Jonathan Kellerman - Compulsion

“Antoine disappeared into thin air?”

“ We didn’t do it. Not Will or me.”

“Who did?”

Maisonette worked his hands through his hair. Dandruff snowed on the table.

Milo slammed the table hard enough to twang the metal. “ Enough of this bullshit! What’d happened to Antoine ?”

Real rage. Maisonette parried it with long, cool stare. “Nothing.”

Milo shot up to his feet. Leaned on the table, nearly upended it with his weight. “Sixteen years, Bradley. Antoine’s parents living with the pain of not knowing. You and your so-called friend were at that funeral, pretending to be all torn up. Sixteen fucking years. ”

Maisonette’s skinny frame began to shake.

“ Say it!”

Maisonette’s head dropped. “Damn Will.”

“Will did something.”

“He swore me.”

“To what?”

“Silence. Not ’cause we did something. Something got done to him. ”

A beat.

“And to me.”

The man’s name was Howard Ingles Zint.

Aka Floyd Cooper Zindt. Aka Zane Lee Cooper. Aka Howard Cooper Sayder.

Sixteen years ago, he’d been the “West Coast sales professional” for Youth In Action. The company, defunct for over a decade, had turned out to be a scam, taking cash for magazine subscriptions rarely delivered.

Zint arrived in L.A. in May, after a stint in Tucson, set about recruiting students from local schools. Concentrating on minority kids, using the racist logic that dark skin equaled poverty and poverty was a great motivator. When Antoine, Will, and Bradley met Zint, he was a smooth-talking thirty-five-year-old self-described “former college jock” able to sell anything.

Now he was a middle-aged inmate at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

The mug shot revealed a gaunt, white-bearded apparition with dead eyes.

Twenty-three hours a day in your cell could do that to you. Especially with ninety-two years left on a hundred-year sentence for abducting, beating, cutting, and molesting scores of boys.

Sixteen years ago, Zint hadn’t yet progressed to violence, was content to seduce his prey with cash and promises of video games, running shoes, cool athletic gear. For the older boys, hookups with “hot babes.”

It started off simply in L.A.: Zint picked the three laughing black boys up on a street corner, outlined their routes, collected them at the end of their shifts. Advanced them money, even though it was against the rules.

After trust was built up, he began pulling them off early, one at a time, where icy cans of beer, freshly rolled joints, and pills Zint assured them were just “for relaxation” awaited.

More cash was disbursed, then Zint played music from a boom box and watched, smiling, as the boys got all “hazy.”

“What I mean by that,” said Bradley Maisonette, “is even now I can’t be sure it actually happened. Even though yes, I know it did. Maybe on my own I never would’ve come to that conclusion, I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

I said, “But when Will told you…”

“After he tried to jump off the Long Beach pier, is when he told me. Second semester at college. I held him back, had to fight with him, he was always big. I said what the fuck you want to go and do that for? That’s when he told me.”

Deep breath.

“I saved his life, what does he do when he’s finished talking? Hauls off and hits me.” Rubbing his jaw. “I said, ‘Man, what the hell is wrong with you?’ He said, ‘You messed me up, my life ain’t worth saving.’”

Bradley Maisonette swiped at his eyes. “Big man, crying like a baby.”

I said, “He told you what Zint did to him and you remembered.”

“I always knew, I just kept it behind… some kind of curtain. Listening to Will woke up something in my mind – pushed the curtain aside. Like, what the hell. ”

I said, “Did you let Will know?”

“Not then, no way, it was too… overwhelming. This was finals week. Will was depressed the whole time we were there, borrowing my notes, cheating off my tests in English. Really looking bad. And yeah, the depression started after Twan, right after, I should’ve figured it out, but…”

“Eventually you did tell Will what happened to you.”

“Yeah.” Shaking his head. “We were both blasted on rock. Will didn’t take to it. I did. He’s cheating off my tests and he ends up getting all respectable.” Throwing up his hands. “Here’s me.”

Milo said, “You’re talking, now, Bradley. You’re a good man.”

“Yeah, I’m a saint.”

“What happened to Twan?”

“What happened ? He went with Zint, didn’t come back. Went into Zint’s van and the van drove off. Which was different, usually Zint parked on a quiet street, stayed in place to party. Like the van was his house – he had housekeeping stuff in there. Food, drinks, books, games, all kinds of shit.”

“Zint changed his style that day and drove off.”

“Don’t ask me where, I’ve been asking myself that for sixteen years.”

Maisonette sprang up, circled the room, wedged his head in a corner, stood that way for a while. When he returned to the table, he put his head down, closed his eyes.

His lips moved. After a while, sound came out. “First time.”

I said, “It was the first time Twan went into the van?”

Nod; his hair scraped the table. “Twan didn’t trust him. Twan was smarter than us. But that day…”

His eyes clenched. “Oh, God, this is so…” He flung one hand over his cheek.

Milo touched his shoulder. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Maisonette sat up, stared at something miles away. Sunken cheeks vibrated. His eyes were red and wet. “Twan went in there ’cause we said it was cool. Zint paid us fifty bucks to convince Twan it was cool. Will didn’t want to admit what happened to him, same with me. We told Twan it was cool to go in there and he did and we never saw him again and now nobody’s going to forgive me.”

Howard Zint, diabetic, tubercular, HIV-positive, made the deal from a prison infirmary bed.

Two extra candy bars a month and no additional sentence.

He told the tale concisely, with no emotion.

Antoine Beverly had resisted Zint’s overtures, tried to escape the van. Zint hit him in the face and Antoine’s head snapped back, colliding against the edge of a miniature slot machine Zint had just purchased.

Zint drove to the undeveloped wilderness north of the La Cienega oil fields and buried the boy on a dune, somewhere on the eastern edge of what was now the Kenneth Hahn Recreational Area.

Sixteen years later, he drew a map.

Development had resected the land in some places, augmented others. It took a while to find the spot.

Bones.

The autopsy revealed no serious head injury but did highlight multiple cut-marks on Antoine’s ribs.

Ever the con, Zint had reached for one more guilt-minimizing lie.

There was talk about negating the agreement and putting him on trial for murder.

Sharna and Gordon Beverly said, “Just give us Antoine and leave us alone.”

The funeral was held on a beautiful autumn morning. Over two hundred friends, relatives, and well-wishers, the predictable sprinkle of politicians, journalists, and “community activists” trawling for photo ops.

Bradley Maisonette was nowhere to be found and neither was Wilson Good. Good and Andrea had been staying at a motel in Tarzana, picked up their dog the day before we’d found Maisonette, left town for parts unknown.

Milo said, “Hopefully someplace without a pier.”

After the ceremony, we queued up to pay our respects.