Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“As I was saying. Expertise…”

His thumb pressed the torch’s ignition button, and a thin, two-inch-long blue flame shot out of the nozzle.

“It’s always seemed to me the most egalitarian of assets,” Dalton said. “Anyone can have an expertise. You don’t have to be smart, or rich, or clever. You don’t need a degree. There’s no privilege involved, no genetic lottery. You can be a ditchdigger and have an expertise. A shoe salesman, a dishwasher, a garbageman…”

He brought the needle of the awl into the flame and kept it there.

“I’ve always felt that you can tell a lot about a person if they have a genuine expertise. If they do, you know for certain, without knowing anything else about them, that they are dedicated. They have applied themselves, they have a passion for something that has driven them to a point well beyond where most people would ever go. That says a lot about a person, don’t you think?”

The awl’s needle glowed red. Dalton turned off the torch and put it on the cart. Geiger stared at the incandescent needle; it looked like the nucleus of a hearth’s fire compressed into a single, lucent filament. He felt the past being awakened by it.

Dalton studied the needle’s tip, then brought it close to Geiger’s left cheek with an unwavering hand. He grabbed Geiger’s hair with his other hand to immobilize the head.

Geiger didn’t move. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Where is the boy?”

Geiger shut his eyes. A single piano note cascaded down into a full chord, and luminous puffs of clouds bloomed, laced with streaks of bright, falsetto-fueled lightning. They say everything can be replaced. They say every distance is not near.

Very slowly, Dalton pushed the hot needle into Geiger’s cheek until Geiger felt the tip break through the inner side and poke at the edge of his tongue. Dalton wiggled the probe.

So I remember every face of every man who put me here.

“Geiger, where is the boy?”

As Dalton had intended, the torture delivered a dual sensation: the searing burn of the hot steel and the sharp pain of the piercing of flesh. Geiger’s brain had a moment to form a critique. Heating the needle was, ironically, counterproductive, since it produced something of a desensitizing effect on the skin, diminishing the intensity of the invasion.

Dalton adjusted the awl’s angle slightly downward and jabbed it in farther, into the soft, connective tissue beneath the tongue.

“Where is the boy?”

Any day now, any day now… The high, sweet voice weaved toward the hot blast of pain and, like a viper, wrapped itself around it and strangled it… I shall be released.

Dalton shoved the awl in deeper. Its point came up against something solid. Bone. The pain was molten. Geiger was inside the sun.

“Geiger… where is the boy?”

Geiger opened his mouth and spat blood. Dalton shook his head and pulled the awl out. The heat had created a circular pink flush on the cheek, and a crimson bubble of blood began to grow in its center. Dalton picked up one of the hand towels and began wiping off the instrument with short, measured strokes.

“I’m curious,” he said. “Professionally speaking, on a scale of one to ten, how much did that hurt?”

Geiger’s eyes opened, and when they swiveled to Dalton light flashed on their wet surfaces. “How much did what hurt?” he said.

Dalton looked up from his cleaning ritual. He had heard the stories for years: about the boy wonder who’d brought a new style to the trade, about the wizard who at one point even had the CIA singing hosannas, about the master who could draw out the truth without drawing blood. But the man in the chair was not what Dalton had expected. He was too… But Dalton couldn’t complete the thought, couldn’t quite put his finger on the qualities that set the real man apart from the legend.

Dalton put the awl down and picked up the bat.

“Now, this takes me back,” he said, and took two short checked swings. “You like baseball?”

“I never played.”

Dalton swung and hit Geiger flush on the left pectoral. Dalton’s grunt was almost as loud as Geiger’s, whose lips twisted and seemed to pull the rest of his face inward, like an eddy sucking in debris. The physical agony ballooned inside his chest, and the army of angels’ voices in his head sent a volley of high-arcing arrows raining down on the pain. I see my light come shining — piercing it, puncturing it, deflating it- from the west down to the east.

“Tell me where the boy is, Geiger.”

When no answer came Dalton swung again, hitting the top of the sternum at the nexus of the clavicle. The force of the blow caused the trachea behind it to seize up, and the result was a combined feeling of choking and asphyxiating. Geiger’s ears filled with a high-pitched whine that drowned out the music inside him; he struggled reflexively against his bindings, his chest heaving.

Dalton grabbed him by the jaw and rammed his head back against the headrest. The thrust actually helped Geiger gulp some air.

“Listen to me,” Dalton said, leaning in very close. His breath smelled of peppermint. “I like my work, but I’m not enjoying this. It’s weird, you being who you are. So I’m going to tell you something. Call it a professional courtesy. This job is in effect a norell-hear me? No release likely. You may as well be at a black site. They’ll have me turn you into a Cobb salad before they tell me to stop. So don’t do this-stop being whoever you think you’re being, because that’s not who you are. And because if you don’t, you will probably die in this chair.”

Dalton straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Now, was there any part of that you didn’t understand?”

Geiger was finally able to swallow.

“What’s a Cobb salad?” he asked.

Dalton brought the bat down hard, smashing it across both quadriceps.

The loud clap of the blow and the wild twisting of Geiger’s torso made Hall, watching through the one-way mirror, grimace.

“‘What’s a Cobb salad?’” he repeated. “That’s very funny.” He turned to Ray, who was sitting on the couch with a glass of ice pressed to his face. “Considering his situation, that is a great line.”

“Tell Dalton to start cutting him,” said Ray. “He’ll talk. And make sure he tells us where Harry is, too.”

Hall poured himself some Clynelish.

“Hey, me too,” said Ray.

“No alcohol.”

“I’m feeling better, you know.”

Dalton had found some lidocaine in Geiger’s medicine cabinet and given Ray a shot in his lower face. The pain had lessened, and Ray’s vitality was increasing.

“Ray, Harry didn’t give Geiger up. So what makes you think Geiger will give Harry up?” He raised the glass to his lips, then stopped and put the Scotch back down. “Listen to me, Raymond. The job is Matheson. That’s it. After that, I don’t ever want to see Geiger or Harry again. Ever. We clear?”

“After this is done, my time’s my own,” Ray said.

Hall could see Ray’s brain squirming inside his skull like a mutt in a cage. That would be all they’d need-to find Matheson, escape from this mess clean, and then have Ray go after Boddicker and leave a bloody, mile-wide trail. He was beginning to wish Harry had shot the sonofabitch in the head.

Hall turned back to the viewing window. Dalton was focused on the cart, eyeing his options. Geiger-red welts spreading on his chest, bleeding from his cheek-sat in the chair with his head bowed. The two men looked like deep thinkers considering a serious point of debate. Geiger was breathing through his mouth, cheeks puffing slightly with each long exhalation. Then he looked up, staring directly at the glass as if he could see right through it.