Free or dead. Like the license plate on his New Hampshire rental car. Live Free or Die. It finally made some sense to him.
His thoughts crept over to the three people who had stalked him. The children of his failure. Raised to hate everyone who’d failed to help.
“I know you now,” he said out loud, picturing Virgil in his mind. “And you, I’m about to know,” he continued, conjuring up a portrait of Merlin.
But Rumplestiltskin remained elusive, a shadow in his imagination.
This was the only fear he had left, he understood. But it was a substantial fear.
Ricky nodded to the image of himself in the mirror. Time to perform, he told himself.
There was a large drugstore on the corner, one of a chain, with rows of over-the- counter cold remedies, shampoo, and batteries. What he intended for Merlin that morning was something he remembered from a book he’d read about mobsters in South Philadelphia. He found what he needed in a section that contained cheap children’s toys. Then the second element in a portion of the store that carried a modest selection of office supplies. He paid cash and after placing these items in his jacket pocket, Ricky walked back out on the street and hailed a cab.
He breezed into the courthouse building as he had the day before, appearing like a man with a purpose far different from that which he actually had in mind. He stopped in the second-floor bathroom and took out the items that he’d purchased, and prepared them in a few seconds. Then he killed some time before heading to the courtroom where the man he knew as Merlin was arguing a motion.
As he suspected, the room itself was only partially filled. Some other attorneys lounged about waiting for their cases to be called. A dozen or so of the courthouse buzzards occupied seats in the middle portion of the cavernous arena, some dozing, others listening intently. Ricky slipped quietly through the door, past the baliff who guarded it, and into a seat behind several of the old folks. He slid down, making himself as unobtrusive as possible.
There were a half-dozen lawyers and plaintiffs inside the bar, seated at sturdy oaken tables in front of the judge’s bench. The area in front of both teams was filled with papers and boxes of pleadings. They were all men, and they were intent upon the reactions of the judge to what they had to say. There was no jury, in this preliminary stage, which meant that everything they spoke was directed forward. Nor was there any need to turn and play to the audience, because it would have had no discernible impact on the proceedings. Consequently, none of the men paid the slightest attention to the folks seated haphazardly about in the rows of seats behind them. Instead, they took notes, checked citations from legal texts, and busied themselves with the task at hand, which was trying to win some money for their client, but more critically, for themselves. It was, Ricky thought, a type of stylized theater, where no one cared anything about the audience, only the drama critic in front of them, wearing the black robes. Ricky shifted in his seat and remained hidden and anonymous, which was what he expected.
A surge of excitement raced through him, when Merlin stood.
“You have an objection, Mr. Thomas?” the judge demanded sharply.
“Indeed, I do,” Merlin replied smugly.
Ricky looked down at the list he’d made of all the lawyers involved in the case. Mark Thomas, Esquire, with offices downtown, was in the middle of the group.
“Then what is it?” the judge demanded.
Ricky listened for a few moments. The self-assured, self-satisfied tones of the attorney were the same that he’d remembered from their meetings. He spoke with a confidence that was the same, whether what he was saying had any basis in truth or the law or not. Merlin was the exact man who had come into Ricky’s life so disastrously.
Only now he had a name. And an address.
And just as it had for Ricky, this would be like opening a door on who Merlin was.
He pictured the lawyer’s hands again. Especially the manicured fingernails. Then Ricky smiled. Because in the same mental image, he noted the presence of a wedding ring. That meant a house. A wife. Perhaps children. All the trappings of the upwardly mobile, the young urban professional, heading aggressively for success.
Only Merlin the attorney had a few ghosts in his past. And he was brother to a ghost of the first degree. Ricky listened to the man speak, thinking what a complicated system of psychology was on display in front of him. Sorting through it all would have been an intriguing challenge for the psychoanalyst he once was. Sorting through it for the man he’d been forced to become was a significantly simpler issue. He reached into his pocket and fingered the children’s toy he’d placed there.
On the bench, the judge was shaking his head, and beginning to suggest that the matters be continued over into the afternoon session. This was Ricky’s cue to exit, which he did quietly.
He took up a position next to the emergency stairwell, waiting across from a bank of elevators. As soon as he spotted the group of lawyers exiting the courtroom, he ducked into the stairwell. He had lingered just long enough to see that Merlin was carrying two heavily stuffed briefcases, no doubt filled to overflowing with endless documents and court papers. Too heavy to carry beyond the closest elevator, Ricky knew.
He took the stairs two at a time, emerging on the second floor. There were several people waiting by the elevators for rides down the single flight. Ricky joined them, keeping his hand around the handle of the toy in his pocket. He stared up at the electronic device that shows the location of the car and saw that the elevator was stopped on the floor above. Then it began to descend. Ricky knew one thing: Merlin wasn’t the type to move to the back and make room for anyone else.
The elevator stopped, and the doors swung open with a swooshing sound.
Ricky stepped up, behind the people getting on. Merlin was in the direct center.
The attorney lifted his eyes, and Ricky stared right into them.
There was a flash of recognition, and Ricky saw a momentary panic slide onto the attorney’s face.
“Hello, Merlin,” Ricky said quietly. “And now I know who you are.”
In the same instant, he lifted the child’s toy from his pocket and brought it to bear on the attorney’s chest. It was a water pistol, in the shape of a World War II German Luger. He squeezed the trigger and a stream of black ink shot out, striking Merlin in the chest.
Before anyone could react, the doors slid shut.
Ricky jumped back to the stairwell. He didn’t run down, because he knew he couldn’t outrace the elevator. Instead, he climbed up to the fifth floor, walked out and found the men’s room. There he disposed of the water pistol in a wastebasket after wiping it clean of any fingerprints, just as he might have done with a real weapon, and washed his hands. He waited a few moments, then exited, walking through the corridors to the opposite end of the courthouse. As he had learned the day before, there were more elevators, more stairs, and another exit. Attaching himself surreptitiously to another group of attorneys exiting from other hearings, Ricky maneuvered down. As he expected, there was no sign of Merlin in the portion of the lobby he entered. Merlin wasn’t in the position where he would want to do any explaining whatsoever about the real nature of the stains on his shirt and suit.
And, Ricky thought, he will come soon enough to understand that the ink Ricky had used was indelible. He hoped that he had ruined far more than a shirt, suit, and tie that morning.
The restaurant Ricky had chosen for luncheon with the ambitious actress had been a favorite of his late wife’s though he doubted that Virgil had made that connection. He had selected it because it had one important feature: a large plate glass window that separated the sidewalk from the diners. Ricky remembered that the lighting in the restaurant made it difficult to see out, but not nearly as hard to see in. And the placement of the tables was such that one was more often being seen, than seeing. This was how he wanted it.
He waited until a group of tourists, perhaps a dozen German-speaking men and women wearing loud shirts and necklaces of cameras, sailed past the front of the restaurant. He simply tagged along with them, much as he’d done in the courthouse earlier. It is difficult, he thought, to pick one familiar face out of a
