Killshot

There was so much this punk didn’t know.

“Let me tell you something, okay?”

“What?”

“That wasn’t the real estate guy.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’ll explain it to you sometime. What I want to tell you now, the only time you take out your gun and aim at somebody is when you gonna kill them.”

“You could’ve back there.”

“No, no could’ve. Only when you know you can do it. Then all it takes is one shot. It’s the same as with a hunter, a guy that knows what he’s doing. He don’t take the shot if he thinks he could miss, or might only wound it. See, then he has to go find the animal to finish it. Okay, what if it’s a kind of animal that could eat him up? Like a lion that’s mad now ’cause it’s shot and waits to jump out at the guy. You understand? That’s why you always make sure. One shot, one kill.”

“Man, I’m bleeding something fierce.”

“Don’t get it on the seat. What I’m saying, you don’t want to have to shoot anything more than once.”

“I’m in fucking pain.”

This guy was not only a punk, he was a baby.

“We gonna take you to a hospital,” Armand said.

“In Sarnia?”

“I think it’s St. Joseph’s. I’ll know it when I see it. Me and my brothers went there one time to kill a guy.”

Richie said, “No shit,” quieter.

This was how you got his attention, tell him how the big boys did it.

“None of that bullshit,” Armand said, “like in the movie you see the guy who’s gonna do it come in the hospital? Then you see him go in a room and close the door. He comes out, he has a white coat on and everybody’s suppose to think he’s a doctor. This guy nobody in the hospital ever saw before.”

“Or the janitor,” Richie said. “I’ve seen it where the guy’s suppose to be a janitor. With a mop, you know, and a bucket? Yeah, nobody says, ‘Hey, who the fuck are you?’ ”

“Listen, okay? You want to learn something?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“We get to the floor, one of my brothers holds the elevator. My other brother, this kind of setup, watches for anybody that might come along.” Armand thinking, Like a nurse. But didn’t say it. He paused, still thinking of a nurse and what happened after, months later . . .

Until Richie said, “This’s at night?”

It brought Armand back. “Yes, it’s at night. I go in the room where the sick guy is—I think he had a heart attack. I mean why he was there. I pull the sheet up over his face and pop him. Once.” Armand took his hand from the steering wheel and pointed to his mouth. “Right here. One shot.”

“One shot, one kill,” Richie said. “What’d the guy do?”

“He died.”

“I mean what’d he do you had to blow him away?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not any of my business, it was a job.”

“You blow a guy away, it’s none of your business?”

“Whatever he did isn’t, no.”

“Were you pissed off at him?”

“I didn’t know him. Don’t you understand nothing?”

“To me, that doesn’t make sense,” Richie said. “Me, I have to be pissed off at the guy. Like you know, he doesn’t do what I tell him.”

Driving along the river road toward Port Huron Armand turned to look at Richie, blood all over him, holding the bloody handkerchief to his chin. Some things maybe you couldn’t explain to a guy like this.

They crossed into Canada over the Blue Water Bridge. It was midafternoon. The customs officer in his uniform checked the Ontario license plate and asked where they lived. Armand said, Toronto; they were here looking for work at the oil refinery. The customs officer hunched over to stare through the window at Richie, at the dark stains on his coat. He asked where they’d been. Armand said they went to Port Huron, to fool around, and his friend cut himself trying to open a beer bottle with his mouth. The customs officer said, “That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” Armand told him his friend was a stupid guy. It was the only thing he said that was true. The customs man shook his head and waved them on.

Armand parked by the hospital emergency entrance. He let Richie go in alone and waited in the car so he could take this time to think, plan ahead.

They would return south along the Canadian side of the river. Take Vidal Street out of Sarnia, he remembered that from nine years ago with his brothers. Go down past miles of petroleum and chemical works, Ontario Hydro, another name he remembered. Go all the way to Wallaceburg, yeah, and then cross that swing bridge over the Snye River and you were on Walpole Island. Like coming in the back door.

He didn’t believe Richie had ever killed anybody. Okay, maybe with a shiv one time in prison. But he would be surprised if Richie had ever used a gun, as he said to blow a guy away. That was something he picked up at the movies, that blowing away. Armand tried to think how his brothers used to say it. They would say they were going to do a guy. Or they might say so-and-so got popped. Maybe because when you used a suppressor it made a popping sound, like an air rifle. The old man’s son-in-law would ask if he’d go see somebody. Go see a guy. No one Armand could think of ever used the word kill. Maybe because it was a mortal sin.

Wait a minute. Armand remembered now that Richie had used the word kill....No, that was when he was in prison and killed a guy and some other guys had tried to kill him. The migrant worker, the hitchhiker he picked up, he said he would have robbed the guy and shot a hole in him if the cop hadn’t been there. But that one, and Richie saying he had blown people away during holdups, robbing a store one time and a gas station, didn’t make sense. Killing a person without a good reason. Or, as he said, because he was pissed off. That was how a punk would imagine it and make up a story.

He did shoot at the guy in the real estate office.

Yeah, because he was scared to death. He had to.

One thing for sure, if Richie had never shot anybody he was anxious to try it. See what it was like to use a gun.

Armand thinking, Yes, you could help him out there. Show him where to point it. This guy had to be good for something.

The ten stitches in his chin didn’t keep Richie from talking. Only now he barely opened his mouth when he spoke and was hard to understand. Armand was getting tired of saying “What?” every time Richie asked him something. Now he wanted to know where they were going. Wasn’t that the guy Lionel’s house they went by?

“That’s right,” Armand said, “and his wife was there. We got enough people already have seen this car.”

“I told you, take it to Detroit and let it get stolen,” Richie said. “Now where we going?”

They were crossing a short span of bridge over one of the many channels in these flats. “Now we’re on Squirrel Island,” Armand said. “It’s like part of Walpole. I want to see if it’s a good place.”

“I think down in the marsh is better,” Richie said.

He was probably right. Armand, letting the Cadillac coast to a stop in the dirt road, remembered this island green with corn in the summer. Now it was all dead, rows of withered stalks as far as you could see, reaching way over to that freighter in the ship channel. It got Richie excited.

“Look at that. Like it’s going through the cornfield. Over at Henry’s you see them, it’s like they’re in the woods. Now where we going?”

“Back,” Armand said.

Back across Walpole, following roads through deep woods to the other side, to Lionel’s house on the Snye