Nice Girls Finish Last (21 page)

“If Hell had a kennel club … ,” Mike whispered to me as the slave-men went through their paces.

There were others in the room, a very large man in a harness with two dominatrices attending him and a lone woman with a whip, who was introduced as Carlotta, Anya's “lieutenant.”

“These are our players,” Anya said, introducing me to the others, who gave their first names only. Some were masked, some were not. All had signed releases, which are good things to have when you're shooting sensitive material like this.

“Ms. Hudson has a few questions,” Anya said, and gave me the floor.

I passed a photocopied photo of Kanengiser around.

“Have you seen this man before, in this club or elsewhere?” I asked. “His name is Herman Kanengiser.”

“I've seen him before,” one of the slaves said. I noticed his mistress tightened his leash slightly when he did.

“Where did you see him?” his mistress asked, mockingly.

“Uh …”

“On television,” said another slave. “He was on television this past week, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“That's probably where I saw him,” the first slave said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I'm sure,” said the slave.

“Do you know anyone who knew him?” I persisted.

They all just stared at me so I moved on, passing the photo of Joey Pinks around.

“No, don't know him,” said the slaves. It was so hard to tell if they were being truthful—they were so in the control of their woman masters, who betrayed nothing and were holding those leashes taut. You wouldn't want to play poker with this bunch of B-movie Amazons.

Maybe Tamayo was having better luck downstairs with her photos.

At that point, Anya took over. The woman had to control everything. We were required to stay through a paddling demonstration—or two—or three, and watch the man with two dominatrices be tied to a rack and stroked with a whip. We had to watch Anya put her spiked heel on the back of Charles's head and hold him down that way while she insulted him, calling him a lowdown worm, a dog, a poor excuse for a man, and several other charming endearments.

Mike was uncharacteristically silent.

So was I. I no longer felt like laughing. This was not harmless role-playing. I had a powerful urge to grab that whip from Anya's hand, break it in half, and punch her lights out for picking on the poor man. I wanted to hoist him to his feet and tell him to stand up for himself and rejoin the human race. I flashed back to a time when I was a kid, and I stood by and watched my schoolmates bully a new kid, and I did nothing because I was glad they weren't bullying me. I hated standing by now, even though they were all consenting adults and the slaves wanted to be treated this way for some reason.

My head was swimming. I felt nauseous. I felt myself swaying slightly and then heard Mike's comforting voice in my ear: “Artichoke, artichoke, artichoke. Let's wrap this up and get out of here. We've got more than enough.”

Mistress Anya was pissed when we cut short the shoot. She would no doubt call Jerry, who would no doubt chew me out for missing good tape opportunities. But so fucking what? I couldn't watch one more minute of it. I guess that makes me a prude.

Downstairs, I retrieved Tamayo.

“We're out of here,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, but she said it reluctantly. She was enjoying herself. Many men had asked to lick her boots, and she pretended she didn't understand English very well. “Oh, you
like
my boots,” she said, and moved away, although, just for kicks, she had let one guy lick her boots.

“It was okay,” she said. “I didn't mind.”

“Did anyone recognize the picture?”

“A couple of people weren't sure, but most people said no outright.”

“Well, we did our best,” I said.

“My wife is not going to believe this,” Jim said, as he loaded his sound deck into the back of the van.

“Let's get out of here,” Mike said.

“Want to go for a drink?” Tamayo asked.

“Not tonight,” I said.

“Well, I'm going over to Hogs & Heifers. Want to share a cab?”

“I'll drive you home, Robin,” Mike said. “Jim's taking the van back to headquarters, and I have my car right here. I can drop you at the bar, Tamayo.”

Before I could protest, Tamayo said, “Oh perfect.”

I did
not
want to get into a car with Mike. I wasn't even sure he still had a license, since Jim did all the driving. But I didn't want to offend him, nor did I want to appear afraid, and Tamayo had already hopped in the back. I got in the front.

After we dropped Tamayo off at Hogs & Heifers, Mike said, “Sure you don't want to go have something to eat?”

“It's late.”

“Okay. Thought I'd ask,” Mike said.

“Thanks for asking,” I said. “I just want to go home and take a one-hour bath in disinfectant.”

Mike wasn't listening. He was staring into his rearview mirror.

“That car has been following us since West Street,” he said.

I turned and looked out the back window. A dark sedan was behind us.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. It was parked behind us, and when we pulled out, it pulled out. Some fucking pervert, we'll show him.”

It looked like the car I'd seen in front of the Bastable.

Mike stopped abruptly and when the car behind stopped Mike suddenly floored it, right through a red light.

“Drive to a police station and see if it follows us,” I suggested, brightly, as I scribbled the license plate number in my reporter's notebook.

But Michael O'Leary had other ideas.

“We'll lose 'em,” he said, shifting into gear and squealing away at the next light.

“This isn't Sarajevo, Mike,” I said. The car was still following us. “We have law enforcement here. Sort of.”

“Reach under the front seat, will you, and give me my gun.”

“Your gun? You have a gun? Jesus Christ. No, I won't get your gun.”

Mike made a sharp, screeching turn onto Washington Street. He whipped around Tribeca's cobblestone streets, pulling a U-ie on West Broadway, where we lost the other car.

“Lost that bastard,” Mike said.

“I changed my mind, Mike,” I said. “Let's go for a drink. I need one.”

We stopped off at the first bar we came to, a little hole in the wall on a narrow side street. There were three other people in the place, not counting the bartender, and none of them were talking to each other. You could tell by the litter on the floor that there'd been quite a crowd here earlier, probably having a friendly old time, but then the party had gone elsewhere, leaving nothing but the misanthropes behind.

After I called Ferber and Huculak from the pay phone by the bathroom and told them about the car, I thought again about quitting my job: Maybe I should think seriously about a career change. Even if I survived the reshuffle, I wasn't likely to get back to general news anytime soon. That would mean another year, maybe longer, of stalking call girls and fly-by-night hairpiece moguls, another year of taking crap from Jerry Spurdle. Then what? I'd be older and have sleazier and sleazier pieces on my resume. Maybe I'd be better off quitting before they shoved me into some stupid off-air job for the duration of my contract.

The problem was, I didn't know what else to do. Ever since I was a little girl, I'd wanted to be a television reporter. I guess it sounds sad, like wanting to grow up to be a congressman. But it was my dream and I wasn't ready to give it up yet.

I joined Mike at the bar.

“You think you're being followed?” Mike said.

“I saw that car before. And last night or … two nights ago. I don't even know what day it is now … Sunday? Anyway, the cops found a dead ex-con with my business card on him and an OTB betting slip for a horse called Robin's Troubles.”

It was not conducive to a Positive Mental Attitude.

“What will you have?” the bartender asked.

“Vodka,” I said immediately. Fuck Max Guffy. Fuck Howard Gollis. Then I changed my mind. “No, make it a Budweiser.”

“Grolsch,” Mike said.

“I know it's all connected to the Kanengiser case, and I think someone thinks I know something and is after me because of it. But I don't know anything! The cops have a lid on the case, Jerry only wants me to use the murder to introduce S&M, every woman Kanengiser ever boinked is a suspect and most of them won't talk to me anyway …”

“You should get a gun, Robin.”

“I hate guns,” I said. “But I feel like I might have to get one, because everyone else has one, you know? Why do you have a gun?”

“To protect myself.”

Jesus. People were shooting at anchormen, and the anchormen wanted to arm themselves so they could shoot back. Dead felons turned up behind dumpsters, husbands and wives were blowing each other away, and people shot at the White House on a pretty regular basis. There were towns in the United States where every head of every household was
required
by law to own a gun. Chaos reigns.

I realized suddenly that I was talking in a very panicky fashion. Mike put his hand over mine and waved to the bartender for another beer for me.

“Didn't you want to help those slaves escape tonight? Wasn't it awful watching that?” I asked.

“They were all consenting adults and nobody was killed. You can't say that about wars. The thing I noticed was how odd the slave Charles was acting. Did you notice him twitching?”

“No.”

“I'll show you the tape on Monday. He was nervous for some reason. There was something very strange about him. I have a sixth sense about this.”

“Distemper?”

Mike smiled. He was a pretty good-looking guy, I thought. His face was kind of plain, but so animated by his wacky Irish personality that after you knew him a while, and had a bit to drink, he looked really handsome. But not pretty-boy handsome.

“They all seemed nervous, those slaves. What a concept that is, someone choosing to be a slave,” I said. “I can see a little leather, a little role-playing for fun, but the humiliation …”

I stopped. Some current in the room changed and I suddenly became aware of Mike's smell. He smelled like a hardware store, an oiled rubber and brown paper smell, with just a touch of soap, no aftershave. I love the smell of men.

But now that I'd smelled him, I felt funny talking about sex.

“That was disturbing, I have to admit,” Mike said. “I flashed back a bit to being a hostage in Lebanon.”

Mike and Reb had been taken hostage in Beirut but they escaped after three weeks. Normally, Mike wouldn't talk about it, but he'd had a bit of beer, so I pressed him, because Reb had told me two different stories.

“How exactly did you guys escape?”

“Between you and me,” Mike said, “we didn't exactly escape.”

“Huh?”

“Have you ever read the O. Henry story ‘Ransom of Red Chief'? These rogues kidnap a boy, try to get ransom from the parents, but the child is such a holy terror, the parents ignore the kidnappers. The child is drivin' them crazy, and he won't leave and the kidnappers can't get rid of him …”

“I love that story.”

“It was kind of like that. Reb started compulsively singing and humming. It was something he learned in Nam, to clear his mind during interrogations. But in Beirut, he wouldn't stop, he couldn't stop, except when he was sleeping.”

“What did he sing?”

“Oh, Reb sings it all. Sixties pop songs, operetta, Peggy Lee, English drinking songs, Irish drinking songs, the ‘Marseillaise,' fifties advertising jingles. It got to be a bit much. The guards would come in, tell him to shut up, and beat him with sticks, but he wouldn't shut up. I thought they were going to hang us, but it wasn't a good time for them, strategically, to kill us.

“One night, after exercise, they put us back in our cell and forgot to manacle us, forgot to close the window. They even left a wooden crate so we could climb up to the window. We got outside, the night guard was mysteriously absent, and there was a taxi nearby. Don't tell anyone. Reb would kill me if I blew his story out of the water.”

“Boy, Reb didn't tell me any of that. I heard the version where he chewed through his leather restraints, broke a window, helped you out and you walked miles, until a truck hauling melons gave you a lift. And the version where the truck was hauling Halal chickens.”

“He really does believe we escaped, all the same. He thinks he's Irish too, or Irish American.”

“He isn't? Reb Ryan? Sounds Irish.”

“Nah, he changed his name years ago. Something East European, I think. But now he really believes he is Irish.”

“Why didn't you let management know he was nuts before they heard about the Haiti Incident?”

“Because, I dunno. Code of the field. Everyone out there in the field is half-crazy, and Reb was a good reporter, in spite of everything else. It's funny, when he's on camera, he is the most incisive, truthful person I've ever met, but off-camera, he's delusional and you can't believe a word he says.”

“How do you keep sane, Mike? I mean, you've seen much worse than this.”

He laughed. “I rotated back to keep sane. Well, that wasn't the only reason I rotated back. I was in the doghouse for a couple of driving stunts in Rwanda. But the biggest reason I came back is my ex-wife, she's American, she moved back to the States, and she brought our daughter back. I wanted to be closer to Samantha.”

His daughter, Samantha, was ten.

“I bet you're a great dad,” I said.

He had another beer and showed me some of his pictures. Jim and Mike whip out their pictures at the drop of the hat. It's very endearing.

“You want to have more kids?” I asked.

“I don't know. I don't t'ink so,” he said. A couple of beers and he got really Irish. “Not wit' dis job and dis lifestyle. I don't see enough of Sam now as it is. Besides, I come from seven kids, and I have truckloads of nieces and nephews. So many, I could unload 'em wit' a pitchfork. What about you?”