After Mr. Crenshaw became Senator Crenshaw, Emilio often shuttled between Washington and California on the Crenshaw jet. And now he was shuttling down the West Side of Manhattan in a stretch limo.
Life was good on the fast track.
Emilio hadn’t wasted his spare time during the past ten years. He’d gone to night school to improve his English and his reading. And he’d kept in shape. He’d sworn off the steroids but kept working out. The result was a slimmer, meaner frame, with smaller but denser muscles. At forty-one he was faster and stronger than he’d been in his halcyon days at The Blue Senorita. And this Dog Collar place might be a little like his old stomping grounds...and he did mean stomping.
He popped his knuckles. He almost hoped somebody got in his way when he picked up Charlie.
“It’s up here on the left,” Fred said.
But Emilio was watching to the right. On the near side of West Street, near the water, a group of young men dressed in everything from leather pants to off-shoulder blouses were drinking beer and prancing around. Every so often a car would stop and one of them would swish over and speak to the driver. Sometimes the car would pull away as it had arrived, and sometimes the young man would get in and be whisked off for a rolling quicky.
Fred did a U-turn and pulled up in front of The Dog Collar. As Emilio stepped out, Decker and Molinari appeared from the shadows. Decker was fair, Molinari was almost as dark as Emilio. They were his two best men from the Paraiso security force.
“He’s still there. Want us to—?”
“I’ll get him,” Emilio said. “You two watch my back.” He pulled out a pair of plain, black leather gloves. “And be sure to wear your gloves. You don’t want to split a knuckle in this place.”
They smiled warily and pulled on their gloves as they followed Emilio inside.
“He’s wearing a red parka,” Decker said as he and Mol flanked the door.
Crowded inside, and dark. So dark Emilio had to remove his shades. He scanned the bar that stretched along the wall to his right. No women—not that he’d expected any—and no red parka. He met some frank, inviting stares, but no sign of Charlie. He checked out the floor--crowded with cocktail tables, a row of booths along the far wall and an empty stage at the rear. Slim waiters with boyish haircuts and neat little mustaches slipped back and forth among the tables with drinks and bar food. Emilio spotted two women—together, of course—but where was Charlie?
He edged his way through the tables, searching the faces. No red parka. Maybe he’d taken it off. Who knew what Charlie might look like these days--the color of his hair, what he’d be wearing? One thing Emilio had to say for the boy, he was discreet. He wasn’t deliberately trying to ruin his father’s political chances. He usually rented a place under an assumed name, never told any of his rotating lovers who he was, and generally kept a low profile. But nonetheless he remained a monster political liability.
Maybe that was why the Senador had decided it was time to reel Charlie in. He’d been gone for almost two years now. Emilio had tracked him to New York through the transfers from his trust fund. He’d traced him across the country but now he couldn’t spot him across this single room. Had he made Decker and slipped out the back?
Emilio was about to return to the door to quiz Decker when he saw a flash of red in the rearmost booth and homed in on it like a beacon. Two guys in the booth—the one holding the parka had his back to him. Emilio repressed a gasp when he saw his face. It was Charlie. The curly brown hair was the same, as were the blue eyes, but he looked so thin. Emilio barely recognized the boy.
Why do I still think of him as a boy? he wondered. He’s twenty-five.
Perhaps it was because part of his brain would always associate Charlie with the pudgy teenager he’d carried out of that Tijuana alley.
Charlie looked up at Emilio with wide blue eyes that widened further when he recognized him.
“Oh, shit,” Charlie said. “You found me.”
“Time to go home, Charlie.”
“Let me be, Emilio. I’m settled in here. I’m not bothering anybody. I’m actually happy here. Just tell Dad you couldn’t find me.”
“That would be lying, Charlie. And I never lie...to your dad.”
He grabbed the boy under his right arm and began to pull him from his seat. Charlie tried to wriggle free but it was like a Chihuahua resisting a pitbull.
The guy in the other half of the booth stood and gave Emilio a two-handed shove.
“Get your mitts off him, fucker!”
He was beefier than Charlie, with decent pecs and a good set of shoulders under the T-shirt and leather vest he wore, but he was out of his league. Way out.
“No me jodas!” Emilio said and smashed a right uppercut to his jaw that slammed him back into the inner corner of the booth. He slumped there and stared up at Emilio with a look of dazed pain.
Emilio turned and started dragging Charlie toward the door, knocking over tables in his way. He didn’t want a full-scale brawl but he wouldn’t have minded another maricon or two trying to block his way. But most of them seemed too surprised and off guard to react. Too bad. He was in the mood to kick some ass. He saw the bartender come out from behind the bar hefting an aluminum baseball bat. Decker and Mol intercepted him, and after a brief struggle Mol was holding the bat and the bartender was back behind the bar.
Once he was free of the tables, Emilio swung the stumbling Charlie around in front of him and propelled him toward the door. Decker and Mol closed in behind them as they exited. Emilio heard the bat clank on the floor as the doors swung closed. Half a dozen steps across the sidewalk and then they were all inside the limo, heading uptown.
Charlie opened the door on the other side but Emilio pulled him back before he could jump out.
“You’ll get killed that way, kid.”
“I don’t care!” Charlie said. “Dammit, Emilio, you can’t do this! It’s kidnapping!”
“Just following orders. Your father misses you.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Charlie folded his arms and legs and withdrew into himself. He spent the rest of the trip staring at the floor.
Emilio kept a close eye on him. He didn’t want him trying to jump out of the car again--although that might be a blessing for all concerned.
He sighed. Why did the Senador want this miserable creature around? He seemed to love the boy despite the threat posed by his twisted nature. Was that parenthood? Was that what fathering a child did to you? Made you lose your perspective? Emilio was glad he’d spared himself the affliction. But if he’d had a child, a boy, he’d never have let him grow up to be a maricon. He would have beaten that out of him at an early age.
What if Charlie did die by leaping from a moving vehicle? Or what if he fell prey to a hit-and-run driver? A major stumbling block on the Senador’s road to the White House would be removed.
Emilio decided to start keeping a mental file of “accidental” ways for Charlie to die should the need suddenly arise. The Senador would never order it, but if the need ever arose, Emilio might decide to act on his own.