“Of course. The forgery business somewhat relies on discretion.”
“Good. So, I am not wrong to search. I figure you made this man papers in the last month, at most. But I also figure little ferrets like you, Han… well, you’d keep copies for leverage, correct? You’d keep something to hold over your customers in case they became dangerous.”
“It’s a theory,” Han said, which seemed better than admitting he was right.
“And I suppose since you are an ancient, decrepit piece of detritus, you would keep hard copies rather than digital. I noticed your drafting table. You do most of your work by hand.”
“Yes… well, you have your art form, I have mine,” Han said. But the man was dangerously accurate, he decided. “If you’re going to tear the place apart and kill me, what do you need me for now?”
Van Kamp took a few paces and stopped so that he was standing over the old man. “I thought we might be able to speed up the process by you telling me where and what to look for. It’s the only way to make sure it ends quickly.”
“What? What ends quickly?”
“The pain I’m going to introduce to your life.” Van Kamp bent at the waist, hands propped on his thighs, like a school mistress lecturing a small child. “You see, I know who you really are, Han Binh. I know what a brutal, nasty fellow you were in the war, running that POW camp. Someone admirable once, really, a man who knew no limits in seeking power. And now… now, look at you. A washed-up actor running a dry cleaner’s.”
“Life takes its turns,” Han said with a practiced sigh. “But I did two episodes of Simon and Simon, and two of The Fall Guy. That’s something.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about your legacy much longer. I’m going to torture you, Han,” Van Kamp leered, “and I’m going to greatly enjoy myself doing it. I’m going to introduce pain to every part of your body. I will leave the teeth and the testes to last, of course, as their excruciating nerve agony is the sweetest ecstasy to me. And before I’m done, you’re going to help me find Bob Singleton. I know he was here, Han. I know you helped him, because you are the only man in the southwest qualified to forge papers to the exacting standards he would demand. And when I am done, I will kill you.”
Han was sure he knew who Van Kamp meant. He’d only had one high-rolling client in four months, and he’d had a set of Nevada ID made up in the name of Bob MacMillan. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Van Kamp smiled again, though it was barely a grim line; a man unaccustomed to good humor. “Well, that is just fine, my decrepit friend. Just fine. I have killed so many men in so many countries, I’ve just about lost track…”
“Oh… I doubt that,” Han offered wearily. “I imagine you’re the type who keeps a firm count. Probably trophies, too.”
The smile disappeared. “And you won’t be added to the tally, as no one is paying me for you,” the South African said. “Typically, I would use my necklace, you see.” He reached down and lifted it out of his t-shirt for Han to see. “It’s titanium, very strong. The locket on the end was my mother’s. She made me hard, like her, beat me daily like a dog. One day, when I got tired of her discipline, I strangled her with the chain it was on, a platinum rope thing one of her male clients bought her. She was an expensive whore, my mother, but she died squealing like a pig. I throttled the life out of her. I think she would have approved, had it been anyone else.”
“Charming.”
“That chain did not survive the act in question, so I got one made to replace it, one strong enough to throttle a thousand throats. But I save it for paying jobs. You? You’re just a little bit of fun, a healthy scream or two to start my week. Right? Now… I suppose for the sake of posterity, we should do this correctly. I’ll start with the fingernails.”
He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a hypodermic needle. He took off the red plastic cap and held it up to the light, flicking the syringe to ensure it was free of air bubbles. “This has a particularly irritating form of botulinum toxin in it. I’ll slide the needle into the nerves under each of your fingernails, and it will exacerbate the pain a thousand-fold.”
He took a deep breath, as if drinking in the majesty of it all. “Are you ready, old man?” Van Kamp crouched and began to insert the needle into the quick of Han’s forefinger.
The pain was agonizing and Han felt his entire body tense to rigidity, the sensation so awful he couldn’t even scream, the sound trapped in his chest. “CUH… CUH…CUH…” he repeated, unable to form a word.
His torturer looked up at him, wide-eyed with a mix of joy and wonder, as if giddy with happiness, his monstrousness overcome by a child-like glee. “YES! YES! That’s how it starts! A little bit of shock protecting you from the worst of it! Soon, you will scream, old man. You will scream like you have never screamed before. And then you’ll tell me what I want. But… hopefully not too quickly. By the time I’m done, Han Binh, you’re going to wish that spider had bitten you. Because suffocating to death would be sweet sorrow compared to the short time you have left.”
The needle pushed in further and Han let out a terrified shriek. Van Kamp smiled broadly this time, as if feeling something inside. Not pity, or guilt, or any recognizable human emotion, just an animal’s excitement at the imminent death of prey.
“And then, after six months of him running, I can add Bob Singleton to my tally properly.”
Han prayed that his screams might be heard outside. But the place had cinder-block walls. He knew it was in vain; he knew he could scream until his lungs collapsed, and no one would hear.
12BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA
Bob slept fitfully. He’d spent a half-hour before bunking down to set up a crude alarm: a trip line using some of Mr. Feeney’s fishing line, connected to bottles that would shatter when pulled off the window shelf in his motel room.
Not that he expected an immediate return. If the goons worked for Merry Michelsen, the meth dealer Sharmila had mentioned, they’d be trying to figure out how a lawyer handled them so easily, and how far they could push things.
He woke just past dawn, as was his habit, and spent a half-hour with his 5BX workout routine, concluding with five minutes of high-speed, high knee-lift jogging on the spot, his bare feet barely touching the carpet at pace, a fine sweat developing on his brow.
The decades-old workout system had long been abandoned by its inventors, the Canadian Armed Forces, for the brutal toll it could take on joints and its general rigor. But it allowed him to ram intensive exercise into a half hour reliably, and it had worked for two decades, keeping him trim and some of his muscle tone intact even after nearly ten years of mostly sleeping rough.
He showered and checked the news for any sign he was wanted; he didn’t expect the officers in Nevada to track him there, and any description probably included his beard. Losing it made him that much harder to pick out of a crowd. But he had to be careful, he knew. Marcus was depending on him.
At least for a few more hours.
Sharmila had been surprised when he suggested they needed a second lawyer to handle the Monday bail hearing, while he investigated. But it saved Nurse Dawn some trouble; Sharmila called her attorney cousin from San Francisco.
They were supposed to meet around eight at the clinic downtown that also served as her HMO’s headquarters. Instead, Sharmila called just after seven in the morning. “Feel up for a drive?”
Sharmila drove them across the city and into Oildale. The change was obvious and immediate, downtown replaced by mostly residential blocks, the homes smaller and less expensive, the big backyards and pools disappearing.
It’s hardly an inner-city ghetto, Bob thought. But rich, it ain’t.
They passed a trailer park. “Is that…” Bob began to say.
“Nope,” Sharmila said, keeping her eyes on the road. “Oildale has a few.”
The lot was off East Petrol Road and Wesley Lane. They pulled up along its edge and parked. “Well… this is it,” she said. “If you follow the western edge of the property north, you’ll see it hits a stake in the ground eventually. It’s sort of a dot from more than an acre away, but…”
Bob opened the car window. He could hear the sound of engines whining. “Is that…?”
“The racetrack. It’s just a few blocks northwest of here.”
He surveyed the potential trailer park site. “Doesn’t look like much.” He sniffed. “Smells… sulfurous.”
