10 (continued)
Near the Hudson Valley town of Saugerties, New York, Thursday, February 20, 8:05 am
“Barb, come out of there now!” Stan ordered through the locked bathroom door.
“Fuck off, Goldman!” she replied. “Why don’t you drag your sorry ass down there to Nueva Valencia and rescue your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I took her around the city and she flew back home.”
The door flew open, almost hitting Stan in the head and an angry-looking Barb stood facing him, her hands on her hips. “Do you think I’m stupid, Goldman? That guilty look on your face when you came back gave you away.”
“Honestly, Barb,” he began. “Look, she was lonely and scared about what might happen to her when she went back to run against that President Mendota.”
“You mean Mendoza.”
“Yeah, Mendoza,” Stan said. “Look there’s no call to be jealous of her. You’re here in this nice house and she’s having her pussy shocked in some torture chamber so they can make her say she lost that election, which she won in a landslide.”
Barb looked like she was thinking. “You think she’ll crack under torture?” she asked.
“I assume everyone does eventually, but she has a personal issue with Mendoza because he killed her parents, so I’d bet she’ll try to hold out as long as she can.”
“I bet I’d be tougher to crack than her,” Barb said.
“You think so, Moore? You think having current frying your lovely little pussy wouldn’t hurt?”
“Of course it would hurt, but so does caning and whipping and I’ve built up quite a tolerance for those.”
“Well, why don’t we go downstairs and see how you’d do?”
Barb stared at Stan. “You don’t have any electrical gear, do you? I’m not going to let you do anything crazy with the toaster.”
Stan laughed. “No, the toaster is too valuable. How would I make my bagels without it? No, after she told me about what they do, I bought some equipment on line. I’ve been afraid to try it out, but it seems like you want to try and prove something.”
Barb looked hesitant. “N-n-no, not really, it’s just that…”
“Why don’t we go downstairs and have a look?” Stan said. “If you’re too scared, we’ll just forget it. Of course Bárbara Morales will be scared, but she won’t have any choice, will she?”
He led the way down to their well-equipped basement and opened a cabinet. He bent down to one of the lower shelves and took out a grey box about the size of their toaster. It had a long black power cord that ended in a three-pronged plug and some lights and a dial on its face along with several sockets into which could presumably be inserted the extensions that would be attached to the victim’s body to deliver the desired shock.
Stan picked up a booklet that lay on the shelf next to where the box had sat. He thumbed through it. “It has instructions in Spanish and French as well as English,” he said. “Very convenient. I suppose the interrogators down in Nueva Valencia have read the Spanish instructions.”
“Are you sure you can follow the English ones, Goldman?” Barb said.
Ignoring her, he plugged the power cord into the wall socket. Two of the lights glowed a healthy red. He reached into the cabinet and took out a plastic case and opened it. “These came with it,” he said, holding up some wires that had a thick single prong connector at one end and a shiny silver alligator clip at the other.
“I guess this clips on to the victim at some sensitive spot,” he mused clicking it open and closed. “You still wanna prove how tough you are, Moore?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it, Goldman, but we have to have a safe word. You stop when I say it, OK?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Riesling.”
He laughed. “Riesling. OK. Now Bárbara Morales didn’t say so, but I’m pretty sure the victims have to be naked so that the wires can be attached wherever the interrogator wants them.”
“I suppose so,” Barb said, slipping her T shirt over her head and unfastening her bra. Stan was getting hard watching the show. Soon, she was totally naked.
Stan pulled a metal folding chair into the center of the room and set it on the concrete floor. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.
Barb sat.
“I would guess that they must restrain the victim, don’t you think, Barb? Otherwise they would jump out of the chair and pull off the wires when the current hits them.”
She sighed. “One would think so.”
He got some rope and tied her ankles to the bottom of the chair. Then he took her arms and moved them behind the back of the chair. He handcuffed them together and tied the cuffs to the crossbar on the back of the chair. “That ought to do it,” he announced.
Stan spent a few moments looking through the manual. “OK, I think I got the general idea here,” he announced.
“Geez, Goldman, at least your girlfriend is being tortured by people who know what the fuck they’re doing.”
“Very funny, Moore,” he said, holding up a wire with an alligator clip at one end and plugging the other end into a red outlet on the box. He knelt in between Barb’s legs and spread her outer labia with the fingers of his left hand.
With his right hand, he pressed the serrated jaws apart and positioned them around her clitoris. Barb stared at his hand, a look of near panic on her face. She shook her head in denial, “You’re not gonna put that there, Goldman. Please!” she begged.
“Okay, Moore, don’t ever say I’m not a nice guy.” He moved the clip down a short distance and positioned it around a bit of her inner labia. Then, he slowly released the jaws.
“Fuck!!” Barb exclaimed, wriggling in the chair as the pain hit her. “That hurts!”
“You had enough already? You wanna say the word?”
She shook her head, a look of grim determination on her face. “No way, Goldman. I can take it.”
“Good, girl,” he replied. “I knew you could.” He reached into the case and pulled out a wire that had a thick metal dildo-like object at one end. He plugged the prong into a black outlet on the box. “I suppose you can guess where this goes?” he asked.
“You’re fucking kidding me, I hope,” Barb protested.
“I don’t think those guys down in Nueva Valencia are much in the humor department. But, just because I’m a nice guy, I’ll lube it up, so it goes in easy.” He spread some lube on it and positioned the tip at her vaginal opening, then applied a bit of pressure. It slid in easily. His cock was hard in his pants and he wished it were going inside her instead of the metal dildo, but, she wanted to prove how tough she was, as tough as that Morales woman must be.
“There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?” he asked.
“Let’s get this over with, Goldman,” she spat at him.
“Very well,” he said. He adjusted the dial to 1. “Ready?” he asked. Then without waiting for a response, he pressed the button and held it for just a second or two.
“Ooohhh! Shit!” Barb exclaimed. She wriggled on the chair, as though trying to shake the awful electrode out of her, which of course she couldn’t do. He could see her legs straining against the ropes that held her ankles in place.
He released the button. “God, that hurt,” Barb exclaimed.
“That was at 1. It goes to 10. I don’t know how high they’re going with Bárbara Morales. You ready to say the word?”
She shook her head.
“Shall we try 2?” he asked. Hearing no response, he turned the dial to 2 and pressed the button, this time holding it for perhaps three seconds.
Every muscle in Barb’s body went rigid. She thrashed her head around. It looked almost like she was having an orgasm, but he knew she wasn’t.
He released the button. She collapsed, panting for breath, exhausted from her fruitless struggles. Stan let her rest for a while.
“That was awful,” she said, finally. “Words can’t describe it.”
“Do I hear a certain grape variety? Do you think you can take 3?”
Barb looked like she was strongly considering whether to give in or stand firm. “I don’t know, can you do it for less time?”
Stan considered that. “Nope. Either we stop now, or go to the next level. Your choice. Of course, Morales won’t have that choice, unless she gives them what they want.”
“OK, I must be crazy, but do it, Goldman.”
He adjusted the dial to 3 and pressed the button. Barb went rigid. She howled wordlessly, her voice vibrating with the current. He released the button.
She slumped in the chair, her body coated in sweat, her hair plastered against her face. “Riesling!” she yelled. “Ries-fucking-ling!”
“I’ll be right back,” Stan said. He went to the kitchen and poured some chilled Riesling into a glass and returned downstairs. He held the glass in front of Barb’s face, tilted it and let her have a healthy swallow.
“So, suppose you were in Nueva Valencia and there was no safe word and they were going to take it to 4 or 5 or whatever. Would you sign a confession? Give them names?”
“I’d confess to things I’ve never even thought of doing. I’d give up my parents, my first born child-anything to stop the torture.”
“What about me?” he asked.
“I’d have given you up at 1. Maybe 0,” she said.
“Very funny, Barb. I wish we’d have had this device back on the Force. We could have wrapped up some cases pretty quickly.”
“I guess,” she said. “Now would you please untie me? I want a long hot shower.”
Stan reached for the dial on the control box and pretended to fiddle with it. “You sure you don’t want to try 4, Barb?”
She was about to reply when his phone rang. He picked it up and looked at it-it was a number he didn’t recognize-area code 202-Washington, DC. He pressed the button, “Stan Goldman, here.” He listened for a moment. “Just a second, please,” he said, muting the phone.
“It’s the White House.”
Barb looked shocked.
“Not the President?” she asked.
“No, someone from the National Security Council. You’ll have to excuse me while I take this upstairs.”
TBC
