“Possible. He had that sheet. Sex offenses with a minor girl. And his sex life in general …” Wolfe pursed his lips and waggled his big hand from side to side.
“He likes getting the shit pounded out of him. Yeah, there’s that, but it doesn’t exactly connect with the kind of person who becomes a stalker.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, your average stalker is a regular person with an obsession about a particular woman. She left him, he can’t stand it, so he chases her. Or he saw her in the bank and she’s his heart’s desire, but he can’t get up the nerve to meet her, so he stalks.”
“Like Pruitt.”
Marlene nodded approvingly. “Sort of. Pruitt did get up the nerve to ask her out, originally, but he’s that type. My point is that stalkers tend to be people with low social skills and outwardly ordinary. If they were born middle-class, they’re downwardly mobile-like Mark David Chapman, the guy who did John Lennon.”
“Ted Bundy had great social skills.”
“He did, but serial-killing psychopaths like Bundy are not really stalkers in the sense we’re dealing with here. I guess my point is we don’t see successful, talented people like Evarti doing stranger stalking.”
“He’s not a stranger; he’s a … you know, he works with her.”
“A colleague. Okay, good point. He lusts after her, she doesn’t know he’s alive, except when he’s tinkling those keys; he’s like an appliance. So he gets pissed off, he tortures her with these notes and invasions. That could work. But I hate that he’s an S-M freak. It seems somehow an … excess of weird, even for a musician.”
Marlene thought about the last time she had seen Felix Evarti. He hadn’t liked her, she recalled, and she had, in turn, been repelled by something vaguely wrong in his demeanor, a Peter Lorre-ish oiliness, a furtive quality. And he certainly had access to Edith Wooten, not to mention possessing the musical knowledge that the stalker had shown.
“Okay, let’s put him on the short list. I’ll ask Edie if he ever made a pass at her. We’ll set up a watch on him, a little discreet shadowing, see if maybe we can catch him with the roses and the note.” She shuffled through the pages of the report. “I see you found Edie’s main squeeze.”
“The violin, Ten Haar, yeah.”
“He a possibility?”
“A long shot. He lives in Europe. He could be hiring it, though.”
“Never happens,” said Marlene confidently. “They love to do it themselves. It’s the fun part. Forget him-I’m just glad she’s getting laid, the poor little bitch. While we’re on bitches, what about the sister?”
Wolfe rolled his eyes, a dramatic gesture on the usually impassive face. “The sister. Also into whips and chains. And drugs too. Strictly prescription, though, like I said in the report. Gets them from her boyfriend.”
Marlene leafed through until she found the right page. “This is the doc?”
“Uh-huh. Very Park Avenue type too. Matter of fact, we ran into him the day I met Wooten, in the hallway outside her place. Big blond guy …?”
“Yeah, I know. He was at the concert too.”
“He was?” Wolfe seemed surprised.
“Yeah. And he knew me. And he had a shot at it while I was making that phone call. What do you think about him and the sister for it?”
“Oh, she’s mean enough. And he’s not, you know, too tightly wrapped either. And Evarti could be in with them too, for the music part.”
“Evarti knows Ginnie and what’s his name, Vincent Robinson?”
“Uh-huh,” said Wolfe. “They all go to the same club to get whipped. I got it down there somewhere. Cuff’s.”
Marlene looked at the page. “Yeah, I see it here-it’s on First off the Bowery.” She looked across at Wolfe, considering, trying to suppress a loony image-a faded socialite, a Romanian concert pianist, and a Park Avenue doctor with their white buttocks in a row, waving in the air, waiting for the lash. It was all she could do to suppress a guffaw.
“What?” said Wolfe, who was beginning to squirm under her gaze.
She snapped out of the reverie. “Oh, nothing, just thinking. Look, have you got a black T-shirt?”
“A black T-shirt?” Wolfe repeated.
“Yeah, and black jeans, a leather jacket … you know, swinging stud garments.” A blank look from the man. “Don’t get out much, eh, Wolfe? Okay, there’s a place called Naughty Boys on East Eleventh. Go over there today and pick yourself up an outfit. We’ll pay for it, or rather, Edie Wooten will. I’ll meet you back here at, say, ten tonight.”
“We’re going there. Cuff’s.” Wolfe said it like “So the tumor is malignant.”
“We are. Why so glum, Wolfe? There was a time when a young dude would’ve jumped at a chance for a night at the clubs with Marlene Ciampi. Tell me I haven’t lost it all!”
Wolfe’s face blossomed so with confusion that Marlene felt obliged to reach across and pat his arm. “Joke, Wolfe. We’ll check the place out, get some background on our friends. We could get lucky and learn something useful. At worst, we’ll have to watch them get whipped.”
“Or whip,” said Wolfe with a strange, cautious look. “What I hear, Robinson likes to whip.”
When Wolfe had gone, Marlene called Lily Malkin, a sociology professor at NYU who specialized in the study of violence against women and who, like many among New York’s panzer-feminists, was a big fan of Marlene’s.
She was in but unavailable. Marlene left a message and then made a set of calls to a half-dozen of her clients, reminding them of court appearance, making referrals, and generally checking on how they were. All seemed quiet for a mercy, and she was pleased to learn from Tamara Morno that Marlene’s dog interview with Arnie Nobili had borne fruit. Morno had heard from friends that he was going to meetings, had stopped drinking.
Marlene was thus feeling very much like a contributing member of society when the phone rang with Lily Malkin returning her call. Marlene told her what she was doing and what she wanted to know.
Malkin stayed silent for so long that Marlene thought something had gone wrong with the phone.
“Lily? Are you there?”
“Uh-huh. Just thinking. Exercising the great card catalog that is my mind. What you want to know is not quite in my field.”
“But I thought sadomasochism would be right up your alley,” said Marlene.
“So to speak,” said Malkin, chuckling. “No, conventional S-M has nothing whatever to do with the kind of stuff I study. It’s not violent. Or probably I should say it’s 99.5 not violent.”
“Wait a minute: you’re saying sadomasochism isn’t violent? Isn’t that like saying water isn’t wet?”
“Not at all. S-M is a sexual game. The people who play it are by and large solid citizens, high S.E.S.- sorry, socioeconomic status-by and large. They have code words that they use to stop themselves from actually getting hurt.”
“That sounds like a joke, Lily,” Marlene objected. “The masochist says ‘hurt me!’ and the sadist says ‘no!’ You’re serious about this?”
“Yeah, it’s all for fun. I’ve got a study here I could ship over to you, explains the whole dominance and submission scene. That sort of includes both straight sadomas and bondage and discipline. It’s quite a read. There’s another paper about professional mistresses-dominatrixes-that’s a hoot and a half.”
“My God, it shows you how sheltered I’ve been. I had no idea. Why do they do it?”
“Well, like I said, it’s not my field, but, as with everything else, it’s the mother-”
“What a surprise!” said Marlene, and they both laughed.
“I’ll send those papers over.”
“Okay, great,” said Marlene, “but one thing-you said it was 99.5 percent harmless. What about the other half a percent?”