(1987) The Celestial Bed (10 page)

Reading the scene in Dr Quarrie’s case history, animating it in his own mind, Freeberg had found it not entirely unfamiliar. There were human beings in the world, and there were human beings who were still animals.

Freeberg resumed his reading of the case history, and Dr Quarrie’s summation of what followed:

‘This went on, the same pattern, for six weeks. Not only was Zecca insatiable in his desire for intercourse, but in each episode that came after the first he was as thoughtless as before and increasingly brutal. According to Nan, the pain suffered during these couplings was almost unbearable. As the couplings grew longer as they inevitably would, Nan was forced to bite her lip to smother protests and she bit her lip until it bled. Finally, during each coupling, she began to scream. Given Zecca’s utter insensi-rivity, he misinterpreted her screams for sounds of arousal and he was as pleased as a child receiving a gift. He showed his pleasure by giving Nan a modest raise in salary, and after a month he gave her an imitation gold necklace.

‘Recently, according to Nan, after finishing with her, he lay back puffing and mused aloud to her, “I like you. I sure do. I’m going to keep you for good. I wouldn’t want you messing around

with anyone else. None of that. I mean, if you did, I’d find out. I could easily kill you. I killed plenty of gooks in Nam. Killing is easy if someone tries to do you in. If I was ever double-crossed, I’d kill again. So you just behave.”

‘Nan claims she said, “Of course, I’ll behave. I’m with you, Tony. I’m yours.”

‘He said, “Good girl.” ’

Reading this, Freeberg reached out on his desk for his box of cigarillos, managed to free one and light it. Smoking, he read on, waiting to come across the scene that he was sure would happen. Then he found it. He read and reread it. He dramatised it in his mind.

Two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago, it happened.

They were in bed together at night. He tore her legs apart, and without any preliminaries, he drove his rigid instrument at her, ready to go into her as usual - only this time it didn’t go in.

Shoving as strongly as he could, he tried to enter her. No luck.

‘Hey, now, what the fuck’s going on?’ he wanted to know. ‘What’s wrong there? I got it in the right place, ain’t I?’

‘Yes, yes, go ahead, Tony … please go ahead.’

Once more he tried, and again he was unable to enter her. He swore at his frustration. ‘You’re locked up like a steel vault down there. What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not doing anything. I’m trying like always.’

Determined, for the fourth time, he rammed himself between her legs. No luck.

‘Lemme see what’s going on,’ he muttered. He lifted her pelvis, his hands clenched under her buttocks, high toward him. He took one hand and dug three fingers into her. ‘Seems okay now. Let’s find out.’

He dropped her on the bed, and tried for a fifth time to force his way into her. He couldn’t enter beyond an inch. ‘Something is sure haywire. How does it feel?’

‘It feels tight, real tight. And it hurts a little. Maybe it’s something organic’

‘Something what?’

‘Organic. Physical. Anyway, something is wrong with me. Maybe I can go see a doctor tomorrow.’

‘You got a doctor?’

‘A gynaecologist in town. He’d know.’

Zecca humoured her. ‘Yeah, baby, you do that. Find out what’s ailing you. Get it set right.’ He looked down at his drooping instrument. ‘Now what about tonight?’

‘I — I can still make you happy.’

‘Yeah, you do that.’

She reached out between his legs, to get hold of that thing, and make him happy. But before she could take hold, one of his hands reached up behind her head and pushed it down between his legs.

Shutting her eyes, she opened her mouth, and went ahead.

Finishing the page, reliving this scene from Nan Whitcomb’s case history, Freeberg murmured to himself, ‘Poor woman.’

He completed reading the last of the case history, and put the blue folder on his desk to await Dr Max Quarrie’s return. To his surprise, Dr Quarrie had already returned and was seated opposite him.

‘Well, Arnold,’ said Dr Quarrie. ‘What do you think?’

‘Definitely a case of vaginismus, in an extreme form. I doubt if she’s phobic about coitus. She’s getting muscular spasms in the region to avoid any more intercourse with him.’

‘Confirms my own diagnosis and the gynaecologist’s,’ said Dr Quarrie. ‘Question is - think you can do something about it? I can’t talk her into getting better. I suspect it will take more.’

‘Yes,’ Freeberg agreed. He thought of his one male sex surrogate, Paul Brandon, awaiting his first patient. Now he would have her. Freeberg nodded. ‘It’s made to order for us, for a surrogate and myself working with her. I’m sure we can help. When can I see her?’

‘Right now,’ said Dr Quarrie rising. ‘She’s waiting in my car. I’ll send her up.’

Chet Hunter had been unable to get an appointment to see Otto Ferguson, editor-in-chief of the Hillsdale Chronicle, until late this morning. Ever since Suzy’s great tip last night, the big story - and big break - had been forming in Hunter’s mind and he was eager to pitch it to Ferguson. Bland as Ferguson seemed, cynical and negative as he was, Hunter was positive he would go for this news lead. After cooling his heels outside Ferguson’s glass-enclosed office, Hunter was finally shown in.

He could see Ferguson’s bald pate as he bent over some copy, marking it, and at last he lifted his head and focused his baggy St Bernard eyes on his visitor.

Nervously, Hunter had set himself on the edge of the straight chair across from Ferguson.

‘Well, Chet,’ said the editor. ‘What brings you here this time? Want to sell us an exclusive lead from your police friends? Or the Reverend Scrafield? Or on a poll you’ve been taking?’

‘I don’t want to sell you any research,’ said Hunter. ‘This time I want to sell you a story, a complete story,’

‘It had better be something bigger than the stuff you’ve been feeding us so far.’

Hunter was emphatic. ‘It is bigger, this is bigger than anything I ever had. It’s the biggest.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Ferguson’s mask of scepticism remained. ‘All right, young man. Go ahead. I’m from Missouri.’

Hunter braced himself, raised his voice as if it were a boldface headline. ‘Exclusive in the Chronicle. SEX SURROGATE OPERATION TAKES OVER HILLSDALE!’

‘What?’

‘Exactly. Found out about it last night. Unimpeachable source. Trained sex surrogates from around the country have gone to work today for a new sex clinic that just opened in our fair city. You know what sex surrogates are?’

‘Knew about them while you were still wetting your pants.’ A flicker of interest had crossed the editor’s face. It was as if he was talking to himself. ‘Sex surrogates in LA, Chicago, New York, to be expected. In pure little Hillsdale, never. Are you sure you’re sure?’

‘I’m positive, Otto. And I can prove it.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Excitedly, without revealing Suzy Edwards’s name or position, Hunter told him about it, told Ferguson about the new Freeberg Clinic, Dr Arnold Freeberg, the six sex surrogates from around the country who had gathered here and been assigned to work. ‘Right now in Hillsdale. They’re loose in Hillsdale. I say that’s not a lead, that’s a super story.’

‘Could be,’ Ferguson conceded, ‘could very well be. Depends. How would you go about getting such a story?’

‘From the inside, by joining up. Becoming a patient. Rapping

with Dr Freeberg as a patient. And rolling in the hay with one of his paid female sex surrogates. Then I’d expose the whole mess. You’d have headlines for weeks.’

‘A sting operation,’ said Ferguson, half to himself. ‘Yes, that would be the way to do it. It could be big, no question.’ He considered it, then frowned. ‘Only I see some problems … one in particular. If you applied as a patient, a professional therapist like Freeberg would see right through you. You’d never get away with it if you faked it.’ He narrowed his eyes on Hunter. ‘Or would you be faking it? Maybe you know you’d qualify for treatments?’

Hunter’s cheeks reddened ever so slightly. ‘Never mind about that, Otto. Don’t make me spell it out for you. Let’s say I could qualify. But, frankly, I don’t have the ready cash to get treatments from a sex surrogate.’

‘What are we talking about, Chet?’

‘$5,000 on the line.’

‘That’s a hefty amount for a fuck,’ said Ferguson.

‘It’s for our story, Otto. HIGHEST PAID PROSTITUTES IN COUNTRY NOW IN HILLSDALE! How does that sound?’

‘Anyway, money isn’t an issue when there’s a really big story.’

‘Well, then, let’s go.’

But Ferguson was hesitant. He fell back against the slats of his chair, thinking. ‘There’s one more thing - another problem …’ he began. ‘You know, Chet, that’s a pretty raunchy story for a family newspaper like ours … unless — ’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless we could turn this from a smirking expose into a newspaper’s civic duty - a political issue and crusade to clean up fair Hillsdale.’ He mused aloud. ‘Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Now we have the world’s newest profession, the sex surrogate, who is also paid to give a piece of ass in the guise of a cure. If we could just make this into a community campaign. Maybe get your friend the Reverend Josh Scrafield interested, part of his ongoing clean-up campaign - ’

‘I could get Scrafield for you in a minute, Otto. Once he learns about this, he’ll grab it and run with it.’

‘ — and then there’s one more element, the wrap-up element that would make it possible for us to print this. If you could get Scrafield to storm in on the DA, Hoyt Lewis, and have him reveal the whole secret operation, and get the District Attorney’s office to

indict this Dr Freeberg for illegal pandering under state law and grab one of his female surrogates for practising illegal prostitution under existing state law - and then put them on trial — we could run with it from there. We’d have a criminal story, a political story, a virtuous civic story. Copies of every edition would race off the newsstands. But first, Chet, you’ve got to get Scrafield and Lewis behind you … and behind us. Then you’ve got to infiltrate that Freeberg operation and get the goods firsthand. Think you can do all that?’

Hunter was on his feet, pumping Ferguson’s hand. ‘Can I? Otto, watch me do it. Faster than a speeding bullet. Watch me move. And start setting my by-line in type!’

Not until early this afternoon, as he listened to Chet Hunter in the computerised office at the rear of his Church of the Resurrection, had the Reverend Josh Scrafield looked upon his part-time researcher with any real respect.

Until this afternoon, Scrafield had always regarded Chet Hunter with mild contempt, something of a frail grub and intellectual nerd, sallow and frightened of life. About a year ago, when Scrafield had been planning to undertake his campaign against the insidious sex education then invading the public schools, Darlene had discovered Hunter and advised Scrafield that the young researcher might be useful in digging up facts. Reluctantly, Scrafield had taken on the library mole, the ferret.

But early this afternoon, Scrafield had heard and seen another side of the grub. For Hunter, in revealing his knowledge of the pandering Dr Freeberg and the sluts he sent out to corrupt the purity of Hillsdale, had shown a human side to himself. Like Scrafield himself, young Hunter had shown some understanding of lust and how it might come to destroy paradise.

Once he had understood what Hunter had in mind, and what his own role might be, Scrafield had been quick to arrange a meeting for both of them with Hoyt Lewis, Hillsdale’s clever District Attorney.

Now, towering over his informant, Scrafield led Hunter into District Attorney Hoyt Lewis’s impressive office in the marble-floored city hall. Scrafield felt comfortable about this meeting. For one thing, the District Attorney was a smart and perceptive man in his late thirties, as smart and perceptive as Scrafield himself.

Despite his scraggly sandy-coloured moustache and his tendency towards obesity, emphasised by his habit of locking his hands across his spreading paunch, Lewis was a man above the crowd and a man who was going places. In fact, he was self-assured enough to wear a black string tie. Lewis came from one of the better families in Hillsdale (they were said to have second and third homes in Malibu and Palm Springs) and he possessed a real comprehension of the needs and wants of the masses. Not unlike Scrafield, the District Attorney could communicate with the peasants and was popular with them.

Hoyt Lewis had come to his feet, to shake hands with Scrafield and Hunter after they had entered his vast office, and was gesturing them to a button-backed leather sofa near his desk. After they had been seated, Lewis had drawn up a leather chair on casters and lowered himself into it, filling it to overflowing.

‘Good to see you, gentlemen,’ Lewis was saying. His moustache rose to reveal his even white teeth, and he was as cordial as a host at a dinner party. ‘Well, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’

While Hunter seemed to cringe inwardly, Scrafield was pleased with the thoughtful formality.

Scrafield glanced at Hunter, then at Lewis. ‘Let me kick this off, Hoyt. It’s an important matter that, I perceive, requires your immediate attention.’ He jerked a thumb at his companion. ‘Chet Hunter here, he’s an expert researcher, you know. I’ve seen his work firsthand. He came to me originally, out of civic duty, with the most appalling information about programmes the liberals were instigating to infect our school system. This information proved to be accurate and has been something I’ve been able to employ effectively on my weekly television shows.’

Hoyt Lewis bobbed his head. ‘My wife and I are regular watchers of your shows. They have done much to assist our office in keeping the community clean.’

‘Thank you, Hoyt. But now our enterprising Mr Hunter has come up with something far more insidious and dangerous to our fair community. My fight against indecent sex education in the schools absolutely pales beside the foul pollution that Chet Hunter has uncovered.’

Hoyt Lewis’s curiosity was evident. ‘I’m eager to hear what you’re talking about, Reverend Scrafield. Please go ahead and tell me about it.’