The Heart Has Reasons (50 page)

“Our
friend is in jail because of you punks, and we’ve brought you here to persuade
you to recant your stories.”

“What
‘recant’ mean?”

“It
means you’re going to tell the FBI that you lied about seeing a woman in our
friend’s vehicle.  Your homeys have already agreed.”

Mr.
White went over to remove Travell and Andre’s gags.  “Tell him.”

Abject
terror distorted Travell’s face.  “Malik, man, you gots to do what they
says.”

“Yeah,
bro,” Andre agreed.  “They gonna hurt you bad if’n you don’t.”

Mr.
White uncapped a bottle of water and held it to Travell’s mouth.  After
Travell had greedily drained the bottle, he did the same for Andre. 
Watching this performance gave Malik hope.  Maybe he wasn’t about to die
after all.  But since Travell and Andre were watching, he needed to man-up
and stop acting like a little bitch.  They looked up to him.  “Man, I
ain’t recantin’ a motherfuckin’ thang.”

Mr.
Black’s hands shot out and stabbed into his armpits again.  He struggled
to accept the pain that lanced through his torso, ripping at muscles and
tendons, but his mind and body refused.

After
a seeming eternity, Mr. Black released him.  “What I’m doing is known as a
pain-compliance technique.  In other words, I administer pain to you and,
in return, you comply with my wishes.  This particular technique is rather
mild compared to some others I know.  So, did you, or did you not, break
into my friend’s vehicle?”

Malik
swiped at the tears streaming down his face.  His armpits throbbed with a
pain that refused to abate.  “Man, I’s on parole.  If’n I tells them
that, my black ass goin’ back inside.”

“Yeah,
I heard you did time for raping a fourteen-year-old girl.  I also heard
you were preparing to rape the woman in my friend’s vehicle.  Does it make
you feel like a man to force yourself on a woman?”

It
did, of course, but assuming that “yes” would not be the best possible answer,
he simply shrugged.

“I
heard you sodomized that little girl.  You ever been sodomized, Malik?”

“Fuck,
no!”

Mr.
Black grinned.  “Guess that means I’m getting a virgin.”

Before
Malik could protest, the other two men yanked him up from his wheelchair and
shoved him facedown across the table.  Due to the two Tazings, he was
unable to summon enough motor control to put up much of a fight.  Mr.
White snapped a handcuff around his left wrist and fastened the other end
around one of the table legs.  Mr. Red duct-taped his casted wrist into
place around another.  Mr. Black then yanked his pants and drawers down to
his ankles, baring his ass.

Thrashing
wildly, he screamed, “Wha’ the fuck you doin?”

“I
want you to see what it’s like to be raped.”

The
big Indian, Mr. Red, said, “Mr. Black, you need some Crisco or something?”

“I’m
sure this bitch doesn’t give his victims the benefit of lubrication, so why
should I do so for him?”

The
black man walked around behind him.  Malik screamed, “No, man,
please!”  Travell and Andre would be sure to tell everyone how this
motherfucker had fucked him up the ass like a bitch.  He’d lose all street
cred.  “You can’t do this to me.”

Behind
him, he heard a zipper slide down and then something hard shoved against his
asshole.  Clenching his buttocks together as tightly as he could, he
screamed, “Please!  Don’t do it!”

A
moment later, Mr. Black appeared in front of him.  Malik blinked through
tears to see that the man’s jeans were zipped.  He clutched a four-foot
length of one-inch diameter bamboo in his hands, and Malik realized with relief
that the bamboo was what had prodded him.

Although
Mr. Black’s face was deceptively placid, there was something very scary in his
eyes.  “Unlike you, I’m no rapist.  Not to mention that you aren’t my
type.  But you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.  You ever heard
of caning?”

“Naw,
man.”

“It’s
how they punish offenders in some parts of the world.  Your two homeys
received ten strokes each.  But since you enjoy raping little girls,
you’re getting twenty.”

Malik
uttered a sigh of relief as the man moved to his side and raised the bamboo
cane overhead.  In comparison to getting ass fucked, an ass whipping wasn’t
nothin’.

Or
so he thought.

As
the cane struck down across his buttocks, his entire body convulsed with an
explosion of pain so great that, for an instant, his mind was almost unable to
recognize it as pain.  Sizzling and enormous, it caused his lungs to seize
in mid breath.

Before
he’d recovered from the first stroke, the white-hot fire of a second
exploded.  His high-pitched screams echoed in the low, open-raftered
ceiling.  Shockwaves of pain reverberated through him as a third stroke, a
fourth, and then a fifth connected.

He
lost consciousness upon the ninth.

Malik
drifted in a fog of pain while dozens of rats swarmed across his ass, feasting
upon his flesh with red-hot teeth.  In his delirium, he writhed and
thrashed, striving to throw them off.  As he slowly came to, the muffled
voices of several men worked their way into his consciousness.  He pried
open his eyes and immediately regretted it as memory came flooding back.

The
three men stood in the open doorway, talking and joking amongst
themselves.  The searing agony in his buttocks brought bile to the back of
his throat.  Acrid sweat drenched his body.  He tasted blood and
realized he’d bitten his tongue.

He’d
also pissed himself.

The
three men glanced around, and then Mr. Black started toward him, cane in hand.
 “I was starting to think you’d died on me.”

Malik
shivered spasmodically and screamed, “Oh, please, god.  No more!”

“Is
that how your victims plead with you, Malik?  Stop being a little
bitch.  You’ve got another eleven to go.”

Malik
uttered a low, animal moan as he regained consciousness the second time. 
A river of pain dimmed and wavered his vision.  He cried and sobbed for
some time, not caring who saw.

When
his tears finally subsided into a low, inarticulate weeping, Mr. Black came
back over to him, cane still in hand.  “Okay!  I’ll say whatever you
wants me to!”

I’m
pleased to hear that, but you’ve still got another five to go.”

A
fresh sob escaped his lips.  “
Please
,
god
. 
No more!
”

“I
promised you twenty, and I always keep my promises.”

As
he raised the cane high overhead, Mr. White approached to say, “Mr. Black, if
you’re getting tired, I could take over.”

“Thank
you, Mr. White, but I’m having so much fun I could do this all night.”

When
Malik regained consciousness for the third time, he cried and sobbed without
restraint, until utterly limp with exhaustion.  At some point, his grill
had come loose from his teeth.  It now lay glittering on the concrete
floor.

Leaving
the other two men standing in the open doorway, Mr. Black strode toward him and
deliberately put one booted foot on the grill, crushing the gold nearly
flat.  “Oops,” he said with a grin.  “Sorry about that.  So,
let’s get down to business.  Did you, or did you not, break into my
friend’s vehicle?”

“Naw.” 
The man raised the cane high into the air, and Malik screamed “Yeah!  I
means yeah!  Me and my homeys, we broke in his vehicle.”  He
shuddered convulsively as a tremor ran the length of his body.

“Did
you find a woman tied up in the back?”

“No. 
There weren’t no woman in there.  Weren’t nobody in there.”

“And
did our friend then return to whip your punk asses?”

Malik
opened his mouth to answer, and then hesitated.  Fuck!  What was the
right answer?  He looked up at Mr. Black, who helpfully nodded. 
“Yeah,” he gasped.  “He jacked us up good.”

“Why’d
you lie to the FBI about a woman being tied up in the back?”

He
had to give the matter some thought before coming up with an acceptable
response.  “’Cause we was fired up ‘bout the beat-down he give us.”

“And
when are you going to inform the agents that you lied?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow
morning
.”

“Yeah
—
yes, sir
.  Tomorrow morning.”

“Malik,
I’ve gone easy on you, this time—”

You
call this easy?

“—but
if you and your homeys don’t do as agreed, we’re going to make you very
sorry.  If even
one
of you doesn’t do or say exactly as we’ve
instructed, we’re going to bring
all three
of you back here.  By
the time we’re finished with you, you’ll all be begging for death.  Then
we’ll happily oblige you, and bury your punk asses out here in the desert where
nobody’ll ever find you.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,
sir!  I understands!  Everybody gonna do what you says.  I’s
gonna make sure of that.”

Mr.
White and Mr. Red freed him from the table and unceremoniously dropped him into
the wheelchair.  His piss-soaked clothes chafed his groin and thighs, the
acrid stench clogging his nostrils.  These things were nothing, though,
compared to the pain in his ass.  It felt as if he were sitting on
white-hot knife blades. 

They
rehearsed their new story and, two hours before dawn, the three men herded them
from the building.  Under their own power, Travell and Andre climbed into
the trunk of one of the sedans.  With three broken limbs and an ass that
still hurt like a motherfucker, it took Malik a little longer, but he finally
managed to climb into the trunk of the Crown Vic.  As the lid thumped
shut, he was grateful for the dark privacy as, once again, the tears flowed.

After
what seemed like days, the vehicle rocked to a stop.  When the men raised
the trunk lid, Malik found they were in a secluded alley mere blocks from his
mom’s apartment.  Once again, the men roughly hauled him from the trunk
and dropped him into his wheelchair, making him cry out as his ass hit the
seat.

Mr.
Black leaned down until their faces were only inches apart.  “Go home,
shower, change into clean clothes, and get your asses to the FBI office.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Are
we going to have to do this again?”

“No,
sir.  We knows what to say.  Don’t worry ‘bout nuttin.  We gonna
do like you says.”

“Make
sure you do.  Your lives depend upon it.”

CHAPTER
35

Special Agent Edison Jarvis crossed his
arms over his chest.  “And so all three just suddenly decided to recant
their stories?  Bullshit.  O’Malley got to them.”

Emily
Sengupta looked as if she wanted to punch someone —
any
one.  “I was
told that all three are much the worse for wear, so that was my assumption as
well.”

“I’d
bet both my testicles it was the same three men who alibied O’Malley.  All
three are ex-Special Forces.”

“That
would certainly explain why our witnesses look so scared.”

“Where
are they now?”

“I
had them segregated in separate interrogation rooms.”

“Let’s
talk to Waddell first.”

Equal
measures of anger and fear seemed to emanate from Waddell.  That
ridiculous gold grill was missing from his mouth, his hair was escaping its
cornrows, and his eyes were red and swollen as if he’d been crying. 
Although he’d recently showered, he still reeked of acrid fear-sweat.

When
Jarvis clapped him on one shoulder, Waddell jumped and cried out.  “Malik,
my man, you clearly have had a rough night.”  Waddell remained silent, jaw
clenched, and refused to meet either his or Sengupta’s eyes.  “The agents
who took your statement tell me you’re now admitting that you broke into Mr.
O’Malley’s vehicle, and are claiming there was no woman tied up in the back.”

Waddell
was sullen.  “Yeah.”

“Surely
you realize giving a false statement to government agents is a crime.”

“I
knows.”  He gave an elaborate shrug.  “But we ain’t gonna let that
man do time fo’ sumpin he ain’t done.”

“I
see.  So, if Ms. Santos wasn’t tied up in the back of his vehicle, how’d
you know what she looked like?”

Waddell’s
wild-eyed gaze ping-ponged around the room.  “We heard her ‘scription on
TV.”

“That’s
impossible since, at that time, there’d been nothing on the news about her
abduction.”  Waddell shifted in his seat and it was clear from the
tightening of his jaw that the movement caused him considerable pain. 
Jarvis forced a note of sympathy into his voice.  “Malik, what did they do
to you?”

Waddell’s
jaw clenched.  “Who?”

“O’Malley’s
friends.  It’s clear they got to you and your buddies.  What did they
do?”

A
flash of anger crossed Waddell’s features.  “Yo, I don’t know what the
fuck you talkin’ ‘bout.”