Dead and Gone

probation? Or for early release if sentenced? Do you know how to teach these sickening men how to avoid mouthing their cognitive distortions when they’re interviewed?”

“Cognitive distortions?” I asked, stalling—I needed time to deal with the info-overload.

“The classic example,” he answered, “goes something like this. People are primarily motivated by desire for pleasure. Children are people. Children seek pleasure. Sex is pleasure. Children seek what they want by communicating their desires. That is why so many children are deliberately seductive—they are seeking pleasure, for themselves.”

“And people buy that crap?”

“Law enforcement doesn’t. Just the treatment centers that make a living from it. My task is to make sure the … client doesn’t repeat any of it, regardless of his personal belief system.”

“So you sell them the keys?”

“Certainly. And each client subset is different. With the incest offenders, we have to eliminate their expressions of a profound sense of ‘entitlement’ to their own children. Learning to feign remorse is critical to their survival, once apprehended.”

“Christ!”

“Of course, the worst are the ‘true believers.’ You’re familiar with their rhetoric, I’m sure.” His voice switched to a singsong parody of a memorized litany: “ ‘Those children who later claim to have been harmed by a loving sexual experience with a caring adult are not victims of sex, they are victims of programming, playing the victim role as dictated by self-interested therapists, and exploited by greedy lawyers. The media never report that there are numerous studies which show that the child participants themselves, interviewed later as adults, did not consider their earlier experiences to be harmful in any way at all. The only “perversion” going on is the perversion of love.’ ”

“Nice.”

“Be honest, if only with yourself. I sell these people images—pictures and videotapes. And if they are later caught with such product, I sell them information on how to minimize the consequences. And, of course, if their status warrants, I sell their names to certain foreign governments before there are any consequences. In short, I prey upon them. Are your own operations any different?”

“I promise them kiddie porn, sure. But I never deliver.”

“And so you are better than I, somehow? Morally superior? I don’t produce the pornography, I procure it. Do you think the people from whom I obtain the product would go out of business if I stopped buying? Parents sell their children all the time. All over the world.”

“What’s all this got to do with Nazis?”

“Are you really this dense? If you want to preserve the bloodlines, you do what the royals always did. Keep it in the family. It’s called inbreeding. Or, if you prefer, incest.

“Anyway, the whole ‘Nazi’ concept is nothing more than a marketing tool. It isn’t about politics, it’s about packaging. A skillful profiteer always tailors his product to the market. Does the phrase ‘National Socialism’ register with you? Hitler was all about German dominance. Do you think he would have welcomed Greeks or Poles or Italians as ‘Aryan’? They might have been at the end of the line for the ovens, but, rest assured, they would certainly be on that line.

“Modern merchants understand that young people are where the money is. So, instead of limiting their pitch to the genetically correct, they simply change the definitions. Today, any kid who could conceivably call himself ‘white’ can qualify … even a good number of Hispanics.”

He was right. And tapping a deep vein, too. Even when I was a kid, the dark-skinned Puerto Rican kids they brought into the lockup would only speak Spanish, making certain the cops didn’t take them for blacks.

“Am I really telling you anything you don’t know, Burke?” he went on, completely composed. “How many crates of nonexistent weapons have you sold to these imbeciles? I’m selling them a nonexistent Valhalla-on-earth where they can practice whatever perversion suits their disorders. Only I operate on a grander scale than you could ever have conceptualized.”

“Then why have me killed?”

“Because, until this very moment, you didn’t know one single word of what I just told you. No, you thought I was some sort of super-pedophile. And you wanted to kill me, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, way past gaming now.

“I acknowledge that the scheme you hatched—that phony ‘immunity’ I was fool enough to purchase—was a clever one, although I suspect the woman was the real instigator.”

“You never went after her, though.”

“Why should I? She’s a stupid policewoman in her heart. She did her job. I went to prison. She’s done with her work. Besides, I know what happened to her. What good’s a prosecutor without a jurisdiction? She’s out of business, permanently. But you … in a way, you represented the last impediment to me acquiring enough money to disappear and live, literally, as a king. With you alive, I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“How long—?”

“Was I planning this? I hatched the final plans for Darcadia in my prison cell. They took my freedom, but not my resources—my government friends saw to that, too. I thought it would be a perfect irony for you to be murdered by one of the children who appear to mean so much to you.”

“That kid … he was one of—?”

“He became one of them. His parents sold him.… Well, more accurately, I should say his mother sold him. She wanted her child to grow up as a warrior for his race. Despite the money she garnered from the transaction, I believe she was quite sincere in her Nietzschean politics. In fact,” he said, somewhere between a laugh and a sneer, “she plans to join us on Darcadia someday. The boy’s father was not a factor. A