The Proprietor
“Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.”
—Aesop
SHE HAS THE sleep habits of a vampire.
Sleep is for the weak. She’s always thought as much, even as a teenager when most of the girls she’d gone to school with at The Spence School in Manhattan had coveted an extra hour of sleeping in as if it were the key to the success they assumed was their rightful inheritance.
While they slept, she plotted her future. She supposed that was the difference between someone who was born with her future already mapped out and a girl who’d been granted a scholarship to Spence. A girl with a genius IQ that elevated the school’s quotable stats in a way that made her a public relations bargain.
She certainly hadn’t cared that they’d used her to enhance the school’s reputation. Mutual use was an undeniable tenet of life on planet Earth. Success was determined by an individual’s ability to spot the need in another human being and then to fill that need in a way that satisfied both parties. It was a roadmap she not only understood but had become an expert at implementing in every professional relationship that mattered.
She had her father to thank for that education. He had taken her hunting with him when she’d been a little girl. He liked to trap and then shoot, explaining to her that it was too much trouble to try to hit a moving target. He wasn’t particular about what kind of animal he trapped, although his preference was deer. They could eat deer.
One morning, when she’d been seven or eight years old, he’d gotten her up early and asked her to walk with him through the woods behind their small house to check the traps. She had been happy to be asked and dressed quickly in snow bibs and boots. The New York winter bit at her cheeks as they walked through the trees, following the path her dad knew so well.
The first trap was empty. He added bait, and they walked on anther thousand yards or so before they saw the second one.
A young deer, probably born the summer before judging from her size, leapt up from the snow as they approached. The ragged iron jaw of the trap held her right front leg hostage. She bucked and reared against it, but the leg only began to bleed more, a bright red puddle forming on the snow beside her.
She’d had no idea deer could scream. But this young doe made a sound of terror that played through her head like glass against glass. The sound made her more curious than empathetic. How long had the deer been here like this, trapped by a fate she’d never thought to expect?
She noticed then the adult doe watching them from a short distance away. Even in the early morning light, she could see the fear and worry in the doe’s eyes. She wanted to charge at them, make them leave her baby alone, but it was clear that she knew she could not. Somehow, that mama deer knew she had no power over them.
Her father held his gun out and said, “It’s time for you to learn about follow through.”
She looked at him, unable to hide her surprise. “You want me to shoot her?”
“There’s no other choice now. Even when you’re the captor, there comes a time to show mercy.”
“What if I miss?”
“You won’t,” he said. “Aim the way I taught you, and it’ll be over quick.”
She lifted the rifle, the butt resting on her shoulder as she pointed it at the young deer. The deer was calm by now, staring back at her as if there was no longer any point in questioning her fate. Even so, she took her time, realizing the importance of not missing. Using another life for your own gain was one thing, suffering another.
For a moment, her fixed look slipped to the mother, meeting the deer’s head on. Was there pleading there, or was it simply her imagination? For a single, emblazoned second, that pleading registered deep inside her, ignited recognition of something she would later value in life. That moment when both parties involved in a negotiation realize that one holds the winning card.
Pity swayed her for a brief, flickering second, but she understood somewhere deep inside her that losing wasn’t an option. She moved her focus back to the young deer, bolting backwards now against the jaw of the trap, as if aware that death was imminent, that fighting back was her only option.
She found a spot on the deer’s chest, let her finger find the resistance in the trigger and then pulled. The blast rocked the silence of the woods around them. The deer went down, and its stillness now seemed to her, merciful.
She lowered the gun, looked at her father. He smiled at her, pride in his voice when he said, “That’s my girl.”
The words echo in her mind as she picks up the piece of paper from Sergio on her desk.
Two deer in trap. 17 or 18.
She pictures their new captives as they must look now, terrified, trying to decide when is the right time to fight to free themselves. Little do they know, there will be no right time. That moment disappeared when Sergio gave them the option of getting in the cargo area of his Range Rover or being shot.
Freedom from the current trap will only occur when they agree to put themselves in the final and ultimate trap.
And make no mistake, it will only happen with their agreement. Of course, when their options are laid out for proper consideration, entertaining some of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world will seem like a privilege, one they will welcome.
She figured out long ago that human beings relish choice. They like knowing they have options. Even teenage girls.
She pulls open the center drawer of her desk, removes a lighter, and ignites the end of the note, holding it over her metal trash can and then dropping it just as the flame engulfs the paper and turns it to ash.
Her insistence on leaving behind no evidence whatsoever is her greatest strength. She’s been called anal, obsessive, controlling. But then she’s never been caught.
Most everyone within her circle of influence, businessmen, senators, congressmen, live their lives on their phones, their laptops, their iPads. She wonders if they ever really considered the digital picture they’ve painted of themselves with every call, every text, every Google search. She’d asked a few along the way why they were so willing to trust in the privacy supposedly afforded them by such devices. Most answers involved some blustery rejection of suspicion. “The best minds in the world are working on cybersecurity. And what do I possibly have to hide?”
Quite a lot, actually, in most cases.
Her glance lands on the oil painting gracing the wall across from her desk. Behind it is a safe. Inside the safe is enough dirt to bury every single customer to walk through the doors of the Hotel California.
She often wonders what her father would say about her enterprise if he were still living. If he would approve of the direction she had taken with his desire to pass along his love of the hunt.
Maybe. Maybe not.
In all fairness, she considered her version a more compassionate take on it. At least there was some enjoyment to be had on the part of the victim. Blasting a hole through the heart of a deer was hardly a comparison.
She does enjoy meeting the newly trapped though. Witnessing the hope in their eyes when they see that she is a woman, certain that she’s there to free them. She likes to toy with them a bit, enlarge that hope so that when it finally comes crashing down, she can actually feel its explosion, like the mushroom cloud after a nuclear blast.
The money is nice, but this single facet of her business would not have been enough to justify its continuing existence. It is like reliving that morning with her father over and over again, pulling the trigger, watching the surprise drown in the wake of instant death.
And too, there is the satisfaction found in the luring of men so powerful they think they are insulated from accountability. Now and then, she enjoys proving them wrong. Setting another kind of trap when one of them starts to outgrow his usefulness. And if they visit Hotel California often enough, it eventually happens, that sense of entitlement, refusal to continue paying the admittedly exorbitant price of spending an evening there.
Most retreat with a warning, a glimpse of one or two items from the wall safe behind the oil painting. More than once, she has witnessed, via hidden camera, the shock on their faces when they pull the photographs from their envelope. It is as if they are looking at someone they don’t know.
A stranger.
Only it isn’t a stranger.
It is that side of themselves they only let out of the cage under the most guarded of circumstances. So infrequently, perhaps, that between outings they let themselves believe it hadn’t really happened, or at most, was a one-time thing, never to be repeated.
Of course, she provides them with proof to the contrary. So far, they have all stepped back in line with the warning.
But then what other choice is there?
Exposure would not only decimate their worlds, but also that of their wives and children as well. And their public image, that most of all, they would go to any lengths to protect.
All in all, the system works for everyone. In some ways, those who visit Hotel California need to be protected from themselves, whether they realize it or not. She sees her role not only as that of proprietor, but protector also. Letting some of the country’s most powerful indulge their deepest fantasies without handing them rope to hang themselves.
How many people would be capable of maintaining such a delicate balance?
Few.
And that is what makes her unique. One of a kind. Omnipotent, even. Yes, that is the word. All-powerful. The proprietor.