Fear itself

How sane and casual he sounded when she wasn’t looking at him.

“When I ask a question, I expect you to answer it. Remember what I said about unnecessary suffering?”

“Oh, that’s a crock. You want me to be afraid of what you might do, so you don’t actually have to do anything.”

Simon was impressed. He was also beginning to suspect he was in for a tussle. She would fight him every step of the way, this FBI agent. He didn’t mind-it was his game, and they had all night. “I’ll tell you anyway. She was in the bath. We’d been together all night-just like you and I are going to be. Hot bath. No suds. The-”

“Yes!” Linda hadn’t meant to shout.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I know how she died. Coral snake, neurotoxin, respiratory failure. So you can save yourself the trouble.”

“But it sounds so clinical, the way you put it. It wasn’t clinical at all. For one thing, the coral didn’t want to bite her-I had to hold it up against her neck, press it right up tight against her jugular, then let its tail droop into the hot water. They have short fangs, the corals-they have to-”

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”

He boxed her ear. It was a trick he’d learned from Grandfather Childs. Very painful-even prizefighters hate to get whacked on the ear. One way or another, it seemed, the old man was always with him. “To be continued,” he said. “Where’s the kitchen?”

Linda felt as if she’d won a small battle-at least he’d dropped the pretense of civility when he slapped her. She resisted the temptation to provoke him further, though. She let him help her into the kitchen, kept her mouth shut while he made coffee.

Then he poured them each a cup, sat down across from her at the kitchen table, and it began again. Linda did her best to tune him out, but you can’t close your ears like you can your eyes; you can look away, but you can’t listen away. So she heard most of it, the worst of it, as Childs recounted in meticulous detail how Gloria had died.

And he was right; it wasn’t clinical at all. He made Gloria’s death throes come alive; he acted out the pain, and how she’d gradually gone numb, how her eyelids had drooped, how a look of surprise had passed over those half-hidden eyes at the end, when she tried to draw a breath and her lungs would not respond.

A lousy way to die, thought Linda. But she could have guessed all that, extrapolated it from the condition of the corpse and the fax from Poison Control, if she’d wanted to. So all Childs had really accomplished, she realized, was to take the incentive out of the surrender-and-get-it-over-with option for her. Which left the fight-to-the-last- breath option. Physically, she told herself, she was no match for him-physically, she was no match for the Pillsbury Doughboy-but maybe she had a shot at outwitting him.

As in any fight, it was always a good idea to get your adversary distracted. “So how’d it go in Atlantic City? How’s your mom?”

“A drunken hooer-a dead drunken hooer. How’s yours?”

Touchy, touchy-that told her she was on the right track. “Did you mean to kill her, or was it an accident?”

Simon almost answered, then caught himself. Wrong game. “That’s neither here nor there-I still haven’t finished telling you about Gloria.”

“You got to where Gloria’s dead. That’s pretty fucking finished. What’d you do, kill her twice?” When you were trying to convince somebody you were tough-when you were trying to convince yourself, for that matter-it helped to be an Italian from the Bronx. Swearing helped, too.

“Watch your language.”

“Fuck you.”

Simon was momentarily at a loss. He couldn’t let her attitude stand, but if he let things get heated, he might find himself playing the game with a bloodied corpse; not much satisfaction there. “In case you’ve forgotten, Skairdykat, I do have the power of life and death over you.”

“Big hairy deal. Every strunz’ with a loaded gun has the power of life and death.”

In a contest like this, Linda was beginning to realize, it also helped to have a fatal disease. She watched the steam curl lazily from her coffee, then took a tiny sip-still a little too hot to drink, but not bad for the Safeway house blend. Linda was starting to appreciate little things-that was also supposed to be one of the pluses of having a fatal disease. Yeah, right. Then it occurred to her: in the last hour or so, the odds of her dying from MS had dropped considerably.

“You’re really asking for it,” said Childs. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Linda decided there might be a way to steer the conversation to her advantage. “Mr. Childs, I want to live. But sometimes it just isn’t in the cards. You of all people ought to know that-you don’t have much longer to live than I do. Oh-but I forgot. You’re rich. You’re mentally ill, at least by most people’s standards, and you’re rich. They don’t execute sick, rich people in this country. If you give yourself up-if you let me handle your surrender-you’ll be living the high life in some country club asylum, like that du Pont guy who killed that wrestler, long after this damn MS sends me to my grave.”

“Excellent point,” said Childs. “How’s your coffee?”

The pleasant tone should have alerted Linda; instead she thought for a moment she had succeeded in getting him to consider another option. “Very good. I was just waiting for it to cool down.”

He picked up her mug, dashed the contents in her face. “There,” he said. “That’ll cool it down a little quicker.”

As if to show his contempt, Simon left Linda alone in the kitchen while he returned to the living room to fetch the travel bag. Unfortunately, he hadn’t allowed her to put on her braces or bring her cane into the kitchen with her. Her face still stinging from the hot coffee, Linda was inching her chair backward toward the counter, bound for the knife drawer, when Simon returned. Without breaking stride or even glancing at Linda, he grabbed the top rung of her chair and dragged it back to the table; it might as well not have been occupied.

“I think it’s time.” He dropped the travel bag into Linda’s lap. “Do you think it’s time?”

“You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.”

“Well, yes. But you mustn’t give up hope.”

“Why not?” It might have been an attempt at irony-then again, it might not. Childs seemed to take it seriously enough.

“Because it will spoil the game,” he said.

No surprises here, Linda reminded herself, as Simon slipped on the heavy leather gauntlet and reached into the travel bag. He frightens them, he custom fits their deaths-we knew all that. She braced herself, and if it’s possible to shout at yourself in your interior monologue, she shouted.

Okay, asshole, I’ll play your fucking game. Lord knows, I can’t die any younger. Come on, whip it out, let’s see what you got. Fuck, is that all? Not a very big one, is it? Kind of skinny, too. Black nose, black head, pretty bands, red-yellow-black-yellow-red-yellow-black down to the black tail. Yeah, that’s right, a little closer, bring it a little closer. I love this, I want a better look. I love this snake I love this fucking snake. Forked tongue, flickering out. That’s how they smell, it’s just smelling me. Smelling the coffee. Wake up and smell the coffee. Good snake pretty snake I love it observe observe observe the red and black bands are wider than the yellow ones the red bands have little black flecks the pupils are round not slits like I thought yeah sure bring it right up to my fucking eye I love it I-

When she made her move, Linda went, not for the snake, and not for Childs, though she wanted to rip his face off, but for the glove. She reached around the snake, grabbed the gauntlet at the wrist with both hands while simultaneously throwing herself backward, and held on to the rough leather for dear life as her chair tipped over; she hit the floor still throttling the empty glove at arm’s length.

Okay, I played your fucking game, thought Linda, as the snake slithered rapidly but gracefully through the kitchen door, with Childs in clumsy pursuit. Now, where’s my lovely parting gifts?