Strange Flesh (27 page)

“Nope. It’s for work.”

“Work? You change jobs on me? What’s it for?”

“Confidential. Of course.”

“I’m just playing. Seriously, what did you have in mind?”

“A scene from Sade,
120 Days
.”

“Ahh, a Sadistic Savant, are we?” He smiles like he’s pleased to hear this, but then quickly runs through the implications and frowns. “Wait a minute, this wouldn’t be on assignment for one of those crypto-fascist law enforcement organizations you consort with, would it?”

“No. Nothing like that. I promise. I need three to five minutes of high-quality video. Live actors, good lighting. I was thinking maybe—”

“King of the Hill.”

“What?”

“Day twenty-three, scene four. In which a man can only get off from being savagely beaten with canes in front of witnesses in the second-floor parlor of a brothel. Just before he nuts, he makes them
defenestrate
him into a pile of dung sitting in the courtyard below. Only then can he climax. The Sadisticats love that kind of shit. I even know a stunt man with, shall we say, liberal attitudes toward personal hygiene.”

“Um, okay. You, ah, seem to know the book well.”

“True. By nature I’m a lover not a biter, but in this business, it pays to be conversant in the ways of the world. That filthy little Frenchman
carved out a whole dark continent we’ve spent the past two centuries exploring.”

“So . . .”

In a strange display of delicacy, Adrian writes a number on a cocktail napkin and slides it toward me. Then he says, “Cash, preferably. I’ll have it for you this weekend. Assuming I can find some non-union livestock for the prop work.”

B
lake speaks out of the haze. “So has my brother gone with the dead girl or the live boy?” He’s quoting a Louisiana governor’s boast about who he’d have to be caught in bed with to lose an upcoming election. But Billy’s preoccupation with Gina’s death makes the joke ring off-key.

We’re sitting in the steam room of the Racquet and Tennis Club, an illegal martini slowly warming in my hand. Blake prefers live meetings away from his office, as if we’re old mates who just happen to be doing a series of work-related favors for each other. Since we’re also not Ukrainian gangsters, this location seems particularly odd, but, as Mercer pointed out to me weeks ago, I can’t quibble with our billionaire client over appropriate meeting attire.

“I don’t exactly know yet. Given his literary inspiration, I’d have to say both. At any rate, we’re looking at some ugly developments.”

“How so?”

“Well, he’s been trying to drag you into his world with these pranks, but we should prepare ourselves that another strategy of his might be explicitly breaking his silence on the topic of your family—”

“Has he sent something to the media?” This is the first time I’ve heard a quaver of stress find its way into Blake’s voice.

“No. But I bet he’ll invoke your name in this game of his.”

“What’s the point? If the little bastard wants to slime us, why doesn’t he just bawl it out to Oprah? Or run an ad in the
Journal,
God forbid.”

“Well, would you agree that at his core your brother is an artist?”

“At his core, he’s a perverted baby.”

I smile but realize Blake can’t see me through the steam.

He continues. “But he does adopt the pose.”

“So I suspect the instigation of all this was the death of his friend Gina. For whom he probably had romantic feelings. Can you think why he might connect her with you?”

“That’s ridiculous. And anyway, Billy likes games, not girls. He may have been sad about his friend, but he didn’t need her death as an excuse to fuck with me.”

I’m annoyed Blake isn’t more forthcoming about having dated Gina in college, but clients are often dissembling about something. Confrontation just makes them more defensive. So I change the subject.

“Do you think he might be jealous of you and your sister?”

“Of what? He’s got the money to do whatever he wants.”

“Yes, but he’s not famous. He doesn’t have your celebrity. A couple write-ups in abstruse art rags. But no one really remembers you two have a brother.”

“He changed his name.”

“Maybe because he felt cheated. Like his inheritance had been stripped.”

“Bullshit. He—”

“It may be. But we’re talking about how he feels. Perhaps he wants to amp up his profile enough to put his status on par with yours, and he’s willing to trade on the most valuable thing he has in order to do that. His identity as a Randall. If he just dishes scandal to the
Post,
then he’s the tabloid freak of the week, but if he’s able to parlay the public’s interest in your family into a groundbreaking work of art, then that’s more like a career.”

“And he thinks harassing me is going to help him achieve this?”

“That’s an element. But I get the feeling he’s trying to make an argument. The medium he’s chosen is designed to get people participating, not just passively receiving a message. They can be very powerful experiences and are fashionable right now in gamer and media circles. But they’re still mostly seen as trivial entertainments. Imagine someone putting together a game that revealed important secrets about the
real
world. One in which the efforts of the players had a significant impact on actual events. Maybe that’s what he’s aiming for.”

“What kind of impact? What are these secrets, James?”

I don’t know where Billy’s going with his mishmash of Sade, cybering, and salacious cinema. But to Blake’s question:

What do his arrest near Exotica and his indirect references to the company in
Savant
have to do with the Randalls?

Given that the haute porn director Farber and his gonzo partner Mondano Sr. both died while Blake was still in college, I’d be willing to wager that any connection Billy makes will be with Robert Randall. The obvious similarity is geographic, all three men having lived near Los Angeles.

An insight slowly takes form. The article on Ronald Farber said he “came from nothing” to produce an immortal classic of blue movies. But no one comes from
nothing
. He was a camera technician at an Irvine TV station. Right around the time Blake’s father was starting to build his SoCal broadcasting empire.

Making my voice as neutral as possible, I say, “I’m not sure yet, but I think where this is heading is that your brother will try to link IMP and your family to the pornography industry.”

I wish I could see Blake’s reaction to this. There’s a short pause followed by a snort that sends pretty Mandelbrots of vapor toward me. “That’s it? That’s his raw meat for the gossip sheets? That IMP benefits from pornography? Everybody knows that. Anyone with a cable box can see that pay-per-view is mostly porn. We provide internet access to two million people in this city alone. Do you have any idea what proportion of all the bits sucked into their apartments is porn? At least a quarter. Maybe a third. Regardless of the real number, everyone knows it’s high, and nobody gives a shit.”

“I think he’s getting at something more specific.”

“What?”

“Have you ever heard the name Ronald Farber?”

“Ronald Farber?”

“A dead pornographer. I think Billy will disclose he had some sort of relationship with your dad.”

More steam whorls. “It’s possible . . . my father was democratic in the company he kept.”

“Blake, I’m going to have to play Billy’s game if you want to know what’s out there, never mind finding him. To do that, I may need to know these things. Maybe go pretty deep into your family history.”

Blake grunts skeptically. “Okay. We’ll get you whatever you need. But, James . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sure you’re aware that an enterprise like IMP doesn’t get created without taking a certain number of . . . liberties.”

“Naturally.”

“So I don’t need to explain that if we’re to show you where all the bodies are buried, as it were, you’ll need to exercise pretty flawless discretion, if . . .”

“If I don’t want to end up buried with them?”

Blake’s face emerges from the mist disconcertingly close to mine. He chuckles and slaps me heartily on the back. “Now, why would I say such a thing? You don’t believe I make
idle
threats, do you?” He stands up and grabs a towel, then turns to me and says in a faux lockjaw, “Let’s repair to the bar. This drink tastes like piss.”

W
ith three of the R & T’s colossal martinis under my belt, I’m buzzed enough to convince myself that productive work might be possible, so I catch a cab downtown to GAME. I’d been hoping to slip into my office without a lot of commotion, but Garriott appears at my door saying, “Mate, you have to help me.” Then over his shoulder, “I will not submit to it, you deranged Cossack!”

Olya barges in, reaching for his ear. She stops when she sees me. “Ah . . . Maybe now we have a real man.”

The way she assesses me as though I were a hound of questionable pedigree sets me on edge. “What’s going on?”

“Olya needs a dick.”

“Yes, and better now I do not have to chase around this . . . this child.”

“I was going to finish up—”

Olya shakes her head. “Mmm, but today we need to do the casting. We have new skin materials, new sensors. We need molds for anatomy. The pussy, it’s a bottleneck right now. And the cock—”

“We’ve been using off-the-rack components,” says Garriott. “There’s no reason—”

“Andrushka, we are spending all this time like hospital surgeons cutting up Cyber Cocks and Pocket Pets. And it still feels like you’re fucking the Cuisinart. If we have the molds, we cast silky silicone around your machines in twenty minutes. And the seams we have now—” She snarls with loathing.

I say, “I have to agree with her, bud. Ginger gave me quite a blister in the last test.”

“You were too vigorous! Plunging away at her like she’s a defective toilet!”

Olya and I share a look.

Garriott recovers. “Well, I won’t do it. Your blister is nothing compared to what happened the last time she tried this on me.”

Olya has had enough. “Listen to me, infant—”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I say. “But what the hell are we talking about?”

Ten minutes later I’m sobering up and regretting my bravado, as I’m strapped pantsless into one of the MetaChairs with Olya standing above me wielding what look like electric sheep shears.

From behind me, Garriott whispers, “Don’t let her do it. Back in November she wanted a specimen off me. Five days later, it was like I had the worst case of genital herpes in the history of primate intercourse.” He pats my shoulder but shivers with abhorrence. “Ingrown hairs, mate. Thousands.”

Olya shakes her head. “Maybe I was a bit rough with the razor. But you wiggle like hamster.” She kneels in front of me and places a cool hand on the inside of my thigh, pushing it gently to the side. “But for you, I am very gentle.”