hanging on the cross?”
“You tell me.”
“It wasn’t for money. It wasn’t for sheer meanness, either.”
Hackberry remained silent.
“Josef was born with the brain of a rodent and the face of a ferret, and he blames God for the pitiful little toothpick that he is,” Collins said. “For formally educated people, neither of y’all seems real bright, Mr. Holland. But I guess overestimating the intelligence of my fellow man has always been my greatest character defect.” He pushed the diagram toward Hackberry and resumed eating, his fork scraping in the grease at the bottom of the plate, his eyes as empty as glass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
They had beaten Krill in his cell and hung him from a rafter in the center of the cellar, where the Asian woman could see him hanging, and then had beaten him again. When they dropped him to the floor, his wrists roped together behind him, he had begun to slip in and out of consciousness and into a place where his children were waiting for him. They were standing outside a traveling carnival, their cheeks smeared with Popsicle juice, the carved wooden horses of a merry-go-round spinning behind them, the music of the calliope rising into the evening sky.
Frank or the man standing next to Frank poured water from a canteen on Krill’s face. Josef Sholokoff was sitting on a chair two feet away, one knee folded over the other, smoking a perfumed cigarette that was gold-tipped and wrapped with lavender paper. “Noie Barnum remained for weeks in your custody, but you never made him draw the design of the drone? You’re a businessman who kidnaps and sells valuable people, but you never try to extract information from them? You think I’m a stupid man, Mr. Krill?”
“My name is Antonio.”
“You came to see the woman for religious reasons? You didn’t know she helped transport arms to your country? It’s just coincidence that we found you at her house while you were on a spiritual mission? You are a very entertaining man, I think.”
“My women have always told me that.”
“You worked for the Americans in your country?”
“Of course. Everyone does.”
“But you planned to help Al Qaeda?”
“An American helicopter killed my children. But I know now that I am responsible for their deaths, not others.”
“Oh, I see. Because you have discovered you are powerless against the killers of your children, you blame yourself and, in so doing, become a saint. So, in our way, we are helping you with your saintliness?”
“You taunt an uneducated man whose hands are bound after you have tortured him?” the Asian woman said from her cell. “You are a very small man, Mr. Sholokoff.”
“Frank, take care of that,” Sholokoff said.
“Sir?” Frank said.
“Ms. Ling. Take care of her.”
“The only way to shut her up is to pour concrete in her mouth,” Frank said.
“Then do it,” Sholokoff said.
“Sir, we need to finish with the greaser one way or another,” Frank said.
“All I get from you are admonitions but never results. In the last forty-eight hours, we have had in our possession a defense contractor, a notorious kidnapper and coyote, and an ex-CIA operative who flew with Air America. We get nothing out of any of them. Are you successful only with a worthless man like Cody Daniels? You certainly seemed to rise to the occasion when you turned him into a living passion play. I wonder about you, Frank.”
“That was your doing, sir,” Frank said. He was standing behind Sholokoff, wearing tight leather gloves like a race-car driver might wear, his flat stomach exposed by his scissored-off T-shirt.
Sholokoff turned in his chair. “You need to explain yourself, Frank.”
“We shouldn’t have been wasting our time on the minister. It wasn’t me that had the hard-on about him. That’s all I was saying.”
Sholokoff puffed on his cigarette, his eyes warm and shiny, exhaling the smoke from his nostrils. He put out the cigarette under his foot, then picked up the butt and handed it to one of his men to dispose of. “Frank, tell me this. Why is it that Sheriff Holland is not responding to our calls? Even after we sent part of Temple Dowling to his office. Why is a man like Holland, a personal friend of Ms. Ling, seemingly detached from her fate?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Frank said.
“Could it be that he no longer has Noie Barnum in his possession? Or that he’s closer to us now than he was this morning?”
“You mean he’s coming here?” Frank said.
“Put Antonio back in his cell. I have to use the bathroom,” Sholokoff said. “While I’m gone, I want you to devise something special for Ms. Ling. I also don’t want to have to correct you again. Do you understand me, Frank?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. S.,” Frank said.
“ Senor, you got a minute for me?” Krill said from the floor, staring through the legs of the men who surrounded him.
“You want me to be your friend now, Antonio? To take you out of all this unhappiness?” Sholokoff said.
“Yes, sir. I am very tired of it.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I don’t want to be here when the next bad thing happens.”
“With Ms. Ling?”
“No, with you and your friends, senor.”
“I think you have become delusional, my Hispanic friend.”
“You didn’t see what Negrito just did. Negrito was living inside my skin, but he just left my body and went up on the ceiling. Now he’s standing right behind you. You are in deep shit, senor.”
“Who’s Negrito?” Sholokoff asked Frank.
“The guy who’s gonna fuck you with a garden rake,” Krill said. Then he began laughing on the floor, his long hair hanging in a sweaty web over his face.
Sholokoff seemed more bemused than offended and went upstairs to use the bathroom. Two men picked Krill up by his arms and carried him to his cell and threw him inside. “Hey, Frank,” one of them said. “There’re scratches around the keyhole.”
“What?” Frank said.
“His food bowl is here, but there’s no utensil. The guy must have been using a fork on the lock.”
“Somebody gave the greaser a fork?”
“Frank, I gave him a spoon,” said the man who had brought Krill his food.
“Then where is it?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“We should tell Mr. Sholokoff,” said the man who had discovered the scratches.
“Shut up. Both you guys shut up,” Frank said. He stepped inside the cell and kicked Krill in the base of the spine. “Where’s the spoon, greaseball?”
“That hurts, boss. It makes my mind go blank,” Krill said. “Somebody gave me a spoon? I must have lost it. I am very sorry.”
“Frank,” one of the other men whispered.
“What?”
“Mr. Sholokoff just flushed the toilet.”
Jack Collins had led the way in a Ford Explorer through a winding series of low-topped white hills on which no
