My vision is all ceiling tile, so I can’t see it, but I hear it. And I feel it. Before the toxic liquid plunges into my bloodstream there is a gonglike ringing, a gurney-trembling collision, and the grip on my scalp releases. When I look down I see the truly astonishing: Herkimer wavering on his feet, his eyes clicking up and down like the spinners of a slot machine. He reaches dopily into his pocket but before he can extract anything he is again hit in the head by the fire extinguisher. When he falls onto the unconscious cops with a padded, mattresslike whomp, the guy in the turban strips the tape off my mouth.

I just stare at Herkimer.

“My name is Jagjeet Singh,” the guy says. “I am here to help you. You must do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”

My mouth opens wide but the horror noises are not audible. Maybe dogs can hear them.

“Nod if you understand.”

I am still trying and failing to scream. It hurts; it’s like having dry heaves in the lungs.

“Otto Starks, nod if you understand.”

Mouth open, dry heaving, I nod.

“Good.”

He reaches into Herkimer’s pocket and produces a cruel, curved knife. He uses it to cut me free from my many tubes. Bending down, he puts his fingers on the cops’ necks. Then he puts the blade up to Herk’s throat. Now I can speak.

“No,” I croak. “Don’t.”

“If I don’t he will come after us.”

“No he won’t. He’s my friend.” I say this in spite of the flagrant evidence to the contrary. I say it because I need it to be true.

I can’t lose Herk, too. I couldn’t survive it.

“He will find us and kill us.”

“No. He’s my friend.”

“He is not.”

“There’s a reason for what he was doing. I know it.”

I’m crying again.

“This man is not your friend.”

He grabs Herkimer’s arm by the wrist and pulls back the sleeve, revealing a tattoo that features a knife piercing, like Cupid’s arrow, the unskillfully executed, nearly childlike image of a hat. I think: I’ve seen that image before. On a file at Janus, on a Crimies card, on a note I received in a box containing the remains of Pinkerton.

I think: it can’t be. I think: please no. Then I think nothing at all.

The Truth About Herkimer

The Truth About Herkimer