Chapter 18. Visit At The Safe House

Thursday September 11, 2008

I was at the safe house, just me and Darnel with Darnel’s digital data from his home

After they were reviewed and mirrored by the computer firm an outline of Darnel’s hard disk contents plus some of the videos was sent to me on a thumb drive. I went over the contents during the week. He had minimal protection, I guess that when he needed access he did not want to fool around opening software locks. There was a program installed to crash the drive but once that was safed all the secrets were quite exposed. From the logs he spent most of his time using crude spreadsheets to try and beat the odds when placing football bets, plus looking at pictures/videos of women in compromising/inspirational/disgusting positions, including some in use by up to four guys. The most frequently accessed files involved Doria (the daughter of the Sunset Shark Boss) and Darnel doing sexual things. She didn’t look forced.

In some cases Darnel was doing Doria in a DP with another guy, somebody I recognized. His name was Chiggs Martin, we captured him when we took down the Shark base near the Seerdon Forest. Sara, my interrogator for that episode, was a former IDF member who married a 49 member. She flattered Chiggs and made friends with him. Then we had to flip him back to the Sharks where he could say scary things about space lasers and a mysterious prison in the desert where our enemies where burned alive, opening a gateway to Hell - he had seen it twice.

They tested him with a lie detector but the results did not make their boss feel better - he was telling the truth about space lasers. We arranged a demo, a line near the swimming pool burned by a laser. That was when the head of the Sharks had to dig up his yard to find out what burned a straight line one night in his concrete by the pool. He got irrational when the science guys said the same as Chiggs, “it was lasers, the angle says it could be space lasers.”

In the movies Chiggs looked like he was really into Doria, but he was not happy to be sharing her body with a piece of slime like Darnel.

Darnel’s phone camera had a few snapshots of Gracie in the bookstore where Darnel met her and talked her into the really bad party with some of his sicko friends. The quality was poor. Darnel’s phone logs showed that he had used these pictures to sell her willing body to the Black Kings, as their ‘pain party girl’ for the night. The computer also had the footage from the bookstore’s security camera - the shots Gracie’s ex-FBI stepfather was too chicken-shit to muscle away from them, which was the reason Gracie’s life was in danger and he had to kill a Tucco.

In another set of pictures, we had not realized Gracie was slightly roofied that night. Darnel bought her a bottle of an energy drink. She opened the seal but he slipped the pill in the bottle after it was open. She spilled the bottle before she drank half of it, but some of the drug got to her.

The pain party was apparently a weekly Black King event until we took them out. Police found the bodies and filed a report, but the previous girls were all junkies and the guys were no-talk gangers so it ended there. Gracie was the Black King’s last dance forever and they didn’t get to do anything to her except strip and bind her fine form. It was not fair.

Gracie was all the thanks I needed for my machete party to end their pain parties.

Gracie had confirmed the picture of Darnel I sent to Detroit Monday, we had the right guy, now we had to squeeze him dry.

Darnel Starts To Break

After reviewing everything I had to spend some quality time with Darnel. He had been in an induced sleep since Monday night, when he was bopped and taken. Thursday he woke up again and he had a problem. During the sleep he had a half dozen hits from a mix of addictive drugs, a mix that was tweaked for addictive effect. He was already addicted when we got him, so the treatment took hold fast. Once hooked and jonesing he was forced to stay awake, without sight, sound or other external stimulus for almost 18 hours before I arrived. In his IV he had also been given an addiction enhancer, and a little LSD to boost his imagination. He was in a fine mood when I came in.

Now, the CIA and FBI books say that with most people, building a rapport is the way to get information that is accurate and timely. “Help me help you,” is the common line. All over the world people use this method. I have used it myself.

But in this case I had a couple of problems with that standard approach. First off, I could not help that I wanted to tear the guy into small bloody bits, those feelings normally leak through the discussion and kill the whole rapport thing. Second, Darnel was experienced. He was a special case who would take whatever bits of data he could get from the questions to weave them around to no good end while keeping his mind focused on something he considered amusing without giving the real answers I needed. He would consider it a fun game that he had used many times (since he was 9) to drag out the interview and win against cops who could only hold him so long. He would not believe my statement that I was not a cop, a fed, Mexican CIA or something like that. It would take real torture to convince him otherwise. That would waste time, more than he had.

On the other hand, he had no idea why he was snatched, who had him, where he was, plus that I had used some chemical extras to give him a really screwy internal clock. For a guy who operates by screwing with other people I took away his favorite toys and exposed him to some of his own deepest insecurities.

Today I was going to let him know that I would observe no limits in treating him. The first step involved tilting him back (the bondage rack is made for it) and then doing the “just add water” for the waterboard thing that Gracie asked for. I did not say anything first, I just tilted him back, draped his mouth and added water ... off and on for about 30 minutes. Very few people could hold out that long. When he seemed ready, or maybe more than ready, I used a voice modifier to talk.