“That’s right.”
“But doesn’t your wife have a right to not have your sexual addiction thrown in her face?” This wasn’t what I thought, but it was what I thought might get Bob one step closer to facing his own reactions.
“My wife has gotten everything she’s wanted. One thing, one stupid thing-letting me jerk off in my own office on my own time-what is the big fucking deal?”
His voice was rife with feeling. Real anger flashed in his eyes. Good, we’d accomplished something. He was still controlled, but he was clearly furious. I was relieved to hear the shift. “Why is it so important that you have this one thing?”
“Because she has everything else. She has always had everything else. She didn’t want children right away, she wanted a career, and she wanted to wait. We waited. She wanted to live on the Upper East Side, even though I wanted to stay in the Village. She wants…she wants…she wants me to keep my dick in my pants, unless she wants me to take it out.” He was shouting and I didn’t do anything to stop him.
We were moving toward a new stage where Bob might finally be able to face how hurt he was. We still had miles of feelings to traverse, but at least we were on the way. I was quiet, waiting, allowing Bob to sit with his emotions, letting the sound of his voice fill the room and then fade away, until there was only the sound of the little clock on the table by my chair, and the traffic outside.
“I can’t stop thinking of those girls,” he said, his voice now low and sad.
“Why is that?”
He didn’t answer me.
Thirty-Three
Less than twenty-four hours after arriving in New York, Detective Jordain had flown back to New Orleans and appeared in court for the Hatterly trial, for what he hoped would be the last time. He spent a half hour on the stand and as soon as he stepped down, Jordain was again thinking about the two victims in New York. Once he was back in a taxi and on his way to the Louis Armstrong airport, he called Perez to get an update.
“ZaZa, whose real name was Cindy Conners, has been working for Global Communications for the past two years. Same company Debra Kamel worked for. Conners was an actress. Easy work in between auditions, I guess. She never landed much-mostly extra work-but she took a lot of classes over the years. Tania’s an actress, too.”
“That where they met?”
“We don’t know yet, but one can assume.”
Jordain watched the scenery whiz by. Leaving New Orleans was always bittersweet. Home had a pull all its own, even after he outgrew it.
“Did the forensic team find anything at the apartment?”
“Not yet. If anyone left behind one fiber, one hair, a single speck of dirt that had been stuck in the tread of a shoe, they’re going to find it.”
“Sometimes I think you believe the cop shows you watch on television. Even if someone left a fiber behind, what will it mean to us unless the same person left the same fiber behind at Debra’s apartment and we find that one?”
“The TV shows are modeled after us, not the other way around. Don’t get confused on me,” Perez interrupted.
Jordain smiled and gulped lukewarm coffee from a foam cup. No matter, it was still his drug and would work its trick, regardless of its temperature.
“And, no. We don’t have anything yet on Debra Kamel’s apartment. I know that was your next question.”
“No, actually, I was going to ask you how Tania is.”
“It’s still touch-and-go.”
“Butler have any luck with the computers?”
“Still at it.”
“We’re going to find something on the computers.”
“I hope so. But ZaZa’s laptop is pretty much shot to hell.”
“We don’t have an option on this. We need to find something, and soon.” Jordain wasn’t surprised Perez didn’t ask why. They both knew.
How many more girls were targeted?
How many could they save?
Damn. This case was getting under his skin. They all did. But there was something about this one that disgusted him. Maybe it was the spectacle of it. The horror of knowing that while these women gasped for their last breath, naked and vulnerable, they were on view before thousands and thousands of men who were sitting out in the wild blue yonder, all over the globe, watching them, jerking off to them, coming in their hands to them, without realizing that the girls were dying in front of their eyes.
“If they’re going to die, they should at least be afforded some dignity.”
Jordain hadn’t realized he’d said it out loud until he heard Perez’s sigh.
Thirty-Four
Bob stood up suddenly, said he had to go to the men’s room, and walked out of my office. When he’d been gone for five minutes, I called Allison and asked her if he’d left. It had happened before-a patient bolting when a session got too rough to handle.
She hadn’t seen him, and he did return after another few minutes. Silently, he took his place on the couch. His eyes were shut. There was little expression on his face.
“When was the first time you saw a naked woman?” It was a topic I’d wanted to broach for a long time.
“A real woman?”
“Whatever comes to mind.”
“When I was twelve, I found magazines under my father’s bed. Luscious, full-color pictures that made me drool. Those beautiful women, looking at me, lying there naked for me, showing me what I wanted to see-the way they’d make me feel. Christ. That slow burn, the build. I’d hide out in my room and sneak looks at them. I’d leave dinners to go upstairs. Five minutes with the right magazine in one hand and my dick in the other, the sounds of the busy house beyond my door. Is that what you asked me?”
“You’re doing great.”
“My father never seemed to notice when I took his magazines.”
“Do you think he did?”
“I don’t know, but I wish I knew if he was like me.”
“Would it make you feel differently about him?”
“No. About myself.”
“How?”
“But those were just photographs. Nothing like the first real woman I saw naked.” It wasn’t the first time Bob had skipped over a direct question about his feelings, and I didn’t want to stop him to force the issue. “It was at an X-rated theater.” His lips twisted into a smile that was also a grimace. His fingers flexed. “One Friday afternoon when our school let out early, two of my friends took me. They’d been there before and had been telling me about it for weeks. I can still remember how much I wanted to go, even now. This was really doing something bad. It was breaking big rules, and I knew if I got caught I’d be in a shitload of trouble.
“The theater was called the Playpen. It’s still there. All boarded up, but still standing. It had been one of the city’s really grand old movie palaces that had gone out of business. Turned into a smut palace.” His voice had lingered over the last two words almost lovingly. Then he frowned.
I had seen this same kind of pleasure/guilt reaction from other patients. Like them, Bob found both release and a kind of exquisite hell in his addiction. It was a special kind of torture, his orgiastic needs overpowering his morality. The push/pull of his conflicting cravings.
“What a mess it was inside. Grimy and stinking. The rug was worn down to threads. Isn’t it crazy that I can remember the rug? It was dark red.” He shook his head as if his own memory surprised him. I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t unusual for someone to remember minute details of his first sexual encounter.
“The owners had broken up the old screening room and turned it into two smaller theaters-one where they showed the dirty movies, and the other was the live room. That’s where we went. Each of us had our own small booth. I pulled the ratty curtain closed behind me. And then all I could see was the stage.
“She was sitting on a chair, dressed in a tight skirt and a tight sweater and high-heeled shoes. I was hard the minute I saw her. My buddies had told me that everyone pulled it out and jerked off during the show, but I couldn’t believe it was really okay to do that. I’d only done it at home, quickly, while the world was going on around me. Now I had time. And this woman wasn’t on a page of a magazine but staring straight into my eyes.”