Afterparty Part 9

She spent the next few minutes poking at the lock's innards with the wire twist ties. A dollop of sweat popped from the end of her nose. Her fingers trembled.

Bobby watched her, nervously gripping his treasure chest. He said, "It's okay if you can't open it."

Ollie's head jerked up. "What did you say?"

I said, "Kid, let her work."

"I'm just saying, we could call a locksmith. One time when I was locked out of my car-"

Ollie jerked on the padlock and suddenly it was open. "When you're popping locks, it's not if it opens," she said. "It's how fast." She sat back on her haunches, looking worn out. "I'm just not up to speed yet."

"Literally," I said.

She looked up at me and smiled. "I'll do better tonight. How about another fortune cookie?"

I unfolded the paper I'd purchased from Brandy. The page was divided into perforated strips, each strip printed with a sentence. I tore one off. It said, "You will be taking a long trip."

Ollie popped it in her mouth. Bobby nodded at the toolbox and said, "So...?"

Ollie opened the box and began lifting out items: a black velvet bandolier loaded with picks, wrenches, s.h.i.+ms, and thin-bladed knives; a top tray full of plastic cases containing electronic components; a lower tray of molded slots for pliers, wire cutters, tiny flashlights, and screwdrivers. Bobby said, "Is that a gun?"

"This?" She picked up a hunk of dark gray plastic with a pistol grip, pointed it at him, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. "This is a drill," she said. "Which reminds me, I need to charge this thing before our a.s.sault on the house of G.o.d."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Reverend Rudy Gallo Velez, naked except for his undershorts, crouched atop a chair in the center of the room in one of the cla.s.sic stress positions: thighs parallel to the floor, arms tied behind his back, head bowed. A plastic garbage bag, loose at the bottom, covered his head. A figure eight of nylon cord, one loop around his neck, the other around his knees, kept his body in the proper att.i.tude. He'd been in the position, on and off (mostly on), for three hours. He was a strong man, very fit, but sweat gleamed on his skin, and his legs trembled.

The Vincent sat about twenty feet away, his feet propped on the chemjet printer, his hat low across his eyes. A Zane Grey novel was open on his pen. He remained silent, giving Rudy time to think.

The pastor grunted, very quietly. He flexed his bare feet against the seat of the chair. His muscles had to be burning constantly now. Shooting pains would be knifing up his thighs, across his lower back. The discomfort caused by a stress position was psychologically different from that caused directly by the interrogator-say, a punch to the face, or a snapping of a finger bone, both of which the Vincent had inflicted upon Rudy within the first thirty seconds of meeting him-because positional pain seemed to come from within. This predisposed the victim to solicit the torturer's help to end the suffering.

But a predisposition only. The Vincent could tell, even with the hood obscuring the pastor's face, that he was not yet sufficiently distressed. Was he resilient because he was a man of the cloth, a g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger, or both? A black hand tattoo covered his left shoulder, and an elaborate "13" decorated the side of his neck, both of which marked him as La eMe-Mexican Mafia. If Pastor Rudy had found religion, it was only after a long allegiance with another hierarchical organization.

A novice interrogator might grow impatient at this point, start beating the man to break him down. That would be a mistake. As the CIA's Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual made clear: Pain was useless. Psychology was everything.

Pain was a tool to get a subject-especially an alpha male like Rudy-into the proper state of mind. Which was why, when the Vincent had surprised the man in the back room of the church, the Vincent had immediately dropped him to the floor with the punch, then bent his finger the wrong way toward his wrist. Swift, unexpected pain hinted at the parameters of the interaction to come, and notified the subject of his change of status, from captain of his fate to pa.s.senger on the USS I Am f.u.c.ked.

For the young man who'd been in the room with Rudy-a gangly African-American who resembled the adopted younger brother of Uncle Sam-that s.h.i.+p had sailed. The black man had tried to run, and the Vincent had collared him like a rodeo calf and slammed him to the cement. The boy was stunned, teetering on unconsciousness, and the Vincent had helped him over that edge.

Despite all the violence and, let's face it, an impressive display of physical prowess, the pastor refused to answer the Vincent's questions. What did you give the red-haired woman, Lyda Rose? Where did you get the chemjet printer? Who gave you the ingredients? The pastor only smiled and said, "She took our communion wafers."

Enhanced coercive interrogation techniques were required. To do the job right, the Vincent needed a private, soundproofed location, preferably one underground with a few metal doors to slam, all the better to convince the victim that he was isolated, helpless, and beyond rescue. Instead he had to improvise with what was available: a plastic bag, a chair, and a windowless warehouse with a cement floor. He'd done more with less.

A few minutes later, Rudy's legs gave out and he tipped sideways. The chair shot out from under him and smacked the floor. The pastor lay on his side, the noose still enforcing a curled position.

The Vincent tipped back his hat but remained seated. "Are you ready to answer my questions, Rudy?" He thought it intellectually honest to call his victims by their names. He would not turn what he did, and who he did it to, into abstractions. That was for people with no control of their emotions.

The pastor breathed hard under his hood, the plastic hugging his mouth, then inflating. The Vincent flicked to a new page on the pen. "My employer would like you to fill out a brief questionnaire. I can read you the questions and record your answers. Ready?"

The hood moved slightly. The Vincent took that as a nod.

"One. 'Are you a user of the drug that you've been distributing?'"

The Vincent waited for several seconds. "All righty, then. I'm going to put that down as a yes. Two. 'How long have you been taking the drug and in what dosages?'"

Nothing.

"These aren't hard questions, Rudy. For research purposes only, not personal at all. Help me out here."

The Vincent got to his feet. "Three. 'Would you say you've been taking the drug for less than a week, a week to one month, or longer than a month?'"

The pastor said, "Are you happy?" His voice was m.u.f.fled by the hood, but he sounded genuinely curious.

The question surprised the Vincent. Usually at this point, the questions were more along the line of "Why are you doing this?" or "What do you want?" or "Why won't you tell me what to say?"

The Vincent said, "I'm doing well, thanks." It was sometimes a mistake to let the victim drive the interaction, but at least he was talking. And this was the most interesting conversation the Vincent had had in a while.

"I mean happy with your life," Rudy said. "With what you're doing."

Ah. An appeal to his conscience. Talk about a rhetorical cul-de-sac. The Vincent tucked the pen into his jacket pocket.

"I'm happier than anyone else I know," he said. "I'm..." What was the word? "Free" was close. "Liberated"? "Unfettered"? "I'm unenc.u.mbered." He moved behind Rudy and pulled him into a sitting position. "I'm like a G.o.dd.a.m.n free-range buffalo. Sorry-bison.

"See, you have a G.o.d to answer to," the Vincent said, warming to the topic. "Others have society, or Mom, or the gang. Some voice in your head shaming you when you've broken the code. But in my head it's quiet. Peaceful. Up you go."

He helped blind Rudy climb back onto the chair, an awkward series of moves.

"You know in your heart what's right or wrong," the pastor said.

"I know in my head," the Vincent said. "And what I've learned is that it's not knowing what's right or wrong, it's caring. Feeling the wrongness. See, Rudy, when you see someone you love being hurt, you feel an echo of the pain yourself. You only got to imagine it. I can say, 'I kicked your grandfather in the b.a.l.l.s,' and you will feel a twinge in your groin. Your morality is not rational, or handed down to you on stone tablets by some divine cop, it's wired into your nervous system." He patted the man on his sweat-slick back. "Fortunately, there's a treatment for it."

"But you're alone," Rudy said. "My G.o.d is here."

"He doesn't seem to be helping you much." The Vincent leaned close. "Where did the printer come from?"

The man said nothing.

The Vincent said, "I'll track it down eventually, but you could save me a lot of time. Was it the cartel? Have they branched into desktop drugs?"

The Vincent watched the hood for movement. The man seemed strikingly calm. Breathing deeply, but without the ragged gasps of someone under duress.

"Rudy, you've been put in an unfair position. The people who gave you that hardware knew that sooner or later someone like me was going to come around asking questions about it. They knew that you'd tell me eventually."

The Vincent pulled the hood from the pastor's head. Rudy's face was covered in sweat, and he blinked to keep it from running into his eyes.

The Vincent said, "I can tell that you're a good man, trying to do the right thing. But no one but you expects you to keep all this secret."

Rudy looked to his left, as if someone had just stepped into the room. The Vincent couldn't stop himself from glancing in that direction. Of course no one was there.

"I think it's time we move on to the next phase," the Vincent said. He walked to his carry-on bag and unzipped it. He took out a pair of pliers, a serrated knife, a roll of duct tape, a punch awl, a plastic bottle of lighter fluid, and a box of kitchen matches. Set them on the floor in a row. They were all new, picked up from the Walmart soon after he'd landed in Toronto.

He made sure Rudy was watching this presentation of the props. The interrogation was, after all, a theatrical performance. You had to engage the victim in the narrative, a story that followed the cla.s.sic structure: The hero (our victim), faced with a dire situation, overcomes adversity, and achieves his goals. Well, one goal, really: survival. But it was important that that modest happy ending seemed within reach, right around the corner. The Vincent's job was to inspire not only fear, but hope.

The Vincent picked up the awl. "Rudy, I need you to tell me where you got the printer. It's not like anything I've seen. Was it given to you, or did you buy it? Who did you get it from?"

Rudy shook his head.

"Just one name," the Vincent said reasonably.

"I'm not going to tell you that," Rudy said.

"Why not?"

He opened one eye, squinting. "I'm not going to point you toward another brother or sister."

"So you got it from someone else in the church. One of the members."

"Not this congregation," Rudy said. "Not this building."

"So if I looked for other congregations of-what do you call it? The Church of the Hologrammatic G.o.d-I could ask them. Maybe do a few more pastoral visits."

Rudy said nothing.

"I'm going to level with you," the Vincent said. "I'd rather not go to all that trouble. But you're putting me in a corner. If you don't give me some information that I can take to my employer, then I'm going to have to talk to other people in your church, as I'm talking to you now."

Rudy glanced to his left again, a gesture that was getting tiresome. The man just wasn't scared enough. And the Vincent couldn't just start slicing skin and breaking bones. Pain at that level was counterproductive, not only because of the well-doc.u.mented willingness of prisoners to say anything to stop it, but because of the opposite: Many victims discovered that their tolerance was higher than they expected. And death threats were worse than useless; hold a gun to a victim's head, or a blade to his throat, he might start to think he was going to die no matter whether he submitted or not. The Vincent had seen this happen during an interrogation of a poppy farmer in Afghanistan. The army had botched the job, and the farmer shut down completely. He almost seemed to be at peace. By the time the Vincent had arrived at the scene, there wasn't enough time to win him back. Another human resource, unexploited.

No, it wasn't death threats that motivated his victims to cooperate, or pain, but fear of pain. And this man, Pastor Rudy Gallo Velez, seemed to have an extreme deficit of fear.

If he was drugged-and his employer said that he'd be dealing with criminals and users, starting with the addict Lyda Rose-it was no drug the Vincent had seen before. The Vincent had a bad thought: What if his own medication was interfering with the job? Maybe if he had some of the emotional sensitivity that he possessed when he was off duty and off the meds, then he could figure out where Rudy was vulnerable. But off the meds, the Vincent wouldn't have the stomach for the job at all.

It was a conundrum.

Maybe he could grab somebody off the street-an innocent, a little girl, perhaps-and torture her in front of the pastor? But that was crazy. Where was he going to find a little girl at this time of night? The black kid with the beard could have been leverage, but it was too late for that.

The Vincent said, "So what's it going to be, Rudy?"

The man shook his head. "I'm sorry. I just can't." He sounded genuinely apologetic. "I made a vow."

Even on the meds, with his empathy reduced to a trickle, the Vincent could detect the sincerity in the pastor's voice. Rudy was determined to keep his promise.

The Vincent put a hand on the man's neck. Three small dots surrounded the "13" tattoo, representing Prison, Hospital, and Cemetery, the gangster stations of the cross. "Just a first name," he said. Asking, even though it was futile. "Or the initials."

Rudy said, "It's not too late. It's never too late. G.o.d can forgive you. Even after you do what you're about to do."

The pastor stared at the floor. He was already gone, gone as that Afghan farmer.

"What are we going to do with you?" the Vincent asked.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Ollie and I rode in the backseat, Bobby alone up front. During the ride to the strip mall she held my hand, running her thumb up and down my wrist. Her fingers were no longer trembling. She directed Bobby to drive around the back.

She pulled my face to hers and kissed me fiercely. "For luck." She jumped out of the car and jogged up the steps beside the loading dock. She looked twice as big in the camo jacket.

I hopped out after her, then leaned back in to the pa.s.senger window. "Keep the car running," I told Bobby. I'd always wanted to say that.

Ollie took something out of her jacket pocket and inserted it in the lock of one of the doors. I whispered, "How long will it take to-?"

She pushed the door open and stepped into the dark.

"Okay then," I said.

Ollie turned on a thin flashlight. She played the light around the wall adjacent to the loading dock doors and finally settled on a small white box at eye level. My eye level, anyway-the box was positioned just over Ollie's head. The lid hung loose. She reached up and popped it off.

"Huh," she said.

"Problem?" I still had my hand on the door.

"The alarm's already disabled."

I closed the door. Ollie flipped a light switch. I winced against the light, turned to face the room-and my body jerked, then froze-the microseizure of the life-endangered mammal.

In the middle of the warehouse, a figure lay curled on the floor, his back to us. I flashed on the body of Francine, sprawled on the tile of the NAT bathroom, and knew this to be another corpse.

I stepped forward, and Ollie put a hand on my shoulder. "We have to get out," she said. "Now."

I ignored her and walked toward the body. He was naked, or nearly so. His hands were clasped behind him. His neck was straight, supported by something small, so that his head hovered over the floor. Blood had pooled beneath it, then sp.a.w.ned a rivulet that meandered a few feet to a drain.

I moved around his feet to see his face. It was the pastor. His eyes were open, his lips slightly parted. I crouched to see what he was resting on. I touched his shoulder, and he tipped onto his back.

A rounded wooden handle was buried in the side of his neck. The tattoo I'd seen yesterday was obscured by blood.

Ollie said, "Lyda..."

I was shaking, and couldn't stop myself. Some neural pathways are so old, the grooves so deep, you're forced to realize that you're an animal first. Reason, choice, self-control? They all showed up late to the evolutionary party.