Warren Murphy: Slave Safari

"Six cuts," said Lippincott who had intentionally given himself the last two in anticipation of taking revenge for his discomfort on Walla.

"Bwana, I know where you can get woman. You need woman, Bwana, don't cut poor Walla."

"I don't want some little black ape, Walla. Now you have cuts coming to you and you know you deserve them."

"Bwana, you look. You want woman. You don't want Walla."

It was then that James Forsythe Lippincott realized his body was indeed calling out for a woman.

"White women, you do whatever you want. White women, Bwana."

"There are no white women available in Busati, Walla. That will be another cut for lying."

"White women. Oh, yes. White women. I know."

"Why haven't I heard of them before?"

"Not allowed. Not allowed. Secret. White women at the big house with the iron gate."

"A whorehouse, Walla?"

"Yes, Bwana. White women in the whorehouse. Don't cut Walla. You can do anything to them you want if you got money. Anything. You can cut white women if you got enough money."

"That's outrageous, Walla. If you're lying, I’ll give you twenty cuts. Do you hear me?"

"I hear, Bwana."

When Lippincott drove up to the large white house with the iron gate, he saw to his delight that the windows held air-conditioning units. Iron bars held the gray units in place. If he had looked closer, he would have seen that there were bars also on windows that had no air conditioners. But he did not look closer, nor did he wonder why Walla did not accompany him, even though the servant knew he would be punished for just disappearing the way he had.

Lippincott was pleasantly surprised to see that the buzzer button on the gate worked. He tried it only after he found that the gate did not open to his pushing.

"Identify yourself," came a voice from a black box over the mother-of-pearl button.

"I was told I could find entertainment here."

"Identify yourself."

"I'm James Forsythe Lippincott, a close personal friend of the Minister of Public Safety."

"Then he sent you?"

If Lippincott had lived a life that exposed him to any sort of danger, he might have taken cautioned notice of the fact that in a country where brass doorknobs were stolen regularly, no one had pried loose the little mother-of-pearl buzzer from that front door. But James Lippincott was discovering himself, and in the excitement of finding that he truly loved to inflict pain, he neither worried nor cautioned.

"Yes, the Minister of Public Safety sent me and said everything would be okay," Lippincott lied. So what? Instead of a pre-guilt payment, there would be an after-guilt payment.

"All right," said the voice in the hollow raspiness of a speaker system. Lippincott could not place the accent, but it sounded faintly British.

"The car can't get through the gate," said Lippincott. "Will you send a boy out to watch it?"

"No one will touch a car in front of this gate," came the voice. The gate clicked open and such was Lippincott's anticipation that he did not wonder what might protect a car in front of this house, when ordinarily Busatians stripped a parked car like piranha working over a crippled cow.

The path to the door of the mansion was inlaid stone and the door handles shiny brass. The door of oak was polished to a gleam and the bell knob was the crafted head of a lion;—not African lion but British. Lippincott knocked. The door opened and a man in Busati Army whites, with sergeant's stripes on his sleeves, stood in the entrance.

"A bit early, what?" he said in a British accent, that seemed even colder coming from his anthracite face.

"Yes. Early," said Lippincott, assuming that was what he should say.

The sergeant ushered him into a living room with ornate Victorian furniture, chairs stuffed to discomfort, bric-a-brac filling crannies, large portraits in gold frames of African chiefs. It was not British, but almost British. Not the almost-British of Busati, but the almost-British of another colony. Lippincott could not place it.

The sergeant motioned Lippincott to a seat and clapped his hands.

"A drink?" he said, lowering himself into a stuffed sofa.

"No, no, thank you. We can begin now," he said.

"You must have a drink first and relax," said the sergeant, grinning. An old wizened black woman came into the room silently.

"We'll have two of your special mint juleps," the sergeant said.

Mint juleps. That was it. This home was furnished the pre-Civil War South, American South, thought Lippincott. Like a pre-Civil War whorehouse, perhaps in Charleston, South Carolina.

Lippincott made a show of looking at his watch.

"Don't rush yourself, the girls will wait," said the sergeant. The man was exasperating, thought Lippincott.

"Tell me, Lippincott, what brings you to Busati?"

Lippincott resented the over-familiar use of the last name, but answered, "I'm an amateur archaeologist. I'm looking for the causes of the breakdown of the great Loni Empire and the assumption of power by the Hausa tribe. Look. I'm not really thirsty and I'd like to get on with, well, with the business at hand."

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," said the sergeant, "but you are not on the approved list to use this house, so I'll have to find out more about you before you may begin. Terribly sorry, old boy."

"All right, what do you want to know?"

"Must you make it seem like an interrogation, old boy?" the sergeant said. "Interrogations are so crass."

"When crass is faster, crass is nicer."

"All right, if you must be barbaric, who told you of this place?"

"The Minister of Public Safety," lied Lippincott.

"Did he tell you the rules?'

"No."

"The rules are these. You don't ask the girls their names. You tell no one of this house. No one. And, old boy, you don't just drive up to the gate. You phone in advance. Make an appointment. Understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah. C'mon. How much?"

"It depends upon what you want to do."

Lippincott did not feel comfortable talking about it. He had never done this before, not what he wanted to do, and before coming to Busati had never even suspected that he had such desires. He fumbled with the words, stepping into the area of his longings, then skirting them, then approaching them from another angle.

"Whips and chains, you mean," said the sergeant.

Lippincott nodded silently.

"That's not so unusual. Two hundred dollars. If you kill her, that's $12,000. Severe damage is prorated. These girls are valuable."

"All right, all right Where do I go?"

"Cash in advance."

Lippincott paid, and after insolently recounting the money, the sergeant led him upstairs to a long broad hallway. They stopped in front of a polished steel door. From a tall chest next to the door, the sergeant took a cardboard box, and handed it to Lippincott.

"Your whips and chains are in here. Hooks are on the wall. If the girl gives you any trouble, just ring the buzzer in the room. If she refuses you anything, threaten to ring the buzzer. She shouldn't be any trouble though. Been here three months. Only the really new ones give trouble. Haven't been educated, so to speak."

The sergeant took a key from a ring on his belt and unlocked the door. Lippincott gripped the paper box tightly under his arm and went into the room like a schoolboy discovering an abandoned pastry shop.

He slammed the door behind him, and in his rush into the room, almost stumbled over a wide metal cot. On it lay a nude woman, her legs drawn up to her stomach, her arms shielding her head, her red hair a dirty tangle on the mattress, which was speckled with dried bloodstains.

The room smelled of camphor and Lippincott assumed it must be from the ointment that glistened on the girl's flanks over fresh and precisely drawn lash marks. Lippincott suddenly felt compassion for the creature and was tempted to leave the room, perhaps even buy her freedom, when she peered from beneath her folded arms and seeing a man with a box, rose slowly from the cot. When he saw her young breasts flecked with dried blood as she rose from the cot, a driving rage enveloped him, and when she dutifully walked to the dirty, blood-spattered wall and raised her hands above her head to an iron ring, Lippincott was trembling. He fumbled the chains around her wrists, then pounced on the whip as if someone might snatch it from him.