mouth, a mixture of blood and adrenaline and sudden fear. I didn’t know what was happening to Randy at that point. I tried to get up. The man was standing above me, ready to hit me again, I was sure, so I picked a spot in the middle of his body and drove my shoulder into it. He gave ground, but not nearly enough. I felt hands on my neck. A grip stronger than human.
He’s choking me.
I grabbed at his hands, at his arms. Useless. You’re going to die right here, Alex.
No, there’s something you can do here. One way out. Somebody showed you this a long time ago…
I brought my right arm up and over his wrists, got as much leverage as I could, and then dropped to the floor. He went down with me, his forearms pinned against my chest. I heard him swearing. I felt his hot breath in my face. He drove his forehead into mine and pulled his arms free.
Did it work? Did I break his wrists? Before I could catch my breath, I got my answer. He hit me on the back of the neck with either one fist or both of them, or maybe it was an iron safe. It didn’t matter. I was done fighting back.
A hand on the back of my shirt. Another one on my belt. I am lifted or dragged or God knows what and then there’s a long flight of stairs leading down. I hit every one of them, five hundred steps or a thousand. And then I am at the bottom lying facedown on something soft. It is carpeting, thank God in heaven for carpeting at the bottom of the stairs and then I am out.
CHAPTER 10
I opened my eyes. White ceilings tiles. Bright fluorescent lights. I thought about the hospital, waking up and seeing the doctor looking down at me. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” I heard them say. “We had to leave one of the bullets inside him.”
No. I wasn’t in the hospital. My eyes focused on machines. Stacks of metal plates, gleaming bars. A mirror on the opposite wall.
The basement. I was in the basement. It was filled with every kind of barbell and dumbbell and weight machine. All the fluorescent lights were on above us, so bright it hurt. My back against a wall. My left arm, hanging above my head. I looked up. A handcuff on my left wrist, looped through a D ring bolted to the wall. A hand in the other cuff. Someone else’s hand.
Randy was sitting right next to me. “Hey buddy,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“Randy,” I said. There was blood on my lower lip. I felt with my tongue where the lip has been split open.
“How ya doin’?” he said.
“What happened?”
“You don’t look so good.”
“Randy, what the fuck happened?”
“I’m not quite sure,” he said.
I took a deep breath. Okay, I could breathe. I moved my legs. My left knee ached, but I could bend it. I moved my arms, as much as possible with the cuff on. The metal bit into the skin. I had forgotten how much handcuffs hurt when you put them on too tightly. I moved my neck. “God,” I said. “That hurts.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“I think so,” I said. “How about you?” I looked at him. He didn’t have a scratch on him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “They didn’t touch me.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The big guy, behind the door…”
“He jumped on you,” Randy said. “Leopold just picked up this shotgun and pointed it at my head. I tried to stop the big guy from pounding on you, but Leopold told me he’d shoot both of us.”
“That’s beautiful,” I said. “He picks me to beat up on and throw down the stairs.”
“You were closest to him,” Randy said. “Luck of the draw.”
“Have you figured out why they’re so mad at us?” I rubbed my neck with my free hand.
“No idea,” he said. “He still can’t be that mad at me thirty years later, can he?”
“Well, whatever it is,” I said, “they obviously want us to stick around awhile. Where are they, anyway?”
“They went upstairs. They put these cuffs on us and said something about making ourselves at home.”
“Did you say anything to them? Did you ask them why there were doing this?”
“I did,” he said. “They said I shouldn’t even have to ask.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Does this make any sense to you?”
“There’s gotta be some way out of these, right?” He shook the cuffs.
“Stop doing that,” I said. “It hurts like hell.”
“There’s gotta be some way to pick the lock or something,” he said. “There’s always a way out.”
“These are real handcuffs, Randy. We’re not gonna pick them with the paper clip you happen to have in your pocket. This isn’t a TV show.”
“You used these things when you were a cop, right? You gotta know a way out of them.”
“There is no way,” I said. “Unless… Can we stand up?”
I put my weight against the wall, tried to get my feet underneath me. My knee hurt, the muscles under my right arm, my neck, my head. God, my head. I had to stop halfway up and wait for the pounding to go away.
“This thing is bolted in here pretty good,” he said, giving the D ring a tug. “We need a wrench to get it out. Do you see a wrench anywhere?”
“I’m about to pass out here, Randy.”
“If we see a wrench, maybe if one of us stretches real far…”
I lifted my head. Big mistake. “Oh God,” I said. “This is not good.”
“I don’t see a toolbox, do you?”
“All I see are weights,” I said. “And machines.”
“That must be how that guy got so big,” he said. “Look at all this. He’s got a whole gym down here.”
“Yeah, believe me,” I said. “He hasn’t missed many workouts.”
“That’s what this ring in the wall is for, I bet. Look, there’re a few of them here. It must be some sort of exercise thing.”
“I’m gonna sit back here,” I said. “I really have to sit down.” I rubbed some of the feeling back into my left arm, and then I slid down the wall.
He sat down next to me. We heard voices above us, but we couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“It’s a nice basement,” Randy said.
I let that one go.
“They did a nice job down here. I wonder if they did it themselves.”
“Randy, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying it’s a nice place they’ve got here. If you have to get beaten up and thrown into a basement, this is the basement you want to be in.”
“Randy, do you think this is some kind of joke?”
“I’m just trying to keep us psyched up, Alex. We can’t give in to these guys.”
“ ‘We can’t give in to these guys’? Are you really saying that? Are you out of your mind? We’re beyond giving in to these guys, Randy. They’ve got us chained up in their fucking basement and God knows what they’re gonna do to us when they come back down here. We’ve got one chance of getting out of this. We have to convince them that they made a mistake. They did make a mistake, right? They obviously think we’re somebody else. Am I right?”
“We’re just trying to find his sister,” he said. “What else would they think?”
“You tell me,” I said. But before he could answer, we heard footsteps on the stairs.
We saw the legs first, the white of Leopold’s painting overalls, and then the bigger man coming down behind him. It was my first good look at him. He was at least six foot three, and I would have guessed 240 pounds. It was hard to tell. Muscle weighs a lot more than fat, and this guy had plenty. He was wearing baggy gray sweatpants and a white shirt with the collar torn open. The standard bodybuilder’s outfit.
“Gentlemen,” Leopold said. “I trust you’re comfortable.”
