Many hours later deep in the night, Gannon came awake as his steel cell door shrieked open. Before he could even so much as sit up, a pair of strong hands seized him in an iron grip. Bright stars came out suddenly in the darkness a second later as his head bonked painfully off the concrete from them roughly dragging him out of bed to the floor.
“What the hell!” he said as he was turned over.
As if in reply, a sharp knee was painfully dug into his spine as his hands were cuffed behind him.
“Shut up,” said the familiar voice of Button Eyes in his ear.
A sack was popped over his head as he was lifted to his feet. Barefoot and shirtless with just his boxer briefs on, he was half dragged down a concrete corridor and up some stairs.
Past a doorway at the top of them, he was hurried through another concrete area that seemed more open. After some distance through this space, another set of cement stairs crashed into his shins. His toes were stubbed hard enough to bring tears to his eyes as he was mercilessly shoved and pulled and dragged upward again.
Atop this next flight, there was suddenly a wood floor under his scrambling bare feet. He was shoved to his left almost off his feet through what seemed like a creaky swinging door.
When he was violently seated, he was thinking they were about to waterboard him or something.
But he was wrong.
The hood was removed and he sat blinking out at a massive elaborately set dining room table, the china and silver glittering in the flickering light of a half dozen or so candles.
As Gannon tried to absorb this patent absurdity, his old buddy Button Eyes appeared and undid his left cuff. Then he re-cuffed it to a steel eyebolt embedded into a massive concrete block that sat, Gannon suddenly noticed, beside the left elbow of his tufted chair.
“I, repeat, what in the hell?” Gannon said as Button Eyes retreated.
If his cell had a Tuscan theme, this one was French, Gannon thought. Decorating the wallpaper were old oil paintings, landscapes, portraits.
Ugly portraits, Gannon thought, staring up at the deathly pale and wigged European faces.
He looked at the wallpaper. On it, old-timey Three Musketeer– looking dudes on horseback were deer hunting. What was it called again? Toile? His wife, Annette—pregnant with Declan and nesting—had done their powder room in it. Annette had minored in French in college.
The door flew open a moment later, and Button Eyes was wrestling another prisoner.
As he was sat and cuffed at another concrete block, Gannon could see he was a barrel-chested guy with longish curly dark hair and a dark beard. His dark button-down shirt had some embroidered cowboy stuff on the front of it. He looked like a country Western singer or something.
“Hey,” the man said, smiling broadly as Button Eyes left. “You’re new, huh?”
He had a Spanish accent.
“Me? No, I’m a regular,” Gannon said. “Try the soup. You’ll thank me later.”
The guy laughed merrily. Gannon laughed himself. He didn’t know if the guy was a plant or something but liked him immediately. There was a good vibe off him, a happy upbeat energy. And heaven knows, that was in short supply here.
“What are you in for?” Gannon said.
“Political wrong think. Or do, in my case. Same as you, I bet. They don’t bring you here for slight offenses.”
Gannon nodded.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been a bad boy, all right. Where you from? Spain? Portugal?”
“Brazil. And you are American. From New York?”
“I am,” Gannon said. “How’d you know?”
“I love American movies. Die Hard is my favorite and you sound like John McClane. You know John McClane from Die Hard?”
As he said this, he flicked something at Gannon across the table. It ricocheted off one of the silver sticks and landed before him on the linen. It was folded-up paper like one of those little footballs from grammar school.
“Know him?” Gannon said as he knocked the paper off the table and bent and tucked it into his waistband.
“John McClane is my spirit animal,” he said.
“You are very funny,” the guy said with another goofy laugh. “I am Paolo.”
“Mike,” Gannon said.
“Miguel, a pleasure.”
“Now, now. No talking in class when teacher isn’t around,” Jimmy Devine said as he came in through the door behind Gannon a second later.