"I can't," Charlie said.
"You're saying we have to torture it out of you?" asked Tony.
Every minute longer that I live, Charlie thought, gives me a chance for another. He turned his head as far as he could and looked Morris in the eye, confident of his hatred for the man. "I'm saying that, yes."
Morris nodded coldly. "Then it's showtime," he said.
He yanked the needle out of Charlie's back.
He felt nothing. No one spoke. Morris checked his watch. Still nothing. I'm okay, thought Charlie.
Then, flaming up his spine, came a red ganglion of pain that frayed outward in searing, incomprehensible complexity-and when he arched his back in shocked torment, the pulsing hot bud at the base of his spine bloomed again while simultaneously reappearing within itself, detonation within florid detonation. "Oh, God," he screamed, "God, God, God."
The men held him down and Morris took a pair of pliers from the toolbox. He ripped something from Charlie's spinal column. The pain became hallucinatory-icy worms writhed in one foot, his anus spasmed. "Jesus," he screamed. "Jesus, please!"
Someone grabbed his hand. He opened his eyes.
Morris, smiling at the great good humor of life, pressed a bloody steel screw into Charlie's quivering palm. "Bone atrophy," he explained. "This was getting loose."
"Oh, please," Charlie cried hoarsely. "Just let me call my wife." He dropped the screw and fell flat upon the table, the pain sparking and crackling brightly. "Just give me the phone… and let me-" But the pain rode up his back again, like the wheel of a freight car, and he had to tuck into himself, let it go past. I can ride this, he thought, I know I can. He noticed Morris examining a steel clamp. I'm stronger than they are, Ellie, don't worry. I've done this before. Now his back jerked in convulsions, the nerves and muscles confused, red lights popping before his eyes. They can't kill me, sweetie, I promise. He was going to hold and hold and hold. Stay conscious. It's fine, Ellie! Tell Julia. Tell Ben.
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Brooklyn September 28, 1999
If he was the coward he suspected himself to be, he'd get the truck and drive back out to Orient Point, using his right hand for the steering as well as the shifting. Stay in the slow lane. Not so hard. Then bump along past the farms and the pumpkin stands, past the ice cream shops and gas stations and public beaches, until he found his hidden dirt lane. He'd get out and with one arm patiently cut the scrub oak he'd dropped before he'd left, then park the truck next to the cottage. And look at the tomatoes and the corn. Look at the purple honeysuckle on the near side of the barn. He'd feel good. The grass would be tall and wet. He'd pick up his key under the oyster shell and poke around the cottage, then get hungry and drive out on the main road, avoiding the farm tractors, to the diner with the school bus in back full of firewood. He could go in, coward that he was, and sit down and of course they'd stare at his stump and maybe ask what happened and maybe they wouldn't and he wouldn't care either way. Just give me the chicken dinner, please. After a few days no one would care anymore and he could be alone. He'd sit by the window of the cottage and watch the day and the night move over the ocean, and conclude that, as a coward, he'd left the thing unfinished. He'd decided to come back into the city because of Christina, and so far as he understood, she was in more trouble than ever now-a problem with some money-and here he had not yet talked to her, not yet helped her. He could argue to himself that he'd had his goddamn arm cut off and one foot almost ruined and lost a tooth, and that meant he didn't have to help her. That he'd made a valiant attempt and failed. Lost all his cash but gotten out before it'd cost him too much. Gotten out with enough to go on. He could tell all these nice things to himself and they would be lies.
An hour later, at seven in the morning, he looked at the stump while the nurse changed the dressing. They'd cut a couple of pieces of skin off his ass and used them to make a little flap that they sewed across the wet part of the slice.
"It's healing well," the nurse said.
"When do the stitches come out?" Rick asked, his cheek still hurting.
"Two weeks. No sooner than that. There are a lot of dissolving stitches inside, too."
"There's nothing else that happens here, right?"
She looked at him, not unkindly. "They have new prosthetic arms that respond to the nerve impulses in the stump," she said. "That requires some physical therapy to-"
"No, no," Rick muttered. "I'm just asking if it's all set to go."
She understood. "The doctors fixed the artery so that the blood turns around and goes back," she explained. "Once they do that, the tissue normalizes pretty quickly. It's the nerves that take a while." She pulled off the mesh booty they'd put on his left foot and inspected the small dark scabs left from the drill. The flesh around the punctures remained puffy and sensitive, but there'd been no infection. The ankle and foot would need bone surgery, of course. The doctors and nurses had asked him how he'd been injured, but he explained that it'd be better if he didn't explain. Should we call the police? No, he'd said.
After the nurse left, he reached over to the table next to the bed with his right hand, opened the drawer, and pulled out the Bible. It seemed heavy enough. He whacked the stump a couple of times just to see how it felt. Not too bad. He hit it hard a few times more, at different angles. It hurt, but no bleeding.
By ten o'clock, he had checked out of the hospital and reached his truck. There he found they'd spent a few minutes tearing up the seats and glove compartment looking for Easter Bunny gifts and Cracker Jack prizes. The money and traveler's checks were gone, as he expected. He slipped in the key, wondering if they'd fucked with the engine. Started right up. He drove to Macy's, where his mother used to take him each fall before school began. He used his brother's American Express card to buy shoes, socks, underwear, a dress shirt, a suit, and a tie. He put on all these things in the Macy's dressing room, hobbling on his sore foot. The saleslady who was helping him was very nice, stared at his bandage but didn't ask. Wearing the new clothes, he walked gingerly up Broadway through the New Jersey shoppers and black kids from Harlem looking for action. I need cash, he thought. Or something I can trade, no questions asked. He stepped into an electronics store run by some Iranians. They noticed his good clothes and called him "my friend." He told them his father had just retired and he, Rick, wanted to give him something special, something that would last forever. How much are you looking to spend? they asked, rubbing the chests of their silky European shirts. Rick said he didn't care about the cost, he just wanted the best. Nothing but the best for my father. They started him off on a three-thousand-dollar wide-screen television, and he announced that he wanted only the best, and they said, I strongly agree, my friend. Very good television, the best. I'll pay Paul back later somehow, he told himself. He spent ten minutes pretending to choose between the eight-thousand-dollar television and the eleven-thousand-dollar television. Both excellent price, my friend. For you we make very good price, first time you buy with us. You are happy, you come back. This we know. My family, they have been selling for two hundred years. He chose the eleven-thousand-dollar television and asked them if they thought it was a good choice. Very good. They carried it to the truck for him. You have very good taste, they said.
By noon, he was sitting in a bar in Queens, where he exchanged the television for lunch, three thousand dollars in cash, a Ruger. 22 pistol, a 12-gauge Winchester pump shotgun, and a box of shells for each gun. Then he purchased several other items: a stylish long winter coat, a pair of leather gloves, a stapler, an electric razor, an AC/DC adapter that ran off his truck's cigarette lighter, a box of cotton wadding, a roll of duct tape, a Swiss Army knife, and a hacksaw. Sitting in his truck under the FDR, not far from a man throwing bags of construction debris into the East River, he measured the shotgun carefully against his stump. Then he opened the door of the truck, wedged the gun under his boot, and cut about a foot off the barrel. Then he put the gun in the left arm of the coat, stuffing it with the wadding, and stapled the left glove, also stuffed, to the cuff. Using the knife, he slit the arm of the coat, so that he could reach it with his right hand. Last, he awkwardly taped the butt of the gun to the end of his stump and pulled the coat on over it. The gun was hidden. Using his right hand, he set the stuffed gun-arm into the deep left pocket. He loaded the pistol and put it in the right. Rick Bocca, he whispered, botta-bing, botta- boom.