rippling in front of me like I was looking at it over a radiator.
“I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?” Charlie Wah repeated, word for word.
“Yes,” I said, not trying to get up. I was damned if I was going to let him see me stagger.
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “Add that to the two-eighty you left with Mrs. Jesus here, and we're over half a million. What in the world prompted you to leave half a million in Tiffle's office?”
“A love of symmetry,” I said. He'd heard the half million on the news, but he didn't know about the money for the pilgrims.
He shook his head. “Let's get things straight,” he said flatly. “You've cost me immeasurably. I've lost money, respect, and now a ship. There's nothing that I won't do to you.” He reached down and flicked his forefinger forcefully against my right eye, which I barely closed in time, and when I got it open again he was shape-shifting through my tears. “Anything you can think of that hurts, I can think of too. And, unlike you, I can do it.” He glanced at Mrs. Summerson, big and mute and absent on her chair. “I can even enjoy it.”
“Charlie,” I said, “you're getting personal.”
“I suppose I am,” he said, without much interest. “Certainly, if I cause you unnecessary pain, it will be for my own satisfaction. But there are business reasons, too. I need to recoup as much of my money as I can, and I have to annihilate the men who disrupted my transaction and cost me my ship. Anything less will not be understood by my associates.”
I watched him sweat.
“I was on the telephone most of the night,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “In Taiwan they actually took seriously the idea that some blacks were trying to move in on us. They were expecting some sort of proposition this morning: a partnership, perhaps. But then we got the news about Tiffle, and it all fell into place.”
Blacks. The henchmen we'd let go had apparently called Taiwan.
“Still, you might have gotten away with it if you hadn't handed so much to the police, just to inconvenience Tiffle. I don't understand how you could mount an operation so complicated, so elaborate, and then do something so revealing.”
He wanted me to talk. “My memory palace was full.”
“Was it?” he said dismissively. “Well, we're going to help you to clean it out.” He gestured to Bluto, who went into the bedroom and came back out carrying a coil of rope. Bluto surveyed the room briefly and then threw one end of the rope over one of the beams below the ceiling, the beam from which the hermit who built the shack had hanged himself some thirty years earlier, when he realized they were paving Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard a mile below. The man had prized his solitude.
Bluto took both ends of the rope in his hands and hoisted himself on it, bringing his legs up and parallel to the floor just to show off.
“He weighs more than you do,” Charlie Wah observed. “Too much muscle.'
“It's a strong beam,” I said, my voice sounding thin and far away.
“Get up. Take off your shirt.”
“Take off your own shirt. It might help the suit.”
The gun tilted down to point at my midsection. “What's going to happen to you on the beam won't be pleasant, but it'll hurt less than being shot in the gut.”
I got up and took off my shirt. The buttons seemed to be smaller than I remembered.
“Over there,” Charlie Wah said, wiggling the gun toward Bluto. “Don't do anything you're not told to do, or I promise you really exquisite pain. Is that what they say? Exquisite pain?”
“For Christ's sake, Charlie,” I said. “Get a dictionary.” The shirt landed at my ankles. Feeling as naked as a shelled shrimp, I took the long walk to Bluto.
“Hands out,” Charlie Wah said. “Wrists together.” Bluto was an expert; it took him only a few seconds to wrap one end of the rope around my wrists. He knotted it off tightly enough to make the veins on the backs of my hands pop out, and then he backed off and began taking in the other end of the rope, hand over hand. He pulled effortlessly until I was dangling by my wrists, barely able to reach the floor on tiptoe. When I was stretched to capacity, he tied the rope's end to the leg of the wood-burning stove and stood back to admire his handiwork.
“This is a good trick,” Charlie Wah said. “We use it on first-time runaways, people who try to welsh on their contracts. There are very few second-time runaways.” He reached into the sagging pocket and pulled out a shiny little ballpeen hammer. “It also has the advantage of being consistent with the natural causes you are probably going to die from in a little while,” he said, advancing on me, “unless you are very, very cooperative.” We both listened to the lie, and he smiled apologetically. “A drunken fall from your sun deck.” He stopped in mock dismay. “Stupid me, I've forgotten something,” he said. He pointed behind him and snapped his fingers, and I saw a black medical bag at Mrs. Summerson's feet.
Bluto scurried to the bag and opened it. He withdrew a corked bottle of vodka and a hypodermic needle large enough to use on a horse. For a moment I thought I was going to vomit. Compared to the needle, the ballpeen hammer looked like the hand of friendship.
The cork popped as Bluto drew it out. “Not too much at first,” Charlie Wah said. “We want him coherent.”
The long needle probed the vodka, and I watched the level fall as Bluto drew back the plunger. It took about a quarter of the bottle. Looking beyond him, I saw Mrs. Summerson's magnified eyes fixed on the hypodermic. So someone was home, after all.
“Good,” Charlie Wah said. “Hurry up.”
Bluto came toward me with the needle in both hands, and I hoisted myself on the rope and swung my legs at him, trying to get the needle. He avoided me easily and swung wide to the right, going behind me. He moved very quietly. I lifted my feet again and swiveled on the rope to keep him in sight, and Charlie Wah threw an arm around my waist and pulled down with most of his weight. The beam groaned but held, and I lost sight of Bluto.
Something struck my right shoulder like a fist and immediately became the center of a circle of fire. Heat coursed up and down my arm and I resisted the compulsion to try to swing away, frozen by the image of the needle breaking off inside me. I felt a tugging sensation, and Bluto stepped away and into view, examining the empty hypodermic. Charlie said something sharp in Chinese, and Bluto handed him my spare gun. Charlie glanced at it and dropped it into his jacket pocket.
Then I was drunk.
It happened almost instantly: a brightening of the colors in the room and a high singing in my ears. Charlie Wah's wretched suit glowed like the world's last lemon drop. Bluto was back at the bottle, tilting it to get the rest of the liquid within reach of the needle.
“No,” I said automatically. My tongue was thick enough to choke on.
“I agree,” Charlie Wah said. Was he weaving or was I? “Not yet, anyway. We don't want it to act as an anesthetic.” He reached out and tapped my shoulder lightly with the hammer. “I want the names and addresses of the four people who helped you. We'll start with the black ones.”
“Martin Quimby and Klaus Fuchs,” I said, pulling names out of the air. And then I remembered Tran and added, “And George Smiley.”
Charlie tilted his head and regarded me. “Too easy,” he said. “Let's see if you stick to it.” Then he drew back his arm and swung the hammer directly at my chest.
I actually heard the rib break. A tide of hot red pain swept over me, starting at the broken rib and spreading through my body until it filled even my toes and fingers with a sticky, unholy heat. I gasped for breath, and the pain started again, a spark at first, then expanding outward like a ball of flame, pulsing ahead of the deeper pain that propelled it, and I was screaming. When the scream was exhausted, I grabbed air again and the seed of pain exploded once more, and this time I stifled the scream and hung there, trying to take in sips of air.
“You learn fast,” Charlie Wah said approvingly. “Some fools scream over and over again. We actually lost one to a heart attack. What are their names?”
I hung there, gaping at him like a fish. Their names, whatever they had been, had been washed from my mind. I closed my eyes, and the room began to spin wildly, and I forced them open again, trying to anchor the universe with the weight of Charlie Wah's yellow suit.
“We'll break one on the left side this time,” he said, raising the hammer.
“Dexter Smif. Horton Doody. Howard Doody,” I said. He'd never find them.
He gave the hammer a little heft and looked deeply into my eyes.
