Agent Martin
In New York City, everything smells like Eleazar. The G.W. Bridge is jam-packed, but my car slides between the gaps without stopping to the maze of impersonal titans, like grotesque phalluses pointed hatefully at the Lord. I navigate the streets, a human bloodhound on the trail of the most dangerous criminal the Universe has ever known.The trail leads to Carlos Menendez, wandering aimlessly through the streets. When his sister fought back, her attackers held her down and cut her tits off. They shouted at her, "You think you a man? We'll make you a man!" After seeing what was left, Carlos couldn't focus on holding his gun or his knife, no matter how badly he wants revenge. He doesn’t even look at me as the Cadillac pulls up along side him and I roll the window down.
Normally, he would hate me, I’m nothing but a gringo, but seeing a switchblade protruding from your sister’s cunt as she draws her final breaths in his arms has largely drawn his attention. “I know who did this. Get in.” I'm barely forceful, but he listens, and I drive back to that ghetto apartment. He is screaming before we even get to the door. I made him carry the brief case with all my interrogation tools, so he can feel the weight of his sins. I have to drag him through the door, where he immediately falls by the corpse of his sister, weeping like a child. I peel him away and get the railroad spikes through his wrists, affixing him to the wall and arrange the three bodies in front of him to keep him focused on the task at hand.
In the bathroom, there is a baby bath for a child that was with its father tonight. I put the tub beneath him to collect any blood, and bring my face close to his, whispering, “What do you know about Lazarus?” His terrified eyes work over the crags of my face, and when he fails to answer in a timely manner, I tear off his genitals. He is screaming and crying, and that makes me want to hurt him so much more. I have to emphasize just how urgent his answers are, so I spread some lye in his wound, and step back as his body spasms in uncontrollable agony.
After a minute or so, I neutralize the lye with vinegar and let him calm. This takes a few more minutes than I am comfortable to give him. I pace about the room, arms folded across my chest, watching the short figure-8 track I’m walking on the floor. He's still sobbing a little when I grab his jowls and shout, "Tell me where to find Lazarus!" The others were well-known associates. I probably could have plugged my nose and found my way to the coke dealers in Virginia, but I can't identify how this one is tainted with Eleazar's stink.
“No hablo ingles!” he whimpers. “Por favor! No hablo ingles!”
“I know when you lie,” I hiss. I pull him by his collar until he meets resistance from the spikes. He wails much louder than I would have thought he'd be hurt.
I don't need him to talk. I can smell the streets, the trash, and the perfume. There is sweat and rotten food. Stagnant water and forgotten garbage cans in backalleys that never see direct sunlight. “Where was Lazarus?" The questions are rhetorical now, I don't even know if Menendez can still hear me. I follow the scents down the road-map in my head, affixing each to its source as we pass, separating them until only Eleazar's stink remains unidentified. I have to look deeper.
He is still whimpering that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“Why do you insist on lying to me?” I ask in a sigh. I tear off his shirt and make a tiny slice near his left nipple, and meticulously pull the skin from his torso in a single strip, no more than a millimeter wide. The Turkish lictors that practiced this in the past, had to be careful to staunch the blood-flow and to keep the victim from dying. I could bleed him all day though, and not bring him even slightly closer to death. It takes me just under an hour to peel him. With the time frame I’m working with, I probably would have stopped if he remembered a detail, but I need what has been absorbed. A corruption exudes from Eleazar, settling in the skin and muscle. I can see it as black spots in the blood, and the smell is exquisite. Once I have Carlos peeled, I stick him with the hobby knife a few times, just to emphasize the seriousness of my questioning.
The baby bath is nearly full of his blood, so I affix hooks to his lips and cheeks, pulling them taught and pegging them above his head and under his armpits to keep his mouth open. I love the way it distorts his screams, transforming it into the baying of a frightened animal. I still have to crush his lower jaw to get it to hang open enough to pour in the blood. He still has the resolve to try and drown himself in his own blood, still unable to comprehend that I’m not going to let him go until I’m done.
Once all the blood has made it into his stomach, lungs, and down the front of his skinned body, I cast the bath aside. “Are you ready to tell me what I want to hear?” I ask, reassembling his jaw enough for him to talk.
“Please,” he begs. “I don’t know, please stop!”
I drag a bed out of one of the back bedrooms, strip it down to the iron framework, and build a fire in the center of the room underneath. I rip him off the wall and tie him to the bed with coat-hangers. His screams are incoherent. Even as I’m pulling off his roasted flesh from the bones, he pleads ignorance. What I consume will distill inside me and teach my cells its memory. aning, where it has passed. These I distill further, finding their place in the real world, generating a treasure map leading me to a hotel downtown. I knew he couldn't resist luxury forever. Most of Carlos's torso has been reduced to burnt skeleton, I whisper in his ear, “Beg your Lord for mercy.”
His sightless eyes loll toward me and his toughened lips work, cracking apart as he tries to speak. “Jesu...,” he whispers, his tongue breaking apart to form the word. “Jesu...”
I let him meet his maker.
Go to Chapter 49
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