The Lure (29 page)

“How did you get hold of them?”

“I’m not going to answer that,” Vega said. “And no, Randy doesn’t know.” Their eyes met. “I wouldn’t do that to him. He’s too nice a kid. And he trusts Loomis.”

That implied Buddy didn’t.

Vega stood up. “Well? You coming?”

Noel felt as though the path that had veered off a few minutes before was becoming more definable. He knew if he stood up and went with Vega now he’d never retrace his steps again. But he had to see the dossiers to believe: he had to know what Vega was up to.

Vega cabbed uptown to a largish building in the West Eighties where he had a good-sized, sunny, railroad apartment with a tiny backyard. Noel followed on his Atala.

Buddy introduced a small, thin, pretty, dark-haired girl feeding three children in the big kitchen as his wife, Priscilla. The smallest child was still in a high chair; the others, four and six. All of them were healthy, good-looking, bright.

As was the apartment. Next to Redfern’s place it looked middle class, but it was clean, well furnished, well kept, with a stereo, color TV, children’s toys strewn about, and picture books open where they had left them to go have lunch, even a child’s record player.

“This is Noel Cummings,” Vega told his wife. “He works for Whisper, too. I told him about what I found.”

“Buddy! Why?”

“He’s all right. Someone else has to know, that’s why.”

She stared at Vega in disbelief then came over to Noel, facing him squarely. “If you are a good man, then listen to my husband. If not, then leave this apartment right now and be content that I don’t tear your eyes out.”

“Stop that, Pris,” Buddy said, angrily pushing her away.

“I mean it,” she said to Noel, ignoring Vega.

“Stay with the kids,” Buddy said, leading Noel into the living room. He went into another room, then returned with a series of accordion folders containing manila envelopes. He went through them, found one, and gave it to Noel.

“This is a copy?”

“A copy of a copy. Have a beer, make yourself comfortable.”

Aside from many pages of information Noel already suspected Whisper had on him were bank statements, credit union reports, employment records since he was a teenager, his driver’s license, and school reports dating from kindergarten.

And two other startling documents.

The first was titled “First Encounter with the Subject: Use of Plan J-23 for total instant psychological breakdown.” It was dated March 2 of the current year, the day after Noel had witnessed Kansas’s murder. It began:

Although certain the subject was unallied to the perpetrator ( s), we nevertheless decided to implement plan J-23, an instant total breakdown test. The subject was incarcerated over an hour in a dark freezing cell, threatened, ignored, and finally assaulted under controlled conditions by four operatives (18, 301, 75, 111) to ensure the total release of any remaining defensive devices. I then interfered, as previously planned, and setting myself up as savior for the moment, immediately gained his full trust for the preliminary interview.

Which was detailed with exact fidelity to what Noel could recall of the first meeting, interspersed with various comments by Loomis.

The second document that Vega had starred for Noel’s notice was a full psychological profile of Noel, beginning with his earliest school and doctor’s reports, evidently compiled and interpreted by Loomis—who, it appeared, was Dr. Loomis, M.D., Ph.D. Diplomate in Psychiatry. This portrait gave the history Vega had talked about, including the fraternity hazing incident. As he read, Noel saw his character, his personality, over more than two decades, his psyche itself laid bare. The final paragraph was shattering:

The above information, in conjunction with many taped conversations with the subject, displays a case of arrested infantile psychosexual development characterized by impulsive behavior alternating with overcaution, both at the most inopportune and even self-destructive times. His easy dominance by members of the opposite sex, well documented above, is still not as total as his susceptibility to control by an older, parental male—as illustrated in clauses 15, 76, 119, 234, etc. above. He is vain, conceited, easily flattered, believes without much proof that he is mentally and emotionally superior, is lazy, and must constantly be prodded into action, is occasionally rebellious, only to fall even more deeply into submission—all arising from a deep belief that he lacks ability, importance, and worth, and by the very realistic fear that he is and always was a homosexual. These factors make the subject an exceptionally high class rating: 1.

When Noel looked up from the page several minutes later, he felt as though his heart had been surgically removed from his body without him ever feeling the stroke of a scalpel.

Priscilla had joined them, sitting on the arm of Buddy’s chair. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” she said. “You ought to read the terrible things they say about Buddy.”

“Well?” Vega asked.

Noel didn’t know what the question was. “I feel like when I was eight years old, and I hurt a friend, put a stick in his eye or something like that. My father spanked me for the first and last time in my life, but I’ll never forget that spanking. How angry he was.”

“Now you see what Loomis thinks of you.”

“I didn’t know he was a psychiatrist.”

“Class-A operative. Number one rating he gave you. Right next to Mr. X. Aren’t you?”

“Loomis thinks so.”

“Then it will get a lot worse,” Buddy said darkly.

Noel didn’t understand that. He was still trying to accept what he’d spent the last hour reading. Given that everything written about him was true, how in hell could Loomis conclude he was homosexual? All those years with Monica! His affair with Mirella. And one little drunken incident to unbalance it, to tip it. It was unjust! Unfair! Unfair!

Vega was talking again, saying vague things in enigmatic phrases: the dossiers were not the worst of it; something else was behind it, something far worse; he wasn’t sure what, but he was going to find out.

“I’m sorry,” Noel said, finally stopping Vega. “I’m not following you. I need time to think about this. You won’t show this to anyone?”

“Don’t worry. It’s locked up. But even if nothing comes of it, remember! You read it. You held it in your hands and read it! Remember that!”

“What do you expect to come of it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Buddy!” his wife warned. “Shut up, until you know.”

After all that, the stupidest thing Noel could have done that night was to attempt to make love to Mirella Trent. That’s what he told himself several times that evening with her.

The first time was when he picked her up in her large, spacious Upper West Side apartment. She offered him a seat and a drink. He took the first, refused the second. That was when she—still standing—asked him whether he liked the sweater she was wearing—a forest-green turtleneck that clung revealingly and gracefully. Or, she asked, should she wear this?—holding up a Chinese silk blouse. Of course it was a come-on. Noel saw that as it was happening. Why else would she draw attention to her body, especially her beautiful breasts, unless she had more ideas than merely dinner?

During dinner he thought of it a second time. Almost from the minute they sat down in the small Italian place she had taken him to, she began to make it known through hints and various subtle allusions that Noel had a reputation among women for being both attractive, mysterious, and aloof. Might it have something to do with his late wife? Mirella said she’d heard that Monica had always seemed deliciously satisfied, enviably so. A woman beautiful as Monica—so charismatic—must have been approached by scores of other men, and yet had never once been even whispered about; that was intriguing. Her absurd “first date” game turned him off, as much as her stockinged foot under the table, rubbing his inner thighs and crotch, turned him on.

After the long, leisurely dinner, they walked a half dozen blocks through the warm June night back to her apartment for an after-dinner drink. Even before they had entered her apartment, Noel began to make love to her.

Stupid. He could have ignored her hints and allusions. Their foolish, rotten relationship was bound to begin again.

But he had to know if Loomis was right.

Stupid, because now he knew. As far as Mirella could tell, Loomis was absolutely wrong. Noel was as healthy and lively and accomplished a heterosexual partner as she or any woman could have wanted. Years of making love to Monica had perfected his techniques, taught him the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the various turn-on spots of a woman’s body, and the timing, too. Without giving that much thought to it, he carried out a bravura performance—one that might have been filmed for sex instruction classes.

He kissed her deeply, holding her neck cupped in one hand. From there he moved all over her face with his lips, down to her throat, around to first one ear then the other, then to the nape of her neck, lifting her short, dark hair away, then, around to her throat again, to the cleft where her breastbone began, all the while deftly slipping his hand under garments and through zippers, across her shoulders, down to her lovely breasts, aureoles of mocha outlining the tanned flesh, responding with her erect nipples surrounded by tiny gooseflesh pimples that told him all was just right. Then, the sweater off, the skirt dropping slowly first in front then sliding from in back, he moved down farther, gliding along her creamy skin to her tummy so suddenly soft amid the hardness of her wide, hard-boned hips, down to the tender-as-butter thighs, then up again briefly with his tongue deep into her navel, then down again past the silken frizzy hair to kiss her lower lips, his hands all the while caressing moving stroking fondling breasts buttocks hands thighs feet…

And she so effortlessly finding herself twisting once more with pleasure at the touches of this man she didn’t really like, thought was weak, easy to dominate, too uncertain, too mild-mannered for her really. This man who would not stop even though she asked him, then begged him, then couldn’t any longer stop his compelling wet hunger until he had the very inner webbing of her gyrating with warm and cold and hot and ice, and as he demanded it she gave it, oh, gave it, resisting at first then no longer able to resist. Gave it so gratefully, his film-star face, his sweat-curled, shiny hair, his eyes that rose up to meet her afterward as he mounted her, asking for her to give it yet again, this long-muscled, hard-fleshed semideity, this mystery to her and yes, again she could no longer resist and gave it to him, and once again, too, leaving herself and all qualms to let him enter behind her this time, a new pleasure for her, one she’d only heard of and difficult, constricting at first. Then, as his hands guided by hers moved in front of her, inside her, at the same time, and she relaxed so utterly into his hunger and rhythmic ferocity, she was a queen with her favorite, a whore of Naples with a young GI, a frontier woman in the adobe hut, and he was lovelier than any woman or man or child she’d ever seen before, the exhausting, panting everyman.

As far as Mirella would ever know and tell, Loomis was wrong.

She looked at the clock.

“I can’t believe it! Only midnight. I thought we were together for hours and hours,” she said, then leaned over looking at him, smoking a cigarette. She was afraid to touch him, afraid she would never stop if she did; that having tasted she would have to devour all of him. “Noel?”

“Ummm.”

He seemed off somewhere she couldn’t be.

Then he sat up, went to the bathroom. After a minute or two she heard the toilet flush. He came out, looked at her, then began picking up his clothing.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer, hastily got dressed. She was disappointed but tried not to show it.

“Will you call me?”

“I don’t think so,” he said tonelessly. Now she began to feel cheated.

“Only one-night stands,” she asked, meaning to be sarcastic. “Or only one time per customer to spread the wealth around?”

“I’m seeing someone,” he said, leaning over to pull on his shoes. “A guy.” He looked up for her reaction, then tied the shoes.

“That’s the worst line I ever heard, Noel.”

“It’s true.”

Perplexed, she let him go, saw him to the door, and stood there—wearing only the top of her pajamas as he waited for the elevator only a few feet away, expecting something more; she felt she deserved more.

“I really don’t believe you, Noel.”

He looked toward her as though to say something very important that would explain everything, then he turned to face the elevator doors that had just begun to open.

“I
don’t
believe you!” she shouted once more, enough for him to hear it echoing inside the overilluminated elevator car hurtling down.

Noel missed his transfer point on the subway. When he looked up, Forty-second Street was long gone. The train was just pulling into Fourteenth Street. He got out of the car with the intention of trying the Canarsie Line across town, then going up again nearer to where he lived, via the Lexington Avenue Line; or taking this train back uptown to Forty-second Street and the crosstown shuttle.

“Lost in Greenwich Village. That’s what you look like.”