The Seduction - Art Bourgeau (20 page)

"Well, goddamn it, tell Dad we're trying—"

"So this time," she continued smoothly,
"he's going to make an exception. You know what I gave you the
last time . . . well, that same guy—the one who's interested in the
young girls—is going to be at the corner of Eleventh and Washington
at four this P.M. A friend arranged for him to meet some girls there.
Dad thinks it might be a good idea if you dropped around." She
patted his hand, then squeezed it. "Now we've got to be running.
Father's saying Mass tonight. Call me sometime. Let's have a drink.
Ciao," she said, as she put the black Corvette in gear and
pulled away from the curb.

Sloan looked at his watch. It was after two. Hardly
enough time to collect the squad and get set up on Washington before
four.

He hurried to his car and put in the radio call to
the squad at the depot, then headed for Eleventh and Washington.

Rafferty and Evans, Kane and Spivak met him there.

About three o'clock the players started showing up. A
brown Mercedes sedan stopped alongside the trolley stop and several
females got out of the backseat. All were dressed like teenagers, but
Sloan recognized a couple of them from prostitute round-ups. They
were anything but teenagers. As the Mercedes drove by, the driver
waved at Sloan. Sloan recognized him, too—at the wheel was
Sylvester "Slick" Gianni, the man in charge of prostitution
at the docks.

At four on the nose an old white Cadillac convertible
pulled alongside the tracks and stopped. The ladies at first appeared
coy, and then gradually one by one they began to approach the car.
When they had all gathered around the passenger side, one of them
gave a little wave.

"That's it, move in," Sloan said into the
radio.

As he pulled out so did Rafferty and Evans in their
car, and Kane and Spivak in theirs. Rafferty and Evans were the
closest and immediately blocked his escape. Kane and Spivak did the
same on the other side.

Sloan got out, gun and badge in hand. The ladies
around the car scattered. Sloan called out: "Don't move,
police."

The driver of the car didn't try to move. Rafferty
jerked open the door on the driver's side and pulled the suspect out.
Sloan read him his rights. Then: "What's your full name?"

"Carl Laredo, but what's all this—?"

They handcuffed him and put him in the back of
Sloan's car.

Rafferty rode with Sloan to police headquarters while
Spivak followed in the Cadillac. Carl kept asking what this was
about. Nobody answered him.

Once at the Roundhouse they immediately gave him a
saliva test. If his ABH factors didn't match the killer's or didn't
show up at all, meaning he was a non-secretor, he was in the clear.
Otherwise . . .

While they were waiting for the results of the saliva
test Sloan began the interrogation, with Rafferty the only other cop
in the room. It was good cop—bad cop time. He, good. Rafferty, bad.

"Soliciting sex is a crime. You know that . . ."

"I wasn't soliciting or propositioning. I'm an
artist," Carl said nervously. "I was trying to commission
them to model for me—"

"What will they think of next?" said
Rafferty.

Sure, far-fetched, but the word "artist"
rang a bell with Sloan. Kane said she'd met an artist at Lagniappe .
. . He went outside. "Kane, is this the guy you met at
Lagniappe?"

"Yes, lieutenant." She sounded unhappy.

"He says he was trying to hire those girls as
models. Know anything about it?"

"Not a thing."

Sloan went back inside. Evidently in his absence
Rafferty had begun to apply some pressure, because Carl Laredo looked
at him like some kind of savior.

"I'm just trying to tell this man that I was not
soliciting those girls for sex. Nobody in their right mind would mess
with a street girl. Not with AIDS and all. I'm an artist—"

"We know that, Mr. Laredo," Sloan said.
"Now calm down and tell us what you were doing there."

"Same thing I've been doing there for the last
several months. Like I said, I'm an artist. I lived in France for
several years. You know about Paris street scenes; artists always
paint them. While I was there I got interested in the Apache dancers
of the Fifties. You know, the guy in the beret and the woman in the
split skirt. I thought of combining them with a conventional street
scene to make what would be sort of mean streets Paris-style. When I
came back here I decided to do the same with Philly street scenes,
and the best-looking girls for it are in South Philly. So every few
weeks I hire a couple of the hookers, take them back to my place and
take some Polaroids to work from. That's all. No sex. No nudity even.
The way they're dressed with the high heels and the tight jeans,
that's what I want to paint—"

Kane stuck her head in. "Lieutenant, can I see
you?" Her voice sounded better.

He went outside.

"The lab report is in."

"And?"

There was a hint of a smile. "He's not our man.
He's a secretor, all right, but with blood type A, not O."

Her smile told him that she liked Carl Laredo more
than she was saying.

Sloan sighed. Even the mob was wrong once in a while.
 
 

CHAPTER 19

MISSY HELD the double old-fashioned glass filled with
ice at eye-level as though it was a chemist's beaker and poured into
it from the frosty Stolichnaya bottle. Her hands were rock steady.
Up, up, up, rose the level of the clear liquid, thickened by the cold
of the refrigerator, until she stopped just short of the rim.

She carefully put the bottle down on the kitchen
counter as though it was filled with nitroglycerin. Spread out next
to it on the counter's black ceramic tile surface was a single-edged
razor blade, a small pile of white powder, and a tiny silver coke
spoon. The sounds of Bryan Adams singing "Heaven" filled
the room, and outside on the Delaware River, through her kitchen
window, she could see a tug muscling into its berth a white tanker
showing rust streaks through its paint job and flying the Panamanian
flag of convenience in the fading twilight. But if she noticed either
she gave no sign of it.

Holding the glass with both hands in a peculiarly
little-girl fashion, she brought it to her lips, looked over the rim
of the glass as she tilted it upward and drank, her eyes bright and
staring, but at a point that only her mind could see, her pupils
portals to the darkness beyond.

A drop of moisture fell from the glass onto her bare
chest and trickled down between her breasts. She paid it no mind.
Seemed unaware of it.

She drank again, taking in the icy sterile bite of
the alcohol; the level in the glass dropping noticeably, its frigid
coldness seeming to bring her back to the here and now. Since that
night at the opera her hatred of Cynthia had been building. Her
scheming was obvious. There was her play for Felix at the opera. Her
lunch with Carl and that Ramsey woman when she all but said she would
even get pregnant to get Felix back. And now today she'd called him
for a date and he'd accepted. Out of obligation, of course, but
nevertheless it had spoiled tonight's Halloween plans Missy had made
for them.

She'd called him with fabulous plans. A great costume
party. Special turn-on lingerie she was going to wear for him.
Tonight was going to be the night when they finally went to bed
together. But now it was all off, and it was all because of Cynthia.

Twice after she'd heard about their date she had had
blinding attacks of the pain, trying again to come to terms with the
idea of getting pregnant, giving Felix the child he wanted. Cynthia
had provoked all that, and there was no reason in the world for Missy
to put up with it. Like she'd told herself when she left Carl that
morning, only one of them was going to be left standing when this
thing was over. And it wasn't going to be the ex-Mrs. Ducroit.

Putting her glass down beside the bottle she leaned
over the counter and scooped up powder with the tiny spoon. She
sniffed it up each nostril, twice, three times, and daintily wiped
away any excess with the tip of her middle finger.

Cynthia was like a Barbie doll she'd had as a child.
When Barbie thought no one was around she would torment Ken, her male
doll, and make him do horrible things. Missy tried everything to get
her to stop. She lectured her, scolded her, even separated the dolls,
but it did no good. As soon as Missy's back was turned Barbie would
begin to torment Ken again. Missy had no choice except to punish her.
Each night when she was alone in her room with the dolls she would
take off all of Barbie's clothes, then press her against a hot
lightbulb, softly talking to her all the while, trying to get her to
see the error of her ways. Barbie was stubborn, parts of her would
blacken from the pain and the heat, but even that didn't help. She
was still bad. Finally Missy had no choice except to do away with
her.

She hid Barbie's remains beneath a bush near the
swimming pool, and that night when the Ken doll asked her where
Barbie was, she told him that Barbie had gone away and wouldn't be
back. The Ken doll knew what had happened, but he wasn't sad. He knew
Barbie was bad, too . . .

She picked up her glass and padded barefoot across
the kitchen, her bare body caught and reflected in fragments around
the room like strewn parts in the aftermath of destruction—her face
reflected in the shiny ceramic tile, her hand and forearm in the
surface of the toaster, her leg and buttock in the window of the oven
door.

Felix . . . he was gentle like the Ken doll. He
didn't understand how women could be. They were deceitful creatures
like her mother. They took from men and gave nothing in return.
Laughed at them. Committed adultery with their best friends. Made
fools of them. Even drove them to an early grave, like her father.
Well, she would not let that happen with Felix. She would protect him
. . .

In her bedroom, laid out on her king-size bed with
almost military fashion, were a dark leather jacket, a white
aviator's scarf, leather driving gloves with holes over the knuckles,
trousers, shoes and socks, a shoulder holster with an automatic in
it, jockey shorts, a Latex set of cyclist's shorts, two rolls of wide
elastic bandage, a pair of handcuffs, a small pile of stainless steel
chains, a plastic bag filled with what looked like human hair, and a
flesh-colored dildo with a head at each end.

She picked up the elastic bandage from the bed and
turned to face the wall of mirrors that concealed her closets. As she
began to bind her chest, the elastic flattening her breasts, forcing
them into a square shape like a man's pectorals, she felt a familiar
surge of pleasure and almost purred at the thought of her own
wetness.

When she finished her binding she stopped to admire
herself in the mirrors. What stared back at her had no gender
identity. Her face, while still attractive, without makeup seemed
curiously angular and almost boyish. Her bandaged breasts were
squared off, showing no nipples, not even tiny male ones. And below,
on her mons veneris where a brunette would normally have a triangle
of rich, dark hair, she was shaved clean, the lips of her labia
invisible from across the room, as though she had no genitals at all.
This was the moment she always savored most—presto, chango,
alakazam, gone was the woman, born was the man.

But today the vision was marred, and it took a moment
to figure out why. Her scar, no matter the pain, was normally
fleshcolored and invisible, but tonight it seemed angry and red. She
looked down at the twelve-year-old scar. It wasn't red at all, but
when she looked in the mirror it again seemed so.

She turned away, afraid that if she looked any longer
at herself the scary, truncated memories would start again, and so
would the pain.

Twice in one day was more than enough. She'd had all
she could take. Twice she'd seen herself standing in the doorway of
her father's study, waiting to tell him. Twice he'd looked up from
his desk. And twice the pain had come as strong as if she'd stuck her
finger in a light socket. She didn't want to know what happened
afterward. Not anymore. She just wanted to get on with her life with
Felix. There was so much for them to have together . . .

She crossed the room and took a long pull on her
drink, her hands no longer rock steady, now shaking as if she were
cold. The alcohol helped. It always did. The very clinical nature of
the vodka was soothing, gave the illusion that she was sterilizing,
purifying herself deep inside.

From the bed she picked up a thin stainless steel
chain that she fastened snugly around her waist, leaving one end free
and dangling down behind. The dangling end, resting in the cleft of
her buttocks, felt cold against her skin.

She picked up the two-headed dildo. It was made of
fleshcolored rubber, giving it the approximate rigidity of a real
penis but also a certain overall flexibility. Near the midpoint was a
small hole in the shaft. Reaching between her legs with her free hand
she grasped the end of the chain and pulled it to her. The hole in
the shaft accommodated the chain perfectly, and she threaded it
through like it was the eye of a needle. Opening her legs slightly,
she worked one head of the dildo into her vagina, pushing it in, in,
in until several inches were lodged inside her. Holding it with one
hand, she used the other to pull the chain through the hole until it
was taut. The friction of the chain against the rubber made a sound
like a zipper. She adjusted it carefully, forcing the chain into her
labia until it was almost painful and cutting, finally clipping it in
front to the length around her waist. Viewed now, the chain was not
entirely unlike a sanitary napkin of the old belt-and-pad days, and
unrefined as it was it still served its purpose, firmly anchoring the
dildo in place and giving the remaining shaft and head very nearly
the angle of a real penis.