Fear City (31 page)

“‘IV'?” Jack said. “Like a needle? Like death from lethal injection? Reggie deserves more than—”

“With La Chirurgienne, ‘IV' means
Infernum Viventes
.”

“Still no help.”

“It's Latin.” Burkes's grin was not a pretty thing. “It means ‘Living Hell.'”

 

10

“You're probably wondering why I called you two here today,” Tony C said from behind his desk.

Vinny thought he'd heard that line before—a movie, maybe? Anyway, yeah, he was wondering why he was standing here with Tommy in the back office of Tony's appliance store when he had business to attend to. But when your capo called, you came.

“Vinny,” he went on, “I know your junkyard's going real good, but I want your help on something.”

“Sure, Tony.”

“For the past week, Tommy here's been doing a great job putting my money back to work.” He looked at Tommy. “How much we got out now?”

Tommy said, “Just over forty Gs.”

His voice sounded funny—low and mean, like he wanted to be here less than Vinny.

“That's pretty damn good,” Tony said, nodding. “Pretty damn good. And none of them too big.” He stopped nodding. “Except one.”

Tommy glared at him. “Hey, if you're talking about the towel-heads—”

“I
am
talking about the towel-heads. Ten grand?”

Yeah, Vinny hadn't liked that one either. Coupla shifty-looking mooks. Up to him, they wouldn't have got a freakin' dime.

Tommy wasn't budging. “You're the one sent me to them.”

“Yeah, but I didn't tell you to lay ten grand on them.”

“Then maybe you shoulda fucking told me that before you sent me out!”

Tony gave him a look, like,
You kiddin' me?

Vinny knew what he meant. Tommy had a chip the size of Staten Island on his shoulder. Where'd that come from?

Tommy took a breath. “Don't worry your ass about it, Tony. Like I told you last week, I laid it off on both of them. So that's like really only five grand apiece. I know they both got jobs—I checked myself—and I know where they both work.”

“I know what you told me, but we ain't collected any vig yet.”

“Not due till tomorrow.”

Tony banged a bony fist on his desk. “What? You think I'm senile or something? I fucking well know that! And I want
you
to know that I am concerned about the first vig payment. If we get that without any excuses or bullshit, it'll be a sign they ain't total-ass deadbeats and I'll feel better. If you gotta go chasing 'em, it's on your ass.”

“Hey, now—”

Tony karate-chopped the air. “No excuses.”

Much as he liked to see Tommy squirm, Vinny couldn't call this fair. Tony had pushed to get his money out there working for him, and so Tommy had done just that, but now Tony was hedging his bets.

Vinny, though, wasn't about to say squat. This was between those two.

“But I ain't without consideration,” Tony added. “To make sure you get maximum results, I'm sending Vinny along as backup.”

Vinny was about to protest but Tommy beat him to it.

“I don't need no—”

Another karate chop. “He's goin'. Check him out. The would-be deadbeats take one look at Vinny and start reaching for their wallets.” He turned to Vinny. “I ain't expecting somethin' for nothin'. You'll get somethin' for your trouble.”

Vinny forced himself to say, “It's okay,” and leave it at that.

No amount of beak dipping could compensate for a day spent driving Tommy around.

Tony tapped his desktop. “Right here, this time tomorrow: all the vig on my forty Gs. Got it?”

Vinny saw Tommy reach into his jacket like he was going for his gun. He couldn't be serious. But his eyes had an insane glint that made him look capable of anything. His hand paused, and then he scratched his chest and brought it out.

Whoa. For a minute there …

He turned his thoughts toward tomorrow. Who knew? Maybe they'd get lucky. Maybe everybody'd have their vig ready and he'd be done with Tommy in a couple hours.

Somehow Vinny didn't see that happening. Like looking out at a calm ocean on a clear sunny morning and knowing, just
knowing
you'd be better off staying on shore that day.

 

11

“See?” said the woman with her French accent. “It is out.”

The bloody barbed tip of the arrow floated into Reggie's field of vision. His head was fixed, allowing him to follow it with his eyes only, but he recognized it as one of his own. She'd injected his neck with some hellishly painful stuff that was like torture going in, then she'd gone to work on the arrow.

“I used local anesthesia,” she went on, “because I did not want you moving while I was extracting the tip. One jerk at the wrong time and
poof!
you are gone. But that is the last anesthesia for you.”

“But I'm okay?” he said in a steam-leak voice that wasn't his, was barely a voice at all.

She laughed. “Well, no, you are not ‘okay.' It severed your left recurrent laryngeal nerve, which is why you have so little voice. And you were very dehydrated. But I am fixing that now.”

Once they'd tied him to this metal … whatever it was, she'd hooked up an IV and started pumping him full of “sugar water,” as she called it. Had to admit he was feeling better. And fucking-ay good to know that arrow was out.

But the big question remained: Why? It had looked like they were going to let him just fade away with that arrow in his neck. Now they'd had a surgeon remove it. What was going on?

Suddenly the table or rack began to tilt to his left. It kept on tilting but he didn't roll off because of the straps binding him. It stopped when he was facing the floor. He felt the fabric of his shirt tear across his upper back.

“Let us see if you are branded. Ah, bon. You are not. Charlot has had enough snacks for today.”

What the fuck—?

“We shall proceed. Allow me to explain what will follow. I do not know what you did to so anger your captors, but it must have been something terrible, for they have requested that you undergo the Infernum Viventes procedure. Well, to be precise, it is not
a
procedure. Rather a
suite
of procedures.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am so glad the arrow cut that nerve. I don't have to worry about you screaming.”

Scream? Oh, no! What was she saying?

“Here is what will happen. You have five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. The IV procedures completely eliminate sight, sound, and taste, and ninety percent of touch. It leaves you with only your olfactory sense. Why leave smell? you ask. You will find out.”

Reggie's scream wasn't a scream at all.

“Now,” she said. “The first to go is touch. To accomplish that, I am about to sever your spinal cord at the fourth-cervical level. Why that particular level, you ask? American medical students use a little rhyme to help them remember the functions of the nerves springing from the spinal cord in the neck. Part of it is, ‘Three, four, and five keep the diaphragm alive.' If I cut above the C-four level—and by C-four I do not mean the explosive—you will require a respirator, which I do not have, and you will die within minutes. So I leave you with C-four and up so that you can still work your diaphragm and breathe. You will also be able to turn your head and perhaps shrug your shoulders. But that is it. You will lose all sensation and movement from there down. Not a finger, not a toe will you ever feel or move again.”

“No. Please no.”

“But we do not stop there. C-four quadriplegics can often use an electric wheelchair with chin or sip-and-puff controls. But what good is a wheelchair when you are blind? That is correct: In the second procedure I shall remove your eyeballs—enucleation, we call it—and cauterize the stumps of your optic nerves. Then I shall destroy your middle ear and damage your cochlea with cautery to leave you not only permanently deaf but with a persistent case of vertigo. Then I shall sever your other laryngeal nerve and cut out your vocal cords. Lastly, I shall remove your tongue to deprive you not only of taste, but any chance at speech as well. All without anesthesia, I am afraid.”

Reggie tried to scream again.

“But as I told you, I will leave you with your sense of smell. That is so you can smell food you will never taste. And there is another reason I leave you your sense of smell, but I will not tell you because you will learn it on your own before very long.”

Reggie began to sob. This could
not
really be happening. They were just trying to scare him. They couldn't be this bent out of shape about a whore, a fucking nobody!

He screamed as something cut into the back of his neck. Soon after he felt as if his entire body had been set on fire from the neck down. The fire died as quickly as it came, leaving … nothing.

 

12

Kadir heard a heavy knocking on the door. He stopped mixing his latest batch of urea pellets and nitric acid and went to see who it might be. A peek through the side window showed Ayyad standing outside. He removed his goggles and mask and opened the door.

“Who's with you?” Ayyad said in Arabic.

“Ramzi.”

“Come outside. I can't go home smelling like that.”

He had been recently married—a match arranged by his parents and hers—but he did not share his efforts for jihad with his bride.

Kadir grabbed his coat and motioned to Ramzi to follow him. They gathered in the lengthening shadows outside the door.

“Are we on schedule?” Ayyad said.

Kadir nodded. “We will have everything mixed by tomorrow. What of the hydrogen?”

“That is proving to be a problem.”

“I thought you could get it through your company,” Yousef said.

“It is not as easy as I thought. The suppliers I have approached will sell it to me but only with a purchase order from my company's stockroom. That is proving difficult to acquire.”

Yousef began waving his arms as he walked in a circle. “We told you from the beginning that we would be needing it. And we need it tomorrow at the latest! After that it will be too late.”

Ayyad gave him a stony look. “Do you think you are telling me something I do not already know?”

“I don't know what you know. Kadir, Salameh, and I do all the hard work while you go to your office and drive around in your car. And when it comes time to produce the final ingredient, you show up with empty hands.”

“And just what—?” Ayyad began.

“Please, please,” Kadir said, raising his hands between them. “Let's be calm. We are all tired, hungry, and thirsty.”

He was seeing that Ramadan, even though a holy month, was a less than ideal time to fashion a bomb.

“I have one more place to try,” Ayyad said, “but I wanted to make sure we had enough of the nitrate mix.”

“Even now we have enough,” Yousef said, then added pointedly, “
if
we get the hydrogen.”

“You will have it,” Ayyad said, then turned and walked toward his car.

Kadir prayed he was right.

May Allah guide you.

 

13

Al-Thani wasn't quite the guy they'd brought here. Physically he didn't look too much different. His right shoulder and upper chest were bandaged, as was his left upper back, but otherwise pretty much the same. His eyes, though alert, said he'd been through some kind of hell. He seemed to understand the questions, but his answers were garbled.

“He appears to be suffering from a form of expressive dysphasia,” Dr. Moreau said as she entered the room.

“And what the bloody hell does that mean?” Burkes said.

“It means what he wants to say does not come out the way he means it to. It can happen after a stroke in a certain area of the brain. It is not exactly what is called ‘word salad,' but it is almost as useless.”

“It's permanent?”

She shrugged. “I do not know. We have entered
terra incognita
here.”

They'd listened to the doctor's tape of her interrogation but gleaned little more than what she'd had in her notes. Jack had noticed al-Thani's answers becoming less and less focused through the tape … could almost hear whatever drug he'd been given decaying his speech.

So they'd gone to the source … with zero gain. They gleaned strange snippets of little use, like:

Why bomb the UN?

Towers off-limits.

What towers? The Trade Towers?

Towering towers.

Why are they off-limits?

Because Roman said so.

Why?

Wouldn't tell me. Nobody would tell me. Just that they mustn't be damaged. So we diverted them.

“Could he be faking it?” Jack said.

She smiled as she shook her head. “He is broken.”

“And what about the other guest we brought you?”

“The one with the bad hair? He is in hell. Come and see.”

They all trooped into her procedure room to look. Jack stopped at the door as a wave of queasiness swept over him. Reggie was still strapped faceup into the frame as they'd left him, but there the resemblance ended. A bandage encircled his head, covering his eyes and his ears. A curved suction hose like dentists use ran from his mouth to a receptacle. Blood oozed through the tube.

“What happened to his mouth?” Jack said.

He could still see bloody teeth. Had she done a
Marathon Man
number on him with a drill?

Dr. Moreau showed him a stainless steel basin containing two eyeballs and … was that his tongue?

“What … what…?” was all Jack could manage against his rising gorge.