The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer?

by Pat Powers

  "All right, I'll give her a call," I said. "You have pleased me greatly."

  "A girl is glad to please her master," said Astra. "Her heart goes with you."

  I called Dr. Bulloch and got lucky -- she was in and, once I had explained the nature of my visit, would be glad to make time to talk to me.

  Emory University meant a drive into Decatur, an Atlanta suburb that had once been a small town and had pretenses of still being one even though the city had long since overrun it. In short, the city was a traffic nightmare. Small-town streets with big-city traffic.

  It took me a solid hour to reach Dr. Bulloch's office in a beautiful old brick building on a remote part of the Emory campus. I spent most of that time thinking about the case, but found it hard to really focus when I was trying to keep my van's front end out of the back seats of various idiots.

  Professor Bulloch's office was the usual small cubby that academics generally worked out of, filled with posters and images of dancers, many of them belly dancers but also some Balinese temple dancers, square dancers, African tribal dancers, ballroom dancers and some burlesque dancers. I knew I was in the right place. No Gorean dancers, but photos of Gorean dancers might not be a smart thing to display in a work environment.

  Bulloch was an older woman, looked to be in her 60s but very fit and well preserved, as seemed to be typical of dancers generally. Even the overweight ones had a certain glide to their step and a smoothness to their moves that made them attractive on a very fundamental level.

  Bulloch wasn't overweight, she was a small, sprightly woman with bright, sharp eyes. She had thinning hair which she disguised with a wig. I had had a certain amount of spotting wigs -- it was a pretty common form of disguise.)

  "It's always a pleasure to help a friend of Astra," said Bulloch warmly. "What can I do for you?"

  "Well, I'm working on a theory about why April was kidnapped," I said. "If I can understand their motives, it may help me if and when I locate her."

  "I'll do anything at all if it will help April come back safe and sound," said Bulloch. "What's your theory?"

  "First of all, I'd like your promise to keep anything I may tell you in confidence," I said. "That would include the police and other government officials."

  'Isn't it illegal for me to withhold information from the police if they interrogate me?" Bulloch asked.

  "It is," I said. "I'm not asking you to withhold information about the theories we may discuss. I'm only asking you to withhold information about anything I might tell you about my progress on the case. It's illegal to withhold that information too, but the only way the police will find out you know any of it is if they ask me, and I won't tell."

  "Why not simply withhold information about the case from me?" Bulloch asked.

  "Because it may help you to understand what I'm looking for, and I -- and April -- need you to understand as clearly as possible, so you can help me understand,” I replied.

  "Very well," said Bulloch. "You have my word, provisionally. I cannot promise you that I will break the law."

  "Thank you," I said, thinking that if we came to an impasse I could simply ask her to talk to my old partner Al, who would at least use the information discreetly. "What we've discovered is that one or several moral conservatives cooperated with one or several lesbian feminist dancers to kidnap April. It's a very strange alliance, made more so by the probable presence of one or more intelligence agents in the conspiracy."

  "Intelligence agents?" Bulloch asked.

  "Spies," I responded.

  "Seems like a lot of people for a kidnapping," said Bulloch.

  "It is," I responded. "It's even more puzzling because there hasn't been any sign of a ransom note. There has been no contact from the kidnappers at all. And there's no sign that April has been in contact with any politicos who might want her to vanish. So what I'm left with is culture war."

  "Culture war ..." Bulloch murmured thoughtfully.

  "Yes, culture war," I responded wryly. "What I'm thinking is that both the lesbian feminists and the moral conservatives see the popularity of April's dance as deeply subversive. The lesbian feminists think she's going to lead women back into the Dark Ages. The moral conservatives think she will turn all women, but especially their daughters, into sex-crazed sluts. They hate her for different reasons, but they both hate her."

  "Where do the spies come in?" Bulloch asked.

  "They're hooked in with the moral conservatives," I said. "We think."

  "Sounds like a reasonable theory to me," said Bulloch, shrugging.

  "Then why don't I like it?" I responded. "It's my theory and I'm having a lot of trouble buying it. People normally don't kidnap for abstract reasons. They do it for money, for love, really strong reasons that would make them take a big risk. I don't buy the notion that they do it because of something like 'cultural subversion' unless they're officials in a government that wants them to do that. But I'm not really expert in these areas, and you are. Do you think such groups could really feel intensely enough about April to kidnap her? Do you think it at all likely that there's any group out there that would do anything like that?"

  "Well, of course there are," said Bulloch. "Historically, various political groups have performed kidnappings and much worse on innocent women. There are extant customs like honor killings which are in essence cultural which involve the murder of innocent, women, as well as their kidnapping quite often -- it happens to women in some Middle East countries every year. It's not at all inconceivable to me that such a thing might happen here in the U.S. though granted I don't know of any organized groups that do such things here. But there's a first time for everything."

  "Yes, there IS a first time for everything, but I've always found that the smart money lies in assuming that a phenomenon ISN'T unique unless you have very good reasons for assuming otherwise," I responded. "There's evidence that this might be a first-time kinda thing, here in the U.S. anyway. And there's also a group involved -- the spies -- for whom it wouldn't be a first time event. They handle murders and kidnapping routinely. Mostly murders, though, and when they do a kidnapping it's mostly for extracting information from the victim, or for turning them."

  "Turning them?" asked Bulloch.

  'Getting them to work for your side instead of the other," I said.

  "You know, that's what it sounds like it might be," Bulloch.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Turning April," said Bulloch. "You said there was no ransom note. if they had just wanted to kill April, I'm sure the spy people have assassins who could have done it for them. So why have these ideologically-oriented groups taken her? It could very well be that they see enormous propaganda value in getting April to renounce her dance, her Goreanism, her very sexuality."

  "So you're thinking they just plan to torture April into publicly rejecting belly dancing and Goreanism and all that?" I asked.

  "I don't know if I would use the term "just" in conjunction with torture," Bulloch protested. "What I'm thinking of is something more like an intervention -- something along the lines of deprogrammers kidnapping someone who's fallen in with a cult. That has plenty of precedent in the US."

  "Right,' I said. "All they use, typically, is sleep deprivation, isolation and intense conditioning. Works well enough, from what I've read. I would really like to believe your theory, because it would mean that April is probably alive and unlikely to be killed in the immediate future, It's probably the most hopeful scenario we have. Of course, there's still the matter of the spies."

  "Why are they a problem?" asked Bulloch.

  "They are a hard bunch, compared to the ideologues," I said. "If they think they've been discovered they may just decide to kill everyone involved, or at the very least, kill April."

  "Why would they do that?" Bulloch asked.

  "To avoid prosecution," I responded. "Although there are spies involved, we suspect this is not an official government op -- such ops have to be approved, and I can't se
e any career bureaucrat putting his ass on the line for something like this, especially considering how well known and well liked April is. So any intelligence agents that are involved stand to be charged with kidnapping, which involves some heavy jail time."

  "Deprogrammers don't go to jail usually, do they?" asked Bulloch.

  "No they don't," I said. "They generally get the permission of family members first, so that the kidnapping is more akin to someone being committed to an asylum by family than a kidnapping by strangers. If the deprogramming is successful, the victim doesn't press charges, his or her family is on it so they don't press charges, and in fact are on record of approving, and the people who might want to press charges, the cult, are typically an out-group not well liked by the community who don't have the same standing as family members."

  "So, are you seeing any parallels here?" Bulloch asked.

  "Definitely," I responded. "I especially like the outgroup aspect of it. The Goreans would probably have very little chance of prosecuting if the kidnappers had one of April's close family members signed off on the kidnapping. But I checked the family members and they all seemed to be okay with April's relationship with the Goreans. Of course, if one of them was in league with her kidnappers, he or she might not be too forthcoming with me on the topic."

  "You mean people don't always tell private detectives the truth?" Bulloch asked, smiling.

  "Sometimes I think they lie to me just for practice," I said, grinning. "But if someone in April's family has given her over to her kidnappers, I think I can loosen them up fairly easily."

  "Why?" Bulloch asked.

  "Because even if the people who kidnapped April only want to kidnap her, she's still in great danger. As a captive, she's vulnerable, and some people just aren't able to control themselves when they have someone vulnerable before them -- they'll hurt her, just because they can. They'll generally have some sort of rationalization for doing it, but somehow they'll do it. And even though we think we know why April may have been kidnapped, we don't know for sure -- her death may still be in the works. Someone who's in on this may have their own agenda in regard to April that isn't the same as everybody else's. Which might include killing her."

  "So if a family member is involved, you think you can make them feel guilty," said Bulloch.

  "If they ARE guilty, it should be very easy," I said. "They may not have thought it through, but I can help them with that."

  "Check out the mother first, and most thoroughly," said Bulloch. "They tend to feel their daughters' lives more intensely than others. She would feel the shame if her values are more mainstream than her daughter's, as they most certainly are in April's case."

  "Why do you say that?" I asked.

  "Well, look at the odds," said Bulloch. "Everything I know about April indicates she has a very warm, appealing personality, but there's no denying her lifestyle is right out there on the edge, sexually speaking, and her dance of course is a red flag telling everyone who has seen her on television about it."

  "I don't get it," I said. "Why do you say her dance is so revealing?"

  "Because it is true," said Bulloch. "When April dances, her every muscles proclaims her sexuality. How much do you know abut dance Mr. Bowman?"

  "Considerably less than I thought I did when I started this case," I responded.

  "Well said," Bulloch responded, smiling. "Do you know the different kinds of dancing, any of the training techniques, etc."

  "I know a little about the forms of dance," I said. "I know the way the Goreans dance, having seen them in company with Astra. And I've seen one Gorean training technique -- a rather powerful technique they use for overcoming inhibition."

  "The one where the dancer is, um, forced to display herself intimately?" Bulloch asked.

  "That would be it," I said, nodding in agreement.

  "Well, good, that's a good example as it turns out," said Bulloch. "The Gorean technique is more, well, demanding than other such techniques, but there's no denying that it gets results. Experienced Gorean dancers have very little in the way of physical or sexual inhibitions in the way they move and display themselves, and it's because they learn to totally give themselves over to the dance, just as they learn to totally give themselves over to their sexuality. The audience can't see them submitting sexually to their masters, the depth of it, the power of it, but it shows in the way they move."

  "How?" I asked. "Specifically, how does it show so that Joe Average can see it? Because I've been in my share of nudie bars, and I've seen a lot of women waggling their butts, and some of them WERE better than others, but from what I could tell the other guys only care about whether or not the dancer had big boobs, or dressed like a schoolgirl before she peeled, or otherwise appealed to their kinks. But you're saying there's something subtle about April's moves that's subversive. I'd say before you can send a subversive message, it has to be noticed."

  "Hardly, in fact, the best subversive messages aren't noticed at all," said Bulloch. "Haven't you ever noticed that some women are just more attractive than others, but you don't know why? I know why. It's because you're subconsciously picking up cues from the way they hold themselves, the way they move. This can be an incredibly powerful signal under the right circumstances. Have you ever heard a married couple talk about how they were just drawn to one another in some crowded room? It's not pheromones that draw them to one another, it's the way the hold themselves that sends of subtle cues about their compatibility. They don't experience it with their conscious minds, so they assume some mystical, magical force brought them together. But in fact it's just that their conscious mind didn't read what their subconscious minds did."

  "And this relates to April because ...?" I asked.

  "Because April is a genius at that language, who happened to spring from a culture that allows such genius its fullest flowering," responded Bulloch. "Her sexuality is natural and strong and her dance conveys that very clearly because her inhibitions have been erased by Gorean conditioning. Not that she was ever very inhibited to begin with, but even a little inhibition will show in a dancer's body when she dances sexually, or even when she dances joyously, and mar it. The reason April is so popular is that her dance is the real thing -- she really does dance sexier with her clothes on than most nudie dancers manage to be while stark naked."

  "That's not saying much, in a lot of cases," I said. "So you think April is in fact unique and there might be some real advantage to kidnapping her for people alarmed at the popularity of her dance. And her mother or whomever in her family may feel it too when they see it on TV, but might also feel ashamed."

  "I think April is unique, but she's hardly irreplaceable," said Bulloch. "I'm sure there are a lot of Gorean dancers who, though not as talented as April, still have a certain power of expression."

  I thought of the dancers he had seen last night and had to nod agreement. Even fully clothed they would have been something to see.

  "That doesn't mean that others won't PERCEIVE April to be unique," said Bulloch. "Even if she were unique, they wouldn't succeed in their aims, whatever they might be, of course."

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "You have been talking about culture war," said Bulloch. "I'm not sure that I buy the analogy that is implied by the phrase, but there's no denying the existence of constant conflict between the morally conservative elements of our society and the rest of it. Although that conflict may be played out on television or the movies, that's not where it really goes on. The mass media are rarely in step with what's actually going on with most people. The real conflict between the moral conservatives and the rest of us doesn't happen primarily in the media, it's played out every day in real life. The moral conservatives go to their churches and hear railings against the stuff others do on Saturday night, while the others t hey rail against have fun on Saturdays nights in bars, strip clubs and their own homes. The moral conservatives go to the voting booths and cast their votes to stamp out strip clubs, and others go to th
e strip clubs and feed them dollars. The sexy woman dresses sexy, the conservative woman looks at her and disapproves. The conflict occurs everywhere, every day, and the media reflection of it, if there is one at all, is inaccurate and is a result of extreme examples of the day to day conflict among these ordinary people, like a protest or a fight, not the cause of it."

  "Could be a feedback loop thing going on there," I said. "I'm not too crazy about the notion that the media is responsible for people's behavior myself, but I can see how people might be affected by what they see on TV and the movies."

  "Granted," said Bulloch, "but in real life, it's the real experiences that people have with real people that has the most to do with how they behave, not what they see on TV. And the effect that April has had is just the tip of the iceberg. Getting rid of her won't really change much -- the iceberg is still there, under the media surface."

  "But the people who kidnapped her may not share your opinions on that topic," I said.

  "I'm sure they wouldn't," said Bulloch. "If there are spies involved, and political partisans, you're probably dealing with ideologues of one stripe or another, and they tend to be oblivious to cultural influences, which run deeper and stronger than ideologues generally realize, which is why their plans for just and perfect societies so often go disastrously wrong."

  I had not interviewed a lot of academics in my life, and now I understood that the problem with academics wasn't getting them to talk. It was keeping them on track. Not that it mattered. I had what I wanted and a lot more.

  Chapter 30

  Not well suited for the constant internecine battles

  I poured a hit from my coffee mug once I reached the van, then booted up my notepad and pulled out the number of April Dancer's parents. I should have interviewed them earlier, as they lived in town, but the leads other leads had seemed more promising. My talk with Bulloch made me think I might have something to learn from them.