Chapter 13: Cyril Van Dine

Cyril Van Dine was in heaven. June Bug’s last clout to the side of his head had put him there.

Soft warm light filled his vision. He smiled and drifted toward it. It looked so inviting.

A blast of cold water to his face brought him back to cold dark hell.

For at least a day Cyril’s hell had been a small brick-walled room in the basement of a building he could not hope to identify. Through the tiny barred window near the ceiling in the far corner of the room he had seen the sun set and rise again since he had been there. Though he had been conscience when they’d brought him there, a bag had been over his head and he had made the trip in the trunk of car.

Throughout the entire ordeal, at least during the times he had been conscience, June Bug had been there. Though he never said a word it was clear his one job was to make Cyril miserable. It was a job at which June Bug excelled. In the twisted world where torture was an art form and Cyril was the canvass, June Bug would have been considered a Renaissance master.

Powerful but precise, and fiendishly creative, June Bug knew the exact amount that he could wrench Cyril fingers back without them breaking. He knew precisely when to release his chokehold so Cyril would not blackout. And nine times out of ten he could hit Cyril’s knee caps with a baseball thrown from across the room. When he missed it was usually worse.  

As far as Cyril was concerned June Bug could even read minds. He knew where Cyril was most ticklish. He seemed to know exactly when Cyril was thirsty so he could pour water on the floor. He knew when he was hungry so he could eat and lick his meaty fingers clean. And worst of all, he knew when Cyril most craved the burn and he would reach into his pocket, unscrew the flask and run it under Cyril’s nose. Though the physical pain had made him scream like a newborn baby, it was the aroma of rye so close to his lips that had finally brought him to tears.

Water dripped from Cyril’s nose as his head lolled forward again, his chin coming to rest on his chest. Most of his body felt numb. The parts that didn’t itched. Behind his back, tied to the chair on which he sat, he could feel his wedding ring digging painfully into his little finger. One of the three rubies inset into its outer face had turned just the wrong way sometime during the night and he was sure it had gnawed his pinky to the bone since.

Inside he cursed the day his brother had ever met Margery. Cursed him for ever having gone off to war and for having been dumb enough to have drowned that day when so many others had been saved. He should have been better than that.

The ruby-studded ring, like the wife, had been his brother’s before it had ever come to him, a gift from Jim Soong. An heirloom, he claimed. Soong apparently hadn’t let Crispin take it to war with him and had passed it on to Cyril that cold February day when he had come calling.   

Cyril had not seen Jim Soong since the bag had been placed over his head in his kitchen and he had heard his voice only once. After he had been brought to the room and tied to his chair, but before the bag had been removed, his voice had come from across the room, free of the silk that had laced it in his home.

“He is the husband of my only sister and a member of my family,” he had said, presumably to June Bug, and Cyril had momentarily felt comforted. “Keep him presentable.”

A door had closed and when the bag was taken off only June Bug remained. Cyril presumed Soong had been busy finding Carr, and Margery, ever since.

Wherever he was, he had not come back to follow up on June Bug’s progress and, since there was no mirror in the room, Cyril was unable to make his own assessment as to how well June Bug had held up his end of the bargain. If he looked as bad as he felt, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell.

Snow, he thought and closed his eyes and imagined it on his lips, that would be nice right now. With his bottom lip he half-consciously tried to catch a bead of water that clung to the tip of his nose. He was still trying when he felt a new sensation grip his scalp.

Hair pulling, one strand at a time, had been one of June Bug’s first games. Cyril stiffened and his eyes shot open. June Bug was at his side, one hand on the back of his chair near his bound hands. Cyril caught a glimpse of a black comb buried in the other hand. June Bug was running the comb roughly through his hair. An itch in his scalp that had been eating at him for ages was suddenly soothed and Cyril almost groaned aloud.

“What the heck are you doing?” Cyril asked cautiously.

Cyril had never expected an answer and, true to form, June Bug simply pocketed the comb and walked to the door at the far end of the room. The door was thick and heavy but silent on its hinges as June Bug swung it open and then shut again, ducking under the frame as he exited. The only sound Cyril heard was a thin squeak and a soft thud as the door was locked from the other side.

Within a minute Cyril was asleep.

**************

Cyril was jolted awake by what sounded like gunshots. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but pain lanced through his neck as he pulled his chin off his chest and looked to the small window, seemingly the source of the sound. After a long moment, when no further shots were heard, Cyril began to wonder whether he had dreamt the sounds.

Awake and with the room still devoid of June Bug Cyril finally to a moment to inspect his prison. Apart from brick walls and the tiny window, its only features were the door out of which June Bug had departed, a second door in the wall to his right, and a dark window on the same wall, beside the door and to his immediate right. The room beyond that window seemed dark and he could make out nothing from within.

He flexed his wrists testing his restraints. Rubbed raw over the past day his skin felt as if it were on fire as he pressed against the rope. Cyril winced and was about to cry out when he felt something loosen. The pain momentarily forgotten, he pulled again. Cyril could hardly believe his luck when the rope seemed to unfurl like a snake releasing its suffocated prey.  

June Bug, he thought as he pulled his stiff arms free of the chair and stood up. Cyril could not fathom why the giant would have let him go.

The black window to his right suddenly lit up and Cyril dove to the floor to be out of sight.

“Cuff’em to the chairs,” he heard followed by some commotion. When he glanced up a man he had not seen before stood looking in the window. From where he lay Cyril was in full view of him but the man seemed to look straight over him. As Cyril watched he adjusted his neck tie and then used a gloved hand to massage one end of a thin mustache.

Cyril had read about one-way glass in funny books as a kid, but he had never seen one in real life. Not completely believing it, as the man turned around, Cyril crawled to the wall and peaked through. Three men were leaving the room while two more sat cuffed to chairs. The one on the right seemed unconscious while the other looked drearily from side to side and into the naked light bulb swinging gently from the ceiling above him. His eyes finally settled on the other man.

“Ron,” he said in a harsh whisper following by something Cyril couldn’t make out. The other man roused and looked around himself. They began to talk in hushed tones.

“…my mess,” he heard one say. The other one mumbled something and then returned, “Where are we?”

At that Jim Soong entered the room followed by two men, one of them the man that had been grooming himself in the mirror only a moment before.

“You’re in a private office reserved for my use at the Second Third Bank,” Soong replied and Cyril could see the building in his mind. He knew the area well. One of his least favorite but cheapest drinking establishments was in an alley across the street. He used to enjoy going there until he and his big mouth had learned the hard way that many of Soong’s men did too. Wallack’s Theater was only a few short blocks away.

“I know because I put you there,” Soong continued as the two suits blocked Cyril’s view of his fellow captives.

At the far end of his own room Cyril heard the deadbolt sliding open. He glanced back to his chair but knew he would never make it before the door opened. His heart beat faster as a yelp from the other room told him the inevitable beatings had begun. Cyril stood up but otherwise remained frozen as the door swung open. June Bug ducked into the room, looming so large that it took Cyril a moment to realize that his wife had walked in behind him.

“Don’t say a god-damned word,” she said before Cyril had a chance to reattach his brain to his tongue. “That glass ain’t that thick and we don’t have the time besides.”

In the other room Cyril heard the words “triad bastard” and knew screams would not be far behind.

“What the hell is going on?” Cyril hurriedly whispered as the predicted screams erupted from behind the window.

“There isn’t much you’re deserving of,” Margery replied, “but you don’t deserve what you’ll get here. This was never part of the plan.”

“Plan?” Cyril repeated, but Margery cut him off.

“The door is open,” she gestured. “From here on out, you’re on your own.”

Something in the way she said it let Cyril know Margery was not just referring to today. They stared at each other. In the other room someone screamed, “I was following your cunt sister!” and it broke Margery’s gaze.

“What have you…” Cyril managed but the voice from the other side of the window continued, cutting him off.

“That’s right,” it said dripping with contempt. “Your sister just got off the phone with Flo Silvestri and then jumped in a car with you.”

Margery’s eyes found his again and she took a deep breath.

Cyril ran for the door.  

“Ain’t that the cat’s pajamas?” he heard the speaker say just before he passed through the door and into the hall. To his right he found a staircase and a hallway. An unholy scream erupted from the door behind him and from down the hallway simultaneously. He made for the stairs but, his legs still stiff from confinement, he missed the first one and crashed heavily onto the metal steps. Picking himself up he scrambled on all fours until he reached the point where the stairs doubled back on themselves. He was making the turn when he heard the bark of gunfire and pieces of brick tickled the right side of his face. He didn’t stop.

Looking ahead a door stood at the stop of the stairs, solid and closed. He could only hope it was unlocked. Time seemed to pass slowly as he stumbled his way over the top of the last stair and reached for the handle. It turned and he burst out into the warm evening air. The sky was purple above the alley and red at its end, where it met the street and where Cyril saw people ambling by. He started running toward them as shouting erupted from the stairwell as the door slammed shut behind him.

He was not thirty feet from the street when he heard the door crash open behind him and he tripped and fell. Skin tore from his palms as the cobble stones, rougher in the alley than on the well worn street, rudely massaged his battered body from head to toe. Getting back to his feet he stumbled closer to the street, ducking to avoid the gunshots that he knew would inevitably be coming. He had just reached the corner of the building when the first one jolted him and he tumbled onto the street.