He falls silent for a moment. Then lifts his chin again, “You gonna let me-“
I interrupt to throw a wrench in his tactics. “How do we get ahold of your army buddy?”
He snickers, like this is all too much for him. “You’re not fishing. I can tell that. You must have a full file on me.”
“I had to pick up a new fence since you snatched mine.”
Risina smiles at that. She’s behind Deckman, so he doesn’t notice. I repeat, “How do I contact Spilatro?”
“You got my phone?”
“What’s the number?”
“Give me my phone and then give me my hands. I’ll track him down for you.”
“Your phone is smashed and in a trash can in the parking garage at the MGM. Along with your two pistols and the knife you had in that cute little wrist sheath.”
This gets him to draw in his smirk. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll know where I was last.”
“Who will?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Will I? It’s a big city.”
He shrugs, looks down at the floor. He tries to toe that spit mark he made in the dust, but can’t get to it with his foot.
I haven’t broken his confidence, but chipped at it, like a ship cracking through ice to get to the pole. I sit back and fold my hands behind my head. “Tell me about the dark men.”
His eyelids flutter, slightly. Then, he offers, “I gotta go to the can.”
I don’t move, just keep the chain tethered between our eyes.
“You gonna make me piss myself?”
“You can earn trips to the bathroom.”
“You’d fit right in at Abu Ghraib.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
He takes another run at the bindings then settles again to see if he accomplished any slack. He grunts, unsatisfied, then does that thing people do when they’re absently thinking. He sort of moves his lips over to the side of his face. After a moment, he looks up again. “All right then. How you wanna play this? Because I’m getting bored and quite frankly, a little angry.”
“Tell us how to bring Spilatro out, and this can end lickety-split.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I’m not going to shoot you, or beat you, or cut you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I always thought that was more of a weasel play, and I don’t care for it, to tell you the truth. I mean, if you want immediate results, it’s probably the way to go, cut a man up, get him to talk, but why go to the trouble when I have nothing but time? So what I’m going to do is sit behind you in the dark back there and watch you die of thirst.”
He stares at me evenly, his face hot, as he tries to gauge whether or not I mean what I say.
Risina walks over and hands me a fast-food bag. I take out a plastic bottle of water, take a swig, then set the remainder in my chair.
“I checked online, and the maximum someone can go without water is ten days. But the statistics say your body will pretty much shut down in three. Three days? Can you imagine? That’s nothing. That’s a weekend. That’s a ‘hey, I’ve got plans on Tuesday so I’ll see you on Wednesday.’”
Risina pulls up a camera and takes a picture of him. Then we leave him there to think about that water bottle just out of his reach, Tantalus with his grapes.
This place must’ve once been some sort of manufacturing plant servicing the auto industry, but it has the look of a place run-down long before the Big Three started asking for government handouts.
An office adjacent to the room provides a window that looks out onto the front of the building so I can spot any unwelcome vehicles approaching. Whoever owns this warehouse doesn’t keep a regular security guard here, but maybe he pays someone to come out and look around once a week or once a month, the way Bacino’s neighbor did back in Chicago. It doesn’t look like the front door has been cracked in years, and I’m happy to keep playing the percentages, but if someone does happen to roll snake eyes, I’d like to have a few minutes warning to get my money off the table.
The room has another window on the opposite wall that faces the back of Deckman’s chair. He spent the first hour trying to tip the chair, and the second hour yelling just to yell. The next morning, he’s stiff and sore and broken. It didn’t take long.
“You kept in your piss. I’m proud of you.”
“Fuck you,” he croaks.
I start to stand again, and I can see the desperation in his eyes as clear as if I can read his thoughts. I’m going to guess he’s never been tortured before, neither during the first Gulf War nor at any point in his professional life, because he doesn’t have the mettle to test his own durability.
“Okay, listen. I don’t know why we gotta play it like this.” His voice sounds scratchy, like a rake on the sidewalk.
“Tell me how to contact him.”
“Okay, but listen. Here’s the thing.” His eyes ping-pong between my face and the water bottle in the chair. “You’re a dead man. You have to understand this. I say this not to be confrontational, but it’s a fact, as sure as these walls are white or that floor is cement. As sure as I can admit you know what you’re doing in tying a man to a chair. Spilatro is the smartest man I know, the smartest I’ve ever known. He thinks differently, you see? He sees the world as interconnected lines, or, or, dominoes toppling against each other.. but he sets ’em up, you see? He cuts the lines. He knows exactly which pieces are going to fall when, because everything fits into the little designs, the patterns he creates. We’re the dominoes, man. And he’s the finger pushing ’em over.
“He was always better than me. It wasn’t even a competition. He has this disconnect thing he can do where he just shuts it all off, any compassion, any concern for innocents, anything that stands in the way of the dominoes falling. He’s already played this out, man. You just don’t know it.”
“If that’s true, then he gave you up like a pawn on a chessboard.”
“Did he? I don’t know. You can’t look at the micro with him. Just the macro.”
“So he’s expecting my call?”
“I’m sure he is. Which is why I don’t really feel like sticking out this ‘dying of thirst’ scenario. Let’s get on with it. Give me some water and I’ll tell you how to get to him.”
“Was he expecting me to kill you?”
His throat bobs. “What’s that?”
I pull out my Glock and enunciate slowly. “Was he expecting me to kill you?”
His mouth moves to the side of his face again. “I don’t think the percentage play is to do that if you want your friend back. I’m sure that’s why we didn’t dump what’s-his name, Pistol, in the Chicago River. There’s an exchange to be made. That’s why we did it.”
“But if I shoot you now, it’ll throw Spilatro off his game, right?”
“If you shoot me now, your friend is dead.”
I don’t look at Risina. I told her she’d have to see this side of me and that she might not like it. But this is the game. This is the difference between talking about it and doing it, the difference between theory and application, the difference between looking at a photo of a crime scene and having another man’s blood on your face, your hands. They brought the fight to us and that’s where the truth lies. I hope she can see the difference. There is an entire universe in the difference.
“Maybe. All I know is if he was expecting me to take you and make an exchange, as you figure, then the best play for me is to kill you and disrupt his plans.”
“But you still don’t know how to contact him.”
“Then tell me.”
His eyes dart wildly, like a wild animal that wants the food in your right hand but is worried about the left hand he can’t see behind your back.
“If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
