Josh Bazell - Beat the Reaper - A Novel

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Cooperate?” the first one said.

“You knocked over a house in West Orange, a year ago October,” I said. “Killed a couple of geezers. All I want is the tape that was in the VCR you took.”

They looked at each other. Shook their heads in disbelief.

The first one said, “Asshole, if we took a VCR from those poor fucks, we sure as hell didn’t keep the tape.”

I took a breath so I wouldn’t have to for a while. Then I started pulling the triggers.

Let me tell you about revenge. Particularly murderous revenge.

It’s a bad idea. For one thing, it doesn’t last. The reason they tell you revenge is best served cold is not so you’ll take the time to get it right, but so you’ll spend longer on the fun part, which is the planning and the expectation.

For another thing, even if you get away with it, murdering someone is bad for you. It murders something in yourself, and has all kinds of other consequences you can’t possibly foresee. By way of example: eight years after I shot the Virzi brothers, Skinflick completely destroyed my life, and I threw him headfirst out a six-story window.

But on that night in early 1993, all I could feel was the joy.

Shooting the Virzi brothers with my silenced .45’s was like holding a photograph of them, then tearing it in half.

I take Squillante’s cell phone from his hands and twist it into pieces.

“Talk, asshole,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “What’s to say? As long as I stay alive, my guy Jimmy won’t call Brooklyn.”

“Won’t call who in Brooklyn?”

“A guy of David Locano’s who can get word to him in Beaumont.”

I make a fist.

“Relax!” Squillante says. “It’s only in the event of my death!”

I jerk him up off the bed by the loose skin where his jaw meets his neck. It’s dry, like that of a lizard.

“In the event of your death? ” I say. “Are you fucking insane? You have a terminal illness! You’re already dead!”

“Les ho I’n ot,” he drools.

“Hope won’t get either of us shit!”

He mumbles something. I let his head drop back.

“What?” I say.

“Dr. Friendly’s going to operate. He says we might be able to beat this thing.”

“Who the fuck is Dr. Friendly?”

“He’s a famous surgeon!”

“And he operates at Manhattan Catholic?”

“He operates all over town. He brings his own OR staff.”

My beeper goes off. I hit the “kill” button.

“Him and me are gonna beat this together,” Squillante says.

I slap him. Lightly.

“Can the shit,” I say. “Just because you’re dying doesn’t mean you get to take me with you. Call off your connection to Locano.”

“No,” he says quietly.

I slap him a little harder. “Listen, dumbfuck,” I say. “Your chances of living suck as it is. Don’t make me kill you now.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not, if it doesn’t make a difference?”

He starts to say something, then blinks instead. Starts again. Then begins to cry. He turns his head away and pulls up into as much of a fetal position as his various inputs and outputs will allow.

“I don’t wanna die, Bearclaw,” he says through the tears.

“Yeah, well, no one’s asking for your permission. So snap out of it.”

“Dr. Friendly says I have a chance.”

“That’s surgeon talk for ‘I need a slightly longer Chris-Craft.’”

My beeper goes off again. I kill it again. Squillante grabs my forearm with his chimplike hand. “Help me, Bearclaw.”

“I will if I can,” I tell him. “Call off your guy.”

“Just get me through the surgery.”

“I said, I will if I can. Call him off.”

“If I can just make it through the surgery and get out of here, I promise I will. I’ll take it to my grave. I don’t need to live forever.”

“Hey there! What kind of talk is that?” a voice says behind me.

I turn to see a couple of doctors entering the room. One’s a gangly, exhausted-looking resident in scrubs, the other’s a fat cat who’s fifty-five years old. I don’t know either of them. The fat cat’s ruddy, with a truly audacious comb-over—a comb-around-and-around, to be more accurate. But that’s not what’s interesting.

What’s interesting is the guy’s thigh-length white lab coat. It’s covered with drug-name patches, like something out of NASCAR. And it’s leather. Better still, the patches are over the parts of the body each particular drug works on: Xoxoxoxox (pronounced “zoZOXazox”) over the heart, Rectilify over the sigmoid colon, and so on. Over the crotch—cut in half because the coat is open—is the familiar logo of the erection drug Propulsatil.

“That’s an amazing coat,” I say. The guy looks at me, trying to decide whether I’m being sarcastic, but I don’t know myself, so he can’t tell.

So he just says, “Are you the Medicine team?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Dr. Friendly.”

Great. I wouldn’t trust this guy to work on my car.

“I’m taking this patient to the OR this morning,” he says. “Make sure he’s ready.”

“He is ready,” I say. “He doesn’t want a DNR.”

Dr. Friendly drops a hand on my shoulder. Nice manicure, at least. “Of course he doesn’t,” he says. “And don’t kiss my ass. I get enough of that from my resident.”

I just look at him.

“If I need to talk to you, I’ll have you paged,” he says.

I try to think of an excuse to stay, but I can’t. I’m distracted—first by the fact that Dr. Friendly’s coat has Marinir patches over the kidneys when he turns his back on me, and then by the smell of his resident.

Which, suddenly, I recognize. The resident’s dark-circled, bloodshot eyes stare back at me as I turn.

“Surgery ghost?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks for letting me sleep.” His breath is still utterly rank.

I turn back to Squillante as I leave. “Try to stay alive till I get back,” I say.

As I leave the Anadale Wing there’s a high-pitched whine in my left ear.

I try to imagine what Prof. Marmoset—the Great One—would tell me to do. I ask him, almost out loud: Professor Marmoset!!! What the fuck should I do???

I imagine him shaking his head. Beats the fuck out of me, Ishmael. [19] Ishmael was my code name inside WITSEC, though no one except Prof. Marmoset ever actually called me that. WITSEC is the abbreviation the Feds use, helpfully, for the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Fuck it. I pull out my cell phone. Say “Marmoset” into it and press “dial.”

A nurse walking past me says “You can’t use a cell phone in here.”

“Yeah,” I say to her.

On the phone, a ridiculously breathy and sexual female voice says, “Hi. I’m Firefly, the automated answering service. For whom are you looking?” It’s like speech from a vagina.

“Marmoset.”

“Professor Marmoset is not answering his phone right now. Would you like me to go look for him?”

“Yes,” I tell the fucking thing.

“Please state your name.”

“Ishmael.”

“One moment, please,” Firefly says. “Would you like music while you wait?”

“Eat shit,” I say.

But the joke’s on me. A song by Sting comes on.

“I was unable to locate him,” Firefly finally says. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes,” I say, fighting tears of bitterness at having to converse with this monstrosity.

“You’re welcome. You may begin your message now.”