Maria put her hand over her mouth, suppressing a laugh.
“You’re a real motherfucker,” DaSilva said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
“What about the girl?”
“Maria and I leave together.”
“There’s a fucking investigation going on here, Simon,” DaSilva snarled. “People need to talk to her. Do you know what it’ll look like if she’s just gone?”
“I don’t care. And neither does she.”
A pause. DaSilva hacked out a cough, the sound of a busted generator struggling to catch. “What’s gonna stop you from sending that photo around?” he said. “Even if you give me the original form?”
“You know a photo like that doesn’t count as evidence.” Simon was guessing, but it sounded right. “It’s too easy to fake. But the real thing? That’s completely different.” He paused. “Maria will delete it from her phone if that’s what you want. She’ll do that right in front of you.”
There was a long moment of silence. Maria stared at the phone, biting her lip. Simon wondered if he’d somehow screwed up, if he’d said the wrong thing.
“You think you’re some kind of hustler?” DaSilva finally sneered. “You don’t have a fucking clue.”
“But you’ll do it? Forty thousand.”
Another pause, then, “Yeah, forty thousand. So where the fuck are you guys?”
• • •
They’d made the call almost five hours ago. DaSilva had told them he’d be there in less than four; he needed an hour to get out of the hospital, another to gather the cash, and then not quite two to drive out to Montauk. But he was late, and Simon could see Maria’s frustration blossoming. She hunched against the chill in her leather jacket, her gloved hands stuffed into her armpits. He was trying to figure out what to say, how to convince her to be patient, when he heard the crunch of tires over dirt echoing down from the top of the bluff.
“Maria,” he said, but he could see in the way she stiffened and tilted her head toward the cliffs that she’d already heard it too.
The sound of a car door slamming. Nothing for a few moments, and then DaSilva appeared at the edge of the bluff, a dark smudge against the snow and pale limestone. He carried a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Simon lifted his hand in greeting, and after a brief pause, DaSilva returned the gesture. Peter started to pick his way down the trail, gingerly transferring his bulk from foot to foot. He steadied himself against the bluff with one hand while the other, carrying the duffel, waved wildly in the air. Simon felt the sudden, deeply inappropriate impulse to laugh. The sight was so incongruous, so ridiculous: DaSilva in his black slacks and black coat and black leather shoes—his Cabrera work clothes—his imperious gut, his giant square head; his awkward, painstaking movements along the path.
Finally he reached the foot of the bluffs. He paused for a moment, turning his head to take in the dimensions of the beach, its geometry. Then he walked toward where they stood, near the waterline, and stopped about ten feet away. Simon and Maria had kept five feet between them, at Maria’s insistence, and so the three made a triangle with DaSilva its apex. He stared at Simon, his chest heaving, eyes crinkled almost entirely shut against the brightly reflecting ocean. He glanced at Maria briefly, with something like contempt or at least dismissal, and then he returned his attention to Simon. “So where is it?” he said.
Maria reached into her jacket pocket. “Here.” She took out the carefully folded sheet of paper and held it up.
Peter dropped the duffel onto the sand with a heavy thunk. “How do I know that’s the real thing?”
Maria stepped closer, unfolding the paper.
“Wait,” Simon said.
She waved him off. “It’s fine.” She stopped a few feet from DaSilva and held the paper out in front of her. “Take a look.”
Peter leaned forward and scanned the paper. “All right.” He squatted down in the sand next to the bag, opened its zipper, and yanked back its top flap. “It’s all here.”
Simon looked down into the duffel: a layer of banded bills lay tight across the top of the bag. Simon’s ears prickled. Peter had actually brought the money; this absurd plan was actually going to work.
“Here.” DaSilva reached into the bag. He plucked out a banded wad and tossed it to Simon. Simon caught the bills and flipped through them quickly: ten hundreds, all fresh and uncreased. As he counted them, DaSilva stared at him with a fury that was only more obvious for how hard he was trying to suppress it. Simon looked over at Maria. “Okay,” he said. “Get the rest.”
She nodded and moved toward DaSilva. She handed him the form with one hand, the other stuffed inside her jacket’s pocket.
“Maria?” Simon said. What was she doing? This was all out of order. “The bag?”
“It’s all right,” she said.
DaSilva took the paper from her and looked down to read it, the duffel still at his feet.
“I don’t—” Simon began, but before he could finish, Maria’s hand darted out of her pocket, a glint of metal winking in the sun.
DaSilva saw it too, and he hunched away at the last instant, enough that Maria’s switchblade struck him in the shoulder instead of square between the ribs. He staggered sideways, bellowing. The transfer form fluttered to the sand. As she pulled back the knife for a second blow, he lifted his arm to block it. The blade caught on his jacket fabric, tearing through the wool, revealing a bright flash of blood. With his other hand, he shoved Maria backward and gained some distance. He reached inside his coat.
Simon sprang forward as DaSilva drew a handgun from a holster against his ribs and raised it to Maria’s face. He slammed into DaSilva’s side just as he fired, the gun’s report like a crack of thunder inside Simon’s skull. Maria collapsed, screaming in pain, clutching at her foot.
Simon and Peter fell onto the sand in a tangled heap, Simon swinging wildly. He connected with DaSilva’s wrist and knocked the gun loose, the pistol skittering away across the half-frozen sand and into the water.
They rolled, locked together, into the shallows. Icy water filled Simon’s jacket and soaked through his shirt, water so cold it felt hot, burning and prickling against his skin. He pushed free of DaSilva and thrashed his way to his knees in time to greet Peter’s fist as it smashed into his jaw, knocking him back into the water. He staggered to his feet and saw Maria crumpled on the sand, blood soaking the hem of her jeans. And then Peter was on him again, sputtering and snorting, huge and relentless, his wounded arm hanging awkwardly against his side, blood leaking from gashes in his shoulder and forearm, as he tried to pull Simon under.
Simon’s ears filled with the ragged huffing of their breath, the desperate sucking and hoarding of oxygen. “I didn’t know,” he gasped. It didn’t matter anymore, but he couldn’t help himself. He stepped backward and the seafloor fell away, the water quickly up to his shoulders and then his chin. “She wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“Fuck you both,” DaSilva hissed.
There was nothing more to say; they were beyond talking, beyond explanations.
Now, Simon thought, and he took a breath and dove.
He opened his eyes and saw, through the murky green, DaSilva’s pillar-like legs. Simon drove himself into the knees, wrapping his arms around the thick calves and rolling his body to the side. Peter’s dress shoes scrabbled for purchase on the seafloor, and then he toppled over and joined Simon underwater.
Simon grabbed DaSilva’s jacket, yanking at the lapels, pulling the collar over the big man’s blocky head and twisting it around his face. Simon’s mind was filled entirely by bright, white-hot rage, more a primal state of being than an emotion: survival was all. He kicked hard, pinning DaSilva against the bottom, driving himself down on top of the giant head. Peter’s fists battered Simon’s back, but his left arm was ruined and the blows fell weakly.
He stood in water up to his chin, hauling in lungfuls of cold, crisp air. DaSilva surfaced a moment later and floated, belly-up, a few feet away, wheezing and coughing up salt water. His face was red and his eyes squeezed shut. He seemed only half-conscious, unaware of where he was and what was happening to him. But he was still alive.
“Bring him in!”
Simon turned toward the beach: there was Maria, kneeling at the waterline. He couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to move at all, the blinding, otherworldly pain such an effort must have demanded.
“Come on, hurry!”
Simon grabbed DaSilva’s shoulders and dragged the heavy body toward shore. Peter didn’t resist, his breathing wet and labored. They reached the sand. Simon collapsed onto his hands and knees next to DaSilva’s prone body. He retched, hot bile and cold salt water mixing in his throat, as DaSilva began to moan and twitch.
Maria limped over to Simon and shook his arm. “Stand up. We’re almost there.”
Simon forced himself to his feet. DaSilva had managed to roll onto his side and was coughing blood-spattered phlegm onto the sand.
“Where’s the gun?” Maria said.
Simon shook his head. His limbs were trembling with cold and exhaustion. DaSilva slowly lifted his head off the sand and looked up at Simon and Maria. There was no question now that his mind had returned to his body, that he understood what he was seeing. “Don’t,” he said. His lips were blue. “Don’t.”
“Here.” Maria handed Simon the switchblade. The handle’s mother-of-pearl design throbbed in time with his frantic pulse.
DaSilva tried to push himself up, gaining his hands and knees.
“Keep him down,” Maria said.
“What do you—”
Maria grabbed the knife from Simon, flicked open the blade and slammed it down into DaSilva’s back. Peter collapsed to the sand again, the air whooshing out of his lungs. Maria nearly fell over, her face white with pain.
“Find the gun,” she said through gritted teeth. “Please.”
Simon waded back into the ocean. He found the pistol after a minute of searching, its silver barrel shining in the clear and shallow water a few feet from shore. He dangled it upside-down, shaking it a few times, letting the water drain out of the barrel. He turned back to Maria and DaSilva. She stood over the large man as he twitched and muttered. Peter tried to rise again, and again she slammed the switchblade down into his back. He grunted and then lay flat on the sand, his only movement the labored rising and falling of his chest, the stubborn insistency of his breath.
“Finish this,” Maria said.
Simon squatted down and pressed the barrel of the gun to DaSilva’s right temple, shivering so much he had to steady his shooting wrist with his other hand. He stayed like that for one, two, three breaths, the gun pressed to Peter’s temple, his left hand gripping his right wrist, his finger trembling against the pistol’s trigger. He stared at his finger. He willed himself to pull, the action itself so insignificant, barely a muscle twitch.
Nothing happened. He let the muzzle drift away from DaSilva’s head.
“Simon,” Maria said. “Do it.”
He nodded. He steadied the gun again, pressed it against DaSilva’s forehead. But still he couldn’t fire. This wasn’t self-defense, not with DaSilva lying here half-dead on the sand, not beyond the most existential, abstracted sense of the term. This was pure, unadulterated murder. He couldn’t do it.
Simon lowered the barrel of the gun.
“Simon,” Maria said.
“I’m sorry.” He looked up at her. She swayed slightly, her face pinched and ashen. “It’s not in me,” he said. “I can’t.”
She didn’t try to convince him again. Instead, she simply put the switchblade into her pocket and held out her hand. He stood and gave her the gun.
DaSilva stirred again. His head lifted from the sand, and his eyes widened as he saw Maria point the pistol at his face. “No,” he rasped. “No, I can’t—”
She pulled the trigger.
Simon turned his head away, but nothing happened. Maria lifted the pistol, shook it. A few drops of water spattered onto the sand. She bent over and pushed the barrel back against DaSilva’s temple. He tried to move away, sobbing now, but he was too weak, and without hesitation she depressed the trigger a second time. This time the gun fired, jerking sharply in her hand. DaSilva’s head lifted off the sand and then dropped back down. His temple was caved in, splinters of bone protruding from the edges of the hole. Maria bent down and placed the pistol into DaSilva’s right hand, curling the fingers around the grip, bending the pointer inside the trigger guard. A wave surged gently across the pebbles, washing over the hand that held the gun. Simon noticed a flash of white in the water: the transfer form, soaked through and already falling apart. Another surge of water carried the paper onto shore; the wave receded and sucked it back under. Simon retrieved the stray wad of cash and stuffed it back into the duffel. He picked up the bag, and then they turned their back on Peter’s body and limped across the beach to the foot of the path, Maria’s arm slung over Simon’s shoulder, her wounded foot dragging behind her.
THEY made it to a Best Western in Jamaica that evening, a concrete box near the Grand Central Parkway. It was as far as he’d allow them to travel before tending to her foot. She’d refused to let him bring her to a hospital. “I need to disappear,” she’d said, “not be processed in a fucking ER again.” Upstairs in their room, he helped her onto the bed and propped her foot on a pillow. His jaw ached, tapping out a Morse code of dull pain. He held her ankle gently. “I’m going to take off the sneaker, okay?”
She nodded, staring at the foot. Her face was grayish white, her pursed lips nearly colorless. A hole had been blown through the top of the black Chuck Taylor and dried blood stiffened the sneaker’s fabric. Simon loosened the laces as delicately as he could, then lifted the tongue. The blood had soaked the sock, a sticky, rusty red. He gripped the sole between his hands and looked up at her. “Ready?”
“Just do it already.”
He pulled the sneaker off in one quick motion. She hissed, her fingers digging into the bedspread. Her body went limp, and he looked up and saw her eyes roll back into her head. She came to gradually, surfacing in increments. Her eyes refocused on his face and then slid, reluctantly, down to her foot. The hole was neater than he’d expected, punched right through the webbing between her first and second toes. He looked inside the sneaker. The bullet was still there, embedded in the sole. He brought the lamp over from the bedside table and leaned in closer to her foot.
“It’s only nicked the bone,” he said. “You’re lucky.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I feel really fucking blessed right now.”
“We’re alive, aren’t we?”
“There’s that.”
He walked to a drugstore on Hillside Avenue and bought a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, tweezers, bandages and gauze, a tub of ibuprofen. He found a replacement charger for his cell phone and threw that into his basket too. While he waited on the checkout line, he closed his eyes and saw DaSilva lying on the sand in his sodden black jacket, a hole in his head. The image presented with the dispassion of a fact, like one of Maria’s collected photographs: DaSilva’s skin blue white, the dried blood crusted around the lip of the wound red
dish black and flaking. Beneath this image and at the same time contained within it, a palimpsest, were the half-dismantled girl in anatomy lab and Amelia in the morgue. The dead were piling up in Simon’s mind. It could have been you, he told himself. Remember that, it could have been you. But although he recognized this as the truth, he couldn’t simply reject his guilt, toss it aside like a smoked cigarette. He was partially responsible for a man’s murder; he’d failed to save his own sister. That the man had tried to drown him and that he’d risked his own life in the attempt to save Amelia’s did not change these facts. He thought of Lenny Pellegrini too, the suicide Simon had done nothing to prevent; he’d ignored Lenny’s pain because it was inconvenient. He recognized that guilt would always be a part of him. He needed to learn not to fight it, nor let it overwhelm him, but to coexist with it, to make space for it, like a difficult, burdensome family member within the house of his self.
Back in the Best Western, he found Maria on the bed, hunched over DaSilva’s duffel, a few stray wads of cash scattered across the comforter. She looked up when he walked into the room and gave him a seasick smile. “Does this make you feel any better?”
She tilted the open bag toward him. Inside were a few more banded wads of cash, but the rest of the duffel was filled with stacks of plain white printer paper. “He was going to fuck us too,” she said.
“It’s not the same thing.” Simon reached inside the bag and lifted up the reams of paper. There was nothing underneath. He knew he shouldn’t be so surprised that DaSilva would try something like this. But all it proved was that he was going to shortchange them on the money, nothing beyond that.
“What isn’t?” Maria asked.
“Really? You’re going to make me say it?”
She just looked at him, waiting, defiant.
“Ripping somebody off and killing them, Maria. Not the same thing.”
“I had to do it.”
“You’re not going to convince me, so just stop trying.”
The Dismantling Page 27