“Where are her clothes, Harry?”
He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just the three of us.”
Harry frowned in confusion, glanced back toward the bedroom. “Girl’s comin’?”
“No. Louis. Better give him a hand.”
Now Harry got it.
He leaned down and hefted his partner in the plastic shroud and held the crinkly corpse in his arms like a B-movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but only on the inside; you could sort of see what was left of Louis’s head trying to look out. Harry seemed like he was going to cry again.
I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open.
Cold came in, but I barely noticed. I don’t think Harry much noticed, either.
“What…?” he asked. “Where…?”
“Out on the lake,” I said, and nodded in that direction.
“…can I get my coat?”
“I don’t think so. I think the cold will keep you on your toes, and anyway, suppose you have a gun in your pocket, and I have to kill you, and mess up that beautiful Burberry. Which would be a fucking shame, plus which I’d have to make two trips, carrying Louis, and your fat ass.”
He swallowed, nodded, as if all that sounded reasonable enough. “Okay. I…there’s a shovel I could get…?”
“We won’t need it. Ground’s too hard, anyway.”
Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.
I responded to the question his face was asking: “We’re going to bury Louis at sea.”
“Huh?”
Now I was noticing the cold. “Outside, Harry. My nipples are getting hard, and not in a good way. Okay? Outside.”
He moved past me, his plastic bundle over one shoulder-he might have been delivering a rug.
The chubby ex-gangster walked into the trees, heading toward the yawning white expanse of frozen water. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused.
As we wound through the pines, the snow got deeper, ankle deep in places. As his glasses got unfogged and made his trek easier, Harry made conversation.
“Was…was that you, Quarry? Back at that fucking convenience store?”
“That’s right.”
“And, what? You…you thought we’d come after you? This has nothing to do with you.”
“Does now. And anyway, I got my question answered.”
He risked a frown back at me. “What question?”
“What the Odd Couple needs with Tampax in the middle of the night…Keep moving.”
Finally, at the snowy edge of the wooded shore, Harry came to a stop, and half turned, Louis turning too, Harry asking another question with his face: What now?
“Go on, Harry.”
Harry frowned. “Go on? What the fuck, ‘go on?’z”
“Keep walking.”
“ Where? ”
I gestured with the shotgun, toward the lake.
Harry followed the gesture, eyes tight, and it took a few seconds for him to absorb the meaning. Somehow, though, he couldn’t turn his confusion and apprehension into words.
So I said, “When you sense the ice getting thin, give Louis a toss…let the lake have him. Then head back here, and we’ll talk.”
Harry looked at the lake, then at me; the lake, me.
His voice seemed even higher pitched than before, almost childish, his wide eyes buggy behind the lenses. “What…what if the ice gives, under me? I mean…it’s gonna get thin, farther out I get…”
“We’ll keep the stress to a minimum.”
“ How? ”
“I’ll stay put.”
All the air went out of Harry, and if Louis had been one pound heavier, both men would have gone down in a pile in the snow, right there. But he stayed on his feet, even though the despair must have been heavier than Louis.
“Quarry…Quarry…will you just fuckin’ kill me. Kill me here and be done.”
I shrugged. “Thought you might like a sporting chance, Harry. Before you know it, you’ll be out of range…maybe you can make it over to those trees, where I can’t catch up with you.”
He summoned a sneer from somewhere. “If the ice don’t break first.”
I shrugged again. “That’s between you and the ice.”
He sneered at me; but the sneer dissolved into this pitiful, lower-lip trembling thing that got only a single shake of the head out of me. That, and another nod toward the lake.
Cradling Louis like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold (which was fitting, as Louis had been the wife), Harry heaved a sigh, took a tentative step, and found the ice firm. He drew a deep breath, as if he were diving into water, not about to walk on the frozen variety, and then he was making his way with the mummy-like bundle out onto the lake, walking carefully, hesitantly, testing the ice with one baby step after another, always letting the tentative ground settle under him.
It took a long time-maybe two minutes. Harry would look at his feet, then off to the bank on the right and the thick darkness of trees, clearly considering that option. His breath was visible, small puffy clouds, and the heavy sound of it came back over the stillness of the lake, interrupted only by the call of a loon. Or something-some damn bird too stupid to fly the fuck south.
Subtle at first, the cracking seemed something I was only imagining, in my anticipation; but Harry had heard it, too, because he was poised out there as frozen as the lake.
Actually, more frozen, because suddenly the ice was snapping under his shoes, as if he were standing on a window, and that window was breaking…
He didn’t even have time to run. He was clutching onto Louis, which might have been bittersweet, only I think he was hoping he could use Louis like a big piece of driftwood or something, but it didn’t work out that way.
Louis disappeared, sliding under like a turd down the crapper, leaving Harry to flail, and try to hold onto the bigger chunks of ice; he was screaming my name and swearing, then the splashing was louder than the screaming and then the screaming stopped altogether and finally the splashing subsided.
And he was gone.
I studied the lake-soon you could barely see the hole Harry had made-with the black starry sky my only companion. Even the loon had nothing to say, the frozen expanse and the surrounding blackness of trees as quiet as, well, death. Suddenly this wintry world seemed austerely beautiful to me, a study in white and gray and gray-blue and black, but enjoying myself like that seemed vaguely creepy, so I headed back to the cabin, shotgun slung over my arm.
Back inside, I got the girl’s clothes out of the closet-her cell phone was in a pocket-and went in and gave them to her, keeping the phone. A black hip-hop t-shirt and designer jeans and Reeboks.
“Did you kill those men?” she said, breathlessly, her eyes dark and glittering. She had her clothes in her lap.
“That’s not important. Get dressed.”
“You’re wonderful. You’re goddamn fucking wonderful.”
“I know,” I said. “Everybody says so. Get dressed.”
She got dressed.
I watched her.
She was a beautiful piece of ass, no question, and even with those rings in them, the titties were cute as puppy dogs. The way she was looking at me made it clear she was grateful.
I said, “We need to call your father.”
“What’s your hurry? After a reward? There’s all kinds of rewards…”
I held her cell phone out to her. “We should call him.”
She shrugged and came at me and I found myself backed against the wall, as if she were holding a gun on me. Then her arms were around me and the pretty little mug was looking up at me devilishly.
She had to get up on tiptoes to do it, but she kissed me long and slow and her tongue knew things it shouldn’t have at her age.
Then she drew away from me, her arms still around me. “What do you say, hero?”
“Kind of a bad time, isn’t it?”