by Paula Cox
Palmer’s like that. And it’s not like he’s storing all the bad stuff down inside like some kind of future nutcase or serial killer. His deal is that he just forgets it. All the bad that’s happened; all the guys who’ve betrayed him or made his life hell. Like his son-of-a-bitch father or the guys he’s had to fight just to keep himself on his feet. A thousand bucks says that if he’s still around a year from now, he won’t even remember who shot him. I’m not making this up. He’ll swallow whatever crap life gives him without ever remembering swallowing it.
I’m not like that, but sometimes I really wish I could be. But that’s just sometimes. The rest of the time, I like knowing. I collect all the bad stuff because, unlike for Palmer or any of the other guys, I like getting even. You can’t get even if you don’t remember. You’ve got to remember every one of those shitty times but also assume that you’ll never have the chance to get your revenge because, usually, that’s the way it goes. Shit happens and the people who do it get away with it.
But every now and then, when the blue moon is at its fullest, and it’s just one of those days the universe decides to throw you a bone, you catch the guy who does it, and then there’s nothing sweeter. It’s like you’ve gotten permission from nature herself to take justice into your own hands. When that happens, there’s no way you can fail.
The Clubhouse is deserted when I get back. Crash called the guys and told them to meet at the hospital. It’s just me, and the Russian.
I leave him unconscious in the back of the car while I get what I need:
Duct tape.
Wooden chair.
Rope.
Pliers.
Rubber gloves.
Gasoline.
Lighter.
Rag of paper towels.
I lug the stash out to the rear of the Clubhouse, next to the covered parking lot, and back against the brick walls of some old tenement houses. The way this place has been abandoned recently, I could probably do it in the front of the Clubhouse, but there’s more room in the back. I wouldn’t care if anyone saw us anyway. They’re not going to do anything.
I keep the sawed-off on my person at all times just in case there are more tricks to this Russian than I thought. Dragging him out of the Chevy, any ideas that I should expect a fight fly out the window. The guy’s a moaning sack of potatoes.
So I sit him down in the chair and half hitch his feet to the legs and wrap his arms to the rests. He’s got a knife in his belt, which I missed so I’m glad I discover it now. From the way he sat slumped there, I was going to need something to draw his attention.
Gently, firmly, and gently again. When you’re trying to get information out of a guy, you’ve got to do it like you’re unwinding a screw. You can’t force it out, and you can’t just wiggle it out—it has to be a combination of both. So I start gently and run the blade of the knife on the sensitive skin between the thumb and forefinger. The cut barely draws blood. The Russian grunts. I do it harder, and the grunt gets louder. Results. His fingers clench and unclench. His upper body moves. His head twists up to me. The face is wide and fleshy, smeared with a swamp camouflage of his own blood and messy hair.
“Stop moving.”
Either because of the smile or because he’s lost too much blood to think straight, the guy doesn’t obey. I bring the knife down again. He sure as hell feels it this time. I stuff the wad of towels in his mouth so that I don’t have to hear his screams. That’s the only reason for it. I’m not even worried about other people finding us. I just don’t like the sound of a man’s screams.
“The other guys are tracking your partner,” I say, calmly and slowly. “Shouldn’t be long now. They’re not going to keep him alive like I did you. That means it’s just you who can tell me what I want to know.”
The Russian stares at me with super-black eyes, and says nothing.
“Do you understand me? You understand what I’m saying to you?”
I remove the rag. He makes no sound. Just keeps looking at me with those black eyes.
“You speak English, don’t you? Kirill’t know any Russian. Sorry.”
“You no find my friend,” the guy says. Finally, words. “He gone. He away. You no find.”
“So you can speak?” I get in closer so that he’s got no choice but to stare with his beady dark eyes straight into my smile. “I just thought you could scream.”
It doesn’t matter how confident this guy is feeling. I’m a big guy and when I’m angry, a big fucking scary guy.
“Tell me where your partner’s going, and you’ll live,” I say, very quietly and carefully.
The Russian doesn’t say anything.
“You’ve got three seconds.”
Not a change. He doesn’t even bat an eye. Stubborn bastard.
“Three.”
I nudge the pliers in and with one clip take off the pinky and forefinger. Blood spurts out in little fountains. The guy screams just once before clamping his mouth shut and limiting himself too hard, fast breaths coming through his nose.
“Do you think you can fuck with me? Do you really wanna try and find out what happens? Well, you’ve seen what I’m planning on doing when you waste my time. You wanna try that again? Huh?”
“You no find. You no find.” His head’s going furiously side-to-side like the possessed girl in The Exorcist.
“I told you not to move. Kirill’t you remember me saying that?”
I snap the pliers over the bottom two fingers of his left hand and wrench up and in the same motion, toss the digits away.
“You wanna start a war, you son of a bitch? You like killing our guys? Is that it? Maybe you think this is a game, huh? Some fun game to you? You gonna tell me now? You didn’t have any problems talking before.”
I recognize the state I’m in right now, and I know I’m dangerously wound-up. Scared—I know well enough I’m scared. Because I don’t know who these guys are or what they’re planning on doing or why they’ve done what they’ve already done. If they wanted to take us down, that’d be one thing. If they were set on killing us to rob us, that’d be one thing. But they’re not—I know they’re not. I’ve dealt with enough of this guy’s type to know it. There’s something else behind all this.
“Look.” When he doesn’t look, I take a fistful of his hair and twist his head for him. “You see that? What I’ve got for you? Tell me what that is.”
His lips are tight and quivering. His hair, even in the snow and the cold, is layered in sweat and grease. No words.
“That’s gasoline. You know what that’ll do to you when I pour it on you? Do you really wanna find out?”
Still no words, but his breaths coming out in those seismic heaves tell me more than his words could.
“No one here is going to save you from me.” My voice is quiet and still. It does that by itself, gets down almost to a whisper like I’m sharing secrets. “Just you and me. You still think I’m bluffing? After I’ve cut off four of your fingers do you still think I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t do exactly what he says?”
The pliers go back over his right hand, middle finger this time. He’ll regret that one big time, but I’m done playing easy on him. I’m gonna get results as fast as I know how.
Then—something sputters from his lips. A few clipped consonants. I put my ear in closer.
“Please,” the guy whispers. “Please don’t. I no tell. No can. They kill me.”
They. That’s the gold. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.
“Who’s they?” I relax the pliers softly but make sure he can still feel the bottom blade on his finger.
The Russian shakes his head.
“Theo?”
He shakes his head again. “No Theo, no. But I no can tell. Please.” His eyes start to go watery on me. Maybe if the guy had tried that with Bolt or Crash, it would have gone over better, but for me, wet eyes just make the job easier. It shows how much I have to work with. How much the guy is in my power. I bring the top blade down, sque
ezing his finger from both sides.
“Please!” he cries.
“You’ve already said that. Try something I want to hear instead.”
“But I no tell! I tell—they kill!”
The pliers bite in a little and the Russian roars.
“Look at me.” I don’t know how I can still be so fucking steady while facing off with a guy I’m planning on burning alive, but there it is. The anger makes me a different person. It’s like I don’t even have a choice.
“I said look at me… good. I don’t know anything about who hires you. I don’t know why they’ve got it out for us or what they want to do to us. I don’t know anything. That’s why I’ve got you. But if you don’t know anything, or if you don’t talk which is the same as not knowing anything, then I’ve got no trouble killing you. That just puts me back to where I was. I’ve got nothing to lose by killing you. Nothing at all.”
I stand there real still, just to give him the opportunity for all this to sink in. It must be a whole minute: I don’t move one goddam inch. The guy doesn’t break. Either he doesn’t believe me, or I haven’t been clear. Which leaves one option.
I chuck the pliers away.
“No,” the guy says. “No. No. No.”
I don’t hear any of it. Whatever he can tell me I’m already past it. Nothing’s changing my mind now, not after I’ve got the gasoline. I swish it around a bit just to give the Russian a few extra seconds to see what I’m doing. Then I dump a stream of it on his head. He sputters and shakes.
Already got the Zippo flipped open—already showing him the fire.
“You’ve got twenty more seconds,” I say. “That’s twenty seconds to tell me everything I want. If I like what I hear, that’ll be the end of it, and I won’t burn you alive. You got all that? Nod if you understand.”
“But I no talk!” the man screams. “I no, no talk! I no can!”
“Fifteen seconds.” The fire’s like a little, pale yellow tissue.
“Please! Please!” He’s thrashing so hard in his chair I’m worried he might break through the bindings.
“Ten seconds.”
Then I hear it. A weak voice carrying over the snow and the wind, saying my name. When I turn, I see Maya, who is both Maya and not Maya. She’s got Maya’s blonde hair, fashion sense, and innocent schoolgirl façade but with a look in her eyes I can’t even describe. Maybe it’s horror, and maybe it’s shock, or revulsion, or disbelief.
I don’t recognize her at first. I’m still too caught up with the Russian. But she stands there and the longer she does, the more it sinks in that I’m really seeing her. The girl I thought I’d lost. The girl I might even love.
The Zippo drops with a hiss of burnt snow.
Chapter 23
There isn’t a chance I can off a guy with Maya standing right there behind me. And for whatever reason she’s come here, she sure as hell isn’t leaving without saying something.
So I put in a call to Crash and quickly explain all the essentials about the situation with the Russians/confrontation and then mention that I’ve left the big guy tethered up back at the Clubhouse for them to decide later what to do with him.
There are some ruins of an old tenement building still attached to the warehouse. It’s not Theo’s mansion, but it’s enough to keep the guy from getting hypothermia during the twenty minutes it’ll take Crash to get himself down to the Clubhouse. I tie a cloth around his missing fingers for the blood and bind his arms and legs, but he’s not going anywhere. He’s only hanging on to consciousness by a thread.
Maya is in the exact same spot as before, still looking at me with that mix of wonder and horror.
I don’t say anything. There’s no trying to explain yourself out of torturing and almost killing a man.
Maya sees me coming back and starts walking towards the covered car I’d seen when I brought the Russian over.
“You drive,” she says, cold.
I pull off the blanket she’s used to cover the thing and take the keys without a word. She doesn’t want to hear me talk. That’s clear enough.
We spin out onto the main road, in a little globe of snow. The flakes aren’t as fast as earlier in the day. They look more like little bullets made out of ice. I drag us through for about ten minutes. We’re going so slowly we’re not even out of Easttown yet. The highway’s at least twenty minutes away. Maya doesn’t wait for us to reach it.
“You’d better find something to say. You’d better at least try.”
I choose my words like I’m doing brain surgery. “They were trying to kill our guy.”
“Did they torture him? Did they cut off his fingers first? Did they try and set him on fire?”
“No.”
“Is that all you’ve got, then?” Her words threaten to break on a sob, but she holds it in.
“Maya.” I put a hand out for her, but she slaps it away.
“Kirill’t try, Quinn. Kirill’t you even fucking try. I don’t even want to know what the hell you’ve been doing with your hands.”
I turn my attention back to the road. “You don’t understand,” I say quietly. “You don’t understand what they’ve done to us.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t want to understand. If this is what you do—if this is what you meant when you told me that stuff in the hotel, then I don’t want to understand any of it. You’re all murderers and psychopaths to me.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yeah? Do you believe what you’re saying? How could you try and tell me that after what I just saw you do? How can you even think that?”
“Because it’s not. It’s business. That’s all.”
We leave the tenement houses behind, finally. I see distance. The gray slush of the canal fed with dirty melted snow. Gloomy clouds like diapers roll over the flat surface of sky.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers. “I want to give you a chance. I want to believe anything else apart from what you’ve just shown me, and I can’t. You won’t let me. You say the sickest, the most ridiculous things, and everything in me is screaming not to let you in further. You’ll only make it worse if I let you in further. You’ll only turn yourself into more of a monster.”
“I’m not a monster. You have to believe that.”
“I don’t have to believe another word you say.”
“I haven’t ever lied to you, Maya. Not once. I couldn’t.”
“You said you killed bad people. I should have run then, but I didn’t. It wasn’t anything new to me, anyway. Daddy did the same thing. And I wanted to believe you two were different from each other. I wanted to believe you couldn’t be like him because there’s only room for one monster in my life. Kirill’t turn here,” she says when she sees me redirecting the Maserati towards the highway. I let it go, and we continue to drift down the back roads.
“Maybe you didn’t lie,” she goes on. “But you sure as hell didn’t tell the whole truth.”
“What else could I have said? This is my job. It’s ugly and brutal, but it keeps my brothers and me alive. Try protecting yourself against these people without being violent and find out what happens.”
“I can’t listen to this.”
“I kill people for money,” I go on anyway. I can’t stop. “Maybe that’s what I should have told you before. I kill people other people want dead. I do it for money, and I do it for protection. Is that enough?”
Maya’s eyes are full of tears, but her face is stone. Even though she’s tiny and even if her hair makes her look like a Barbie, she looks weirdly indestructible.
“That all?” She turns to me. “How about killing people for enjoyment? For convenience?”
“No. I’m not a murderer.”
“Kirill’t make me laugh. That’s exactly what you are. Maybe you tell yourself that because you don’t want to believe it. Maybe you really don’t think you are. I know what I saw.”
“Maya…”
“Kirill’t say my name,” she snaps, “ever aga
in. I’m done with you and all your bullshit.”
Back to the road. The clouds twist around and get darker. The snow pellets slacken off. The night’s coming.
Maya turns and looks out the window and forgets that I exist while I drive. I drive until I can’t recognize any of the buildings on my right, and keep driving. The Gulf rears up sooner than I’m expecting. It has a cruel, hard quality about it.
Maya tells me to drop her off at the Motel Six to our right, and I do. She has just enough cash on her so that she doesn’t have to use her card. I offer to help her in with her things, but she shoulders me off and slams the passenger door shut so hard I’m pretty sure I hear the glass chipping.