“I found something out, shadowing the professor.”
“That he likes to fuck young women?”
“Well, I learned that, too. But…what kind of stuff are you dealing with in your book?”
“What…what do you mean, Jack?”
“I mean, there was something Byron said to you the other day, about you reporting every bad thing you ever saw or experienced with your father. What would that be, exactly?”
“Jack, I…that’s kind of personal.”
Not long ago, I’d been eating her out; not along ago, my dick had been halfway down her throat. And this was kind of personal?
“Honey,” I said, trying that out, “I have a good reason for asking.”
She sat all the way up. I did, too. But the sheets and covers were around her waist, so her small, pointy breasts were accusing me.
She said, “You know I have a rather…strained relationship with my father. Right?”
“I kind of gathered.”
“There are…reasons for that.”
“Reasons besides he’s a drug trafficker and murderer?”
She half-laughed, half-sighed. “Yes. Yes. Other reasons.”
“He beat you?”
“No.”
“Then he…oh.”
“Yes. ’Oh.‘ He fucked me, Jack. He fucked me from when I was twelve, around when my mother died, and until I was fourteen when he remarried and I got shipped off to boarding school. When I was older, later teens, when I was home for vacations or during the summer, there were no…advances, no sneaking into my room. He had a wife now and that was the past and it was never spoken of. Like it never happened. But it did.”
“Christ. I’m sorry. How does a thing like that…?”
“My mother died. Of cancer. It was lingering. In fact, the…abuse, the psychologists call it, began during Mother’s illness. I became the woman of the house at a very young age, her surrogate in many respects…”
Many respects was right.
She was saying, “I have terribly mixed feelings about it all, and-”
“Mixed feelings? What’s to be ‘mixed’ about?”
“That’s just the thing. The horrible, the most awful part to admit-I was his willing partner. Oh, I didn’t like it at first, it hurt me, I was too small, but I knew Daddy loved me and that I made him happy and I was taking over for Mother. Filling in for her, taking her place. And as the months passed, I came to like it. I liked having orgasms, and I liked having closeness with my father, and I became a kind of second wife to him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I. Only, after he married, and our relationship stopped? At first, I know this is sick, this is crazy, but I was jealous. And I told a priest, and the priest secretly, taking a big chance, got me psychiatric help, and I came to know how wrong it was, how sad and sick and awful it was, and became very ashamed.”
Yeah, you got to hand it to psychiatry. Really put things right, that crowd.
“And the priest and the shrink, they didn’t report your father?”
“Daddy is a big contributor to the diocese. And as for my psychiatrist, well, you know who my father is. What would Daddy have done to that doctor?”
Hired somebody like me.
“Anyway,” she said, “I know now, intellectually and emotionally, that my father is a terrible man, a sociopath. I want nothing to do with him.”
“And you’re putting this in your book?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the repercussions?”
“What can Daddy do about it? Kill me?”
Well, he’d fucked her, hadn’t he? Why was killing her out of the question?
And this was it, wasn’t it? The secret that Lou Girardelli could not allow to get out. A book about him could contain all sorts of speculation about the mob and criminal activities; that kind of occasional bad publicity came with the territory, and even built a guy’s legend. But a confirmed story, from his own daughter, of incest and abuse?
I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, Annette.”
She shook her head of hair the way a lioness does its mane. “Of course I do. I’m going to free myself and became an artist, a real artist, through my book.”
“Your non-fiction novel.”
“Yes. My non-fiction novel.”
“Thanks to the instruction and nurturing of Professor Byron.”
“That’s right. Absolutely right.”
How could I tell her that her latest father-figure was fucking her in a whole new way?
Maybe just give it to her straight.
“For all I know,” I said, “the book you’re writing may be a masterpiece. But even so, I discovered something very troubling about Professor Byron.”
“Please. You’re not…come on. Jealous, Jack?”
“No. Did you know the professor was writing his own book about your father?”
She smiled. Laughed. Shook her head. “No he isn’t. You’re confused. He’s helping me.”
“He’s pumping you.” Boy was he pumping her. “He’s got all this juicy stuff about your father committing incest with his underage daughter, and that’s going to make his non-fiction book a huge bestseller…” If it didn’t get him killed first.
She was frowning now, and shaking her head again. “No. No, Jack. This is crazy.”
“I swear to you, Annette. He’s been researching your father for several years. This is his big follow-up to Collateral Damage. He already has a publishing contract. He isn’t collaborating with you-he’s researching you.”
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes were wide as well. But thoughts were flickering behind those eyes, as defensiveness and denial gave way to everything fitting into place…
Finally she said, damn near shrieked, “That bastard! That fucking bastard…”
I took her by the shoulders again, held tight. “I know this is a shock, but you have to get past it in a hurry. What the professor did to you isn’t even the worst thing that happened to you tonight.”
Breath poured out of her and she swallowed and, those huge brown eyes locked on me but half-lidded, she nodded.
She asked, “What now?”
“You get some sleep. I’m going to help you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But I will.”
“What about calling my father?”
“I’ll handle that.”
“Can I trust you, Jack?”
“You can.”
The crazy thing was, I wasn’t lying.
TEN
At some point I’d gotten up and peed and shut the drapes, and we might have slept deep into the morning if the phone hadn’t rung. Both of us were startled awake, and I was sleeping next to the nightstand and reached for the phone, though my hand initially touched the nine millimeter’s cold metal skin. Then I found the receiver and it was the Broker.
“You’re to take Miss Girard back to Iowa City, to her apartment,” Broker said, after perfunctory hellos. “She’s to stay in for at least today. No meetings with Professor Byron or anybody else for that matter.”
“That would help me out,” I said, purposely vague, “if you intend me to pursue that other matter.”
“I do.”
“Okay, but shouldn’t I stay with her? I have a hunch there may be other black guys on the South Side who could find their way to her apartment.”
“Have breakfast at the Concort coffee shop,” he said. “Make a leisurely exit from the hotel. If you leave no earlier than ten, then by the time you reach Iowa City, the girl’s father will have representation there.”
By “representation” I took it to mean that guys with guns would be sitting in the apartment house parking lot. Hopefully white guys.
“Okay. But Miss Girard and her father aren’t on the best of terms. I’m not sure she will go along with that.”
As you might imagine, my nude bedmate was sitting up by now, leaning on an elbow, her eyes perked with interest and her nice little breasts just plain perked.
“Whatever their differences,” he said, “they have a common interest in this matter-specifically, keeping her alive.”
“Not a bad point.”
“But I would like you to have her call her father so they can discuss it themselves. Perhaps come to a meeting of the minds if not a reconciliation.”