The women of the lower classes were another matter entirely.
With these females, upper-class Victorian males felt free to do anything they desired, however dark or unnatural . . .
This, then, was the London of 1881 when several members of the House of Lords formed The Circle of Six, a very exclusive club dedicated to debauchery and pleasure.
As we would later learn, it was the purpose of The Circle of Six to pluck from the vile streets of slum London, girls as young as five and six. Some were paid for, while others were simply kidnapped. The six men who made up The Circle would not touch them at so young an age — for even these rakes had some moral standards — but they would turn the girls over to experienced prostitutes who would train them in the ways of male pleasures . . . so that by the time the girls were twelve or thirteen, they would know every sexual trick a man could possibly desire. It was then they were taken to a lavish manor house outside London to which The Circle would repair for pleasure . . .
I
n 1893, a group of mid-western businessmen, among them two men from Cedar Rapids, visited London and read of The Circle being exposed by London police. The Royal Family had fought bitterly against revealing the story — one of the young girls had died while practicing a most bizarre sex act — but the police had insisted on prosecution.
And so the six Lords and their Circle became known through the penny newspapers that feasted on the facts, and all the lurid speculation, like predators on carrion.
Soon enough, the mid-western businessmen returned home, and the two men in Cedar Rapids . . .
". . .
some very prominent names in the community," Gilhooley said.
"Started their own Circle of Six?" I finished.
"Exactly," he said.
"But they couldn't take a girl from Cedar Rapids because she'd be missed, so they went to the Indian settlement and—"
"That's what the old newspaperman tells me, anyway. There was a police matron named Anna Tolan — she was pretty much like a police officer except nobody wanted to call her that — and she figured the whole thing out about The Circle. And about the murder."
"What murder?"
"In 1903, my friend. A very beautiful young Indian girl of sixteen years was found dead with her nose cut off."
"Who killed her?"
"He says he doesn't know, but that this Anna Tolan sure investigated the case."
"The Indian girl was sixteen," I mused. "They didn't take very young girls, then?"
"No. What they did was to take a girl, and get her addicted to cocaine. Once they'd turned her into an addict, she wasn't ever going to run off. It worked out fine."
"So after this particular girl was killed—"
Gilhooley leered. "After she was killed, and after Anna Tolan started pushing hard for a serious investigation, the businessmen dissolved The Circle of Six and burned down the house they'd built to have all their fun in."
I thought of the ancient mansion where the dog had brought me the arm of the dead woman. That must have been the headquarters of the local Circle of Six in olden times.
"Any of this make sense?"
"Makes a lot of sense," I said, thinking of the dead sisters and why they'd had to die.
"So, you think she'll go out with me?"
"Huh?" I was caught up in my own thoughts. "Who?"
"Kristin."
"Boy, I don't know, Gilhooley."
"I think she was just playing hard to get."
"She was doing a very good job of it."
Then he seemed to ponder something for a long moment. "I wonder if she knows anything about Mao. You reckon?"
"Oh yeah," I said. "She probably sits home every night in her bunny-jammies reading up on the Cultural Revolution."
He laughed. "Man, wouldn't that be great, a cute-lookin' chick like that who digs Mao?"
I guess we each have our own individual fantasies about women.
I
had to wait twenty minutes — impatient minutes now that I was beginning to see the shape of all this — before an obliging car appeared and buzzed open the gates. I followed right behind him.
As I pulled my car into an available space, I started wondering how I was going to get up to the second floor to talk to Linda Prine. But there was no problem. As I crossed the lot to the twin buildings, I saw her on the veranda watching me, taking the last of the summer sun, like a vampire draining the last drops of blood from a victim.
She wore a pink string bikini that looked festive against the dusky beauty of her skin, her small breasts eminently edible exotic fruits, her stomach flat and hard — the fierce machismo of female beauty these days. Actually, I've never minded a little extra weight on women, particularly, I suppose, as I get older and have a little extra weight of my own to contend with.
When I got close enough so that she could lean over and speak in a soft voice, and not give her wealthy neighbors the impression that she was Indian trash, she hissed down to me: 'This time I'm going to call Perry and I'm not going to stop him from beating you up."
"You do that. You call Perry. I've been looking for him — so have several other people, including his wife." I saw the lie in her glistening eyes, that she could summon him at will. "And you've been looking for him, too, I'll bet. Did he leave you without any spending money?"
"I'm going in now," she told me.
She minced over to the chair she'd been sitting in, picked up her drink and her paperback, and started inside, her mules clacking on the veranda floor. Then she disappeared, the angle of the balcony floor above me cutting her from sight abruptly.
It was time to say it. I called up: "I want to talk to you about your brother. David Rhodes."
The heel-clacking stopped.
I was aware of my surroundings suddenly. Parking lot. 4 P.M. Voice and music at tolerable levels coming from various balconies and open windows. Smell of fading heat and gasoline fumes from cars and trucks on First Avenue. Maintenance man in far corner cursing Lawn-Boy he couldn't get started.
Heels clacking again but a different rhythm this time. No longer sharp, angry. Slow now. A certain weariness in the sound.
She appeared again on the balcony above me. She'd thrown a towel over her shoulders, as if she were not only aware of her near-nakedness but ashamed of it now.
"You bastard."
"We need to talk."
"You bastard. You bastard."
Not until this moment did I realize that she was coked up. Or coked down, actually — that long dark chill slide into the need for white powder again.
"You bastard," she said one more time. This time she was crying.
A few minutes later, she buzzed me in.
"T
he two sisters stole you from the reservation when you were six years old. They took you with them when they traveled with the rodeo so you never saw Iowa again until you were a teenager. They also turned you into a junkie so that you'd be more obliging. They started selling you when you were thirteen or fourteen — at least, that's how these things usually go — then when they moved back to Cedar Rapids and got to know all the young high-rollers downtown, they decided to peddle you as this very young, innocent girl. You could pass a good four years younger than you were, so you were perfect for The Circle of Six that Perry Heston and Bryce Cook started up. Except there were never six — there were just the two of them. They wanted a virginal young girl who was totally at their command and the sisters convinced them that that's exactly what you were. It was a very cushy life for a while, wasn't it? They built this fancy house out in the boonies somewhere and put you up in it and everything was going fine — the sisters had taught you all the ways to keep your benefactors happy — until the sisters got greedy and started blackmailing Heston and Cook. And then it all started coming apart, didn't it? They moved you out of the house to this nice new condo here. They didn't want The Circle of Six anymore but they did want you. They were both in love with you — or addicted to you, anyway. And so they put you here. And then one or both of them killed the sisters. And tried to hang it on David who you'd learned by then was your brother, right?"
Through the open windows you could smell charcoal and burning meat. Men and women in chef hats and aprons with funny sayings on them were grilling steaks and gulping wine from coolers and listening to the crickets and cats and dogs gathering together for their dusk symphony that would be coming up soon.
She wasn't having any steaks or wine. She was having cocaine, a line of it on a small mirror. She snorted it up in an astonishingly delicate and feminine way. She still wore the pink string bikini but now had a blue summer-weight blanket around her. She looked younger and more vulnerable than ever.
"I just can't believe they'd kill anybody," she said, now that cocaine had made her right and whole and strong again. "I really can't. I mean, Bryce has a bad temper, sure, but . . ." She shook her head.
"How did you meet David?"
"In a bar, out at one of the malls. He was a big cruiser, David was. Always hustling. He was a great-looking guy. A lot of white women, really attractive white women, dug that he was a full-blooded Indian. Gave him a real edge of danger, you know what I'm saying?"
"You didn't know he was your brother?"
"No, of course not. How would I? I was just a little girl the last time I'd seen him."
"And he didn't guess your real relationship, either?"
She looked at me. "I know what you want me to say so I'll say it. We had an affair for a while — I'd never been with anybody else since the sisters brought me to Bryce and Perry — and everything was all right until the sisters found out and told me who I really was . . . and who David really was. That's why he killed himself. He couldn't handle what we'd done. He was in love with me . . . and then he found out I was his little sister. No, he just couldn't handle it. His drinking got worse and worse and he started coming around here and making scenes and that's why Bryce and Perry beat him up at the casino. And getting beaten up that way — it all just started coming apart for him. He started following Bryce and Perry around. That's how he found out about that old burned-down mansion. He went out there that night you trailed him to check it out for himself." She shook her head. "It just all came down for him. He couldn't stand to live anymore."
"How are you handling it?" I said.
"About David and me?" She made a small sad face. "The way the sisters brought me up, I guess I don't get too excited about things like that. But I miss him. He had his demons but he was a good man."
"Like Perry and Bryce are good men?"
She touched a finger to a perfect nostril. She was quick and clean as a cat and even the merest gesture was charged with erotic possibilities. "You make a lot of judgments about people."
"I suppose I do. You were sixteen when Cook and Heston took you."
"You forget. I was supposed to be sixteen but I was actually twenty."
"I guess I was wrong about them. They're a couple of swells."
"They're not as bad as you might think. At first it was just about sex and I didn't like them much, but then later on they fell in love with me — both of them — and they kind of competed against each other. And it was fun to watch. They never hurt me. They never even made me do much sex against my will. Early on I guess they did, wanting to be
macho and all, I suppose. But later . . . You're kind of square, Mr. Payne. And you judge everybody by that same square standard. Maybe it's time you looked around."
And then the blood came boiling out of her nose. She must have felt it starting a minute or so earlier when she put the finger to her nostril.
"Shit!" she screamed and kicked off her mules and got up and ran through the condo into the bathroom. I knew she wouldn't want me to follow. She had an animal's sense of privacy.
She came back a few minutes later and said, "Sometimes the nose gets kind of bad."
"Maybe it's time to think about kicking."
"Maybe you were a priest in a former life."
I looked around the nicely appointed condo. "I think it's coming to an end, Linda."
She sat on the edge of the couch. The blanket was gone.
She was mostly naked again. She was amused that I couldn't quit watching her breasts and legs.
"I need to know where the house is."
"What house?"
"You know what house. The house Perry and Bryce built for you."
"Why does it matter? I live here now. They don't even go there much anymore."
"Where is it?"
"You think something happened to them?"
I nodded. "Nobody's seen them for two days. There's a strong possibility that something's happened to them."