“Okay, that’s enough!”
The voice had come from the front seat. His buddy Sal the Driver. Now Sal had a gun too, and with the roomy backseat of the Mercedes-Maybach, Myron would have no chance to reach him in time. Sal pointed the gun, his eyes wide and full of rage.
He wanted to shoot.
Myron hesitated. And that was all it took.
The man on the left, the one he’d elbowed in the nose, hit Myron on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. Myron saw stars. There was another blow — Myron wasn’t sure from where — and then another.
And then there was blackness.
Chapter Eight
Myron was tied to a chair in the center of the room. His left shoe and sock were off.
Next to his bare foot was a set of pruning shears.
There was also a protective plastic sheet under the foot.
Oh, this wasn’t good.
There were four men. One was Sal. Two were the men who’d jumped in from the sides. And there was a new one, clearly the leader, who stood in front of him.
“Saw the pin drop to your friend,” the leader said. “Sal stuck your phone in the back of a truck heading west. Your friend is probably tracking you to the California border by now.”
The leader’s appearance screamed old-school bad guy. He had the greasy two-day growth on his face. His hair was slicked back and his shirt was unbuttoned. He had gold chains ensnared in his chest hairs and a toothpick clenched in his teeth.
“I guess you were some hotshot basketball player back in the day,” the leader said. “But I never heard of you.”
“Wow,” Myron said. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”
The leader smiled, gave the toothpick a good chew. “We got ourselves a comedian, boys.”
“I’m also a gifted vocalist,” Myron said. “Want to hear my rendition of ‘Volare’?”
“Oh, I’m going to hear you sing all right.”
Again the smile. Myron didn’t look away. Rule Two of Engagement: You never show fear. Not ever. That was what Myron had learned. These guys feed off fear. It arouses them. It gives them strength.
Assess. That was what Myron knew to do. Take it in. Figure out what he could. Myron checked out the space quickly. The walls were concrete. There was a tire pump against one wall. A shovel too. There were tools on the wall.
Could be a garage.
He could hear traffic outside, the occasional loud radio as a car speeded by. The leader stepped forward. He kept chewing the toothpick.
“Where is Bo?”
“The toothpick,” Myron said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit much?”
“What?”
“The Badass gnawing on a toothpick,” Myron continued. “It’s been done. A lot.”
That made the leader smile. “Good point.” He spit out the toothpick and moved closer. “Let me tell you how this is going to play out, okay? See your foot? The one with no shoe or sock?”
“I do, yeah.”
“So here’s the thing, hotshot. We’re going to cut off your pinky toe. That’s not open for discussion. You can’t get out of it. It has to happen. It’s our boss’s thing. Like it’s his slogan or something.”
“His MO,” Sal corrected.
The leader nodded. “Yeah, that’s better, thanks. His MO.” Then: “What’s MO stand for anyway?”
“Operating method, I think.”
“Then it would be OM.”
“Right,” Sal said. “Wait. I think it’s Method of Operation?”
“Then it would be MOO.”
“Moo,” Sal said. “Like a cow.”
“Right. And that would be easier to say, right? We would say ‘cutting off a toe is his moo.’ Moo is one syllable. It’s easier to say. MO is two syllables. Who’d abbreviate it and make it harder to say? So it can’t be that.”
“We can google MO, Jazz,” Sal said.
“Right, of course.”
Then Myron said, “Modus operandi.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what MO stands for. Modus operandi. It’s Latin.”
Jazz liked that. “Look at Einstein the comic vocalist over here,” he said.
Sal added, “Einstein without a pinky toe.”
“Well, he’ll still have one pinky toe if he cooperates.”
“Einstein with one pinky toe instead of two.”
“Kind of a mouthful, Sal.” The leader — Jazz — turned back to Myron. “So that’s the deal, my friend. You lose the pinky toe. No matter what. Even if you sing like a canary. But if you don’t want to lose more appendages—”
“Good word, Jazz.”
“What, ‘appendages’?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks, Sal. I do that word-a-day thing online.” Back to Myron. “Anyway, if you don’t want to lose more appendages” — he looked back and winked at Sal as he said it — “you’ll tell us what we want to know. Where is Bo?”
“How do you know I’m looking for him?” Myron asked.
“Yeah, that’s not really important.”
“Well, yeah, Jazz — can I call you Jazz? — yeah, Jazz, it is.”
“How so?”
“Because if you know I’m looking for Bo, you also know I don’t know where he is. If I did know, I wouldn’t be looking for him, would I?”
Jazz took that in. He looked at Sal.
Sal said, “Kinda makes sense, Jazz.”
The other two goons nodded agreement.
“But you are looking for him, right?” Jazz said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Myron debated how to play it and decided to play it as straight as possible. “He may be connected to another missing person.”
“Who?”
“Who what?”
“Who’s the other missing person?”
“Oh,” Myron said to stall. “You know what’s interesting?”
“Can’t wait to hear.”
“We both seem to be on the same side here.”
Jazz rubbed his chin. “How do you figure?”
“We are both looking for Bo Storm. If we pool our knowledge, we could probably help each other out.”
“Oh man, that would be great, Myron. I so want to help you out. It’s what I live for really.”
Sal shook his head. “The dude is stalling.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Let’s clip off the toe and speed this up. Jerry?”
One of the goons said, “What?”
“You got the ice cooler?”
Jerry the Goon brought over a small Coleman cooler, the kind of thing you’d store a six-pack in, and placed it next to Myron’s foot. He looked back at Jazz.
“Go ahead, Jerry. Do the honors.”
The idea clearly didn’t thrill Jerry. “I did it last time.”
“So? You’re good at it.”
Sal said, “I’ll do it. I’m still pissed off at him about that choke hold.”
This was not good.
Myron tested the ropes. No give at all. Sal moseyed over. Outside, Myron could still hear the cars whizzing by, the snatches of songs on the radio. Sal bent down and picked up the pruning shears. He brandished them right in front of Myron’s eyes, slowly squeezing and relaxing the handles, just to show Myron that the shears did, in fact, work.
Myron tried to buck, kick out, move in any way. But there was no give to the ropes.
Sal dropped to his knee by Myron’s exposed foot.
“Hold up a second,” Myron said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Let’s talk this out.”
“We will, Myron,” Jazz said. “Don’t worry about that. But first, the toe has to go.”
Sal opened the shears. He showed Myron the curved blade. Myron desperately started to wiggle the foot, tried to squirm or bend or whatever.
Anything so it wouldn’t stay still.