Nina, the Bandit Queen

by Joey Slinger

Toole kept his mouth shut. It could turn out that she was a mental case. Then again, she might be really cagey and trying to lead him into a hopeless mush of doubtful and confusing information. Who knew what the hell she might be? Or it could be he hadn’t made himself very clear when he asked the question. Never mind. You just had to let some things go by. You learned the hard way.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s him.”

  “What?”

  “The dead guy. It’s Frank.”

  “How can —”

  “By the fingerprints. You checked the fingerprints. Looked them up. Saw it was Frank. Checked with the prison or something. Saw I was his only relative. Why else would you have ended up here?”

  Wow! “You and Frank …” He was about to say something about how maybe they weren’t all that close, but it drifted off.

  “So what do you need me for?”

  She had him there. But there was one thing he couldn’t figure out and this visit to the sister wasn’t going to make any clearer. Who the fuck Frank Carson was that somebody would murder him in such a gruesome way? Whatever that way was, exactly. The only thing he could say for sure was that an awful lot of wacko-ness had been turned loose on some asshole from SuEz who nobody ever heard of.

  That’s what had made Toole curious in the first place. Nobody puts that much effort into killing somebody for no good reason. No. That wasn’t completely correct. A pervert might. Or perverts, since there were two of them. How would they know which chat rooms to troll to discover each other in the first place? But that was a tiny little coincidence. The enormous Jesus coincidence was how did they decide on this particular victim? Somebody they just happened to see walking along the street? Who just happened to get out of jail the day before after doing three of eleven? And the day they snatch him just happened to be the day somebody walked out of the Great Big One National Bank with 1.18 million dollars, withdrawn at gunpoint? And the guy dies as a result of methods that Allied soldiers used in Iraq to encourage uncooperative individuals to divulge information? And the face of the armed robber in the bank security video just happens to ID the same as the fingerprints on the tormented stiff that was found tied to a tree in the park?

  Little coincidences were things Toole had no problem with. You could always find them, especially if you were prepared to exercise a little creativity. But an enormous Jesus coincidence — there never had been such a thing. Ever. And there never would be. Not as far as cops were concerned. Not as far as a cop was concerned who was serious about his work. So now the only question was whether these two creeps had been successful in persuading Frank Carson to give up the information they wanted before he — the aptness and similarity of the phrase made Robbie Toole smile when it popped into his mind — before he gave up the ghost.

  That’s what he was interested in finding out more than anything. In fact, it was the only thing he was interested in finding out. Because to him, being a cop was more than a job, it was a business.

  As a senior member of the holdup squad, Toole believed his task was comprised of three parts: to catch individuals who carried out armed robberies, to recover the loot, and to ensure that a reasonable portion of it — when this was absolutely unavoidable — was returned to the victim. In some instances, the way he did these things depended on whether the individual was shot while fleeing. In others, the deciding factor was whether the individual ended up in custody on a charge that was quite a bit less serious than armed robbery, as a result of having arrived at a satisfactory arrangement with Toole. This was called arrest-bargaining, and Sergeant Toole was very skilled at it. And why not? After thirty-one years with the department, it was all that made his shit salary into something that vaguely resembled a living wage.

  He’d found that an enhanced income was necessary after it occurred to him that he might be gay and, after thinking about it carefully for some time, concluded that he was. One financial aspect of dutifully informing the department of his revised sexual orientation was that he ended up being ten years past his due date before he made sergeant. And sergeant was as far as he was ever going to go, because none of the police chiefs he’d served under was a good fairy who would wave their wand and promote him, or raise his salary, any higher. So it came down to basic economics. Unless he made something on the side, there was no way he could afford his stereotypically gay lifestyle. Robbie Toole was essentially an honest man — certainly honest enough to admit that he was well past middle age, and for that reason alone it was impossible to do it on the cheap and have the kind of friends and home decor he wanted.

  This was why he’d tracked down Frank’s next of kin.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. As he handed her his card, he got a momentary glimpse inside the house, and had a strange feeling that something was funny about the light in it. How it seemed to flood toward him. How it was almost as if the whole back end of the place was a gigantic picture window. Maybe even that it wasn’t a window, that there wasn’t anything there at all.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Nina tore the card to pieces and dropped them off the side of the porch. Then she let herself think about Frank. The dumb son of a bitch, she thought. She wondered if it was the guys that grabbed him that did it. Somebody did. If it had been an accident, the cop would have come out and said there’d been some kind of accident. She hadn’t ever been all that close to the dumb son of a bitch. And now — now that was about it for her side of the family. Everybody gone but her. She wondered how upset she was going to be. It hadn’t been easy to clamp her reaction right down flat when the cop had been there. Maybe that she could do it at all was a SuEz thing. Maybe when it involved something as big as Frank getting murdered, and you clamped it down as hard as she had, it would take awhile before it rose back up and slammed you around. The dumb son of a bitch.

  Sixteen

  Victor didn’t believe Raoul had been an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. But when somebody went around bragging about how he’d studied advanced intelligence gathering techniques at a prison in Iraq as famous as that one was for using them, Victor wasn’t about to interrogate him to find out if he was lying. When the image you wanted to create for yourself was that you were a sicko torturer, then you might as well be accepted as one. If the result was the same, who gave a shit about the facts? It had been a long time since Victor arrived at the conclusion that when it came to dealing with people who had snakes in their heads, the smart thing to do was whatever had to be done, and not get them wondering about you.

  He didn’t believe Raoul’s name was Raoul, either.

  Victor’s own approach to interrogation was pretty straightforward. If you wanted somebody to tell you something, and they didn’t want to, you squeezed their nuts. If they still didn’t want to, you squeezed harder.

  Raoul was happy to pass along what he said were the latest trade tips, and if he learned them at Abu Ghraib or on some website for perverts and they worked better than squeezing somebody’s nuts, it was okay with Victor. Raoul was happy about all sorts of things besides that. Victor went so far as to think Raoul was happy about everything. It was why he never stopped smiling. It wasn’t a fake smile, either, or a sarcastic one. It was a big, happy smile like you’d expect from a person who felt really pleased about something. As far as creepiness went, Victor thought this was the icing on the cake. He wondered if maybe the infant Raoul’s parents kept bouncing him down the stairs on his head until the smile never left his lips, and had then sent him out into the world to make it a sweeter place.

  One thing Raoul made a big deal about was using ordinary, down-to-earth equipment, stuff you could find around the house or wherever. It gave the interrogator some extra whammy if he used things so familiar that most of the time people just took them for granted. “Or look at it the other way around,” he said. “What if you’re just getting comfortable in the dentist’s chair and you suddenly notice that he’s about to plunge into your mouth with a knife and fork? See how that makes it even more terrifyi
ng?” Victor took the diplomatic route and nodded appreciatively. Another example: nothing beat a J Cloth for waterboarding. The person being worked on should see it get pulled right out of the box. And be sure and to use national brand names. People identify with them, even if they reach for the economy brand when they’re shopping. And, yes, he could have carried electrical wires with him, but that wasn’t his style. When the cord was ripped out of the toaster and the ends were stripped in front of the guy they were going to be attached to, it had a real strong psychological effect even before it was plugged in.

  Victor was pretty sure he remembered seeing stuff about ripping the electrical cord out of the toaster in a movie, but he didn’t mention it.

  They had Frank stripped naked. If the person being interrogated was naked, it always put him at an emotional disadvantage. You felt more vulnerable naked.

  “Unless you happen to be driving a tank.”

  “What?” Raoul said.

  “But then, how often does anybody get naked and climb behind the controls of a tank?”

  “Sorry?”

  Victor thought the lights behind Raoul’s eyes might have dimmed a couple of watts, but the smile stayed as wide as ever. Snakes — oh, Jesus. So many of them packed in there, his skull was ready to burst.

  They had also knocked Frank unconscious, and every time he came to, Raoul banged him behind the ear with the tire iron from the car. “Letting him regain consciousness, and then knocking him out again, reinforces in his mind how completely he has lost control of his universe. Furthermore, it allows you to complete your preparations without being distracted by his struggles.”

  I can’t fuckin’ believe it, Victor thought.

  “What’s that?” Raoul said.

  “Good,” Victor said. “Good. I want to get you to go over all this again later. So I can make notes.”

  The next time Frank woke up, he was tied to a tree. His ankles were bound with wire. His hands were tied at the wrists and raised above his head by what looked to him like an extension cord looped over a branch. They were in a wooded part of a park or something. He watched Raoul hunt around in the car’s trunk with a flashlight, pull out the jump-starter cables and open the hood. Raoul attached one of the cables’ clamps to the car’s battery and the other end to Frank’s right nipple.

  “Ouch!” Frank said. “What’re you doing?”

  “You’re not serious,” Victor said to Raoul.

  Evidently he was, because he attached another clamp to the other battery connection and then pinched the skin of Frank’s scrotum and clamped the other end to that.

  “I’ll tell you where it is,” Frank said, making a whole bunch of faces.

  Raoul ignored him, opening the door on the driver’s side.

  “He’ll tell us where it is,” Victor said.

  “No, he won’t.”

  “He says he will.”

  “He won’t tell us the truth.”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” Frank said, trying to make it clear he wasn’t just going to watch the proceedings like it was a TV show.

  “No, he won’t. He won’t tell us the truth until he gets a taste of the old prune juice.”

  “Prune juice?” Did Victor hear that right?

  “What’s brown and wrinkly and a shock to the system?” Raoul asked. “A hundred-and-ten volt prune! At Abu Ghraib we loved prune jokes.”

  “It’s in the Porsche!”

  “What Porsche?” Victor sounded willing to give Frank the benefit of the doubt.

  “What’s brown and wrinkly and can blow your ass off?” Raoul asked. “This was my favourite.”

  “I’m telling you! It’s all there!” Frank was yelping. Actually, he’d been sounding very agitated since the first clamp was attached.

  “A prune grenade!” Raoul laughed loudly, then shook his head and went back to his normal smiling. “Pay no attention to him,” he told Victor. “He’ll say anything to keep from experiencing intense pain.”

  “What’s this about a Porsche?” Victor said.

  Raoul slipped behind the wheel. “A day without prune juice,” he said. “How about I serve him a little?”

  “Let’s just hear what he’s got to say.”

  “Forget what he’s got to say.”

  Victor closed his eyes. “Forget what he’s got to say? What do you mean forget what he’s got to say? You mean you don’t care what he’s got to say. You just want to give him a fuckin’ jolt.”

  “I just want the money.” Thinking about how much he wanted the money made Raoul’s smile almost dreamy.

  “You want to give him a jolt. If we could get it without giving him a jolt, you wouldn’t be the fuckin’ slightest bit interested.”

  “What are you getting at?” Even though it was dark, Raoul’s smile gleamed through the windshield.

  Frank was squirming back and forth. “The Porsche, it’s yellow. It’s —” He started to piss.

  “I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” Raoul said.

  “You think you’re some kind of fuckin’ genius!” Victor couldn’t believe he was blowing up like this. It was embarrassing. Why was he going to bat for some asshole he’d been hired to squeeze 1.18 million dollars out of? He grabbed Raoul’s sleeve. “You want to do this no matter what.”

  “The Porsche is in the garage at her building. Her name is Junetta —”

  “You hear that?” Victor was jerking Raoul’s shoulder.

  “ — Solito. She lives at —”

  “Yeah?” Victor moved toward Frank, hungry for every word. “She lives at?”

  “ — at —”

  “Jesus Fuckin’ Christ!” Victor threw his hands in front of his face. He dove to the ground, dodging a stream of sparks — maybe an actual flame. Anyway, he hit the ground to get out of the way of something that came blazing out of Frank’s dick. Other blazing streams came out his ears. His eyeballs popped. Little tongues of flame from the sockets licked his eyebrows.

  “Fuckin’ amazing,” Raoul said, switching off the engine.

  Victor was on his knees, his face in his hands. He was whimpering.

  “Although I worried that this might happen.”

  “You worried —”

  “It’s this eight-cylinder engine.” Getting out of the car, Raoul picked up a flashlight and inspected Frank Carson, slumped dead against the tree.

  “You worried that this might happen?”

  Frank’s teeth clacked. Clackclackclackclackclack. It reminded Victor of the wind-up choppers they sold in joke stores.

  “Should have gone with a four-cylinder,” Raoul said. “Not such a powerful charge.” It is possible to tell by the sound of someone’s voice whether they’re smiling, even if you can’t see them. Raoul sounded as if everything pleased the absolute hell out of him, despite this minor setback. Victor expected him to slap his forehead and say, “Don’t that beat all?” He didn’t, though. He just went on about what might have worked better. “A Jetta maybe. Imports are more precision engineered.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Victor said. “They all use the same batteries.”

  “Are you sure about that? Why would they? Smaller motors. Precision engineering.”

  “He was going to tell us!”

  In spite of the darkness, Victor had a clear impression of steam rising from Frank’s body. At least his teeth had stopped going clackity clackity.

  “Juanita something,” Victor said.

  Raoul pulled onto the road. “That’s bullshit. He hadn’t been properly motivated.” He sounded like he couldn’t believe what a slow learner Victor was.

  “A Porsche.”

  “Maybe,” Raoul said. “But an economy car will work better. I’d try a Jetta.”

  “She has a Porsche! The fuckin’ Juanita woman. That’s where the fuckin’ money is.”

  Raoul leaned back in the seat, enjoying the sweep of night they were speeding through. “You should try to keep up with the research, my friend.”

&
nbsp; Seventeen

  Krystal Beach’s emails caused a sensation in Lagos.

  Never had so many Nigerians been offered the opportunity to get their hands on so much money. Before this, they had to start a relationship from scratch with some far-off stranger and follow up with no end of back-and-forth correspondence to persuade the stranger to pass along their life savings, or more if they could be persuaded to borrow it. Yet some of the individuals they corresponded with, after making all kinds of promising noises, still backed out, forcing the Nigerians to find another stranger to start up a friendship with from scratch.

  Because so much money was up for grabs, and because word got around among the leading industrialists and officials who received the White House offer, and because these industrialists and officials had a great deal of say in how the country was run, they decided great care had to be taken to make sure they weren’t in danger of throwing their investment away. And so Operation Due Diligence sprang to life. Kevin Olorgasele and J. Ridgeway Mbunzu, the two most feared colonels in the Finance Ministry, were given airplane tickets and sent to see if six railway cars filled with gold ingots could truly be obtained by paying the wife of the president of America three hundred thousand dollars cash in advance. If this turned out to be the case, they were directed to see if the six railway cars filled with gold might then somehow be obtained without paying the wife of the president or anybody else anything at all in advance, or ever. And, if that were possible, whether they might then be able to obtain a great many more than a mere six railway cars without ponying up as much as a nickel, even though everyone in Nigeria agreed that the amount she had asked for was very reasonable in the circumstances.

  Kevin Olorgasele and J. Ridgeway Mbunzu were impressed by how easily their national intelligence organization discovered that the emails had been sent from the computer terminals that anybody could use for free in the public library beside the subway station at The Intersection. When they considered all the ways this location was entirely unconnected with Washington, D.C., it became obvious why it had been chosen as the secret communications centre for the Fort Knox venture. And when the owner of the email address was tracked down, the colonels were equally impressed to see how much the woman who appeared to be the driver of a delivery van for ConGlom Courier Services by the name of Ms. K. Beach behaved as if she really was the driver of a delivery van for ConGlom Courier Services by the name of Ms. K. Beach. “I say, Ridgeway, old thing,” Olorgasele said, “it’s bloody marvellous. The best cover I’ve seen in my many years in the business.”