It was going to be a chilly night.  Everyone thought of Las Vegas as being warm, but that wasn’t always the case—as Lenny had cause to know.  He also knew that his denim jacket wouldn’t be much help, not over a thin black cotton t-shirt.  His jeans, tucked into a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren ranger boots, were faded and worn.  There really wasn’t much to keep the chill out.

Lenny needed to find a place to stay for the night.  He needed to find a trick.

Tall and lean, with a shock of unruly jet-black hair, the boy was just barely eighteen—he thought.  Lenny had been on the streets for more than three years, fleeing from the mental abuse of a viciously religious upbringing.  He’d started selling his body right away; the heavy drug use followed soon thereafter.  By now, the kid’s higher mental functions were shot—he was little more than an animal, with the narrow focus of cunning street smarts that enabled him to survive, and to acquire what he needed.  His expensive boots, for example—they’d been stolen off a john.

Which brought Lenny back to tonight.  What day was it—Saturday?  But he’d been with that fat fuck on Wednesday night.  Lenny craved cock as much as the next faggot, but the asshole tourist had been middle-aged and hung like a minnow.  Enraged, the violent street punk had punched his lights out and cleaned out his wallet, netting more than three hundred bucks.  What had happened to it since then?

Oh yeah—Angel.  Bleary at best, Lenny’s memory still managed to churn up a vague recollection of running into the dealer in a bar on Paradise sometime Thursday afternoon.  Lenny had already owed him money for fronting an eightball.  Lenny had paid him back—he didn’t have much of a choice; Angel was armed—and things got hazy after that.  The boywhore had no idea where he’d spent the last two nights, but he had a dim idea that by the time it was all done, he owed Angel even more than he had on Wednesday.

Well, he’d worry about that later.  In the meantime, he needed to find a mark for the night—someone to take him in and provide for his needs, either willingly or unwillingly.  Lenny wasn’t intelligent, but he knew how to get what he needed.

He’d been on the west side of I-15—he couldn’t remember why—and was heading east on Flamingo, back towards the strip.  Lots of cum-thirsty fag tourists on the strip; he was sure he could find a nice, soft, rich trick there.  Once he crossed the highway, though, and was passing alongside the Bellagio, he felt—he knew—he was being watched.  He possessed the senses of a feral cat, and they weren’t leading him astray.  A quick glance around, and he found the source.

The man was standing on the other side of the Flamingo, in the VIP valet lot for Caesar’s Palace.  Latino, with a shaved head and a goatee, he was wearing a leather biker jacket.  Something about the man screamed pure erotic machismo; Lenny’s dick was instantly hard.

Something else about the man screamed pure, unmitigated danger, and screamed it louder.  But the dude was sliding into a cherry-red convertible Mercedes two-seater.  Lenny’s survival instincts were finely-tuned—but they could easily be overridden by greed.  And when the stud took advantage of an almost unheard-of gap in the traffic at the intersection at this time of the day and pulled across Flamingo to where he was standing on the far side, Lenny jammed those instincts as far down as he possibly could.

“You look like fun,” the older man drawled laconically, “Wanna party?”

“Aw, fuck yeah, man,” Lenny replied with a huge grin.

“Jump in, dude,” the man said, “I got two fifths of Johnnie Walker and an ounce of primo weed back at my place.  Guess that’s enough to start with, yeah?”

Lenny leaped into the passenger seat with alacrity.  He couldn’t believe his luck.  He glanced over at the stud who was wearing a white t-shirt under his leather jacket and skin-tight jeans tucked into a pair of Caterpillar Revolver steel-toed work boots.  “What’s your name?” he asked.

Carlos looked at him evenly.  “Mark.  Call me Mark.”

“Hey—I’m Lenny.”

Carlos turned away.  He didn’t need to know the faggot’s name.  And in a little while, it wouldn’t need a name anyway.

Lenny could sense that the dude didn’t want to talk, so he kept his mouth shut.  It took some effort, though, once he saw the condo building and entered the private elevator for tenants in the parking garage.  Aside from one or two of the ritzier hotels, this was far and away the nicest place he’d seen in Vegas.

Carlos opened the door to the unit and strode into the bedroom with the wide-legged gait of a man with a massive set of tackle between his legs.  “Strip, boy,” he called out, “I’m gettin’ a drink.”

Lenny complied, kicking off his boots, but he was still uncertain.  “Dontcha wanna know my—um, what it’s gonna cost?”

Carlos strolled back in, a tumbler of Scotch in his hand.  He’d already taken off his jacket and shirt revealing his heavily muscled and inked torso.  “It don’t matter,” he replied tersely.

Lenny was too busy gaping at the older man’s chest to notice that he hadn’t been given a drink himself—or to take in the full import of Carlos’s words.  “That’s ok,” he said faintly, “If you’re as good as I think yer gonna be, we can probably work out some kinda discount.”

He figured the deal was set when he saw the smirk on Carlos’s face; he utterly failed to notice the smoldering hatred in the muscle-bound stud’s eyes.  Later on, he’d see it much more clearly—when it was too late to do any good.  In the meantime, he peeled off his shirt and wriggled out of his jeans.  Underneath, he was commando; he was standing in Carlos’s living room, nude but for his socks.

He was also sporting a boyish grin and a rapidly swelling erection.  His member was nothing to be ashamed of, either; it jutted out in front of him, the pink, spongy head pulsing visibly.

“Well,” he asked, his grin growing cocky, “How ya wanna play?  You want this up yer ass?”

“Get in the bedroom,” Carlos hissed.  Lenny saw his face go beet-red—and managed to misinterpret the buff killer’s intense rage as sexual excitement.

“Sure, dude, whatever ya want,” he replied, strolling causally past the larger, more muscular man into the bedroom.  “Damn, that’s a nice view!”  He approached the huge window the looked out over the strip.

Carlos came up behind him.  Just as he did, Lenny wheeled around.  “Hey, where’s that weed you said you had?  I wanna get fucked up.”

“Don’t worry,” Carlos replied, his grin becoming obviously malicious, “You will, motherfucker.  Yer gonna get more fucked up than you thought possible.”

A tinge of concern pressed into Lenny’s fuzzy mind like a pebble in his shoe; that didn’t sound quite right.  “Wha—”

Carlos punched him hard, twice.  The first blow landed on his jaw, the second on his hard flat belly, driving the air from his lungs.  The punk sank to the floor, gasping and stunned.

He looked up at Carlos in disbelief.  This wasn’t the first time a john had turned violent on him before—hell, one had put him in the hospital last year—but he’d always known it was coming.  His street sense had triggered an alert before he’d been attacked.  Not this time.  He hadn’t seen any warnings.

Not that he was cowed.  Lenny knew how to fight, and he’d been in some rough scraps.  He could give as good as he got.  “You sonofabitch,” he snarled up at Carlos, his emerald eyes glittering like a feral cat’s, “You’re the one who’s gonna get fucked up, asswipe!”

The boywhore sprang off the floor, launching himself at the older man.  But Carlos was much more experienced with violence that the rentboy was; he could read the fag’s every thought almost before it had entered Lenny’s mind.  He merely twisted to one side and stuck his foot out, tripping the adolescent and sending him sprawling across the floor.

The carpet was thick and soft; Lenny was more angry than hurt.  And when he heard Carlos’s soft chuckle behind him, he became enraged.  No fucking trick was gonna get the better of him!

Of course, if his street smarts had been honed a little better, it’s possible that he might have recognized the danger hidden in that faint laugh—he might have heard the voice of a vicious sadist kicking into overdrive.  But even if he had, it would have been too late.

Lenny didn’t know it—yet—but he was locked in with a serial killer.

Even as he began getting up, Carlos strode forward and kicked him in the flank, hard.  “HOOG!” the teenaged rentboy spat out in pain.  Rolling over and clutching his bruised ribs, he heard the soft chuckle again.

“You like that, faggot?” Carlos sneered.  “You better, cause there’s plenty more of that shit comin’ for ya.  I’m gonna fuck you up so bad yer momma won’t be able to recognize ya.  And then I’m gonna stick my dick in ya.  You want that, right?  All you fuckin’ homos wanna ride my cock.  Don’t worry—yer gonna ride it right into yer grave.”

Still trying to catch his breath, Lenny turned and looked up.  Carlos loomed over him, his massive, erect cock throbbing, large dark nipples jutting out from his hairy, inked chest.  The look on the boy’s face spoke of his confusion.

“Yeah, bitch, you heard me,” Carlos smirked.  “I’m gonna hurt ya, and I’m gonna waste ya.  It’s what you deserve—what all you fags deserve.  I’m gonna use yer worthless ass as a cumdump and leave ya in the desert to rot.  And ya know what?  Ain’t no one gonna care!  One less faggot whore in the world—hell, I’m doin’ this town a favor.  Now get up.  Get the fuck up, dickhead.  You got to earn yer death.  You got to earn it through pain.”

By now, Lenny had figured out that the situation was serious.  Despite getting punched out, he hadn’t grasped the fact that the dude wanted to kill him, but between Carlos’s words and the look of maniacal glee on his face, Lenny knew that that was exactly what was gonna happen if he didn’t get out of this place. 

“Ok,” the teen said, playing for time, “Ok, I’ll get up—just don’t hit me again.”

“I don’t have to hit you to hurt you, cunt,” Carlos muttered.  Standing next to the bed, he turned and opened a drawer on the nightstand.  Reaching in, he extracted a four-foot length of straight link machine chain.  As the three-quarter inch links clinked in his powerful hands, Lenny took advantage of his preoccupation and bolted for the door.

His socks made virtually no sound on the carpeted floor, but Carlos had noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye.  His big black boots did make a sound, the heavy thudding of his footfalls telling Lenny that he was being pursued. The rentboy wasn’t in complete panic yet, but he was scared as hell—he knew that this was likely his only chance to escape.

If he didn’t make it—but his mind shut that line of thought down.  He’d make it.  The alternative was literally unthinkable.

And then there was a searing, slashing pain across his back, so bad it made him scream.  He was so close to the front door, but the pain made him falter.  And then it came again.

Lenny stumbled and fell, sobbing by now.  He looked behind him and understood everything.  Carlos was standing there, swinging the chain—he’d been wielding it like a whip.  As he swayed on his knees, the teen whore could feel blood trickling down his back from the wounds where the chain had flayed his flesh.

“Big mistake,” Carlos hissed menacingly, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying mix of hate and lust, “I’m gonna make you beg for death, faggot.”

He lashed out with the chain again, striking the cowering youth across the chest.  As the metal links tore open Lenny’s skin, the boy squealed like a piglet, making Carlos leer in sadistic pleasure.

“Now yer gettin’ it, fuckwad,” he jeered.  “That’s just the beginnin’.”  As the muscled ex-con approached, Lenny’s hands came up involuntarily in a supplicating gesture.  Carlos knocked them aside and wrapped the chain around the boy’s throat, then gave it a twist over his own hand.  Having thus fashioned a workable handle, he was easily able to deadlift the adolescent fag off the ground.

The metal links sank into the flesh of Lenny’s throat; the boy kicked and clawed frenziedly, trying to get free of the agonizing stranglehold.  Carlos just smirked.

“C’mon, motherfucker,” he said quietly, “Let’s take this back to the bedroom.  I’m gonna tie you down so I can take my time with you, asswipe.  I’m gonna destroy yer fag ass, and I’m gonna take my time doin’ it.  Yer gonna love this, ya sick faggot pervert.  You’re gonna love the pain so much you’ll cum.”

He lifted Lenny up even higher to look him in the eyes; the boy’s socked feet flailed in the air almost a foot above the floor.  “They always do.  Remember that, fucker.  Every fag I’ve ever offed blew a wad before it died.  You ain’t gonna be no different.”

And with that, he bodily carried the dangling, struggling teenager back to the bedroom.  The metal links sank into Lenny’s skin; the pain was excruciating.  Thrashing and twisting in a vain attempt to free himself, the boy got a brief glimpse out the window.

It was dusk and the lights on the Strip were just coming on.  To the adolescent’s swelling, bulging eyes they appeared as kaleidoscopic bursts of rainbow colors.  It was indescribably beautiful, and he had been in the middle of it only minutes ago—what was happening?  How had it happened?  He swung again, face to face with his assailant, but what his eyes locked onto wasn’t Carlos’s steely glare, but the thick gold chain around his neck.

And for a brief moment, the fagwhore’s true nature kicked in.  How had he missed that?  If he could just get free, that’d be the first thing he’d steal.  All he needed was a chance.  He just had to get a chance.

What he got was utter darkness.  Carlos punched his lights out.  The teen cunt never even saw it coming.

Lenny’s first tentative forays into regaining consciousness did not bode well.  He could breathe again, true, but there was the pain—so much pain.  And there was a stiffness, a tightness; he couldn’t move…

He opened his eyes and realized that he was face down on the bed with Calos tying his leg to the footboard of the bed by looping what appeared to be nylon rope around the ankle.  He could see it easily; the headboard of the bed was open metalwork with a mirror behind it—he could see himself; he could see the muscle-bound stud at the foot of the bed. 

His other leg had already been bound by the same method, and both hands at the wrists.  And it was tight, painfully tight.  His right hand was already losing sensation.

Icy terror clutched at the rentboy’s heart, filling his mouth with an acrid tang.  He’d been in dangerous positions before—any boywhore in this town was bound to run into trouble at some point—but nothing like this.  He’d voluntarily placed himself in the power of someone who was going to take profound pleasure in torturing and killing him, and he was utterly helpless to prevent it.

“P-please—please, sir?” he quavered.  “Sir, you-you don’t have to hurt me.  I’ll d-do anything you want, sir.”  It was all he had left.  If he couldn’t talk his way out of this, he was dead.

“Yeah, you will, bitch,” Carlos growled. “And I do have to hurt you.  You need to be hurt.  All you faggots do.  How else are ya gonna learn what useless sacks a’ shit you are?  Get yer reamed-out homo fuckhole ready, cause I’m goin’ in dry.”

By staring straight ahead, Lenny had a perfectly framed view of Carlos climbing on the bed, his enormous cock jutting out from his open fly like a crane from a construction site.  He could see that the hypermasculine ex-con was still wearing his black boots; he could even see fine details of the stud’s prison tats—although the rentboy was barely literate enough to have spelled out the words “Die motherfucker die” even had they not been reversed by the mirror.

And he could also clearly see Carlos mount his ass raw.  The teenaged slut knew it was coming and tensed himself.  It was a bad move.  Carlos’s massive, throbbing member was an irresistible force, punching through Lenny’s sphincter like a rock through a window.  The metaphor was apt—Lenny’s jagged shrieks of agony were shrill enough to shatter glass.

“Shaddup and take it, ya piece a’ fag shit,” Carlos snarled.  Pulling both ends of the chain with one hand, he jerked the boy’s head up and punched him in the side of the face.  The fuckmeat grunted but kept on screaming, so he hit it a few more times.  He didn’t count how many, but by the time he was done, the screaming had subsided to an anguished moaning. 

“Yeah, ya cocksucker, Carlos crowed, “You likin’ this?  ‘Course ya are—you’re a faggot; you just love shit bein’ shoved up yer ass, right?”

“St-stop,” Lenny managed to bleat out through his snotty tears, “Please-please stop…”

“What kinda lame homo are ya?” the serial killer jeered, “I’ve gone to all this fuckin’ trouble—I ain’t stoppin’ till I full yer fuckhole with cum.”  Carlos then lay full length on the boy, grabbing a handful of his hair and jerking his head back.  Once again, Lenny had a full view of the muscled stud, now lying on top of him and grinding his enormous member into his ass.  Carlos bent his head down, his thick goatee scraping the teenager’s cheek as he whispered.

“And you know what it’s gonna take to get my load, dontcha?  You gotta die.  When I see yer eyes glaze over and feel you convulse on my cock, I’ll hose yer guts with sperm.  That’s whatcha want, ain’t it?  That’s what every cumguzzlin’ pansy wants—to get offed by a Real Man, to feel the power of his spunk as they die.  Not like yer ever gonna get a better fuck anyway, so I might as well put you outta yer misery, right?”

Terror pierced Lenny’s chest like an icy shaft of steel.  He wasn’t gonna die—he couldn’t.  Not him.  His mind would not, could not accept the fact.  He tried desperately to break free of his bonds, but his struggles only drew the slipknots tighter around his wrists and ankles.

Carlos grunted in animalistic pleasure as he felt the teen squirming under him.  “Fuck yeah, bitch, work my dick.  Fuckin’ faggot whore, show me how ya earn yer money!”

Lenny glanced up, only to see the hardbodied ex-con sweating and penetrating him, relentlessly using his ass as a sex toy.  The heavily tattooed older man was so fucking hot; the gold chain swinging back and forth with each brutal, powerful thrust—for a brief moment, the cockpig at the core of Lenny’s innermost soul was able to forget that his lifespan could be measured in a handful of minutes.

For a brief moment, Lenny got off on his own rape.  It didn’t last long.

“You’re enjoyin’ this too much, cunt,” the sadistic killer snarled.  “Only way dumbass fags like you learn what inferior pieces a’ shit you are is to suffer—time to start yer lesson, motherfucker!”  Without missing a beat of the vicious assfuck, Carlos grabbed the chain, making sure it was still wrapped around the boy’s neck.  Then he rose up on his knees, jerking the chain up like reins until Lenny’s back bent in an excruciating upwards arc.

That was when the real nightmare began.  That was when Lenny first began to understand that the psycho might have been telling the truth about something—that he’d be begging for death before it was all over.

The pain was beyond anything he’d believed possible.  He could feel the individual links of the chain as they sank into the tender flesh of his throat, the skin welling up agonizingly in the center of each link.  The pain was so intense that it almost distracted him from the fact that he couldn’t breathe—almost.  The teen’s hands clenched into helpless fists as he instinctively struggled to get his arms free.  His biceps swelled with effort as he jerked and thrashed, the nylon rope abrading and flaying the skin on his wrists and ankles.

An inadvertent glance in the mirror showed that he hardbodied convict who was strangling him had biceps even larger and more powerful, though.  It also showed something else—Lenny saw his own face, swelling and blackening grotesquely….

No.  No, this wasn’t happening—it couldn’t be.  It was a bad dream.  He wouldn’t look at the nightmare; he’d wake up soon and could forget all about this.

But Carlos had seen him looking.  He pulled the adolescent’s head back and up until Lenny could see nothing but the mirror.

“Look,” the experience killer hissed, “This is what a faggot looks like when it dies.  It chokes and drools like a dog.  It’s slow and it’s painful and yer gonna want it to be over long before I put you outta yer misery, asswipe.  Keep watching and remember how much scumshits like you deserve this shit.  Watch yerself die, cunt and remember—this is your fault.  I’m doin’ the world a favor by puttin’ you down.”

Lenny tried to speak.  Even now, as his head pounded, every throb seeming to cause it to swell to the bursting point, he wanted to speak, to refute the insults, to plead for his life.  He wanted to beg for the sake of his family—but things were becoming faint.  He couldn’t remember them clearly.  He couldn’t remember much of anything clearly—there was only the present.  And the present was a tiny universe full of searing agony.

He saw himself in the mirror.  He had to; his eyes were swollen, bulging from their orbits so far that he was unable to close his lids.  The facility of thinking clearly was swiftly fading from his oxygen-starved brain, but even so, he knew that what he was seeing couldn’t be him.  That black, puffy, congested face, those huge eyes, red with pinprick hemorrhages, that protruding tongue, sticking out between the thick blue lips over which flowed streams of white, foamy drool—no, that was a caricature.  That wasn’t him.

He wasn’t that.  He was…he was—he was pain.  The crushing agony of his throat, where the chain had sunk in so deeply that was no longer visible, that was him.  The unassuageable flaming agony in his lungs, that was him.  The nightmarish sensation of being ripped apart by anal impalement, that was him.

The excruciating, eager, and deeply humiliating ache in his own seething scrotum and pulsing, oozing cock—yes, yes, that was him…

And that was when the teenaged whore realized that the brutal alpha had been right all along.  This was exactly what he needed, what he deserved.  He was willing to accept death, and all it had taken was slowly being throttled to the point of irreversible brain damage.

As the fuckmeat’s mental processes began to shut down, Carlos could literally feel the changes via its ass.  “Yer ready, aintcha, fuckwad?” he jeered, “Ready to have my thick wad of spunk hose yer homo guts?  Here it comes, faggot—lessee if ya live long enough to enjoy it!”

Twisting the chains so that he could maintain his stranglehold single-handedly, Carlos drew back his other fist, his inked bicep swollen with implicit power.  The fuckmeat could barely see the poised blow through the black death-blossoms that were exploding in front of its eyes.  It didn’t matter anyway.  It had already lost the capacity for wonder or fear—or rational thought, for that matter.

As Carlos had predicted, it was nothing but agonized fagmeat desperately needing to be put out of its misery.  And the psycho ex-con was so eager to oblige, his gigantic horsecock was on the verge of exploding.  

“Die, motherfucker,” he growled, his voice strained with the effort of holding back his orgasm, Die!!”

The last thing the young faggot felt in its life was the brutal donkey punch Carlos delivered to the back of its head.

A donkey punch is meant to contract the victim’s muscles, making the top’s orgasm more intense.  This certainly accomplished that—by knocking the whore’s head so far forward its spine was severed, vertebrae shattering like dry twigs.  The punk spewed nearly two pints of semen in a steady stream ionto the sheet beneath it, but its shredded spinal cord prevented it from feeling that. 

But it was a blessing, too, in a way.  With an inarticulate cry of rage, lust, and release, Carlos’s round, rock-hard asscheeks went concave as he jammed his gigantic horsecock deeper into the homo’s intestines that he ever had before.  The cunt was at least spared the sensation of its rectal lining being torn like the wrapping paper on a toddler’s gift as its guts were hosed by searing potent manseed.

Carlos continued to slam his fist into the dead whore as it convulsed and milked his shaft.  Fuck, it always felt so good at this point—even dead, a real faggot kept trying to get his prime alpha load.  That’s how he knew he’d offed a true homo.

After several minutes, it was over.  The corpse was still quivering, but the motions weren’t intense enough to have any impact on Carlos.  Besides, the convict’s balls were empty; he’d need a few minutes at least to recharge.  Not that there was time—he needed to meet Nick in couple of hours.

The sun had set.  It was time to take out the trash.

An hour later, Carlos was cruising a state highway.  It was a warm night, and he had the top down.  Behind him, in the trunk, the body of the dead rentboy was wrapped in a sheet, along with its clothes—Carlos has used its t-shirt to clean the cum off the end of his cock.  It was on its back, its boots lying on its cum-matted belly.  The muscled sadist had considered keeping them for himself, but when he tried them on, they were too small.

He’d headed south out of town on Highway 15, then west towards Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.  Just outside of the park, obscure roads twisted over the arid hills towards a couple of gypsum mines.  Turning down one of these, the ex-con soon found a deep, narrow gully.  Easing to a stop—there was no shoulder to pull over on—he shut off the engine and got out of the car.  Retrieving the still-trembling bundle from the trunk he unceremoniously dumped it into the ravine.

As far as hiding places went, it wasn’t all that hard to spot, and the white sheet didn’t help—but it didn’t matter.  Carlos knew no one would care.  After all, it was just another faggot cumdump.  They were a dime a dozen, and he was helping out the police by culling the herd.

As he swung the car around and headed back towards, the highway, Carlos had managed to work himself into a state approaching indignation.  Hell, the way he was taking out homo cunts, the city shoulda given him a fuckin’ medal…

---

“So whatcha got, Schweitz?” Nuñez asked as he got out of the car.

“It’s down there,” Schweitz replied, pointing down into the gully.  “Driver with a load of ore noticed something white flapping in the wind.  Young male, late teens or early twenties—”

“Let me guess,” Nuñez interrupted.  “Our favorite fagkiller.”

“Yeah,” Schweitz said.  “This one was ugly.  There’s a length of chain still embedded in its neck.  Fucker must’ve really suffered.”

“Well, there’s a potential clue.”

“Nah,” Schweitz responded with a sigh.  “Seen that type and gauge in dozens of home repair shops in the area.  Not worth my time to follow up on it.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda in two minds about this guy,” Nuñez remarked.  “I mean, part of me wants to shake his hand—the more fag whores he clears off the street the better, right?  But I wish he’d he stop dumping them out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m with ya.  Fuck, far I care, he can leave ‘em in the middle of Boulder Highway.  I ain’t huntin’ him down.  I hate havin’ to drag my ass all the way out here just to make it like LVPD gives a shit about some dead homo scum, though—oh, the ME’s boys got it.”

Two men had laboriously climbed the slope from the bottom of the ravine, a stretcher between them.  There was a gurney awaiting them at the top, next to the Medical Examiner’s van.  The corpse was still wrapped in the white sheet in which it had been discarded.

Nuñez walked over to it and pulled back the sheet.  He looked at the dead boy for a moment, then expressionlessly pulled the sheet back over its face before returning to Schweitz.

“Aw, what’dja want to do that for?  Don’t need to look at it to fill out a couple of forms.”

“Curiosity, I guess,” Nuñez said.  “Wondered if I’d seen it be before.”

“Well?  And?”

“Sure enough.  That one was getting booked on a charge of soliciting and indecent exposure at the same time as I brought Rodriguez in.  Don’t remember its name, though.”

“Well, it’ll be in the records.  C’mon, let’s get back to town.  No reason to hang around here, and I found this coffee place I wanna show ya.”

The detectives got back in the car.  Schweitz turned the ignition and put it in gear, then paused for a moment and pondered.

“Ya know, I wonder…”

“What?” Nuñez asked dispassionately; he know his partner had these quasi-philosophical moments.

“Why do the parents even bother to name them?  They way they turn out, most of these fags might just as well be called meatbag…”

Nuñez rolled his eyes.  “Let’s go.  I need that coffee.”