A Private Cathedral

Chapter Thirty-seven

The hoods were removed from our heads, and we were marched down a passageway to a forecastle that had leather-padded bulkheads and blue plastic tarps spread on the deck. There were no portholes, and I had no way to get a bearing. Chains with sheep-lined leather cuffs hung from the bulkheads.

“How do you like my arrangement?” Shondell said. “Roomy, soundproof, and with an array of items that go back perhaps five hundred years.”

At the far end of the compartment were primitive machines and worktables covered with metal instruments. The machines were constructed of brass and iron and oak and heavy bolts and spikes and pulleys and cogged wheels with long wood handles attached to them.

“Anything to say, Mr. Purcel?” Shondell said.

“Eat shit,” Clete said.

“When it’s your turn, the man whose finger you shot off will be here to cheer you along,” Shondell said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“What are you going to tell Johnny about all this?” Clete said.

“He’ll know you went away. He’s a good boy. He’ll stay that way.”

“What about Isolde?” I said.

“Believe me, these are not your concerns. In the next twenty-four hours, you’re going to be extremely preoccupied.” Shondell gazed at the machines and instruments that represented the darkness I had tried to plumb in Marcel LaForchette. How could I have mistaken the torment in poor Marcel for the disease that lived inside Mark Shondell?

“I love the names of these things,” he said. “The scold’s bridle for loquacious housewives, the choke pear for expansion of the mouth and other places, the iron maiden, the scavenger’s daughter for compressing people who need size reduction, the rack, and the thumbscrew. How about my favorite, the brazen bull? The victim is inserted inside and slowly boiled. There’re pipes inside that make his screams sound like the roaring of a bull.”

Carroll LeBlanc was crying.

“Nothing to say, Dave?” Shondell said.

“It looks like a junk pile that your average pervert would probably appreciate,” I said.

“I think you’ll change your tune.” Shondell looked at the brazen bull and grinned. “That’s a hint.”

“Here’s one thing that won’t change, Shondell,” I said. “No matter what happens to us, you’ll remain the same. You’re trash, your family is trash, and your ancestors were trash. I think God keeps a few people like you around to remind the white race we’ve got some serious problems. I heard the Shondells worked as pubic-latrine cleaners for Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. Is that true?”

Maybe it was the light or my imagination, but the creases in his face seemed to deepen, with an effect like soil erosion, the blood leaving his lips. He exuded an odor that smelled like an unchanged bandage. There were whiskers showing above his collar, the way they do when an old man cannot shave adequately.

Then he seemed to collect himself. “A young woman awaits me now,” he said. “After a nap and a shower and a fine breakfast, I’ll return, and we’ll continue our talk. General Mendoza will be accompanying me.”

“Mr. Shondell, you promised you’d get my daughter into a hospital,” Carroll said.

“Oh, yes,” Shondell said. “Thank you for reminding me. A lovely girl.”

We were taken back to the compartment where we had woken up, the ligatures on our wrists. Bell locked us in. We sat on the deck in the white bareness of the compartment, hands bound behind us, the engines humming through the bulkhead. I was reminded of the play No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. The characters find themselves in a windowless room and discover they are not only dead but in hell.

“Hey, you guys, I know this won’t mean much, but I’m sorry I sold you out,” Carroll said.

Neither Clete nor I could bring ourselves to look at him.

“Y’all hear me?” he said.

“Yeah, we heard you,” Clete said. “That means you don’t need to say any more.”

“We saw all their faces,” Carroll said.

“Yeah,” Clete said.

“That means we got no chance, huh?” Carroll said.

“No one is putting the glide on you, LeBlanc,” Clete said. “Now shut up.”

“I don’t want to go out like this,” Carroll said. “With you guys hating me. My daughter never had a mother. I tried my best. I didn’t think all this would happen.”

“I’m going to come over there and kick the shit out of you,” Clete said.

“Listen to me, Carroll,” I said. “You owned up. You’re genuinely sorry. We accept that. Now we’re going to do everything we can to get out of here. Shondell has a weakness.”

“What?” Carroll said.

“He’s vain and afraid,” Clete said. “He knows what’s waiting for him down the track.”

“What’s waiting for him?” Carroll said.

“Probably everything he’s done to other people,” Clete said.

“Yeah?” Carroll said. “What good does that do us?”

Clete struggled to his feet. “There is no us. There is me and there is Dave. Then there is you. There is no us. Do you have that straight, you pinhead?”

It would have been funny in any other circumstances. But we were inside a nightmare, perhaps an atavistic memory of real events passed down through the eons, like dreams of falling or burning or being buried alive. We had no place to hide, no mother to wake us, no descent from the heavens by a winged spirit with a shining broadsword.

Then we got a visitor I didn’t expect.

Adonis stepped into the compartment and shut the hatch behind him. He wore floppy white slacks and a purple corduroy shirt with a chain and cross around his neck, as though affecting a man of leisure who was at peace with both heaven and earth. His hair was freshly barbered, lightly oiled and combed back on the sides. If a mirror had been available, I’m sure he would have been looking at his reflection.

He carried a small tin box in his palms as though it were a sacred object. It was painted with purple roses and green vines. “Hello, fellows,” he said.

“Lose the guise, Adonis,” Clete said. “You’re working with that perv.”

“I’m the only person on this yacht who will tell you the truth about your situation. I’m also the only one who might help you.”

“Help yourself by dropping the dime on the perv while you have time,” Clete said.

Adonis turned toward me. Considering the circumstances, his lidless eyes and swarthy good looks and calm demeanor were impressive and not to be taken lightly. However, if I hadn’t known better, I would have believed that Shakespeare had Adonis in mind when he said the prince of darkness was always a gentleman.

“You realize you will not leave this place?” he said.

“So?” I said.

“I can make your ordeal easier, or I can end it now.”

He opened the tin box. It contained a syringe and two glass ampoules of liquid.

“I think I’ll pass,” I said.

He ticked one fingernail on the box. “This is as good as it’s going to get.”

“You’re offering us a hotshot?” Clete said.

“Morphine,” Adonis said.

“What are you giving up in exchange for Isolde?” I said.

“Almost everything we have.”

“How do you know a greaseball is lying?” Clete said. “His lips are moving.”

“Clete’s right, Adonis. You’re a bum. I think you’re about to become Shondell’s silent partner.”

“Penelope loves you,” he said. “If she goes to the authorities, her daughter will be killed. Any power I have cannot stop Mark Shondell.”

“He’s not of this earth?” I said.

“That’s right,” Adonis replied.

“Wonder why he hauled butt when I shot at him,” Clete said.

“You shot at Mark?”

“You got to do something for kicks.”

“The three of you are going to die a horrible death,” Adonis said. “Take the morphine.”

“If we go through trial by ordeal, that’s the way it is,” I said. “Now get out of here. You’re stinking up the compartment.”

I was surprised at his reaction, because I had not expected one. He blinked, and his lips parted as a child’s might if an adult pinched his cheek and shamed him in public.

“Something else you can take with you,” Clete said. “I hear Gideon Richetti wants to do me a solid. Guess what that means for you, dick-wipe.”

Later someone turned off the overhead light, and immediately, the compartment was plunged into darkness. I lost track of time. An hour could have been a day, and a day could have been an hour. I wasn’t sure when I was awake or when I was dreaming. After a while the two states of mind became interchangeable, one no more rational or irrational than the other. I tried to think of the sun bursting on the horizon, splintering the blue sky with a gold radiance that reached into infinity. I also envisioned a full moon rising with the wispy, cold fragility of a communion wafer.

Whatever my fate was, I wanted it over. I wished I had not witnessed the executions in the Red Hat House at Angola. I don’t know how the condemned men didn’t go mad anticipating a death that by anyone’s measure is grotesque and cruel. Long ago I came to believe that these criminals were far braver men than I. Now I was confirmed in that belief. I had spoken with bravado to Adonis. But my words did not reflect what I felt. My breath was rank, my armpits reeking with a vinegar-like stench, my hair damp with sweat, even though the compartment was frigid.

We were given a bucket to use as a latrine. Carroll LeBlanc soiled himself. Clete snored. We felt like animals. Then, inside a deep sleep, I heard Clete call my name.

“What’s the haps, Cletus?” I said.

“I dreamed you and I were at an LSU — Ole Miss game. It was raining down whiskey. We stomped Ole Miss’s ass.”

“Fuck these guys, Clete.”

“You got it, big mon. We’ve got to get our hands on a weapon.”

The hatch opened and Bell stepped into the compartment. “If you got to relieve yourselves, now’s the time,” he said.