“I remember,” Jules said. “He was mad at me for describing him as ‘the Barbaric Billionaire.’”
“At first, a lot of reporters and talk-show comics ridiculed him,” Brenda said, “but not for long. J. T. can pressure media CEOs like no one else.”
“He can play a tune on people’s heads,” Jules said, “a real anvil chorus. I’ve seen him do it.”
“In part,” Brenda said, “because he’s not afraid to make shit up. I’ve watched him blackmail politicians and CEOs with doctored photographs and fabricated emails. His scams were often bluffs, but they invariably worked. He always had crackpot media outlets ready to run with those stories. He always backed the big shots down.”
“Most TV journalists are gossipmongers at heart,” Jules said. “They’d have run with the stories and echoed them off each other to hell and back, whether they were true or not.”
“You’re the only one who’s dug deep into his business dealings,” Brenda said. “You and Danny McMahon are the only two that have stayed on his case.”
“And now Danny’s disappeared,” Jules said.
“I hope J. T.’s not involved,” Brenda said. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“The raw intelligence I’ve been able to gather on his disappearance,” Jules said, taking Brenda’s shaking hand, “has not been reassuring.”
“If J. T.’s involved,” Brenda said, “Danny McMahon is in for a whole world of hurt.”
PART XV
“Oh, Mr. McMahon, we’ve only just begun your education.”
—Raza Jabarti
1
“Will you walk with me out on the wire…”
—Bruce Springsteen
Fahad entered a dark, high-priced hotel lounge with a U-shaped mahogany bar—packed two- to three-deep behind a row of leather-padded stools. Three dozen high circular dark-wood tables with matching quartets of chairs accommodated the overflow. Art deco lamps were everywhere, and the walls featured large framed photos of the great actors and actresses of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. The piped-in music was eclectic, ranging from the great jazz singers of those same decades—including Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald—to the great rock stars of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, artists such as Janis Joplin, CCR, the Stones, and the Boss.
Fahad squeezed in beside the tall, angularly slim woman seated at the bar. She had superlative bones and shoulder-length pale-blond hair. Her black, close-fitting Dior suit revealed a surprising amount of cleavage and thigh. Her slingback Jimmy Choo ebony pumps with five-inch heels completed the ensemble. He knew her name from her apartment building’s directory and her Facebook page—Adrienne Harmon—and he also knew her to be a highly successful attorney-at-law.
He’d followed her for the last three nights, and her pattern seemed predictable. After work, no matter how late, she stopped off at this bar, her neighborhood watering hole, Ye Alde Pub. She always ordered the same: Jameson neat with a pint of Guinness backup. She was not averse to drinking several of each, and one of the three nights that he’d tailed her, she’d taken a gentleman home.
Tonight, he planned on going back to her apartment with her himself.
Fahad knew how to handle women, and he also knew she would like the way he looked. His whole life women had compared him to Omar Sharif, and he cultivated the actor’s look assiduously. Shaving twice a day, he kept his five o’clock shadow to the barest minimum, and his mustache was always scrupulously trimmed. A high-priced haute-couture stylist cut his hair and darkened it to a deep ebony every other week. His wardrobe was always impeccably selected and meticulously maintained.
Since it was mandatory that he take Adrienne home, he was even more expensively attired than usual—an exquisitely tailored, black Armani suit, matching Gucci wingtips and a white silk Brooks Brothers shirt with a red Hermes tie. Holding the tie in place was a 4-carat diamond stickpin. He kept his left hand on the bar, so Adrienne could see that he wore no wedding ring but was sporting a platinum Rolex Submariner with emerald-cut, 3-carat diamonds.
Decades of close observation had taught him that women found the specter of great personal wealth—always implicit in ultraexpensive clothes and their costly bejeweled accoutrements—to be an all-but-irresistible aphrodisiac and that most women in bars were drawn to an attractive man with exorbitant riches like moths to a candle. He definitely had to draw this sensual moth into his licentious flame.
Springsteen was on the box, wailing “Born to Run.” In raw, guttural tones he sang about a man offering a woman a chance to escape New Jersey and move, presumably, to the Big Apple.
Won’t you walk with me out on the wire,
’Cause, baby, I’m just a scared and lonely rider.
Fahad assumed that walking with him on the high wire was a euphemism for the two of them going to bed. Well, he needed to be in the woman’s bed tonight.
“You ever feel like the guy in the song?” Fahad asked the woman. “Have you ever felt the urge to kick over the traces and run for the sun with someone you love and finally, forever, be … free?”
She turned to him, allowed him a quick perfunctory smile, then gave him a once-over. Pausing for a closer look, she gave him a twice-over. Blinking her eyes, she went for a brief, discreet … thrice-over. His incredible looks and awesome affluence were almost too much for her to absorb. Cranking her smile up all the way, she gave it every watt of candlepower at her disposal till the grin glittered and gleamed like all the lights on Broadway and all the stars in the heavenly firmament.
“With every second of my life,” she said softly, “with every fiber of my being.”
All the while her smile continued to scintillate, illuminating her eyes and crinkling the corners of her mouth. She was smiling at him with all her might, almost as if she were … sincere.
As if she … cared.
“You know,” Fahad said casually, “sometimes I think I’d like to give it all up, donate everything I have to ‘Save the Whales’ and start out all over again, stone broke but without a care in the world.”
“Having great wealth worries you?” Adrienne asked with an only slightly amused laugh.
“Always. I’ve never had the time to enjoy my money. It grinds away at me, like a heavy weight on the back of my neck, like a whetstone on my soul, and it weighs me down. My whole life has been nothing but work and worry. What’s the point of it all, if you never have time to enjoy the fruits of your labor?”
“Maybe you need a womanfriend who could loosen you up, show you the time of your life and help you rid yourself of some of that burdensome … loot.”
“Know of any volunteers?” Fahad asked, now giving her his widest smile, most of his thirty-two capped teeth, glinting like purest alabaster.
“What are friends for?” Adrienne said, putting a hand on his arm, turning to face him, leaning forward and gazing closely, intimately into his eyes.
Her smile was so infectious and so inviting that against his will he found himself liking her. In fact, he decided he would put some effort into this one. He’d make love to her that night like she’d never been made love to before. He would show her all the kingdoms of earth, the mountains of the moon and every kinky nether region in between, until the two of them had explored every infernal hellworld of her darkest, most diabolic desires.
He was determined to give her the fuck of her life, a fuck for the ages, a fuck that would rock the earth, stun the gods, till the stars themselves howled in shock and awe, till the galaxies screamed, and the angels on high trembled in envy, desire and disbelief.
Yes, Fahad al-Qadi would give her the hottest time of her hellacious young life—something special to remember him by…
Before he killed her.
2
“My brother’s insane laughter rocked the room.”
—Brenda Tower
Brenda had spent her whole life hoarding horrific stories of her brother, and now, late into the night, she was telling them to Jules. The tales seemed to rush out of
her, as if they were river water thundering out of a detonated dam. The world would finally know the truth, and the truth did indeed appear to be setting Brenda free. Talking to Jules catharsized her.
The episodes were all shocking, but the one that really shook Jules and had haunted Brenda her entire life was how J. T. had driven their younger brother, Ronnie, to suicide.
“I suppose the worst period was when our father died,” Brenda told her, “and Jim wanted the company all to himself. I wasn’t a problem. I told him he could have my shares. I had more money than I could ever spend, and I didn’t want to work that hard—hell, I never wanted to work at all. J. T. also knew I’d never stand up to him. Our little brother, Ronnie, though, had a lot of stock, and he also had a conscience. He staunchly opposed our petrochemical pollution operations, and he despised bilking people through crooked casino operations, through Wall Street scams and through predatory real estate projects and practices. He and J. T. were on a collision course, and after I saw what J. T. did to him on the last night of Ronnie’s life, I knew I could never stand up to J. T. He was too scary.”
“J. T. still tells everyone who’ll listen that Ronnie was gay,” Jules said.
“Ronnie was so reticent that none of us ever knew, and I never cared,” Brenda said. “Daddy worried though, and J. T. constantly denounced Ronnie as ‘queer’ in front of anyone and everyone, especially the old man. I know it hurt Ronnie deeply.”
“I heard rumors before that he’d made the kid’s life a living hell in every respect,” Jules said.
“You don’t know the half of it. We had a horse farm in New Jersey near Saddle River, and Dad had invested in some very high priced Thoroughbreds, the most famous of which was the Derby winner Thundercrack. When Ronnie started hanging around the stables, he turned out to have a way with horses. He began getting press coverage for his work with them, which drove J. T. almost insane. He longed to be darling of the press, but Ronnie was getting all of the attention. The press had referred to Ronnie as Thundercrack’s ‘co-trainer,’ which drove J. T. nuts.”
“Your father had some other Derby winners,” Jules said.
“Several,” Brenda said, “but his most impressive Derby winner was Thundercrack, and Ronnie loved that horse. The kid was shy around people, but not those Thoroughbreds, particularly that one. The trainers were impressed with the way Ronnie handled him, and they encouraged him to exercise him.”
“The trainers call it ‘breezing’ the horse,” Jules said.
“Right,” Brenda said. “Ronnie breezed Thundercrack all the time, but the horse wouldn’t let J. T. near him. He’d buck and kick if J. T. tried to touch him and would even try biting him.”
“Ronnie committed suicide in Thundercrack’s stall if memory serves,” Jules said.
“In an empty stall next to Thundercrack’s,” Brenda said. “A few days after the horse won the Derby, Ronnie was in Jersey, working with him. Late one night he was in his stall, rubbing him down and feeding him apples. Ronnie was the only person in the stable, and J. T. showed up in a total rage. He was bigger and stronger than Ronnie, and so he dragged him out of the stall by the hair. He called him a ‘horsefucker’ and a ‘little queer.’ He beat the living hell out of the kid, punching him, tearing out handfuls of hair—the same shit he’d do later to wives and girlfriends—repeatedly kicking him in the groin, shouting in his ear at the top of his lungs: ‘I’m gonna beat the fucking queer out of you.’”
“The papers reported that Ronnie hanged himself in the stall that night from the overhead light fixture,” Jules said.
“Or J. T. hanged him,” Brenda said. “He wanted Ronnie’s stock really bad, and the corporate bylaws stated that if one of us died, the siblings inherited the deceased’s stock. Daddy had set it up and called it a ‘tontine.’ Since Daddy had just passed away and I’d already signed an irrevocable agreement, giving J. T. authorization to vote my stock, Ronnie’s death effectively gave J. T. total, irreversible control of our father’s company.”
“How did you learn what J. T. did to his brother that night?” Jules asked.
“A few weeks after Ronnie’s death, J. T. was sitting in his penthouse, late one night. He doesn’t usually drink, but that night he indulged himself in a couple of snifters of my brandy. He was feeling effusive, boastful, and he told me most of the story, implying he’d killed him. He laughed about it. He was proud of what he’d done.”
“He never showed any remorse?” Jules asked. “Ever?”
“No. In fact, a few weeks later I asked him, point-blank, if he was upset about Ronnie’s death.”
Brenda looked away.
“Did he answer you?” Jules finally asked after a long silence.
“‘Hell no!’ he shouted, his insane laughter rocking the room.”
Jules sat with her a long time. Brenda cried quietly, and Jules held her hand.
Shortly before dawn, Brenda pulled herself together and left Jules’s hotel room.
Jules went to the bathroom. Standing before the mirror, she made herself a promise:
“J. T.,” she said softly. “I swear on my soul, on my sisters’ souls and on my mother’s, I am taking you down.”
3
“We view Western women with awe and horror, referring to them as the ‘Third Sex.’ Their way of life is diametrically opposed to ours. We are ostracized physically and socially from early childhood on, trapped in a labyrinth of restrictions and regulations, most of which are brutally barbaric and utterly illegal under international law but which determine our lives as inexorably as birth and death. Who issues these edicts? Men. They serve Allah, but we serve them. Men dictate, and we obey.”
—Raza Jabarti to Danny McMahon
McMahon lay on his back, stretched out on his rack. Moonlight filtered through the small high window, and he wondered idly whether he would ever see the open night sky again.
Raza wandered in and walked up to him. She pulled up a straight-back chair and sat beside him.
“Remember what I always told you?” she asked him.
“Not to understand you too quickly,” McMahon recited dully.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she said. “I also told you you’d come out of this experience changed.”
“You also said,” McMahon repeated robotically, “I’d learn to love you in the daylight.”
“Well, how are you doing so far?” Raza asked.
“I feel a new manic dynamism coming over me already,” McMahon muttered under his breath.
“Joke, if you wish, but you do see us differently, don’t you? Before, all you knew about our faith was words, but now you’ve experienced the harshness of Islam firsthand. Now you know precisely how the women in our world feel.”
“You also break women on racks?” McMahon asked, harshly skeptical.
“Not that often, but we do flog and stone them. We clitorize them. You’ve been held captive several days, but our women are imprisoned their entire lives. We are Islam’s real ‘caste of untouchables.’ Men can shake hands, walk hand in hand with one another, but for them to touch a woman anywhere in public is haram.”
“How do your country’s leaders justify their abuse of you?” McMahon asked. “What do they say when you ask them?”
“They tell us it is Allah’s will,” Raza said, “that Islam means submission. Just as men submitted to Allah, so, we were told, we women are forced to submit to men. Islam is the only justification our leaders feel they need.”
“So the fact that Islam requires the enslavement of women makes it … all right?”
“Mr. McMahon, starting in childhood I was covered head to foot with those white sacks known as the abaya robes. My face was obscured by the matching niqab so that I looked like a dead sailor in a sailcloth shroud, just before his burial at sea. My sisters and I endured our endless Muslim prayers, or salat, in swelteringly hot burqas and chadors. School consisted of forced memorization of the Koran with the goal of having learned it all by heart at age fourteen. Lapse
s in memory were requited with the strap or the switch.
“Our walls at home featured no photos or portraits, no likenesses anywhere. Nor was music ever played—not once. All such pleasures were haram. We were to take our pleasure and enjoy our reward not in this life but in the Hereafter, though what form that heavenly pleasure would take for women was never spelled out, not even in the Koran.
“To be a Saudi woman is to endure a life of perpetual servitude, subjugation and surveillance. The family men can torment, even violate us with impunity and with a vengeance. Even the clerics have their way with us. On the streets, the all-seeing mutawa’u—the religious police—perpetually persecute us. In the mosque, the clerics routinely issue fatwas, mandating our makeup, fingernail polish, sexual activities. They even attempt to dictate when we may have our periods.”
“Your life,” McMahon said, “the lives of your daughters and sisters don’t have to be that way. There are always choices. You can choose to resist.”
“Kaafir” [Infidel],” Raza said, “you are naïve. We view Western women with awe and horror, referring to them as the ‘Third Sex.’ Their way of life is diametrically opposed to ours. We are ostracized physically and socially from early childhood on, trapped in a labyrinth of restrictions and regulations, most of which are brutally barbaric and utterly illegal under international law but which determine our lives as inexorably as birth and death. Who issues these edicts? Men. They serve Allah, but we serve them. Men dictate, and we obey.”
“But not you?” McMahon asked.
“I am hard to subjugate,” Raza said, smiling.
“But you now have power. You can help other women resist, change, be more like you,” McMahon said.
“You do not know me, kaafir, and you do not know my world. Do not think for a moment I am like you.”
“I know more than you think.”
“You are a fool,” Raza said with an angry frown. “You will never understand me, and you will never understand us … at all. Our lives are an enigma hidden in a paradox concealed in a conundrum. We live in what your poet Eliot called ‘a wilderness of mirrors.’ Our world is a maze of conflicting tribes, sects and factions, which our rulers tyrannize and suppress, controlling every aspect of our lives. Our paranoia is so intense we only trust blood of our blood, an obsessive reliance on family, which often requires the marriage of first cousins to first cousins. A tradition going back four thousand years to ancient Egypt, our attitude toward matrimony often mirrors those of the pharaohs, whose distrust of even their allies was so profound the kings married their sisters.”
The Evil That Men Do Page 30
