to come round.
So what happens now?' asked Sunshine.
Nimmo did not answer. He lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, thinking how he always hated this kind of thing, which was making someone tell you that which they didn't want to tell. It was not that he was a cruel man. He himself thought it was simply that he had little or no empathy for other people. It was as if something inside him had been switched off, disabled, in the same way that some people were colour-blind or tone-deaf. Of course, he had questioned men before. Many times. And often he had been brutal with them. More often than he cared to remember. Usually, the inflicting of pain was the result of a simple lack of time. Mostly you were in a hurry for information and that meant there was only one possible solution to your dilemma: pain. Lots of it, too. The way Nimmo saw it, for both parties' sakes it was best to go in hard, as soon as possible. That way they knew that you were not fucking around, and it wouldn't get any better from then until they convinced you they weren't holding anything back.
Maurensig groaned and, hearing this, Nimmo pulled his beard hard a couple of times to hurry him up to the surface. When Maurensig's Tabasco eyes finally opened, Nimmo lit another cigarette and placed it between the gun dealer's already well-chewed lips. He said, Okay, beard, listen up. Here's the I-know-you-know dialectic.
Now I know you know Tom Jefferson. I know you were in the army with him. For quite a while. And I know you're a friend of his, otherwise you wouldn't have told me that you'd never seen him before in your hitherto pain- free life. I know you made this bullet. Exhibit one.' He held up the sabot he had found on Maurensig's bench. Which is the identical Toni twin of this bullet I recovered from Tom Jefferson's house. Exhibit two.' Nimmo held that one up too. So, now you know that I know that you must have supplied it to him. Which means now I know you know things I don't know. Quite a fuckin' lot, I shouldn't wonder. And the way I see it is that with your ass at a position of extreme disadvantage, I shouldn't have to wonder at all. Not any more. Not with what you are about to receive for which the Lord won't make you truly thankful, amen. So I'm gonna make you a real friendly invitation to bring me up to speed on what you know. And please try to bear in your red-haired mind that this invitation is strictly RSVP. That's French for you respond or vous gets pain. Wherever pain hurts most.
Maurensig closed one eye against the smoke that was curling into his eye from his cigarette and said, What kind of a fuckin' fed are you anyway, mister?
The worst fucking kind there is. The venal kind. The vicious and degraded kind. The impatient kind. A drunkard, a liar, and an adulterer by an enforced obedience of planetary influence. Evil by a divine thrusting on. A villain and a bastard.' Nimmo paused and bent closer to Maurensig's face. Where, my hog-tied friend, is Tom Jefferson to be found?'
I don't know anyone by that name.'
Nimmo stood up and sighed. I'd forgotten. You were a soldier, were you not? You've got the will to heroism. But only because your body isn't in a panic yet. Or maybe it's that you think there's a creator, who's going to save your soul, even if he can't save your lardy ass.'
I don't know who the fuck you're talking about, mister.'
Nimmo shook his head. Watch out. That's two denials. You deny your friend a third time and we're gonna be looking around for a fuckin' rooster, Colt. Look what happened to St Peter. Cock-a-doodle-do spells big trouble. Old Peter, they crucified his ass. That's what the Bible says anyway, if you believe that shit. Those Christian martyrs could take the New Testament's amount of pain the Romans put them through because they had faith in an immortal soul. But you and I know different, Colt. If there's one thing the twentieth century has taught us, it's that this frail flesh is all there is. We know what happened during the war. And there ain't any such thing as the peace of heaven. So, I'm going to ask you one more time. Real friendly. Like we were outside the gates of Jerusalem, and I was one of those maids of old Caiaphas himself. Where the fuck is he?
How the hell should I know? I haven't seen him in a long-' Before Colt Maurensig could complete his third denial, Nimmo had snatched away his cigarette and had thrust his fingers into the other man's nostrils, twisting them hard like a farmer attempting to control a maddened bull. Maurensig opened his mouth and bellowed with pain. Coolly holding Maurensig's nose with one hand, Nimmo fed the cigarette between his own lips, quickly puffed it aglow, and then popped it into the other man's wide-open mouth, before pulling the gun dealer's lower jaw tight shut on the burning hot end. Maurensig's whole head turned magenta, and his body flexed as if he had been in the hot seat at Sing Sing and the New York State executioner had just thrown the switch to send him on his way with twenty amperes at 2,400 volts. From behind Nimmo's hand, clamped tight across his mouth, Maurensig screamed a long, muffled shriek of choking pain that sounded like a whole pitful of devils.
Come to where the flavour is,' breathed Mothballs. Jesus.'
Sunshine sneered a cruel laugh and lit one for himself. Experimentally he tapped the lighted end at a callus on his hand and, discovering that this hurt more than he had thought it would, he tried to imagine what it would be like to have a hot cigarette inside his own mouth. Since Maurensig was still screaming like a burning heretic, this was easy enough, even for an intellectual somnambulist like Bobby Solegiatto.
After ten or fifteen seconds, Nimmo removed his hand and let Maurensig spit, gag, and retch the still-burning cigarette end from his wretched mouth.
Colt?' Nimmo tried to get the weeping man's attention. Colt?' Now he took hold of the beard again. Listen to me, Colt. The next time, I'll make you swallow it,' said Nimmo. Like Portia, the wife of Brutus. And by the way, she didn't make it. So what's it to be, Colt? Some answers, or a last cigarette? Smoking'll kill you pal, and that's a fuckin' promise. Mothballs? Fetch hotlips here a glass of water so he can talk his way back into our affections.
Mothballs brought a glass of water and helped Maurensig to drink. Wincing with pain, he swallowed the water and then mumbled, with Quasimodo's care of diction, He's got. A safe house. In New York. I don't. Know where. But that's where. It is.'
When did you last see him?'
For a moment, holding cold water inside his branded mouth seemed to afford Maurensig some relief. Then he shook his head and swallowed uncomfortably.
Not in a while. But we spoke. On the phone.'
When?'
Mid-November some time. Maybe the eighteenth?'
What did he say?'
Maurensig looked as if he was suffering from the most excruciating toothache, and every answer was like cold ice-cream on a raw nerve.
Only that he was going. To New York.'
To do what?
That's where he. Does his research. When he's planning. A hit. Finds out about people. Targets. You want to find him. Try the New York Public Library. Maybe. You'll find him there.'
So why did he call you?'
Maurensig sucked some cool air into the auto-da-fe that was the inside of his mouth. He'd seen someone hold a cigarette inside his mouth when he was in the army. A party trick. It was a trick you obviously had to learn with an unlit cigarette. Maurensig found it hard to imagine that anyone would have risked feeling the kind of pain he was in to impress a few dumb broads in a bar.
He said he was going to be gone for a long while. And that his next job. Would probably. Be his last.'
Jesus Christ,' muttered Johnny Rosselli. Jesus fucking Christ's ass.'
He say who it was that he was planning to wing?'
Never tells me nuthin'. Not like that. I just supply ammo and guns, is all. Or a scope.
But not this time, right?'
No. Give me some more water. Please.'
Mothballs, still holding the glass of water, looked at Nimmo, who nodded back. Maurensig leaned toward the glass like he was dying of thirst.
And what did you say?' asked Nimmo. When he told you that this New York thing would be his last?'
Not what he said. Listen. New York's just safe for him. Plans the job there. Then he goes someplace else and does it. Miami. Dallas. Vegas. You name it.'
Palm Beach?'
Wherever the contract takes him.'
So what did you say? On the telephone.'
