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“Whoops, sorry!” someone said. “Little off course there, Bobby.”

He was yanked back and propelled forward again. His nose was bleeding, maybe broken. He snuffled up blood, choked, began to cough. They were moving him at suicidal speed, his paddling feet barely touching the floor. They came to stairs and he was driven down them like a hog in a chute. Near the bottom they let go and one of the men gave him a hearty push. Finn screamed into the bag, imagining a drop of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet, with broken-bodied death awaiting him upon touchdown.

It was only two or three steps. His foot caught on the bottom one and he went sprawling. He was grabbed again. Every time he pulled in a breath the bag went into his mouth and he tasted his own blood, fresh and still warm, set off by a soupcon of chickenshit.

“Stop it!” he screamed. “Stop it, I can’t breathe!”

“Pull the other one, Bobby,” one of them said. “The not-breathing part comes later.”

His knees hit something hard. He was whacked open-handed across the back of the neck and he fell forward onto what felt like a bench.

“Gotta flip the omelet so it won’t burn,” someone said cheerily, and he was turned over. One of his flailing hands hit something soft.

“Off my crotch, faggot,” a new voice said, and he was slapped through the bag. “That’s strictly my girlfriend’s proppity.”

“Please,” Finn said. He was crying, trying not to choke on the blood now running down his throat. His nose throbbed like an infected tooth. “Please don’t, please stop, I’m not the guy, I’m not Bobby Donovan—”

Someone fetched the side of his face a tremendous whack. “Bobby Feeney, you stupid git.”

A cloth was draped over the bag. The first voice said, “Here it comes, Bobby! Bwoosh!”

Warm water soaked the cloth, then the bag, then Finn’s face. He sucked water in and spluttered it out again. He held his breath. The water continued to pour down. At last he had to breathe. Instead of air, he sucked in water. He gargled it, choked on it, spit it out, swallowed more. There was no air. Air was gone. Air was a golden oldie, a blast from the past. He was drowning.

Finn thrashed. The water continued to pour through the hood. There was no sense of drifting away, no peace, only the horror of the constant water. He reached for unconsciousness and couldn’t find it. Only more water.

At last it stopped. They rolled him on his side. He vomited into the bag. One of the men patted it gently all around. “A puke facial!” he exclaimed. “And we don’t even charge!”

They rolled him on his back and yanked the hood off. He was allowed a hand free to wipe his face. He coughed and coughed while he did it. At last his vision cleared enough for him to see Mr. Ludlum peering down at him. Because he was at the head of the bench, he looked upside down.

“Are you Bobby Feeney or Finn Murrie?” Mr. Ludlum asked.

Finn was at first coughing too hard to answer. When it eased a little he said, “Whichever you want. I’ll swear to it. Just don’t do it again. Please, no more.”

“Let’s say investigation has proved to our satisfaction that you are Murrie, rather than Feeney. Where is he?”

“Who?”

Mr. Ludlum nodded. One of the men—not Doc, not Pando, they weren’t here—fetched him a terrific open-handed wallop. A mixture of vomit and water flew.

“Feeney, Feeney, Feeney! Where is he?”

“I don’t know!”

“Where is the bomb factory? Last chance, my boy, before you enjoy another baptism.”

Finn coughed, choked, turned his head to the side, heaved, spat. “You said… papers. Papers in a briefcase.”

“Papers be damned. Where is the bomb factory?”

“I don’t know anything about—”

Mr. Ludlum nodded. The wet cloth went over Finn’s face. The water began to flow. Soon he wanted to die. He wanted that more than anything. But he didn’t. At last, semiconscious with the puke-stained bag once more over his head, he was brought back to his cell. He was no longer hungry. There was that, at least.

The last thing Mr. Ludlum said before closing the door was, “It doesn’t have to be this way, Finn. Tell us what Feeney did with the blueprints and this can end.”

There were no blasts of music, but Finn was still unable to sleep for a long time. Every time he started to drift, a new coughing fit would shake him awake. The last one was so furious he thought he might pass out, which would be welcome. Anything to escape this nightmare. The skylight high above him sent a few slices of subdued light through the slopped-over black paint. Outside, in a world that was no longer his, it was daytime. Maybe early, maybe late. Whichever it was, there were people out there going about their business with no idea that in this cell, a young man with no luck but bad luck was trying to cough water out of his lungs.

For every stroke of bad luck God deals out, his grandma had said, he gives two strokes of the good.