Randy White - Dead Silence

I glanced at her and replied with a slight shake of the head: Don’t ask.

“Stop looking at the woman,” the Cuban yelled. “Look at me!”

I said, “I’m sorry,” gauging the distance to Farfel’s ankles, picturing how I might work it. Trip the man to the floor and wrestle the pistol away before the giant crushed me from behind. No… both men would have time to shoot. Even if Navarro missed me, he might hit Palmer.

I was also considering the distance to the winch-two bare, bloodstained hooks hanging near the ground-as Farfel said, “Look how I was forced to treat poor Mr. Nelson Myles.” He motioned toward the body, enjoying himself. “I considered it yet another experiment. As a scientist, you may appreciate the precision of my technique. I am a real doctor, unlike you. Does that impress you? It should.”

I shrugged, a nonanswer that I expected to irritate him. It did.

Voice louder, he said, “The experiment I conducted earlier I can also apply to you. You see, I knew all about Mr. Myles. That he murdered a poor, young girl, as the rich often do, yet he tried to deceive me. When men talk, they tell me everything or they talk never. If you do not cooperate, I will conduct the same experiment on you.”

Once again, the woman was staring at me. She had to be wondering what form of insanity I had led her into.

Eyes on the floor, I replied, “Tell me what you want me to do, I’ll do it. But I want something in exchange. Tell me where the boy is. Is Will Chaser still alive?”

The man began to pace, checking the windows, checking his watch. “Shut up! What do I care about some American brat? He is no longer my responsibility.”

Farfel wasn’t just desperate, I realized, he was as frightened as Palmer and me. Until that moment, I hadn’t considered his predicament. He had tortured men-American men-a few of whom were still alive. No matter how many years had passed, they would jump at a chance for revenge, to tell their horror stories in a U.S. court or World Court. With the media in attendance, Rene Navarro would spend his last years like an animal in a zoo, condemned to die in a cage.

Now the man was working hard to project an overbearing confidence, yet it only made his anxiety more apparent. He was terrified because he was trapped. Maybe he’d wanted to recapture power he had enjoyed as a younger man, but it had all gone bad. He and Yanquez had been abandoned by their partners. The boat scheduled to take them to safety-and wealth-hadn’t appeared.

There is nothing more dangerous than a killer who has been cornered. But maybe the man was so desperate that I could manipulate him into the mistake of allowing me to help.

“Tell me about the boy,” I said, “and I’ll cooperate. You want to go to Cuba? I’ll take you. Do you have the keys to his boat?” I motioned vaguely to Myles without looking because I didn’t want to take my eyes off Farfel.

The Cuban nodded. “The dock is only fifty meters from here.”

I said, “Then let’s make a trade. Tell me what happened to the boy, help me save him if he’s still alive. I’ll agree to drive the boat. I can have you in international waters in less than an hour. By sunrise, you’ll be close enough to Cuba to see Havana. But the woman stays here, understood? That’s the agreement. Just the three of us go.”

I watched the man thinking about it, probably envisioning a scenario that included throwing me overboard once the boat was in open water. He was disgusting to look at, with his rodentian cheek structure, his manicured hair and his crazed metallic eyes. Farfel: a fitting name, not only because of his dentures but because of his precise and delicate physiology.

He was older than I had pictured: mid-sixties. He looked exhausted, in his outdated tweed slacks, torn at the knees, and a white guyaberra shirt that was spattered with sea grass and blood. People who are compulsively neat sometimes react to dirt as if it were physical pain. Farfel struck me as one of those, with his perfect hair and his mannerisms.

“It is easy to pretend driving a boat to Havana is so easy,” the little man said, “but the waters of Florida are shallow, as we’ve discovered. Channels are narrow and the rich man’s boat is the size of a house. This imbecile, who is the idiot son of an associate-a medical school colleague-he ran us onto many obstacles: rocks and bars of shell. I had to wade in the water and push!” Farfel was glaring at Hump, who had positioned himself behind me. “This fool also claimed it would be easy to drive a boat to Havana. But you pretend it is different with you. Why?”

I said, “Because I’ve done it before.”

Farfel wanted to believe me, but he also wanted to keep me in my place. “Are you admitting that you are him? The man who trespassed in my country many times?”

I looked at the steel cable as if staring out the window. “Many times, yes.”

Was he asking if I was a spy? If so, he was speaking English for the benefit of Detective Palmer. He would have assumed I spoke Spanish.

Yes, he was doing it for Palmer. I understood when Farfel smiled, as if something had been confirmed, saying, “Then you are the one I have heard stories about! The famous Dr. Ford!” He laughed. “The Bearded One hated you. I heard it was because you made him appear foolish, many years ago, at a baseball game in Havana. Is such a thing true?”

I could sense Palmer looking at me, wondering what the man was talking about, thinking, Who are you?

The Bearded One. During Fidel Castro’s reign, Cubans either spoke of the dictator as the Maximum Leader or El Barbudo, the Bearded One. They rarely used his name because it was dangerous to risk even a complimentary remark. It could be interpreted as an insult by eavesdropping Party members.

Farfel knew things about me Myles could not have suspected, even from an Internet search. Farfel knew my real identity and that meant I was dead. I was sure of it now. But how I would die, and when, was still within my control.

I asked, “Mind if I stand?,” getting to my feet without waiting for permission, then saying to Farfel, “Who are you talking about, the Bearded One?”

“Sit-sit on the floor. On your hands!” Click, the man’s dentures snapped, adding emphasis.

I ignored him, watching him take another step back, hoping he’d elevate the pistol to improve his field of vision. It would give me room to dive for his legs. But I was unprepared when Yanquez-Hump-hammered the back of my neck with his elbow. Hit me so hard that I dropped to my knees.

Next, as if rehearsed, in one smooth motion Farfel took a dance step forward and kicked me hard in the ribs. When I almost caught his leg as he backed out of range, the man’s face spasmed, nervous as a jackal. From behind, Hump kicked me again, then a third time, before I curled up in a ball on the floor.

A moment later, I heard the snap of precision metal. It was Farfel thumbing back the hammer of his gun. As I lay there, some perverse, frightened instinct in me wanted this nightmare to end and hoped he would shoot. I preferred a bullet to a drill.

Instead, Farfel produced a phone from his pocket-my cell phone-saying, “If you do something so stupid again, I will kill you. But I can see that…”-he was reading my face-“… I believe that the threat does not frighten you. So!”-he swung the pistol toward Palmer-“I will shoot the woman first. I will shoot her above the abdomen. The solar plexus, I think. Dr. Ford, have you ever seen a person with a wound in this sensitive area?”

Farfel had years of experience reading fear in the faces of frightened men and he read mine accurately. Yes, I knew what he was threatening and I didn’t want to see the woman suffer that sort of agony.

“Good,” he said, relaxing a little. “You will do what I tell you to do. Understood? Sit! You will look at me when I speak. You will answer when I ask a question.”