Only someone as young and naive as the boy across from her could have made such a speech, and it was precisely that youth and naivete that made it ridiculous.
“I can look after myself very well, thank you.”
“Pardon me for being blunt, Miss Haverman, but you’re an alcoholic and a prostitute. If that’s what you call looking after yourself, I’d hate to see what you call neglect.”
In answer, Naz turned her wrists upward, nudged the watch on the left and the bracelet on the right to reveal the thin pale scars beneath. She held them in the light for a moment, then turned them down again.
“By my own standards,” she said quietly, “I’m doing great.”
She saw his fingers tremble, felt him fight the urge to take her hand. It was too easy to imagine him sweeping her up in his arms, pressing her cheek against his hard flat chest and wrapping his strong arms around her. She could feel herself wanting this to happen, yet knew that in an hour or six, when she had given him more than he’d have ever dreamed of asking for, the urge to protect her would fade away, replaced by disgust.
But right now there was just the heat.
“I’m just curious,” Morganthau said huskily. “You seem to hate psychologists and hospitals and every other institution devoted to emotional and physical caretaking. So what made you volunteer for three different studies testing—what was the term? ‘psychic aptitude’?—over the course of six months?”
Naz shrugged. “They paid.”
“Ten dollars for a full day’s work. I would think a woman of your beauty makes more than that on a single date.”
Now it was Naz’s turn to blush. “I have no doubt you know exactly how much I charge. You seem to know everything else about me.”
“Actually, I don’t. And”—Morganthau raised his voice to speak over her—“I’d rather not. I find it tragic that any woman should have to resort to those means to support herself, but for a lady of your character, it’s maddening. I want to find every man who ever took advantage of you and cut his heart out.”
They didn’t take advantage of me, Naz thought. I took advantage of them. Or I took advantage of myself—it amounts to the same thing. But she didn’t say it aloud.
“I was curious,” she said instead, aware that it was the same word he’d used. “Dr. Calloway told me it was all in my head. My empathy. My inability to screen out others’ feelings. He meant that I was making it up, but I found myself wondering: what if it is in my head? Not in the way Calloway meant. What if there’s a biological or genetic or, I don’t know, magical cause for this torture I’ve had to endure every minute of every day of my whole life? These waves of emotion washing over me every time I come within ten feet of someone—love and hate, fear, anger, lust, greed, all pressing down on me the way raindrops fall on other people. At least then I’d have an explanation for what I’ve done, what I’ve felt. And, who knows, maybe a cure, as well.”
“But the studies you participated in were testing for a different kind of psychic ability, weren’t they? Telepathy, prognostication, and remote viewing. None of these is exactly the condition you describe. Anyone can see that you’re special, Naz. Anyone.”
Naz could feel the desperation beginning to grow in him. The need to convince himself—to convince her—that he could help her. No, she told herself. She didn’t feel it. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his hands, his eyes. The cues were physical, not mental.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my results actually fell below statistical norms. Dr. Calloway was right. It is all in my head. The only emotions I feel are my own. And they are terrible, Agent Morganthau. Terrible.”
His hand moved toward hers, but just then the waiter arrived with a second round of drinks. By the time the waiter left, Morganthau had regained some of his composure.
“It’s funny. I initially thought of approaching you with this idea because I deduced from your file that you had some interest in the paranormal. I wouldn’t have guessed that your motivation was so …”
“Weird?” Naz said. She too had calmed slightly. All hail the great god gin.
“I was going to say ‘normal,’ actually,” Morganthau said. “I mean, it makes more sense to me when a person for whom all the usual channels of aid have failed turns to superstition. It’s when rational people get interested in this stuff that I get confused.”
“The world is strange enough on its own, eh, Agent Morganthau?”
“I’ll say,” he said, sounding for a moment even younger than he looked. He blushed and sipped at his drink. “So I asked you before if you’d ever heard of LSD.”
“Actually, the clinician who ran the second study I participated in—the one on prognostication—mentioned it to me. He said several studies had shown that it proved beneficial to schizophrenics and other patients suffering from acute mental disorders. He even gave me the name of one working at Harvard—O’Reilly? O’Leary?—but when I went there, it turned out he’d left the institution.”
“Leary,” Morganthau said. “He was asked to leave, actually. His methodology was a little too unorthodox for Harvard.”
Naz’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like you know something about him.”
“Just what I read in his file. His interest in LSD and the Company’s ran on tangential tracks.”
“And what exactly is the Company’s interest in LSD?”
Morganthau waved her question away with a smile. “‘Need-to-know basis,’ as they say.”
“Then let’s return to our original subject: what is the Company’s interest in me?”
“The Company’s only official interest in you is in a caretaker capacity, as befits the debt owed to your father. But the Company is also looking for people to assist in its LSD investigations, and I thought you might be interested in helping.”
“You want me to take LSD?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then what?”
“I want you to administer it.”
“To …” Naz’s eyes suddenly went wide. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Morganthau refused to meet her gaze. “The Company requires a few things from its subjects. First, that they be completely ignorant of the fact that they’re being given the drug. And second, that they be unwilling to pursue the matter should the drug cause them any adverse effects.”
“And who would be less likely to pursue matters than a man given the drugs by the prostitute he was sharing his evening with? And I assume the corollary is true as well? That if I refuse to help you, you’ll report my own illegal activities to the police?”
Morganthau blushed yet again. It was clear Naz wasn’t the only intoxicated one at the table. “Before I met you, I would have said yes, that was the reasoning behind it. But, having spent an hour with you …”
“Two, by the way I reckon these things.”
Morganthau’s blush deepened. “After getting to know you, I would be hard-pressed to do anything that might cause you harm.”
“But?”
“But I’ve already included your name in my report. If I don’t recruit you, there will be questions. Repercussions. Though I wouldn’t turn you in, someone else in the Boston office surely would.”
“So your hands are clean, is that it? It’s the Company that’s doing this to me, not you?”
“You have to understand, Miss Haverman, there are goals here that are bigger than you or me.”
“Is that what Kermit Roosevelt told my father? Because if he did, he was right. What my father did for the Company not only got him killed, my mother, and my aunt, and three housemaids, and how many hundreds, thousands, of other innocents. Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve always known, on some level. Whatever, you don’t need to persuade me. I know a losing battle when I see one. But I want compensation.”