Never Enough

by Harold Robbins

  Emily shook her head. “We’re playing with fire.”

  “The way he’s got it set up: the levels of protection. Dave has always been a manipulator. And he’s damned good at it.”

  “God, I have to hope so.”

  They were in their bedroom. Emily was naked. The rings Alexandra had encouraged her to put in her nipples still hung there. She was proud of them. She was really very proud of them. Jenna asked to see them occasionally and kept asking when she could have her nipples pierced. It was difficult to deny her, since her mother had pierced nipples and wore rings.

  Emily had made a concession to Jenna. The girl was almost fifteen now, and Emily had agreed she could have a ring installed in her navel. It was a public thing. When Jenna went swimming in her bikini, the ring in her navel was conspicuous. And … and the girl loved the attention it got. She was known for it.

  Emily and Cole could have wished she was known for something else, but that was what she was known for. The fact that she might be valedictorian of her high school class was all but overlooked. She was the girl with the ring in her navel.

  “Exactly what is going to happen, Cole?” Emily asked.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I am to be in Zurich and waiting by the phone. I’ll get a call. I’ll call Schnyder, and then something will happen.”

  He did not tell her that the call from Dave was to come to the apartment of Hanna Hess. It would be evening in Zurich, and that is where he would be. Axel Schnyder had so arranged it. The telephone number was in another name.

  Hanna had arranged to make the evening recreational, also.

  III

  The corporation involved was CalINet, California Internet Services. It was a NASDAQ stock, trading at 103.

  At one o’clock on the afternoon of February 1, Janelle, who knew exactly how to do it, used a computer at a friend’s apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She had a key Ed Atkins had given her years before. She entered wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, to be taken for a student. He never knew she had entered the apartment and used his computer. She used his AOL account, went on the Internet, and posted a news release on the website of NetWire, a business news service. It read:

  California Internet Services has issued a report of earnings for the last quarter of 1994 that are substantially below expectations. At the same time CalINet issued a statement that first quarter earnings for this year will fall below previously expected numbers.

  The problem, according to officers of CalINet, is that the company has been bleeding talent. Key personnel have left, accepting positions with other companies.

  Apparently these key employees have lost confidence in CalINet and have been seeking other opportunities.

  NetWire distributed the report to its hundreds of subscribers. Within an hour, CalINet had fallen from 103 to 91 and continued tumbling fast to 31.

  At that point, Janelle called the Zurich number.

  Hanna Hess answered but immediately put Cole on the line.

  “Climb Mount McKinley,” she said.

  “Climb Mount McKinley,” he repeated.

  She hung up.

  He dialed Axel Schnyder. “Climb Mount McKinley.”

  “Climb Mount McKinley.”

  Through Dave’s accounts, and through his own, Schnyder bought CalINet at 31. It was two P.M. in New York.

  By two-thirty CalINet had posted on PR Newswire a release denying entirely the story that had come through from NetWire. The company called it a fraud and threatened a major lawsuit against NetWire. By four, when the market closed, CalINet had recovered to the 103 where it had begun the day and had in fact risen to 105.

  Before then Janelle had called Zurich a second time. “Come down from Mount McKinley,” she said.

  “Come down from Mount McKinley.”

  Schnyder dumped all the CalINet stock. Some of it went for 103, some for 104, and some for 105%.

  It was the coup Dave had wanted. He risked four million dollars on it and made more than a million. Ben Haye made a quarter of a million. No one asked how much Axel Schnyder had made.

  But it had been very risky. The SEC and the Justice Department immediately identified it as a bold fraud and initiated an investigation. All would depend on how well Dave and Janelle had covered themselves.

  IV

  Dave went to Zurich to meet with Axel Schnyder. He spent the night with Hanna Hess and Trudi. When he arrived at her apartment, he found Hanna naked. She demanded he make himself the same. When Trudi arrived they stripped her and fastened her to the X-frame. They strapped a rubber-ball gag in the girl’s mouth. Hanna gave Dave the whip, and he whipped Trudi.

  By now he understood that the girl loved it. He put a finger in her crotch and felt how wet she was. So he whipped her hard—hard enough to raise welts, not hard enough to cut her skin and make her bleed.

  When he finished, her head was hanging and she was crying. They left her there, strapped to the frame, while they poured drinks and Hanna began to make dinner. Dave took the ball from the girl’s mouth, brushed back her hair with his hand, and gave her a sip of brandy.

  “Gut. Gut, Dave. Danke. Sie schlagen mir gut.”

  They unstrapped Trudi. She sat with them and ate and drank wine.

  Then he said, “I think it’s time Hanna was whipped.”

  Hanna shook her head doubtfully. “Trudi likes it,” she said.

  “Have you never been whipped?”

  “No, never.”

  “You have the equipment for it,” he said, nodding at the X-frame.

  “A man had dot built. He likes to be vipped.”

  “And you accommodate him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Trudi.”

  “She likes it.”

  “How do you know you won’t? Let’s strap you on the frame and see how you like that, anyway.”

  Trudi led the dog into the bedroom and shut him in there. He might get excited seeing his mistress bound and maybe whipped.

  Hanna submitted to being strapped on the X. Trudi helped, and Dave fastened her tightly by the wrists and ankles and with the belt around her middle.

  “Dave,” she muttered. “You are an eefil man. I don’t vant to be vipped. Make me stand here like dis, but don’t vip me.”

  “Well … let’s put the gag in anyway. You need to know what that’s like.”

  She tried to resist, but he shoved the rubber ball between her teeth and strapped it in tight.

  “No vip,” she struggled to say past the ball.

  “Just a test,” he said.

  He stepped back and swung the whip. It whooshed through the air and smacked her hard on the butt. Her flesh shuddered, and she strained against the straps.

  “AAH! AAHH! NO!” She could not scream past the ball, but she shook her head wildly, moaning. “NOO! STOP!”

  “You thought it was fun when Trudi took it. Maybe you’ll like it better after you get a little more used to it.”

  “No … No …”

  He swung again. Her fleshy nether cheeks jumped under the impact. “NO! GOTT! NO … NO …”

  Dave handed the whip to Trudi. “She enjoys whipping you. Maybe you’ll like whipping her.”

  Trudi smiled an evil little smile and swung the whip. The flesh of Hanna’s butt bounced. Trudi swung again. The whip cracked against Hanna’s tush. Welts began to show.

  Hanna began to weep hysterically. Trudi swung again. Then Hanna choked and vomited.

  “Maybe that’s enough,” said Dave quietly. “Apparently she really can’t take it. Give her some brandy to clean her mouth. We’ll leave her where she is until she settles down.”

  “You are an eefil man, Dave,” Hanna sobbed. “I don’t vant to be vipped. It hurts! I gif you anysing. I suck you. But not vip. Pleasse! No more!”

  They left her on the frame for an hour, giving her sips of brandy from time to time. She hung limply on the straps and sobbed quietly.

  V

  MARCH, 1995

&nbs
p; The doorbell rang in Edward Atkins’s apartment. He went to the door. A grim man showed him identification.

  “FBI.”

  “Come in. What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve traced a news release placed on the Internet. It came from your computer, your AOL account.”

  Atkins shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The FBI man sat down on Atkins’s couch. “It’s a multimillion-dollar stock fraud, based on a news release posted by you on NetWire.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You could wind up in the slammer very shortly,” said the agent.

  “For what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay. Play it tough. Where were you on the afternoon of February first? Say, one o’clock?”

  Atkins shook his head. “I don’t know. I … Well. All right. What day of the week was that?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “At one o’clock on Wednesdays I meet a class. I teach at MIT. Before that I would have had lunch with one or two friends in the cafeteria. Then—”

  “Can these friends vouch for that?”

  “I don’t know. Who remembers what he was doing on February first? But if I missed the class, the university would have a record of that.”

  “Does anyone else have access to your computer?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Even without your knowledge?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Does anyone have access to your apartment?”

  “Well … c’mon. Yes, I have a girlfriend, and she has a key. But—”

  Atkins honestly did not remember that he had given a key to Janelle Griffith years before.

  VI

  Lou Beth Simpson answered her doorbell. She was wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, what a witness had described the young woman who entered the Atkins apartment on or about the first of February had been wearing. Shortly she found herself handcuffed and in a car on the way to the office of the United States District Attorney, Boston.

  She cried. She had no idea why she was under arrest, and she was terrified.

  “What have I done?” she sobbed in the office of the DA. “What am I supposed to have done?” She covered her face with her locked-together hands and wept.

  “A multimillion-dollar stock fraud,” said an assistant district attorney grimly.

  “I don’t own any stocks. I don’t know anything about stocks.”

  The girl, an attractive blond, was a graduate student of mathematics at MIT.

  When she persisted in protesting her innocence, she was taken to lockup. Her parents arrived and retained a lawyer. Lou Beth was arraigned, but paper work was fouled up, even though her attorney was yelling and screaming. It was three days before the DA decided he could not make a case against her and the paperwork appeared. She left the jail shaking, frightened.

  The DA and the FBI had made no connection to Janelle and Dave.

  VII

  MAY, 1995

  Alexandra sat in her cell in the evening, locked down. She had a block of watercolor paper and a set of paints and brushes and was trying to paint a picture of a church in Kiev as she remembered it. She had to work from memory. The prison library had no books with pictures of her home city.

  The lawyer Dave had hired had made an appeal for a commutation of her sentence, but he had not succeeded. She was resigned to the fact that she would be in prison until 2002, if not even longer.

  The lawyer had given her, quietly, a statement of how much Dave had placed in her Swiss account. She was a wealthy woman. But … that didn’t unlock her cell door.

  Her cell had become her home and her refuge. She was actually glad when they locked her in. Locked, she was alone and did not have to react with the loathsome women who lived in Bedford Hills.

  She read in the paper the account of the major fraud perpetrated on the CalINet stock. It had the mark of Dave on it, and she wondered if he had managed it. If he had, she would get her share of the profit. She smiled grimly and congratulated the manipulative man who was out there functioning while she sat here.

  She believed he was sincerely trying to get her out. That was Dave. He forgave her for trying to kill him. The State of New York wouldn’t.

  But … They called for a count. She stood and pressed her hand to the little glass window in her cell door. The officer looked in. He was a man. She was wearing nothing but her panties. That made no difference, either. No one had ever touched her, or suggested he might. Maybe the officer liked seeing her. Maybe he only looked in to see … whatever. She was not going to try to kill herself, if that was what he had in mind. She was going to serve her time and get out.

  VIII

  Janelle walked around the apartment in a pair of dark stockings held up by a black garter belt. She wore stiletto-heeled shoes.

  “Don’t forget we’re going out for dinner,” Dave said.

  “Lutece,” she said. “With the Jenningses. You know, they’re not the world’s most interesting people.”

  “Cole did what we asked him to.”

  “If he hadn’t, who would you have used?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I guess he has his purposes. He’s entirely loyal to you.”

  “In more ways than you know. And Emily … She’s not so dull. Ask her to show you the platinum rings in her nipples.”

  “Alexandra had them. And in her pussy, too. Didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to have that done?”

  “You’re perfect, and I love you the way you are.”

  “I’m glad you think so, because I don’t think I’d want—”

  “They’re downstairs,” he said, nodding toward the call box that brought word from the lobby. “You want to get dressed?”

  Dave carried an attaché case to Lutece. At the door he handed it to Cole and told him to check it. Cole did. When they left, Cole retrieved it. He did not open it until he and Emily were at home in Wyckoff. It was crammed with what Cole had known would be in it: bundles of hundred-dollar bills.

  “You can’t report that,” Emily said.

  “Hell no.”

  “What are we gonna do with it?”

  “I’ve got my own overseas account,” said Cole. “You have to fly to Zurich with it. I’ll tell you who to see. He’ll be expecting you.”

  “We’re in up to our asses, Cole,” she whispered.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  AUGUST, 1995

  Ben Haye had another idea and invited Dave and Janelle to Greenwich to hear it. As always Ben would not talk business within Deborah’s hearing.

  Debbie Haye was a determinedly happy woman. She invited Janelle to join her in the kitchen, where she was cooking their meal. She was not fat but plump, and this night she was wearing a red minidress that really did not suit her. It showed her thick legs. Scooped down at the top, she showed as much as she thought she dared of her ample breasts.

  “My father makes beautiful things,” she said. She held up a tumbler of studded milk glass. “He taught me to appreciate beautiful things.”

  Janelle grinned. “Did he ever consider making a bowl based on a molding of one of your boobs?” she asked.

  Debbie blushed. Not many people could blush anymore, but she did. “My father has never seen them,” she said.

  “I wonder … You’re proud of them, aren’t you?”

  “Well … I’m not the world’s most beautiful woman, but—”

  “I bet we could find an artist,” said Janelle. “I mean, maybe he could put one of them in clay or latex or something and make a model. From that model, he could do—How would you like to have a bronze reproduction of one of your tits? Or both?”

  Debbie Haye laughed nervously. “You’re making fun of me, Janelle.”

  “Not at all. Someday they’ll be … droopy. But not now. We’ve got a painting hanging in our apartment. It’s of Dave�
�s second wife. A nude. You know where she is. She’ll never again be what she was when that picture was painted. But it’s a permanent remembrance of what she was.”

  “You’re serious?”

  Janelle nodded.

  “Jesus!”

  In the living room, Dave and Ben talked.

  “Hey, look,” Dave said. “They’re on it. They came damned close at one point. Don’t ask me any questions about this. The feds held a poor little girl in jail for three days, to sweat her. They kept her in handcuffs when they were interrogating her. She couldn’t have told them anything. She didn’t know anything. Which didn’t discourage them. God save us all from runaway prosecutors.”

  “You’ve got levels and levels of protection,” said Ben.

  “Yeah, but it would not be impossibly difficult to reach the conclusion that the leaks are coming from Kidder, Peabody, which is just a step from you. We don’t dare be greedy, Ben. I’ll let you in on things. But right now we’ve got to lay low. For a while.”

  II

  Fifteen-year-old Jenna remained a virgin, with an inflexible determination that she was going to remain that way. She had, though, a reputation for being willing to show herself. It had become common knowledge in Wyckoff that Jenna Jennings could be persuaded to show her breasts, and more, to boys. She wouldn’t do it for anybody. She did it for friends she trusted, and that circle of friends expanded.

  Her mother and father suspected something of this but didn’t know how far it went. Jenna continued to be an all-A student. There seemed to be no reason to get therapy for her.

  They might have if they had known—

  One summer afternoon Jenna was in a car with three boys and said she had to go to a bathroom. Bill Morris said, “Why do that? Let’s just walk down in the woods here, where you can pee.”

  She laughed. “Hey, c’mon, guys!”