He shook his head, kept his eyes lowered. “My father has never been in trouble.”
“That’s what I keep hearing,” I said. “I’ve read a lot about you and your family in the past day or so. Gone all the way back to your school days at Texas. You were involved in a couple of scrapes in Austin. Two date rapes. Neither case went to trial. Your father saved you then. It won’t happen this time.”
Lawrence Lipton didn’t respond. His eyes were dead, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His blue dress shirt was as wrinkled as a used tissue, soaked with perspiration at the underarms. His hair was wet, dripping little rivers of moisture down to his shirt collar and sideburns. The skin under his eyes sagged and had a purplish tint in the harsh interrogation room light.
He finally said, “I don’t want my family hurt. Leave my father out of this. Get him protection.”
I nodded. “Okay, Lawrence. Where do we start? I’m ready to put your family in protective custody until we catch him.”
“And afterward?” he asked. “It doesn’t stop with him.”
“We’ll protect your family.”
Lipton sighed loudly, then said, “All right, I’m the moneyman. I’m Sterling. I might be able to get you to the Wolf. But I need promises in writing. Lots of promises.”
Chapter 98
I WAS HEADING into the deepest darkness again, attracted to it as most people are attracted to sunlight. I kept thinking about Elizabeth Connolly, still missing and feared dead.
Lipton’s father visited him a couple of times and the two men wept together. Mrs. Lipton was allowed to see her husband. There was a lot of crying among the family members, and most of the emotions seemed genuine.
I was in the interrogation room with Sterling until a little past three in the morning. I was prepared to stay later, as long as it took to get the information I needed. Several deals were struck with his lawyers during the night.
At around two, with most of the lawyering done, Lipton and I sat down to talk again. Two senior agents from the Dallas field office were in the room with us. They were only there to take notes and tape-record.
This was my interview to conduct.
“How did you get involved with the Wolf?” I asked Lawrence Lipton, after a few minutes during which I emphasized my concern for his family. He seemed clearer headed and more focused than he’d been a few hours before. I sensed that a weight had been lifted from him. Guilt, betrayal of his family—especially his father? His school records revealed he was a bright but troubled student. His problems always centered on an obsession with sex, but he’d never received a day of treatment. Lawrence Lipton was a freak.
“How did I get involved?” he repeated, seeming to be asking the question of himself. “I have a thing for young girls, you see. Teens, preteens. There’s lots of it available these days. The Internet opened new sources.”
“For what? Be as concrete as you can, Lawrence.”
He shrugged. “For freaks like myself. Nowadays we can get what we want when we want it. And I know how to search for the nastiest sites. At first I settled for photos and movies. I especially liked real-time films.”
“We found some. In your office at home.”
“One day a man came to see me. He came to the office, just like you did.”
“To blackmail you?” I asked.
Lipton shook his head. “No, not blackmail. He said he wanted to know what I really wanted. Sexually. And that he would help me get it. I threw him out. He came back the next day. He had records of everything I’d bought on the Internet. ‘So what do you really want?’ he asked again. I wanted young girls. Pretty ones, with no strings attached, no rules. He supplied me with two or three a month. Exactly what I fantasized. Color of hair, shape of breasts, shoe size, freckles, anything I desired.”
“What happened to the girls? Did you murder them? You have to tell me.”
“I’m not a killer. I liked to see the girls get off. Some did. We’d party, then they would be released. Always. They didn’t know who I was or where I was from.”
“So you were satisfied with the arrangement?”
Lipton nodded and his eyes lit up. “Very. I’d been dreaming of this my whole life. The reality was as good as the fantasy. Of course, there was a price.”
“A bill had to be paid?”
“Oh, yeah. I got to meet the Wolf, at least I think it was him. He had sent an emissary to my office in the early days. But then he came to see me. In person, he was very scary. Red Mafiya, he said. The KGB came up, but I don’t know what his connection to them was.”
“What did he want from you?”
“To go into business with him, to be a partner. He needed my company’s expertise with computers and the Internet. The sex club was secondary with him, a throw-in. He was heavily into extortion, money laundering, counterfeiting. The club was my thing. Once our deal was struck, I went looking for wealthy freaks who wanted their dreams fulfilled. Freaks who were willing to spend six figures for a slave, male, female, didn’t matter. Sometimes a specific target, sometimes a physical type.”