office, I’m amazed by how cramped Jimi’s place is. It feels so small, like a tomb. No windows. No anything. “Have a seat.” He gestures at the single chair on the guest side of his desk.
I sit down, unbuttoning my jacket. Smooth down my tie. “Do you know why I’m here, Jimi?”
“I could guess.”
“You need to stop calling Finn.”
“Hm.”
“No more voicemails. No more visits to his house.”
“Mm-hm. Why is that, Mr. Raines?”
“He’s not coming back here.”
God, I hated his smirk. I wanted to knock it right off his face. “He’s a grown man,” he tells me. “He can do anything he wants.”
“Yes,” I say patiently, “and he doesn’t want this.”
“Then he can come tell me. He owes me that.”
I shake my head. “He’s not coming here.”
“Then he can call me.”
“No, he’s not doing that either.”
“Really? Are you keeping him a prisoner, Mr. Raines? Is that why he can’t talk to me, man to man, face to face, like we used to do? You locking him up? That’s illegal, you know.”
“What’s illegal is what you want to do with him.”
His laugh is a horrible croaking sound, like a bullfrog. “That boy. What does he think I wanna do with him? He won’t even talk to me.”
I can barely look at him. I feel dirty even being in the room with him. “He knows what you want. He says you like to sell the boys to billionaires.”
“Billionaires…like you.”
“Not like me.”
Jimi settles back into his chair, his gold-ringed hands linked together over his bulging belly. I can see where his shirt won’t quite cover him up, the fish-white flesh showing between the buttons. “Mr. Raines, do you understand what I do for a living? Do you get what my job is, what my function is in this great big animal kingdom of ours? My job is to make men happy. That’s a nice goal, ain’t it? Sounds very sweet. All I want to do for a living, is put a smile on people’s faces. Now, I’m not a funny man, so I can’t do it by telling jokes. I can’t be a stand-up comedian. I’m not an artist or an actor or a chef, anything like that. What’s a guy like me supposed to do, then, if I want to make men happy? Well, I guess I gotta find out what they really want…then make it easy for them to get it. That means I gotta be able to look into men’s hearts, see what they really want in life.”
The parallels between what he’s saying, and the conversation I’d had with Finn in the glass room, are starting to chill me, and I wish I could leave. I can’t, not until I’ve gotten a solid commitment that he will never contact Finn again.
I don’t know what that’s going to take, whether it’s a bribe or a threat or both, but what I know is that Jimi is twisting one of his gold rings, turning it around and around on his fat finger, and that there is a look of greed and evil on his face.
“The trouble with the job,” he continues, “is that men want such nasty things. It’s a tragedy, really. If they wanted something sweet, something good, then my life would be a lot easier. But no. They want someone they can degrade, someone they can crush. I don’t like it any more than you do, Mr. Raines, but my job is giving them what they want, not judging them for it. It’s not my fault that they want such ugly things.”
“Leave Finn alone,” I say, to draw him back to the point of this conversation.
“I would. I really would. You know me, I like Finn. I’ve had him here at the club for a long time. Feel like I’ve practically raised him myself. Feel like a daddy to him—oh, look at you stiffen up, are you like a daddy to him, too? My Two Dads, ain’t that something. You know that boy was orphaned? Did you know that about him?”
“I’m not here to talk over Finn’s life. I’m here to tell you to stay away from him.”
“He ever tell you how he got that scar?”
“Jimi—”
“He hasn’t? Why, Mr. Raines, I misunderstood. I thought perhaps you were together, and that’s why you came here with all this bluster, this show of strength, you in your fancy Hermès tie and your Dormeuil suit. Ooh, listen to me using fancy words. You think I don’t know everything about you, Mr. Raines? You think