More grumbling, and he stops when his soles touch the ice. He hesitates. The snow was full of air and not too frigid but the ice is dry, flat, and sticky. It’s cold enough to burn.
“What do you want me to do?”
I’m about to speak for the first time but the words die on my lips. Not yet. Not yet.
I wave him forward.
“On this?”
I nod and extend the gun.
“Ah shit,” he says but begins walking.
It’s full light now.
The sun advancing over the plains. The moon a fading scar.
Beautiful.
The lake. The trees.
Frost crystals.
Voleries of geese.
Fish in trance.
“Aow!” he says.
Vapor lock. His soles are stuck and he shudders to a halt. Momentum is the key. I give him a shove. His back tenses at my touch and he doesn’t move.
I tap him with the gun.
We begin again.
But the sensation of his powerful shoulder muscle through the glove has made me nervous.
I’m going to have to be very careful when I give him the hammer.
In his freshman year at college he had a charge of assault and battery dismissed (so Ricky thinks) through the influence of his father; and in his senior year he broke another man’s jaw, but that never came to anything because it was on the football field.
He’s strong. He could snap me in half. Would too, given half a chance.
“How much farther? What is this?” he asks and stops again.
I push him.
Although he moves, there’s a little jaunt in his step that makes me think he’s up to something.
Got to be careful in spades.
“What’s with the silent treatment, buddy? Do you even understand English? Are you mute?”
He turns to look at me.
“Huh? Get me? What are they paying you? I’ll give you ten times what they’re paying you. What’s your price? Name it. Just name it. I’ve got the money. A lot of money. Everyone has their price. Tell me what it is.”
Can you run back time? Can you do that? Are you a mage, a necromancer?
“What have you done with my clothes? I want my clothes. I want my goddamn clothes!” he shouts, furious, stubborn.
Naked in, amigo, and perhaps if things don’t go well, naked out.
Even so, when the gun waggles he keeps walking.
“What is this? I want my clothes!”
The echo back over the lake opens the floodgates.
“This is insane! This is crazy!” he yells. “You can’t shoot me, you can’t. You can’t shoot me. You can’t. I haven’t done anything. You got the wrong man. This is a goddamn misunderstanding.”
I’m not going to shoot you. That would be far too easy. That would not give us sufficient comfort in the long years ahead.
“Listen to me, listen to me. I know you’re not mute and I know you can hear me. Say something. Speak. You think you’re being so smart. You’re not. I want you to speak. I’m ordering you to speak. Speak to me!”
You want part of it? How about this: enshrined within the Colonial Spanish penal code is the Latin maxim talem qualem, which means you take your victim as you find him. American cops call it the eggshell skull rule. Slap someone with a delicate cranium, break it, and they’ll still charge you with murder. Talem qualem. Take your victim as you find him. In other words, be careful who you kill. Be careful who you kill, friend.
“Madness. This is madness. You’ve obviously made some kind of mistake. I’m not loaded. You want to go to Watson, he’s worth a billion. I’ll show you. I’ll show you. He’s got a van Gogh, a Matisse. Him, not me. Dammit, talk to me! Who do you think I am? What is this? Who do you think I am?”
I know exactly who you are.
It’s who I am that’s the mystery. What am I doing here? That one I still haven’t figured out.
He stamps his heel into the ice, flexes his shoulder, turns again.
“This is crazy. You don’t… Have you any idea what you’ve got yourself into? Do you know who you’re dealing with? Ok, I’m no goddamn Cruise but let me tell you something, I’ll be missed. They’ll come looking for me. Are you listening? Take that thing off your head. I don’t know what they told you. I don’t know what you think you’re doing but you’re making a big mistake, pal. Big mistake. Biggest mistake of your whole life. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t know who I am, this is just a job to you, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Well, let me hit you with the truth, bud, you’re making a life-changing error.”
His confidence is starting to return. It didn’t take long. His default position is the black rider, the boss, the center of the Ptolemaic universe. I prefer that.
“This has gone on too far. Way too far for a practical joke. Right now you’re doing permanent damage to the soles of my feet. I’ll see you in court for this.”
He still doesn’t get it. He still doesn’t see why we’re here.
“Listen to me, pal, you have no idea what you’re mixed up in. You don’t. Name a sum of money. Go on, just name it. A hundred thousand dollars? Two hundred thousand dollars? How about a cool half mil? Half a mil. Easy money. Easy money. Come on, buddy. You and me. We’ll pull one over on ’em. We’ll show them. Come on, whaddya say? I’m a grifter, you’re a grifter. Come on, man, you can see the angles, we’ll play ’em together.”
Oh, compañero, is everything about you fake? A performance? Where did you learn to talk like that? The movies? TV? Isn’t there anything real under that sheath of skin?
I slide the breech back on the M &P and it makes a satisfying clunk.
He continues shuffling, but only for a few paces.
“Come on, man,” he says, and turns, and he’s so fast I don’t even see the drop kick coming.
He jumps with both feet and crashes into my stomach.
The wind is knocked out of me and the gun goes flying. Both of us go down onto the ice with a crash. He falls on me, his thighs crunching against my ribs.
Water and a big fissure forming under my back.
He pivots on top of me, and although his hands are still cuffed he’s trying to bite my face.
His teeth snag on the ski mask at my chin, his breath reeking of booze and fear.
I make a fist and thump him so hard the first blow probably breaks his nose. The next gets him in his left eye, and the sideways kick to the crotch is the clincher. He doubles up in agony and I push the writhing mass of naked flesh away from me.
I get to my feet, retrieve the gun, suck O2.
I look nervously at the crack under my feet. I stand there for a few beats but it doesn’t widen.
“Jesus,” he says.
Jesus is right. That was really something.
We both could easily have gone right through the surface. The hammer in my backpack would have taken me down to the lake bottom and if the shock hadn’t sent me into cardiac arrest, the current would probably have taken me away from the crack and up under unbroken ice. And if I hadn’t been able to break through I would have drowned. Shit, even if I’d gotten through somehow, I’d have been too exhausted to get out of the water. I’d have frozen to death in about half an hour. Mary, Mother of God, that would have been too perfect. It almost would have been worth it, just for that. What a wonderful, circular, karmic joke on me.
Yes.
I underestimated you, friend. And if I was a better person I’d let you go.
More deep breaths, hard, until I feel that I’m balanced again, poised between fight and flight.
Behind me the startled ravens stop squawking and resume their perches.
He is gasping for air, blood bubbling in his mouth.
After all the excitement we’ll both need another minute. He returns my gaze and, observing the gun, backs away crabwise, trying to make it to the shore. Painful to watch: hands resisting the desiccated ice, heels dragging.