not the couple had been Punch and Judy was a moot question; they were gone now. At least I had gotten some exercise.
As I crossed the street heading for the brownstone, I noticed that the light in the stairwell leading down to the belowground floor Garth and I used as a storage area was out, leaving the stairwell and half the stairs leading up to the main entrance in darkness. That was not good for my own security, or for the safety of my neighbors, and I decided I would replace the bulb before I went to bed.
I was halfway across the street when I saw the figure sitting in the shadows on my stoop, in almost exactly the same spot where I had found Margaret Dutton. But this wasn't Mama Spit. I went a few steps closer, and my mouth went dry when I saw the dyed blond hair and pale sheen of the taut flesh of the woman's face; I'd not only been made but had, but good, by the two professionals. It was the last thought I had before the steel prongs of a stun gun probed into my back on either side of my spinal cord, sending a few thousand volts of electricity coursing through my body. It smarted pretty good; it felt like somebody had poured molten lead into a hole in the top of my skull, burning out my brain and severing every neural connection in my body. I dropped to the pavement like a stone. A powerful hand grabbed the collar of my coat and dragged me the rest of the way across the street; I was bumped up over the curb, hauled across the sidewalk, and unceremoniously bumpety-bumped down the steps into the darkened stairwell. Punch was now joined by Judy, and they used separate, thin ropes to lash my wrists and ankles. When they had accomplished this, Punch tossed the ends of both ropes over the street-level railing above my head. Then he pulled on the ropes and tied them off, leaving me drooping in the air like a hammock. It was an extremely uncomfortable position-which, of course, was precisely what they'd had in mind.
My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and it was useless to struggle, so I just sagged there, trying not to think about the pain that was already nibbling along my spine, and watched while the man, who I now realized was wearing a toupee, pulled a thick leather glove over his right hand. He removed a small glass bottle from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and poured a small amount of a clear liquid into his gloved palm. Suddenly the air was filled with the fetid odor of feces.
'It won't do you any good to try to cry out, Dr. Frederickson,' the parchment-faced man with the blond toupee said in perfect English that no longer carried any trace of an accent. 'I will immediately muffle any cries with my glove. Like this.'
Having made this pronouncement, Punch proceeded to cover my nose and mouth with the liquid-soaked glove. Whatever was on the glove didn't appear to be the real thing, but it might as well have been, because the smell and taste immediately made my mouth feel like a recently used toilet. After a few moments he took the glove away, and I spat.
'That is really vile stuff,' I said in as even a tone as I could manage from my extremely stressed, rather undignified position. 'I certainly don't plan to cry out, and I hope you're not planning on doing anything that would make me want to change my mind. How do you know who I am?'
'Don't be so modest,' the woman said in English that was as perfect and unaccented as her husband's. 'Doesn't everyone know Mongo the Magnificent, the famous ex-circus star, former college professor, karate expert, and renowned private investigator who also just happens to be a dwarf? You and your brother have made headlines all over the world.'
Ah, yes, the perils of celebrity. 'I can see I'm going to have to tell my public relations people to tone things down a bit.'
'I can't believe you could have been so stupid as to approach us like that on the street, and then ask a dumb question about how to get to Carnegie Hall.'
I couldn't believe it either. If I lived to New Year's, I was going to make a serious resolution to stop trying to be such a clever little rascal. 'I didn't know who you were when I approached you, and I still don't know who you are. I've been looking for a teenage runaway. I came over to ask if you might have seen him, but when I heard you talking I assumed you didn't speak English. The question about Carnegie Hall was just a display of my razor wit employed in an attempt to amuse myself. What the hell do you want?'
'You're lying,' Judy said, and Punch indicated that he agreed with her sentiments by poking me in the ribs with the stun gun. I screamed and went into convulsions, and Punch immediately slapped the glove that smelled like feces over my mouth. That stopped the screaming, but not the convulsions. The electricity and repulsive odor comprised a double-barreled bazooka attack on all my senses, pairing the extremes of pain and revulsion, and it was most effective.
I'd been tortured before; I hadn't much cared for it then, and I didn't much care for it now. In fact, I hated being tortured. Just like the times before, I cried and screamed-or tried to-and threw up and most sincerely begged them to stop, and, just like the times before, I knew that if they finally found out what they wanted to know, they would kill me. Just like the times before, I knew I was going to have to somehow summon up the will to look beyond the terrible pain, try to think happy thoughts about the fact that I was still alive, and keep lying in order to keep me that way.
They let me hang around, as it were, twitch and soil myself for what felt like a couple of centuries, but was probably only about five minutes. My back felt like it was about to break, and might have if they hadn't flipped me around into a position that was only slightly less uncomfortable. My whole body had become one huge cramp, but in the new position I was able to breathe-and presumably talk-a little easier. I couldn't decide which was worse, the artificial odor on the glove or the real smell of my own vomit, and I knew I was going to have to endure-survive-one more slam of electricity before they would be ready to believe whatever tale I was going to tell them. It would have to be good enough to satisfy their curiosity yet make them decide not to kill me, and it was a whopper I had yet to come up with. My current situation was seriously interfering with my imaginative flow.
'Untie the ropes and let me lie down on my back,' I croaked. 'I think I'm rupturing a disc or two. I'll tell you what you want to know.'
Punch said, 'Tell us what we want to know, and then the pain will stop. How did you know who we are?'
'Hey, pal, if I'd known who you were, I wouldn't have come up to you on the street and made clever remarks. If you're going to torture me for information, at least don't waste time by asking stupid questions. It's my body you're using up. I had a description of two people, and you two looked like you might fit it. That's why I came over to you, to take a closer look.'
'Who gave you this description?'
'There was a witness to the killing you pulled off here a week ago.'
'Who?'
'How the hell do I know? It was somebody in the neighborhood. The police wouldn't give me a name.'
'Was it the woman sitting on the grate, the one dressed in rags?'
'I told you I don't know, but I seriously doubt it was her. I know her. She's not only a loony but half blind and deaf.'
'She's not up there now. Where is she?'
'How the fuck would I know? She's probably in some shelter-or maybe she went to Florida for the winter. Jesus H. Christ. Hurry up with the questions, will you? My back is really giving me problems.'
'The killing you mentioned is a police matter. Why are you involved?'
'I'm chairman of our neighborhood Crime Watch committee.'
That did the trick. This time I got the stun gun in the belly, and my bones rattled as I twisted around in the ropes, convulsed, threw up, and cried. It was now time for Mr. Scheherazade to step through the curtain and go for one more night, this one.
'Interpol,' I gasped when I was finally able to speak.
The man and woman looked at each other, obviously surprised. Judy asked, 'What about Interpol?'
I spat out vomit and stifled a sob. 'You're blown; the whole operation is blown. One of the patients who escaped from Rivercliff walked into a relief center and told her story to a social worker. The social worker called the police, and the police called the Feds because they smelled something very big and fishy about the whole thing. Word about what was going on leaked to a senator who's a friend of mine, and she's planning an investigation into just who's responsible for Rivercliff. In the meantime, her committee has hired me to do some preliminary investigating and search for the rest of the patients, besides the one you killed and the one who came in, who are still hiding out on the streets.'
'That's nonsense,' the woman said, sounding none too sure of herself. 'What you're describing couldn't possibly have happened so quickly.'
