Embrace the Wolf Page 5

  “I won’t scream. I promise.”

  “With this on, I know you won’t. Open up.”

  She licked her lips again slowly as she opened her mouth. Her tongue licked the gag as it went in. I put the gag in and tightened it around her head, grabbed the leash, and went looking for Lester. I wanted to be done with chores as soon as possible. Maybe if I soaked in Lysol I’d feel better after this. I think my friend was having a lot more fun than I was.

  We left the room and headed toward the light. One thing, we wouldn’t stand out in this crowd. Just a man and his girl out for a stroll. A couple passed us in the hall. The woman dug her spurs in, pulled up on the bit, struck the man with her crop, and he winced and cantered off. Humpalong Cassidy, my boyhood hero. Two main playrooms branched off on either side. There was enough rubber and plastic worn in those rooms to be Playtex’s profit margin for the year. A shtupperware party from Fredericks of Dachau. My reluctant playmate gargled behind her gag. I unsnapped it and pulled her close to me. “Yes?”

  “These are the orgy rooms. The private rooms are downstairs; Alex is probably up in his room upstairs.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because the damn gag hurts and if you’re not going to fuck me, it ain’t worth it.”

  Upstairs would be where Lester videotaped the private rooms. That gave him the leverage to stay open untouched for as long as he had. I’d learned that when Lester had tried to set me up to flush out the overeager editor who’d pocketed a copy of a tape. That was when I’d met Kurt.

  A shadow closed off the hall for a second. The bouncy, slightly zigzag gait was all too familiar. I pulled my friend close to me and kissed her, harder than I had too. She tried to climb right up my body the way a drowning person does. We conversed tongue in cheek for a moment. The shadow passed on.

  She licked her lips. “Um. Yum. Nice tongue. I bet you give good head.”

  “Yeah, I’m a cunning linguist. Let’s go upstairs.”

  I pocketed the gag and tried to take the leash off and hold her hand. She didn’t want me to. I gave up. We went up the stairs. I heard the bathroom to the left gargling. Kurt’s ablutions?

  “Which room is Lester’s?”

  She pointed down the hall to the right. “Okay. Thanks. Now disappear. I told you I’d keep you out of it. Scoot.”

  “Okay. If Kurt doesn’t kill you, come see me in room six. I’ll be in the trapeze.”

  “Sure thing.” Just doing her practi-cum in American Fucklore: “The erotic uses of the trapeze, swing, and teeter-totter” by Jungle Jim. She turned away, then back.

  “Why do you keep calling Alex, Lester?”

  “Because the count is really Lester Kroll of Pump City, Alabama. Remember that. Now begone!”

  I turned and glided down the hall. I heard Lester’s wheezy bark of a laugh. Jabba the Hutt lives. The door was unlocked. I palmed the knob and rolled in behind it. Lester sat behind his console: eight screens showing the best in suburban horseplay. Lester hadn’t changed. Cadaverously thin, his oversized head with its whipped cream pompadour and fish eyes bracing a banana nose made you want to laugh at him. His down-swept shark’s mouth said don’t. He was as cuddly as an ice pick.

  “Hello, Lester.”

  He spun about. “What the hell? How’d you get in? What’re you doing here?” His hands flashed for a button on the console. I grabbed his bony wrists and pinned them together. As I spoke, I rubbed his wrist bones against each other—just to assure his attention.

  “Lester, Lester. I’ve never braced you before so you know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a good reason. I could give a shit about what goes on here. I also know you’re historically uncooperative, and I have neither time nor patience nor money to wine and dine this information out of you. So be helpful and I’ll be gone. Don’t make it harder on yourself than it has to be.”

  I played bone grinder again, and he yelped. “Okay, okay.”

  I dropped his hands. He rubbed his wrists slowly. “Good, Lester. I’m glad we understand each other.”

  His eyes dimmed. Manhole covers of the soul. “Don’t call me that again, Haggerty, or Kurt will throw you out.”

  “Lester, if Kurt even lets his shadow land on me I’ll leave him in worse shape than Humpty Dumpty.”

  “Is that a threat, little man?” Kurt was in the doorway. I rose to meet him.

  “No threat, Kurt. It’s a promise.” He was an average size specimen of his kind: six foot three, two hundred forty pounds. Just big enough to palm me if he wanted to. He was blocky through his red jumpsuit with the big lifter’s belt cinched tight. His full red beard flared out. A Santa Claus with a hostile streak the size of an interstate highway. Like always, he leaned forward as if he was walking into a wind. He was bobbing from side to side. A cobra’s dance before it strikes. I grew fists.

  “That’s enough. I don’t want a fight here.” Lester looked at me. “At least not now. Be warned, Haggerty. I owe you this one for keeping your mouth shut without ever tapping me, but this is the end of the gravy train. Come around me again, ever, for any reason, and I will let Kurt do anything he wants with you. Anything.”

  Kurt smiled.

  “Fair enough, Lester, uh, count.” I smiled with contempt.

  “Kurt, leave us here for thirty minutes. If Mr. Haggerty is still here at that time, dispose of him as you see fit. Also, check all the doors and the security. I want to know how he got in.”

  “Tina said she saw him go upstairs. That’s why I came up.” Kurt turned to leave, and I blew him a kiss.

  “What do you want, Haggerty? Make it quick. I’ve got a lot going on I don’t want to miss.”

  Lester’s body looked like the logical adaptation for a voyeur: all his sense organs enlarged and dead from the neck down.

  “I want to know about a guy who uses a—”

  “Shush. Wait a minute. Oh boy. Look at this.” He waved at me over his shoulder without turning from the bank of screens. They looked like the composite eyes of a giant insect. A locust of lust harvesting all those images, stripping all those people down to chaff. I glanced at screen six. My little friend was busy, very busy. She had her hands full. And her mouth and just about everywhere else. She looked like La Guardia with all her bays full and incoming stacked up all around. It was a crime of passion, your honor. A crime of passion. Not a plea, but an accusation.

  “Look, look. See her, she’s a justice department lawyer. Look at this, look!” I thought Lester was going to levitate out of his seat. A woman was walking across one of the main playrooms. She strode purposefully in the full battle regalia of her nakedness and then knelt in the middle of the room. The other women in the room approached her. They bound her hands behind her back and shackled them to her ankles. I tried to look elsewhere, but the images were all the same. I was truly in the crotch of the universe. One of the women reappeared with a leather hood that was pulled down over the bound woman’s head so that it covered her eyes. It was adjusted and then two black plugs were inserted into her nostrils. She opened her mouth to breathe. Men began to line up masturbating. I punched some buttons on the console. The screen went black.

  “Listen Lester—”

  “No, you listen. You come in here. You break in here,” he pointed his finger at me, “and run around telling me what to do. Okay, I’ll answer your questions, but we do it my way, Haggerty. My way. You just sit and wait.”

  Lester leaned back and punched another button; the images reappeared. “Mary, bring me a bourbon straight up. You want anything?” I remembered when touring foreign countries, don’t drink the water.

  “No thanks.”

  Lester leaned back at his console, comand center of the S.S. Pornucopia. I looked for some place to sit.

  “You know this is the best setup I’ve ever had. Here in D.C. is better than L.A., better than New York. You can’t hurt me, Haggerty. You can’t touch me. I’m untouchable. I’ve got everybody I need in my pocket. I’m talking to you b
ecause I want to. You couldn’t make me. You’re a nobody, Haggerty. A nothing. I could have you dropped off the Cabin John Bridge with two phone calls. One to bury you and the other to cover it up. You’re a nuisance, and tonight’s a night I don’t want messed up. So we’ll have our talk, but we’ll do it my way.”

  I hoped all this bluster made Lester feel better about talking to me.

  “You know why I’m so solid here? I bet you don’t. That’s because you’re just a stupid dick, Haggerty. No imagination. No flair. I’m so solid here because this town’s so perfect for what I’ve got to sell. What do they make in this town, huh Haggerty, tell me?”

  “I don’t know. What do they make, Lester?” I shrugged my shoulders. I felt like my father was trying to teach me arithmetic. I was getting stupider by the minute.

  “They make rules, laws, here. That’s what. This city oozes power, man. Real power. Power to do things your own way. You know what that does?”

  Lesson two. I took out my pad and pencil. “No, Lester, tell me. What does that mean?”

  There was a knock at the door. “Come in.” Mary, Mary not at all contrary entered. She had on an apron that once was a butterfly’s wings and spike heels that would break your orthopedist’s heart. She curtsied, and Lester goosed her. “Thank you, m’lord.” She squatted on Lester’s hand for a minute and then he excused her.

  “Where was I?”

  “Fingering the help, Lester. Let’s finish the lecture. I’m getting older by the minute.”

  “Patience, Haggerty. Or I’ll have to start all over again. Wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  No, wouldn’t want that, Sister Benigna, chief penguin at the primary school. I don’t want to start all over writing ‘I will not talk in class’ five hundred times because I didn’t dot the i. No ma’am. You heartless cunt.

  “What this city is, is a magnet for the power hungry. Only the winners get here. They’re used to getting their way, getting to the top. Very driven people. But this is a very frustrating town. Democracy’s like that. Everybody has a say. Checks and balances, procedural safeguards, rules, rights, ‘justice for all.’ Very frustrating, always compromising, having to hear the other side. It’s hard being that close to all that power and not being able to freely use it.

  “This is a hard town to be frustrated in, too. Not like L.A. or New York. There’s power there in those towns, too, but a different sort. Image power, but all kinds of images can exist in those towns. Any town that can tolerate 42nd Street in daylight has no need of me. There’s image power at work here, too, but it’s a lot less free here. You represent America: America as your cud-chewing constituents in Horseplop, North Dakota, want to see themselves; America the beautiful, home of the brave, land of the free. You’re always aware of the media, the need for that iamge at all times to be what all the yokels back home want you to be.

  “But you’re here; there’s all this power humming in the air. A free-flow energy field, if you can only tap it. And you’re here because you love power. But it’s so frustrating and you can’t show that. Not in public. See how it comes together. I got a whiff of this town and knew this was where I’d settle down. We’re custom-made for each other. All those power-hungry, frustrated, driven bastards needing a place to shuck their respectable images and purge themselves. Hell, I’m a social service agency. I offer release and privacy. What do you think would happen if all that tension couldn’t find an outlet?

  “That’s what I am: a safety valve for America. Defusing all those potential explosions on the Hill that could lead our country to ruin. A lot of high-powered cocks have gotten relieved here. You know why I’m out here in Potomac and you’re sucking shit somewhere on the streets, Haggerty? Because I’ve got imagination. I knew what this town needed. I could sense it. You, you follow pissant dreams for nickels and dimes. You’re going nowhere.”

  “Are we done, Lester? Any more and I won’t have enough self-respect to talk to you, and that’s why I’m here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, ask away and let me go back to business.”

  “I’m looking for a girl and through her a guy. All I’ve got is a loop. It’s homemade with a dominance shtick. Guy was into a nasty dog-training routine. Girl had real close-cropped blond hair, blue eyes, no tattoos or scars—I looked. The tape’s probably at least four years old. What can you tell me?”

  “I can tell you to get lost, Leo, but you wouldn’t, would you? You’d nose around and make trouble. Even if you couldn’t close me down officially, you’d scare my clients off, ruin my reputation for privacy. You and that thing of yours. What was his name?”

  “Arnie, Arnie Kendall.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. You know I tried to buy him afterward. I wanted him to cripple you. He turned me down cold. You’d just come back with him, wouldn’t you? You really surprised me. I thought I could use you as a bird dog then buy you off or scare you off when this was all over. But neither Kurt nor Erica worked, did they? You turned out to be one persistent motherfucker. I thought you were just stupid. Oh well, live and learn.”

  I knew Lester would eventually give me what I wanted, but first he had to rebuild his ego, make it look like he was doing me a favor, not doing what he was told to do. “What about Captain K-9 and blondie?”

  “This requires a lot of discretion, Leo. Very sensitive information. But then I know that about you, too. Persistent and private. A man who can keep a secret. I am surprised you’ve never tried to touch me up before.”

  “Why should I? I told you I wouldn’t. You were a client. I don’t like your business, but I’ve seen worse. Everybody’s here because they want to be. They play funny games, but then, so’s cricket.”

  “I tolerate your existence because you’ve been so discreet. I could have you taken out. But then there’s Arnie. He’d know right where to look. You’ve proven not to be worth the trouble to remove. But I’m not used to living so long ‘cooperatively’ with another person. I don’t like the anxiety of it at all. The simplicity of removal is too attractive. Now here you are reminding me that I must tolerate you, and I have to ask myself, why?”

  “I’m building your character, Lester. That’s what anxiety tolerance is: maturity, knowing when to hold on and when to let go. You’ll be a better man for the experience. Trust me. Call it ‘therapeutic parasitism.’ I’m a hard lesson to learn, but I’m even harder to ignore. Apart from that, you’re not a killer. You can cover up this foolishness, but murder’s serious work and you’re a jester. A joker, but not a killer. Kurt, yes, but he’s like an android. Until you wind him up and point him in the right direction, he’ll sleep or behead cats or do whatever amuses him. No animating intelligence. I haven’t proven worth it and, if anything, you’re an expedient man, Lester. That I know about you. Easy way out if there is one. In this case, tell me a story about Goldilocks and the Dogman and I’ll be gone like a bad dream.”

  “Okay, okay. Goldilocks, as you like to call her, was a girl who worked for me. She also did some freelance work on the side. Well, we got a call from her. This was about seven, seven and half years ago. She was barely able to talk, but told us where she was and that she needed help. She’d been hurt by a trick. So I sent Kurt over with our house doctor. Excitement leads to bad judgment and we have injuries now and then.” Lester shrugged his shoulders. “You walk a tightrope, you’re gonna fall. What can I say?”

  When the sideshow’s in the big top you got trouble. “Close the circus, Lester, but what do I know? No imagination, right?”

  “Anyway, Kurt went out there. It was a mess. The doctor did what he could there. They brought her back here. She stayed here for a while, until she healed up. Some things we couldn’t fix. Anyway, she retired from this business after that. I don’t know what she’s doing now. The reason I know she’s the girl is she’s blond, looks like a dyke, and used to talk now and then about some of her tricks—the girls all do—including a strange guy who had a doggie routine he made her do. Maybe he did it to her, maybe not. She neve
r said which John did it. Just told Kurt that the john had nipped out, gone nuts on her. The ‘play’ was no longer enough. He’d gotten a taste of blood and liked it. All this here is ‘theatre.’ Bedtime stories for bad boys and girls.

  “Everyone’s here because they want to play at being bad and being punished. You see, you can’t really hurt someone who wants to be. The victims let you hurt them. Hurting someone only counts if they don’t want it. So it’s all a charade here. The real McCoy is for those who can’t be satisfied by the play. It’s a failure of imagination, of fantasy. The ones who need the real thing are out beyond this little playhouse. Maybe your friend, the dogman, took a trip to the great beyond, and once you go there, the ‘play’ is never enough again. You’ve got to have headier thrills all the time. Maybe that’s where the dogman is, pursuing newer depths of pleasure. A solitary explorer of his own limits. Anyway, Goldilocks got hurt real bad by a man who went into the wild blue yonder, and she also was seeing a man who used a routine like you describe.”

  “The name, Lester, name and address.”

  “I’ll call to let her know who you are and that I say you’re okay to talk to. She doesn’t meet men alone anymore at all. Whatever that guy did freaked her out. She’s been a recluse ever since. I won’t tell her what you want because I don’t think she’d talk to you. She never talked further about that night to anyone.”

  “Okay. Make your call.”

  Lester spun away and punched the number on the phone. He looked up and changed the focus on one of the monitors and let out a low whistle.

  “Ingrid. This is Alexy. Is Jocelyn there? Good. I want to send a man over who wants to talk to her. Yeah, he’s okay. I vouch for him completely. Okay? That’s a dear, good. No. He won’t touch her. It’s not business. Yes, I know. I know. He just wants to talk with her. Okay. I’ll ask.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “Her roommate wants to be there when you talk to her, otherwise it’s no go. All right?”