Oh Christ, I wanted to shout. Oh for the love of Christ. But that bloody rag was stuffed in my mouth, the Bald Man standing in the corner…
“As I started saying, Keeper,” Pearl said. “Did you know that I’m a noted expert on both psychological and physical torture?” He made his way around the desk, holding the dentist’s pick in his right hand, a loaded syringe in his left. “I’ve also done extensive research into the resulting post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
My eyes tracked his every movement.
“For instance, I know that to avoid physical evidence, torture is often performed with needlelike devices in order to produce maximum pain with minimal evidence.” He was standing over me now. “Stretching, crushing, asphyxiations are also forms of torture that produce lots of pain with minimal physical stress. But, oh my, the post-traumatic stress is extremely significant. I’d bet the farm that you’ll recall just about anything I want you to recall, just to stop the pain.”
He dropped to his knees, eye level with my sex.
“Here’s how it all works. First we shoot you up with a little speed mixed with a new amazing little drug that stimulates the NMDA receptor in your brain. Your pain should be enhanced to the extent that even the slightest touch will send your neurotransmitters and their receptors screaming. Really, very neat state-of-the-art stuff.”
I felt the prick of the needle in my thigh and then the hot pressure of the medical concoction injected into my system. When it was empty, he pulled the needle out and threw the syringe onto his desk. “Now,” Pearl said a few seconds later, “does this hurt?”
When he tapped my testicles with the point of the weighted dentist’s instrument, I thought my middle would explode in fire and ripping pain. As I thrust my body up against the restraining devices, I thought my eyeballs would pop out, my ribs would snap.
I tried to scream.
But screaming was impossible.
“Oh my,” Pearl said, eyes wide and intense, “do we have a live one or what?”
Leon laughed.
The Bald Man smoked.
Short Goatee rubbed his midsection, let out a groan.
Then Pearl jammed the spike into my left testicle.
Chapter 58
She is typing in the first words of the final page when the door to the room opens. Two men step silently inside, walking out of their own shadows and into the half light that leaks out of her little desk lamp.
One of them in a leather blazer, a pistol in his right hand.
The other in a long charcoal overcoat and navy blue fedora.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks the men.
The man in the fedora takes a step forward. Without a word.
The man in the leather blazer makes his way to the phone, picks up the receiver, brings it to his ear. When it registers that the phone is dead, he pulls on the thin white wire, sees that it is not connected to the jack.
He bends down and connects it, letting out a grunt as he extends his arm under the bed to his right.
In the meantime, the fedora man picks up the travel bag that sits in the corner of the room by the desk. He sets it on the bed.
“Get ready to travel,” he says.
She stands, pulls the last page from the manual typewriter, sets it on the stack of pages to her right.
Charlie’s story. It is finished.
“Get me Homicide,” the man on the phone says. “Yeah, it’s Ryan.” He turns and looks Renata in the eye. “Put out a Missing Persons on Renata Barnes. That’s right, nowhere to be found.…Marconi?…Yeah, we questioned him.”
The man hangs up the phone, lets out a breath.
“How’ve you been, Renata?” he says.
“Not too good, Mike,” she says.
Chapter 59
I woke up on my back in a room so black I could not see the shape of my hand when I held it up in front of my face.
How do I explain the pain?
How it came to me not immediately but in a sudden wave that started at my feet, worked its way up my legs, shot up my spine, into my head.
There was the taste of blood in my mouth.
My teeth felt loose.
I would have given my life—what was left of it—for a drink of water.
Just one beautiful replenishing sip.
My right eye was swollen shut.
I touched it with my fingertips and felt the tender sting.
The floor was cold and hard. Concrete. Not rubber. I was naked.
I curled my knees into my chest, wrapped my arms around my shins. I wanted to shout, but no words would come.
Just the shivers.
After a time, a small opening appeared at the base of the metal door. A little mail-slot-size opening through which a bright light poured in, followed by a plastic tray. In the light I could see that a bowl had been set on the tray along with a plastic spoon. I crawled over to the bowl on all fours, dipped my fingers into it.
I felt warm wet fur and flesh.
I pulled my hand back.
In the little bit of light I could see blood on my fingers. I could smell the blood, feel the warm stickiness.
In the bowl, a dead rat.
I kicked the bowl away with my bare feet, pressed my back up hard against the wall.
Laughing coming from outside the door.
Then the mail slot slammed closed.
I curled up on my side.
After a while, I went to sleep.
Startled awake, again.
This time the silhouette of a man standing over me, syringe in hand. Me using all my strength to crawl back into a far corner, trying to hold out my hands, trying to scream at him to get the hell away. But so weak, the effort was useless.
Pathetic.
First I felt the plunge of the needle.
Then the warmth of the fluid.
As it shot up my veins.
When I woke up a third time I was shivering.
But here’s the strange thing: All the pain had subsided.
In the darkness, I rolled over onto all fours, felt the floor with my hands, carefully ran them over as much of the concrete as I could until I came to the perimeter walls. The bowl with the dead rat inside it had disappeared.
From what I could gather, the square-shaped room was maybe seven by seven, with a wire drain in the center of the concrete floor. The concrete walls were covered, in places, with rubber padding. I knew the ceiling was likely constructed out of concrete planks with two holes bored out of them. The first for ventilation, the second for a video monitor fitted with a night-vision lens.
How did I know this?
I was a former maximum-security warden. I knew what to expect from solitary confinement because I myself had sent men to solitary. Which meant I also knew the effects even a minute amount of solitary could have on the brain.
The brain is a funny thing.
It loses its efficiency when it’s deprived of stimulation. And as for those five famous senses? They just go all to hell.
Take away the environment and suddenly you can’t remember your name anymore, suddenly you begin to hallucinate like a crazy man.
You withdraw into yourself.
Your IQ melts away.
You become a babbling moron.
All within days.
I had no way of telling how long I’d been in the hole.
A day, two days. A week maybe. Five minutes. I didn’t know. I had no way of telling time, no way of knowing day from night.
I felt my face with my hands.
A day’s worth of beard growth. But not much more.
Maybe whoever injected me had shaved me too. Cleaned me up a little. It was possible.
Anything was possible in the dark.
I curled up on the concrete floor, a dull throbbing pain beginning to develop in my midsection and in my head. When the little sliding door opened, I expected to see another tray appear. But then the entire metal door opened up.
The light outside in the hall bu
rned my eyes. I held out my hand to shield it. I squinted, but that didn’t help. I didn’t need eyesight to know that Pearl and his boys had arrived for round two. The three of them stood over me in the cell.
“How are we feeling?” Pearl asked.
“Who sent in the clowns?” I said, my voice dry, cracking.
Pearl let out a laugh. “That’s the spirit,” Pearl said, bending down at the knees while Leon and Short Goatee stood poised behind him. “Does this still give you pain?” When he thrust his hand between my legs, flicked my balls with his fingertips, I thought I would go through the concrete roof. My eyes rolled up into the back of my head. There were the telltale signs of passing out —the blurred vision, the slurring of the voice, the feeling of falling into a bottomless well.
“Still very tender,” he said, pulling out that dentist’s pick from his pocket along with another syringe.
I shot back against the wall.
Pearl came close, ran his open palm down the side of my face. “There, there, baby,” he said, slowly standing up. He informed me that in one hand he held an instrument that required no explanation. And he was right. In the other, he said, he held a syringe filled with a painkiller so potent it would eliminate my troubles in less than thirty seconds.
My troubles. Meaning my pain.
I was breathing hard, through my mouth.
“You must understand, Keeper,” he said, “we’ve been very patient with you. All we need is an address. Give it to us and you get the painkiller. If you resist, well…”
He held up the dentist’s pick.
“Die,” I said, through my tears.
Pearl shook his head. “You should know that every man has his limit,” he said, shaking his head. “And I thought we were making progress.” He dropped the syringe to the floor, crushing it with the heel of his shoe. “Boys,” he said.
The two goons came at me, grabbed my arms, held on tight, while Pearl went down on his knees.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I screamed, suddenly seeing Tony’s face in my head, cursing him to hell for having abandoned me. “I know where Renata is. I swear I’ll tell you the truth. I swear to God almighty I’ll tell you anything.”
“Of course you will,” Pearl said, bringing the cold, sharp tip of the tool to my left eyeball. “I’m certain you’ll tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”
Chapter 60
“Are you taking me home?” she asks from the backseat of the cop cruiser. “Or are you taking me to jail?”
The man in the fedora turns around in the passenger-side seat to look her in the face.
“Neither,” he says.
There is another woman in the cruiser, sitting beside her in the backseat. She is a thin woman, dressed in a short wool skirt and a black turtleneck sweater. Her hair is shoulder length and sandy. The woman smiles with her lips pressed together. “I’m Val,” she says.
“We need your help,” the man called Ryan says from the driver’s seat. He is looking at Renata through the rearview mirror.
She turns away from Val and looks at the reflection of Ryan’s eyes in the little rearview mirror.
“Lately, I’m a popular girl,” she says, clutching the manuscript up against her breasts.
“It’s not you we want,” the fedora man says.
“It’s Richard,” the driver explains, his eyes holding hers in the rearview mirror.
Chapter 61
I woke up knowing she was next to me.
I didn’t have to see or feel or call out for her.
All I needed was her sweet smell.
A perfume I forever associated with her no matter where I was or no matter who else was wearing it.
When I opened my eyes I looked directly up at a white cathedral ceiling. I panned down, grabbed an eyeful of the black bookshelves that lined the walls.
Tony’s condo.
Sitting on the edge of the couch, Val was dressed in a short wool skirt with tan leggings, little brown shoes with buckles, and a black turtleneck sweater. No jewelry. Her hair was cut just above her shoulders and parted down over her forehead, just above her brown, sometimes hazel eyes. When she reached out to place her hand on my leg, I noticed she was wearing the engagement ring I had given her more than a year ago.
I wondered if she had ever taken it off.
I filled my lungs with air, then let it out again. I was sore all over. Propping myself up on one elbow, I looked into her eyes.
She took my hand, squeezed it. “I was wrong,” she said.
Someone cleared his throat.
Tony, standing in the center of the living room. He wore gray slacks and a white button-down, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for almost forty-eight hours.”
I ran my hand down my leg, over my midsection. There was some padding under my sweatpants, and an ice pack.
“I thought you forgot about me,” I said, my voice cracking, the back of my throat parched.
Tony nodded. “The damage is nothing permanent,” he said. “Albany Med discharged you almost immediately. You’ll have no recollection.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Barnes decided to press charges,” he said. “There was nothing we could do other than buy you some time in Capital District Psychiatric. We counted our blessings. At least I did. Because the alternative was county lockup. But what Ryan and I both didn’t realize was that Barnes has a friend who runs the show there.”
“A freak show.”
“Ryan wanted to go after them immediately when he saw the condition you were in,” Tony said. “But I talked him into taking care of them later, once he had your fully executed statement in hand. The important thing now is that you’re out.”
“And alive,” Val said.
“The Bald Man works for Barnes,” I said, after a time.
“I know.”
“But Barnes is your client.”
“Was my client. He was using me to get to you.”
“What about Renata?”
“I’m here,” she said, walking out of the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hands. “Tony found the Days Inn matches in your jacket pocket. He located me at the motel the night you left.”
“And the manuscript?”
“The manuscript explains it all,” Val interjected.
In typical Tony fashion, he spared me the gory details:
Back in late 1994, the year I’d been appointed Warden of Green Haven Prison, Reel Productions had been hired by the Republican challenger to produce a slash-and-burn campaign to destroy the Democratic incumbent in the 1996 election for Governor.
“The campaign opened up some serious doors for Barnes,” Tony went on. “Especially when he was approached by the Vice-Commissioner for Corrections with a deal he could not refuse.”
“Pelton,” I said.
“Washington Irving Pelton,” Tony said, nodding.
The name still hit me like a brick. My old corrections officer buddy; the man I’d survived Attica with when the inmates took over D Yard and took us hostage. The same man who set me up a couple of years ago when a cop-killer by the name of Eduard Vasquez had escaped from Green Haven. When Vasquez turned up dead, Pelton conveniently tossed the blame onto me. I was well aware of his precise motive. He wanted me out of the picture so he could continue to run the drug racket he had been propagating at Green Haven for years.
But it wasn’t until now, in Tony’s condo, that I realized just how badly Pelton had wanted me gone. It turns out the deal he’d offered Barnes was this: If the producer lobbied heavily for the new governor to appoint him Commissioner of Corrections, Wash would see to it that Barnes was made a full one-third partner in the Green Haven drug operation.
One-third partner amounted to one hundred Gs a month.
Cash.
Guaranteed.
So naturally, Barnes agreed to secretly lobby the challenger on Pelton’s behalf, especially when he was convinced
the campaign was sure to succeed. All that was required of Pelton was to switch partisan allegiances — Democratic to Republican. Easy.
But Pelton wasn’t about to let Barnes get away with all that money, all that easily.
“What he wanted from Barnes,” Tony said, looking down at the tops of his polished Florsheims, “was to have you killed. The Bald Man was supposed to assassinate you when you left the house that warm Monday back in May of 1996 on your way to Green Haven. But the whole thing was botched from the start. The traffic that morning was too heavy. You’d already left before he got to the house. When he spotted you going through that red light at the corner of Manning and Western, he used it as an opportunity to ram you. Only instead of killing you, he did something worse. He killed Fran.”
I asked Tony what he knew about Shaw Hudson. Was he acting on Barnes’s direct orders when he tried to kill us? Or was he working for himself?
“We don’t know for certain,” Tony said. “What we do know is that Hudson really is a hired gun for Barnes and that he went along with his order. To a degree, anyway. You see, Barnes knew that if you did not break out Renata, then the Mexican government might have extradited her to the States. That was a chance he could not take.”
“But what do you think?” I asked.
“What do I think?” Tony said. “I think Barnes used you to break her out. Then he used Hudson to kill her. The resulting blame would be placed on your head.”
I was beginning to understand everything, because my motivation was crystal clear. I’d been going progressively nuts, seeing things in cemeteries. I skipped my wedding, shot up a bar. I may have even left a trail of murder. I thought again of those two young women at Hudson’s ranch.
I ran my hands through my hair.
I wasn’t sure who I wanted dead more: Barnes or the Bald Man.
Both, I told myself. I wanted them both dead. It made me feel good to admit it. If Pelton wasn’t already dead, I would have added him to the wish list too.
I got up from the couch, slow as hell. “Where’re my clothes?” I said. “I need my clothes.”
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