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window on the world outside. 'Mommy! Mommy, I'm sorry! Forgive me, Mommy! Please!' I would cry while she pranced about her parlor, the rings passing the keyhole each time Suzannah slinked by. When she was high on cocaine—and that was most of the time—Mother used to talk to the masks. ..."

    On the wall facing the French doors to the balcony hung carved wooden masks from Africa. A Baga Nimba with an Ashanti fertility head. A Bambara elephant face with an Oule mask from Bobo. Staring vacantly at the door to Sparky's prison were painted masks from the Near or Far East. A mummy mask from Egypt with a Roman mask of Pan. A Japanese Gigaku with a Chinese T'ao T'ieh. Around the keyhole and its teary eye hung faces from pre-Columbian times. An Inca death mask with a Hopi Katchina doll. An Iroquois false face with a Salish spirit mask. Circling the French doors open to greet the masks of Mardi Gras were masks each guilty client would don before she took him downstairs.
    Hollow eyes.
    On naked flesh.
    Bending over the table.
    Tearful eye.
    At the keyhole.
    Fixed on Mother's rings.
    The razor blade tapped to the music as she chopped up the white powder, working it into thick lines across the glass table. Rolling a crisp hundred-dollar bill into a tube, she placed it to one nostril and plugged the other, and then inhaled sharply to suck up all the drug. A shudder shook her spine, jiggling her ample breasts, the rouged nipples of which she plucked as she threw back her bald head and groaned an orgasmic "Ahhhhhhhhh . . ." To complete the ritual she wet her index finger and washed it over the surface, then rubbed the residue of coke around her gums.
    Also on the table were the texts of her trade:
    The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade.
    "A Child Is Being Beaten" by Sigmund Freud.
    "The Discipline of Pain" by Henry Havelock Ellis.
    Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing.
    Jitterbugged by the drug, Suzannah strutted to the doors and spread her hands high and wide to embrace the fireworks. "Carnival! Flesh, farewell! Mardi Gras!" she cried. "Let the Lupercalian rites begin! Come to me, my lovelies! Pagan, perverse, and unrestrained. Hide those faces, yes. But you can't hide from me. For I know your secrets, and you've been naughty boys. Only punishment will relieve your guilt. And my kind of punishment will cost you dearly. So bring me money, or bring me jewels, and let the blood flow!"
    Turning from the balcony, she sashayed across the parlor, rolling her shoulders to twirl her breasts as she did onstage when all those piggy male minds drooled for her body. This bedroom off the parlor was a riot of red and black. The walls were red satin with red velvet drapes to match, the spread on the bed a red patchwork quilt. The carpet was black; the dresser, wardrobe, and washstand were onyx; and each ebony post supporting the canopy of the bed had chains and handcuffs of blackened steel.
    This was the room where Mother straightened Sparky out.
    On the bed.
    "Watch the rings."
    With the tools of her trade . . .

    ". . . saddle straps to separate the buttocks for the bite of the taws. Slave sandals, locking bibs, posture collars, anal probes, cattle prods, choke gags, valved submission helmets, and the like she used upstairs. The heavy-duty stuff was down in the cavern. ..."

    Cocaine shivers tingled her skin. Trickles of cold sweat snaked down between her shoulder blades to tickle the small of her back, while her heart beat wildly in a bid to burst out through her breasts. Eyes glazing in a face flushed by blow, she pinched her nose to sniff her head full of snow. She sat across from the Ice Queen in the boudoir mirror and washed a hand with red-lacquered nails across her shaved scalp. The blue veins spreading like fingers reaching up from her temples throbbed with the rapid pulse at which her heart pumped blood. Feline green eyes watched her blacken sultry lids with theater makeup, fingertips working the smoky shadows around the