Then suddenly a revelation came to Blakely. He would no longer judge a person by his appearance. A man wearing a T-shirt counted as much in this land of democracy as a millionaire in a $700 suit. He would no longer push anyone aside just because the person looked like a nobody. Especially if the person was holding on to him by his eyelashes.
"Where's the prisoner you're holding with the missing front teeth?" Remo asked.
"Marco Gonzalez?" Blakely sqtieaked.
"That's the one."
"Out on bail." The judge's eyelids were stretched out in front of him like two red, candy-striped awnings.
"I thought there wasn't any bail for him."
"Changed my mind."
"You mean all that loot in your pockets changed your mind. Where'd it come from?"
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Remo pulled Blakely's eyelids in the direction of his trouser pockets, out of which peeked the crisp edges of several bills. Blakely's head whipped downward with surprising agility.
"I don't know," he croaked, his voice constricted by his awkward posture. "Some guy with gold balls."
"I see. Just in case I don't get that close a look, what's his name?"
The Honorable James Addlington Blakely was drooling onto his fly now. "Didn't tell me his name. Dark hair, regular features, about your height. He carried two gold balls on a necklace. He's got Gonzalez. Will you let go of my eyes now?"
"Sure," Remo said. He released them with a twang. The judge was weeping wildly as his facial skin slowly slid back into formation. He closed his eyes, hoping to hear the crazy T-shirted nobody leave.
He didn't. All he heard was a gentle whirr. When he opened his eyes, the fellow was gone. And all the money that had been in his pockets was raining around the room in a million tiny pieces of green confetti.
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CHAPTER NINE
Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzalez was in pain. It was the worst pain he had ever known in his life, worse than when he had gone too far with Rosa's tie-bodiced blouse and she had kicked him between his legs with her spike heels, worse than when six black street toughs with lengths of lead pipe put out his lights for two days, even worse than the time Fats Ozepok knocked out his two front teeth.
Rosa's ringside kick had been all right, because she was so sorry afterward that she'd not only let Marco undo her tie-bodice blouse, but had let him sneak two fingers into her underpants by way of apology. And while Fats and the Watts boys with the pipe had banged him around pretty hard, he was blissfully unconscious on both occasions after the first five minutes of the scuffle.
The pain now was different. It offered no relief in Rosa's sweet arms, and no retreat into uncon-
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sciousness. Because the man in front of him fidgeting with the gold balls on his necklace was neither a Mexican virgin nor a thrill-crazed ghetto blood. He was some kind of cold, professional killer, of that Gonzalez was sure. The man with the gold balls knew how to inflict pain and see to it that his victims stayed awake to feel it.
He was never rushed for time, this cold stranger who had taken Gonzalez from the holding cell and brought him blindfolded to this stinking cellar. He just kept asking the same stupid questions over and over, and after Gonzalez gave him the same answers, the man would break Marco's fingers with a hammer, or hold burning cigarettes to his his chest.
The questioning and the pain had been going on for hours, and the stranger had not once cursed, raised his voice, or struck Gonzalez in anger. Just the repeated questions about the metal box beside the Dempsey Dumpster outside the UCLA software lab, followed by the careful, emotionless administering of pain.
They were resting now, the interrogator toying with the dangling gold balls of his necklace, Gonzalez sitting in the chair he had been tied to, tasting the acrid droplets of sweat from his face as they rolled between his cracked lips. He tried to think of Rosa, but his mind kept returning to the same, inevitable questions to be asked: What did he do with the box? Where did he take it? Who was his employer?
"Where is the LC-111?" the man began softly. "Mister, I told you maybe a hundred times.
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That LC box by the dumpster just looked like some metal trash to me."
"Where is the LC-111?"
Gonzalez sighed. "At the dump. The Hollywood Disposal Service."
The man lit a cigarette, puffed it to redness, and held it close to Marco's shoulder. "Where is the LC-111?" the man asked for the third time.
The hairs on Marco's shoulder curled and ¦ singed off, giving off a smell that had come to permeate the cellar since the questioning began. The oily stink of fried flesh and hair was everywhere. Marco's skin, a fraction of an inch from the man's cigarette, was starting to blister.
"I'm telling you the truth."
"Perhaps," the man said, and pressed the glowing end of the cigarette into Marco's shoulder.
The burn sent Gonzalez screaming into spasms of pain. "Stop! I'll tell you. What do you want to hear? I give it to the Russians. I throw it over a cliff. I hock it for twelve-ninety-eight and a wrist-watch. Jesus, just tell me what you want."
The interrogator exhaled two long streams of smoke, put out the cigarette with a sigh, and opened a door on the far side of the bare room.
Two burly men entered the room. One of them had a pair of lips so large and rubbery that they seemed comical. Out of a bald, bullet-shaped head stared two beady, beastlike eyes. The other was small and spindly and was dressed in crisp new LeviSj a pink LaCoste shirt, and a pair of Bass Weejun loafers. The interrogator made a gesture of dismissal toward the figure in the chair as he spoke rapidly to the two men in a language
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Gonzalez didn't understand. The men answered him in the same language, occasionally glancing at Gonzalez warily.
After a moment of discussion, the interrogator snapped out what sounded like an order. The ox-faced subordinate with the lips left the room and came back with a briefcase, which he placed reverently atop his open arms. The interrogator opened it and took out a plastic case housing a hypodermic needle and several vials wrapped in chamois cloth. He held a vial up to the light, filled the syringe with its contents, then walked back to Gonzalez, carrying the needle aloft.
"I hate needles," Gonzalez said softly, feeling the spittle in his mouth turn to rubbery strings.
The interrogator didn't answer. The hypodermic went into Gonzalez's left bicep and out again. As he counted the seconds on his watch, the interrogator fingered the dangling gold balls. Gonzalez watched his face grow dim and gray like an old photograph, then fade away. The last thing he saw was the necklace, seemingly suspended in midair, its gold balls clicking together in rhythm.
"Is he dead?" the agent holding the briefcase across his arms asked in Russian.
"Of course not," Mikhail Andreyev Istoropovich answered. "He is our only link with the LC-111, however weak that link is."
"What about the professor?" the other subordinate said, straightening the collar of his shirt. "We could take her to Moscow Center with us."
Istoropovich pursed his lips in disgust. "Idiot. The disappearance of the LC-111 could be con-
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strued as an accident. There would be no international repercussions. But kidnapping a NASA physicist in charge of a top secret American project would be dangerous for all of us."
"What about her assistant?"
"Her assistant knows nothing about the workings of the computer. He is employed only to monitor the professor's personal indulgences."
The natty-looking subordinate snapped his fingers. "Comrade Colonel," he said to Istoropovich, "I've got it. I read one of the dossiers on the professor. She has many weaknesses—men and alcohol being among the worst. If we captured her and kept her here in this country, perhaps we could exploit those weaknesses to the point where she would cooperate with us on the LC-111."