The Inquisitor: A Novel (25 page)

Dalton looked slightly disappointed at Geiger’s apparent lack of interest. “Well, I like it. Very elegant.”

Geiger remained silent, waiting Dalton out.

“They’re in a real hurry about this, Geiger,” Dalton said, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows. “So I’m not going to bother with any head games—not that head games are my strong suit, and not that they’d work on you in any case. No, I’m going straight to the pain. That’s my humble expertise—that’s what I do.”

Dalton turned to the cart, and Geiger slowly rotated his palm so he could see it. The skin had a moist sheen. He stared at the number: 917 555 0617. He recited it silently, committing it to memory.

The door to the viewing room swung open and Hall barged out. Dalton turned at the disturbance.

“His hand!” Hall yelled. “He’s got something on his palm!”

Geiger clenched his hand into a fist, rubbing his fingertips against his palm, working at the skin, until Dalton grabbed the hand with both of his and pried the fingers open. Hall arrived as the palm was revealed—a smudged but still legible 917 5 was followed by a smear of blue ink.

“It’s a phone number,” said Dalton.

“I can see that,” growled Hall. He glowered at Geiger. “Don’t make this hard. You’re smarter than this.”

Geiger nodded. “How is your head, Mr. Hall?”

Hall ignored him. As he headed back to the viewing room, he spoke over his shoulder to Dalton: “Get to work on him—now!”

The door slammed. Dalton reached toward the cart and picked up the awl and the butane torch. The awl’s steel needle was four inches long and a sixteenth of an inch thick, and the wooden grip was darkened from the sweat of countless uses. The torch fit perfectly in his hand.

“As I was saying. Expertise…”

His thumb pressed the torch’s ignition button, and a thin, two-inch-long blue flame shot out of the nozzle.

“It’s always seemed to me the most egalitarian of assets,” Dalton said. “Anyone can have an expertise. You don’t have to be smart, or rich, or clever. You don’t need a degree. There’s no privilege involved, no genetic lottery. You can be a ditchdigger and have an expertise. A shoe salesman, a dishwasher, a garbageman…”

He brought the needle of the awl into the flame and kept it there.

“I’ve always felt that you can tell a lot about a person if they have a genuine expertise. If they do, you know for certain, without knowing anything else about them, that they are dedicated. They have applied themselves, they have a passion for something that has driven them to a point well beyond where most people would ever go. That says a lot about a person, don’t you think?”

The awl’s needle glowed red. Dalton turned off the torch and put it on the cart. Geiger stared at the incandescent needle; it looked like the nucleus of a hearth’s fire compressed into a single, lucent filament. He felt the past being awakened by it.

Dalton studied the needle’s tip, then brought it close to Geiger’s left cheek with an unwavering hand. He grabbed Geiger’s hair with his other hand to immobilize the head.

Geiger didn’t move. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Where is the boy?”

Geiger shut his eyes. A single piano note cascaded down into a full chord, and luminous puffs of clouds bloomed, laced with streaks of bright, falsetto-fueled lightning.
They say everything can be replaced. They say every distance is not near.

Very slowly, Dalton pushed the hot needle into Geiger’s cheek until Geiger felt the tip break through the inner side and poke at the edge of his tongue. Dalton wiggled the probe.

So I remember every face of every man who put me here.

“Geiger, where is the boy?”

As Dalton had intended, the torture delivered a dual sensation: the searing burn of the hot steel and the sharp pain of the piercing of flesh. Geiger’s brain had a moment to form a critique. Heating the needle was, ironically, counterproductive, since it produced something of a desensitizing effect on the skin, diminishing the intensity of the invasion.

Dalton adjusted the awl’s angle slightly downward and jabbed it in farther, into the soft, connective tissue beneath the tongue.

“Where is the boy?”

Any day now, any day now …
The high, sweet voice weaved toward the hot blast of pain and, like a viper, wrapped itself around it and strangled it.
… I shall be released.

Dalton shoved the awl in deeper. Its point came up against something solid. Bone. The pain was molten. Geiger was inside the sun.

“Geiger … where is the boy?”

Geiger opened his mouth and spat blood. Dalton shook his head and pulled the awl out. The heat had created a circular pink flush on the cheek, and a crimson bubble of blood began to grow in its center. Dalton picked up one of the hand towels and began wiping off the instrument with short, measured strokes.

“I’m curious,” he said. “Professionally speaking, on a scale of one to ten, how much did that hurt?”

Geiger’s eyes opened, and when they swiveled to Dalton light flashed on their wet surfaces. “How much did
what
hurt?” he said.

Dalton looked up from his cleaning ritual. He had heard the stories for years: about the boy wonder who’d brought a new style to the trade, about the wizard who at one point even had the CIA singing hosannas, about the master who could draw out the truth without drawing blood. But the man in the chair was not what Dalton had expected. He was too … But Dalton couldn’t complete the thought, couldn’t quite put his finger on the qualities that set the real man apart from the legend.

Dalton put the awl down and picked up the bat.

“Now, this takes me back,” he said, and took two short checked swings. “You like baseball?”

“I never played.”

Dalton swung and hit Geiger flush on the left pectoral. Dalton’s grunt was almost as loud as Geiger’s, whose lips twisted and seemed to pull the rest of his face inward, like an eddy sucking in debris. The physical agony ballooned inside his chest, and the army of angels’ voices in his head sent a volley of high-arcing arrows raining down on the pain.
I see my light come shining
—piercing it, puncturing it, deflating it—
from the west down to the east.

“Tell me where the boy is, Geiger.”

When no answer came Dalton swung again, hitting the top of the sternum at the nexus of the clavicle. The force of the blow caused the trachea behind it to seize up, and the result was a combined feeling of choking and asphyxiating. Geiger’s ears filled with a high-pitched whine that drowned out the music inside him; he struggled reflexively against his bindings, his chest heaving.

Dalton grabbed him by the jaw and rammed his head back against the headrest. The thrust actually helped Geiger gulp some air.

“Listen to me,” Dalton said, leaning in very close. His breath smelled of peppermint. “I like my work, but I’m not enjoying this. It’s weird, you being who you are. So I’m going to tell you something. Call it a professional courtesy. This job is in effect a norell—hear me?
No release likely
. You may as well be at a black site. They’ll have me turn you into a Cobb salad before they tell me to stop. So don’t do this—stop being whoever you think you’re being, because that’s not who you are. And because if you don’t, you will probably die in this chair.”

Dalton straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Now, was there any part of that you didn’t understand?”

Geiger was finally able to swallow.

“What’s a Cobb salad?” he asked.

Dalton brought the bat down hard, smashing it across both quadriceps.

*   *   *

The loud clap of the blow and the wild twisting of Geiger’s torso made Hall, watching through the one-way mirror, grimace.

“‘What’s a Cobb salad?’” he repeated. “That’s very funny.” He turned to Ray, who was sitting on the couch with a glass of ice pressed to his face. “Considering his situation, that is a great line.”

“Tell Dalton to start cutting him,” said Ray. “He’ll talk. And make sure he tells us where Harry is, too.”

Hall poured himself some Clynelish.

“Hey, me too,” said Ray.

“No alcohol.”

“I’m feeling better, you know.”

Dalton had found some lidocaine in Geiger’s medicine cabinet and given Ray a shot in his lower face. The pain had lessened, and Ray’s vitality was increasing.

“Ray, Harry didn’t give Geiger up. So what makes you think Geiger will give Harry up?” He raised the glass to his lips, then stopped and put the Scotch back down. “Listen to me, Raymond. The job is Matheson. That’s it. After that, I don’t ever want to see Geiger or Harry again. Ever. We clear?”

“After this is done, my time’s my own,” Ray said.

Hall could see Ray’s brain squirming inside his skull like a mutt in a cage. That would be all they’d need—to find Matheson, escape from this mess clean, and then have Ray go after Boddicker and leave a bloody, mile-wide trail. He was beginning to wish Harry had shot the sonofabitch in the head.

Hall turned back to the viewing window. Dalton was focused on the cart, eyeing his options. Geiger—red welts spreading on his chest, bleeding from his cheek—sat in the chair with his head bowed. The two men looked like deep thinkers considering a serious point of debate. Geiger was breathing through his mouth, cheeks puffing slightly with each long exhalation. Then he looked up, staring directly at the glass as if he could see right through it.

“What’s your story?” said Hall, as if Geiger could hear him, too. “You in the market for a little redemption? That what this is? Sorry, man—ain’t gonna happen. You’re going to hell, just like the rest of us.”

Hall’s cell phone rang, and he answered.

“You in position?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Mitch, “I’m here. Right downstairs, across the street.”

“Stay put.”

*   *   *

Dalton turned to Geiger, hands behind his back, head bobbing in a slow, satisfied nod, as if he had figured out some especially difficult riddle. Mr. Chips in a chamber of horrors.

“What do you do with it?” Dalton asked.

Geiger, his head inclined again, shifted his jaw slowly, searching for a position that would allow him to talk with the least discomfort.

“Do with what?” he mumbled.

“With the pain. I read all the studies. Do you do that ‘put it in a box’ thing? Or do you go Zen and rely on mind over matter? Which is it? I’m fascinated—honestly. I saw the backs of your legs when we stripped you down, and clearly you’ve had plenty of chances to practice. So what do you do with the pain?”

“It’s my…” The last word was difficult for Geiger’s battered mouth to form, so it came out a slushy mutter.

Dalton bent down. “It’s your
what
?”

Geiger’s head slowly rose until his eyes met Dalton’s. Their faces were just inches apart, so close that Geiger could see his reflection in Dalton’s glasses.

“My
ex—per—tise
,” Geiger said.

Dalton’s hands came out from behind him. They held Geiger’s antique straight razor, and Dalton saw the shift in Geiger’s eyes and the tightening of his chest muscles. The movements were minute but unmistakable. Dalton’s feral smile reappeared.

“This is a real beauty, Geiger. Where did you get it? Is this an old friend?” He admired the ornate handiwork on the mother-of-pearl handle. “And the backs of your legs? You know, the way you deal with the pain tells me that maybe the two of you know each other very well.” He pulled the blade out from its sheath. There was an inscription etched into the polished steel. “‘To Ben, with love, from Paula.’ Mom and Dad? Am I right?”

A smoke-spewing train came chugging through a tunnel in Geiger’s memory, barreling toward the moment. He sensed what cargo it brought, and the train’s clatter and roar set his eardrums vibrating.

“You got cut for years, huh? Was it Mommy or Daddy? I’m thinking it was dear old Dad.”

Geiger saw a glimmer of something new in Dalton’s eyes, but it wasn’t sympathy.

“You had a very bad time of it, didn’t you, Geiger? Sorry, but now you and I are going back there.”

Dalton ran his gloved thumb gently up and down the blade’s finely honed edge. The latex split open.

“A little too sharp, I think.”

Geiger watched him start tapping the razor on the cart’s metal railing, creating a serrated design the length of the blade’s edge. The train kept coming, its Cyclops eye burning fiercely.

“Where is the boy?” Dalton said.

*   *   *

“Are you ready, son?” said the voice inside Geiger’s head.

*   *   *

“I’m ready, sir,” Geiger replied.

Dalton turned, smiling quizzically.

“No need to be so formal,” he said. He examined the blade and then laid it down on Geiger’s left quadricep, four inches above the knee joint. “We’ll work upward. I think that’s what your father did. When I reach the groin—if we get that far—I’m going to cut off your testicles.”

Dalton pressed the blade down evenly. The entire length of it sliced into the flesh.

*   *   *

The boy lay facedown, naked, on a bench in the great room. The music played softly. “I see my light come shining…”

His father stood over him, holding the pearl-handled razor.

“What do we know, son?” he said.

“Life makes us ache for the things we think we need, and the pain makes us weak.”

“So what must we do?”

“Embrace the pain, a little each day, and grow strong.”

*   *   *

Behind his glasses, Dalton’s eyes narrowed as he examined his handiwork. The altered razor left a puckered, four-inch incision whose jagged edges sent the blood flowing in different directions across Geiger’s thigh.

“Tell me where the boy is, Geiger.”