Cold Fury

says bang?”

I climbed into the ring cautiously, raised the.45 directly toward him, and he giggled girlishly. That he was amused by a gun aimed at his face only unnerved me more, and I heard my voice break as I repeated myself. “I. . I said. . let him go.”

“Hey, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to point guns at your elders?” he said, tossing Willy aside like a sack of potatoes. The old man hit the canvas hard, groaning and turning onto his side. Ski Mask Guy faced me, cracking his knuckles and rolling his horrible head on a thick neck.

The cold blue flame kindled and flickered in my gut when I saw him move like that, like a career heavyweight preparing for battle. Nervous fear drained from my brain and body, replaced by a jarring it’s-him-or-me sense of reality as sharp as the blade of a knife. The.45 suddenly felt weightless in my hands, and I licked at my lips, knowing instinctively that lowering it meant lowering my only defense against the bulky maniac. I didn’t want to shoot him, but it was plain that Willy and I were dead unless I kept the gun squarely and confidently between us, which meant that if he took even one step. .

“Gimme that thing, you silly little. .” Ski Mask Guy squealed, lunging like a crazed grizzly bear.

And then my finger squeezed metal just once, lightly, as the shot filled the room with an echoing blast and Ski Mask Guy grabbed his shoulder. The bullet had grazed him just enough to cut a line in his filthy suit and the skin beneath it. “You shot me,” he said, amazed, touching the surface wound and holding up bloody fingers. “I mean, you barely shot me, but you shot me! I didn’t think you had it in you!”

“It was easy,” I said, looking at him down the barrel, seeing that my hands had stopped shaking. “Easier than I thought it would be.”

“Sara Jane,” Willy said weakly from the canvas. “Don’t. .”

“Listen to Uncle Tom!” Ski Mask Guy said, his voice as shrill as fingernails on a blackboard. “Once was funny, a real lark, but remember. . guns don’t kill people! People kill people!”

“Where’s my family?” I said. “Tell me now, or I guarantee that next time my aim will be much better.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, backing away, holding up his hands like a TV bad guy. “Gimme that old notebook and I’ll tell you the whole amazing story, beginning to end, with no commercials! I swear on a stack of Bibles as tall as the Willis Tower!”

I stared at his thick, jumpy body, his facial muscles undulating crazily under the knit mask, and said, “You’re lying. You won’t tell me shit.”

“Quite possibly, but you’ll n-e-e-ver know if you kill me!”

“True,” I said, wanting so badly for this nightmare to end, for the terrible freak not to exist. I stepped forward, close enough to smell rancid meat, and put the barrel of the gun in his face. “Maybe I’ll never know,” I said. “But maybe I don’t care anymore.”

“No, Sara Jane!” Willy called. “Please. .”

The tone of Willy’s voice-more desperate than angry-gave me just enough pause for Ski Mask Guy to go up and over the ropes like it was Cirque du Soleil, hit the gym floor like a ton of bricks on two feet, and run for the exit. I watched him go, watched him bow dramatically at the door, and heard his falsetto echo up the stairs as he cried, “Next time, Sara Jane! Oh, how my heart beats for next ti-i-i-me!” I looked at the gun in my hand, feeling nothing but bitter regret at my inability to use it, and then dropped it and went to Willy, who was suffering on his back. After I guided him to his apartment, I told him as much as I thought he should know about the notebook-that it, and not me, was what everyone was after, and that it was valuable and I was disposable.

When I was done, Willy said, “Get me a cigarette.” I rose, removed one from the battered tin box, put it between his lips, and lit it. He inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, and then said, “That’s all I need. Put it out.”

I crushed it in a coffee cup, saying, “Those things will kill you.”

“At least it would be a slower death than if crazy man did it,” he said. “Or you, with that gun.”

“He hurt my family.”

“You know that for sure?”

“I know for sure he hurt you.”

Willy nodded and cleared his throat. “I never told you how my daughter died.”

“You just said cars and alcohol.”

Willy nodded again, pursing his lips. “What I didn’t mention was that I was driving the car she was in when she died. And that the alcohol was in me.”

“Oh. . Willy. .”

“See, I killed my own daughter, Sara Jane. I was drunk and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, but she trusted me. She died and I lived, and I will never understand how the universe got it so wrong.” His eyes were wet behind his glasses but his voice was steady. “Yes, it was an accident. But all those drinks I had weren’t. I didn’t intend to kill my daughter but I did, and I loved her more than life, and still. . still the stain won’t ever wash out.”

“Willy,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen to me and listen good,” he said. “You don’t want that cancer on your soul. I know your life is upside down and there are some very bad people after you. But the real fight now is your brain versus your heart, doing what you know is right versus what you feel must be done. Killing someone, especially when it’s on purpose. .” His words drifted off. He cleared his throat again and said, “Don’t do that to yourself, girl. Promise me you won’t.”

“Willy, we need to call a doctor. .”

“Promise,” he said, fixing a gaze on me that shone with remorse.

“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

Afterward I got him as comfortable as possible and then called an ambulance. When I saw that he had drifted off, I slipped out of the apartment, shimmied up to the Crow’s Nest, and grabbed the briefcase. I checked its contents-money, credit card, and of course the notebook-and remembered the gun. On my way across the gym, I climbed inside the ring and retrieved it, and then paused only long enough to scribble some words on a few pieces of paper. I opened the apartment door so the EMT people would see Willy, left behind the bloody, shorn shirt I borrowed from them, and hurried back toward the gym exit. I stopped every so often to post one of the pieces of paper, each of which bore an arrow and read Guy with broken arms this way.

I climbed in the Lincoln and started the engine, hearing approaching sirens.

I was leaking tears, wondering if I’d ever see Willy again.

I wondered if I’d be able to look him in the eye if I ever broke my promise.

15

I'm not certain, but I assume that the life of a fugitive doesn’t normally go from sleeping in bloody head bandages on an army cot above a sweat-stinking boxing gym to being saluted by a doorman in epaulets before settling into a four-star hotel suite, gliding from a steam shower Jacuzzi to a warm, enveloping spot between two- thousand-thread-count Egyptian sheets on a bed large enough to host a square dance.

But it did.

I had the notebook to thank.

I couldn’t believe it was real until sushi rolled in on a silver cart.

According to the notebook, the hotel I was in-the Commodore, across the street from Lake Michigan-had been secretly owned and operated by the Outfit for seventy years. I’d randomly selected it from the list of safe houses, closing my eyes and pointing at the page. There was a phone number and scribbled instructions next to it-make the call, ask for the manager, and say “Al sent me.” Afterward, all I had to do was show up and I would be treated like a VIP, no names taken and no questions asked. When I arrived and repeated the line to the doorman-“Al sent me”-he saluted, said my room was ready, and noted that the Lincoln would be at the curb each morning, ready to go. He looked me over from head to toe and politely enquired whether there was anything else I needed. I said no, but asked his name just in case.

“Al,” he said with a wink. “Just like everybody else around here.”