Beg Me (21 page)

“Yes. Okay, yeah, I panicked—”

“You never looked at her closely—you just shot out of there. And when they sent you the pictures, you saw what they wanted you to see.”

“Oh, my God,” mumbled Oliver, and he had to sit down. “You’re telling me…You’re telling me they faked her death? They got some girl to be Kelly, and she’s—”

“Oliver,” I cut in. “You’re not getting it. They didn’t fake her death. Don’t you see? They
faked her life.
”

“I don’t understand.”

“That
was
Kelly Rawlins in that hotel bed. She was a call girl from Queens whose body was a close-enough match. She died never knowing she was a victim of identity theft. The girl you met just called herself Kelly Rawlins for
you.
”

“Oh, Jesus…”

“It was one of the things nagging at me on my return flight,” I explained. “I couldn’t figure out why they would kill her but not you. You could say, okay, a trail leads from you to them. But what’s to keep the cops from poking around in her past too and finding the group? Answer: The real Kelly Rawlins never had this past. She never knew Danielle or Isaac. So her murder scares you off but doesn’t have any suspicious link to the cult.”

“All the time we spent together,” he was muttering to himself, “everything we did…She was just spying on me for them?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Oliver.”

“But the bishop symbol—”

“Think about it. The cops wouldn’t release a detail like that to the press or public. It helps them distinguish any copycats, any nut who phones in claiming he did it. I think Isaac and Danielle counted on its psychological impact when they sent you the photos—to frighten you, confuse you. It worked. And they knew you wouldn’t go to the cops with it. You felt guilty. You felt set up. And you were. So the police are left with this weird clue that means nothing to them.”

“But why let me live in the first place?” he asked.

“That bothered me as well. Then I tripped over an expense account in
your
name attached to the temple’s holding corporation. You’re a victim of identity theft too. Doesn’t matter when, but my bet is Isaac and Danielle got their paws on your wallet sometime when you were back at the mansion. Your credit cards weren’t the goal—they were the means to the end. They used them to authenticate access for any withdrawals from the hidden account. When he needs to, Isaac can walk in claiming to be you and take out thousands of dollars in cold hard cash if he ever needs to split. And he doesn’t even need to do that—he can wire the money to an offshore account.”

“But why put the money in my name?”

“You’re the fall guy in case anything happens,” I explained. “Consider who you are. You own a bookshop specializing in African-American titles. To cops these days, that alone can smack of being ‘radical’! You belonged to the princes once, so you’ve got history with them that can be confirmed. You’re a businessman who has some knowledge of incorporating and bank accounts. If the cops or the FBI come looking for the leader, Isaac and Danielle will give them you.”

“But I left them!” he argued.

“All the better,” I said. “Now you’re completely out of the loop and don’t know what they’re up to. The cops will follow the money. They couldn’t get ’round the real-estate holdings—they
had
to put those in Danielle’s name. If they used yours, then the annual taxes would land on your doorstep and tip you off. But this discretionary account…I think they’ve been socking away the money in it for quite a while, but lately things have changed. First with Anna, then you. So Kelly Rawlins became their insurance against you. And they killed her.”

“I don’t even know what I did to piss them off!”

“Craig Padmore came to you,” I reminded him. “That was enough. They thought you two were working together. They assumed it because he walked into your store, bought one of your books, and asked you questions.”

“They killed that poor girl just to scare me away,” croaked Oliver. “And it worked. I’m such a goddamn fool.”

“Listen. Did you ever talk to ‘Kelly’ about Padmore?”

He cradled his head in his hands. “Oh, God! I did. It was to reassure her we’d be safe soon. That Isaac would be too busy to worry about us!”

“Oliver,
focus.
You couldn’t possibly have known she’d betray you and the real Kelly and Craig would wind up dead. It’s a bloody good thing Craig didn’t confide in you whatever he learned, otherwise I think you’d be dead. They’d have emptied the account, and that would have been it. But they’re greedy. If you’re murdered, that means the expense account can’t stay open. Now, are you
sure
Padmore didn’t give anything away? Not even a hint?”

“No…”

“Oliver, there’s got to be a connection. You told me that Padmore wanted to dig into Isaac’s background. Well, what does it have to do with the Vietnam War besides Isaac lying about a war medal given to his father?”

“I don’t know, Teresa. Honestly.”

“You and Isaac are about the same age. Did his dad get killed in Vietnam?”

He shook his head. “No, I think the guy died in Pittsburgh or something. It’s not like Isaac talked about him much.”

“Is there any chance Isaac’s father knew Harry Bishop?”

Oliver looked at me questioningly.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I didn’t tell you this before. When Craig Padmore’s body was discovered, a bishop symbol was drawn on his arm, just like with your father. Craig Padmore was digging into the history of the Vietnam conflict. And the same guy who murdered your dad, Harry Bishop, was a mercenary training South Vietnamese near Da Nang.”

“Then what’s behind all this?” he demanded, shaking with frustration.

“I don’t know yet,” I sighed. “There’s got to be a connection. Two wars. Bishop served in both. Maybe he’s still a distraction, just like with Kelly Rawlins and Padmore, but there is a connection somehow with the wars. I don’t see it yet, I just don’t. But I will.”

10

I
was flipping through a book on the Malinke in the mansion’s library when I saw a framed group shot hanging on the wall. I stood in astonishment for a moment. There was Anna Lee in the back row of the group, wearing a blue cotton robe just like the one I had on now. Smiling. Happy. Alive. Hard to see how old the shot was, but her ex-boyfriend Craig Padmore was in it too. So was Oliver. There were slightly different hairstyles for a couple of the girls. Danielle was wearing her hair short, and—

She was right behind me. Didn’t hear her approach.

“I think that was our second year here,” she remarked.

I nodded. Big pause. I was trying to bluff through the moment and look like I had just got bored or curious. Mother Superior had got the drop on me with her invisible antennae whirling up and down, looking to figure me out.

“I like your hair now better,” I finally said.

“Oh, thank you!” she answered, positively reeking of sincerity. “I do too.”

“Hey, who’s this?” I asked, pointing to Anna. “I haven’t met her yet.”

Danielle crossed her arms and sighed. “And you never will. That’s Anna. Sad story. She was pretty screwed up when she came to us, had all kinds of sexual hang-ups. Maybe it was her background, I don’t know. She was from Thailand, and they do
every
perversion you can think of over there. I think maybe she was abused as a child or something. She’d freak out sometimes and scream at the girls. She even mouthed off once to Isaac! I thought she had to go right then, but Isaac was so compassionate, so patient with her.”

She
tsk-tsked
and looked appropriately grieving over the “Thai” girl in the photo.

“Finally, we had to tell her, look, it’s better you leave. What we didn’t know was that she’d been on and off drugs for years. She must have gone back on them, because they found her dead in an alley. Some dealer had shot her over a buy or something.”

“Oh, God, that’s horrible,” I said, playing along.

“Yeah, but it’s like Isaac says, Teresa. To be a prince or princess means having dignity. Self-respect, self-restraint, respect for your brothers and sisters…We ignored the warning signs with Anna. We made mistakes. I look at you, sweetie, and I know I never have to worry.”

We hugged on that note, and as I smiled and thanked her, I pictured doing my best
mawashigeri
roundhouse kick upside her head for slandering and murdering my friend. Clock’s ticking, bitch.

I went back to “work.”

“Yeah, I knew Anna a bit,” Violet told me later in our dorm room. “I joined, and then she was gone a few weeks later. I thought she was real nice. Couldn’t believe it when they told me all this stuff about her, like, going nuts and dissing Isaac.”

“That’s what Danielle told me.”

“Wow.” Violet threw up a hand and let it drop. What are you gonna do?

“She used to give massages to some of the princes and princesses. That’s what she did before she came here. She was a massage therapist. I had one from her. She was really good at it too. She saved the life of one of the guys once.”

“Really? How’d she do that?”

“It was Jimmy, but I don’t know all the details. He had an allergic reaction to something—I don’t know what—and so, like, she’s giving him a massage, and first he starts complaining about his heart beating too fast and then he’s got cold sweats, and
then
he stops breathing. So Anna does CPR, and she calls for an ambulance. Isaac and Danielle rushed right back from the city.”

“They were out of the house at the time?”

“Oh, yeah, a lot of people were. I was at the public library. Isaac and Danielle had to go take care of some business, and Gordon and Trey had tagged along. So there was nobody but the junior princes and princesses left. Must have been really scary.”

“I bet,” I said.

“But Jimmy’s okay.”

“Yeah…”

You’d think Anna saving Jimmy would make her a bona fide heroine to Danielle and Isaac. The ultimate servicing and caring for a junior Nubian prince of the sarcophacan temple.

Instead, Anna got led to her death a couple of months later.

In front of the mansion, a good three acres away from the road, Gordon led all the princes and five of the girls in
kihon
—Japanese karate basics—on a Sunday. Rows of bald black men in white
gis
threw punches and kicks as he stood at the front counting off in Japanese:
“Ichi!…Ni!…an!…Shi!…Go!…Roku!”
And so on. An army to go with the empire.

I stood on the mansion’s front balcony, carefully checking them out. It didn’t surprise me at all that Gordon was their
sensei.
I suspected that he was Isaac’s new enforcer, with Andrew Schacter inconveniently dead. Or maybe he was Danielle’s preference.

The classes were mandatory for all the Nubian princes but voluntary for the girls. I thought it would be better to keep my own fighting talents a secret. For now.

“What do you think?” asked Violet at my shoulder. “Are they sexy like that?”

“Some,” I laughed. I didn’t want to tell her what I was thinking.

None of the students wore colored rank belts, just simple white ones, but I was relieved that most looked to be about purple to first brown level. I could take ’em. Danielle was in there, setting an example. Sloppy blocks, no recoil in her front snap kick. Good. But Gordon was a third-degree black belt, easy, and he’d give me trouble. Oh, man, I
hate
guys who know karate. Puts us on an even playing field.

“You and I both have free time,” said Violet. “You want to come with me and hang out?”

She said there was a nice spot in one of the fields where we could get some sun, read, talk, and be left alone.

I gestured to the self-defense class. “You don’t go in for this?”

She pushed out her bottom lip and frowned. Uh-uh. Her face reverted to its sunny smile as I laughed. “I don’t like violence.”

Now was not the time to tell her that violence wasn’t what the art was supposed to be about, or that it had all the spiritual stuff that had probably attracted her to the temple. Hey, lots of people think BDSM is violence.

In the wrong hands, anything is.

We walked for close to an hour through long pastoral fields that she said were all the mansion’s property. It was supposed to be converted and added to the farm one day, but for now it was her private sanctuary, the place she went to when she needed time alone. I thanked her for sharing it with me. Two long deck chairs were folded up against a tree, so we stretched out on them and relaxed. I had brought along a novel, and Violet had a textbook and notepaper in case she got some new ideas on the great megastructure.

I watched her strip off her blue robe and rub sunscreen over her naked body. Tried not to stare. Read, Teresa. Read.

“Hey, how was it with Anwar the other night?” She asked me like she wanted to know how breakfast went.

“Intense.”

“Good intense?”

“Violet! Okay, yeah. It was wild.”

“Anwar’s a sweetheart. I’d rather him take me any day than, say…” She stopped herself.

“Than who?” I prompted. “There’s no one around. Go ahead.”

“I shouldn’t. Complaints erode—”

“Violet, there’s just us, darling.”

She looked at me a moment, trying to decide whether to invest her confidence. “All our temple brothers are all right, they’re cool. But Trey, sometimes he can be…” I gave her another look of
Come on, out with it.
“He can be
cruel.
I know we don’t use safety words, but it’s a prince’s responsibility to know, right?”

Not the way the game was supposed to be played.

“You speak to Danielle about this?”

“I don’t think I can do that. You’ll see how things are, Teresa, after a while. Trey is…It’s just better I keep my mouth shut. I stopped letting him see he hurt me, you know? I go robot, and that turns him off, and he loses interest.”

Oh, my God.

“It’s my problem,” she mumbled, biting a nail.

“The hell it is!” I said. “If it goes too far—”

“It’s our duty to—”

“Violet.”

Her face was pensive more than troubled. It was as if she couldn’t reconcile two sides of an equation. Such weird dynamics. If she were away from this group, she never would have put up with sex rougher than what she wanted. Perhaps he singled her out because she was young. Perhaps the other girls had a higher threshold, not that
that
mattered—it’s what she felt.

No safety words. No talking out a scene beforehand.

I wasn’t sure how to handle this. My first instinct was to tell her to get on the ferry and leave, and that abuse should never be tolerated. But I ran the risk of blowing my cover. And she made it sound like she had suffered in silence but got past her crisis point.

Trey could, I realized, be doing this to other girls.

“You’re a good friend,” she said to me.

I thanked her. “Good friends are supposed to be easy to talk to.”

Then she gave me this look, strange and yet familiar, and all at once I knew why she enjoyed my company so much, why she sought me out.

She crouched near my chair and leaned in very close. Her fingertips on my shoulder were electric. Her mouth hovered close to mine, tantalizingly close but not closing in, as if there was an invisible connective field of two opposing magnets. I was abruptly, powerfully conscious that she was nude.

“I like the guys, I do,” she said as if offering an apology, “but…they don’t…I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what am I doing?”

“Violet.”

I had my hand on her arm, stopping her from moving away.

“It’s always discipline with them,” she said. “It’s not like they hug you or hold you or ever do it vanilla, you know what I’m saying? Like they forgot or something. It can be great, but sometimes I want…more. You are so beautiful. Oh, God, I’m sorry…”

“Stop apologizing, it’s okay.”

Tenderness, she wanted tenderness. I flashed back to the first time I was with a girl, which was only last year, how it screwed me up for a while and I had to come to grips with my own tastes.

“Teresa, I like you…”

Mesmerized, I let her small fingers open my robe. After the days of strutting around the mansion in my birthday suit, becoming objectified by the guys, I didn’t care anymore what the princes saw. Now here was Violet, lips hovering, almost close enough for her eyelashes to brush my cheek.

“Have you been with a girl before?” I asked.

“When I was sixteen,” she confessed. “I thought I was being immature or something. God, I’ve never told anybody.”

“It’s okay.”

She stared into my eyes, and distantly, as if it were happening on a second’s delay, her right hand cupped my breast and began to massage it, squeezing and playing with it until my nipple was a jutting point, the pad of her finger circling the areola. I convulsed with pleasure once, and there was an embarrassing instant of my juices squelching. Violet’s hand slid silkily down my stomach to caress the rise of my mound.

I shuddered. My eyes demanded she kiss me, as if I couldn’t lean forward myself to complete the transaction of our lips. I could smell her breath. I could feel the faint pant of her on my chin.

And then I relaxed a moment, deliberately slowing myself down to pause and delight in what was happening. I had noticed her beauty before. How could I not? But I had repressed my desire, that same ol’ demon of thinking
girls
mean
complications
(as if men didn’t!), putting away my interest in a disciplined compartment of my mind.

She was so young, and that disturbed me too. I had never gone out with someone so young, man or woman, and here was Violet with that adolescent signature of open mouth framed by her generous lips, still a bit of puppy fat around her belly and hips, no age in her fingers. Little princess. Beautiful girl who knew what she was doing as she urged me with a hand to rise up on my knees, her mouth forming an
O
as she slowly, achingly, breathed hot on my chest. She laid her head gently against my stomach, and her left hand came around to grip my ass. She caressed my buttock, and my arms held her in a loose embrace. Oh, God. I couldn’t take it anymore and tilted her chin up so that I could kiss her hard.

We moved onto the grass and our fanned out robes and must have kissed for minutes on end. Her thing with the guys was being flogged, and I traced my fingertips along the healing scars of her back. Then we embraced tightly. All at once, I panicked. I stammered an apology that I was taking advantage of her. I felt foolish. She looked at me, briefly confused, and then showed she was smarter than me—or at least wise when it counted. She shushed me like a child. Gentle strokes on my face, gentle caressing strokes. Tenderness, I thought. I want tenderness too, after all this.

I felt a low-amp orgasm just by kissing her, our tongues playing, and when she nuzzled me and brought her mouth down to suck my breast, my body felt the rush of familiar spasms. I had never come with something as simple as that. Oh, God…God…And I thought I knew what it was. Little by little, stimulus and response, the bloody training had actually worked in a profound way, but not as expected. The princes could manufacture orgasms but not ecstasy, and my body was responding to making love, not sex. Affection all the more sweet because it was like a guilty secret.