Clandestine

"O-okay."

Carlisle and Smith threw open the doors of the car. I pulled Engels into a sitting position on the backseat. I removed his handcuffs and he rubbed his wrists, which had gone almost blue, and started to sob.

"Quiet now," Dudley whispered to him. "We'll have none of that, you understand?"

Engels caught the maniacal look in the big Irishman's face and understood immediately. He looked at me imploringly. I smiled sympathetically, and felt vague power stirrings: if justice was the imperative, and good guy-bad guy was the method of interrogation, then we were already well on our way.

Mike Breuning pulled up in back of us and tooted his horn. I took my eyes off Engels and checked out the surroundings. We were parked in a garbage-strewn alley in back of what looked like a disused auto court.

"Freddy," Dudley said, "you go with Mike and open up the room. Make sure no one's around."

"Right, skipper."

I got out of the car, stretching my cramped legs. Mike Breuning clapped me on the back. He was almost feverish in his excitement and praise of Dudley: "I told you old Dud thought of everything, didn't I? Look at this place," he said, leading me in through a narrow walkway to a one-story L-shaped collection of tiny connected motel rooms, all painted a faded puke green. "This is great, isn't it? The place went under during the war, and the guy who owns it won't sell. He's waiting for the value to go up. It's perfect."

It was perfect. Chills briefly overtook me. A perfect impressionist representation of hell: the L-shaped wings fronted by dead brown grass covered with empty short-dog bottles and condom wrappers. "Keep Out" signs painted over with obscenities posted every six feet. Dog shit everywhere. A dead, towering palm tree standing sentry, keeping the parking lot of an aircraft plant across the street at bay.

"Yeah, it's perfect," I said to Mike. "Does it have a name?"

"The Victory Motel. You like it?"

"It does have a ring to it."

Mike pointed me toward room number 6. He unlocked the door, and a large rat scurried out. "Here we are," he said.

I surveyed our place of interrogation: a small, perfectly square, putrid-smelling room with a rusted bedstead holding a filthy mattress on bare springs. A desk and two chairs. A cheap oil painting of a clown, unframed, above the bed. A magazine photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt pinned to a doorway leading into a bathroom where the bathtub and fixtures were covered with rodent droppings. Someone had drawn a Hitler mustache on F.D.R. Mike Breuning pointed to it and giggled.

"Go get our suspect, will you, Mike?" I said. I wanted to be alone, if only for a moment, if only in a hovel like this.

Dudley, Breuning, and Carlisle entered the tiny room a minute later, propelling our pajama-clad suspect in front of them. Carlisle threw Engels down on the bed and handcuffed his hands in front of him. He was trembling and starting to sweat, but I thought I noted the slightest trace of indignation come into his manner as he squirmed to find a comfortable posture on the urine-stained mattress.

He looked up at his four captors hovering over him and said, "I want to call a lawyer."

"That's an admission of guilt, Engels," Carlisle said. "You haven't been charged with anything yet, so don't fret about a shyster until we book you."

"If we book him," I interjected, assuming my role of "good guy" without being told.

"That's right," Mike Breuning said. "Maybe the guy ain't guilty."

"Guilty of what?" Eddie Engels cried out, his voice almost breaking. "I haven't done a goddamned thing!"

"Hush now, son," Dudley said in a fatherly tone. "Just hush. We're here to see to justice. You tell the truth and you'll serve justice—and yourself. You've got nothing to fear, so just hush."

Dudley's softly modulated brogue seemed to have a calming effect on Engels. His whole body seemed to slump in acceptance. He swung his legs over the side of the mattress. "Can I smoke?" he asked.

"Sure," Dudley said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a handcuff key. "Freddy, unlock Mr. Engels, will you?"

"Sure, Dud."

I unlocked the bracelets, and Engels smiled at me gratefully. Playing my unassigned role, I smiled back. Dudley tossed him a pack of Chesterfields and a book of matches. Engels's hands shook too badly to get a light going, so I lit his cigarette for him, smiling as I did it. He wolfed in the smoke and smiled back at me.

"Dick, Freddy," Dudley said, "I want you lads to make the run to the liquor store. Eddie, lad, what's your poison?"

Engels looked bewildered. "You mean booze? I'm not much of a drinker."

"Are you not, lad? Barhopper like yourself?"

"I don't mind gin and Coke once in a while."

"Ahhh, grand. Freddy, Dick, you heard the man's order. Hop to it; there's a liquor store down the street."