“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Lying beside him in bed, the black ring on her right hand, her left hand resting on his chest, her head on his shoulder, she tried again to understand how she could possibly love someone about whom she knew absolutely nothing. She supposed adolescents could fall instantly and madly in love with someone simply on the basis of looks and personality but that was only because there was so little else to know about a teenager. Didn’t an adult have to know someone before she could love him? And yet, what other man had ever filled an entire apartment with roses for her? The only other man who’d ever bought her a ring was Michael. Her engagement ring, and then the wedding band she now wore on her left hand. Someone she did not know at all had filled her life with roses and slipped an ancient Roman ring onto her finger. Black, no less. She had never owned a black ring in her life. Before this evening, she hadn’t even known that bronze could turn black.
I love you, too, she had told him.
And now she tried to learn who this man she loved was.
“Are your parents still alive?” she asked.
“Oh yes.”
“Where do they live?”
“Well, my mother lives in Connecticut. My father’s in Kansas.”
“Are they separated?”
“Sort of.”
“What does your father do?”
“He used to be a building contractor.”
“What does he do now?”
“He’s retired.”
“How old are they?”
“My father’s fifty-two. My mother’s fifty.”
Only sixteen years older than I am, she thought.
“Where in Connecticut?”
“Stonington.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Two sisters.”
“Older or younger?”
“Older.”
“I’ll bet they spoiled you rotten.”
“They did.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“Kent and UCLA.”
“What’d you major in?”
“Business administration.”
“When did you graduate?”
“I didn’t. I got kicked out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, suspended, I guess they called it.”
“Why?”
“Drunk and disorderly.”
“Be serious.”
“I’m serious. I beat up four guys who poured spaghetti sauce in my bed.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“I guess they thought it was funny. Anyway, I was already beginning to lose interest in school. I used to go up to Vegas a lot, gamble, fool around, you know. The two didn’t mix.”
“I’ve never been to Vegas.”
“I’ll take you there sometime.”
“Why’d they separate? Your parents.”
“Oh, I don’t know. One of those things.”
“Did your father want it? Or your mother?”
“Neither of them. It was something that just happened.”
“My sister’s going through a divorce right this minute.”
“I know. Pretty woman.”
“Yes.”
“But not as pretty as you.”
“Thank you.”
She was silent for a long while. Then she said, “You shouldn’t have bought me the ring, Andrew.”
“I wanted to.”
“How can I possibly wear it?”
“Wear it when you come here. I don’t care about the rest of the time. Just wear it when you come here.”
“All right.”
“While you’re here, I want you to take off the other ring. I want you to wear only my ring while you’re here.”
“All right. I’ll find a place to hide it. I’d love to wear it all the time, it’s so beautiful...”
“No, just when you’re here,” he said. His voice lowered. “Take off the other one now.”
“All right.”
She took off her wedding band and placed it on the nightstand alongside the telephone. She felt no guilt taking it off. She slipped it from her finger as though Michael no longer existed. Andrew kissed her finger where the ring had been.
“Now take my cock in your hand,” he said. “The right hand. The hand with my ring.”
“Here they go again,” Regan whispered.
“Better turn it off,” Lowndes suggested.
“Shhh,” Regan said.
The bedroom bug was in the telephone on the nightstand alongside the bed. There were similar bugs in the kitchen counter phone on the second floor, and in the conference room phone on the first floor. New York Telephone had reported that there were three unpublished phones in the apartment above the tailor shop. Freddie Coulter had subpoenaed the phone company for the numbers, and then had subpoenaed again for cable-and-pair, terminal location, and pair-and-binding information. He’d put his access line in the same terminal that contained the target’s phone lines, coming off the already existing B-P posts. Before entering the tailor shop again, he’d revisited the terminal box on the rear of the building, and shorted out all the phones, disabling them. It took him a total of nine minutes to bug all three phones.
But while he was in there, and just for good measure, he went to each room, found a wall with a good aural sweep, and unscrewed a 110-volt outlet from it. He then replaced each outlet with a one-watt radio transmitter. On the outside, this looked like any functioning wall outlet, which in fact it still was. Behind the faceplate, however, was the complicated circuit board that sent out the voice signal. Each transmitter had a range of some two to three blocks and required its own receiver. The devices were strictly emergency backups, and would be used only if, for one reason or another, the phones went out. In the bedroom, the fake outlet was on the wall close to the dresser. Freddie replugged a lamp into it, tried the lamp to make sure it still worked, and then started packing his tools.
The new application for a court order had this time cited reasonable suspicion as well as probable cause, and had requested both a wiretap and a pen register in addition to the bugs. The wiretap would enable them to listen to and record both ends of any telephone conversation. The pen register would print out only telephone numbers dialed from the premises, but it would also record the time and the duration of any call whatever, incoming or outgoing. All minimization requirements were still in effect. If Faviola’s mother called to talk about her homemade lasagna, for example, the investigators would have to shut down at once.
Everything had been in place since Valentine’s Day.
This was the first time Regan and Lowndes had heard a woman talking.
“Hold it tight,” Faviola said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Fuckin’ woman gives me a hard-on,” Regan said.
“Better turn it off,” Lowndes suggested.
“Can you see the ring moving up and down on your cock?” she said.
“Got to be a pro,” Regan said.
“The black ring you gave me, moving up and down on your stiff cock?”
“Turn it off,” Lowndes warned.
“I don’t want you to come yet,” she said.
“Then you’d better...”
“I want you to beg me to come.”
“If you keep on...”
“No, no, not yet,” she said.
“She’s letting go of it, the cunt,” Regan said.
“You’re gonna blow the whole fuckin’ thing!” Lowndes shouted.
“So will she,” Regan said, and laughed.
“For Christ’s sake, Johnny, turn it off!”
“Let’s see just how hard we can make you, all right?” she said. “Let’s see what rubbing this ancient Roman ring on your cock can do, all right? My hand tight around you, the black ring rubbing against your stiff cock...”