Mark Costello - Big If

Tashmo said, “Me too. I remember it distinctly.”

Bobbie said, “Hey Vi, are you okay up there?”

Vi was in the first bench behind Gretchen and the driver. Vi’s jaw was absurdly swollen. She said with a thick tongue, “I’m fine.”

Bobbie said, “Did the clip pop out when you were fighting with that guy?”

“That’s what happened,” O’Teen said. “I took a class on crime scenes when I was in Crim. You reconstruct from data, see? The clip pops out and gets kicked down a storm drain. Did Boone even bother checking storm drains?”

Vi shifted the cold pack from her right hand to the left. She was trying to sort out what had happened in the square. She kept seeing the strange magician’s flourish with which Naubek had brought the pistol out, and remembering the way his body had felt when she finally fought her way to him, the slack weight, the passivity — a living man — more like an empty bag.

She said, “There was no clip.”

“Aw bullshit,” Tashmo said.

“You couldn’t see,” said Herc. “You were on the fucking ground — you couldn’t see one way or another, Vi.”

Vi turned to face the other agents in the back benches of the van. She made this movement slowly, gingerly, because her head was throbbing.

She said, “All we did today was fulfill a wish.”

The phrase was mincing, cruel, fulfill a wish .

They had left the coast by then, the string of village greens and ancient harbor towns. They were crossing through the mountains, sixty miles overland to Manchester. Halfway there, they encountered snow. The country disappeared into the gray of flurries and the darker gray of road. The vans slowed to a crawl. The agents, bored, turned their attention back to Vi who was facing front again and trying to nod off.

O’Teen said, “Yo Vi, let me ask you something, since you know so much—”

“She doesn’t know shit,” said Herc.

Bobbie said, “Don’t pick on her. She can be wrong if she wants to.”

Gretchen in the front seat thought, well, this is how it ends — we were almost all together for a minute there, but then they had to go and fuck it up.

“I’m not picking on her,” O’Teen said.

“Your tone is not what I’d call pleasant,” Bobbie said.

Tashmo said, “Oh please.”

Vi stared straight ahead, ignoring all of them.

O’Teen said, “I’m serious. I’ve got a forensic question here. This will shed some light. Yo Vi, let me ask you — Yo Vi, turn around.”