“Do you know where he is now?”
“I think in New York.”
“Are you in touch with him?”
“Sort of.”
“How? Letters, phone, meetings?”
“Meetings, I guess. He drives up to me in the street and asks me if I’m happy.”
“Oh, how unpleasant. I had no idea he was so imbalanced. Next time he does that, you can tell him his brother wants to resume contact. That might help him regain some of his sanity. Did you try to have him arrested?”
“Yes. But they didn’t find him.”
Philip then told me the story of his past with Damon, which turned out to be stranger than the most melodramatic plot lines of any soap opera, including The Bold and the Beautiful.
Philip said that before he was an actor, and before he became legless, he was a plastic surgeon. His story revolved around a third man, a former friend of his, who was also a plastic surgeon, named Ben. Ben was apparently extremely talented and ambitious, as well as extremely unethical and unhinged. One day he performed plastic surgery on a young girl without the authorization of her parents. Later, he actually kidnapped two children and worked on them as well, without the authorization of their parents, nor their own. The police searched for the criminal. Philip found out by chance that it was Ben. Ben begged Philip not to report him, and Philip agreed, but Philip’s brother, Damon, who hated Ben, sent an anonymous letter to the authorities revealing the culprit, and Ben was arrested and released on bail while awaiting trial.
At that point in the story, Philip paused, and softly said, “And that’s when Ben came …”
He was then silent for a long time, and I said, “He came where?”
“That’s where the story really begins. Or ends. Could you please stop drinking your tea while I tell you this. It’s very hard for me.”
I put down my cup.
“Ben came to my house one evening while I was having dinner with my daughter and Damon, who happened to have stopped by earlier. Ben had a gun. He handcuffed us, gagged us, and drove us to his house. He took us to the basement, which was divided into two rooms. He left Damon in the first room, tied down, and brought my daughter and me into the second room. Two heavy chairs were bolted to the floor, facing each other, ten feet apart. He sat my daughter and me down, and tied us up. Soldered to the arm of my chair was a gun, aimed at my daughter in the opposite chair. Ben tied my hand around the gun’s handle. He ungagged my daughter, but not me. She screamed and cried.
“Ben then talked to me, said absurdities like, ‘You had to turn me in, didn’t you. Making someone beautiful; there could not be a more atrocious crime. I should have left these girls to their happy lives of ugly ducklings. Your daughter is far from ugly, poor girl. She doesn’t know what she’s missing, right? Don’t worry, I won’t give your daughter a life of ugliness, at least not for long. I’m not saying I won’t disfigure her. No, I’m not saying that at all. I will, in fact, disfigure your daughter in such a way that even after years of plastic surgery she could never regain her present appearance. But that’s irrelevant, because immediately after I disfigure her, I will continue to torture her in extremely painful ways; ways that will also be, after, let’s say, about half an hour, fatal. Now, I’ll tell you what your choices are. I have generously given you the option of putting an end to the torture at any time, by killing your daughter with that gun. Granted, one way or the other, she’ll end up dead. But still, I’d say, it’s not bad.”
Philip paused. My breathing seemed loud to me in the silent room. So I stopped breathing.
“And he did what he said,” Philip went on, staring at some point behind me, squinting a little as he spoke. “He first disfigured her, cutting off pieces of her face. She was screaming. He burned her in various places, punched her, cut off some of her fingers, and then an ear, and then her tongue, her lips. I didn’t shoot her. He continued torturing her, bringing her closer to death, until she had stopped crying, and all you could hear was her pained breathing, her wheezing. And finally the sound of her breathing stopped. Ben felt her pulse and said, ‘Okay, that’s done. I won’t reproach you for not having spared her the slow death. Everyone makes their own choices. Although, I should have known that about you and spared myself the trouble of soldering the gun to the chair.’ ”
Philip was quiet for a moment, staring at me intently before going on: “Then Ben dragged me into the room where Damon was, and ungagged me. I was in shock and didn’t speak. Ben said, ‘You may think I’m kidding, but I don’t think that what happened in there was quite enough of a punishment. I will also cut off your legs. This may seem a bit anticlimactic, but I don’t care; I think it’s a good idea, especially in the long run, when the pain of your daughter’s death fades a little and you try to start your life over again. The missing legs will be a good, vivid reminder that it’s not so easy to turn over a new leaf.’ Damon was thrashing, screaming through his gag. He wanted to tell Philip that he was the one who sent the letter, not me. But he never got a chance. And I certainly wasn’t about to correct the misunderstanding. I didn’t need to lose my brother now too. As Damon kept thrashing, Philip looked at him and said, ‘You don’t need to see this,’ and he whacked him in the head with his gun, knocking him out. The blow sent Damon into a coma that he came out of only a month later.
“Ben then put me under anesthesia, and I woke up in my house, sitting in a wheelchair, by the phone, my legs missing. Damon was slumped in an easy chair next to me, unconscious. Tagged to his clothing was a note: ‘Don’t know why he hasn’t come to, yet, the wimp.’
“I sat there, in a trance, remembering what had happened to my daughter and unable to move. Finally I called an ambulance for Damon. We were rushed to the hospital. They informed me that I was fine, that the amputation had been done very well. Damon was kept at the hospital, on life support.
“The police tried to find Ben, but he had disappeared and to this day has never been caught. When Damon came out of his coma a month later, he wanted to find Ben, of course. He said his purpose in life would now be to find Ben and kill him. I told him I didn’t want him to. Through much persuasion, I made him promise me to never look for Ben, never go near him. I didn’t want to worry about Damon’s safety. He then said that he would devote his life to helping me. I refused this offer as well, saying I preferred we didn’t see each other, because the sight of him would constantly bring back the tragedy. I told him I would contact him when the memory of what had happened had become less vivid and painful. He left, very upset. It’s been eight years. That was the last time we spoke.”
“And there was never any trace of Ben?”
“No. I’ve been afraid, over the years, that Ben would find out that Damon was the one who turned him in, and that he would again seek revenge. The police and hospital personnel, at the time, agreed not to reveal to the press that Damon had written the letter. But three years ago, a journalist wrote a big piece on me for Soap Opera magazine. He was fascinated with my story, and delved deeply into the case. He spoke to doctors, nurses, and the police. Somehow, he found out that Damon had written the letter, and he mentioned it in the piece. I was worried that Ben would see it and go after Damon. I actually wrote to Damon then, telling him to be careful. He sent me back a postcard saying he was fine, and has continued doing so once a month, ever since.”
Philip and I finished talking in the early hours of the morning. I was to sleep in the guest room, but ended up unable to sleep much at all and wishing I could take a plane back to New York immediately. I was scheduled to leave later in the morning, right after breakfast.