Chapter 6
He was still wrapped in the blanket when Valentine turned up with a nurse and a spare thug.
Valentine’s eyes were so blue, they were a little shocking. They looked like a special effect. His hair looked like a special
effect too, a mess of golden-white curls.
“Joe Valentine,” Mr. Valentine said. “I’d offer to shake, but my mother taught me no one loves a tease.”
The nurse pushed a rolling cart with Van’s breakfast on it. She had a pert snub nose and the sunny attitude of a young preschool
teacher.
“I bet you’re thirsty!” she announced, poking a straw through the tinfoil lid on a cup of orange juice. “Let’s wet your whistle,
Mr. McBride.” She pushed the straw toward his mouth and—resentfully—he drank. It was cold and sweet and good.
“You want to watch out for my sister,” Van told the nurse. “She’ll let you put a straw in her mouth and then she’ll spit in
your eye.”
“Oh, no!” said the pert nurse. “I’m sure she wouldn’t.”
The thug positioned himself just inside the room. He was almost as wide as the door, with a Freddie Mercury mustache. That
mustache was familiar somehow. Van looked again and remembered. He had been in the apartment when they came to get him, had
been holding one of Van’s sneakers while someone stuck a needle in his neck.
The nurse chirped, “We have some oatmeal and we have some yogurt. What would you like?”
“What I’d like,” Van said, “is to feed myself. What I’d like is for you to take off these fucking gloves. Help me out, lady, and when this goes to court I’ll tell them you tried to do the right thing.”
She went on as if he had said nothing. “We want to stay with soft white foods for the next twelve hours. You’ve been under
heavy sedation, and we don’t want to make your tummy work too hard.”
“I’m not recovering from an operation. I’m recovering from a kidnapping. You are one of my kidnappers. You get that, right? That you’re a criminal? That when this is over, you’re going to go to jail?”
She cast a fretful look at Valentine. It was getting harder for her to maintain the smile. “Let’s try some oatmeal.”
“You try it. Go ahead and pack some up your ass.”
Mr. Valentine took the only chair in the room—it went with the desk next to the TV—turned it around and straddled the straight
back.
“If he doesn’t want to eat,” Valentine said to her, “you can do the rest of it, Nurse Dover. Maybe he’ll be hungry come lunch.”
She put down a white plastic spork, reached under the tray, and came up with a blood pressure cuff.
“Where am I?” Van asked.
“A secure facility,” Mr. Valentine said.
Van said, “What state? Is this still New York?”
Valentine shook his head.
“So we can add human trafficking across state lines to the charge of false imprisonment.” He looked at Nurse Dover while she
pumped the black bulb, inflating the pressure cuff on his arm. “How old are you? Twenty-five? You’ll be eligible for social
security by the time they let you out.”
She ripped the Velcro strip and tore the cuff off his arm.
“Your blood pressure is higher than I’d like,” she said, “for a man coming out of sedation.”
“That’ll be the cocaine,” said the thug with the Freddie Mercury mustache.
Van was surprised, hadn’t expected the muscle to contribute to the conversation. The mustache was still nagging at him. He
felt he should know that mustache.
Allie’s voice on the phone, breathless, rushed: They’re with the fat man from Greenland, I never learned his name. That was it. Recognition clicked into place.
“You were there—in Narsarsuaq. You sat in on the debriefings,” Van said.
“I’m surprised you remember me,” said the man with the mustache. “I would’ve bet a hundo you were stoned during your interview.”
“Who do you work for?” Van asked.
Valentine cast a casual glance back at the big man with the mustache. The big man crossed his arms and declined to reply.
Valentine turned to face Van once more.
“We don’t have to hold you long. If you help us out, we can have you back in New York inside of two weeks.”
Van laughed. Nurse Dover tried to poke a thermometer in his mouth and he turned his head away.
“Two weeks is thirteen days and twenty-three hours too long, old son,” Van said. “But never mind that. How the fuck are you
going to let me go? I write for Rolling goddamn Stone magazine. I smoked pot with Jesse Ventura before he was governor of Minnesota. I got a book been published in eight languages.
How are you going to let me go, when I will spend the rest of my life having every one of you crucified in the court of law
and public opinion?”
“No,” Joe Valentine said. “I don’t think so. You’ll sign an NDA. You’ll be glad to, glad to resume your life. In fact, by
the time you pack your bags I predict we’ll all be friends.”
“You tried to snatch my wife right off the streets. You tried to stick her with a needle and kidnap her. My wife.”
Valentine drew back slightly and gave Van a woeful look, as if Van had struck a particularly low blow—although a smile remained
at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, we tried. A second-year field agent got overexcited and was charbroiled for his error, along with the rest of his team. I think we
can call it even. But let’s talk about what happened in Brooklyn, Donnie.”
“Donovan.”
“Let’s talk about how five people died, forty-two people were injured, and your wife slipped away from us.
For the moment, I should add—she will be joining us shortly, I think I can pretty well guarantee that.
Now, I happen to know there’s a mark on her chest. You have it too.
So does your sister. We can’t see it, although we’re going to do some studies to see if it can be revealed by different wavelengths of light.
She touched the mark and brought the entity through.
I have a lot of questions, but let’s start with an easy one. Does it have a name?”
“He has a face,” Van said. “And you’re going to see it, mister.”
Valentine clapped a hand against the stiff back of the chair. “Okay! This is how we begin. There’s so much I want to know.
Where it comes from. How you control it. But this is where we begin. Help me out, Donnie. Help me help you. Give me a name
and let me show you my appreciation. I can get you something for that headache, and I’m not talking about Tylenol either.”
And he tapped the side of his nose. “Steak for dinner and a Macallan twelve-year double-cask Scotch to wash it down. Let me
know! Mr. Francis, we’re all set here.”
He rose from his chair and nodded at the big man. Mr. Francis moved to the door and rapped his knuckles against it. There
was a clunk and a hiss—it looked like a motel door, but it was steel reinforced and someone on the outside had to press a
button to pop the lock—and the door swung open. Nurse Dover trundled out, pushing her tray ahead of her. Van’s head rang and
the orange juice had left an unpleasant metallic aftertaste.
Valentine had one foot in the hall when Van called out.
“You should’ve left my sister alone. This is going to fuck her up so badly. Let her go and maybe we can talk. As long as you’re
holding her too, I’ll never help you.”
Valentine looked back from the doorway. “No, Donnie. You’ve got that exactly backward. As long as I’m holding her, I know you’re going to help me.”