“Yes. I mean no. I’m Finn Murrie. Finny
“Doc.” The white-haired man—Mr. Ludlum— nodded to the one with the droopy eye. “Help this fine young man to remember his name.”
Doc stepped forward. Pando, aka Mr. Weasel, grabbed Finn by the shoulders. Doc removed a heavy ring, put it in the pocket of his chinos, and slapped Finn across the face, good and hard. Then he went the other way, even harder. Spit flew from the side of Finn’s mouth. It hurt plenty, but what he felt most in that moment was astonishment. And shame. He had nothing to be ashamed of, but ashamed he was.
“Now,” Mr. Ludlum said, leaning back and clasping his hands on his midsection, “what is your name?”
“Finn! Finn Mur—”
Mr. Ludlum nodded to Doc, who administered two more brisk slaps. Finn’s ears rang. His cheeks burned. The tears came. “You can’t do that! Why would you do that? You made a mistake! ”
“I can do it.” Mr. Ludlum opened his folder and tossed a pamphlet across the desk. “Open-handed slaps are a world-approved technique for advanced interrogation. I think you should read this carefully before we talk again. See what other techniques we might decide to employ. Take him back, you two. Mr. Bobby Donovan has some homework to do.”
“You don’t even know who you’re—”
He was jerked to his feet, Pando on one side and Doc on the other. Pando picked up the pamphlet and stuffed it into the waistband of Finn’s jeans. “Come along, Bobby-O,” he said. “Let’s take a wee dooter.”
“Ta-ta,” said Mr. Ludlum.
With that Finn was hustled from the study with his cheeks burning and tears streaming from his eyes.
~
BACK IN HIS ROOM—his cell—Finn pulled the pamphlet free of his jeans and looked at it. There was no binding, not even a staple. It was just a few sheets of paper folded together. On the front, smearily printed and slightly askew, was this: WORLD-APPROVED TECHNEEKS FOR ADVANCED INTEROGATION.
“Are you shitting me?” Finn asked. He spoke in a whisper, so the mics—surely there were mics as well as the camera staring down—wouldn’t pick it up. His first thought was that the “pamphlet was a joke. But the slaps hadn’t been a joke. His face still burned.
The first page of the pamphlet: OPEN-HANDED SLAPS, OKAY!
The second page: SLEEP DEPERVATION TECHNEEKS (LOUD MUSIC, SOUND FX, ETC.), OKAY!
Third page: THREATS (TO FAMILY MEMBERS, FUCK-BUDDIES, ETC.), OKAY!
Fourth: ENEMAS, OKAY!
Fifth: STRESS POSITIONS, OKAY!
Sixth: WATERBORDING, OKAY!
Seventh: FIST HITTING, FOOT PADDLING, BURNING (WITH CIGARETTES OR LITERS), RAPE &, SEXUAL ABUSE, NOT OKAY!
Eighth: IF NOT SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED, PROBABLY OKAY!
The rest of the pages were blank.
“They can’t even fucking spell,” Finn whispered. But if it wasn’t a mistake, or someone’s macabre idea of a joke, it could mean he was in the hands of psychopaths. The idea was more terrifying than believing it was a case of mistaken identity. That could be resolved.
One of his grandma’s aphorisms (she had many) came to mind: Most people will be reasonable if you speak soft and gwe them a chance.
Because he had no better idea, he dropped the pamphlet on the floor, got up, and faced the camera. He spoke soft. “My name is Finn Murrie. I live at 19 Rowan Tree Road with my grandma and my two sisters, Colleen and Marie. My mother is away on business, but she can be reached on her mobile at ...” Finn reeled off the number. “All of them will tell you I am who I say I am. Then ...”
Then what?
Inspiration came. Or logic. Maybe both.
“Then you can put a bag over my head, even knock me out again if you feel like you need to, and drop me off on some random street corner. You can do that because I don’t know who you are and I don’t know where this is. I don’t have no briefcase and I don’t have no papers. Just, you know, be reasonable. Please.”
He’d lost track of how many times he’d said please. Quite a few, for sure.
Finn went back to the cot and lay down. He began to drift. Did that other fella look like him? Had he really been dressed like him? Had it possibly been a setup instead of a mistake? He wished he’d gotten more than a glimpse of Bobby. Just as he was slipping away, Anthrax came ripping out of the speakers: “Madhouse.”
He almost fell off the cot. He covered his ears. After two minutes that seemed much longer, the music stopped. He no longer felt sleepy, but he felt plenty hungry. Would they feed him? Maybe not. Starving a prisoner wasn’t specifically mentioned, so it was PROBABLY OKAY!
He slept. He dreamed that Bobby looked like him. Or was him.
They gave him four hours.
Then they came for him.
~
FINN DIDN’T SEE if it was Doc and Pando or some of the other ones. Before he realized what was happening, he was hauled to his feet, still mostly asleep. A bag came down over his head. It smelled vaguely of chicken dirt. He was propelled forward and slammed into the side of the door.
“Whoops, sorry!” someone said. “Little off course there, Bobby.”
He was yanked back and propelled forward again. His nose was bleeding, maybe broken. He snuffled up blood, choked, began to cough. They were moving him at suicidal speed, his paddling feet barely touching the floor. They came to stairs and he was driven down them like a hog in a chute. Near the bottom they let go and one of the men gave him a hearty push. Finn screamed into the bag, imagining a drop of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet, with broken-bodied death awaiting him upon touchdown.
It was only two or three steps. His foot caught on the bottom one and he went sprawling. He was grabbed again. Every time he drew a breath, the bag went into his mouth and he tasted his own blood, fresh and still warm, set off by a soupgon of chicken shit.
“Stop it! ” he screamed. “Stop it, I CQn’t breathe! ”
“Pull the other one, Bobby,” one of them said. “The not-breathing part comes later.”
His knees hit something hard. He was whacked open-handed across the back of the neck and he fell forward onto what felt like a bench.
“Gotta flip the omelet so it doesn’t burn,” someone said cheerily, and he was turned over. One of his flailing hands hit something soft.
“Off my langer, faggot,” a new voice said, and he was slapped through the bag. “That’s strictly my girlfriend’s proppity.”
“Please,” Finn said. He was crying, trying not to choke on the blood now running down his throat. His nose throbbed like an infected tooth. “Please don’t, please stop, I’m not the guy, I’m not Bobby Donovan—”
Someone fetched the side of his face a tremendous whack. “Bobby Feeney, you stupid git.”
A cloth was draped over the bag. The first voice said, “Here it comes, Bobby! Bwoosh! ”
Warm water soaked the cloth, then the bag, then Finn’s face. He sucked water in and spluttered it out again. He held his breath. The water continued to pour down. At last he had to breathe. Instead of air, he sucked in water. He gargled it, choked on it, spat it out, swallowed more. There was no air. Air was gone. Air was a golden oldie, a blast from the past. He was drowning.
Finn thrashed. The water continued to pour through the hood. There was no sense of drifting away, no peace, only the horror of constant water. He reached for unconsciousness and couldn’t find it. Only more water.
At last it stopped. They rolled him onto his side. He vomited into the bag. One of the men patted it gently all around. “A puke facial!” he exclaimed. “And we don’t even charge!”
They rolled him onto his back and yanked the hood off. He was allowed a hand free to wipe his face. He coughed and coughed while he did it. At last his vision cleared enough for him to see Mr. Ludlum peering down at him. Because he was at the head of the bench, he looked upside down. His rusty black tie hung down like a stopped pendulum.