An Incidental Reckoning (20 page)

Marcus slumped to the floor unconscious, and Brody turned his weapon on Raymond. The young man visibly trembled, said nothing but shook his head back and forth, his palms out.

“He’s a dead man. You can live, if you promise never to come against me. I don’t care what you do with your life other than that. But hang around with guys like this, and I don’t know how long it will last.”

“Absolutely. Yes, thank you.”

“Go downstairs and get your buddy. Bring him up here. No guns. You two are going to put him in my trunk, and then never speak of this again. You might be tempted to think, once you’re clear of this and back with whoever is left, that you can take me out. I suppose that’s possible, but you’d better be damn sure. If I have to come after you, it will end with you dead, and that following a whole lot of pain.”

“You have my word, Mr. Stape.”

“Mr. Stape. I like that. Now get.”

Raymond came around the bed slowly, inching his way past Brody as though in close quarters with a grizzly bear. Brody said nothing to put him at ease, refused to make it any easier. Raymond and the other had not been around when he had run things, so they had no way to know who Marcus had set them against. When the boy had gone, he considered Marcus on the floor, his eyes closed and a string of drool connecting the corner of his lip to the carpet.

“Brody, I’m sorry, babe. I’m so sorry.”

He ignored her, turned his back so that it faced her. She began to cry again, repeating, “I’m sorry” over and over again as though a mantra that would alter his judgment, change things back to how they were. But nothing could do that. You made your choices and you lived with them, babe.

Brody had called in a favor for a small but fast boat, and drove to Lake Erie with Marcus in his trunk. He always kept the Mustang’s tank full, so had no need to stop to refuel on the trip up. The boat was at a private dock. The owners asked no questions and he offered no explanation to its use.

Marcus had screamed and kicked at the walls of his mobile prison for a while after regaining consciousness, and Brody had to put the windows down to air out the smell of puke that permeated the car. Eventually his prisoner had gone silent, and Brody hoped he had accepted his fate but doubted it. Marcus probably thought he still had a chance to live. Marcus thought too highly of his abilities. Brody wondered how far Marcus thought he could swim.

He parked near the boat, and got out, leaving Marcus in the trunk. In the craft he found the pistol with the serial number burned off, the silencer already fitted on the barrel, and the extra cans of gas necessary for the trip. He placed his own gun in a compartment and took the new pistol with him back to the car. The night was cool, and a fog had rolled in from the lake, so that the streetlights produced cones of light that lit the vapor and gradated to nothing before reaching the ground. There was no one else in sight.

Brody wasn’t worried about the fog. He had driven boats many times in the past in more difficult weather than this, and the craft had a lot of horsepower and state of the art GPS and navigational equipment anyway.

He walked to the trunk and opened it up. Marcus blinked at him and started to speak, but Brody didn’t want conversation. He shot Marcus in the thigh with the .22 caliber bullet and let him howl for a few seconds.

“Get out, or I do the other leg.”

Grunting and favoring his wound, Marcus edged over the lip of the trunk and then fell to the ground, crying out when he struck the pavement. He was bleeding, but not terribly so Brody knew he hadn’t struck a main artery. Didn’t matter, really, if he had, but it would be more fun if he stayed alive until they reached open water. It crossed his mind briefly that he should have brought Jon and Will along with him, to demonstrate what happened to those that crossed him, and to season them a little more for the task ahead. But no, this was personal, between him and Marcus, and no one else needed to see or know what happened tonight.

“Brody, man. Please. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Done what, Marcus? What did you do? I want you to tell me, so we’re clear.”

“I set you up, man. Told the cops where you’d be.”

“What else?”

“You know what else.”

“I want to hear it anyway.’

“I took everything over. I came to Sharon’s house to kill you, all right? I’m sorry. I’ll leave. You’ll never see or hear from me again. Just please, don’t kill me.”

Brody laughed, and then stepped out of the way as Marcus ineffectively tried to kick him with his good leg. He fired a shot into the pavement directly next to his head, and shrapnel from the impact drew blood from his cheek and forehead. Marcus froze, his hands held next to his face and trembling.

“Here’s the deal, Marcus. You’re going to get up and on that boat. I have handcuffs there that you’re going to use to lock yourself up. Then we’re going for a ride. I promise you, if you do that and don’t give me trouble, I’ll offer you a chance to live. If you don’t, I’ll kill you right now. Your choice.”

“You promise me? Promise that you’ll let me go?”

“I promise I’ll give you a chance. That’s all I said.” Brody heard the hope in Marcus’ voice as he grasped at this straw. But if he wanted to deceive himself, play make-believe instead of facing his death like a man, that was his choice. They both knew how this would end. Marcus just didn’t know the specifics. But he did plan to keep his promise.

“All right. Okay. Help me up, man.” Marcus reached out a hand, and Brody just smiled and shook his head.

Marcus tried to return it, but it came out as a grimace instead. “Can’t blame a brother for trying,” he said.

“I can and do. Get up. Now.”

Despite the lack of visibility, the boat glided smoothly over the light waves. Marcus had thrown up several times, due to seasickness or blood loss or fear Brody didn’t know and didn’t care, although he didn’t relish the clean up later. First his car and now the boat. In his former life, he had any number of lackeys to farm the task out to. Not anymore. But he had the man responsible for his downfall, and from that perspective it wasn't such a chore to clean away the last traces of his sorry life from this earth.

They had been traveling for about twenty minutes heading due north. Brody closed his eyes and let the wind strike his face, cleaner than when riding a motorcycle. Of any place on earth, he favored open water, a freedom here not found anywhere else. Sure, there was the Coast Guard, but authority had limitations with only deep water beneath and only fish to fill it. He could picture himself buying a boat after all of this, sailing the oceans, the Caribbean. Maybe become a pirate just for fun.

“So where you taking me? To Canada? That’s cool. I can stay there if that’s what you want. Never see me again, man.”

Brody didn’t answer, didn’t even turn around to acknowledge he had spoken, continued piloting the boat out further from any shoreline. After he had gauged them somewhere near the middle of the approximately fifty-seven mile width of the lake, he turned off the engine and let the currents have their way with the boat. He did a slow three-sixty pivot, searching for the lights of freighters or any other craft in the area, and saw nothing but darkness and stars, the fog not reaching this far out, felt he and Marcus had boarded Noah’s ark and were the last two living souls on the planet; a number soon to be halved.

He walked over to Marcus with the key to the handcuffs and gave it to him, watching him carefully for any signs of rebellion. He had to know what would come next, but offered no resistance, unchained himself and stood up slowly, favoring his wounded leg. He didn’t cry out again, and Brody gave him credit for enduring the pain.

“Ride’s over Marcus. Here’s where you get off.”

“What the hell you talking about, Brody? We’re out in the middle of the lake. I’ll die out here.”

“Probably. But I’m giving you a chance. If you can swim to shore, you get to live. Or maybe someone will pick you up. I could have taken you out to Jersey and into the Atlantic. Sharks would have been on you in no time with that blood.”

Marcus stared at him, and Brody stared back. The waves gently slapped the side of the boat and rocked the craft in small undulations. Brody sighed and raised the pistol. Marcus stood as straight as he could, offered a mock salute, and then hobbled to the side and flipped over headfirst and into the lake. He sputtered and splashed in the water, only five feet from the boat but already hard to see.

“If you had just tried to kill me, I might have taken you all the way to Canada. But you stole ten years of my life, Marcus. Ten years. That’s a good chunk of anyone’s time.”

He pointed to the south. “That way’s the USA.”

He pointed to the north. “Over there somewhere’s Canada. Up to you where you want to end up.”

“Fuck you, Brody.”

“No Marcus. You’re the one that’s fucked. Bye.”

He turned the key and started the ignition, glanced one more time at the spot he had last seen Marcus, expecting an attempt to reboard and ready to send him back to his fate with the sole of his boot, but Marcus had disappeared.

He began to move, slowly at first, not wanting to run him over, desiring that he should experience the inevitability of death and the full terror that accompanied it. Then he swung the boat around and opened up the throttle, heading back to Erie and his Mustang, feeling the wind on his face and heaviness in his heart he had yet to fully comprehend.

Brody woke with a scream on his lips. He expected to see the expanse of Lake Erie in all directions stretching out to a sky full of stars. Instead he saw the peeling wallpaper and frayed curtains that hung limp over the window of the motel room, breathed in the musty odor of the mattress that he had laid down on without daring to give any thought to its history.

In his dream, he had been drifting in the lake with a bullet in his thigh, alone in the water, his arms and legs growing heavier with each passing second. Something had passed beneath him, something darker than the inky black water and the night sky. Something that had come just for him.

He had thrust his face beneath the surface, saw nothing at all, not even his own feet dangling over the shipwrecks nestled somewhere on the bottom. He wondered if it could have been a Northern Pike, or a big Muskie. They could grow huge and had needle-sharp teeth, but Brody had never heard of an attack on a person. The fear he felt didn’t fit with that anyway, more like a Great White had found him and now circled for the best approach to tear apart his flesh.

He had started swimming - knowing that the act was futile but refusing to die without a struggle - when the thing returned, and he was seized and pulled beneath the waves. As he went down, his face passed Marcus', or what the fish had left of it. But it wasn't his hands that gripped his feet. He passed below Marcus and saw Richard, a man that had worked for him and had taken a burst of machine gun fire to the chest. He felt new hands grab his ankles and he continued down, passing Roger and then another, more, all of those that had died as a result of association with him. So many. He could no longer tell which direction the surface lay, the entire world a wet void filled with the volume of his sins. Still Brody went down, the chain of his victims pulling him into the abyss.

Two sets of hand grabbed him at once, each pair clinging to a single leg. He was pulled down a few more feet, and touched the bottom. Though the complete darkness hadn't lifted, he could make out the features of the two that wrapped their arms around his calves and held him in place. He struggled but they turned to stone, statues that had become sculpted around his legs and that he could never escape; Jon Albridge and Will Roup, the likenesses perfect and leaving no doubt. He had finally taken a breath, allowed the cold water into his lungs to scream and had jerked awake.

He got up and went into the bathroom, turned the handle for the hot water although only cold water spilled out no matter how long he let it run, and splashed it on his face. It reminded him too much of the lake and he quickly dried off with his t-shirt rather than use the house towels, and tossed it on the floor and thought about the dream.

The horror of it had already begun to fade, and Brody quickly re-established control of his emotions. He wasn't a man prone to self-reflection, had plenty of time for that in prison if he had cared for it, but instead played chess and read novels and lifted weights or did whatever it took to assuage the boredom and pass the time.

Marcus had probably died by now, barring a miracle, and this fact troubled him only slightly. He had done a cruel thing - but then Marcus had known him, and so should have known better. But if he had it do over again, he would just park a bullet in his brain.