Dead Silence df-16

by Randy Wayne White

“Is that a word?”

  “We use it at the bowling alley all the time. Like getting a shot for something contagious. Like the flu…” I gave it a few beats. “Or herpes.”

  The bully inside me enjoyed the man’s sour silence.

  26

  At 8:30 a.m., Saturday, January twenty-fifth, Farfel used his new cell phone to snap a photo of Will Chaser staring up from his coffin, then lobbed a handful of sand at the boy’s face before walking to confer with Hump, who was leaning on a shovel waiting.

  The sand was a farewell gesture of contempt and punishment for the boy’s recent behavior.

  When Hump had pried the lid off the box, after so many hours in darkness the boy had sat up and started bawling. He had stupidly misread the photographic interlude, believing the fresh sunlight signaled freedom instead of what it actually foreshadowed: William Chaser’s last living minutes on the face of the earth.

  The boy had cried so hard that he started coughing, another silly mistake because his mouth was taped. Then he’d begun choking, coughing and choking with such violence that his eyes bulged.

  Panicking, Hump had ripped the tape from the kid’s mouth and the kid instantly began begging for forgiveness and thanking Farfel for his life, crying through the entire scene.

  Disgusting. How many times had broken men asked Farfel for forgiveness? It was a variation of the Stockholm syndrome. As a researcher, Farfel understood that all men have a breaking point. Begging was part of a predictable chain of behavior. But the boy’s perverse gratitude for being hurt and humiliated was unaccountable, a dramatic device used to evoke sympathy.

  The Cuban had experienced it too many times.

  “Shut up!” Farfel had yelled in English. “You’re a disgrace. Show some self-respect.”

  When the boy continued bawling and blabbering for forgiveness, the Cuban had reached to slap him-something Farfel now had to admit was a rare mistake on his part.

  Instantly, the insane young Indian had ceased crying, swung his jaws like a snake, and bit a chunk out of Farfel’s hand the size of a quarter.

  Maricon! Basura!

  In reply, the child’s Spanish improved when he used profanity to call Farfel sick names and threatened to kill him in sick ways until Hump finally silenced the boy with a fresh roll of duct tape.

  Before Farfel took two steps, he turned and used the hand that wasn’t bleeding to toss another clod of sand at the boy and the boy thrust his face forward as if to catch it. Never in the man’s life had he seen such wild hatred, such black, crazed eyes.

  Insane, yes, but at least interesting.

  To Hump, Farfel said, “While I transmit the photo, nail the lid shut and bury the brat. After all the trouble he’s caused us? Don’t kill him. I want him to have some time with the worms before he dies.”

  Touching the side of his head gingerly, Hump agreed, saying, “I’m worried I’m gonna lose my ear. You should make a poultice for your hand. The Devil Child’s teeth contain a poison, I believe.”

  Farfel said, “Quit complaining and listen! Fill the hole, then use your weight to stomp around on the sand. Pack it smooth. That’s important. We don’t want anyone to spot it from the air.”

  “Pack the sand smooth,” Hump repeated, making a mental list.

  “After that, connect the battery to the fan and aim it so it’s blowing toward the pipe. I don’t care how close you put it, or even if the damn thing works, but it’s part of the agreement. We should be in Havana by sunset, but if something else goes wrong”-Farfel’s expression warned It better not! -“it would look bad in court if there was no fan as we promised.”

  “Connect the fan,” Hump repeated, “but after I fill in the hole first?”

  “ Yes. Is that so complicated?”

  Hump had something on his mind, Farfel could tell by the giant’s twitching. He was working up the nerve to say, “My ears are still making a terrible boom-boom sound because of the rock the boy attacked me with. Is it possible I have a concussion? Something serious damaged inside my brain?”

  Now Farfel’s expression read No… even if I said it, he wouldn’t get it.

  “Dr. Navarro,” Hump continued, “just burying the brat doesn’t seem enough. While the coffin lid is off, couldn’t I first punish him in some small way by-”

  “No! Hurry up and do what I told you. I want to be in the boat, on our way to Cuba, before the FBI starts analyzing the photo.”

  Farfel walked away, concentrating on his new cell phone, a BlackBerry that could send photos over the Internet. He’d bought it on the black market in Havana using some of the money Nelson Myles, the rich child killer, had provided.

  Farfel had first learned of Myles from an American soldier at Hoa Lo Prison, downtown Hanoi. The POW’s name was Billy Sofvia, who said he had worked for Myles and helped him bury a girl the rich man had murdered.

  The soldier Billy Sofvia had a higher pain tolerance than most Americans-that was the objective of the Cuban Program: chart the pain thresholds of different racial and social groups. But Farfel had finally broken Sofvia using a technique of his own invention. Hump’s late father, Angel Valencia Yanquez, an intelligent man, had also contributed, but it was Rene Navarro’s concept.

  The method employed a low-voltage wire that was inserted up the urethra into the bladder, harmless in terms of the urinary tract and reproductive function but devastating psychologically. Inserting a low-voltage wire through the corner of a man’s eye into his frontal lobe did far more actual damage but wasn’t nearly as effective, as data had proven.

  Fear, Farfel had learned early in his career, was a far more effective weapon than guns or bombs.

  Sofvia had confessed to every sin he had committed and then moved on to the sins of people he knew in the U.S.

  Farfel had kept careful notes during his years in Vietnam. He had continued keeping notes as an interrogator-for-hire in Panama and the Middle East. He had cataloged the sins of many prisoners but was particularly interested in the sins of wealthy employers the prisoners knew back home. Farfel had filed that information away, hoping it would be valuable when the politics of Cuba changed.

  It had been a wise thing to do.

  Nelson Myles was so incredibly wealthy that Farfel had decided to allow him to live. The man might be useful later if Farfel ever made it back to Cuba. But so much had gone wrong that he was beginning to have doubts.

  It had seemed so easy in the beginning. As a scientist, he was now surprised by his own naivete. But he was even more surprised by their run of bad luck.

  While living as a peasant in Havana, working as a common barber, Farfel had read about the famous Hamptons. He had often dreamed of visiting the place.

  Farfel had imagined himself at expensive restaurants, chatting with famous artists or in bed with the daughter or wife of his eager host. Yet even though Myles had cooperated-with the exception of offering his wife-Farfel now felt a welling dread when he thought of the Hamptons, all because of the insane boy.

  America, with its wealth, was no longer a dream. It had become a nightmare.

  That will change soon. Be patient, be precise. Listen to the intellect, not the emotions.

  Not easy to do when in the company of a moron. Hump, even though born from the seed of his late friend Angel Yanquez, was just another experiment. And that experiment had gone terribly wrong, as even Angel had conceded on his deathbed.

  Farfel had now fulfilled his promise to Yanquez, so never again after this. All Farfel wanted to do was return safely to Cuba, which, unfortunately, required that he trust Hump to drive the boat while he navigated.

  It’s only two hundred miles. Two hundred miles is nothing! The Gulf of Mexico is only a few kilometers from here.

  Here was an island, a place identified as Tamarindo on the GPS in the boat that Myles had made available to them. Farfel had wrestled with the idea of simply killing the boy, using a razor on him, or an open flame perhaps, which might have provided interesting notes. But their run of bad luc
k worried the Cuban.

  Instead of imagining expensive restaurants and sleeping with the daughters of his hosts, he was now envisioning an American courtroom with former POWs who would never fully appreciate the kindness Farfel had demonstrated by not killing them.

  Fulfilling the obligations of the ransom note, the Cuban had decided, was the wisest course, although now, looking at his bloody hand, he was having doubts about that, too.

  Farfel crossed the beach, hearing the sound of sand being shoveled. The sand made a water-saturated thump as it landed on the boy’s coffin. Finally, Hump was following orders and filling the hole.

  Near the wooden dock, bayside, was a cabin hidden by palms and casuarina pines. Wind in the casuarinas imitated the wash of waves on a distant beach, as Farfel approached a path outlined with whelk shells. The shells were bone white on this breezy, blue tropical day.

  It hadn’t been easy to break into the cabin. It was made of concrete block, and Myles’s construction people had installed a difficult lock system using steel rebar on every door and window. Hump, though, was so freakishly strong that he’d had no trouble ripping off one of the window shutters.

  That by-product of Angel Valencia Yanquez’s experiment, his spawn’s extraordinary strength, had been the only part of the experiment that had gone right.

  Farfel entered the cabin, taking comfort in the coolness of the open room. He washed his damaged hand in a bucket and soaked it in Betadine, which he found on a shelf. Then he lay down to rest on one of the bunks.

  Farfel was exhausted. His ankle hurt, his hand throbbed and he had been suffering back spasms ever since he’d flinched, dodging the syringe the boy had thrown, and then had to scramble to avoid being crushed by the horse.

  Shooting that elephant of a horse was the highlight of this miserable trip.

  As Farfel lay resting, his eyes moved around the room. He’d taken a careful look earlier, but the decorations were still beyond his understanding. He was a scientist yet hadn’t settled on an explanation for the weird symbols on the walls, on the mantelpiece-everywhere he looked.

  There were several prints of an all-seeing eye encased in a pyramid, as on the back of an American dollar bill. There was a pirate flag in one corner, a flag with a large yellow Y in another.

  Pirate banners, showing death’s-heads of various designs, marked the entrance to the little kitchen area, where there was a propane stove and oil lanterns. There were skull-and-crossbones symbols on the mantelpiece and a row of Indian artifacts: flint arrowheads, a withered quiver of arrows, a flint knife, an unstrung bow and more than a dozen figurines-cast in plaster, carved from stone-of a dour, flat-faced Indian.

  Nelson Myles may be wealthy, but he has bourgeois taste. Or… perhaps this is a clubhouse used by children.

  Because there was a canoe, two kayaks and a basketball hoop outside, that seemed plausible until Farfel considered several paddles, not for boats but the sort college boys used to spank with. The paddles were covered with more cryptic symbols. There was also a row of beer mugs engraved with such things as MAGOG, SUPERMAN, GOG.

  American children don’t use paddles or drink beer.

  In a glass-sided box, near the fireplace, were bones, which most people couldn’t identify but Farfel could. He’d seen them earlier so didn’t bother to look. There were human femurs, a partial set of human ribs, carpal remnants and finger segments from a human hand. There were also two ancient-looking skulls.

  A section of the parietal bone was missing from one of the skulls. Teeth were missing from the lower mandibles of both.

  Myles is a serial killer-that explains it. The murdered girl was his first, and he enjoyed it. Only a ghoul would use bones as decorations.

  Or a research scientist, Farfel reminded himself.

  The Cuban lay back on the cot and closed his eyes. They would be in the boat soon headed for Havana. He hoped to cross the two hundred miles in less than twelve hours but feared it might take longer.

  No matter. The deadline was less than twenty-four hours away. By tomorrow morning, they would surely be close enough to watch the American plane drop the crates of personal possessions that had been stolen from the Bearded One.

  Farfel wanted to personally confirm that all records of the Cuban Program had been destroyed-his future depended on it. It also depended on the millions Castro was rumored to have in Spanish treasure.

  Once the ransom had been delivered, he would then turn his attention to finding the American who had lied to them, used them, who had demanded half of the money Nelson Myles had sent and who now had abandoned them to rot in an American prison by not sending a boat as he had promised.

  Tenth Man, his code name, although in English it was Tinman.

  More than anything else, Farfel wanted to confront Tinman. He would use his intellect to find the poorly coiffured American, Hump’s strength to subdue him and then…

  “The job is done, Dr. Navarro.” Hump was standing at the open door. His face was grimy, but he was smiling. “Everything you said, I have done. Would you like to inspect?”

  Farfel said, “Get on the boat, we’re leaving.” But as he crossed the room, he stopped and peered into the glass-sided case next to the fireplace. Something was missing.

  “Did you take anything from here? I told you not to steal anything, unless it was valuable.”

  The huge man shook his head quickly. “Nothing. I swear. Look at the grave, how smooth I made it.” He smiled, a simpleton who was lying but genuinely proud of his work.

  Fifteen minutes later, Hump was standing at the helm of the cabin cruiser, throttle open, and still smiling when he passed to the right of a green navigational marker instead of passing to the left.

  The boat was doing twenty-five knots when it hit an oyster bar, the impact so violent that Farfel was catapulted over the railing into water that was less than a foot deep. He had been standing on the forward deck, holding a navigational chart in one hand and waving wildly with the other, yelling to Hump, “Stop… stop… stop!”

  Farfel recovered his glasses and the chart before wading back to the boat. His back was spasming again, his forearms were bloodied by the oysters, but he was still coherent enough to pause and consider the directional flow of the water. The water was moving southwest, toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  Next, Farfel looked at the cabin cruiser. It sat atop the oyster bar like a trophy, even its keel showing.

  It would be hours, he realized, before they could leave. They would have to wait until the tide turned and was nearly high again. Eight hours at least.

  “Stay away from me,” Farfel said softly when Hump vaulted off the boat to help. “Stay away.”

  27

  Someone double-crossed the Cuban interrogator. They didn’t send a boat. Who?

  I was thinking about it as I sat behind the wheel of Nelson Myles’s Range Rover, the smell of leather and wood mixing with the unmistakable odor of the man’s soiled slacks. Myles and I were only two blocks from the entrance to Falcon Landing. I could see a guard standing beneath a lamppost on a street column-lined with palms.

  I asked Myles, “Do your security people carry weapons?”

  “If they do, I doubt if they’re loaded,” he said. “They won’t bother us, don’t worry. Park by the harbor, if you want.” Once again, he was trying to manipulate me into reentering the grounds.

  I was tempted. I wanted to check the marina, and see if the Cubans had taken the cabin cruiser. If the boat was accurately described, they probably hadn’t made it to Key West yet, not without nosing into the Ten Thousand Islands to refuel. By deadline time, eight tomorrow morning, it was possible they could be in international waters. But, just as likely, they had run aground while leaving Sarasota Bay: Venice Inlet and Snake Island were tricky.

  I imagined the Cubans, frustrated and pissed off, sitting high and dry on some bar. Would that be good for the boy or bad?

  Could be good, I decided. If they were trapped in U.S. waters, they might keep W
ill alive as a bargaining chip.

  I slowed, watching the guard watch us, then I turned west toward the beach, where I’d parked the rental car. “Now where are we going?” Myles asked.

  I said, “To a quiet place. You wanted me to ask questions? It’s time.”

  “I changed my mind. There’s nothing I can add. Stop here, let me out, you can have the car. I won’t call police, I promise.”

  “Call them. They can listen to your confession.”

  “I didn’t confess to anything. What I remember is you sticking a gun in my face and… and, well, why review the obvious? I leave that sort of business to my attorneys. Or… I’ll ask my fraternity brother… the federal judge.” He put his hand on the door. “Let me out.”

  I stepped on the gas. “Questions first. Who else knew you murdered the girl?”

  “I didn’t murder her,” he said patiently. “It was an accident.”

  I gave it a moment before saying, “Who knew, besides Norvin Tomlinson… and Billy Sofvia?”

  It was the first I’d mentioned their names, and the impact made Myles sit up straighter. He tried to recover, saying, “The details are fuzzy, I keep telling you. I might have told someone-I was still drunk and high most of the next day. You can’t expect me to remember every little thing. It was a long time ago.”

  The details were always fuzzy when Myles got to this part of the story. He was lying again.

  “How’s your memory when it comes to last night? Who shot your prize horse? Cazzio… Alacazam… whatever you called him. I heard his stud fee was a couple hundred thousand. No matter how rich you are, that still has to hurt.”

  The man’s surprise was palpable. It filled the car with an expanding, pressurized silence, until he said, “Who are you?”

  I said, “You haven’t told me everything, Nels. But you will. You left someone out of your story. He’s been helping the Cubans, and you know it.”

  “You’ve been lying to me.”

  “And I feel just terrible about it. Trust is so important in a relationship. Answer the question.”