Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales Read online

  It was a high-contrast full-face shot. It made Fletcher think of photographs by that semi-famous news photographer of the forties and fifties, the one who called himself Weegee. It was a portrait of a dead man. The eyes were open. The flashbulb had reflected in them, giving them a kind of life. There was no blood, only one mark and no blood, but still one knew at once that the man was dead. His hair was combed, one could still see the toothmarks the comb had left, and there were those little lights in his eyes, but they were reflected lights. One knew at once the man was dead.

  The mark was on the left temple, a comet shape that looked like a powder burn, but there was no bullet hole, no blood, and the skull wasn't pushed out of shape. Even a low-caliber pistol like a .22, fired close enough to the skin to leave a powder burn, would have pushed the skull out of shape.

  Escobar took the picture back, put it in the folder, closed the folder, and shrugged as if to say You see? You see what happens? When he shrugged, the ash fell off his cigarette onto the table. He brushed it off onto the gray lino floor with the side of one fat hand.

  "We dint actually want to bother you," Escobar said. "Why would we? This a small country. We are small people in a small country. The New York Times a big paper in a big country. We have our pride, of course, but we also have our . . ." Escobar tapped his temple with one finger. "You see?"

  Fletcher nodded. He kept seeing Tomas. Even with the picture back in the folder he could see Tomas, the marks the comb had left in Tomas's dark hair. He had eaten food Tomas's wife had cooked, had sat on the floor and watched cartoons with Tomas's youngest child, a little girl of perhaps five. Tom and Jerry cartoons, with what little dialogue there was in Spanish.

  "We don't want to bother you," Escobar was saying as the cigarette smoke rose and broke apart on his face and curled around his ears, "but for a long time we was watching. You dint see us--maybe because you are so big and we are just little--but we was watching. We know that you know what Tomas knows, and so we go to him. We try to get him to tell what he knows so we don't have to bother you, but he won't. Finally we ask Heinz here to try and make him tell. Heinz, show Mr. Fletcher how you try to make Tomas tell, when Tomas was sitting right where Mr. Fletcher was sitting now."

  "I can do that," said Heinz. He spoke English in a nasal New York accent. He was bald, except for a fringe of hair around his ears. He wore little glasses. Escobar looked like a movie Mexican, the woman looked like Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein, Heinz looked like an actor in a TV commercial, the one who explained why Excedrin was best for your headache. He walked around the table to the trolley, gave Fletcher a look both roguish and conspiratorial, and flicked away the cloth over the top.

  There was a machine underneath, something with dials and lights that were now all dark. Fletcher at first thought it was a lie detector--that made a certain amount of sense--but in front of the rudimentary control panel, connected to the side of the machine by a fat black cord, was an object with a rubber grip. It looked like a stylus or some sort of fountain pen. There was no nib, though. The thing just tapered to a blunt steel point.

  Below the machine was a shelf. On the shelf was a car battery marked DELCO. There were rubber cups over the battery terminals. Wires rose from the rubber cups to the back of the machine. No, not a lie detector. Except maybe to these people it was.

  Heinz spoke briskly, with the pleasure of a man who likes to explain what he does. "It's quite simple, really, a modification of the device neurologists use to administer electric shocks to people suffering unipolar neurosis. Only this administers a far more powerful jolt. The pain is really secondary, I find. Most people don't even remember the pain. What makes them so eager to talk is an aversion to the process. This might almost be called an atavism. Someday I hope to write a paper."

  Heinz picked up the stylus by its insulated rubber grip and held it in front of his eyes.

  "This can be touched to the extremities . . . the torso . . . the genitals, of course . . . but it can also be inserted in places where--forgive the crudity--the sun never shines. A man whose shit has been electrified never forgets it, Mr. Fletcher."

  "Did you do that to Tomas?"

  "No," Heinz said, and replaced the stylus carefully in front of the shock-generator. "He got a jolt at half-power on the hand, just to acquaint him with what he was up against, and when he still declined to discuss El Condor--"

  "Never mind that," the Bride of Frankenstein said.

  "Beg pardon. When he still wouldn't tell us what we wanted to know, I applied the wand to his temple and administered another measured jolt. Carefully measured, I assure you, half-power, not a bit more. He had a seizure and died. I believe it may have been epilepsy. Did he have a history of epilepsy, do you know, Mr. Fletcher?"

  Fletcher shook his head.

  "Nevertheless, I believe that's what it was. The autopsy revealed nothing wrong with his heart." Heinz folded his long-fingered hands in front of him and looked at Escobar.

  Escobar removed his cigarette from the center of his mouth, looked at it, dropped it to the gray tile floor, stepped on it. Then he looked at Fletcher and smiled. "Very sad, of course. Now I ask you some questions, Mr. Fletcher. Many of them--I tell you this frankly--are the questions Tomas Herrera refused to answer. I hope you will not refuse, Mr. Fletcher. I like you. You sit there in dignity, do not cry or beg or urinate the pants. I like you. I know you only do what you believe. It is patriotism. So I tell you, my friend, it's good if you answer my questions quickly and truthfully. You don't want Heinz to use his machine."

  "I've said I'd help you," Fletcher said. Death was closer than the overhead lights in their cunning wire cages. Pain, unfortunately, was closer yet. And how close was Nunez, El Condor? Closer than these three guessed, but not close enough to help him. If Escobar and the Bride of Frankenstein had waited another two days, perhaps even another twenty-four hours . . . but they had not, and he was here in the deathroom. Now he would see what he was made of.

  "You said it and you had better mean it," the woman said, speaking very clearly. "We're not fucking around, gringo."

  "I know you're not," Fletcher said in a sighing, trembling voice.

  "You want that cigarette now, I think," said Escobar, and when Fletcher shook his head, Escobar took one himself, lit it, then seemed to meditate. At last he looked up. This cigarette was planted in the middle of his face like the last one. "Nunez comes soon?" he asked. "Like Zorro in that movie?"

  Fletcher nodded.

  "How soon?"

  "I don't know." Fletcher was very aware of Heinz standing next to his infernal machine with his long-fingered hands folded in front of him, looking ready to talk about pain-relievers at the drop of a cue. He was equally aware of Ramon standing to his right, at the edge of his peripheral vision. He could not see, but guessed that Ramon's hand would be on the butt of his pistol. And here came the next question.

  "When he comes, will he strike at the garrison in the hills of El Candido, the garrison at St. Therese, or will he come right into the city?"

  "The garrison at St. Therese," Fletcher said.

  He will come to the city, Tomas had said while his wife and daughter now watched cartoons, sitting on the floor side by side and eating popcorn from a white bowl with a blue stripe around the rim. Fletcher remembered the blue stripe. He could see it clearly. Fletcher remembered everything. He will come at the heart. No fucking around. He will strike for the heart, like a man who would kill a vampire.

  "He will not want the TV station?" Escobar asked. "Or the government radio station?"

  First the radio station on Civil Hill, Tomas had said while the cartoons played. By then it was the Road Runner, always gone in a puff of dust just ahead of whatever Acme Road Runner-catching device the Coyote was using, just beep-beep and gone.

  "No," Fletcher said. "I've been told El Condor says 'Let them babble.'"

  "Does he have rockets? Air-to-ground rockets? Copter-killers?"

  "Yes." It was true.
r />   "Many?"

  "Not many." This was not true. Nunez had better than sixty. There were only a dozen helicopters in the country's whole shitpot air force--bad Russian helicopters that never flew for long.

  The Bride of Frankenstein tapped Escobar on the shoulder. Escobar leaned toward her. She whispered without covering her mouth. She had no need to cover her mouth because her lips barely moved. This was a skill Fletcher associated with prisons. He had never been to prison but he had seen movies. When Escobar whispered back, he raised a fat hand to cover his own mouth.

  Fletcher watched them and waited, knowing that the woman was telling Escobar he was lying. Soon Heinz would have more data for his paper, Certain Preliminary Observations on the Administration and Consequences of Electrifying the Shit of Reluctant Interrogation Subjects. Fletcher discovered that terror had created two new people inside him, at least two, sub-Fletchers with their own useless but quite powerful views on how this was going to go. One was sadly hopeful, the other just sad. The sadly hopeful one was Mr. Maybe They Will, as in maybe they really will let me go, maybe there really is a car parked on the Street Fifth of May, just around the corner, maybe they really mean to kick me out of the country, maybe I really will be landing in Miami tomorrow morning, scared but alive, with this already beginning to seem like a bad dream.

  The other one, the one who was merely sad, was Mr. Even If I Do. Fletcher might be able to surprise them by making a sudden move--he had been beaten and they were arrogant, so yes, he might be able to surprise them.

  But Ramon will shoot me even if I do.

  And if he went for Ramon? Managed to get his gun? Unlikely but not impossible; the man was fat, fatter than Escobar by at least thirty pounds, and he wheezed when he breathed.

  Escobar and Heinz will be all over me before I can shoot even if I do.

  The woman too, maybe; she talked without moving her lips; she might know judo or karate or tae kwon do, as well. And if he shot them all and managed to escape this room?

  There'll be more guards everywhere even if I do--they'll hear the shots and come running.

  Of course rooms like this tended to be soundproofed, for obvious reasons, but even if he got up the stairs and out the door and onto the street, that was only the beginning. And Mr. Even If I Do would be running with him the whole way, for however long his run lasted.

  The thing was, neither Mr. Maybe They Will or Mr. Even If I Do could help him; they were only distractions, lies his increasingly frantic mind tried to tell itself. Men like him did not talk themselves out of rooms like this. He might as well try inventing a third sub-Fletcher, Mr. Maybe I Can, and go for it. He had nothing to lose. He only had to make sure they didn't know he knew that.

  Escobar and the Bride of Frankenstein drew apart. Escobar put his cigarette back in his mouth and smiled sadly at Fletcher. "Amigo, you are lying."

  "No," he said. "Why would I lie? Don't you think I want to get out of here?"

  "We have no idea why you would lie," said the woman with the narrow blade of a face. "We have no idea why you would choose to aid Nunez in the first place. Some have suggested American naivete, and I have no doubt that played its part, but that cannot be all. It doesn't matter. I believe a demonstration is in order. Heinz?"

  Smiling, Heinz turned to his machine and flicked a switch. There was a hum, the kind that comes from an old-fashioned radio when it's warming up, and three green lights came on.

  "No," Fletcher said, trying to get to his feet, thinking that he did panic very well, and why not? He was panicked, or almost panicked. Certainly the idea of Heinz touching him anywhere with that stainless steel dildo for pygmies was terrifying. But there was another part of him, very cold and calculating, that knew he would have to take at least one shock. He wasn't aware of anything so coherent as a plan, but he had to take at least one shock. Mr. Maybe I Can insisted that this was so.

  Escobar nodded to Ramon.

  "You can't do this, I'm an American citizen and I work for The New York Times, people know where I am."

  A heavy hand pressed down on his left shoulder, pushing him back into the chair. At the same moment, the barrel of a pistol went deep into his right ear. The pain was so sudden that bright dots appeared before Fletcher's eyes, dancing frantically. He screamed, and the sound seemed muffled. Because one ear was plugged, of course--one ear was plugged.

  "Hold out your hand, Mr. Fletcher," Escobar said, and he was smiling around his cigarette again.

  "Right hand," Heinz said. He held the stylus by its black rubber grip like a pencil, and his machine was humming.

  Fletcher gripped the arm of the chair with his right hand. He was no longer sure if he was acting or not--the line between acting and panic was gone.

  "Do it," the woman said. Her hands were folded on the table; she leaned forward over them. There was a point of light in each of her pupils, turning her dark eyes into nailheads. "Do it or I can't account for the consequences."

  Fletcher began to loosen his fingers on the chair arm, but before he could get the hand up, Heinz darted forward and poked the tip of the blunt stylus against the back of Fletcher's left hand. That had probably been his target all along--certainly it was closer to where Heinz stood.

  There was a snapping sound, very thin, like a twig, and Fletcher's left hand closed into a fist so tight his nails cut into his palm. A kind of dancing sickness raced up from his wrist to his forearm to his flopping elbow and finally to his shoulder, the side of his neck, and to his gums. He could even feel the shock in his teeth on that side, or in the fillings. A grunt escaped him. He bit his tongue and shot sideways in the chair. The gun was gone from his ear and Ramon caught him. If he hadn't, Fletcher would have fallen on the gray tile floor.

  The stylus was withdrawn. Where it had touched, between the second and third knuckles of the third finger of his left hand, there was a small hot spot. It was the only real pain, although his arm still tingled and the muscles still jumped. Yet it was horrible, being shocked like that. Fletcher felt he would seriously consider shooting his own mother to avoid another touch of the little steel dildo. An atavism, Heinz had called it. Someday he hoped to write a paper.

  Heinz's face loomed down, lips pulled back and teeth revealed in an idiotic grin, eyes alight. "How do you describe it?" he cried. "Now, while the experience is still fresh, how do you describe it?"

  "Like dying," Fletcher said in a voice that didn't sound like his own.

  Heinz looked transported. "Yes! And you see, he has wet himself! Not much, just a little, but yes . . . and Mr. Fletcher--"

  "Stand aside," the Bride of Frankenstein said. "Don't be an ass. Let us take care of our business."

  "And that was only one-quarter power," Heinz said in a tone of awed confidentiality, and then he stood aside and refolded his hands in front of him.

  "Mr. Fletcher, you been bad," Escobar said reproachfully. He took the stub of his cigarette from his mouth, examined it, threw it on the floor.

  The cigarette, Fletcher thought. The cigarette, yes. The shock had seriously insulted his arm--the muscles were still twitching and he could see blood in his cupped palm--but it seemed to have revitalized his brain, refreshed it. Of course that was what shock treatments were supposed to do.

  "No . . . I want to help . . ."

  But Escobar was shaking his head. "We know Nunez will come to the city. We know on the way he will take the radio station if he can . . . and he probably can."

  "For awhile," said the Bride of Frankenstein. "Only for awhile."

  Escobar was nodding. "Only for awhile. A matter of days, perhaps hours. Is of no concern. What matters is we give you a bit of rope, see if you make a noose . . . and you do."

  Fletcher sat up straight in the chair again. Ramon had retreated a step or two. Fletcher looked at the back of his left hand and saw a small smudge there, like the one on the side of Tomas's dead face in the photograph. And there was Heinz who had killed Fletcher's friend, standing beside his machine with his hands f
olded in front of him, smiling and perhaps thinking about the paper he would write, words and graphs and little pictures labeled Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 and, for all Fletcher knew, Fig. 994.

  "Mr. Fletcher?"

  Fletcher looked at Escobar and straightened the fingers of his left hand. The muscles of that arm were still twitching, but the twitch was subsiding. He thought that when the time came, he would be able to use the arm. And if Ramon shot him, so what? Let Heinz see if his machine could raise the dead.

  "Do we have your attention, Mr. Fletcher?"

  Fletcher nodded.

  "Why do you want to protect this man Nunez?" Escobar asked. "Why do you want to suffer to protect this man? He takes the cocaine. If he wins his revolution he will proclaim himself President for Life and sell the cocaine to your country. He will go to mass on Sunday and fuck his coke-whores the rest of the week. In the end who wins? Maybe the Communists. Maybe United Fruit. Not the people." Escobar spoke low. His eyes were soft. "Help us, Mr. Fletcher. Of your own free will. Don't make us make you help us. Don't make us pull on your string." He looked up at Fletcher from beneath his single bushy eyebrow. He looked up with his soft cocker spaniel eyes. "You can still be on that plane to Miami. On the way you like a drink, yes?"

  "Yes," Fletcher said. "I'll help you."

  "Ah, good." Escobar smiled, then looked at the woman.

  "Does he have rockets?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Many?"

  "At least sixty."

  "Russian?"

  "Some are. Others came in crates with Israeli markings, but the writing on the missiles themselves looks Japanese."

  She nodded, seeming satisfied. Escobar beamed.

  "Where are they?"

  "Everywhere. You can't just swoop down and grab them. There might still be a dozen at Ortiz." Fletcher knew that wasn't so.

  "And Nunez?" she asked. "Is El Condor at Ortiz?"

  She knew better. "He's in the jungle. Last I knew, he was in Belen Province." This was a lie. Nunez had been in Cristobal, a suburb of the capital city, when Fletcher last saw him. He was probably still there. But if Escobar and the woman had known that, there would have been no need of this interrogation. And why would they believe Nunez would trust Fletcher with his whereabouts, anyway? In a country like this, where Escobar and Heinz and the Bride of Frankenstein were only three of your enemies, why would you trust a Yankee newspaper reporter with your address? Loco! Why was the Yankee newspaperman involved at all? But they had stopped wondering about that, at least for now.