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Chapter 41
CURTIS IS TORTURED
The lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Salt Lake City was as bland and soundless as any other. The
carpet was as hard as concrete, and a stale smell of coffee hung in the air. In the corner of the
foyer, a television played with a ticker streaming below the newscaster who read the latest headlines,
noting that new home sales in the United States had fallen by 7.8 percent over the previous month, and
the economy was again sputtering.
Upstairs in one of the hotel suites, a pink walking cane lay on the floor. And a few feet away, in
the bathroom, the owner of that cane—Curtis Green—was being drowned by a postal worker from
the Marco Polo task force. Across from him, as Green’s head was held underwater and his arms
flailed about in panic, Carl Force of the DEA stood with a digital camera videotaping this torture.
It had been a week since the DEA had come into Green’s house with a battering ram, smashing
down his front door and scaring the shit (quite literally) out of his poor Chihuahuas. After he had been
booked, processed, and let go from the local police precinct, he had gone home, dropped onto the
couch, and cried. He reasoned that the next steps would be getting a lawyer, having a court date, and
maybe striking a deal with the DEA that would grant him a lesser sentence. But events had played out
differently.
After his arrest the Marco Polo task force returned to Baltimore, and the Mormon boy, Green,
had been told to lie low. Carl and the rest of the team had assumed that they would have time to
question Green later and could sift through his computer for more evidence in the meantime. But as
Carl had learned (as Nob), the Dread Pirate Roberts had figured out that his employee had been
arrested.
Amid a flurry of confusion, Shaun Bridges, Carl Force, and a postal worker from the task force
had returned to the Salt Lake City Marriott to question Green, to try to glean what they could while he
still had access to his Silk Road files.
Green arrived at the Marriott with his lawyer and immediately began babbling on about how the
ruthless Dread Pirate Roberts would soon surely send his goons to have him killed. He was so
petrified he couldn’t sleep, he said. He kept peering out of his window in Spanish Fork, fearing that
someone would come and tap on the door and that would be the end of Curtis Green and his two