Inside Out

by John Ramsey Miller

  “Finch doesn't know about the lodge—unless he's a psychic.”

  Hank dialed Chet while Winter folded the satellite picture and pushed it between the console and seat.

  After Hank listened to Chet, he ended the call. “Chet's highway patrol captain has set up ‘license check' roadblocks east and west of us to seal River Road. He has EMS standing by and he's less than an hour away depending on how long it takes the chopper to gas up and get there.”

  “They don't keep them fueled?”

  “The first chopper had a problem. The alternative is for them to drive in, and they'd be at least that long coming by road.”

  “Chopper's crucial for surprise,” Winter said. “Let's go.”

  Winter and Hank got out. They opened the rear end for the shotgun and Winter's quilt-lined, water-resistant jacket. Both men wore dark baseball caps for the limited rain protection they offered. They closed the rear and vacated the Jeep, carrying their long guns like hunters.

  They walked on the tire depressions to avoid the undergrowth, moving at a brisk clip. The intensity of light grew as they approached the edge of the woods where the marshland was open beyond the drainage canal. They paused where the woods stopped some fifty feet from the water. Out beyond the algae-covered canal lay the marsh—a tortured, nightmarish wasteland where solitary trees stood on islands, blackened and decaying.

  “Bingo,” Hank whispered.

  Fresh tire impressions led up to, and beyond, a double gate in the ten-foot-tall hurricane fence. There was a small sign wired to links that read, NO TRESPASSING.

  The gate was closed, but the heavy chain and padlock meant that they would have to climb the fence or get into the canal to get to Manelli's place.

  Winter saw no evidence of guards. “I'll lead over the gate while you cover me,” Winter whispered. “Hand signals only from now on.”

  Hank nodded his agreement.

  As Winter approached the gate, he heard a snap and turned to find himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun held by a young bald man wearing a camouflage suit that had allowed him to blend with the foliage. The fellow couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty years old. At the sound of a whistle behind him, Winter turned his head slowly to see another man aiming his shotgun at Hank's head. The men's pump guns were painted in olive-and-gray camouflage to match the hunting outfits.

  The bald man jerked up his gun's barrel, obviously telling them to put their hands up.

  “You boys out duck hunting?” Hank asked. “You know, son, you could be Rudolph Valentino's greatest grandson. Your buddy over there looks kind of like a young Yul Brynner. Actor from The King and I?” He mumbled, “Before your time, I suppose.”

  Yul was oblivious to the raindrops splashing against his head. His eyes were like cherry pits. His mud-slathered loafers looked ridiculous with his hunting outfit.

  The young man Hank had called Valentino looked older than his partner. His coat's hood was up but pushed back so his peripheral vision wasn't hampered. He barked a phrase in Italian and, using his gun, also motioned for them to raise their hands.

  “Want my hands up?” Hank raised his hands slowly. “Up?”

  “Sì, make all hand op. You op hand, bastardo!”

  Valentino pressed his shotgun's barrel under Hank's chin while he took the AR-15 carbine from Hank and slung it over his shoulder. As deftly as a pickpocket, he unzipped and reached into Hank's coat, and one by one, extracted the .45 Colt auto, handcuffs, the cell phone, and Hank's badge case, putting each object into his own coat's pocket. After Valentino patted Hank down to his cowboy boots, Yul relieved Winter of his shotgun, his SIG, his cuffs and the Walther PP. While Yul was kneeling to check Winter's pant legs for weapons, Winter looked down through the open V of the bulky camouflage coat and spotted the grip of a semiautomatic handgun tucked inside Yul's belt.

  As the guards marched them toward the gate, Valentino put two fingers against his teeth and emitted an earsplitting whistle. A third man, holding a high-powered semiautomatic deer rifle, strode through the tall grass from the direction of Sam's lodge. He was well over six feet tall and his black hair, glistening with raindrops, hung to his wide shoulders. Winter thought maybe it was his long narrow nose that made the big man's eyes seem too close together.

  “Big boy,” Hank said.

  “Silenzio!” Valentino snapped. He poked the barrel of his shotgun so hard into Winter's back that only the vest kept the jab from drawing blood.

  “Spiro,” Valentino said, announcing the giant.

  Spiro swung open the gate and stood glaring as the guards directed their captives through.

  “This is all private property,” Spiro said. He pulled the heavy chain around to join the center poles, then closed the large padlock.

  “Finally somebody speaks English,” Hank said. “Where I come from, it's rude to hold people at gunpoint.”

  “Where these guys come from, it's just like a handshake.”

  “Polizia,” Yul said.

  “Of course they're cops,” Spiro said sarcastically. “Who the fuck else would be stupid enough to come back here?”

  The guards handed Spiro the badge cases and he inspected them in turn. “Deputy United States Marshal Trammel . . . and Deputy Winter Jay Massey.” Spiro pocketed the badges, pulled a red cell phone from his pocket, and dialed. All he said was “Just two marshals.”

  Winter figured Valentino had been posted back alongside the logging road and followed them on foot to where Yul was waiting. Winter didn't miss the irony that he and Hank, like Archer's FBI earlier, hadn't bothered to watch behind them.

  Winter had decided to let Hank do the talking because it would serve to keep their attention focused more on his partner, leaving Winter to look for an opportunity to turn the tables. Worst case, Chet would have to come in blind and rescue them along with Sean Devlin. Winter was thinking that when Chet's men hit the ground, maybe he and Hank could still help them from inside. It was nice to know that if Manelli or his people tried to leave the lodge, the Highway Patrol would be there waiting.

  “You let us walk back through that gate and we'll forget the scatterguns in our faces. You can still stop this short of kidnapping federal law enforcement officers.”

  “Where's their bracelets?” Spiro asked. When the guards didn't respond, Spiro said, “Handcuffs.”

  Valentino said, “Handcuffs! Sì, handcuffs!” Valentino and then Yul handed the cuffs to the giant, reluctantly. Winter knew that with the three-foot width between Spiro's shoulders, it would have taken both pairs connected together to join Spiro's overlarge wrists behind his back.

  “Hands behind your backs.” Spiro cuffed the deputies with their own equipment. He unslung his rifle and placed it in the crook of his left arm. “These boys'll shoot you in the heads if you try anything. I'm probably not as good a shot as them, but this thirty-ought-six will go straight through both sides of those puny vests you're wearing.”

  Winter walked along the road toward the lodge, wondering how much worse things could get before Chet showed up—hoping he wouldn't find out.

  99

  The majority of Manelli's boathouse had been constructed on piles so it extended out over the canal. Although rain battered the boat shed's tin roof, once the door closed behind them, there was no sound from outside. A sudden chill filled Winter's hollow stomach.

  “You sit down here, old man,” Spiro told Hank. Pointing his finger in Winter's face then at the floor, he told him, “You there.” Hank and Winter sat on the plywood floor six feet from each other. Winter kept his head down, but he had seen what he needed.

  The boat shed's interior was one open space, thirty feet deep by twenty wide. A steel rack on the wall to Winter's right held four flat-bottom, one-man pirogues—stable marsh boats that, when loaded, needed only three or four inches of water to float. He and Hank faced an empty table and a workbench standing against the west wall. A propane torch, extra bottles of gas, a chain saw, a large wooden vise, pliers, an
ice pick, a thin-bladed filet knife, a pair of limb-pruning loppers, a rubber mallet, and an old meat cleaver were neatly placed on its surface like surgical instruments in an operating room.

  Behind them, a hinged four-by-eight-foot section of floor near the eastern wall had been opened. A steel cable from a motorized hoist attached to a ceiling beam disappeared into the rectangle of dark water. The guards took turns putting all of Hank and Winter's equipment on the sturdy table standing against the wall alongside the workbench. The young guards stared silently at their captives, guns ready, fingers on the triggers.

  “Hey, Fabio!” Hank said.

  Spiro frowned at the name. “Save it. Mr. Russo will be here in a minute.” He slipped off his camouflage coat and laid it on the workbench.

  “Silenzio!” Valentino commanded.

  The door opened and Johnny Russo entered, water dripping from his trench coat. He merely glanced down at the deputies as he crossed to the table. He lifted Hank's cell phone, pressed a button, read the number from the display, and turned it off. He looked at the weapons, using the flat of his index fingernail, he flipped open one of the badge cases.

  Russo said, “What you fellows up to, besides trespassing?”

  “We were checking out the place next door,” Hank said.

  “The last number you called—who was it to?”

  “I ordered pizza,” Hank said. “They should be delivering it shortly and we can all share it.”

  “Next smart-ass shit to come out your face is gonna cost you some teeth, old man.”

  “What's this old man crap. I'm only fifty-seven.”

  Russo's eyes flashed his impatience and he snapped his fingers loudly in warning.

  “Local deputy,” Hank said. “For directions.”

  “How'd you know about this place?”

  “An assistant attorney general just said that some judge was overheard talking about this place and how Manelli hunts ducks here. We're scouting because the attorney general is thinking about planting some listening gear in those blinds in time for duck season. He was thinking that Manelli—”

  “Mr. Manelli to you,” Russo snarled, his face reddening.

  “That Mr. Manelli might talk business while he was in a duck blind.”

  “The FBI didn't send you?”

  “Why would the FBI tell us anything? We're glorified errand boys doing whatever the judges can dream up or nobody else wants to do; like come out in shit like this and be bullied by people like you. Look, Mr. Rosco, we didn't know anybody was back here today.”

  “Mr. Manelli is retired from anything any prosecutor would be interested in,” Russo replied, oblivious to the slight.

  “I must have missed the announcement in the Mafia Gazette. I don't give a bird fart about Mr. Manelli, you, or your gun boys.”

  Russo turned to Winter. “The old guy telling the truth, fellow?”

  Winter nodded. He didn't believe Russo would do anything to them given the fact that he didn't know who else was around. The duck blind story seemed reasonable enough.

  “Let us go and we'll get off Mr. Manelli's land,” Hank told Russo.

  Russo laughed expansively. “I just bet you would.”

  “Let me talk to him,” Hank said.

  “Tell you what I will do. I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time,” Russo started, obviously enjoying himself, “there were two dumb-ass deputies who, just after they called their local deputy pal, drove right off into the canal. The older man was driving—bad eyes, no headlights, and the rain and all—and he panicked when the water rose so they both drowned in their car, screaming like women.”

  Hank said, “We swim real good.”

  “If you can swim out of this, you're way past good.”

  “Listen, you can't be so stupid you think you can just kill federal officers,” Hank said. “You, Mr. Manelli, and these other freaks will be on death row before you can kiss a cat's ass.”

  “It's been a rotten week for you marshals,” he said smiling maliciously. “I doubt two more dead feds will make much difference.”

  “Mr. Manelli is not going to like it when he takes a fall for your knee-jerk decision,” Hank said.

  Russo replied, “I doubt he'll give it any thought. Nobody is ever going to know I was here today.”

  Winter turned his head to watch Russo cross to the winch and grab the dangling command bar. When he pressed the up button, the spool turned and a large moss-encrusted steel cage emerged from the water. Dark brown crabs fell through the grid and rained back into the water, leaving behind an enormous bone with quills of shredded tissue standing from it.

  We are not going to die here. We will find Sean alive, and this sadistic bastard and Manelli will pay for everything they have done, Winter told himself.

  Russo unlatched and threw open the top of the cage, wiping his hands together to dry them. “Give them ten minutes each, Spiro. Then get these young men to help you put them in their car and drive it into the canal on the other side of the fence. Then you come back to the lodge.”

  “Sure,” Spiro said. “It'll take a while to lug them back to their car.”

  Russo stared at the cage, thinking.

  “After you drown them, go get their fucking car and bring it to the canal. Then put them in and submarine it.” Russo inclined his head toward the two guards. “On second thought, just drown the fuckers and throw 'em off into the canal. I mean, who gives a shit.”

  “Sure, okay,” Spiro said, nodding slowly. “I get it.”

  “Do it, then!” Russo snapped. “Then come back to the lodge.”

  Russo started for the door. “Gotta run.” Waving his hands and snapping his fingers, he said something to Yul in Italian. The guards listened intently, waited for him to finish and nodded. “Sì,” Yul told him.

  “Addio,” Russo said, saluting the young guard like a soldier.

  After he left, Yul turned to Valentino and said “La testa della scimmia.” Valentino snickered.

  Winter watched over his shoulder as Spiro leaned his high-powered rifle against the wall near the winch.

  Hank winked at Winter before he shifted so he was facing Spiro.

  Spiro stared at Hank, then raised his hands high over his head, made fists, and brought his arms, like bird's wings, down slowly until his fists were knuckle to knuckle. His red T-shirt looked like it was painted on his torso. As he repeated the motion with his arms, his muscles seemed to inflate and the tendons in his neck stood out like steel wires. His face trembled and his eyes looked as though they might fly from their sockets. The guards exchanged looks, fighting back laughter.

  Valentino told Yul something else in Italian and they both snickered.

  “Let's get this over with,” Spiro said, crossing to Winter.

  “You don't speak Italian? Kind of like Spanish, especially the insults,” Hank told Spiro as the giant moved to where Winter sat with his shoulders hunched.

  “Come on, boy. Time to swim.” Spiro knocked Winter's cap off and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “That bald boy called you a queer.”

  “I don't give a happy shit what that gibberish means.” But the giant's tight lips showed he did very much care.

  “Don't have to get your panties in a twist. They say steroids shrink up your dick to where it looks like a newborn's.”

  Winter kept his head down, fighting the urge to look directly into Spiro's eyes.

  “Technically speaking, it isn't an insult if it's true,” Hank told Spiro. “Oh, they don't have to speak English to know you'd suck a dick. That squaw-looking hair. I bet you got sphincter muscles that'd pinch the head off a catfish.”

  “Watch out, old man!” Spiro warned.

  “A hundred dollars says when you smell Old Spice you get a hard-on.”

  “Shut up, he's going to kill us!” Winter exploded. “This is all your fault.”

  “He's a faggot and it's my fault?”

  Spiro released Winter's shoulders and turned to Hank. Winter lower
ed his head and started rocking in place. The handcuff key in his shirt pocket might have been in the marsh for all the good it would do him.

  Spiro wagged his finger at Hank. “You're trying to get me to lose my shit and break you up so people could know it wasn't no car accident. You're wasting your time. I ain't stupid.”

  “Even that moron Rosco knows you're stupid. I just wanted one last blow job and I know you'll give it to me.”

  “It's Russo, you . . .” Spiro dropped down on one knee and punched Hank hard in his stomach.

  Hank fought to catch his breath. “Foreplay . . . be damned, then.”

  “Please don't kill me,” Winter pleaded. The young guards laughed at him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hank said. “This muscle woman isn't smart enough to work that cage. You're more likely to die of old age while we're waiting for this idiot to figure out the controls. Duh, boss, it'll take a really long time to carry them back to their car,” Hank mocked.

  Spiro grabbed the collar of Hank's coat, dragged him over the floor to the cage, and lifted him. Hank kicked him in the shin, but Spiro didn't seem to feel it. He shoved Hank into the space, then latched the door while Hank kicked against it. Spiro grabbed the winch's control wand, flipped the toggle to raise the cage up, and let it swing over the water.

  “The crabs got your blow job, old man.”

  Hank started yelling in Spanish. “Oh no, no aspira mi pene!” Oh, no, Kill me, kill me! I'd rather be dead! The guards may not have understood Hank's Spanish or the English exactly, but they were laughing. “Sta dicendo che è gonna fuck lui!” Hank howled.

  Yul stood facing the cage with his left shoulder to Winter. He was aiming his shotgun in Winter's general direction, but his attention was focused on Hank and Spiro. Valentino was between Yul and the cage, with his back to Winter. His shotgun rested in the crook of his arm, barrel pointing at the floor.

  As Winter had hoped, the guards didn't perceive him as a threat—Hank was doing a perfect job holding their attention. Spiro, too consumed with anger to think of anything but making Hank suffer the only way he could, started to lower the cage slowly into the water, stopping the winch and then starting it again.