“Nothing.”
“What about him? Ever seen him before?” Cyrus handed her a photograph of Murran he’d gotten from Paulina.
“Never seen him before,” she said.
“You’re certain?”
“I have never seen that man in my life. He might have known me, but I don’t know him.”
“You’re going to have to forgive me for being skeptical. Most of the time, I tail husbands cheating on their wives or blowing money that should go to their kids. One guy blew a lot of his kid’s college fund at your friend Edge’s club.”
“How is that Kingsley’s fault? He runs a club for adults, not a daycare center.”
“Just saying, the work I do…it makes you a little skeptical of everyone.”
“Most of the time, I flog husbands who are afraid to tell their wives they’re masochists or submissives. There’s a lack of trust on both sides.”
“You don’t care those men are cheating?”
She shrugged again. “That’s between them and their significant others. I’m just the hired help.”
“You’re a little more than a housekeeper.”
“Not much more. No kissing. No sex. Only pain and dominance.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You were arrested for prostitution twice in New York. In 2006 and 2007.”
“I wasn’t convicted. Charges were dropped.”
“Charges get dropped for lots of reasons.”
“I won’t lie and say I’ve never had sex with a client. But I will say I’ve never exchanged sex for money—not that, as the kids say, there’s anything wrong with that. One detective tried to get me to give him private information about a client. When I didn’t, he arrested me for prostitution in retaliation. Another arrest was a case of mistaken identity. A wife thought her husband was seeing a prostitute behind her back. He wasn’t. He was seeing me.”
“You’ve never blackmailed a client?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have too many clients if I did.”
“So that’s a no?”
She took a deep breath. He was annoying her. Good. The feeling was mutual.
“Do you have any clients who are in the clergy?” he asked.
“Back in New York, one of my clients was a rabbi. There was also a Baptist youth pastor, but don’t tell his momma.”
“So you’re saying you’ve never been in a sexual relationship with a Catholic priest?”
“I’m saying I’ve never seen, met, or had any kind of relationship—sexual or otherwise—with this priest.” She returned the photograph to Cyrus.
“But he had your card.”
“A lot of people have my card. You have my card.”
“True. But I didn’t call your number right before I killed myself.”
He’d shocked her again.
“You didn’t tell me that part.” She spoke softly, breathlessly. He’d upset her.
“He made two calls in the five minutes before his suicide. The first to a friend to say he was sorry for what he was about to do. The last call he made was to you. You want to tell me why he was calling you?”
“I’d tell you if I knew.”
“You would?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. But I really don’t know.”
“How about this? How about you tell me how he might have gotten your card?”
She took a long breath, puffing her cheeks out as she exhaled. “Well…that’s my old New York number. Maybe he went there on a trip looking for kink.”
“Did Mr. Edge ever give out your cards?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to speak to him then.”
“Good luck.”
He ignored that. “You say Father Ike might have gone to New York looking for kink. I’m not very familiar with what dominatrixes do. Can you walk me through it?”
“You really think he wanted to do kink right before he died?”
“I don’t know what he wanted right before he died. But I do need to find out.”
She looked away, crossed her legs, nodded. “What do you want to know?”
“Father Isaac Murran was sixty years old. Do you have a lot of clients in their sixties?”
“A few.”
“Really?”
“Many sixty-year-old men still have strong libidos and sexual longings. The man I love will be sixty in nine years, and I fully intend to have good sex with him nine years from now. I mean, before then too but also nine years from now.”
She was playing with him again.
“Can you tell me what goes on between you and your clients? The basics?”
She sat forward and gave him her full attention. “A basic session begins like this. A client comes to my dungeon—”
“And where is your dungeon?”
“Do you really need to know that?”
“I really need to know that. I’m not the cops, okay?”
“Fine—828 Piety Street. Old brick factory.”
“You have a dungeon on Piety Street?”
“It’s not my fault half the streets in this town have religious names.”
“Okay,” Cyrus said. “Go on. Who are your clients, mostly?”
“We’ll go with the usual demographics. Most of my clients are straight white men between the ages of twenty-five and seventy-five who are middle class or above. Professional men—white-collar types. A few military guys but mostly doctors, lawyers, bankers, that sort. The bulk of my clients are in their forties and fifties, midlife crisis age. The ‘it’s now or never’ stage.”
“A client arrives at your dungeon and then what?”
“I greet them at the door and they come in. Then I make them take off all their clothes.”
“But not for sex?”
“For protection. I need to see they aren’t hiding any weapons.”
“Got it. Go on.”
“We’ll talk a few minutes about what he wants. Most of the time, it’s some pain and dominance, like I said. Maybe some foot worship. Maybe he wants to be called a specific name like ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ or ‘baby boy.’ Something that’s part of his fantasies. I’ll leave him alone a minute or two to get into the right headspace. He’ll probably kneel on the floor and close his eyes. I’ll come back in and the scene will start.”
“The scene?”
“That’s what we call it. A scene. Scening. A roleplay scene. A Mommy scene. A humiliation scene. Whatever he’s paid for. Anyway, let’s say it’s a pain scene. I’ll put him on the St. Andrew’s cross and hurt him with various instruments of kink-play—floggers, whips, paddles, canes. I see a lot of masochists in my dungeon. Most of them can orgasm from pain or can orgasm very easily after a beating.”
“The men do that?” Cyrus cleared his throat.
“They’re allowed to touch themselves. I don’t jack them off or anything.”
“Isn’t that…unsanitary?”
“Germaphobes don’t usually become dominatrixes. I make them clean up after themselves.”
“What do they use? To clean it up, I mean? Lysol?”