Terry knew they should get out of there fast, but he wanted his canary to keep singing. He thought of his recent phone conversation with Joshua Censkey and his description of the big guy with almost-blank eyes, thin lips, and bony face. The guy who, according to Censkey, tortured him in the Goleta barn and chucked him in the ocean. “What does Hess look like? Describe him.”
“Pale eyes” stammered Two, “thin lips. Scary face. Shit! I’m telling you the truth. He murders people like it’s nothing. To control judges. Makes his own rules.”
“What do you know about an old, dilapidated barn northeast of Goleta? In the mountains? And tell us the goddamn truth.”
“That’s our Farm. Where His Eminence first met Hess.”
“Whoa!” shouted Dan, getting right in Two’s face. “What’s this His Eminence crap that keeps coming up?”
Two winced and turned his face away from Dan. “His Eminence is…well…His Eminence. That’s what we always call him.”
“Who’s we?” Terry demanded.
“Security.”
“So His Eminence is the owner of the house. It’s Judge Gimuldin, right?”
“Yes, the owner.”
“Jesus!” Dan shook his head in disgust.
Terry glanced at Dan but kept pressing Two for information. “Now what’s this about Gimuldin meeting Hess at the farm?”
“Hess repeats the story often,” Two said, speaking so fast his words practically tumbled over one another. “Hess’ parents ran a commune on the Farm. Back in the 1960s. ‘Liberal-ass communists’, as Hess calls them. Each cheated on the other. Slept around. Traitors to one another; traitors to him, Hess says. Anyway, His Eminence became their lawyer for a while when the commune got evicted—because the forest there was federal land. He lost, and although the feds left the structures, everyone had to vacate the property. Hess, who could never stomach his parents or their friends, took that opportunity to leave.”
“Then what?” Dan demanded.
“He joined various groups around the country—dedicated to a ‘purer America’—as he likes to say. Years later he met His Eminence again. As Hess puts it, ‘I committed, fully, to his efforts to reform America’s legal system, for the greater good.’”
Dan snorted. “That’s quite a story.”
“It is. Because it’s true,” said a big man with pale blue eyes entering the Prison Room with another bald-headed guy, guns drawn. “Now drop the goddamn shotgun. And don’t move a fucking muscle or you’re all dead men.”
Terry and Dan stared at the big guy. The scowling hulk with blank eyes was pointing a Luger at them. Without options, Dan dropped the shotgun. He and Terry slowly raised their hands. The hulk motioned with his head toward a far wall and a pegboard that held keys, cuffs, chains, and tools, and his bald-headed companion scurried across the room and returned with two sets of wrist shackles and some other items. The shackles looked much like the ones Two had on—except portable for chain-gang use. Each set had locking metal cuffs connected by a four-foot heavy metal chain.
The bald guy entered the cell while the bigger one kept his gun pointed at Terry and Dan. Then Baldy kicked the shotgun toward Hess and shackled their hands behind their backs. Next, he took out a roll of red tape. Ripped off two pieces with his teeth. And pasted them over their mouths.
The bald guy turned to Hess, “Secure.”
The big man then entered the cell. Hess walked up to Two and gave him a look that would wither a poisonous spider. “Look at me, you sniveling shit.” Two, still standing and shackled to the wall, stared down at the floor. Hess let out a string of expletives, picked up the shotgun, reversed it in his hands and slammed the butt across Two’s face. Two let out a sound like a dying animal and then went quiet. His face flattened. Blood gushing from his nose, his body sagged, unconscious, hanging limp from the wrist shackles on the wall. The big guy turned and left the cell, nodding once at his assistant. “Lock it. Come with me.”
After locking the cell, both Hess and his companion marched from the prison room, slamming the big door behind them.
After taking a look at yesterday’s security video and working out a new strategy at the large planning table in the basement, Hess looked up at Three, still standing at attention, quietly watching Hess work. “It’s a damn good thing we came back early to get the house ready for His Eminence’s return tonight. But this…development… changes everything. It’s a God-given opportunity is what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have three worthless shits so why not make examples out of them? Use them as training aids.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ll take all three back to Camp, where One and the others are finishing up. Then conduct a torture-training session this evening after dark. Two, especially, will serve as an example. A lesson the trainees will never forget, a lesson about how error and disloyalty will always bring down His Eminence’s wrath. Then we’ll interrogate the other two, and I guarantee they’ll divulge who they are and why they dared come here.”
“What about His Eminence?” asked Three. “Will I pick him up this evening in L.A. with the Lincoln Navigator, as planned?”
“Yes. Pick him up. But before we leave here, I’ll call him to explain why our training will extend into the night. He can choose whether to stay at the house or visit the Camp. Even though His Eminence never participates, he loves to watch our training sessions.” His mouth slid up at one corner in what was almost a smile. “I think tonight’s lessons will be of particular interest to him. And with graduation tomorrow and the Summit on Sunday, he may well decide to visit the Camp tonight. You just be prepared to do whatever he asks.”
“Of course.”
“Now. Let’s go deliver the news to Two and our guests.”
Minutes before, when Hess had slammed shut the prison room door, Terry had jumped up from the cot and motioned to Dan with his head, toward his right pants pocket. Dan, struggling backwards with his cuffed and chained hands, fished the key to the cuffs out. Then back-to-back with Terry, Dan tried, blindly, to insert the key into Terry’s cuffs. After some fumbling and multiple attempts, Dan connected and twisted.
The cuff-lock clicked, just as they heard Hess outside the prison room door. Terry and Dan quickly sat on the cot, and as the door swung open, Dan slipped the key behind the bedding.
“You’re going with us,” Hess snarled as Baldy unlocked the cell. “Get moving.” With his Luger trained on Dan and Terry, Hess stood at the door as they exited the cell. Baldy uncuffed Two, still unconscious, pulled him down from the wall, and shackled his hands behind his back. After he dragged Two out behind Terry and Dan, they made awkward progress through the planning room, great room, then into the elevator and upstairs. Hess made Terry and Dan sit in the living room on the floor. Baldy dumped Two’s body next to them. Reviving slowly, Two blinked his eye open and looked blearily around him. He looked like death on hold. Smashed face. Pale skin. Shirt soaked with blood.
“Go get us something to eat,” Hess told Baldy. “I don’t want to drive to the Camp on an empty stomach.” Then he sat on the sofa and glared at Two. Pointing at the half-dead boy, he spoke to Terry and Dan as if it were a casual conversation.
“I should take care of him right now. But I’m nothing if not a model of restraint. And restraint and control, gentlemen, are always rewarded. This dimwit will be dealt with this evening. We will all watch and enjoy. And we’ll take care of you gentlemen too, don’t you worry. Impersonating city officials—yes, I took a look at the security video and I know how you bamboozled this idiot. Breaking and entering. Trespassing, and torturing poor Two here. You’re bad people. Very bad. We’ll deal with that—right after breakfast.”
Baldy returned with bagels, cream cheese, and coffee. He and Hess munched away as Dan and Terry watched, Two continued to bleed, and the clouds unleashed a torrent of rain which beat against the tall living room windows. After breakfast, Hess told Baldy to go straighten up the house. As he trotted off to do his boss’s bidding, Hess stared at Two again, for a long moment. Then he took out his phone.
Terry watched Gimuldin’s Chief of Security stare at his phone as if trying to determine what to do next. He might well call 911—which would be good—but Terry doubted the man would want police on the premises. And he was right. Instead of calling anyone, he just stood there with his gun and phone in his hands. Still facing his three prisoners. Then, as if finally making a decision, he kept his gun pointed directly at them as he backed up toward a grouping of chairs near the furniture on the far side of the room. On his sixth rearward step, the backside of his leg struck an ottoman, the same ottoman Terry had moved to get to an outlet he said he had to test yesterday during the ‘inspection’. Hess stumbled backwards, tried to catch himself without letting his gun fall, bumped into a chair—another piece of furniture Terry had moved—tripped over an end table which wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and fell sideways, hitting his head on the fireplace hearth as he went down. Terry, poised and ready for any opportunity, released the cuff he held closed with his fingers, leapt to his feet, raced toward the window opposite Hess, and threw his body at it, crashing through to land on the manicured lawn, slick with rain. He rolled into a crouch, then sprang up and took off like he’d been shot out of Hess’s Luger, balling the chain dangling off his left cuff in his fist as he dodged and swerved and ran for his life in the now-pouring rain.
