Known to Evil

54

The smells of wood ash and pine needles were the first signs of returning consciousness. I was in a seated position. My fingers were numb from the tight bonds around my wrists, which were tied to the arm of the heavy chair. My feet weren't going anywhere, seeing that they were lashed to the front legs of the chair.

It took a moment for me to identify the speeding fire engine, its horns blaring. It was the headache brought on by the blow to my skull.

There were lights here and there in the room but the pulsating pain made them seem like stars-points in the darkness that illuminated nothing but themselves.

"He's awake," a gruff voice said.

There was motion in the room.

Two large shapes moved in my direction. Men in suits. One was large and brutal. The other looked like a professional manager of a large, glass-walled office.

"Mr. McGill," the manager said.

"Who is that?" I had to squint to see past the pain.

"My name is Shell," he said. "I hear that you've been looking for me."

Something about the connectivity between the ideas cleared up my vision. I was in a cabin, probably in the woods, judging by the smells. The larger man was quite hairy and wore a woolly gray suit. Silently I dubbed him Mammoth. Shell's suit was a muted silver-gray color and he wore expensive Italian shoes cut from red-brown leather.

"You coulda just called me," I said.

I had the urge to vomit but squelched it. Neither Mammoth or Shell looked like they'd have cleaned me up afterwards.

"There's a time for all things," Shell intoned. "This, my friend, is not the moment for bravery."

"Oh no? Why's that?"

The blow Shell delivered was hard-very hard. The heaviness of the chair anchored me, which only added to the power of the clout. I'm used to getting hit. I've sparred and fought real fights for nearly forty years. But Shell's blow was something real, a second fire engine crashing headlong into the first.

The next thing I knew there was cold water in my ears and running down my neck. That chill was the first time I was reminded of Patrick and Diego-but not the last.

"You can get seriously damaged if you don't answer my questions," Shell said.

I blinked twice. There was blood coming down the left side of my forehead. The upper part of the back of my left arm burned.

I remember thinking that my investigation was a success, that everything was falling into place-on top of me.

Shell hit me again but I maintained consciousness.

"Where's Angelique?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

"Where Angelique is."

He struck again, doused me with water again.

I was getting colder. The iciness kept Patrick in my mind.

"You have to know her," Shell said. "You knew about me."

"I met her," I told him, "in a coffee shop. She told me her problem and I agreed to look into it."

He hit me twice.

"I followed the line of ownership for the Leontine Building…"

He hit me.

"… and found out that Regents Bank owned it. I figured that Shell, you, worked for Regents."

He hit me again.

I've been in boxing gyms regularly since the age of fourteen. I've been hit two hundred times in an evening by light heavyweights and heavyweights who know how to hit. I might've looked like shit, but you can't judge a book by its cover, or a boxer by his cuts.

"Where is she?" Shell asked.

I realized that my mind had been wandering, sent on its circuitous route by Shell's power shots.

"I don't know where she is."

"Then how did you know to come to Regents?"

"She told me about you, at least somebody with your name, about meeting this man at his office in the Leontine. I'm a detective. I followed it down from there."

Mammoth came over and hit me then. That threw the chair over and me into dreamland.

When I awoke I was sitting up again. Mammoth had moved back toward the fake-log wall, and the fireplace was blazing but throwing off very little heat.

"Where is she?" Shell asked from somewhere off to the left.

I turned to him.

"Don't let that guy hit me again," I said. That was the beginning of my plan. It wasn't much of a strategy but it was mine and I was sticking to it.

"Then tell me where she is."

"She had money on her," I said. "Three thousand dollars. She was going to take a bus out west. I told her to hang around, to go to a hotel and call my office after five days. She gave me five hundred and went to ground."

I thought my nose was broken after his next punch. It wasn't, but it sure felt like it.

"Where is she?"

THE BEATING WENT ON for a quite a while. It got harder and faster when they realized that I was going to hang tough. Unluckily for me these guys weren't sadomasochists. I say unluckily because if they had pulled out a knife, or even just a burning cigarette, I could have put my plan into action. But all they were doing was hitting me. I didn't want to make it too easy on them so I took the punishment until I figured they'd hit me enough to have broken someone not trained in the fistic arts.

I once studied the Method under a wonderful thespian named Anja Klieger. I had no intention of going onstage, but I figured that my profession demanded believable emotional pretense from time to time.

Anja had taught me to remember a time when I had the feeling that the character I was portraying felt.

I thought about my father walking out the door with his army-surplus duffel bag. I remembered his last hug and then the months of my mother's decline. At last I thought about a boy entering puberty, alone in the world for no reason that made sense.

I wasn't in a cabin in the woods. I wasn't being beaten by hard men. I was a child bereft of the only love he'd known. The tears began to flow and I cried for the first time in over a decade.

"I'll tell you," I said. "Just stop it. Stop it."

"Where's the girl?" Shell asked. He was a little winded from the exertions of beating me. I'm sure his knuckles were sore.

"I don't know where she is but I know who has her."

"Who?"

"A guy named Brennan. I told him that I'd call when it was safe."

"What's the number?"

I gave it to him. "But if anybody but me calls he'll hang up and run."

Shell brought out a gun and pointed it at my forehead. "Untie his hands, Leo," Shell said.

Mammoth did so.

"Hand our friend the phone," the cruel manager added.

I tried to take the landline receiver but it fell from my numb fingers.

"What the fuck?" Leo said.

"It's my hands," I said hastily. "They're numb from being tied for so long."

"Take your time," Shell said generously.

After a few minutes I entered a number. As soon as the phone started ringing Shell picked up an extension line.

The phone rang seven times before Hush answered.

"Hello?" he said.

"You got the girl, Brennan?"

"You know I do," he said easily.

"I need to see her."

"Sure."

"Where do you have her?"

"You know that private cemetery in Hicksville?"

"Yeah."

"Show up at the gate after the sun rises and I'll buzz you in."

He hung up and I took a deep breath.

I looked up into Shell's eyes. He was wondering, and I was, too, if he should kill me right then and there. That might have been much easier. It would have certainly been safer.

But he didn't know anything about the cemetery except that the gates were locked.

"Where's this place?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"I want out of this," I said.

"Who you working for?"

"The girl."

"You told the people at Regents that you were part of a group."

"Just me and Brennan, man. Just me and him."