At last he tasted oxygen and felt light on his face. His eyelids were fluttering as William leaned close, that sour breath moving across his cheeks.
‘Ouch, ouch, I know, pal. I’m sorry. I know.’ William watched closely, his face soft with empathy. ‘But you see, I’m an expert in this. I’ve taken a lot of folks to the edge. I been here before. And you haven’t. So I know the stories they tell, the lies they spin. There’s a pattern to it, see? The fake answers, the money they promise, the friend who’s gonna call the cops.’
‘Okay . . .’ Mike panted. ‘I lied about Shep.’
‘Where’s Katherine?’
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know.’
William hoisted a filled jug. ‘Ready for the next round?’
‘No,’ Mike said. ‘No no no.’
But it came anyway. The even influx of water up his nose, the airless choking and heaving, the head-shaking blindness – a fireand-brimstone hell imported from some past, barbaric age. Somewhere between screaming soundlessly and passing out, his instinct to detach, cultivated since the whitesouts of his early childhood, kicked in.
He slid out of himself and observed the proceedings. He made himself impervious. He was a collection of parts, of bone and flesh. He was a rock. Unthinking. Unfeeling.
As Dodge tried to pull the towel free, Mike clamped his teeth down on it, and it tore a little. William laughed, ‘He’s bitin’ it?’ And then Dodge’s fist hit Mike’s forehead like a battering ram and the cloth was ripped from his jaws.
William said, ‘Feisty, huh?’
Mike sputtered and drooled water. Because of the slant, it ran up his cheeks, over his eyes, through his hair, and tap-tap-tapped on the concrete.
William said, ‘Where’s your daughter?’
Mike said, ‘I have no daughter,’ and something in his voice made William draw back, shocked or perhaps a touch awed.
Dodge scowled impatiently and William bobbed his head, winded. A foul odor pressed in on Mike, and he thought for a moment that he’d messed himself. But then he realized it was the decay of Hank’s body, picking up strength in the dank cellar air.
They did another round. And another. He would have preferred to die, but that was the point, to take him to a place where he would’ve pled for a bullet and to make him stay there awhile. And then to bring him back to life, again and again.
When he came into himself the next time, he was breathing and William and Dodge were standing side by side, arms crossed, William wearing an expression of frustration that would have been gratifying under different circumstances. The little towel hung like a dishrag in Dodge’s hand, and Mike was pleased to see that it was ripped in several places; he must’ve bitten down on it a few more times. The smell of Hank’s body was stronger now, mixed in the airless room with the stink of sweat and fear. Reclined half upside down on the exercise bench, Mike hacked water through his mouth and nose, his throat raw, his chest an unremitting ache. His arms were as numb as posts beneath his back.
Dodge produced two cigarettes and set them beside each other between his lips. He dug a cheap plastic lighter from his shirt pocket and lit up, tilting his head to a cupped hand out of habit. He passed one to William, who sucked a long, eyes-closed draw.
‘Fucking stinks in here.’ William armed sweat off his brow. ‘Before we take it to the next level, we should check with Boss Man.’ His left leg was trembling. ‘I’ll get the phone.’
He labored up the stairs and returned a few minutes later. His gait had worsened from the effort of climbing and descending, one foot dragging, pigeon-toed. He reached Mike, squatted, and held the phone to Mike’s ear.
Brian McAvoy’s smooth voice. ‘She’s in a foster home, isn’t she?’
Mike said, ‘Who?’ The syllable like a claw raking his throat.
McAvoy laughed. ‘With the money at stake? We’ll check every last one in the state. And then we’ll move to the next state. And the next.’
‘So all this,’ Mike said, ‘is about money?’
‘You think I’m just a casino?’ McAvoy said. ‘I am a nation. I made something where there was nothing before. My daughter etched her initials into the front step when we poured the foundation. I know you think your life, your daughter’s life are a big deal. But as far as collateral damage goes when it comes to nation building? There’s no choice. This isn’t my fault any more than it is yours. Or Katherine’s. So let’s handle this like men. Men with a decision to make. Here’s my proposal to you: You tell us where she is, and we’ll make it humane. For you, now. And more importantly for her.’
Mike’s breaths were shallow across the receiver. He said, ‘No.’
‘We’re finding her either way. All you’ll be doing is sparing her a scared, miserable existence between now and then.’
‘No.’
‘So what’s your plan?’ McAvoy said. ‘You’re going to outlast my two guys there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bring ’em down through force of will?’
‘Sure,’ Mike said.
A guffaw. McAvoy had intended it to be dismissive, but there was surprise in it as well. ‘And then?’
Mike said, ‘You’re next.’
A very long silence ensued. Then McAvoy said, ‘Tell William I’d like to talk to him.’
Mike rolled his head. ‘Wants . . . to talk . . . you.’
William stood up with the phone, cigarette dangling between his lips. ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.’
He snapped the phone shut and tossed it to Dodge, who slid it into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. Something passed between their eyes, and then Dodge crouched, picked up the ball-peen hammer from the neat square of burlap, and tapped it into his vast palm.
William said, ‘Why don’t you get rid of our pal there first. He’s makin’ my eyes water.’
Dodge shuffled over, rolled Hank’s body a few more times in the plastic sheeting, and hoisted him onto a shoulder. Mike’s stare lingered on the remaining drop cloth that he’d soon be occupying.
William said, ‘Leave me the rag.’
Dodge tossed it over, and William held it up in front of his face, his small eyes and patchy beard visible through the holes. He shot a stream of cigarette smoke through the towel and said, ‘This ain’t gonna work no more.’
Dodge swung Hank’s body down, which struck the floor, sending a vibration through the sit-up bench. He tugged off his shirt and dipped it into the tub of water, his shoulders and biceps bulging beneath his wife-beater. On his way back to the body, he dropped the sopping shirt onto Mike’s face.
Darkness. Mike had managed to suck in a breath before the shirt hit, and he fought the wet fabric with his mouth and tongue, moving it around. Breathing was difficult, but without fresh water pouring through he was able to draw some air.
William’s voice floated down at him. ‘When we’re done with you, I wonder if you’ll see my brother. If you do, tell him I’m sorry. I should’ve looked out for him better, like he looked out for me. Tell him we sent you.’
Mike heard Dodge’s heavy boots creak the stairs as he carried the body up. He heard William’s knees crack as he crouched and then the glug glug glug of the milk jugs filling. From upstairs came the muffled ring of a phone, then the screech of a fax. A moment later Dodge’s voice called down – ‘Look’ – and something soft hit the cellar floor. The sound of paper uncrumpling, then a shrill laugh escaped William.
‘Wow,’ William said. ‘Wouldja look at that. Okay, go on and take care of the body. I’ll fill in our friend here on the recent developments, and then we’ll go handle business.’
Heavy footsteps moved overhead, and a screen door banged. Mike kept manipulating the shirt into position. His teeth locking into the fabric, he blew out hard and managed to suck a few drops of air around his lips. Then he kept working the shirt across his face – almost there.
A singsong voice. ‘I got something to show you.’ Another laugh. ‘Looks like a cop who owed me a favor came through. Little girl
found. In a foster home. He was good enough to fax over a picture so we could confirm. Before we . . . you know, saddle up and ride all the way out to . . . Arizona.’
Heat spread through Mike’s chest, out through his limbs. A prickling panic, suffused with rage. Images flickered through the darkness – Dodge and William rolling up in their truck. Snatching Kat off the playground. Her little body, fighting and twisted in panic.
He forced his focus back to the wet shirt. A few drops tapped the fabric, increasing the pressure above his nose, quickening to a thin stream; William was playing with him, drizzling water. ‘Wanna see?’
William reached for the shirt, and then the weight was lifted from Mike’s face. A grin twitched around the cigarette. ‘Ta-da!’
Mike caught a flash of the uncrumpled fax in William’s hand – a photo of Kat in the backyard of the foster home. The picture had been taken at night, the flash severe, and Kat was recoiling, terrified, her skin bleached a sickly white.
Mike breathed through his nose, his nostrils flaring, his mouth clamped around the acid liquid burning into his tongue.
Cigarette smoke unspooling up the side of his face, William looked down at the object clattering on the concrete floor, freed from the wet shirt.
A cheap plastic cigarette lighter.
Chewed open.
The cherry on his cigarette flared with a shocked intake of breath, and William lifted his eyes just as Mike wrenched himself forward in an excruciating sit-up and blew a spattering of lighter fluid into his face.
The cherry erupted into a sparkler, embers flying into William’s eyes and beard. One side of his face caught, the wisps crackling, giving off an acrid odor. William screamed, a high-pitched feminine wail, and stumbled blindly to the tub, with the fax, aflame, fluttering after him.
Mike fought to keep himself bent up into the incline, and as William dunked his head into the tub, Mike flopped off the situp bench, landing across William’s shoulders. The bench flipped with him, the pads clinging to one calf.
William bucked and fought, Mike struggling to keep his weight on him so his face would stay submerged. But without the benefit of his arms, Mike could only pin William so long. William slid out from under him and collapsed on his back, sputtering and moaning. Mike rolled off as well, the wooden lip digging into his side, and spun over to the square of burlap. With the cloth restraints biting into his wrists, he felt for the tools behind his back, his fingers fussing over metal rods and rubber handles. William writhed on the floor, holding his eyes and thrashing. Something stuck one of Mike’s fingers, and he reached for it again, holding the blade even as it opened the pad of his thumb. Trying to will the tingling from his fingers, he got the knife turned and sawing against the restraints. His panicked stare moved between William and the door at the top of the stairs.
Silently, William shoved himself to a sitting position. One eye was open. His teeth showed as a slash carved out of red flesh and black, curled hair. He struggled to his feet and lurched toward Mike.
Mike rocked to aid the movement of the blade, his shoulders aching, his hands cramped and barely holding on. William was almost on top of him. There wouldn’t be time to saw through, so Mike rolled to his side, bent his legs, and tried to swing his wrists down under his feet and in front of him. The cloth restraints snagged on the bottoms of his shoes, and he tugged harder until his hands popped through. He barely managed to get to his feet before William swung at him. Mike ducked the blow, grabbed the back of William’s shirt with both bound hands, and tugged it over his head to tie up his arms, an old schoolyard trick. Pressing his fists together, he hammered them down across William’s face. A ribbon of blood slapped the concrete, and William fell to all fours over the canvas. Mike wrenched his arms apart, straining as hard as he could. The restraints finally gave way with a wet rip just as William hoisted himself up and slipped a knife into Mike’s side.
The motion was silent and smooth, all pressure and no pain, just the slice of a shark cutting through water.
And then William wrenched.
The sensation was electric, Mike arcing like a hooked fish, a current of pain running so hot and intense up his left side that he thought for a moment he’d somehow caught fire.
He staggered back a step and then another, William keeping on, the blade low in his hand, his breath fluttering the charred tufts of beard around his lips. William jabbed and Mike skipped back, the current coming to life again, making him cry out. Mike unhooked his belt and wrapped the soft end around a fist. William lunged with another thrust. Mike dodged and whipped the buckle, catching William at the side of the jaw, knocking him forward too hard and quick for his left leg. He stumbled, landing on a knee. Mike threaded the belt back through the buckle to form a snare and lowered the loop of leather over William’s head. Yanking the makeshift leash tight, he dragged William choking and screaming across the floor to the patch of canvas. William’s resistance, coupled with the tearing pain in Mike’s side, brought Mike to his knees short of the mark. William’s hands scrabbled at his throat, loosening the belt. As he turned to claw at Mike, Mike snatched up the first tool in reach, a flathead screwdriver, and drove it through the side of William’s left knee, crushing the fragile bone. William howled, veins popping on both sides of his neck, and curled on the floor, coughing and weeping.
It took a few minutes, but Mike forced himself up. Stepping over William, he started for the stairs, his elbow brushing the wound, blood streaming down the outside of his leg. He left a scarlet footprint on the bottom stair. A few steps up, he almost lost consciousness. He pressed his bloodstained knuckles against the wall for balance and then sat.
He whited out for a minute, drifting back to Shady Lane. Charles Dubronski waited in the darkness, thick bully head protruding on his stout neck, except this time he was leering not at Shep but at Mike. Stay the fuck down, runt. Stay down.
Somehow Mike was at the top of the stairs, stumbling into the wreckage of a kitchen, shocked to see daylight streaming through the dusty windows. The smell of grease clogged his throat. Every surface was littered with rotting fruit, pots, and pill bottles – so many pill bottles. But no Dodge. The house felt empty, and the walls threw off an old-lady vibe. Peeling floral wallpaper. Old pictures in rose-colored porcelain frames. A posy of fake flowers, dust caking the gingham bow. Mike tilted into the table, sending sheets of paper airborne and knocking over a stack of old newspapers. His Batphone was on the table, dissected; clearly, given how they’d questioned him, they hadn’t been able to retrieve whatever data they were looking for. He swung his leaden head around, searching for another phone. The charger at the outlet was empty, and Mike remembered Dodge slipping the phone into his pocket. Panting, Mike leaned on the counter, coming face-to-face with a fax machine perched atop a cracked microwave.
It had no telephone function, but the piece of paper in the feeder had Mike’s Social Security number and another of those crazy codes – FST14U. He clutched the page, his fingers leaving bloody smears. There was another page behind, also waiting to fax, with another Social Security number – probably Hank’s – and another code, 6D8BUG. In sofar as he could think anymore, Mike thought, So that’s it.
William’s moans climbed up the stairs, but there was no way he’d make it up and out. As Mike turned to go, he spotted among the mess of papers on the table the big gray envelope Two-Hawks had given him. Its contents had been pulled halfway out, bringing the stack of photocopied ledger pages into view. He told himself to pick it up, and a minute later he listened. He staggered across the corroding tile of the foyer and out into the vivid white day. A vast field of weeds, hilltop wind roaring across his ears, and on the other side of the hilltop, a wrecking yard from which issued a blacksmithlike clanging over the low drone of machinery.
He lost his footing on the porch stairs and had to hug the banister, worried that his intestines were going to spill onto the rust-colored dirt. But then he was balancing cautiously, tightrope-walking across to the laid-open ga
te of the wrecking yard. His throat and nose still burned, salt-tinged wetness stinging the abraded flesh. He spit a mixture of blood and lighter fluid. The weight of the envelope tugging at his left hand reminded him, every instant, of the knife gash in his side.
The walk was interminable, the wind rising to a maritime whistle. Purple spots appeared across the sky. The glare of the sun turned into a five-pointed star. The banging continued – metal on metal – and as the mechanical drone grew louder, Mike pegged it as a big diesel engine of some sort.
He passed into the yard, tasting the rust in the air, and followed the clang clang clang through two rows of crushed cars stacked higher than the fence. He came into a clearing, one arm numb at his side, his legs wobbling.
A giant electromagnetic crane loomed ahead, the enormous circular magnet up on the boom still swinging from recent activity. But the cab was empty, the door ajar. A battered, rusting station wagon waited below the hoist, an ant beneath a raised boot. Its old-fashioned black-and-yellow license plate was barely holding on: FST14U – the code paired with Mike’s Social Security number on the fax back in the kitchen. Staring at the plate, Mike blanked out, the heat rising from the earth through the soles of his shoes. But a fresh clanging broke him from his trance.
He oriented toward the sound, which came from an ancient, top-loading automobile crusher – a cross between a giant Dumpster and a bear trap. A fat cable ran across the dirt, connecting the two machines so that one man could work the yard by himself, operating the crusher from the cab of the crane. In the crusher Dodge’s massive bowed shoulders reared up into view. He was hammering away with his ball peen, trying to dislodge a piece of shrapnel from the metal jaws.
Mike stood frozen, no more than twenty yards away. But given the rattle of the crane’s engine and the pounding of the hammer, Dodge was oblivious. He stopped swinging, evidently satisfied with his progress, and stooped, disappearing from view beneath the high wall of the crusher. A moment later he heaved back into sight, Hank’s wrapped body tilted across a shoulder. He readjusted the corpse, letting it slide down and away. Then he stood with his hands on his hips, catching his breath and regarding his handiwork.
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