and some rags, and dropped to his knees to clean up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.
“Stick the rags in the end of the plastic there, Harry, would you? Thank you.”
Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands half-heartedly in the air, and said, “Now me?”
“I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”
His eyes jumped. “Not…not how I remember it.”
I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of asshole do you think I am, Harry?”
Harry had sense enough not to answer.
“Let’s see how Daddy’s little girl’s doing,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose kissing Harry’s neck, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.
“Open it,” I said.
He did.
We went in, Harry first.
The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.
Her expression melted into confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope, when she saw me.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Green,” I told her. “I’ve already taken care of the skinny one.” I nudged Harry with the gun in his neck. “You got a handcuff key?”
Harry swallowed and nodded.
“Uncuff her.”
My gun trained on him from nearby, Harry was complying as she asked, “Did…did my Daddy send you?”
I held out my hand to Harry and he dropped the cuff key in my palm.
“Fatso and me are taking a moonlight stroll,” I told her. “Meantime, you stay put. I’m going to get you back to your father.”
Her confusion didn’t leave, but she began to smile, wide, a kid Christmas morning, seeing her gifts. Her gift to me was dropping the blankets and sheets to her waist. The cute cupcake breasts had pierced nipples with rings, like beer cans waiting to be opened.
“Remember,” I said, and waggled a teacherly finger. “Stay right there.”
She swallowed and nodded and her eyes sparkled. Well, they did.
I walked my host out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind me.
“Where are her clothes, Harry?”
He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just the three of us.”
Harry frowned in confusion, glanced back toward the bedroom. “Girl’s comin’?”
“No. Louis. Better give him a hand.”
Now Harry got it.
He leaned down and hefted his partner in the plastic shroud and held the crinkly corpse in his arms like a B- movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but only on the inside; you could sort of see what was left of Louis’s head trying to look out. Harry seemed like he was going to cry again.
I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open.
Cold came in, but I barely noticed. I don’t think Harry much noticed, either.
“What…?” he asked. “Where…?”
“Out on the lake,” I said, and nodded in that direction.
“…can I get my coat?”
“I don’t think so. I think the cold will keep you on your toes, and anyway, suppose you have a gun in your pocket, and I have to kill you, and mess up that beautiful Burberry. Which would be a fucking shame, plus which I’d have to make two trips, carrying Louis, and your fat ass.”
He swallowed, nodded, as if all that sounded reasonable enough. “Okay. I…there’s a shovel I could get…?”
“We won’t need it. Ground’s too hard, anyway.”
Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.
I responded to the question his face was asking: “We’re going to bury Louis at sea.”
“Huh?”
Now I was noticing the cold. “Outside, Harry. My nipples are getting hard, and not in a good way. Okay? Outside.”
He moved past me, his plastic bundle over one shoulder-he might have been delivering a rug.
The chubby ex-gangster walked into the trees, heading toward the yawning white expanse of frozen water. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused.
As we wound through the pines, the snow got deeper, ankle deep in places. As his glasses got unfogged and made his trek easier, Harry made conversation.
“Was…was that you, Quarry? Back at that fucking convenience store?”
“That’s right.”
“And, what? You…you thought we’d come after you? This has nothing to do with you.”
“Does now. And anyway, I got my question answered.”
He risked a frown back at me. “What question?”
“What the Odd Couple needs with Tampax in the middle of the night…Keep moving.”
Finally, at the snowy edge of the wooded shore, Harry came to a stop, and half turned, Louis turning too, Harry asking another question with his face: What now?
“Go on, Harry.”
Harry frowned. “Go on? What the fuck, ‘go on?’z”
“Keep walking.”
“ Where? ”
I gestured with the shotgun, toward the lake.
Harry followed the gesture, eyes tight, and it took a few seconds for him to absorb the meaning. Somehow, though, he couldn’t turn his confusion and apprehension into words.
So I said, “When you sense the ice getting thin, give Louis a toss…let the lake have him. Then head back here, and we’ll talk.”
Harry looked at the lake, then at me; the lake, me.
His voice seemed even higher pitched than before, almost childish, his wide eyes buggy behind the lenses. “What…what if the ice gives, under me? I mean…it’s gonna get thin, farther out I get…”
“We’ll keep the stress to a minimum.”
“ How? ”
“I’ll stay put.”
All the air went out of Harry, and if Louis had been one pound heavier, both men would have gone down in a pile in the snow, right there. But he stayed on his feet, even though the despair must have been heavier than Louis.
“Quarry…Quarry…will you just fuckin’ kill me. Kill me here and be done.”
I shrugged. “Thought you might like a sporting chance, Harry. Before you know it, you’ll be out of range… maybe you can make it over to those trees, where I can’t catch up with you.”
He summoned a sneer from somewhere. “If the ice don’t break first.”
I shrugged again. “That’s between you and the ice.”
He sneered at me; but the sneer dissolved into this pitiful, lower-lip trembling thing that got only a single shake of the head out of me. That, and another nod toward the lake.
Cradling Louis like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold (which was fitting, as Louis had been the wife), Harry heaved a sigh, took a tentative step, and found the ice firm. He drew a deep breath, as if he were