“You were always heck on wheels. Remember when you threw the cherry pie in the congressman’s face?”
“I did that?”
“In the hotel restaurant in Galveston. That’s how we met.”
“I’m really tired, Hack. I think I’m going to pass out.”
“I need to tell you something. Ishmael came to me in a dream just this evening. It was a strange moonrise. The moon looked like a broken wafer. The moonlight was in the dream, like it was part of what was happening to Ishmael. He was a little boy again, dressed in his Easter suit, with a rabbit in a basket. He was trying to tell me where he was. I think I’ll see him again and he’ll tell me where he is. Maybe in a dream tonight.”
She gazed at him woodenly, her lips moving as though she’d misunderstood his words.
AFTER THE SECOND bucket of water had been poured incrementally on the towel, Ishmael felt his lungs turn to fire and his heart swell to the size of a cantaloupe; he saw a great pink balloon inflate inside his head and suddenly pop as though it had been touched with a hot cigarette.
When he woke, someone was blotting his face with a towel. “Who are you?” Ishmael said.
“My name is Jeff. You’re a tough guy.”
“What happened to Jessie?”
“I sent him to make a snack. He was a little rough on you?”
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“I’m going to unhook one of your hands and walk you to the water closet across the room. You don’t want to take the pads off your eyes. You know why, too. We’re in agreement on that?”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be up the stairs. All the doors are locked. You cain’t go nowhere. Don’t get ideas.”
Ishmael nodded to show he understood.
“This doesn’t have to end in a bad way, buddy,” Jeff said. “Just don’t give the wrong guy trouble. Come on, get up. Easy does it. There you go.”
Jeff fitted his hand under Ishmael’s left arm and walked him across a floor that felt paved with bricks, then left him inside a wood cubicle that had a door with a latch on it. “The chain is on the left-hand side of the box. Pull it when you’re through,” he said. “There’s a roll of paper on the floor. Sorry about all this.”
Then why are you doing it to me?
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Ishmael said. “Thank you for your consideration.”
He sat on the toilet and felt in front of him to ensure that the door was shut. He peeled one eye pad partially back with his thumb and realized he was sitting in darkness. Through a crack in the wall, he could see water seeping through the stones below a ground-level window, and he guessed his basement prison was located close to a river or a lake. A solitary palm tree was silhouetted against the moon, its fronds straightening in the wind. Low in the sky, perhaps on the western horizon, a lake of electricity seemed to be flaring inside a storm bank. From somewhere above, he could hear the voice of the man who had almost drowned him: “The guy doesn’t know anything. If he did, I would have gotten it out of him.”
“Who told you to question him?” Jeff’s voice said.
“Mr. Beckman wants something from the guy’s father. I was helping out.”
“Listen, Jessie, we’re paid to do what Mr. Beckman tells us. Right now that means we find the soldier’s mother.”
“What for?”
“She beat the living shit out of Mr. Beckman. With a frying pan.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Tell him that.”
“Where is she now?” Jessie asked.