Three doors down, about a hundred yards, walking casually maybe a minute. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I was having trouble swallowing. Probably because there was no saliva to swallow. My mouth tasted like an old penny. Do or die. Do and die. Don’t and die. Swell options. I flexed my hands. Above ground Susan.
I clamped my jaw a little tighter. The muscles ached. I came to the third door and opened it and walked in. There was a woman. A middle-aged secretary at a desk. Christ, she was my age. Blue framed harlequin-shaped glasses hung on a gold chain around her neck. She looked friendly and firm, like someone in a coffee commercial.
She said, “May I help you?”
I said, “Yes, is Jerry in?”
“His family is with him,” she said warmly. “Perhaps you can wait.”
“Sure,” I said. “Actually he wanted me to show you something.”
I walked to the desk and held my clenched left fist out in front of me, low near the desk top. “Watch,” I said, “when I open my hand.”
She smiled and looked down. I took the sap out from under my shirt with my right hand and hit her low on the back of her head. She sprawled forward onto the desk and was still. I put the sap in my back pocket and took out my gun and went past her to the inner office door and opened it and stepped in. Jerry was there at his desk with his feet up smoking a thin good-looking cigar. Grace sat in a leather chair near the wall and Russell leaned on the same wall next to her, his arms folded.
“Ah, Kurtz,” I said.
Jerry swiveled slowly and stared at me. He saw, the gun before he saw who held it and he recognized the gun before he recognized me. But he did recognize me. The stages of surprise and slow recognition played on his face.
Grace said, “Oh my God, Jerry…”
Russell had an odd tight grin. His face looked shiny. He didn’t move or speak. Jerry stared at me. “Jerry,” Grace said, “Jerry, for heaven’s sake do something. What’s he want, Jerry?”
Jerry stared at me for a moment then turned his head and looked at Russell.
“You let him in,” Jerry said.
Russell grinned at him. “Not me, Pop,” he said.
“You Jew-loving little bastard,” Jerry said.
“Jerry,” Grace said.
Jerry kept looking at Russell.
“You sick Jew-loving little bastard,” he said. His voice quivered slightly.
Grace said, “Jerry,” again, louder.
Costigan looked back at me. “Fuck it,” he said, “get it done.”
I shot him. A hole appeared in his forehead and the impact spun his swivel chair half around. He fell sideways and lolled out of the chair draped over one of the black leather arms. Neither Russell nor Grace moved. I stepped around the desk and shot Jerry again, behind the ear, to be sure. Then I turned toward his widow and orphan.
Russell still had the fixed shiny grin. His arms were still folded across his chest, he still leaned against the wall. In the acrid silence I could hear his breathing, shallow and fast. There seemed to be spots of color on his cheekbones. Grace’s face was squinched up like a withered apple, a trace of saliva was at one corner of her mouth, and her entire posture seemed to have bunched up like a fist.
“Don’t you touch me,” she said. Her voice had a raspy sound to it. “Don’t you dare touch me. Don’t you dare come near me,” she said.
“We’ll go out together,” I said. “We three. If I get out you get out. Otherwise you’re dead.”
“You better not touch me,” Grace said.
Russell said, “No. I’m not going.” His voice was tinny.
“I shot him,” I said, “I’ll shoot her. We’re going out together.”
Russell shook his head. “You’re on your own now, Superman.”
“Rusty,” Grace rasped. Her voice was electric. “You do what he says.”
“Like hell, Ma,” Russell said. “He won’t shoot me.”
“And your mother, do you care about your mother,” she said.
The spots of color on Russell’s cheeks deepened and enlarged as if a fever had begun to spread. “Ma,” he said.
She clapped her hands together once, sharply. “Rusty Costigan, you listen to me. You still belong to me. And now that Dad’s dead, you’re all I have. You do what he says. Don’t you let him hurt me.”
The rasp in her voice came and went, replaced at odd moments by a lisping little girl sound full of lateral L’s and infancy. Russell’s breathing was even shallower. His face was fully flushed now.
“Move it,” I said.
Grace stood and took Russell’s arm, and turned him toward the door.
“I know you want to sit in that chair,” I said to Russell. “But unless we walk right out of this mine without any sweat,” I said, “I promise to kill you both.”
