Beg Me

by Lisa Lawrence

  But we’re not choosing. And I kinda like being pursued sometimes. Yeah, sure, with the right guy, but I never had a problem telling a guy gently or bluntly to get lost.

  The logic was inverted, bent to fit a shape, rationalizations that you could pick apart. And at the end of the day you can’t explain taste. Or primal desires. I think the girls must have got it into their heads—or been told—that by sharing within the group, there was loyalty to the group. Why would a prince stray if he had variety in the mansion? Or a princess, for that matter? No such thing as promiscuity if you didn’t venture outside.

  Which would be great if desire was logical.

  She sounded like she was reciting stuff that had been fed to her again and again. And I got the sense that it wasn’t relationship fatigue that had led her to the group anyway.

  “So you’re saying you’ve never had an infatuation with just one guy at the temple?”

  “Not one guy, no,” she said cryptically.

  She linked her arm through mine and steered me down an aisle. “I want to look at hats!”

  “Hats?”

  “Hats!” she giggled, and then she pleaded in a mock whine, “Hats? Please? Hats, hats!”

  “Okay, okay!”

  I got another insight into Violet over lunch at a diner. She was looking through a brochure she’d picked up from the planetarium when I said, “I’ve got to ask. What’s all that stuff you’re writing on the blackboard at the house?”

  “Just my work. Nobody ever wants to know about my work.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay,” she relented in a singsong, “but you’ll get bored of it like everybody else, so stop me when you’ve had enough.”

  I wiggled my fingers in my direction: Give.

  “I’m trying to develop my own megastructure concept,” she offered.

  My face went blank.

  Violet leaned forward, grabbed one of the napkins, and started to scribble diagrams. “You’re going to think I’m a real geek—”

  “Too late, darling.”

  She smiled up at me, tried to cover her laughter. “Hey! Listen up. Okay, a megastructure is an artificial construct, and most people, like, know ’em from science-fiction books and movies, but they really do exist as concepts in theoretical physics. You know what a Dyson sphere is?”

  “Nope.”

  Her eyes lit up as she warmed to her favorite subject. Her small hands with their childlike fingers gestured frantically in the air, mapping an outline for me.

  “This is my thing! How do I explain? ’Kay, right. Imagine this, like, huge globe that completely encapsulates the sun and the earth. Well, what would you get? You could use the total energy output of the sun! Think of it. Freeman Dyson proposed that you could have these, um, energy collectors that just orbit around to get the energy. But that’s just one megastructure. There are others that are way cooler, like a Niven ring.”

  “A Niven ring?”

  “Yeah, this science-fiction writer Larry Niven came up with it.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar—probably my brother had read his books. He liked sci-fi. Violet drew what looked like square plates on the napkin.

  “This is so cool! You have a ring that’s about a million miles wide and the diameter of the earth’s orbit, so that’s, what? Six hundred million miles in circumference?”

  I laughed. “If you say so!”

  “Okay. You place it around a star, and it spins to create gravity. You have walls about a thousand miles high to keep in the air.”

  “Wouldn’t this thing be massive?” I asked stupidly.

  “That’s the whole point!” said Violet. “If the world’s overpopulated, on a thing like this, if you could build it, you’d have…”

  She paused, and I watched her scribble down equations I couldn’t even begin to work out. Then she tapped the napkin and said: “You’d have a surface area three million times that of earth. It would take ages to fill that up. Imagine the biospheres you could put on it! But the thing wouldn’t be stable.”

  “Ummm…Why?” I was really out of my league with this discussion.

  “It’s not in inertial orbit,” Violet explained (yeah, right—like I understood this). “It’s rotating around the sun, sure, but the center of mass doesn’t move at all. Gravity, like, pulls an object into a curved path as it attempts to fly off in a straight line, right? But with this thing—” She saw me lost in a fog and erupted in giggles. “Poor Teresa! I warned you, honey.”

  “I’m interested, I am!” I protested. “I wish I could understand it better, that’s all.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, her hand touching my arm. “Like I said, this is my thing. So I’ve been, you know, going over concepts like Niven rings and Alderson disks, trying to come up with my own. My very own megastructure. Gravity’s the main battle.”

  “It is for us all,” I quipped. “Why is Isaac interested in all this?”

  “Oh, he’s been so supportive!” she gushed. “He says this is just like our rediscovery of our lost teachings, the whole thing of, like, how we’re supposed to live together. Isaac says I’m rediscovering our lost sciences—that my work is crucial. He says one day soon, it’ll be the black man who harnesses these great energies and leaves earth behind—because why would we stay? Why should we after so much oppression? All our stolen nations are corrupted and past salvaging.”

  Hoooo, boy.

  “I don’t know science, but it would take trillions to make one of these ring or sphere thingies, wouldn’t it?” I asked gently. “And how would you even build it in space?”

  “That’s just it,” said Violet, without losing an ounce of enthusiasm. “There are technologies people don’t even know because they stay so freakin’ illiterate. I mean, do you ever read about new theories of skyhooks or orbital towers in the news? No. Exactly! I’m not saying we’re going to be around to see the exodus, but Isaac, he looks forward.”

  I gave her a patient diplomatic smile. “What if this isn’t you ‘rediscovering lost science’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those are your equations on the board, right?” I argued. “You’re the one who’s coming up with all this. I know there’s supposed to be nothing new in the world, but it sounds like you don’t give yourself enough credit. Whatever concept you dream up, it’s going to be your own accomplishment.”

  Her shoulders lifted in a self-conscious shrug. “Yeah, guess so. This is boring for you, right?”

  “Not at all! To be perfectly honest, Violet, I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  “Same here,” she said, and lightly touched my arm again. “The other girls are great, you know what I’m saying? But they can get real bitchy when it comes to my work. It’s like, should I be embarrassed because I happen to know this stuff? And there’s no one I can talk to about it, not even the guys. It’s the only thing about the mansion that…” She clapped her thigh and looked away. “I shouldn’t be whining. Complaints erode the center.”

  Complaints erode the center. A mantra to reinforce discipline.

  I hadn’t known her very long, but I needed very little convincing to think she was a dupe in all this. For all her book smarts and genius, she was still nineteen years old. Isaac and Danielle had done quite a number on her. They made her feel special by encouraging her work and attaching a purpose to it for themselves, but they couldn’t prevent the intellectual alienation the girl felt with the others.

  You had the ceremonies, the sex, the great house, but Violet cared about the moon and the stars.

  When you don’t have at least one person to share your interests, you get awfully lonely.

  “So talk to me when you’re bursting with this stuff,” I offered.

  “You can’t help me.”

  “I can listen,” I countered. “No one else is doing that for you.”

  “No,” she admitted. “They don’t.”

  “I’ll even try to read up on the subject. They make a Physics
for Dummies, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, I think they do. We might have to get you something simpler.”

  “Oh, ha-ha. By the way, this does not mean I will ever watch Stargate with you, if you’re one of those.”

  “Please!”

  Half an hour later, I told her I wanted to fetch a bag from my fleabag hotel and say good-bye to a casual acquaintance I’d made, a tourist girl from Holland. I kissed Violet on the cheek in Bloomingdale’s and watched her take an escalator, humming a Rihanna tune.

  I had no intention, of course, of going to any “fleabag” hotel. I was checked in at the famous Chelsea on Jeff Lee’s dime, but I couldn’t let my surveillance tails learn that.

  It took fifteen minutes of effort to shake them off, and I couldn’t make it look like I was deliberately ditching them. Fortunately, when I ran for the bus (didn’t matter where it went), they didn’t have a hope of catching up. Or a clue.

  I made my way back fast to Fifth Avenue, and the New York Public Library. It took combing through old stories in the Post, but I found her in about an hour. The late Kelly Rawlins, dead in a hotel room.

  Definitely Kelly Rawlins, but not the Kelly I met at the mansion.

  Well, well.

  Oliver gaped at me when I breezed into Bindings. I assured him everything was cool, but he reminded me how paranoid they were about him, despite accepting me as “tribute.” No, I wasn’t followed, and, no, they didn’t know I was coming here. Nice to know he cared.

  I got down to the business of explaining about his ex-lover. A girl who had definitely not had her skull bashed in and been left in a bloody hotel bed.

  “When you came back that day, you panicked, didn’t you?” I said, hardly needing to make it a question.

  “Yes. Okay, yeah, I panicked—”

  “You never looked at her closely—you just shot out of there. And when they sent you the pictures, you saw what they wanted you to see.”

  “Oh, my God,” mumbled Oliver, and he had to sit down. “You’re telling me…You’re telling me they faked her death? They got some girl to be Kelly, and she’s—”

  “Oliver,” I cut in. “You’re not getting it. They didn’t fake her death. Don’t you see? They faked her life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That was Kelly Rawlins in that hotel bed. She was a call girl from Queens whose body was a close-enough match. She died never knowing she was a victim of identity theft. The girl you met just called herself Kelly Rawlins for you.”

  “Oh, Jesus…”

  “It was one of the things nagging at me on my return flight,” I explained. “I couldn’t figure out why they would kill her but not you. You could say, okay, a trail leads from you to them. But what’s to keep the cops from poking around in her past too and finding the group? Answer: The real Kelly Rawlins never had this past. She never knew Danielle or Isaac. So her murder scares you off but doesn’t have any suspicious link to the cult.”

  “All the time we spent together,” he was muttering to himself, “everything we did…She was just spying on me for them?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Oliver.”

  “But the bishop symbol—”

  “Think about it. The cops wouldn’t release a detail like that to the press or public. It helps them distinguish any copycats, any nut who phones in claiming he did it. I think Isaac and Danielle counted on its psychological impact when they sent you the photos—to frighten you, confuse you. It worked. And they knew you wouldn’t go to the cops with it. You felt guilty. You felt set up. And you were. So the police are left with this weird clue that means nothing to them.”

  “But why let me live in the first place?” he asked.

  “That bothered me as well. Then I tripped over an expense account in your name attached to the temple’s holding corporation. You’re a victim of identity theft too. Doesn’t matter when, but my bet is Isaac and Danielle got their paws on your wallet sometime when you were back at the mansion. Your credit cards weren’t the goal—they were the means to the end. They used them to authenticate access for any withdrawals from the hidden account. When he needs to, Isaac can walk in claiming to be you and take out thousands of dollars in cold hard cash if he ever needs to split. And he doesn’t even need to do that—he can wire the money to an offshore account.”

  “But why put the money in my name?”

  “You’re the fall guy in case anything happens,” I explained. “Consider who you are. You own a bookshop specializing in African-American titles. To cops these days, that alone can smack of being ‘radical’! You belonged to the princes once, so you’ve got history with them that can be confirmed. You’re a businessman who has some knowledge of incorporating and bank accounts. If the cops or the FBI come looking for the leader, Isaac and Danielle will give them you.”

  “But I left them!” he argued.

  “All the better,” I said. “Now you’re completely out of the loop and don’t know what they’re up to. The cops will follow the money. They couldn’t get ’round the real-estate holdings—they had to put those in Danielle’s name. If they used yours, then the annual taxes would land on your doorstep and tip you off. But this discretionary account…I think they’ve been socking away the money in it for quite a while, but lately things have changed. First with Anna, then you. So Kelly Rawlins became their insurance against you. And they killed her.”

  “I don’t even know what I did to piss them off!”

  “Craig Padmore came to you,” I reminded him. “That was enough. They thought you two were working together. They assumed it because he walked into your store, bought one of your books, and asked you questions.”

  “They killed that poor girl just to scare me away,” croaked Oliver. “And it worked. I’m such a goddamn fool.”

  “Listen. Did you ever talk to ‘Kelly’ about Padmore?”

  He cradled his head in his hands. “Oh, God! I did. It was to reassure her we’d be safe soon. That Isaac would be too busy to worry about us!”

  “Oliver, focus. You couldn’t possibly have known she’d betray you and the real Kelly and Craig would wind up dead. It’s a bloody good thing Craig didn’t confide in you whatever he learned, otherwise I think you’d be dead. They’d have emptied the account, and that would have been it. But they’re greedy. If you’re murdered, that means the expense account can’t stay open. Now, are you sure Padmore didn’t give anything away? Not even a hint?”

  “No…”

  “Oliver, there’s got to be a connection. You told me that Padmore wanted to dig into Isaac’s background. Well, what does it have to do with the Vietnam War besides Isaac lying about a war medal given to his father?”

  “I don’t know, Teresa. Honestly.”

  “You and Isaac are about the same age. Did his dad get killed in Vietnam?”

  He shook his head. “No, I think the guy died in Pittsburgh or something. It’s not like Isaac talked about him much.”

  “Is there any chance Isaac’s father knew Harry Bishop?”

  Oliver looked at me questioningly.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I didn’t tell you this before. When Craig Padmore’s body was discovered, a bishop symbol was drawn on his arm, just like with your father. Craig Padmore was digging into the history of the Vietnam conflict. And the same guy who murdered your dad, Harry Bishop, was a mercenary training South Vietnamese near Da Nang.”

  “Then what’s behind all this?” he demanded, shaking with frustration.

  “I don’t know yet,” I sighed. “There’s got to be a connection. Two wars. Bishop served in both. Maybe he’s still a distraction, just like with Kelly Rawlins and Padmore, but there is a connection somehow with the wars. I don’t see it yet, I just don’t. But I will.”

  10

  I was flipping through a book on the Malinke in the mansion’s library when I saw a framed group shot hanging on the wall. I stood in astonishment for a moment. There was Anna Lee in the back row of the group, wearing a blue cott
on robe just like the one I had on now. Smiling. Happy. Alive. Hard to see how old the shot was, but her ex-boyfriend Craig Padmore was in it too. So was Oliver. There were slightly different hairstyles for a couple of the girls. Danielle was wearing her hair short, and—

  She was right behind me. Didn’t hear her approach.

  “I think that was our second year here,” she remarked.

  I nodded. Big pause. I was trying to bluff through the moment and look like I had just got bored or curious. Mother Superior had got the drop on me with her invisible antennae whirling up and down, looking to figure me out.

  “I like your hair now better,” I finally said.

  “Oh, thank you!” she answered, positively reeking of sincerity. “I do too.”

  “Hey, who’s this?” I asked, pointing to Anna. “I haven’t met her yet.”

  Danielle crossed her arms and sighed. “And you never will. That’s Anna. Sad story. She was pretty screwed up when she came to us, had all kinds of sexual hang-ups. Maybe it was her background, I don’t know. She was from Thailand, and they do every perversion you can think of over there. I think maybe she was abused as a child or something. She’d freak out sometimes and scream at the girls. She even mouthed off once to Isaac! I thought she had to go right then, but Isaac was so compassionate, so patient with her.”

  She tsk-tsked and looked appropriately grieving over the “Thai” girl in the photo.

  “Finally, we had to tell her, look, it’s better you leave. What we didn’t know was that she’d been on and off drugs for years. She must have gone back on them, because they found her dead in an alley. Some dealer had shot her over a buy or something.”