“Why yes, I knew that,” I said. “And did you know that this house has a front door, too? And no peacocks on guard this time.”
He blinked. “Should I be alarmed?” he said.
“Well, you never know who might come barging in uninvited.”
Dr. Danco moved the left corner of his mouth upward perhaps a quarter of an inch. “Well,” he said, “if your friend on the operating table is a fair sample, I think I may be all right, don’t you?” And I had to admit that he had a point. The first-team players had not been impressive; what did he have to fear from the bench? If only I wasn’t still a little dopey from whatever drugs he had used on me, I’m quite sure I would have said something far more clever, but in truth I was still in a little bit of a chemical fog.
“I do hope I’m not supposed to believe that help is on the way?” he said.
I was wondering the same thing, but it didn’t seem entirely smart to say so. “Believe what you like,” I said instead, hoping that was ambiguous enough to give him pause, and cursing the slowness of my normally swift mental powers.
“All right then,” he said. “I believe you came here alone. Although I am curious about why.”
“I wanted to study your technique,” I said.
“Oh, good,” he said. “I’ll be happy to show you-firsthand.” He flickered his tiny little smile at me again and added, “And then feet.” He waited for a moment, probably to see if I would laugh at his hilarious pun. I felt very sorry to disappoint him, but perhaps later it might seem funnier, if I got out of this alive.
Danco patted my arm and leaned in just a bit. “We’ll have to have your name, you know. No fun without it.”
I pictured him speaking to me by name as I lay strapped to the table, and it was not a cheerful image.
“Will you tell me your name?” he asked.
“Rumplestiltskin,” I said.
He stared at me, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses. Then he reached down to my hip pocket and worked my wallet out. He flipped it open and found my driver’s license. “Oh. So YOU’RE Dexter. Congratulations on your engagement.” He dropped my wallet beside me and patted my cheek. “Watch and learn, because all too soon I will be doing the same things to you.”
“How wonderful for you,” I said.
Danco frowned at me. “You really should be more frightened,” he said. “Why aren’t you?” He pursed his lips. “Interesting. I’ll increase the dosage next time.” And he stood up and moved away.
I lay in a dark corner next to a bucket and a broom and watched him bustle about the kitchen. He made himself a cup of instant Cuban coffee and stirred in a huge amount of sugar. Then he moved back to the center of the room and stared down at the table, sipping thoughtfully.
“Nahma,” the thing on the table that had once been Sergeant Doakes pleaded. “Nahana. Nahma.” Of course his tongue had been removed-obvious symbology for the person Danco believed had squealed on him.
“Yes, I know,” Dr. Danco said. “But you haven’t guessed a single one yet.” He almost seemed to be smiling as he said that, although his face did not look like it was formed to make any expression beyond thoughtful interest. But it was enough to set Doakes off into a fit of yammering and trying to thrash his way out of his bonds. It didn’t work very well, and didn’t seem to concern Dr. Danco, who moved away sipping his coffee and humming along off-key to Tito Puente. As Doakes flopped about I could see that his right foot was gone, as well as his hands and tongue. Chutsky had said his entire lower leg had been removed all at once. The Doctor was obviously making this one last a little longer. And when it was my turn-how would he decide what to take and when?
Piece by small dim piece my brain was clearing itself of fog. I wondered how long I had been unconscious. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I could discuss with the Doctor.
The dosage, he had said. He had been holding a syringe as I woke up, been surprised that I was not more frightened- Of course. What a wonderful idea, to inject his patients with some kind of psychotropic drug to increase their sense of helpless terror. I wished I knew how to do that. Why hadn’t I gotten medical training? But, of course, it was a little late to worry about that. And in any case, it sounded very much like the dosage was adjusted just right for Doakes.
“Well, Albert,” said the Doctor to the sergeant, in a very pleasant and conversational voice, slurping his coffee, “what’s your guess?”
“Nahana! Nah!”
“I don’t think that’s right,” said the Doctor. “Although perhaps if you had a tongue, it might have been. Well, in any case,” he said, and he bent to the edge of the table and made a small mark on a piece of paper, almost like he was crossing something out. “It is rather a long word,” he said. “Nine letters. Still, you have to take the good with the bad, don’t you?” And he put down his pencil and picked up a saw, and as Doakes bucked wildly against his bonds the Doctor sawed off Doakes’s left foot, just above the ankle. He did it very quickly and neatly, placing the severed foot beside Doakes’s head as he reached over to his array of instruments and picked up what looked a large soldering iron. He applied this to the new wound and a wet hiss of steam billowed up as he cauterized the stump for minimal blood flow. “There now,” he said. Doakes made a strangled noise and went limp as the smell of seared flesh drifted through the room. With any luck at all he would be unconscious for a while.
And I, happily, was a little more conscious all the time. As the chemicals from the Doctor’s dart gun seeped out of my brain, a sort of muddy light began to trickle in.
Ah, memory. Isn’t it a lovely thing? Even when we are in the middle of the worst of times, we have our memories to cheer us. I, for example, lay there helpless, able only to watch as dreadful things happened to Sergeant Doakes, knowing that soon it would be my turn. But even so, I had my memories.
And what I remembered now was something Chutsky had said when I rescued him. “When he got me up there,” he had said, “he said, ‘Seven,’ and ‘What’s your guess?’” At the time I had thought it a rather strange thing to say, and wondered if Chutsky had imagined it as a side effect of the drugs.
But I had just heard the Doctor say the same things to Doakes: “What’s your guess?” followed by, “Nine letters.” And then he had made a mark on the piece of paper taped to the table.
Just as there had been a piece of paper taped near each victim we had found, each time with a single word on it, the letters crossed out one at a time. HONOR. LOYALTY. Irony, of course: Danco reminding his former comrades of the virtues they had forsaken by turning him over to the Cubans. And poor Burdett, the man from Washington whom we found in the shell of the house in Miami Shores. He had been worth no real mental effort. Just a quick five letters, POGUE. And his arms, legs, and head had been quickly cut off and separated from his body. P-O-G-U-E. Arm, leg, leg, arm, head.
Was it really possible? I knew that my Dark Passenger had a sense of humor, but it was quite a bit darker than this-this was playful, whimsical, and even silly.
Much like the Choose Life license plate had been. And like everything else I had observed about the Doctor’s behavior.
It seemed so completely unlikely, but-
Doctor Danco was playing a little game as he sliced and diced. Perhaps he had played it with others in those long years inside the Cuban prison at the Isle of Pines, and maybe it had come to seem like just the right thing to serve his whimsical revenge. Because it certainly seemed like he was playing it now-with Chutsky, and with Doakes and the others. It was quite absurd, but it was also the only thing that made sense.