Morris drew close and whispered, his breath metallic, like the side effect of medication. "You're all over the Village, Rick. You been snooping around, looking in shops and talking to people. Right? You think we don't know this?"
"Ha-wait, wait," he breathed thickly. "She probably down there-could be anywhere… I don't know — "
Morris wasn't listening. "Tommy, you pack the ice chest like I told you?"
"In the car."
"Go get it."
"Right."
"Also bring the camera."
"You got it."
"Hey, Rick," Morris said, "you know, she's not worth it, okay? I mean-hey! — we're reasonable people. You tell us, we drop you at the hospital, they patch you up. You're bleeding now, see. You're in a little bit of trouble. Tell us now and it's the emergency room."
He made a noise with his mouth.
"It's not a big problem. It's like five minutes."
His groin felt wet, his head hot. His hands were cold, and he wanted to sleep. Maybe they would take him to the emergency room. Of course. He couldn't really die now, it wasn't time.
Morris started the drill.
Rick shut his eyes. "Jim-Jack," he called, mouth a socket of agony. "Bleeck-er."
"What about it?"
"Work there."
"What days?"
He didn't know, but they would not believe him if he said so. "Mon-day to Sat-day."
"Nights, day?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Downtown-we can pick her up anytime," said Tommy.
"Right." Morris turned back to Rick. He looked at the drill, then started it. "Where's she living?"
"I–I don't-" He didn't want to say it. He was sorry. He was sorry for everything, and he closed his eyes, choking.
"It's coming, I can tell," Morris narrated. "I've seen this."
"I love her… I love that girl!" The drill started near his ear and he began to cry, convulsing in despair at how worthless and weak and broken he was, a nobody afraid of dying. "I loved…" He sobbed shamefully and covered his eyes with his shackled hands.
"No, no, Rick," explained Morris, "not that, not yet, you can't break down yet. You have to just hold on now, say the address. Just say it-you can. Just let it out."
"I love her, I do!" he cried, hating himself.
"I know you do," came Morris's voice of understanding. "That's admirable, I respect you for that, but it doesn't help anything. You have to tell us the address now, Rick. You have to say it. If you don't, then I'll give you the drill again. You know I will. Right? I know what I'm doing, Rick. I worked as a paramedic for nine years, I've seen everything. I have control of you, Rick. I have control of your body and your mind, and I have more things in my box that hurt. Now, you need to give me her address or it will get very bad for you."
" Ah…" he breathed, not knowing what to do.
The drill started. His eyes were closed, but the drill was so near he could smell the burn of the electric motor. The noise was close to his nostril, just inside, tickling-"East Fourth!" he cried. "East Fourth… First Avenue. Blue building. The mailbox says Williams."
"Williams?" said Morris, withdrawing the drill.
"Yeah."
Morris let the drill stop. "Good, very good."
A few minutes passed. He dribbled spitty blood from his mouth. He didn't care about the ankle or the rib, it was the tooth, all gone, all drilled away, the roots sensitive to the air, his tongue feeling the hole in his cheek. They sat him up again and gave him a carton of orange juice. He spilled some of it down his shirt. It burned his tooth but cleaned out his throat.
"Okay?" asked Rick finally. "Thah's it?"
Morris shook his head. "You didn't tell us about the money."
"What?"
Tommy dragged a large ice chest across the floor. A Polaroid camera swung from his neck.
"The big money, the boxes."
"There's no money like that!" cried Rick. He tried to stand but fell to the floor. "You gotta take me to the hospital now!"
"We're not quite done here," Morris noted. "Tommy, show Rick the ice chest."
Tommy pulled over the cooler. "I usually take this on my boat."
"We've got this thing under control, Rick," said Morris. "Help him back up on the table." He wet his finger in his mouth, then pulled off his wedding ring and slipped it into his pocket. "Okay, so now we're going to find out if you know where the money is."
"Nah-" He didn't understand.
"This is under control, Rick, you don't have to worry."
He couldn't really talk, his mouth was so swollen and thick. Morris pointed to his arms.
"We're going to cut one off."
"Nah! Please!" He checked Morris's eyes.
"Tommy, you put film in that fucking camera?"
"'Course."
"Tony wants proof, see."
"Fuck!" yelled Rick. "What? What?"
"Left or right? We'll accommodate."
He didn't believe them, did he?
"Which?" asked Morris.
"Need the right!"
"It'll be the left, then." He pointed to Rick's handcuffs. "Take it off the left, and cuff his right to the table."
Morris opened one of the carpenter's boxes while the men held Rick and moved the handcuffs. "I have an arterial hemostat I'm going to put on your upper arm," he said softly. A sweetness, even a calm appeared to pass into him. "Nobody is going to bleed to death. And no problem on the limb recovery. Cooled, you've got four hours maybe. So there's no problem."
"I fucking told ev-thing!" Rick cried.
Morris came over and sat down. "See, this is what we're going to do, Rick. We had a good discussion, but now we have to talk about the big topic. If you tell us where the money is, we stop right now."
Rick searched Morris's face for an explanation. He didn't understand anything anymore.
"But if you don't, then my procedure keeps going. Once it goes far enough, though, we have to keep going. I'm not leaving a messy job. So that's where we are. Okay, also, listen to me, because the more anxiety you allow yourself, the more unfortunate everything gets." Morris's eyes moved closer to Rick. No redness, no fatigue in them. "First I'm going to start a saline IV on your other arm. This allows me to compensate for the blood loss, which really should not be excessive if I get the artery clamped quickly enough-"
"No, no!"
"I'm figuring that I really must have that artery closed off in sixty seconds, forty-five being optimal," Morris explained. "On the IV, I'll use a fourteen-gauge, which is big enough to give you a liter a minute if I have to. It also lets me administer morphine as necessary. We'll be starting you off at fifteen milligrams, but watching to see if your respiration drops. I usually give the patient five milligrams, but with this, I think fifteen is warranted." Morris nodded to himself, satisfied by his own analysis. "I'll be cutting through the upper arm, through the biceps muscle and the humerus-just one bone-and then through the triceps. It's easy. Muscle and bone. I don't feel like going through the elbow joint, see. The joint is very complicated-lot of nerves and blood vessels running through there. I do have enough morphine for the pain that would cause-that's not the problem, it's that if it got messy I might have a little difficulty finding the artery." He was a man in his element. "If it takes me ninety seconds to get you clamped, then we might have a bleed-out. Upper arm, the artery is no problem. Also, if we cut through the elbow, your arm is damaged forever. But the upper arm-should be fine. The boys at the replantation center at Bellevue are magicians if they've got a clean cut. So the key to this whole deal is the aforementioned hemostat." He held up a stainless-steel needle-nosed clamp with locking finger grips. "More effective than a tourniquet. Once we get the arm off and the clamp on, you're in good shape, Rick. You're not going to die. You might feel that way, you might go into shock, but you are absolutely not going to die. The body's ability to recover is astounding. The body protects itself. We'll make sure the wound is washed with betadine and bandaged so that the boys are working on a wound that is clean. Tommy will take pictures of each step. As for the arm itself, I'll be putting a piece of Saran Wrap on the cut surface and then will wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil and put it on the ice. It won't be in direct contact with the ice. I don't want you worrying about that, either. We want that arm cool but not frozen. That arm, once chilled down rapidly in a sanitary environment, is going to be good for three, four hours. You'll be in Bellevue by then and they'll be sewing it back on. I'm making it easy for those guys."