Butterfly Winter (24 page)

“I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. We don’t cook up our prisoners like so many pigs on a spit. The study will often go on for days, weeks even, if the subject is imaginative enough.

“Now, over here we have a test of endurance.”

Quita saw a board like a teeter-totter, with the subject strapped tightly to the board which, when at its lowest, submerged the subject’s head beneath water.

“The test is quite simple,” said Dr. Noir. “The subject must learn to be submerged for one minute. Not difficult at all. He is then withdrawn from the water for one minute, then submerged again, and so on. The study becomes interesting sometime during the second day when the subject must, if he is to continue living, teach himself to sleep during the minute his head is not under water. We’ve had some very interesting results, one subject was very adept at catnaps and lasted nearly two weeks. Others opted for suicide in as little as a few hours.”

Quita gasped.

“Suicide is always an option here, Miss Garza, an option which saves the government, and ultimately the taxpayers, huge sums of money. In all the jails in Courteguay every prisoner has a suicide capsule available at all times. Here, while I think of it.”

He reached inside his tunic and produced a small tin box, he slid the lid back and extracted a blue capsule. He held it out to Quita.

“Take it, Miss Garza. Put it in the pocket of your dress. I’m sure you’ll be most co-operative with us, but if you should choose not to, that little pill may prove to be a blessing.”

He pulled Quita to another part of the room.

“We have other studies. The gentleman over here was a spy. I’m sure you agree with me, Miss Garza, that a spy deserves no mercy. You don’t have to look at him, Miss Garza, though he can’t help looking at you, for you see his eyelids have been removed. Mercifully there is a towel over his midsection though I see a few splotches of blood have oozed through. Each day he is forced to watch while certain surgeries are performed on his body and his, to be delicate, private parts.”

“Do you ever show mercy to anyone?” Quita asked. The room seemed to be tilted slightly, rotating.

“It depends on the crime, Miss Garza. Over here we are experimenting with new kinds of scalpels, notice how our subject is held to the wall entirely by a series of stilettos so slim and sharp that they hardly draw blood when passed through the subject’s appendages. To answer your question we show great mercy to minor transgressors, thieves, grifters, prostitutes. I often treat them myself, giving them a
thorough physical examination, often painful enough to change their outlook toward society, but not damaging them enough that they cannot become useful members of that same society.

“To the right is another of our studies.”

Quita saw a naked man on his back on the polished hardwood floor, his right leg seemingly disappearing into the side of a gleaming deep freeze, which had a slot a few inches wide cut in its side. Insulation had been packed about the leg at the point where it was inserted into the freezer.

Quita’s knees felt weak.

“I’m told the subject was very noisy for the first few hours. You see the inside of the freezer is –40 degrees, but the leg now appears to be well anesthetized.”

The prisoner, his hands cuffed behind him, appeared to be unconscious, but as they approached one pain-glazed eye stared up at them.

Dr. Noir opened the lid of the freezer and a cloud of frosty air escaped.

“Ah,” sighed Dr. Noir, staring at Quita’s horror-stricken face. “It is nothing really. You’ll notice that most prisoners in this study volunteer for their continuing treatment. While the first installation may have to be accompanied by a certain amount of force, after that first treatment, when the afflicted extremity begins to thaw, why the patient experiences so much discomfort that they wish to return to their therapy, often begging to do so. Usually we manage to accommodate them. However, if they have been particularly unappreciative of our hospitality they may be left in the general population.

“Come here and look at a foot that has been frozen at –40 degrees, for what?” He nodded toward the soldier guarding the freezer, “Six hours?”

The soldier nodded.

Quita held back.

Dr. Noir forced her to peer into the freezer. He reached in and, seizing something, flicked his arm and wrist in a deft movement. Quita screamed. Dr. Noir held up a toe for her inspection. The insentient
man on the ground did not react. Quita fainted. She awoke where she had fallen. It was difficult to guess how much time had passed. She felt weak. She had bruised her face when she fell; her left eye was badly swollen.

“Now that you’ve toured our medical facilities, Miss Garza,” Dr. Noir began as soon as he saw she was conscious, “I assume you would prefer not to be involved in any of the situations you’ve encountered. Therefore, while you were indisposed I had some papers drawn up.”

He helped Quita to her feet.

“The confession is straightforward. You admit to an act of terrorism at the Hall of Baseball Immortals, as well as membership in an organization with plans to overthrow my government. I will personally recommend leniency: life in prison rather than death, and your beautiful body left intact.” He paused.

“Well, not entirely intact.”

As Quita shrank away he placed his hand on her slightly distended belly.

“I will take care of that little problem myself. As soon as you’ve signed the papers.”

“Never,” said Quita, her voice stronger than either of them would have thought possible.

“You are very brave now,” Dr. Noir said, stretching her cuffed hands above her head. “I’m afraid you have no choice but to co-operate.”

He fastened her handcuffs over a peg in a round wooden pole. Her toes just touched the floor. At his signal a soldier approached carrying a stout black leather belt, which gleamed from recently being oiled.

“I would prefer not to do this, Miss Garza. However, in a few hours when I ask what you will do to have the whipping stop, you will reply, ‘Anything.’ I know this from experience. In such a confrontation as this, the whip always wins.”

Dr. Noir’s cheeks bulged on each side of his mask.

“Never,” whispered Quita.

“Just a small reminder,” said Dr. Noir, as he prepared to leave. He reached down, and forcing Quita to balance on one foot, raised her
other one waist high. He balanced her sepia foot on the pink palm of his ebony hand. With one deft movement he dislocated her little toe.

Quita screamed.

He dislocated the toe next to it. Quita screamed louder.

Pointing to the soldier with the whip he said, “I’m sorry not to be able to participate fully myself, but such exercise aggravates my asthma. I’m sure you’ll understand, but I have speakers in my office, and in my bedroom. I find the sounds of suffering very soothing. I’ll check in frequently to listen to your screams.”

HOURS LATER, DR. NOIR
’
S HEAVY BOOTS
clattered on the floor of the wound factory. Quita was still suspended naked. Her body bore evidence of mayhem. She stared at him with wide, horror-filled eyes.

“Now, Miss Garza, assuming that a few hours of education has changed your perspective, let me ask you the same question I asked last night. What will you do in order for me to stop your punishments?”

“Anything! Anything!” gasped Quita.

“Much better. We’ll repair to my private operating room and take care of your little problem.”

“No,” cried Quita.

“Really?” said Dr. Noir. “I thought you had grasped the situation, Miss Garza. What I desire will eventually happen. But we never conduct a procedure without the patient’s consent. One more chance. Your answer is still negative?”

“Never,” said Quita.

Dr. Noir motioned to one of his lieutenants, who then spoke into a squawky two-way radio. Almost immediately a squad of palace guards marched into the wound Factory, eight heavyset young men in blazing white uniforms and pith helmets.

Turning to the squad Dr. Noir said, “You gentlemen are on limited furlough, but will of course be on call. Please accompany Miss Garza to the guest suite. I’m sure you will find everything there quite comfortable. I’ve taken the liberty of having a keg of coconut wine set up for your enjoyment. You will of course take care of all Miss Garza’s
needs, and she yours.” He turned to his lieutenant. “When these gentlemen are quite exhausted, you may send in the second squad of guards, and then the third. I will monitor their progress from my quarters.”

THREE DAYS PASSED
, then a week.

“I understand Miss Garza remains uncooperative even though she has not been allowed to sleep for several days, the small electrodes attached to sensitive areas see to that,” Dr. Noir said to his lieutenant. “Now, you will allow Miss Garza to sleep for three hours. When she wakes refreshed, shower her and bring her to my quarters. And bring with her a set of scalpels and an adequate selection of pliers.”

T
here are many rumors about how Julio met his wives, most of them created by the tabloids. To my knowledge Julio has never been married. Oh, he would have married Quita Garza, but in that instance there were many obstacles.

Once at a hotel in Atlanta, deciding that he wanted to be alone, Julio stepped into the bubbling water of the hot tub beside the swimming pool, which smelled of sulphur. As he eased himself down into it, each part of his body that passed beneath the surface of the water disappeared, not just submerged, but disappeared.

A girl, whom he had met in the coffee shop of the hotel, and invited to join him in the hot tub, watched awestruck, not believing her eyes.

“How do you do that?” she finally croaked, when only Julio’s head remained above the water.

“It is something my tutor in Courteguay showed me.” She, being from Idaho, wherever that was, probably was not ready for the word wizard. Julio smiled his heavy-lidded smile. “Perhaps I will see you tomorrow at the ballpark?”

He ducked his head beneath the surface. All that was left was the odor of his hair tonic and the dumbfounded girl from Idaho.

T
he first complaints came from Moosey Battaglia, a bulbous-nosed Phillies first baseman, struggling, as he would through his long, sixteen-year career, just to stay on the club.

“There are times,” Moosey said to a reporter, after a particularly humiliating afternoon where he struck out four times, fouling only one pitch during the whole losing game, “when I don’t think that motherfucker throws the ball at all. Lots of times I think he just goes through all the motions but the catcher really has a ball hid in his mitt. The catcher makes the popping sound of ball hitting mitt with his mouth. I mean nobody’s that fast.”

The reporter paraphrased Moosey in the paper’s early edition, leaving out the word
motherfucker
and the twenty-eight other profanities Moosey had used during the short interview.

Other hitters were quick to jump on the bandwagon.

Charlie Bizarrovitch of the
Sporting News
did a feature story the following week. Moosey Battaglia, whose batting average had slipped to .219, took the story to the Phillies’ corporate offices.

“What if we was to set up movie cameras, secretly of course, and catch this guy with the goods, or without the goods would be even better.”

Moosey guffawed heartily until he saw the sober-faced executives across the table from him.

“Yeah, well, you know what I mean,” Moosey said with his usual gift for clarity.

The next time the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South visited Philadelphia, a portion of the press box was boarded up, supposedly under renovation. A second high-speed camera was hidden behind the center field wall, the lens dotting the
i
in the
Strike
of Lucky Strike. Both cameras filmed every move Julio and Esteban made all that muggy June afternoon.

Once, in the sixth inning, while Moosey was batting with the bases loaded and two outs, Esteban called time and trotted to the mound. He and Julio talked until the umpire came and reprimanded them. Then Julio threw a pitch, the force of which almost knocked his crouching catcher brother onto his back. Moosey Battaglia swung halfheartedly, then spitting curses as if he had a mouthful of porcupine quills, retreated to the dugout.

The film took forty-eight hours to process, but in the meantime Phillie executives met several times with a jubilant Moosey Battaglia to gloat over what they were certain would appear on the film.

“We got him cold in the sixth,” said Moosey. “There was no ball. The catcher threw himself back as if he’d caught something, and made the popping sound with his mouth. There was no ball.”

Phillie executives were inclined to agree. There had been four clutch situations in the game and three had ended with strikeouts of a suspicious nature.

The film finally arrived. The executives and Moosey Battaglia gathered in the Phillie projection room. The film was grainy black-and-white.

“Look at the sixth inning first,” said Moosey and the others agreed.

They watched each pitch Julio delivered to Esteban, while Moosey was dug in at the plate. The ball, while not exactly visible, was
discernible both in Julio’s hand as he delivered it, and as a comet-like blur traveling toward the plate.

“Now!” said Moosey as the critical moment approached.

“Slow it down,” said a Phillie executive.

The film showed Julio Pimental in full wind-up, his left leg kicking toward the center of the sky, his arm swished forward and.…

They replayed the sequences, from both cameras, perhaps forty times, and what they saw each time was the same: Julio striding forward and firing the ball. But it was not a ball, but a pale, delicate flower, almost certainly a camellia. The flower bloomed from Julio’s fingers, glided toward the taut batter, slowly and softly as its perfume. Moosey Battaglia swung so hard the men in the room all thought they could hear his vertebrae cracking, though there was no sound with the movie.