Ricky pushed forward rapidly on the sidewalk, and thought: He will want to move fast. He will want to resolve the matter immediately. He will not want to prepare or plan, as once he did. Now he will let cold rage utterly overcome all his instincts and all his training.
But most important: Now he will make a mistake.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Usually, once or twice each summer back in the years and vacations that seemed so distant to him, when his life was fit into normal, recognizable patterns, Ricky would make a reservation with one of the old and particularly accomplished fishing guides who worked the Cape waters hunting for big stripers and schools of bluefish. It was not that Ricky thought of himself as an expert fisherman, nor was he an outdoors type of any special note. But what he’d enjoyed was heading out in a small, open boat in the early morning, when mist still hung over the gray-black ocean, feeling a damp chill that defied the first streaks of bright morning light leaping across the horizon, and watching the guide pilot the skiff through channels, past shoals, to fishing grounds. And what he’d appreciated was the sensation that amid the acres of constantly changing waves, the guide would know which seascape held fish, even as they concealed themselves in the somber colors of the deep water. To slide a bait through so much cold space, taking so many variables of tide and current, temperature and light into the equation, and then to find the target, was an act that Ricky the psychoanalyst had admired, and constantly found fascinating.
Collecting his thoughts in his cheap New York room, he thought he had embarked on much the same process. The bait was in the water. Now he had to sharpen the hook. He did not think he would get more than a single opportunity with Rumplestiltskin.
It had occurred to him that after confronting the younger brother and sister, he could flee, but he knew instantly that would be useless. Then he would spend the entirety of his remaining life being startled by every unusual noise in the dark, nervous at any sound behind his back, afraid of every stranger who happened into his line of sight. An impossible life, spent running away from something and someone impossible to discern, always with him, ghosting every step Ricky ever took.
Ricky knew, as much as he’d ever known anything with certainty, that he had to best Rumplestiltskin in this final phase. It was the only way he’d really regain a grip on any semblance of life as he hoped to live it.
He thought he knew how to accomplish this. The first elements of his scheme had already been put in place. He could easily imagine the conversation between brothers and sister that was happening even as he sat in the cheap rented room. It wouldn’t be a telephone conversation. They would have to meet, because they would have to see one another to reassure themselves that they were safe. Voices would be raised. There would be a few tears and considerable anger, perhaps even some insult and blame tossed about the room. Everything had gone smoothly for the three of them, wreaking murderous revenge on all the obvious targets of their past. Only one had come up a cropper, and that one was now the source of significant anxiety. He could hear the phrase “You got us into this!” shouted across the room at the shadowy figure who had meant so much to them over so many years. Ricky thought, with some satisfaction, that there would be panic in that accusation, because he had managed to drive a small wedge into the bonds that linked the trio together. No matter how persuasive the need for revenge had been, no matter how cunning the plot was against Ricky and all the others, there was one element that Rumplestiltskin had not foreseen: Even with their compulsion to go along with him, the younger brother and younger sister still had aspirations of lives in the mainstream. Normal, in their own ways: A life onstage and a life in court, playing by certain rules, with recognizable strictures. Rumplestiltskin, alone of the three, was willing to live outside certain boundaries. But the two others were not, and that was how they became vulnerable.
It was that distinction that Ricky had found. And it was, he knew, their greatest weakness.
There would be harsh words between them, Ricky knew. As cruel as the game had been, and as murderous, the actual pushing, shooting, and killing had been left to only one of them. Ruining a reputation or savaging investment accounts were some nasty works. But none that actually saw blood. There had been a separation of evils, with the most suspect left in a single pair of hands.
Those jobs had fallen to Mr. R. Just as he had borne the brunt of beatings and cruelty as they grew up, so the actual violence had belonged to him. The others had merely helped him, reaping the psychological satisfaction that revenge provides. The difference between being an enabler and being the performer, Ricky thought. Only now, they understand, their complicity has come back to bite them.
They thought they were home free, Ricky thought. But they are not.
He smiled inwardly. There is nothing, Ricky decided, quite as devastating as realizing that now perhaps it is you who is being hunted, when you are so accustomed to being the hunter. And that, he hoped, was the trap he had set, because even the psychopath would leap for the opportunity to regain the position of superiority that was so natural for the predator. He would be pushed in that direction by the threat to Virgil and Merlin. What few threads of normalcy that Mr. R. retained were those that connected him to his brother and sister. If, deep in his psychopathological world, he had any remaining links to humanity, they came from his relationship with his siblings. He would be desperate to protect those. It is simple, really, Ricky insisted to himself. Make the hunter think he is hunting, closing in on his prey, when in reality, he is being drawn into an ambush.
An ambush, Ricky thought with some irony, that is defined by love.
Ricky found some scratch paper, and worked for a few moments on a rhyme. When he had it the way he wanted, he called the
“Look, if I’m out of town, can I still call in and get the responses?”
“Sure,” said the clerk. “Just dial the access code. You can call from anywhere.”
“Great,” Ricky replied. “You see I have some business up on the Cape this weekend, so I have to head up there for a few days, and I still want to get the responses.”
“It won’t be a problem,” the clerk said.
“I hope the weather is good. The forecast is for rain. You ever go up to Cape Cod?”
“Been to Provincetown,” the clerk said. “It’s pretty wild up there after the Fourth of July weekend.”
“No kidding,” Ricky said. “My place is in Wellfleet. Or, at least it used to be. Had to sell it. A fire sale. Going up just to settle a few leftover matters, then back to the city and back to the grind.”
“I hear you,” the clerk said. “I wish I had a place on the Cape.”
“The Cape is special,” Ricky spoke carefully, lingering over each word. “You only really go in the summer, maybe a little in the fall or spring, but each season gets inside you in its own way. It becomes home. More than home, really. A place for starting and ending. When I die, that’s where I want them to bury me.”
“I can only wish,” the clerk said, slightly envious.
“Maybe someday,” Ricky added. He cleared his throat to deliver the message for the classifieds. He had it run under the modest headline: Seeking Mr. R.
“Don’t you mean ‘Mr. Right ’?” the clerk asked.
“No,” Ricky said. “Mr. R. is fine.” Then he launched into what he hoped would be the last rhyme he would ever need to concoct:
