BETTY HALUKA, DESPITE A perfunctory description provided by Stanley Moodrow, had entertained many images of the cult leader, Davis Craddock. She’d imagined him to be anything from a white-robed guru to a tweedy academic, eventually settling on a tall, slender figure, an urbane maniac whose glittering eyes revealed his underlying insanity. She’d been expecting to meet Craddock all along; her Therapist had assured her that Craddock personally interviewed all patients before they became part of the Hanoverian community. Still, the summons came as a shock. Betty was marched up to Craddock’s suite before she could shed her coat.
“The thing is to just be yourself,” her Therapist, Jack Burke, advised. “No pretensions. He’ll see through you in a minute.” He smiled as he advised her, thinking of Craddock’s penchant for seduction as a test of worthiness. For most of Hanover House’s existence, a night with Davis Craddock had been an absolute precondition to the admission of females. But over the last year, what with all the problems, Craddock had become less concerned with day-to-day Hanoverian life. Now the experiment was entering a new, unpredictable phase. Yet the great man could still take the time to counsel a patient. That’s what made him a great man.
Betty, following her Therapist up the stairs, was aware of the general agitation within the community. Knots of Hanoverians, their bags already packed, talked excitedly. Many were crying. If Betty had had the instincts of an ex-cop, the alarm bells would have been ringing loud enough to wake the dead, but Betty deliberately refused to speculate, focusing her attention on what she would say to Davis Craddock.
“This is it. Good luck.” Burke held the door to Craddock’s suite open.
“You’re not coming in?”
“It’s a personal interview.” He grinned lewdly. “I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening.”
Betty stepped into what real estate agents like to call an eat-in kitchen. The counters, sinks and stove gleamed with the efforts of Hanoverians to please their master. The floors and walls were spotless.
“Are you Betty?” A small, Asian girl sat by a white Formica table. Her hands were folded on her lap, her eyes downcast.
“I am.”
“You can go inside. Davis is waiting for you.”
Betty expected to enter an office or, at the least, a cozy living room. Instead, she found an enormous bedroom, big enough for a pool table and a bank of electronic gear against the far wall. She let her eyes wander for a moment, trying to take it in, then noticed the black man sitting calmly in an overstuffed chair. He was enormous, almost as big as Moodrow, and he regarded her with curious, amused eyes.
“Wendell Bogard,” he announced. “At your service.”
Without answering, Betty turned her attention to the man sitting at the foot of the bed. Far from her expectations, Davis Craddock was short and wiry, with a thick head of stiff, black hair that hung over his brow, dominating his small dark eyes. Looking into those eyes, Betty found no trace of the glittering insanity she’d anticipated. The man’s eyes were dead black circles, as blank and empty as the eyes of a cooked fish on a plate.
“Please,” Craddock said, “sit down.” He indicated a straight-backed chair a few feet from his knees. “You’re Betty Haluka?”
“Yes. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m a little nervous.”
“I can see that.” He waited a moment, as if expecting a response, then continued. “You know I’ve been very lax these past few months or we’d have met before this. Things haven’t been going too well for Hanover House. I’m sure you noticed that everybody’s getting ready to leave. Have you noticed that?”
“There does seem to be a lot of activity, but I don’t know what it’s about.”
“It’s about the end of Hanover House. The end of the great experiment. I’m sending my children out into the cold, cruel world. Now, they’ll have to maintain their various neuroses without my tender ministrations. Do you have any idea how many have come to me, begging to remain by my side? I’m not an emotional man—I admit it—but I was deeply touched by the response. I thought they’d hate me. After all, I lured them into Hanover House, made them my slaves, destroyed any chance of a normal life…Wouldn’t you hate someone who did that to you?”
This time the pause went on so long, Betty felt obliged to make some sort of a response. “I don’t understand.” She’d been nervous before coming into the room. Now she was afraid. It was one thing to be face to face with a criminal psychopath in a courthouse interview room and quite another to be a potential victim.
“Well, that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that I’m making a few exceptions. I’m looking for Hanoverians with very, very special qualities to accompany me into exile. Tell me, do you fuck?”
“Mr. Craddock…”
Without a hint of warning, Davis Craddock drove his right fist into the side of Betty’s face. “Call me Davis.”
Betty scrambled to her feet. Her mind formed a dozen responses, all equally meaningless. She looked toward the door, but Wendell was already there. He was laughing.
“Please,” Craddock said, “sit down. Right here. Next to me. Trust is very important to a successful therapeutic relationship. Don’t you think?”
Betty touched her fingertips to the side of her face. The swelling beneath her eye was noticeable. There was anger, now, to go along with the fear, and the notion that perhaps this was still a test. It was an idea that could only have been formed in desperation. She set the chair upright and sat close to Craddock, trying to feign a sincerity that went against everything she was feeling.
“What was I saying?” There was life in Craddock’s eyes now. A glow of anticipation. “Oh, yes. I was talking about special qualities. I’m looking for middle-aged women with fat detective boyfriends who manage to insinuate themselves into my life. I’m looking for creative letter writers who amuse themselves by pretending I’m an asshole. But most of all, I’m looking for insurance. Do you know anybody with all those qualities?”
“Fuck you.”
Craddock’s fist shot out again. “I think I like you better on the floor.” He regarded her for a moment. “Yes, I definitely like you better on the floor. I only wish your skirt had ridden up over your thighs.” He sighed loudly. “But in the course of a long and troubled life I’ve learned that you can’t have everything. Wendell, will you ask Kenneth and Blossom to come inside?”
The Asian girl appeared a moment later. A blond man wearing the blue blazer of a Hanoverian Therapist stood behind her. He glared at Betty through unblinking eyes.
“I believe you’ve already met Blossom,” Craddock said. “You should take a lesson from her. In my opinion, obedience is natural to the human female. Doesn’t she look happy? And this is Kenneth Scott. Kenneth has a personal interest in the fat detective. Show her, Kenneth.”
Kenneth Scott took off his blazer, then opened his white shirt and pulled it to one side. The round bruise on the upper right side of his chest was a few days old. The reddish purple had faded to a dull greenish yellow, but it was clearly visible. “The detective is Satan,” he whispered. “And the woman is Eve.”
“Please, Kenneth,” Craddock laughed. “Enough of the Bible bullshit.” He turned to Betty. “Poor Kenneth. He was raised in a good Christian home and he can’t shake it off. I think you should know that Kenneth and Blossom are personally responsible for your well-being. If you want anything, just ask one of them. I promise they’ll be attentive to your needs.
“Stanley’s going to kill you for this,” Betty answered.
“Kenneth, would you go down to the van and get it running?” Craddock waited until the door closed before continuing. “Stanley Moodrow is my problem. And we’re not here to talk about my problems. We’re here to talk about your problems. Blossom, get some ice and wrap it in a towel. By the way, Betty, would you like to see Blossom naked? No? Gee, and you look so butch. I thought for sure…All right, Blossom, go fetch the ice.” He waited patiently until Blossom returned. “Give the ice to Betty.” The Asian girl, without a trace of emotion, crossed the room and offered the towel.
“Blossom is learning obedience,” Craddock continued, pulling the girl onto his lap. “She’s proven herself an excellent pupil.” He slid his hand into her blouse. “Notice that her expression doesn’t change. Hopefully, you’ll reach this level before our relationship comes to an end. But all in good time.”
Betty got to her feet and moved to a chair several yards away from Craddock’s fists. Her mind was in turmoil, anger and fear mingling with self-recrimination. How could she have been so stupid? Moodrow had warned her. Jim and Rose had warned her, too. What would Moodrow do when he found out? If he exploded, Craddock could easily kill the both of them. She needed to get herself under control, but her thoughts were tumbling through her mind like handkerchiefs in a clothes dryer.
“Now, let’s talk about your problems,” Craddock said mildly.
“Fuck you.”
“Shi-i-i-it,” Wendell interrupted. “Lemme teach this white bitch some lessons about disrespectin’ her superiors. Bitch got herself a attitude that don’t fit her position. I fix it so’s when you say ‘hop,’ she say, ‘on yo dick or on yo face.’ ”
“I don’t think so, Wendell. Remember, Betty’s an insurance policy, not an experiment. Eventually, she’ll come to us, but we don’t want her so shaken that she panics the fat detective when we put her on the phone. Now, Betty, let’s talk about your problems. Your biggest problem, as I see it, is that I could kill you without thinking twice. I could shoot you. Or stab you. Or crush your fucking skull with a brick, then wash my hands and go to dinner. I enjoy killing, but, let me hasten to assure you, I don’t kill without a reason. I’ve been thinking about the fat detective. Why does he persist? The police investigated my activities, then gave up. The IRS gave up, too. Even the Attorney General gave up. Why, I keep asking myself, does the fat detective persist? The fat detective persists because he’s paid to persist. Connie Alamare’s money motivates him and he’ll keep coming as long as she keeps paying. Unless, of course, I supply him with a reason to stop. You are the reason. Any questions?”
“If you hold me forever, he’ll haunt you into the grave.”
“Good point. It shows that you’re thinking and that’s all to my benefit. I need three weeks to complete my project. A month at the outside. Then I’ll let you go. As I told you, I don’t kill without a reason. I’m a businessman.”
“And your business is dope.”
Craddock laughed out loud. “Very good, but not entirely accurate. My business is PURE, not ordinary dope. PURE is to dope as Botticelli is to Norman Rockwell. But why should I convince you with words, when I can demonstrate the genuine article? In fact, I’ve already prepared a sample just for you.” He removed a small syringe from his shirt pocket and held it up for her inspection. “You can fight, of course, but what good would it do you? What’s the old saying about rape? ‘When rape is inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.’ ”
Betty expected to die. PURE had killed two junkies and reduced Flo Alamare to an existence far closer to death than to life. What better way for Craddock to eliminate her? She would die silently, without a scream or the sound of a gunshot.
Fear overwhelmed her. She had never experienced terror like this before, not even in her worst nightmares. The room jumped into focus. She felt herself to be aware of every single atom, of whirling electrons, of worlds that stretched to infinity. Yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t even beg.
Tears began to flow from her eyes, but she didn’t sob. She didn’t seem to be breathing at all. She could sense the molecules of blood rushing through her veins, the molecules that would carry the toxins to her pounding heart. Craddock lifted her arm and nonchalantly strapped a rubber tourniquet to her bicep.
“Good veins,” he said to Wendell.
“Won’t stay that way long.”
Craddock waved the syringe in the air. “Not so, Wendell. The use of sterile needles and a little alcohol can keep the veins alive for years. You know, when I first decided to create a new drug, I toyed with the idea of packaging it in a syringe. But, of course, needles are illegal in New York and PURE is not.” He broke into a laugh. “Wendell, look at Blossom.” The girl was staring at the syringe in Craddock’s hand. “Don’t worry, little one, your turn will come.”
The tip of the needle slipped easily into the large vein just in front of Betty’s elbow. A single drop of blood pushed back into the clear liquid, then Craddock snapped the tourniquet off and slowly depressed the plunger.
Within seconds, Betty’s fear vanished. Despite the danger, despite the manifest insanity of Davis Craddock, she felt perfectly at ease. The sensation was almost entirely physical, but she didn’t feel slow or sleepy. In fact, her consciousness was dominated by a single, simple realization, a truth she could have gotten from any junkie on the street. The lure of dope stems directly from the quality of the high. It feels good. At least in the beginning. That’s why people do it.
She recalled an anti-drug ad she’d seen on TV. Fat hissed and crackled in a hot frying pan while an off-screen voice intoned, “This is drugs.” Then an egg dropped into the pan and the same voice announced, “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”
Betty smiled. She had a question. Why did the creators of the ad feel it necessary to lie to kids who already knew the truth? Maybe the ad wasn’t meant for people at risk. Maybe it was meant for middle-aged women, like herself, who rarely had more than a glass of wine at dinner. Anyone seriously interested in helping kids would tell them the truth. That it feels so good, you want to do it again and again. You want to do it until it owns you.
“A week, Wendell. Four injections a day for one week and I’ll own her. She’ll beg for it. Beg. She’ll willingly perform any art I demand. She’ll set up the fat detective for a single dose of PURE.” He walked back to the bed and took a syringe out of the nightstand drawer. “Here you go, Blossom.”
Blossom needed no help. Within a minute, she was pushing the plunger home, her eyes half closed in anticipation of the rush.
“Get dressed, Blossom. We’re going for a ride.”
With all the nonchalance of a veteran prostitute, Blossom shed her robe and walked naked to a chest of drawers. She slid into panties and a bra, blue jeans and a red Donald Duck sweatshirt.
“I’m gon’ miss that little yellow bitch,” Wendell said. “Gon’ miss this whole scene.”
Craddock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Marcy was much better. She was inventive. But if you want Blossom, you can take her with you. It doesn’t matter to me and it won’t matter to her. As long as you keep her supplied with PURE.”
“You temptin’ me, Davis, but ain’t no way I can bring the bitch back to my crew. Raise too many jealousies.”
“Then say good-bye, Wendell. You won’t be seeing her again until we’re ready to deal.”
Craddock showed Betty a small revolver and made the predictable threats before hustling Betty down a back stairway and into an alley that ran out to Orchard Street where the van was parked. He needn’t have bothered. Still overwhelmed by the effects of the drug, Betty followed obediently. Even when he ordered her to sit on the floor of the van, even when he blindfolded her with a strip of soft cotton, she made no protest. But as they moved through Manhattan, the first effects of the drug began to recede.
It wasn’t much, just a slow lessening of the physical sensations, but it enabled Betty, locked in darkness, to come to grips with her situation. Craddock was insane. His surface control had to mask an underlying desperation. How could he get away with this? Where could he go? Her fate didn’t really matter. Moodrow would never stop looking for Craddock, even if Craddock released her unharmed. And Stanley Moodrow had less than no interest in the niceties of the law. Betty’s value to Craddock was decidedly short term. If he held her too long, Moodrow’s patience, assuming he decided to be patient, would dissolve and he would act. If Moodrow thought Betty was dead, he would call in the FBI and a hundred agents would scour the country. Kidnapping is a federal crime and carries a life sentence.
The truth was obvious enough to Betty, though she experienced it without a trace of emotion. There was no ‘joy of enlightenment,’ just a quick, calm understanding. Davis Craddock wasn’t stupid, despite his theatrics. He needed a month to complete his ‘project,’ a project that could only involve the manufacture and the initial distribution of the drug called PURE. After that, he would be forced to disappear which meant that he had no intention of remaining active in the drug world. A quick hit. Over and out.
She recalled her only prior experience with narcotics. Following an emergency appendectomy fifteen years ago, she’d been given a prescription for thirty tablets of a painkiller called Demerol. The pain had disappeared after a few days and she’d flushed the mostly unused prescription down the toilet, despite (or, rather, because of) its narcotic effect. The painkillers had cost her fifteen dollars and seemed, to her, to be very powerful. Curious, she’d asked one of her junkie clients what Demerol sold for on the street and been told that, depending on how much heroin was available, black market Demerol sold for eight, ten or twelve dollars per tablet. Her prescription had a street value of three hundred dollars. If the cost of manufacturing PURE was in any way similar to the cost of Demerol, Craddock stood to make an enormous profit from a very small amount of the drug.
A month to complete his project? He would have to keep her alive and able to communicate until he was ready to run. The physical danger was not immediate. She would have time to think, to prepare. On the other hand, the psychological danger was much more imminent. She was already anticipating the next injection. And the one after that and the one after that. Craddock was determined to humiliate her, to enslave her until she no longer wanted to be released. It would be so easy for her to acquiesce, to slide into acceptance. She was in the back of a locked van, headed for an unknown destination, imprisoned by a madman, yet she felt no anxiety whatsoever. If PURE was powerful enough to overcome fear, it would certainly overcome shame or pride. Her survival—physical, emotional and psychological—depended on her ability to resist the drug. The simple fact that the clarity of her understanding was also an effect of PURE was an irony that escaped her altogether.