Abattoir, page 4
But she wasn’t fooled by that.
She began to follow him, to his so-called appointments. Sure enough, she tailed his Jaguar to his office downtown, to the doctor’s clinic on the west side, to the grocery store and to the golf course. So far, he had not stopped at a swank hotel for a clandestine tryst.
But she wasn’t fooled by that either.
This man was oh so clever, she reminded herself. How shrewd, how meticulous, how deceptive he could truly be.
She was working herself up to a blind rage. She no longer cared about the drink or the Degas or the big window or her goddamned life. She was so worked up that she never noticed that her wall clock still showed 4:31 p.m.
§
The BMW M-3 pulled into the underground garage at the Exeter. Sleek, black and new, it was the perfect vessel for its owner, Derek Taylor, who matched its sleekness in almost every respect.
It was late, nearly 3 a.m. Taylor wasn’t alone. He opened the door for his date, a tall blonde who could easily have passed for a model. As she rose from the seat, he took her in his arms and caressed her hair. She responded by grabbing his face in her hands and planting a wet kiss on his lips.
Taylor broke away long enough to open the trunk and retrieve a large vinyl cover, custom-made to drape the curves of the M-3. Gently, and with great care, he tucked his automobile in for the night.
He looked up at the girl who stood patiently near the door. She looked hot—skintight pants, heels, a top that revealed her taut stomach and a sun tattoo on the small of her back. Delicious.
She gave a delighted cry when she took in Taylor’s flat. It was techno-industrial, lots of stainless steel, thick white carpet, furniture that looked like it came from the set of Star Trek. It screamed money, which was the part the date most appreciated.
He put on some Sinatra and poured Taittinger into two small fluted glasses. He played the courtship and foreplay expertly and efficiently, wasting little time and even less emotional investment. The seduction was rapid, the foreplay even quicker. She was willing and ready.
Like everything Taylor did, sex was precise, energetic and fast. In the massive beveled glass mirror that covered his bedroom wall, he watched himself as he pleased her, in several ways. In turn, she did her best to please him. Yet for Taylor, the sex, for all its physical intensity, was tiring and businesslike, the date falling asleep in his arms almost as soon as it was over.
Taylor gently pulled himself away from her and rose from the bed. He covered himself with a satin robe and walked into the living room. He lit a cigarette and exhaled it busily. Although he had never been fond of flowery perfume or the uniquely female scent of apres’-sex, he took his hands, anointed with his lover’s essence, and rubbed them thoroughly over his chest and torso, making himself breathe the aroma deeply. It made him feel like a man.
He walked to the window and stared at the lights of the sleeping city far beyond. He watched the blue smoke of the cigarette tumble in the air of his flat, and frowned.
A stranger might have wondered why this man had anything to frown about. He was the proverbial playboy, a trust fund baby whose father was the scion of an immense manufacturing empire. Since birth, he’d been given everything he’d ever wanted and, not surprisingly, had come to expect that as a right. He had dutifully gone through the motions necessary to earn a BA at an Ivy League school but had done little of note since. He had no career, nor did he need or want one.
Taylor seemed content playing the role of privileged prince. When he reached 25, his father set him up to live independently—essentially paying him to stay away. That was fine with Taylor. He’d resided for the past five years in a series of opulent townhomes, of which the Exeter was the most recent. With each new home, he spent ever greater amounts of money. He spared no expense in decor or the best and latest in electronic gadgetry—built-in computers, plasma televisions, alarms and sound systems.
He was the kind of man whose likeness could be found in magazines like GQ, Esquire and Maxim. His hair was dark, made even darker by his habit of having it dyed black each month at the city’s trendiest salon. His suits were all custom-tailored, his shoes Italian, his shirts handmade silk. It was not unusual for Taylor to visit Zegna on regular buying sprees.
Women flocked to him, not only for his obvious wealth, but his striking good looks and taste. He was very seldom alone. He was a member of various cliques in the city, composed of the hippest crowds. This provided him with a never-ending supply of female company.
Taylor’s women, as a rule, were not very deep, and not very sincere—they were, in fact, mostly hungry opportunists—but they all were beautiful, sexy and looked very aesthetically pleasing draped on his arm.
Invariably, none of them lasted long. Not that it particularly concerned him; the presence of a female—the most beautiful, most hip, most sexy—was an essential component of his meticulously calculated image. Everything else—clothes, flat, wheels—was tertiary.
Nothing brought Taylor greater pleasure than to see a photograph of himself; his arm encircling the slender waist of one of his many Venuses, or his hand grasping hers, ideally on the daily’s society page.
He caught the ash of his cigarette at the last minute. His thoughts had strayed from the moment, out into the sparkling city. He wondered what was going on behind all those lights, what he was missing.
Taylor’s loins were empty, the animal edge of his lust momentarily sated, yet he was still hungry. He wanted to hunt.
The predatory desire was almost overwhelming, but he found himself unable to picture, or even imagine, his prey.
He was lying to himself and somewhere deep inside, he knew it. The realization made his shoulders twitch involuntarily. He began to chew on his thumbnail.
Taylor sensed what lurked out there, what waited for him. Like a moth circling a deadly, forbidden flame, he’d flirted with it here and there over the years; knew that he would likely do so again. There was both dread and excitement in that prospect.
It would happen sooner or later. When it did, the Derek Taylor that his friends and lovers knew; the Derek Taylor that he had always thought and hoped he was, would die forever.
Nothing in the world could terrify him more.
§
Stu Brown swallowed his Metamucil—he detested it, but it was the only thing that worked—and divided his attention between the morning business outlook on the Internet and Bloomberg’s stock index report on cable. Both led him to the same bleak conclusion:
“Fuck!” Cigar smoke streamed through his clenched teeth, hanging in the air of the flat. “Goddamn candy ass investors. Nobody has balls anymore.”
He shook his head in disgust, extinguished the TV with his remote and walked away, wondering how much he would lose today. The thought brought a sour taste to his mouth.
That the loss would likely be made up in a day or two, and the fact that his corpus was significant enough to withstand an entire year of such reports, made little difference to Brown. Any loss was untenable: if there was such a thing as a Golden Rule of business, that was it.
This morning, Brown was alone, as always. His flat was so arranged that it appeared a grand party was mere moments from the offing. The table was set for six, with silver, crystal and Delft. A decanter of Scotch—which he also detested—stood ready on the sideboard. Magazines he would never read were strewn tastefully across the coffee table. As for the classical art and sculpture, the Renaissance furniture and the ornately woven rugs . . . his concern for them was roughly equivalent.
Although Brown happily conceded his miserly qualities, he was no materialist. The things that money could buy were mere trappings to him. The same was true of his clothes; all purchased from the finest stores, sewn by the finest tailors and informed by the latest conservative trends.
Brown wore them with élan. They draped his stocky body, but in truth, he would have felt just as comfortable in sackcloth. The only reason he dressed as he did was the fact that he could, and that it was good for business.
And business was his reason for living.
His stock in trade was alcohol. That, and a wide variety of attractions, bells and whistles he expertly manipulated in order to attract consumers to it. He’d started humbly, with one bar—an old neighborhood gin mill, purchased for a song. It was 1964, and the world was ready for go-go, but only Stu Brown knew it. By 1965, the place had become the hottest spot in town, turning customers away. It was a place of excitement, where groovy boys could meet even groovier girls, where music pulsed and—most important—spirits flowed like nectar.
That first bar revealed to Brown his own greatest talent—seeing beyond the curve when it came to entertainment; knowing what the masses would want even before they knew it themselves. That, and an uncanny knack for promotion, would serve him very well.
In the 1970s, he had a chain of 10 discos, stretching across the region like a rhinestone necklace. Each one had a distinct concept and theme, but the results were the same.
By the 1980s, Brown started to slow down: He no longer cared for the whims of adolescent culture, where beer was the drink of choice and the funds for it quite limited. He began a gradual transition toward the higher end of the spectrum. His uncanny eye for the curve led him to sushi when that culinary fad was virtually unknown on this continent. He went from there to traditional French, to northern Italian, to exotic seafood, to USDA prime steak.
In the course of this mercenary journey, he discovered a fundamental truth: it was just as easy to sell fine champagnes and wines to high-end clientele as beer to post-adolescents.
By now, with most of his properties sold off and just a couple of flagship restaurants that he kept for show and various tax purposes, Brown was basically retired. His primary task was the daily monitoring of his vast fortune, most of it in stocks, some in bonds and commodities, and some in real estate.
It was the latter category that brought him to this place. In Alexander Cantrell, Brown had sensed a little bit of himself. True, Cantrell was an architect, perhaps even an artist—and he detested that too—but Brown could forgive him for that. He believed in his vision, and Brown suspected that Cantrell had some of the same skill for seeing beyond the curve. Perhaps most important, he had the balls to pull it off.
That’s why Brown was a significant investor in the Exeter. He liked the symmetry of living in a place he partially owned, with the inevitable headaches belonging to somebody else. Needless to say, he had no doubt that the development would bring him profit.
Profit, in the end, was Stu Brown’s family, his creed, his purpose in life.
Poverty was a lingering demon; a nightmare stalker always snapping at his heels. One stumble, the slightest slip, and it would be on him, devouring him whole.
His childhood had been one of empty bellies and bone-chilling nights in a Brooklyn tenement; of insects that lived in the kitchen and rats that shared his bedclothes.
His father had skipped town by the time he was two. It was only him and his mother, who was often away from home working two jobs, sometimes even three, just to put food on the table.
By the time Brown was 14, he was already working; emptying barrels of grease for neighborhood restaurants. He paid for some of the food and utilities by 16. At 18, he was paying all the bills. Tough, physically demanding, low-paying jobs, but he learned so much from them.
The most abiding lesson? That, in the end, he could only rely on himself.
When he was 20, he held his last job as bar-back in a popular jazz joint. He washed dishes and glasses, replenished liquor bottles, slung buckets of ice, emptied the trash for bartenders, and learned a few things about alcohol. He grew fascinated with the profit potential in the liquor trade; that each bottle could be marked up as high as a thousand percent, and that no matter what was going on in the outside world, economically, socially or politically, people would always be thirsty for booze. And willing to pay a premium for it.
Brown showed an inherent skill for negotiation, in convincing the elderly owner of the Clown’s Tears Lounge to turn the business over to him for $1,000 and a share of the profits.
It was a very inauspicious beginning. The bar was a dive, a hangout for neighborhood lushes and lounge lizards. Two months later, renamed the Yellow Pages, the place was packed seven nights a week.
He dove into his destiny with a vengeance. The Yellow Pages was only the beginning. Nothing would stand in his way.
Success followed success, each one greater than the last, none truly satisfying his hunger. His three wives were no more successful in keeping him happy, nor were his houses, his cars or his press clippings.
But happiness had never been Stu Brown’s goal: Keeping the wolves at bay was the only thing that ever mattered. He couldn’t hear them yelping or howling, but they were always there, always waiting.
And he’d never stopped fearing them.
5
The psychiatrist, Sharon Knaster, took in the view. “It’s fantastic!” she gushed. “I absolutely love what you’ve done with the place.”
Sharon was being polite. In reality, the flat in which Su Ling and her daughter resided was sparse, especially compared to other units in the Exeter. There was no expensive furniture or art, no state-of-the-art electronics, no Persian rugs, no evidence that an interior decorator had ever set foot in the place.
Over the fireplace was a simple color photograph of the family—what used to be the family—Su Ling, her daughter Anna, and Quan.
There were other mementos: etchings of Asian folklore scenes, an American flag, a framed copy of Su Ling’s and Quan’s citizenship papers. The American decor heavily outweighed the Asian, which was not accidental. The Nugyens were intensely proud of their adopted homeland, and only faintly nostalgic for their native Vietnam.
“How’s our patient this morning?” Sharon asked, getting down to business.
Su Ling attempted a smile and shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t need to say what the gesture signified: Same as always.
Sharon sighed and made her way to the bedroom. She carried a large black valise. It always reminded Su Ling of old-fashioned doctors making house calls in the dead of night.
She creaked open the door.
Anna lay on the carpet, staring blankly at the gray sky outside the window. There was a look in her eyes that struck Sharon as profound sadness, although her professional caution prevented her from rushing to such conclusions.
Anna’s toys lay untouched on their shelves, alongside an impressive collection of neglected juvenile books. The perfect neatness of the room was broken only by a simple pad of paper and a pencil which sat next to the girl, as if waiting to be used.
She really is beautiful. Sharon closed the door behind her. Just like her mother.
Sharon opened her valise, produced several medical tools, and began with a cursory physical examination of the child—pupils, heartbeat, blood pressure—all of which indicated remarkable physical health and strength. Throughout, the girl was passive, almost pliant, like a plastic action figure.
Sharon followed up with a series of stock questions, meaningless in and of themselves; designed to provoke specific responses in the subject.
As usual, there were none. The girl did make limited eye contact when questions were put to her, but there was no sign of cognitive response, nor did she open her mouth to speak.
Anna was not typical of Sharon’s patients. In fact, she was the only child the psychiatrist was seeing. The idea of having children as patients was depressing to Sharon. She had believed in a naïve notion—that children were like flowers, innocent, beautiful and pure. She just couldn’t handle the idea that they could be anything else.
She still wasn’t sure why she made an exception nine months ago when Su Ling had begged her for help.
It was only three months after the accident, and the child had made no progress in the care of other specialists. She remained unresponsive, apathetic. Perhaps the challenge that Anna posed made Sharon bend her own rules.
Sharon’s field of specialty was Alzheimer’s and dementia. Her expertise in this area was renowned. She’d published several papers in prestigious journals and taken home half a dozen national awards. Her waiting list for new patients was six months long.
The diseases in which she specialized were most often associated with the elderly. Her patients, in virtually all cases, were terminal. All Sharon was able to do for them was provide comfort for their families and perhaps, in the luckier cases, alleviate some of their symptoms. It was a rewarding profession, but certainly not a hopeful one.
Hope was what Anna offered.
There was something in the girl’s catatonic stare, something in the way she glided her pencil over the paper—with passion and a focus only she could see—that hinted at a possible breakthrough. There was a certain logic, perhaps even the hint of form, to the girl’s scribblings, which had begun only a few weeks ago. The drawings intrigued Sharon, who took many of them home and studied them at length. They were all different, all abstract, without apparent meaning.
Sharon rose from the carpet and took a chair in Anna’s room. She gazed at the child, feeling an unusual stirring of maternal instinct. She hated to admit it, but she would love to have a daughter, even in this silent, impassive condition. She knew that her relationship with Anna and Su Ling was already well beyond professional interest.
Sharon was not one to live in denial, especially in psychological matters. She prided herself on being a realist in every part of her life. Her loneliness, therefore, was not something she could hide from.
Her professional accolades and considerable income would never fill the profound void she felt. There’d not been a man in her life for a decade. It had been a brief marriage, and not a great one, for he was jealous of her prestige and the time she was forced to commit to her work. The marriage broke up after six months, and there had been no rebound. At first, Sharon was happy with that—it freed up time for patients and work—but now, years of solitude later, she pined for companionship, if not exactly for love.
