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III
It was fourteen flights down to the subbasement where the vault room was located. The room was not actually a vault. It was a large conference room with a vault door that had been designed as a bomb shelter in the 1950s. It was also the place where the department head's so-called "special units" did some of their dirtiest work.
Mrs. Chew had to stop to rest several times on the way down. The woman she was assisting was dead weight, unable to walk on her own. But what was really irritating was the way the woman winced and wimpered every step of the way. Every step! Evidently each one was torturing the younger woman's hard, heavy, still-swelling globes. Droplets of the yellow gooey substance seeping from her nipples also were landing on the older woman's long split skirt, causing stains that would have to be dry-cleaned out. I'm sending the dry cleaning bill to the department, Mrs. Chew kept repeating to herself in disgust during their long descent.
When the two women finally reached the lower-level basement, the vault door was standing open. Mrs. Chew could hear men's voices along with the sound of a woman crying. Although she didn't see anybody inside the well-lit room, nevertheless she angrily shoved Patty through the open entrance. When she herself stepped through the vault door and into the room, she saw that one of the men from special unit had caught Patty before she fell to the floor. Her boss was already there, as was Doc, holding his old-fashioned doctor's bag. Three other men from Special Unit 33 were standing in various locations around the room. Seated on a metal folding chair, sobbing fearfully into hands that covered her face, was a very young woman—maybe nineteen or twenty years old—in jeans and a sweat shirt. She was barefoot. She had long blond hair tied in a ponytail in back, Mrs. Chew noticed.
"Put her in the chair over here," Big John ordered the man holding up the equally fearful undercover agent who kept murmuring, "Oh my god, no. Oh my god, please no." She couldn't take her eyes off her younger sister. The burly man dragged Patty to another folding chair across the room. As she was lowered onto a chair facing her sister, her unbuttoned blouse parted allowing everyone standing a look at the grotesquely disfigured breasts. To Big John, they seemed even larger than just a few minutes ago upstairs in his office. "Handcuff her," he ordered. When this was done Patty's bulging breasts stood out even more. Her chin quivered silently as she stared at her younger sister across the room.
Then Big John was standing in front of her, blocking her view. He lifted her head up with one of his massive hands cupped under her chin. "Now, here's what's going to happen, Patricia. We are about to begin doing some terrible things to your sister. What's her name?" he asked no one in particular? "Heather," came the reply from one of the special unit members. "Heather," he repeated. "Patricia, the first thing that will happen is that Heather will experience much pain and unpleasantness. That's Part One. The second thing that will happen is that you will agree to give me the information that I need. That is Part Two. This will cause Heather's pain and suffering to end—and yours, too, by the way." He nodded at Doc who now had the antidote. "The third thing that will happen—Part Three—is that we will all go our separate, merry ways. Patricia, you know that you can believe what I am saying. Of course, you can allow us to skip Part A by agreeing right now to talk. See, Doc is standing by with the medicine for your breasts." Doc nodded, but Patty did not see him. "I can't. Please, I can't," she sobbed softly.
"Very well." Big John sighed. Then he turned his back to Patty and gave the order: "Strip her!"
The men from Special Unit 33 surrounded the sobbing girl in the chair. Two lifted her to her feet. Two others began disrobing her. There wasn't much clothing to remove. The sweatshirt was pulled up over her head and off, the jeans unzipped and yanked down; the tiny, delicate bra was gone in a yank; so were the colorful panties.
"Leave her alone!" Patty suddenly yelled. "Oh, Sissy, Sissy . . . I'm so sorry!" she sobbed.
Heather recognized her older sister's voice. "Pat? Pat? Are you here? Where are you? What's happening? Oh please, Pat, don't let them hurt me!"
"Quiet!" Big John yelled in anger. "Beat her until I tell you to stop!"
One of the two men who had undressed Heather took aim first. He delivered a fist to the young sister's very flat stomach, causing her to groan loudly and lurch forward with her upper body. Immediately each of the two men holding her arms landed a blow to her lower back. Her knees buckled, her head snapped upward. Two more blows, one from the front to the face and one from the rear to the back of the neck put an end to the young woman's pleading protests. Big John signaled with his hands for a pause. The two men let her drop to the concrete floor.
Patty, who had been screaming "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" all the while became silent herself. Her audible panting was causing her badly swollen breasts to rise and fall inside the white outlines of her open blouse.
"Part One is just getting started, Patricia. You can move us to Part Two right now simply by agreeing to answer a few questions." Big John's voice reflected hope, optimism.
"I can't. I can't," Patty sobbed. "Oh, Sissy, I'm so sorry, Sissy. I can't."
"Okay, then. We'll continue with Part One. Is she unconscious?" One of the special unit men shook his head negatively. "Then strap her to the chair. Mrs. Chew, I think it is time for some of your special handiwork." As the four special unit men bound the stunned and whimpering Heather's wrists and ankles to the metal folding chair with white plastic tie-downs, the chief of staff came over to see what Big John had in mind. "Doc, do you have any scalpels in that kit of yours?"
"Of course," said the older man. He opened his black bag, fished around inside it, then pulled out what looked like a rectangular strip of paper. He ripped off one end and produced a shiny metallic object. "Here you are."
"What do you think?" the department head asked his chief of staff.
Mrs. Chew looked at Patty's disfigured breasts, then at her naked, bleeding, whimpering sister across the room.
"Let's start with her nipples," she said to her boss. "Tits seem to be the theme for today."
"Very well. She's all yours, Mrs. Chew. Proceed." Turning to the two special unit men who were standing on either side of Heather: "Hold her steady." The men grasped Heather's shoulders and handfuls of her hair and waited for Mrs. Chew to approach.
The chief of staff took the shiny scalpel from the doctor's hand and walked across the room. Patty began to scream: "No! You can't do that! Don't!" Then, sobbing again, "Oh Sissy, I'm so sorry . . . so sorry."
Everyone in the vault room ignored her, Mrs. Chew included. She held Heather's small, perky right breast gently in her left hand. With five or six quick motions of the wrist she slashed open the young woman's flesh. Not deep wounds; just deep enough to bleed—and leave permanent scars. "Noooooooooooooooooo!" screamed both sisters in unison. Ignoring the blood on her hand, Mrs. Chew grasped and pulled the nipple with her thumb and index finger, positioning the scalpel at its base. "Noooooooooo, don't!" screamed Heather. Patty tried to rise from the folding chair, but someone pressed her firmly back down with a hand to her shoulder.
Mrs. Chew paused to consider the possible dry-cleaning implications of what she was doing. I'll bill the department for a new suit and blouse, she said to herself. New shoes, too. She stretched the skin still further out from the bleeding breast. Quickly she sliced downward with the sharp blade. No one noticed what she did with the severed nipple. All eyes were on the spurts of blood that eventually slowed to a trickle. A stream of red ran down the young woman's stomach into the fold in her lap, then made a left turn and disappeared into the blond pubic hair in her crotch. Mrs. Chew look down to see the damage to her own wardrobe and frowned as she saw the gobs of blood near the hem of her long skirt and on her feet and shoes.
Both Vogel women were screaming uncontrollability. Big John had a hard time quieting Patty down. He slapped her face several times with his massive hands before she would stop.
"Patricia, are you now ready to put an end to Part One? Are you ready to tell me what I need to know? Spare you little sister more pain and mutilation, please."
"I can't, please, I can't!" Patty was crying again.
"Alright, Mrs. Chew." There was resignation in Big John's voice. "Continue. Cut off her other nipple, then we'll decide where to go next."
The chief of staff repositioned herself in front of Heather's left breast. She stretched out the nipple, pulling with her thumb and index finger. She held the now bloody scalpel to slice downward as before . . .
"Wait!" screamed Patty. "Wait! Don't do it again!" Then she swallowed hard and composed herself. Ignoring the tremendous pain in her own breasts and the increased weight that pulled at her chest, she spoke slowly and calmly—professionally. "I'll answer all of your questions. I'll tell you whatever you want to know." She looked sadly down at the floor.
Big John exhaled in triumph. "Very well. End of Part One. On to Part Two, then." He turned to the doctor. "Doc, tend to the little sister first. Then administer the antidote to Patricia here." To one of the other men he said: "Release this one and bring her over to the conference table. Gently. She, too, is in a great deal of pain. Be careful of those tits."
The agonizing sobs of the younger sister filled the bunker-like room. The doctor made no effort to quiet her as he began examining her wounds, staunching the flow of blood, and cleaning her up.
It took two men to half carry, half drag Patty to a seat at the head of the long conference table. They avoided bumping or touching her huge disfigured breasts as best they could, but it didn't matter. Patty's searing pain was now overshadowed and compartmentalized in equal measures by her remorse over what she had allowed to be done to her younger sister and by what she was about to do to her professional reputation. She no longer cared about the DA's ongoing investigation or about Operation Mason. Julia Mason had been destroyed sometime after 8:00 a.m. that morning in the big office on the twelfth floor. She was now fighting to save what was left of Patricia and Heather Vogel and of their relationship.
The questioning lasted over two hours. Heather had been taken to the doctor's own clinic for further treatment on her mutilated right breast. Patty answered every question, named every name, told everything that she knew. The antidote that the doctor administered before he left with her sister did not seem to be helping with the pain, even two hours after he had injected a dose of it into each bulging, throbbing, burning breast. In fact, the pain of the needle had been more painful than that which it was intended to remedy. It didn't matter. Patty was scarred for life, and she knew it. Both her breasts and her sense of self worth were permanently scarred. Her sister, though, was only partly scarred. Maybe she wouldn't hate Patty for the rest of her life. She doubted it, but she knew she would spend the rest of her own life trying to make it up to her sister. She also knew that she would spend the remainder of her working life as the undercover agent who was not equal to the challenge. She wondered if she would ever work again. So she sat at the conference table, her disfigured breasts still projecting outward grotesquely from inside her silk blouse, answering their questions, mostly from Big John Thompson, the head of the city building department, but also from his female chief of staff. She answered slowly, quietly, completely.
Then it was time to go. Someone had brought down her bag, her suit jacket, and brassiere from the twelfth floor. Movement in her limbs had returned. How long had it been? Hours? It was mid-afternoon. It seemed liked days. What to do about her top was another matter. Her bra was out of the question. Neither the blouse nor the suit coat could now be fastened over the distorted dimensions of her new bust line. Finally someone produced a dark sweater, the size of which suggested it was a man's. Big John's, she supposed. A souvenir for the loser, she thought bitterly.
Patty was able to stand on her own if somewhat unsteadily. She still needed help walking, however. Two of the men from the special unit who earlier had beaten her sister and assisted in her mutilation now helped her walk to the elevator. With great care that she found ironic they took her out the backdoor of the office building to a stretch limousine awaiting in the parking lot. They helped her carefully climb into the rearmost seat. When they asked her where she wanted them to take her, she had not idea.
She did not reply at first. Her car with the ignition key hidden under the floor mat was still parked in a parking structure two blocks away. Her apartment keys, billfold, and cellphone were at the District Attorney's office. Her sister was somewhere, hopefully being properly cared for by the previously complicit doctor. Patiently they asked her again where she wanted to go. "I don't know," is what she said. I don't care, is what she meant to say.
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