Spitting Image

by Patrick LeClerc

  “No smart comeback? No? Well, then let us begin.”

  I waited, trying to stay calm, breathe deep and slow, knowing something bad was coming. I’ve heard that the worst thing about being blindfolded was the uncertainty, but I disagreed. I was quite certain something bad was coming, but that didn’t make it any better.

  “How did you know that it wasn’t your girlfriend you were with that night?”

  “I thought it was strange when she didn’t want to play ‘the Panzer Commander and the French Milkmaid’—”

  Somebody lifted the legs of the chair and my head went backward, plunging into a tub full of cold water. I gasped, which is a bad move under water. I felt it pouring into my airway and I panicked. I tried to cough, to bend my body and get my head out of the water, to retch and cough and expel the water and pull in air.

  I’d been talking when they dunked me, so I didn’t have all that much air in my lungs and I saw red closing in on the edges of my vision and water was filling my lungs and then I was out again, spluttering and coughing and pulling wheezing breaths in.

  “Now,” said a calm voice in the darkness. “We will try again. How did you know it wasn’t your girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t,” I panted when I could speak. “Not then. I knew something was different.”

  “Different how?”

  Well, that was both pretty personal, and hard to put into words, but I really didn’t want them to hold my head under while I thought about it.

  “It’s complicated–” I began and they plunged me back under. I felt the chair start to move so I held my breath this time as the icy water closed over me and the bag clung to my face. Soon the lights began to flash behind my eyes and my lungs began to burn. I figure they pulled me out a good six seconds before I went insane.

  Being out wasn’t all I’d hoped. Gasping for air pulled the cloth tight against my nose and mouth, and wrung water from it into my throat. I coughed and retched and felt bile come up, burning my trachea even as I struggled to get that elusive, life giving air.

  I thrashed, straining against my bonds, but that just made everything worse. Jesus H. Fucking Christ! I thought, which is as close to praying as I’d come in a long time. In fact, I think it was Mars or Odin the last time I’d called out for divine help.

  Somewhere in the back of my brain, a cold, cynical voice cut across my panic, told me to calm down, flailing was just demanding more of the precious oxygen that I didn’t have. I fought down the fear, the struggle, the wash of adrenaline that thought it was helping while making things so much worse. I turned my head to the side, blew out, and took small breaths, which helped make a little pocket between the maddening hood and my mouth, and let the water and bile and whatever other hellish stuff I’d brought up run out the corner of my mouth. Every breath was like dragging a saw across my throat, my lungs felt raw, but at least I was breathing. It was hard to breathe through the bag, but not impossible.

  “How did you know it wasn’t her?”

  “I knew something was wrong,” I panted, quick as I could, before he ran out of patience and dunked me again. “It felt wrong. Just not like usual. I figured she was upset at me.”

  They plunged me in again. Oh holy fuck, why? I thought. I held my breath and my sanity with a weakening grip. This time, I kept down my panic until I thought I couldn’t, but I dug deep and found a stronger emotion than fear.

  Anger.

  I would survive this, because they wanted me to, and then at some point I would be free and then I would take the kind of revenge that would make Ghengis Khan blanch. I held onto the rage until I passed through it, into a calm sea of disoriented oblivion, floating above the whole tawdry scene.

  I came to on the floor, still tied to the chair, but on my side, the hood removed, my cheek pressed against cold tiles. I could hear a hideous wheezing, crackling whistle. It took a moment to realize it was my own breathing.

  That horrible calm voice spoke again. “That is why you suspected. I need you to tell me how you knew.”

  I lay still and panted for a moment. How did I know? Caruthers. Was that it? Were they looking for a rat? Trying to ferret out an informer? If that was it, what did I owe him? I didn’t like the idea of throwing anybody to the wolves, but if they kept this up, I’d get to the point where I’d roll on the Virgin Mary.

  “Alright,” said the voice. “We’ll try again.”

  My chair was manhandled off the floor and the man who wasn’t Brad approached me with the hood. I recoiled at the thought of the cold, wet thing over my head, blocking out the light, restricting the air. I felt the horror surge up again.

  “A man!” I shouted. “A man tipped me off.”

  “That’s better. Who?”

  My thoughts raced. I didn’t want to give anybody up, and maybe I didn’t have to. The informer could have been anyone, and he wouldn’t have given his real name.

  “He said his name was Nolan,” I said. “Jim Nolan.”

  It’s dangerous to lie to interrogators. They usually ask some questions they know the answer to, and some they don’t. If they catch you in a lie, they hurt you, and they don’t trust your next answer. So they hurt you even when you tell the truth, until you repeat it often enough. If you are going to lie, you need to keep it close to the truth as you can, and most important, tell a lie you can remember, because they will probably ask you again when you’re tired and scared and beaten, so don’t make up anything too complicated.

  Gypo Nolan was a character in The Informer, an old black and white John Ford film about the Irish war of independence. It was easy to remember that, but “Gypo” was odd enough that they wouldn’t believe it, so I changed it just enough. Nolan was the informer who sold his friend out to the Black and Tans, the British Special Police, and easily as big a bunch of bastards as Brad and company. The fate of poor Nolan was what you’d expect, which was a subconscious reminder to stick to my lie. If they asked what he looked like, I’d just describe the actor, Victor McLaglen. I’d seen Caruthers change his appearance, there’s no reason he couldn’t have shown up looking like Victor McLaglen.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That it was his real name? No. But that’s what he told me.”

  “He told you you’d been with an impostor? And you believed him?”

  “Yes. Yes! Jesus, don’t dunk me! Look, it’s crazy, I know. I didn’t believe it at first. But, look. I mean, I have mysterious powers myself. I’ve seen other people with them. It made sense.”

  They plunged me in again.

  I don’t know how long it went on. They kept asking me the same questions, and I stuck to my story.

  I’m not a particularly brave man. Not above lying or cheating or running away. But I stuck to my story. The informant’s name was Nolan. He looked like McLaglen. When I was skeptical of the story of shape changers, he changed to look like Benedict Arnold. They probably hadn’t met Arnold, but I had, and it was easy to describe Arnold when thinking of a turncoat, so I wasn’t likely to forget or change details. I insisted that Nolan had told me where they were holding Sarah, because I wanted to keep Bob out of this and off the radar.

  I used nice, simple, memorable lies and clung to them like grim death. Any time I thought of telling the truth to stop the pain, I told myself that changing my story would just make things worse. I thought about giving up and dying a few times, but if I had, then I wouldn’t be able to see Brad’s expression change when I finally got out of this, tracked him down and shot him in both kneecaps.

  That helped.

  Chapter 21

  EVENTUALLY THEY GOT BORED with hearing the same answer, or their arms got tired from lifting the chair by the legs and dunking me, or maybe they got sick of reviving me. I found myself back in the first room, still tied to the chair, wet, shivering and lightheaded, dragging shaky breaths into my poor ravaged lungs and letting the pieces of memory fall together.

  I know I lost consciousness at least once and they had to bring me around with an oxy
gen mask. My chest hurt, but that may have been from straining against the belt, or it may have been pain in my starved lungs. I doubt they actually had to do CPR on me, but it’s possible.

  The thought of payback kept me going, gave me a reason to keep hoping for freedom, but I knew it wasn’t much of a hope. I told myself that next time I was untied, I would fight my way out, but I felt too weak to fight the average nursing home patient, let alone a pair of thugs.

  Nothing wrong with a reassuring little fiction to keep you going, though. One of humanity’s oldest coping mechanisms. It’s hard for a man who’s been around as long and seen as much as I to pray in the trenches, so I just had to get more creative with my lies.

  I scanned the room again looking for anything that might help me escape. There still weren’t any carelessly overlooked submachine guns or large false mustaches or forgotten secret doors. Even if there were, I wasn’t getting out of my bonds without help or a box cutter. Brad hadn’t accidentally slipped one of those into my pocket either.

  I figured my best bet was to go limp, act defeated and hope they let down their guard next time they came to feed me. Then I’d have to rely on the element of surprise and a plastic straw to fight my out with.

  That and Thor’s grace to strengthen my arm.

  There. Cynicism back where it belonged. I was feeling better.

  I heard a gunshot. Then a slamming door, running, shouting, and more shots.

  After the first barrage faded away, I heard footsteps pound past the door, then another burst of

  gunfire. Then it got very, very quiet.

  Eventually, I heard a key in the lock. I readied myself, took a deep breath and waited.

  The door swung open and Bob came in, preceded by the barrel of a shotgun. He scanned the room– which took a good half second– before he spoke.

  “You alright?”

  “Great,” I replied. “Had ‘em right where I wanted ‘em.”

  He came into the room and walked over to my chair. John took up a position guarding the door. Bob set the shotgun down and pulled out a knife, sliding it under the zip ties around my wrists.

  “Looks like we got you just in time,” he said, looking me over.

  “Any minute now, I was going to make my move,” I said. “Just lulling them into false sense of security. Trying to look helpless.”

  “It’s working,” he replied. “You think you can handle a gun?”

  “Yeah,” I said, rubbing the circulation back into my wrists, feeling my hands come back to life, protesting.

  “Here.” He handed me a compact 9 mm automatic. I dropped the magazine checked that it was full, checked the chamber and found it loaded. I slipped the magazine back in, found the safety.

  “It’s on,” said Bob. “Ambidextrous thumb safety.”

  “Thanks.” When I was sure the weapon was loaded, and my throbbing hands able to fire it, I asked him: “How do you like your eggs?”

  A staged rescue would be easy for my enemies. They could look like my friends, pretend to whisk me to safety and probably get me to spill info before I discovered the trick. Giving me a gun would help allay my suspicion. Giving me a loaded one was a calculated risk. I still wanted to hear him answer a question.

  “With all the salmonella cooked out of them. Now let’s go.”

  Had to be Bob. Anybody who was just guessing would say over easy.

  He led me out into the hallway. John was there, and my old friend Brad, his hands bound, a gag in his mouth. Blood dribbled from his nostrils and a split lip.

  “This time, we’re taking the prisoner with us,” said John. “Even if he was lousy in bed.”

  “You’re calling the shots,” I replied. I’m not one to look a gift rescue in the mouth.

  I followed them through a series of hallways, up a flight of steps and through a large kitchen to a back door. Bob opened it, looked left and right and waved us out. We found ourselves in an alleyway between two buildings. An ambulance pulled up and we all piled into the back.

  “Sean!” Nique said from her position in the passenger seat. “Are you alright?”

  “I’ll live,” I replied.

  “Just get us out of here,” said Bob. “Everybody’s OK.”

  “An ambulance?” I asked.

  “Hard for them to chase us, we can go around traffic without getting pulled over, and if anybody got shot on this mission, we could treat ‘em. Well, they could treat ‘em.” He jerked a thumb toward Pete and Nique in the front.

  He and John wrestled Brad down onto the stretcher and tightened the belts across him. John reached into the linen compartment and found a pillowcase. “Here you go, handsome,” he said, putting it over the prisoner’s head.

  “So how–” I began.

  Bob shook his head. “Wait until we get where we’re going. Then we’ll discuss what happened and see what our new friend can tell us.”

  I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I waited. Bob was right, anything they told me they’d be telling our prisoner, and the more he knew, the better able he’d be to withstand questioning, since it would be harder to catch him in a lie if he knew what we knew. And if he did get free, the more he knew, the more of a liability he’d be. Right at that moment, the idea of shooting him and dumping him off a dock with a cinder block chained to his ankles had a certain appeal, but it would be nice if that wasn’t the only option.

  I moved forward and leaned through the passageway, squatting between Pete and Nique in the front seats. “Thanks, guys.”

  “No problem, man,” said Pete.

  “Are you alright?” asked Nique.

  “I’ll be fine. You guys working?”

  “Nah,” said Pete, “just borrowed the truck.”

  “Going out on a limb with that.”

  “It’s after nine on a weekend. No adult supervision at FlatLine. This beast is a spare. I showed up in uniform and took it. Anybody asked, I was bringing it to the mechanics so they can have it there bright and early on Monday.”

  “Nobody asked?”

  “All out saving lives,” he replied. “I doubt anybody will notice it’s gone. I’ll bring it back later. It’s not like the base is Fort Knox.”

  “Good point.”

  “You sure you’re alright?” Nique persisted.

  “I’m a little dinged up. Maybe a broken nose. Nothing I can’t recover from.”

  “What do you do to get people so pissed at you, man?” asked Pete. “I mean, they can’t all be supervisors from ambulance companies you worked for in the past, can they?”

  “That would explain a lot,” I admitted.

  The ambulance pulled into the empty parking lot of a factory then around behind the building. Bob and John grabbed the prisoner and hauled him out, then tossed him in the back of a waiting van. I followed.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said to Pete and Nique. “I’ll call you soon and let you know what’s up. Right now, you’re better off not knowing where we’re going.”

  “Take care of yourself,” said Nique.

  “Watch your back,” said Pete.

  “I will. You guys be careful yourselves,” I said. “Don’t trust anybody. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. Be suspicious. Ask me something to prove I’m me.”

  They drove off. After a few minutes so did we. Maybe it was paranoia, but what they didn’t know, like our direction of travel, they couldn’t give away.

  Chapter 22

  AFTER AN HOUR or so, Bob pulled the van into the driveway of what looked to be a vacant business. He drove around the side, out of sight of the road, and opened a garage door, then pulled the van inside.

  “Place used to be a body shop,” he told me. “It closed a few years back. The landlord won’t lower the rates enough to attract a new tenant, so it’s just sitting, waiting for the local economy to bounce back.”

  “How’d you find it?”

  “Guy I knew from way back. Works for the state tax department. He lets me know about vacant places, in cas
e I need to hole up or hide something. He owes me one from a long time ago in a land far, far away.”

  “It’s good to have friends,” I said. “Speaking of which, thanks for coming for me.”

  “You came back for me last winter,” he said.

  I had. But I had also kinda gotten him involved in the first place, so I figured I still owed him.

  John dragged our prisoner into a glass-windowed office, the kind of area that keeps the noise of the shop from bothering the guy doing paperwork, but lets him watch the work being done, and zip-tied him to a chair. After we closed the door, we could still keep an eye on him, but unless we shouted, he probably couldn’t hear us.

  “So how’d you find me?” I asked.

  “Sarah,” Bob replied. “She said when she called you, something wasn’t right, so she did some tech savvy thing and traced your phone to the address we found you at.”

  “Good thing she’s smart.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “I don’t like it, but she’s on her way here. Says we need somebody to be the brains of this operation.”

  I thought about it. I didn’t like the idea of her in danger either, but it’s not like she hadn’t been a target already, and she was right, smart, younger and more technically literate, she brought skills to the table that we lacked.

  “After Sarah found you, she did some more online investigating to see who owned the building, and some of the names matched those contacts from that phone you took off the other bad guys, so we planned a rescue. Called your medic buddies because, like we said, best getaway vehicle ever, and useful if anybody got hurt.”

  It was a good idea. Unfortunately, it seemed that I’d landed just about everybody who mattered to me in the shit.

  After centuries of trying to look after myself and avoid getting too close so I wouldn’t have to worry about this kind of thing, I seemed to be making up for lost time.

  “When we found the place,” Bob went on, “we breached the door and started looking for you. The first guy we met decided to shoot it out, but that went badly for him. Then this guy came around a corner, I hit him with the butt of my shotgun, took his gun and politely asked him to bring us to where you were being held.”