Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  “I need one more favor, Jeremy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your car.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Spanish town of Cagaya once served the Crown by providing interrogators for the Inquisition. It was a profession passed down within families through generations, and there is still an alley off Cagaya’s main square that the residents call Torturer’s Lane. At the end of it is a redbrick building that pays grim homage to the town’s place in history. It is a leather-goods store, but on its walls hang working replicas of the devices that wrung confessions from the damned three centuries ago. None are offered for sale to the public, but if a passionate collector should make his way to the store, he would find the proprietor to be a man of business.

  I stand inside the front door of the winery my father purchased in 1968. It lies in ruins. In one corner stand the rusted press and crusher, in another the collapsed bottling machine. Beside the weathered front door is a gnarled pile filled with woven picking baskets, steel trellises, and field boots. Nothing in it has been touched in three decades. Along the side wall are two 500-gallon stainless-steel tanks, meant to ferment the wines my father would craft in his retirement. They have stood empty for thirty years now, casualties of the cancer that struck him down.

  I lean my shoulder against the heavy, rusted front door and push it closed, sealing out the moonlight and the intermittent sounds of the country night. The 5,000-square-foot winery is quiet now, and most of its expanse lies in darkness. But not all of it. Ten yards in front of me is a large circle of light. I start toward it across the packed earth floor. The light emanates from within a ring of barrels. Forty-four barrels of white French oak, double-stacked to a height of five feet and arrayed in what would be a perfect circle except for the opening in front of me. Each barrel is filled with cabernet sauvignon, and together they give off the damp aroma of wood and wine that permeates the air of the winery.

  I stop in the opening and touch one of the rough, stained barrels with my fingers. Within this ring of barrels, facing one another in two rows of three, are six standing heaters, each sending its heat down and toward the center. Within these rows of heaters, across from each other, are two 300-watt lamps, each again training its bright light into the center of the circle. And in that center is Miss Lessing.

  Three hours ago I found her spread wide and stripped to her barest lace. She is again. I enter the ring of barrels and walk to her side. She is starting to stir, starting to break free of the narcotic pull of the chloroform. Her brow is clear and relaxed, and now she wets her lips, imagining maybe that she is as before, bound lightly on a motel-room bed, awaiting the soft touches of Jake Teller.

  As her senses return, she will realize that she is not lying on a bed at all, but on a table of hard canvas. And when she tests the binds that secure her, she’ll find that instead of the soft silk that inflamed her imagination, her hands are fitted now into gloves of coarse, strong, old-world leather. And closed tight around each ankle is a heavy strap of the same hide.

  The black blindfold covering her eyes will keep her from seeing that each glove, and each anklet, forms the end of a thick coil of leather, the other end of which is stitched to the spoke of a receiving wheel. These four receiving wheels, one beside each corner of the canvas table, are in turn connected to a master wheel just past the head. The master wheel is made of heavy wood and stands five feet high, as tall as the helm of a ship. Turning it requires strength; but when turned, it moves each of the receiving wheels as well, winding the leather coils around their spokes and thus pulling each glove, and each anklet, toward its corner. Along with the limbs they hold.

  I watch her fingers flex in surprise, and I see the muscles in her thighs tense as she tries in vain to bring them together. “No,” she whispers, waking now. “Where… please.”

  I step closer to her.

  “Who’s there?” she asks, trembling. She turns her face toward me.

  I don’t answer, but step to a small stand a few feet away. On it is a cassette player. I press the PLAY button. And now I step back to her and place my hands for the first time onto the smooth white canvas table. The table that forms the base of the device that the old torturers of Cagaya called the revealer.

  Its true name is the Spanish rack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I’m not ready to let her go.

  That’s all it is. So I’m headed up the New York State Thruway at one in the morning. Headed for an abandoned winery where I expect to find… what? I’ll look around in the dark, and then I’ll drive to Pardo’s place and do what I should have done with Jeremy in the city — get drunk.

  Pardo couldn’t believe I was coming up. I asked him if he knew any place we could get a beer after 2:00 A.M. He knows five that don’t start serving until 3:00. When you work for the governor, apparently everyone in town wants to make you happy. “We’ll end up at Nirvana, Jake,” he said, his voice exultant. “A bar for the ages. It’s where the dancers go when the strip clubs close.”

  I pass the sign for West Point, keeping Jeremy’s Grand Am at a steady seventy-two. Only a few scattered lights break the darkness of the road ahead.

  Brice met Mimi one time by the elevator. He made certain that she worked his account. And he named a winery after her. A winery he doesn’t want anyone to know he owns.

  That’s it. That’s all I have. And Nina Torring. And Elise Verren.

  I inch up to seventy-five. Ahead of me, shining in the headlights, is the first road sign for Albany.

  Fifty miles.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Her skin shimmers in the strong light, oiled not by crude hands but by the perspiration drawn out of her by the heaters, her fear, and now her pain. Thirty minutes ago her wrists were two feet apart. Now they are five. Her ankles, too, each pulled toward a canvas corner as the receiving wheels — turning in sync with the master — wind the leather coils around their spokes. I step away from the heavy master wheel and move to her side.

  She lies in quiet, pained concentration, fighting to keep her breathing deep and even. She has a runner’s frame and great courage. The others by this stage were crying out in wrenching sobs. She has spoken just three times, once after each turn of the wheel. “Mr. Brice,” she said, “please stop.” More urgently each time, but this simple plea and nothing more.

  I look from her to the tray that stands beside the rack. The tray is covered by a black felt cloth, and on it lie three shining metal instruments. I pick up the middle one, a four-inch fork with two sharp prongs at either end. Attached to its center is a leather collar, as thin as a necklace. I hold the fork up to the light and then turn back to her.

  Perspiration has soaked her brassiere and the other piece of bare lace that covers her. I lift my eyes back to her face. In the set of her mouth, in the soft movements of her head, I can see that she is trying through strength of will to escape her pain. I lay my hand on her forehead and bring her back. She gasps. I press my fingers to her crimson cheek, which burns as though with fever, and then I slip my hands beneath her neck, and secure the thin leather collar around it. She gasps again as I tighten it, and again at the cold touch of metal, though I am careful to lay the fork lengthwise across her throat, facing its sharp prongs away from her skin.

  “Please,” she whispers.

  I rest my hands on the edge of the canvas, watching as she wets her lips in desperation.

  “Mr. Brice. Are you there?”

  Rivulets of perspiration run down her face, but as my silence sinks into her, she finds her courage again. She sets her mouth and, almost imperceptibly, turns her head. I follow it and realize for the first time that she is escaping into the music.

  Beethoven’s Eroica has played softly through her increasing pain. It plays still, and she is concentrating her mind on it. Intently she listens, secretly, lifting her chin the barest amount to follow the rising notes of a flute as it flutters through the scherzo.

  “Listen for the c
enter of gravity,” I say. “It pulls him back, no matter how far out he dares to go.”

  She turns her face sharply toward my voice.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for speaking.”

  I reach down and slide off the black blindfold and lay it beside her on the white canvas. She blinks in the strong light, struggling to make sense of what she sees. She looks quickly to her right hand, staring in fascinated horror at the leather glove that secures it. She looks down at her legs, and then around her, at the receiving wheels and at the tall heaters lining each side of the canvas rack. And now at me.

  “You’re here,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “You’re here with me.” Her eyes find mine and hold them. “Please, Mr. Brice. Whatever has happened. Whatever you think —”

  “No words,” I say. I lean toward her.

  “Please,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I must talk. To make you see —”

  I touch her face and she turns it into the canvas, away from me. I turn it back, lifting her chin so that she faces me again, and take in my fingers the metal fork that rests on her throat. “God, please,” she says frantically. “If you would just tell me why —”

  I turn the fork, and she is silent.

  It is called the Heretic’s Fork, and it was another of Cagaya’s tools of truth. Two sharp points rest beneath her chin now, two more on the bone of her sternum. The slightest movement of her head will drive the four points through her skin. The strap between the fork and the collar keeps it from slipping.

  I look down at her. She is silent, barely able to part her lips to breathe. I turn and walk past the row of heaters to the barrels, where I stand in the sudden chill, my back to her. I breathe in the fragrant oak beside me and look up at the stainless-steel tanks, and beyond them at the dark rafters. Where the roof tiles have rotted away I can see up into the black country sky.

  I close my eyes and see her again by the elevators that first morning. Unguarded innocence in her eyes. I turn to look at her. Within the leather gloves her hands are balled into fists. Her toes are pointed in pain. She lies perfectly still.

  As Eroica starts into its finale, I walk back to her. I rest my fingers again on the edge of the canvas rack. The white lace of her brassiere is mesmerizing. It too has been stretched, and the swell of her bosom now presses against it. I glance down at the lace between her hips. It just barely conceals her. I look back to her face. Her pained eyes plead for mercy.

  Their struggle.

  The way you take away every defense. One by one.

  I walk to the master wheel and grasp it firmly with both hands. I give it a half turn, and watch as the receiving wheels follow.

  The pain sears her, but she can’t cry out. She can only breathe sighs of agony. I step back to her. Perspiration pours down her face now, pooling in the well of her sternum, just below the sharp points of the fork. She tries to close her eyes in concentration, but they open again in fear and pain.

  The pain is not in her wrists but in her shoulders, not in her bound ankles but above her slender thighs. Deep in the stretching ligaments it starts, soon to move through into the bone. She is lithe, limber, but already I can see the blades of her shoulders starting to rotate inward, and each muscle from wrist to shoulder, from calf to thigh, shines now in taut, desperate relief against her skin.

  I walk back to the wheel and give it another quarter turn.

  Another exhalation of pain from her. Deeper this time. Too deep. Returning to her side, I see the tiny dots of blood in the soft skin below her chin. Her back arches dangerously now, and though the points of the fork keep her silent, her shoulders have turned farther inward. The next turn of the wheel will pull them free of their sockets, and begin the deep, final hemorrhaging.

  Eroica gathers for its finish. Beethoven wrote it for Napoleon, and within it is all the grandeur of conquest. She is beyond its solace now. All of the night’s pain is concentrated in her eyes, and beneath that pain is understanding. She knows she can’t endure another turn of the wheel, and so she watches me desperately.

  I wait for the final notes to sound and fade, then lay my hand on her burning forehead.

  “It’s time,” I tell her.

  She closes her eyes in anguish as I step away from her. I walk to the master wheel, take hold of the smooth wood, and brace myself. And now I give it a full, hard turn — back the other way. I step to her side again.

  “To the brink and then back. Isn’t that how he does it?”

  I reach down and brush her damp hair from her forehead. Her wrists and ankles have been returned to the canvas, and her back and shoulders are level again. Tears of pain and relief stream down her crimson cheeks. She is still spread wide, brutally wide, but she is out of danger.

  It is time I let her speak.

  I take the Heretic’s Fork carefully in my fingers. Engraved on its side is ABIURO. I recant. Those four soft syllables, requiring so little movement of the tongue, were all the fitted sinner could murmur before being led to the stake. I start to turn the fork away from her, but then raise my head suddenly. Above her low, pained breathing and the steady hum of the heaters is a new sound. I look quickly into her eyes. She closes them, but too late. She has heard it, too. I listen again, and the sound is louder, unmistakable now — churning gravel. A car is ascending the quarter-mile grade that leads from the service road to the winery clearing.

  He has come.

  I leave the sharp fork in its place. She opens her eyes and watches desperately, helplessly, as I pick up the black bag from the floor beside the rack and leave her. I walk quickly out of the ring of barrels and to the winery door. I kneel beside it. From inside the bag I take the bottle of chloroform and two fresh sets of gloves. The car is closer now, no more than fifty feet from the clearing. I pull on one set of gloves, and over them a second, industrial pair, and then take a rusted pail from the pile of forgotten refuse by the door. I stand the pail upright and empty the bottle of chloroform into it, careful to turn my face into my shirt and breathe in short breaths. I reach back into the black bag and take from it a heavy leather mask. I drop the mask into the chloroform and, using a steel trellis from the pile beside the door, force the mask below the surface and pin it to the bottom of the pail. I hold it there, listening as the grinding of gravel reaches the clearing, then ceases. A car engine cuts off.

  I lift the mask from the chloroform, take it in my gloved hands, and wring it out. I keep my face turned into my shirt, but still the fumes are toxic, suffocating. My eyes burn fiercely. A car door slams, and in the quiet night footsteps approach across the gravel clearing. I rise to my feet, holding the soaked mask at my side.

  I keep behind the heavy front door of the winery as it opens in with a rusted creak. A strip of moonlight falls across the dark earth floor. Jake Teller steps inside. He is larger than I imagined, an athlete. I cannot afford to miss. He takes one, two, three steps into the winery, and stops still. Straight ahead of him is the opening to the ring of barrels. Through it he can see the rack, and on that rack, lit brilliantly, lies Miss Lessing. Stripped just as he strips them. Spread as he spreads them.

  “Jesus.”

  I am only a step from him when he senses me. I pull the bottom of the mask open wide, and just as he starts to turn, I bring it down over his head. He swings sharply, his elbow crashing into my temple, and I fall hard to the winery floor. But even as I fall, I see him take, instinctively, the deep breath that dooms him. He falls to one knee, the chloroform flooding his lungs, and now to both; as he reaches in slow motion for the mask, he painfully takes his last free breath of the night and falls onto his side.

  I put my hand to my mouth. I can taste blood, but I hurry to Jake Teller and press in on the nose of the mask. He jerks once and is still. I pull the mask off him and fling it into the pile by the door. I rise slowly to one knee, coughing and struggling to breathe, tears streaming from my burning eyes. I pull off my gloves and toss them onto the pile, too. I rise to my feet and stand abo
ve him, breathing deeply for almost a full minute. And I kneel again. I turn him, and look for the first time into the face of Miss Lessing’s corrupter.

  His strong jaw is slack now, and one of his cheeks brown with earth. I stand, grasp him beneath his arms, and begin to pull. I drag him ten feet at a time, stopping to rest on my knees. He is dead weight, exhausting, his heels catching again and again in the dirt. Finally, I reach the first of the two huge stainless-steel tanks. I lean Jake Teller against it. His head slumps onto his chest, and I rest for a few seconds, breathing heavily.

  At the bottom of each steel tank is a small door through which the wine is transferred to the oak barrels. I unlock the steel clasp and pull the door open. I turn my face away, gasping. From inside comes the acrid, hollow smell of death eternal. I rest again and then, marshaling the last of my strength, grab Jake Teller behind the knees and lift his feet into the low door, then ease his hips over its rim and, with a final shove, send him into the tank.

  I close the door and seal the clasp. Inside, there is no handle of any kind. No break in the smooth steel. When he awakens, to grope in darkness, he will find only the walls of his tomb. And he will have perhaps an hour of air.

  I walk slowly back to the ring of barrels. I pull a handkerchief from my shirt pocket and press it to my mouth. A cut lip, nothing more. I stop in the opening and look at Miss Lessing. She lies as before, still and silent in pure light. She can see only straight above her, and a few feet to either side, so she listens anxiously to my footsteps as I walk toward her. I step into her vision, and she closes her eyes in desolation.

  I lean down and carefully turn the Heretic’s Fork to its side, easing her torment. She swallows, and breathes deeply again and again. I take a cloth from the tray beside her and gently wipe the spots of blood from beneath her chin.