The Magdalene Cipher (31 page)

It happened in an instant. Blémont leaned in with his Zippo. There was a sharp click, a flash of light, and a curtain of blue and yellow flames exploded with a
whoooof
a in Dunphy's face. Blinded by the light, too shocked to cry out, it was all he could do to gasp
.
The heat
a . . . And then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, the flames fluttered out
.

Blémont and the Jock were laughing. “Look at the smoke!” the Corsican said, patting Dunphy's shirt with his fingertips. “He's smoking!” He sniffed the air, glanced at the Jock, and chuckled
.
“Peux-tu sentir les cheveux?”

A giggle came in reply
.

“Jesus Christ!” Dunphy said through gritted teeth. “What do you
want
a?”

Blémont adopted a serious mien, clearing his throat and frowning in an effort to repress his laughter. Then he spoke in a low voice that was a parody of sincerity and confidentiality. “Well, obviously—Jack—I want to
torture
you.” Whereupon, Blémont and the Jock burst into laughter yet again
.

Dunphy's heart was thumping away like an oompah band. He didn't know if Blémont was going to kick him, punch him, set him on fire—or what. A heart attack would be fine, Dunphy thought. And I could die, here and now. But that wasn't going to happen, he knew. So he wrenched at the bonds that held his wrists, and to his surprise, they seemed to give—just a bit
.

“That was just a . . .” Blémont snapped his fingers, searching for the idiom, then chuckled dryly. “Just a warm-up.” Then he laughed uproariously
.

He's insane, Dunphy thought
.

“And look at this!” Blémont picked up an electric drill, or something like it. A long, orange wire ran from its base to a machine on the floor, which was itself plugged into the wall. Stooping, the Corsican snapped on a switch at the side of the machine, and instantly, the shop was filled with the vibrating din of an air compressor
.
“My grandfather was a carpenter!”
a Blémont yelled
.
“In Ajaccio!”

Dunphy wriggled his hands and looked away. He didn't want to know what Blémont was going to do, because whatever it was, it was going to be done to him
.

“I've seen his work! It's not—”
a The compressor cut off, as quickly as it had come on. “It's not bad.” Suddenly, the room was dead silent. “Of course, they didn't have nail guns then. Everything was done by hand. But with this . . .” Blémont pointed the tool in Dunphy's direction and, with a sadistic grin, squeezed the trigger
.

Szzzunkk!

It made a sound like a time clock being punched, and in that instant, a nail smacked into the plaster wall behind him. To Dunphy's horror, there was no ricochet
.

“With
this
,
I could pound nails all day long, and never get tired. Every nail—
powww!
like a sledgehammer. A hundred pounds an inch.” He paused for a moment and frowned. “Of course, there are so many kinds of nails. Long nails, short nails, framing nails, roofing nails.” He held up what looked like a foot-long bandolier of two-inch nails. “These are finishing nails,” he explained, slotting them into the gun. “A hundred of them.”

Dunphy was sitting stock-still, even as his fingers clawed at the knots behind his back. He could feel the blood draining from his face as Blémont raised the nail gun yet again, this time aiming lower. Dunphy's right thumb and forefinger wrenched at the knot behind his back
.

And Blémont raved. “The ones with the big heads are framing nails. But these—they have almost no head at all. Look.” And, with that, he squeezed the trigger
.

Dunphy jackknifed involuntarily as the nail slammed into his lower leg, punching through the flesh past the shinbone to the calf muscle underneath. The pain was astounding and, somehow, high pitched, an agonizing rip, as if the full length of a hypodermic needle had been driven into
and through
his leg. A bellow of pain and shock reverberated through the room. It came from him
.

“Owww,”
Blémont remarked in a coy voice
.

Dunphy shivered, suddenly cold and faint. Pitching forward, he saw a neat little hole in his pants leg. A spot of blood. Behind his back, his fingers fumbled frantically with the cord that bound him
.

And there was hope. Whoever had tied his wrists had not been a sailor. In place of a single, useful knot, the cord had been wrapped repeatedly around his hands and wrists, over and under, and tied in a series of what seemed to be square knots. One of these had come undone from repeated tugging, and the bonds now felt a little looser. For what it was worth, he could at least imagine getting free
.

Blémont raised the nail gun with both hands, holding it like a homicide cop on late-night TV, then brought it down slowly, sighting along its barrel. “
Les bijoux defamille
a . . . it's a tough shot.”

Szzunnnk!
A nail tore into his thigh, just below the hip, dragging a choked cry from his throat as Blémont whooped with delight and the Jock smiled broadly
.

“Roger—laissez-moi essayer,”
the Jock said
.

“Why not?” Blémont replied, and tossed him the gun. Then he turned to search among the tools on the upholsterer's workbench, looking for other toys
.

The Jock sauntered over to Dunphy with a little smile in the corner of his mouth. “How do you want it?” he asked
.

Dunphy took a deep breath and looked away. Whatever he said, they were going to crucify him. There was no point in pleading, and nothing to be gained by telling the Frog to go fuck himself. Whatever he said, he was going to hurt. So he kept his peace, even as his hands worked frantically behind his back, tearing at the knots
.

The Jock studied the gun in his hands, then turned to Blémont. “What if I nail his
couilles
to the chair?” he asked
.

Blémont snickered. “As long as you don't kill him,” he replied, “you can nail him to the ceiling, for all I care.”

“Eh, bien,”
the Jock replied, and turned back to Dunphy
.

Just then, the air compressor went off with the suddenness of a fire alarm, its pneumatic engine rattling the air. Startled, the Jock turned, and as he did, Dunphy's leg lashed out, slashing at the man's knee
.

Dunphy was as surprised as the Jock. He hadn't planned to kick him. It was a reflex, or something like it—a suicidal gesture, perhaps. In the event, the Jock buckled, yelped, and staggered backward, then came up firing the nail gun
.

Szzunnnk! Szzunnnk! Szzunnnk!

The first three nails slammed into the wall behind him, but the fourth caught Dunphy in the right side, the pain so sudden and intense that it wrenched him around in the chair and sent him crashing to the floor. The next nail blew past his face, while the two after that tore into the ball of his foot and his elbow. By then, Blémont was shouting at the Jock to stop—which he did, just as the air compressor switched off
.

The Frenchman rubbed his knee and cursed, while Blémont righted Dunphy in his chair. “You could have killed him,” the Corsican complained
.

For his part, Dunphy was fighting against his body's wish for sweet surrender. He could sense his nervous system shutting down, his hands and feet growing colder, his pain becoming increasingly remote. It occurred to him, in a distracted way, that he was going into shock—and that, if he did, he'd die without knowing it
.

With a low growl, he sought out the pain, retrieving it one nail at a time—finding it first in his foot, then in his elbow, side, and leg. In the end, he wondered if there was any part of him that didn't hurt, and shuddered to think that if there was, that part was certain to be next
.

Blémont crouched in front of him. “Let's do business,” he said
.

Dunphy looked away
.

“There is a banker in Santa Cruz,” the Corsican continued. “A man I know. He can arrange to have the money transferred. We do that—and you can go.”

Right, Dunphy thought. Just like that. He shook his head
.

Blémont's smile disappeared. “It's
my
money, Jack.”

“I know,” Dunphy said. “But you can't get it that way. They won't give it to you.”

The Corsican stared at him. “Why not?” he asked
.

“Because it's in a safe-deposit box,” Dunphy explained
.

“Then you'll give us the key,” Blémont said
.

Once again, Dunphy shook his head. “I'll give you the key, but it won't do any good. If you aren't on the box-holder's list, it doesn't matter if you've got the key. You'd have to show them a court order.”

“How do they know—”

“They look at your passport.”

Blémont thought about it
.

“We could go together,” Dunphy suggested
.

Blémont shook his head. “I think you'd be hard to handle in public.”

“It's the only way,” Dunphy told him
.

“Is it? What about the girl?” Blémont asked
.

Dunphy pretended that he hadn't heard. “I won't give you any trouble,” he said
.

“What about the
girl
a?” the Corsican repeated
.

“What girl?”

This time, he saw it coming and backed off enough that the punch caught him a glancing blow on the side of his head
.

“Don't fuck with me!” Blémont warned, his eyes bulging. “I'm talking about that bitch of yours—Veroushka.”

“Oh,” Dunphy said, shaking his head to clear it
.
“Her.”

Blémont flexed the fingers on his right hand and composed himself. “She went to the bank for you in Zürich,” he said calmly, “when you lost my friends at the hotel.”

“On the Bahnhofstrasse,” the Jock said. “La Credit Suisse.”

“So her name's on the box,” Blémont stated
.

Dunphy nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You're right. I forgot.”

“Then she can get the money.”

“I could call her,” Dunphy suggested. “She'll be at the Tiller—waiting to hear.”

Blémont smiled thinly. “I don't think so.”

“If you're worried about the police—” Dunphy began
.

Blémont shook his head. “It's always better to do business in person.”

In the course of the next hour, three things happened: the Jock went out to buy a tape recorder. Dunphy loosened the last of the knots that bound his wrists. And Luc expired
.

This last event was entirely without fanfare. Seated in his overstuffed chair, Blémont's henchman gave a sort of myoclonic jerk, then sank back with a quiet rattle in his throat. Hearing the whispered gargle, Dunphy turned toward the noise in time to see the dying man's face go slack and his eyes roll back in his head
.

Blémont remained at the workbench with his back to the room
.

Dunphy cleared his throat
.

“I heard it,” the Corsican said, without turning
.
“C'est triste.”

The Jock came back about ten minutes later, carrying an inexpensive Sony with a built-in microphone. On seeing the Alsatian in his chair, he went over to the dead man and carefully closed his eyes. Then he turned with a growl and lunged at Dunphy—only to have Blémont seize him by the arm and pull him away, whispering in French. Eventually, the Jock nodded, took a deep breath, and exhaled mightily
.
“Eh, bien,”
he said, and leaned back against the workbench
.

Blémont came over to Dunphy with the tape recorder in his hand. “Okay,” he said, “here's how it goes. You tell your girlfriend to go to Zürich with Marcel. When they get the money, I let you go. Until then, you're here with me.”

Dunphy turned the proposal upside down and inside out. “What if Marcel keeps going?”

Blémont dismissed the idea with a forceful shake of his head. “He won't,” the Corsican said. “I know where he lives. And he knows I know—don't you, Marcel?”

A grunt from the workbench
.

“And after I make the tape,” Dunphy said, “the reason you don't kill me is . . . what? I forget that part.”

Blémont made an impatient gesture with his hands, as if the answer was obvious. When Dunphy didn't react, the Corsican said, “The money!”

“Which money?” Dunphy asked, confused
.

“The
rest
of the money—the money you owe me. You said it yourself—you spent twenty grand. I'm betting twenty-two. And I told you: that's just the beginning. There's interest on top of that—and expenses. When we find out how much is in Zürich, we'll know how much more you've got to pay.”