by Lisa Unger
“Where did you get that?”
“I made Craig turn it over to me, even though he didn’t want to. You shouldn’t encourage him to hide things from me, Jeff.”
Lydia felt a stab of betrayal as she looked over and recognized the DVD. She wondered if Craig had told Jacob everything. But then she wondered why it should matter. They were supposed to be able to trust Jacob. He was supposed to be on their team. She looked over at him and noticed a tremor in his hand. Why does he feel like the enemy all of a sudden? she wondered.
“Did you watch it?” she asked him.
“Yes, I did. Though I wish to God I hadn’t.”
“There’s a little girl missing, Jacob. Women are dying, being murdered for someone’s sexual pleasure. Human beings are being trafficked, sold into slavery. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Lydia. I understand that. It’s been that way since the beginning of time.”
She shook her head, as if to help his words sink in while shaking them off at the same time. “What are you talking about?”
“There has always been a master class. Men whose money and power allow them to buy and sell other, less powerful human beings to fill their needs. Whether the need is to build pyramids or tend cotton fields or satisfy their sexual urges, it really doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. It’s always been this way. It’s just generally better hidden than this, especially these days, with the media and the culture of political correctness being what it is.”
He opened the case and took out the DVD while Jeffrey and Lydia looked at him, incredulous. He snapped it in two and threw the pieces out the window. A horn honked in protest of his littering.
“You can’t stop it any more than you could single-handedly stop the drug trade. And if you try, you’ll both be destroyed, and this firm will be destroyed along with you. I can’t allow that. It means too much to me. You,” he said, turning to Jeffrey, “mean too much to me.”
There was silence for a moment as Jeffrey looked at Jacob’s face in the dim light. He remembered clearly the days when he had loved Jacob, when they had been friends who trusted each other and counted on each other. The man sitting across from him had somehow become a stranger. Jeffrey realized that the only feeling he had in his heart for his college friend was indifference, and a smattering of distrust. He couldn’t say when this had happened or why, but he suspected that his feelings for Jacob had begun to erode a night long ago in a dark New York City hotel room.
“I remember that night,” said Jeffrey.
“What night?”
“In New York. The George Hewlett case.”
Jacob paused a second, taking a breath before speaking. “I was able to stop you from destroying yourself then, Jeffrey. Over a homeless man, the ultimate failure of society, you would have ruined us all.”
“Oh my God, Jacob,” said Jeffrey sadly. “Who are you?”
The hand still shook, Lydia noticed. And Jacob lowered his eyes in what looked like shame.
“What are you guys talking about?”
“The story I told you in Miami, about George Hewlett. There was a little more to it.” Jeff kept his eyes on Jacob as he spoke. “I went back to my hotel—you remember I was still stationed in D.C. at the time—after my meeting with Sarah. When I got there, the door was ajar. Jacob was there. It was so weird; he was just sitting there in the dark, like we were in some kind of bad spy movie. I said, ‘Jake, what the fuck are you doing, man? You scared the shit out of me.’ ”
Jeff paused for a second, looking at Lydia. “I can’t believe I never told you this. It’s like I put it out of my mind.”
“Anyway, Jacob says, ‘Why did you do that, Jeff?’ And he was scared, but a little angry, too. ‘It’s one thing for you to be a cowboy. But I have a wife and kids, man. Did you think about that? Do you have any idea what you’re fucking with by doing what you just did?’ I got really pissed, told him I couldn’t believe his career was more important to him than the fact that an innocent man was probably going to get the death penalty for a crime he didn’t commit. And he said, ‘Not our careers, man. Our lives. These are people you do not fuck with. Don’t you understand that?’ And I’ll never forget what he said, next. ‘That homeless guy, his life was already wasted. You, me, my wife and unborn baby, our lives still mean something. I saved your ass tonight, Jeff. I won’t be able to save it again if you don’t drop this thing.’ And then he left. I called after him, but he just turned around and gave me this sad shake of his head.
“I didn’t know what to think at first when he left. It kind of half-felt like a joke. I tried to forget about it, convince myself that he was just being paranoid. I turned on the lights and television, made myself a drink from the minibar. But I started wondering how he knew where I had gone and what I had done. It’s not as though he knew the woman I was with, so even if he was tailing me, it would have been hard for him to get close enough to me to hear without my recognizing him. Then I started to feel paranoid.
“But like I said, the next day it all went away.”
Lydia looked at Jacob and saw someone she wasn’t sure of. She had always known that Jacob disliked her, but she never imagined him to be anything but loyal to Jeffrey. He looked small and mean when she looked into his eyes.
“It wasn’t so cloak-and-dagger as that, Jeff. I was just worried about losing our jobs,” Jacob said with an unconvincing laugh.
“Of course. It was all in my imagination,” said Jeff, looking out the window. Lydia couldn’t read his expression.
“And what about Tatiana Quinn, Jacob?” asked Lydia. “Daughter of the rich and powerful Nathan Quinn. How much is her life worth? Is finding her going to ruin us all?”
“Tatiana is dead, Lydia.”
The words felt like a punch in the stomach, and Lydia flinched.
“No, she isn’t,” she said reflexively.
“Yes, Lydia. She is. They found her body tonight. During the raid of a crack den on Tenth Street, they found her in a closet. Beaten beyond recognition, violated. One of the cops recognized her necklace from the description of what she’d worn when she ran away. The medical examiner identified her by the dental records they had on file. One of the dealers they picked up said she showed up a couple of weeks ago, had been prostituting herself for crack.”
She waited for a wave of grief, but a feeling of disbelief lingered instead. A stubborn faith that Tatiana was still alive wrapped itself around Lydia’s heart. But she nodded her head, pretending to accept the news, and stared out the window. Jeffrey placed a hand on her leg.
“How did you find out about it?” Jeffrey asked.
“Bad news travels fast.”
“I want to see the body,” said Lydia.
“She’s already on her way back to Miami.”
“That’s impossible. The red tape alone would hold that up for days.”
“The sea of red tape parts for the likes of Nathan Quinn,” he said, echoing what Craig had said to her last night.
“That’s right,” she said with bitter sarcasm, “the master class.”
They all sat in silence for what seemed like forever. Lydia rolled down the window a crack, letting in the whisper of tires on wet asphalt and a flutter of raindrops. The car pulled off the FDR at Houston Street. A squeegee man accosted the front windshield of the limo at the light, but the driver ignored him. Lydia pulled out a dollar and handed it to him through the window crack. She heard him yell “God bless you” as they moved on slick roads through Alphabet City and then further into the East Village, turning onto Lafayette and then onto Great Jones. The limo idled in front of the building.
“Jeff, let’s go someplace and talk.”
“Not tonight, Jacob. I’ll meet you in the office tomorrow morning at nine. I want to see those books. No excuses.”
“Fine. I was never trying to hide anything from you, man.”
Jeff nodded, looking at him with cool eyes and a sad half smile. The driver opened the door for Lydia, holding an umb
rella over her head, and walked her to the front door. He went back to help Jeffrey with the bags as Lydia opened the door to the elevator vestibule, which, she noticed, needed a coat of paint. Too bad they were heading to Eastern Europe tomorrow to thwart a sex slavery/snuff ring. How are you ever supposed to get anything done around the house? she wondered. If she were a member of the “master class” she wouldn’t have to trouble herself with such worries. She punched their code into the keypad by the elevator and the door opened. She got in and held it as Jeffrey and the chauffeur came in with the bags.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said softly in her ear. She almost believed it.
“She’s not dead, Jeffrey,” she said as they walked into the apartment.
“Lydia …”
“She’s not.”
He didn’t argue with her, knowing that it was pointless.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Jacob?” she asked.
He put a finger to her lip. “No more talking tonight.”
“But—”
He grabbed Lydia and pulled her into him, pressing his mouth to hers. He wanted, needed, to shut everything out but her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and felt herself being lifted a little in his embrace. His lips found the delicate lobe of her ear and moved down to the soft flesh of her neck. “Let’s take a shower,” he whispered in her ear.
“Umm,” she replied, taking his hand and leading him upstairs.
They let the scalding water fill the bathroom with steam as Jeffrey peeled off her clothes. Plush throw rugs protected her bare feet from the cool stone tile floor as she kicked off her boots and let Jeffrey slide her pants down over her hips.
“I forgot about this,” he said, lifting her ripped shirt off over her head and inspecting the cut on her arm.
“It’s fine,” she said, lying. Smiling, she reached to unbuckle his belt, unbutton his jeans. She lifted off his shirt and ran her hands along the soft skin and hard muscle of his chest, pressed her bare skin against his. It was good to think of nothing but the moment, to leave the evil outside the bathroom door and immerse herself in the hot water and in Jeffrey. The water burned and beat down on her skin in a pleasant way as she stepped over the ledge of the Jacuzzi tub. She loved hot, hot showers that left her skin red and tingling. He climbed in beside her and they stood for a second, looking at each other. He pushed her hair back from her eyes and water washed over them. He kissed her with the same desperate passion that he had the first time their lips had touched, and she melted into him, as unable to resist now as she had been back then. She felt him grow hard, and she ached inside. Each time they made love, it felt like they had been together for a lifetime already, it was so intimate, so loving, their knowledge of each other so complete. But every time it was different, too, new levels of pleasure, new shades of emotion. She groaned as he entered her, holding on to her back, pressing her against the tile. She wrapped a leg around him, her arms around his shoulders, her mouth on his neck.
They were only their bodies and their hearts; everything ugly and wrong they had known over the last few days was shady and indistinct behind the steam that filled the bathroom and fogged the mirrors.
Is it possible to love something as much as you hate it? Is it possible to be as turned on by something as you are repulsed by it? Lydia was thinking as Jeffrey rubbed Neosporin into the gash on her arm and then tenderly applied three butterfly bandages. It turned out to be about six inches long, but not as deep as it felt. White stars of pain danced before her eyes as Jeffrey nursed her wound.
“That should help it heal better,” he said, kissing her on the forehead and leaning back on the mahogany headrest of the bed in their Great Jones loft. Their bedroom was lighted by a single white pillar candle, and Chopin intoned mournfully on the Bose CD alarm clock beside their bed, lulling her into an ever-blacker mood. She’d never been happier to see their beautiful duplex, or to climb onto their luxurious four-poster king-size bed, or to wrap herself in the velvet duvet, the pleasure of relief being one decibel away from orgasm. But it was to be a one-night reprieve, and then back into the lion’s den. She lay back and let her tired body become one with the mattress. But when she closed her eyes, visions of the last few days visited her like Harpies shrieking their fury. She shuddered, opened her eyes, and met Jeffrey’s warm gaze. His was the very face of comfort and security. She was constantly amazed that the same person who aroused in her such passion could make her feel so safe and calm, so peaceful with just one glance.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay,” he said for the second time that night, reaching over to shut off the Chopin. “That music is so depressing,” he said.
He got up and walked over to the dresser and blew out the candle there. “Let’s go to bed, okay?”
When he came back, he reached over and turned down the covers on her side of the bed. She scooted over, wearing black cotton panties and a matching camisole. He tucked her in and kissed her on the lips. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
He got in bed beside her, and then there was a fifteen-second wrestling match for sheets, blankets, and comforter, which Lydia won, making Jeffrey snuggle in close to her to remain under the covers. “You’re such a bed hog,” he complained.
“Whatever,” she said, enjoying the warmth of his body. No more than five minutes later, she heard his breathing grow deep and steady. She lay there with her eyes open, wide-awake, staring at the window where the amber glow from the streetlight leaked beneath the blinds, sleep slipping away like water through cupped fingers.
chapter twenty-five
The bruised and bluish body, thin and stiff on the metal gurney, was not his daughter. Did they think he did not know every inch of her, down to her delicate fingertips? The body before him was common and cheap, weak and discarded by life. Tatiana would never look like that—even in death. He closed his eyes and nearly lost consciousness in his relief in the airport cargo hold, where he’d insisted he be shown the body by the medical examiner, who greeted the plane with him. She was still alive. Of course. He had felt her even over the past few hours, during which he had known more fear and grief than he had in all his life. But who had gone to so much trouble to make him think otherwise? Who wanted him to believe that his daughter was dead?
He nodded his head to the medical examiner. “That’s her,” he said, choking.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Quinn, truly sorry for your loss.”
He nodded, barely able to contain his joy, covering his mouth with his hand. He walked, head bent, through the crowd of police officers who had comprised his escort, back to the waiting limousine. His driver opened the door for him, and he climbed into the darkness, sank into the rich black leather, and let his head fall back and his eyes close. He’d come back from New York just hours before he got the call from the NYPD. He’d come back and found Jenna gone.
Tatiana was to have been the jewel in his crown, priceless, glorious, dazzling in her beauty. The first night he saw her, he’d known that she belonged to him. Her father’s princess, dressed in a black velvet shift with patent-leather ballet slippers. She was still a little girl, but the fullness of womanhood was beginning to show itself in her hips and her tiny breasts. Even at thirteen, she was the envy of every woman in the room. He saw it in their stolen glances, in the shadow of self-consciousness that danced across their eyes as they compared their skin, their bodies, the luster in their hair to Tatiana’s. Of course, there was no comparison. She was one of God’s perfect creations.
She was a miniature of her mother, though Jenna’s beauty had begun to fade even then. Jenna had already started to hate Tatiana in that jealous motherly way. But there was a fierce love there, too. He knew they were a package deal. And there was no length to which he would not have gone, no act too low to make them his. He’d proven that. In the end, Jenna and Tatiana had no choice but to come with him to America. They would have been killed if they had remained in Albania. Or worse
… they would have been poor.
Jenna had actually proven herself a suitable mate, uninterested in his personal affairs, unemotional, and possessing a keen business sense. He’d allowed her to keep her interest in American Equities because she proved a valuable liaison when it came to the Albanians. Nathan wanted nothing to do with the ones who didn’t speak English; he couldn’t communicate with them anyway.
And Tatiana grew more stunning every day. It had been easy to turn her head with pretty things and pretty words. Even easier to turn her against Jenna in subtle ways, since an adolescent girl and her mother are natural enemies anyway. Jenna said no; Nathan said yes. Jenna and Tatiana argued; Nathan comforted. They grew closer. Everything was evolving as it was meant to between them. And didn’t she know the power she had over him? Didn’t she know that for her slightest smile, for that sweet, shy glance, he would move the earth for her?
But he didn’t have the kind of control he’d thought he would. The way she threw herself into his arms when he arrived home from work, the way she lounged around in thin pajamas, or in her bikini by the pool … her creamy flesh, her fragrant hair. It was pleasure torture. He’d gotten careless.
Jenna had taken the limo to a charity auction, which he’d declined to attend, giving him an evening alone with Tatiana. He’d rented a movie for them to watch together, and Tatiana made microwave popcorn. She was luminous in a pink T-shirt with a tiny red heart embroidered between her breasts. He could see through her white pajama bottom to her red thong underwear. Her lustrous hair was pulled up into a twist, exposing the delicate skin and graceful lines of her neck. She moved in close to him on the couch and put her head on his lap, balancing the bowl of popcorn on her flat belly. She chattered innocently about something or other going on at school, but he couldn’t hear her because of the blood rushing in his ears. He turned the light off and the movie on. In the darkness, with the light from the television dancing on the walls, he began to stroke her hair. It was an innocent gesture, except that his fingers were on fire, wanting more. He released her hair from the clip and it spilled across his lap. She seemed to move in closer, so he allowed himself to move his hand down over her arm. He did not see or hear a word of the movie in front of them, so full were his senses, so intense the ache in his loins. He was hard as rock, just centimeters from where her head rested on his thigh. He couldn’t stop his hand from touching the exposed flesh of her belly where her T-shirt had ridden up. She didn’t move or jump up or protest, but her whole body stiffened. In a heartbeat, she had gone from total trust and comfort to wariness. He removed his hand. After a moment, she sat up and slid casually to the other end of the couch. He didn’t say a word, did not react in the least, as if it couldn’t matter to him less. But the energy between them had shifted.