Raindrops struck the lake’s surface, making thousands of concentric rings. More lightning flashed overhead. I stopped the forklift at the edge of the pier. The forks stuck out over the water. The lake was deep at this point. At least fifteen feet. I’d heard it was even deeper further out, and there were sinkholes in the bottom, supposedly leading down into underwater caverns. Wouldn’t have surprised me. Central Pennsylvania is littered with limestone caverns and old mine shafts. There’s an abandoned iron ore mine out between Spring Grove and Hanover that’s supposed to be bottomless. Supposed to be haunted, too. Bullshit, of course, but people had drowned there over the years and their bodies were never found.
The engine idled choppily. I turned around and checked the gauge on the propane bottle, wiping the rain away so I could read it. The tank was almost empty, but that didn’t matter. We’d reached our destination and would go no further. At least, not together. Not thinking clearly, I turned the key to the off position. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was just a combination of fear and shock and sheer exhaustion. The pain in my head returned again, throbbing in time with my pulse. The engine choked, sputtered, and then died. Silence descended. Even the thunder seemed to pause.
“End of the road, you fucker!”
Whitey didn’t respond. Didn’t move. His eyes remained closed. The blood that had been gushing from his mouth was starting to congeal.
“Hey, Whitey! Wake the hell up. We’re here. Don’t go to sleep on me now.”
Nothing.
“Shit…”
Could it be that he was finally dead, or was this just one more attempt at deceit? Unsure, I decided there was only one way to find out. I turned the key and the forklift stuttered to life again. The hydraulics squealed. The engine backfired. The chains rattled.
Whitey remained stationary—immobile.
Lifeless.
My shoulders sagged. The strength drained from my body and weariness seeped into my limbs. I closed my eyes. Rain streamed down my face. I felt robbed of my victory. Cheated out of my revenge. I thought of Darryl and Yul and how they’d died, and of Jesse, whose body, for all I knew, was lying in a ditch somewhere. I thought of the innocent cops that had been slaughtered, and the butchery at the lumber yard. I remembered Webster, and his plaintive howls during the gunfight at my apartment. And more than any of these, I thought of Sondra. Of what she’d been through. Her life. The terrors she’d faced just to come here in search of a dream, and how that dream had been trampled and pissed on instead.
So much cruelty. So much needless death. All because of one man.
The man on the end of my forklift.
Zakhar Putin, a.k.a. Whitey Putin.
And now he was dead and I felt nothing. Not vindication. Not peace. There was no solace in this death. No joy or exultation. No sense of justice or victory. All I felt was bitter resentment that he’d died before I had a chance to enjoy it. That his soul—if he even had a soul—had slipped away without me seeing it. I’d wanted him to suffer the way he’d made others suffer. The way Rasputin had suffered.
I opened my eyes, raised my head, stared out at the rain-drenched corpse dangling from the forklift, and decided that perhaps he’d suffered after all. Maybe he’d suffered more than any of us. He’d certainly felt pain. If he’d never felt it before this, then at least I’d changed that. He was fucking intimate with it now. I’d taught him all about pain—and about loss.
Sondra and the baby were safe. We didn’t have to run anymore. That was the important thing. That was all that mattered.
The thunder returned, but it was fainter this time. The storm was moving away—losing steam. But it brought with it a new sound; police sirens. The cops knew where we were. I started to reach for the key and shut the forklift off, intent on turning myself in when they arrived, but my hand froze in mid-air.
Whitey’s eyes snapped open again. He stared at me, and then blinked away the rain, as if to prove he was still alive. Maybe it was a final act of defiance. His gaze moved in the direction of the wailing sirens and then slowly drifted back to me. Slowly, he twitched his arms. Then he grasped the forks and gripped them tight. His knuckles bulged. His tendons stood out. Still staring at me, he began to pull himself closer, no longer trying to escape. Instead, he was trying to reach me.
“Whitey,” I said, “you’ve been a bad, bad boy.”
The hydraulics whined as I grabbed the controls. Whitey’s eyes grew wider. Trembling, he clung to the forks and shook his head in denial.
I was still staring into his eyes when I separated the forks, widening the space between them again. I did it slowly, and my eyes never left his.
The chains clanked and the hydraulics shuddered. Then, after a moment’s pause, the forks ripped through Whitey’s torso, tearing his chest open and cutting him in half. Internal organs sailed through the air. Blood sprayed in all directions. His legs and abdomen fell into the water with a splash, sending a plume of spray across the pier. Pink-tinged foam lapped at the forklift’s tires. Even with his lower half missing, Whitey held on tight. Then his fingers started to slip. His arms sagged and his body dropped. He dangled from the forks. I thumbed the controls, spreading the forks apart the rest of the way and simultaneously raising them higher. Whitey lost his grip and he hung with one hand.
He still stared at me, his eyes expressionless and boldly defiant. I got the impression that even now, he refused to accept his fate—refused to acknowledge that this was it, that he was dying. Then his other hand slipped off and he plunged into the lake. The last thing I saw before he slipped beneath the dark water was his vengeful glare.
And then he was gone.
“Rest in pieces, you son of a bitch.”
The thunder roared.
The sirens grew louder now, drawing closer. Tires squealed. Red and blue lights flashed across the surface. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, but even in that ultimate blackness, I saw Whitey’s stare reflected over and over. I opened my eyes and turned the forklift off. Behind me, I heard car doors slamming and running footsteps. A radio squawked with static. Someone shouted at me, their voice audible over the thunder, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying and didn’t really give a shit. Fuck them. I was so tired. Weak and dizzy, I climbed down from the driver’s seat and collapsed onto the pier. The boards dug into my back. The rain washed over me, soaking me to the bone. I wanted it to feel like a baptism, wanted it to wash away my sins and carry off my troubles. Instead, it just left me cold. I was alive but empty. Alive but dead inside. Nothing mattered anymore and death would have been a welcome release. I wondered if that was how Whitey had felt, and if so, had I granted his wish? Was that what he had wanted all along?
I lay there on the pier and began to scream.
And that was where the police found me. I was lying there covered in the dried blood of my dead friends and the man who had killed them, howling at the wounded sky, my teardrops lost in the rain.
twenty-four
In some ways, that all seems like it happened a long time ago, and to somebody else. Another Larry Gibson. But then late at night, when I’m totally alone, it seems just like yesterday.
Alone. Hell, I’m alone all the time these days. It’s hard to find someone when you don’t trust anybody.
The cops arrested me at the lake and charged me with a whole shit load of stuff. The news cameras were there, filming the whole thing. I’m glad they were. Whitey had left a lot of dead officers in his wake, and if the television crews hadn’t been on the scene, I’m pretty sure the cops would have put a bullet in my head right there on the pier.