Moondogs - Alexander Yates [77]
THE NEXT TIME HE WAKES, it’s night. The air is cool. The window is a narrow box for the moon. Howard breathes slowly, his body sore as he changes positions on the hard floor. He turns to the door and sees that it’s cracked open. There’s a woman there, staring at him. He closes his bad eye and tries to get a better look at her. She’s young, and her black hair is streaked with peroxide-blond highlights. She slides a cardboard tray toward him—his refilled water bowl and a dish of boiled rice.
The television is off and Howard recognizes a familiar sound coming from the adjacent room. His cell phone is ringing. That’s wonderful. The fact that it’s still on and that it’s so near means the police will definitely be able to do the satellite thing he’s seen on TV. They’ve had time enough to double-check with the hotel and learn he never made it back. They could be here as early as tonight. The particular quality of the ring raises Howard’s spirits even more. He’s set a different tone for each of his favorite contacts. This is Benny’s ring. Benny is calling him. The ringing stops and starts again after a few seconds. Still Benny.
Howard looks past the woman, into the room beyond. The taxi driver and his big friend—the one who beat Howard with the PVC pipe—sit at the plastic patio table. They stare down at Howard’s ringing phone, which sits in the middle of the table. They look perplexed, as though agonizing over what to do. There’s also someone new, someone weird-looking beside them. It takes Howard a moment to process the fact that it’s a green rooster, smoking a cigarette. The rooster stares intensely at the air. It jukes its head to ash the cigarette. Then it crows, erupting with smoke like a science-fair volcano.
“Ignacio!” the woman calls. “Littleboy! He’s awake.”
The taxi driver, Ignacio, looks up. “Goddamnit woman,” he hollers. “Weren’t you paying attention to our briefing? I said no names!”
Briefing? Howard laughs—he can’t help it. Ignacio pushes past the woman and starts kicking at Howard gingerly. That makes him laugh even harder. He forces himself to stop, which is difficult and feels a little like choking, which happened to him once, at a wedding. He can’t believe these morons—these wannabe badasses. They’re clearly afraid of hurting him any more than they’ve already done, and rightly so. They’re too frightened to just answer the phone and make demands, and too stupid to have smashed the phone in the first place.
“Listen,” Howard says, blocking Ignacio’s last kick with his elbows, panting like a man tickled. “Listen. This is silly. We both know you didn’t really think this over. You’re not prepared to do the whole ransom thing. That’s fine. I’ve got enough cash in my hotel room for you to retire on. I’ll tell you where it’s all hidden. Be smart about this. There’s no need to drag it out.”
Ignacio leaves the room. He returns with a curved razor blade that Howard recognizes as a cockfighting spur.
“What’s wrong with you? Why threaten me? You’ll get what you want if you just—”
Ignacio braces Howard’s head between his knees and slices his ear off with the spur. It takes a moment for the pain to register, because his ear couldn’t have just been sliced off. It’s his ear. Ignacio staunches the bleeding with a dishcloth and crams the cloth into Howard’s mouth to stop him screaming. Because he’s screaming now. Because his ear’s been cut off.
Ignacio stays with him until he passes out.
MORNING AGAIN, AND THEN NIGHT. Ignacio and Littleboy seal up the square window with plywood and spackle. Hon calls, and then Benicio calls, and then the kidnappers place the phone beside Howard like a fellow captive and smash it to pieces under their heels. The woman comes inside and changes Howard’s bandages, and it’s only then that he realizes he was bandaged at all. She brings him a bucket to shit in and some