Chapter 9

Friday, June 18, 2010

Jake found Harris waiting for him when he arrived back at his car. They got in and Jake reached into Harris’s jacket for the digital recorder.

“Did you do anything that worked against my plan?”

Jake sensed his frustration. “I didn’t tell him about all of my property.”

“What part did you leave out?”

“I’ve got a yacht in Galveston.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Call him on your cell phone and tell him.”

While he did, Jake started to listen to the tape. He fast-forwarded through a fifteen-minute wait in the reception room and then listened to the interview with the lawyer. Harris had played it straight as near as Jake could tell. He had given the lawyer his instructions. The lawyer had had his paralegal prepare a power of attorney that Harris signed before leaving. Harris had a list of documents to send back to the lawyer and information to look up.

Jake drove to Harris’s mansion.

“Do not talk to the servants,” Jake told Harris as he led them into the house and then to the study. “Unlock the safe and stand back.”

When the safe was open, Jake started taking out the contents. There was an envelope filled with jewels, several file folders with business records, a handgun, and a letter from Harris’s sister.

Jake put them back into the safe.

“Why do you have a gun in there?”

“I thought it might be useful if someone forced me to open the safe against my will.”

“What’s with those business records?”

“Those records are not the kind I want the government to see.”

“Why not?”

“They are for a brothel.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“How do you own it?”

“I’m the sole proprietor.”

“How do you manage it?”

“I hired someone to run it. She sees to the hiring and supervision of the staff and oversees operations.”

“Your own whorehouse. That’s cool.” Jake locked the safe back up. “How is the lawyer going to sell it?”

“I didn’t even tell him about it. You can’t sell a criminal enterprise like that.”

“How much money do you make from it?”

“Net profits are about three-hundred-thousand a month.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s a nice place. Well run. It provides a discreet, premium service. Of course, I have very loyal and willing employees.”

“What do you do about the police?”

“I’ve installed controls in all the police in the vice section. They are no problem. Whenever a new cop joins vice, they bring him by and let me take care of him. I make sure that we keep a low profile. New business mostly comes from word of mouth.”

“Who else knows you are connected to the business?”

“The staff, of course. I spend enough time there. Also my lawyer.”

“Is there anything that will lead the Council to the brothel?”

“I don’t think so. None of them knows who my lawyer is.”

“What about Colin Masters or any other associates. Do they know which lawyer you use?”

“I don’t think so. I took care of all the legal issues. No one else ever had dealings with him.”

“Interesting. I want you to get the papers the lawyer asked you for and write down the information he wants. Don’t use the phone, and don’t leave this room until I come back.”

Jake looked in the storage room. The only boxes remaining contained business records and gold. Jake went back to the kitchen where he ran into Annabelle.

“Where are Andy and Randy?”

“They left an hour ago with a bunch of garbage bags, sir.”

“Can I have a Coke, Annabelle?”

“Yes, sir.”

She came back a moment later with a glass of ice and a can of Coke.

“Sit and tell me your life story,” Jake said as he poured his drink.

“I began as the cook here, sir. It’s what I’ve always done.”

“How long have you been the cook?”

“Since two thousand and three, sir.”

“How did you learn to cook?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Jake looked at her memory recall index.

“Who was your favorite English teacher in high school?”

Three indexes lit up but no memory was returned.

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t recall high school.”

“Did you have a boyfriend in high school?”

Again the indexes were queried fruitlessly.

“Think about your high school graduation.”

This time Jake was able to isolate the time parameter. He followed the nerve bundle into the memory cortex. He soon found a ring. He tore it out.

“Who was your favorite English teacher in high school, Annabelle?”

“It was Mr. McGrath, sir. He taught British Literature my senior year.”

Jake went back to the study. Harris was going through his files writing down notes.

“Tell me about the changes you made to the servants.”

Harris looked up, irritated at being interrupted.

“I made a lot of changes. It takes a lot of work to make perfect slaves.”

“What if I wanted to put them back to normal?”

“It can’t be done.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not there anymore.”

“I just restored Annabelle’s memories of high school.”

“I’ll alert the media.”

“What is there in Annabelle that can’t be restored?”

“You would need Annabelle. She’s not there anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Her sense of self is gone. I took it out.”

“How did you do that?”

“It’s my specialty. I’ve made dozens of slaves just like Annabelle for other mind readers. It’s labor-intensive and other mind controllers will pay me about half a million dollars for each slave. If you start fucking with her brain, you’ll be reducing the value of a very valuable piece of property.”

“How did you take out her sense of self?”

“Look at my anterior medial prefrontal cortex.”

“Where exactly should I be looking?”

“About level with my eyebrows, all the way forward. Don’t worry. You won’t be able to miss it. Are you ready?”

“Uh, I guess,” Jake said.”

“Look what happens now.” He paused. “I am Glen Harris. I am a man. I have arms and legs.” He looked up at Jake. “Did you see it?”

“There was a lot of activity in both hemispheres when you were talking about yourself.”

“What you saw was Glen Harris. If you go look at Annabelle, there won’t be anything there. Non-people like Annabelle and the others don’t think of themselves as themselves. And as a side effect, they are unable to make their own plans. Their only motivations, aside from basic drives delivered by the reptilian complex and the limbic system, are those that someone else gives them. It makes for very good slaves.”

“So how did you disable her sense of self?”

“I didn’t disable it. I destroyed it. I burned out all the major nerves that lead to and from the seat of her self.”

“How?”

“I channeled the strongest stream of energy that I could to each nerve bundle until they were too damaged to propagate signals.”

“How long does it take to destroy a nerve that way?”

“It usually takes me about five minutes.”

“How many connections do you have to take out?”

“I just keep going until I get tired. The more I do, the more complete the process. At a minimum, I remove the forty largest connections. After I remove about seventy-five, I see diminishing returns.”

“So I could make you into my servant in as little as 200 minutes.”

“I would rather you just kill me.”

“So why did you stop her from remembering the time before she was a servant?”

“It makes them moody if they can remember when they were their own people. It’s easier to deal with the memory inputs than take the time to fine-tune the emotions. They retain all their procedural memories so the loss of memories of past events doesn’t reduce their usefulness.”

“Come to the kitchen when you’re done. Bring the papers. I’ll mail the whole bundle to your lawyer.”

Jake went back to the kitchen and told Annabelle to sit.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

The activity in the seat-of-self region was much reduced but it wasn’t completely dead. The connectivity within the region seemed healthy, but the region itself was isolated from the rest of the brain.

Just then Brenda walked in.

“Brenda, come here and tell me your name.”

Her seat of self was much more active than Annabelle’s. There were a considerable number of nerves that connected it to the rest of her brain. Jake wondered why Harris had prepared her differently.

“Brenda, I’m going to put a pile of papers on this table when I leave. I want you to get it into the mail. I’ll leave a note with the destination and return addresses. Will you be able to take care of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

On the road again, Jake had Harris give him the directions to his brothel.

“What’s it called?” Jake asked.

“Nothing official. Everybody knows it as Diana’s or Diana’s Brothel.”

They left the exclusive neighborhood where Harris lived and drove through a green belt that created a border between it and a slightly lesser neighborhood. Harris directed him along the heavily forested strip. He pointed out a barely noticeable turnoff. Jake turned in and followed a dirt road for fifty yards. The road opened into a clearing. There was a large house, at least as big as the one he would be moving into on Monday.

At Harris’s prompting, Jake drove into a large paved parking lot behind the house. They got out and Harris led Jake around to the front.

“There’s an inconspicuous side entrance for the staff, but why don’t we let you see it the way a customer would see it.”

“Okay. Behave while we’re here. Stay with me. Do not say anything to anyone to get him to hurt or grab me or suspect me of being at odds with you in any way. You will tell the manager that I am the new majority partner and that you are transitioning to me overseeing the business rather than you. We are not here for sex.”

They stepped inside. There was nothing of red-flocked wallpaper or ornate Victorian furnishings. The entrance hall was paved in marble. It was light and open and had a few nice traditional furnishings, including comfortable seating. A wide, shallow stairway led to a second floor and a long hallway, much of which overlooked the entryway.

Is there a mortgage on this place?

No. I own the whole thing free and clear.

A gorgeous, middle-aged woman burst through a hallway and hurried up to them.

“Glen, why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I would have prepared entertainment for you.”

Her voice was magical, low and cultured, and projected an affection for Harris that she did not actually feel. She glanced at Jake and frowned.

“Glen, I know you’re the boss, but bringing young ones here raises the security risks beyond an acceptable level.”

“That may be true generally, but you’re going to have to make an exception for this one. He looks young, Diana, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s immature. In fact, I’d like to introduce you to the new boss.”

“You’re selling out?”

“Not totally, but Jake here is the new managing partner. You’ll find him to be a pretty sharp businessman. If you do a good job for him, he will give you the same free hand to run this place that I do.”

Diana looked at Jake critically.

“Even a fifty percent stake would require a buy-in of twenty-million dollars, and that’s conservative.”

“Not your concern, Diana. Why don’t you give Jake the grand tour? And get to know him. You don’t want to alienate the boss the first time you meet him.”

She sighed. “Come this way, Jake. We’ll start at the top and work our way down.”

She led him up the stairs. He was way out of his league and he knew it. He was going to have to be careful. If his lack of business knowledge and experience became too obvious, Diana would not take him seriously.

“Give me an overview of the facilities, please,” Jake said.

“We also broker escorts, but our main business is in-call. The house has twelve bedrooms and three suites, plus several specialty areas in the basement. There are also several management offices, the security room, the employee’s break room, the kitchen, and the entertainment room.”

While she spoke, Jake focused intently on her mind. Her thoughts made many references to business concepts that he didn’t know. He struggled to learn as much as he could from her. It was like drinking from a fire hose.

“Your customers need more entertainment?”

“The entertainment room is essentially a TV room. There’s a big-screen TV, a sound system, and a wet bar. It gets booked a lot during football season — younger guys who like to have female companionship while they watch the big game with their buddies. We provide beverages, food and women. Very popular, but we don’t use it during the week enough to justify constructing another one. Instead we put TVs in the common rooms of the suites. That way they can perform much the same function.”

She stopped partway down the hall and opened a door.

“This is a typical room,” she said and stepped aside.

Jake entered and looked around. It was twice as big as his mother’s bedroom. The room contained a king-size bed and tasteful, comfortable furnishings. There was a leather sofa, several matching easy chairs, and a wet bar. The attached bathroom had a large tub and a separate shower.

“The suites have a sitting room and two bedrooms this size.”

“How do you hire your employees?”

“Usually the talent come to me looking for a job. The money is good and the working conditions are excellent. Mostly it’s current employees who send prospects our way. We pay a bonus for a successful referral. Glen insists on a trial run with each girl before she sees clients. Not the escorts, I should say, since they don’t provide sex. I audition the men.

“You hire women who don’t provide sex?”

“Sometimes men want attractive, personable women to accompany them when they are socializing. Non-sex escorts bring in fifteen percent of revenue, and we’d do more if we could recruit more escorts.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Very few women have the beauty, brains, poise, and discretion that the job calls for. When we find one, we try to hold onto her, but it’s hard.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, the clients keep wanting to marry them. The clients tend to be rich, successful men. Often they are charming and physically attractive. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t market ourselves as matchmakers. We’d be able to charge the women instead of paying them.”

“What about the rest of the employees?”

“We have seven people in the kitchen, five on security, four for housekeeping, three in reception, and two working maintenance.”

“How many, uh, talent?”

“There are thirty girls and five guys. All work part-time. We don’t let anyone work more than twenty hours per week.”

Jake read her to find out how to ask his next question.

“Tell me about the pay structure.”

“The talent gets thirty percent of the revenue. We aim for total labor costs of forty percent. My salary is allocated to overhead.”

You don’t mind that she’s stealing one percent of the gross?

No. Look at how it motivates her. It’s like giving a valued employee an equity position, only better. She thinks she’s putting something over on me and gets off on that. She works hard to run this place well to maximize her cut. If you add in the cash she’s stealing, she’ll never find a job with better compensation, so I don’t have to worry about replacing her. She doesn’t want me to look more closely at the books, so she makes sure that everything else is documented meticulously. And, on top of all that, she is one of the best fucks I’ve ever had that I didn’t take control of. She knows that pleasing me is one of her duties.

Jake looked over at Harris.

“How much time do you spend here?”

“On the job? Not much. I evaluate new girls every other week, more or less. Diana and I review the books monthly. I pop my head in about once a week to take Diana for a ride or just to check up on the place”

“How do you handle security?” Jake asked.

Diana looked at Harris who nodded to her before she answered.

“We have the entire place wired with video cameras and microphones. It’s all recorded and monitored constantly. We always have at least two guards on duty. We have a moneyed, mature clientele, so we don’t have many problems. Our policy is that the clients are expected to behave themselves. If they want any unusual services, including sadism, they have to request it ahead of time so that we have appropriate talent available. Clients who force girls to do stuff they don’t like are asked to leave and discouraged from coming back.

“We don’t have problems with the authorities. Glen handles it. I am not involved with that, aside from letting Glen know when the police come onto the property.”

“Do you ever blackmail your clients?”

“No. The recordings are reviewed in the event of a dispute between the talent and the client, but that’s all we do with them. On the other hand, we do save them all offsite in a data center. I haven’t been told why, but it’s my belief that it’s for self-defense in case a client turns on us. Our clients are wealthy people. They often bring powerful friends as guests. It’s insurance against us ever being targeted by the political elite.”

“Let me see the security room.”

Diana led them to a door with a no admittance sign.

“This is an entrance to the back hallways which are for employee use,” she said to Jake. “I would recommend that you use them, too. Clients would get spooked if they were to see you here.”

She led them down to the first floor and into a locked room. Monitors lined the wall. Four of the rooms were in use. Jake saw that there was sex going on in two of the rooms at that moment. A couple of the empty rooms were very different. Lots of chrome.

“Tell me about those rooms,” Jake said, pointing.

Diana was surprised that Jake paid no particular attention to the displays that were showing sex in progress. She wondered if he was gay

“Let’s go down and see them in person,” Diana said.

They went down to the basement. The walls were unfinished concrete. The lighting was low. Diana opened a door. The room had tile walls and a handheld sprayer mounted on the wall. There was a drain in the center of the floor. The bed had a vinyl cover.

“This room is for messy stuff. Water sports and so on.”

She went to the next room. Jake recognized equipment from Harris’s torture room.

“This is for sadists. We have another room set up for masochists. That one is better equipped, including some implements I don’t trust the sadists to use on the talent.”

“How do you keep the sadists from using too much force?”

“We try to have a second girl in the room to supervise. If the client resists then we watch especially closely. All rooms have intercoms. Security can ask the client to restrain himself. If necessary, a guard is sent to intervene. We’ve only had a few instances when intervention was necessary.”

“Do you train the talent to work with sadists and masochists, or do you hire people who are already experienced?”

“They always have enough experience in S&M to know that they are drawn in that direction. Some are very skilled when they get here, but usually, we have to work with the prospects for a while. There are too many dangers when you’re dealing with restraints, and some of our implements can maim. We want to make sure that they understand how far they can go and how to keep themselves and the clients from getting injured or worse. Masochists don’t require much training but new dommes and sadists work with experienced staff for quite a while before they are allowed to work on their own.”

“Do you have any men, any dominants, on staff?”

“Not much call for it. There’s the occasional gay masochist or submissive. Very few women ask for the service. One of the guys has the training for the rare occasions when it’s requested.”