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Anton points at me. “All this is his fault!”
I try to stand, but my bottom half is like a fish’s. My eyes are moving in my head. I try to speak, but gurgling sounds come from whatever I have in place of lips.
“We have to get rid of the bodies,” Barron says.
There are other sounds then, snapping bone and a wet thunk. I try to roll my head so I can see, but I no longer know how.
“Keep him quiet,” Anton shouts.
Was I making a sound? I can’t even hear myself.
I feel hands clasp on me and lift me up, hauling me through the restaurant. My head falls back, and I notice that the ceiling is painted with a mural of an old naked man, his scimitar held high, riding a brown horse down a hill. The mane of the horse and the man’s long hair are blowing in the wind. It makes me laugh, which comes out like a teakettle whistle.
“It’s just blowback,” Philip says softly. “You’ll be okay soon.”
He puts me in the trunk of Anton’s car and slams down the top. It stinks of oil and something else, but I’m so out of it I barely notice. I twist around in the dark as the engine starts, my body not my own.
We’re on a highway when I come back to myself. Headlights of following cars stream erratically through the outline of the trunk. My head is banging uncomfortably against the carpeted tire well with each bump of the road, and I can feel the shaking of the frame underneath me. I push myself into a different position and touch plastic filled with something soft and still warm.
For a moment I think of laying my head against it, until I touch a patch of sticky wetness and realize what I’m touching.
Garbage bags.
I gag in the dark and try to crawl as far away from them as I can. I press myself against the far back of the car until I can’t go any farther. The metal presses into my back and I can only support my neck awkwardly with my arm, but I stay like that for the whole ride.
When the car lurches to a stop, I am sore and light-headed. I hear the doors slam, gravel crunch, and then the trunk opens. Anton is standing over me. We’re in the driveway of my house.
“What did you have to go and do that for?” he shouts.
I shake my head. I don’t know why I changed the gun, or even how I did it. I look at my hand and see that it’s smeared with a dull, dark red.
My bare hand.
“This is supposed to be a secret. You are supposed to be a secret.” Then he notices my hands too. They must have left my gloves in the restaurant.
His jaw clenches.
“I’m sorry,” I say, climbing woozily to my feet. I am sorry.
“How do you feel?” Barron asks me.
“Seasick,” I tell him, but it isn’t the recent car ride that is making me want to puke. I know I’m shaking, and there’s nothing I can do to control it.
“I killed those men because of you,” Anton says. “Their deaths are on your hands. All I want to do is bring back the old days when it meant something to be a worker. When it was good, not a thing to be ashamed about. When we owned all the politicians, all the cops. We were like princes in this city back then, and we can be again.
“Dab hands, they used to call us,” he says. I think of Daneca’s mother and her not entirely, yet wholly dissimilar lecture. “Dab hands. Experts. Skilled. When I’m in charge, I’m going to bring back the old days and make this city tremble. That’s a good goal, a worthy goal.”
“And just how are you going to do that?” I ask. “You think the government is going to roll over because you’ve murdered your way to the top of a crime family? You think Zacharov could have the world by the balls, but he’s all ‘No, thanks’?”
Anton hits me square in the jaw. Pain explodes in my head and I stumble backward, barely keeping my balance.
“Hey,” Philip says, pushing Anton back. “He’s just a bigmouthed kid.”
I take two steps toward Anton, and Barron grabs my arm.
“Don’t be stupid,” he says, and pulls my sleeves down over my hands.
“Hold him,” Anton tells Barron. He looks at me. “I’m not done with you, kid.”
