Exit Strategy

by Charlton Pettus

  “Do you trust me?” he said.

  “I trust you.”

  He went to the foot of the bed and pulled off the boots. He put them side by side in the closet, white socks hanging out. Her toes tasted briny, like olives, and she clenched them in his mouth but didn’t pull away. He pulled the skirt off by the hem. She wore nothing underneath. She was tidy, nearly hairless. Recently waxed, he thought. He could see, too, that she was aroused. He ran the backs of his fingertips up the front of her thighs. Her eyes closed and she arched her back slightly, pushing herself onto his hand as it reached the top but he pulled back and stepped away.

  She pouted and let out a little whimper. Playful. He crossed to the far closet and came out with a black duffel bag.

  “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, her hips twisting, arms splayed over her head, eyes fixed on him. He put the bag down on the floor and she heard a heavy zipper, then he stood up with what looked like a stainless-steel curtain rod with leather cuffs for finials. He cuffed one ankle and again looked to her for permission before attaching the other. She blinked her assent. He tightened the second cuff, then pressed a small spring-loaded catch on the rod and spread it, forcing her legs farther and farther apart until, satisfied with the geometry, he released the catch with a solid click. He grabbed the bar and tugged down, stretching her arms and pulling on her shoulders. She gave a guttural groan. He smiled and crawled beside her on all fours and tasted, smelled and bit his way around her body. She twisted her head to kiss him but he slapped her hard, leaving an angry red mark on her cheek. She didn’t turn away but her eyes took on a stony hardness and her lip tensed.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you.” Her voice was thick and her breathing quicker and shallow. Alex took a dull metal briefcase out of the duffel and opened it on the bed. She couldn’t see what was inside; the lid of the case blocked her view. He studied the contents for a moment before making his selection. She heard something slide, then click into place. Alex took the object from the case with him and plugged it in next to the bed before laying it gently on the floor. He crossed to the window and pulled the heavy drapes. Then he hit the light switch and the room became totally dark. She heard his steps as he crossed the room, brisk and sure.

  There was a dull click and an almost-neon purple glow illuminated the side of the bed. She turned her head. She saw his face, still impassive, lit by the glow coming off the mushroom-shaped tip of the object Alex held in his hand. It looked like a big brown electric toothbrush except the brush part was glass, glowing violet and flared at the top. It made a low surly buzzing sound, like an old record player before the music starts. He moved it closer to her body and she heard the buzzing change as it got closer. Another hum came on top of the first and rose in pitch as it neared her skin. As he held it just over her breast all the tiny hairs stood straight up. She felt a tingle on her skin. Then he lowered the wand and a spark jumped from the tip to her skin. She cried out and looked at him with fear for the first time. His eyes were steady and he allowed a trace of a smile. She kept her eyes on his as he played the wand around her nipple. The little sparks were continuous now and not so much painful as intensely effervescent. “Champagne,” she said, her eyes swimming shut as he traced his way down her stomach.

  She smelled ozone as if a lightning storm had just passed. Alex wrapped his hand around the glowing end of the wand. She thought he’d be shocked but he wasn’t. He adjusted something on the handle and the humming got higher in pitch as he reached his left index finger to her lips. She raised her head to kiss it but when her lips got close a spark arced from his finger and shocked her hard.

  Whatever part of his body came near hers brought the current now. The tips of his fingers snapped and burned her; his tongue gave a softer, tingling sensation except when it brushed against her sex with an overpowering jolt as painful as it was pleasurable. He constantly adjusted the intensity of the instrument, raising the intensity gradually until she cried out, then backing it off to a tingling tease before building up again. She lost track of the time, yearning for and dreading each new touch.

  He had his mouth on her, gradually raising the voltage. Her fingers convulsively flexed as her knees shook, fighting the restraints. It hurt. She was sobbing, words in Polish he couldn’t understand. The pitch of the machine grew higher and more insistent. Her sobs came in a constant panting rhythm. She smelled ozone and sweat bitter with fear. Suddenly he pulled away. She hung on the precipice, her eyes pleading with his. He went to the case and took out a large silo-shaped dildo of black rubber with gleaming metal contacts at the head and along the base, and as he attached it to the power supply, he said gently, “Do you trust me?”

  Her fingers still clutching, eyes closed, tears trickling down her mascara-streaked face, she managed to say, in no more than a whisper with a voice cracking and dry, “I trust you.”

  38

  STRANGE ACTIONS AT A DISTANCE

  “Shit,” Jordan said. He slammed the laptop and shoved it in his knapsack with the dirty clothes he had spread out in the pod to air out. His chest felt like someone was squeezing him hard and his pulse thudded in his ears. His mouth had gone sour. He scrabbled backward out of the capsule, dragging the bag. Suddenly strong hands grabbed him and jerked him out. His head slammed against the edge of the opening, filling his eyes momentarily with a bright yellow light. He had bitten down and tasted blood but felt no pain either from his tongue or the golf ball budding on the back of his head. The knapsack was ripped away and his head was slammed against the wall.

  “That won’t be necessary, Dennis” came from behind him in a familiar, gentle, bemused voice. The hands let him go. Slowly Jordan turned around. His cheek still stung where it had pressed against the wall. Dennis stood a couple of steps away, his bulk filling the hallway, the knapsack still swinging in his hand. At the end of the hall on the other side Manny leaned against an open capsule, picking at his teeth with a grubby fingernail.

  “I’m sorry about that, Jordan,” Sam said. He was sitting on the edge of the capsule opening on the lower level across from Jordan’s. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

  Outside Sam led the way and Dennis and Manny trailed several yards behind. “This hasn’t worked out entirely, has it?” Sam looked at him with an easy smile. Jordan didn’t say anything; his mind was racing a dozen directions at once but couldn’t seem to fix on any one thought. “You know,” Sam went on, “usually the change of venue works for people. It makes the idea of starting over more...I don’t know...more reasonable.” He raised his eyebrows as though it were a question.

  “Not so much for you. I’ve thought about it a bit and my theory is that it’s because you had some ambivalence about leaving your past behind. As you can imagine that is not generally the case with our clients.” Here he gave Jordan a knowing smile. “In any case, that ambivalence has made it more difficult, no?”

  Jordan tried to read the expression but Sam was inscrutable.

  “Yes. We know about the Instagram account. And the unfortunate events of the other evening.”

  Blood hammered in his ears.

  “But don’t worry. As you know I have seen Dr. Parrish and the incident seems to have passed without undue notice.”

  “You mean...” He didn’t dare say it, even hope it.

  “I mean, she seems unaffected. I got the impression she’s not much of a social media person. There seemed to be no need to take any kind of, shall we say, corrective measures.”

  They walked in silence for a minute. Sam wasn’t going to hurt his family. That was as much as Jordan could understand. He felt the panic fade away into a dull distant toothache of simple fear. He wrinkled up his nose as they walked over a subway grate.

  Sam arched an eyebrow.

  “How do you stand it?” Jordan asked. “It’s like rotting fish over raw sewage.”

  Sam smiled. “
Honestly, I never noticed. I’m anosmic.” Jordan looked at him blankly.

  “No sense of smell. Silver lining, I guess.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  Sam smiled again. “We’re not going to do anything. We’re going to move you somewhere more pleasant, somewhere I think you’ll be much happier—at least, I hope so.” They had arrived at a tan Toyota sedan. Sam opened the front passenger door. Jordan got in as Manny and Dennis squeezed into the back. Sam drove effortlessly through the chaotic Tokyo afternoon traffic, eventually merging onto the Keiyo Toll Road toward Narita.

  39

  DNA THEN

  Ok, DNA then. I can have Simon run it.

  maybe.

  They’d still have it right?

  i would think so. let me ask my guy.

  I can call the police. He was my husband.

  no! don’t call police. if they reopen the case it will be a mess. insurance company will freeze everything, may fuck up pfizer deal. all bad. copy?

  Copy.

  for real ok? i promise i’ll get something. my guy is high up.

  Ok thank you

  40

  22 RUE BONAPARTE

  Jordan looked up: 22 rue Bonaparte had a simple facade, pale gray stone with minimal ornamentation save the pairs of tall windows on each floor. Each had faded white shutters and a small wrought-iron railing on the outside. One window on the second floor was slightly open, revealing long heavy curtains that luffed gently in the breeze. Dennis was struggling with the key that opened the heavy black wooden outer door. He cursed under his breath, and then, with a creak, the lock surrendered and the door swung in. They entered a dim foyer with two narrow staircases on the right and a heavy oak door on the left. Dennis led the way up the far staircase, carrying the larger of Jordan’s two bags. Two flights up he used the same key to open the door to the apartment.

  Jordan blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. The ceilings were high with ornate rosettes anchoring the light fixtures and rococo moldings around the borders. The furnishings were spare but tasteful. The living room had a sleek modern white sofa broken up by a pair of Jonathan Adler pillows with swirling designs in vivid green and orange. A massive chrome lamp arched over the back of the couch, casting a warm pool of light on a glass bowl filled with smooth black stones and a red plastic Pernod ashtray on the coffee table, a maple Louis XV with tiger-stripe figuring. A pair of black armchairs and a bookcase against the opposite wall completed the room.

  “I told you it was nice,” Sam said, crossing to the windows. His footsteps echoed in the open space. He flung open the heavy curtains, which pooled onto the floor, and the daylight flooded in. “One of our first clients bought this place for a girl he was seeing, beautiful girl. It turned out she was screwing some young writer when he wasn’t around. It got messy. Very unpleasant. Anyway, it’s been empty since. Lovely neighborhood, though. Les Deux Magots is just around the corner.”

  Sam opened the windows. They swung in and a rush of cold air stirred the pages of the old fashion magazines on the coffee table. There was a muffled ring and Sam dug out his phone. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he said. “Why don’t you put your bag in the bedroom and give yourself the short tour? I won’t be a minute.” He gestured with his chin at the French doors and answered the call.

  Jordan went into the bedroom and threw his knapsack on the bed while Dennis sat on the sofa and began idly flipping through magazines. The bedroom was decorated as minimally as the living room. The bed was covered in a simple white comforter and faced an antique armoire.

  There was a small writing desk and a table with a flat-screen TV and a telephone. On the wall was a framed poster for the Luc Besson film Le Grand Bleu and a photograph of a laughing Josephine Baker with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other. A doorway opened to a bathroom with an old claw-foot tub and a pyramid of stacked white towels. Jordan crossed back through the living room and the connected dining room with its farmhouse table and orange-and-red globed chandelier, to the kitchen. It was small but efficient, tiled entirely in black and white squares. He heard Sam approach like a nurse on her ward.

  “You should be comfortable here for a while, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Y-yeah, it’s fine,” he stammered. “I mean, it’s certainly better.”

  “You speak any French, Jordan?”

  “No, not really, little grade school stuff. I can count to twenty, I think.”

  “Don’t worry about it. They all speak English. They’ll pretend they don’t just to be shits but they do. Especially around here. Saint-Germain is pretty high-end. All the shops cater to rich tourists. You’ll be fine.”

  “How long am I here for?”

  Sam looked surprised by the question. “Up to you, really. If it works out, indefinitely. You can have a good life here, Jordan.” He pulled out one of the dining room chairs and sat down, motioning for Jordan to join him.

  “Dennis, would you see if there’s any wine in the fridge? Thank you.” Dennis heaved himself up with a grunt.

  “Look,” Sam said, spreading his hands on the table and affecting to study his cuticles, “this is new for me, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a client who didn’t want to stay lost before. It presents some challenges. I’ve decided to skip ahead a bit. We’re going to cut right to the point where I turn over access to some of your money and you do what you want.”

  “What money?” Jordan said.

  “Your company insured you for a great deal, Jordan. You were their primary asset. That payout has allowed them to carry on in your absence. If it were to be suspected that your demise was suspicious or, God forbid, fraudulent, they would find themselves in a very compromised position indeed.”

  Jordan studied him like a venomous spider he had just recognized by its distinctive markings.

  “Fortunately, they were sensible enough to invest part of their windfall with us to ensure that never happened.”

  “Blackmail,” Jordan said.

  “I prefer to think of it as an insurance policy on their insurance policy. Risk mitigation,” Sam said, looking up as Dennis placed two glasses of white wine on the table. Sam raised one and silently toasted Jordan as Dennis sulkily returned to the sofa.

  “We’re going to back off. No cameras in here, long leash. I’m trusting you. I’m trusting that you understand and accept my one absolute ironclad condition—Jordan Parrish is dead. That means your past has to remain in your past. It has to be this way. You do understand that, right?” Jordan nodded as the cool Chardonnay slipped down. Definitely French, steely compared to the oaky Californians Stephanie liked.

  “Excellent. Then you are free to live here, or anywhere you like in France for that matter, with no restrictions. In the due course of time, who knows, you may find love again, you may even remarry. You never know how life turns out.”

  “What about my family?” Jordan said.

  “I will keep an eye on them. They will be taken care of. For you they cannot exist. There will be no repeats.” Sam looked at him and Jordan saw that subject was closed.

  He nodded.

  “One more thing,” Sam said, “we are going to have to tag you. It’s not terribly pleasant but it’s the price of freedom. It keeps us apprised of your whereabouts without having to constantly intrude on your privacy.” He nodded to Dennis, who quickly crossed to Jordan’s other side.

  “There may be some discomfort but there won’t be any pain as long as you cooperate,” Sam said as Dennis handed him a black zippered nylon pouch about the size of a sandwich. He unzipped it and laid it on the table. “Remove your shirt, please.”

  Jordan’s vision tunneled; everything seemed to be happening very fast and his head felt fuzzy. He looked at the empty wineglass.

  “Sorry,” Sam said with a little shrug.

  Dennis pulled Jor
dan’s shirt over his head and hung it over the back of the chair. Sam had a square of gauze stained a rusty brown, which he wiped around Jordan’s right chest and shoulder, staining the skin. Then he took a long thin needle from the pouch and threaded it onto a syringe. From a vial he drew a good amount of a clear liquid and squirted a little out the tip. Jordan smelled a familiar hospital smell that made his already swimming head even worse. He wanted to get up and run or at least put up a struggle but his body wasn’t responding. He felt like he was trapped behind thick glass, watching, unable to resist.

  Dennis pinioned Jordan’s forearm to the arm of the chair as Sam brought the needle to a little hollow just below the end of the clavicle at Jordan’s right shoulder. “Probably best if you don’t look,” he said as he firmly pressed the needle through the skin. There was a momentary sharp pinch, then he felt the smooth steel pass through the soft tissue and suddenly his right middle finger started convulsively twitching as if it were flicking a switch. Sam gently shifted the angle of the needle, and first Jordan’s index finger, then his thumb, started to jump with each probing twist of the needle’s tip. A muscle in his forearm started to convulsively bunch and release then, and Sam made a small sound of irritation and repositioned the needle again. Finally when Jordan’s first two fingers clenched together in a palsied spasm, Sam seemed satisfied and pushed in the plunger. Jordan felt an unpleasant fullness as the syringe emptied; it made his lower back tighten and arch as his head twisted to one side and he groaned involuntarily.