fast and my gut told me I still was. I could get them now. I could get them all. Their asses were mine. But at the last second, God knows why, I stayed my hand.
I knew why. I had never shot a man that way. I could kill him, but not that way.
I shrank back from the edge as the ladder bumped against the wall. Who would come over the top first? If Dante came up, my job would be easier. But my hunch told me it would be someone local, a pathfinder who could lead them across the treacherous parade ground to the place where, they thought, we’d all be happily asleep. I heard the ladder shake, saw it move in the dim glow from the boat far below. I slid back on my belly with the gun in my hand, getting very still as a head came over the edge. I had been right, it wasn’t Dante. But I was sure he’d be the next one: it wasn’t in his nature to take up the rear. The pathfinder came head and shoulders over the wall, a little penlight in his teeth, and in that moment I knew how it was going to go. If I was lucky, it would be a replay of Baltimore.
He turned his head and his light went right over my back. He looked down and nodded, then he came over the wall and stood up, waiting.
Again he nodded his head.
My heart was pumping like a war drum, I could feel my gun hand trembling, I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. The ladder moved: Dante was on the way up. I felt cold one second, giddy the next. I almost laughed out loud, these guys were such schmucks, in their own dumb way as stupid as those kids I had faced down on the street so long ago. I knew what was going to happen ten seconds before each move. The pathfinder would reach down and give the man a respectful hand, leaving them both vulnerable for that moment. I could push them both off the wall: I could easily get close enough to kick them out into space. It probably wouldn’t be a lethal fall unless Dante landed on his ass, but it was high enough to do some real damage and at least they’d be stunned for a moment. Then perhaps they’d come up shooting, and that was my kind of action; I could kill them all then and sleep just fine tomorrow. And in the heat of that moment, I found myself actually craving it, savoring what might come.
I saw Dante clear the wall. A Confederate defender with a Whit-worth rifle could’ve popped his thick head from a bunker a mile away on Morris Island, that’s what a target he made. There was a moment: I hung back, waiting for some defining motion to egg me on. The ladder bumped again. I knew it was the third man, on his way up, and that was something I couldn’t wait around for.
I stepped up beside them, still a foot back in the shadow. Both were looking over the edge: neither had a gun out and that gave me a huge advantage. I cocked my gun and even in the wind it sounded like the clap of doom. I saw them stiffen. “Don’t move,” I said. “I will kill you both right where you stand.”
In almost the same breath the third guy began to clear the wall. He still didn’t know anything had happened and his moment of clarity came slowly. He said, “Hey,” and that was it, his sudden awareness in a nutshell as I kicked him in the head. He tumbled into space, clawing wildly for something to grab. I heard him hit the sand and the ladder crash over on top of him. All this time I kept my light in Dante’s eyes. “You don’t learn very good, do you, stupid?”
The pathfinder started to back up, away from the edge. “Wrong way, fuck-knuckle,” I said, and I lifted my foot and shoved him off. He screamed, going down like I’d just pushed him off a thousand-foot cliff.
Dante and I stared at each other, primal, mortal enemies. He looked at my gun, then at me. I taunted him. I wanted him to try something.
“Come on, fatso, you’re such a tough guy, come take my gun away from me.”
“You’d like that. You need that excuse. You haven’t got the balls to just do it.”
That was his only try at bravado. I leaned into the light and said, “Is that what you think?” and in that moment I became one with the killer: whatever difference I thought had existed between us was gone now. I was going to kill him, there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind, and in that second he knew it too. I saw it in his face: the born intimidator who had spent his life watching people cringe had never once faced the possibility of his own death. He saw it now.
The flesh began to sag around his mouth, under his eyes. He tried to recoil but I grabbed him by the shirt and heaved him around. “You lose, asshole,” I said, and I banged him in the mouth with the barrel of the gun. He let out a little cry and tried to back away, he stumbled and fell. Again I shoved the gun into that gaping mouth, bloody now where two teeth had broken off. My hand trembled: any little movement might’ve set it off and I didn’t care.
“Wait,” he said.
I rammed the gun down to his tonsils. “Wait for what?”
He gurgled out something that sounded like, “Just wait.”
I leaned down close to his face. “Wait for what, asshole? Wait for what? You got something to say, say it now.” I jerked the gun out of his face. “Say it now. Say it. What’ve you possibly got to say that I would care about?”
“We could make a deal.”
“Don’t make me laugh. What’ve you got that I want? I’ve got your nuts in my pocket, Dante, what can you give me for that? Give me Burton’s notebook for starters. Maybe then I’ll let you live another five minutes.”
Suddenly he looked like a gored weasel, a rat trapped in a flooding sewer. His eyes had the same dead look as Little Caesar, who couldn’t believe he was dying even in death. Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico? Same dead eyes. Same incredulous face. I put the gun to his eyes and he shivered in what he must have expected to be his last
