Rocco’s smile quirked on one side, the facade betraying his anger, but just for a second.
“Our names. Both hacked up, right? Americanized. That’s what we have in common. Yours should be pronounced Ya-vor-ski instead of Ja-wor-ski, yes? And the G is supposed to be silent in mine — Ba-tal-ee-uh, not Ba-tag-lee-uh. But here, the American machine grinds these things up. It’s one size fits all, you know. Anything unique, any jagged edge, gets rounded off, filed down. Our names and cultures got away from us, way back before our time. Got butchered. Got mashed into something new, something reduced, I think.”
His gaze drifted up along the highest parts of the wall as he spoke, where more chipped paint and faded posters about the importance of wearing gloves and safety goggles at all times broke up the monotonous gray.
Now Rocco’s eyes found Jaworski’s once more, something darker in them. Something as hard as the concrete all around them.
“That’s the cost of doing business, though, right? Here in America, everything is business. Everything has a price. There is something comforting in that, weird as it might sound. Something rational. Quantifiable.”
He reached into the toolbox without breaking eye contact, going slow on purpose, his face expressionless.
“So please understand: what’s happening here, between us? It’s just business.”
When he pulled his hand free, Jaworski finally saw what was clasped in his fingers.
Something bulky and orange.
A power drill.
Chapter 52
Luck hunched over her, arranging a bag of ice and a towel under her battered ankle.
“I worry about you,” he said. “I know what you’re like. Always running face first into any wall that gets in your way.”
The drugs had started to kick in while he’d made the trek to fill the ice bucket, and the pain felt somewhat distant now. Darger’s head felt floaty and light. Like an untethered balloon drifting high up in the clouds.
“Hey, wait,” Darger muttered. Her eyes were half-open slits. “Are you more concerned about someone else than your career right now?”
Luck’s mustache twitched, reminding her of the angry flick of a cat’s tail, but she saw amusement in his eyes.
“Give the snarky comments a rest and try to relax for a minute, would you?”
They fell quiet. The only sound was the faint whisper of insects bumping and fluttering against the window, drawn to the dim light offered by the single lamp in the room.
Darger's mind wandered, and she thought of Luck’s daughter. He shouldn’t be here. He should go home to his daughter. She thought she should tell him this, but another part of her was glad for his company. She didn't want to be alone just now.
Partnering with Luck hadn't been so bad after all, she considered.
Then her mind went to the victims of the Darger curse — as she called it — and listed their names: Zara, Sierra, Ethan, and now, probably Deputy Huettemann. She struggled for a moment to think of his first name, finally coming up with it. Kyle.
All four of them were dead because they’d had the simple misfortune to cross paths with Violet Darger.
The drugs made her feel cynical and detached, and she knew there was something narcissistic about thinking this way. As if her mere presence had the power to determine someone’s life or death fate. It was silly, and yet she still felt the sting of guilt when she thought of any one of them. If she had only done more…
Her eyes were shut but sprang open when her phone rang. She thought that only a few minutes had passed since she let her eyelids droop closed, but she saw now that bright morning sunlight streamed in through the open drapes. Luck was gone. She was alone.
She flailed at the bedside table. Her fingers brushed the edge of her phone, and she grasped it in her hand.
“Hello?” Her voice was thick with sleep.
“It's me,” Loshak said. “We found Huettemann’s car.”
For a second, her dumb, half-awake mind was relieved. It was a lead. A clue to Huettemann’s whereabouts. And then her analytical mind caught up. It was a clue, alright. The first clue in the deputy’s death.
“There's blood,” he continued. “In the car, I mean.”
Her stomach twisted.
“No sign of his… of him.”
He’d stopped himself from saying no sign of his body. Too grim. Sounded hopeless. But holding out hope at this point was a fool’s errand.
They were quiet for some time, letting the full weight of it sink in. Finally Darger managed to sit up. She wiped the sleep from her eyes.
“Where?”
Chapter 53
Just survive this first wave, Jaworski told himself, eying the spiraling metal of the drill bit. That will be the hardest part. Live through this, and you can figure something out from here. Live through this, and you can get through anything.
Rocco Battaglia still stood on the other side of the table, the orange drill in his hand, dangling at his side like an oversized gun. Based on reputation, Jaworski had expected the blood to by flying by now, red spray shooting off the drill, but Rocco was a talker.
Maybe this, too, was intentional. Dragging it out. Making him wait.
“There are two schools of thought when it comes to torture,” Rocco said. “And to be perfectly candid with you, both have their merits. The first approach — the traditional one, let’s say — says you’re supposed to draw out the dread stage for as long as you can, that as soon as you start inflicting pain, start rending the actual flesh, you’ve taken away the incentive to talk. Once the worst has happened, the subject has nothing left to fear. You might even be emboldening them to defy you.”
Jaworski stared at Rocco as he spoke. Unblinking. He knew the younger Battaglia had all the power here, that sooner or later the pain would come, but he wouldn’t give Rocco the satisfaction of showing him his fear.
“That’s the first way. And it’s all well and good — some truth there, no doubt — but the second way? Well, that’s a little more hands-on, right from the start. I like the second way a little better.”
Now Rocco smiled, his grip adjusting on the drill.
“The second way says it’s really all about maintaining leverage, OK? So you can hurt someone, can commence torturing them, can even go to sickening lengths in doing so, but you always have to maintain a bigger lever to threaten them with. You can pry off their fingernails one by one, go to fuckin’ town wit’ it, so long as you also have a car battery that you can threaten to hook up to their gonads after, right? Always gotta have a bigger threat on the horizon, something additional for them to fear. That’s your leverage.”
Now the mobster lifted the drill, examined the thick coil of steel sticking out of the end, the part that would penetrate Jaworski’s flesh before long.
“And knockin’ around in this field a little myself, I think I’ve found the biggest lever of them all — a loved one. There are some sickos who love no one but themselves, to be sure, but for the most part, even the hardest killers have families, wives, girlfriends. Someone they would protect at any cost.”
For the first time, Jaworski flinched a little. A couple of hard blinks. Shit. That only told Rocco what he wanted to know, telegraphed a real pain point.
“So I’ma torture you a little while. Do some real damage. And then, when the time is right, I’ll let you know about the bigger lever, that person you care about, and when I do, you’ll already know exactly what I’m capable of. Firsthand knowledge. Experience dealt through the tip of my drill. And you’ll know that you’re the only person who can spare your people, your family, whatever, that same fate.”
The shadows swirled around the large figure as it moved around the table, drill now posed like a threat in its hand, raised like a weapon.
Jaworski strained against the cuffs, against the chains, rattling metal high and low, knowing it was no use.
And Rocco licked his lips once he got within arm’s length. Mouth juicy and almost greasy looking
. Pupils swollen like a jungle predator on the hunt.
He fingered the button. The drill whirred — a sound like a dentist’s drill on steroids, deeper, fuller throated.
He jammed the drill toward Jaworski’s temple, and the Polish hitman’s heart leapt. He jerked away from the metal, leaned as far to his right as he could go.
His brain. Rocco Battaglia was going to stick a fucking drill in his brain. Perform a lobotomy courtesy of Home Depot.
And now Jaworski was scared. Truly, truly scared.
Just live through this. Whatever happens. Live through it. It’s all you can do.
Rocco brought the drill close to the hitman’s temple again, but he hesitated a few inches shy.
“I don’t suppose, you know, you wanna tell me where Vinny the Bull has been staying right up front,” Rocco said. “I have mixed feelings even asking, I guess. After all this buildup, I kind of want to use the drill. But give me an address, and it all goes away. All this trouble, all this conflict, is forgotten.”
Jaworski clenched his jaw. Stared at Rocco again. He said nothing.
Rocco’s smile beamed brighter. A sick smile. Hungry for what would come next. Perhaps the first genuine smile Rocco had flashed during their time together so far.
He squeezed the trigger, and the drill closed those last few inches in slow motion.
The little engine kicked out its dentist’s drill whine again, shrill and harsh.
Jaworski felt the drill bit twirling in his hair now. He gritted his teeth. Braced for the spinning incision, not really able to imagine how it would feel to have sharp metal whirling in his skin, grinding at that shell of bone encasing his brain.
But Rocco turned the drill sideways at the last minute, and the engine’s grind shifted to a lower pitch.
Hair tangled around the spinning drill bit, pulled taut, snapped Jaworski’s head toward the power tool. The tension built, coiling the hairs tighter and tighter, yanking hard enough to hurt. All of the extra drag slowed the drill’s speed but just a little.
Rocco ripped the drill away, a clean, powerful stroke using both hands.
A sound like tearing a sheet of notebook paper erupted from Jaworski’s hairline, and a wound opened where a big chunk of hair used to be.
The first flash of pain turned everything white. Blinded him. Made his teeth clench so hard it hurt, made his jaw convulse at the corners, the muscles pulsing like mad.
Jaworski screamed. Involuntary screeches torn from his throat.
He’d been a professional killer for thirteen years. He’d been beaten. Stabbed. Shot. He knew pain. This hurt was as sharp as any.
A huge tuft of Jaworski’s hair and scalp flapped around the whirring drill. Bleach white skin attached to dark strands. Disgusting.
It was probably only the top layer of flesh, Jaworski knew, painful but not too serious.
Still, his head felt so open that he could only imagine an oblong patch of his cranium exposed at the temple. All his flesh torn out by the roots. Bloody bone laid bare. Naked. Open to the air.
Rocco stopped the drill then, that whir cutting out, the flap of skin bobbing twice and then going still. The gangster cleared most of the hair from the bit like he was wrenching a piece of crabgrass out of his yard, flinging it to the ground in a jerky motion. His hand shuddered a little after, as though the act of touching it disgusted him.
He moved the drill to another spot near the crown of the head. Brought it close. Fingered the trigger so it whined once more.
The hair wove around it again, pulling tight like violin strings about to snap.
Jaworski’s fingers found a support bar on the back of the chair — a piece of wood he gripped as he braced himself, knuckles shaking.
Rocco yanked again.
Another blinding flash of pain to paint the world white.
Another clenching of the jaw so hard. Too hard.
Another shredded vocal cord scream. A pitiful sound, raspy and mournful this time. A sorrow to it like a dying animal.
He closed his eyes, and Jaworski felt outside of himself this time. An out-of-body experience almost.
The pain was still right there, raw and wriggling inside of him, shooting down from his scalp to his core, but it was somehow outside of him, too. Something he could observe as though it were happening to someone else. Something he could see the limits of. Something he could separate himself from, at least in part.
Live through this. That’s all.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that Rocco was changing tactics.
Now the drill hovered just shy of his left knee. The gangster didn’t hesitate.
The whirling metal jammed into that soft connective tissue behind the kneecap, entering at an angle, reaching deep into the joint.
Pain.
The drill ate into his flesh, the twirling bit not so much stabbing as ripping its way in, spinning skin roughly aside to make a hole, to sink itself deeper.
Jaworski cried out right away this time. Ragged sounds. A bellow through clenched teeth.
Jesus fuck, it hurt.
He hopped up and down in his chair. Rocked back and forth as though he could wriggle away from the injury.
There was a slight burning smell now. Acrid smoke. Jaworski knew it must be the drill’s motor, working harder with the strain. But some part of him thought the smell was his knee cooking.
And it didn’t stop. That circular motion chewed into him. It seemed insectile in a way. Something foreign. Something alien and hard forcing its way into his body.
And yet it was undeniably machine. Cold metal slowly going warm via his blood.
When the drill bit got halfway deep, the pain overtook him.
Spinal reflexes snapped his chest and head into odd positions. Posed him like a mannequin.
And the world darkened around him, the shock pulling him down into a hole. Trying to spare him this agony.
Rocco laughed. Little hateful hisses. That sadistic glee contorted his features.
The mafia boss wrenched the drill around in the joint and little sounds slurped out. Wet and violent like a meat grinder working at a tough piece of beef. Turning it into hamburger little by little.
Something popped deep in the knee. A strange release of pressure. Everything in the joint suddenly feeling loose and wet and warm.
A ligament probably. Severed or shredded.
And that somehow settled Jaworski again. Steeled his resolve.
The damage was done. If this was the worst they’d do, he’d live. Just to spite them, he’d live.
As if on cue, the drill bit caught on a piece of bone and the metal snapped. The pressure in his knee let up. His chest heaved in deep breaths of relief, sucking fresh wind into him.
Rocco’s smile faded. He let up on the trigger, and the drill’s whine cut out.
He withdrew the drill. Examined it. A stubby little piece of metal protruded from the orange plastic, maybe an inch and a half long, cleaved into something crooked.
“Shit,” Rocco muttered. “Looks like the fun is over.”
He eyed Jaworski, and then the smile came back over his features.
“You remember what I said about maintaining leverage, right?” he said. “You know your girl is the next lever, don’t you?”
Jaworski closed his eyes.
“Yeah, we’ve heard about her. Heard you been keepin’ her a little secret. Wonder why. I never took you for the bashful type. Anyway, we don’t know who she is just yet, but it won’t be hard to find out. Maybe a day of asking around, I figure. That’ll give you time to sit here, lick your wounds, think about what Marasco and Big Joe Carlo will do to her. What I’ll do to her.”
Jaworski didn’t open his eyes. Not when they unshackled him. Not when they shoved him into a wheelie chair of some kind, rolled him off into some other room.
He pictured Urszula. Knew that she was probably lost to him now. One way or another.
He might live through this after all, he thought. But he didn’t kno
w if he wanted to.
Chapter 54
In the gray light of morning, the sun was a wavering beam of fire on the river. Darger could smell the water here, feel the humidity in the air.
She stood shoulder to shoulder with the other members of the task force. They watched in silence as the crime scene techs bustled in and around Huettemann’s car. It was slow work. Work done with tweezers and swabs and brushes doused in fingerprint powder.
The deputy's vehicle had been found near Riverside Park, nestled between a patch of overgrown Queen Anne’s lace and a large warehouse.
The chain-link fence bordering the park rattled in the light breeze. Darger's eyes went to the spatter of blood on the driver's side window. Huettemann's blood.
A boat’s horn blared, drawing her gaze to the line of cranes already hauling cargo off the ships, stacking the multi-colored shipping containers in neat rows beside the warehouse.
This area would be pretty deserted at night, she figured. The park was closed. The dock workers all gone for the day. The perfect place to stash a vehicle until you had a free moment to make it disappear for good. Only Jaworski hadn’t made it back in time to do the job.
She wondered why. Something to do with being shoved into the back of a vehicle with a hood over his head, no doubt, but beyond that, she hadn’t been able to make sense of it.
While she thought on this, Darger found herself studying the bloody smear on the window again. It looked like the remnants of ketchup crusted to a plate.
A seagull cawed. In the distance, she saw the suspension cables and bright turquoise stanchions of the Ambassador Bridge.
Darger stared at the river and wondered if Huettemann’s body was somewhere down there beneath the churning black water.
There was a very good chance they'd never find out.
Chapter 55
Marasco and Jaworski sat in a windowless office toward the back of the factory. Cramped. Dated. Wood paneling coated the walls like a strange growth — fungal probably — dark brown seamed with black.
Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Page 25
