In the unlikely event you can help it, never be tortured to death by an amateur. It goes without saying that most of the time you're really not going to have much choice. Once you find yourself tied to a metal chair in some unfinished basement you've never seen before, it's a little late to start interviews for who uses the pipe wrench. Now that said, if you can influence things a bit – it always helps to find the guy in the room who gives the best torture. “Good” torture, of course is a relative term. I mean, it wouldn't be “torture” if it were pleasant. If it were pleasant it would be something more like a sex fetish or S&M territory. I'm not going there, that's a whole different conversation. But if we're talking about your honest-to-god “torture” torture, then you're going to want someone who's spent a lot of time practising and has some showmanship about them.
The reason you want a torturer with practice is because that practice is the difference between being tortured and just dying a slow and painful death. A bus can do that. A practised torturer learns what your limits are, breaks them, and will generally scar you for the rest of your life without killing you. Sometimes without even crippling you. The whole point is to inflict the maximum necessary pain without causing too much physical injury along the way. A torturer who knows what he's doing will leave you pissing the bed at night for fifteen years and only break about four fingers. Give or take. Your run-of-the-mill hired muscle will just beat you upside the head with a two-by-four until you die. That's the kind of situation what leads to people's next-of-kin buying guns and shit. Bad for business. A torturer with practice is key.
The reason you want a torturer with some flair is so that you won't be bored and in total pain at the same time. A proper sequence of torture and interrogation takes a long time. Usually several days, if not weeks. And if you're going to be stuck doing something horrible with some guy you hate for weeks at a time, it helps if you're with somebody who can keep things interesting. “Bad” torture – again a relative term – has a lot in common with bad horror movies. Stuff like nobody knowing how to hold the props or some guy spouting bad one-liners. That is of course unless you're just in it for the gore, but if you just can't make it through the week without being up to your elbows in human viscera, then you probably should talk to an analyst. Or become a pathologist. Every big city needs a few pathologists.
Anyway, back to my original point. Generally, what a “torturee” should be looking for is for their torture to do as little crippling over as much time as possible. That way, not only do you retain more mobility in the event of a rescue, there's more time for someone to discover your location and mount said rescue. The last thing you want is to go through three hours of having your fingers cut off and then die of blood loss before the SWAT team kicks in the door to save you. Besides, I believe everybody deserves an open casket. That goes for everybody - regardless of how much of you they find to put inside the casket.
Now bear in mind that if you're aiming to make the torture last as long as possible, you're headed for a lot more pain with an experienced torturer. The mook with the two-by four will just keep knocking you unconscious. That eats up a lot of time. Remember, you control how long the torture lasts, and whether or not you break. A good torturer will remind you of that fairly often. After all, he's got grocery lists and shit to do too.
Sometimes though, a really sick bastard will involve other people in your situation or try to make you do stuff for his amusement or just because he's a fucking sicko. In those cases, ignore everything I've said so far and try to go out as quickly as possible. It's really much better than the alternative.
My name is Sig by the way. I torture people for a living. I'm fifty-three, semi-retired and I spend most of my winters in Mexico chasing after women twenty years younger than me. Today I woke up tied to a chair in my hotel room with some muscle-bound escapee from Act Two of a Rocky movie smacking me across the mouth with a fucking rubber club. One of them whatchacallits – “truncheon” maybe?
Looks like its gonna be one of those days...
First off, I'm not surprised to find myself waking up this way. When your profession is inflicting pain and suffering, people wanting you dead goes with the territory. I've got a long history and it catches up with me every once in a while. Most of the time I wish I could recommend a good grief counsellor but that's too much like gloating. So I'm okay with somebody trying to kill me every now and then. I know I'm a horrible person. It makes sense to want me dead. If I was them and not me, I'd want me dead. The lengths some people go though just seems a little disproportionate. You off somebody's family there's hurt feelings. Maybe a retaliation kill or two. You spend seventeen days feeding a guy his own toenails a scrap at a time? His entire extended family's gonna be hunting for you for years. Hey sweetheart! The only reason your husband's still alive is because I'm a professional and he had ugly feet to begin with! Maybe now he can focus on his podiatrist career and spend less time at the racetrack! You're welcome!
Thankfully, everybody who's tried to kill me so far has been a grieving idiot. No proper planning, can't hold the gun straight, everything's blurry from all the crying. Hell, I even avoided an ambush one time because some hydrangeas started sobbing. True story. Anyway, where was I?
Right! Getting my jaw broken by Dolph Lundren's ugliest stunt double. This guy has no fucking clue what he's doing. There's a reason splashing a guy with a bucket of water to wake him up is the go-to trick on TV. There's the surprise, the disorientation, the realization that you're tied to a chair - and then some stranger's standing halfway across the room with an empty bucket in his hands and a goofy smile on his face. That's the kind of shit that rattles a fella. You know what happens when you start out by slapping a man across the mouth with a two-foot stick made of rubber? He's gonna question the length of the stick in your pants is what.
Unfortunately, he's whacked me a couple times before I even woke up and my jaw hurts too much from his last swing to tell him so. He takes a deep breath to start yelling at me and starts waving the rubber club just under my nose. It hurts to smile but I just can't help myself.
“What? You think this is funny you old fuck? The only reason you're alive is because you know shit my boss wants to know. Now are you gonna talk or what?”
I can't take it any more, I just gotta fuck with him. “Yeah I'll talk.” I say with as straight a face as I can muster.
“Good! Then talk.”
“About what?” The club starts quivering less than an inch from my nose.
“About Tony Mallory.”
““Short” Tony Mallory or “Irish Tony” Mallory?”
The billy club taps my nose. I think it's supposed to be a warning. “Don't play games with me asshole. Now tell me about Tony Mallory.”
“Seriously, I've worked on at least two guys named Tony Mallory and I don't even know if those were their real names.”
WHACK!
I get hit across the face with the club. The force of the hit throws me against the back of my chair so hard I can feel the wooden struts shift in their sockets. I'm pretty sure the only thing keeping me in this chair is the fact that the armrests are actually one huge piece of wood that wraps all the way around the chair's back. The blurry Aryan man says “I said don't play games with me.” The emphasis he puts on the word “said” tells me that he's more interested in me doing-as-told than in me telling him anything useful. The smack across the cheek tells me he knows nothing about he human skull. If he busts my jaw or fractures my cheekbone I won't be able to tell him anything. And then I'm probably dead. I hang my head and try to look defeated.
All of a sudden, he yanks my head back and backhands me across the face.
“Did I say you could go to sleep?”
“Oh come on, really?”
“-What did you just say?”
Oh shit. I said that out loud. Run with it. “Listen kid, I've had boys pull my hair and smack me across the face with dildos before.”
The Great-Golden-Punching-Bag lets go of my head and wheels back to give me a massive belt in the chops with the club. I just look up at him like he's giving me a lap dance so bad that I'm about to start taking my money back. Everything becomes slow motion. He finishes his windup. He starts to swing...
...and then two inches from my temple he thinks better of it. The kid actually walks over to the nightstand, sets the club down, walks back across the room and pulls the other chair in the room over to face me. Then he sits down.
“Tell me everything you know about Tony Mallory.”
“Tony Mallory was a pizza shop owner who spent a lot of time vacationing in Florida. Twenty years ago he was also a Mob informant planted in some federal department whose name I can't remember for reasons I never understood. The long and short of it is, the guy was connected. He reported to the mob, on the mob and was basically playing both sides and nobody cared. And then old Tony got sloppy. He let slip to one of his mob buddies where he kept a stash of computer files he'd been using to blackmail both sides for protection. Naturally, Tony's buddy stole the files and then sold Tony out to the bosses. Unfortunately for Tony's buddy, Tony was on better terms with the bosses than Tony's buddy was.
This is where I come into the story. Tony's buddy had hidden the files somewhere else and they needed to be recovered. Eventually Tony's buddy was buried alive beneath a new church on the East side but I'm getting ahead of myself. First he and I had a nice long chat the one time. But that's about all I know about Tony Mallory.”
“Bullshit.” says Scrappy Dingo.
“That was how many years ago?” I try to count on my fingers. “I can't count, I'm tied to a fucking chair, but it was a long-ass time ago.”
“You remember more than that.”
“Nothing reliable. My memory was shit back then.”
“Tell me.”
“Do you have any idea how much coke I used to do back then? I got nightmares so bad that I'd stay up for a week at a time.”
“Just tell me.”
“No.”
“I'll beat it out of you.”
“Really? We're going back to the old 'slap and tickle' plan?”
“I will if I have to.”
I sigh and tilt my head all the way to the right. “There's a fully-stocked kitchen right over there.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Son, if our positions were reversed, I'd have you dancing like a ballerina – chair and all – with nothing but two forks and a micro-plane.”
He just looks at me for a while after I say that. I finally break the silence.
“A micro-plane is like a cheese-grater only- “
“I know what a micro-plane is.”
“Then what's the problem?”
“I just realized that you're actually giving me advice on how to torture you.”
“Believe me, you fucking need the help.” I pause and he just stares at me. So I ask him “So, is your boss around?”
* * *
The first thing that crosses my mind when Scipio Genovia enters my hotel room isn't the fact that he looks more like a Polish used car salesman than an ancient Roman general. What crosses my mind first is the fact that Scipio Genovia looks absolutely horrible in a powder blue suit. I know, so does everybody. But this suit takes looking horrible to a whole other level. This is bar none the worst tailoring job I have ever seen. First of all, the suit doesn't fit. It hangs in places it shouldn't hang and keeps riding up in the crotch and other embarrassingly tight places. The overall fit is so close to his body that parts of the suit seem to move all on their own for no reason whatsoever. And on top of all that the fucking thing is absolutely covered in sequins. I kind of wish I could take a picture. But that's only because if I live through this I want to tie someone else to a chair and force them to stare at that picture and see if they go insane. This suit isn't just ugly; it's H.P. Lovecraft ugly.
Anyway, Mr. Genovia comes rolling in in the suit Satan paroled and asks my would-be interrogator turned kidnapper. “What's the problem Eli?”
Eli replies “He said he'd rather talk to you.”
Genovia scowls “So you hit him again numbnuts! You fucking called me outta a goddamn bachelor party because some old fuck you're supposed to be beating for answers asks you to? I'm not supposed to be connected to this Eli. Now I'm connected to this.” Genovia slaps Eli across the cheek. Not hard, but hard enough to sting. I suspect it would have been harder, but Genovia is so short he has to stand on tiptoe to reach Eli's cheek. “Now go stand in the corner or something. Now that I'm here, I better get my answers.” “Discount Dolph” obediently parks himself in a corner near the door.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Before “He-Who-Wears-The-Suit”can launch into one of his motivational speeches on me, I look over at Eli like I'd just been told he was actually a robot or a unicorn. “His name is fucking Eli?” I ask.
“Yeah his name is Eli. And my name is Scipio Genovia. And you're going to tell me everything you know about Tony Mallory.”
“Listen, I don't know his shoe size.”
“I don't give a fuck about his shoe size.”
I wait about two seconds. When Genovia doesn't expand I blurt out “Son, I'm old now, and old people like to tell long, boring stories to young people. Trust me, It'll go a lot better if you give me a topic to build on.”
No dice. “Just start talking old man. I'll tell you what's a waste of time.”
I warned him. “I've never had children of my own, and-”
Genovia interrupts me. “Keep it to the point old man.” I put on my best flabbergasted face and I give Genovia my best flabbergasted harrumph.
For the first time I notice that Genovia is wearing rings as I watch him twist a heavy gold signet ring inset with sapphires back and forth on his right pinkie. “What? What are you pissing about now?”
I take care to use small words and enunciate them very carefully. “What do you want to know about Tony Mallory?” The back of Genovia's right hand catches me across the right side of my face. I distinctly feel the heavy ring impact my cheekbone and slide across my nose. The world goes red – blinding pain – Yup, I think the little son-of-a-bitch just about broke my nose. Note to self: That pinkie ring is real gold. Other jewelry includes a white gold wedding band on his left ring finger and two tiny white gold bands set with different-coloured stones on his left pinkie. No necklace but the man really should do up another couple buttons on his shirt. Preferably before that dog-shit suit manages to crawl inside and start laying eggs.
When I come back to reality Genovesse is already in the process of reassuring himself he's got the biggest dick in the room. “Don't you fucking talk down to me you washed-up old shit. You're just lucky you're the only son of a bitch who knows something that I need confirmed. ” Geneoveese pauses for effect.
Oh good, I'm temporarily indispensable. I pour all my frustration and all the pleading I can muster into my next three words: “Which is wa – haaa – huuut?”
“Where is Tony Mallory?”
Finally! A fucking question with fucking answer! I immediately drop my “pitiable prisoner” act. “Okay, so how much did your uncle Baldo tell you?”
Genovia does that blinking thing people do when they're stunned or confused. I don't wait for the schmuck to catch up, I just keep talking. My words come out all funny because of my swollen nose, but it looks like the two of them can follow what I'm saying.
“Yes I know your uncle. I assume Baldo at least told you that Tony Mallory is a phony name?”
If its possible to nod skeptically, that's what Genovia does. His blue suit seems to writhe uncomfortably like a slug in a bowl of salt. I try to ignore what the suit's doing and keep going.
“Okay, so your uncle and I were up late one night watching movies together and we just happen to watch this new movie called “Donnie Brasco”. So after the movie, Baldo looks over at me and says. 'You know what we need? Our own Donnie Brasco.' Now far be it from me to criticize your uncle, but this was a crazy idea even by his standards. Sure every once in a while a black sheep from a family of cops or a family of wise guys winds up trying out life on the other side. Usually though, they wind up coming home or getting put in a box when shit gets too complicated. Baldo got it into his head that if he could get a kid into not just the NYPD, but a federal agency, he could keep tabs on just about anybody. The problem was how to keep the feds from sniffing out any Genovia fingerprints from the little bambino's records.
Eventually an opportunity appeared. The wife of one of Baldo's current snitches in the NYPD got cancer, and had a daughter already in training with the ATF in Georgia. Now this was back in '98 or so, so medical coverage for beat cops and their families had all kinds of useful holes. Not to mention the old guy'd done terrible things to his liver over the years too. Anyway, the daughter reaches out to us because her pop's insurance company won't give her the time of day and she straight up offers Baldo to be his snitch in the ATF. Anything but murder, so long as her mom got the treatments, of course. Naturally, Baldo does his homework and makes the deal when things check out.
And so, I spent an Easter Sunday photocopying something like 5,000 internal memos and policy documents. Then, I had a chat with a certain insurance adjuster – followed by a certain supervisor – followed by a certain CFO – who was then mysteriously paralysed in a dirt-bike accident around the time in question. Life's funny like that. God hates unnecessary suffering.
Once the insurance mooks had been told to play fair, they approved the treatment claims – and about ten thousand others they'd been trying to weasel out of – went broke after four years and got bought out by another company. The new guys kicked the mother and about a half-million other claimants to the curb and made a shit-ton of money.
By then Miss ATF had finished her training, gotten promoted, been transferred to New York, and was making enough scratch to cover her mom's health expenses. Baldo got ready to back off, given that our only leverage was one long-weekend of vigilante justice a half-decade prior.”
Genovia's been staring at me the whole time I've been flapping my gums. He's even nodded in a couple places so I know he can understand me and he's heard all this before. The longer I talk the more he seems to calm down too. Even the suit's stopped crawling around on its meat-hanger and settled down to stare at me as well. Yes, the suit has a stare. A glassy dead-eyed stare from six adjacent pits of Stygian blackness that I think also serve as buttons. And for the record, this suit has most terrifying expression of polite interest I've ever seen. Which makes it unfortunate that the tale I'm telling takes the turn it does.
“You may want Eli to step outside for this part.” Genovia is momentarily startled. He probably forgot Eli was even in the room. “Eli, get the fuck out.” Genovia waves vaguely in the direction of the door behind him and motions me to continue the story. I wait for Eli to leave the room and for the door to click closed.
“That's when the weird shit started happening.”
I start to talk faster because I'm afraid Genovia probably hasn't heard this part from his uncle. “Y'see what Baldo didn't know was that Miss ATF had told her training officer about the deal the minute she set foot back into Gerogia. He took the story to some higher mucky-mucks and somewhere along the way the ATF decided they needed a Donnie Brasco in the Genovia family. They'd use the girl's monthly report to your uncle to feed Baldo info on where our rivals were keeping their weapon and drug stashes and on who was planning attacks on family interests. In “return” they'd find out through watching our guys whether or not their own snitches were on the up-and-up. So, basically, your uncle Baldo had turned his part of the family into an off-the-books hit squad for the ATF. He didn't take that well.”
The nephew also didn't take the revelation well. Both Genovia and the suit recoiled with surprise. Instantly, Genovia is up on his feet, leaning over me and yelling. “Bulshit! Baldo Genovia would never fall for a dirty trick like-”
Interrupting your interrogator is dangerous and usually painful. Sometimes though, its the only way to get them back on track. “Bullshit yourself! The Baldo Genovia you know is twenty years older and forty times as mean as the twenty-six year-old safe-cracking nutcase I knew back in the day. He had a snitch turn double one time in his entire career. Only once, this one time. And that's what started him down the path to becoming the man you love and fear today.”
Genovia steps back two paces and peers down at me. “Then how come I never heard this from anyone in the family you old fuck?”
“Because its bad for the legend you nincompoop! Think about it. If someone can feed the all-seeing Baldo Genovia a lie even once in a lifetime there's going to be assholes lining up for miles to try and do it twice. Us old fucks keeping our mouths shut just makes your uncle safer and keeping him safe keeps us safe.”
Genovia suddenly cocks his head to the left and gets that grin people get when they think they've just caught you in a lie. “Then why are you telling me old man?”
Some criminals are just a special kind of stupid.
Not for the first time, I am forced to give an actual full-grown man the “get off my lawn” stare and howl bloody murder at him. “I told you because you're his fucking nephew you greasy sausage-eating little cunt! You've tied me to a chair and had some Scandinavian fuck named Eli beat the shit out of me without so much as 'hello' or 'can I buy you a fucking cup of coffee?' I finally get that motherfucker to get you to come in fucking person and then I fucking cooperate with you the entire fucking time – and you still slap me across the fucking face. And then I just get to the good part of the story and you start fucking arguing with me! I've had it with you! I've been making people talk since you could crawl - fucking interrogating and torturing people as a favour to your uncle for twenty-nine fucking years and he sends you here and you're fucking stupid enough to try to rough me up for answers? Do you know how fucking pissed off I am that you are this much of a fucking disappointment to God and Baldo Genovia?
As I finish my speech I'm literally vibrating. The old chair underneath me squeaks and rattles. Genovia is totally stunned. He's just realized who I am. He can't form words. The combination of my tirade and the revelation that followed have backed him up all the way to the door. Various expressions war over his face: anger, resentment, confusion, fear. Anger seems to be winning. I need to make my move.
I look at Genovia's feet. “I think the door's pissing on your shoes, Skippy.” Genovia's eyes are completely full of hatred and smoulder at me from beneath his heavy dark eyebrows. He looks down at his feet. I can only see so much from my chair, but I can imagine that as he looks down he sees the slowly-spreading pool of blood creeping under the door. He wonders where it's coming from, then he hears the chair come apart as I stand up. He looks up, and he sees me barrelling toward him. I don't know if he sees the scattered pieces of wood trailing behind me, but he definitely sees that I'm still tied to the wrap-around arm-rest. He makes the mistake of going for his gun.
When you're going to be carrying concealed weapons, inform your tailor. Shoulder holsters need a bit more room in the chest to conceal the weapon and allow for a fast draw. Ankle holsters require slightly wider and shorter pant-legs to allow for easier access. Never ever, ever, get a tightly-fitted suit and try to carry a concealed anything. The unholy fabric bump-and-grind that ensues will only make pulling a weapon harder and reveal the fact that you're carrying to absolutely everybody. That goes double if you plan to stop lifting weights and then put on about fifteen pounds.
By the time Genovia's got his right hand around his gun, I'm already swinging a low left uppercut toward his jaw. He tries to fend me of with his left hand. Congratulations genius, you've just pinned your own gun to your chest. I step in and bring my left foot down on his right ankle. There's a pop. Genovia falls over but he doesn't seem to feel it.
As he falls, he makes the mistake of pushing down with his left hand for balance. I use the momentum to spin myself around and drop the the right side of the armrest onto his left hand. There's an audible crunch and a scream this time. Guess he felt it. I roll myself away from the door and back onto my feet. The little bastard's in a lot of pain, and his right hand is still trapped within the folds of the powder-blue disco-shoggoth-cum-straightjacket, but he still seems hell-bent on shooting me.
So I quickly duck into the kitchen to cut myself free with a bread knife that I jam into a crack between the fridge and counter. Do not attempt that yourself without both practice and copious clean towels. Best case, you'll have a nasty flesh wound. Once I get free, I reach back into the pantry and pull out the presents I keep for special visitors.
If you're any kind of serious paramilitary jerk-off, I strongly discourage you from buying American-made “flash-bang” grenades. They're finicky, contain white phosphorous, and they're more or less nonlethal. If your nightmares and/or military fetish wet dreams are made of 'uprisings' by minorities or civil war fan-fiction then just buy a few more 'paint the walls in guts' regular grenades. Just be honest with yourself and admit it - “non-lethal” ain't for you. If, however, you have protective ear and eye-wear and an overwhelming need for your enemies to yell “ohmygodwhatthefuck?” the flash-bang is the way to go.
I put on the dark sunglasses and earmuff I keep beside the grenade, then I toss the flash-bang into the front room. There's a flash, a bang and as I run up to Scipio Genovia's stunned body he mumbles “whatthefuck?” I love it when they say that. Next I pick Eli's truncheon up off the floor and hit Scipio over the head as hard as I can. Twice. Okay I lose count, but no more than three, four times tops.
* * *
The wedding is an absolutely beautiful occasion. Callista looks absolutely beautiful walking down the aisle in her wedding dress. Her beau Simon is dapper-as-hell waiting for her by the altar in an all-black tux with tails. The top-hat makes him look like a queer, but you can't have everything. At the reception, the receiving line is picture perfect. Two rows of ushers alternated with ... whatchacallem?
...laides-in-waiting? Ah hell, whatever. The point of where I was going is that there isn't anything out of place with the whole wedding. Well, except for a suspicious gap when it comes to seating at the bride and groom's table. Specifically between me and the father of the bride way down at the one end. Scipio Genovia is missing his cousin's wedding. I tell ya the three of us would have looked like a mismatched set of toys if there ever was one. Like his son, Baldo Genovia hadn't re-tailored his suit in a good ten years. Unlike his nephew, Baldo not only hadn't stopped lifting weights, he'd added more. Way more. The overall effect was something like putting your favourite Italian actor's head on the body of a life-size He-Man toy and then stuffing the whole works into an Armani suit three sizes too small. In the middle woulda been little Scipio in his horrifying powder-blue nightmare suit, barely coming up to his uncle's shoulder. Then there's me, dressed in a white polo shirt, clip-on black tie, electric orange floral-pattern Hawaiian shirt and matching pineapple shorts. I look directly into the eyes of every child who dares gaze at my awesomeness and return their silly faces. Plus improvements. Nobody notices the bandage on my left hand.
Gloria, Baldo's wife, spends the entire night silently fuming at me. During the main course I give her a googly-eyed grin. Gloria sniffs at me in distaste and looks away. Baldo nearly falls out of his chair laughing. During the second desert course, I tell Baldo what Scipio tried to do to me today. Baldo starts promising me recompense. After the servers deliver the third desert course and leave, I tell Baldo what it is I want. He spends the the rest of the meal making me promise to “only make an example”. When the servers come back, neither of us has touched our piece of the wedding cake. It wouldn't be right. Over at the kids' table Scipio's wife Amanda is trying desperately to stamp out the growing insurgency before it leads to another food fight. Baldo says he'll talk to her when the dance is over. I nod and say “thank you”.
I don't stay for the dance. But I do pick up a partner. Eli is waiting for me by my car. I nod and he nods back. We drive back to my place in silence. Just after I park in my usual spot at the mouth of what used to be an alley, I stop and look over at Eli. “That was good timing on the pig's blood, but what took you so long?”
Eli shrugged “I had no idea where to get the stuff.”
“There's a butcher-shop two blocks that way.” I point off into the darkness.
“Yeah, I figured that out.” Eli pauses, fighting with himself whether or not to say something.
“Talk Blondie, I'm not mad at you.”
“Why did it have to go down like this Sig?”
“It didn't.” I turn off the headlights and open the car door. “It really didn't.”
“Then why are we doing this?”
“Baldo has his legend to keep, I have mine.”
We slowly get out of the car and walk up the wooden stairs to my hotel room. We both stand in the puddle of congealed pig's blood as I open the front door. Scipio is still tied to the metal chair I left him in. I look Eli dead in the eye.
“I think I said something earlier about two forks and a micro-plane. We'll do that first. Next I'll teach you about burning off fingerprints.” Scipio hears me and starts crying. Eli keeps looking into my vacant eyes trying to find something alive and human inside them. He can't. He starts to turn green. I motion Eli inside. I follow him and close the door behind us. As the door closes, one last sentence leaks out into the still Mexican night:
“Did I mention I used to be a barber?”