by David Liss
“All right,” I said. “I think I have it figured out. I think I finally understand. There’s this guy, a strange-looking tall guy with white hair named Melford Kean. He set this whole thing up. He killed Bastard and Karen and then took the money, and for the past two days he’s been making it look like I did it. But it was him. The whole time, it had to have been him. Look, I don’t like you, and I don’t want to help you, but this guy has screwed me over, and I’ll help you get him and your money. All you have to do is let me go.”
“So, this guy Melford Kean has the money,” Doe said.
“That’s right.”
“And you’ll help me find him.”
“I will.”
“And when I find him, I’ll get my money?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think it’s that hard to understand.”
“It ain’t hard to understand your words,” Doe said. “Just why I should be expected to believe such a bullshit story.”
“Why can’t you believe it?” I asked, almost pleaded. I was sure I would be able to save myself with this, or at the very least buy some time in which Aimee Toms might save me or I might think of something.
“Mostly,” Doe explained, “because Kean’s been working with me.”
And there he was, walking out of the shadows, grinning at me.
***
“Do you really think I’m strange looking?” Melford asked. “First you tell people I’m gay, and then you tell them I’m funny looking. That’s hurtful.”
And in the dimness of the pig barn, under the flashing vents, he looked more than strange: He looked vampiric. His hair stood out, his face was long and pale, and his eyes were wide- not childlike wide, but insane wide. How had I not noticed it before?
“How could you do this to me?” I cried out. I felt the urge, almost unbearable, to leap up and rush him, but Doe’s gun kept me in place.
“You want me to explain myself to you when you were just about to sell me out? That’s pretty hypocritical, don’t you think? Look, I went to Jim when I realized there was money missing, and he and I have been tracking it since yesterday. And our efforts led us to you. I thought you were clean at first, but then all the evidence pointed to your outsmarting me and getting the money out of the trailer. I think you’d better start talking.”
Melford somehow believed, truly believed, that I had the money. Maybe he thought the encyclopedia business was all bullshit, or maybe he found out that I hadn’t told him about the Gambler. Maybe because he played and manipulated and lied, he thought everyone else did as well, and that my complaints and fears and hesitation had all been in the service of tricking him. And maybe he’d killed Bastard and Karen for no more complicated reason than he wanted money, and now he was willing to kill me to get it, too.
I hadn’t wanted to see it before, but there it was. It was ideology. The one thing about which Melford hadn’t lied. We see what we think is there, not the truth. Never the truth.
“This is bullshit,” I said with a kind of indignation I didn’t know I could summon. But it was bullshit. That was the thing. It was unadulterated, cosmic bullshit.
Doe studied me for a moment and then turned to Melford. “You come to me. You tell me you can hook me up. Now I better not find out that you’ve been fucking with me.”
“I’d never fuck with you, Jim.”
“Don’t sweet-talk me, asshole.”
“Then how about this? I want my cut, so I’ve got no reason to fuck with you.”
“You sure he’s got it?”
“Can’t be sure of anything in this crazy world. Some people think the lunar landing was a hoax. Of course, that wasn’t really in this world.” He paused and observed Doe’s expression. “I’m pretty sure he’s got it.”
“Okay,” Doe said. “Let’s take it outside.”
“What happened to feeding him to the pigs?” Melford asked.
“I have a better idea.”
***
With the glare of the sun in my eyes, they marched me toward the waste lagoon. I could barely breathe for the fear and the stench, and I thought that I did not want to die with the smell of shit in my nostrils. I didn’t want to die at all, but I knew that as options tightened, goals grew more meager.
I knew Doe and the gun were maybe ten feet behind me, I could hear him walking with his wide, awkward gait. Melford was between the two of us, I suspect because whatever deal he and Doe had struck, there was no trust there.
Doe told me to stop at the lagoon’s edge, where the stakes in the dry earth marked the perimeter and the flies buzzed a greedy, manic hum. A single black mangrove tree, its roots gnarling into the pond, provided a modicum of shade.
Doe told me to turn around. The two men stood next to each other, but only for an instant. Doe gestured at Melford with his gun. “Go stand over there a little ways. I want to be able to keep my eye on you.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Fucking shit, no. I’ll trust you when I got my money and I never hear from you again. Until then, I figure you’re about to double-cross me. That’s how you survive in this game.”
“Does that mean I should figure you’re about to double-cross me as well?” he asked.
“Just stand on over there and stop pissing me off.”
“Always good advice when talking to an armed man at the shore of a waste lagoon,” Melford said. He took a few long strides over toward where Doe had been gesturing, so now he was the third point of an equilateral triangle. Doe probably figured he could keep an eye on Melford from there, but not shoot him accidentally if he needed to fire at me. Something like that.
I tried to resist making eye contact with Melford. The powerless rage I felt at that moment was so great that I couldn’t endure looking at the source of those feelings. I had broken into a criminal’s hotel room, I had gone snooping around Jim Doe’s backyard, I’d been in a raid on an animal test facility, I’d faced Ronny Neil Cramer, and I’d gotten the girl. I had, in short, faced down powerless Lem and replaced him with a new Lem, one who took charge of his own life. And now I was being held at gunpoint on the shore of a sea of shit, betrayed by a man I should never have trusted in the first place.
Despite my wishes, I made eye contact anyhow. A flash of something impish crossed his face. And he winked at me and with one finger pointed toward the ground.
I felt the thrill of exaltation. A sign, though an unclear one. The wink I understood- a universal sign, after all. But what did the ground mean? What did any of it mean? Had Melford screwed me over or not? If he hadn’t, what was I doing here? What was he planning on doing about Doe? No, I could not assume this was anything but a trick, a ruse to put me off my guard. But to what end?
“How you like that shithole?” Doe asked me.
“Compared to other shitholes, or compared to, I don’t know, an orange grove?”
“You think you’re mighty tough, don’t you?”
I had to stifle the urge to laugh. Doe was buying the tough thing. That was something. Not much, but something. “I’m trying to make the best of a difficult situation,” I said.
Melford cocked his head slightly. The impish look, the winking companion, was gone. He looked like a bird studying human commotion from a distance, studying it with an amalgamation of curiosity and obliviousness. In the sunlight, he looked slightly less hellish than he’d appeared in the pig shed, but only slightly. Now he was only cadaverous and mean.
“I always wanted to see someone drown in a pool of shit,” Doe said. “Ever since I was a little kid.”
“You also wanted to see someone get eaten by pigs. I guess life is all about making choices.”
“It looks to me like I’m going to get at least one wish. Now, before we even start negotiating, I want you to step on in there. Wade in until you’re about waist deep. Waist deep in the waste.” He laughed at that.
I looked at the lagoon. I wanted to stay alive, unpunctured by bullets, but there was no way I was going in there. No way.
Besides, once I did, I was nothing more than the walking dead. I’d never be able to escape. I had to get away, but if I did that now, I’d be dead in seconds. The determination to die on the run faded like a drop of food coloring in a still lake. I would go along with what they asked. I would stall for what time I could get, and each second I would hope for something, some miracle, maybe in the form of a county police car or a helicopter or an explosion or something.
“Come on,” Doe said. “Move.”
“Wait a second,” Melford interjected. “Let’s give him a chance to answer some questions first.”
Doe whipped around to look at Melford. For an instant, I thought fists would fly. “You getting soft on me?” He narrowed his eyes, daring Melford to piss him off.
“It’s not my softness you want to worry about,” Melford explained, “it’s the bottom of the lagoon. It’s all settled shit in there, and there’s not going to be a solid bottom. It could suck him in before we know what happens, and then we get no answers. No answers, no money.”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” He gestured toward me with the gun. “Now get the fuck in there. I wanna see him sink into that shit.”
“But that’s exactly why I shouldn’t go in there,” I said, making a lame stab at deploying my sales technique. Doe only looked back at me with disgust.
I looked at the waste lagoon, seething and clotted, as devoid of life and light as a black hole. I needed to go to Columbia, I needed to have sex with Chitra, I needed to live outside of Florida. I couldn’t die in a pool of pig excrement; it was too pathetic. Yet the only way I could think of was a tactic from the book of a third-grade prankster. It was absurdly stupid, but it was all I had, so I took a crack at it.
“Thank God,” I said, pointing to behind Doe. “It’s the county cops.”
Doe spun his neck around, studied the emptiness. I didn’t have time to turn to see what Melford was doing because I was already charging Doe. I had no idea what I was going to do even if my charge was successful. If I managed to knock Doe down and took his gun, I’d still have Melford to deal with. I would face Melford, I decided, when I had to face Melford. I’d have to get that far.
I guessed I was ten long strides from Doe, and I had covered two of them before Doe realized how idiotically he’d been duped. He turned and looked at me. He began to draw his pistol.
At three steps he was raising it. I was going to be shot. I wouldn’t even be halfway toward tackling him before I was gunned down. It had been a foolish plan, but at least I wasn’t going to die in the waste lagoon. At least I would die with dignity.
Stride four, and the gun was aimed. But it wasn’t aimed at me. I managed a quick glance over my shoulder and saw Melford looking at Doe and raising his own pistol.
The wink had been real. The rest had been a masquerade. Melford hadn’t betrayed me. Not really. I still had no idea what all of this was about, why everything had happened, but I knew that Melford was not my enemy and that he was going to save me.
Then I heard the crack of gunfire, and the explosion came not from Melford’s weapon, but from Doe’s. I had come to believe so strongly in Melford’s magic that it hadn’t occurred to me that Doe might win the draw. Once Melford entered the battle, I had never doubted he would win.
Six steps in, and I dared another look behind me. I saw a flash of blood spraying up toward the burning rage of the sun in a cloudless sky. Melford, arms up in the air, falling back, staggering against the mangrove tree root, falling into the waste lagoon.
***
Doe flared his nostrils with rage. “I fucking knew-”
But that was as far as he got, because, I think for the first time, he saw me coming at him, now only three long paces away.
In his irritation at Melford and his complacency toward me, Doe skipped a beat before he began to level his gun at me. Then he moved it toward me, but it was off center. I knew, I had seen, that Doe was a good shot and a fast shot, but I would force him to become a desperate shot, and hopefully that would be enough.
Two steps now stood between us. I stretched out with an aching, hip-stretching stride, and I saw Doe squint his right eye. I saw the twitch in his wrist.
I shifted to my left. Doe hadn’t fired, so I hadn’t dodged a bullet. But now I was off my balance and the advantage was his. I lurched forward now. One more long step, and then I was in the air. I had never played football in my life other than the brutal touch football games I’d been drafted into during PE class, and I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about tackle theory. I didn’t know how to hit or where, but I knew what to do now. Melford hadn’t been pointing at the ground when he’d winked. He’d been pointing toward his crotch, and it wasn’t his crotch he wanted me to think of, it was Doe’s.
I aimed myself with instinct and impulse and a paucity of physics. I landed with my shoulder, and I landed low and hard, jamming my weight into his testicles.
We collapsed together onto the hard ground. I let out a loud groan, but Doe let out a howl so warbly that it sounded almost like tribal music. I hadn’t thought I’d hit him nearly hard enough. I could feel the power of the blow diffuse, go to waste, as though something had been left behind, but Doe curled into the fetal position. His hands, including the one holding his gun, folded over his crotch.
Melford had been right. My tackle should have hurt Doe, but not floored him. I recovered my own balance, squatting and tense, ready to spring. Next to me, powerless to do harm, Doe rocked back and forth, his mouth open, though he made no noise. Tears streamed from his eyes. I reeled my arm back and with all the force of rage and anger and frustration I could muster, I rammed my fist into the space directly between his legs.
I pulled back to do it again, then stopped. Doe had opened his mouth to let out another yelp, but he hadn’t made it. The color drained from his face, his eyes rolled up, and he was still.
I found it very hard to believe I’d killed him from a blow to the balls, so I could only assume that he’d passed out. I took the gun, heavy and sickening, from his slack hands and rose. I gave him a couple of hard taps with my foot to make sure he was out, and then, remembering Melford, I spun around.
I was just in time to see his form sink under the greasy skin of the waste lagoon.
***
I didn’t know if he was dead before he hit the surface. I didn’t know if he was already drowned. All I knew was that he hadn’t betrayed me, and he had saved my life. I had to try to save his.
I darted to the shore of the lagoon, by the mangrove, only half-aware of what I had in mind. On the surface, above where he’d sunk, there was a slight indentation, as though he were dragging down the mass of the pool with him. I looked right and left- for what, I didn’t know. Maybe some hope, some option that would save me from doing what I did not want to do. But I had to do it.
I set down the gun by the shore, took a deep breath, and tensed my muscles. Then I froze. I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. Everything about me- my mind, my heart, my stomach, the cells that composed my body- screamed that I could not, under any conditions, do what I was proposing. The core of my being rebelled against it. The very stuff of life, millions of years of primate genetic memory, rebelled against it.
I did it anyhow. I jumped in.
***
The first thing I thought was that it felt more like jumping on a mattress, a hot, horribly rotten mattress, than jumping in water. The next thing I thought was that I was dead. Ghastly, congealed blackness rose up all around me, sucking me down, pulling as though weights were tied to my feet. It was up to my waist and then, in an instant, my chest. Panic stormed the gates of my consciousness, and I knew I had one chance before I lost myself in death and despair.
I struggled, straining my muscles, to reach up with one hand. I gritted my teeth and finally forced the arm out of the muck and felt it break the surface- I felt the relative cool of the air against it. Somehow I found one of the outstretched roots of the mangrove tree. I clutched it tight, fe
eling its sharp bark bite into my slick skin. With the other hand, still under the surface, I began to probe, moving around in a circular motion and then downward. It was shallow and deep in the lagoon all at once. I waved my hand as best I could, as far as it would go. I stretched as far as I could go, afraid of losing my grip, because if I did, I would fly into the lagoon and I would be lost.
The heavy, slow-moving waves smacked against my face. I could taste the filth in my mouth, smell its already drying crust in my nose. Mosquitoes, like tiny buzzards, had begun to buzz around me. The strength of the sludge pulled against me with a grotesque sucking sensation, and then, all at once, my mouth was under the surface. Then my nose.
Everything in my being cried for me to pull myself out, but I stretched farther, went deeper under. Then I felt something hard- the rubber and canvas of a Chuck Taylor. I leaned forward to make sure I grabbed shin instead of shoe, and I began to pull with my other hand at the mangrove root.
I broke the surface and gasped for air. It turned out to be a horrible move, since the waste slid into my mouth, and my stomach lurched violently. I wasn’t going to vomit. Not yet. I needed to stay in control.
With my free hand, I clawed at the earth and gained purchase on the root. Another few inches, and then another few, and then it became easier. My whole upper body was out, and after that I had one knee up on the ground, then the other. I was out. Somehow I was out, and I was pulling Melford along after me onto the shore, where I let go and sat next to him.
He looked much the way I must have, like a man made of wet chocolate- I kept telling myself chocolate, hoping it would keep the nausea at bay. I couldn’t see the details of his form well enough to see how injured he was. I couldn’t see if he was alive. I couldn’t see blood. And then there was the flicker of something.
