Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(4)

Lou sipped at his whisky, stalling until she came to the point.

“You get nice cut, Lou. Twenty points. What saying you? How much they pay? Five hundred? Seven hundred?”

“Dollars?”

She laughed. “Funny man. Thousands, darlink. Only thing, can’t use my name. I am informed source. Deep Throat.”

“Svetlana, if this is a kind of sex scandal, nobody will touch it unless you go public. They’ll want pictures, everything.”

A pout, a frown, a rethink.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

She brightened. “All live, on camera. Because I not trusting this rat at first in case he’s too kinky.”

He struggled to his feet as she directed his gaze to a tiny GoPro camera hidden between folds of velvet curtain, the little round eye of its lens barely showing. “With new clients, I take it on calls, in case of hanky-panky.” From dicks with anger problems, Lou presumed. “This was our first date, early January.”

He followed her beyond the curtain, past a cot with leather straps affixed to it, past shelves with dildos and belts and thongs and objects he didn’t recognize and didn’t want to, into a small office, where her Toshiba was open on a desk, the video on pause, the client’s bum raised, the riding whip suspended on a downward stroke. Svetlana clicked play. The date stamp: January 6.

“I was a bad boy!” Thwack!

“I teaching you, you bad boy, you piece of shit. You want harder?”

“No, Mother, I beg you!”

Thwack!

Half a minute of this and then they were playing horsey, Svetlana with her prod, the bad boy bucking, showing his face in partial silhouette, his voice and profile familiar, a prominent, someone he ought to know. He guessed she’d hidden the camera somewhere in that log cabin in the boreal woods. The postcard view from the window of frozen lake and snowy hills seemed surreal against the pornographic foreground.

Lou watched all this with anus-clenching dread, a tinge of nausea — he was wishing he hadn’t had the poutine.

“Please, God, help me, make her stop!” the fat-assed fellow called, unavailingly, as he carried his mount out of view of the camera. A big voice, commanding, agonizingly familiar.

“That was back in January. No hanky-panky, so no danger, no more need for taking movies. Later on I learn he has troubles. I helped him through it, the back-stabbing shit.”

“Through what?”

“His mother. Never mind. As an ethical therapist I can’t repeat.”

Still nothing on the screen but the background. Some guttural sounds, suspiciously like someone beating off. “Is there more to see?”

“Enjoy.”

In a few seconds, the movie’s male lead reappeared, shrugging into a purple turtleneck pullover, tightening the draw cord on his lounge pants, a full frontal view. Lou gasped as he walked off camera. The fat-assed masochist was the Honourable Emil Farquist, federal environment minister.

“This is ball-breaker, yes?” Svetlana said.

Lou’s throat was dry, his voice croaking as he agreed, yes, this was dynamite, and explained again that she would have to put herself on the line. There’d be reporters, cameras, gawkers on the street. Maybe visits by the police. Lawyers. At any rate, no one in the media had the kind of money she was seeking.

She frowned. “Okay, maybe we write book. As told to Lou Sabatino. Half and half. But I keep all rights until.” She closed the laptop with a firm click.

Lou asked for a glass of water, and when she went to fetch it, he dipped into his pocket and pulled out the memory stick he’d rescued from his desk and stuck it into a port in the Toshiba, lifted its lid. Enter Media Player. Open recent. Click on ‘Last Played.’ Control-C. Click on Drive E. Control -V.

The copying took fifteen tense seconds, but the USB drive was back in his pocket by the time she returned, not with water but sparkling wine, two glasses.

She sipped hers. “Well, Mr. Reporter?”

Emil Farquist. Lou knew him. He’d watched him in the House, at his press conferences, had even interviewed him. He was not one of the dummies that infested the Conservative Party. He was a much-published economist who ran a think tank in Alberta. He was also Chief Government Whip; the irony was breathtaking. “How bad do you want this very bad boy?”

“Very, very, very bad. Main thing is not money. Main thing is principle. Main thing is destroy him. But then we write book, yes?”

She took Lou’s silence as assent and touched her glass to his with a confirmatory tinkle.

Her big blues went sad. “Is like love story, but unhappy ending, a woman wronged.”

“A love story?” A jest, surely.

Another cigarette, a spume of smoke. “I told him it was the first time for Svetlana, to fall in love.”

“You were in love with him?”

“Of course not. The prick!”





THE TRANSFORMATION MISSION

A banner outside the community hall demanded: “Wake up! Smell the Roses at the Spring Flower Show!” This being an annual event on the amiable island of Garibaldi, in the West Coast’s Salish Sea. About a hundred locals were meandering about tables bedecked with blooms, inside the hall and out. The sun was in full bloom too on this warm May holiday weekend — it was Victoria Day; jackets had been doffed, collars undone, legs bared.