The rain continued to beat in a lulling rhythm on the roof of the car as Michael contemplated my rough and ready wisdom. Apparently it called for the fortification of another candy bar. I let him get halfway through it before saying, “I have a question of my own.”
Michael shrugged lightly in permission, but there was a hint of uneasiness in the gesture. He knew I was bound to continue in the same vein and Jericho was far and away not his favorite topic. I couldn’t blame him. The thought of being strapped to the table in that bastardized excuse for a medical room was horrifying enough. But picturing Jericho bending over me with gleaming teeth rivaled by the glitter of the metal instruments in his hand stitched my bowels with a needle and thread of ice. Worse than that, though, would be not knowing when or where your moments in the basement would come.
Michael had said it hadn’t hurt that much, that he’d been sedated for the majority of it. Did that matter? Hell, no. It might be that loss of control made the experience more unbearable. You couldn’t prepare and you couldn’t resist. It would be like falling, falling, and never having a chance to grab on to anything. Michael had forgotten a lot of things in his life. It didn’t surprise me he’d as soon forget this as well. I only wished our situation could have allowed him that luxury.
“You said Jericho was grooming you and the other kids to be assassins,” I started. “That he was going to sell you.”
His nod was hesitant and wary, a far cry from the indifferent reaction he’d shown the last time this topic had come up. Trust; it was all about trust. Unconsciously or not, he was now letting me see flashes of what churned inside him.
“How’d that happen? How did they go about it?” There had to be some way to obtain more obvious evidence that the government was turning a blind eye to Jericho’s setup. Saul had thought it obvious, but I still wanted to be sure. “Did people come in and”—Jesus Christ. I gritted my teeth to finish the disturbing question—“pick you out?” Like a stray dog at the shelter or a ripe melon at the grocery.
They did.
But from what Michael said, the children never saw the “shoppers.” The ones near graduation were shepherded into a room with mirrored walls to be looked over by invisible eyes and then sent back to class. The next day one of the students would be gone. It wouldn’t be based all on appearances, I was sure. Blending in to a certain population might be necessary, but obedience and temperament would be considered as well. And that last one would be the reason Michael had only heard about the inside of those rooms, not seen them. Michael may have been obedient on the surface, but his temperament wasn’t that of a killer. As he’d said before, it was a toss-up as to whether he would’ve seen graduation.
The only thing I was accomplishing was to stir up bad memories for Michael, and I gave up on the subject for the moment. Proof might not exist in either direction. If it didn’t, we would probably spend the rest of our lives on the run. Jericho we could evade, with luck, but the government was a different matter. Then again, Elvis had been doing it for more than thirty years.
We stopped at a gas station to check the phone book for Dr. Marcos Bellucci’s address and buy a street guide. He lived in a fairly ritzy area, not quite up to Uncle Lev’s standards, but nice enough. There were quiet streets and trees that would cast wide pools of shade in the summer. Now they bowed morosely under the drizzle. Michael shared their opinion of the weather. As I parked the car on the street, he made a face at the rain spattering against his window. “We should’ve bought an umbrella when we stopped for the map.”
He was such a cat with his distaste of the cold and wet. “Manly men like us don’t use umbrellas,” I instructed, switching off the car.
“We don’t?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know, kid. It’s an unwritten law. Kind of like the one that says we don’t wear shirts with Einstein on them,” I drawled.
I could see he was contemplating throwing the rest of his candy bar at my head, but at the last moment he decided it was too precious to waste on the likes of me. Folding the wrapper carefully around it, he stored it in the glove compartment. “Next store we come to, I’m getting an umbrella,” he said firmly.
“Afraid to get wet, Misha? Think you’ll melt?” I teased.
“That’s not what I want to use it for,” he shot back.