Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (33 page)

Not sure of what to say, I just nodded. Listening, watching and waiting for the right moment to ask him the questions I hoped would give me a glimpse into his darkness. So far he was comfortable, slightly nervous, but connected and not distracted.

“What made her so good at what she did?”

“She loved it. She reveled in it. Being a master came naturally
to her. Sometimes, when I was on the floor, lying there naked, looking up at her, begging her to let me move, to let me touch her, to let me get close to her, she would touch herself and make herself come.”

He shut his eyes for a moment as if reliving the scene, and then he continued talking. “My waiting for her, my needing her, my willingness to do as she said turned her on. Do you have any idea how fucking hard that made me?”

I shook my head. “Did you ever want to reverse it and be her master?” I asked in a low voice.

He shook his head now in a slow, rhythmic way. He was still in his daydream and my voice was barely penetrating. But he heard me.

“No. Never. Never wanted to. It’s too easy. I can do that all day long. Have done it my whole life. Told people what to do, what to buy, what to sell, what to learn, what to take in. It’s being helpless and having someone tell
me
what to do that makes me excited. Do you think you could do that?”

“Yes. I think it would be wonderful to have a slave.”

“It is. Especially for a woman who can enjoy sex. Can you? Not all of Cleo’s girls do. Most don’t. But I need someone who does. I don’t like someone pretending for me.”

“Does that make you angry?”

He nodded.

“But Cleo never pretended?”

He opened his eyes wider and looked straight at me. They were the oddest color of blue. Lapis lazuli. A color I had only seen in stone, and they gave him a suddenly inhuman expression.

There was something wrong. With the way he was looking at me, with what we were talking about, with the very color of his eyes.

In her book, Cleo had described the fifth man, the Healer, as the man with eyes this color. Like the money clip that belonged
to Judas, the champagne as drink of choice for Midas and the scar that had been on the cheek of the man with Parkinson’s.

Cleo had taken traits of all these other clients and given them to the Healer. She had disguised him more than anyone else. He was an amalgam of how many others? Four so far. And why?

“You wouldn’t have to act, would you?” the Slave asked me.

“No. I wouldn’t. I don’t know how to act.” It was an odd sentence for me to say, suddenly bringing me back to my daughter and my mother. Confusing my real present with my fictitious one. Except I was acting. Sitting here pretending that I might possibly let this man hire me.

“It really bothers you that someone might act,” I said.

He nodded. “It is the one thing that I can’t tolerate to do this.” He was suddenly serious. Talking about his predilection as if having it didn’t bother him at all. And perhaps it didn’t. “I’m married. To a well-known woman. You’d know her name. You’d know who she was. She’d kill me if it ever came out that her husband needed to buy an evening of pleasure here and there. But what choice do I have? She won’t…she can’t… We’ve tried marriage therapy and couples therapy and she’s even been to see top sex therapists but…”

The hair on my arm prickled.

“At first it was fine. For the first two years we were together. I guess now, looking back, it was the newness of the relationship that made the sex okay. But the longer we were together, the less interested she was, and the less interested I was. No biggie. I know. It happens to everyone. But I missed it more than others do. And divorce was out of the question. I love her. I love our life. And I love our kids. It’s so hokey, isn’t it? Most men I know leave their first wives. Trophy wives are a dime a dozen out there. Get tired of the old one,
buy yourself a new one. But I really am happy with her. Every way but this. And this is harmless. As long as no one knows.”

“Does the fact that no one knows make it more exciting?” I asked without thinking, and then was horrified. His admission had been so like one I might hear in my office that I had slipped into my role as therapist. But he hadn’t noticed.

“Of course. That’s one of the most important parts. No one knows I have this other life. Everyone thinks I am a master of the universe—did you read the Wolfe book?”

I nodded. He continued.

“But I’m not. I’m a slave. I like to be ordered around. I like Cleo to use me as some kind of sex toy. I like to be able to come here and spend an hour with her and know that she is using me to give herself pleasure. My wife doesn’t get pleasure like that from sex. She is scared of sex. Of this kind of sex. She is scared of exploring the outer edges of eroticism. You have no idea what it is like to be tied up, my hands, my feet, helpless on the floor, and have Cleo touch me with just one finger and tease me. I get so excited. But she won’t let me come, not until I do things for her. Sometimes she sits on my chest with her legs spread wide and makes me lick her. Makes me do it until she is done. Until she orgasms on my face.”

He was lost. His eyes were shut again. I was lulled into listening, forgetting for a moment that I was there to figure out if he was someone who could have taken Cleo.

“Do you like it to get rough? Do you like her to hurt you? Do you want her to hurt herself?”

His eyes opened fast and in them I saw complete confusion. His mouth puckered as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. “Hurt her?”

“I’m just trying to find out what you might want me to do. I don’t like pain. Not inflicting it. Not taking it.”

He shook his head vehemently. “No. No pain.”

The Slave was quiet for a few moments. He looked down into his drink, staring at the cubes of ice, the three green olives and the colorless liquid.

“I have to tell you something,” he began.

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to take this personally, but I don’t think I’m going to ask you upstairs with me.” Under the table I felt him fumble for something and then his hand took mine. It was hot and his fingers were strong. He pried my fingers open and put a wad of bills there.

“It’s only been a week since I saw Cleo last. And I’m just not sure I can trust you. It’s just a feeling I’ve got. I know I can trust her. We’ve been seeing each other for a few years now. I like how she does it with me. I think I’ll hold out till she comes back. I’m sorry. It’s not personal. Well…” He laughed, a very warm laugh. A kind laugh. “It is personal, I guess. I’m more attached to Cleo than I knew. Jeez, I have feelings for her. How strange is that?”

“That you have feelings or that you didn’t know it till now?”

“Both.”

“Not so strange. She makes you happy. She doesn’t judge you.”

The bar had become my office. And for a moment it didn’t matter.

“Thanks. You’ve just made me feel as if there is absolutely nothing wrong with what I like.”

“I guess that’s because I don’t think there is anything wrong or right about what we like as long as no one ever gets hurt against their will.”

He nodded and smiled at me. A genuine smile. Even gentle. “No. That’s a terrible thing. That’s what is wrong with our society, with a world that doesn’t allow for differences
and preferences. That’s why what you do, what Cleo does, is so important. You give us a place where it is all right to have our fantasies. As long as we can act them out in a safe, private place, then there’s no reason for anyone to ever be hurt.”

I had been sure up until that moment that there was no way he could have been the man who had taken Cleo. But the very last thing he said made me stop. And wonder.

“And if someone tried to take away your private place, what would you do?”

He smiled again. I watched the pupils in his eyes. I watched a vein on his neck pulse. His breath did not quicken. There were no signs that this conversation was exciting him or disturbing him in any way. Especially when he laughed again. “If someone threatened to expose this side of me? Or close down the club? There is one sad secret. I’m waiting for someone to prove me wrong, but so far no one has. When someone wants to do something that I don’t want them to do, I just find out their price. The saddest thing. The worst thing about my life, Morgan, is that I have not yet found anyone who does not have a price.”

He drank more of his drink.

Despite his wanting to keep his predilections a secret, I didn’t think he was capable of doing anything hurtful to Cleo. He was only capable of having her do something to him.

“You know, you shouldn’t do this,” he said. “I mean you are beautiful enough to do this. But it’s a waste. You should be a shrink. You just made me feel better and you understood more about what I need than any of those two-hundreddollar-a-session therapists my wife has dragged me to.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And luckily, he just laughed, too, not finding my reaction to his comment all that strange.

After he got up and left, I looked into my hand to see what
he had put there. Tightly rolled up were ten one-hundreddollar bills. I looked at my watch. I’d been with him for fortyfive minutes. It was the most I’d ever gotten paid for a session.

I’
d met all but one of the men described in the book, four of the five people I had thought might have a reason to hurt or abduct Cleo. I might never meet the fifth. The identity of the Healer was still a mystery.

Unless it was Gil himself, I thought.

I was sitting at the bar while he finished talking to a customer.

If Cleo published her book, then Gil would be ruined. He’d have nothing left. Sure he had the building and the bar, but without Cleo supplying the women, what was the place but another restaurant?

I shivered. Had I told Gil too much? Had I revealed anything I shouldn’t have? Was he the fifth man? Had Cleo written about him and given him attributes of all the others to disguise him?

He turned to me. His face was hard. It was late. He had circles under his eyes and deep lines like parentheses around his
mouth. It was as if he was seeing my thoughts. No. Ridiculous. He couldn’t.

Was Gil capable of creating this elaborate ruse of introducing me to these men to throw suspicion off himself? If I weighed what everyone had to lose, he was up there with all the other men I’d met here. The club had made him a rich man, given him power and prestige. He would not want a book to threaten that.

Nina was right. Noah was right. I was in over my head. Being a good therapist did not qualify me to figure out if someone was capable of being a kidnapper or, worse, a killer. I was someone who talked to people about their problems, not a mind reader, not a diviner of sick souls.

“Another Glenlivet, please, Gil,” a customer said.

Was Cleo in this building? Was she locked in a room somewhere? Had Gil hidden her away to try to convince her not to write the book? Of course it was him.

Cleo would never have told her clients she was writing a book. And of the two men I knew she had told, Elias had nothing to lose. He didn’t want her to publish it because he was worried for her. But that’s not the kind of concern that would lead him to harm her to stop the publication. But Gil
did
have something to lose. He had everything to lose. Plus he was jealous of Elias. Of course he knew about him. And he must have been furious that he’d lost his girlfriend to him.

I had to find some kind of proof to take to Noah, to make him believe me, to make sure that he would investigate this.

Before Gil could turn to me, I got up.

“’Night, Gil,” I called out.

“Wait a second, Morgan,” he called back, urgency in his voice.

But I didn’t.

Out on the street, I walked to the corner as fast as the high heels allowed.

What could I do? How could I get someone to believe me? Who would help me figure it out?

And then I knew. The one person who cared about finding Cleo even more than I did. Elias. He’d called earlier when I’d been in session and I hadn’t called him back. I’d been avoiding him since he’d told me about the ransom note. I hadn’t wanted to tell him that I’d alerted the police to the fact that it was a fake. I looked at my watch. It was only ten o’clock.

I dialed his number on my cell phone.

“H
ave you been thinking impure thoughts?” he asked.

She answered.

“I can’t hear you.”

“No, Father,” she said, trying to talk louder. But she was confused. The days and nights were drifting into one another. She wasn’t sure if she was ever herself anymore, or if the actress was taking over all the time now. She hardly ever opened her eyes anymore. All she wanted to do was sleep.

And now she was angry that he had woken her up to go through this ritual again. Twice a day. Every morning and every night. Which was it now? Night, she thought, remembering that she could tell these things if she looked beyond him at the light. It was bluish low light, which meant day.

“Cleo?”

His voice came to her from a distance and she fought it. She hated hearing his voice. It crawled on her skin like a snake, slinking up, never losing contact, sinuous and cold. She
knew if she didn’t answer him he would just get angry. And when he got angry he did not let her use the toilet.

“Yes?”

“I asked you if you have been thinking impure thoughts.”

“No, Father.”

“How have you been purging yourself of them?”

“I have been praying.”

“I think we should pray together.”

She shivered. This, too, was part of the ritual. And she hated it almost as much as his withholding her bathroom privileges. She heard the door open and felt a whoosh of colder air come in with him. He walked behind her, unlocked the handcuffs and, then holding her hands tightly, brought them in front of her, where he put the cuffs back on. It was such a relief to have her arms in front of her. She could do more with her arms like this. Her shoulders ached. Not her shoulders, not her hands. The actress’s shoulders ached. She had stepped in. She
had
to step in. Because of what he was going to make her do. Cleo wouldn’t stay for this.