They ripped off the duct tape that covered Jordan Talafero’s mouth, pulled out the handkerchief and stuck a hose down his throat.
Toninho Feioso, the author of the hose idea, had heard, somewhere, that such a procedure, followed by turning on the water full-blast, could be particularly painful to the victim. He, therefore, decided to give it a try, because, in his opinion, Jordan Talafero was a canalha who deserved the very worst that he and Gaspar could dish out.
The result of the hose operation was gratifying. So gratifying, in fact, that Toninho was loathe to give it up. It took quite some cajoling on Gaspar’s part before he finally agreed to turn off the water and replace the handkerchief and the duct tape.
Toninho meant “little Tony”, but this was a misnomer. Little Tony was neither little nor named Tony. Some of his colleagues, Gaspar for one, knew that much, but no one claimed to know what his true name actually was. No one ever had the guts to ask.
Feioso meant “ugly,” which was entirely appropriate. Toninho Feioso was the ugliest of men, and he appeared even uglier when he was attacking your kneecaps with a ball peen hammer, as Jordan Talafero, after they’d finished with the hose, had occasion to find out.
“And this, you bastard, is for the guy downstairs,” Toninho informed Talafero, the statement eloquently punctuated by the crack of breaking bone and a muffled scream from beyond the duct tape.
Toninho, who wasn’t very smart, couldn’t remember the name of Miranda’s downstairs neighbor, which was Atilio Nabuco, and he didn’t care much about Nabuco anyway, but he had previously dedicated bones on other parts of Talafero’s anatomy to Miranda, his wife, and each of his kids. He was grasping for names since it appeared he was going to run out of them before he ran out of bones.
Gaspar would have liked a turn with that ball peen hammer, but he knew better than to interrupt Tony when he was exercising his professional skills.
Gaspar, therefore, confined himself to questions of the kind Talafero could respond to with movements of his head.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” he said, “did you, or did you not, plant that fucking bomb that killed the Captain?”
For the first time, Talafero nodded.
Gaspar took a step backward, looked at Tony and smiled. Then he turned back to Talafero.
“You shoulda come clean in the first place, admitted it right away, saved us all this trouble. Then you coulda been dead by now.”
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been much of a reward for honesty. But Talafero, at that moment, wanted nothing more than a quick bullet to his head.
Gaspar, however, wasn’t quite ready to give it to him. Some questions remained.
“There was something about diamonds,” he said. “The boss was gonna talk to the federal cops. You know anything about that?”
Talafero shook his head.
“And the Artist’s mother? You have anything to do with grabbing her?”
Again, Talafero shook his head.
Gaspar turned back to his colleague.
“Well, I guess that’s that.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, “that’s that.”
He took out his pistol.
“Hang on,” Gaspar said.
“What?”
“Lend me that hammer.”