Page 73 of Code 6

They found his whatchamacallit.

Patrick was in the slow, disorienting transition from unconsciousness to the dark reality of life behind a blindfold. He remembered the guard shoving him against the wall, knocking loose the tool he’d found in the trunk of the car. It had slipped down the inside of his pant leg and fallen to the concrete floor with a clang. The guard had started yelling in Spanish, and the last thing Patrick remembered was the crushing blow of the whatchamacallit against the side of his head.

“Damn,” he said, feeling the lump behind his ear. He smelled something strange, and for a moment he thought it was his own blood. But his wound was dry to the touch. He breathed in through his nose, sniffing out the odor. It was rum. Patrick wasn’t much of drinker, having seen what it had done to Mrs. Gamble, but one semester of college was more than enough “education” to make the distinctive smell of a Cuba libre immediately recognizable.

A screech pierced the darkness, the sharp scraping of a chair pulling away from a table on a concrete floor. He heard footsteps, and it finally registered that he was no longer in the janitor’s closet. He had no memory of being moved to another room—or was it an entirely different building? He wondered how long he’d been out cold from the blow to his head.

As the footsteps drew closer, Patrick instinctively raised his hands for protection. Chains rattled. The slack quickly disappeared, and metal handcuffs pinched his wrists. His hands were in front of his body, rather than the more restrictive behind-the-back method. Still,he had little range of motion with such a short chain tethering him to a pipe of some sort that protruded from the wall, perhaps a radiator.

“Buenosdías.”The slurred Spanish was like bad Castilian—Buenothdiath—which oddly reminded Patrick of his own mother, who’d learned to speak Spanish while living in Spain. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

Patrick felt a swift kick to the belly, followed by more slurred Spanish, something to the effect that Patrick was a rudeAmericanowho couldn’t even say “good morning.” The voice was definitely the guy who’d brought him to the Hostage Hotel, but the inescapable breath was Bacardí.

“Buenothdiath,” said Patrick, and another swift kick followed for having mocked his captor. It took a minute, but finally Patrick had enough wind to speak.

“Did you move me someplace new?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“A while.”

“How long do I have to wear this blindfold?”

“As long as I say.”

As stupid as he was, this guy could handle questions with the skill of a Washington politician. “Just take it off,” said Patrick. “I saw your face in the jungle. It’s not like I forgot what you look like.”

“That’s not good for you.”

“Dang. And I was on such a lucky streak.” He’d said the last sentence in English, and the fact that he didn’t get another kick to the stomach told him that the sarcasm was lost on his captor.

A pair of thick fingers fiddled with the knot behind Patrick’s ears, and the blindfold slipped away. His eyelids fluttered in the sudden burst of light. The room was dimly lit, and the adjustment from total darkness came slowly. He wasn’t chained to a radiator, as had been his guess. He was on the floor, tethered to a metal bed frame. The small room had no other furniture and no window. The walls were filthy,paint peeling away, graffiti everywhere. The concrete floor was a patchwork of stains, several the color of dried blood. The only source of light was a yellow bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling. His gaze drifted toward his captor and settled on the hideous gang-style tattoo that crept from his shoulder, up his neck, and covered the entire left side of his face. It did a fair job of camouflaging a ghastly scar that started at the corner of his mouth, curled back across the cheek, and then up and over the ear. It looked as though someone had tried to remove the skin from his skull with dull scissors. The name Scarface came to mind, the old Al Pacino film, but that moniker was too cool for this talking turd. Patrick named him “Inkface.”

“What are you looking at, El Rubio?”

Patrick averted his eyes, unaware that his staring had been so obvious. “Nothing. Takes a little getting used to the light, that’s all.”

A noisy commotion came from the hallway right outside the door. It was two men arguing, which made Patrick nervous, as he was certain that Inkface wasn’t the only drunk piece of shit in the building who was packing a loaded pistol and a knife big enough to behead a rhinoceros. The tip of the blade was suddenly an inch from Patrick’s nose.

“Make a peep, and you die—slowly. Understand?”

Patrick nodded. Inkface withdrew the knife and, as he crossed the room, yanked the string dangling from the ceiling to kill the light. The door opened, and Patrick caught a glimpse of one of the men arguing in the hallway.

It was Javier.

The door closed, but the argument continued—so loud that Patrick could overhear. Javier was looking for Olga. Patrick hadn’t seen or heard from her since she’d surprised him in the bathroom of the Hostage Hotel and vowed to get him out.

“I know she’s here!” Javier shouted.

“No, no,” said Inkface. “Not here.”

“You’ve seen her. Don’t deny it!”

“No. Nobody seen Olga.”

Inkface was lying, and Patrick didn’t know why, and it only escalated the conflict. Someone tried the doorknob, which made Patrick start, but thankfully the door was locked.

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