It just couldn't be over. It was too simple. He was somewhere out of the light, brooding like a dark toad, under the bridge, maybe, eyes up, waiting, face green, sucking air, very quietly. I listened. Not a drip. Not a ripple. Not a sigh.'Shrank,' I whispered.
Shrank, echoed the timbers under the bridge.
Off along the shore, the great oil beasts lifted their heads up at my summons, sank them down again, in time to a long sighing roll of water on the coast.
Don't wait, I thought I heard Shrank murmuring. It's nice down here. Quiet at last. I think I'll stay.
Liar, I thought. You'll come up when I least expect it.
The bridge creaked. I whirled.
Nothing. Nothing but fog sifting across the empty boulevard.
Run, I thought. Run telephone. Call Crumley. Why isn't he here? Run. But no.
If I did, Shrank might go free.
Far away, two miles off, the big red trolley bucketed along, whistling, wailing, sounding like the terrible beast in my dream, come to take my time, my life, my future away, heading for a tar pit at the end of the line.
I found a small pebble and dropped it in.
Shrank.
It hit and sank. Silence.
He's escaped me. I wanted to pay him back for Fannie.
Then, Peg, I thought. Call her.
But no, she would have to wait, too.
My heart pounded so loudly that I feared the waters would stir below and the dead rise. I feared that my very breathing would knock down the oil derricks.
I held onto my heart and breath and made them slow, eyes shut.
Shrank, I thought, come out. Fannie's here, waiting. The canary lady's here, waiting. The old man from the ticket office is beside me. Pietro's here and wants his pets. Come out. I'm here, along with the rest, waiting.
Shrank!
This time he must have heard.
He came to get me.
He shot out of the black water like a cannonball off a springboard.
Christ, I thought, fool! Why did you call to him?
He was ten feet tall, a dragon yeasted up from a dwarf. Grendel, who was once a jockey.
He snatched up like a Fury, talons out. He hit me like a balloon full of scalding water, with thrash and yell and shriek. He had long since forgotten his good intentions, his plans, his myth, his murderous integrity.
'Shrank!' I yelled.
There was something slow-motion and terrible about it, as if, frame by frame, I might stop him along the way and examine his astonishing arc and growth, and how his eyes blazed and his mouth ached with hate and hands gripped with rage as he seized my coat, my shirt, my neck in iron grapples. His mouth was blooded with my name as he heaved back. The tar waters waited. Christ, not there, I thought. The lion cages waited with doors flung wide.
'No!'
The slow motion stopped. The swift fall followed.w Fused by his rage, we fell down, sucking air in flight.
We struck like two concrete statues and sank, loving each other with a mindless frenzy of passion, climbing each other to keep each other down, making ladders to air and light.
On the way down I thought I heard him whining, wailing, 'Get in there, get in there, get in,' like a boy at some rude game without rules, and I was playing wrong. 'Get in!'
But now, under, we went from sight. We whirled around like two crocodiles at each other's necks. From up top we must have seemed like a moil and welter of piranhas self-feasting, or a great propeller off center and amok in rainbow oils and tars.
And at center of the drowning there was a small pinpoint flash of hope which burst but to fire again behind my eyes.
This is his first real murder, I must have thought, or was there time? But I am flesh and will not behave. I fear dark more than he fears life. He must know that. I must win!
Not proven.
We rolled and struck something that knocked most of the air from my lungs.
The lion cage. He was shoving and kicking me through the open door. I thrashed. We whirled and in the surge and white water I suddenly thought: God. I'm inside. The cage. The whole thing ends as it began! Crumley comes to find me! beckoning behind the bars at dawn. Christ. My lungs ballooned with fire. I tried to whirl and knock free. I wanted to shout him off with my last breath. I wanted to…
It was over.
Shrank relaxed his grip.
What? I thought. What? What!
He almost let go.
I seized him to push but it was like grabbing a dummy that had suddenly lost its ability to gesticulate. It was like handling a corpse that had leaped out of the grave and now wanted back.
He's quit, I thought. He knows he must be the last one. He knows he can't kill me, it doesn't fit.
He had indeed made up his mind and as I held him I could see his face, the merest pale ghost, and the shrug that said I was to at last go free and move up toward night and air and life. In the dark water, I saw his eyes accept his own dread as he opened his mouth, flexed his nostrils, and let out a terrible gaseous illumination. Whereupon he took a deep breath of black water and sank away, a lost man seeking his final loss.
He was a cold marionette I left behind in the cage as blindly I thrashed for the door, pushed out, and pushed up, wildly praying to live forever, to seek the fog, to find Peg, wherever she was in all the dread damned world.
I broke up and out into a mist that had begun to rain. As my head burst out, I gave a great cry of relief and sorrow. All the souls of all the people lost and not wanting to be lost in the last month wailed out of me. I gagged, threw up, almost sank again, but made it to the bank and dragged myself out to sit and wait on the rim of the canal.w Somewhere in the world I heard a car pull up, a door slam, running feet. Out of the rain, one long arm reached and a big hand clutched to shake my shoulder. Crumley's face, like a frog's under glass, came to view in a movie closeup. He looked like a father in shock, bending to his drowned son.
'You okay, you all right, you okay?'
I nodded, gasping.
Henry came up behind, sniffing the rain, alert for dread smells and finding none.
'He okay?' said Henry.
'Alive,' I said, and truly meant it. 'Oh, God, alive.'
'Where's Armpits? I got to give him one for Fannie.'
'I already did, Henry,' I said.
I nodded down at the lion cage, where a new ghost drifted like pale gelatin behind the bars.
'Crumley,' I said, 'he's got a whole shack full of stuff, evidence.'
'I'll check it.'
'Where the hell have you guys been?' I wondered.
'Damn-fool taxi driver's blinder than me.' Henry felt his way to the canal rim and sat down on one side of me. Crumley sat on the other, all of us letting our feet dangle over almost into the dark water. 'Couldn't
