INFAMOUS TRADE by Andrej Koymasky (C) 1998 - 2002 written the 20th of July, 1995 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Jer
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"INFAMOUS TRADE" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
TENTH
Washington Square - December
Dan Firestone entered the bedroom of Jacques Roux's small villa in time to see the Puerto Rican nurse, a chubby woman in her forties with gold teeth, preparing his lover for an intravenous injection.
Confined now to his bed, and pale, Jacques, reduced to skin and bones, was totally dependent on the small transfusion tubes -- from there also were supplied to him his intravenous injections. Being weak and completely deprived of any energy, he allowed only Dan to see him. As a psychologist and psychiatrist he always controlled every thing in his life and in that of his patients. But leukemia was something he was not able to control and that, because of his young age, was rapidly progressing. When the nurse left them alone, Dan kissed Jacques on his forehead and caressed his cheek.
"May I do something for you, baby?"
"Where is Oscar?" Jacques asked with a hoarse sigh.
Dan smiled at him sweetly, gently taking his lover's hand between his own, "In the garden with his mint biscuits. I think he is the only gourmet in the world having three legs..."
"Rowland?"
"He will arrive from London tomorrow evening. I'll go to wait for him at Kennedy. Then we'll go directly at the Astoria. The auction will start with his arrival. I checked the slaves, last night -- they are as ready as they will ever be, especially that splendid animal, Elton..."
"And your friend Yung Chem?"
"He's due the day after tomorrow. I know him. He thinks he is smart. He gives you a time then he changes it at the last moment to catch you by surprise. Anyway he will come, he is enthusiast about the new little blond we kidnapped for him. And he has also to sell quickly his stock of his best slaves, included Elton, to scrape up the twenty millions he still owe to Kim Jong."
Jacques emitted a deep sigh, "He's a strange man, that Korean. He can't stand the presence of a kid near him for any time longer than he needs to make him a perfect lover. Then he gets rid of him and starts all over. Certainly, he makes them ideal lovers."
"I feel you envy him..."
"And you would like to trade me for one of those slaves, I bet."
Holding each other's hands, they burst into laughter. After a few seconds of silence, while they looked into each other's love filled eyes, Jacques asked to be told about the buyers who would participate in Rowland's auction on the following night.
Dan shook his head, "It is incredible how much the auction excites them. I talked with one of them, last night -- they are more than beside themselves. One of them is Ortero, the Colombian banker, who takes part to buy kids with red hair and a small ass. I also talked to that Swedish pilot. The one that in your opinion resembles Kirk Douglas in the Vikings. He is always determined to have mature black boys with big cocks. And then, there is always Prince Al Whaladhi -- he prefers oriental boys, and when I showed him the picture of the three Laotian kids, you know, the two twins and their younger brother, who is just thirteen, his eyes shone with such a lust that I feared he could cumm on the spot in his underpants. Just looking at their picture! He says he hopes to be able to buy all three of them, especially the twins. The auction attracts people of all kinds. Ah, by the way, Rowland says that Clown is impatient to lay his hands on Terry Dos Santos."
"Terry... Terry... is he one of my patients? I can't remember, it's all so difficult..."
Sadly, Dan dropped one of Jacques' hands, thinking that there was nothing that could help ease the pain of watching his lover, who was dying. The sudden loss of memory was only one sign that his end was approaching. No religion, not even a long career as a policeman, or any philosophy you could think to believe in. Nothing could prepare you for such a thing. It had been many years since Dan had felt so powerless, so unprepared. What would he do, afterwards?
It was not strange that in that moment of weakness, Jacques thought that Terry had been one of his patients. It was he who, among his more unstable and attractive patients, chose some of the slaves that Rowland sold in the auctions. He also personally chose those among the boys assisted by the Lesley Foundation and those of the "breeding" of Clown's island. From time to time Alberto also found some candidates, among the lonely people he met in his restaurant or in the single's clubs of Manhattan. Some clients in fact wanted adult slaves. But it was Jacques who worked with the candidates persuading them they were submissive people, sexual animals born to serve a master. It was he who transformed them into being eager slaves. The only exceptions were the ex-lovers of The Clown, like Elton.
Rowland Preston paid for this kind of therapy and for the imprisonment in a house in the Astoria quarter in Queens where the subjects were secluded until the auction. Besides some sales were made directly, delivering the slave to the client, trusted people or old clients. The auctions were held in various cities of the world, to avoid making the police suspicious about repeated visits and traffic, strange adoptions of kids or rich people arriving alone and returning to their countries with a presumed "manservant".
Very often Rowland, who was notoriously a tightwad, complained he had to pay Jacques exorbitant sums; but he was forced to admit that without the esteemed doctor Jacques, he would earn much less money -- an unconvinced slave would not last long and could cause a lot of problems. Until a month ago, when the big setback occurred, Jacques treated his patients from his bed, hiding his illness behind an elegant black silk gown.
In the bedroom, Dan drew closer to Jacques, "He was not one of your patients, baby. He's the kid Alberto procured us. The one who went to his restaurant with his mother."
"Ah, yes, I remember now. You brought him here so I could see him. A likable kid, he could make Yung Chem happy. If he can only keep this one."
Dan agreed. Terry Dos Santos was doomed to end who knows where, possibly to lead a miserable life as the slave of some sadist. And all because Alberto bought the bar they went to see that night, when he rescued them from the hoodlums, and made it a restaurant. To buy the premises Alberto asked Jacques for a loan of fifty thousand dollars at ten percent interest. A good business deal, when the interest started to arrive. But as the Italian didn't succeed in finding a good chef, the restaurant opened three months late. Alberto ignored his debt with Jacques and Dan did an investigation for Jacques on that pasta-eater Italian, but unhappily only after the loan had been made. So he came to know that Alberto was a kind of sexual maniac. He had restaurants also in Sorrento, Addis Ababa and Saigon. He was involved in illegal activities like weapons traffic, prostitution and counterfeit money smuggling. Chance, political connections and the providential disappearing of witnesses had kept him far from troubles, up to then.
After the discovery that he had leukemia, Jacques need for money increased dramatically. Dan helped him any way he could, of course, then asked Alberto to pay back his debt. The Italian first answered giving back the fifty thousand dollars, then complained he had no other means to pay the matured interests. He was restructuring his restaurant's kitchen on 73rd, he had taxes problems and the unions where making his life a nightmare. All he needed was a little delay.
Dan suspected that Alberto was deliberately drawing it out, convinced that the death of Jacques would erase all debts. Dan made him understand he was mistaken thinking that at the end he had not to pay back Jacques Roux. The previous week, on Thanksgiving Day, Dan made an unexpected visit on the Italian's apartment in South Central Park and gave him what he called his last warning. At the end of their meeting, a crying Alberto, his eyes staring at the Swiss Army knife blade pointed at his groin, swore he would pay all that remained of his debt with Roux, in one week.
That's why two day later, a Saturday, he invited Dan to the Umbria making him sit three tables away from the place where an adorable blond kid was having lunch with his mother and a slender young man with soft brown hair.
Discretely pointing out the kid, Alberto whispered, "His name is Terence Dos Santos, Terry. I think he will made both of us rich. Call Rowland and ask him what he thinks of him."
Dan observed the kid for several seconds then went back to his albese with white truffles. Twenty minutes later, in a transoceanic call from Alberto's office, Dan described Terry to Rowland Preston.
"Very, very good. But you have to send me a good picture, and also in hurry." The English man answered.
Dan said to Rowland that his part to control the kid's situation and the prize at the conclusion of next auction would not be enough, not with the care for Jacques that became more expensive day by day. The sweet Terry had to earn him at last a quarter of a million dollars. Rowland promised that, if the pictures confirmed his description, the quarter of a million was sure thing.
Dan set his men in motion and obtained the pictures, included one in a pool, really tasty. And organized the kidnapping.
In his bedroom Jacques looked at Dan, "It will be the first auction I've miss since we associated with Rowland. I count on you to learn everything, including gossip. Hey, what's up? You seem in a bad mood, you're frowning. What going on?"
"Black. That man is getting too close, and I don't like it. He followed Terry's traces and that brought him too near my home. I thought that killing the boy's parents would throw him off, but on the contrary last night he went poking around in Alberto's restaurant to meet a friend of Terry's mother. And here he caught Alberto in the private room with Kim Shin. Black and Shin's body-guard came to blows -- Black not only kicked in the gorilla's ass, but also gave Shin a good thrashing. As Shin has a diplomatic passport, that attracted the attention of the police department, the Korean Embassy and the American Government."
"So then, what is the problem?"
"Just guess, if Black asks himself why Alberto and Shin are on so good terms. Black surely connected Shin to Chem. Guess he can connect Alberto with me. That mess at the restaurant would not have happened if Black was not following the traces of little, precious Terry, as Rowland calls him. And he also knows that Fort is in contact with me, and I think he guesses that it is thanks to him I got Susan's reports..."
"Is Fort still in Washington?"
"No, he went to Mexico but he should be on his way back with the receipts from the sale of the South-American boys sent to Chem's island. Shim was complaining we didn't gather enough boys. I guess that general Kim Jong is pushing on Chem and he takes it out on us. Alberto was trying to calm down Kim Shin when Black appeared on the scene. Let's now see my second problem with Black-- a couple of weeks ago he went to the DEA to take look at all the profiles written by those two policemen killed by the traffickers. I got fifty thousand dollars for revealing their identity -- no regrets, baby, we needed that money and that's all. In any case, I ask myself how near Black is to getting the proof that Susan, Fort girlfriend, sold to Fort the identities of those two policemen."
Jacques gently smiled, "That Black is like a Summer flu -- we can't get rid of him..."
"I know everything about Black. He is the kind of guy who when he threatens to send you to hell, you already are on the way. What would happen if he comes to know the relationship that Alberto, Kim Shin and Yung Chem had in Saigon? What would happen if he squeezes Alberto and that pasta- eater brings him to me?"
Jacques slowly raised his index finger, "Did you or one of those psychopaths working for you investigate about Black with your faithful computer?"
"You bet! That guy is fucking clean or possibly just he was not yet caught red handed, I don't know. He is an expert in martial arts -- everybody says he is a real champion. Some years ago he left the Police Corp. to work for a private agency. Then, after a couple of boys were mysteriously killed, Black dismissed and went back in the Corp. They put him on a gold pedestal. Christ, he is too clean to be real!"
"And what does this make you think?"
"There have been some rumors about revenge. It is said around that Black worked in that private agency only to kill those two. He never was charged with anything. Still, today nobody knows who killed those two."
"Do you think it was Black?"
"He got out of bed on the wrong side..."
"Don't make me laugh. Laughing loosens these cursed cannulas." He put a finger on his lips to ask some silence. He was thinking. Dan kept silent waiting for his words. Finally Jacques said, "Don't kill Black. Until I'll tell you."
"As you want."
"Each of us has a weak point. Children, a wife, a lover of some kind. Find out the people he loves and you'll know his weak point. This is the way we will put him out of the game without risking a direct confrontation."
"I can piss on him... I can make his life really unbearable."
"And you can also cut his legs. Remember that a pack of rabid dogs paralyzed America taking hostage only a few citizens. I am sure we can resolve this matter acting this way."
"I see."
"Force him to defend himself on various fronts. If he becomes impatient and you face him directly, you risk being defeated by a type like him. I know very well you think this couldn't happen, but think about a direct clash only as the last resort. In the mean time, I want you to be smarter than him, not to limit yourself to react to his moves."
"It will not be easy, baby."
"Black has his problems. He thrashed a Korean Diplomat, do you remember? It's enough to raise a negative reaction from both governments. For sergeant Black this means more problems. Moreover his most evident weakness seems to be his sense of guilt. According to the recording you made of his telephone calls to the Dos Santos, I'd say he feels guilty for not having yet found the son of his ex-girlfriend. He feels he deceived her, then not having married her, and to have disappointed her now not having brought back her son. I would like to know why, back from Vietnam, he broke up with her. And now that she disappeared, I think his guilt complex increased."
"I had to do it, baby! One of my men was at the control of their phone, when I took his place. Then I heard that the Dos Santos were saying to Black they remembered a black man who wandered around the restaurant the last time they went there and that he seemed to look with a weird interest at the kid. They thought he could be a sex maniac. It was that fucking bastard Fort, who was preparing the kidnapping with Alberto. If they described him carefully, Black could recognize Fort, and that would automatically lead him to me. I had to get rid of them, and soon. I went to their home in uniform telling them we found Terry, and I made them disappear. They will not find them any more..."
"I'm not reproaching you, darling. You acted for the best, I never doubted this, not even for a minute. Let's now talk some more about Black. Guilt, this is what pushes him to behave with so much zeal. Let him continue to live, at least for the moment. But remember what I told you about the people he loves. Play with his sentiments."
Dan nodded, "You told me when to leave the Police. When it was the moment to start my private agency of tough men. I have at my orders eight wonderful professionals you chose thanks to the interviews with the perspective candidates, and who now would do anything for me. You did so that I could open the disco and put me in contact with the people who sold me the bar on Bank Street. And you also inserted me on Rowland's business tour. If it was not for you, I would not even have a hole to piss in. I have to know, baby -- Russell Fort and Alberto, which of them can harm me more?"
"Russell. As you said, there is the possibility that Black has already understood about his paramour. If it is so, you'll start having troubles from that side."
"And Alberto?"
"He has already been arrested more than once. And he always managed to get out. He will know how to manage, in any case, without too many problems. All he has to do is to keep silent, and to let his lawyer talk in his behalf, then pack up and leave the country. Fort and Susan. My advice is to stop the leak before it is too late. Susan knows that Fort used her to pinch the two infiltrators. And she also knows that Black doesn't leave a track that can lead him to whoever did those two killings. I know you scared to death Russell, but possibly Susan could have some scruples, or just be too scared. You can threaten Russell till judgment day, but you can't trust him. And even less his lover. You would be better to renounce them, or else they can ruin you."
"If I was not so desperately in need of Russell to get the information, I would seriously think to kill them."
"What prevents you from finding a different access to that information?"
Dan was near answering when he noticed that the hollow eyes of Jacques moved to the door. The Puerto Rican nurse was inflexible -- she conceded to Dan twenty minutes. That span of time was about ending and she now was certainly coming back to resume her job and it was better not to give her a hard time.
He gave a light caress to his lover and smiled at him with extreme sweetness, "I'll be back in a while, Love. I want to go see how Terry is. Tomorrow will be his great day. See you."
"You know how to behave with the kid."
"I had the best of teachers..."
Five minutes later Dan, taking with him his usual briefcase, rode the elevator down to the warm basement of Jacques Roux small villa. He switched on the light and checked the door leading into a small cellar, turning the knob, and checked the lock he personally put there. The cellar's door had not been tampered with. A last pressure on the knob, then Dan checked the thermometer. This reminded him he had to order diesel fuel for the villa's heating system.
Dan started to walk again. Going to the end of the underground passage, where a light above a metallic green door was lit. He was just passing the washing machine and some metal racks containing the records of sittings with Jacques' patients, when the green door slowly opened. A young man with a childish face and a Uzi submachine gun in his hands, appeared on the threshold. He had short-cropped light brown hair and wore a tight pearl-gray T shirt with a Tom of Finland drawing on it, that showed off his strong pectorals, and trousers of a track suit of plush of the same gray.
When Dan reached the door, the young man silently moved aside. Dan entered a small room with concrete walls, lit by a neon lamp and the young man followed him. The furniture was composed of a camp bed, a metal folding chair and a small table. Dan knit his eyebrows feeling the strong smell of tobacco and frankfurters. On the bed some gay magazines, on the floor beer cans, empty pizza boxes and tissues crumpled into balls. On a small color video-deck was playing a porno movie showing two sailors raping a mate, without sound.
Reaching the opposite end of the room, Dan placed a hand on a second metal door looking through the glass spy hole. Then he addressed to the young man, "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, all right."
"Just try to touch him and you are dead -- if it's not Yung Chem to do it, I'll do it."
"There is no danger, I prefer mature men, you know it..." The young man said looking at him with provoking air.
Yes, Dan knew it -- he was a former student at the Police Academy, one of the best, who had been kicked out because he heavily provoked more than one of his Academy mates with sexual advances.
Taking a key hanging from a hook at the right of the door, Dan opened the lock and entered a second room with concrete walls, closing the door at his back. Slightly smaller than the first one, the little room was lit by a neon light similar to the other one, and contained a folding bed, sheets, a table and two folding chairs. Different from the other, this room had also a tiny private bathroom. In a corner of the ceiling a closed circuit TV camera monitored the scene. Under the camera, Terry Dos Santos was lying on the bed, turning towards the wall.
Hearing the door open, he turned, his eyes almost hid by his blond hair. He was still wearing the same clothes he had on when Dan kidnapped him, five days earlier. After a few seconds he sat up, pulled his hair away from his eyes, and looked towards the ex policeman, his eyes rimmed in red. He had to be scared, but he fought to hold the man's look. Dan appreciated the courage that the kid was showing.
"I want to go back home." Terry said.
They were the same words he told Dan the last time he came to check his conditions. He talked with a low voice, but determinedly. He was making a big effort to keep calm, to avoid yielding. Many men would be reduced to pieces in similar circumstances. The kid had something special.
Dan sat on a chair and opened his briefcase. He pulled out a micro-tape recorder and switched it on. He lit a cigarette, deeply inhaled; then exhaled the smoke towards the camera.
After a few seconds he pointed at the food on the table, "Don't you like cheeseburgers and fries? I thought all kids loved them. You have to eat something, really."
Later Dan would have Jacques listen to the recording while looking at the recording from the camera to make his recommendations to Chem. His advice would be the first step for Chem to transform the adolescent into one of his perfect recreation creatures. In the next minutes each thing the boy would say or do, his smallest reaction or answer, would tell very much to Jacques. Yung Chem often listened to Jacques' opinion about the education of his young boys.
"Why do you keep me here? Why I can't see my mother? You are not a policeman -- you said you are but I know you aren't. You lied to me."
The boy was also shrewd. Dan showed him the badge to approach him. He also used it to enter in the house of his parents on the night he kidnapped them to kill them.
Using his sleeve, Terry dried a tear that was starting down from his eye, "I don't want to stay here, I want to go back home."
Feeling somebody at his back Dan turned to see who he was. The young man got tired to look at his porno video and had silently opened the door a little to spy on what was happening. Chewing gum, he was on the threshold enjoying the show. Dan stared at him until the young man understood and went back into his room closing the door behind him.
"I'll now explain to you why, Terry. Because you cannot see your mother or go back home, just that. You are here exactly because of your mother, do you know that?"
"I don't understand."
"Your mother entrusted you to us, she gave us legal custody of you, so we can find somebody wanting to adopt you. She doesn't want you any more -- this is the only way she has to settle things with your father. As your father doesn't want you around any more. Because he discovered that you are not really his son -- your mother had you with another man."
"You are a liar, I know this is a lie." Terry said standing up from the bed, his fists tight at the sides of his thighs.
Five days in this sewer and still the kid resisted, Dan thought. The kid was really hard, "Terry, believe me, it is so. She doesn't want you any more. I'm sorry, but the situation is this. And we will find a rich dad for you, who will adopt you..."
"No. She would never do such a thing. You are a filthy liar."
Terry assumed a challenging air and remained attached to his mother. Clown would have a hard task with this kid. To mold him to his pleasure would not at all be easy. Rummaging in his briefcase Dan pulled out a cellular phone, stretched out the aerial and dialed a set of numbers. Then he took it to his ear and said as listening.
When a recorded woman's voice started to talk, Dan said, "Madam Dos Santos? Well thank you, and you? Good. Madam, I have Terry here and I would like you to confirm to him our agreement. Yes, certainly, I explained everything to him but he doesn't want to believe me." And while he was talking to the phone, he observed the kid.
Terry's eyes didn't move from his face. His hair ruffled, his eyes red, but still wonderful. And also strong. He was at a step from yielding, but he resisted. He resisted and proudly refused to lower his eyes, Dan had to beat his eyelids.
"Yes, I know that, Madam, I know this was our agreement, but... Yes, I know you were forced to... If you just would personally tell the boy..." Dan said in the telephone.
"I want to talk with her. Let me talk with my mother."
Terry was not afraid to stand up to an adult. Dan smiled and thought that Chem had to be careful with that kid.
"Certainly yes. I am sorry, Madam Dos Santos, but the boy... I understand, as you wish, Madam. Yes, certainly. Good evening, Madam." He said and closed the telephone pushing back the aerial, "I'm sorry, Terry, but she says she doesn't want to talk with you..."
Among tears and screams Terry hurled himself against the man trying to tear the cellular away from his hands, "I don't believe you, I don't believe you!"
Dan pushed him back thinking that everything had happened just as Jacques had predicted. Then he asked himself when had his lover ever been wrong. How could he continue without him? Moving away from Dan, Terry let himself fall on the folding bed, in tears. While the kid's body was shaken by sobs, Dan shut his briefcase and stood up -- he didn't feel sympathy for Terry, he didn't hate him; but did not love him. All he cared about was Jacques. Jacques was way more important than thousand of Terrys. Dan went to the door. When he turned to throw a last glance to him, he saw that Terry stopped crying and was now sitting with a disconcerting calm. Was he a monster, that kid? He was sitting straight, possibly how his mother taught him and was drying his tears with the index finger of his right hand.
He looked straight in Dan's eyes, and said with an incredibly calm voice, "You didn't talk with my mum. I know it was not her on the phone."
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER ELEVENTH
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