19
At one point, the beam of his flashlight swept across my legs, but I remained frozen, body pressed hard against the pilings of the house, trying to blend in.
Apparently, I did.
Acky paused, looked in my direction, then continued walking, checking downstairs doors. I got the impression that false alarms had become routine for him. When the siren sounded, it was usually the same: he grabbed a pistol and flashlight, made the obvious rounds outside, then returned to bed because no one was ever there. Power surges and failed telephone lines are not uncommon in Panama.
Still, Merlot had insisted that he search outside. He’d screamed at him, “I have my reasons! I have my reasons!”
Did that mean something? Or was it simply a coward’s insistence on overprecaution?
I watched Acky intensely, barely breathing, trying to calculate the most effective point of intersection. He was a huge man; lots of weight-lifter muscle. This would have to be done carefully and quickly.
I watched him disappear behind a hibiscus hedge at the back of the house, saw the beam of the flashlight sweep the hillside. It was still raining, coming down harder now. That was good. Rain provided cover. So did the occasional rumble of distant thunder.
I had the leather club in my hand, ready. Still watching Acky, I began to move.
There is rhythm to such a maneuver. It requires patience and a refusal to panic. Fortunately, it does not require great coordination-a gift I do not possess. I kept it simple. When he moved, I moved. When he slowed, I froze…
The house was between us… then the hedge was between us… and then I was behind Acky, traveling quickly, quietly, because if he happened to turn while I was in the open, there was not much doubt that he would use the pistol in his right hand…
Now he was plodding sideways down the hill toward the water. We were on the old golf course now. Was he checking to see if an uninvited visitor had arrived by boat?
Yes, that was it. He was shining the flashlight, painting the canal’s bank with a yellow column of light as I continued to close, moving faster now because I had no cover at all…
… Then, when I was only three or four strides away, it happened. He turned to face me, perhaps alerted by the sound of my feet on grass, or the air pressure of my bulk moving toward him, or possibly by some atavistic alarm that warned of predators-for that is certainly what I was in the instant, a predator; a predator locked so precisely on my target that all else vanished in a charge of adrenaline so pure, so potent, that the feeling surely mimicked elation.
I heard an unexpected sound: a thoracic growl. Could a human being make such a sound? Yes. It was the sound of terror, an inhuman reflex, and I could see the shock in Acky’s eyes when he realized that I was on him, his mouth opening wide to scream as his pistol hand levered toward me.
I caught the pistol in the crook of my arm as I swung hard with the sap… was aiming at the delicate bone behind his ear, but his head dropped instinctively and I caught him high on the cranial globe. The pistol went flying from his hand, but he did not collapse in a heap as I had anticipated. Instead, he staggered drunkenly for a moment, then lunged hard toward me-a very big man who was now crazy with fear.
I caught his chin in the palm of my hand, locked his head against my chest as I threw my legs behind me, sprawling to avoid the reach of his arms… and then I gator-rolled with the full momentum of my weight, back arched off the ground, 360 degrees with Acky’s head still locked tightly against me, two hundred and twenty-some pounds of torque.
That sound…
The sound that his body made was sickening. It was the sound of green wood snapping, sap exploding. It was the sound of a human spine twisting until severed.
When it happened, my head was tucked hard against his back, applying pressure. The noise, transmitted through the man’s own viscera, seemed deafening. I could feel the trembling of his body as his muscles spasmed out of control… and then there were no more spasms, no movement, nothing.
I stood.
Acky was a dark mass at my feet. Dead. If Merlot really had filed away letters about the men and the Venezuelan girl that Acky had supposedly killed, they were useless now.
I didn’t much care one way or the other. I’d been involved in the deaths of much better men than this, plus there was a feeling in me now… a feeling of terrible energy that was fueled by the most basic of elements: moon, moving water, wind, blood…
Blood. Had I drawn blood? I fought the urge to check.
Yet the feeling remained, a kind of instinctual madness that ruled from the marrow; a feeling that I knew in my memory and despised in my soul because I’d drawn on it too often years before, and it drained from me that which I value most: my reason, my self-control.
Moon, wind, water, blood…
In that instant, those things were in me. Those elements were me.
I moved away from the body. Everything around me had been blurred by my intensity, but now I took a look at my surroundings. We were screened from the house by trees. Only a few yards behind me was the Panama Canal. The water was black in the moonlight. To the northwest was a transiting cruise ship. The newly wed and nearly dead. It was lit up like a floating city, moving toward Gamboa and the locks at Miraflores. It was far away. No one could have possibly seen me snap this man’s neck. Flawless!
Now I had things to do.
Yes, things to do…
I used Acky’s flashlight to hunt around until I found the pistol. A cheap little. 38 special. But loaded.
I tossed it into the water.
I found the sap. I’d dropped it when I wrestled with the man. Now I jammed it into my back pocket No clues, no man-spore. Didn’t want to leave any sign of me.
From the direction of the porch, I then heard Merlot’s voice. “Acky? Acky! Get your ass back in here! The computer’s working again and I’ve got something to show you!”
I heard the back door slam. A petulant sound.
I didn’t hesitate. I ran; ran hard along the hill and up the back stairs to the door where Acky would have reentered. As I reached for the knob, though, the door was suddenly flung open and Merlot thrust a revolver out. From the expression on his face-a mixture of expectation and terror-my first thought was: He knew I was coming…
When he threw open the door, we each froze for a microsecond, both of us stunned to be standing nose to nose. So close I could smell him: a fried bacon odor, sweat cigarettes. I could look through his eyes into him.
It was that moment of shock that saved me. He backpedaled slightly, me still coming hard through the door, and as he brought the pistol up, I knocked the barrel away from my face just as he pulled the trigger-ker-WHAP-the bullet’s cone of percussion deafening me but missing.
Merlot’s voice was shaking and he sounded near tears as he yelled, “Stay away from me or I’ll kill you. I mean it! Stay back!”
I was still moving toward him; wanted to stay close as he brought the pistol down for another try. I caught his wrist in both hands, twisted counterclockwise as I used my knee to bang him hard beneath the ribs… and then I was holding the revolver as he stumbled backward and fell hard on his butt.
“Oww-w-w! You kicked me!”
Merlot was buckled over in pain as I pointed the revolver at his belly. I still felt the intensity, that appetite, but was fighting it. Shoot a man in cold blood? That was something I had never done. Yet the urge, the craving was there. I spoke to diffuse that feeling of want, of need. How could my voice sound so calm? I might have been joking around with a locker-room buddy. I said: “Know what? You really hurt my feelings, Darkrume. One fun night on the computer, then you never call, you never write. I feel downright used.”
Something about the way I was smiling must have frightened him, because he began to cry now. Boo-hoo-hoo, actually making the distinctive noise, the skin on his face jiggling as the head bobbed. He had his hands out, palms toward me — Please stop! — as he said, “That was all a joke! You thought I was serious? I was kidding. It’s one of those on-line E-mail things that everybody does. My God, if I thought you’d actually take the time to come looking for me, I’d have apologized right there!” Crying and shaking. His black eyes looked abandoned in the massive pink face; this gigantic baby with perfect hair and a baggy brown guayabera who had to weigh four hundred pounds but it was like Jell-O.