The Infant of Prague

Big Ben Herguth felt cold. New York always made him feel that way. In fact, every place except Southern California made him feel that way.

The day was bright but deep shadows painted all the crosstown streets, and it was chilled in the shade. Every time he had to go to New York, there was more shade. He wore the houndstooth jacket that made him look even bigger than he was. His shirt collar was open and he wore a chain around his size-twenty-two neck.

The limo dumped him — it felt like getting dumped — in front of the seventy-three-story smoked-glass and prerusted steel building that served as network headquarters. The noise of New York was all around him, a pounding noise that would give him a headache after a couple of hours and would only be soothed by a pitcher of martinis and a twenty-two-year-old piece of ass. He hated New York: People didn’t walk, they loped. And New York was where Julie was. Herguth felt cold and a little afraid every time Julie summoned him.

There were two outer offices, and when he got to the inner sanctum on the forty-ninth floor he felt out of breath, as though he had walked up all those stairs. The room was completely silent save for the occasional interruption of a wa-wa-wa ambulance sound.

Jules Bergen was sitting on a couch and he was studying photographs.

“Hello, Ben,” he said. He did not look up from the photographs. Ben Herguth kept his distance, remained on the other side of the immense room.

“Get yourself a drink,” Jules Bergen said. The voice was distracted. “This is really good work, this last batch.”

“Is that Anna?”

“Yes. I said I wanted her naked this time. She is terribly developed for someone fourteen. Did I mention I had a ten-year-old in here last week, she was sent over by one of the agencies? She was very professional, she spoke well. She wanted to sit on my lap after a while. Sometimes I’m tempted. But right in the office… How would it look?”

“It wouldn’t look good,” Ben Herguth said. He made a double Beefeater on the rocks. He drank it down like medicine. He made another. Jules Bergen only drank Perrier.

“You seen these?”

“Sure,” Ben said. He had collected them. He was Julie’s collector, among other things. Make a run down to Mexico now and then, get a bunch of spic kids, take the stills and sometimes the videotapes. He wasn’t really interested in the little boys though. He made that clear. He liked the girls without body hair.

“How is Anna?” Jules asked.

“I talked to the keepers, she’s learning the rules. She keeps quiet, she doesn’t pull no shit like that screaming shit she was doing.”

“They aren’t molesting her?”

“No. Just the pictures you wanted.”

“Yes.” Jules had a dreamy look in his vacant, blue eyes. He was the second most powerful man in television. He owned production companies, was a movie producer by proxy, owned stars and their contracts, owned twenty-three percent of the stock of the network, owned fine paintings. Owned as much as a man can own. He liked little girls just on the lip of puberty. It was a discreet passion — almost a hobby — for a man as powerful as Jules Bergen.

Ben prowled the room. The carpet was gray and deep enough to sleep on. Books on the walls, respectable titles. Television monitors. The trappings of power. A photograph of the President with his arm around Jules.

Ben Herguth stood in front of Jules and looked down and saw the photograph of Anna standing naked in the middle of a dim little room with her sex organ exposed and her hands at her sides. She looked sad. Maybe even frightened.

“Skoal,” Ben said and took another swig. Being with Julie made him want to drink.

“What is happening?” Jules said, staring at the second picture of Anna.

“Willis from Langley drops a dime, says some guy from this fucking R Section is in the country. Just a word to the wise. I told the keepers to watch themselves. I got four guys in that house on the kid, they got no trouble. Willis is still telling me he’s trying to find out where the fuck Miki is. Miki is not in Prague, definitely, but no one is making a deal for him right now. Fucking CIA, these guys are like spies in comic books.”