Catch and Release Paperback

by Lawrence Block

  Lust. That’s our subject, isn’t it? And do you suppose there’s a physiological explanation for one’s tendency to natter on and on in one’s senior years? Is there a gene that turns us into garrulous old farts?

  My point, to the extent that I have one, is this: As a physician, as a trusted medical practitioner, as a putative authority on matters of the human anatomy, I was taken into the confidence of my patients and thus made more aware than most people of the infinite variety and remarkable vagaries of human sexuality. I saw more penises than Catherine the Great, more vaginas than Casanova. Saw them up close, too, with no fumbling around in the dark. Told husbands how to satisfy their wives, women how to get pregnant.

  Why, I knew an older man who had a half dozen women, widows and spinsters, who came to him once a month on average to be masturbated. The old duffer didn’t call it that, and I don’t even know if he thought of it in those terms. He was treating them, he confided, for hysteria, and the treatment employed an artificial phallus hygienically hooded with a condom. He wore rubber gloves, did this doctor, and seemed genuinely offended at the hint that he might be getting more than a fee for his troubles. As to my suggestion that he might send them home with dildoes and a clue as to how best to employ them, he grimaced at the very idea. “These are decent women,” he told me, as if that explained everything. And perhaps it did.

  I have become inclined, through observation both personal and professional in nature, to grant considerable respect to the sex drive. The urgency of its imperative is undeniable, the variety of its manifestation apparently infinite. I will furnish but one example of the latter: One patient of mine, a lesbian, married another woman in a ceremony which, if unsanctioned by the state, was nevertheless as formal a rite as any I’ve attended. My patient wore a white gown, her spouse a tuxedo.

  After a few years they parted company, without having to undergo the legal rigors of a divorce. My patient began living as a man, and eventually took hormone treatments and counseling and underwent sex-change surgery. And so, quite unbeknownst to her, did her former marriage partner. They are now pals, working out at the gym together, going to ball games together, and looking for nice feminine girls to hook up with and marry.

  Infinite variety...

  But, entertaining as their saga may be, I wouldn’t call it lust. Lust is desire raised to a level that prompts unacceptable behavior—how’s that for a definition? And I can think of no clearer example of that than a fellow I’ll call Gregory Dekker.

  Dekker was a serial rapist. That’s spelled with an S, not a C, lest you imagine some lunatic having it off with a bowl of Cream of Wheat, or working his way one by one through a box of Cheerios. His sexual desire was strong, though probably not abnormally so, and he satisfied it in one of two ways—by rape or by masturbation. And, when he masturbated, the images in his mind were rape fantasies.

  Rape, we are often assured, is not truly sexual in nature. Rape is a violent expression of hostility toward women, and has nothing at all to do with desire. The rapist is wielding his phallus as a weapon—a sword, a club, a gun that fires seminal bullets. He is getting even with his mother for real or imagined abuse.

  What crap.

  Oh, surely hostility may play a part in his makeup. And surely there are some rapists who are acting out their primal dramas. But, if the chief aim of the act is to inflict pain and damage, why choose such an uncertain weapon? Why reach for a gun so apt to jam or misfire?

  Rape, you see, requires an erect penis. And a successful rape culminates in orgasm and ejaculation. And who would imagine that all of this takes place in the absence of sexual desire?

  Rape, I submit, is often nothing more or less than the sexual activity of a sociopath, a man lacking conscience who, as he might tell you, quite sensibly seeks to satisfy himself sexually without having to resort to candy or flowers, sweet words and false promises. He doesn’t have to take his chosen partner to dinner or a movie, doesn’t have to feign interest in her conversation, doesn’t even have to tell her she looks nice. Why, he proves she looks good to him, good enough to throw down and ravish. Isn’t that compliment enough?

  I’ve no clear idea what makes a person grow up sociopathic. Is it in the genes? The upbringing? I don’t have the answer. Nor, in fact, do I know much about Gregory Dekker in particular. He was never a patient of mine.

  Susan Trenholme was, however.

  She was a remarkably ordinary young woman, neither beautiful nor plain. Her hair was light brown, not quite blond, and her figure was womanly, and fuller than she’d have preferred; she was always trying new diets and over-the-counter appetite suppressants, all in an effort to lose five pounds over and over again. She was, I suppose, no more neurotic in this area than most young women; if they were as obsessed about their height, they’d all put on weighted boots and suspend themselves from the ceiling.

  Susan met a young man in college and lived with him for two years. They drifted apart, and she was twenty-six years old and living alone when Gregory Dekker caught up with her in the parking lot of her apartment complex, knocked her to the ground, fell on her, and told her not to struggle or make a sound or he’d kill her.

  Looking into his eyes, she knew he was serious. And she became convinced that, whether she cried out or remained silent, whether she struggled or acquiesced, her fate was sealed. He would kill her anyway once he’d had his pleasure with her.

  In fact she had grounds for this assessment, beyond what she was able to read in his eyes. A rapist whose description matched her assailant had committed a string of rapes in the area within the past several months, and had left his two most recent victims for dead; one recovered, one was dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. Unlike the monster in your story, Soldier, Gregory Dekker was not given to lust-murder; he killed only to avoid being caught.

  And he would have been easy to pick out of a lineup. If Susan Trenholme looked ordinary, Gregory Dekker surely did not. Whatever the cause—a drunken obstetrician misusing his forceps, a mother who dropped him on his face in infancy—Dekker was an heroically ugly young man. His schoolmates, perhaps inevitably, called him Frankenstein, and they had reason. Extensive facial and dental surgery would have helped, no doubt, but his parents couldn’t have afforded it, if they even thought of it.

  Dekker probably assumed he could never have a woman other than by force. He was almost certainly wrong in that assessment. Some women find ugly men particularly attractive, and others respond to qualities other than appearance. I knew one woman, for example, who held that there was no such thing as an ugly millionaire.

  Well, Dekker was no millionaire, nor did he have other attractive qualities, so perhaps rape was a sound choice for him. In any event, it worked. When he wanted a woman, he took her. Sometimes this happened in the course of his work, which was burglary; he broke into homes and offices, grabbed cash or something readily converted thereto, and fled. If there was a woman on the premises, and if he liked her looks, he would take her as automatically as he would take her jewelry.

  In Susan’s case, he saw her at a supermarket, followed her to her car, then tailed her in his car and assaulted her, as I’ve said, in her parking lot. And would very likely have left her there, dead or dying, if she hadn’t taken action.

  She didn’t resist, didn’t cry out. On the contrary, she did everything she could to make things easier for him, and, after he had entered her, she wriggled pleasurably beneath him and began uttering little moans and yelps of pleasure.

  And she proceeded to do what countless of her sisters have done, not on the gritty pavement of a parking lot but in the sweet embrace of the marriage bed. To wit, she faked an orgasm.

  It must have surprised the daylights out of her partner. I don’t know what sort of fantasy life Gregory Dekker may have led, but he wouldn’t have been the first rapist to persuade himself that a potential victim actually longed for his embrace, that a woman taken initially by force might be rendered passionate by his lovemaking, and might enjoy
it as much as he did. None had shown any sign of enjoying his attentions in the past, but who was to say that his luck might not change?

  If he’d entertained such fancies, he must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Because here was this creature, moaning and twisting in his arms, and ultimately wrapping her legs around him and crying out Yes! and telling him, as he lay exhausted in her arms, what a great lover he was and how she’d always dreamed of a man like him and a moment like this.

  Did it enter his mind that she was putting on an act? Even if he believed her, wouldn’t it be safer in the long run to bash her head in or break her neck?

  He may have thought so, but she tried not to give him time for thought. She kept cooing at him, telling him how wonderful he was, talking about the extent of her excitement and satisfaction, running a loving hand over his distorted features, raising her head to kiss his misshapen mouth.

  And then, as if unable to help herself, she fell upon him and behaved, well, like an impressionable White House intern.

  By the time she was finished, she had effectively saved her life. Dekker believed what she wanted him to believe—that he’d excited and satisfied her and left her begging for more. And beg she did, wanting to know if she would see him again, if they could do this with some frequency. And wouldn’t it be even more wonderful in a bedroom, with the lights lowered and soft music playing, and the comfort of a mattress and clean cotton sheets?

  They made a date for the following night. He was to come to her apartment at nine. He got there at eight and rang her bell at ten, confident by then that she hadn’t set up a police ambush. She met him with a drink in hand and soft music playing, telling him truthfully enough that she’d been worried he wasn’t going to come.

  He made an excuse, but later, at the evening’s end, he told her how he’d staked out her building to see if any cops showed. “Just give me a minute,” he told her, “and I’ll hook your phone lines up again. I pulled them before I came in, in case you were planning to make a call.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she said.

  “Well, I know that now,” he said. “But I had to be sure.”

  Before he left she made him a cup of cocoa. After he left she stood at the sink, rinsing the cup, and pondering the curious situation she was in. Her rapist was her lover, and she was fixing cocoa for him.

  He saw her the next night, and the night after that. When he came over the following day he had a sheepish expression on his face. She wanted to ask him what was the matter, but she waited, and he got around to it on his own.

  “I may not be much good to you tonight,” he said. “On account of what came up this afternoon.”

  “Oh?”

  He was working, he said, prowling apartments, seeing what he could pick up, and this woman walked right in on him. “Last thing I wanted,” he said, “but there she was, you know?” And he got this little-boy smirk on his face.

  She let her excitement show in her face. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Well, I did her,” he said.

  “Tell me!”

  “What, you want the gory details? You know something, Susie? You’re as bad as I am. What I did, I was behind the bedroom door, you know, waiting for her, and she walks through and bingo, I got one hand over her mouth and the other grabbing her tits. Little tits, way smaller than yours, but they were nice.”

  The room was dark, the curtains drawn, and the woman never got a look at his face. “So I didn’t have to, you know, do her.”

  “Kill her.”

  “Like you have to do if they get a good look at you. But it was dark, and I got some tape over her eyes before they got used to the dark. So she never saw my face and she never saw my dick, so what’s she gonna tell them? What it felt like?” He laughed, and she laughed with him. “There’s guys who get a kick out of, you know, finishing ’em off. Personally, I think that’s sick. Waste of good pussy, you know?”

  “But sometimes you don’t have a choice,” she said.

  “That’s it exactly. Sometimes you don’t have a choice. And if I got to do it, well, it doesn’t bother me. You do what you gotta do. Anyway, who told her to come home in the middle of the goddamn afternoon? She’s supposed to be working, so what’s she doing at home?”

  “She deserved it,” she said.

  “Probably half-wanted it,” he said. “Like you the first time. Except this one wasn’t like you, she was crying and making a fuss. Nice, though.” He chucked her under the chin. “When I was done with her,” he said, “I thought, oh shit, I’m not gonna be much good to Susie. She finds out, she’s gonna be pissed.”

  “I’m not, though. It’s exciting. Tell me what you did.”

  The report included anal intercourse, and she pouted when he told her. “We never tried that,” she said.

  “Well, most women don’t like it.”

  “I’m not most women,” she said. “Oh, what have we here? It looks as though you’re going to be able to do something after all. My goodness!”

  He left finally, after downing a cup of cocoa to soothe his stomach. His stomach had been bothering him lately, and he agreed that the cocoa would probably help.

  Two nights later, she told him how it excited her to think of him raping another woman. “I only wish I could have been there,” she said.

  “To watch?”

  She nodded, moistened her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “Maybe help,” she added.

  “Help?”

  “I could hold her hands,” she said. “Or...”

  “Or what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe do stuff.”

  “Like fool around with her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Like how?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe, you know, touch her. Do things to her.”

  “You ever been with a woman?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Well,” she said, “if she couldn’t do anything, you know. Like if she was tied up? And I was in control?”

  “You are one crazy bitch,” he said.

  “Well.”

  “Man,” he said, “now you got me going. Maybe we could, you know, pick somebody out, follow her home. Or if I was working and I found somebody, like, I could call you. Or...”

  She had a better idea. There was this woman she knew, a former coworker. A honey blonde, creamy skin, good breasts.

  “You’re hot for her,” he said.

  The woman was attractive, she allowed. And she knew how they could decoy the woman to a motel, where he could have a room booked. And they’d be waiting for her, and when she came in...

  He helped her plan it out. “One thing,” he said. “This broad knows you. And she’ll know who lured her to the place, and anyway she’ll see you when we do her, she’ll see both of us. Unless you’re telling me she’s gonna like it?”

  “No,” she said. “She’s not going to like it.”

  “Well then,” he said. “You got to realize what’s gonna have to happen when we’re done. When the party’s over, she ain’t gonna turn into a pumpkin.”

  “I know.”

  “What I mean, I’ll have to do her.”

  “We’ll both do her.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t mean do her like have sex with her. I mean do her so she’s done. Finish her, is what I’m saying.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Maybe I’ll help,” she said.

  A few days later they were driving around, and she pointed out the woman she had described. He was excited and wanted to take their victim immediately, decoy her into the car, take her out into the woods and leave her there when they were finished. “It’s better if we let her come to us,” she insisted. “We set a trap and she walks right into it. And we can take our time, and do everything we want.”

  “Right now’s when I’m horny,” he said.

  She grinned. “
I can take care of that,” she said.

  On the appointed evening, he was waiting at the motel room when she arrived. “We’ve got half an hour before she gets here,” she said. “Did I tell you she’s selling real estate now? She thinks we’re a nice sweet couple, we want her to show us some houses. Well, we’re not that sweet, and we’ll be showing her more than she shows us. Honey, are you as excited as I am?”

  “Take a look.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “I can’t wait to see that going in and out of her.” They talked some about what they would do to the blonde, and then she said, “Oh, before I forget,” and took a small unlabeled bottle from her purse. “For your stomach,” she said. “Is it still bothering you?”

  “Off and on. It’s worse at night.”

  “‘Intermittent pain, worse in the evening,’” she said. “I have this herbal doctor, I started to tell him about it and he was finishing my sentences for me. If you drink this it should cure it completely.”

  “What is it?”

  “A mixture of Chinese herbs, and it doesn’t taste great. But if you can get it down your troubles are over.”

  He took the bottle from her. “How much are you supposed to take?”

  “All of it, if you can.”

  He uncapped the bottle, shrugged, tipped it up and drained it. His face twisted. “Jesus, that’s terrible,” he said. “Anything tastes that bad, it must be great for you.”

  “He said it tasted pretty bad.”

  “Well, he got that right.”

  “And at first it may make you feel worse,” she said. “That’s a sign that it’s working. But after fifteen minutes you should feel great, so by the time our little blond friend gets here...”

  “She’s not so little. Pretty big in the tits department.”

  “Well, you’ll be ready for her.”

  “I’m ready for her right now,” he said. “Oh, shit.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I think this shit is working, that’s all.” He clutched his middle. “Oh, shit, that’s pretty bad. What’d you say it had in it? Chinese herbs?”