Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“Yes, sir.”

Curtis closed his cabin door behind himself, so Mark did the same, noticing the clean simplicity of the cabin, with its bunk-beds, built-in drawers and minimal floor space. Out the round porthole, the lights of Kaohsiung swiftly receded, black night rushing in, and he felt the difference underfoot when they cleared the harbor and moved out onto the open sea.

He was in the cabin only a minute or two, laying out his possessions on the top bunk, deciding he’d sleep on the lower, when there was a sharp rap at the door. Expecting Curtis, he crossed to pull the door open, and the man from that day in Curtis’s office shouldered in, shoving the door out of the way, punching Mark very hard in the stomach.

Reeling, doubled over, bile in his throat, Mark felt panic and blank astonishment. The man he’d delivered the money for, the one who’d been following Jerry and Luther, who’d done something to Jerry, was here ! In this room, shutting the door behind himself. And when Mark stared upward at him, mouth strained open, air all shoved out of him, the man punched him in the face.

Oh, Luther, tell them! Tell the police, force me to change my mind, convince me, make me stay in Singapore and tell the police what I know, make me stay, anywhere but here! Luther, let me not be here!

The second punch had knocked him to the floor, and now the man kicked him, time after time, wherever there was an opening. Mark curled into the corner between the bunk and the porthole wall, trying to protect himself with arms and legs, but the kicks kept on and kept on; and then stopped.

Dazed, Mark lifted his head, blinking through tears, and the hulking man was just going, carrying Mark’s luggage with him. The door snapped shut behind him. A lock snapped into a hasp out there.

He was bleeding, cuts and bruises on his face and head and hands and arms. Every movement hurt, and he thought certain he’d throw up, but it never quite happened. He lured me here, Mark thought, really afraid now, really afraid, he lured me here to get revenge. And there’s nothing I can do.

They didn’t feed him at all on the trip, and for a while it seemed as though they wouldn’t let him sleep either. Twice he fell asleep, and both times his tormentor came in and woke him again, with fists and feet. Mark was shaking, he was babbling, he was begging a chance to speak to Curtis, see Curtis, just a word with Curtis, but the man ignored him as though he hadn’t spoken at all.

They didn’t let him out to use the ship’s only toilet, though he begged and pleaded, and finally there was nothing to do but use the lowest of the built-in drawers, closing the drawer afterward but still aware of the stench, still aware of how they were destroying him, making him less than human. And fear had loosened his bowels, so he had to keep opening the drawer, even though he wasn’t being fed.

But then they did at last at least let him sleep, the next afternoon, and it must have been so he’d be unconscious when they made their way into the new harbor, so he wouldn’t raise any alarm, attract any attention. The ship was at anchor in the harbor and it was night again when they came back, the big man kicking him awake, dragging him to his feet, shoving him out of the cabin. He was pushed and prodded to the common room, where Curtis, dressed in black pullover and slacks, turned away, saying, “Bring him along, Bennett.”

Mark started to speak, to beg, to explain, to talk , but a heavy hand cracked him across the right ear, and Bennett said, low and menacing, “Not a sound.”

There was ringing inside his ear, pain everywhere.

Not a sound. Mark went out on deck, after Curtis, and there was a motorboat there, with a dark figure at the wheel. All around them was a city, huge, towering, great glass walls reflecting back the stars and the city lights and the thousand movements of the water.

Where was he? While he was trying to make sense of it, Bennett casually cuffed him to the bottom of this new boat, and he lay there, defeated, finished, knowing it didn’t matter what city this was. He’d die in it, that’s all.

He hardly knew how or where they went. The motorboat thudded across the harbor, the hard ride of it increasing all of his pains, and then it stopped at some unlit pier and Bennett leaned down to squeeze Mark’s jaw and whisper again, “Not a sound.”

Mark knew he didn’t need an answer, didn’t want an answer, already knew the answer. Bennett dragged him up onto his feet, and again he followed Curtis.

They went up a wooden flight of stairs and along a dark passageway between buildings and out onto a dim-lit street of warehouses or factories. A black van was there, with Chinese characters in white on the side. As Curtis went up front to sit beside the driver, Bennett opened the van’s rear door, picked Mark up by the shoulder and the belt, and tossed him into the van. There were coils of rope in there, large plastic cans. Mark lay on them, stunned, and Bennett climbed in, shutting the door behind himself.

Mark could see almost nothing. They drove through dim streets, and then more brightly lit streets, and then paused, and then bumped over some barrier and into somewhere, and Mark heard what sounded like a large gate being closed. Bennett got up as the van stopped, opened its rear door, and clambered out. Mark, not wanting to be thrown around again, scurried after him, but Bennett slapped him on the head anyway, to knock him down on the dirt behind the van.

The van drove off, spurting stones and dirt onto Mark’s face, and then Curtis came back and said, “Put him on his feet.”

There was no point trying to do it himself, they wouldn’t let him. Bennett yanked him upright, and Curtis said, “Look at me.”

Mark looked at him. Everything else was blurry, but Curtis’s eyes were clear, and very cold.

Curtis said, “You’re still working for me, Mark, but now your job will be a little different.”

“Mis—”

Bennett hit him openhanded but hard, across the ear. Mark flinched and whimpered, and stayed silent.

Curtis went on as though there’d been no interruption. “I have a lot of work to be done here,” he said, “and I’m shorthanded. I would have enough people, if I had enough time, but because of you I don’t have all the time I need, so I’m shorthanded. Naturally, you want to make up for the trouble you’ve made—”

Mark opened his mouth, but then caught himself and shut his mouth again.

“—and happily you can.” To Bennett, he said, “Take him where I showed you on the map, give him to Li. At least you two can speak the same lingo with each other.”

Curtis went away, and Bennett pointed. “Walk over there.”

Mark took a step, and another, and managed to walk.

And now he saw that he was in some sort of large construction site. The thing must take up half or more of a city block, with wooden fence all around the perimeter, blue plastic sheathing on the three or four stories already built, many construction vehicles parked here and there, but only the sparse worklights left gleaming.

Put me to work, he thought, put me to work? Where?

Bennett prodded him to the building under construction and through the blue tarpaulin. It was darker inside, only a few bare bulbs lit on the meager superstructure of the lower part of the building. Bennett shoved Mark over to the big square vertical tube of a cage where the construction elevator would be, and pushed the button.

Is he going to take me to the top, Mark wondered, and throw me off? He hadn’t the strength to resist.

The elevator came up, not down, rising from some basement level. Bennett pulled back the accordion gate, shoved Mark aboard, followed him, and started them down again. The elevator, a cage in a cage, moved slowly downward, through an excavation only minimally built on, beams and posts to support the work above. Then it ran through a kind of floor, which should have been the bottom of the excavation but was not, and descended through darkness, and then into a different kind of light, an interior dim light, as the elevator descended into a tunnel.