Renee was mystified and afraid. She didn’t know who this was, or where she was, or what was about to happen. She was sure of only one thing: her vacation was in shambles.
In the parking lot at the Miami Seaquarium, she had barely seen the inky specter that had swept her into the car and promised to kill her if she so much as twitched her honky lips.
The trunk of the automobile had been cramped and uncomfortable, but it had a new-car smell, which Renee thought was a good sign. She had shut her eyes and tried not to cry aloud. All she could hear was Wilson Pickett singing “Wait Till the Midnight Hour,” which her captor had played over and over on the tape deck, full blast.
Although it had seemed like eternity, Renee LeVoux actually spent only twenty-seven minutes in the trunk of the Cadillac. Viceroy Wilson had driven straight from the Seaquarium to a cheap motor inn on the Tamiami Trail. There he’d popped the trunk and lifted Renee LeVoux over one shoulder like a sack of tangelos.
Inside the room, he’d wordlessly removed her halter and jogging shorts, gagged her, and tied her to the bed. He’d noticed that she was trembling, so he’d tossed a thin blanket across her, as if she were a horse.
Renee had slept fitfully, straining against the ropes, certain that she would awake any moment to be violated by the biggest black man she’d ever seen.
But nothing had happened. Aside from intermittently checking the knots at Renee’s wrists and ankles, Viceroy Wilson had paid almost no attention to his beautiful captive. Instead he’d watched Mary Tyler Moore on television, skimmed the New Republic, and done one hundred push-ups, Marine-style.
The next morning, when she heard him turn on the shower, Renee began to cry again. Viceroy Wilson poked his glistening head out the bathroom door and glared. He put a finger to his lips. Renee nodded meekly and became quiet.
Viceroy Wilson had no interest in pale white girls with strawberry hair. During his time in the NFL he had known an astounding variety of women with an equally astounding range of sexual appetites. It had gotten boring toward the end, and dangerous. When Wilson had reinjured his right knee before the crucial Pittsburgh Steelers game in 1977, the Miami Dolphins had put out a press release saying it had happened in a practice scrimmage—when in fact Viceroy’s knee had hyperextended on a water bed beneath two limber sisters who worked in a foundry on the Allegheny.
Later, when he became a revolutionary, Viceroy Wilson made a vow not to mix sex and sedition. He wanted to be remembered as a very professional terrorist.
He attached no symbolism to the red Jockey shorts.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” he asked Renee LeVoux as he toweled off.
From the bed his prisoner just stared in fright.
Moments later a key rattled in the door and another man slipped into the motel room. Viceroy Wilson greeted him with a grunt and a nod of the head. Renee was struck by the difference in the two figures and thought it odd that they could be partners. Wilson’s companion was a wiry Latin-looking man who spoke sibilantly and moved catlike about the room. Craning her neck from the bed, Renee could see the two of them conferring in the kitchenette. Soon she smelled coffee and bacon, and her stomach began to make noises. Viceroy Wilson approached the bed and removed the gag from her mouth.
“If you scream, you’re dead.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Your name is Renee?”
She nodded; obviously they had her purse. “You can have all the money in my wallet,” she offered.
“We don’t want your money.” Viceroy Wilson slid one hand under her head and lifted it slightly off the pillow; with the other he held a cup of coffee to her lips. She slurped at it timorously.
“Thank you.”
“What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
Wilson put the coffee cup down. Renee LeVoux noticed that he had a pencil and a piece of paper.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“We’re going to write him a letter. Tell him you’re okay.”