him that she smokes.
I don't think this's good news for this boneheaded broad that you've got on your hands here, wasn't too bright to begin with. This is a dangerous man.
'He's proven it, many times. The videos of him in banks when he's been robbing them show a very scary man in a state of cold homicidal rage, capable of doing anything. You would not want to've been in one of them, getting cash on your MasterCard, when Lowell and some friends stopped by to make a withdrawal. The people who've attended his robberies in person 've testified that he's frightening to behold.
'Terrifying' is a word they often use.
'This is the man whose woman's smoking truly infuriates him. He likes screwing her and having her blow him. For that he has to be around her, so he tries not to let her smoking make him mad. But self-control isn't Lowell's stock in trade. Self-restraint isn't something that he's good at, especially where sex's also involved.
'This guy is what teenage boys wish they were. He's a sex engine. In the place where you and I have got our penises, he's got a jack-hammer.
He's what they call a paraph iliac He's got an abnormally powerful sex drive. There really is such a thing as being sexually insatiable, and he is that. When he's been in the can, they've had to put him in solitary several times for sexually running amok, assaulting other inmates. Either he wants to bugger them and they don't want him to, or else he wants them to blow him and they're not keen on that either, so as a result he's going to beat on them until they see it his way.
'Keep in mind what kind of polished gentlemen make up our prison populations. These guys that he's threatening are thugs themselves, hardened criminals like him and they're afraid of him.
'When he's been in solitary, locked up by himself; knowing there's a TV camera on him every minute; no access to any erotic material outside his own diseased imagination; he's been observed masturbating to orgasm eleven times in one twenty-four-hour period. In that same period he also had a wet dream. He'd been jerking off all day that is what they had him doing; merrily watchin' dirty movies every half hour or so.
Then he went to sleep for a while, five or six hours, I guess and while he was asleep he got hard and came off again. And then when he woke up, the first thing he did was jack off.
'This was at one of the institutions where the psychologist got permission to test this new aversion-therapy on him. It sounds like some kind of a fantastic joke, but it's some starry-eyed nitwit's bright idea of a new treatment for sex offenders child molesters; bell-ringers; guys who beat up prostitutes; rapists.'
'Every type of leading citizen,' Merrion said.
'Right,' Paradisio said. 'I guess no one's ever proven it works, but then no one's ever proven any of the standard, traditional approaches've worked either. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a cure for those guys they could demonstrate was reliable. So you could ever feel really comfortable letting them loose. Basically they show the dirty pervert all kinds of filthy stuff, find out what really turns him on. Then overpower him with it: Show him dirty movies and let him beat his meat until it's raw or it falls off, whichever comes first. It sounds to me almost as though it oughta be cruel and unusual punishment, stir the guy up into such a frenzy that he does that to himself; has so much fun he really hurts himself.'
'While the medics thoughtfully look on and take notes, I presume,'
Merrion said. 'All in the interest of science, of course. Are we still sure we know which one of these people in the playroom's the guy who's got the problem? Or is it just possible that both of them're now upstanding one from watching the movies, the other one from watching the watcher?'
'That was my first thought,' Paradisio said. 'Anyway, when they put Chappelle in the box and made him watch porn flicks all day, he took to it right off. He really seemed to like it.'
'Oh, I bet he did,' Merrion said. 'Much better 'n re shelving the books in the prison library. Much more fun watching' 'Debbie do Dallas' 'n it is mopping down the dining hall. What'd he do, set a new record for the pony- lope?'
'They shut the VCR off after three hours,' Paradisio said. 'By then he'd finished off five erections.'
'Very impressive,' Merrion said. 'They should groom him for the Olympics. Maybe the way to rehab this guy is get him a movie tryout.
If he doesn't get stage-fright, he could be worth a fortune. He's not a bad guy after all; just a poor unhappy kid who missed his true calling in life.'
'Yeah,' Paradise said, 'but they didn't do that, so as a result I've got him. What I'm afraid'll happen is that some night after he and Lady Janet've been drinking and he's been in her a couple or three times, he'll be ready again before she is. And she'll say 'No, let's wait a minute, honey. Take a break and have a smoke, make ourselves another drink. We got all night to play.' And he'll go berserk and either kill her for putting him off or else force her do it, and in the process be so rough he'll kill her without meaning to. Not that it'll matter much to her.'
'If he's telling the truth,' Merrion said. 'Dangerous guys don't always do that, as I'm sure you probably know.' He did not wish to believe that Chappelle was a threat. If he was then he would first have to think of something he could do that would keep Janet safe, and then he would have to do it. That would be more work for him. 'More work's against the chief clerk's religion,' Larry Lane had said.
'Well, yeah,' Paradisio said, 'but like I say: I don't think he's lying to me. He doesn't have anything to gain by doing it. Why lie if it doesn't get you anything? He doesn't give enough of a shit about me or the pathetic little things that I can do to him. Put him back in jail?
It's practically his second home. I don't care, but it's still bad news for the broad. She's pissing him off. That's never a wise thing to do.
'I think you should at least tell her. He's not doing this 'cause he's in love. Because he likes her, even feels sorry for her. He's fucking her because she's got the equipment, what he prefers to get the job done. Brains're not included in that, so it's okay with him that she's not only stupid but probably not right in the head, talks ragtime or isn't all there. Dependable pussy is what he's after, and that's what she's offering this week. This week and the week after next. If her talk starts to distract, he just buys her another drink. And if one pop doesn't quite do the job, another one after it will. Sooner or later she'll pass out on him, and then he can go to sleep. Knowing he'll get back into her again two or three times in the morning.
'Lowell Chappelle is a practical man. Half-breeds're often that way, I've noticed. Used to working the fringes; they get pretty good at the game. You've got to find some way to warn her, and make her understand she's being warned.'
'If you just bought a carton of cigarettes, you mean,' Merrion said to Janet. 'If you bought a carton, say, every five days, then you wouldn't need to go down to Dineen's every morning, the way you do now.
Then only every fifth day.'
'Well, maybe every three or four days,' she said. 'I've always been:
'Have I got it?' Then I'll have it. The booze and the pills, and the cigarettes, too. Or if I had something to sniff.' She frowned. 'Which I haven't been doing for quite a long time. I wouldn't want you thinkin' that. But when I did, when I was doin' that, that was the way that I did it, all right? Just like with everything else. If I've got it, I'll use it. No matter how long it's supposed to last me, I'll use it if I got it around.'
'I wasn't suggesting…' Merrion said, 'anything like that. I didn't mean anything like that. That you might be back on the stuff.
You gave me your word, you wouldn't do that you were all finished with that stuff. And that was an important part of our deal, that you'd keep that promise to me. Because otherwise, you know, all bets were off. No help from me with the judge. Or with the people over at Welfare, or with the building super, either, up at the place you live.
Well, so far as I know, you have done that, stayed clean. So I'm still trying to help you.'
'Because those fuckin' neighbors of mine I've got up there,' she said, 'they are real nosy people, and mean. The people who were there when I moved in there, like you said, when you got me in, those were very nice people there then. I got along with them good. But then one at a time, they all seem to've moved out. Always just one at a time. Almost so you wouldn't notice. And then if you did, well, you'd just assume, the new ones'll be just like them.
'But it didn't turn out that way. These're not nice people there now.
These're a very mean, loud, kind of people. I don't like them. I'd like to do something to them. Spray-paint their cars or something like that. Get back at them for how they act. But I don't. I don't do anna thing say nothin', to them. I just go along there, minding my business, not a care in the world. Don't give them no bullshit at all.
