Tim Green - Exact Revenge

Lexis glanced and nodded, then quickly focused on Allen as the team broke into small groups after their stretching. Allen began throwing passes down the field to his receivers, licking his fingers between throws.

“Look at that arm,” Frank said.

“You didn’t play quarterback, did you, Frank?” Lexis asked, feeling light-headed.

Frank glanced at her quickly, then put his binoculars back up to his face.

“I had a hell of an arm,” he said. “Just like him. But, you know, with my size they put me on the line. That’s the only thing he got from you. Those eyes and that frame.”

Lexis just nodded.

THE THIRD COLLECTION RUN for Bert and me on our own takes us to an old refurbished hotel on Raquette Lake by the name of Bright Side. I study a map before we leave and see that Lake Kora is close by and right on the way. I’m driving Bert’s old Ford Bronco, and he’s asleep with his face against the window when I pull off Route 28 and down Uncas Road. When I stop the truck, Bert scratches his head and rubs his eyes. It’s late afternoon and the sun is shining through a warm breeze, but I slip a flashlight from under the seat into the side pocket of my cargo pants.

“A little lost,” I say.

“That’s okay,” he says. “I gotta piss anyway.”

Bert climbs out and makes for the bushes. I walk down a dirt path that leads to the water, the smell of pine needles in my nose. Across the lake, under the shadows of some tall hemlock trees, I think I see the rooflines of the cottage that Lester told me about. Up the shore a ways is a weathered dock and a small skiff. I pick my way along the rocks on the water’s edge and check out the new camp that was apparently built over the spot where Durant’s lodge used to be. It’s a Tuesday and late in the season, so I’m not surprised there are no signs of any people.

I’m halfway across the small lake, rowing, when Bert appears on the shore.

“What the fuck you doing?” he asks with his hands cupped around his mouth.

“I think I know where we are,” I say. “I had a friend used to own that place over there. I’m just checking it out.”

Bert shrugs and rips a thin branch from a tree. He strips off the leaves and starts to whip the seed heads off the grass growing out of the bank. I know if I offer to thumb wrestle him when I make the turn back onto the main road, he won’t even remember this place.

The cottage is sagging and it smells damp in there under the shade of the trees. The front porch is coated with moss and even a few saplings struggle up out of the wood. The key is buried in a plastic bag at the base of a post. I dig it up with a flat rock and unlock the heavy front door. In the back of the kitchen is the pantry. I have a hard time swinging back the shelves. They seem to be fixed and, just as I was in the prison, I am gripped by the fear that I am the victim of a ruse. A film of sweat breaks out on my arms as I strain against the wood frame. Finally, their rusty hinges creak and give way and there behind the wall is the full-size door of a safe.

I spin the knob, marveling at how slick it moves after all these years. It clicks, and I spin the second one until it clicks too. I press my weight against the lever and the door swings open. I flick on the flashlight and walk down into the cool dry space that is lined with narrow wooden boxes stacked upright like books on a shelf. My heart starts to thump when I see the metal strongboxes on a shelf in the corner. When I open them, I suck in my breath.

Refracted light sparkles back at me in a million different hues. There are rubies and emeralds fat as walnuts, but mostly it’s diamonds set in rings, strung from necklaces, or mounted on precious crowns. I slip four of the biggest stones into my pockets.

“Holy shit,” I say and sit down on the edge of a shelf that is labeled Picasso .

I shine the light all around me. Crate after crate, lining the shelves, stacked three tiers high to the massive beams of the ceiling. If anything, Lester grossly underestimated the worth of his fortune.

I sit for several minutes until the light-headed feeling passes, then I go back across the lake to Bert.

“Find it?” he asks.

“What?”

He shrugs, tosses away his switch, and says, “Whatever you were looking for.”

“Yeah,” I say, adjusting the brim of my cap down over my face. “I found it.”

“My grandmother used to say when you found what you’re looking for, it’s time to start looking for something new,” Bert says.

The sun is going down when I pull over the old Ford Bronco at a place called Byrd’s Marina. An old guy rents us a party boat for the rest of the day and gives us a map of the lake. I catch him staring at our hair. Bert’s is tied in a long ponytail and mine sweeps down to my shoulders. I’m still not used to the way white men look at Indians and I feel that my lips are tight. He puts an X on the spot where Bright Side is and tells us to watch the buoys.

“There’s rocks all over this lake,” he says, forcing a smile. “Have fun.”

I keep my head down, but take the wheel. Bert clutches a life jacket to his chest, the same way he does every time we cross into Canada by boat. A slight breeze coming from the direction of the sunset ripples the water. Lights begin to go on in random cabins around the lakeshore, but most of the places stay dark.

Bright Side is a dinosaur. Big and old and missing a few pieces. The boathouse has been patched together with bald pressure-treated planks. The dock stretches out from a crumbling concrete pier that is cloaked in green moss. The hotel itself is freshly painted, but looks as if it has shifted from the effects of an earthquake. It’s easy to see why whoever runs it supplements their income by selling small bags of weed.

We are docked and halfway up the lawn when someone skips down the front porch steps and jogs up to us. His hands are raised in the air in the act of surrender. I peer through the gloom from beneath the brim of my hat and my heart jerks to a stop.

Grinning stupidly at us is a stooped and wrinkled version of Paul Russo. The bags under his red-rimmed eyes are darker now and his shoulders sag and curl forward at the same time. In an attempt to diminish his baldness, he has grown a long flap of dyed-black hair that he sweeps over the top of his head from one protruding ear to the other. His clothes look like they come from an L.L. Bean catalog.

“Hey, guys,” he says with false cheerfulness. The wheezy sound of his voice losing its way in that big nose removes any doubt that this is the man from my past life. “I’ve got some guests in the lobby. Okay if we talk right here?”

I can see Bert staring at me from the corner of my eye, but I keep my face angled down under the brim of the hat and my mouth shut. Bert starts to shift his feet.

Russo laughs nervously through his nose and says, “I know you guys are here for the money and I’ve got most of it. Here. It’s right here…”

He pulls a fat wad out of his pants pocket and begins peeling off bills, counting by twenty. When he’s finished, he holds the stack out to me.

My bones ache. That’s how bad I want to show him my face. To see his eyes go blank. To smell him wet his pants when he stares back at this ghost. To savor his muffled shrieks as we take him away, out to the middle of the lake where I can choke him to death with my bare hands before we tie the anchor to his neck and sink him forever. I know we could do it. It would be easy.

This is my first test.

WHEN I WAS BORN from the pipe in that prison wall, my second life began. It is a simple life with a single purpose. The lessons of my past life have stayed with me, but gone is the scattered focus. I am here to bloody my sword with the mess of everyone who destroyed Raymond White. I am no longer him and I am no longer Running Deer, or Quick Buck, or Quick Book. The joke is over.