"Pretty good," he said, nodding. "Pretty good, Ramsey."
"I'm going to ask you one more time," Brick Ramsey said. "I need to know who you are and who sent you. I need to know how far along this has gotten. You're going to tell me eventually, so why don't you just tell me now."
Shannon opened his mouth. His tongue felt as if it were coated with some sort of sour dust. He felt all those merciless eyes on him and all those cold, plaster body parts and Ramsey's merciless eyes. And no one was coming to help him.
"Go to hell," he said. He looked around the room and swallowed the sour dust and raised his voice. "You can all go to hell."
Ramsey barely lifted his chin in answer and the blockheaded waiter-who-was-a-cop stepped up behind Shannon swiftly and stuck the hard, hurtful barrel of a Beretta into the hollow behind his ear.
The slick agent now rose thoughtfully from his chair. He moved to stand beside Foster. Foster remained where he was, standing at the window, staring out the window at Anatomy across the street, rubbing his fingers with his thumb, rubbing them.
"Should we go in?" the slick agent asked him.
Foster hesitated, gazing down at the restaurant, thinking through the possibilities. Finally, he shook his head. "If they see us coming, they'll kill him on the spot. It'd be over before we got there. Just another dead cop-killer, they'd say." Rubbing his fingers. Thinking. "No. Ramsey is going to want to know who he is, who sent him. If our guy holds out, they'll take him somewhere, somewhere they can work on him, make him talk."
"Why would he hold out?" said the slick agent. "He's just a punk. Why would he?"
Foster's face was blank, his lips parted. He went on rubbing his fingers with his thumb, in a reverie, thinking. "The girl," he said, in a distant voice. "If he gives us up, they'll get to us before we can get her into the system. If he talks, they'll get the girl."
The slick agent considered that, looking from Foster to the window. He grimaced. "He's a punk. He'll just tell them everything."
But Foster shook his head. "He won't. They're going to have to move him somewhere. To work on him."
Now the weaselly agent got out of his chair as well. He moved to stand next to Foster and the slick agent, and they all three stood at the window, looking out.
"They're going to have to bring him out-get him into a car," said Foster. "We'll have a chance then, a shot at stopping them. They've got to bring him out and when they do, we'll see them and make our move."
But he was wrong. They took Shannon out of the restaurant through the service exit in the kitchen. It led to a hall off the ground floor of One City Center. It was an empty concrete hall that led to a service elevator.
Ramsey led the way. Shannon followed him. He had no choice. The blockheaded cop dressed as a waiter was right behind him with the Beretta nine trained on his back. The blockhead kept the gun close to his side so there was no chance to grab it. Shannon knew the blockhead would kill him if he tried.
Ramsey used a Homak key to summon the elevator. The door opened at once. He stood back and let Shannon walk in. Then the blockhead walked in with the nine. Then Ramsey walked in.
Ramsey worked the Homak key in the elevator panel and the door closed. The elevator started up.
Then Ramsey turned and drove his fist deep into Shannon's midsection, right above the groin.
Shannon felt the air rush out of him and doubled over, sick. He was already falling to the floor when Ramsey hit him again, a lead-knuckled blow to the side of the head that dazed Shannon and made his knees give way.
Shannon lay gasping at Ramsey's feet. The moment before Ramsey kicked him, Shannon knew it was coming, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ramsey kicked him in the midsection hard and then kicked him again, aiming for his balls. Shannon spit puke and tried to cover himself. Ramsey grabbed Shannon's windbreaker and lifted him off the floor and punched him, dropping him back down again.
Shannon lay curled on the floor, groaning. He hurt and he was sick, but he didn't think there was anything irrevocable yet, anything broken inside. At the same time, he didn't see any hope of escaping, not with the blockhead holding the gun on him. They would just keep beating him until they were finished, and then they'd shoot him and he didn't see any way out of it. It made him sicker still with fear.
The elevator stopped with a heavy jolt. The door came open. Ramsey grabbed Shannon roughly, lifting him.
"Get up," he said.
Shannon had to take hold of Ramsey as he tried to get his feet under him. He couldn't think straight because of the blows to the head and because his whole body was weak with pain and sickness. He managed to stand up with Ramsey holding him. He stumbled out of the elevator. They were in another concrete hall. Ramsey grabbed him by the collar and hurled him face first into the wall. Shannon felt his nose break, which sent a unique and terrible pain through his head. Hot blood poured down over his face. His legs went rubbery and he started to collapse, but Ramsey grabbed him, held him up, and frog-marched him down the hall.
Shannon saw a door coming at him, but by now he barely knew what was happening. The door opened in the center of a nauseating whirl. A gritty wind bearing the first dead heat of summer washed over Shannon's face. The next thing he knew he was outside, out in the middle of the sky, in the middle of the hot wind. Ramsey dropped him roughly to the floor.
Shannon lay there bleeding, trying to lift his head, trying to look around and get a glimpse of things through his haze of pain and concussion. He saw the naked sky through iron beams, walls in shreds like torn fabric, charred like burned paper. The dark towers of the skyline were visible through the gaps. Great, billowing clouds raced behind the towers on the hot, gritty wind.
Shannon understood where he was. He was on one of the top floors, one of the ruined floors, of One City Center. It was like being in a room that had exploded. The walls were smashed clear through, the beams visible, the windows shattered, the remnants burned. All that was left was the charred wreckage of the place on an open platform in the sky.
He knew what they were going to do to him, too. They were going to throw him off the building. He would fall so far, hit the pavement so hard, his body would be crushed to cinders, and no one would be able to tell what had happened to him. They would get their medical people to say it was an accident or suicide. That would be that.
The fear of dying in that particular fashion made him even weaker, even sicker, but there was nothing he could do, he was too beaten and dazed now to fight back. He tried to think of something that would make it easier for him. He thought of Teresa. He thought he still had the way he felt about her. It was like the gold ring in the boy's hand after his dream in the story-he still had it. He thought she would be safe now. If he could just keep his mouth shut till they killed him, she would be safe, and Michael and the old man-they would be safe, too. So he could die feeling how he felt about her and knowing he had kept his mouth shut and kept her safe and that was something. Otherwise, yeah, it had been a crap life all around. Maybe there was a better life when this one was over. Maybe God would forgive him for some of the bad things he'd done because, in the end, he had helped Teresa, then he would have a better life. But even if there was no God and no better life, Teresa would be safe. Maybe she would even think about him sometimes. So there was that, too. And basically Ramsey could go fuck himself.
The gritty wind blew over him with a roar. The shredded walls shook and fluttered loudly. Shannon lay on the floor and fought against his sickness and the fear of falling.