“But you don’t mind this gentleman driving on your grass to go around, do you?”
“I actually do, yeah.”
“It’s fine this one time.” Joel turned back to the man. “Go on and drive around.”
The ruffled feathers smoothed, and the old man nodded. “Sure, sure.”
Joel smiled and waved towards the woman in the Audi. Once the man had gotten back in his car and driven around — nice and slow to take in the horror — Joel climbed back into the van, put her in reverse, and drove out of there to the place in the woods above Castle Danger, our prearranged rallying point in case things went sour. Joel was great in the woods, which we knew from when he’d shot the BCA agent attacking Paula. A long shot from up in the trees. Credit where credit was due.
The curtain twitchers who had been watching the confrontation from their windows went on about their business, and the couple in the Audi drove on to whatever shit-shack souvenir joint they were headed. No matter how much Lake Superior agate you had, you could always use a little more.
In my world, however, these petite bourgeois grievances counted for shit. I was in real trouble. Bad trouble. Two dead bodies, and it was all my fault.
Watching Dylan die had seemed as though it took forever. We were helpless.
If I’d just told Joel to take him to the emergency—
No, he’d still have died. Of course he would’ve.
This was going to be a long day for me.
Marquette would be looking for me, and of course he would check here. I needed to get away before that happened.
I wasn’t thinking straight.
I was in Castle Danger because I was disillusioned and afraid and I didn’t want to lose this place. I had made the deal to take this job because I hoped Marquette would keep his word about his commitment to gender equality and trans rights — which he had so far — but now I saw him as someone who would say whatever it took to get what he wanted from you, then toss you away once you’d served his interests.
Next thing I knew, a Mercedes was barreling down the main drive towards me. A familiar car, one I’d gotten used to seeing around since Tennyson joined the team.
My skin went tingly, my stomach sick.
He wasn’t driving this time. Instead, he had two men with him, one white, one black, whom I’d never seen before. They climbed out, neither dressed to the nines like Tennyson, but then again, who could compete? One of the men opened the back door, and Tennyson stepped out, straightened his suit, and started towards me. He didn’t look happy.
“Hey,” I said, backing up towards my rental. “Surprise, surprise!”
Dark face, hard angles, shaved head, pained squint.
I fumbled with the door handle, trying to get in before he could reach me, but I’d waited too long. He was already right up on me. The two men behind him. Now there was a stun gun in Tennyson’s hand, same type Joel’s soldiers had used, where you had to punch it into the body.
Which was what he did to me.
My life went horror show right quick. My police training kicked in again and I automatically lurched for what I thought would be safety — Tennyson’s arms — but he backed off, pulled the stun gun away, and I fell forward. Skinned my knees, my palms, my face on the concrete walkway. One of the other men, a fat white guy, stepped over me and pulled my head up, but it fell again when the wig came off in his hand. He laughed, then tried again with my own hair, longer than usual. After all, in what felt like an immeasurably more innocent time, I had toyed with the idea to grow it out. Next thing I knew, my head was tied up in a black plastic bag, some slits cut near my mouth and nose.
I was lifted by my armpits, dragged to a car, thrown in carelessly. My legs were wet and cold. Had I pissed myself? My knees and palms stung. Then someone shoved my still trembling ass over and got in beside me. He grabbed my hands, started wrapping tape around them. Thick stuff.
Tennyson spoke softly, right into my ear. “Sorry about this. I really am. And didn’t I tell you to get rid of that wig? You don’t need it anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. Embarrassed, afraid, betrayed. “Tennyson?”
“Just shut up.”
Another punch from his stun gun made sure I did just that.
When I shook off the sting of that one, I found my eyes covered. Didn’t remember them doing that. Felt like it was over my whole face — tight against my nose, brushing my lips. My face on Tennyson’s lap. Him on the phone, talking so quietly I couldn’t make out a single word. The motion of the car was making me sick. With my hands and feet bound, the curves and turns were excruciating as I flexed bruised muscles to avoid rolling around like a rag doll.
Gradually I realized there was one other man besides Tennyson in the back with me, and he had his hand on my ass.
When Tennyson got off the phone, he sighed. Then started talking.
“Manny, you just … you just won’t leave well enough alone. Just because you think something seems fishy doesn’t mean they always are. You have a problem with perception.”
I didn’t respond.
“The greater good. Around every corner, you have to ask yourself, before you bumble around and break shit, what is the greater good here? That’s what you miss. You see the next three steps, but you don’t see the destination. If you want to work in politics, the destination is what it’s all about.”
I still had nothing to say.
“Do you hear me?”
The hand on my ass lifted and then swatted me nice and hard. Laughter.
Tennyson shushed it.
“I liked you, Manny. I thought you’d go far with us.”
“Bullshit.” I couldn’t help it.
“No, really, I spotted your talents right away, as did the Senator. What he was hoping, what we both were hoping, was that getting you into the machine would help subdue your tendency to fuck things up. But, well, you’re a born detective, I suppose. Shame.”
“You know what? Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”
Another slap on my rump.
Again, I couldn’t stop myself from giving back as good as I got. “Hey! You enjoying that, faggot?”
That got me another punch from the stun gun, and for that I had no come back.
At least not right away. By the time we’d gotten to wherever we’d gotten — which I was guessing was not an abandoned church in Superior, Wisconsin — I’d tuned out Tennyson’s patronizing and Grabby McGrabhand’s kneading of my fun buns. I was hustled out of the backseat, carried across still crunchy ground, probably dead leaves left over from fall that were as yet cocooned in ice. We were on an incline. That much I knew, but none of it really helped me place where we were. I would’ve guessed farther north, though, somewhere in the woods, possibly near the Canadian border. The wind was sharp on my mostly exposed legs, while the rest of me tingled from residual electricity.
I was dropped a few times. Not hard, but I must have been an awkward and heavy package to carry. Or they were just trying to tenderize me for my upcoming interrogation. Or worse. Either way, the ground was cold, itchy, wet. But finally we were on solid ground again, then up some steps. Wooden steps. Only a few, though. And then a distinctive smell that told me I was in some sort of trailer. Maybe an RV. But they all have the same smell. Maybe it’s the plastic, the glue, the paint. I don’t know.
I was set on the floor. A rug.
The tape was cut away from my legs, but before they got to my hands, one of them slipped a mask over my nose, like at the dentist’s office—
Oh shit.
The smell of gas. Nitrous oxide.
Laughing gas.
I struggled to roll away from the mask, but it was strapped over my head. I tried to rake it off against the floor, but a large pair of hands clasped the sides of my head from behind. Tennyson’s voice: “Relax. Let it work.”
Before long I was loopy, giggly, and numb. They peeled the tape from around my wrists, but I was useless. I could feel some sensations, but wa
s unable to keep track of what was happening to me. At least until they started taking my clothes off. I tried to fight back but, like Pink Floyd said, my hands felt just like two balloons.
Completely naked. Cold. I was picked up again, moved to a couch. The mask taken away. The first breaths of fresh air. Consciousness sharpening. But then they put something else on me. Underwear? Someone wrapped a bikini top around my chest. Fit some high heels on my feet. I didn’t know how to walk in high heels yet. Another person hovered in front of me, painted my lips with lipstick, a thick coat, then applied too much mascara, and not very well. Rouged my cheeks.
And then … nothing. I was left alone. Prickle by prickle feeling came back into my limbs. I was able to blink and make sense of my surroundings. Yes, a trailer. A mostly empty living room, except for this couch, a rug, a karaoke machine with a microphone on a stand, and an iPhone on a tripod, hooked into a laptop. On the screen: me. White high heels and a pink bikini. My face done up like a doll’s — dark red lipstick, cheeks on fire, eyes raccooned. Good lord.
Tennyson stood near the door, hands grasped in front of him, still holding on to the stun gun. Next to him, a transwoman, glammed up and obviously still packing a massive cock in a pair of tight leather pants.
“Feeling better?”
I looked down. A pre-stuffed bikini top, a skimpy pair of bottoms, glossy shoes. The rest of me, bruised and exposed. Not to mention a dog collar around my neck, a chain linking me to the wall. “No.”
“That’s too bad. You’re about to record your first performance, and I’d advise you to do your best. Every lyric you miss, every line you blow, Miss Maria Grace here—” He motioned towards the transwoman, who was very tall, very chiseled. In spite of her name, definitely one of ‘us’, as in ‘white Minnesotan’, with hair dyed squid ink black — dishwater roots showing — and arctic blue eyes. She smiled at me. “—is going to make you regret it. How she does so is entirely up to her.”
That’s when I noticed that she had a string of anal beads looped across her shoulders.
I thought about James Bond facing Goldfinger’s laser. What could I say to make this stop before it went any further? What could I do?
“You know we’ve got them, right? You know we’ve got Dylan and Konzbruck?”
A shrug. “Who?”
“If Dylan talks, when Dylan talks, then none of this will matter. Raske goes down, Andrew goes down, and you go right along with them.”
He shook his head. “Except for you, my hands are clean, but then again, you’re nobody anyway. The way it’s going to look from this side of the lens, you were part of Raske’s club, or whatever this is. We’ve always been a step ahead of you.”
A lie. They were thrown by Joel grabbing Dylan and Konzbruck. For once, I was a step ahead, and now I had to find a way to use that. Fast.
“I found what I was looking for. I already sent it to someone else who will send it on to the authorities and the media. Andrew will be done by the end of the day.”
“I told you already, call him ‘The Senator’.”
“How about ‘The Murderer’? You do know he had his own brother, sorry, sister, killed by one of his minions, right? The Chief of fucking police in Duluth? And pretty much left the man to flounder?”
“Believe me,” Tennyson said, pretending to yawn. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And if I did, I would’ve known that from day one without even having to be told.”
He turned to Miss Maria Grace. “Are you ready?”
She struck a pose. “That’s what they pay me for.”
“Go easy on him. I’m pretty sure that’s a virgin ass you’re dealing with.”
“You don’t say?”
Tennyson opened the door. “Just so you know, it’s not just you and Maria Grace here. Consider yourself surrounded. As for the karaoke, let’s start you with an easy one.”
Miss Maria Grace lifted a remote control and pressed a button. The machine came to life, a song from the Eighties I luckily kinda remembered. The screen flashed “More Than This” by Roxy Music.
“So you’d better get up and start singing. All it takes is one mistake.”
I pushed off the couch in a hurry as Tennyson left the room and Miss Maria Grace took a step closer, teeth pulling on her bottom lip.
My new heels felt as though they were about to snap both my ankles, but I lunged, grabbed the mike and mike stand, and did my best Brian Ferry impression as the words flashed across the monitor.
Who was watching? I wondered who was sick enough to be following this live on screen and paying for the privilege.
One for sure: Andrew Fucking Marquette.
Yeah, I hoped he was watching. This one was for him.
PART THREE
1
You all know one thing: I survived my Fancy Room. I couldn’t be telling you this otherwise.
But I won’t tell you what most people really want to know about those of us who suffered … I’m sorry. I won’t tell you the salacious details. I won’t tell you how I was assaulted, how many times, and in which ways.
I won’t tell you how many times I stumbled on the lyrics of Roxy Music, Wham, and The Cure. Won’t describe how many times I flinched as Maria Grace’s eyes lit up at every mistake.
I felt …
No, I was …
Raped.
It was …
It was …
It was finally over. And like I said, the only thing that matters now is that I survived. Can’t even tell you how long it took.
So I’ll tell you another part of the story instead.
We left Joel with a van, two dead bodies, and no one to turn to, as he waited for me in the woods. Of course, I never arrived, and Joel was a smart enough cookie to realize sooner rather than later that something had gone wrong.
What to do?
He had acted without thinking when he’d taken the van, in a hurry to get Dylan to safety, not realizing he’d been shot through the side of the van, bleeding out the back the entire drive up the North Shore. Joel’s fingerprints and DNA were all over the van. Best he could do right then was wipe his prints off any surface he’d touched and hope no one would bother the vehicle until the whole story was ready to be told.
He needed time.
He needed luck.
There had to be a swarm of police back at the church he and his soldier buddies had raided like a riot squad. He’d left them both behind. It stung him in the back of his mind, and once the adrenaline had worn off, the poison of it would creep to the front. But not yet. Not in combat mode.
He thought about calling the police anonymously, if he could find a payphone. Where the hell did all the payphones go?
No, no, stop it. He would wait for me. That was best. I had told him I’d catch up with him, but how long was he expected to wait? Ten minutes went by, felt like an hour. Then Joel checked again, and it had been an hour, and he was out of his head.
In the end, he left the van and walked back to the main road. Another nine miles back to my cottage. Well, he’d marched farther in basic training. No big deal.
Left (right) left (right) left (right) …
Spotty cell coverage, so it wasn’t until he made it back to Highway 61 that he could check his messages. A proud grand-total of two. After all this time, all the sacrifices, all the risks he’d taken for others, how the fuck had he ended up this alone. Ex-Marine, ex-bodyguard, ex-friend to the rich and powerful. The only one he could still count on? A sexually ambiguous tranny he didn’t even like all that much, but just. Couldn’t. Quit. And to make matters worse, neither of those text messages was from me. At least one of them was from Tennyson, an enemy of his ally, sure, but better the devil you know, right?
Fuck it, better him than no one.
He was soaked, head to toe, in both sweat and the moist fog of early Spring that rose from the evaporating snow. And still five miles to go. He stopped to catch his breath.
Might as well get this over with.
<
br /> He called Tennyson.
“Where are you?”
Joel looked around. “Nowhere special.”
“I was wondering if you could come in to HQ. You know, the nice one, in Minneapolis. The Senator would like to talk to you.”
Seriously? Tennyson had to know that I couldn’t have pulled this off without Joel’s help. Not to mention they had a trace on my phone. So … what was this? A mistake? A trap? A chance to infiltrate the enemy?
“When?”
“Soon as you can, man.”
“I’m supposed to help Manny with something right now.”
“Don’t worry about that. Manny’s got some other things to worry about. I just sent him to the airport. He’s flying over to New York City for a few meetings. Finance stuff. But you, sir, you are the star right now. Come in, have a talk.”
“Can I ask what this is about?”
A pick-up truck sped past, typhooned the air, overpowering the phone speaker.
If the campaign manager had said something, it was lost to the wind. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Where are you?”
“The great outdoors. Now, see, what am I supposed to come in about.”
“Just come in. It’s a good thing.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.” A hint of irritation. No fucking way this is good news. “The Senator will explain when you arrive. When can I tell him you’ll be here?”
Joel pieced together his next moves while trying to think of an answer that would put them off for a while. “How about by sundown?”
A long hiss on the other side. Maybe it was a sigh, but Joel thought of Tennyson as one of those lizard people the kooks talk about on the radio. “How about half an hour?”
Of course he couldn’t get back in half an hour. Couldn’t get back in two, most likely.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“Fine.” He hung up. They had Joel’s number — I mean, literally, yes, but … never mind — all he could do was follow Plan B.
And for Joel that meant Plan Beast Mode.
Fuck his employers. They should probably consider this his official resignation.
Castle Danger--The Mental States Page 18