The Marchand Woman

Harry said, “You probably won’t want to know about this.” And Santana with a shrug and a nod picked up his can of beer and left the house.

Anders went around turning off all the lights except one in the kitchen, which threw enough light into the front room to see by. When Anders came back into the front room he was trembling visibly, anger coursing through him and flooding his face with color.

The prisoner, head high, hands shackled, waited with tight-mouthed endurance. The black velvet over his eyes gave him a slightly comical look—like a blindfold trick-shooting act in a county-fair carnival.

Harry said, “In here,” and turned the prisoner toward the door of the cell Carole had been using as a bedroom.

She waited at the door while Anders went in past her; she stood in the doorway to watch, too ambivalent about this to enter the room. Harry looked up at her—he had sat the prisoner down on the cot and was locking another pair of handcuffs, fastening the youth’s ankle to the crossleg of the cot. It wouldn’t prevent him from hobbling around but it would be an unpleasant anchor to drag—no chance he’d get far with that hanging from his foot.

Harry took a wallet out of the pocket of the young lieutenant’s fatigues. He looked through it and held it up so Anders could see it. Anders’ face never changed; it was as if he feared any shift in expression might break the tenuous skein of his spurious dispassion.

The young man was making surreptitious attempts to explore his boundaries: a tug and shift of the shackled ankle, sly shiftings of hip and elbow. He said, “Do you people know who I am?”

“Emil Draga.” Harry tossed the wallet into the young man’s face. It was a gentle toss but Emil Draga, blindfolded, jerked away from it violently, almost upsetting the cot.

“How much ransom do you plan to get for me?” It was mostly a snarl.

Harry got to his feet. Anders watched him: “You going to make the phone call?”

“Maybe we won’t need to.”

“Now there’s a thought.” Anders thrust his automatic pistol toward Emil Draga. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Why don’t you stop waving that thing at him? He can’t see it and you’re not going to use it until we’ve found out what we want to know.”

Anders didn’t lower the pistol. “Ask him fast, then.”

Carole said, “You’d better take it away from him,” to Harry, and afterward she was surprised because she had no doubt he could.

Anders looked at her—a wry sour face—and then at Harry, who only stood there monolithically; Anders put the pistol in his pocket with a rueful show of reluctance. “Ask him now,” he said again, and stalked out of the room.

Under the black blindfold Emil Draga had a waxen and slightly concave face—ugly but shrewd and arrogant, a rich youth who must have learned early that everything had a price and could be purchased—probably the only sexual love he’d ever had was the kind you bought.

“I suppose you people know what the penalty for kidnaping is.”

Carole said, “Maybe you should have thought of that before you kidnaped—”

“Let us handle this part, ducks.”

“All right.” She propped her shoulder against the wall, folded her arms and smiled at Harry to show her trust. “I’d just as soon be watching this part from an airplane anyway.”

Emil Draga blurted, “Who the fuck are you people?”

Carole only watched Harry; and Harry shook his head, mute. The whole scheme was Harry’s: We’ll keep him blindfolded throughout. For one thing we don’t want to put Santana in jeopardy, do we. For another thing if the kid knows anything we’ll want to get it out of him. Deprive a man of one of his senses and he’ll begin to go up the walls pretty fast. The blindfold stays on.

The plan had been to telephone the old millionaire and force him to come out of his lair. But that was before Anders had identified Emil Draga as one of Rosalia’s killers. If he was that deeply involved then he probably knew everything and that suggested there might be no need to drag the old millionaire into this.

Abruptly Harry said, “Draga!”

The youth almost leaped off the cot. He tried to control his trembling.

Harry let the silence run on. Anders came back into the room and stood just inside the door with his hands in his pockets and his face closed up tight. He’d gone outside to collect himself; but he’d been unable to stay away. His eyes ran around, alighting fitfully on Harry, on herself, on the blindfolded prisoner.

“What do you want from me?”

When Emil Draga got no answer to that he began to shout. Tendons corded his neck and he screamed obscenities until Harry stepped forward calmly and slapped him hard across the ear.

Emil Draga fell across the cot, struggled back to a sitting position and snapped his mouth shut, breathing hard and fast through his nose. He was, she saw, a youth who probably had the battlefield sort of courage—he could run screaming right into the guns—but he’d never had to learn endurance. And there was the torture of anticipation.…

She turned away, not wanting to watch this, but Harry said, “You’d better stay,” and she understood: This was on her account and he meant her to accept the responsibility.

Anders said in a chilly voice, “I guess it’s time we had a word with this citizen.” With a deliberation that shocked her Anders stepped forward, leaned down and slammed the barrel of his pistol against Emil Draga’s shin.

The youth screamed.

Anders stepped back, pocketing the gun. Harry gave him an unpleasant look but didn’t speak.

Anders lifted shaking fingers and ran them through his hair.

Emil Draga began to flay about him wildly with his free leg. He flung his torso off the cot and crashed painfully onto the floor and scrabbled about like a half-crushed beetle until Harry’s toe slammed him in the ribs and Harry bellowed something at him and the youth curled up fetally, cringing, trying to hide his head between his knees, the cot overturned across his legs.

Harry let him whimper for a while and then got down and unlocked the ankle cuff from the cot. He set the cot back in place and beckoned to Anders. Between them they lifted Emil Draga to his feet.

Harry motioned with his head toward the door and they manhandled Emil Draga outside, the loose handcuff clattering behind his right foot.

Feeling nauseous, Carole followed them across the front room into the kitchen, where Anders held Emil Draga upright while Harry plugged the stopper into the sink and began to pump water into it.

Immediately she understood, without having to be told, what they had in mind; she turned her face away and stared at the gray television screen.

Somehow she comprehended without the need of explanation that it was in their minds to break him first—then ask questions. Unprepared, he would have no opportunity to rehearse lies.

They were torturing Emil Draga by depriving him of basic sensory information. Harry was right, it was astonishingly effective: It was working on her—and she wasn’t even blindfolded.

Harry’s mouth was screwed up in an expression of sour distaste. Two things amazed her: that he was capable of this, and that having learned the capacity he nonetheless took no pleasure from it. It was something essential she’d learned about him: Harry was hard but there wasn’t a shred of sadism in him.

But Gle

Harry abandoned the pump handle. A final gush flowed into the sink—it was about two thirds filled.

Emil Draga said in a dull voice from which all feelings had been sucked, “Please—what do you want?”

Anders snapped, “Before long you’re going to be getting your emissions from dreaming that this is over. Well it’s never going to be over, I promise you—it’s never going to finish. You’re in Hell, Lieutenant.”