THREE
She lived in an old brick rowhouse that was connected to several others by a common porch and a shrub-filled front yard. I heard footsteps behind me, turned and glanced at three men who were joking about something and carrying a wine bottle wrapped in a paper sack, but I paid no attention to them after they turned toward a lighted house where a party was going on.
She smiled when she opened the door. She wore a blue dress with transparent shoulders, and her blond curls stuck out from under a wide straw hat. She was very pretty with the light behind her, and I didn't care whether we made it to the track or not. Then I saw her eyes focus over my shoulder, saw her expression break apart, heard the feet on the porch behind me, this time fast and running. Just as I turned, one of the three men shoved me hard into Annie Ballard's living room and aimed a Browning automatic pistol straight into my face.
"Don't try to pull it, biscuit-eater, unless you want your brains running out your nose," he said, and reached inside my sports coat and pulled my.38 from my waist holster.
He was tall and angular, his hair mowed into his scalp like a peeled onion, his stomach as flat as a shingle under the big metal buckle on his blue jeans. The accent was Deep South, genuine peckerwood, and on his right arm was a tattoo of a grinning skull in a green beret with crossed bayonets under the jaw and the inscription kill them all… let god sort them out.
The second man was short and olive-skinned, with elongated Semitic eyes and a hawk nose. He went quickly from room to room, like a ferret. But it was the third man who was obviously in charge. His hands rested comfortably in his raincoat pockets; his face looked impassively around the room as though he were standing at a bus stop. He was in his early fifties, with a paunch, a round Irish chin, a small mouth with down-turned corners, and cheeks that were flecked with tiny blue and red veins. The vaguely dissolute edges of his face, with his tangled eyebrows and untrimmed gray hair, gave you the impression of a jaded Kiwanian.
"There's nobody else," the olive-skinned man said. He spoke with a Middle Eastern accent.
"Do you already know I'm a police officer?" I said quietly.
"We know a lot about you, Lieutenant. You've really spread your name around recently," the man in the raincoat said.
"I thought Segura was smarter than this," I said.
"I don't know. I've never met the man. But you're not smart at all." He took a revolver casually out of his raincoat pocket and nodded to the man with the tattoo, who went into the bathroom, dropped my.38 into the toilet bowl, and started the water in the bathtub. Annie's eyes were wide under her hat, and she was breathing rapidly through her mouth.
"I have friends coming over," she said.
"That's why you got your hat on," the man with the tattoo said, smiling from the bathroom door. His hair was cut so close to his scalp that the light made his head glow with an aura. He held a large roll of adhesive tape in his hand.
"I'm going to walk out my door," she said. Her face was flushed and spotted as though she had a fever, and her voice was filled with strain. "I have friends next door and out in the yard and over on the next block and they can hear everything through these walls and you're not going to do anything to us-"
"Annie," I said quietly.
"We're going to leave now and they're not going to hurt us," she said.
"Annie, don't talk," I said. "These men have business with me, then they're going to leave. You mustn't do anything now."
"Listen to the voice of experience," the man in the raincoat said.
"No," she said. "They're not going to do this. I'm walking outside now. These are weak people or they wouldn't have guns."
"You dumb cunt," the man with the tattoo said, and swung his fist into the back of Annie's head. Her hat pitched into the air, and she fell forward on her knees, her face white with shock. She remained bent over and started to cry. It was the kind of crying that came from genuine, deep-seated pain.
"You sonofabitch," I said.
"Put her in back," the man in the raincoat said. The other two men pulled Annie's arms behind her and taped her wrists, then her mouth. Her curly hair hung in her eyes, and there were tears on her cheeks. The two men started to walk her to the bedroom.
"Bobby Joe, nothing except what we have to do here," the man in the raincoat said.
"You wanted her to walk out on the front porch?" said Bobby Joe, the man with the tattoo.
"That's not what I mean. Nothing except what we have to do. Do you understand?"
"There's better broads for two bucks in Guatemala City," Bobby Joe said.
"Shut your mouth, tape her ankles, and get back out here," the man with the raincoat said.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"You're in way over your head, Lieutenant. I'm just not quite sure of your own degree of awareness. That's the problem we have to resolve tonight."
"I'll give you something else to resolve. I'm going to square everything that happens in here."
"You're presuming a lot."
"Yeah? We can make New Orleans an uncomfortable place for crackers that beat up on women. Or for over-the-hill spooks."
He looked amused.
"You think you've made me?" he said.
"You have a strong federal smell."
"Who knows, these days, employment being what it is? But at least you're a professional and you recognize characteristics in people. So you know that Bobby Joe and Erik in there are hired help, not professional at all. They get carried away sometimes. Do you know what I mean? Bobby Joe, in particular. Bad army life, doesn't like authority, certainly doesn't like women. A bad combination for your situation. Tell me where Fitzpatrick is and we'll walk out of here."
"Who?"
"I was afraid we'd hear that from you."
The other two men, Bobby Joe and Erik, came out of the bedroom, crossed my wrists behind me, and wound the adhesive tape deep into my flesh. I could feel the blood swelling in my veins. Then the man in the raincoat nodded to Bobby Joe, who jerked my head down with both hands and brought his knee up into my face. I crashed against the coffee table, my nose ringing with pain, my eyes watering uncontrollably. Bobby Joe and Erik picked me up by each arm. Their hands were like Vise-Grips on me. Then Bobby Joe hit me twice in the stomach, and I doubled over and gagged a long string of saliva on the rug.
"Now you're a cooperative biscuit-eater," Bobby Joe said, and they led me into the bathroom.
The tub was running over now. Erik turned off the taps, and the man in the raincoat lowered the toilet-seat cover, sat on it, and lighted a Camel cigarette.
"In 'Nam we wrapped a towel around Charlie's face and soaked it in water," he said. "It was kind of like a portable river to drown in. But it always worked. Even better than calling him up on the telephone crank. Let's have it, Lieutenant, so we don't have to go through this bullshit."
They had me on my knees, bent over the tub now. My nose was dripping blood into the water. They waited a moment in the silence, then shoved my head under.
I fought to get up, but it didn't do any good. My knees felt like they were greased with Vaseline; my stomach was pressed hard over the tub's rim, and Bobby Joe was leaning all his weight on the back of my neck. My breath bubbled out my nose and mouth, I shook my head violently from side to side with my eyes open, my teeth gritted, then the closure apparatus in my throat broke and I sucked water inside my head and lungs like a series of doors slamming forever.
They pulled me up roaring with water and air, and threw me against the metal legs on the sink.
"This isn't so bad. There's no permanent damage done," the man in the raincoat said. "It'd be a lot worse if Segura's people handled it. It has something to do with the Latin tradition. I think they got it from the Romans. Did you know that Nero killed himself because the Senate sent word to him that he was to be executed in 'the old way,' which meant being whipped to death with his head locked in a wooden fork? If you don't want to say where Fitzpatrick is, you can write it on a piece of paper. It's funny how that makes a difference for people sometimes."