Method 15 33 (5 page)

The Kitchen People tittered and sounded tickled in their womanly, higher octaves in response to the false charm and compliments about their prison food.
Fucking Prince Charming, you lying, piece of shit, asshole. I will kill you
. Although, to be honest, I had to agree; the quiche was delicious and the bread a sweet soft with a perfect mix of rosemary and salt.

But I digress.

So I had doubts, and I was not about to lead with haste by burning all my chances on the Kitchen People. No metrics, no data, no calculations, certainly no benchmarking, supported such an attempt.

Lending to my doubts were my concerns with acoustics. While their voices carried to me, my voice might not carry to them, especially over the mixer and the ceiling fan. If my voice did not carry, he would surely come in and shut me up.
I need not only judge them, I need also to test the soundproofing of this room
. Stomping on the floor might work, but they might believe it was only him and not take action quick enough. I
could stomp and scream and make it impossible to ignore me, this captive. But, even if they heard me, I believed we were in a secluded area. So, they might have heard me and set out to help, but he might as easily, I imagined, shoot and throw them “in the quarry.” I braced myself to get more facts.
Judge them, test acoustics, and insure he won’t/can’t kill them before help comes
.

All of these doubts led me to design “15” without involvement of the Kitchen People. Most people in my situation, I believe, would have taken the shot, would have yelled, screamed, pounded on the floor for help, and they very well may have been rescued sooner. But I would not allow for contingencies in my plan. “
15” will be foolproof and will have multiple layers of insurance. I am not going to rely on one elusive “kill shot” or upon the potential that someone else might help, that someone else who invariably gets himself killed. This will not be a formula movie
.

On Day 17, the visitors returned, The Doctor, Mr. Obvious, and this time, a new person. They arrived outside my door at exactly 1:03 p.m., according to Asset #16, my clock radio, which I set using the time given during the nightly news on Asset #14, the TV. Eight minutes before their arrival, my captor placed a pillowcase over my head, pinched the ends around my neck, and tied a long scarf to hold the contraption in place. The tassels met with my fingers, so I rolled them to steady my nerves. He ripped a gash in the case with scissors and his grubby fingers, I suppose as a breathing hole. And then, as though banding the claws of a lobster, he bound my arms over my head, tight, and my legs together as well, also tight.

“Stay still and don’t move. Don’t speak.”

He left.

When he returned only three sets of sixty later, he brought with him The Doctor and Mr. Obvious. This time a woman accompanied them. She spoke first.

“This is her?” she asked.

Yes, “this is her.” Was it the massive belly or the gigantic boobs giving away my gender, genius?
I labeled her “Mrs. Obvious,” even though it was hasty of me to so quickly conclude she was married to Mr. Obvious. Regardless, had these miscreants not kidnapped me and intended to steal my baby, my mother still would have hated these people and their stupid, meaningless questions. I hated them for my own reasons.

“Let’s see it,” she said.

My heart fluttered, the hummingbird returned, but I steadied myself in practiced tai chi breathing. And then I heard the most awful sound. The floor beyond the door creaked as if breaking, and metal wheels rolling on the wide pine boards announced the approach of something heavy. No one spoke. The object slammed into the door jamb, and after shaking through the doorframe and rolling more, it came to rest at the head of my bed. The slither of a cord or rope scraped past me on the floor.

The song on the radio lost its momentum. A quick silence followed. Next came a scratching sound near the outlet at my feet.
They must need the outlet
. With a whoosh, whatever they’d brought in began to hum.
Must be a machine
.

“Let’s give it a few minutes to warm up,” The Doctor said.

They left my prison-cum-hospital to whisper in the hallway. It was so hard to hear through the bag and above the drone of the mysterious machine, I got only fragments of what they said: “…about seven-and-a-half months…too soon…blue…yes, blue…”

They spilled back into the clink. Footsteps approached the side and end of the bed. Masculine hands fished around my ankles and untied them, and, before this group of strangers to which I was blinded, my pants were removed, my underwear discarded, and my legs ripped apart. I fought with all my strength, kicking whoever was at my feet in his soft body. I can only hope I hit his groin.

“Relax those legs, young lady, or I’ll have to sedate you. Ronald, come here, hold her legs down,” The Doctor said.

He can’t sedate me. I need evidence
. I loosened my grip, slightly. As soon as I did, without ceremony, warning, or apology, a hard plastic wand with a warm gel was inserted. It moved inside me.

The Doctor kept icicle spider fingers on my belly, pressing for movement and parts, just like I did all day in that cell, but for wholly different reasons. Black malice vs. pure love.

“Right here, this little curve, that’s the penis. A boy for sure,” The Doctor instructed.

An ultrasound
. I wanted to see my baby so badly, tears swelled up and wet the case on my face.

“Here is the heart. Very strong. Very, very strong. The boy is healthy. He’s about three pounds now,” The Doctor said.

But the Obvious couple didn’t seem to care about those details.

“And you’re sure her parents also have blue eyes and blond hair?” Mr. Obvious asked.

“Positive.”

“And, the father of this baby, him too?”

“We don’t know who the father is for sure—but we believe the boyfriend is the father. If he’s the one we saw her walking with a couple days before we took her, he, too, is blond, with blue eyes.”

“I’m taking it only if it comes out with blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t want some ethnic-looking baby in my house,” Mrs. Obvious said and laughed, although she most definitely was not joking.

“Your choice. We have a waiting list of customers, but you’ll have the right of first refusal, especially given what happened with the last girl.”

“Just get me a blond baby with blue eyes,” Mrs. Obvious said upon a hiss and a chortle.

Since my love switch was most certainly “on” for my child, my heart broke.
He is healthy. He is strong. He weighs three pounds.
They want to take him. Someone else will take him if they don’t. His heartbeat is strong. He weighs three pounds. She doesn’t want an ethnic baby. His heartbeat is strong
.

Hearing this conversation only gave me more resolution, more resolution I did not need. My fury was bolstered, solidified, garrisoned, and fortified. I believe God Himself would have lifted his heavenly palms in defeat upon meeting up with my otherworldly veneer of absolute hate. My commitment to escape and exact murderous revenge became a force unstoppable. With rage, I burned the tears from my eyes and set a course on these unsuspecting cretins that only the devil might have the audacity to attempt to rival, but he’d lose. I became the devil. If Satan were a mother, he, indeed, would be just like me.

The crowd dispersed in a trailing departure. The Doctor said, “Ronald, leave this thing in here. Doesn’t make any sense bringing it back and forth. This is the last you’ll see of us for this patient—until her water breaks. Call only if there are problems.”

The room emptied, except for my jailer,
Ronald
.

There was an instant quiet, a moment of dead calm, until he lurched toward me and removed the case from my head.

Ronald, who I will try not to refer to in my re-telling by name out of disrespect, untied my bindings. For a split second, a boring familiarity tricked me, the kind like when Nana leaves after a visit and I’m left with only my parents again. The same-old. The blasé. But not to worry, the second passed quick enough, and unfathomable hate returned, just as I intended—the emotion necessary for me to plan, to plot, to escape, to seek revenge. I grabbed my underwear and pants and put them on.

He gathered the cord to the ultrasound machine, as I sat on the bed and stared at him, my arms crossed at the chest. When he met my eyes, I did not blink.
You are going to suffer, Ronald. That’s right, I have your name now, motherfucker
. My pupils were not blue, but were red—crimson, bloody, rageful red.

“Don’t fucking look at me like that, you crazy bitch.”

“Yes, sir.” I lowered my chin, but did not change the color of my eyes.

He left.

I went back to work.
Ultrasound machine (Asset #21), extension cord to ultrasound machine (Asset #22), scarf with tassels (Asset #23)…

I was in the drama club while attending St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and I acted for pennies at midnight showings of Off-Off-Off-Broadway-across-Soho-and-down-some-alley plays, which were written and directed by NYU grad students, who toiled in poorly lit theaters for the chance to present their work and the hope that someone, anyone, any late-night critic might stumble upon their masterpieces.

Amateur producers liked to cast me since I’m half-n-half: father’s Vietnamese; mother’s pure-bred Rochester, New Yorkean. I’m a perfect physical blend of the Asian and the American, although inside I’m 99 percent American—the 1 percent devoted to my father’s insistence that we eat Pho once a month.

This is how I met my wife, Sandra. She was also in St. John’s drama club, and she did stand-up in Manhattan, also past midnight. We’d share a tuna fish sandwich after classes and club and then ride the rattler into the city. We were pretty happy, and we were in love. My major was criminal justice, which I picked only to please my parents. Or, maybe I subconsciously relented to a path set for me long ago.

On a lark or upon Sandra’s dare or, perhaps, upon the realization that I’d need a job to support myself and my college-girlfriend-turned-fiancée, I applied to the FBI. Sure, let’s go with that. Let’s have this be the reason, and let’s not pry further.

If only I hadn’t scored so damn high on my SATs or inherited the burden of “exceptional memory”—if anything, I may have a slight case of hyperthymesia—basically, really good memory, which the senior agents sensed from a mile away. If only my vision wasn’t
better than a fighter pilot’s. If only I had half-assed my studies like other night entertainers and dramatists, maybe the Feds would have forgotten me. Maybe I wouldn’t be so miserable. Maybe Sandra and I would have been happier living in comic, dramatic squalor.

So there I found myself, in the FBI, fifteen-sucked-away years later, as if on the day of admittance, I was placed into a time warp chamber. Laughter all but completely drained away.

When the lens through which you view the world invites the surreal perspective, you may see life as is: undoubtedly amusing. Sandra still had her surreal lens, and, God love her, she neither pitied nor cursed my loss of humorous sight. Instead, she’d try in vain to draw me from black moods by re-painting what I could no longer see. “Actually, sweetheart, look closer, don’t you see…” Nevertheless, fifteen years into the thicket and once again I found myself holed up in a remote field office, scraping through miniscule leads about a kidnapped, pregnant teen. And Sandra wasn’t the only woman in my life. I had a partner, who I’ll refer to as “Lola” to protect her identity for reasons I will later reveal.

Some cases have no leads at all, some cases have lots of leads, some cases have a couple of good leads upon which you can develop more leads, other cases have one good lead that requires tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The case of Dorothy M. Salucci had one good lead, the van, which required tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The black, low-top Converse sneaker was not evidence at all. How could I find a girl by having her missing shoe? There were no fingerprints or blood splatter on it from her assailant. The shoe was worthless to me. I devoted all of my efforts on finding a glimpse of the van, pouring over, obsessing over, scouring each second of every last videotape from every last camera in her town and the surrounding towns and any tollbooth leading from ground zero.

On the eighth day of this effort, I finally caught the image of a 1989 maroon Chevy TransVista with Indiana plates, edging like a snake through a toll. The Hoosier woman confirmed my find: “Exactly. This is definitely the one,” she said. I rummaged a two-person
team back at headquarters to track the van’s route from any highway videos they could acquire. Meanwhile, in checking Indiana motor vehicle records, my partner, who was two grades below me and therefore reported to me, uncovered fourteen registrations for late-eighties to early-nineties Chevy TransVistas fitting our lead.

I mention my seniority over my partner only for comic value, for she considered my rank un-considerable; she promoted herself above me and above the rank of God, I swear. As I mentioned, we’ll call her “Lola.”