Pied Piper

CHAPTER 44

The idea of running one investigation inside another appealed to LaMoia in the same way as did the secrecy of having an affair.

At 11:30 that Wednesday morning he was paged to the Four Seasons Olympic, arguably the best hotel in the city. He drew attention as he passed through the elegantly appointed lobby, in part because of his cocky body language. He rode up to the fifth floor along with a Chinese woman laden with Nordstrom shopping bags. A few minutes past twelve noon, he knocked sharply on the door to room 512.

The routine nearly always the same, the room door came open for him and LaMoia stepped inside. Sheila Hill had pulled the window’s gauzy inner curtain so that the noonday light bled across her skin in an induced twilight. She wore a black underwire bra that forced her breasts up invitingly and black high-cut underwear revealing her tanned flank.

She stepped toward him with her practiced hungry look in her polished eyes and LaMoia suddenly wondered what he was doing there. She allowed him a modicum of control by eagerly submitting to various fantasies, but her reason for being there was a form of addiction, whereas his was a desire for companionship: He had dated twenty-year-olds for too long.

He turned away from her, taking in the room with its glimpse of the sound’s gray-green waters and shipping traffic. He wanted a conversation, something more than G-strings and the Kama Sutra. He told her, “Boldt was able to get some of the credit records from the Bureau-you don’t want to ask.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she corrected, swaying toward him, but stopping short of making contact. “Let’s see what can make you stop talking.”

She slipped off a shoulder strap and sucked on her fingertip.

“We’ve got to talk,” he dared. “This isn’t working for me.”

“How ’bout this?” she inquired, slipping off the other strap. “It certainly worked last time.” She placed her hand between her legs.

“Can’t we just talk for a change?”

“Damn you!” she said, her act over, though her chest and cheeks flushed with anticipation. She stormed over to her pack of cigarettes, all femininity gone, and lit a smoke. Until that moment he hadn’t fully allowed himself to realize how much of her was an act. “So talk.”

LaMoia said, “Not like that. I mean talk.”

“About?”

“Something other than work and sex,” he said.

“And the leading candidates are?”

“What if we just had dinner tonight? A bottle of wine, some pasta.”

“I hate pasta. I bloat up. What has gotten into you?”

“We shouldn’t be doing this at lunch hour,” he complained, regretting his earlier line of argument. Born of guilt and concern over Sarah’s abduction, he said, “Those kids need us on this ’round the clock.”

“What the hell have you been smoking?”

She sucked on the cigarette though didn’t seem to notice it. She appraised him like a tailor, paying no mind whatsoever to her own partial nudity. Reaching for the table, she tossed him a key ring and said, “Make me a gin and tonic.” She indicated the minibar.

“It’s lunchtime, Captain.”

“Yeah. Okay. Make it a double. And make one for you too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Make one for you too. I’m not drinking alone, cowboy.”

LaMoia obeyed her, observing himself as if watching another. He poured the drinks, a stranger to himself. From where did she extract such power over him? He even went down the hall for ice. The drinks were poured strong. The cigarette smoke annoyed him.

She circled him as she drank. “More important question,” she said. “Why would you give a shit about conversation? Hmm?” She dipped her finger into her drink and offered it to his lips, and he sucked on it. “Tongue,” she said, and he obeyed. “Are you going soft on me, so to speak?” She plopped herself down onto the bed, the drink spilling onto her hand. She licked off the excess lasciviously, making a great show of her abnormally long tongue.

“I want more than nooners,” he blurted out.

“Not from me you don’t.” She leaned back and poured a stream from her drink so that a silver line of liquid jumped through the delicate white hairs on her belly and vanished into the underwear’s black elastic. “Ready or not,” she said again, rocking her legs open and closed. She giggled girlishly. He knew that was part of it as well-she was someone else in these hotel rooms.

LaMoia upended the drink. She liked his long neck and its angular Adam’s apple. He did this for her, again not understanding why.

Her thighs slapped softly.

She poured another stream down her belly to where it disappeared. “Come and get it!” She waved the cigarette at him.

LaMoia slipped it from her fingers and extinguished it, suddenly boiling mad. With the reactions of a snake, he knocked the drink from her hand, snagged her wrist, and pulled her so hard and so quickly toward the head of the bed that he pulled her out of her underwear. It rolled into a lump between her knees.

“Whee!” she squealed, possibly appreciating that he had mixed her drink as a triple and his own as a single.

“Take a few minutes to think about us,” he said, cuffing her left wrist to the headboard. She made an exaggerated expression of concern and said, “Oh, you’re scaring me!”

The liquor glass rolled to a stop.

LaMoia hurried to the closet and returned with two terry cloth bathrobe belts. A moment later the underwear was on the floor and her ankles bound to the bed.

“Something new!” she said excitedly. “Have we done handcuffs?”

“You’ve been rude to me, Sheila. Demeaning.”

“Rank has its privileges,” she fired back at him, waiting for him to undress. “Once you’re captain, I’ll make the drinks. But you’ll still come when I call. And you know why? The twenty-year-olds gratify the ego all right, but not the loin.”

LaMoia tugged the comforter off the bed, then the blanket out from under her and the flat sheet. Hill, naked and writhing, legs bound, one hand in the cuffs, didn’t know what to make of this. She forced a smile, beginning to question his actions. He reached beneath her, and she cooperated, arching her back. He freed the corner of the fitted sheet and also stripped this from the bed, pulling a mattress pad with it. Nothing left with which to cover herself.

“What the hell?” she said.

He showed her the handcuff key as he carefully set it down in plain sight next to the television.

She looked around searchingly, suddenly understanding the game. “No way,” she said, believing it a joke.

“Phone’s in reach,” he said, pointing.

“You will not do this,” she shouted. “I am stark naked!”

He nodded. “And you know something? You’ll call me again-”

“You’re dead you do this!” She squirmed but wasn’t getting loose. Her free arm could not reach her ankle.

He moved toward the door. “And you know why? Because you’ve never had it like this. Those fifty-year-olds just don’t do it for you.” LaMoia pulled the door shut, her insults filling the hall. He wondered how long until she made the phone call to room service.