“Is there something funny about that?” Stadtler asked.
“We find your manner… refreshing,” Zero told him.
“Do you?”
“Oh yes.”
Grimes ordered more drinks for them all. Stadtler didn’t mind; he barely had enough money to cover his whore, let alone all the booze he was sucking down. If these two queers wanted to pay, so be it. He’d gladly talk with them if they covered expenses.
“Do you have any favorites here?” Grimes asked.
“The Asian women,” he told them. “Particularly Lee Chang. I’ve been through the rest. Whites, blacks, Indians. I’m tired of them all. Even Lee is getting boring. But what else is there?”
“Yes, what else?” Grimes said.
He and Zero exchanged another of their secretive looks.
Stadtler was waiting for the inevitable proposition he was certain was coming. Hopefully, they’d buy him more drinks before he had to turn them down. He figured Grimes was at least fifty; Zero somewhere in his forties. It was a novel approach they’d developed, he thought, hanging around whorehouses and trying to pick up men. It all seemed rather absurd when there were dozens of places males of all ages could be had for a price or for free.
“We know of your plight,” Zero assured him. “There isn’t a house of pleasure in this damn town we haven’t milked dry for entertainment.”
Grimes nodded. “A man reaches a point where he needs something new.”
Here it comes, Stadtler thought.
“Before you bother going any farther,” he said, “I should tell you I’m not interested.”
“In what?” Grimes asked. He looked slyly amused.
“This isn’t a proposition,” Zero said.
“Isn’t it?”
“If it was a young man we wanted, sir, the city’s full of better pickings than you, I dare say.”
Stadtler felt terribly foolish. He’d as much as insulted them and all on the part of an over-inflated ego. “My apologies,” he said. “I thought—”
“Think nothing of it.”
“What do you do for a living?” Grimes inquired, ordering more drinks.
“Private security,” Stadtler said. “You’re a doctor, I take it?”
Zero smiled. “I hold that degree, but I’m not in practice. I sometimes lecture in anatomy at UCSF.”
“If it pleases him,” Grimes said.
Stadtler studied Zero. His clothes were tailored, his nails manicured. Everything about him spoke of money. A man, apparently, who only worked when it pleased him. A dream life.
“And you?” he said to Grimes.
“I teach mathematical theory at the university.”
“And you get together from time to time to enjoy certain pleasures?”
“Weekly.”
Zero added, “But it seems there’s less and less to be had. Our little circle of two is growing tiresome. We need fresh blood.”
“New thoughts on the nature of experience.”
“And you want me to join?”
“Maybe.”
“And what do we call our little group?” Stadtler asked.
Grimes and Zero locked eyes again.
“The Templar Society,” Zero said.
“As in the knights of history?”
“As in the way they were reputedto be,” he explained, “not as they truly were.”
“Interesting.”
A silence passed between the three as each debated this possible partnership.
“I’m game, if you still want me,” Stadtler said.
“What do you think?” Grimes asked.
“He’ll do nicely.”
Stadtler smiled. “A toast, then? To the Society of three?”
They swallowed down their drinks and Grimes ordered more. Stadtler was getting drunk and it seemed appropriate to celebrate.
“But first,” Zero said, “will your profession stop you from indulging in anything considered immoral?”
“Or illegal?” Grimes wondered.
Stadtler thought about what he was getting into. He didn’t give a damn. “Of course not. I’m game for anything.”
They drank again and began talking about the women they’d had and what they’d bullied them into doing. They laughed and joked and confided like old friends. And through it all, Stadtler couldn’t help feeling that it was the beginning of the end somehow.
“I’m glad you waited,” Lee Chang said, coming up behind Stadtler and licking his ear. She was dressed out in silk and lace, her legs long and sensuous, her breasts high and full. Her eyes promised a thousand ecstasies.
“At last,” Stadtler moaned, running his hand between her legs. “These are my friends. They’ll be joining us tonight.”
Zero and Grimes looked pleased.
Lee licked her lips with lecherous delight. “I’ll do my best to amuse them.”
The foursome went up the stairs to the chambers above.
And this is how it all came together.
They met more often in the weeks that passed, the games taking on a new and practiced urgency.
And by that time, there was no looking back.
DOCTOR OF DEMENTIA
The thing that bothered Lisa the worst was that she’d let Eddy Zero slip through her hands. It hadn’t been her decision, of course; she’d been a junior member of staff at Coalinga State Hospital. The others—doctors Quillan, Reeves, Staidmyer—had the final decision. And after some five years, they’d decided to let Eddy go. Whether they actually believed his lies of being cured or it had more to do with overcrowding or budget cuts, she was never sure. Probably all three.
“We have to release him,” Dr. Staidmyer told her one evening.
“With all due respect, sir, you can’t be serious.”
His face reddened. He didn’t like being challenged. “And why not, Dr. Lochmere?”
“Eddy Zero is dangerous. You know that as well as I. He’s a textbook sexual psychopath.”
Staidmyer had smiled curtly, as if she, barely out of internship and a woman to boot, couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. “I disagree completely. He’s compulsive, yes, but hardly a maniac.”
“He has a history of psychosexual deviation. He raped two women.”
“And has been rehabilitated.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Before he came here, he was repressed and hateful, but he’s come around nicely. I can’t possibly keep him here any longer.”
Lisa just stood there, feeling helpless and awkward in the male-dominated hierarchy of Coalinga. Rehabilitated? He isn’t goddamn rehabilitated. He’s still a dangerous felon! If you think he’s come around nicely, give him a few hours alone with your wife. Of course, she didn’t say any of that because it wouldn’t have been professional and they liked their shrinks professional at Coalinga, a.k.a. Hotel California.
Regardless, that was that. Eddy Zero slipped through her hands. Oh, she could’ve told Staidmyer things only she knew. Like how Eddy admitted to her that Staidmyer and the rest were doddering old fools, how he’d lied to them, worked them like putty in his fingers. Made them believe they’d affected a cure on him. But she remained silent. She could’ve told them how he tried to rape her with an orderly just outside the door. But they’d made their decision.
And Eddy slipped away. But she never forgot.
She never would.
The possibility that he was out there, even now, stalking innocents, is what really bothered her. Because of three naïve men who called themselves psychiatrists, a monster had been unleashed on the world. Maybe at the time of his release he’d been little more than a twisted sexual predator with aspirations of psychotic mania, but she knew that would change. A man who fed on suffering like he did could only grow more evil with time.