Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

The eye just stared. The kid had no ready answer.

Dugman said to Jeffers, "Cut off his ear!"

Jeffers took out the butterfly knife, snapped it open, grabbed the kid's right ear roughly and began to saw away. Blood rolled down the kid's face into his eye. The kid howled and heaved, but Jeffers might have been the Chrysler Building for all it mattered.

Dugman leaned over and pinched the kid's nostrils shut, and when his mouth popped open he shoved a bloody mass into the kid's mouth. The kid immediately spit it out, gagging and retching. He was sobbing now, and his nose was running.

"He doesn't like ear," said Dugman. "Too bad."

"Want to try some nose?" suggested Jeffers.

"Nobody like nose," said Dugman. "Besides, his all running with snot. It's disgusting. No, whyn't you roll him over. Everybody like pecker."

They left the kid, crying and cursing, manacled to the bumper of his car, and drove back to the pier. After a block or so, Dugman remarked to Jeffers, "You were real sloppy cutting off that ear. I tell you to cut off some mutt's ear, I expect it to fly off his head."

Maus said, "Oh, right! I got to drive, and you guys get all the fun part. How come I never get to torture suspects? This sucks, guys, I mean it. I'm sorry I joined the cops now."

Jeffers ignored this and said to Dugman, "Sorry about that, boss, I guess I didn't get enough sleep."

"You was using the wrong side of the blade, fool! You suppose to use the sharp side, cut off a man's ear."

"No kidding?" said Jeffers, opening his eyes wide. "Shit, I better write that down. And while we at it, what did you shove in that kid's mouth?"

"Piece of Maus's roast beef. I slopped it in some of his blood."

"You fed him Maus's roast-beef sandwich!" Jeffers exclaimed. "Hey, Sarge, I got to tell you that's over the line. I might have to write you up for that. No wonder he puked."

Maus said, "When you guys stop fuckin around, you want to tell me what he said?"

Dugman said, "Yeah, he was real cooperative after we unzipped his fly. There's five guys in the place besides him. Willis, Manning, and three others. One guy's at the entrance, sits in a little guard office by the door. The rest of them are on the second floor. Water and power's cut off. They use electric lanterns. They got the Loo in a storage closet on the second floor."

"Is he OK?" asked Maus.

"He still screaming, the kid said. The kid said he was going to get some tape that the Loo had. That's why they were beatin on him. He finally broke down and told them where it was. I figure they won't do him before they got the tape in hand; he could just be buying time. So he's still alive, but he ain't gonna stay alive unless we do this right."

Maus parked the van under the expressway and Dugman told the other two men what he expected them to do. He racked a round into the chamber of the Spanish 9mm he had taken off the kid and checked his own big.357 revolver. Maus and Jeffers also checked their 9mm automatics, huge weapons that sat uncomfortably heavy in their shoulder holsters, and Maus picked up his shotgun and a roll of gaffer's tape.

They walked across the deserted avenue to the pier. It was twilight, but the concrete still held the day's heat. As they walked, they each glanced up nervously at the windows of the building, now in deep shadow, like the embrasures of a fortress.

Dugman opened the door with the key he had taken off the kid. They slipped silently into echoing moist darkness, dappled with shafts of light from glassless openings on the river side of the structure. A paler light also came from a small guard post built out of the right inside wall of the building.

As they approached, a voice called out, "Hey, Sloopy, you back already?"

Jeffers accelerated like the linebacker he once was, smashed through the flimsy wooden door of the office, and smashed the man to the ground with a blow of his pistol. The man collapsed and was quickly trussed and gagged with gaffer's tape.

Dugman and Jeffers started up the enclosed concrete main stairway. Maus ran across to the other side of the loading bay to a doorway, went through, and started climbing the outside fire stairs.

At the second-floor landing Dugman opened the door a crack and peered through.

"You see anything?" Jeffers asked in a whisper.

"Yeah," whispered Dugman. Through the crack he could see most of a large and partially ruined room, a passenger lounge of some kind, with a long bar along one wall with a large cracked mirror behind it. Part of the ceiling had sagged, exposing pipes and beams, and the pastel murals depicting luxury ocean travel were buckled and stained. A few pieces of broken furniture lay scattered around and there was a pile of the padded cloths movers use abandoned against one wall.

"Two guys sitting at a table," he said. "A guy lying on a couch. I don't see Willis or Manning."

"What do we do?" said Jeffers.

"I'll go right, you go left. Watch the-"

There was a distant sharp report. And another. Then two louder explosions. Dugman saw the two men at the table spring to their feet and draw pistols from their clothes. The man on the couch sat up, shook his head, reached down to the floor, and came up with a MAC-10 machine pistol. A door slammed some where and someone shouted, "What the fuck…!"

The men looked away at the source of the shots, and Dugman sprang into the room with his revolver in both hands. Without warning, he began firing into the man with the MAC-10. Hit three times, the man fell back on the couch, and as he fell his hand tightened convulsively on the trigger of the little automatic weapon, spraying fire at his two companions. One of them was struck by the full force of the burst and went down screaming.

The other one got off a shot at Dugman, which pierced his suit coat. He felt the tug of the cloth and thought briefly that he had been hit. He was swinging his gun around to the new target when he heard the rapid fire of Jeffers' pistol from somewhere behind him and the third man cried out and disappeared behind the table.

Dugman rose creakily from the crouch he had assumed and snapped a Speed-loader into his revolver. They heard running footsteps and the slam of a door. Jeffers started to move in the direction of the sounds, but Dugman placed a restraining hand on his arm.

"No," he said, "drop on down to the entrance. There ain't but one way out, unless he's got a boat. Maus has the top covered."

"What about Willis?"

"He'll keep. Just go. I got to find the Loo."

Jeffers ran off down the stairs. When he was gone, Dugman glanced briefly at the three men they had shot, enough to make sure all of them were dead. One was still rasping out breath, but Dugman saw that his belly and chest had been blown apart by the automatic fire at close range. He stepped over the man and walked toward the storeroom where the kid had said Fulton was being held. A smell like that of an ill-kept monkey house reached his nose before he had the door open. His stomach turned over as he stepped into blackness.

It was dark in the little room and the floors were slippery. Gun in one hand, reaching out with the other, Dugman advanced into the room. After four steps his foot struck something and he heard a groan.

With his hands he determined what it was he had found. He holstered his gun. Then he dragged Clay Fulton, still bound to his chair, out into the fading light of the lounge.

Dugman tore off the wires that held him to the chair. In a small alcove under a window he quickly made a pallet of the mover's pads, heaved Fulton over to it, and covered him with several more.

He felt Fulton's pulse and was gratified to find it reasonably strong. Fulton opened his eyes, or rather one eye, as the other was closed by a massive bruise. "That you, Dugman?"