Before Ricky responded, a buzzing sound went off in her pocketbook. A cell phone. Ricky shook his head. “That would be your middle brother the lawyer calling to warn you that I appeared in his life this morning already. And there will be another call, soon enough, from the older brother who kills for a living. Because, he, too, will want to protect you. Don’t answer it.”
Her hand stopped.
“Or what?”
“Well, you should be asking yourself the question ‘How desperate is Ricky?’ and then the obvious follow-up: ‘What might he do?’ ”
Virgil ignored the phone, which stopped buzzing.
“What might Ricky do?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “Ricky died once. And now he might have nothing left to live for. Which would make dying a second time far less painful and perhaps even welcome, don’t you think?”
He looked hard at Virgil, scouring her with his gaze.
“I might just do anything.”
Virgil shifted uncomfortably. Every tone Ricky used was harsh. Uncompromising. He reminded himself that the strength in his performance that day was to be a different man from the one so easily manipulated and terrified into suicide a year earlier. This, he realized, wasn’t far from the truth.
“And so, unpredictability. Instability. A little manic streak, as well. Dangerous combination, no? A potentially volatile concoction.”
She nodded. “Yes. True.” She was regaining some of her elusive composure as she spoke, which is what he’d expected would happen. Virgil, he knew, was a very centered young woman. “But you’re not going to shoot me here in this restaurant in front of all these other people. I don’t think so.”
Ricky shrugged. “Al Pacino does. In The Godfather. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Anyone eager to act for a living has seen it. He comes out of the men’s room with the revolver in his pocket and he shoots the other mobster and the corrupt police captain right in the forehead, then tosses the revolver aside and walks out. Remember?”
“Yes,” she said uneasily. “I remember.”
“But I like this restaurant. Once when I used to be Ricky, I came here with someone I loved, but whose presence I never really appreciated. And why would I want to ruin the fine luncheon these other folks have planned? But mostly, I don’t need to shoot you here, Virgil. I can shoot you any number of places. Because now I know who you are. I know your name. Your agency. Your address. But more important, I know who you want to become. I know your ambition. And from that, I can extrapolate your desires. Your needs. Do you think that now that I know who and what and where about you, that I cannot deduce whatever I need to know in the future? You could change your address. You could even change your name. But you cannot change who you are, nor who you want to become. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? You’re as trapped as Ricky was. And so is brother Merlin, a detail that he learned this morning quite messily. You played the game with me, once, knowing every step I would take and why. And now, I will play a new game with you.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a game called How Do I Stay Alive? It’s a game about revenge. I think you already know some of the rules.”
Virgil had paled. She reached for a glass of ice water, took a long sip, staring at Ricky.
“He’ll find you, Ricky,” she whispered. “He’ll find you and kill you and protect me-because he always has.”
Ricky leaned forward, like a priest sharing a dark secret in a confessional. “Like any older brother? Well, he can try. But, you see, now he knows next to nothing of who I have become. The three of you have been chasing around after Mr. Lazarus, and thinking that you had him cornered, what-once? Twice? Three times maybe? Did you think you missed him by seconds in the home of the one man who crossed both our paths the other night? But guess what? Poof! He’s about to disappear. Any second now, because he’s just about used up every little bit of usefulness in this life. But before he goes, perhaps he will tell whoever else it is I have lined up to become everything I will need to know about you and Merlin and now Mr. R. as well. And all that put together, well, Virgil, I think that makes me a very dangerous adversary.”
He paused, then added: “Whoever I am today. Whoever I might be tomorrow.”
Ricky leaned back, slightly, watching the words he spoke register on Virgil’s face. “What did you tell me, once, Virgil? About your chosen name? ‘Everyone needs a guide upon the road to Hell.’ ”
She took another long sip of water, nodding. “That’s what I said,” she replied softly.
Ricky smiled nastily. “I think you chose your words well,” he answered.
Then he rose sharply, pushing the chair back quickly.
“Goodbye, Virgil,” he said, leaning toward the young woman. “I think you will never want to see my face again, because then it might be the last thing you will ever see.”
Without waiting for her response, Ricky turned and walked briskly out of the restaurant. He did not need to see her hand shake, or her jaw quiver, though he knew these reactions were likely. Fear is an odd thing, he thought. It displays itself in so many external ways, but none is nearly as powerful as the blade it slices through the heart and stomach, or the current it puts into the imagination. He thought that for one reason or another much of his life had been spent being afraid of many things, a never-ending sequence of fears and doubts. But now he was delivering fear, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t like that sensation. Ricky let the noontime crowds absorb him, as he melted away from Virgil, leaving her behind, just as he had her one brother, trying to assess just what sort of danger they were truly in. Ricky cut swiftly through the throngs of people, dodging the bodies like a skater on a crowded rink, but his mind’s eye was elsewhere. He was trying to picture the man who’d once stalked him to perfect death. How, Ricky wondered, will the psychopath react, when the only two people left on this earth he truly holds dear have been threatened to their core.
Ricky pushed forward rapidly on the sidewalk, and thought: He will want to move fast. He will want to resolve the matter immediately. He will not want to prepare or plan, as once he did. Now he will let cold rage utterly overcome all his instincts and all his training.
But most important: Now he will make a mistake.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Usually, once or twice each summer back in the years and vacations that seemed so distant to him, when his life was fit into normal, recognizable patterns, Ricky would make a reservation with one of the old and particularly accomplished fishing guides who worked the Cape waters hunting for big stripers and schools of bluefish. It was not that Ricky thought of himself as an expert fisherman, nor was he an outdoors type of any special note. But what he’d enjoyed was heading out in a small, open boat in the early morning, when mist still hung over the gray-black ocean, feeling a damp chill that defied the first streaks of bright morning light leaping across the horizon, and watching the guide pilot the skiff through channels, past shoals, to fishing grounds. And what he’d appreciated was the sensation that amid the acres of constantly changing waves, the guide would know which seascape held fish, even as they concealed themselves in the somber colors of the deep water. To slide a bait through so much cold space, taking so many variables of tide and current, temperature and light into the equation, and then to find the target, was an act that Ricky the psychoanalyst had admired, and constantly found fascinating.
Collecting his thoughts in his cheap New York room, he thought he had embarked on much the same process. The bait was in the water. Now he had to sharpen the hook. He did not think he would get more than a single opportunity with Rumplestiltskin.