SoHo Sins (20 page)

“Thanks for the date,” she said. “It was fun.”

Things were going very well with the Balthus Club ploy. Paul—a realist at heart, so he believed—seemed much happier once we shifted from painting to photography. Every Monday, when the gallery was closed, he visited me in the back room, and we looked at pictures together. Week by week, we worked our way through Mapplethorpe, Jock Sturges, Sally Mann, even some selected Lewis Carroll. Paul sometimes smoked a joint, while I imbibed a high-grade cognac and listened to classical music. Finally, after many pleasurable sessions, Paul felt secure enough to tell me about his second, more specialized, PM Videos show—an irregularly scheduled webcast called
Virgin Sacrifice
.

Like a new-media version of a moveable house party, the live feed appeared whenever the organizers chose. Given the way one was “invited to watch,” I could just picture the audience—computer geeks who liked to punctuate their Dungeons and Dragons marathons with reality-based cybersex, Japanese salarymen with a thirst for watching underage cuties being turned into bondage nymphs. An access code was issued sporadically to members via e-mail. Following Paul’s suggestion, I tapped into a
Virgin Sacrifice
episode alone in my bedroom one night.

On my computer screen, bracketed by glaring porno ads, appeared a bit of live-action programming, its key concept contained in the show’s title. Production quality was not a major concern. Basically, the scenes looked like someone’s basement dope-and-music party, with the added feature of a rude sexual initiation at the end. Apparently, the ceremony always involved a certified virgin—this time, a slim brown-haired girl of junior-high age.

“You’ve got to hand it to these art world types,” Paul said as we were looking through a museum catalogue a few evenings later. “They’re slick. Same subject—I risk jail time; they get retrospectives at the ICP.”

“It’s different.”

“How? Is there some kind of legal exception for good lighting?”

“You push things a lot farther than they do.”

“Do I?” He shrugged. “Only because I’m up-front. Only because I don’t disguise the fact that I love it.”

“Unlike those International Center of Photography darlings?”

Paul nodded. “Some people get tied up in knots over this stuff, for no good reason. Know why? They project their adult hang-ups backwards onto the kids, who in fact don’t really give a damn.”

“Are you sure?”

“Listen, those little honeys will all be going at it hot and heavy in a few years anyway. I mean, what high-school kid doesn’t screw? Name one.”

“I can’t. I’m out of touch.”

“You see? It’s just natural. And take my word for it, the younger they start, the more they dig it. Check out Thailand or Cambodia. Sex is a game to the kids there, like skip-rope. They laugh and smile and tell you to come back tomorrow.”

“Maybe that’s just an act.”

“Go there, try it for a while. Then you tell me.”

I wanted him to stop saying those things.

“Look at the sulky tweens in these photo books,” he said. “Check out their poses, their faces. What are they—ten, twelve? Do you think they got that way by accident?” He laughed. “No, Jackson. Someone pointed a camera, someone directed. On the Internet, we make it all look a little rough and low-down, because that’s what sells.”

“Target marketing?”

“Right, cyber-fantasy.”

“And in reality?”

“For the most part, it’s just kids having fun.”

“Why not film it that way then?”

“No art in that, my man. I’ve got a trademark look to promote. Raunch pays the bills, even if it doesn’t get me a MacArthur grant.”

“And you don’t think there’s a difference between your work and this?” I gestured toward the pile of exquisitely produced photography volumes.

“Only if the fools looking at this artsy-fartsy stuff are blind. Technically, the setup is the same: find some beautiful kids, get them half-naked, ask for a hot pose, let the viewer’s mind do the rest. It’s the same old gimmick—whether the customer is wearing sweat pants in a Times Square peep-booth or a Brioni suit at a Metropolitan Museum preview.”

“But you don’t leave it to the imagination. You make it all completely explicit.”

“Yeah, I do. So now it’s a crime to be honest?”

“Depends on the subject.”

“What is it with you older guys? You treat sex like some kind of life-and-death thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not to these kids. They hang out, they play some video games, they get each other off. What’s the big sweat?”

It was hopeless. No matter what I said, I couldn’t get Paul to grasp, or even consider, the flesh-and-blood damage his video work did. To him, it was all like the coolest virtual reality game ever.

We had other disagreements. In photographs, I favored a soft mise-en-scène: clear-eyed, nubile girls on the beach, children wrapped in bath towels and wearing heavy makeup. Paul went for heavier, rawer arrangements.
Brother and Sister
, a shot of a naked young man with an erection and a pistol, leaning over a bound female nude;
They Found Her in Bryant Park at 8 A.M. and Took Her Home
, the depiction (real or staged, did it matter?) of a teenage gang rape in front of a mirror. Both were by Paul’s favorite artist.

“Larry Clark,” he said quietly, “is my God.”

It was then that I got the nerve to broach the next step of my plan. “Some of the club members have watched the webcasts,” I told him, “but the whole process is a little too techno, too geeky, for my clients. All that cyber-coordinates mumbo-jumbo is annoying for men who are accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it.”

“They could buy the compilation tapes,” Paul suggested.

“The what?”

“Every season we put together VHS highlights of the most recent sessions. They sell through the Internet here, and on the streets all over Asia.”

“Sounds like a cash cow.”

“Money comes in faster than it can be counted, I hear.”

“But the action is still virtual, on video.”

“What else would you like?”

I made him wait a second or two, to show that my answer was serious.

“The real thing, live.”

Paul drew back. “That’s a very far-out idea.”

“Also a lucrative one. The Balthus Club members and their friends would pay top dollar to attend. These are guys—venture capitalists, hedge-fund managers, corporate executives—who buy tables at museum benefits at ten thousand dollars a throw. Your show would be a bit more entertaining.”

I could see the greed, and the chance to be a hero with his porn-peddling bosses, start to work on Paul’s resistance.

“How big a pool are we talking about?” he asked.

“The club has about twenty members. Each of them has at least two or three interested friends.”

“A group small enough to manage but big enough to pay off.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Paul.”

The strange thing was, as always, that Morse found nothing odd about our conversation. All he cared about was having me give him a gallery show and nominate him for membership in the Balthus Club, where he was already working the contacts in his mind. For the rest, it was as if violating underage girls on camera, before a live audience of rich culture buffs, was as ordinary as making a TV commercial for dish soap. He was excited by the revenue prospects, intrigued by the technical challenges, determined to maintain artistic control—preserving the sense of confined intimacy that prompted his victims’ best doped responses. Nothing else.

“I’ll mention it to the head guys,” Paul said finally. “They might like a new angle.”

“Especially when there’s a pile of loot to be made.”

“There better be. We’re not in this business for laughs. You’ll have to convince my contact, Sammy. He has to green light the idea before it can go any farther.”

I slipped the Larry Clark book back on its shelf and turned again to my guest.

“Don’t worry, Paul,” I said. “Have you seen some of the art in this place? I can sell anything.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “So everybody in SoHo has heard.”

There was only one more major hurdle to clear. “You know who’s a Balthus Club member?” I said. “Someone you just wouldn’t believe.”

“No idea.”

“That crazy guy, Hogan—the P.I. who was in Penny Lane’s dressing room the night we met.”

“Christ, how can that toad afford it?”

“He gets comped. For shielding us from his old cronies over in the vice squad.”

“I knew that bastard was crooked. Why the hell was he dogging my ass so hard?”

“Just to see if you’d panic. He’s working the Oliver case and getting nowhere. It was a desperate move.”

“That crap ought to be illegal.”

“Probably is—like a lot of other techniques he uses.”

“Does he have to be in on this?”

“We need him. He keeps us all out of jail.”

“You vouch for him?”

“He’s one of us, a Balthus Club member in good standing. What more can I say?”

“Say you trust him.”

“With my life.”

Paul seemed to measure me briefly. “If things go sour with Sammy, that’s exactly what it could cost you.”

The point was not lost on me. If it weren’t for the danger Melissa faced from Paul and the people behind him, and, more distantly, my debt of friendship to Philip and Mandy, I would have stopped then and there—still safe and comfortably self-ignorant.

“Nothing will go wrong,” I said. “Hogan has helped me out with any number of, let’s say, special transactions.”

“So that’s why you put up with him?”

“I have to. The more imaginative forms of art dealing require protection.”

I wasn’t sure if Paul entirely bought my story just yet, but his gaming blood was up.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s see what this Hogan is made of.”

The first real payoff from my meetings with Paul came a week later, when I took Melissa to dinner at Balthazar while her mother, back at the studio, finished work for her impending show. The girl changed her outfit three times, settling at last on a simple black shift. She was convinced that we would encounter Christopher Walken at any moment in the pseudo-French bistro, and she wanted to be ready with just the right touch of casual downtown chic.

“How are things with you and Paul Morse these days?” I asked.

We were seated on a banquette that gave Melissa a commanding view of the cavernous room.

“He’s really nutty now. All he can talk about is how he needs to borrow Mandy’s laptop from me. So he can log tapes or something.”

I fought to keep a poker face. “You have Mandy’s laptop? The one she used to keep by her bed?”

“Uh-huh.” Melissa studied the crowd, occasionally glancing up at one of the big acid-aged wall mirrors to continue her hunt for celebrities. “Is that bad? He’s the one who told me to borrow it from her. He’s been bugging me about it for a long time now.”

“Since when?”

“This summer.” She regarded me coolly, vengefully. “While you were off playing in Europe.”

“What did Paul want the laptop for?”

“I don’t know. At first, it was like he just wanted me to have it. For goofing around online together. Chatting at night.”

“Nothing else?”

“Who knows? Jokes, dumb pictures, some mushy stuff.”

With great difficulty, I kept my voice even. “But then he said he wanted to use it too? Maybe he was just looking for an excuse to come over to your house.”

“Oh, yeah. All the time.”

“In Westchester?”

“In Westchester, in SoHo. He even invited me to his loft in Tribeca.”

“Did you go?”

“No, I was too busy thinking about you. About us.”

“I’m finally good for something then.”

“Just barely.”

“What did Paul say about the computer when he told you to borrow it?”

“He asked me to get it for him and keep it in my room. He said to tell Aunt Amanda that I needed it for a field trip from school.”

“When did you pick it up?”

She looked farther away. “The weekend before she was shot, I think.”

“How was Aunt Mandy then?”

“She was fine. Just awfully restless with Daddy gone. She said, ‘Men never stay home very long, Missy. It’s a phobia they all seem to have. You better get used to it.’ ”

“Was she upset?”

“No more than usual. She got upset a lot.”

Imagining life with Philip, I could understand why.

“And Mandy didn’t think it was curious, your borrowing a laptop from her? Don’t you have one of your own?”

“No, just a clunky tabletop thing. Besides, Aunt Amanda was always lending me stuff, giving me gifts. So I wouldn’t feel gypped and hate her.”

“Did her strategy work?”

“Kind of. Now.”

“Now that she’s dead?”

“Yeah. Is that weird?”

“No. The dead are always easier to love than the living.”

Melissa gave me a questioning look.

“Less hassle.”

She shook her head disgustedly.

“Once you had the laptop,” I said, “did you ever invite Paul over?”

“No. I told you a million times already, no.”

“Did he ever tell you you’re special?”

She hesitated. “Well, I am special, aren’t I?”

“Very much so.” My eyes dropped, and I found myself fiddling pointlessly with the menu. “When did you see him last?”

“Sunday. We went to Central Park. He took some photos of me in my new school outfit.”

“But nothing at your loft?”

“Oh my God, no. It’s bad enough there with that Hogan guy pestering Mom with questions every few days. If that’s what they’re really up to.”

“They didn’t tell me about meeting so often.”

“No kidding, Sherlock. Did you expect them to?”

“You’re awfully suspicious.”

“No, I’m just tired of Mom’s so-called dates showing up at all hours.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Of Mom?” She laughed.

“Maybe jealous enough to take Paul up on his offers?”

“Oh, ick. Stop it. Why are you being so nosy?”

“I just want to be sure you’re safe.”

Her eyes focused on me precisely, then softened. “OK, be nice then. That’s the way it should be.”

“Have you told Paul that we talk about him sometimes?”