Phantom Limb

by Dennis Palumbo

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, believe me, neither did I. Now don’t get me wrong. Marriage to Charles Harland was a fucking nightmare from Day One. Hell, the Bataan Death March was probably more fun. On the plus side, he was rich, which I really, really liked. But he’s a cold bastard. Cold and cruel. Know what I mean?”

  “I was around him long enough to get a sense of that, yes.”

  “Anyway, after a few years of wedded shit, we were spending more and more time apart. Christ knows, that creepy house of his is big enough to stay happily lost in. Of course, we continued doing all those public functions together—the charity balls, museum fundraisers, that crap. Plus every year, our big-ass anniversary gala. The most important event on Pittsburgh’s social calendar. Every VIP in the state, from the governor on down, shows up to kiss Charles’ ring. Which they have to do, if they want his financial support come election time.

  “And there I am, the former sex symbol, older now but still hot enough to drive all his geezer friends and enemies nuts with envy. Imagining all the great sex he’s getting, even at his age. All the tricks I must’ve learned as a Hollywood starlet, the tabloid party girl. One step up from being a high-priced whore.”

  She paused, voice thickening.

  “You should see the look on the old man’s face every year at that event. It’s the only goddamn time I ever see him happy. When the truth is…”

  She grew quiet, and I heard the first trickle of a soft rain. A steady, melancholy misting, barely audible as it reached my ears from the shadowed mouth of the cave.

  “The truth is,” she went on, “there wasn’t anything like that going on between us. Hadn’t been since the earliest days of our marriage. We’ve slept in separate bedrooms for years. Then, after his first stroke—”

  “Was that what put him in the wheelchair? I don’t think the exact nature of his illness has ever been made public.”

  “It hasn’t. He and Arthur Drake made damned sure of that. Although Charles was still sharp as a tack after his recovery, they were afraid it would hurt the Harland Industries brand if word got out about a stroke. Instead, they floated the idea that it was some sort of muscular degeneration. Genetic or some bullshit. In other words, ‘Don’t you worry, Mr. and Ms. Investor, the mighty Harland financial brain is still A-OK.’ And the funny thing is, it was….”

  I could feel her hand sweeping the air in front of me.

  “Hey, Doc, you got another one of those water bottles? I always get a dry throat doing monologues. Not that I had that many in the crappy scripts I got stuck with. Mostly I just had to scream a lot.”

  I pulled a bottle out of my jacket pocket and managed to find her grasping fingers in the dark. Then I heard her twist it open and take a long drink.

  As she did, I simply listened to the rain and kept quiet. Whether or not it was the right call, I’d decided not to tell her yet about her husband’s latest stroke and hospitalization. Nor did I feel it appropriate to inform her of Arthur Drake’s murder. Lisa had just survived a grueling, horrific ordeal, and my instincts told me that letting her tell her story, in her own way, was perhaps the most therapeutic thing I could do for her. At least here, in this godforsaken place.

  She spoke again, her voice now stronger.

  “Thanks, Rinaldi. Hit the spot. Anyway, after the stroke, Charles and I barely touched each other. Not even a kiss, unless there was a camera around, or an audience of big-shots…”

  Lisa sighed. “Which is the other weird thing. I think the old man still loves me. Really. No matter what anybody says. Even that tight-ass Drake has sworn to me that Charles told him so. But I also know something else. That the Lisa Campbell he loves is the one on those old movie posters in his office. The Hollywood sex bomb. All tits and no brains. Someone I haven’t been for a long time.”

  “When did the affair with Payton start?”

  “About a year ago. Funny, too, ’cause I knew that at first Mike was suspicious about my marrying the old man. Had me pegged as a gold-digger, pure and simple. But as we got to know each other, he kinda mellowed. Actually talked to me like I was a person. Though I can’t say the same for Drake, or Charles’ nurse, Donna Swanson. Neither of ’em ever came around, really, but at least they had the courtesy to be passive-aggressive about it. Unlike James, who was totally upfront. Openly hostile. But, Christ, if I were him, I’d feel the same way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “James really hated his father. Everything he was, and everything he did. And believe me, the feeling was mutual.”

  “Because Charles blamed James for what happened to his other son, Chuck. The overdose.”

  “Charles said more than once that the wrong son died. To James’ face, in front of company. Can you fuckin’ believe it?”

  She took another deep swallow from the water bottle.

  “Even Mike Payton, who has no love for James, thought the way the old man treated his son was really shitty. That was one of the things we used to talk about…”

  She paused, as though lost in the memory.

  “Anyway, the point is, I hadn’t been laid in, like, forever. And I may be older, but I’m not dead. So…”

  “You and Mike started seeing each other.”

  “I was about to say we started fucking like rabbits behind my husband’s back, but I like how you put it better. But it wasn’t just the sex, Danny. We liked each other. Still do. Me and Mike were together for months, ’til we both realized how crazy it was. What’d happen if Charles ever found out…”

  “So you ended it?”

  “Yeah. Truth is, I think Mike couldn’t deal with the guilt. Underneath all that G.I. Joe, take-no-prisoners crap, he’s a real, honest-to-God good boy. Total straight arrow.”

  “It was hard, wasn’t it, Lisa? Giving him up?”

  She nodded. “At first. I mean, I knew damn well it was for the best, but…Yeah, it was hard. Then, about a month ago, just when it was starting to get easier…”

  She hesitated. I heard her twisting the empty plastic bottle in her hands.

  “What happened a month ago, Lisa?”

  “One night, after dinner, James finds me in the study. Charles had already gone up to bed, so James suggests I join him for a nightcap. Real casual and friendly. Which is pretty strange, since he’s never been exactly chummy before this. But I figure, why not? I was about to get hammered anyway…”

  A short laugh. “I know what you’re thinking, Doc.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to. But trust me, nobody could live with Charles Harland without being tanked most of the time. Anyway, James mixes the drinks at the wet bar, hands me one. We toast, I take a healthy swig, and then everything goes black.”

  “He drugged you?”

  “Yep. The next thing I know, I’m in the backseat of a cab driving through these winding, empty streets. Though I’m still woozy as hell, and can’t tell where we are.”

  She paused again. I leaned in closer, though I knew she couldn’t see it.

  “When we get where we’re goin’—some shitty, rundown building—James has to practically lift me outta the cab. I mean, I am fucking out of it. Then he brings me in to meet this weird guy with a mustache. Raymond Sykes. Real skinny, this guy. Like a toothpick. And the place itself—all the rooms and hallways are dark, gloomy. And then we go to this one room, no windows or anything. Padded floor. Then I…I pass out again, I don’t know for how long. But when I come around, I’m on this narrow bed… totally bare-assed. Not a stitch. There are lights, really bright lights, shining in my face…

  “And then I see James, and he’s naked, too. And he’s not alone. He’s with three other guys, and they’re all naked. And wearing these masks—like ski masks, I guess. And then James starts telling me who these guys are. I’m so drugged-out I can barely register their names, bu
t I can tell James really wants me to know. Like he’s getting off on it. ’Cause one guy’s a big state senator, one’s president of a worldwide bank. I think the third ran a huge multinational corporation. Strange thing was, I thought I remembered one of the names. Some high-roller who always shows up at the anniversary gala. Fawns over Charles…and me. At the time, I figured I was just fucked up from the spiked drink. He couldn’t be one of the men behind the masks. But now…”

  Another long silence. I waited, the only sounds the rasp of her quickening breath, the gentle insistence of the rain.

  “And then James pulls a mask over his own face, and says to me, ‘See, Lisa, you’re gonna entertain three of the city’s most prominent citizens. Four, if you count me…’”

  I sat up, straining to see her face in the darkness.

  “The Four Horsemen. James Harland and these other three.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said they called themselves. They come down to this canker sore of a building in the Hill District—this old factory—and do drugs and girls. Hookers, mostly. Coke whores. The skankier, the better. ‘Going ghetto,’ James called it. ’Course he told me all this afterwards. After—”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Take your time, Lisa. Or you can keep the details to yourself, if you want.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. They’ll keep. What happened in that room, every horrible, unbelievable thing, is burned right into the old memory banks. Whether I like it or not. I’ll be thinking about it, replaying it all in my head, on my deathbed.

  “But you’re in luck, Doc. I can’t even describe what those four monsters did to me. I don’t have the words. It went on for hours. Sometimes they took turns, sometimes it was all at once. They…used things, too. Things that hurt. It made what my first husband used to do to me seem like patty-cake.

  “What they did…what they made me do…I mean, I always figured I was tough, but…Christ, I can’t even talk about it.”

  “That’s all right, Lisa. Unfortunately, I have a pretty good imagination. I can guess.”

  “No,” she said simply. “You can’t.”

  ***

  My eyes more accustomed to the dark, I could now make out enough of Lisa’s features to see the tears streaking her cheeks. The way they glistened wetly in the hushed gloom of the cave.

  “I…I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards. Maybe I passed out again. Anyway, when I come to, I’m in the library at the residence. With no idea how or when I’d gotten there. It was daylight. Late morning. Me and James were both totally dressed, and there was an elegant coffee service on the table between us. I guess one of the maids had brought it in. Anyway, the thing that struck me the most—that scared the shit outta me—was this look on James’ face. This creepy, satisfied smile…”

  I took a guess. “That’s when he told you about the video.”

  “Yeah. Though I don’t know how the hell you know about it.”

  “I was once in that same room where you were assaulted, Lisa. I saw the lights, the camera.”

  She nodded. “James told me that everything that happened the night before had been shot. Put on video. But in a special way. I didn’t understand all of it, but apparently he had some stoner friend of his, some computer geek, run the camera and download the video into an encrypted file. I mean, it was all techno-babble to me. But he said the file couldn’t be copied, or even opened by someone who didn’t know the key code.”

  “Which only James had, I assume.”

  “Yeah. He said it had something to do with algorithms, or random numbers, or some shit. The important thing was that nobody, not even Sykes, could download it or duplicate it. And that the file was on a flash-drive, hidden where nobody could find it. Jesus, you should’ve seen his face. He was all excited, like a teenager with some secret porno stash. Really freaked me the fuck out.”

  I thought then about how Arthur Drake had described James. Implying, almost wistfully, that he was still a boy, with a boy’s appetites. A defiant adolescent in an adult’s body.

  “What did he say he wanted to do with it? Sell it?” I paused. “Or, more likely, blackmail you?”

  She shook her head. “Much worse than that. He said he planned to hang on to it until the next anniversary gala, which takes place in a month. He’s going to show the video on a big screen at the event. So that Charles, and hundreds of the old man’s VIP guests, could see his famous trophy wife gang-raped by four guys in ski masks. See her naked. Tortured and humiliated.”

  “My God, Lisa…”

  “Then, after that, he said he’d probably upload it to YouTube. Why should his father’s high and mighty friends be the only ones to see it? Why not share it with the whole world?”

  I merely stared in her direction, at a loss.

  She lowered her chin. “I knew then that my life was over. I mean, I did feel a twinge of pity for my husband—I’m not that much of a bitch. But what I mostly felt was panic. For me. Because it would be the end of everything. Once Charles saw that video, the marriage would be over, of course. And believe me, he’d see to it that I was left without a pot to piss in. But that’s not what horrified me. It was the publicity, the scandal. All that shit, like before. All stirred up again. And if James did decide afterwards to put it up on YouTube…Christ, then everyone would see it. My poor parents, my daughter, everyone. The damned thing would go viral, and…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “I can’t imagine how you must’ve felt, Lisa.”

  “It was so…what’s that word?…Surreal. James tells me what he’s going to do, calmly sipping his coffee. Then he adds that it’d be best if we avoided having any contact in the future. Then the bastard gets up and leaves. Just like that.”

  She cleared her throat. “That’s when I began thinking about killing myself. I mean, why not? Who’d care, anyway? My loving husband Charles? Hell, no. Not once he’d seen the video, and been mortified in front of all his so-called friends.”

  “What about your daughter, back in Los Angeles? Didn’t you consider the effect your suicide would have on her?”

  “I told you already, Gail doesn’t care whether I live or die. Neither does her greedy shit of a husband. Guess she shares her mother’s great taste in men, eh? All those two care about is making sure I send them money. Like my twat’s an ATM machine.”

  “And their kids? Your grandchildren?”

  “Never met ’em. Never will. So you see, when you crunch the numbers, suicide was my best option. At least I thought so.”

  “That’s not exactly true, Lisa. Some part of you fought that urge. Or else you wouldn’t have sought me out. Wouldn’t have been so desperate for someone to help you figure out a reason to keep living.”

  She hesitated, letting me see the consternation on her face. Slowly rubbed her temples.

  “I guess you’re right. Maybe. But I don’t really understand it. There I was, making plans, gathering together my stash of pills. While at the same time, I’m asking Mike Payton to do research on you. Make sure you were as good as your rep.”

  “But that’s what I don’t understand, Lisa. Why didn’t you tell me all this at our first session?”

  “It took me the whole time to decide if I could trust you.”

  Beyond us, outside the mouth of the cave, the rain had strengthened. Not only could we hear its increasing intensity, but a subtle dampness now clung to the air, even as far back as we were in the pocket of the rockface.

  “Okay, Lisa,” I said carefully. “Can you tell me what happened after our session? When Griffin showed up?”

  “When the door opened, and this big goon was standing there, I just started screaming. And then, after he knocked you out, he grabbed me and put his hand over my mouth. I thought he was gonna kill me, or worse. But instead, he tells me that his boss had sent him. Raymond Sykes, from that night
at the old factory. Sykes wanted me to know that he had the video now. That he’d gotten the flash-drive away from James. Griffin said Sykes didn’t give a shit about embarrassing me or Harland in public. He didn’t know how to open the damned file anyway. He just wanted money. Lots of it. And if I got it for him, he’d give me the flash-drive.”

  “But how could he have gotten it from James? Unless he’d threatened him in some way. Forced him to hand it over…”

  “Yeah, probably. Though I wasn’t thinking real clearly at the moment. Not with the big guy’s hand on my arm. It felt like he was going to tear it off. I knew that if I didn’t come with him, he would go ahead and kill me. Besides, the thought that I could get that horrible video back…I didn’t care what it was going to cost, it’d be worth it…”

  “So you went willingly with Griffin.”

  “Yeah. We were just two people walking down the hall. Then we went down the service stairs to the parking garage…”

  I paused. “So that’s how it happened. I wondered …”

  I saw her face tighten in the dimness.

  “Wait a minute! You son of a bitch, you thought I staged my own kidnapping…?”

  “Well, it had occurred to me. I couldn’t find those pills you mentioned, for one thing.”

  A gruff laugh. “You never did a lot of drugs, did you, Doc? You just gotta know where to hide your stash. Bottom desk drawer on the left, taped to the underside. We’ve got two live-in maids I call the Snoop Sisters. I had to be careful, since I know they go through my shit all the time.”

  Then she leaned forward and punched me hard on my arm. “That’s for thinking I arranged everything myself. Some pal you turned out to be, Rinaldi. What an asshole.”

  “I am sorry, Lisa. For what it’s worth.”

  “You should be. Anyway—not that you deserve to hear the rest of it—once Griffin walked me to my car and had me unlock it, he chloroformed me. When I woke up, I was bound and gagged, on the ground in that cellar. With the tattooed man watching over me. Except for when I was brought up to the room, when Sykes called the residence. Making his ransom demands.”