“You know Bubba’s warehouse,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“The fence that runs around it also runs around the playground.”
“I’m aware of this,” Devin said.
I opened the car, popped the glove compartment, began pulling out its contents and spilling them on the seats.
“What’re you doing, Patrick?”
“The fence,” I said, “has a hole in it. You can’t see it in the dark because it’s just a cut. You push at it and it flaps forward.”
“Okay.”
I saw the edge of a small steel cylinder sticking up from the pile of matchbooks and warranty information and various papers and screws on my seat.
“The hole is at the east corner of the fence where the posts meet at the beginning of Bubba’s land.”
Devin looked at the cylinder as I shut the door and headed up the avenue toward the playground.
“What’s that in your hand?”
“It’s a one-shot.” I loosened my watchband, slid the cylinder between the leather strap and my wrist.
“A one-shot.”
“Christmas present from Bubba,” I said. “Years ago.” I flashed it at him. “One bullet. I depress this button, it’s like a trigger. The bullet leaves the cylinder.”
He and Oscar looked at it. “That’s a fucking suppressor with a couple of hinges and screws, a blasting cap, and a bullet. It’ll blow up in your hand, Patrick.”
“Possibly.”
The playground loomed in front of us, the fifteen-foot-high fence glazed in ice, the trees black and heavy with it.
“Why do you even need that?” Oscar said.
“Because he’ll make me give up my gun.” I turned and looked at them. “The hole in the fence, guys.”
“I’ll send a man in,” Bolton said.
“No.” I shook my head. I nodded at Devin and Oscar. “One of them. They’re the only ones I trust. One of you go through it and crawl up on him from behind.”
“And do what? Patrick, he’s got—”
“—a baby strapped to his back. Trust me. You’re going to have to break his fall.”
“I’ll do it,” Devin said.
Oscar snorted. “With your knees? Shit. You won’t get ten yards across that ice.”
Devin looked at him. “Yeah? How you going to drag your whale’s ass across a playground without getting seen.”
“I’m a brother, partner. I’m one with the night.”
“Which is it?” I said.
Devin sighed, jerked his thumb at Oscar.
“Whale’s ass,” Oscar said grumpily. “Huh.”
“See you in there,” I said and walked over the sidewalk to the playground.
I came up the steps by pulling myself, hand over hand, up the railing.
The streets and avenues had been burned free of ice by salt and tires during the day, but the playground was a skating rink. At least two inches of blue-black ice covered the center where the pavement sloped and the water had pooled.
The trees and basketball hoops and jungle gyms and swings were pure glass.
Gerry stood in the center of the playground, in what was intended as a fountain spring or frog pond before the city ran out of money and it became merely a cement basin with benches surrounding it. A place to go with the kids and watch your tax dollars at work.
Gerry’s car sat sideways; he leaned against the hood as I approached. I couldn’t see the baby on his back from my angle, but Danielle Rawson bore the hollow gaze of someone who’d already accepted her own death as she knelt on the ice by Gerry’s legs. Twelve hours in a trunk had matted her hair to the left side of her head as if a hand were pressed there, and her face was streaked with dirty fingers of ruined mascara, the corners of her eyelids burned red by gasoline.
She reminded me of pictures of women I’ve seen in Auschwitz or Dachau or Bosnia. She seemed to know her life had passed beyond the reach of human protection.
“Hi, Patrick,” Gerry said. “That’s far enough.”
I stopped six feet from the car, four feet from Danielle Rawson, found myself toeing the ring of gasoline.
“Hi, Gerry,” I said.
“You’re awful calm.” He raised an eyebrow, and it was sodden with gasoline. His rusty hair was pasted to his head.
“Tired,” I said.
“Your eyes are red.”
“If you say so.”
“Phillip Dimassi is dead, I take it.”
“Yup.”
“You wept for him.”
“Yes, I did.”
I looked at Danielle Rawson, tried to find the energy necessary to care what happened to her.
“Patrick?”
He leaned back against the car and the shotgun taped to Danielle Rawson’s head pulled her back with him.
“Yeah, Gerry?”
“Are you in shock?”
“I dunno.” I turned my head, looked around at the prisms of ice and the dark drizzle and the blue and white lights from the police cruisers and the cops and federal agents stretched across car hoods, splayed haphazardly on telephone poles, kneeling on the roofs surrounding the playground. All of them, to the man, with guns extended.
Guns, guns, guns. Three hundred and sixty degrees of pure violence.
“I think you’re in shock.” Gerry nodded to himself.
“Well, shit, Gerry,” I said and found myself scratching my head as it was pelted with rain, “I haven’t slept in two days and you’ve killed or wounded just about everybody I care about. So, I dunno, how’m I supposed to feel?”
“Curious,” he said.
“Curious?”
“Curious,” he repeated and wrenched the shotgun so that Danielle Rawson’s neck twisted in his grip and her head banged off his knee.
I looked at her and she wasn’t terrified or angry. She was defeated. Just like me. I tried to find a bond based on that, to force emotion to rise in me, but it wouldn’t come.
I looked back at Gerry.
“Curious about what, Gerry?” I rested my hand against my hip, felt the butt of my gun. He hadn’t asked me for my gun, I realized. How odd.
“About me,” he said. “I’ve killed a lot of people, Patrick.”
“Kudos,” I said.
He twisted the shotgun and Danielle Rawson’s knees lifted off the ice.
“You’re amused?” he said and his finger curled tight around the shotgun trigger.
“No, Gerry,” I said, “I’m apathetic.”