by Daniel Hecht
"Yeah. Listen—it can't be Ty. I think it's Flannery. It's got to be Flannery."
Biedermann didn't sound surprised in the least. "It's the total shits, isn't it. Okay. I'm gone. Hey, Mo—you've done the right thing here. Calling me first. We'll fix this. This isn't the first time for us, you know what I'm saying?" And the line disconnected.
Mo tried to call Rebecca on her cell phone, got her service, tried to tell himself it meant nothing, she always turned the thing off when she was taking personal time. Then he laid stripes in the gravel as he peeled out.
Sunday night, light traffic, flasher blazing, knuckles white. Mo made the forty-minute drive in twenty-five, barely aware of the pounding ache in his jaw, the screaming pain and unresponsiveness of his index finger, the mud stiffening on his clothes. The highway landscape rushed toward him like a sucking whirlpool, surreal. Here was the rearing bridge, the rooftops of Fort Lee, the exit ramp, and the distant STAR BOWL sign glowing pink and blue neon against a darkening eastern sky. Mo took the curves of the ramp at highway speed, the Chevy's wheels squealing. Then a couple of agonizing minutes of tangled New Jersey streets and the STAR BOWL sign again. The shopping center, mostly dark now, stores closed, parking lots almost empty. He shut down his lights as he approached the front, of the alley.
He'd expected more activity, a couple of MRT vans, perimeter patrol, something. But there were just a handful of civilian cars in front of the Star Bowl. One was Rebecca's Acura.
He got out, trying to figure whether everything was completely wrong or completely all right. The lights were still on in the glass entry of the Star Bowl, nothing had changed since he'd last seen the place. Just a quiet Sunday night in Fort Lee. Maybe Biedermann's guys had parked around back or arrived in civilian cars, part of keeping the profile low. Maybe the whole thing had played out and they'd already taken Geppetto away. Maybe Geppetto hadn't shown up, the horrors Mo had imagined weren't part of the plan after all.
He got out of the car with his Glock in his hands, but put it away as he approached the door. Bad enough he was coming in here covered with blood and filth, no need to put a gun in the picture. He opened the glass doors, went through the second set and up three steps to the lobby.
The lanes were brightly lit, no sign of trouble.
He paused at the front desk. The old man wasn't at the register, but a quick scan of the alley showed five or six people sitting at one of the lane booths on the left side. And two blond heads, over on the right at lane nine. Rebecca and Rachel, side by side, huddled close. A warmth of relief poured over Mo. Rachel's head was shaking as if they were laughing or goofing around together. But where was Biedermann?
He started down the short flight of steps and was halfway to
Rebecca's booth when it clicked that something wasn't right. The lanes were silent. Nobody was walking around.
"Rebecca?" he called.
Her head whirled in surprise. "Mo! Don't come over here! He's cuffed our hands to the table! He's going to—"
Before she could finish, the lights went out with a chunk! The alley became a pitch-black cavern. An instant later the emergency lights went on over the exit doors, a glow that barely made it to the center of the room.
Mo dove to the floor behind a rack of bowling balls. He rolled to the right, froze, listened, then cautiously lifted his head. A dim, low-ceilinged cave, lit only by the insufficient emergency spots, red exit signs, a faint glow from the entry area.
He could make out Rebecca's head over the back of her booth, and though she was craning to look behind her, she was immobile, hunched awkwardly forward. Then the sound of whimpering drew his eye down the left side of the alley, where he could dimly see the cluster of people at lane three also hunched over. Mo groped for his cell phone and remembered it was dead and gone.
And then something slashed out of the dark, hit his temple, sent him sprawling across the waxed boards. A dark shape loomed over him and eclipsed the emergency lights as another blow bounced off the back of his head. The explosion shut the world down, everything shuddered and went small and far away. It was Biedermann, swinging a telescoping steel baton. Mo rolled onto his back and put up his hands to intercept it, but instead of a sharp crack he felt Biedermann's knee plunge down on the center of his chest. The baton came across his throat. Mo's empty lungs labored, but the baton was a crushing bar cutting off all air. No blood to his brain. He dipped just under a roiling surface of darkness. He vaguely felt his Glock being ripped away. He heard it clatter on the boards and then Biedermann's voice: "And that tricky little Ruger, let's not forget that." A tug at his ankle and another skittering noise. Biedermann bowling with guns, he thought. The instant the pressure left his throat, he gulped burning air and clawed back from his confusion. In slow motion, he raised his hands to strike at Biedermann's face, but instead of contact he vaguely felt his arm gripped hard and then a sharp bite as a band came tight around one wrist. Then the other. The weight came offhis chest and he felt his arms drawn up over his head.
"To complete Rebecca's informative comment," Biedermann panted, "what I'm planning to do is appeal to your consciences in a dramatic fashion."
He dragged Mo by his wrists past Rebecca and Rachel to one of the ball-return carousels at the head of the lanes. Mo pulled his knees up, waited, and when Biedermann knelt to fix the cuffs to the ball return, he straightened his legs hard. Both feet hit Biedermann in the chest. Knocked him upright, put a surprised expression on his face, but nothing more.
Biedermann jammed his booted foot up under Mo's chin so hard he was afraid the jaw would come off. "Always the attitude," he snarled. "Always. Cocksucker. Okay, one more like that and I'm going to fuck you up badly. But first I'll fuck up your girlfriends, right in front of you. So act nice. Talk nice. I mean it, Mo."
Biedermann yanked his arms and cinched the cuffs to a flange on the underside of the ball return. He tested their hold and stood up again. "Much better," he said.
He gave Mo a halfhearted boot to the ribs, then stepped into the lane to kick the guns away. The Glock skated almost all the way to the pin box, the Ruger spun into the gutter twenty feet down.
Beidermann rubbed his chest. "You know, that one hurt. Rebecca, would you tell him to try to be more cooperative? He has such a hard time doing what I ask. It's this fucking attitude problem, maybe he needs some counseling . . .?"
"Mo, please do as he asks. Please." Rebecca's voice had an edge he'd never heard.
"I made some calls on my way down here," Mo gasped. "I knew it was you. I called the State Police, they'll be here any minute. This is a hopeless situation for you. If you need a hostage, take me, let the ' others go. You don't need to hurt anyone else."
Biedermann was crossing behind Mo and didn't answer immediately. Mo twisted his head to see that the big man had gone to the booth where Rebecca and Rachel were tied. He slid onto the seat next to Rachel and put an arm around her shoulders. Muffled weeping continued at the other booth.
"Nah, you didn't call them. I've been monitoring my scanner, and the only trade those boys're seeing tonight is speeders on the Garden State Parkway. And you're wrong about the other thing, too. I do need to hurt people tonight."
"What do you want, Erik?" Rebecca asked. "What is it you need from us?"
"Oh, ho! What I really need, what I needed anyway, was a life. What I need now is to tell a very sad story."
"We'll listen. We'll gladly listen. You don't have to—"
She was cut off as Biedermann reached across the table and drove his fist into her face. The smack of impact echoed in the room. Rachel began squealing quietly.
"Save the sensitivity and compassion. It's a little late."
Mo scanned the dark room, looking for opportunities, resources. His vision had adapted enough to see a still figure down in one of the lanes at the far end. Down at the booth at lane three, he could just make out a tight half-circle of heads, six of them, one just a kid. All bent hard over the central table.
The booths
were plump vinyl horseshoes, wrapped around small tables that held built-in electronic pin displays and scoring materials. Biedermann sat at one end of the horseshoe of booth nine, wearing a black turtleneck and a pair of shoulder holsters. His right arm was draped around Rachel's shoulders. Rebecca sat across from them on the opposite arm of the U and like Rachel was leaning awkwardly forward against the edge of the metal table, hands and lower arms out of view beneath. Biedermann had cuffed their wrists to the table's pedestal with the same convenient, disposable Flex-Cufs that he'd used on Mo.
Mo tested the straps, then groped at the underside of the ball return. It was hard to feel anything there, with fingers numbing from the cuffs and the useless right index finger Radcliff had broken. He turned to sit awkwardly facing Rebecca, leaving his hands pulled to one side against the ball return. Fifteen feet away from her, and he could do nothing to help.
"Down at lane three," Biedermann called, "we have six good citizens of Fort Lee. There were seven, but one of them was uncooperative and had to be put down. But I won't kill you, Mo. Counting you and the girls, we got nine people here. The plan is that two or three of you will walk out of here alive because I need living witnesses. I need messengers to the world at large. If you're nice, it'll be you and Rebecca and Rachel."
When the people at the far booth heard him, the weeping intensified and a chorus of pleading broke out. It subsided quickly as Biedermann half stood and shined a flashlight in their direction. He sat back down and stroked Rachel's hair. Rachel leaned away, still making the grinding squeal in her throat.
"He means it," Rebecca said. "Survivors are central to his agenda."
"No! He's bullshitting!" Mo called. "He just wants us to be submissive. He—"
Rachel shrieked as Biedermann did something up near her face. A second later something small fell to the floor and rolled unevenly near Mo. In the dim light he could just make out its shape against the floorboards: Rachel's nose ring. Rachel was crying now, snuffling through the blood in her torn nostril.
"Attitude, Mo. Attitude." A glower deepened the shadows on Biedermann's face. "You, too, Rache—stop that racket. There comes a time to acknowledge when you can't fight it. I think you're there now."
Rachel went quiet. She looked out of her mind, pale and frozen, eyes wide with fear, blood running from her nose down her chin. But even in the bad light, Mo could see there was something very different in Rebecca's face, something he'd never seen there before. An emotion her sunny face wasn't well suited to: absolutely unmoving, lips flat and thin, brows level, eyes—what?
And Mo thought, Jesus. Better not make any mistakes, Biedermann. Not one. Or you'll have to deal with that.
52
"NOW," BIEDERMANN SAID, "we've got a lot of ground to cover. So don't go away. I'll be right back." He leapt up, came quickly over, checked Mo's handcuffs again, snugged the bands hard. When he was satisfied, he jogged off in the direction of the front door, up the four steps, and into the lobby area.
Mo bent to inspect the underside of the ball return. Too dark to see much. The cuffs were nylon bands, three eighths of an inch wide, about a sixteenth of an inch thick. Easy to cut with the right tool, but with a tensile strength of 375 pounds, breaking them would require more force than even the biggest prison-muscled con could exert. Each of Mo's hands had about eight inches of movement. He gave a couple of powerful jerks to test the steel flange. Nothing budged.
Rachel was moaning, her head hanging toward the table.
"Rache, it's going to be okay," Rebecca whispered. "Just hang on. Hang on.", Mo said, "How're your hands, Rebecca? Any movement at all?"
From where he sat on the floor, Mo could see that her wrists were tied hard against the foot-thick steel pedestal. She worked at them for a moment, gave up.
"No," she said. "But listen—"
But Biedermann was coming back, springing down the steps, carrying a big duffel bag. He dropped it halfway between the occupied booths, went to check the people at lane three, came back.
"Doors locked," Biedermann said, "sign says Closed, nothing happening in the parking lot. Answering machine at the desk turned on. I think we're ready to go."
"Erik, we know who you are," Rebecca said. "We know about the psych projects, we know you manufactured killers during the Vietnam War. That you programmed Ronald Parker and Dennis Radcliff to do the puppet murders. We don't know exactly why, or what you want. I know you've got a statement to make, but—"
"But you don't know what it is. Well, it's simple. It's that no one should do these things to other human beings. It's that governments shouldn't make people into monsters." He turned toward lane three and raised his voice. "I worked with a special branch of Army Intelligence from 1964 to 1973. My job was to destroy the part of people that made them human. To turn men into killing machines. I had primary responsibility for making fourteen of them. And I was only one of half a dozen doing that job."
Biedermann's voice had risen, affronted, appalled. Now he stared over toward lane three as if expecting more of a response. "Do you give a shit? Does it matter to you?, Well, you're gonna give a shit tonight! You're gonna know exactly what it means."
When nobody said anything, he charged down there, leaned into the half-circle of frightened faces. A moment later, a wrenching scream echoed in the room. It was a man's voice that peaked high and ended in a guttural, choking noise. Mo could see one of the heads at the far booth bobbing and bucking. Another scream rose and subsided, and then there was just the sound of weeping.
Mo tried sawing the handcuffs against the flange, but it was too smooth, no abrasion. He glanced over at Rebecca. Beneath the table, he could see that her hand had found Rachel's hand and was caressing it with her fingers. She was also doing something funny with her hips, lifting slightly and arching them forward and back against the seat.
Biedermann came back to the center of the alley and stooped to unzip the big duffel. He started taking out equipment and ordering it on the floor.
"When the program shut down, it left all kinds of lingering problems. All these guys with their circuits screwed up. We'd operated on their brains, we'd severed the little wires that gave them the nice feelings most people take for granted. We'd conditioned them to take orders absolutely and to fear and hate things. What that really means is, I'll tell you, there are parts of your brain and mind that go way back. That still have the instincts of reptiles, the program to kill prey and rivals. You just have to let those monsters out of their little soft boxes in the brain. We've all got 'em, they're always right there, I fucking guarantee it." Biedermann's voice was smug yet grieving, choked with sorrow. "But our experimental subjects, our robots, they didn't work very well. They went fritzy five ways come Sunday. Oh, well—psychology is an inexact science. Right, Bee?"
She responded immediately. "And you're recapitulating these atrocities, even though you abhor them, because, what, you wanted the public to know?"
"Ah—dawn breaks over Marblehead! Yeah. To know and to experience revulsion. Hey—anybody experiencing revulsion yet? If not, believe me, I'm gonna fix that." Still digging in the duffel.
Rebecca continued to move her lower body, that odd sideways sidle and forward slide. "And you wanted revenge. Because you felt controlled—they turned you into something you never wanted to become. Somebody deserved to pay, and you deserved some catharsis. But you also experienced something in your own childhood, didn't you? What they did to you fit right into the lifelong pattern. That's part of why you submitted to it in the first place, why it was easy for them to convince you to go along. Was it your father?"
Biedermann stopped, looked over to Mo. "God, she's good. So good. A good lay, too, huh, Mo? Sometimes when they've had a kid, they're not as tight, but this gal . . . Nice attitude about it, too. But that's right, Bee. You know, for moments there I almost thought we had a chance —you and me, maybe there was another way, a sweet, normal way out of it. But when you got me up close, you didn't like me so much, did you."
"Oh, Bee. What chance was there I could be 'normal'?" A voice of misery. "I don't even know what that means. You gotta understand, they'd killed my fiancee, back in '71. They did surgery on my life, trying to cut out the parts of me that would rebel. But I always felt the strings on me, Thirty years, it always hurt, I always resisted."
"Which is why you chose the puppet motif," Mo said. "You wanted to re-create the injustice you experienced. To demonstrate how horrible it was."
Biedermann stopped his unpacking again to look across at him with shadowed eyes. "You guys are great together, you know that? Sharp as tacks. Bee, what Mo just said, remember to explain it to the press tomorrow. But, see, it didn't end there, when the program shut down. I felt bad about what I'd done. They'd ignored my protests, but they gave me a chance to help remedy it, to some small degree. I was given the delightful job of cleaning up the domestic messes back here. Because so many of them came home and started doing awful things. And I took that job. I even had to clean up some of the guys I'd made. You know, really, it wasn't a lot of fun. The only good thing about this was that by doing it I stayed above suspicion myself, I wouldn't get cleaned up myself. And by staying on the inside I was still on the grapevine, I could still hear things."
Biedermann had taken out a roll of plastic line and was pulling off lengths, clipping sections with a wire cutter, setting them aside.
"One of the items in this duffel is a manila envelope. It's got photos, it's got tapes, it's got lists of names and dates. It isn't all that much, but it details what I know of the program. It tells how I personally made a puppet to kill Senator George McGovern and gives information on four other domestic political hits. Sirhan Sirhan will be the easiest to prove was one of ours. I mean, Jesus, do you know what the weight of this does to you? The weight of knowing this?"
