CAMPSITE CLOSED FOR REPAIRS
USE BOULDER BEACH, CALLVILLE BAY,
OR ECHO BAY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
A pair of headlights blinked from the other side of the campsite.
“You make up your mind yet?” Ike asked.
“I need to play this situation as it lays. I won’t put either of you in jeopardy.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Ike parked and they climbed out of the Camaro. Billy’s skin was tingling and butterflies filled his stomach. Ike grabbed two shovels from the trunk and tossed one to this partner, striking him in the chest. T-Bird cursed him.
“Chill out,” Ike said.
They crossed the campsite to where the Mercedes was parked beneath the pine trees. The driver window came down and Doucette stuck his head out. He was holding a cell phone and appeared to be taking a call. “What took you so long? You forget how to get here?”
“My car don’t go as fast as yours,” Ike said.
“Here, take this.” Doucette passed Ike a handgun enclosed in plastic wrap. “It’s only got one bullet in the chamber, in case he tries to do something stupid.”
Ike lifted the front of his shirt and slipped the gun behind his belt. Then he and T-Bird walked into a clearing and started to dig, their bodies silhouetted by the moon’s glare.
Billy lingered behind, staring at the Mercedes’s trunk.
“Is she still alive?” he asked.
“She cried all the way here,” Doucette said.
He told himself not to think about it and walked into the clearing. Near where Ike and T-Bird were digging was a fresh mound of earth. Ricky Boswell’s final resting place, he guessed. A flashlight’s beam hit him in the face. Shaz, watching from the car.
“Are they going to join us?” he asked under his breath.
“They don’t want to leave fingerprints, so they stay in the car,” Ike said.
Shaz ran the flashlight’s beam over their faces. She eventually grew bored with the procedure and shut the flashlight off.
“You make up your mind yet?” Ike asked.
“Still working on it,” Billy said.
Soon the grave was ready. Coffin shaped, three feet across, six feet long. Ike tossed his shovel to the ground and went to the Mercedes to tell Doucette it was time. The Mercedes’s trunk popped open. Ike returned to the campsite dragging Mags by the collar of her blouse. She looked bad, hair in her face, sobbing through the duct tape, losing it.
Ike brought her to the edge of the grave, then retreated. Mags found the courage to stop crying and gazed at Billy with the same bewitching eyes that had frozen him on the street corner in Providence so long ago. If he hadn’t jumped into her car that day, he would have gone on to become an engineer or a college professor the way his old man had wanted him to, his life filled with endless repetition and boredom. Mags had changed his universe, and if she died here tonight, a part of him would die as well.
He made Mags face the grave. His lips brushed her ear. Four words came out of his mouth, barely a whisper. Then he stepped back.
The campsite was quiet. No one around for miles. He had never shot anyone before. There was a first time for everything, he supposed.
“Give me the gun,” he said.
Ike drew the gun and tore away the plastic before handing it to him. “You ever shoot a Glock before? There’s nothing to it-just aim and squeeze the trigger.”
“Got it.”
The gun felt heavy in his hand. It was black, boxy, with a dull polycarbonate sheen. He spent a moment finding the sweet spot on the back of Mags’s head that was his target. He took a deep breath. Raising his arm, he aimed, then stole a sideways glance at Ike and T-Bird to gauge their reactions. They had turned into statues, their mouths wide open as if catching flies. He squeezed the trigger. The bang reminded him of a firecracker going off. A tuft of hair flew into the air, and Mags tumbled into the grave. One second she was there, the next, gone. The shot echoed across the distant lake before finally coming to rest.
“Fucking A. I didn’t think he was gonna do it,” T-Bird said.
“Me, neither,” Ike said.
He lowered his arm, unsure what came next. Shaz rushed into the clearing clutching a Maglite. Grabbing his wrist, she pulled him to the edge of the grave. Her flashlight found the back of Mags’s bloodied head and she squealed with perverse delight.
“You did it,” she gushed.
“You sound surprised.”
“I didn’t think you had it in you. You whispered in her ear. What did you say?”
“Have a nice eternity. I saw it in a movie once.”
“That’s cool. I’ll remember that.”
“Are we done?”
“We’re more than done. Good job.”
“You want the gun?”
“Bury it with her.”
He tossed the gun into the grave. She had not let go of his arm, and he walked her back to the Mercedes. The sparkle in her eyes said he’d won her over, but what about the others? As she got into the passenger seat, the car’s interior light came on. Doucette was still on his call and shot Billy a thumbs-up. Crunchie was retrieving e-mails on a handheld device and ignored him. Whatever reservations they’d had were gone. He’d passed the test.
The Mercedes’s taillights grew faint as it rumbled out of the campsite. Billy waited until he was certain they were gone before returning to the clearing. Ike and T-Bird had remained by the grave, prepared to finish the job. P. T. Barnum once said that you couldn’t fool all the people, all the time. Barnum was wrong. You could fool all the people, if you played your cards right.
He got down onto the ground, lying flat on his stomach. Reaching into the grave, he tapped Mags on the shoulder.
“Get up. It’s safe now,” he said.
FORTY-FOUR
They entered the urgent-care clinic on the corner of Eastern and Flamingo at just past ten. Mags had a bloody towel pressed to her ear, and fit right in with the rest of the clinic’s walking wounded. The clinic was run by a drunk named Dr. Gregorio Ibarra. Ibarra specialized in treating the city’s criminal element, the reception area’s cheap plastic seats filled with drug dealers and tattooed gang members. Ibarra treated their gunshot and knife wounds without bothering to report their injuries to the police, as the law required. That was his racket, and he made a good living from it.
A female receptionist reading a celebrity magazine sat behind a plate of bulletproof plastic. Billy sweet-talked her, his breath fogging the plastic. Soon Mags was being ushered into an examining room ahead of the other patients.
The examining room was without decoration. Mags sat on a steel table bolted to the wall and kept shaking her head, pissed off that she hadn’t been taken to a regular hospital. Billy stood against the wall with his arms crossed, refusing to wilt under her hostile gaze.
“This place is a dump. The floors aren’t even clean.”
“I can’t take you to a regular hospital without the cops getting involved. You’ll be fine here. Your wound isn’t that bad.”
“You could have blown my head off with that crazy stunt.”
He had shot Mags on the side of her head directly above her left ear. He hadn’t meant to take a sliver of her ear off, but shit happened. To everyone in the campsite it had appeared that the bullet had entered her skull, when in fact the bullet had only grazed it. The timing of her fall into the grave had sold the play, and he didn’t think it could have gone better.
“You’re alive, aren’t you? Show some gratitude,” he said.
“A piece of my ear is gone. I’ll be scarred for life.”
“So wear your hair long.”
“My hearing’s fucked up as well.”
“Learn sign language.”
She angrily threw the towel at him. “I thought you cared about me.”