much as look at you, if you get all Navy SEAL on his ass. You wanna take that on?”

            Orbis stared at her grip on him until she got religion and let go. “I. Want. My. Life. Back.”

            “Fine. Same here. Getting my life back? All for it. But if Vagabond’s been holdin’ out, you gonna need a hell of a lot more than that photo.”

            “San Francisco Police Department,” Bo announced, bursting into Dr. Veracruz’s office. “Is the doctor in?”

            The secretary was at his back. “I’m sorry, Dr. Veracruz! I told him you were busy—“

            “What the hell?” Manny said, rising at the noise. “Bo? I’m with a patient—”

            The cop rounded on the young woman, eyed her all of two seconds, and said, “Here’s why your life sucks: It’s all your fault.”

            Manny gawked. “BO! Ms. Williams, I do apologize for this officer—“

            “Vagabond lied,” Bo hissed. “From the start, he lied. Why do you think he gets so nutty around you?”

            That shut him up. Manny paused. “Ms. Williams,” he said at length, “this is Officer Bo Bronsky of the SFPD, for whom I consult on occasion. I’m afraid I have to cut this session short. We won’t charge for this round.”

            As the two women walked out and closed the door, both heard Manny very uncharacteristically yell to the officer “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

            “Vagabond was kidnapped and sold into a human trafficking ring.”

            Manny’s voice caught his throat. “What?” he croaked. “When did that happen?”

“When he was a boy.”

“How the hell did you find that out?”

            “I really wish you could see right now,” Orbis muttered. “I came across a photo from an investigation. One we were told to stop.”

            “Stop? Why—“

            “The photo is Vagabond. Maybe seven years old, but it’s him. ROM aged the photo.”

            “Age progression is inexact at best—“

            “It’s him!” Orbis pressed. “He was bought and sold and he never told us. He’s never told us anything about his past. The only thing we know about his life is at and after Merryman’s assassination.”

            “Assassination? It was a drive-by—“

            “The hell is was. Merryman was eliminated.”

            Manny held up is hands. “Whoah, whoah, whoah. Let’s back up. OK, let’s just assume you’re not a raving lunatic pulling shit out of thin air and what you say is true. Why ‘eliminate’ him?”

            Orbis crossed his arms. “My best guess—“

“’Guess?’”

“—is that he was going to come clean about boy-Vagabond. At first, I thought Vagabond was a kept boy exacting revenge. Now I think he was completely fucked up to begin with, and went off the deep end when Merryman got shot. Vagabond keeps talking about how ‘they got Paul,’ but he never gave any hint on who ‘they’ were. We never asked because it looked like an anonymous drive-by. Because he’s never said, we’ve never figured it out! It was a needle in a field-full of haystacks.”

Manny was quiet for a moment, mulling the idea, trying to get things in a linear progression. “OK. Let’s start over. Hypothetically, why would Vagabond keep something like that a secret?”

Orbis recalled ROM’s dime-store psychology that, nevertheless, had a twisted logic. “I don’t think Vagabond wants admit what happened to him. He may be the world’s most powerful psionic, but he’s still a victim of abuse — and in total denial of it. But he wants to find Paul’s killer. He has two…I don’t know, ‘drives’ that are working at cross-purposes. He wants to forget whatever it was that happened to him when he was trafficked, and still find the killer, and I’ll bet you that killer, or killers, are members of the ring.”

Manny crossed his arms. “That is a pretty out-there theory, Bo.”

Episode 1, Part 3: The Poor Wandering One

            “That wasn’t a great print,” ROM said of the original image. “The computer cleaned it up, but there was some guesswork.”

            Orbis nodded. “Ok. How old would you say he is? Say, seven?”

“Eh. Give or take. Sure.”

“Cool. Can you age him by, say, 20 years?”

            “No problem,” ROM mused. Her fingers flew over the keys. Tikka-tikka-tikka… “But it ain’t going to be exactly like what this kid looks like now. And he’ll still be smilin’, since he was in the original. There was guesswork before, and there’ll be even more now. I mean, don’t they compare the kid with the parents and go from there?”

            The man nodded. “I’ll deal. Go for it.”

            “OK, Mista Man. This’ll take a few seconds.” ROM replied, and hit “Return.” Lines of light passed over the child’s head, and it began to spin and blur, as it aged and “grew” larger to the head of a young man. “OK,” ROM mused, looking at her screen. “Approximate age is 27.” She glanced over at the image and did an instant double take, her eyes wide. “You are shittin’ me.”

Orbis was already staring, his face an inhuman mix of satisfaction and rage.

“And, hey,” she said, “what’s say we grew his hair out and dye it black?”

            “And let’s assume he looks as if he’s done a few rounds of steroids to bulk up,” Orbis added, his voice dangerously chipper.

            With measured, deliberate strokes, ROM quietly set the new parameters.

            It was Vagabond. Even with all the compu-guesswork. It was Vagabond.

            The two were utterly silent for several seconds before ROM spoke. “Never saw him smilin’ befo’.”

            “That son of a bitch,” Orbis whispered. He paused. “THAT SON OF A BITCH!” He grabbed the photo off the scanner, practically breaking it. ROM wanted, very much, to be just about anywhere else—now. “Can you burn that to a CD?”

            “Uh. Sure. What—“

            “That asshole has been lying by omission from the start!” Orbis raged. “And we fell for it! And for what? To ‘psychically shield’ us from kidnappings or attacks that never came? Bastard!”

            “Orbis, get a grip…”

            The man focused such a baleful glare on her that ROM’s voice curled up and blew away in her throat. “Hit Missing Persons. I can’t. I’ll be watched. I had to get all sanctimonious on my sarge about burying this. He’ll have eyes on me. ‘Young Vagabond’ has to be in some database somewhere. Then, hack into Paul Merryman’s bank account records. And assume something is being hid or has been covered up. I don’t care what you have to do. Pull up everything about that man.”

            ROM whirled around to the computer. “But what am I lookin’ for?”

            “A large monetary purchase.”

            “How big?”

            “Anything over 10 grand.”

            “Why?”

            Photo in hand, Orbis turned to leave. “Because I’m betting Merryman wasn’t his lover. He was his owner.”