Abaddon's Locusts

ABADDON’S LOCUSTS

By Don Travis

  

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth:

and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

….

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit

whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath

his name Apollyon.

Book of Revelation 9:3 and 9:11

          Prologue

          Two men gazed at the sleeping youth sprawled across the motel room mattress. The older, his pleasant features blemished by an occasional glint of cruelty in his blue eyes, smoothed silver wings at his temples before handing over a number of large denomination bills to a young Hispanic almost as handsome as the boy on the bed but with a harder cast.

          Now fully clothed, Silver Wings exuded the authority of a player, someone who counted.                     “Fucking beautiful. How old did you say he is?”

          “Eighteen. Barely. Sí, I know he’s older’n you usually like. But he’s one of them rare ones, no? As linda as a woman and as macho as a man. He took care of you, yes?”

          Silver Wings rubbed his eyes as if remembering the last hour. “He was fantastic. Must have worn himself out. Does he usually go comatose afterward?”

           “Ah, that is the drug. He claims he gets a bigger bang by charging up. But you benefit as well, no?” He eyed his companion. “He is yours for $25,000.”

          Interest flickered and died. “Tempting. But my household isn’t set up for that kind of arrangement. I prefer to call you when I feel the need. Even if that means sharing him.”

          “You don’t take him, then we move him south.”

          “South? To Mexico, you mean? Juarez?” That wouldn’t be too bad. El Paso was a short hop, and Juarez lay just across the border.

          “At first, but then we gonna trade him up.”

          Silver Wings understood the trafficking language of trading up, but it was unusual to move members of the “family” out of country these days. “Trade him up in Juarez? Sounds more like trading him down to me.”

          “¡Órale! There’s some big money in Juarez. But there’s a bigwig in the Middle East that went ape shit over the kid’s pics. He wants him. And for a lot more than twenty-five. I only give you that price to let you know how much we value you.”

          “Middle East, huh?” Silver Wings licked his lips. “Put off that transfer while I see if I can work something out.”

          “Two days. Then I gotta move him. You know, easier to ship him overseas from Mexico than from the States.”

          Silver Wings’ voice hardened. “You can do better than that. Give me a week to reorder my life. I’d like to visit him a couple of times. Usual fee, of course. That gives you reason enough to hold him here.”

          “Okay, but not no more’n a week. I got people to answer to, you know.”

          “I’d like him again tomorrow night, but it will have to be late. I have a dinner meeting.”

          Hispano lowered his head. “As you wish. All you gotta do is call me.”

          Silver Wings left the motel reluctantly. What would take place in that room now that they were alone? Oh, how he’d like to witness those two going at it. Awesome. Perhaps he’d request that tomorrow. It would cost more. But it was only money.

          Chapter 1

Monday, August 9, 2010, Albuquerque, New Mexico

          I parked my Impala as close as possible to the detached, single-car garage to leave room for Paul’s Dodge Charger on the driveway and sat for a moment trying to figure out the cacophony on the radio. I’d failed to reset the station after Paul and I went for a rare game of weekend golf at the North Valley Country Club and listened to the station on the way home from the office to try and understand my companion’s taste in music. Now something called “Alejandro” by a gal proclaiming herself to be Lady Gaga committed assault on my classical music-loving ears. As I switched off the noise and stepped from the car, a high, uncertain voice snagged my attention.

          “Yoo-hoo, Mr. Vinson. BJ!”

          Mrs. Gertrude Wardlow, the late afternoon sun catching in wayward strands of her white hair, waved at me from the foot of her driveway. She had lived in the white brick across the street for as long as I could remember. Mrs. W. and her husband Herb had been with the Drug Enforcement Administration from the time it was formed in 1973 until their retirement. Some twenty years ago, Herb passed on to his reward—an urn on his widow’s mantelpiece. I walked out to meet her in the middle of Post Oak Drive.

          “I’m so glad I caught you.” She fiddled with the frilly lace at the neck of her lavender blouse. “A young man on a Harley has been driving up and down the street. He stopped at your place twice. Rang the bell and then rode off.”

          No doubt she was recalling the time when two thugs on another motorcycle attempted to gun me down. When she’d yelled to distract their murderous attention, they shot up the front of her house, scattering her husband all over the carpet.

          I smiled and nodded toward her picture window. “I trust Herb’s resting comfortably in his new urn.”

         A mischievous smile touched her thin lips. “I suspect some of him ended up in the vacuum cleaner. But he won’t mind. He was carrying too much weight there at the end.”

          I touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m not involved in any gang disputes at the moment. Not that I know of anyway.”

          She covered her lips with the fingers of her left hand. “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. I just thought you should be aware someone was trying to contact you.”

          “Thank you, Mrs. W. I’ll be on the lookout.”

          After exchanging pleasantries, we parted. I mounted the steps to my front porch and paused to enjoy the welcoming aroma of the tea roses my late mother had planted. No evidence of a note on the door or in the mailbox. That meant the mysterious biker would probably return. I went inside and forgot the matter as I removed one of Paul’s casseroles from the fridge and got out a pan of rolls. Our household mantra was Paul Barton, freelance journalist, whipped up gourmet meals; B. J. Vinson, confidential investigator, burned toast.

          We planned to stay home tonight and watch an episode of a new gumshoe TV program called The Glades. Matt Passmore, the guy who played the detective, was a way-cool customer who Paul claimed should be my role model. I’d no sooner set the dishes to heating than a rumble on the street caught my attention. A moment later the doorbell rang.

          I turned off the stove and opened the door to reveal a tall raven-haired Navajo with high cheekbones. It took a moment to recognize the good-looking guy. “Henry Secatero, as I live and breathe.”

          His deep voice came up out of his nether regions. “Wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

          “How could I forget the guys who helped me solve a case. Is Jazz with you?” His quick frown told me he was about to deliver bad news. “Come on in.”

          We settled in the den with a couple of jiggers of Scotch. He laid what appeared to be a sleeve for a laptop computer on the floor beside the chair and took a sip before speaking. “Jazz is gone.”

          “Gone?” My hand tightened on the rocks glass halfway to my mouth. “You mean—”

          “Naw, not dead. Just gone. Disappeared. Poof. And that ain’t like Jazz.”

          Jasper Penrod, who dubbed himself Jazz as soon as he was old enough, was Henry’s mixed-blood half-brother.

          “Are you sure? Way I understand it, he spends some of his time on the Navajo Reservation and some in Farmington. Hard to keep track of him.”

          “Yeah, he bounces around, but he don’t go outa touch for long. He calls me regular like. If he can’t reach me on my cell, he leaves a message at the chapter house. I didn’t get worried until I saw his Uncle Riley in Farmington and found out he hadn’t called him or Jazz’s mother either. Been three… four weeks since anybody heard from him.”

          “Do you have any idea why?”

          “Not sure, but this might have something to do with it.” Henry leaned over and picked up the canvas case. He hesitated after pulling out an Acer laptop computer. “Man, I sure hate to show you this.”

          My raised eyebrows probably expressed my surprise better than my spoken “Why?”

          “You’ll see a Jazz you ain’t seen before. Hell, I hadn’t seen before. You gotta understand. Jazz being like he is, you know gay and all, it’s not easy for him up in Farmington. When he was growing up, he didn’t mind casual… affairs, I guess you’d say. Until he saw what you and Paul had together, I don’t think he believed nobody was out there for him. Permanent, I mean.” Sweat formed on his upper lip, attesting to how hard talking about his brother’s homosexuality was for him.

          I called to mind an image of the uncommonly handsome, unabashedly gay, and friendly-as-a-puppy-dog kid I’d last seen three years ago. All his life he had maneuvered successfully in an environment of miners and oil field workers normally hostile to his lifestyle, thanks in large part to the aggressive protection provided by Henry, their father Louis, and Jazz’s mother’s brother, his Uncle Riley.

          Henry drew a deep breath and let it out. “Anyway, he started looking for a steady. Someone he could build something with. And there wasn’t nobody in Farmington. Nobody he could attach to, at any rate. Not on the rez, either. He’d try with this guy or that but didn’t find what he was looking for.” Henry gave an insincere laugh. “Jazz looking like he does, lotsa guys you wouldn’t even expect would go with him for a while. Some might even have stuck, but they wasn’t what he was looking for.” His face twisted in perplexity. “You want the truth? I think he was looking for another you. He really dug you.”

          “There was never anything between—”

          He waved a hand. “I know. He told me he offered, and you said you already had somebody. That really impressed him. That’s what he was looking for. Someone who’d turn down an offer because they belonged to someone else.” Henry ran an agitated hand through his thick black hair. “Aw, I’m screwing this up. All I’m saying is he was looking for love. Just like I do but on the other side of the bed.”

          “You’re doing fine. But I’m curious. What do you really think about your brother being gay? I know you won’t stand for people picking on him, but down deep how do you feel?”

          “I don’t understand it. I look at a guy—hell, I look at you—and ask myself what would Jazz see?” Henry shrugged. “He’d see mutton stew while I see a gourd. Sometimes I’d sorta understand when I remember that for him it was the same as me looking at a woman.”

          Despite just being called a gourd, I nodded. “Now show me what you came to show me.”

          He fired up the laptop and stared at the blank screen as the device went through its booting up process. “I felt like a shit going through his private stuff,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m glad I did. I found these.”

          He handed over the machine. Jazz used aol.com for his Email, and Henry had gone to his Sent section to select a message. “This is the first one I found. After you read it, scroll up to the next one. Jeez, I need to go for a walk or something while you do that. Okay?”

          “Leave the door unlocked. Just come in when you work it off.”

          Henry had selected the first Email message where his brother responded to a contact from someone named Juan. They apparently connected through a site called nm.lonelyguys.com. Unwilling to switch back and forth between Jazz’s Sent and Trash containers, I searched his My Folders until I spotted one labeled Juan. Upon opening that file, I found messages between the two stretching back about four months and ending five weeks ago right after they exchanged Skype addresses.

          The first photograph in the Email file was a bust shot of Juan showing an attractive, smiling Hispanic man on the shy side of thirty with a white blaze in his dark hair. He wore a bright yellow polo shirt. Jazz responded with a photo of himself standing beside the old ‘91Jeep Wrangler ragtop I’d helped him buy during the Bisti case. He wore a pair of walking shorts and a blue, sleeveless pullover that clearly showed his six-pack.

          Juan responded with a request for a head shot, a close-up to see if he was as “beautiful as he seemed to be.” Jazz’s next photo was a wowser, as I used to say when I was a kid. Jazz qualified as stunningly handsome, and the camera wallowed in it. The half dozen messages led me right where I feared this was going. Juan’s second photo was without a shirt. Jazz matched it. Long before I reached the modest naked and the stark-naked shots, I knew what had happened to Jazz Penrod. The Internet had swept him into a sex ring.

          When Henry returned, I set aside the laptop

          He balked at my conclusion. “No way! Jazz ain’t… whata you call it? Promiscuous. He had sex with guys, but he didn’t spread it all over the place. He wouldn’t go to bed with nobody he didn’t like.”

          “Which is why this Juan—which is probably not his real name—took his time reeling Jazz in. As soon as Jazz sent him his first picture, Juan knew he had a winner. So he played him, feeding him more and more.”

          Henry poked a finger at the Acer. “Some of them Emails tell me Jazz was getting to like the guy. When you get to the end of them, you can see where they talked about meeting here in Albuquerque. At someplace called Robinson Park.”

          “Then they went to Skype, and we don’t know what they talked about after that because they were talking face to face with cameras and mikes,” I said.

          “Where’s Robinson Park.”

          “It’s a city park in the southeast section. Lots of big trees. They could sit and talk without being bothered. It looks like he might have come to Albuquerque to meet the guy.”

          “I’m worried, man. He wouldn’t go this long without getting in touch with none of us.”

          I studied Henry. “You know what puzzles me? Jazz once said wasn’t usually attracted to people who looked like him. You know, black hair, brown eyes.”

          “This Juan guy has a big white streak in his hair. Maybe that’s enough to make him different.”

          “Maybe. But it’s more likely Juan just devoted the time necessary to snag Jazz’s attention. In some of those messages, they talked about what they liked and disliked. But if you noticed, Juan asked and Jazz answered. And then, of course, Juan liked everything Jazz did.”

          Henry bounced out of the chair and stalked the den stiff-legged. “But if it’s what you say. If he’s been tricked into a sex ring, why does he stay? He don’t look all muscled up, but that boy can fight when he wants to. How could they keep him against his will?”

          He wasn’t going to like my answer, but before I could deliver it, Paul came through the back door and yelled a greeting.

NOTE: DSPP has not contracted to publish this book. As it is not yet finished, they have not yet seen the manuscript, although they have approved the theme of the book.