“Sloppy,” Elvis repeated.
“The way you beat Casimiro was sloppy. Too messy. I can’t stand messy interrogations. You probably are messy all the time,” the man said, raising his hands in the air and sighing. “Three guys to beat a skinny priest? You couldn’t do it on your own?”
“You handle it any better in Russia?”
“How’d you figure that one out?” the man asked. He didn’t sound surprised. Just pleased that Elvis had caught on quickly. Maybe he’d assumed Elvis was a fucking idiot and he wouldn’t even guess right.
“You sure aren’t from Peralvillo. Arkady’s a Russian name. It’s fromCrime and Punishment.”
“Are you studying literature?”
Elvis chuckled. “I like to read.”
“Good. Everyone deserves an education. Now, what’s your angle?”
“I’m guessing that yours is to try and scare me by telling me you’re KGB and then waving your gun at me.”
He probably had a Makarov somewhere on him, fucking commie spy.
The man smiled and switched on the radio, turning up the volume pretty damn high. “White Room” was starting to play. He rolled up the newspaper he was holding, his hands tight around the paper. “No, by keeping it simple. Not sloppy. Simple.”
Arkady whacked him in the face with the newspaper, like Elvis was a damn dog. And shit, it fuckinghurt. Arkady whacked him again and again and again. Elvis tried to focus on something else. That’s what El Mago told them when they were hurt, focus on something else. But there wasn’t much to focus on in that gray storage room filled with boxes.
“Scream if you want, by all means,” Arkady said. But of course the radio was blasting, and who the fuck was going to hear Elvis anyway? Better to bite his tongue instead of whimpering like a baby.
He thought of the woman. Maite. With her startled eyes, the face like Bluebeard’s wife. The way she’d craned her head that morning when the hippie had been speaking to her in front of her building, before they got into the car. Her dress was yellow with a flowered print.
Elvis blinked, looking up at Arkady. The man had stopped hitting him and was now looking down at him, still smiling. His teeth were very white. He probably brushed them after every meal, the fucker. Combed his hair very nicely, made sure not a strand of it was out of place. Even now after hitting Elvis eight times in a row he looked pristine.
“Who do you work for?” Arkady asked, now tapping Elvis on the shoulder with the newspaper. A tiny tap. Elvis flinched and swallowed, the taste of bile coating his tongue. He’d once read about an asshole who beat a dog to death with a newspaper and wondered if you could do the same with a man. He wasn’t about to find out.
Reveal what you must, conceal the rest. That’s another thing El Mago always said. He decided to try that avenue. “DFS,” he muttered. A lie, but it sounded real enough. He was thinking about the DFS quite a bit lately, and it was safer to say he was with DFS than a Hawk. Even a KGB orangutan would think twice about putting a bullet in a DFS man. It would cause too much trouble.
“What do you want here?” the Russian asked.
“I’m guessing the same thing you want,” Elvis muttered. “An art education.”
“You mouthy idiot. What. Do. You. Want.”
Each word was followed by a blow and the rhythmic wah-wah of Clapton’s guitar until Elvis croaked a name. “Leonora,” he said, figuring what the fuck. He had to saysomething.
“Ah, Leonora. The girl with the pictures. Do you have any good leads?”
“My only lead brought me here, so it’s not much.”
“No, it’s not,” Arkady agreed. “Who’s your boss?”
“Some dude.”
Arkady hit him again. Half a dozen whacks to the face. Elvis’s mouth was bleeding. But if he answered too quickly, the man would know he was faking it. So he thought about Maite again, the picture he’d stolen from her apartment. The dark eyes captured in that snapshot, that quivering of the mouth, frozen in time.
Upstairs, the people were dancing again. The tap-tap-tap of their feet seemed to mark each blow. He couldn’t recognize the music. It sounded distorted, muffled by the radio in the room. Danzón, maybe. For all he knew, a tango. Yeah, probably a tango. He couldn’t dance. Put music on and he’d stand firmly in place, ramrod straight.
A fucking tango was taking place above his head, Los Hooligans were on the radio now that the song by Cream was done, and the damn Russian was striking him with indifferent, methodical blows while Elvis swallowed blood.
Another half dozen blows and Elvis spoke. “Anaya,” he sputtered. “It’s Anaya.”
It sounded honest, and Arkady seemed satisfied, though he still smacked him across the face with the newspaper one more time before stepping out.
