Cooch

by Robert Cook

  Wide-eyed, the young man began to scream. “Help me, somebody help me!”

  The young lady stirred and opened her eyes, still groggy. She looked around the small room, and then at the piled assortment on the table. She lifted her eyes and saw Alex looming above her, his balaclava making him seem ominous and impersonal. She also began to scream.

  Alex walked back to his corner and sat down, waiting and looking at them in turn. When they began to become hoarse, he stood again and walked to them. They quieted and watched him apprehensively. He walked to the woman and fondled her breast, tracing the love bite.

  “Let her alone, you filthy pig!” the young man screamed.

  Alex turned to him as if surprised. “Yes, of course. I was just curious. I have no interest in young women—or any women, for that matter,” he said with a strong Hispanic accent.

  He walked slowly to the young man and tucked a finger under his chin, tickling it. “But I like boys. And what is your name, my pretty one?”

  “His name is Brian, and mine is Kelly. What do you want?” the girl asked in a quavering voice.

  Alex could see Brian’s face go slack with fear and apprehension. His mouth worked, but no sound emerged.

  Alex reached under the man’s armpits and probed, then squeezed one tendon over another abruptly. The young man threw his head back in pain and screamed repeatedly, while his girlfriend watched, slack-jawed. Alex walked back to his corner and sat down, waiting. After several minutes, the screaming slowed, then fell to a whimper, as the tendons finally slid back into place. Sweat poured from Brian’s face onto his chest, and his eyes were wide with fear.

  “You have both been given to me as playthings by my leaders. They would like you to provide a service for them.” He looked at Brian. “They want you to convince your brother that he should cooperate with them—and quickly. I understand they have had a disagreement about this matter. I am to convince you to go to your brother and persuade him to cooperate. If you do, you are to be released with a generous amount of the coca as a reward. I will be given a small payment.”

  “Good luck! I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire,” the young man snarled.

  Alex allowed his voice to light up. “Good, good! If you don’t do what they want, or if you fail, you two belong to me for as long as you last!” He giggled in a high-pitched voice. “I had the last two for almost three weeks before they died. I had such a wonderful time! It was selfish of them to die; I think perhaps I should have sold the girl instead. It was probably the blood loss that killed them, but I think I know how to keep that from happening this time. You two will be with me for a month, perhaps even two!”

  Alex undressed quickly, nude except for his balaclava, putting his clothes in the corner. He turned and walked between the captives. Their eyes went to his massive, muscled upper body, and then fell to his groin. He did some bodybuilding poses for them and then fondled his penis, whirling it like a limp rope in front of them until it began to swell. He giggled in a high-pitched voice.

  “I am beautiful, eh, my sweet? All the boys love me!” he said to Brian. “I think you will see and feel much of my body before we are done. Maybe you would like a little love with me now?”

  “Fuck you!” Brian shouted, his face chalk white and showing his terror.

  “Ah no, my little paloma, fuck you! Over and over and over again!” Alex waved his penis in front of Brian’s face, then danced a little step, turning to the girl.

  “He is not cooperating!” Alex said to her. “You must talk to him. You must convince him that my love for him is pure! I must have him. I think he is a virgin. I love virgins.”

  She looked at him, eyes wide. “How would I do that?”

  Alex grabbed the roll of duct tape and threw it furiously against the wall. “Does he love you?” he demanded.

  She was silent, nodding.

  “Perhaps if I were to use you as a boy? It would not be so much fun for me, but I could close my eyes and pretend. It would take a long time for me to be satisfied with you, and you would feel pain, but only for a short time if you have had a few men back there. He is so beautiful.” Alex sulked a little. “I want him to want me.”

  “God, Brian! Do something! Do whatever he wants!” she wailed as she stared at his groin, imagining.

  “Wait, wait!” Alex said. “I will show you a wonderful trick.” He walked to the table and picked up the can of tennis balls and opened it, the vacuum releasing with a hiss. He turned to them with one tennis ball in each hand. “Watch!” Cuchulain said, as he bounced the tennis balls lightly in his hands. “Think of us as lovers, Brian. Our first time, but you are too much like a man and not enough like a boy. It interferes with my happiness, so I reach down to fondle your manhood and pop!” Alex squeezed both tennis balls sharply, and they exploded with a loud noise, showering Brian with yellow rubber shards.

  Alex gave a loud, high-pitched giggle and began to dance around the room. He snatched the oranges from the table, and exploded them over Kelly’s nude body with a squeeze, then grabbed the apples and did the same to Brian.

  “Squeeze, squeeze, pop, pop!” Alex giggled as he danced. “You’re on the bottom and I’m on top.”

  “Jesus!” Brian whispered, finding the man’s insanity to be numbingly terrifying.

  “So, can we have a little love together now, my sweet?” Alex cooed. “You will be happy after the pain has gone.”

  “Look, if I can get my brother to do what you want, will you let us go?” Brian said quickly, consumed in a panic.

  Alex stamped his foot. “It is not fair! You should want me now, and then do what my leaders want! I must have you. I must have you now!”

  Kelly cried out, suddenly hopeful. “You said your bosses told you to get Brian to have his brother do something for them, to cooperate with them. If he’s able to do that, you have to let us go!” Alex slumped his shoulders a little and whined, “I don’t see why you can’t do what I want and what my leaders want as well.”

  Brian’s face brightened with hope. “I can do it! I can get my brother to cooperate with your leaders! Just give me a chance. Oh, Jesus, just give me a chance.”

  “This gives me such great sadness, my sweet. You are making a mistake. We could have been so happy together, at least for a while.” Alex walked to the corner, picked up his clothes, and dressed. He then walked to the table and picked a boning knife from the block. He sat down in front of Brian, and then reached under the chair and grasped Brian’s penis and testicles in his hand, pulling them down a little and holding the boning knife up with the other. “Perhaps it would be better for you without these, or maybe I should just give them a nice squeeze, like the oranges, just to remind you that I still have Kelly?”

  “No!” Brian screamed.

  Alex stood again and looked at Brian. “I will release you, but I will keep the woman. If you go to the police, if you betray me, all of my friends and I will use this woman badly before I kill her, and then we will find you, I promise. My leaders will be unhappy, and you have perhaps heard that we Colombians will follow someone to the ends of the earth to avenge a betrayal. I will be the avenger of that betrayal, if it takes a week, a month, or a year to find you. You will suffer. I will take your manhood and make you my woman. Then when I tire of you, I will kill you slowly.”

  “You won’t touch her if I get my brother to help you?” Brian asked desperately.

  With a sigh, Alex said softly, “It is not permitted. My leaders are businessmen and men of their word. Unfortunately, it is not my decision.”

  Alex walked to his bag and brought out a cellular telephone and a piece of paper.

  “I will release you now to dress yourself,” he said. “When you are dressed, I will blindfold you and take you back to your car at the bar where I first met you, and you will be released. You will contact your brother, and within twelve hours you will contact me on my telephone, using this number, advising me of your success. You will call only at five minutes before t
he hour until five minutes after, so the authorities cannot find my location and interfere with the beginnings of my revenge on you, if you fail me.”

  He held the piece of paper in the air, then put it into Brian’s trouser pocket. He picked up the boning knife and cut the duct tape holding Brian to the chair, and waited while Brian dressed frantically.

  “Please, Brian, if you love me, don’t fuck this up!” Kelly wailed.

  Early-morning traffic was light as Alex drove back to the deserted bar. He loaded Brian, still blindfolded, into the driver’s side of their car, then said, “Do not move for five minutes to look at me or my car. It is stolen, in any case. When I get your call, I will release the woman where she can get to a phone. Do not fail me, and do not betray me.”

  Alex moved quickly to the Lincoln and drove off, watching his mirror to see if Brian, or anyone else, followed. There was no one.

  A few minutes later, he parked down the street from the Stanford Court and resumed his slow, nearly painful walk into the lobby and up the stairs. He entered his room and quickly undressed, removed his makeup, and showered, then fell into bed. He lay there for several hours, trying to clear his mind and achieve a state of relaxation. It proved impossible.

  Palo Alto,

  California

  AT seven, he rose and pulled from his bag his workout clothes and a small fanny pack to hold the phone. He dressed quickly in an outfit that included a Forty-Niners baseball cap and large mirrored sunglasses. He walked from the hotel and began to run. At ten until eight, he turned into the Stanford University campus and ran toward the bookstore, slowing to a jog and then a walk as he neared it. There were a few joggers out, and several students hurrying to their eight o’clock classes. A man in a Stanford sweatshirt with a blue collar peeking from it sat on a bench nearby, reading a copy of Foreign Affairs. Alex walked toward him, pulling the hotel towel from around his neck and wiping the sweat from his face. As he passed the man, he turned suddenly and said, “Hey, Izzy. How are you?” The man looked startled for a second, then stood and said, “Cameron! I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Let’s walk and talk for a while,” Alex said, still moving.

  Izzy hurried to catch up, and then fell into step beside him.

  Cuchulain looked around for any listeners, then said, “I’ll make this quick. The Colombians are deep into a national security matter, and we’re going to take a few of them out. We need you to take credit for breaking up the ring, and to roll up the lower-level managers and dealers, all at once. Tell them they have been deserted by their superiors. When no lawyers show up, and I suspect they won’t, they’ll start to believe you, and you can probably turn a few.

  “We may be able to find their big stash, and let you know if they have turned any of your boys,” he continued. “I’ll let you know of any extras like that, and you can add them to your glory. Give me a number, and I’ll try to give you three or four hours notice to get your team in place, then I’ll let you know when to execute.”

  “Jesus Christ! Who the hell do you think you are?” Izzy exploded. “I think I’m going to have a casual meet with a fellow fed to find out why you’re playing in my sandbox, and you start giving me orders! I need to know who you are, what the fuck you think you’re doing, who authorized you to be here, and most importantly, exactly what the hell is going on.”

  Cuchulain nodded, then shrugged. “It’s the usual national security bullshit. Everything is compartmentalized and you don’t have the proverbial ‘need to know.’ As a fellow jarhead, I’ll give it to you straight. The dopers are into some heavy national security stuff and looking as if they want to get in even deeper, just for the money. If you push us too hard, you’ll probably end up as the DEA training officer liaison in Toule, Greenland. If you just treat me as an information source, you could get a career-boosting, front-page mega bust out of this. In either case, you have complete deniability and no exposure.

  “This meeting never happened, and this whole thing will be done in a week or less,” he went on. “The bonus for you is that the bad-guy leadership will be toast, and your job will be one hell of a lot easier if we pull it off.”

  “What’s the catch?” Izzy said.

  “The catch is that we never had this meeting, and you know nothing about me or anything of the national security aspect that I mentioned. Whatever happens, happens. You don’t tell your boss, you don’t tell your wife, you don’t tell anyone. You take all the glory and forget all about us forevermore, because it’s best for our country that way. We vanish.”

  Izzy shrugged. “It’s not clear to me you can do anything that we can’t, but I’ll buy the national security thing. God knows I heard it often enough in the corps. Besides, my boss told me that you guys seem to have unbelievable political clout, and that I should watch my ass with you.”

  “It all will be clear in a few days. I suspect you’ll also understand why we don’t want any publicity.” Alex stopped and turned to Izzy. “How about that phone number?”

  Izzy pulled a business card from his pocket and wrote a phone number on it. “It’s my private cell. Someone is on it twenty-four hours.” He handed it to Cuchulain, who glanced at the card, then nodded, not taking it.

  “See you around, Izzy,” Cuchulain said as he turned and jogged away.

  Izzy watched Alex as he increased his speed to a run, then shook his head and walked toward the parking lot. He had some planning to do.

  A block from the Stanford Court, Alex slowed and stopped at a pay phone.

  “Mac.”

  “Izzy’s on board. Is Brooks here with the goodies?”

  Mac gave him a phone number. “He’s waiting, and has a set of fairy-tale plans.”

  “Good. I’ll call him now. Our pigeon is off and running, and his soul mate is still stashed. Get her out if things turn to shit. She can see and the lights are on. She’s a junkie. If you can get a babysitter in with her, it would be good.”

  “Done. We provided a good set of fake chips and plans for the kid to pick up. Stay in touch.” Mac hung up.

  Alex made contact with Elliot and arranged to meet him at the hotel in an hour, then jogged back, just another fitness buff out for some exercise before work.

  He had showered and dressed when the knock came. When he saw Elliot through the security viewer, he opened the door and stepped aside. Elliot was dressed in the quintessential preppie outfit: gray wool slacks, a blue, button-down cotton shirt, striped tie, blue blazer, and Bass Weejuns. No socks. He carried a Land’s End canvas briefcase and a set of rolled plans tucked under his arm. He could have easily passed as the architect of choice for the rich and famous.

  They shook hands quickly, and slapped shoulders with the other hand, like brothers.

  Elliot walked to the bed and spread the plans for the Bertram fishing yacht across it. “The boat is pretty much standard, from what I’ve learned from its interior-decoration people. I walked by it. Believe it or not, there’s not even a guard on board!”

  They spent several hours going over the plans and making decisions, Alex drawing on the plans from time to time. They were interrupted only once by a call to Alex’s cell phone. He looked at his watch. Five before the hour. He picked it up from the dresser and said, “Si, my pretty one. Is it done?”

  Brian’s voice sounded weak. “Yeah, he said he would get what they want to them today after work. We want ten full pounds as the reward. Let Kelly go, now!”

  “I am so disappointed! But perhaps you are lying to me, and I will come for you later. The reward of ten pounds will not be a problem, but of course I cannot release the woman until my leaders tell me that your brother has completed your end of the bargain. I am to talk to them early this evening. If all is well, I will release her then. Call me at nine o’clock this evening, not before. If I am not occupied with my leaders, I will answer. Otherwise, call me once each hour.” Alex disconnected.

  “Jeez, Alex,” Elliot said. “You almost scare me. You think he’s going
to come through?”

  “Hell, Brooks, I scare myself! It’s disgusting to be into that mind-set, but I think he’ll come through. I have this weird Paco shit down so well that I can guess when it’s going to work.”

  Elliot stood and stretched his back. “I think we know what we have to do, and I think I understand your placements. Let’s do it right now, in broad daylight. I have some clothes. We’ll both carry the goodies in and I’ll go on board to get things ready while you keep watch, then you go in to place the fuses and goodies while I watch. Jerome has a good cover spot if it gets nasty. I’ll come back in to put it all back.”

  Alex laughed and shook his head. “You always did have big balls, Brooks. I guess I’m more alert now than I will be tonight, so let’s get to it. I’m going to need you to cover me tonight, anyhow.”

  They walked down the stairs to the street, and got into a gray Ford panel truck. They drove to a dock near the San Francisco airport. Wearing gray coveralls and official-looking badges hanging from clips on the pockets, they walked past the office of the marina and down a dock to the yacht named Snow White. Alex and Elliot each carried a heavy satchel. When they reached the boat, they gently laid the satchels on the dock. Elliot jumped on the stern deck and walked to the cabin door. He pulled a slim black nylon parcel from his pocket and bent over the door for a second, then opened it and went below.

  Alex walked fifty yards or so, then bent over the piling next to an abandoned sailboat and pretended to be engaged in his work. He watched the entrance to the dock as he listened to the whine of a power drill removing the screws holding Snow White’s lower deck in place. Fifty minutes later, he saw Elliot carry one satchel inside, then the other. Another thirty minutes went by, then Elliot came out of the boat and walked to Alex.