Everything but the Squeal by Timothy Hallinan

vacuum.”
    “How?” I finished my drink and looked for Peppi. Hammond's invariable first choice, the Iron Butterfly's “Inna-Gadda-da-Vida,” pumped through the loudspeakers.
    “We're so very progressive,” Bruner said. “Child labor? Unconstitutional. Cruel and unusual punishment. There's no legal work a kid can do without his or her parents' permission. So for a kid who's run away, what's left? Illegal work. And of all the illegal ways for a kid to make a living, none pays better than hustling.” He picked up his soda water and sipped it distastefully, then chewed two more Maalox tab- lets. He had little flecks of yellow foam at the corners of his lips.
    “They can't work at McDonald's,” he continued. “They can't even sell their blood. So they wind up with their thumbs out on Santa Monica or Sunset, trying to make enough money to buy some anesthetic.”
    “Are most of them abused?” I asked, thinking of the knots of muscle at the corners of Daddy Sorrell’s jaws.
    “You mean sexually? Physically? It depends on what you mean by being abused. They almost all come from strict homes. Spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child stuff. This will hurt me more than it does you. Their parents say they love them, and they express their love by whaling the tar out of the kid every time the kid does something that isn't covered by the Ten Commandments. When we talk to them, they deny that they ever beat the kid. Just disciplined him for his own good. ‘We spanked him, but we didn't beat him.’ ”
    Hammond returned and sat down. He looked around the room. “Sure an exciting bunch of people,” he said.
    “You spank someone with your hands,” Bruner said. “You beat someone with an object. Lamp cord, coat hanger, wooden spoon. Baseball bat.”
    I pushed the little picture of Aimee across at Bruner. “Aimee Sorrell,” I said. “From Kansas City. Will you have your guys keep their eyes open?”
    Bruner looked at the photo and chewed at the inside of his mouth. “Sure,” he said, “but you want my guess? If she hasn't showed up at the Oki-Burger, the place she landed first, she's either left L.A. or she's dead.”
    “What do you know about this?” I handed him the Polaroid.
    He studied it for a moment and then looked up at me, his eyes wearier than Ashley Wilkes's ever had been.
    “I think she's dead,” he said.

8 - The Dog's Stratosphere
    E  aster Sunday was ninety minutes away as I lurched through the front door of the Red Dog into the drizzle and aimed myself unsteadily east, looking for Alice. As far as Hollywood Boulevard was concerned, it was just another Saturday night.
    The Boulevard was bumper-to-bumper, and the sidewalks were packed wall-to-curb. Neon made little zetz sounds overhead. Drum machines accompanied amplified grunts from the rolled-down windows of wet cars jammed full of kids. The street and the sidewalk were slick with mist. A cop's blue and red lights flashed ahead of me and two patrolmen, one of them a patrolwoman, braced a couple of sagging Mexicans against the side of their dented Toyota. This was what we'd come to: a female patrolman under artificial daylight frisking a stoned Mexican against a Japanese car to the beat of synthesized music. The future had arrived while I wasn't looking.
    My head was turned back, my eyes on Jack's, when I stepped up onto the curb and bumped into somebody who was very hard. “Excuse me,” I said to whoever it was, and faced front to find myself looking at a phone kiosk. A skinny girl about Aimee Sorrell's age giggled wisely and said to her friend, “Scope him out. Talking to a pay phone.”
    “That's what they're for,” I said with great precision. “They're less interesting than talking to you, but that's what they're for.” The girls looked at each other uncertainly. I attempted courtliness. “Does either of you have a breathalyzer?”
    “No,” the friend said. “We don't.” She said it very slowly, as though she were talking to a tourist from