Hannibal’s tee shirt was soaked by the time he was approaching the end of his morning run. He felt a little stitch in his left side, but nowhere near enough to slow him down. It was a good day. He had started on time, and would finish a little early. He took a perverse pride in his own anal retentive nature, suspecting that certain people he waved to five mornings every week used him to determine whether or not they were on time for work.
It was getting harder to keep his breathing quiet, but he tried anyway, relishing the morning sounds and not wanting to blot them out of his own ears. Anacostia was one of the roughest of urban inner city areas, yet it still offered an early morning symphony for those awake to hear it. Even there, birds chirped and whistled and sang at the edge of dawn. However, the main theme there was carried by groaning garbage trucks, and the taxicab horn section. The overhead whine of jet engines replaced the woodwinds, and all the sounds melded together in a way neither nature nor an orchestra could imitate.
As he reached his own block Hannibal slowed to a walk. The view to his home was a path of brick buildings, cracked sidewalks and broken bottles. This area of the nation’s capital was rundown and generally impoverished, yet it tried hard to cling to its dignity. Hannibal loved his neighborhood because it was a real neighborhood. He knew his neighbors, and his neighbors knew him.
As rough as it was, it was a neighborhood in transition, within a city in transition. Ahead lay a few blocks of abandoned or condemned buildings, many still inhabited. But a few blocks to his left stood a series of new, high-priced town houses. If he ran in the other direction, crossed the Anacostia Bridge and went a few blocks up Potomac Avenue he would bump into the congressional office buildings that flank the Capitol, less than two miles away. In Washington, it was an easy walk from the halls of power to the abandoned halls of slum apartments.
Having almost regained his breath, Hannibal leaned on the sandstone banister and mounted the steps up to the stoop at number 2313. Hannibal remembered the first time he walked up those steps. The building was a crack house then, and the owner had paid him to flush the squatters out. He looked down at the dark stain on the stoop left there by his own blood after his first attempt to do his job. He had returned with a small team of men gathered from the homeless shelter where he volunteered. Sarge and the others had helped him take the building back. Ray, a former client, had helped too. Afterward, he had decided to stay there, and the others did too. They had fought for the building and found a home.
Closing the outer door behind him, Hannibal glanced to the right out of habit to read his own name on his office door. Then he walked left around the central stairway. He unlocked and opened the fourth of five doors down the side of the hall. Once inside he took a deep breath. It was refreshingly cool inside, since the owner had replaced the ancient boiler with a modern furnace and installed central air conditioning.
The flat wasn’t luxurious, but it was just enough for Hannibal. Big, sliding double doors stood in for walls between the rooms. With all of them open he could see through his two extra rooms to his bedroom at the front of the building. To his right, past the bathroom door, his small but functional kitchen waited. For just a moment he debated with himself whether breakfast or a shower should come first, but the shower won out.
After arranging to meet with Anita in the afternoon, Hannibal drove to Marquita’s house. Pulling into the driveway around ten o’clock he was met with a few surprises. First, the sprinklers were running. Then he noticed that the lawn had been mowed. Curiosity drove him to open the mailbox. It was empty. Even greater curiosity spurred Hannibal to the door. Five seconds after he pushed the doorbell, Sarge pulled the door open.
“Hey, Hannibal. Good to see you man. The doc’s already here, doing an exam on her.”
Hannibal followed Sarge into a house that was transformed. The carpet had been vacuumed, maybe shampooed. The mail was stacked neatly on an end table. Swiping a black-gloved finger across the entertainment center proved it had been dusted.
“So I guess you kept busy through the night,” Hannibal said.
“Well, they taught me in the Marines to keep my quarters ship shape,” Sarge said. “The galley gave me the most trouble. I don’t know how the woman could stand to get food in that place. Anyway, I figured she’d find it easier to get back to normal if she wasn’t living in a crap hole.”
Hannibal lowered himself onto the edge of the sofa, almost afraid to ruin the house’s showroom appearance. “You did quite a job. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“I caught a few winks off and on up in the bedroom.”
Hannibal cocked an eyebrow. “Her bedroom?”
Sarge shook his head with a grin. “It ain’t what you’re thinking. Markie woke up screaming in the night. The night terrors, you know, like I’ve seen alcoholics get.”
“Markie?”
“That’s what her friends call her,” Sarge said, dropping into the recliner. As he spoke, his fingertips slowly rubbed his left palm. “We got to talking a bit. She was too scared to stay in there by herself so I sat with her a while. She dozed off and on, and so did I. You were right, buddy. She sure as hell didn’t need to be out here by herself last night.”
Hannibal nodded. “And she dug her nails pretty deeply into your hand, I see. You’re a good man, Sarge.”
“She’s a good woman,” Sarge said. “Hannibal, how could a man break a woman down like that?”
Before Hannibal could answer he heard his named called from upstairs. He and Sarge stood immediately and jogged up the stairs to Marquita’s bedroom. The door was ajar, but Hannibal pushed slowly on his way in. Marquita was under the comforter, just as he had left her, but nothing else was the same. Both the disorder and the smell he had faced the first time he entered the room were gone. Roberts perched on the edge of the bed, speaking to her in hushed tones. Marquita had regained a little color and Hannibal could see a hint of African heritage, although her background was overwhelmingly French, judging by her features. She looked more centered than she had the night before, but her knit brow told Hannibal that it was still hard for her to focus.
“Now, will you be all right in here alone, while I go outside to talk to Mr. Jones?” Roberts asked. “He’s a friend.”
“I know,” Marquita said, smiling for a second in Hannibal’s direction. “He’s the man who was here when I collapsed. He was very sweet to me when he could have taken advantage.”
“Yes, but we need to speak out in the hall for a moment.”
“I’ll be fine, doctor, if Archibald can sit with me for a little while.”
Hannibal’s face jerked toward Sarge. “Archibald?”
Sarge raised a finger in front of Hannibal’s face, his course voice bristling. “You don’t never need to call me that, hear?”
“Hey,” Hannibal raised his palms toward Sarge. “I’m the last guy who’d make fun of anybody’s name, man.”
Still, he was chuckling as he backed out of the room. Roberts followed him into the next room and pushed the door closed behind himself. Hannibal waved Roberts into the vanity chair while he stood rather than sitting on the bed.
“So how’s she doing, Doc? Is she checking herself into a nice rest home?”
Oh, I don’t think so,” Roberts said. “She’s still in rather bad shape, but she’s pretty resilient, and if she keeps drinking lots of water to flush the alcohol out of her system I think she’ll be okay.” He looked up at Hannibal, the weight of his knowledge dragging his face down. “Someone used this girl badly, in ways I don’t see too often. Too many men, too many ways, and there are signs that when the men couldn’t do it to her themselves they used other things. And there are strap marks. She was really lucky.”
Hannibal shook his head. “Doesn’t sound too lucky to me.”
“I mean lucky you came along when you did,” Roberts said. “She’s hideously undernourished and dehydrated. If she had stayed in this house one more day, not eating and self-medicating with alcohol to dull her pain, who knows what would have happened to her. It was a fortunate turn of fate that brought you to her door before she was too weak or too drunk to answer the bell.”
“Yeah, timing is everything,” Hannibal said, thrusting his hands into his pockets. His hand hit a small bottle there. He pulled it out and, on an impulse, handed it to Roberts.
“Say, Doc, I found these in Marquita’s medicine cabinet. Something dangerous? If she was trying to commit suicide, maybe she should be under observation.”
Roberts shook a couple of the round pills into his hand and flipped one over to see the markings. His bushy white eyebrows rose.
“No, people don’t try to hurt themselves with flunitazepam. They leave it to someone else”
“Fluni-what?”
Roberts looked up and Hannibal with new weariness on his face. “Do you know the more common name Rohypnol?”
“Is that the same as roofies?” Hannibal asked. “The so-called date rape drug?”
“That’s it,” Roberts said, dropping the pills back into their bottle. “It does have sedative or hypnotic effects. Rohypnol really can incapacitate a girl; prevent her from resisting sexual assault, for instance. One of these is as powerful as ten Valium and can keep a person compliant for eight hours or more. I have to believe someone was using these to keep Ms. LaPage in a compliant frame of mind.”
“That’s sick,” Hannibal said. “To sneak drugs into a girl’s food or drink to take advantage of her?” He paced from one corner of the room to another. The sun coming in the window was annoying him.
“You found these in her medicine cabinet?” Roberts asked. Hannibal nodded. “Well then, I hardly think they were sneaking them into her.”
Hannibal stopped, mid-pace, and turned to stare at Roberts. “You mean you think she knew? Yeah, of course, she must have. Well, it makes sense I guess, if you want to be controlled. But that’s crazy. Why would anyone accept being drugged like that?”
“Ah, Hannibal,” Roberts said. “This sort of naivete ill becomes you. People will allow you to do anything once you’ve gained their trust. Whoever was here, whoever did these things to Ms. LaPage, He would appear to be a master at gaining women’s trust.”
Trust, Hannibal thought. Blair called it the number one business asset of our age. And maybe it was the number one asset of the sexual predator as well.
“What do we do now, Doc?”
“Well, she’ll need some looking after,” Roberts said, standing, “but I don’t think there’s a medical solution for her problems. When she’s regained her strength I would recommend psychiatric counseling. If she’s interested, I’d be happy to have her as a patient.”
The bedroom door was open just an inch or two, and Hannibal stood in front of it for a moment before pushing it wider. Sarge sat on the far side of the bed beside Marquita who was propped up on a collection of pillows and wrapped in a soft yellow silk robe. A shaft of light from the window cast a warm glow around her. Despite obvious exhaustion, she seemed animated as she chatted in low tones with Sarge. Color was already returning to her face. Her hair was shiny and now that it was brushed out it turned out to be longer than Hannibal had realized. It was hard to believe she looked this good, considering what Dr. Roberts had said about her health. Could one night’s sleep make that big a difference?
As he pushed the door open, Sarge and Marquita turned toward him. She presented the smile of a practiced southern hostess but her hand clutched Sarge’s a little tighter.
“It is good to see you again, Mr. Jones. Is the doctor gone?”
“Yes ma’am. He says you’re doing much better. I have to say you sure look a lot better than you did just last night. Do you think you’re up to talking to me for a while?”
“She’s pretty worn out, Hannibal,” Sarge said. “What do you need with her, anyway?”
Had Sarge been a canine, that question would have been a low warning growl. Hannibal hadn’t expected this protective stance, but it was clear from Sarge’s body language that he was standing guard over the girl. Hannibal smiled and pulled the chair from the vanity to sit close to the bed. “I have a client who had dealings with the man who hurt Marquita. I’ve been hired to find him, and she might be able to help me do that.”
“You know, buddy, I don’t know if this is stuff she needs to be talking about right now.” Sarge had puffed his chest out and squared his shoulders as he spoke. Hannibal was sure it was an unconscious response, the subtle signals he had learned to send in order to get his way as a bouncer without having to get physical with drunks. There was no percentage in conflict with Sarge. Hannibal kept his focus on Marquita LaPage.
“Ma’am, I know this other girl’s problems aren’t your concern, but I’m going to ask you to think about your life since Rod Mantooth left here. From what I saw, you’ve been punishing yourself and here’s why I think you’ve been doing that. I think you’ve been waiting for him to come back. And I think you hate yourself for wanting him to return. You’re doing everything he told you to do, hoping he’ll walk back in that door, but you know damn well that’s not what you ought to want.”
As Hannibal spoke, Marquita’s soft brown eyes widened and her breath became fast but shallow gasps. When she finally looked down, she appeared on the verge of tears. Long blonde tresses dropped over her lowered face like sheer curtains closing on a window that was too easy to see through.
“Stop it, man,” Sarge said, squeezing her hand. “Can’t you see what this is doing to her? Besides, that’s all bullsh…” Sarge’s eyes cut toward her for a second, “that’s all bull, man. The last thing in the world Marquita wants is for that bastard to come back here.”
“Uh-huh.” Hannibal nodded his skepticism, his lips drawn in against his teeth. “Right. So. Where’s the collar, Ms. LaPage?”
Marquita shook her head with such violence that her hair sashaying in front of her like a dancer’s skirt. Then she slowly looked up through the sheer wall of hair.
He asked again. This time it was just above a whisper. “Where’s your collar, Ms. LaPage?”
For a frozen moment, the only movement in the room was the rising of tiny dust motes in the shaft of light falling on the bed. Those bits of matter were so small that they needed only the heat of the sun to put them into mindless flight. For humans, weighed down by guilt and pain and self-loathing, movement can be considerably harder. Eventually, Marquita moved her head to the side, indicating the small table beside the bed on Hannibal’s side. A small sniffle came from behind her hair, and three drops of her soul rode gravity down to thump into the comforter.
Hannibal’s hand moved very slowly to the table, and quietly slid the drawer open. From inside he lifted her hated prize. It was gray suede with a silver buckle and tiny rhinestone studs along its length.
“What the hell?” Sarge said, his face contorted the way it would be if he drank sour milk. “You didn’t actually wear that thing, did you?”
Marquita’s head moved slowly up and down. Hannibal tossed the collar on the bed.
“You kept it close at hand. Symbolic of his ownership right? Evidence that you belong to him. But he abandoned you didn’t he? Cast you aside. Was a part of you hoping he’d appear at the door and require you to wear that collar again? No, more important question. Aren’t you tired of loving and hating this man, this life? Would you like to stop wondering if he’ll come back here?”
When Marquita spoke, her voice was small and distant. “I am so worthless. When he was here, I existed to serve, and I was, God forgive me, I was happy in his service. I did things I never believed I could do, but it gave him pleasure and somehow that became my only goal. I can’t explain. I hated him, hated myself for needing to please him.” When no one responded, she looked up, using one hand to part the curtain of her hair. “How can I ever be free of this man?”
“You’ll be free of him if I break his neck,” Sarge said.
Hannibal didn’t want to go there. “Mantooth has done bad things to other women, Ms. LaPage. He’s also a thief. If I find him, I’ll make sure he can’t come back here. That will take the decision out of your hands.”
“Hannibal can find anybody,” Sarge added.
Marquita stared at the collar in front of her. She raised her hand, then made a frustrated fist and lowered it, as if she was afraid to touch the thin leather strip. “What can I do to help?”
“Atta girl,” Sarge said with a smile. “The only way to get a monkey off your back is to shake it yourself.” He captured her hand again and she held his up, shaking it, as if drawing strength from him. Hannibal figured Sarge for the best tower of strength he knew. She would need it, for what he was about to ask.
“Ms. LaPage,” he began.
“Please call me Marquita. You may have saved my life, and that makes us too close to be so formal.”
“Ms. LaPage, I need to know more about how this man works. I need to know how he met you, and how he insinuated himself into your life.”
Marquita’s face collapsed in on itself, as if her very muscles were at war with each other. Then she nodded her head once, quickly, as if agreeing to something. Then, to Hannibal’s surprise, her eyes came up, clear and bright. When she finally spoke, it all came rushing out.
“How we met? He was a simple handyman when we met. When I moved up here, after daddy passed, I didn’t know anyone. But the investments were here, you see, the real estate holdings and so on. I bought this house, but it’s really too much for just me. Rod helped with the yard work, and did all that landscaping with the flowers out front. He also extended the deck.”
“Jesus, babe, why’d you get such a big house anyway?” Sarge asked.
Marquita’s smile returned for a moment, and her eyes sparkled as she looked at Sarge. “Ah, mon chere, I had to have space for big parties, didn’t I?” Her accent, well hidden at first, began to assert itself.
“Did Mantooth attend your parties?”
“Oh, mon Deux, non! He was not of the station. But we spoke, day to day. He told me he lived nearby and did a lot of work for local residents.”
Hannibal knew exactly where he was living at the time, or more accurately, whom he was living on. “And you liked him?”
“Not particularly at the time. We flirted a little. I guess I was flattered by his attention at first, but it soon became annoying. In fact I fired him.”
“He do something to you?” Sarge asked. His anger was still evident in his voice and his breathing, which had become deeper.
“One day, when I returned from the grocer, he was here working on the yard. He helped me bring the packages in. Then, when I thanked him he said he wanted a more personal thank you. He became very aggressive, and tried to kiss me, to hold me, but I pushed him away. I told him to get out, and that was the last I saw of him for a while.”
“Why would you ever see him again?” Sarge asked through clenched teeth.
Marquita held his big hand in both of hers. “Because I am a stupid, worthless woman, mon chere, that’s why.” Then to Hannibal, she said, “I saw him in Atlantic City. This was weeks later. He was dressed in very expensive clothes this time. I had only seen him in work clothes. And he had a new car, a huge red convertible, like a Cadillac but not really.”
Hannibal saw the confusion on Sarge’s face and said, “It’s a custom job, half Caddy, half Stingray. I’ve got a line on the car. So you saw him in a casino?”
“Yes. He recognized me, and walked right up, so forceful and full of himself. He was with another woman, but he just told her to go away. Then he looked me in the eye and told me I was going to be his. He had money now, and more coming, and I would belong to him.”
“What did you say?” Sarge asked.
“Well naturally I…” Marquita stopped herself, her hands falling to the bed between her covered legs. “Well the truth is, I found it rather exciting. This rough, tough man declaring that he would have me. But I walked away from him. That was on a Friday night. And the very next day, here he was at my door with flowers and tickets to a show, doing it the right way. I don’t know why I went with him. There was something about him that made it hard to say no.”
“Yes, I keep hearing that,” Hannibal said. He didn’t mean to be unkind, and he regretted the remark as soon as he made it. “How long did you date?”
Marquita became quiet for a moment. The rising sun shifted its beam of light lower in the room, taking the spotlight off Marquita. Without that glow she now looked more like an ordinary, vulnerable woman. But now the light was on her hand, locked in Sarge’s at the edge of the bed.
“There was no dating. Not really. We came here that same night. I didn’t intend to invite him in but he came in anyway. We drank. We kind of… well, he spent the night, you know. Then he…”
“You don’t have to do this,” Sarge said.
“He was just here, and he never left. He just took my life over. At first, I admit it; it felt good in a way to have someone take over. To have no responsibilities except just to do what he thought was best. Then he introduced me to the lifestyle.”
“The lifestyle?” Hannibal repeated, implying that he needed more of an explanation.
“He taught me how to be a submissive. And as long as I was good, did what I was told, he was so good to me and I was so happy and…”
The tears were back, but in an eerie way her breathing remained quiet. One sob shook her body. Sarge looked from Hannibal to Marquita, mouth partially open. He looked scared, an expression Hannibal had never seen on that dark, round face. He appeared to be waiting for Hannibal to do something, but Hannibal could not imagine what that could be.
“Marquita, I know this is difficult for you,” Hannibal said. “But knowing any of Mantooth’s contacts would be very helpful. You mentioned other men who came here?”
“Jesus, Hannibal, you don’t need to go into all that,” Sarge said. “And she don’t need to dredge it all up again. Just go find this bastard.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Marquita said, sending a dark laugh through her tears. “I’m sure it’s no secret. He brought his friends in here and treated them. Made me treat them. And I treated them good, I’ll tell you. They all had me. Every way you can imagine. Ways I never imagined before. Then after he left, he still sent them. Said if I was obedient he’d be back for me. So you see I’m just a whore, a common whore.”
Marquita was about to collapse, but Sarge gathered her in one of his big arms. “You are no such thing, Markie, this guy just knows how to manipulate people. Hannibal, you just get out there and find this guy so I can kill him. You hear me? Now, where’d the doc put those pills he left you, baby?”
While Sarge tried to calm his charge with one hand and searched the end table for medicine with the other, Hannibal stood.
“Yeah. Listen, I’ll check in a bit later. I’m going to get with the client and see if I can get any kind of lead on this guy. Listen, I’m sorry Marquita. I didn’t mean…” Words seemed pointless, so he stopped dropping them. Sarge was right. Hannibal needed to find this man before he broke one more spirit.
Anita opened the door to Hannibal the way she might greet an auditor from the Internal Revenue Service. Hannibal remained pleasant, because he understood. He was now a symbol of her problems, branded with the smell of her garbage, which he was poking through out of necessity. He was a walking reminder of all the things she had done, the things almost no one else even knew about. He was used to it. People hired him to go through their garbage, even when they themselves couldn’t stand the smell.
After declining her offer of coffee, Hannibal returned to the office downstairs. Anita followed, her eyes focused on him with a new intensity. He resisted an urge to tear through books and papers. Instead, he turned to Anita with a small, soft smile.
“Now, Ms. Cooper, You know I’ll be discreet with everything I learn, right?”
Sensing an incoming request, she smiled, lowered her lids and gave a shallow nod. “What else do you need to know?”
“I’m convinced the prize Rod took is something your father brought from work,” Hannibal said. “I’ve got to find out what your father was working on. To do that, I’ll need to speak to people who knew your father at work.”
“But I don’t know any of father’s coworkers.”
“I know,” Hannibal replied. “I need to find them, and that means I need to see correspondence. Where did he keep his letters, Anita?”
Anita lowered her head and slowly paced to one side of the room, as if searching for a memory on the floor. Then she turned, seeming to scan the bookshelves for input.
“I don’t think father ever wrote letters,” she said. “He had few distant friends, and he saw the people at the lab every day. I don’t think he ever communicated with them from home. Unless…”
Her voice trailed off as her head turned to her right. Hannibal’s eyes followed hers to the desk, and the keyboard that rested on it.
“Of course. E-mail.” Hannibal started toward the chair, and just as quickly backed off. “No. You. Sit down, Anita. You know the passwords and stuff.”
Anita dropped her slender frame on to the seat, her fingers poised over the keys.
“How many e-mail accounts did your father have?” Hannibal asked, standing close behind her, hands on knees.
“Only one, I’m sure.”
“Well, open it up,” Hannibal said.
Anita stared straight ahead at the screen. “You want me to open my father’s private e-mail?”
“What, don’t you know the password?”
“I do.”
“Then open it.”
His words prompted Anita’s fingers to immediate response. She was a puppet, and it was altogether too easy to pick up her strings. Hannibal resolved to make requests of this woman, rather than demands, from then on.
As the Microsoft Outlook window blossomed onto the screen it looked at first as if Anita’s father had never deleted a message. The list of received e-mails filled several pages. In some cases that would mean an exhaustive search to narrow down good targets for questioning. In this case it would not be that difficult. As Anita scanned down the list Hannibal saw that at least eighty percent of the messages were from her. Hannibal realized that he knew next to nothing about Anita’s father. The fact that he had kept every e-mail his daughter sent him from college suddenly cast him in a very different light from the overindulgent and obsessive biology nerd Hannibal had imagined up to that moment.
A tiny stifled sob returned Hannibal’s focus to the woman before him. Anita had opened the last e-mail on the list and was reading her final electronic communication with her beloved father. Her head shuddered, and he sensed that he would lose her completely if he didn’t force her to move on.
“All right, Anita, I need you to close that.”
“Daddy loved me so much.”
“Yes he did,” Hannibal said. “Now, I need you to get back to the list please and put those messages in order by the date, most recent on top.”
Scanning down the list, Hannibal saw only three or four other names that recurred on a regular basis. “Let’s take these three. Hathaway, Gaye and Trumble. Open each e-mail you see from them. Let’s see what we can find out.”
Hannibal scanned the notes as quickly as he could. He wasn’t looking for details, just to get a feel for the relationship. All three were apparently past coworkers, and after seeing a couple of notes from each of them it was clear that Trumble would be the first contacted.
“Why can’t they all be like you, Mr. Trumble,” he asked the computer monitor, “with a nice e-mail tag line with their phone number and address? It won’t be so easy to find the other two.”
“I don’t understand,” Anita said. “Can’t you just push reply and e-mail them?”
“It’s a nice thought,” Hannibal said, “but people don’t generally share information about their friends with strangers through e-mail. Still, it might not be real important if Trumble stayed in touch with all his old buddies the way your father did.”
“I was over optimistic,” Hannibal said while shaking small dots of steak sauce onto his porterhouse. “The phone call was pleasant, but it was a dead end.”
“I’m sorry.” Cindy brushed an errant strand of hair back and shared a broad smile that deepened her dimples. “Haven’t been able to get my brain away from work. What were you saying?”
Hannibal had hoped that a good steak would get her mind off her job. Bobby Van’s and one or two other places were contenders, but for his money Morton’s served the best aged, top-prime porterhouse steak in the city. Or, more accurately, for their money. Cindy always insisted they go Dutch at places like this.
“Just that this lead to Anita Cooper’s father didn’t pan out. This Ron Trumble character.” Hannibal took a deep, relaxing breath. It wasn’t the expensive appointments that drew him to a restaurant like this, or the attentive service. Hannibal loved being wrapped in the red meat smell of a good steak place. The smell hinted at so much: freshly cracked peppercorns, sauteed onions, mushrooms, and the scent that arises when flames meet a well marbled cut of beef.
“Oh, yes,” Cindy said, sliding her knife through her steak. “This is the girl who likes it rough.”
“I don’t know if that’s really true. But this guy she was with sure did a number on her.”
Cindy waited to speak until she finished chewing. She was beautiful in her navy blue power suit and Hannibal briefly wondered how many she owned. She wore her hair up that day, but by six o’clock a few locks always shook themselves loose from captivity. When she looked up, she seemed surprised to find him hanging on her words.
“You make her sound like a victim, and maybe she is. But trust me, my gallant knight, there are plenty of women out there just waiting for a man to come along and hand them just what you described this Rod character did. There’s a market for muy macho hombres with plenty of machismo.”
That doesn’t justify it, he thought. Aloud he said. “Weak women.”
“Maybe just different tastes.” She pointed at him with her fork. “You are so limited in your view of humanity. And judgmental.”
The juices filling his mouth as his teeth pushed through the black crust surrounding rare meat numbed Hannibal to what could be an insult.
“Well, no man could ever do that to you, right?”
“Oh, hell no,” Cindy said, adding her lilting laugh. “Some man came at me with all that master shit, I’d have to stab him in his sleep.” She put her fork down beside her plate, placing her fingers together in front of her face. “But then again…”
“Then again what?”
“Well, you know, as play,” she said, her eyes wandering out the window behind Hannibal, reflecting the night-lights on Independence Avenue. “I mean, don’t you ever think about, you know.”
“Not sure I do know, babe.”
Cindy dug into her baked potato. “Well, like, being tied to the bedposts with silk scarves. That kind of thing sometimes does sound a little exciting.”
“Right, and I’m sure you’re just waiting for a man to tie you down and beat you.”
“Well, hold up a minute,” Cindy said, warming to her subject. “Think about it. There’s a world of difference between a beating and a spanking, isn’t there?”
“Okay, change of subject.” When her eyebrows rose he said, “I am not comfortable talking about that stuff with you. I know we’ll both be working tomorrow, but where would you like to go tonight?”
Cindy’s eyes went down to her plate. “Sorry sugar, I can’t go out partying tonight.”
He slid his hand across the tablecloth to take hers. “Worn out, hon? I know it’s been a long day. Why don’t we just pick up a nice bottle of wine and go back to my place?”
“No, you don’t understand, baby. I’ve spent so much time on the DPO that my other cases have gone by the boards. I need to get back to the office for a few more hours.”
“Excuse me?”
Cindy’s shoulders dropped. “I am so tired. But at that firm, anybody who’s not putting in ninety hours every week just isn’t going to move up. And then you have stuff like this cocktail party we’re all expected to be at tomorrow night. It just gets to be too much. Damn it. They think they own you. They think four hundred grand per entitles them to your whole life. And you know what? They’re right. They own me.”
Hannibal shook slightly, as if an unexpected glass of ice water had been thrown into his face. Was it a slip, or a jab? He had never put an actual number next to Cindy’s income in his mind. That casual comment seemed to force a shift in his world. She wasn’t his girl anymore. He was hers. He was the helper, the junior partner in their relationship. At that moment he remembered the ring he still carried in his pocket every day, waiting for the right moment to make his claim on her future. The ring felt far heavier now. Maybe he should wait for her to propose to him.
Right behind that thought her later words pushed through. They own me, she said. The firm came first. The money not only made her the natural alpha in their relationship, it made her firm her first priority. They took precedence. He was hers, and she was theirs.
“Fuck that.”
Cindy’s head snapped back, her eyes wide. He realized he was squeezing her hand harder than he had intended. And the couple at the next table looked over at him, and then quickly looked away. He had been a bit louder than he had intended too.
“Hannibal? What’s wrong?”
“You tell me. Is Baylor, Truman and Ray more important than me? Than us?”
“Of course not,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.” But he noted the second of hesitation before her statement.
“All right then, let’s go,” Hannibal said. “We haven’t had enough alone time lately.”
The drive back to Anacostia was much quieter than usual, at least in terms of conversation. Hannibal turned the stereo up louder than he generally did when she was aboard and played music he had never played before with Cindy in the car. He didn’t know if Cindy had ever heard of Def Leppard, and didn’t really care. She sat in silence against the passenger door while he drummed on the steering wheel and sang along to “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
He parked in his unofficial designated space in front of his building and walked around to help Cindy out of the car. She squeezed his hand as he walked her up the outside steps, unlocked the hall door, and marched down the hall to his own apartment door. He was just turning the knob when she finally spoke.
“It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“The crazy hours you work?” Hannibal asked, guiding her through the living room toward the kitchen. He needed to pop that bottle of wine. She spoke again before he could reach the light switch.
“My income. I never knew. I never thought.”
Hannibal turned and pressed his face very close to hers in the darkness, aware that his breathing had gotten heavy. “This is not about money.”
Cindy found his light eyes in the darkness. Her respiration rate was up as well, he noticed, her breasts rising to brush against his chest. “Really. Just what is this about? The precious male ego?”
“Don’t push me, Cindy.”
She pushed.
He pushed back.