Passenger(58)

“Stand guard, yeah?”

“Guard for what?” I say.

Maxwell winks. “We’ll make it quick.”

Farther ahead, I hear Jonathan Frick ask where the truck is. That is when Dougie punches him in the face. Once, twice—a third time and Frick staggers backward and drops against the hood of the Lincoln. Frick is a big, muscular man, and the car bounces on its shocks beneath his weight. He slides off toward the pavement, able to get one hand beneath him to catch his fall. This is when Dougie Devine kicks him sharply in the throat. Maxwell joins in and together they beat the piss out of the man while I watch. I am rendered speechless, motionless. I see this ending badly—with a lifeless body being dumped into the harbor. And when the police come to arrest me they will ask my name and I will tell them I don’t know. When they ask why I came here tonight, I will tell them I don’t know. When they ask why we killed Jonathan Frick, why I watched the Devine brothers kick his head in, I will tell them I don’t know.

I don’t know, I don’t know.

It goes on for I don’t know how long. Dougie and Maxwell are strong and fast, but they don’t seem to move with much energy. Anyway, Frick is on the ground the whole time. Bastard didn’t stand a chance. They beat him senseless, probably within inches of his life, and when they are done, straightening their shirts and sliding their sleeves back down their brown arms, Jonathan Frick is a bloody heap of muscle and a too-tight T-shirt on the wet pavement. There is something innately pathetic about a muscular man on the ground in pain. I watch as Frick’s chest shudders as it rises and falls, rises and falls, rises and falls. Snow begins to collect on him.

Casually, Dougie pops open the Lincoln’s rear door and nods for me to get in. He is already lighting his cigarette.

I move toward the car, but don’t immediately get in. Instead, I stand over Frick’s hitching body, looking down with what I feel is little emotion. I hate the fact that I do not feel anything—surely I am supposed to feel something, surely something—so I fake it. I fake it and crouch down to one knee. I can see Frick is hurt bad, but he’s still alive. He’ll live. Maybe. I don’t know; I’m not a doctor. Some broken bones, maybe some internal bleeding, but he’ll live, I convince myself, he’ll live, the poor son of a bitch will— Frick reaches out and grabs the sleeve of my coat. His fingers are curled into talons and he hooks the fabric, tearing it with a dry, brittle sound. I am reminded of my dream, ripping the flesh from my skull. He leaves traces of his own blood on the sleeve. Startled, I jump back and nearly fall on my ass. One of the Devine brothers is behind me, keeping me upright.

Maxwell stomps Frick’s face.

On the pavement, Frick stops moving.

“Get in the car, Wurlitzer,” Dougie repeats.

An automaton, I get in. There is a word for this. I am a co-conspirator. I am a criminal.

Somehow, as we drive, I find my voice. “What was that all about?” It is my voice but it is also the voice of a child. And for some reason, I am thinking of tanker trucks turned over in the Harbor Tunnel, spilling poison into the bay.

“The bastard killed Johnny,” Maxwell says from the passenger seat after a long silence.

“I thought Johnny died in a car accident?”

“Frick was drunk. Hit him head-on.”

“Did you kill him?” I ask. “Just now? Frick?”

“He ain’t dead,” Dougie assures me. “He’ll be hurtin’ plenty for a long while, that’s for sure, but he ain’t dead.”

I don’t know if I necessarily believe this.

“Dead ain’t for us to decide,” Maxwell adds. “Dead, that’s for God to decide. You dig?”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “Sure.”

Maxwell turns in his seat, his black eyes cutting right through me. “You gonna be all right, Wurlitzer?”

“Yeah…”

“You look green, man.”

“I’m okay.”

“You just drunk.”

“Yeah,” I repeat, shivering, and wonder what the dogs would think of all this.





TWENTY-TWO





I suffer a fever the following day. No doubt stumbling around with the Devine brothers till all hours of the night, coupled with my already tenuous condition, has broken down my system. Naked, wrapped in a sheet, I am content to remain in bed for most of the day. Then, at one point, Nicole Quinland shows up. She takes one look at me and her face goes white.

“You’re dying.”

“I’ve just got a cold.”

“You look terrible.”

“I’ve been run down.”

“I can’t believe how you look.”

“It was bound to happen.”

She goes across the street and gets chicken noodle soup. She makes the soup on the stove while I sit propped in bed, wanting nothing but sleep. I eat about half the soup to make her feel good then apologize for all her effort.

“No effort,” she assures me.

She stays until dark, scribbling furiously in a notebook while seated on the floor at the edge of my bed. Finally, after too much time has past, I ask her what she’s writing.

“Stories.”

“What stories?”

“All sorts of stories. The kinds I used to write when I was a little girl. The kinds I used to write with my grandfather.”