I make a sweet smile. “We don’t trip. Only farangs do that. It must have been you who tripped up other people in a previous lifetime.”
A shake of the head. “Okay, let’s drop it. Anyway, what’s got you so frisky this morning?”
This is a good question. It took me five showers to get the Johnson’s out of my hair and skin, but it’s going to take a few more days to wear away that special glow, that phallic pride which no good meditator permits to defile his mind. I never thought I would have been able to cope with such a challenge, but I seem to have managed despite lapses of concentration on the part of the Three N’s whenever Beckham scored. Such feats were never part of my egotism. I decide to talk about the case.
“I think Warren hurt a woman, probably a prostitute. And I think he covered up so well there’s not a chance anyone in the whole of Quantico will ever get the evidence to bring an indictment.”
“If that’s the case, it would be indiscreet for me to talk about it to you, wouldn’t it? Listen to this, I think this might be what you’re looking for, not that I exactly follow your occult reasoning.”
She hands me her Walkman and headphones.
Listen, bro’, something I never mentioned so far. I borrowed money. I guess you don’t know what that means out here. You borrow money, you pay back, you don’t let it ride. I’m talking sharks, bro’, sharks like don’t exist Stateside. These cats, I mean, they don’t have to threaten.
Yeah, I did kinda figure that, Billy. It did cross my mind. How much?
[Inaudible reply]
That’s one fuck of a lot, kid. I don’t got so much right now, and if I did I would probably have to use it for forward investment. I do business these days, I got to make my money work for me.
I ain’t askin’ for money exactly. I’m askin’ for a way out, Eli. I got to get out of this once and for all. Just tell me what to do, like in the old days. [William is speaking in a throaty whisper, the whisper of a man collapsing inside.] You know me and eve’y thing you ever said about me was true. I’m a second-stringer born, I’m the original second child syndrome. An’ on top a that I just spent thirty years following orders. I’m damn good at doing as I’m told, Eli, you know I am. I can perfect any order you give me, down to the last detail. That’s what I know. Fucked if I kin think up one original thang, tho’. Not a goddamn one.
Billy, d’you think it’s a wise thing or a foolish thing to start this kinda talk over the telephone line of a convicted felon?
Okay, okay, we’ll do it the other way. I’m sorry, Eli, sorry to make you have to say that. I was wrong… [A very long pause, perhaps as long as five minutes, when I assume the conversation is ended and am waiting for the next one, then a wail of spiritual agony such as I’ve never heard from a grown man before. It lasts for more than thirty seconds.]
Hang in there, Billy. [A sigh] I’ll see what I can do.
It’s bad, bro, it’s bad. I’m scared as shit.
[Tenderly] I can tell, kid, I can tell.
I stop the Walkman and pull off the headphones. I allow Jones a nod of appreciation. She takes back the Walkman and sets it on the table. “Okay, we’ll do a deal. You tell me why you’re so sure I’m so sure Warren hurt a woman and I’ll tell you if he did or not.”
“There was some scandal here which is making everyone nervous. It looks like half the senior cops in Bangkok were involved in covering it up. I don’t know what it was, but the Colonel more or less admitted it involved a woman. I figured if he did something like that here, he might have done it in your country too.”
Jones is unable to hear any reference to my Colonel without making her jaw muscles work overtime. She seems to be choosing her words carefully. “A twenty-nine-year-old prostitute who specialized in submissive sex. She would charge very large amounts of money in return for being tied up and abused by wealthy men and pretending to enjoy it. She was tough and smart and could fake orgasm the way-well, the way any woman can. She chose only those men who had too much to lose by going too far. She knew how to choose, too. She thought she could read men, at least that kind of man, and she never accepted a job without scoping the guy out. I guess she figured Sylvester Warren was about as safe a bet as she could make. I think it was the only time she misread a man.”
“He hurt her?”
“The human body cannot survive with less than sixty percent skin. The problem is more water than blood. You lose moisture faster than you can replace it, even assuming you’re not tied up and unable to get yourself a drink.”
“She died?”
“Gladys Pierson died on February 15, 1996. She was still tied up.” Jones puts her headset back on, then takes it off again. “Everyone who worked on the case knows that Warren did it, but there’s no evidence, no hair and fiber, no sperm, no DNA. We think he paid a team to clean up after him, specialists who normally work for the mob.”
“He used a knife?”
“A bullwhip. It’s called being flayed alive.” She switches the Walkman on and off, on and off. “From my profiling course I would say that the two sides of Sylvester Warren came together at that moment. I think he’d used a lot of women with that specialization before, but something about this one drove him over the edge. I think it was the most ecstatic moment of his life, something he’d subconsciously been building up to since adolescence, but was too smart, too controlled, too strong to give into until then. But it was something that sooner or later he was going to have to repeat. Usually the psychosis which has its origins in adolescence is given full expression between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. We’re talking men, white men. But Warren is a very disciplined man, the wall between the conscious ego and the seething fantasies would have been much thicker in his case. I think he came to this kind of stuff relatively late in life. Maybe he used drugs as well, but somehow I doubt it. I think he’s a genuine psycho without the need for chemical assistance.” A long pause; Jones is clearly moved. “You’re right, when we realized we weren’t going to get the evidence we needed, the others in the team gave up, but I decided he was into art fraud. It was an excuse to keep on investigating him-and to learn about Oriental art. What the hell? I was pissed, and I don’t think all his transactions are legit. Art is so much more complex than murder, it’s hard for anyone in the Bureau to argue with me when I say there’s evidence of fraud-how would they know without reading an encyclopedia on Southeast Asian antiques? I’m gonna get him sooner or later. They got Al Capone on tax evasion for god’s sake. D’you have any idea what happened over here?”
“No, except that I think it was a Russian prostitute. Do you have a photograph of your victim?”