I slid into the chair at the opposite end of the table in the interrogation room. Didn't even give him a chance to breathe. "Sexual slavery," I said. And waited for a response.
Tucker stared at me. He looked tired. I suppose I would be too if I'd had people grilling me for so long. He hadn't shaved, hadn't washed his hair. Dark bags under his eyes told me he hadn't slept well. All good. "'Zat a question?"
"No, but this is. Are you familiar with the concept of sexual slavery?"
"No."
"I think you are."
"I don't go in for the kinky stuff."
"I think you do."
"You're wrong."
"Then was she the one who liked the kinky stuff?"
"No!"
I leaned forward, capitalizing as best I could on his defensiveness spike. "Are you sure?" I saw the look in his eye, and then I knew. "No, she acted as if she liked the kinky stuff, but it was all show. It was for you. And you knew it. That's how she kept you. How she controlled you."
"Don't know…what you're talkin' about."
"Sure you do. I already told you. Sexual slavery. You'd probably never been with a woman who gave you exactly what you craved most." I paused. God but his eyes were illuminating. "You'd never been with a woman at all, had you?"
"That's not true!"
"Sure it is. You were a thirty-something virgin till she came along. Reasonably pretty. Smart. Hell of a lot smarter than you. Did the stuff you secretly wanted her to do. Sure, she was a sadist. She hurt you. That explains those claw marks on your back." He stiffened, more than enough to tell me I was right. "A relationship based upon sexual servitude. And you were the compliant victim." I smiled. "That's why you don't have a record. You probably never committed a crime in your life till you met her. Tough childhood, sure, but I'm betting you never stole a gumball from a drugstore. She exploited your naivete and, it must be said, your stupidity. What you didn't understand is that sexual sadists secretly despise members of the opposite sex. And in this case, I think your sexually confused master probably hates people of both sexes. That's why she was so hard on you. That's why she's so hard on everyone."
"You don't know what you're talkin' about."
"I do. And you know I do. She spotted you, broke you, used you. That simple. You've probably got DPD-dependent personality disorder. Your mistress has radar for finding men like you, and this city is full of them. Why else would they come here to self-destruct with gambling or booze or drugs? She seduced you, told you she loved you. And you're such a sap you actually believed her."
"That's not true!" he shouted. If he hadn't been chained down, he would've risen out of his seat. "She does love me. I know she does."
"Then why is she letting you take the rap for her crimes? Why is it you're the one in custody, the one suffering? The only one. Why did you always have to do all the dirty work?"
"I wanted to help her. It was my choice."
"Sure it was. If you wanted to keep the creepy sex coming. Once she seduced you, she reshaped your behavior, even your personality, with skillfully directed incentives, clever little behavior modification techniques. Guy like you-I'll bet a sulky pout was enough to get you crawling back to mommy. I'll bet she didn't want you to see your friends, your family, right? No, she wanted to keep you to herself, under her influence. And with every victim, your self-esteem dropped a little lower. Which made it all the easier for her to do her nasty work. To keep you under her finger."
"You're crazy!" he shouted. "We love each other!"
"Who does?"
"We do! Me and-and her."
He almost said it, damn it. He was that close. His mouth was forming the word. His mouth was open-her name probably begins with a vowel sound. He caught himself at the last moment-this time. But maybe if I kept pushing…
"Did she ever tie you up? Shove you in the closet?"
"Hell, no!"
"I'll bet she did. It would be consistent with everything I know about her. She tied you up-or maybe used those handcuffs you're so fond of-forced you down on your knees, locked you in the closet. Maybe…played with you. Sexually. Toyed with your body, your private parts. You hated it, but you never said anything, because you thought she liked it. What you didn't realize was that she was just wearing you down. Until you wouldn't care anymore. Until you'd be willing to do anything for her."
"We love each other!"
"Do you even know what love is? You want commitment and devotion, someone who cares about you. Not someone who's using you to do her dirty work. When you say 'I love you,' it's supposed to mean something. It's supposed to-" Damn it, my voice was choking. "-it's supposed to mean they're never going to leave you, that they understand you, that they care about you. Do you really think this woman loves you?"
Again he tried to rise out of his seat, rattling his chains. "I know she does!"
"Love is something someone gives you because they care about you, Tucker. You're not supposed to have to kill for it!" I paused, hoping my words were sinking in. "Is it really worth it, Tucker? All this killing for some damn math slut?"
"It wasn't like that!" He screamed and lunged, so hard that, despite the leg braces, he knocked the table forward into my chest.
While we both caught our breath, O'Bannon and Granger rushed through the door. "Get out of here!" I shouted.
"But he-"
"I'm not done! Leave us alone!" To my happy surprise, they complied. Once the room had settled down, I reached out and did something none of them expected, least of all Tucker.
I took his hand and held it between both of mine. "Look into your heart, Tucker, and give me an honest answer. Do you really think she loves you? Truly? The way your mother loved you?"
His answer was bitter, but I noticed he did not remove his hand. "Leave my mother out of this."
"Why? Didn't she love you?"
"I said, leave her out of this!" This time, he took his hand back.
"Okay. We'll talk about your father." He looked up. "What did your father do?"
"Nothing! He never did anything to me, understand? Nothing! Nothing!"
My lips slowly parted. "I meant, what did he do for a living." THOMAS STEVENS WAS A PROUD MAN, but the way he looked at it, he had a lot of reasons to be proud. He'd created himself from next to nothing, a classic self-made man. Sure, he inherited his first million the day he turned twenty-one, but the next 247 of them he'd earned, wheeling and dealing, mostly in real estate, with some periodic diversions into casinos, moving through a series of increasingly valuable projects, finally culminating in his first hotel on the Strip. The press liked to call him the New Steve Wynn, the Younger Steve Wynn, the Hipper Steve Wynn, the Sexier Steve Wynn.
Always some damned comparison to Steve Wynn. He was sick of it.
What had Steve Wynn ever done that was so great, anyway? Bought and sold a few hotels and casinos. The way people talked about him, you'd think he invented hotels and casinos. Not to mention restaurants, trams, shopping malls and, of course, his greatest achievement, Siegfried and Roy. Stevens was tired of being compared to that pretender.
After this new deal was consummated, they'd be calling Wynn the Old Thomas Stevens. The Has-Been Thomas Stevens. The Decrepit Thomas Stevens.
Now that had a nice ring to it.
Once this merger was complete, he would own more square footage on the Strip than Wynn or anybody else. And he would build and build until he controlled more rooms, more slot machines, more everything. No tacky architecture, no girlie shows, no pirate ships, no pretentious French restaurants, no bloody art gallery. He would give people what they really liked, not what they pretended they liked when they went home and told their friends about it. He would be huge.
After this merger, there would be no stopping him.
He stepped out of the elevator and passed through the media throng, waving, smiling, careful never to break his stride. If he stopped, even for a moment, he would be consumed. He had work to do.
"Mr. Stevens, is this a
done deal?"
"Is it true you're borrowing more than a billion dollars?"
"When are you and Shalimar getting married?"
"Is it true Steve Wynn is secretly backing your acquisition?"
Okay, he had to stop for that one. "No, it is not. Mr. Wynn is playing no role in this operation." He paused before adding, with equal parts pleasure and elusiveness: "This is a respectable business deal."
He pushed his way through the mass of microphones and paparazzi and entered his private elevator. The doors closed behind him and he descended to his private parking garage. He arrived, but the door didn't open. That required a ten-digit number to be punched into a keypad just above the floor buttons, a number only he and his driver knew. He punched it in-coincidentally the same as the number as one of his Swiss bank accounts-and stepped into the garage.
His car was waiting for him, chauffeur at the wheel.
He slid into the backseat and immediately poured himself a drink. "Damn reporters," he muttered, as if a profession of disgust would justify taking a drink this time of day. "Shatter your nerves like crystal."
Chauffeur didn't answer, but then, he usually didn't. He was the picture of decorum, eyes on the road-not the backseat, which was often very convenient-and none of the eye-rolling or presumptuous throat-clearing he got from the gentlemen's gentlemen. He'd drive all the way to the MGM silently, if Stevens allowed him. But he was in a chatty mood.
"Can you believe it, Mercer? We're finally going to make this dream a reality."
Still his chauffeur did not answer. Now this was just rude.
"Did you hear me? I mean, we're not that far apart. I said-"
He stopped. Something was wrong. His chauffeur-too narrow in the shoulders, and-there was blond hair tucked just inside the black coat, barely visible beneath the cap. "What's going on here?"
At last his driver spoke. It was a woman! "Mercer has the day off. He's…sleeping."
"I didn't authorize this."
In the rearview, he could see a small smile light the woman's face. "I did."
"You presumptuous little-Where's Mercer?"
"If you must know-he's tied up and gagged in a storage closet."
"What are you talking about?"
"How slow are you?" She took a hard left, and he suddenly realized they were not headed for the MGM. "You're being kidnapped."
"What?" All at once, Jeeves's words returned to him. "Who are you?"
"Haven't you read the papers?"
"Oh, my God. I'm getting out of here."
"I don't think so. The doors and windows are locked. I control them."
He removed his hard-soled Pierre Cardin shoe. "Then I'll break the window open."
"No, you won't."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because you took two quickies from the liquor bottle, as I knew you would, and it was laced with enough sedatives to put down a gorilla. You'll be unconscious in…" She checked her watch. "Oh, thirty seconds, at the most."
Damn! He was feeling…drowsy. As if he were…slipping away from himself. "But…the keypad…the security locks…" It was becoming more difficult to form words. His eyelids weighed on him like bricks. "You have to know the number…"
The chauffeur smiled as she turned off the main road. "I'm very good with numbers."
35
Esther wrung her hands as she watched the heating element become a progressively lighter, more intense shade of red, almost blue. Soon it would be time to begin the ritual.
She had thought about this from the moment she knew Tucker had been captured. She didn't need him anymore, she told herself. She could do it alone.
But thinking about it and doing it are two different things altogether.
"Where the hell are my clothes?"
Showtime.
Esther returned to the center room where Thomas Stevens, the Vegas real estate mogul, was chained to an examining room table. "Your clothes were removed."
"Do you have any idea how much that jacket cost me, lady? Do you have any idea?"
"Do you know the square root of two?"
"Huh?"
"Then we're even." She checked her watch. The branding iron was almost ready. "Fear not. I've taken good care of your clothing."
"Why did you take them off?"
"I thought it would be easier while you're unconscious. I'm not a strong woman. And I'm in a delicate condition." She coughed. Her voice was becoming weaker, more gravelly, every day.
"Did you have to take my boxers?"
"Most especially," she said quietly.
"Look, can I cut to the chase? I mean, I don't want to interrupt your sick torture chamber thing or whatever it is you've got planned, but I'm a deal maker, okay? And I feel confident we can make a deal."
"I'm not interested."
"Yeah, that's what Merv Griffin said, too, but three weeks later, he was signing on the bottom line. Let's make this short and sweet. What is it you want?"
She hesitated a moment, then thought-why not? She replied: "God."
"Well, that's tougher. Still, I can help you. What is it you want to do? Build a church? A tabernacle or something?"
"Anything but."
"Oh, I get it. You're the Antichrist, aren't you? Fine, whatever. I'm a non-denominational deal maker. Will a million dollars take care of it?"
"A million dollars?"
"Why not? I figure you earned it. You caught me, fair and square. Don't know how you did it-"
"I programmed my laptop to run an algorithmic number generator that transmitted all conceivable ten-digit numbers in a little over three minutes."
"Whatever. Point is, you did it. So you've earned a little something. You let me go, I give you a million bucks. Then we both go home happy and you don't have to take my arm or leg or whatever it is this time."
"Something a bit more personal, I'm afraid."
"If you're not into cash, I can work with that. Diamonds, jewels."
"How about the family jewels?"
"The-hey, wait a minute, lady. What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking…" She inhaled deeply. "I'm thinking it's time I started."
"Don't do this. I can tell you don't want to do this."
"What I want is…irrelevant." She coughed again. "Clearly the universe does not care what I want."
"Do you know what a million dollars can do for you? You could get anything. Anything!"
"Except," she said quietly, touching her hand lightly to her stomach, "the one thing I want most." She raised the branding iron.
"Wh-What are you planning to do with that?"
"You are Yesod, the sixth member of the Sefirot. Your holy attributes must be removed."
"But-why?" The branding iron was so close to his face he could feel the heat. He began to perspire. "Okay-make it two million!"
"You think your money can buy you anything. Just like it bought you all those little boys."
"Hey, those charges were totally unsubstantiated. Nothing was ever proven."
"I've talked to one of the boys. I know."
Sweat poured down his face. "Okay, fine, make it three, then. Three million bucks. But don't do this. Please."
"I have no choice. The numbers require it, and the numbers control the universe."
"Numbers? What-?"
"Thus sayeth the Kabbalah. Thus marks the pathway."
"The pathway to what?" He was screaming, twisting his head, trying to get away from the intense red-hot heat. "Enlightenment?"
The hand holding the branding iron trembled. "The path to becoming God."
"Becoming God? Why?"
She closed her eyes, tears slipping through the lids, and thrust the iron forward. "Because we deserve better." "TELL ME about your father."
"No."
"Did he abuse you?"
"No."
"Would you tell me if he did?"
Silence.
"Tucker, I know he did. Tell me the truth. Was it physical? Or…sexual?"
&nbs
p; "He never touched me!"
"But I-" Wait a minute. I wasn't listening. He just gave me the clue. The clue to the whole damn mess. "Do you have a little sister, Tucker?"
"No."
"Brother."
"No."
"You're lying. I know you do."
"No!"
"Tucker, it won't take the computer geeks five minutes to bring me the name and age of your little brother. So save us some time. How much younger is he?"
He glared at me, his eyes cold and filled with reproach. "Five years."
"And your father…slept with him?"
"No!"
"He beat him up. But only him. Never you. Even then, you were strong. Small but strong. You'd fight back. So he went after your helpless little brother. You couldn't stop it. And you've felt guilty ever since."
"You don't know what the hell you're talkin' about."
"I do. Your father would hit him, and he'd scream, maybe he'd even call out your name, but there was nothing you could do. You couldn't protect your best friend, the one boy who looked up to you and-"
"Why should I? It's not like Mother ever did!"
A remark so revealing it almost took my breath away. "That's it. It wasn't just you being helpless. It was your mother, too. She couldn't stop your father, he was big and mean, but afterward, afterward, he'd…what? Hit her, too?" I kept peering into his eyes. "No. She'd cradle your little brother. Stroke him, maybe? Caress him? Rock him to sleep? All the attention you wanted but never got. He got everything while you sat on the outside looking in, feeling like the ugliest, most unloved creature who ever lived."
"You're full of shit, you know that?"
"Tucker." I reached out to him again, but he snatched his hand away before I could get it. "Let it go."
"You don't understand anythin'!" He was shouting at me, spitting out his words.
"That's a song your father sang, isn't it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Maybe when he was chasing your brother. 'Round and round the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel'…"
"Stop it!" he screamed, pressing his hands against his ears. "Stop it!"
"Pop! Goes the weasel!"
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