Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

Carmine reached out again, but this time he gave Geiger a firm slap across the face.

“Why did you do it? What the hell could you possibly have been thinking?”

“Right,” Geiger said.

“You think I’m happy about this? I’m not, Geiger. You’re my boy.”

Geiger’s head started to loll. “Right,” he said again.

“I wish there was a choice here, but I do business with these people. Remember when you told me the feds bugged my house? That was my fucking invitation to them. You gave it to me. You’re the one who hooked me up with them! We talked. We made a deal. I help them out once in a while, give them a name, do them a favor-and they leave me alone. Jesus, Geiger. It wasn’t Colicos who sent Hall to you. It was me.”

“Right.”

“You know who you’ve been fucking with? These guys are contractors-and I don’t mean the kind who do renovation. They’re government contractors. Understand? They’re the guys who do the stuff nobody’s ever supposed to find out about, and they don’t play by the rules, because they don’t have to. They’re all ex-commandos and mercenaries, fucking cowboys! And most of them are crazy, because if you do this stuff long enough, that’s what it does to you-it makes you crazy. Bottom line, they do anything to get the job done, because they know they’re gonna get disappeared if they don’t. These guys don’t retire with a pension and health benefits. Capiche?”

Carmine tugged at his jacket sleeves, as if he’d suddenly decided they were too short.

“They called this morning and very politely said that if you should happen to come by… So now do us both a favor. Just tell them what they want to know. I know he’s just a kid-but be smart.”

“Right.”

Carmine grabbed Geiger’s face in his hands. “And I’m gonna tell you something else, Geiger-about life. All your ‘outside versus inside’ stuff? It’s bullshit! Life owns your ass-from day one, cradle to grave. You don’t get it, Geiger. You think you can choose whether you’re in or not, but you can’t. If you come out of this alive, you remember that.”

“Right…”

Just before Geiger blacked out he had a thought, and even in his deeply muddled state, the irony did not escape him. He had never felt so good in his whole life.

“Geiger. Wake up.”

The voice was behind him. He could feel the restraints at his wrists, ankles, and chest. He was lashed tightly to something. He opened his eyes and quickly went down a checklist of his senses. Sight, sound, touch-they all seemed to be in working order. No fog, no fuzz, no delay.

He was in his own place-the Ludlow Street session room-strapped into the barber’s chair, wearing only his white jockeys. The air-conditioning was off. It was hot. He was already sweating.

“I’m awake,” he said.

A man stepped in front of him. Very thin and well over six feet tall, he was dressed in loose beige khakis and a gray sweatshirt. He wore round glasses, and his lightbulb-shaped head had only a few tufts of sparse, graying hair. To Geiger, he looked like a praying mantis. He held a pair of disposable white latex gloves.

“My name is Dalton,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, though who would’ve thought it would happen like this?” His voice had the tranquil, measured tone of a high school teacher who knows every teenage trick in the book. He pulled one of the gloves on. The snap bounced around the room. “I like the lightly powdered,” he said. “What do you wear?”

“I don’t. I don’t like the way they feel.”

“You don’t worry about infection? Aids, Hep C…”

“There’s hardly ever any bleeding with me.”

Dalton put the other glove on. Snap. Geiger looked to the one-way mirror. Who else was here? Hall, certainly. Carmine? Probably not, but he heard the echo of his words: I do business with these people. You know who you’ve been fucking with? They’re government contractors.

Dalton followed Geiger’s eyes. “You have a wonderful place here, Geiger. You’ve got a real eye for the little things, the special touches. And the viewing room-beautiful.” Dalton walked behind Geiger, out of his sight, then came back around pushing the wheeled cart. “I brought some of my own things and picked out a few of yours, too.”

On the cart’s top shelf were a handheld butane torch, a box cutter with the grip wrapped in duct tape, an awl with a wooden handle, an aluminum baseball bat whose upper portion was encased in a four-inch layer of blue rubber foam, and Geiger’s antique straight razor. The bottom shelf of the cart was stocked with half a dozen white hand towels, a roll of gauze, a roll of adhesive tape, and a neatly folded khaki windbreaker.

“It must be very strange, being on the other end of this,” Dalton said.

Geiger looked at Dalton’s loose, oversized clothes; he couldn’t get a sense for whether the man’s body was in good shape. His face was sallow and free of wrinkles. He looked to be about fifty.

“How long have I been out?”

“About forty-five minutes.” Dalton took off his glasses and began polishing the lenses. “Now, first things first. I’m out of the loop on this. All I’ve been told is that they want to know where the boy is. So… where is the boy?”

Geiger remembered that he’d written Matheson’s cell number on his left hand. The hand was extended just past the end of the chair’s arm, palm facing the floor.

“That Jones in Iraq,” said Geiger. “Did you really cut off his lips?”

Dalton’s smile reminded Geiger of a dog baring its teeth just before it growls.

“Sorry,” Dalton said. “I never kiss and tell. But let me ask you something.” He put his glasses back on. “Do you know what they call you?”

“Who are ‘they’?” Geiger asked.

“Some of our mutual… friends. ”

“No,” said Geiger. “I don’t know what they call me.”

“They call you the Inquisitor. What do you think-you like it?”

Geiger was monitoring his pulse. It was slow. He considered the moniker: The Inquisitor. The royalty of torture. The CIA loved their code names.

Dalton looked slightly disappointed at Geiger’s apparent lack of interest. “Well, I like it. Very elegant.”

Geiger remained silent, waiting Dalton out.

“They’re in a real hurry about this, Geiger,” Dalton said, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows. “So I’m not going to bother with any head games-not that head games are my strong suit, and not that they’d work on you in any case. No, I’m going straight to the pain. That’s my humble expertise-that’s what I do.”

Dalton turned to the cart, and Geiger slowly rotated his palm so he could see it. The skin had a moist sheen. He stared at the number: 917 555 0617. He recited it silently, committing it to memory.

The door to the viewing room swung open and Hall barged out. Dalton turned at the disturbance.

“His hand!” Hall yelled. “He’s got something on his palm!”

Geiger clenched his hand into a fist, rubbing his fingertips against his palm, working at the skin, until Dalton grabbed the hand with both of his and pried the fingers open. Hall arrived as the palm was revealed-a smudged but still legible 917 5 was followed by a smear of blue ink.

“It’s a phone number,” said Dalton.

“I can see that,” growled Hall. He glowered at Geiger. “Don’t make this hard. You’re smarter than this.”

Geiger nodded. “How is your head, Mr. Hall?”

Hall ignored him. As he headed back to the viewing room, he spoke over his shoulder to Dalton: “Get to work on him-now!”

The door slammed. Dalton reached toward the cart and picked up the awl and the butane torch. The awl’s steel needle was four inches long and a sixteenth of an inch thick, and the wooden grip was darkened from the sweat of countless uses. The torch fit perfectly in his hand.