‘Oh, you’re up.’ William came toward him, making lurching progress, an empty plastic milk jug floating in each hand.
Mike turned his head away, the only movement he could muster, bringing him again face-to-face with Hank. His sprawled body lay at an odd angle to his neck, a plastic drop cloth already cocooning his lower half. One foot protruded, the worn black dress sock incongruous here, in this context. The line of flaking white skin showing at Hank’s ankle underscored the awful tableau, the frailty of this life, of any life, which, despite all the sweat and work and best-laid plans, could end in a windowless cellar, half rolled in a strip of plastic sheeting.
Beside the body was another drop cloth, which Mike realized had been reserved for him.
When he turned back, Dodge loomed above him, winding a piece of terry cloth the size of a gym towel around his hand. His shirt was unbuttoned, curled back from a wife-beater worn to near transparency. William crouched, letting out a little pained moan, and began to fill the gallon jugs with water from the tub. The bubbles gave off a faint, comic-book repeat:
‘Okay,’ Mike said, still trying to grasp what was happening. ‘All right.’
William stood, a bottle dripping in either hand. Staring up at the faces overhead – Dodge’s drawn back, glinting eyes set in the wide skull, and William, stooped to favor his left side, all wisps of facial hair and bunched lips – Mike felt something break open inside him and spill heat.
‘I heard about you years ago,’ William said, ‘from my Uncle Len. You were the one who got away. The Job. But Boss Man, he woulda let it lie. Finding you. He stopped looking. Stopped caring. Figured whatever life you’d made, you’d never put it all together. But then your buddy Two-Hawks kicked the hornet’s nest, found out about your name on that genealogy report. Boss Man caught wind, and guess what? You were back on the table.’
He neared. ‘These are glossies of Ted Rogers, the guy who did the stealing for Two-Hawks.’ He produced some photographs from a back pocket and held them for Mike to see. The soft pink skin of a middle-aged man in various forced contortions. William fanned through several taken within these same cellar walls before Mike turned his head and gagged. William leaned over him, breathing down. ‘My uncle worked on your dad some. What yer daddy went through? Made this’ – a shake of the photos – ‘look like a tickle. You know what? Why’m I talking so much when I can just show you.’
Horror came on like a toothed blade, sawing its way through the shock.
‘Okay now,’ William said gently, and Dodge let the small towel flutter down over Mike’s face.
Mike jerked in an instinctive breath, the towel adhering to his mouth. He sensed William lean in close, and the cloth grew wet and heavy. Water moved up his nose, a slow trickle at first, and then soaked through the terry, sealing out oxygen. The effect was instant, comprehensive. Mike jerked and screeched, shaking his head, but the towel clung to his face like a film. His lungs and throat spasmed uselessly. Just when he thought he might go out, the towel peeled back and he found himself gasping and gagging, Dodge staring down at him, the towel dripping onto the floor.
Mike’s shoulders cracked in their sockets, and he realized he’d pulled himself up to a sitting position. Also that he was screaming. He twisted off the backboard, one leg tangling in the pads, the bench rocking up on two legs and settling with the clop of horse hooves on cobblestone. He hit the floor with his shoulder and lay there, exhausted, pain blurring his vision.
Dodge leaned down and lifted Mike as easily as a grocery bag. He laid him back on the bench, manipulating his legs and torso with stern efficiency, totally absorbed in his task. He might have been threading a needle or tying his shoes. When Dodge moved Mike’s feet through the leg pads, Mike bucked, trying to get upright again, but Dodge placed a thumb on his chest and flattened him down onto the decline backboard. Blood rushed to Mike’s head. His chest heaved against the pressure.
Dodge finished with Mike’s feet and eased his thumb off. Mike gasped for air, his ribs aching.
‘You got information you don’t want to tell us, right?’ William said. ‘So we need to extract it from you. It’s not gonna be easy – on you
Mike made some garbled noise.
William’s eyes trembled back and forth, as if his gaze were wavering, though it was not. ‘Where’s Katherine?’
Mike said, ‘I don’t know where she-’
William went to a knee over the tub, grimacing.
It was over now, Mike knew. He was going to die. He just had to figure out how to get them to kill him before his stamina gave out. He pictured Kat where he’d left her, sitting on that little bench in the foster home, her untied shoelaces scraping the ground.
William said, ‘We know you wanted to put her somewhere safe. Somewhere hidden. But Boss Man needs her, see, you
‘Shep got your address from Graham,’ Mike said. ‘If I don’t check in with him, he’ll call the cops and head up here.’
William shook his head with disappointment. He nodded slightly, and the terry cloth slapped back over Mike’s head. Mike’s panicked inhalation dimpled the cloth into his mouth, up his nostrils, and then the slow bleed of water invaded his face, drowning him into contorted silence. His thighs burned against the pads, but when he tried to shove himself upright, the steady pressure of Dodge’s thumb smoothed him back down. There was fire and agony, the cloth suctioned to him like a sea creature, leaking a calm stream of water into him, shoving his own breath back down his throat.
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
