The Frenchman's Revenge (62 page)

Manchu
took a piece of rope out of the pack he was carrying and
hog
tied Aldo’s hands and feet together and threw him back to the floor.
He wiped some of the blood off Aldo’s face and
smiled
at
Liang
.

“Hell, good to see at least his blood is red.
And
something tells me the only yellow stuff that’s gonna flow in here tonight is this asshole pissing all over himself
.”

Liang
nodded and walked over to the closet and hollered out from inside.

“Our information
’s
correct.
It’s right here where they said it would be
.
Come and help me.
This goddamn thing looks like it
came
straight out of the inquisition.”

Manchu
help
ed
him drag a fearsome looking
apparatus
out of the closet.
When they had all the parts together and rigged up in the middle of the room,
Liang
stepped back and looked at the contraption with a mixture of anger and
amazement
.

“Fuck,
Manchu
, Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t have a
thing on this cruel son of a bitch.
He really is a holdover from the
I
nquisition. Jesus God.
Who says we don’t do the work of the righteous
?
Just playin
’
a role in ridding the world of this despicable piece of
human garbage
will be one of my proudest accomplishments.
”

Manchu
nodded in agreement
and began unloading the rest of the tools in his pack.

An hour later,
Liang
and
Manchu
stepped back to admire their handiwork. Aldo was stretched spread-eagled on his custom made rack. He was naked and looked like a
pale,
scrawny
pitiful
little man instead of Lucifer in the flesh.

No matter
how it sickened him
, Liang had to admit
the device w
as
ingenious
.
There were a multitude of straps that went around the victim
’
s appendages and were spaced so that when one bone was broken or cut off
,
the rest of body part
remained fastened to the rack.
Each arm
brace
had seven individual straps
,
not including the glove that allowed
the fingers to be
broken or c
hopped
off one
at a time
without
freeing
the rest of the arm.

“Amaz
ing piece of machinery, Aldo
.
”

Liang’s
voice dripp
ed
with scorn.

“How long did it take you to kill a man? Or did
you keep
cutting off parts until the poor fucker couldn’t scream anymore and gave up the ghost? We’
re
told the only way you could get that pea sized prick of your
s
up
was hearing the screams of terrified men.”

Manchu
was standing back shaking his head. His eyes were dark and wide
,
as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Christ,
Liang
, there are six straps
here
to hold the fucker’s cock.
Where the hell do they all go?”

“Tell you what.
Let’s hook up Aldo and see if we can figure it out.”

Many minutes of screaming and puddles of piss later
,
Liang
and
Manchu
stood in the doorway looking back at the specter hanging on the rack.
Neither one of them spoke
,
as though putting the evil they saw in words would diminish it.

Taking a deep breath,
Liang
spoke in a quiet voice.

“So you understand
,
Aldo.
The reason we didn’t kill you ourselves is that it would have been too quick.
Besides
,
there are so many people who want a piece of you it seemed greedy for us to take it all.

“I have two messages for you from
t
he Frenchman
. He wanted
you to contemplate
them
as you burn in hell for eternity
.
The first is that when you die and you will die tonight, a hideous death
,
know that your daughters and grandchildren will
be in
t
he Frenchman’s care for the rest of their lives
. The second message is that
we
have dedicated
your death
to the
honor of Jeng Ming and the women she represents.”

Liang
and
Manchu
picked up their packs, turned
,
and left the room
,
closing the door behind them.

~~~

Aldo
s
creamed until his throat was raw
. H
e
ranged from wild screaming rage to disconsolate frantic sobbing.
S
till no one came.
Every inch of his
body
throbbed and nothing he could do relieved the pain.
He was immobile
held
in a way that nothing of substance supported him.
The rack that he
conceived
was
designed so that the victim
could
be
suspended
for hours
,
the weight of his body tearing at tortured shoulder joints, bent elbows, fragile wrists
.
The
hideous supporting bands were attached to the most vulnerable of places
:
finger and toe joints, neck, his shriveled penis. The least motion sent a torrent of agony raging through his body.

When
several hours had passed
,
he heard footsteps outside
in the hallway
.
He
scream
ed
over
and over as loud
as he could.

“Help, help!
Somebody, help me!
Carlos, Harry, Somebody help me!”

The door opened and he saw Carlos.
He couldn’t hold back tears of relief and blubbering like a baby, he cried out, “Thank God, Carlos.
Thank god.
Oh God, I thought you would never come.
I thought…Help me
,
you stupid asshole.
Don’t just stand there staring at me!
Get me down!”

Carlos stood in the doorway and looked at the hideous little man hanging on the rack.
His
gut
roil
ed
,
remembering
how many men he had helped Aldo hang on that
malevolent
rack.

H
e couldn’t say what
had
finally broke
n
through his resistance to the evil.
He’d been around it so long
. He’d
participated in it, condoned it
;
it was part of his life. But something broke through. Hell, maybe just the weight o
f
it
,
the ma
gnitude
. Or maybe it was that last little girl Aldo sicced his dogs on after he sodomized her with his
iron
poker
. C
arrying
her
shattered
body out to the incinerator
,
Carlos
knew it was over, he was done.

It was a small relief to know that
,
like Aldo, he would not survive the night. In some miniscule way
,
it assuaged his guilt to hand over Aldo’s
records
to Tom Caldwell when he’d learned from one of the
syndicate
bankers that Caldwell was
t
he Frenchman’s financial impresario. Tonight’s activities would also help.

He focused o
n Aldo’s
face
, concentrating on the purple fury, the
enraged
beady
eyes, the spittle spewing from his mouth.

“Good evening, Aldo.
You have company.
”

Ignoring Aldo’s screams of
rage
,
Carlos
stepped aside
to let in the enforcers of five of the gangs
Aldo had
terrorized.
Each man represen
ted
a gang that
had lost at least on
e
man to Aldo’s
torture
rack.
None of the men were strangers to
violence
or
cruelty
. I
t was the centerpiece of their lives.
They were the mob’s enforcers, after all.
But
every one of
them paled
when they saw the rack and the enormity of
the
evil it
represented
.

Aldo
cried out,
sobbing, begging for help.

“Carlos, for Christ’s sake.
Tell them
,
Carlos.
Tell them it wasn’t us.
Tell them or they’ll…they’ll…Christ, Carlos, help me! Carlos, please tell them it was that fuckin
’
Frenchman.”

When Carlos didn’t answer, Aldo
began
screaming at the other men.

“
Don’t you understand? It was that fucking Chink,
t
he Frenchman!
Don’t you see?
He’s trying to make us kill each other.
Can’t you see?
Are you so stupid
that
you can’t see that Chink is trying to take us all down?”

One of the men from D’Maggio’s gang
,
who had lost two men to Aldo’s rack
,
turned to the others and said with a sneer, “Listen to the cowardly bastard.
Jesus, what a fuckin coward you are
,
Aldo.
First you try and blame it on the Micks and now the Chinks.”

He walked over and spit in Aldo’s face.

Aldo screamed again
,
his face contorted with terror.

“Carlos, for the love of God, help me!”

Carlos ignored him and put
a
tray of ten inch knives on the table in front of the rack.
He walked back to the door
,
then
took
a last look
at the
terrified
man
.
Carlos’s
face
was
emotionless
, his voice flat
.

“Good night, Aldo
,
and good by
e
.”

He turned and closed the door behind him. The screams lasted long in
to
the night.

Chapter 2
9

Greg
sat
at his desk
, his face tight with strain
.
The past ten days had been the most challenging of his life.
At times
,
even his iron clad control
slipped. He
yelled at subordinates, challenged the
g
overnor
,
and plunged into moody bouts of self doubt.
Hell, it was no wonder.
What with Martin rushing hysterically in his office five or
six times a day with one frantic message after another. Yeah, it was bad, but that fat little prick
,
weeping like a girl, convinced the end was near
,
didn’t help.
By the end of the week
,
and as the Governor
’
s
B
all approached
,
he had regained his
equanimity
a
nd was presenting his usual
composed
face to the world.