'Say what?'
'A living will. It's the latest thing. It's in case somebody shoots you in the spine and you can't walk, you can't move, you can't feed yourself, you're paralyzed, live your life in a chair. You can't jerk off because your dick don't get hard anymore. Well, actually, you can jerk off with a soft dick, you know that, Tyrone? So, maybe you can sit there and jerk off the rest of your life, but you'll never have another woman because it just won't get hard. You can't even control your bladder or your bowels, spend your life shitting yourself, Tyrone. A living will allows you to say, I don't want any more of this, let me die … You got one of those, Tyrone? In case somebody shoots you in the spine? That last house you burgled? Man there's got a gun, got it just cause of you, now he's waiting there for you to come back. Think I should take you to see him? Want to make a visit?'
'Just jackin' your jaw, ain't you, Pussy. Must be hard, driving around all day, nothing to do but look at trees, guess you got to talk to yourself.' McNeil drove past the town dump and recycling station, heading for a section where the houses were smaller, older. In a small enclave off a private road that turned from asphalt to rutted gravel and finally to hard-packed dirt, sheltered from the eyes of the more affluent residents of Clamden, sat a series of houses that looked as if they belonged in another place, another era. Five cars, three of them on blocks, occupied the yard of one of them. Another sported a small boat that had not been seaworthy in years. McNeil drove to the end of the hard-packed road and into a dirt driveway that rose and twisted itself up the hill and away from the other houses. Sheltered among the trees, invisible even from the beginning of the driveway, sat McNeil's house, a squat one-story building, one side of which was covered in a huge blue plastic tarpaulin, evidence of a renovation effort that seemed never to finish. A sawhorse sat in the yard surrounded by bits of scrap lumber and a bucket of rusting nails.
'It's not what you're used to, Tyrone. I know you like to burgle the bigger houses, I know you like to sneak along those terra-cotta hallways and leave your muddy footprints on shiny oak floors, but they, it's all I can afford, and a man's home is his castle, you know?'
McNeil drove the police car into the garage and stepped out, leaving the engine running.
'Besides, I got such an awful lot of privacy here. Nobody ever comes around here except some deer. You like deer, Tyrone? You ever even seen a deer?'
'What we doing here?'
McNeil closed the garage door, plunging them into sudden darkness.
'What you playing at?' Tyrone tried the doors of the car without success.
'You afraid of the dark? Don't worry, your eyes will get used to it.'
'Let me out of this car, man.'
'You a prisoner, Tyrone Abdul Skids Kiwasee. You ain't getting out until I let you out. Go ahead and kick that mesh, beat on the windows.
What do you think this car is designed for? You couldn't break those windows with a sledgehammer. There's no way out.'
McNeil reached into the front seat, tapped a button, and one of the rear windows moved down an inch.
'There you go, a little ventilation.'
'What you playing at, McNeil?'
'See, that's the first thing you have to learn, Tyrone.' McNeil thrust his face close to the window. 'I ain't playing! '
Stepping away from the car, McNeil pulled a roll of aged carpeting away from a wall of the garage and kicked it out against the door, pressing it against the crack where the door met the concrete slab.
Kiwasee put his fingers through the mesh and shook it, then lay on the back seat and kicked at the windows with his feet. 'Don't you make a mess in there now,' said McNeil, unconcerned. 'That car was nice and clean when you got in there. '
'What you want, McNeil?'
'I want you to think real hard about a living will, Ty rone. Looks like you're going to need one. Things happen to a bad man like yourself even if you don't get shot in the spine. There's all kinds of ways to get fucked up for life. Carbon monoxide poisoning, for instance, just to take one example. You know what it does? It shuts off oxygen to your brain. That goes on too long, of course, and you die. If it goes on just long enough, then you're a vegetable. You not only got a limp dick, you don't even know if you got a dick. The secret is in the timing. Just enough gas, not too much.'
McNeil removed a yellow slicker from a hook beside the garage door and pressed it against the base of the door that led into the house.
'Man, turn off the engine,' said Kiwasee, struggling to control his panic. 'Le''s talk.'
'You done enough talking, Tyrone. You just don't seem to be the kind who can keep his mouth shut.'
'Tell me what you want. I'll do it.'
'You know what I notice, Tyrone? I notice you're not calling me Pussy anymore.' 'I is sorry about that. Didn't mean nothing by it.'
McNeil looked around the garage. 'Let's see, what did I forget?
Everything looks all right, what do you think?'
'Turn off the engine, man. Le's talk, le's just talk this out. I cooperate, you know that, I cooperate with you. Whatever you want, whatever you want.'
'It takes about ten minutes, Tyrone,' McNeil said. 'You can tell the time right there on that nice big clock on the dashboard. Ten minutes to make a veg out of you. What kind of vegetable you like? Yam? Grits?
Corn on the cob? How about black-eyed peas? Let me see if I got the right recipe for black-eyed peas. Ten minutes, ten seconds, that's my guess. Of course, it depends on how much breathing you do. The more you struggle and try to get out, the more you're going to be breathing, so in that case, maybe nine minutes, eight and a half. Hell, I haven't got it down to a science, Tyrone, so don't blame me if I screw it UP.'
McNeil opened the door leading into his house. 'Got to go now, Tyrone.
It's starting to have a funny smell in here. Smell it? Is that gas? Or is that you, shitting yourself already?… Bye, Tyrone Abdul.'
When McNeil stepped into the mud room leading into his kitchen and pulled the door closed behind him, Kiwasee's cries were muffled. When he closed the kitchen door as well, he could barely hear them at all.
Kiwasee was broken by fear and panic, his face streaked with tears and mucus, his eyes wild with terror. The clock on the dashboard had advanced nine and a half minutes when the radio suddenly came alive.
'Central to Car Two,' the voice crackled. 'Come in, please, Car Two.'
'Man, I'm in here!' Tyrone screamed at the radio. 'I'm in his garage.
He's killing me!'
'Come in, Car Two.'
'He's killing me! McNeil is killing me! Help!'
'Two, come in, please.'
'Get me out of here, lady! Lady! Help!'
'McNeil,' the voice on the radio said testily. 'Respond please.'
'Lady! Lady! Get me out of here, you ho!'
The radio clicked into silence. Kiwasee, his nervous system assailed to the point of breakdown by adrenaline, anger, and horror, pulled his shirt over his face in an effort to keep out the gas, then alternately laughed and wept, until he heard the engine suddenly turned off. He looked with disbelief to see McNeil opening the garage door. Sun streaked into the darkened building.
McNeil lowered the back seat window another few inches and Kiwasee winced, not certain if the extra space was letting in more fresh air or more gas.
'You should have put your shirt in the window, Tyrone, block up the crack-that would have given you longer to breathe the oxygen in the car.'
'Ten minutes, man, you left me for ten minutes.'
'I told you, this ain't a science, not yet.'
'I could be dead, I could be dead,' Kiwasee said, incredulous, addressing his fingers, which he wiggled back and forth in proof of his vitality.
'Look at you, Tyrone Abdul, you made a terrible mess of yourself. Is that the way you do back in Bridgeport? Folks don't live like that in Clamden. We're a clean people, Tyrone. Look at me. You see any snot on my shirt? You
