by Jonas Saul
“What the fuck did you do that for?” he shouted through his clenched teeth. “I’m already tied up.”
“Did not you hear the boss?”
“No, I did not hear the boss.”
“He said no handcuffs.”
“Then take these off, asshole. Untie me.”
“We will. In time.”
The man brought another fishhook up from a metal container on the floor and eased it into the other triceps.
Darwin pulled against the chains that held him, but there was no use. He couldn’t get his arm away from the hook.
He panted, his breathing shallow as his face flushed and sweat beaded up all over his body.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. You don’t need to do any more. You’ve made your point.”
Blood trickled from each wound. The man used a long piece of wood, like a chopstick, to dab at the blood, applying a clear liquid on the wounded flesh. A moment later, the blood clotted and stopped flowing.
“Super Glue,” the Russian said, holding it up.
“Are you done having fun yet?”
The man shook his head.
“Why do this? You’ve already got me secured.”
“The boss, he say all the hooks.” He turned to look in the box, then back at Darwin, smiling. “I have too many to count. But it okay, soon you sleep. Once you all hooked up, I take handcuffs and ankle cuffs off. Trust me, you won’t move or try to escape. If you do, your skin come off.”
“I will kill you. Trust me, you will be the first to be cut in half.”
He wagged his finger in Darwin’s face. “You die first.”
Unnerved by how the man kept smiling, Darwin watched him gather another hook. They were for a large ocean fish of some kind. The size of a rounded coat hanger found on the back of a door or in an elementary school, except these had a pointy tip with a barbed end aimed the other way. Trying to dislodge them would rip and tear and do more damage than when they entered the flesh.
Darwin shouted until his voice was hoarse as the man forced the hooks into his flesh, slowly easing through the skin, smiling with each one, as if this was his dessert after a hard day at the office. Then he would seal the wound with Super Glue.
The sentry at the door had lowered his weapon and watched with amusement. Rosina slept on the mattress, oblivious to what was happening to her husband five feet away.
The pain of the small hooks entering his skin became unbearable as the Russian did one after another in his shoulder blades and lower back. His stomach gave out. The protein bars came up as he vomited on the floor, splashing his feet. The second bout flowed from his mouth as he almost passed out, leaving trails of bile down his chest and underwear.
The Russian didn’t seem to notice the vomit. He stepped in it and continued his insane violation of Darwin’s flesh. The sentry brought a wooden stool over and set it under Darwin’s knees to help support his weight when he collapsed.
As a hook entered his cheek, the sharp tip probed the inside of his teeth.
That was the end for Darwin.
He passed out and dropped twelve inches, as far as the chains would allow, his knees stopping on the wooden stool.
Chapter 20
Water splashed across his face. He snapped his eyes open and gasped. He thrashed for a second until the pain returned and he locked his body up, holding still. Instead of screaming, he moaned. With a hook piercing each cheek, it would painful to scream with an open mouth.
They hooked him up everywhere. Pain seemed to be what his body had become. Nothing but pain.
As he adjusted his weight, Yuri kicked the wooden stool out from under his knees. The chains snapped behind him as they took all his weight. From the way he had been suspended, dangling in the cuffs and chains for so long, his toes had fallen asleep. Now, as blood coursed through them, they ached, pins and needles tingling and making him want to move them. The plastic crinkled under his feet as he moved his toes.
He closed his eyes and focused on his body, on the pain. They must have set a hook in his skin every six inches or so. At least that’s what it felt like. There was a certain numbness where the hooks were embedded. The sharp pain of them entering his flesh was gone, but it still hurt when he moved.
He opened his eyes and tried to move his head enough to see the damage they caused, but couldn’t.
“I was afraid you were going back under.”
Two large men flanked Yuri. One of them sported a buzz cut, tattoos on his arms, and a large bird tattoo on his chest. The other had a long and hard nose that appeared to have been broken a few times. Both men looked like something he would see entering a boxing ring—a bare-knuckle ring.
“We’re going to take the cuffs off now,” Yuri said. “We need you awake for that.”
Darwin moaned. It seemed involuntary now. He couldn’t open his mouth to speak because of the hook in each cheek.
Something moved behind him. He wanted to tell them to get out of there. Don’t bump into him.
Then a piece of metal clicked and a slight pressure was added to the hooks in his back. There were more clicks.
Yuri reached in a pocket and pulled out a small mirror.
“Let me show you what we’re doing,” he said.
He held the mirror up. The Russian who had impaled him with the hooks applied chains to the end of the hooks in his back. Darwin watched in horror as six chains we’re clipped into place, two at his shoulder blades, two near the middle of his back and two at the small of his back. He had two smaller chains added to his triceps hooks. Yuri lowered the mirror and allowed Darwin to watch as four more chains were connected to the hooks in his hamstrings and his calf muscles. Twelve hooks embedded in his flesh, connected to twelve chains locking him to the wall.
“There,” Yuri said. “I think that should do it.”
The Russian who had hooked him up walked from behind Darwin and unlocked the handcuffs. When he pulled them off, his weight adjusted again and his pain threshold increased to the red zone. His sanity slipped a notch, and he understood in that moment that he would never be the same. If he walked away from this, he knew he would be a changed man. The scars on his body would pale in comparison to the mental scars.
His ankle cuffs were unlocked and pulled away.
He stood on his own two feet which were almost awake, held only by the chains clipped to the hooks. If Darwin were to step forward and walk, all twelve hooks would shred his flesh.
Yuri turned to one of his guards. “Call Sven and have two double coffins prepared for Darwin and Rosina.”
The guard nodded and stepped out of the office.
“What’s … a double coffin?” Darwin asked, keeping his mouth closed for the most part. He struggled to hold himself upright on weak limbs, knowing if his knees gave out, he would fall and rip out large chunks of meat.
“It is one of my most used means of disposal.”
Yuri stepped to the side. Darwin followed his movement slowly, until Rosina came into view. She was still asleep, but had moved since the last time he’d seen her.
“A man out of Buffalo is credited with designing the double coffin,” Yuri said. “When he has a client at the funeral home, they are buried in what appears to be a normal looking coffin. Underneath is a cavern where I can bury my enemies without suspicion. There’s actually a legit funeral and everything.” Yuri pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket. His remaining bodyguard leaned in with a lighter. After he had it lit, he held it aloft, blew smoke out of his mouth and looked down at Rosina’s sleeping form. “You two will be buried in the bottom of two different double coffins, and Mrs. Smith or John Doe, or whoever’s funeral it is, will be none the wiser. Brilliant, eh?”
He puffed hard on the cigar.
“No one will ever find the body,” he added. “What would make the authorities exhume a coffin of a man or woman who has no affiliation with us?”
The pain became a constant, like a strong toothache that just wouldn’t go away. It cam
e in waves and only increased when he moved, which was frequently to adjust his weight from leg to leg.
“There’s a Russian saying that says, ‘The house is burning and the clock is ticking.’ Do you know what this means?”
Darwin didn’t reply.
“It means you have to keep making money every minute. As we speak, I have people making money for me. The clock is always ticking and the house is always burning. It’s hustle, hustle, hustle.”
He puffed on his cigar until the tip glowed.
“I got my start robbing jewelers.” He moved to Rosina and sat on her mattress. “We would dress up as ultra-orthodox Jews. The fake beards, side curls, black hats and coats, you know, the whole thing. We’d get the retailer to pull out expensive jewels while we chatted away in Yiddish. One of us would distract the jeweler while the other would switch the jewels with fakes. After an excuse to leave, we’d walk out with thousands in jewels and no way for them to identify us. It was brilliant.”
Darwin shifted to the other foot. A wave of nausea passed over him. His stomach twisted and tightened. Dizziness followed.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
“I remember the day we got caught,” Yuri continued. “It was stupid of us, really.” He had a faraway look on his face as he thought back. “We had taken the train to another part of New York to hit a pack of jewelers we’d never seen before. On the way back at the train station, as we were getting ready to board, a police officer stopped us.” His clouded eyes focused and he turned to Darwin. “Do you know why?”
“Because you’re an asshole,” Darwin mumbled through the hooks.
Yuri smiled. “I like you, I really do.” He puffed on the cigar. “I’m going to miss you. I have never met anyone as formidable as you, Darwin.” He blew the smoke out. Rosina continued to sleep her drug-induced slumber beside him. “They caught us because it was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Observant Jews are strictly forbidden to travel. The security guard was Jewish and asked if we were, now get this, Observant Jews. Can you believe it?”
“No.”
“There was a gun fight. I spent time in jail. I stopped robbing jewelers when I got out. Started thinking bigger. And here I am.”
“Impressive.”
Yuri eyed him sideways. “You’re being sarcastic again.”
“What are you doing?” Darwin asked. “Why tell me all this shit?”
“I’m stalling. Waiting for the meeting to start. I always want the man I’m going to kill to know who killed him. Since I’m not gay, this is as intimate as we’re going to get.”
“But you’ve got it wrong.”
“How so?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
Yuri laughed. He got up and stepped in front of Darwin. “Damn, I wish I had an ounce of your tenacity in my men. Even in this state of constant agony, hooked up to the wall like a side of beef, you threaten me. Wow. If I didn’t get so much pleasure out of killing you, I would hire you to work for me.”
“I would never work for you.”
“I know. That is why you have to die. This world cannot have the both of us.”
“I agree.”
Darwin’s leg slipped as it weakened. He hopped onto the other and almost fainted. The room spun then came back. The pain soared from the hooks in his legs. The crazy Russian who had hooked him up moved behind him with the wooden stick to apply Super Glue where the bleeding had started again on his legs. Darwin felt it trickling down his ankle.
“That was close,” Yuri said. “You almost came undone. Not long now. The meeting will start in fifteen minutes. Then a bullet will enter your skull at close range near the hairline behind the right ear. Your wife goes first, though, since you’re tied up at the moment.” He chuckled. The Russian behind Darwin got to his feet and laughed too.
Yuri walked to the door, then turned to talk to the Russian torturer. “When I call, wake her with smelling salts and walk her out here,” he pointed. “Then walk Darwin out. The execution will go as planned.”
“Yuri?” Darwin said.
The large Russian had stepped out the door. He stopped but didn’t turn around.
“What?”
“How long was I out?”
“All night. We drugged you. It is almost noon, nearly twenty-four hours since you snuck onto the golf course. Why?”
“You’re having a meeting with the Chinese and the Italians?”
Yuri turned and faced Darwin. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “That’s right. I almost forgot, thanks for the documents you had in your pants. The ones the FBI gave you. It’s good to know what they have on us.”
“They’re on their way.”
“No, they’re not.”
“They told me they knew about this meeting.”
“Sure they do. It’s true. They just don’t know where it’s being held. They think we are meeting fifty miles from here at a restaurant in Chinatown. I even have a couple of Russians and Italians meeting for lunch there so the FBI can listen to them discuss whores. No,” he wagged his finger, “they will not be here. They will not come in and save you. It is truly over, Darwin. No heroics this time.”
“The police car I drove here in. They will track it.”
“Already covered. After you got here yesterday, the police car was taken away. Investigators were raising it from the bottom of Lake Simcoe near Barrie, last I heard, looking for the body of the man who stole it, The Scythe. They think he hightailed it out of Toronto and lost control near the lake.”
“The Scythe?”
“Yeah, you told the adult store clerk and the strip club guys that you were The Scythe. That’s what the authorities are working with. No one knows where Darwin ended up.” He tapped ashes off the end of his cigar, then puffed on it. “And no one ever will.” He looked at his watch. “You and your lovely wife have about ten minutes to live. Enjoy them.”
How could anyone save them now? He had recklessly raced through Toronto, blinded by rage and ended up walking into a trap that snared them both.
By using Scythe’s name, he had hoped to get out of this mess with Rosina and not be jailed. It was reckless, stupid and crazy. Once they picked the real man up, he may even have an alibi. All Darwin ended up doing in the end was deflecting the police from finding him and Rosina. And now they were going to die.
“I’m sorry, baby. I tried.”
Tears streaked down his face.
“We never really had a chance, did we?”
Rosina stirred in her stupor. The Russian walked over to her and checked her pulse.
“She’s waking,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Good timing.” He smiled wide, the kind of smile a kid wears when he’s about to go have ice cream and waffle cakes.
Darwin wondered if he would see that smile in hell when he arrived.
There were a thousand things he wanted to say to Rosina, but she would never hear them. They would just disappear. No one would ever see them again. They would be buried in that double coffin thing and would remain on a missing person’s list eternally.
“Oh, baby …”
If there was anything he could do, he would. Even if it meant he could die to save her. The despair held weight, an uncanny pressure on his psyche that made him feel he couldn’t stand anymore. He tugged on the hooks until the chains pulled taut from the wall and the pain increased. His skin lifted tent-like from his back and legs.
Short of ripping himself off the hooks, there was nothing he could do. Even if he did that, everyone in the next room was armed. What chance did they have?
He slumped back allowing the chains to slacken. At least his torment would be over soon. His failure as a man to save his wife, to protect her, colored his heart a dark gray.
If only things were different.
Yuri called from the other room.
It was time to die.
The Russian pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked Rosina’s restraints. Then he tossed
them aside and put the key away. His hand came back up with something else, which he waved back and forth in front of Rosina’s nose. She gasped and jolted awake, coughing.
Her eyes wide, she took in the room, settling on Darwin.
He tried to smile, but all he could do was wince as the last time she would see him was in such a defeated, despicable way.
He looked away. The sadness in her eyes was too much to bear.
“Darwin?”
Their eyes met as the Russian hauled Rosina to her feet.
