I remembered Jennifer telling me about the meeting and the sudden defection. “Little Shawn and his crew.”
“Yeah, they’ve been helpful. Not as helpful as you’re gonna be, though. We’ve still got some questions, and you’re gonna fill in the blanks.”
“You assume I have the answers.”
“I will determine if you do, or if you don’t,” the Doctor said. “It will be unfortunate for you if you don’t.”
Angelo snorted. “Pretty unfortunate either way. You should have accepted our job offer in Chicago, Faust. Hell, you even ended up helping us take out Nicky, just like I wanted you to. How’s that for ironic? You could be living the good life right now. Instead, by the time the Doc is done with you…well, let’s just say it ain’t gonna be an open-casket funeral.”
He turned to leave. I bit down on a surge of panic. I needed to keep him here, keep him talking. Every second I could buy, staving off the inevitable, was more time for the twins to track us down and come to the rescue.
“You’re forgetting one thing,” I said. “Damien Ecko.”
Angelo paused, glancing back at me. “What about him?”
“He’s working for you, isn’t he? Helping out with the hit list.”
He shrugged. “He’s had his uses.”
“Because of me. Ecko isn’t a mercenary. The only reason he’d work for the Outfit is if you promised to help him find me. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I might have made some promises to that effect. So what? The guy is a fuckin’ loon. Nobody’s gonna find whatever’s left of your body. When we’re all done wiping your buddies out and planting our flag in Vegas, it’ll be ‘oh, so sorry, guess Faust wasn’t here after all, he must have skipped town.’ How’s he gonna know any different?”
“You’re underestimating him,” I said. “He’s obsessed with getting revenge against me. If he finds out that you denied him his moment of triumph—and he will find out—you’ll be next in line. You don’t want that.”
Angelo put his hand to his chest. “I’m touched by your concern for my well-being. That said, I think I’ll take my chances. C’mon, Sal, let’s leave the Doc to do his thing. I just ate lunch, I can’t watch this shit.”
“You’re making a mistake—” I shouted, but the door swung shut. Leaving me trapped in the tiny office, alone with the Doctor.
He stood before me. Looking me up and down, silent, tapping his finger against his chin. Like a sculptor with a fresh block of marble, deciding the perfect place to chisel the first cut.
“I’m not going to ask you any questions,” he told me as he walked around to the back of my chair.
He took hold of my left hand, grabbed my little finger, and snapped it in two places.
“Yet.”
The pain hit me like a bucket of boiling water. Lancing up my hand, my wrist, straight to my spine. I howled through gritted teeth, wheezing, rocking back and forth as far as my bonds would let me.
He waited until I could breathe again.
Then he broke my ring finger, bending it backward until the bone snapped. Leaving it dangling like that, claw-hooked backward and limp, as my swallowed scream came out as a high-pitched, keening groan. I thrashed against the tape, my head flailing and the folding chair’s legs thumping against bare concrete.
He let go of my hand and walked around me. He pulled over a second folding chair from the corner and sat down across from me, almost knee to knee, waiting patiently as I struggled to find my breath.
“I was army, before I went into the freelance market.” His voice was sedate, a patient schoolteacher explaining a complex lesson. “Intelligence. My stint in Iraq was an important turning point in my career. That’s where I learned a fascinating truth.”
I hissed between my teeth, jaw clenched. My fingers felt like they were pressed to a hot stove and I couldn’t pull them away. I met his gaze, but I couldn’t find the breath to speak.
“It is a common belief,” he said, “that torture doesn’t work. That it’s an exercise in empty cruelty, as the subject will simply tell the torturer anything they want to hear. That they’re as likely to lie as tell the truth—more likely, in fact. Anything to make the pain stop. And this is, I can confirm from extensive firsthand experience, one hundred percent true.”
He held up a finger.
“But! This presupposes an environment where the subject is otherwise treated as a viable human being, a life that will continue beyond the interrogation itself. That there is an expectation of eventual release or, depending on the government in question, that the subject can be reformed or remolded into a model citizen. So one imposes arbitrary limits. Waterboard, but not too much. Employ sleep deprivation and sensory-bombardment techniques, but not to the point of total psychological destruction. Say you’re going to throw a man’s child to a pack of feral dogs and force him to watch…but don’t actually do it. I developed an alternative regimen. Which, unfortunately, led to my aforementioned freelance career. My superiors in the military were, how do I put this? Not pleased with my scientific rigor.”
“You’re a fucking whackjob,” I grunted. “I don’t even know what you want from me.”
His eyes lit up. “Exactly! That’s phase one.”
He reached for the desk and picked up a cordless drill. The titanium bit whirred to life as he squeezed the trigger, gleaming like a white-hot brand. Its shrill, grating whine filled my ears.
“This is phase two,” he said and pointed the drill at my left eye.
25.
I bucked wildly in the chair, flailing against the duct tape, desperate to get away as the whining bit inched closer and closer to my face. The Doctor stood up and put his free hand behind my head, gripping my hair and holding me still. The whirling bit loomed large now, the overhead light glinting off its tip.
“This drill is designed for professional construction work. The bit, a high-quality one, can drive through a two-by-four as if it were butter. In a moment, it will rupture your left eye. The cornea will go first. Caught on the tip, shredding, twisting, the bit’s construction effectively tearing it away. The rotation of the bit will cause the remainder of your eye to collapse. The intraocular fluids, normally kept in a pressurized state, will burst like a water balloon.”
“Just tell me what you want to know!” I fought against his hand, feeling a clump of hair rip out at the roots with a fresh burst of pain, but I couldn’t get loose. “What’s the point of torturing me if you haven’t asked any questions?”
He let go of my hair and lowered the drill. The bit whined to a stop.
“And there,” he said, “is the genius of my method.”
He placed the drill back on the table and set a small gray box beside it. A digital timer, with bright red numbers. He turned the timer, making sure I could read it.
“The seed of any subject’s defiance in the face of torture,” he explained, “is hope. The hope of earning release, of survival, or simply of enduring an interrogation without being permanently disfigured. I have learned that the ideal way of extracting information is to start by removing these distractions. Please listen carefully, as my process depends on you fully understanding this part.”
He set the timer for ten minutes but didn’t start the countdown. The LED numbers flashed, expectant.
“I’m going to check on my other patient. I will return in precisely ten minutes. When I do, I will subject you to extensive and irreparable mutilations. We will begin with your permanent disfigurement, the surgical removal of your nose and lips. Then I will employ the drill to remove your left eye, exactly as promised, before moving on to both of your kneecaps—”
“Why?” I shouted at him. “What’s the point?”
He gave me a tiny smile. “The point is, that when I have finished my list of alterations—I was only getting started before you rudely interrupted me—you, as you understand yourself, will no longer exist. All that remains will be a broken and bleeding lump of tissue that vaguely resembles a human bei
ng. And then, truly without hope, truly destroyed, you will tell me anything I want to know. And you will not lie, for you will no longer have any reason to. You will no longer have a life to save.”
He tapped the button on the timer. The glowing numbers flicked to 9:59.
“See you in ten minutes,” he said and stepped out of the room. He closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with the clock.
Bentley and Corman had taught me escapology and magic hand in hand. The point wasn’t to learn how to shiv a pair of handcuffs or slip out of a knotted rope, though both of those had come in handy more than once in my life. The point was to master the one skill that both arts demanded: focus under fire.
“Folks see a stopwatch and they start to panic,” Corman had told me. “It turns into a guillotine hanging over their heads. Then they rush, they get sloppy, then they screw up. Always remember, kiddo: every predicament is a puzzle. The clock isn’t your enemy; it’s just another piece of information. Take a deep breath, look around, and break everything down.”
Four deep breaths. That’s what I calculated I could spare. A slow five-count in, a slow five-count out. I faced my aching hand and my fear and stepped through it, past it, gently pushing away my emotions. I needed cold reason now. Cold reason and a weapon.
The timer was a mind game, that was obvious—but it didn’t mean the Doctor wasn’t coming back to do everything he’d promised and then some. He just wanted me good and terrified before he got to work. Had to assume his threats were genuine. Second assumption: the cavalry wasn’t coming. No reason to assume Angelo was lying about how remote we were, and if the twins had some way of tracking Nicky down, they would have known he was still in Vegas in the first place.
Magic. My cards, gone. No tools, nothing I could use, and no hands to work with. Even my impromptu magic needed a surface to work on, a drawn sigil, something. Without any gear, the best I could do was call a spark to my fingertips and let it tumble to the oil-stained floor. As the timer ticked down, I studied my bonds. No chance of snapping the duct tape with brute strength. If I could get to a cutting edge, though…I looked down at the chair. Folding chair. That was good. Folding chairs moved. My hands were tied behind me at the wrist, poking through the open back of the aluminum chair but not taped to the frame itself.
I rose slowly and curled the fingers of my good hand around the back of the chair. Half-standing, half-crouched, I tugged at the frame. My back ached as the chair started to buckle on its hinges, its frame straightening out and the seat vanishing from under me. Then it was done. I stood on my own feet, the chair folded perfectly straight behind my legs. I lifted my bound wrists and rested them over the back of the chair. Six minutes and forty-two seconds on the clock.
I couldn’t walk, but I could hobble, making my way to the desk one clumsy, shuffling, swinging step at a time. If I turned my back to the desk, I figured I had just enough range to reach back and grab something to cut myself loose. The scalpel. I lined myself up and swung myself around, working blind and the chair digging into my back as I groped behind me. My fingers closed over the scalpel’s hilt. Carefully, like threading a needle, I turned it in my fingertips and lined up the blade with the middle of the tape binding my wrists.
The scalpel slipped. It cut into the meat of my palm, drawing blood, and the sudden shock made my fingers twitch. The blade tumbled to the floor, lying beside my bare foot.
I tried to crouch, as far as my bonds and the chair would let me. My fingertips clutched at empty air, straining, but it was no good. I couldn’t reach the blade. I straightened my back, ignoring the blood dribbling down my fingers, and took another look at the desk. The timer clicked down to five minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Almost half my time gone, and all I’d managed to do was stand up.
I dismissed the hacksaw: too big, too awkward to work with in this position. Nothing else offered a good cutting edge. Then my eyes fell upon my last, solitary hope.
The soldering iron.
I took a deep breath, turned my back to the desk, and felt for it. My good fingers closed around the tool’s plastic shaft—about the size of a fat Magic Marker, with a metal tip on the end—and tugged it from its charging stand. That cost me thirty seconds. Another half-minute to carefully swivel it around, getting the tip lined up with the duct tape around my wrists.
This was my last shot. If I dropped it, if I let go, I might as well sit down and wait to die. I clicked it on with my thumb and spent another thirty seconds waiting for the device to heat up. Then I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and pressed the tip against the duct tape.
The tape sizzled, rippling with flame. I couldn’t see it but I could smell it, the air filling with the sharp metallic tang of an electrical fire. And then I felt it, as the burning tape clung to my bare skin and the tip of the iron bumped against my wrist.
I threw my head back and clamped my jaw shut, fighting with everything I had. Struggling not to scream, battling every instinct to drop the iron as the white-hot tip seared a ragged line along my skin. The muscles of my neck stood out like steel cords, my eyes squeezed shut and brimming with tears as I forced the iron down one agonizing quarter-inch at a time.
The tape parted. My hands snapped free and I tossed the iron onto the desk, tore off the smoldering, severed tape, and gasped for breath. My stomach churned as I surveyed the damage. Two fingers, hooked and dangling limp like broken claws, and the insides of my wrists marred with lobster-red burns and blisters. Scraps of charred tape clung to my skin, and the tip of the iron had drawn a ravaged line along my wrist like a suicide’s razor. I needed medical attention, fast. But first I needed to survive.
Two minutes and eight seconds on the clock.
I crouched down, snatched up the fallen scalpel, and went to work on the tape around my calves. The folding chair fell free and I caught it, a heartbeat from clanging against the floor. Couldn’t risk drawing attention now. That door would swing open soon enough, and I needed every second I had left to get ready.
I had my choice of weapons. Hammers, hacksaws, pliers. Nothing so elegant as a playing card or a pistol. Only a savage killed with tools like these.
That was all right. As the timer counted down and I stood alone, naked, bleeding and burned and waiting for my executioner, I was feeling pretty goddamn savage myself.
26.
The timer hit zero. I crouched, like a wounded panther waiting to pounce, and waited.
The door swung wide. One of Angelo’s goons behind it, not even looking my way as he talked to somebody over his shoulder. “Yeah, the Doc just says to—”
I hit him with my shoulder, knocking him against the door, and ripped the hacksaw blade across his throat. His eyes went wide as he collapsed, blood spilling from the ragged wound in a gurgling torrent. His buddy was right behind him. I dropped the saw, grabbed the hammer with my good hand, and as he rounded the corner, brought the claw end down on the crown of his head. The steel prongs punched through his skull, digging in an inch deep, then wrenched free with a crackle of shattered bone. I flipped the hammer in my grip, raised it high, and hit him with the business end until he fell to the floor. Then I kept hitting him, until his feet had finally stopped twitching and my arm was tired.
Both of the dead men were strapped. I tossed the hammer aside and took their guns, a snub-nosed .32 and a black matte nine-millimeter Beretta. My bad hand throbbed, serving up a fresh jolt of bone-deep pain with every move I made, but the Doctor had made one mistake: he didn’t break my trigger finger.
“The hell are you guys doing in there?” Angelo called out.
I answered him with bullets as I burst through the doorway, striding out across the concrete expanse with both guns raised high. Angelo and a pair of his soldiers dove behind a clutter of old oil drums as slugs sparked off the rusting lifts, ricocheting across the dusty garage. Sal and the Doctor were over by the side door, open to show the weed-choked vacant lot outside, the two of them smoking cigarettes. They ducked out the doorway, the
Doctor running while Sal stood just outside the doorframe and pulled his revolver.
The two-gun theatrics bought me time to find cover. I put my back to a fat steel lift and dropped the empty .32, gripping the Beretta in my good hand. One of Angelo’s guys poked his head up. I stepped out, took careful aim, and dropped him with a bullet in the face before ducking back behind the pillar.
“Got one for you, too, Angelo!” I called out. A hail of return fire pinged off the steel, one bullet slashing the air an inch from my cheek. I figured I had about three shots left. Had to make each one count.
The hitter on the floor was howling as he clutched his ruined face. Then I heard another gunshot, and sudden silence.
“Mercy bullet?” I shouted. “Hope you saved one for yourself. Because when I get my hands on you, you are sure as fuck dying slow.”
Sal snapped off a few rounds from the doorway and cupped his hand to his mouth. “Boss! C’mon, I’ll cover you! Let’s just go. It ain’t worth it!”
Angelo and his last soldier standing broke cover, racing to the side door while Sal unloaded his revolver at me. Throwing a hailstorm of lead that kept me pinned down for two crucial seconds. I popped up the instant he spent his last round, emptying my magazine at Angelo’s back, but all I hit was a chunk of concrete in the lot outside. I heard someone leaning on a car horn, probably the Doctor, and then the screech of tires.
I stumbled over to Nicky’s side, where he dangled naked from the fork of a car lift like a side of raw beef. They’d done a number on him. Just fists, but with one eye swollen shut, his nose pulped, and his chest a patchwork quilt of deep black bruises, he wasn’t going to be entering any beauty pageants. I tore the strip of duct tape from his lips. His good eye struggled to focus on me.
“Danny,” he croaked, “you look like shit.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him, then went to find the scalpel. He tumbled into my arms as I cut him down, too weak to stand, and I gently rested him on the concrete floor.
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