Letting him go, but turning him—if he could be reliably turned—could give them information and opportunities to do further damage.
As Chi-Chi had done.
Nick made up his mind. “To be clear, Jackie, the choice you’re making here is whether to die now, quickly, or much later, slowly.” He put the gouge on the absorbent pad next to his kit. The key to this work was developing ways to prolong and intensify pain without doing mortal damage. You wanted blood, but not too much. You wanted to avoid internal damage as long as possible. Some men who did this work preferred big tools and big damage and would cauterize as they went, causing more pain and staving off mortal blood loss. But that approach risked sending the subject into shock, and it was difficult to pull a body back from that.
Sculpting gouges were among his preferred tools—they were precise instruments, small and sharp. They cleanly sliced skin away in long lengths without exposing organs and overly weakening the body. The pain they left behind was extreme, however. A little salt or hot sauce in the wounds made it worse. Stone’s bare chest, belly, and thighs were crisscrossed with seasoned gouge wounds. He was also missing eight teeth and all of his fingernails.
But he was flagging more quickly than Nick would have expected, and it was shock they were trying to hold back now. Nick wondered whether Stone had heart problems.
Through his bloody, swollen mouth, Stone whined, “I don’t know what more you want from me.”
“You do. As close as you are to Church, I don’t believe you know so little about him.” He lifted the tray out of his kit and took one of his larger tools—a set of blacksmithing tongs that he’d had modified. “Get his shorts off.” Matty did, and Nick walked up and snapped the tongs a few inches from Stone’s flaccid dick. “Back in the Spanish Inquisition, the priests used breast rippers on female heretics. Nasty things—did just what the name says. I made myself a junk ripper.”
Stone hadn’t wet himself until now, but now he very much did, and Nick stepped back out of the splash zone.
“The Armani is ruined, but I’m hoping the Bruno Maglis make it through the day, Jackie. C’mon.”
“You guinea fag.”
Nick grinned and grabbed hold of Stone’s junk with the tongs. Stone screamed as the claws dug into the meat around his trio—dug in, but did not yet break skin. “Not smart to insult your host, Jackie. Not smart at all. Last chance here, or I give this a good, hard tug, and you bleed out hanging from a hook, with your jewels on the floor. It’s slow going, trust me. I’ve seen.” For emphasis, he squeezed the tongs a fraction more, and Stone’s eyes bugged out.
“New York! He’ll turn to New York!”
He eased off the tongs. “Explain.”
“Alvin’s been talking to some Puerto Rican in New York. Ortega. He doesn’t like spics, that’s why I was on point with Zapata. He’s just been toying with this guy. But Ortega has cartel connections. You cut him off in New England, so he’ll go to Ortega. Get to Ortega and it’ll cripple Church and everybody connected to him. That’s the head of the snake. Now, Lord Almighty, kill me. Please.”
Nick removed the tongs. “Thank you, Jackie. You’ve been a great help.” He nodded at J.J., who’d been watching the whole scene with silent, rapt attention. “You take the kill, J.J. Make it clean.”
J.J. nodded. One of his crew dropped the winch until Stone’s feet were on the floor, and then J.J. put a bullet in the back of his head.
Nick went to a sink against one wall and washed his hands. “Matty—open the box, see if he’s alive.”
Matty opened the foot locker and pulled off Chi-Chi’s hood. “Yeah, boss. Conscious, even.”
Drying his hands with a couple of paper towels, Nick went over to the box. From his tightly folded, excruciating position, Chi-Chi made a silent plea with his eyes. Nick shook his head. “You got Jimmy killed. You got Brian hurt.” At the name, thoughts he’d shoved out of his way crowded in, and Nick paused. “You tried to set us up. If I thought you had anything to do with my father”—Chi-Chi’s eyes went wide and he tried to shake his head—“I know you didn’t. Stone told us when you turned. Stone told us everything we need. So I need only one thing from you. A suffering death.”
He nodded, and Matty closed the lid, dampening Chi-Chi’s already muffled screams. “Chain it up. And wrap up Stone. Time for a boat ride.”
~oOo~
Nick, Matty, J.J., and Sam took Nick’s cruiser far out into the ocean and sent Stone’s naked, weighted dead body overboard. Then the chained box containing the living traitor went over. Nick stood in the moonlight and watched the swirling, bubbling ocean take down yet another batch of secrets, more fodder for the beasts.