“Leonard came up to me once at McDonald’s, like all greasy and pathetic, and he asked me if I wanted anything, like a burger or anything. He said he’d buy me whatever I wanted if I’d just eat it with him, like just sit at the table with him. I knew he was a fag, but if he wanted to buy me a Big Mac, what did I care? I know I’m not gay, so what does it matter to me? So I said okay, and we’re eating and he’s trying to be all beast, like he’s this cool dude, like he’s my buddy, and he asks me if I want to come see his apartment. He says he’s got a bunch of DVDs there and we can watch a movie or whatever. So I knew what he was after. So I told him straight up I wasn’t going to do anything with him, but if he had some money maybe we could work something out. So he says he’ll give me fifty bucks if he can, like, touch my package or whatever, like over my pants. I told him he could do it if he gave me a hundred bucks. So he did.”
“He gave you a hundred bucks?”
“Yeah. Just, like, to touch my ass and stuff.” The kid snorted at the price he had extorted for such a small thing.
“Go on.”
“So after that he kept saying he wanted to keep doing it. So he’d give me a hundred bucks every time.”
“And what did you do for him?”
“Nothing. I swear.”
“Come on, Matt. A hundred bucks?”
“Really. Alls I ever did was let him touch my ass and, like … my front.”
“Did you take anything off?”
“No. My clothes were on the whole time.”
“Every time?”
“Every time.”
“How many times were there?”
“Five.”
“Five hundred bucks?”
“That’s right.” The kid sniggered again. Easy money.
“Did he reach inside your pants?”
Hesitation. “Once.”
“Once?”
“Really. Once.”
“How long did this go on?”
“A few weeks. He said it was all he could afford.”
“So what happened at the library?”
“Nothing. I’ve never even been to the library. I don’t even know where it is.”
“So why’d you report him?”
“He said he didn’t want to pay me anymore. He said he didn’t like paying, he shouldn’t have to pay if we were, like, friends. I told him if he didn’t pay me, I’d report him. I knew he was on probation, I knew he was on the sex offender list. If he got violated on his probation, he was going away. Even he knew that.”
“And he wouldn’t pay?”
“He paid some. He comes to me all like, ‘I’ll pay you half.’ So I told him, ‘You’ll pay me all.’ He had it. He’s got lots of it. Anyway, it wasn’t like I wanted to. But I need money, you know? I mean, look at this place. You know what it’s like to have no money? It’s like you can’t do anything.”
“So you were shaking him down for money. So what? What’s this got to do with Cold Spring Park?”
“That was his whole reason, like, for dropping me. He said there was this other kid he liked, some kid who walked through the park in the morning near his apartment.”
“What kid?”
“The one who got killed.”
“How do you know it’s the same kid?”
“ ’Cuz Leonard said he was going to try and meet him. He was, like, scouting him out. Like, walking through the park in the morning trying to meet him. He even knew the kid’s name. He heard his friends say it. It was Ben. He said he was going to try to talk to him. This was all before it happened he’s saying these things. I didn’t even think anything about it until the kid got killed.”
“What did Leonard say about him?”
“He said he was beautiful. That was the word he used, beautiful.”
“What makes you think he could be violent? Did he ever threaten you?”
“No. Are you kidding? I’d fuck him up. That’s just it. Lenny’s kind of a *. That’s why he likes kids, I think, because he’s a big guy but he figures kids are smaller.”
“So why would he be violent with Ben Rifkin if he met him in the park?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I know Lenny had a knife and he took it with him when he thought he might be meeting people, because he said sometimes, you know, if you’re like a fag and you go up to the wrong guy, it can be bad.”
“You saw the knife?”
“Yeah, he had it with him the day I met him.”
“What did it look like?”
“Just, I don’t know, it was a knife.”
“Like a kitchen knife?”
“No, more like a fighting knife, I guess. It had, like, teeth. I almost took it from him. It was pretty cool.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell anyone about this? You knew that kid got murdered.”
“I’m on probation too. I couldn’t really tell anyone I was, like, getting money out of him or, like, that I lied about him grabbing me in the library. That’s like a crime.”
“Stop saying ‘like.’ It’s not like a crime. It is a crime.”
“Right. Exactly.”
“Matt, how long were you going to go before you told anyone this? Were you going to let my son get convicted of a murder he didn’t commit just so you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed you were letting some guy grab your nuts every week? Were you going to just keep your mouth shut while they sent my son off to Walpole?”
The kid did not answer.
The anger I felt was of an old, familiar kind now. A simple, righteous, soothing anger I knew like an old friend. I was not angry at this smart-ass punk. Life tends to punish fools like Matt Magrath anyway, sooner or later. No, I was angry at Patz himself, because he was a murderer—and the worst kind of murderer, a child murderer, a category for which cops and prosecutors reserve a special contempt.
“I figured no one would believe me. ’Cuz my whole problem was, like, I couldn’t tell about the kid that got killed because I already lied about the thing in the library. So if I told the truth, they were just going to say, ‘Well, you already lied once. Why should we believe you now?’ So what would be the point?”
He was right, of course. Matt Magrath was about as bad a witness as you could dream up. An admitted liar, no jury would ever trust him. The only trouble was, like the boy who cried wolf, he happened to be telling the truth this time.