The basin of the sink is carved from exotic amber quartz and appears to be floating, although it is actually supported by inch-thick, cunningly hidden steel rods that fasten it to a red-steel beam inside the wall. The drainpipe and two stainless-steel water lines exquisitely describe parallel arcs from the bottom of the quartz bowl and disappear into the granite-clad wall. He has long been proud of the sink’s elegant, unconventional design.
As his mind clears a little further, he discovers that he is lying on his clothes but is not wearing them. His Gucci polo shirt has been cut off him. Likewise, his wonderfully comfortable Officine Générale pants have been scissored up each leg and through the waistband, the material splayed to each side of him; and the crotch panel has been cut away entirely.
That is twelve hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of top-of-the-line wardrobe. He would be incensed, except that in his current semidreamy state of mind, he takes satisfaction in knowing that he looks good in his Dolce & Gabbana gray briefs with black waistband, his package nicely displayed in the snug pouch.
Someone switches off the salsa music.
Sterling begins to come further to his senses when the girl enters from the bedroom. Her face is as lacking in expression as it is beautiful. She towers over him like some goddess. She drops to her knees at his side and places her left hand, in a kinky black glove, on his muscular chest. Slowly she slides her hand down to his abdomen. In spite of his restraints, he doesn’t feel imperiled. But then she displays the scissors in her left hand, works the blades—open, closed—still as blank-faced as a mannequin, her eyes such a bright blue, they seem illuminated from within. In a voice as flat as her expression, she says, “What else might be fun to cut off?”
Sterling is now wide awake.
19
* * *
OVERTON’S EYES were hemlock-green with the faintest purple striations. Jane had never seen a more poisonous stare.
The venom in his eyes was spiced with fear, however, and that was good. Narcissists were usually spineless cowards, but some of them were so extravagant in their self-regard that they believed themselves untouchable. Even in such a dire situation as this, the crazier ones could be incapable of imagining themselves dead.
She needed this attorney to imagine himself dead.
Which he might be.
Overton summoned his boldest courtroom bravado. “You’ve made a big mistake, and there’s damn little time to set things right.”
“Have I got the wrong man?” she asked.
“There are a thousand ways you’ve gotten the wrong man, girl.”
“Isn’t your name William Overton?”
“You know it is, and you know that’s not what I mean.”
“The William Overton whose closest friends call him Sterling?”
His eyes grew wide. “Who do you know that knows me?”
That fact had been disclosed in a magazine profile. How odd that those who loved the limelight could reveal personal details to curry favor with an interviewer and later forget what they had said.
“You hired a Dark Web hacking service. Maybe to steal some corporation’s trade secrets so you could threaten to blow up the business, get a pretrial settlement. Something like that, huh?”
He said nothing.
“You never met the hacker, never saw the sleaze you hired. He used the name Jimmy.”
“You’re talking nonsense. You’re operating on bad information.”
“While Jimmy hacked for you, he also hacked into you, taking one of your best-guarded secrets.”
In the courtroom, with his clothes on, not shackled, he would have maintained a deadpan stare. Under these circumstances, he found it rather more difficult to remain poker-faced.
All his secrets schooled like sharks through his mind, and there were no doubt so many that he had no hope of guessing which one had motivated her to violate the sanctity of his home.
“You want hush money? Is that all this is?”
“Hush money is such an ugly term. It implies extortion.”
“If you really have something on me, and you don’t, but if you did really have something, going at it this way is bug-shit crazy.”
She would not mention his close friend Bertold Shenneck or nano-machine brain implants. That secret was so big and dark, he would know he had no future anymore if it were exposed. He must continue to believe that he had hope, however thin it might be.
“Jimmy says you belong to some totally hot club.”
“Club? A few country clubs. It’s just smart business, making contacts. Hot isn’t the word for any of them. Unless you think golf and golf talk and white-jacketed waiters are totally the thing.”
“This club is some sick damn rich-guy whorehouse.”
“Whores? You think I need to pay whores? Screw you. Screw Jimmy. I don’t know any Jimmy.”
“But Jimmy knows this thing about you. Three hundred thousand bucks to join. You move in exclusive circles.”
“This is a stupid fantasy your Jimmy cooked up. There’s no such place as far as I know.”
“What’s three hundred thousand buy, and what are the ongoing charges? You’re a guy who gets value for his money. What do you get in the club? Beautiful, submissive girls? No desire too extreme? Just how extreme are your desires, Sterling?”
She had noticed a poker tell: When she told him a truth about himself that he wished she didn’t know, his right eye blinked, only the right.
“They call the place Aspasia,” she said. “Your type probably think that, naming it after the mistress of an ancient Greek statesman like Pericles, you’ve made it a classy establishment.” She raised the scissors and worked them. “Snip-snip. Keep lying to me, Sterling, damn if I won’t tailor you a little.”
He ignored the scissors and met her eyes, but this long and considered stare was not an adolescent challenge. He was taking her measure, as perhaps he took the measure of jurors in a courtroom.
When he spoke, he clearly had determined that continuing to play innocent was the most dangerous path he could take. But he still didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging the fear that he repressed. He shook his head, smiled, and pretended the admiration of one predator for another. “You are something else.”
“Yeah? What am I, Sterling?”
“Damn if I know. Look, no more bullshit. Yeah, Aspasia’s real. It’s not a whorehouse the way you mean. It’s something new.”
“New in what way?”
“You don’t need to know. I’m not selling information here. I’m just buying my ass out of a sling. You could publicly embarrass me. Damage my business. Blackmail. You came here for money.”
“Is that really what you think this is about?” she asked.
“It’s always what everything’s about. You came here for money, I have it, so let’s do the deal.”
“I can’t walk into a bank with a blackmail check, Sterling. I don’t have accounts in the Cayman Islands that you can wire it to.”
“I’m talking cash. I said no more bullshit. From either of us, okay? You know I’m talking cash.”
“How much?”
“How much do you want?”
“You’re talking a home safe, right here?”
“Yes.”
“Is there at least a hundred thousand in it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll take everything in it. What’s the combination?”
“Isn’t one. The key to the lock is a biological identifier.”
“What—your thumbprint?”
“So you cut off my thumb and hold it to the reader? Nothing that easy. You need me. Alive. When I’m dead, it’s locked for good.”
“All right. Anyway, it’s not my intention to kill you unless you give me no other choice.”
He rattled the plastic cable ties that cuffed him to the bathtub. “Let’s do it, then. Let’s get it done.”
“Not now,” Jane said. “After I’ve been there and come back.”
Overton looked baffled. “Been where?”
“Aspasia.”
Alarmed and unable to conceal it, he said, “You can’t go there. You can’t get in. Only members can get in to any of them.”
“Any of them? How many clubs does Aspasia run?”
He looked abashed that he had given up a bit of essential data. Too late. “Four. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington.”
Jane seemed to have opened something that was both Pandora’s box and the figurative can of worms. “Jimmy says when you get to that Dark Web site, it offers to deal with you in any of eight languages. So there’s members all over the world, huh? Oligarchs with extreme desires.”