Black River

by G. M. Ford

  “What is it?” Corso asked.

  “Jury expenses.”

  “That’s the one.”

  She hefted the file in her hand. “Biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

  “Could you make me a copy?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Do I look like a guy who’s kidding?” he asked.

  Corso pointed to the sign on the wall. COPIES, $1.00 PER PAGE.

  “I hear it’s gone up to two bucks a page,” he said.

  “Three,” she deadpanned.

  “Damn Republicans.”

  Monday, October 23

  7:45 p.m.

  Forced onto a jury, torn from their friends and families, sequestered in a downtown hotel for months, the jurors tended to take it out on the menu. Surf and turf. The thirty-six-ounce porterhouse. Don’t forget the cheese sauce for the asparagus. Once the revenge factor burned off, most seemed to settle into a routine. Some ended up eating hardly anything at all. By the time it was over, juror number 3 was living on cereal and dry toast. Juror number 5, on the other hand, never met a cheesecake he didn’t like. Corso figured he’d either spent his out-of-court hours on a treadmill or he’d gained fifty pounds.

  That’s how they had them listed: Jurors 1 through 12 and then 13A and 14A, alternates. The expenses incurred by each were itemized on separate documents. He’d started at juror number 1 and was working his way toward the back. He’d been at it for nearly two hours, and was only halfway through, when the waitress came out from behind the counter again with the coffeepot. Without looking up, Corso said, “No, thanks.”

  “We close at eight,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, without looking up.

  “Maybe a little earlier so’s I can make the ten bus.”

  Corso began to laugh. “No shit,” he said.

  “Hey, now, mister—” she began.

  He pointed to the page with his finger. “Big as life.” He turned the page and then the next. “Every night. Same damn thing.”

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He looked up and smiled. “Depends on who you ask,” he said. He sorted through the pile of pages and selected half a dozen, which he folded into fourths and stuck in his inside jacket pocket. He threw a twenty on the table and slid out of the booth.

  “You got anything smaller?” she asked.

  Corso threw his arm around her. She drew the steaming pot back as if to defend herself. Corso kissed her on the cheek. “Tell you what. You throw away the rest of those papers for me and keep the change. How’s that?”

  “Works for me,” she said, without hesitation.

  Corso patted her shoulder once and headed for the door.

  The sky was black on black. A flash of lightning skittered above Elliott Bay. A cold winter rain angled in from the south. Corso cursed silently, wishing he hadn’t left the Subaru up at the hospital this morning before court. Especially since Dougherty had never stirred, and he’d been forced to spend an hour and a half talking with Joe Bocco’s leg-breaker buddy, Marvin, whose entire stock of misinformation seemed to be garnered from ESPN.

  Corso turned his collar up and began to lope uphill. Despite the effort, he couldn’t keep from smiling. Wait until he told Dougherty. Give her something else to think about, other than David.

  By the time he reached Ninth Avenue he was beginning to pant, so he slowed to a walk. Rain or no rain, he didn’t want to be winded when he told her the story. Ahead in the distance, Harborview Hospital peeked out from a curtain of rain, its edges wavering and uncertain against the sky. He stopped under the canvas awning of a print shop and shook the rain from his clothes and hair.

  Standing there, brushing at himself, facing away from the street, with the rain snapping and popping against the awning, Corso never heard it coming. He was still muttering to himself, practicing his delivery to Dougherty, when the steel wire slipped around his neck and dragged him to his knees.

  His first instinct was to get his fingers between the wire and his neck. He clawed at his throat until the warm wetness whispered it was too late. His head felt as if it might burst. He tried to throw himself onto his back, but his assailant could not be moved. His eyes burned, his vision was beginning to blur. The next-to-last thing he saw was another set of legs in front of him on the sidewalk. And then the shoe starting at his face. He jerked his head to the left and, in that instant before the shoe connected, he saw the black Mercedes sitting at the curb with the doors open.

  36

  Monday, October 23

  7:51 p.m.

  As the four men slipped the ropes through their gloved hands, lowering the casket into the frozen earth, the birds went silent, the sky went white….

  Suddenly Corso was awake, his ears pricking at the sound of the voices.

  “We’ll put him where we put that Ball motherfucker. He like goin’ down there so bad, we let his ass stay there till kingdom come.”

  Another voice, farther away. “He come around yet?”

  “Startin’ to.”

  “We want him awake. I don’t want to be carrying that shit.”

  “We gonna do that again? Make ’im carry his own weight?”

  “You want to do it?”

  Close voice chuckled. “You know what I been thinkin’, man?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I been thinkin’ this whole fuckin’ mess started with that asshole in the truck that we was supposed to pop but what was dead when we got there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how that was like a hit we got paid for but didn’t do.”

  “You got a point here?”

  “And now we end up doin’ a hit we ain’t gettin’ paid for. All kinda evens out in the end. It’s like one of those ‘meta’ things of yours.”

  Corso was wedged along the floor in the backseat of a moving car. His hands were tied behind his back. A foot suddenly pressed hard against his neck, driving his face down into the rubber floor mat. “You stay real still, hombre,” a voice said. “We just about there.”

  Seemed like an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than three minutes until the car began to slow, and then it turned and they weren’t on paved road anymore. He could hear the whisk of grass and brush on the undercarriage as the car eased along.

  “We’ll put him down with the other one,” the voice from the front seat said.

  The car glided smoothly over a series of bumps and then swung in a slow circle and eased to a stop. The shoe on the back of his neck was replaced by the feel of cold metal. “Easy now,” the voice behind him whispered. Above the sound of rain beating on the car, he heard the click of the door and the shift of weight as the driver got out and opened the rear door. “Ready?” the driver asked.

  The guy in the backseat grabbed Corso by the belt. Another pair of hands gripped his shoulders, and in a single heave he was dragged from the car. He landed on his chest in the wet grass. He heard a pair of doors close. “Look,” he heard Backseat say. “Fuckhead’s feet are starting to float. We need to add some more weight.”

  “Better put two on nosy man here,” Front Seat said.

  And then they had him by the elbows and were jerking him to his feet.

  “Gotta get up and walk now, nosy man. Not like we gonna carry your ass or nothin’.”

  When they began pulling on his arms, Corso realized he couldn’t feel his hands. His knees nearly buckled from his own weight. He staggered slightly, regained his balance, looked around. Two of them: one nearly as tall as he was, long black hair worn in a ponytail. The other was a troll, a short dark specimen with a pockmarked face and one ear noticeably higher than the other.

  “Get movin’,” the troll said. “That way, down the end.”

  Corso looked around. Something was familiar, but he couldn’t quite fathom what it was. “We figure you like it here so much,” Ponytail said, “we’ll let you stay.”

  And then Corso saw the bright light reflected in the water on his left. He looked to t
he south and saw the marsh and, beyond, the Briarwood Garden Apartments. They were parked on the levee that defined the northern extreme of the Black River marsh. Beneath the low sky, the water was stippled by the falling rain, its wavering surface broken here and there by grassy hillocks and broken-tooth stumps protruding above the surface. Along the edges, reeds and clumps of bulrushes waved in the wind like signal flags.

  The only light came from the Speedy Auto Parts sign up the road. As he followed the reflection back across the marsh, he saw a pair of feet sticking up from the water. The shoelaces had burst, the bloated ankles were three times their normal size, pumped floating full by the expanding gases of death, forcing the feet up and out of the water as if the owner had dived into the muck and stuck.

  They’d driven as far as they could. Three concrete pylons blocked the grassed-over road that ran along the top of the levee. Ponytail walked around and stood directly in front of Corso. In his right hand he carried a silver automatic with a gray silencer screwed onto the front. “Open your mouth,” he said. When Corso failed to comply, he dug the barrel hard into Corso’s solar plexus. Corso grunted and leaned forward. Next thing he knew his mouth was filled with metal and the pressure of the suppressor clicked on his teeth, forcing him up straight. “You just stand real still, nosy man,” Ponytail said, pushing Corso’s head back as his partner began to untie Corso’s hands.

  The steady rain beat down onto his face, wetting his cheeks, forcing his eyelids to flutter from the aerial assault. With the final strand removed, his arms flapped around to his sides. His wrists burned, and he could feel the cold blood struggling to move in his fingers. Slowly, the silencer slid from his mouth.

  Ponytail motioned with the automatic. “That way,” he said.

  Corso hesitated, only to be propelled forward by a blow to the kidneys.

  “Move your ass,” the troll growled.

  Corso rubbed at his wrists as he lurched forward; his hands were beginning to tingle as he stepped between the pylons into knee-deep grass.

  Ahead in the darkness, the road was blocked by a pile of rubble. The troll passed by on Corso’s left, hurrying up to the pile. He pointed at a spot about halfway up the pile. “This one,” he said. “This one first.”

  As Corso approached, he could see that what had appeared to be a pile of light-colored rock was, in reality, a pile of broken concrete. Somebody’s driveway, jackhammered to pieces, loaded into a truck, and surreptitiously dumped along the top of the levee. “Here,” the troll said again.

  The shards varied between six and eight inches in thickness, smooth on the top, wavy and rough with aggregate on the bottom. The troll slapped the pile with his hand.

  “Come on, asshole. Hurry up.”

  The chunk of concrete was shaped like a triangle. Three feet in length. Nearly that long at the base, tapering to a point at the apex. “Let’s go,” Ponytail said, prodding Corso forward with the silenced automatic.

  Corso bent his knees, got his left forearm beneath the jagged piece of stone, and straightened his legs. Must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Corso lurched under the weight, adjusted his grip for balance, and turned back the way they’d come.

  Ponytail held his gun by his side as he backed up, beckoning Corso forward with his free hand. “Come on,” he said.

  Corso moved carefully. His head roared and throbbed from the strain. Mindful of his footing, he shuffled along beneath the burden, until he was parallel with the submerged body, where Ponytail held up his hand.

  “Dump it over the side,” he said.

  Corso staggered to the edge of the levee. The marsh was six feet below. It wasn’t until he noticed the wavering, stippled surface of the black water that Corso remembered it was raining. He bent at the waist and let the chunk of concrete fall from his arms. It thumped onto the steep slope, rolled end over end, and stuck, point down, in the shallows.

  “Go get it,” the troll said.

  Corso did as he was told, sliding down the muddy bank into the cold ankle-deep water. Unable to get under the piece, he was forced to lift it with his arms. He staggered and went to one knee, then righted himself and straightened up.

  The troll was in the water with him now. Water up to Corso’s shin was over the troll’s knees. He waved Corso toward the half-submerged corpse, a dozen feet from shore. “Put it over the legs,” he ordered. “Right behind the knees.”

  By the time Corso was in place, the frigid marsh water covered his knees. Three feet beneath the surface, the remains of Joe Ball lay festering and bloated, his torso held beneath the shimmering surface by another piece of concrete.

  For some odd reason, Corso was overcome with the urge to be gentle. As if to spare the dead further indignity, he carefully placed the stone across the backs of the knees and let it go. When he straightened up, the protruding feet were gone. In another month, the gases would dissipate and the weight would push the corpse into the bottom of the marsh, where the body would begin to come apart. Small pieces of flesh would float to the surface, where, one by one, they’d be discovered by the birds and eaten, until finally nothing remained of Joe Ball save metal and bone.

  “Let’s go,” the troll said.

  Corso had to pull his feet from the gurgling muck one at a time as he labored back to the levee. His throat was constricted, but his mind was racing, trying to find a way out. Stifling an overpowering urge to run, he clawed his way back to the top of the levee and got to his feet. He knew he wouldn’t get thirty feet before they shot him down and dragged him back to join Joe Ball, facedown in the muck.

  “Let’s go. Do it again,” the troll said.

  Corso steadied himself and retraced his footsteps back to the pile of broken concrete. They walked on either side of him, out of each other’s line of fire, guns at the ready. The second chunk of concrete was nearly square and harder to carry. Corso had to keep adjusting his grip as he shuffled along the berm and finally let it fall from his arms and roll, end over end, down into the water.

  “One more,” Ponytail said.

  Corso was beginning to shake. From fear, from the cold rain—he couldn’t tell. Music was playing in his head now, voices and organs, getting louder and louder, something he’d never heard before. As if, all his life, he’d carried the sound track of his death inside himself, waiting, all this time, for the credits to roll and the end to be at hand. His legs wobbled as he started back. The troll prodded him in the side with his gun. “You get this one, nosy man,” he leered. “You make us carry it, I’m gonna put a couple in your balls. Let you lay around a bit before I cap you.”

  He moved forward as if he were sleepwalking. The music was blaring now. Morose and multivoiced, it filled his ears. “This one.” Ponytail pointed to a jagged piece of concrete slightly smaller than the others. As Corso grabbed it and began to lift, the side of the pile collapsed, sending a dozen pieces of concrete bouncing down into the grass at the troll’s feet. “Goddammit,” the little man screamed, rubbing at his ankle with his free hand. He growled and grabbed the offending piece of stone from the grass and hurled it out into the marsh, where it landed with a splash. “Son of a—”

  He didn’t get all the words out before a movement in the marsh jerked his eyes from Corso. The snap of six-foot wings cut the air as a great blue heron took flight. Corso shifted his burden, getting his hand and elbow beneath it, and then, with every bit of strength left in his body, shot-putted the concrete at the troll.

  It landed on his ankles. The troll howled like an animal and fell over onto his back, screaming at the sky. He had one foot jerked free when Corso landed on him, driving the breath from the small body. Corso had both hands on the gun when the flat report of Ponytail’s silenced automatic split the air. Corso saw the back of his left hand explode in a mist of blood and bone but hung on with his right, allowing his momentum to pull the gun from the little man’s grasp, as he slid down the side of the levee on his stomach. He fought for traction with his knees and then brought the gun to
bear. He felt the tug of a bullet at the collar of his coat, before he heard the sound of the gun.

  Ponytail had covered half the ground when Corso squeezed off his first round. It took Ponytail high in the right shoulder, spinning him nearly around in a circle, sending his gun off into space. He fell to one knee, then quickly jumped up, looking desperately around his feet for his weapon.

  Corso crawled to the top of the bank. “Don’t” was all he said.

  Ponytail clutched his damaged shoulder and stood still. A scraping sound pulled Corso’s vision toward the pile. The troll had extricated his other foot and was now kneeling in the grass. “Over here,” Corso said, but the little man merely curled his lips and spat down onto the ground. Corso pointed the gun in his direction and let fly. The slug hit a chunk of concrete about two feet from the side of his head, sending a geyser of stone and dust into the air. The troll ducked behind his hands.

  “Over here,” Corso said again. This time the little man struggled to his feet and hobbled across the levee to his partner’s side.

  “Keys are in the car,” Ponytail said.

  Corso started for the car.

  “You better drive far away,” said the troll. “ ’Cause this ain’t over, motherfucker.” He jabbed a finger at Corso. “We gonna find you. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But you can make the rent on it.”

  “Find that fat cunt in the hospital too,” said Ponytail with a smile. “Take care of her big ass, once and for all.”

  And then his lips moved again, but Corso couldn’t hear the words because the music was deafening now, rolling out of every pore of his body. As he raised the gun, the music reached a crescendo and stayed there, pounding in his head like hell’s hammers.

  From a distance of eight feet, Corso shot the troll between eyes. The man’s face was a mask of astonishment as he sank to his knees and then fell backward onto the ground, twitching.

  Ponytail’s mouth was agape as he knelt by his partner’s side. “Gerardo,” he said quietly, shaking the little man’s shoulder as if to rouse him from sleep. “Oh, Gerardo!” The muscles along his jaw moved like knotted rope, but by the time he turned his fury toward Corso it was too late. The silencer was no more than a foot from his temple when Corso pulled the trigger, sending the man’s brains spewing out over his partner’s body. He toppled onto his back and lay motionless. A small trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. And suddenly the night was silent.