by Sandy Nathan
“Call 911, we need the police,” the director barked at the security man. “And get that door open.”
The door opened before they could unlock it. Madame Mercier stood in the opening, face expressionless.
“Something terrible has happened,” she said. “I killed her.”
11
George Hempstead no longer had his gray hat. Whether he’d lost it when they apprehended him at the track, or later, he didn’t know. Or care.
He had placed his last bet—his very last, since he had no more money and no one would give him credit. He’d been standing in the general admission seats, watching the race and hoping for a miracle. Two men, each twice his size, had come up and stood on either side of him.
“Come with us,” the smaller of the two had said.
When he’d said, “Wait! Wait! Let me see how the race finishes,” they’d taken him under the arms and he’d found himself moving across the tarmac. “Wait!” He never did get to see if he won or lost. Winning would have meant so much. They didn’t care.
At first, he thought the guys hauling him off were from bookies or loan sharks. It took him a while to realize that wasn’t so.
If he’d been smart, he would have paid everyone off the day before when he had the money. He should have taken the rest home to his wife, gone out to dinner, and then sworn off the ponies forever.
But he wasn’t smart. He thought he’d pay everything off from his winnings of today. He’d been going to the races for years—he had his own system. He thought he’d use what the girl gave him, combine it with his method, and be unbeatable. He hated the fact that the track management had him down as a two-bit loser. He was a winner! He’d shown them that. So he came back to show them again. He’d double his money! He’d win and win. He bet high and hard.
When he started losing, he bet twice as much to win it back. When his bankroll was approaching nothing, he bet more. He kept going until he had made that last bet and the guys in black picked him up. When they got out of the stands, he expected them to turn left and propel him into the innards of the stadium, the way they had yesterday. That didn’t happen.
When they got outside the arena, a black car with blacked-out windows had hovered at the curb. A couple of more men in black suits leaned against it. The car was one of those that were banned ages ago because it took so much power to lift off the ground. Only the government still had them.
He was in the car and moving away from the track. “I didn’t—” was all he got out before he felt a prick in his thigh and the car began to spin.
When he woke up, he was in a room. He’d never seen such a room. All cement. Walls, ceiling, floor. He was strapped in a chair with no way to get out. He knew exactly who had him: the feds. Only an interrogation room would look like this. A strong metal table sat before him. He noticed that there was a gutter around the room. Before each wall, the cement dropped four or five inches into a trough. He could see drains in the gutter, and a larger one in the middle of the room.
He decided he would tell them whatever they wanted, or give them the house, or anything he had, and then beg to go home. He’d throw himself on their mercy.
A man came in. He had short brown hair and was wearing black slacks and a white shirt. He seemed more normal than the two big men, like you could talk to him. George opened his mouth, and the man said, “Shh! Don’t say anything.” He looked up and George realized the room was bugged.
“Look, I’m your only chance,” the stranger said. “People are going to come in and hurt you worse than you can imagine. So tell me, now.”
“OK,” George had said. “What do you want to know?” He thought they wanted him to show how he’d pay back his debts.
“How did you win three-and-a-half-million dollars yesterday?”
He sat up. They wanted the girl. Everything in him said, “Protect her. Protect her with everything you’ve got.”
“Just luck,” he told the man. “I’ve gone to the track for years. I was bound to get lucky someday.” Something ran through the chair and he jerked backward. His first scream was cut short when he bit his tongue. He continued to convulse for a while. The man he’d been talking to was sitting on the edge of the table when George came out of it.
“I forgot to tell you that I’d hurt you, too,” he drawled. “Probably more than the others. That was electric shock. You’re wired up. Now, I want to know how you won the money yesterday. That’s all I want to know, because I already know everything else about you.” He put his hands on the table and leaned over him, spitting out each word.
“Your name is George Hempstead. Your wife’s name is Myra. You live at 12000-A NW 1st, Brooklyn. You work at America First Bank; your wife manages the Main/Norfolk CrumblyGood branch. Your mortgage is with Central States.” He slammed his hand down on the table and leapt closer to George.
“Do you understand? I know everything about you. Down to the four-fuck affair you had with Eileen Streit last year. You have a forty-grand-a-year habit at the track, and you’re about to be fired and lose your house. Three bookies would love to do what I’m going to do to you.” He leaned even closer.
“I want to know one thing: how a two-bit loser like you won every race he bet on yesterday—win, place, or show—and could quote exact odds to every other loser around him?
“How, George? I want to know,” he screamed in George’s face.
George peed in his pants. It trickled down his legs, beyond the edge of the table, and toward the drain.
“Oh, George, it’s too early for that.” The man slammed George’s face against the table, then whispered in his ear, “When I’m done with you, your bloody shit is gonna be in that drain.”
George was shaking when he sat up. His nose hurt like it was broken. “I don’t know how I did it. I just did.” He screamed as they shocked him again. And again.
“Hey, I’m sorry, Val. I thought he’d be easy. I don’t usually fail.”
George heard another person in the room. Only one of his eyes would open, but it was enough to see that the newcomer was a woman, slim and well built, with fair skin and black hair. She wore a short black suit and red lipstick. She smiled at the man who had been torturing him.
“I know you don’t, Will. But that’s why they have me.”
George didn’t know how long he’d been there. His front teeth were missing. The ends of his fingers screamed where their nails had been torn out. But he hadn’t talked.
He hadn’t told them about the little girl, even when they showed him films of Myra being dragged out of CrumblyGood. Even when they showed her in a room like his, convulsing and screaming—he didn’t talk.
“Well, George”—the woman’s voice was rich and syrupy and her breath smelled sweet when she bent down to whisper in his ear—“you and I are going to be very good friends. You are going to love me more than anyone on earth. More than Myra, or even Elaine. Do you understand? And this is going to help me.” She inserted a needle into the IV they’d put in his arm while he was out. “This will be nothing like what you felt before. Now, you must trust me, George, and tell me everything you see.”
He was walking through a beautiful forest. Everything was green and gold. The wind made the trees sway. The girl was with him, wearing her ballet slippers. They walked along, holding hands. Her touch was wonderful. It gave him hope; it took away the pain of his savaged face and hands. He knew that while he was with her, things could end up all right.
“What are you seeing?” The woman’s voice.
“I’m in a forest. It’s beautiful.” He smiled stupidly. “I love it.”
“That’s so nice, George. Who else is there?”
“No one. I’m by myself.”
“Oh, George. I hoped you would trust me. You see, I have a very valuable instinct. They pay me a great deal to use it.” She grabbed the hair on the back of his head. “I know when people are lying to me. I can tell, George, whether they’re screaming or flying high. Now—are you having fu
n now?”
He was. The girl was dancing around him, smiling. Butterflies darted with her. It was so wonderful. “Yes, I’m having fun.”
“Well, try this...”
He felt a burning in his IV, and everything changed. The forest was terrifying. The butterflies became bloodsucking monsters. Everything was terrible, and after him. Except the girl. She looked at him sadly, and petted his head. He loved her. He’d die for her.
The girl stayed with him the whole time. She consoled him and held him up. Her people, beautiful golden people, were behind her. He might have drifted softly into death if the woman in the black suit had not roused him.
“George, you’ll walk away from this just fine, but I don’t think Myra will. She’s not doing well. Look.”
A screen on the wall showed Myra screaming and shaking, babbling to something that existed only in her head. She clawed at herself, or tried to, as her torturers pumped her full of drugs. The screen showed her flopped on the table, blood-flecked vomit flowing from her mouth across the metal expanse.
“I don’t think she’s going to last much longer, do you? Why don’t you free her? Tell us what we want to know.”
George’s ruined body shook. Sobs forced their way past broken ribs. He couldn’t let them kill Myra.
“There was a little girl.” He told them everything, about her strange coat and shoes, her silver eyes, and how she acted like she didn’t know where she was. He told them about the piece of paper in her pocket that told her where to go, and the book that had all the right horses to bet on. “It shined,” his captors barely made out. “Like her.” He told them about taking her to the Hermitage Academy.
“Is she still there?”
“Yeah. She said it was her school.”
“Thank you, George, that was very nice.”
He laid his head on the table, grateful that he’d saved Myra. “I’m so sorry,” he thought to the little girl and her people, “but I couldn’t let them kill her.” He felt they understood.
Val slipped a needle into his IV port, injecting a lethal dose into his bloodstream. He twitched a few times.
“Get rid of him, and the woman,” she barked at the technicians.
“God, you’re good,” Will said in admiration.
“Good enough for government work,” she smiled. “Do you want to get a drink?”
“Sure, but what about the little girl?”
“I meant after we get the little girl. Let’s give the taxpayers their money’s worth and pick her up at the Hermitage. Then we can have that drink.”
12
Val and Will moved easily through the early afternoon traffic, the light on top of their car causing the ragtag assortment of vehicles on the streets to move out of the way. Their convoy of black vehicles arrived at about the same time as the city’s black-and-whites.
Val jumped out and flashed her badge. “What are you here for?” she asked the sergeant.
“Possible homicide. Assault, multiple counts. My lieutenant is on the way.”
“Who’s the perp?”
“Supposed to be one of the teachers. A ballet teacher.” Some of the cops snickered, but Val and the sergeant did not.
“Who’s dead and how?”
“One of the students, a new girl from Russia. Allegedly beaten to death with a riding crop.”
Val’s eyebrows went up. That would take some doing; she’d beaten people to death with a piece of rebar or a tire iron. Once, a baseball bat. But a riding crop would take ingenuity. She considered. If the girl was from Russia, they had a problem.
“Does the embassy know she’s here?”
“Don’t know, Lieutenant.”
“Will,” she said, “get the embassy on the line. Find out if they sent a new student here. Don’t reveal anything.”
“You think there’ll be shooting?” the police sergeant asked.
“I don’t know. I know your case. Mine is different.”
“What’s yours, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Treason and terrorism.” Val’s jaw clenched and unclenched.
When Henry saw flak jackets and automatic weapons being deployed just outside the school gates, his hackles went up. He punched a button on his control and whispered a few words. The woman in the black suit was on him like white on bird poo.
“Who did you call?”
“I called them inside to tell them the police was here, ma’am, if it’s all right. They been waitin’.” His manner was so deferential that the radicals of the day would have been offended.
“That’s all right. Who are you?”
“I’m Henry, ma’am.”
“Henry who?”
“Henry Henderson, ma’am. I’m the gatekeeper. I been in this box for as long as the school has been here.”
The woman rolled her eyes, acknowledging that she thought him as stupid as he hoped she would. “Good, Henry.” She turned to one of her people. “Let’s get inside.”
Val led a column of metropolitan police and federal agents across the parking lot toward the school’s main entrance, weapons ready. She hated the place just looking at it. Rich kids’ sandbox. She wanted to shoot a grenade through it.
The door opened.
A pudgy, bigheaded kid who looked scared to death said, “Are you the police?”
“Federal agent. Put your hands on your head.” She flashed her badge and gun at the same time. The kid hit the floor.
“Where did the crime occur?” She spoke to the boy, but someone came out of an office marked Director.
“They’re down by the practice room doors, in the hallway. I thought I should wait until you got here before opening the studio where the... corpse is. I went into the room and checked. The girl is dead.”
“Show me.” Val took off, walking twice as fast as the director. She barked into her mike, “Secure the building. Have the police establish a five-block perimeter around the school.”
The director led them down to the practice studio. A bunch of tear-streaked girls in ballet outfits huddled in the corridor. A smallish, middle-aged woman with black hair and the straightest posture Val had ever seen stood to the side, surrounded by the school’s paunchy security guards.
Val walked up and took control. “OK, what happened here?” The ballerinas sobbed, “She killed her.” They pointed to Ms. Backbone. “Madame Mercier killed her.”
The teacher stood with her hands loosely at her sides. She seemed utterly composed. Val looked at the suspect carefully. The cops and officers crowded behind her.
“Shouldn’t we go in?” said the sergeant.
“You go in when I say you go in,” Val snapped. “I want to find out what happened.”
She addressed the teacher. “Who did you kill?”
“The new girl, the Russian.” The dark-haired woman spoke with absolute calmness, enunciating each word carefully. “I was correcting her lack of discipline. She died.”
“You’re sure that she’s dead?”
“She doesn’t have a pulse or a heartbeat. She turned white. She’s dead.”
“What did she do that you beat her to death?”
“She came into my class, a stranger here by my kindness. She took over the class with flagrant disobedience. All of them joined her mutiny.” She waved at the girls, who shuddered and moaned.
“Shut up!” Val barked at them. “Did you disobey your teacher?”
Nods from the circle of girls.
“And what did your teacher do?”
“She beat the new girl with a... riding crop.”
“She does it to all of us... she hits us all the time.”
“She said we had to obey her and we couldn’t tell anyone what she did.”
Where Val was from, everyone got fucked over. Being beaten was nothing.
But, in the outside world, it was a crime.
“OK. The police will deal with that.” She spun to the teacher, who looked at her without flinching. “I’m a federal agent. We are here for
a different complaint. Is there any other way out of that room besides those doors? A back exit?”
“No. There is a door that leads to a corridor with offices and storage rooms. The corridor is a dead end. There’s no other way out of the building.”
The director of the school finally found her voice. “That’s right. There’s no way out except those doors, and the windows in the studio.”
“The windows?”
“The windows in the practice room look over the driveway, which goes up to the street,” the ballet teacher replied. “Your men are already covering that, I am sure. The windows are too high and they are locked.” Her demeanor gave Val the respect due her, but she did not fawn. “None of the offices or storage rooms along the hallway has windows.”
Val nodded. Something about this woman intrigued her. She decided to play one of her famous hunches and told one of the officers, “Take the girls upstairs and have them give statements to the police. I’m going to debrief—” She indicated the teacher with a jerk of her head.
“Madame Madeleine Mercier.”
“Bring us a table and chairs,” Val ordered, “and give us some privacy. Will, I want a recorder. And then I want you to go. I’ll find out what’s going on.” Will nodded and went upstairs.
Once they were set up, Val asked the other woman, “Where are you from? You’re not French.”
Madame Mercier smiled. “No. The people at the national ballet gave me the name Madeleine Mercier. My long legs got me out of the orphanage and into the ballet academy’s dormitory. And you?” She looked into Val’s eyes.
Val looked down. “Something like your story.” She had moved from the orphanage to a “family” of girls adopted by a rich man. He educated them enough, and taught them discipline and how to inflict pain. But what was she doing, allowing a prisoner to question her? Anger surged through Val. “Do you know what I am?”
“You’re a federal agent with the Anti-Terrorism Unit of the FBI.”