by Norman Green
Prior watched Harman come down the hallway the way a cat watches a mouse. “I want to thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” he said.
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
“I guess not,” Prior said. “Step inside. Room 202.”
Harman watched as Prior plucked a semiautomatic out of his pocket. “Is that really necessary?”
Prior didn’t answer, he simply gestured with the pistol. Harman sighed and stepped into the room. It was standard motel issue: queen-size bed, television bolted to a metal bracket that was screwed into the ceiling, a bureau and a couple of chairs. There was something that looked like an automobile battery charger, the kind you bought at Sears, sitting in a corner. The room smelled faintly of vomit. Prior’s second guard stood in a corner of the room, impassive. The bald chauffeur came into the room behind Prior and stood with his back to the door, blocking the only exit. Prior remained behind Harman. “You ever do cocaine?” Prior asked.
“Cocaine?” Harman was surprised at the question. “I suppose I’ve done a lot of things that I regret.” Like coming here, he thought. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Take a look in the bathroom,” Prior told him. “Go on, take a look.”
Harman walked over to the bathroom doorway and looked inside. Emil Barton, the stockbroker from Haworth, fully dressed, lay in the tub. His face was ashen gray, his eyes were open and so was his mouth. He had one sleeve rolled up, and the pale skin of his forearm was rotten with needle tracks. Harman tried to read the expression on the man’s face, but it was impossible to say if Barton’s last emotion had been ecstasy or horror.
“Terrible drug, cocaine,” Prior said. Harman turned and looked at him. Prior was pointing his pistol straight at Harman’s chest. “When they can’t snort enough to get high anymore, they start mainlining it. And the doses get higher and higher, until it kills them. Did you know that Barton was a cokehead?”
Harman shook his head. “No.”
Prior clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Sloppy,” he said. “That doesn’t inspire confidence. You really need to check these things out.”
Harman’s mind worked furiously. He found out who you are, he thought, but he can’t know the rest of the scam. If he did, you’d be dead by now. Hang on to as much of the lie as you can, because it’s probably the only thing that’s keeping you alive. “Not my department,” he said. “Mr. Ahn has other people to handle that sort of thing.”
“Well, he should have known, then,” Prior said. “I’m actually sort of sorry to see the man dead, but I suppose he’s served his purpose.”
“He OD?”
“You might say that. He was kind enough to answer some questions, first,” Prior said. He gestured with his pistol again, directing Harman to one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”
The chair was too low to the ground to get out of quickly. Harman sat there with his feet straight out in front of him. I’m screwed, he thought, no way can I jump fast enough to even try for this guy. Prior’s guard was behind the chair, out of Harman’s line of sight. Well, play along, Harman told himself. It’s your best option. Your only one, right now…“That why you were doing business with the guy? So you could whack him if you felt the need? Then dump him in a joint like this one?”
Prior snickered. “You catch on quick,” he said. “Another drug addict, overdosed in another cheesy motel room. What could be more natural?” He sat down on the bed a short distance away, looked around the room. “The cops will probably figure a hooker did him, shot him up, then walked off with his money and his dope. Hookers and cocaine go together like peanut butter and jelly…. Of course, I won’t be able to use this place anymore. Pity. I’ve had a lot of fun in this room.” His pistol was still pointed at Harman’s chest, and he caught Harman looking at it. “I’m very good with this thing,” he said, “so don’t do anything stupid. If you stay calm, and if your employer, if that’s what he really is, isn’t trying to rip me off, then we’ll all go home happy, soon enough.”
“All of us, except Emil Barton.”
“Emil’s with God, now,” Prior said, and he snickered. “Listen, Barton was beyond happiness. He wasn’t sorry to see the end, believe me. Anyhow, Gregory Ahn’s lawyer gave me the green light to do this.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Completely. I told him I had certain security concerns, and he told me to go ahead and do whatever I needed to do to make myself comfortable. ‘Five million is not a fortune,’ that’s what he said yesterday, or was that you? I suppose it may not be to everyone, but it is a lot of money from my perspective, so I am taking precautions. I needed to find out what Barton knew. Now I need to find out what you know. So tell me, is Gregory Ahn aware of who you really are?”
You have to preserve the illusion of Gregory Ahn’s omnipotence, Harman thought. “Yes.”
“Just out of curiosity, why did you agree to work for him? According to the copy of your rap sheet that I saw, you ought to be set for life.”
“Set for life,” Harman said, his voice bitter. “Yeah, sure, providing I don’t live more than another five years or so.” The man’s in the same position I am, he thought. He’s made it out, he’s sitting on his money, but it’s all he’ll ever have. Is he as bored, here, as I was in Toronto? Or is he running low? Is he watching those numbers come back lower and lower with every bank statement? Is he doing the arithmetic, figuring how long it will be before he has to start wondering how he’s going to hang on to his new life? “Do you know how much was left, by the time I got to a safe harbor? Not enough, my friend. Not nearly enough. So when Gregory Ahn told me he could double it in three years, I listened. You bet your ass I listened.”
“So? Is he doing it? How good is he?”
Harman thrust his chin out. “At whatever you used to be, how good were you?”
“At the top of my game, there was nobody even close to me.” Prior’s lips parted. That’s not a smile, Harman thought. He’s just showing his teeth. “I am the best interrogator this continent has produced in a century.”
“Fine,” Harman said. “That’s how good Ahn is. Maybe better.”
“You know, it’s a funny thing,” Prior said. “Everyone thinks that the most effective tool in my business is torture. Castration, disembowelment, the imaginative application of pain. My personal favorite is shock therapy. But as much fun as those things can be, we both know there are other things that are stronger, don’t we?”
“Yeah, we do.”
“What am I talking about, Nathan? You don’t mind if I use your real name, do you?”
“We’re talking about my sister.”
“Exactly. Very good, Nathan. I imagine she would miss you a lot.”
“Hard to tell.”
“I’d hate for anything untoward to happen to her,” Prior said. “Really. Every man draws the line in a different place. I myself never truly harmed an innocent person unless there was an important reason for it. Such as my own safety, or my financial well-being. How old is she?”
“She’s twenty-eight, chronologically.”
“And about six, mentally? That’s what I was told. Now, please believe me, Nathan. I wish nothing but a long and uneventful life for your sister.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “Dwayne, behind you, there, is a horse of a different color. Aren’t you, Dwayne?” Harman did not turn to look at the guard, and the guard did not answer. “Dwayne has some peculiar appetites. It’s probably not his fault. I imagine he was born that way.” Prior turned and glanced at his other guard, the bald chauffeur. “We indulge Dwayne from time to time, don’t we?” The chauffeur said nothing, either, he just smiled. “Tiresome, though,” Prior said, turning back to face Harman. “And if your sister did survive, she’d never be the same. Do you get the picture, Nathan?”
You’d better make sure I never get loose, Harman thought. It was then that he realized that he was dead. This guy is never going to let me walk, he told himself. The best
outcome he could hope for was that his sister would be left alone. Prior stepped up closer and pointed the gun at Harman’s forehead. “Please be very still,” he said. “Dwayne is going to secure you to the chair.”
Harman sensed the other man behind him. Dwayne’s head came into view as he knelt down next to the chair. He had a handful of plastic cable ties. They had been invented for electricians to fasten bundles of wires together, but they made great handcuffs. Harman watched as Dwayne made liberal use of them to fasten his forearms to the chair, first on one side and then the other. Once that was done, he repeated the process, securing Harman’s legs to the chair legs. Prior relaxed, then, tossed his pistol onto the bed. “Tip him back,” he said. Harman felt his chair lean backward, raising his feet off the floor, and Prior removed Harman’s shoes and socks. “Put him back down.” He walked over and fetched the battery charger, if that’s what it was, from the corner of the room. Harman could see the driver, over by the door, a wide smile on his face.
“You may think I’m doing this strictly for my own enjoyment,” Prior said, “but I’m not. Dwayne, take a sheet off that bed and wrap it around his head. Make it tight.” A few minutes later, Harman could not hear, see, or speak, he could barely breathe. He felt something bite into the flesh of his right foot and hang on. Seconds later, the same thing happened to his left. Then his whole body convulsed as electricity coursed through his body, he bit down hard on the cloth covering his face and strained against his bonds. He had never felt anything like it in his life, the sensation was halfway between being shaken violently from his feet and being thrown into a hot frying pan. It stopped, finally, and he tried to catch his breath, tried to talk around the mouthful of bedsheet, tried to tell Prior to stop, but he couldn’t manage any of that. The current hit him again, and in spite of himself he screamed into the muffling cloth, strained against the cable ties until he was sure he’d tear his muscles loose from the bone. It stopped again, and more to himself than out of any hope Prior would hear him, he mumbled into the sheet. “Ask me something,” he said. “Ask me anything.” That didn’t happen, though, Prior gave it to him again, and again after that. Finally, merciful darkness descended, and he lost consciousness.
The sheet was gone when he came to, but the machine was still clipped to his feet. Prior was sitting on the bed, he had the slide jacked back on his pistol, the clip removed, and he was peering at the inner workings. He glanced up at Harman. “Back with us, I see.” He reassembled the gun and laid it aside. “Are you convinced of how serious I am?”
“Completely.” Harman could barely get the word out.
“Good. That’s good. You should know I took it easy on you. With the leads fastened to your feet, you don’t really get the full effect, but I didn’t want to worry about stopping your heart. It happens sometimes, if you use the hands instead. The current goes right through your chest that way.”
“Thanks.” Harman could not have said whether he was serious or not.
“I just want you to understand, it can get much, much worse. Now I’m going to ask some questions, and you will want to be forthright with me. This meeting I am going to this afternoon, carrying my five million like a sap, am I going to be held up on my way there? Is this a setup?”
I probably can’t save myself, Harman thought. But Prior seems to want this illusion of Gregory Ahn to be real, and the longer I can keep the lie alive, the longer I might survive, and if I’m alive, anything can happen. Give Fat Tommy and Stoney a shot at this guy, he thought. It’s the best you can do…. “No,” he said
“Who is the target, then?”
“Anthony Bonanno. XRC Technologies.”
“You disappoint me,” Prior said. “I’d appreciate it if you told me the truth. It will be better for both of us, truly.” He gestured at the bathroom with his pistol. “I didn’t get much time with our friend, in there. One little jolt and he was screaming like a girl. I feel like I got cheated. I wonder if the man’s addiction may have made his nerve endings more sensitive….” He looked back at Harman. “Now imagine how much worse it would feel to your sister, who is really just a child. No one heard Barton squalling. They didn’t hear you, either. They won’t hear your sister. Think about what you’re risking.” He leaned in close, dropped his voice. “I know you can take it. I respect that. But your sister can’t. Don’t make me hurt her, too.”
Harman sighed. “No need for that.”
“That’s good, be sensible. Who’s the target?”
“XRC, for real.”
“Look, don’t try my patience,” Prior said harshly. He stared intently at Harman. “If you continue to lie to me, Nathan, I’ll bring your sister down here, and I’ll give her to Dwayne. And I’ll force you to watch. When we’re done, I’ll kill you and I’ll put your sister out on the street. Just think about the kind of life she’ll have. Will you think about that?” Prior sounded like he were the one in pain, and Harman the tormentor. “Please, Nathan. Now, I had XRC checked out. They’re a nothing company, they’re already on the balls of their ass, they aren’t worth shit. Tell me the real target, and tell me right now.”
“Fire your researcher,” Harman said calmly. His outward demeanor belied his inner turmoil. “You are mostly right about XRC, but they do have one thing worth taking. Something very valuable…” He told Prior the story of XRC’s fictional breakthrough. Prior saw the potential immediately.
“Wow,” he said. He relaxed, leaned back, and lost some of his intensity.
Got pretty close to the edge this time, haven’t you, Harman thought.
“Wow,” Prior said again. “All right. Yeah. Goddam. Is that why Ahn needs my five million?”
“Gregory Ahn does not need your money. Gregory Ahn is going to do this whether you decide to invest with him or not.”
Prior considered that. “Ah. Well, that’s good to hear, believe it or not.” He stood up. “I’m afraid you’re going to be sitting there for a while. Just until I return safely from my meeting with Ahn and his sot of a lawyer.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “I’m sorry, but you look too capable for my taste, and I don’t want to have to worry about you. Tie the sheet around him again, Dwayne, but give him room enough to breathe. And you leave him alone while I’m gone. Do you hear me, Dwayne? Don’t you touch him until I get back.”
“You wasa get a message from Jack this morning?”
Stoney looked at Fat Tommy with a blank expression on his face. “A message? Oh, on voice mail. I haven’t checked. Nobody leaves me messages.”
“When I went to his motel this morning,” Tommy said, “he wasa no there. He wasa no call me, either. Check and see, maybe he say something to you onna machine.”
“Shit.” Stoney took out his phone and stood there staring at it. “I’m not even sure I remember the code for this piece of shit.” It took him a couple of minutes, but he finally got it. “No,” he said, holding the phone to his ear. “No new messages.”
“Call his cell,” Tommy said. “See if he’sa pick up.”
Stoney tried it. “No answer. You want me to leave a message for him?”
“No.”
“Do you think he bailed? Where’s that leave us?”
“Still on,” Tommy said. “Jack wasa start to get homesick. Go home, I tolla him, you wanna go, go ahead. No hard feeling. But you wanna know the truth, I am surprise he went.”
“Maybe the two of you got your wires crossed,” Stoney said. “He probably took a car service to the airport. He might be flying home right now.”
Georgie Cho had been standing in the McMansion kitchen, watching Tuco and Marisa through the window, but he managed to focus in on the conversation. “Wait a minute,” he said. “That doesn’t sound right. If he was going to leave, wouldn’t he say that? He’d have said something to somebody.”
“No necessary,” Tommy said. “I wasa talk to him last night, he wasa say he maybe gonna go home. Anyhow, we no need Jack, really. We can just go ahead anyhow. All set up, no reason to hold back n
ow. We don’ gonna walk away from this yet. Just, you know, take extra care.”
“Maybe he did take off,” Stoney said. “Or maybe Prior caught on to him. And if that’s the call, Prior will work on him until he knows what’s going on, in which case we’ll never hear from Prior again. He’ll lock his diamonds away and we’ll have to go to plan B. But in the meantime, if Prior shows up at Wartensky’s, then we can safely assume that Jack went home. Okay?” He looked around, saw general agreement in their faces.
“Now, Georgie, when we go into this meeting with Prior, you’re already suspicious. When you meet Prior, you act like a new dog is walking up your front steps, because that’s what he’ll act like. The two of you are gonna do this little dance until you’ve established that you have the upper hand. Prior won’t be happy with that, and he’ll push back, so you let him get under your skin for, say, ten minutes or so, and then you go off on him. Be careful not to overdo it, though. You understand? You have to react the way Gregory Ahn really would, but you don’t want to mess up our play.”