In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance (4 page)

Leroy didn’t know how much time had passed when Hannah got up and poured them more coffee. “Do you know anything about torture, Leroy?” she said as though talking about turning on the news.

Leroy gulped. “Uh, no, ma’am.”

“I know a great deal about torture, both from healing people who have been tortured, and inflicting it myself. It changes people. That is why I rebuked Charles for calling Miss Duane a junkie. She is a junkie, of course, but she is also a human being. And a torture victim. I know what she faces. Do you know what torture does, Leroy?”

“Huh. No, ma’am. Except maybe kill you.”

“Dying is the easy way out. Torture does far worse than kill. Can you imagine being tied up and made available to hundreds of people? Being raped until your life is a succession of ramming thrusts and pain? Being flogged and screaming, or being shocked with a cattle prod in your body’s depths and knowing that no one will ever help you? Learning tricks and ways of pleasing men that revolt you, but will buy another day’s life?

“The mind breaks. Even if the person survives and gets away, it’s not over. What happened repeats itself inside the brain, all the time. Faces leap out of nowhere, and the body shakes with remembered pain. Terror, always. Rage that it happened, that others allowed it to happen. Having known torture, you can never know peace.

“The survivor can look all right for a time, but then the vicious tide rises and she reacts, screaming and fighting for her life.” Hannah grimaced. “That’s what torture does, and that’s what it’s done to Cass Duane.

“I’ve known Cass since she was a child. When I came to California, I saw a disturbed family. Cass was a little girl, ignored by everyone. Her mother was often inebriated and unable to function. I cared for Cass like she was my daughter. I kept her safe. I loved the child the way no one else did. I will get her back, Leroy, and this time she will not be stolen again.”

“No, ma’am.”

“
Shit
!
I got it! I know how to find her.”
Doug jerked erect in his chair.

Leroy and Hannah turned to him.

“I can find her. But what time is it?”

“It’s four p.m.”

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“It’s too early. It’s one in California. They won’t be working yet. They’ll just be getting up. Shit.” He jumped up. “Your guys need to get ready!”

“For what?”

“Do you have the technology to look inside buildings? To get into government files? Like city or county offices?”

“Yes, of course. This is Numenon. We can look inside anything.”

“Get your guys up here and ready for action. When it’s dark in California, I’m going to make some calls. And we’ll be ready.

“This is one reason I work for Will Duane,” Hannah said, typing furiously on her keyboard. “He’s got the technology to do
anything
. Prototypes of inventions that no one’s even heard of.”

She and her operatives had their laptops up on the dining room table. A screen that covered the wall had dropped from the ceiling across from the table. The agents’ computers were hooked up to it. Each laptop’s images circulated on the larger screen. A complicated metal structure like a pyramid about five feet tall was set up by the living room’s large window. Leroy thought it must be an antenna of some sort.

It took them a long time to set it up, and more time to calibrate with their computers. The sun had fallen in the West. It was that dusky in-between time. The time of transitions and miracles.

“We’re ready,” Hannah said.

Doug looked at his watch. “It’s seven here, that means four p.m. in California. Maybe someone will be around. I’ll give it a try.” He went into his bedroom and picked up a secure phone’s receiver.

“Hey, babe! How you been? It’s Doug Saunders, your old compadre. Yeah, been a while.” Doug smiled broadly, leering. “Oh, yeah. I remember those days. I’d love to come by and see you. I never could leave you ladies alone. But I’m in New York, stranded high and dry.” He lowered his voice. “Some poon would go great right now, but I don’t know where to get it.” He listened for a moment, grinning broadly.

“You got it. You know me—I want it top of the line and squeaky-clean. I’m not going to stick my dick someplace where it will rot off …

“If you could give me a couple of addresses in Manhattan, I’d be so grateful. You wouldn’t even believe how grateful I’ll be.” Doug wrote something down. “Ah, thanks, sugar. You are the best. Now you get ready for a present, you hear? It will come in the mail. A nice present just for you.” He dialed another number and went through the same routine.

“We’ve got five addresses.” The minute he’d finished his calls, Doug dropped his drunken, lewd persona and went back into the main part of the condo. He pulled out his laptop, entering the addresses on a map of Manhattan. They appeared on the big wall screen. Most were close by. “Where do you think she is?”

“Wait,” Leroy said. “What did you do? Where did you get those addresses?”

“I called up some old friends in the business and asked for help. Ladies back in California. They know where the best cathouses are here. They’d never tell the cops, but they would tell Doug Saunders, their biggest customer ever, outside Will Duane. Will and I fucked our way through life together for a long time. I was talking to madams in California, Leroy. They spotted me the local, top-of-the-line establishments.”

“I’ve got it,” Hannah said. “I’ll download it and then we’ll get to work.” She turned to her staff. “Keep going. Find the records for the other apartments. This may not be the one.”

Hannah manipulated the file displayed on her screen, focusing and enlarging portions. “Leroy, this is the floor plan of the first of our potential sites. I lifted it off of the building department records. Fortunately, the building is new enough to have digital records. And now I’m going to do this.”

The image on the screen broke into sections. One displayed the floor plan of the apartment the California madam had targeted. Four other areas showed fuzzy views from inside the apartment. Hannah manipulated the images and they became clearer. They were views of rooms taken from inside the flat.

“This is the ultimate spy-ware,” Hannah smiled. “A simple chip inside each Numenon device and we can snoop wherever it ends up. I convinced Mr. Duane to install the chips in all Numenon products. He complained about legality, but now we’ll see how useful the chips are.”

A fat man with a sandwich walked across the screen. “That’s probably his TV picking him up and broadcasting him.” They couldn’t hear what he said, but they could see everything in the room.

“The chip only works if a Numenon device is in a space. If one isn’t in the room, but is in the apartment, we still can see patterns of hot and cold in the other areas.” This wasn’t the apartment where Cass was held. It was big, but there weren’t enough warm bodies in the bedrooms. The screen in the living room showed a sole occupant, the fat, middle-aged man. Whatever Doug’s contact said, this wasn’t the foyer of a house of prostitution.

The operatives pulled down records and floor plans for the other addresses Doug had gotten.

“It’s there,” Leroy pointed to the map. He didn’t need to look at the screen as the floor plan unfolded across it. The apartment was huge by New York standards. The plans showed at least seven bedrooms, but the patterns of warmth showed those had been bisected. The place was crawling with people.

“They must have Numenon products all over. TVs in every room. Probably showing porn,” Hannah said. “Let’s see.” A large screen TV gave them a complete view of the living room. Another big TV on the opposite wall played a video of women doing
everything
. Women caressing their bared breasts. Women kissing each other. Women going down on men, and other women. Women’s butts and thighs. Corsets and straps digging into soft flesh. The video’s pictures intertwined and separated. New women appeared, coupled and left.

In the room, a slender blonde bound tightly in shiny black vinyl walked toward a hallway, an overweight man following her and grabbing at her breasts. Couples sat on sofas and lounges.

“It’s a bordello, all right,” Doug said. “Is it the right one?”

“She’s right here,” Leroy pointed to an area on the floor plan that was slightly paler than the background. It was at the far rear of the apartment.

“How do you know it’s her?” Hannah asked.

“It’s her,” Doug said. “She’s dying. The color of the screen shows there’s almost no warmth.”

“Let’s go!” Leroy cried. “We have to save her!”

“How?” Doug said. “Way back where she is, they’ll kill her before we can get to her. We can’t shoot our way in.” He thought, stroking his chin. Doug smiled radiantly and looked the others. “We have to buy our way in.”

“With what?”

Doug’s lascivious grin came back. “Ourselves. You and I are going to get laid, Leroy, my man.”

4

Capturing the Dragon

H
annah, Doug, Leroy
and five of the operatives huddled in the van near the apartment building. The other two operatives—the driver and a medic—cruised the area slowly in a service truck outfitted as an ambulance. This was a sober, very upscale, residential neighborhood, the last place you’d expect a bordello. Leroy comprehended immediately how rich their target must be and how much its management must pay the cops to stay away. And come fast, if they needed them.

He knew people who had been to New York City and came back to the reservation saying, “It’s great! Everything’s there! It’s so cool.” They loved it. It seemed like death to him, all moving so fast, nothing but huge buildings and machines. No life. The sun couldn’t reach the sidewalk. He couldn’t live there a day.

All the streets in Manhattan seemed to be permanently jammed and all the parking places filled. Leroy knew they’d never find parking on the street. He looked up, seemingly to the stars when they found the building they were looking for. It was huge and new, covering almost a block. It had underground parking. They turned into the opening and found a manned tollbooth. Doug’s contacts had provided him with the passwords into the garage, through the lobby, and upstairs. Money was the most important password.

“Hey, buddy! Take your wife out to dinner.” Slurring mightily, Doug stuck his head out the window past the driver, intoned the password, and threw a few hundred to the guard on duty. “We may be a while.” He laughed crazily and the driver stepped on the gas. They shot into the basement garage.

Hannah did some typing on one of the computers. The van’s interior looked like the high tech law enforcement vehicles Leroy had seen on TV; its walls were ringed with screens and equipment.

“OK. It’s done. All the surveillance systems are down for blocks. We have about ten minutes.”

Hannah and company held back while Doug and Leroy walked across the parking lot to the elevator and took it to a marble lobby at the street level. A big, tough-looking guy in a uniform was behind a desk.

“Everything’s hunky dory this fine evening,” Doug used the password he had procured from his California lady-friends.

The guard flashed Doug a look. His eyes made a fast circuit of the room, hitting on four wall-mounted screens giving impressive displays of static. He scowled and addressed Doug. “What’s hunky about it?” The guy stood up, looking toward a door at the rear of the lobby for reinforcements. The door remained closed. His brows pulled together and his hand moved toward the handle of the desk’s middle drawer, ready to pull a gun.

“Oh, Jeez. I guess I’m out of date.” Doug pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and fanned out some hundreds. “What will it take to get in?” His speech was slurred, but intelligible. “We just want to get laid. What’s wrong with that?”

“Plenty, if you ain’t right. And you ain’t. You’re not on the list for tonight.” He waived at a clipboard on the desk.

“Wait a minute, tha’s not fair. I been thinkin’ about this all day.” Leroy weaved forward and banged his fist on the reception table. He looked as drunk as Doug. “I can’t wait no more. I never been to New York City an’ I want to get
laid
.
Here. Now.”
He lurched forward.

When Leroy bumped into the security guard, he grasped his neck and the man collapsed, unconscious. Doug and Leroy dragged him behind the reception desk.

“You will sleep until I tell you to wake up,” Leroy said to him.

“That’s nifty, Leroy. I didn’t know you could do that. It’s on the seventy-fifth floor.”

Leroy’s stomach lurched.

“Don’t worry, it’s just like fear of flying. Do it once, and you’ll be over it forever …”

Doug stepped out of the elevator, head turned back toward Leroy as he spoke. A thug in a fancy suit leaned around the door of the elevator, in his face.

“Who are you?” The thug had a New York accent, the most pronounced Leroy had heard. It sounded like, “Whoer uze?”

“Just here for a good ol’ hunky dory time.”

“Things ain’t been hunky dory around here for a year.” Leroy could understand what he said, but would not be able to repeat it to save his life. He grabbed Doug’s jacket by the front and hauled him out of the doorway. “What is this? Did you do this?” The hood nodded at the screen mounted along the wall. It flashed black and white sparkles. “That happens and uze show up? Who sent you?”

Leroy swung out of the elevator box and grabbed New York City by the shoulder. He gasped and collapsed the way the man in the lobby had. They dragged him to an out of the way corner and Leroy ordered him to stay out until told otherwise.

They waited until Hannah and the others arrived in one of the other elevators.

“What now?” she said in that voice like a dozen cigarette rasps.

“No more ‘hunky dory,’ that’s for sure,” Doug said.

Doug took the floor plan out and they made their way to the condo. Hannah and the commandos followed closely, taking positions on each side of the door when they reached the suite. They had that fine Numenon tech gadgetry geared up, sensing everything. All they needed were the two starring actors. Leroy faltered, hanging back in the hallway.

“I know you don’t want to do this,” Doug said, “but you’re the beefcake. When they see you, they’ll stampede. Whores aren’t shy, Leroy. They’ll grab you and want to fuck you. Go with it. If they want to kiss you, kiss them back. If they want to grab you
anywhere
, let them. If they drag you into the back, good. That’s where Cass is. I know you’re a spirit warrior and this is against what you believe. But if you end up fucking some girl and save Cass as a result, that’s OK. Let’s go.”

Leroy lagged. This is what Grandfather had warned him about, and told him was all right. Maybe with his grandpa, but not with him. But he’d do it, if he had to. He and Doug wore cashmere sweaters with soft wool jackets over them, Italian shoes. Top of the line, all the way. Will had stocked their apartment with every conceivable thing they could need for
anything
they might do.

Doug grabbed his elbow and whispered viciously, “
Leroy
, smile. You’re supposed to be out for a wild night with your old buddy.”

Leroy heard the girls’ intake of breath when he entered the living room. He hadn’t known what Doug meant when he said, “You’re the beefcake.” Then he did. There were a bunch of them, but four focused on him. They were dressed in little bits of tight stuff like swimsuit material and undies so tiny he didn’t know why they wore them at all. They had every color hair, curled, sticking out, straight. Eyebrows painted like hard semi-circles sat above their eyes, which were circled with black paint.

After pulling in a hard breath all at the same time, they lunged. One of the women wiggled up to him and took hold of his privates through his pants. She pumped him a couple of times, and his body responded. It felt wonderful. Like something he should stop right now, that would definitely result in the Rules being broken. His cheeks flamed with embarrassment, but he didn’t push her off. She kept handling him, so skilled that he was surprised he didn’t let loose. She knew more about him than he did.

“Oh, baby, your dick is as big as the rest of you,” she exclaimed, sounding awed. Hearing that, the others wiggled closer to look through his pants. “Look at him! That’s what I call a
screwdriver!”

“Let’s get you in back so we can see you good.” A redhead behind him put a hand on each of his buns and pushed him toward the hallway.

“When I get a hold of you, you’re gonna remember me
forever
.” One of them whispered in his ear, kissing his cheek and running her hand down his chest inside of his sweater.

“Don’t pay attention to her, sweetie. I’m the one who’s gonna be your steady. You ever done a one-two-three-four? That’s what
I
do.”

“I do that, too,” he said, while the pros kept stroking and whispering. Leroy remained fully clothed, but that didn’t stop much. The girl who’d been handling his buns bit the cheeks of his ass and felt his balls between his legs. He struggled away.

“Come on, now. I got enough for all o’ you. Let’s go back there and let me make you happy.” He headed up the hallway, four prostitutes in tow.

“Let’s go in my room,” one with blue-black hair said. That was the first door. Then it was “Mine! Mine! Mine!” A couple of big, muscly guys with bulges under their jackets indicating revolvers looked at him. They had baseball bats leaning against their legs. One smiled, then the other. Trying to keep from scaring the customers too much.

“Let’s all go in the back. All of you. I can do you all.”

“
All
of us?”

“Yeah, sure. Do it all the time.” Since they were stuck to him, getting the bunch to move wasn’t a problem. He smelled Cass’s quarters before they got to them. “Let’s go in here.”

“No, we’re not supposed to go in there.”

Leroy stuck his head in. A huge, heart-shaped bed, made up with white satin and lace, sat in the middle of the room. “This is fine.”

“We’re not …”

“You want to do me, or not?” They entered the room, where he immediately laid them out on the bed and zapped them. Put them to sleep for a long time. “Except make noises like you’re having …” He couldn’t say the word. Even unconscious, they began moaning and crying out, then turned to each other and began kissing and caressing each other.

The smell drew him to the closet. It was a big walk-in. Something was in the back, a pile of clothes that had fallen off hangers. He turned on the light and pick them up. Leroy jumped back.

It didn’t look human. It didn’t look alive; face all jaundiced, eyelids stuck shut with yellow guck. Half-shaved head. The dragon Will had said was tattooed on the other side of her scalp peeked through a quarter-inch of stubbly hair. Cass had her arms and legs drawn up like a mummy they showed on the Adventure Channel. She looked like a mummy—dried out, joints twice the size of her limbs. She was wearing a bright-colored slip, that’s all. The smell came from the mound behind her. Whatever shit she’d been able to make was stacked up there. A pool of half-dried golden liquid spread out in front of her. They didn’t take her to the bathroom.

He looked at his soul mate for the first time. Her face was tawny rawhide glued to her bones.
Holy God in Heaven! O, Ancestors! O Great One. This is not possible. I cannot heal her.

He would try. How to get her out of there? The girls were on the bed, moaning and carrying on. He smiled and went to the door.

“Hey, you guys want a freebee? They done me in, but they’s still goin’. It’s on me. I already paid for ‘em. But I get to watch.”

The guards came in warily, lighting up when they saw the girls on the bed, rolling in the throes of something.

“What’d you do to them?”

“Oh, jus’ that ol’ one-two-three-four. Go on. Have some. They’ll never know. I’ll go in this closet an’ take a peek now ‘n’ then. Don’t worry about me.”

Leroy ducked in the closet, wrapped Cass in a coat hanging there. When he picked her up, she dripped and stinking clods fell off of her.
O God, Grandfather, help me.
How he could get out of there without sobbing, he didn’t know. The smell, the way she looked. So unconscious that she had no idea he was there. She was so light in his arms. A child would be heavier. Her heels banged against him. Bones banging would have felt the same.

“Great One, protect me. Protect us. Save us.” He ducked out of the closet and into the hallway. The guards were so deep into the hookers that they didn’t notice him. He ran for the front door.

“Where did you say you got our address?” the madam said to Doug, scowling. She was a short, fat woman with a black wig and surgically enhanced boobs as big as her head. Doug almost took a step back. Angry, the bitch was scary. She nodded to one of the bouncers to get rid of Doug.
“
This is a private club. Only members are allowed here.

“Throw him out,” she barked, then changed her mind. “No, wait a minute. How did you hear about us?”

“Oh, I don’t know, sugar,” Doug said. “We’re here from California. I called up a friend back home. Charlene, maybe, or Karleene. She’s got a real nice place in Hillsborough.”

“I don’t know anyone in Hillsborough.” The bouncer moved closer.

“Well, they sure know you! Let’s get this party going!” Doug beckoned to the guy at the bar. No one moved. “Come on! I came here for a party and I’m gonna have one.”

“Who sent you here?” The madam’s eyes were like recessed slits, sinking into her face. She crossed her pudgy arms. A tattoo of a snake ran down from one elbow.

“Who cares? My buddy’s in there fucking four of your girls. Would you like to get paid? How ‘bout that? Some cash put you in a better mood?” He pulled a roll out of his pocket and peeled off hundred dollar bills. “Say when.” They didn’t say when.

“Whoa, this is high-priced pussy.
He’s got four of your best.
You outta give him a quantity discount.” It took four thousand dollars, and they were still looking at him like road kill.