Josh Bazell - Beat the Reaper - A Novel

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is it going to get me arrested?”

“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that. It’s not illegal. It’s a lot fucking worse than that.”

And because I hadn’t finalized my break with him, I told him, “Fine. Pick me up.”

The whole way out to Coney, Skinflick chewed his nails and took hits of cocaine out of an Altoids tin by licking his fingertip, dunking it, sniffing off the powder, then rubbing the rest around his gums like he was brushing his teeth.

“I can’t tell you. I need to show you,” he kept saying.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Please, dude. Please. Just be cool. You’ll understand.”

I doubted that. I felt like Skinflick and I were having the conversation I’d had with Sam Freed the night before the Feds dropped the charges. Only I knew that this time the surprise was not going to be anything good.

“Want some coke?” he said.

“No,” I said.

By then I’d stopped doing drugs. I’d done a fair amount in jail, to fight the boredom, but compared to a six-mile run with Magdalena, let alone fucking her chilled sweaty body afterwards, that shit just didn’t hold up. The amount Skinflick had on him, though, and the amount he snorted as he drove, were impressive and frightening.

He drove us to Coney, and parked in the same place we had almost two years earlier. Then we took the same underworld walk beneath the pier, though this time he had a larger Maglite.

We went through the fence gap and straight to the shark tank building. It looked smaller than I’d remembered it. The door was already unlocked.

I figured by then that Skinflick had lied to me about the illegal part, and that he’d killed someone and needed my help hiding the body. He pulled the door closed with a bang, and led the way up the curving metal stairs.

He turned his flashlight off as we ducked into the tank room itself, and for a moment all I could see was the gray glow of the skylights and, down below, their reflection in the black water.

Then I heard the noise—a high-pitched “Mmmmmmmm!”

The most accurate way to reproduce it would be to put gaffer’s tape over your mouth then try to scream through it. Since gaffer’s tape was what was over Magdalena’s mouth.

I recognized the sound of her instantly. The adrenaline jacked my pupil size. Suddenly I could see.

There were half a dozen mob assholes, more or less, around the balcony. It’s hard to count in those situations. I recognized a couple of them. All of them were armed.

The rope across the missing section of banister had been removed, and the ramp was unfolded out over the water. Magdalena and her brother Rovo, who was hulking behind her, were standing near the top of the ramp. Their arms, legs, and mouths were taped—sloppily, like the webs spiders weave when you test toxic drugs on them. There was an asshole with a gun just behind them.

An impulse hit me. Kill. All around the room, knees, eyes, and throats lit up like targets in a shooting gallery.

But I didn’t target Skinflick. I could have—I could have lashed out backwards with my heel, and buried it so far past his sternum that I’d crush his heart. But somehow I didn’t yet believe he could be part of this. He’d known about it, yes. But maybe he’d been forced to bring me here. Or something . So I spared him when I started killing.

The creep to my left wasn’t so lucky. He had a Glock pointed at me. I moved in from the outside of it, visualizing the front of his shoulder blade through his chest and then feeling my shoulder crush toward it through his collarbone and lung. I clawed his throat out backhand as I took his gun. With my throat hand I grabbed Skinflick’s flashlight and used it to blind two more of those fucks. Then I shot them through the chest.

But Skinflick, for once, was fast. Because this time all he had to do was flinch backwards through the doorway, and flinching was what he was expert at. From the safety of the arch he yelled “Shoot!”

I shot two more before they could start. Then the creep behind Magdalena and Rovo shoved them off the edge of the ramp, and they started dropping toward the water. I shot that creep through the forehead, and vaulted the railing.

I couldn’t fall fast enough. I could see that Magdalena and Rovo, in addition to being taped up, were taped together. Just a couple of strands, but enough to hold. I was moving toward the water so slowly I wanted to scream. I shot another thug as his stomach came into view below the banister, just for something to do.

Someone else started shooting at me. I saw a muzzle-flash blossom slowly from the balcony, though by then I couldn’t hear.

Then I finally hit the water, and things began to happen.

Water’s always shocking, but I was shocked already, and the water felt as thin as air as I moved through it toward where I thought the Magdalena-Rovo bundle was. My knee hit something slimy that at first gave way like a leather bag filled with water, then sprang into life and lashed back at me.

A lucky grab got me Magdalena’s hair. Something slapped me on the neck. I got hold of some gaffer’s tape and thrashed for the surface. Breathed air that turned out to be water, then spasmed and finally got my head out. I kept kicking things with my legs. At one point I kicked something that felt like a giant slimy rock, so hard I almost sprained my ankle.

I didn’t have time to think about it, though. I couldn’t find Rovo’s head. Finally I got smart and rotated him separately from Magdalena, and they both gasped in horribly through their nostrils.

I sank again, pushing them upwards. Something nosed into my stomach, hard. I needed support. I wondered if there was a shallow end, and if so how to find it.

When I came up for air again, someone on the balcony was shooting. It didn’t seem to matter all that much. I’d long since dropped the gun and the flashlight. What I needed was some way to keep us above water.

Something slammed me in the back and took us all toward one of the walls. I kicked us into the space where two of the hexagonal tank’s walls came together, and tried to use the friction of the glass to lodge Magdalena and Rovo in place with their heads above water. I kicked and thrashed to keep the sharks away. The second it seemed to be working I reached up and tore the tape off Magdalena and Rovo’s mouths.

Magdalena started choking at once. Rovo I had to thump on the chest. Every time I stopped kicking as hard as I could, something sideswiped my legs. Rovo and Magdalena starting wheezing, then hyperventilating. “Breathe!” I shouted.

The waves began to subside, though the butting from below kept up. I wasn’t sure why the sharks hadn’t attacked yet, but from the way they became more aggressive when my attention lapsed, it seemed clear they were testing me out.

And maybe the bullets had helped. I could hear someone moaning on the walkway above us.

After a long while Skinflick called out from somewhere else. “Pietro?”

I debated whether to respond. I was pretty sure he couldn’t see us. I couldn’t see him, in any case, just dim, grated light through the walkway directly overhead, and a small part of one skylight if I looked back over my shoulder. So Skinflick might not know whether we were still alive, and he might be trying to locate us by sound. I was thrashing quite a bit, but that could have been sharks.

I did know this, though:

I’d been stupid not to kill him up above. He, and no one else, had done this.

But he was also our only way out. As repugnant and hopeless as I knew it would be, I had no choice but to try to talk him out of it.

“Skinflick!” I said. My voice felt harsh and weak.