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If it's him."
    "No."
    Morales leaned forward, chest out, forehead thrusting. Like he was getting ready to butt the bridge of my nose into my skull. "What's the deal? What's the motherfucker want?"
    "Cash."
    "Where d'you come in?"
    "He wants me to see if the kid's parents will put up the money. Make a switch."
    "What's ours?"
    I ignored him. "You speak to the kid's folks?"
    McGowan took over. "Yeah. They'd pay. Something. What they have. It's not all that much."
    "If it's him…he's not going to be the same kid."
    McGowan's face was grim. "I know."
    "They
still
want him?"
    "They want what they lost, Burke."
    "Nobody ever gets that back."
    McGowan didn't say anything after that. Morales' ball–bearing eyes shifted in their fleshy sockets. "The fuck that called you. It's extortion, right?"
    "I'm not a lawyer."
    "A lawyer's not what that guy needs."
    McGowan shot his partner a chill–out look. Like asking a fire hydrant to run the hundred–yard dash.
    "They got any sure way to identify the kid?" I asked.
    "Pictures, stuff like that. Things only the kid would know. Name of his dog, his first–grade teacher…you know."
    "Yeah. The freak…the one who called me…he says he wants ten large."
    "They can do that."
    "No questions asked?"
    "No."
    "Win or lose?"
    "Yes."
    "Let's take a shot."
    "That's one thing we can't do," McGowan said, a restraining hand on his partner's forearm. Morales had flunked Probable Cause at the Police Academy—his idea of civil rights was a warning shot.
    "I'll give you a call," I said.
     

9
    T HE FREAK kept dancing. It took another few days to calm him down. I let him pick the place. A gay bar off Christopher Street. He told me what he'd be wearing, what he looked like. When he'd be there. "Bring the cash," he said. Hard guy.
    Vincent's apartment was on West Street. The outside looked like a set from
Miami
Vice.
Glass brick, blue–enameled steel tubing wrapped around each little terrace. I stood so the video monitor would pick up my face, pressed the buzzer.
    Inside it was turn–of–the–century England. Vincent's twin pug dogs yapped at my heels until I sat down on the dark paisley couch. He's a big man, maybe six and a half feet, close to three hundred pounds. Long thick sandy hair combed straight back from a broad face.
    "You know nothing about this person?"
    "Just what I told you on the phone," I said.
    "He thinks he's safe in a gay bar," Vincent said, two fingers pressed against a cheekbone. "Like he's one of us."
    "That's the way I figure it."
    "What can I do?"
    "I need to talk to him. Not in the bar, okay?"
    "You want to take him out of there?"
    "Yeah."
    "He won't want to go?"
    I shrugged.
    Vincent rubbed his cheekbone again, thinking. "You did me a favor once. I consider you a friend, you know that. But I can't be part of…uh…your reputation is…I'm not saying I personally believe every silly rumor that jumps off the street, but…"
    "All I want to do is take him out of there. Without anybody noticing."
    "Burke…"
    "A little boy disappears. Five years later, a young guy calls me, says he knows where he is. Wants to trade him for cash. Scan it for yourself. What's it say to you?"
    He wouldn't play. "It's not important. Those…creatures…they have sex with children and they say such sweet things about it. Fucking a little boy isn't homosexual."
    "I know."
    "I know you know. Are you saying I owe you? From that business in the Ramble?"
    The Ramble is part of Central Park. An outdoor gay bar. One of Vincent's friends got caught there one night by a wolf pack. They left him needing a steel plate in his head. Good citizens, Vincent and his friends went to the cops. The badge–boys found the gang easily enough. Fag–bashers: pitiful freaks, trying to smash what they see in their own mirrors. One got the joint, the rest got probation. Then Vincent came to me. Max went strolling through the Ramble one night. The punks who'd walked out of the courthouse ended up in the same hospital as