For the past seven hours he’d been questioned by FBI agents and Dallas detectives. This was my third session, and it wasn’t getting easier. His lawyers were in the building, but they’d backed off. They had been informed that he could be formally charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder and immediately transported to Washington. His father was also in the building but had been denied access to his son. I’d interviewed Henry Lipton, and he’d wept and insisted his son’s arrest was a mistake.
I sat down across from him. ‘Your father is in the building. Would you like to see him?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘Sure. All I have to do is admit that I’m a kidnapper and murderer. Then I can see my father and ask his forgiveness for my sins.’
I ignored the sarcasm. He wasn’t very good at it. ‘You know we can confiscate the records of your father’s company, shut it down? Also, your father is a likely target for the Wolf. We’re not here to hurt your family members,’ I added. ‘Not unless your father is involved in this too.’
He shook his head, kept his eyes lowered. ‘My father has never been in trouble.’
‘That’s what I keep hearing,’ I said. ‘I’ve read a lot about you and your family in the past day or so. Gone all the way back to your schooldays at Texas. You were involved in a couple of scrapes in Austin. Two date rapes. Neither case went to trial. Your father saved you then. It won’t happen this time.’
Lawrence Lipton didn’t respond. His eyes were dead, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His blue dress shirt was as wrinkled as a used Kleenex tissue, soaked with perspiration at the underarms. His hair was wet, dripping little rivers of moisture down to his shirt collar and sideburns. The skin under his eyes sagged and had a purplish tint in the harsh, interrogation-room light.
He finally said, ‘I don’t want my family hurt. Leave my father out of this. Get him protection.’
I nodded. ‘Okay, Lawrence. Where do we start? I’m ready to put your family in protective custody until we catch him.’
‘And afterward?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t stop with them.’
‘We’ll protect your family.’
Lipton sighed loudly, then said, ‘All right, I’m the moneyman. I’m Sterling. I might be able to get you to the Wolf. But I need the promises in writing. Lots of promises.’
Chapter Ninety-Nine
I was heading into the deepest darkness again, attracted to it as most people are attracted to sunlight. I kept thinking about Elizabeth Connelly, still missing, and feared dead.
Lipton’s father visited a couple of times and the two men wept together. Mrs Lipton was allowed to see her husband. There was a lot of crying among the family members and most of the emotions seemed genuine.
I was in the interrogation room with Sterling until a little past three in the morning. I was prepared to stay later, as long as it took to get the information I needed. Several deals were struck with his lawyers during the night.
At around two, with most of the lawyering done, Lipton and I sat down to talk again. Two senior agents from the Dallas field office were in the room with us. They were only there to take notes and tape-record.
This was my interview to conduct.
‘How did you get involved with the Wolf?’ I asked Lawrence Lipton after a few minutes in which I emphasized my concern for his family. He seemed more clear-headed and more focused than he’d been a few hours before. I sensed that a weight had been lifted from him. Guilt, betrayal of his family – especially his father? His school records revealed he was a bright, but troubled, student. His problems always centered on an obsession with sex, but he’d never received a day of treatment. Lawrence Lipton was a freak.
‘How did I get involved?’ he said, seeming to be asking the question of himself. ‘I have a thing for young girls, you see. Teens, pre-teens. There’s lots of it available these days. The Internet opened new sources.’
‘For what? Be as concrete as you can, Lawrence.’
He shrugged. ‘For freaks like myself. Suddenly we can get what we want, when we want it. And I know how to search for the nastiest sites. At first I settled for photos and movies. I especially liked real-time films.’
‘We found some. In your office at home.’
‘One day a man came to see me. He came to the office, just like you did.’
‘To blackmail you?’ I asked.
Lipton shook his head. ‘No, not blackmail. He said he wanted to know what I really wanted. Sexually. And then he would help me get it. I threw him out. He came back the next day. He had records of everything I’d bought on the Internet. “So what do you really want?” he asked again. I wanted young girls. Pretty ones, with no strings attached, no rules. He supplied me two or three a month. Exactly what I fantasized. Color of hair, shape of breasts, shoe size, freckles, anything I desired.’
‘What happened to the girls? Did you murder them? You have to tell me.’
‘I’m not a killer. I liked to see the girls get off. Some did. We’d party, then they would be released. Always. They didn’t know who I was, or where I was from.’
‘So you were satisfied with the arrangement?’
Lipton nodded and his eyes lit up. ‘Very. I’d been dreaming of this my whole life. The reality was as good as the fantasy. Of course there was a price.’
‘A bill had to be paid?’
‘Oh yeah. I got to meet the Wolf, at least I think it was him. He had sent an emissary to my office in the early days. But then he came to see me. In person, he was very scary. Red Mafiya, he said. The KGB came up, but I don’t know what his connection to them was.’
‘What did he want from you?’
‘To go into business with him, to be a partner. He needed my company’s expertise with computers and the Internet. The sex club was secondary with him, a throw-in. He was heavily into extortion, money laundering, counterfeiting. The club was my thing. Once our deal was struck, I went looking for wealthy freaks who wanted their dreams fulfilled. Freaks who were willing to spend six figures for a slave, male, female, didn’t matter. Sometimes a specific target; sometimes a physical type.’
‘To murder?’ I asked Lipton.
‘Whatever they wanted. Let me tell you where I think he was going with the club. He wanted to involve very rich, powerful men. We already had one, a senator from West Virginia. He had big plans.’
‘Is the Wolf here in Dallas?’ I finally asked. ‘You’ve got to help me, if you want my help.’
Lipton shook his head. ‘He isn’t from around here. He’s not in Dallas. Not in Texas. He’s a mystery man.’
‘But you know where he is?’
He hesitated, but finally went on. ‘He doesn’t know that I know. He’s smart, but not about computers. I tracked him once. He was sure his messages were secure, but I had them cracked. I needed to have something on him.’
Then Sterling told me where he thought I could find the Wolf. And also, who he was. If I could believe what he was saying, Sterling knew the name Pasha Sorokin was using in the United States.
It was Ari Manning.
Chapter One Hundred
I sat high in the cockpit of a luxury cabin cruiser in the Intercoastal Waterway near Millionaires Row in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Were we close to the Wolf now? I needed to believe that we were. Sterling swore to it, and he had no reason to lie to us, did he? He had every reason to tell the truth.
Sightseers came here on motorboat tours, so I figured we wouldn’t be noticed right away. Besides, darkness was starting to fall. We drove past mansions that were mostly Mediterranean- or Portuguese-style, but an occasional Georgian Colonial supposedly signaled ‘northern money’. We’d been warned to tread lightly, not to ruffle feathers in the wealthy neighborhood, which, frankly, wouldn’t be possible. We were going to ruffle a lot of feathers in a few minutes.