Deadline Man

by Jon Talton

  I shrug. Then, “She’s in a safe place.” I can barely talk because my teeth keep chattering. “And the plan is to go public if I don’t check in within twenty-four hours.”

  Bill smiles slightly. He looks like an amused lizard. “You’re a really bad liar.” But he had hesitated just a second. His eyes had flitted to Stu before he talked. He’s not sure that I’m bluffing.

  “She knows more than you think,” I continue. “We have it all down. Eleven-eleven, asshole.” His eyes flicker. “And we have it in sworn affidavits. It’s going to be published, no matter what.”

  “You’re not even going to be working for that fish wrap,” Stu says, “if you ever get free again.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say, gathering strength as I keep spinning the yarn. “There are other reporters and other news organizations involved. Do you think I’d just leave it to myself? Or to the cowards who are my bosses.” I make myself laugh. “And we know about you two: your little death squad. Pretty soon the world will know. You bastards killed Pam and you’re going to pay.”

  Bill’s jaw tightens and he stands, throwing the chair theatrically against the wall. The noise is shattering, amplified by the concrete and cinder blocks of the room. Stu stands, too. Bill strides out the door and closes it behind him. Stu hits some kind of lever out of my line of sight. The chair back collapses and I fall back. My abdominal muscles turn in painful knots. Another metal-on-metal sound, as if the chair is locked into a new position. My body is bent so my lower legs are still aimed at the floor but the rest of me is nearly horizontal. Then my feet go up and my lower body is tilted high. The chair is meant to do this. I stare up at Stu’s immobile face and the overhead lights. Then the door opens and Bill walks in more slowly.

  He’s carrying a clear plastic gallon jug.

  He tosses what looks like a black hand-towel to his partner. He puts his face close to mine, his breath smelling of peppermint.

  “Did you ever do this as a military intelligence officer?”

  “I was an Army journalist.” My voice in unsteady with the upwelling terror inside me.

  “Sure.”

  Bill speaks out of my line of sight. “You were a trained interrogator. What would you do?”

  The blood in my veins feels like it’s turning to ice. “I know torture doesn’t work. Very inefficient…”

  “Army pussy,” Stu says. “I’ve read your jacket. You were also trained for black ops. You were a trained killer.” His heavy-jawed face is two inches from mine, like a drill sergeant’s.

  “Take off these handcuffs and find out.”

  He stares at me. “I’d love to. But I don’t have time. You don’t get it. There’s no time.”

  “Don’t do this.” My teeth start chattering again. “You’re breaking the law. You took an oath…”

  He studies me, amused. Then, “You are going to tell us.” He mutters it to himself.

  Suddenly, I feel a hand on my forehead pushing my head farther back. The force rams my skull so hard I hear the chair shake and shafts of pain shoot down into my shoulder blades and little lightning bursts come into the edges of my eyes. I try to resist but my head stays at the unnatural angle. My arms and legs struggle vainly against the shackles. I start to panic even before Stu drops the towel onto my nose and roughly pinches my nostrils. The fabric is scratchy. My eyes are covered next. As if I want to see.

  “I think he’ll talk.”

  “I bet he will.”

  I feel the towel fall across my mouth and chin. Then it’s pulled tight.

  “Think he went through SERE?” It’s Bill’s voice.

  It’s the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. I’m doing a damned poor job at it right now.

  “We’re gonna find out.” Stu chuckles. Then his breath at my ear: “There’s no code word, asshole. This is the real deal. Maybe you’ll live through the first few minutes and then,” his voice rises painfully, “we’re going to ask you again, where the fuck is Megan!”

  It’s already hard to breathe. The towel sucks into my mouth as I draw air. I fight the instinct to hyperventilate…I am okay, I have all the oxygen I need right here…try to put my mind somewhere else. Some place that is not looking forward to the first few minutes or even this moment. I start to run through the women in my life. This, I tell myself, will stop the tachycardia that’s so pronounced as to be felt in my eardrums.

  Leslie. Linda. Sharon. Susan. Mary Beth No. 2 was a great kisser.

  The towel punches against my lips and I feel its wetness. Then I inhale, but there’s hardly any air. I keep counting. Deb: for us, it was always full on—rock-my-world sex and soul baring—I was a fool to let her go. Kathy, Wendy…Patty who loved for me to brush her hair…Tess who looked so sexy when she would put on one of my dress shirts…Rachel with the luminous hair and eyes. Amber…”

  Then a deluge….feels like one… And another. The towel leaks water into my mouth but no air. My throat closes off and I gag. I struggle to move my head but it’s locked in place. Suffocation quickly begins to overtake me. The last coherent thought I have is a wish that I had taken a deeper breath.

  What’s left are primal feeling and sounds: The slopping of water off my face and onto my frozen chest. My wrists cracking repeatedly against the restraints and the sound of metal being jerked hard and fruitlessly. Gagging…head won’t turn…gagging…air, God give me air…but there’s none. Lungs burn. My nose is cemented shut. A high keening coming from somewhere deep inside my head. Lungs… More water past my tongue…My entire throat is seized up…stomach acid meeting water…can’t breathe, can’t…

  “Stop. Stop now.”

  The water stops and the towel is relaxed. I make a great, greedy inhalation and immediately start coughing and gagging again.

  After a couple of minutes the towel comes completely off my face and the chair is readjusted so I am sitting up again. I look upon the suicide blonde. She closes the door behind her and walks into the room. I cough violently and struggle to keep from vomiting. But I can breathe again.

  “You two, back off.”

  Bill retrieves his tossed chair and sits, arms folded. Stu leans against the far wall.

  Up close, she’s beautiful. Hair the color of harvest wheat is parted on one side and falls to her ears, thick in front and very cropped in back. It is the same color as her eyebrows. She has large pale eyes, high cheekbones, very red lips against a peaches-and-cream complexion. She wears a navy suit with a knee-high skirt and slingback, open-toed medium-high heels. Even freezing, I appreciate her well-carved ankles.

  When she sits across from me, the skirt rides up on her thighs.

  “We don’t have to do this,” she says, looking at me sympathetically. “The columnist doesn’t want to put the country in danger any more than any of us would.” She looks at Bill. “Turn up the heat in here and get him the blanket.” To me, “It’s going to be all right. I’m sorry things happened this way.”

  So she is the good cop in a room full of bad ones. I’ll take it. Momentarily, Bill returns with a blanket and she directs him to drape it around me. My heart rate slows down and I gradually stop coughing and trembling. The temperature in the room grows noticeably warmer. She uses the edges of the blanket to dry my chest and legs, then wraps it tight against my shoulders. Her hands push back my wet hair and gently dry my face. Her finger gingerly touches my left cheekbone and I wince. “Sorry,” she says.

  As she has settled in the chair, it’s impossible to avoid seeing that she’s not wearing underwear. She smiles and puts a warm hand on my thigh. “Nice to be appreciated,” she whispers. And my recently tortured body rebounds quickly, appreciating. “Very nice…”

  “You’re enjoying this way too much, Laura.” Bill leans against the wall and shakes his head.

  “You can leave,” she says.

  “We’ll stay,” Stu says.

  “Suit yourselves. Now focus on me.” She caresse
s my face, aims my eyes at her. “I’m going to explain what’s happening and why it’s essential for you to help, and then we can get you out of here and back to a normal life.”

  It sounds so wonderful that I want to believe her, this pantiless angel sitting before me. She inches her chair closer. Our knees touch.

  “Megan is so beautiful,” she says, putting a hand on each of my thighs. “I was never pretty in high school.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “I’m gonna barf,” Stu says.

  “It’s true. I was a nerd. A late bloomer. Like you.”

  I say nothing more. She gently strokes the tops of my thighs. “Warmer now? You must have felt like a nerd, at the U-Dub, one of a handful of all those thousands of students, who was in ROTC. Definitely not cool back then. But it was the only way you could get through college. And the Army loved your scores, off the charts….”

  “You’ve got me mistaken for somebody else…” My throat is still feeling shut down, but the rest of me starts to react to the warmth of the blanket and her touch on my legs. And I do react.

  “Army Intelligence.” She says it like a lover. “I always admired the smart ones.”

  “Fucking oxymoron, we used to say in the Corps.” This from Bill, who seems an unlikely former Marine.

  “Ignore them. They never liked officers, much less journalists. You’re with me.” Laura rubs my chest and my muscles ache and try to relax.

  My mind doesn’t. “You killed Troy Hardesty. You’re the one who pushed past me that day outside his office.” Her eyes lose their seduction fix for just a moment. She is surprised that I saw her there. “Why kill Troy?”

  The corners of her mouth turn up slightly. “I just do a job. I know you did things in the Army you can’t talk about.”

  “I was an Army journalist…”

  “I know.” She smiles at me, tracing a line with her fingernail down to my navel. “Afghanistan, 1982. You still have your old Combat Magnum. The guys in your unit preferred them to the nines. Isn’t it funny that with your background, you might have married Rachel Summers? Considering her father’s history? All in the family, right?”

  “Rachel doesn’t know anything.”

  “I know.” She starts stroking my penis with her left hand. Not that it needed encouragement. “Oh, you like that. I like it, too.”

  She says my name as if we’d been together for years. “All you need to do is help us. Take us to Megan.” The stroking keeps up and I am breathing heavily. My brain has been through a sieve and I try to concentrate. Why does she want to know about Megan? Why not about what Troy told me?

  Then I look down again in time to see the object in her right hand. It is bright silver and looks about six inches long. Maybe it’s a hat pin or maybe it’s some kind of cocktail swizzle. My pelvis instinctively jerks back but there’s no give in the chair. Through all her gentle ministrations the shackles have never been loosened.

  “I know you want to talk to me.” Up to now, her touch has kept me erect, even with my eyes locked on the pin in her right hand. It glistens in the reflected light. “No, no, baby…” She pulls her left thumb and forefinger tightly around the base of my penis. “Don’t go soft now. I want you full of blood for me.” She keeps me almost painfully hard.

  She runs the head of the pin along the top of my left thigh. I see it penetrate the skin as I feel a sharp burning. My leg jerks upward.

  “Funny little nerve network there,” Laura says. She raises the pin to her mouth and silently sucks the blood off. “Pain and pleasure, right?”

  Her left hand has me securely. She lowers the pin and rubs the long edge against the shaft. It’s cool compared with the warmth of her hand.

  “I love cocks. So hard and yet so soft and vulnerable. So sensitive.” She readjusts her right hand, like someone about to eat with one chopstick. At first, the sharp edge of the pin just adds to the sensation. Then, pain. I see her run the tip of the pin against my penis, hard enough to leave a little red trail of worried capillaries. It’s deep enough to make me cry aloud.

  “This is so unnecessary. But I tried.” Laura turns to Bill. “Get some towels because he’s going to bleed like hell. I don’t want any of it on my shoes.” All the gentleness is gone from her voice but her left hand keeps its hold around my penis. Bill walks to the door and opens it. He stops as if he’s hit something and backs into the room. The movement only catches my attention for a moment. I return to staring at the silver lance at my groin, when I hear:

  “Get your hands off that, bitch. It belongs to me.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Bill keeps backing up, revealing a tall redhead crouched in a combat shooting stance and holding a black semiautomatic.

  Amber.

  “Oh.” She holds out an open black wallet, containing a gold badge and two windows for credentials. “FBI.”

  She quickly repockets it and returns to a two-handed grip on the gun. The door is in the propped-open position. She leaves it that way and moves into the room. “Back up. Against the wall.”

  She sweeps the room with the barrel, her movements economical, almost a dance step, alighting her aim on Stu. “If you reach inside your jacket, big boy, I’ll kill you. I don’t care if you’re trying to get a cough drop.” He relaxes his arm. “Everybody. Arms straight out. Make a ‘T.’ Do it now.”

  They reluctantly comply. Amber wears a businesslike black pants suit. She sounds different, too.

  “Stand up slowly, bitch. And drop your little toy. I can see it.” The pin hits the floor and rolls toward the drain. “Arms out! Very slowly. Back up to the sound of my voice.” Amber does a quick search, then pushes Laura forward. “Now, go get their weapons. Take them by the barrel and do it very slowly. Hold each one out by the barrel, your arms straight out, so I can see it. If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

  Laura walks over to the men and does as instructed. Amber tells her to put them on the table and she does. Next she orders Stu and Bill to lie face down on the floor.

  “Unshackle him.”

  Laura gets a set of keys from the table and unlocks my legs, then my arms. Amber orders her to the floor with the men, face down and arms straight out. The room’s smells, sweat, something else, are distinct now. I can’t tell if they’re coming from them or me. Amber walks to the table and unloads the guns, dropping out the magazines, ejecting rounds from the chambers, and locking them open. She tosses the guns through the open door. All this takes less than ten seconds and she has her gun back in both hands, an authoritative presence.

  “Keep those arms out!” She backs up to the lockers and opens one, then the other. She brings my wallet, keys, my cell phone, and clothes. Or what’s left of my clothes. My suit jacket is gone. I liked that suit. I dress as quickly as I can. Every muscle feels foreign. Every one aches.

  “You’re making a big mistake, G-girl,” Laura mutters.

  Amber ignores her and takes my arm. “Can you stand?”

  I nod and start up, only to nearly pitch over. I grab the top of the other chair and steady myself. “Just give me a minute.” My legs are asleep. They burn as the blood flows normally again.

  “Ready?”

  We step into the hallway and she closes the door, locking it from the outside. She moves with supreme confidence and no wasted motions. This is the cub reporter who totally took me in.

  “Where’s your backup?” I ask.

  “No backup.”

  “What…?”

  “No time to explain.”

  The semi-auto disappears behind her back and she has both hands free. For a few steps, she steadies me before I can do it on my own. My walk is uncertain but her voice is quiet and insistent. “Go. Go.”

  We walk down the same hallway that I had seen on my first visit here. It’s the anonymous building in SoDo. Two bundles lie against the wall. As I get closer, I see they are uniformed officers, face down, and handcuffed. Amber grabs my hand an
d hurries us through a heavy door and gate to the outside. It’s daylight. The air tastes like Eden.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sunday, October 31st

  We drive in silence through the city. It’s been raining and the sun is starting to come out, bathing the mass of towers in a magical glow, alternately golden and purple. The air smells of rain and seawater. It must be Sunday because the streets are empty around the office district, while people congregate at Westlake Park with Macy’s and Nordstrom bags. It is a normal, wonderful, alive world. Amber drives the speed limit.

  I ask her to turn on the heat. Wearing only my scuffed white dress shirt and suit trousers, I feel the chill through the windows.

  As the car climbs Queen Anne Hill I study her face. It’s set in an unreadable mask. My legs ache and my face throbs and I’m giddy to be saved and I’m pissed off. I want to erupt with questions. But I don’t. She makes several turns, coming too close to Pam’s house, and then we’re in the parking lot of the old high school. It’s been turned into condos, and they have spectacular views of the Space Needle, Elliott Bay and downtown. My car is sitting in a space.

  “I had your friend, George, drive it up here. The keys should be under the visor. What did they ask you back there?”

  I tell her: It was all about Megan. “I had bluffed and bullied one of the most powerful CEOs in the Northwest into granting an interview—so I assumed Olympic had called down these dogs on me. But they didn’t ask anything about Olympic.”

  Amber changes the subject. “I packed a bag for you. It’s in the back. I found your working notebook—you should have hidden it better. Still, took me time. I almost lost my favorite part of your anatomy.” She strokes me. I push her hand away. “You’ve got your wallet, but don’t even think of using a debit or credit card…”

  “Wait, wait, wait!”

  She undoes her seatbelt and turns to face me. “What?”

  “I have to…”

  “You have to disappear,” she says. Her face softens. “Oh.” She lightly touches my cheek. “I wish I had ice.” She pulls a packet of Wet Wipes from her console and gently strokes my forehead and cheeks. I remember falling on that face now, as well as getting a rough slap, and I involuntarily recoil from the touch. “Just another minute,” she says. “There, better.”