The 4 Phase Man (12 page)

“Ancient history.”

Canvas gave him another drink. “Not history. We’re the last two, you know. For at least our generation.” Canvas’s voice became veiled and choked with emotion. “Not history.
Legend.”

Somehow, Xenos managed a weak laugh. “I retired from the legend business.”

The standing man regarded the hanging man closely for some minutes, then turned away—physically and emotionally. “I honestly
thought
you’d retired, Jerry. I’d heard you’d told them all to shove it where the sun don’t shine and disappeared. Somewhere in the Med, I’d heard.”

“I did.”

Canvas shook his head as he turned back to face him. All emotion banished from his face. “You don’t look retired to me.” He moved to more closely examine the wounds to Xenos’s exposed back and chest. “Looks like a through and through shoulder and a nick on the old collarbone. Must hurt like a nasty bugger.” He shook his head as he studied the blackening wounds. “My people treating you all right?”

Xenos nodded. “More or less.”

“More,” I should think. “He looked into the hanging man’s” eyes. “The
less
comes later.”

“Pleasantries over, Colin?” Xenos asked in a conversational tone.

“Afraid so, Jerry. Afraid so. You’re about to become an object lesson for the Honorable Ms. Alvarez.” He hesitated. “Unless you want to tell me what she told you. What you know and who you’re working for.”

Xenos grimaced in expression and pain. “I don’t think so.”

Canvas took a deep, somehow sad breath. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t suppose you would.” He started out of the room.

“Colin?”

“Yeah?”

“My father…”

“He’s fine. We all know about you and him.”

Xenos seemed to relax. “Thanks, man.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Five minutes later Canvas returned with two brutes and Valerie. Then the beatings began.

The knock on the door almost catapulted Avidol off the couch. But he hesitated, waiting to be sure Sarah and Bradley were in the other room by the fire escape, before opening it. A short old man chewing an unlit cigar stood outside, an insincere smile on his face.

“Reb Goldman?”

“Yes?”

The man held out his hand. “Herb Stone. I’m a friend of your son.”

“I don’t know you, the old scholar said carefully.”

“No? I’m not surprised, really. You haven’t exactly spoken to Jerry a lot lately, have you?”

Avidol continued to ignore the outstretched hand and the undangerous face beyond it. “Where is my son?”

“Yes, well … that’s what I’d like to talk about.” He pushed past the barely resisting man. “Lovely apartment, he murmured perfunctorily as he sat down on the couch.”

Avidol sat across from him. “What have you done to my boy?”

Herb looked genuinely shocked. “Me? I assure you I’ve done nothing to him at all. At least not lately,” he said more to himself. “In fact,” he continued in a stronger voice, “I’m worried about him myself.”

Suddenly memory attached itself to the wrinkled face and the aged voice. “We’ve met before,” Mr. Stone. Yes? Many years ago, when you came to steal my son. Anger dripped from the old man’s voice. “Deny it!”

“You have a marvelous memory,” Reb Goldman. I’d forgotten that myself, he obviously lied. “But better we discuss the present than the past.”

“The two are joined,” Avidol insisted. “If you had not corrupted my jewel then, you would not be here now.”

“Interesting point, but—”

“Say what you have come to say, then leave. You and your kind are not welcome here.”

Herb leaned back, relaxed. “Now I am intrigued. What
kind
am I?”

“Where is my son?”

“Answer for answer, Reb Goldman. Isn’t that what the Talmud says?”

Avidol jumped up, would’ve struck the man if not for a life’s dedication and discipline. “Do not,” he warned in a cold voice, “ever quote from the holy books again.” He recovered and slowly sat down. “Every word you speak is a blasphemy.”

“And why is that?”

Realizing that there would be no straight answers or direct statement from the man in front of him until he was ready, Avidol resolved to wait him out. For seventy-one years he had studied law, philosophy, theology, morality, and ethics. He was prepared to play the man’s word games back at him if that would get him closer to the answers he now desperately needed.

“You have no soul, Mr. Stone. It withered and died many years ago.”

Herb played with his cigar. “But it was a grand funeral, I assure you. Please, do continue.”

“You equate the ability to inflict pain with strength. You believe that a lie told with noble intent is the truth. You think that lives are yours for the taking, if you are strong enough, smart enough, to get away with it.”

“Everyone has to have a talent.” The ancient spymaster began gesturing with his cigar. “Yours was hypocrisy, as I recall. Jerry’s was playing the piano, feral violence, and exquisite mendacity.” He seemed to relish the memory, then caught himself. “But isn’t that why you disowned him?” Herb asked as he lit his cigar.

“Are you the devil, Mr. Stone?”

Herb grinned. “Not in years.”

“But you believe in Hell?”

For the first time, an air of seriousness crept over the spook across from the scholar. “Intimately.”

“And would you consign my son’s soul to it?”

“We make our own Hells,” Mr. Goldman. Mine in marble buildings; your son’s on volcanic islands. He took a deep drag on the cigar. “Yours, in your heart.”

Avidol nodded. “There is truth there. But there is a fundamental difference between my Jerry and you.”

Herb laughed. “A great many, I’m sure. Care to be more specific?”

“What my son did, whatever crimes against his fellow-man and his God he may have committed, he did in the name of love.”

“Love?”

“Love,” Avidol said softly. “Love of country, of freedom; love of ideals you whispered into his ear even as you were perverting them. Jerry was a romantic warrior who might’ve been brought to understand, in time, that the true warrior—in the Jewish tradition—is the man who stands up for what he believes in, but never breaks God’s laws.”

“Thou shalt not kill and like that?” Herb sucked on his cigar.
“Ever?
Seems a bit limiting.”

“Now you will tell me about my son, Avidol said after a moment’s silence.”

“I will? Why?”

“Because you have been entertained, and because you have learned what you needed to know.”

“Which was?”

Avidol sadly lowered his head. “That I am an old man who—when confronted by sad realities and the stain of my loved one’s blood—cares more about his son than his God’s laws.” At that moment, he seemed far older than his eighty-four years. “That I, like you, must bear my pain silently while seeking to end it.”

Herb moved to the edge of the couch. “I don’t know what’s happened to your son. Not exactly anyway.”

“But…”

Herb held up a cautionary hand. “What I do know is
that something is very wrong. That
someone
is very wrong. And
that
someone has your son, for the moment anyway.” He rolled the cigar in his mouth as he concentrated. “And I would very much like to know who that someone is.”

“What do you want?” Avidol sensed something, fear maybe, deep down in this blank man with the insincere smile.

“The reality is,” Herb continued as if he hadn’t heard the old man, “Jerry will either be dead or free in the next twenty-four hours.”

“You know this?” Avidol almost reached out to the man across from him.

“I
know
Jerry,” was his cryptic reply. “If he contacts you, I’d like you to call me.” He handed across a card with only a phone number on it. “I can be reached there twenty-four hours a day.”

“And my son can trust you?”

Herb shrugged. “Well, he can
count
on me. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?” He stood, starting for the door.

Avidol followed him out. “Why would you help him?”

Herb knocked the ash off his cigar into the fireplace. “Because I was once a romantic warrior as well.” He exhaled deeply. “It’s just that I grew up.”

At the door, Avidol noticed the three large bodyguards standing just outside. “He will not come to me, Mr. Stone. We were finished years ago.”

Herb buttoned his coat and smiled. “One of our first rules—us murderers and sinners—is that the only ones you can trust are those who’ve already betrayed you.” He smiled. “If he can, he’ll make contact.”

Avidol watched him start down the stairs, carefully watched over by his phalanx of bodyguards.

“Shalom, Mr. Stone,” the dedicated religious pacifist heard himself say.

“Peace?” Herb rolled the word on his tongue, then sadly shook his head. “Interesting idea.” He chuckled bitterly. “Shalom, Reb Goldman. Shalom.”

“I don’t think you’re appreciating the finer points of the exercise, Valerie, Canvas said pleasantly.”

She strained against the iron grip of the man who held her facing the beaten man hanging from the ceiling beam. “What
finer points?”
she spat out. “That you can beat the Hell out of an innocent man?”

Canvas shrugged, then nodded, and the beating began again. Two men, taking turns hammering Xenos in the face and stomach with broom handles. Each strike raising large welts, or splitting existing ones bloodily open. “He may be a lot of things, Valerie, but innocent
is not
one of them.”

A blow under Xenos’s rib cage.

“And I’d hardly qualify this as a beating.”

A blow to the face.

“More like a warm-up for the real grotesqueries to come.”

Valerie shivered as she tried to look away from the blood-covered face and the swelling injuries. “You sick bastard!” Her face was turned to continue watching. “What do you want?”

“Open the case,” Canvas said simply.

“Or what?” You’ll beat a stranger to death?

Canvas signaled for the beating to stop as he stepped between Valerie and Xenos. “I told you, this is just a warm-up.” He smiled. “The main event comes when I let these rather talented gentlemen loose on your son and daughter.”

He turned to Xenos, taking a towel and wiping the blood from his mostly swollen-shut eyes. “Somehow I don’t think the tykes will stand up near as well as my friend here.”

Valerie closed her eyes in the most tearing psychic pain of her life.

“What do you think, Jerry? Canvas asked as he gave Xenos a drink of cool water.”

“Let me down and I’ll show you, the wounded man somehow whispered through the agony.”

Canvas shook his head. “I know you would,” he said almost sympathetically. He turned back to Valerie. “It won’t be pretty, it will be prolonged, and I
will
make you watch every moment of it, I promise you.”

“Monstruo,”
Valerie cried.

The big man shrugged.
“Mi madre lo quiere.”
He waved the men from the room. “I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it.” He looked over at Xenos. “Give her some good advice, man. I don’t think she gets it.” He started out of the room.

“Colin?” Xenos’s voice was surprisingly strong and clear.

“Yeah?”

“Let it go, man.”

The man turned, regarding Xenos as he swung lazily in the air.
“You
wouldn’t.”

“I did.”

A noncommittal shrug. “Which is why you’re swinging and I’m making retirement bucks.”

The door closed, locked, and they were alone.

“I’m sorry,” Valerie whispered. “So sorry.”

Xenos spat some blood from his mouth. “I don’t really care right now.”

“They’re going to kill my babies,” she moaned. “No matter what I do.” She took in deep breaths, sobs mixing with calm until after five minutes she’d mostly recovered. “They’re going to kill us all.”

Xenos ignored her, staring up at the beam, the rope looped around it, the knots on each of his bloody wrists.

“I don’t know who you are,” Valerie continued with growing strength and resolve, “or if it’ll make you feel any better”—she walked over to him, taking the towel and gently wiping his face clear of blood—“but when they come back, I’m going to end it.”

Xenos studied her, thought about what he’d read about her, what he’d heard on his room tap. Despite the pain and his rapidly depleting resources, he easily slipped into analysis mode, then smiled.

Something about that smile chilled her to the bone. “If you kill them,” then you guarantee your children’s deaths, he said matter-of-factly.

“But they’ll…”

Xenos looked down at her through slits of eyes, a broken nose, and blackened, seeping wounds. “Let me help you.”

Ten minutes later Canvas, the interrogators, and three guards returned.

“Time’s up,” Valerie. He held up her case. “Either you open it now, with no tricks, or you can watch the destruction of the kiddies. Your choice.”

Valerie’s mind was racing.

Her nightmare existence had changed into a pornographic hallucination into a demonic visitation. Sanity and madness merged, separated, mutated, and blew apart into billions of pieces all within the same second. Her ears filled with the rushing of her blood, her skin went cold, muscles tightened, eyes went in and out of focus.