Percy looked from me to Brutal, his studied calmness dissolving into uncertainty. “What the hell game do you boys think you’re playing?” he asked.
“None of this is a game, my friend,” Brutal said. “You thinking it is … well, that’s just one of the reasons you can’t be trusted. You want to know the absolute truth? I think you’re a pretty sad case.”
“You want to watch it,” Percy said. Now there was a rawness in his voice. Fear creeping back in, after all
– fear of what we might want with him, fear of what we might be up to. I was glad to hear it. It would make him easier to deal with. “I know people. Important people.”
“So you say, but you’re such a dreamer,” Brutal said. He sounded as if he was on the verge of laughter.
Percy dropped the polishing rag onto the seat of the chair with the clamps attached to the arms and legs.
“I killed that mouse,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady.
“Go on and check for yourself,” I said. “It’s a free country.”
“I will,” he said. “I will.”
He stalked past us, mouth set, small hands (Wharton was right, they were pretty) fiddling with his comb.
He went up the steps and ducked through into my office. Brutal and I stood by Old Sparky, waiting for him to come back and not talking. I don’t know about Brutal, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I didn’t even know how to think about what we had just seen.
Three minutes passed. Brutal picked up Percy’s rag and began to polish the thick back-slats of the electric chair. He had time to finish one and start another before Percy came back. He stumbled and almost fell coming down the steps from the office to the storageroom floor, and when he crossed to us he came at an uneven strut. His face was shocked and unbelieving.
“You switched them,” he said in a shrill, accusatory voice. “You switched mice somehow, you bastards.
You’re playing with me, and you’re going to be goddam sorry if you don’t stop! I’ll see you on the goddam breadlines if you don’t stop! Who do you think you are?”
He quit, panting for breath, his hands clenched.
“I’ll tell you who we are,” I said. “We’re the people you work with, Percy … but not for very much longer.” I reached out and clamped my hands on his shoulders. Not real hard; but it was a clamp, all right. Yes it was.
Percy reached up to break it. “Take your-”
Brutal grabbed his right hand – the whole thing, small and soft and white, disappeared into Brutal’s tanned fist. “Shut up your cakehole, sonny. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take this one last opportunity to dig the wax out of your ears.”
I turned him around, lifted him onto the platform, then backed him up until the backs of his knees struck the seat of the electric chair and he had to sit down. His calm was gone; the meanness and the arrogance, too. Those things were real enough, but you have to remember that Percy was very young. At his age they were still only a thin veneer, like an ugly shade of enamel paint. You could still chip through. And I judged that Percy was now ready to listen.
“I want your word,” I said.
“My word about what?” His mouth was still trying to sneer, but his eyes were terrified. The power in the switch room was locked off, but Old Sparky’s wooden seat had its own power, and right then I judged that Percy was feeling it.
“Your word that if we put you out front for it tomorrow night, you’ll really go on to Briar Ridge and leave us alone,” Brutal said, speaking with a vehemence I had never heard from him before. “That you’ll put in for a transfer the very next day.”
“And if I won’t? If I should just call up certain people and tell them you’re harassing me and threatening me? Bullying me?”
“We might get the bum’s rush if your connections are as good as you seem to think they are,” I said, “but we’d make sure you left your fair share of blood on the floor, too, Percy.”