FOUR
FRANK MASON STOOD over a naked man bound to a stainless steel chair. Mason’s two bodyguards, Sinclair and Finch, flanked him at a pace removed. The three of them were a wall of expensive suits and subtle jewelry. The dirt floor cellar was cold and damp, but sweat slicked the man in the chair. His eyes shone wet in the cone of light shed from the single bulb above his head. He looked from Mason, to Finch, to Mason, to Sinclair and back to Mason again. Mason took a long, slow drag on a cigarette and exhaled. He almost never smoked, but this was a special occasion.
“Listen, Frank,” the man in the chair began.
Finch leaned in and around Mason’s left shoulder with a quick arm. His open hand impacted the side of the captive man’s head like a brick at the end of a whip. Even in the midst of a nauseous shower of stars, the man knew enough not to call out. Finch recovered his pose, a dark pillar of flesh in the shadows. “Not until Mr. Mason asks you, Howard.”
Mason took a step closer to Howard, his features resolved in the light cone. At forty-five, he looked every bit the Italian-American Gentleman, from his perfect suit of clothes to the brushed platinum Rolex on his wrist. It threw a dull glow as he swept a lock of hair from his forehead. His skin was flawless, cultured with only the best products and attention. The subtle lines around his mouth and eyes could have been painted by a master. Frank Mason was beautiful the way a wolf is beautiful, lithe and purposeful, its health due to its success as a killer.
Mason crouched down on his haunches, the rare cigarette held by easy lips. He looked up. “I’m going to ask you a question, Howard, okay?”
Howard nodded hard, a stark pop issuing from his neck.
“And when I ask you my question,” Mason dragged on the smoke, the tip an orange flare, “I want you to answer me honestly. That’s all I want.” He bored into Howard’s eyes with his own. “You need to understand something first, though, I think.”
Howard tried to swallow. His Adam’s apple jumped around, but he couldn’t quite seem to get the trick of it. He gave up and mouth-breathed instead, quick and raspy.
Mason exhaled a stream of blue fumes. “I need you to understand that you won’t live through this.”
Howard let out a sob.
There he’d been, returning a DVD he and the wife had watched the night before. Misty with her damn Masterpiece Theatre or BBC Presents—four hours of Victorian bullshit in the English countryside where everyone was either fucking their cousin, or had tuberculosis or both. He’d just slipped into the store and out, was sitting in the Lexus, about to turn the key, and whack! For a moment, he wondered if anyone had seen it happen, if anyone had noticed the two well dressed gentlemen approach him while he sat in his car, if a concerned passer-by just happened to catch it when they sapped the hell out of the back of his head. He knew well enough when he’d woken up in this damn basement, this chair, his skull going off like a klaxon, that he was a dead man. But to hear it said aloud… A steady flow of gelatin tracked his cheeks.
“Howard,” Mason said. “Howard?” He dipped and pivoted until he recaptured Howard’s eyes, squatting down on his hams. “Yeah, there’s a guy. I realize that with this understanding you may find yourself somewhat depressed. And that’s okay. It comes from being out of control and that feels terrible, I know.” He drew on the cigarette. “But I don’t want you to feel completely out of control, because you’re not, not really.”
Howard tried to look away from those reverse points of light in Mason’s face and couldn’t. Even as Howard’s tears blurred the rest of his features, Mason’s eyes remained vivid, hot.
“You have a choice, Howard. You can answer my one question, just one, honestly and die fast, or we can hook you up to an IV and make it take forever.” Mason half-turned his head, “Sinclair, what’s our record?”
A stone soldier in five-hundred dollar Gucci loafers answered, “Six an’ a half days.”
“That right?” Mason said, shaking his head. “That was who?”
“Vin Jones.”
“Huh,” Mason said, pausing as if in the throes of memory, then reached out and grabbed Howard’s ankle in a vice grip. Before he could so much as whimper, Mason pushed the glowing coal of his cigarette into the sole of Howard’s foot. Howard screamed, an awful sound, high and surprised, but Mason would not let go. Skin crackled, vaporized, a whiff of burned meat seeped into the room. Howard ran out of breath on his first cry and began to draw in a great gulp for another shriek when Mason pulled the butt away. Mason studied the wound, a perfect black circle. He dropped the ankle and stood up, flicking the cigarette away.
“I got a whole pack.” He smiled over his shoulder. “Finch smokes too. What is it, Ian? Reds? And Sinclair smokes those big fuckin’ Cubans.”
Howard could only blubber, but it was quiet, resigned.
Mason grinned down at him. “Howard, I don’t care how much. Shit, I already know how much. And I don’t care about how long or even how at all, you get me?”
Howard waited for it, could smell the size of what was coming for him.
Mason’s smile melted away. “The truth now. All I want to know is...why?”
Howard snuffled, snot gleamed from his nose in twin runnels. “Please,” he cried, “I’m sorry.”
Mason’s eyes died. “I know.”
* * *