The Hard Bounce - [41]

Ollie sat at the desk. Again, his fingers flew over the keyboard faster than my eyes could follow. The capture focused, then enlarged. Focused and enlarged. A third time. The piece of the sign was clear. Distinctly, I could make out part of two words. They were all in caps, one word atop the other in red and yellow neon. APA above PANA.

Junior cocked his head at the screen. “What the hell does that say?”

“Apa Pana,” said Ollie. “Sounds Spanish. Either of you speak Spanish?”

“Un poquito,” Junior said. Unfortunately, I knew un poquito accounted for about a quarter of the Spanish phrases Junior spoke. The other three were filthy.

“I think it’s parts from two different words,” I said.

Ollie looked at the screen again, head cocked at the same angle as Junior. “Oh. Oh, yeah.”

“Panama?” Junior said. “Japanese?”

“Junior,” I said. “Does Japanese Panama make any goddamn sense to you?”

“Just train of thought, man. Could be a travel agency.”

“Next time you travel, fly Japanese Panama Airlines.”

“Okay, cheesedick. You think of something.”

I couldn’t. “Can you print that out for us, Ollie?”

“Already did.” He handed us both blowups of the picture on the screen. “Listen, Boo. Because I saw that, it doesn’t make me accessory to anything, does it?”

Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention. Ollie’s also one paranoid bastard. He didn’t eat fish for two years because he thought the government was spreading AIDS through seafood. I’m not kidding. He had a reason. It also made sense.

I squeezed his shoulder. “How could you be? You never saw the video, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. My memory is already hazy. What are you going to do with this guy?”

Junior and I looked at each other. “That all depends on him. We’d love nothing more than to punch him so many times he shits sideways for a few weeks. But our job is to find the girl and get her back to her father. How much pain we inflict is directly in correlation to how much resistance he puts up.”

“I’m gonna fuck him up, either way,” Junior said.

“Aw, who am I kidding? We’re fucking him up either way.”

I looked back to Ollie. I really didn’t like what I saw. The color had run out of his face like rainwater down a drain. I thought he was going to be sick again. Softly, he said, “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Junior asked.

“You guys didn’t watch the whole thing, did you?”

Ollie couldn’t stay. Couldn’t watch it again. He left us to go get some beer from the packie. I’d never known Ollie to touch alcohol before.

Junior and I stared at the monitor, sick dread a lump in my stomach. Or maybe it was just the meatballs. Felt like dread. I hit play.

The scene played out like it had before, but silently. Either Ollie didn’t have speakers connected to the computer or had the sound turned off. For whatever reason, it made the viewing worse. Cassandra’s screaming was still there, but it was inside my head, along with the sound of the blood pounding through my veins. The rage flared red before my eyes.

We reached the point where we’d stopped watching. The video played on. Snake did… things. Things I’m not going to recount. After a minute, Cassie stopped struggling, resigned to the abuse, the humiliation. She just lay there, no fight left in her. Easier to let it happen.

That is, until Snake picked up the knife again.

When she saw the knife in his hand, she bucked underneath him, kicked her legs.

He rode it out, letting his weight keep her pinned. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew he was laughing. He held the knife aloft, letting it catch the light, taunting her with it and his power over her.

A quick flash.

A spray of red along the headboard and wall.

One tiny arm reached up briefly, then fell to the bed. One last spurt of blood arced across the wall. Then the video faded to black.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Junior move to the bathroom. I stared at the black screen.

“You gonna be sick?” I called.

“I dunno.” He made a horrible gassy sound, then, “I think I might be. You?”

“No.” There was surprise in my answer, since a part of me felt like I should be. I wasn’t. Instead, I kept right on looking at the dead monitor. The red haze was gone. Instead, my vision took on a sharp clarity, as though the world had its edges filed to points. I felt no anger. I felt no sadness or pity or revulsion. I felt neither hot nor cold. Even my clenched jaw stopped hurting.

I felt absolutely nothing.

Chapter Thirteen

By the time I tracked down Underdog, the sky had gone purple, Kenmore Square filling up with Sox fans heading to a night game, the Fenway lights giving an eerie glow in the night sky behind The Cellar. Audrey said I had just missed him and he might have gone to Wolf’s Grill. I called Wolf’s, but nobody picked up. I took a cab over to Wolf’s. No Underdog. I realized I hadn’t eaten since Ollie’s. I ordered some ribs and asked the waitress if she’d seen Dog. She said he was headed to The Cellar or The Model. I called The Model. He wasn’t there, but they had a good idea where he might be. This went on for the better part of two hours. Eight calls to various bars and two call backs later, I finally reached him back at The Cellar.