and forth, rubbing the flesh against the rough edges, staring at the back of the voodoo priest as he chatted with his bloodthirsty gods. It was a tricky business. I was drawing blood, all right, but the irritation was making my wrists swell, threatening to cancel out all my good works.
I kept at it, twisting and pulling, and then froze when Fournier abruptly wheeled around to face me. In his right hand he carried one of the scimitar-shaped knives previously wielded by his dead henchmen. The front of his robe, his hands, his triangular face and white hair were all spattered with blood. His dark eyes gleamed even brighter than usual, and he smiled broadly when he saw that I was awake. I was surprised to see that he had an erection, clearly visible as a bulge in his loose-fitting robe.
'Home delivery,' I said. 'I'm impressed.'
'I'm so glad,' he replied, his smile growing even broader. 'A person in my position has certain prerogatives, and having the notorious Frederickson brothers delivered to me alive was one of them.'
'I like the alive part. Look, I've got a splitting headache. You wouldn't have a couple of aspirin around here, would you?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'So where are the chickens?'
His smile vanished. 'You and your brother are the chickens, Frederickson.'
'This your place of power?'
'Yes.'
'Where are we?'
He hesitated a few moments, then quickly walked to the wall to my right, past the three corpses, and opened the black Venetian blinds. I raised my head as far as I could, glanced in that direction, and found myself looking out over a familiar view, the Hudson River. New Jersey, what looked to be Hoboken or Jersey City, was across the way, which put us in a warehouse or on a pier somewhere down on the lower West Side. The sun was just setting. It looked like Garth and I were going to die close to home-in prime time, no less.
'Nice digs,' I continued, then nodded toward the three mutilated bodies lying to my right. 'You killed them because they botched the Dickens murder?'
'I killed them because they are no longer needed. Your investigation into Haitian matters is at an end.'
'That's exactly right. I take that to mean you brought us all the way back to New York so that you could surrender to us personally.'
He turned back to close the blinds, and I used the few seconds to begin twisting my right wrist again. 'You do have a bizarre sense of humor, Frederickson.'
'You're fried no matter what happens to us, Fournier. There are copies of all our records in a safe deposit box, to be opened and immediately delivered to the commission on the death of one or both of us. Killing us is going to get you nothing but grief from two very dangerous friends of ours. Even if your outfit does manage to assassinate the president and vice president, how long do you think Kranes is going to be able to remain in office after all this business becomes public? The FBI has to be right behind us, and then there's the NYPD, Secret Service, and even the Spring Valley Police Department working on this case. We found the connections between you, the planned assassinations, and the CIA, and so will they. This whole conspiracy is going to be blown out of the water, and making Garth and me disappear is only going to speed the process. Your best bet for survival is to agree to testify and let us take you in. The FBI will put you in a Witness Protection program. Trust me; you'll prefer that to what will happen to you when our friends track you down. And they will.'
'I think not,' Fournier replied evenly. 'When William Kranes becomes president, the FBI investigation will go away along with the commission and its planned report. The NYPD is of no more concern to us than the Spring Valley Police Department. None of the information you and your brother have developed will ever be made public, and nobody will know of the events you've been involved in. Of course, that would not be the case if the two of you were to remain alive. Your disappearance will be treated as no more than a peculiar mystery. Your bodies will never be found. Our organization will ride out this storm, and with Kranes in power there will be no more threats. In hindsight, we should have killed the two of you at the beginning. Despite your track record, we still underestimated your persistence and investigative skills. We didn't want to unnecessarily complicate things, and we'd hoped that killing witnesses would head you off and shut you down, but it didn't. Your days were numbered long before you found me, Frederickson. But since you did find me, it shall be my pleasure to personally eliminate the two of you. It may give you some comfort to know that we consider the information you've developed and the report you were preparing to be, by far, the most potentially devastating of all the work being done by the other teams working for the commission.'
'You're going to depend on Paul Piggott to keep your secrets?'
'Piggott didn't have any secrets worth sharing until you two visited him. Now he's dead.'
'You move fast.'
'So do you and your brother.'
'So will the FBI when they finally get up to speed.'
'Sometime this evening there will be a new president, and I'm absolutely confident that the FBI will be told that their investigation into the killings of the Haitians is to be given very low priority.'
'The convention?'
He smiled thinly, nodded. 'The president and vice president accept renomination by their party tonight, and they will appear on the platform together. It's only a matter of waiting until the nominating speeches are over. It's a pity I don't have a television set or radio here.'
'Well, I hope you have a telephone, because you'd better get on the horn right now and tell your people to call it off. After our first little chat, the first thing I did was go to the police. The FBI knows all about you and the CIA, and they know about the two murdered Supreme Court justices and your Right-to-Life shooters. If those killings take place, Congress is likely to legislate the entire CIA right out of the alphabet.'
'I think you exaggerate, Frederickson. The police will defer to the FBI, and it won't make any difference what the FBI knows, or what you told them. The FBI is nothing if not committed to the chain of command, and the director will do as President Kranes orders. The new president will not want to shock the country even more, and he will not want the good name of the CIA sullied, or its good work interfered with. As for myself, I will be halfway around the world by morning.'
'Our dangerous friends will find you.'
'Ah, yes. Those dangerous friends. Your dossier indicates that you're probably referring to Veil Kendry, whose martial-arts students have been guarding your brownstone for the past few months, and John 'Chant' Sinclair. If Mr. Kendry chooses to do anything but continue on with his very successful career as an artist, we'll kill him too. As for Mr. Sinclair, not even we know where he is these days, but it's safe to assume that self-employed mercenary is mounting yet another sting operation against us or our friends to steal our money. I doubt he has any idea what you're involved in, and if he does he probably doesn't care. No, it's only the two of you who remain as obstacles- but not for long.'
'Why schlep us all the way back to New York to kill us?'
'I thought you understood. There is great power for me in killing you myself, in a particular manner, in this particular place. I will keep your hearts in a place of honor on my altar. I shall dispose of the rest of you.'
'I'm touched.'
He drew himself up, breathed deeply, exhaled slowly. Guy Fournier looked immensely pleased with himself. 'Now, is there anything else on your mind you'd like to discuss while we wait for your brother to wake up? As you can see, I rather enjoy talking to you.'
'I'll bet you say that to all your victims. You just love to hear yourself talk.'
'I can assure you that you're the first to utter anything but screams, Frederickson. I'm enjoying studying your behavior under stress. You are a truly remarkable man. When I cut you, I won't be surprised if I draw ice water.'
I pretended to ponder his invitation, then said, 'I guess there's nothing left except to tell you I know your secret, and I know you're a liar. I know what's really going on here.'
He looked genuinely puzzled, and he absently ran a bloodstained hand back through his thick, white hair. 'What do you mean, I'm a liar?'
I nodded toward the bulge in the front of his robe. 'All this chitchat and the anticipation of what you're eventually going to do excites you. That hard-on you've got tells me this whole business is more about sex than
