Jake & Mimi (34 page)

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.

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.

H
er 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 center 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.