The Lure (26 page)

“Right.”

“So? What’s the big secret, since I already know what it is? Open up.”

“I only open it when I’m going to use it.”

Noel was dressed now, too, except for his shoes.

“Well,” Eric prompted, “are you ready?”

“Forget it,” Noel said, tying his Adidas. “I’ll never be ready if that’s the case.”

They went upstairs. In the elevator Eric said, “Someday I’ll tell you all about pain and pleasure.”

“What’s wrong with right now?”

“You’re not really interested.”

It was true. Noel was repelled by even the possibility of what he might find behind the locked door in the big, blue-tiled bathroom: masks, tools, thongs, racks, instruments of torture: who knew what?

“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I said I wasn’t into it.”

“Everyone thinks it’s just being jaded. Isn’t that what you think? That I’ve done everything else—everything!—and I’m just bored with sex, that I play with all this, because it’s different, kinky? Isn’t that what you think?”

“Something like that.”

“It’s not true. There’s an entire aesthetic to inflicting pain, to domination, if you will, and on the other hand to being submissive, that you can’t begin to understand until you’ve experienced it. Of course there are a lot of jerks around, of all sexes and genders, who are just out to hurt. Barbarians! Done right, it’s an art. An art with great refinement—a stretching of sensory abilities we seldom even notice. When someone steps into that room, and few do, he knows in advance he is going to come out knowing a great deal more about himself—his attitudes, his fears, his desires, his thresholds—than when he went in. He comes out of that room altered forever. Not on the outside—that would heal anyway. But inside. Where only he can see it.”

“And what about you?” Noel asked. “Do you come out altered, too?” As he said the words, he knew he had made a mistake.

Eric stopped, looked at him, and his upper lip curled slightly. The moment of confidence, coming that much closer to trust, had been burst, stupidly, unthinkingly. No way to mend it.

“You always have to put me down, don’t you?”

Without waiting for an answer or apology, Eric stalked onto the terrace. Abashed by his mistake, Noel followed.

Alana was in a lounge chair, clad only in the bottom of a scanty bikini with a print scarf around her head. She was surrounded by glossy foreign magazines and sun lotions.

“Come look here, my darling,” she greeted Eric. “There’s a wonderful new place we must visit. In the Andes!”

Noel was in his bedroom reading a Castaneda book Eric had insisted he try, when the phone console buzzed and lit up green: the call was for him. In the two weeks he’d lived in the town house, Noel still hadn’t gotten used to the system. Outside calls were automatically answered, whatever name was requested was color-coded, relayed to each floor, where the console would buzz and flash, until someone answered.

This call was from Alana.

“I thought you were at a shooting?” Noel said.

“I am. But there is something we need here in the studio. A manila envelope with some male head shots I forgot. Would you be an angel and bring it to me?”

“I guess. Let me check with Eric. He’s been with someone from the Coast all day. I doubt if he’ll need me.”

Noel knew a messenger could as easily be used to deliver the envelope to her. But perhaps she was feeling neglectful of Noel. They hadn’t had much contact since he’d moved in. A few times he even thought she was avoiding him to lessen any tension between him and Eric. This might be her way of making it up to Noel.

“Okku will give you the address. The envelope ought to be on the lamp table of my sitting room. Can you bring it soon?”

“As soon as I tell Eric.”

He transferred her call to Okku, who answered from the kitchen. Then Noel buzzed the intercom red, for Eric. No response. He buzzed again. No answer. Maybe he and his visitor had gone out.

Noel easily found the envelope Alana had wanted. It held a dozen or so data sheets on male models: photos and specifications.

Dressed for outdoors, he was on his way out when he saw Okku.

“If Eric comes back, will you tell him where I’ve gone?”

“Mr. Redfern is not out,” the manservant said and pointed down with one finger, before turning on his heels and going toward the back of the house.

Noel’s first impulse was just to leave and assume the message would be conveyed. But who could tell what Okku would do? He’d had no signs from the stolid Scandinavian that could be construed as anything remotely like friendliness. He’d better check out with Eric himself. Capricious as Redfern was, he might decide to lose his temper over a triviality like this.

Okku had pointed downstairs, but the gymnasium was empty. There were signs that the two men had worked out earlier—a towel draped on a press bench, some barbells off their racks, on the floor. But there was no sound of showers running. The big bathroom was lighted—also as though recently in use—but also empty.

Noel was turning to go back out when he noticed something amiss in the room—the second door, the door to Eric’s Red Room, the door he had never seen open before, was ajar.

Eric said that door was only open when the room was in use. Could that have been the purpose of Henry Steele’s visit from San Francisco?

Noel tried to picture the man—a long-legged, slim-hipped, cowboy type, over six feet tall. Then he tried to picture the long body clamped to a marble-topped table in the room, crisscrossed with leather straps, his head perhaps masked, his eyes blinded, his flesh arching and twisting with pain/pleasure—like the photos in the S and M magazine someone had brought to the Grip, that everyone had pored over a few weeks before. Noel could imagine Eric’s role easily enough. He expected to hear a shriek of excruciating pain issue from the room at any second.

He’d leave a note upstairs, hoping Eric would find it. That’s what he would do. But wait. If Eric had left the Red Room door open it couldn’t have been accidental. Noel was supposed to look in. It was all set up to show him what Eric would never tell him. Or was it? Maybe it was a trap. He’d step in, and together, Eric and Steele would jump him and…

He heard voices talking. Neither loud enough nor clear enough to be understood. One was Eric’s, the other probably Steele’s. It didn’t sound like either sex or torture.

Leave a note upstairs. Or call out Eric’s name. Do something!

The mirrored walls opposite the room allowed Noel to see inside the two inches of open doorway. The “Red Room” wasn’t red—neither painted nor lighted red. All he could make out was some metal shelving. More like a storeroom or office.

Holding his breath, Noel backed over to the door, all the while checking the mirror in front of him. Feeling clammy with trepidation, he slowly pushed the door open another inch, poised to leap out of the room in an instant. Nothing. No sign he had been noticed from within. No change in the voices.

But he could see inside better. It was shelving. Filled with envelopes and accordion folders. An office. Steele passed by, pacing, moved out of sight again, then finally sat down on a chair. He was still dressed in gym shorts; he was leaning forward. Noel could now hear him more clearly.

“It’s not the same out West, Redfern. The police are different.”

“The police are the same all over,” Eric said.

“But you don’t have any trouble here.”

“Who doesn’t?” he asked defiantly.

“They don’t bust bars or clubs or anything,” Steele said. “Do they?”

“What’s the difference; let’s get back to the point, Steele. Can you deliver from your district? That’s all we want to know.”

“Deliver what? Money? Or clout?”

Noel never heard the answer. The phone began to buzz again. This time it was cut off in midring. Eric picked it up. Silence. Then, “Thanks, Okku. He’s probably looking for me. I’ll take a look in the gym.”

Certain he’d overheard plans he wasn’t supposed to hear, Noel slipped out of the bathroom, and Indian quiet, leaped up the stairs of the gym to the entrance platform. He stopped, took a deep breath, then called out Eric’s name.

The two men sauntered out of the bathroom. Steele winked a greeting at Noel then went over to the ceiling rings and leaped up on them. Eric came over to the stairs. Had he noticed the door was opened?

“Alana asked me to bring these to the studio,” Noel said casually.

“Take the Benz if you want.”

“Thanks.” If Eric had noticed he wasn’t telling. “Any time you want me to be back?”

“No.”

“See you.” He hadn’t noticed. Good.

Noel opened the door, but Eric called him back. “Yeah?”

“You like my visitor?” Eric asked in a manner that made Noel unsure of how he was supposed to respond.

Noel looked over to where Steele had just completed a roll in midair, and was hanging gracefully suspended from the rings. His long torso rippled like a washboard. He would definitely be accounted a very hot number at the Grip. Well-muscled legs, arms, huge shoulders. It was hard to picture the two of them a minute ago discussing—what? Crime? Politics? Noel knew they would take up the conversation the minute he left.

“He’s all right. Why? You pimping for me? Or were you thinking of something a little more elaborate?” Noel asked, trying to keep their talk on the flirtation level Eric seemed to prefer.

“I’m thinking of throwing a party for him,” Eric said. “Sort of a surprise. About twenty very hot guys, and an ounce of some golden MDA I just got.”

Noel knew the drug’s reputation as a semihallucinogenic superaphrodisiac.

“Sounds more like an orgy to me.”

As Noel reached for the door again, Eric added:

“Give Alana a kiss for me.”

The photography studio was on the fifth floor of an ancient building on the northern edge of the theater district, one of two apartments on the floor. It must cover half a block, Noel thought, following the thin, frizzy-haired young blonde who’d met him at the door through corridor after corridor lined with mural-sized blowups of Anthony Brickoff’s most noted celebrity portraits and advertisements. After passing a half dozen studios—some in use, some empty—and a few rooms that seemed to be living quarters, they arrived at the studio where Brickoff was shooting.

It was almost the size of Redfern’s living room—although by no means as high-ceilinged or elegant.

Most of it in fact was bare, the wooden floors littered with screens, cabinets, and various artifacts the uses of which Noel could only guess. One area seemed to be for dressing and makeup. Large folding screens only half hid a portable wardrobe and a tri-mirrored vanity table.

Opposite this area—lighted by floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides—was the set. A pale gray sheet of paper, perhaps fifteen feet long, pulled down from a ceiling roller, was draped onto the floor. On the paper were four aluminum tripod umbrellas reflecting the bright lights within at different heights and angles. Two other tripods held cameras. More cameras, light meters, and other photographic equipment were scattered on the floor.

A half dozen people were in the room, most of them sitting reading magazines, unconcerned with the shooting. Noel guessed them to be assistants, wardrobe people, assorted helpers.

Brickoff was immediately apparent, however. He was a giant—shaggy-haired, bearded, dressed in an enormous old sweater and equally worn trousers and sandals. He stalked along the edge of the paper, then turned suddenly and began shooting Alana, who was in the center of the paper set, dressed in something sheer and diaphanous. Done with the roll of film, Brickoff would hand the camera to an aide, take up another camera, stalk the edge of the paper in a small circle, mutter under his breath, then suddenly advance upon her, talking low, and begin shooting again, urging her to move in certain ways or to subtly change her pose.

Noel remained off to the side, the envelope under his arm, watching the photo session, but mostly watching Alana. She seemed not to hear Brickoff, but moved as though in a dream, in another, unapproachable dimension where Noel could only observe and feel.

Suddenly she stopped, then walked forward.

“That’s enough,” she said.

“One more,” Brickoff begged.

“No. No. You have too many already,” she chastised gently. Brickoff kept on shooting her, even after she left her position. She held up a hand. “I said no!”

Brickoff turned away, handed the last camera he’d used to an assistant, and sat down on the paper.

“Ah, there you are!” Alana waved to Noel, whom she’d just seen. “Come here,” she called across the room.

Noel held out the manila envelope.

“We don’t need that,” she said, taking it from him and dropping it. “Come here,” she said, turning him around with both hands on his shoulders, directing him next to where she stood on the paper. “Anthony!” she whispered. “Look!”

Brickoff stared up at them as though bewildered.

“What do you think, Anthony?” she asked softly. “Isn’t he precisely right?”

“Maybe,” the photographer said, squinting. He didn’t look impressed. Noel was certain he was merely being polite.