The Bliss Factor (32 page)

“I’m sorry, Conn. I wish there was something else I could say.”

“There isn’t anything else to say. It happened, I’ve moved on.”

“No, you haven’t,” she said, stung at the dismissal in his voice. He dropped a bomb like that and expected her to . . . what? Take it in stride? Act like it was no big deal that she knew he walked around with that kind of weight on his conscience? Not hardly. “Maybe you’re getting from day to day, but you haven’t put it behind you.”

“It can’t be changed.”

“No, but it can’t be ignored, either. You’ve been doing that and look where it’s gotten you.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Take it out, look at it, feel it, Conn, until you can believe that you did what you had to do and forgive yourself. Yes, the actions of your unit had an unbelievably terrible outcome, but how many lives did you save that day. How many have you saved since? You’ve taken criminals off the streets, drug dealers who might still be walking around free to hurt other kids if not for you.”

He looked at her finally, and it was devastating. The emptiness in his eyes made hers fill with tears. Of sympathy, yes, but there was frustration and anger, too.

“His death is on the hands of the people who put him in that village. People who knew he’d be in danger and didn’t care. You can feel guilty about it the rest of your life, Conn, but that just makes it about you, not him. Just like this conversation is about you.”

“If you can’t handle this—”

“You don’t want me to handle it. You want me to walk away? Fine, I’ll walk away, but I don’t know why it matters when you’re already gone.”

“WE’RE NOT ACTUALLY GONNA TORTURE THIS
guy, are we?”

“Until he cries like a baby,” Harry said, pulling Joe aside. “We went to a lot of trouble to get our hands on this guy.” Hell, they’d almost been caught. Twice. Larkin had been wandering the camp, and they’d nearly run right into him when they were wrestling Hans Lockner out to the car. And if the Blissfield woman hadn’t shown up to distract him, Larkin would probably have stumbled across them while they were tossing Hans’s place. Joe understood stealth, his problem was attention span. He’d made a lot of noise in between reminders. “We let him stew down here all night, and he’s still not talking. It’s time to get serious.”

“It’s the crack of dawn. I got, like, four hours of sleep. I’m tired.”

“Then keep your yap shut and let me handle this,” Harry whispered. “I’m trying to scare the crap out of him here, and it won’t work so good if you make me admit I don’t want to hit him.”

“Well, I ain’t hitting him. Blood makes me barf.”

“You hit Larkin.”

“That was mostly an accident. I tripped him so you and Kemp could get him on the ground and tie him up, remember? He hit his head when he fell. There was a lot of blood.”

“Oh. Right. There doesn’t have to be any blood. You could kick him.”

“Sure, just let me change into my steel-toed boots.”

“Really?”

“No. I’m not kicking him, either.”

“Maybe you ought to pull some Three Stooges stunts,” Hans Lockner said. “Try to poke my eyes out, hit me in the stomach, then conk me on the head when I double over.”

“I’m getting tired of the Stooges crap,” Joe said. “Maybe I will hit him.”

“Oh, puh-leeze. I heard you talking over there. You don’t like blood, and I’m a bleeder.”

Hans owned and ran a shop called Paper Moon, which specialized in prints of damsels in distress. He made the prints right there in the back of the small wooden building where he sold them, and when he wasn’t printing copies of dragons assailing Druid priestesses in the forest, he was making money. Except when he was tied to a chair in the basement of Joe’s house in Redford.

Despite their close call, kidnapping Hans had been a raging success, especially as compared to their last attempt. As things stood, however, they were on track to get just as much information from him as they’d gotten from Connor Larkin.

Harry might have worried that he was barking up the wrong tree, but Hans was the guy who printed the money, which meant Hans had been in possession of the plates last.

“It’s your ass or mine,” Harry said, the memory of past failure as much an incentive as the consequences of missing the boat again. “Cough up the plates, and don’t tell us they’re in your trailer. We already looked there. We want the truth, or the next thing coming out of your mouth will be your teeth.”

“Go ahead, hit me.”

Harry looked at Joe. Joe looked back. Neither of them moved.

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Joe said.

“Yes you did, and we got no choice if you want to eat tomorrow. You got laid off, same as me.” It hadn’t seemed so bleak at first. With unemployment and subpay they’d pulled down ninety percent of their pay sitting on their butts. But the layoff had become permanent when the union bartered their jobs away during the subsequent contract talks, and then the economy went to shit. There were no other jobs, unless you went into another profession. Hell, Harry thought, he hadn’t wanted to go to college when he was eighteen. No way was he going back at fifty-three.

When the simple delivery job had turned into something more . . . troubling, he’d said to himself,
How hard could it be to threaten some ding-dongs who liked to play dress-up?
Even when Larkin had come on the scene, he’d only been one guy—built like a bulldozer, sure, but there were three of them and only one of him.

The whole thing had turned to crap, though, and the Mackinac Island jail was just a taste of the humiliation they were in for, the difference between Marshmallow Fluff and a crust of maggot-ridden bread. First they found out Larkin was some kind of secret agent, and they’d blown their one chance to find out how deep the shit really was. Then the big boss refused to shut down the operation. No, he wanted to make one last big score. With Larkin’s posse ready to ride in like John Wayne and the cavalry trouncing the fucking Indians. And to top it all off, they were expected to kill the participants
and
the witnesses. Actually put people in their graves. And they couldn’t even smack around one obnoxious jackass to save their own necks.

Then again, there was more than one way to defrock a re-enactor.

“You got any liquor in the house?” he said to Joe.

“Got some Jack left over from last New Year’s.”

“Well?”

Joe shoved his hands into his pockets and ambled up the stairs.

“Liquor ain’t gonna help,” Hans said.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay, but I thought the point here was to get me to talk.”

“Everybody’s a comedian.”

“Not everybody. Some of us are Stooges. And that’s not Jack Daniel’s,” he added when Joe returned with a dusty bottle that held a few inches of murky brown liquid. “You don’t expect me to drink that.”

“Nope.” But it gave Harry great pleasure to plug Hans’s nose and pour the contents of the bottle down his throat.

Harry had a feeling Hans’s blood was already about twenty proof since it didn’t take him all that long to get good and sloshed. Unfortunately he also got belligerent. Turned out Hans was a mean drunk.

“Go fruk y’sel,” he slurred when Harry asked him where the plates were.

“We know you had them last.”

“So wha’? Been print’n money onna side, too. Din’t even notice.”

“Jesus,” Joe said, “why didn’t we think of that?”

“Shtup’d pricksh.”

“I wanna hit him now.”

“He wouldn’t feel it, Joe.”

“I would.”

“Focus,” Harry said. “We need to get the plates or we’re toast.”

Joe gave Hans an open-handed shot to the chest. No blood drawn, but Hans’s chair went flying over backward.

“Fruck,” he shouted, sounding like the booze was wearing off. Or maybe the pain was cutting through. He rolled around without managing to improve his situation at all. “Feels like you broke my wrists. Fucking asshole.”

Joe leaned over, got right in Hans’s face. “
I want. The fucking. Plates. Now.
”

Hans tried to spit at him. It splatted back on his own face.

“Not a good idea when you’re on your back and there’s, you know,
gravity
,” Joe said, booting Hans in the side, but without much intent since Hans barely grunted.

“You done?” Harry asked him.

Joe fisted his hands and glared at Hans. “Not until we get the plates.”

“Cut it out, you’re scaring me,” Harry deadpanned.

“Any ideas? Other than beating the crap out of him, which ain’t gonna do any good now that he’s feeling no pain.”

“The booze was your idea.”

“You think you can do better, go right ahead.”

Joe mulled it over for a minute, eyes rolling back in his head like he was trying to read the thoughts as they scrolled across his brain. It must have worked because his eyes rotated forward again, and he looked like there ought to be a lightbulb popping on over his head. “Be right back,” he said, taking the basement stairs two at a time and disappearing before Harry could ask him what the bright idea was.

When he came back, a couple of little white pills stamped with cloverleaf lay in the palm of his hand.

“It looks like aspirin. What good’s that gonna do?”

“It’s not aspirin, it’s E, you know, Ecstasy. Kid next door is into all this garbage, says it will make anybody do anything you want.”

“Isn’t that the sex drug?”

“I think it works for that, too. Mostly, he said it’s a mood elevator.”

“That couldn’t hurt. Give him some.”

Joe didn’t follow instructions. He just looked at the pills in his hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure how much to give him.”

Harry just shook his head and pinched one of the pills off Joe’s palm. Hans clenched his teeth shut. Hans definitely did not want his mood elevated.

“Hold his nose shut,” Joe suggested.

“You do it, and when he opens his mouth to breathe I’ll toss the pill down his throat.”

They grabbed Hans by the arms and hoisted him and his chair back to an upright position. Joe got behind him and clamped his thumb and forefinger around Hans’s nose. Hans opened his lips and sucked in a breath, letting it whistle back out again through teeth he’d clamped shut. “Dumb asses,” he said. He was grinning from ear to ear.

Harry lost it. He gave Joe a shot to the shoulder that broke his hold on Hans’s nose, knocked Hans and his chair over again, and kneeled on his neck until he gasped for air. In went the pill, and Hans swallowed it before he knew what was happening. The fact that he almost choked on it was just gravy.

“How long do you think it will take?” Joe asked a couple hours later.

“Seems like there should’ve been some change by now.” Harry walked over to Hans. “How you doing?”

“I’m lying on a cold cement floor with my hands and feet tied to a chair. How about we switch places and you can see firsthand how I’m doing, you
fucking moron
.”

“I think he needs more time,” Joe said.

“I think he needs more E.” And since Harry was in charge, they repeated the process, minus the part where he had to kneel on Hans’s neck. Hans might be fully sauced and partially cooked, but he wasn’t forgetful or stupid.

Joe consulted his watch. It was after nine A.M., with no end in sight. “Let’s go have breakfast,” he said. “I got some nice, fresh sausage. He should be ready to talk by the time we’re done.”

“I want some sausage,” Hans said as they started up the stairs.

“We want the plates,” Harry said.

“Shove the fucking plates up your fucking ass,” Hans shouted.

Harry chose not to respond.

“Give me some fucking sausage. I’m starving here.”

“Yeah, you look it,” Joe yelled down to Hans before he shut the basement door and left Hans alone, still cursing and screaming.

They’d barely worked their way through scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast before the silence from the basement became deafening.

“You think the second pill was overkill?” Joe asked.

“I hope it wasn’t any kind of kill.” Harry made a beeline for the door to the basement, taking the stairs two at a time and breathing a sigh of relief when Hans turned his head and smiled at him.

Smiled at him. That was a good sign. He thought. “Hey, how you doin’?” Hans said in a nighttime deejay kind of voice.

Harry stopped so fast Joe ran into him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think his mood’s the only thing that’s been elevated,” Harry said.

“I’ll tell you where the plates are if you get me a broad.”

“A broad?” Joe repeated. Joe was a little slow on the uptake.

Hans thrust his hips a couple of times. “A broad, dumb-ass.”

Joe stared at Hans’s bulging crotch. “Jeez, he’s all sexed up.”

“That’s right, baby face. Put on a dress or untie my hands—at least one of them.”

Joe made a sound in the back of his throat that pretty much summed up their mutual disgust, but didn’t begin to address Harry’s frustration.

“Christ,” he said, “all I want is the freaking plates.”

“Tree,” Hans shouted like he had Tourette’s. “They’re in the tree.” Then he passed out.

Harry and Joe traded a look, then Joe walked over and nudged Hans with the toe of his beat-up Nike. Hans snorted out a breath and settled into a nice steady snoring pattern.

“Should we pick him up?” Joe said.

Harry shrugged. “He seems to be pretty comfortable.” “What tree do you think he was talking about?”

“Has to be at the nutfest,” Harry said. He pulled out his cell phone and called Kemp to come and watch Hans. “Soon as he gets here,” Harry said to Joe, “we head back to the festival. Should get there just before lunchtime.”

Joe, master of the obvious, said, “There’s a lotta trees there,” and when Harry scowled at him, he added hastily, “but I bet we can figure out where Hans stashed the plates in no time. We just have to think like him.”