Page 13 of Gold Rush
“I don’t know. Look up his childhood. Go back as far as you can.”
“Why? I’m betting he’s going to be from some upscale neighborhood with white bread parents and three preachers recommending him for the prize of king shit.”
“Just do it. I have to know.”
“Up to you,” he said while his fingers went flying once again.
Then they came to a picture of a group of boys in a junior baseball league. The names in the caption were a long list, but Dean was easily found in the front row without bothering to read the names. He hadn’t changed much since he was thirteen.
Goldie sat hard in the chair next to Mims and whispered, “Well, he was right about that.”
“What?”
“That he made money because he looked young. He looks like he’s maybe a year or two older than he did in that baseball picture.”
“Yeah, he sure does. But what about the scholarship?”
“I don’t know. Find out more, if you can.”
They looked further, adding Harvard to the search, and sure enough, they found him in another newspaper photo. This one was of him and seven others, but the light in his eyes was gone. Goldie saw that right off.
“Freshman class five years ago, honor students.”
“What happened to him?”
“Maybe ask?”
“I did. He said that he left his abusive home when he was fourteen and started hooking. That is about a year afterthat baseball picture. And a few years before that Harvard scholarship picture. He’s lying about his background.”
“I’d say so, but why? Why lie about his background?”
“Mims, people tend to feel badly for kids who are from broken, abusive homes. Maybe it’s as simple as that.”
“Maybe so. But I still say ask him. Tell him I looked him up.Blame it on me. Act mad about it but confront him with what we found. We can’t go into this on the word of a liar, Goldie. We can’t take that chance.”
He was right, of course. There was no way he’d risk the entire team, but he wanted to know for more than the safety issue. He wanted to know the truth.
After knocking on the door of his room, Goldie waited for Dean to open it. When he did, there were tears streaming down his face. A face that was clean shaven and surrounded by short golden curls instead of the long hair he’d sported earlier. Abs had done a great job on him. He was as beautiful or more so.
“What’s wrong?”
“Come in,” he said glumly. “I have to…”
Goldie went in and sat in his desk chair, while Dean sat on the bed. “Are you ready to tell me the truth?”
“Yeah. I figured with all of you as some kind of…team, one of you would eventually find out I was lying about my past. I picked that past up from an old friend I had. One of the people I lost to that pimp.”
Goldie stared, glad he was finally ready to confess, but on edge over what he might hear. “You wouldn’t be the first one to try to hide from their past here, Dean. We’ve all…lied about things. Cosmo, the buff, blond guy? We learned about his past the same way, but we didn’t know the half of it until he finally broke down and told us his side of things.”
“I come from a rich family,” he began. “They were pretty and cold people, and I know, poor little rich boy stories are a dime adozen. I’m not saying I had a horrible childhood, but I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the coldness of my home or family.
“I went to private schools, but I begged my parents to let me go into city leagues for sports and other activities. I wanted to know kids from places I’d never been. So, they let me. And I met kids that became my best friends.”
“Okay, that doesn’t explain why you’re living in a motel now and doing what you do.”
“I went to Harvard my freshman year in college. I know, big time, fancy school, the best. I didn’t get in from my parents’ wealth or influence. I got in on my own merits, and I was really proud of that. Then…after a frat party, I woke up…realizing that something bad had happened to me. I wasn’t the same after. I couldn’t be. I flunked out, my parents lost their minds, and I took off, without a dime or a skill for anything. None of the people I grew up with would help me. None of them would give me a dime or a place to live. So, I found some of my old friends from city league, and they helped me.”
Goldie didn’t doubt that a bit. “I’m glad you had friends.”
