Sympathy For the Devil (29 page)

Roger laughed as he began to pack the other guard’s nostrils with gauze. “Ah, to be in your shoes, friend. One can have a good time getting into a lot of trouble with one of those cards. Believe me, I know.”

“But why do all of this for us? Why not just kill us?”

“Because I already know all about you, Miguel Reyes, and I know you’re not part of this. You’re just a nice Dominican boy from Washington Heights who loves his mother, his two sisters, and his nieces. I know you’re not going to interfere in our lives, because I know you don’t want us interfering in yours.”

“Shit,” Reyes said as he looked from Hicks to Roger, then Hicks. “Shit.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen next. Roger’s going to set your friend’s nose and we’re going to wheel this asshole out of here. You’re going to spend the rest of the day here ordering room service and putting it all on your pal’s Amex card. As far as your bosses are concerned, you dropped him off at JFK and that’s the last you saw of him.”

“I just hope this is the last time I see you.”

“Keep your mouth shut about what happened here today, and you’ll never see me again. If you make it about more than that, if you tell anyone what happened here or about me or my friend, I’ll be the last person you ever see. Your family, too. Understand?”

Roger set the guard’s nose in a crude splint and injected him with something for the pain. He made a show of using a new needle. “Don’t worry. It’s not the same one I used on Djebar. No telling what potpourri of social diseases are battering around his system. This will make you sleepy for a while and dull the pain for a day or so.”

Roger closed up his bag and got up from the couch. “I was right. Healing isn’t as much fun as hurting.”

The guard with the broken nose dozed off, but Reyes said, “What about my gun, man? That’s mine, not the company’s.”

“It’ll be waiting for you when you get home tomorrow. Don’t forget, I have your address.” Roger dropped his medical bag in Djebar’s lap, but the man was too out of it to notice.

As they wheeled Djebar to the elevator, Roger said, “Leaving them alive was a mistake.”

Hicks disagreed. “I’m not killing two guys for doing their job. They worked for the company Djebar hired to watch him, not Djebar himself.”

“Well if you were going to leave his black card with them, the least you could’ve done was tell them about the Jolly Roger. The club can always handle more customers.”

Hicks looked down at Djebar. His head was slumped forward and he’d begun to drool on his blanket. “You’ve already got one.”

A
N HOUR
later, Hicks watched Roger prep Djebar for questioning via the television set in the waiting room he’d set up for such sessions. Roger referred to the interrogation chamber as his ‘studio.’ It was actually a former dentist’s office in an old building in the West Village. The years hadn’t dulled the smell of awkward desperation and fear that most dental offices had. Roger’s activities in the years since had only added to it.

The place was still outfitted with late seventies furniture, complete with a glassed in receptionist’s area where patients could make their payments. An old sticker on the window still read: ‘MasterCharge The Interbank Card Accepted’ and ‘Your BankAmericard Welcome Here.’

Only Roger’s patients didn’t make payments in cash, check, or credit card. They didn’t have to present proof of health insurance either. They paid by telling Roger the truth. And if the truth was currency, then Roger was often well compensated.

Roger had strapped Djebar’s arms and legs to a dentist’s chair. The chair had been re-covered in soft rubber to make for easier clean up after a session. A drain had been installed in the center of the floor and florescent lights powerful enough for surgery hung down from the ceiling. The small dentist’s tray had long since been removed in favor of a proper surgery table that held scalpels and sutures. Much heavier equipment, too, like steel bone saws and spreaders that sparkled in the strong light.

Many of Roger’s patients often laughed at the equipment when they saw it, trying to convince themselves it was all just for show. But by the end of their session, they’d learned that Roger never wasted time on theatrics and, quite often, put all of the tools at his disposal to good use.

Through the old television in the observation room, Hicks watched Roger slip the heavy rubber coroner’s apron over his head before he injected Djebar again. Hicks knew the last injection had been a sedative, but this would be just the opposite.

Djebar snapped awake just as Roger pulled the needle from his neck. His eyes instantly bright and alive.

Hicks watched Roger pull up a stool and sat next to Djebar; smiling down into the Algerian’s face. “Welcome back, my friend. How was your sleep? Restful, I trust?”

Djebar now squinted at the light and tried to look away, but realized he couldn’t. His head was secured in a vice that Roger had attached to the chair’s headrest long ago.

“Where… where am I?”

Roger reached up and dimmed the light just enough to stop it from shining into his eyes. “Where are you? That’s a very interesting question. I like to think of this place as a threshold of new beginnings and new truth. You’re in a place where a precious few people have enjoyed the rarest of opportunities to shed the bonds of their old lives and embrace a rebirth. To become something new and clean and pure.”

Hicks watched Djebar struggle to look anywhere but at the light. He managed to move his head just enough to get a glimpse of the bone cutter glinting on the operating table on his left. “Oh God. Please. I’ll tell you anything. Anything at all. Just don’t hurt me.”

Roger placed a finger to Djebar’s lips. “Of course you’ll tell me anything, my friend. Anything at all, especially whatever you think I want to hear. But I’m afraid that won’t be good enough for our purposes, because I don’t want you to tell me just anything, Djebar. I want you to tell me the truth. The pure, unadulterated truth about your friend Omar and why you’re here and what you were hired to do for him.”

Djebar began to speak, a panicked jumble of English and Arabic and French but Roger gently placed a finger on his lips again. “Everything’s going to be fine, Djebar, because the truth isn’t just an assemblage of facts. It’s a process of discovery that can’t be rushed. Anything you tell me now will only be a hint of what I really want to know, and I want to know everything about everything. About Omar. About why you’re here and about all your other dealings all over the world. And together, you and I will help you remember things you thought you forgot. We’re going to remind you of things you never thought you knew. It’s a journey we’re about to take together, my friend; a journey that, for you has been oh so very long in coming.”

“No,” Djebar whispered; his voice as small as his eyes were wide. “No, please. We can deal. We…”

“Our destination on this journey is the purest truth we can know, and you and I will arrive at that glorious place together very soon.”

Hicks watched Djebar dry swallow. He began to tremble in his restraints as he saw Roger tie a thick rubber surgical mask under his nose.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” Djebar whispered. “To me? I told you I’ll tell you anything. You don’t have to do this to me! And for whom? For your country? For your own people who hate you and despise you for what you are?”

Hicks watched Roger reached for his rubber gloves. “But this isn’t about me, my friend. It’s about you and what you are now and what you’re going to become in such a short amount of time.”

Through the old speakers of the television set, Hicks could hear Djebar begin to whimper and pray in Arabic as Roger snapped on the rubber gauntlets that came up to his elbows. He saw Djebar’s surprise when Roger joined him word for word in his chant of a passage from the Quran. In Arabic. It was a passage Hicks had heard prayed in these interrogations many times before. In English, it meant:

“The righteous shall return to a blessed retreat: the gardens of Eden, whose gates shall open wide to receive them. Reclining there with bashful virgins for companions, they will call for abundant fruit and drink.”

Roger smiled down at Djebar from behind his rubber mask. “Such a beautiful sentiment in such a sacred book used by such ugly, ugly people for devious purposes. People like you who want to exterminate people like me.”

Djebar shut his eyes and whimpered when Roger stroked the side of his cheek with the cold rubber glove. “In pain, there is truth and beauty to be found. And if that is true, by the time you and I are done here today, you will be the purest, most magnificent man alive.”

Hicks watched Roger pick up a scalpel and let Djebar watch the light dance along its sharpened edge. “To paradise.”

Hicks turned off the television as Roger brought the scalpel down on Djebar’s sternum. He could still hear the gurgled screams though the thin walls. It was, after all, an old building.

H
ICKS HAD
smoked two Churchill cigars before the examination room door opened. Djebar’s screams had gone hoarse before they had ended and that had been longer than Hicks wanted to remember. The screams had been followed by a heavy silence, then gasping whispers and tears and muffled words. He had even heard laughter coming from the room, but not for a long time.

Hicks could’ve gone somewhere else while Roger conducted his interrogation, but he never did. The idea of going for a walk or grabbing coffee at Starbucks while Roger cut into someone struck him as cold and odd, even more so than the torture itself.

Conventional interrogation wisdom said torture didn’t work. But as Roger was fond of saying, “If it doesn’t work, you’re doing it wrong.”

Roger had already removed his rubber surgical mask and gauntlets when he walked into the waiting area. Except for the rubber apron, he looked as refreshed as someone who’d just woken up from a long afternoon nap.

“My,” he sighed as he sat in an ancient metal and pleather chair across from Hicks. “That was
quite
a session. Glad I had the recorders rolling for that one. He became quite cooperative after a while.”

Hicks noticed a sliver of something bright pink on the belly of Roger’s apron and quickly looked away. “Jesus, Roger.”