The Price

by Joseph Garraty

  An interminable time later, after my knees had started to creak and groan and I’d begun a program of nonstop shivering, an explosion rocked the building. Windows blew out, and the thunderous rumble of detonation vibrated up through my soles.

  I got to my feet.

  Here it comes.

  I felt sick. The noise could have been Benedict, but I doubted it. That sort of energy wasn’t an off-the-cuff spell, I didn’t think—it was something that had been painstakingly prepared. A trap. Benedict probably wasn’t dumb enough to walk into it, but I had a bad feeling. I wondered if I ought to go in after him, but that didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Even if the other wizard didn’t kill me, Benedict would, after finding out I’d disobeyed him.

  Another, smaller explosion—more of a crack! than a real boom—and then screaming. It was coming from out front.

  “Help! Jimmy, get out here!”

  Lazzaro, screaming.

  So much for sticking to my post. I ran, stumbling and sliding on the ice, using the wall of the building to keep myself from falling. The wind nearly knocked me over as I came past the edge of the building.

  Lazzaro was on his knees, cradling his right hand against his body. He saw me right away, though. “Fuck! Get him, Jimmy, get that fucker!”

  I could see the guy through the sleet, running down the road, casting frantic glances back over his shoulder. Benedict was nowhere to be seen. I took a step, slipped, and caught myself on the metal handrail.

  There was no way I was gonna catch the guy running. He was already a hundred feet away and disappearing in the sleet.

  I started the incantation. The wind picked up, grabbing my words and hurling them against the brick. An electric tension started in my groin and spread throughout my body, out through the tips of my toes, the ends of every hair, and the world stood out in ten dimensions. I saw everything, it seemed. I was huge, I was electric. I was Superman.

  I made the last gesture and held out my hand. I shuddered with pleasure. Flame leapt from my fingertips to the icy sidewalk, rushing in a blazing line toward the escaping wizard, like a burning track of gasoline from the movies, faster than he could run. Faster than anyone could run.

  He didn’t even try to stop it. The flame caught him as he reached the street sign on the corner. It flared and engulfed his body while I watched in horrified fascination.

  The wind carried his screams to my ears perfectly.

  He fell thrashing to the sidewalk, and I finally looked away.

  “Frankie, what the hell happened? Are you okay?”

  Lazzaro pointed at a blackened chunk of metal by his feet. “Gun blew up,” he said.

  This was the problem with mob guns. Most of them were untraceable but of unknown, usually dubious provenance, rust-splotched and prone to jamming. I suddenly didn’t mind not having one.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fine.”

  That was hard to credit, but a quick look at him didn’t show any real damage. A few cuts on his forehead, and that was it. By some miracle, he still had all his fingers, and his hand was barely singed.

  “What about Benedict?” I asked, turning to the open door.

  Lazzaro shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  I looked back to where the body was burning, then forced myself to turn away and start up the stairs. I heard the scrape of boot on pavement as Lazzaro got to his feet behind me. We went in.

  The inside of the building was dark, the little wedge of street light petering to nothing in only a few feet. The place smelled musty and unused, and the dust kicked up by the wizard’s passage through here hung in the air. I could tell from the echoes that it was a big open space, but I couldn’t see worth a damn.

  Lazzaro muttered a few words, and a dim orange globe of light appeared in his good hand, pushing back the darkness a few feet. A few more words, and the globe got brighter, sending warm light out to the corners of the room.

  “Not so much, huh?” I said. “We don’t need the whole block to know we’re here.”

  “There’s a flaming body out front of the building,” he told me. “This is the least of our problems.”

  Nonetheless, he dialed it back to a reasonable compromise between announcing ourselves to the entire world and tripping over our own feet. The place was a mess. Most of the interior walls had been knocked out, and the floor was covered with sprays of plaster and the long, serpentine ribs of lath. Even so, it was impossible to see much of anything behind the remains of the walls, and this big room was probably only a quarter of the first floor.

  We looked at each other, both knowing there was no way we had time to search this building. We had to grab Benedict, do something about the body outside, and get the fuck out of here.

  “Fuck!” Benedict’s voice, shouting from upstairs. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

  “He sounds pissed,” Lazzaro remarked.

  “Come on,” I said. “Where the hell are the stairs?”

  We followed the sound of Benedict’s voice and found a rickety staircase I wouldn’t have trusted to support an underfed kitten. Lazzaro shrugged and started up. I waited until he got to the top and went after him.

  Benedict’s cursing provided a fairly reliable trail of breadcrumbs, and we found him shortly after we got to the second floor. He was on the third floor, actually, but we could see him through a gaping, charred hole in the floor, big enough to drop a Cadillac through without touching the edges.

  “Fuck!” he said, yet again.

  “Everything okay?”

  I could barely see his face at the edge of Lazzaro’s light, but I read the scorn radiating out from it easily enough. “No, everything is not fucking okay,” Benedict snarled.

  “We got him,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lazzaro added. “Jimmy burned him up like breakfast toast right outside. We probably oughta get outta here.”

  Benedict’s laughter was ugly. “Oh, you got him, did you? Funny, because he wasn’t here.” He brushed his hands together, knocking dirt or ash off them. “Fuck,” he said. He shook his head in disgust.

  My stomach dropped through the floor. “Say what?”

  “He wasn’t here. Never was. This was a fucking setup.”

  “Then who . . . ?”

  Benedict peeled his lips back from his teeth. “Probably a squatter,” he said.

  The air rushed out of me, and I dropped heavily to my knees. My breath came in short, hitching gasps. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”

  Laughter bubbled out of Lazzaro’s idiot face. “Jimmy’s first hit!” he said, grabbing my right hand and pulling my arm up like a victorious prizefighter. “Think they’ll open up the books for you now?”

  “Fuck you,” I shot back, yanking my hand away from him.

  “We need to go,” Benedict said.

  I followed the two of them down the stairs in a daze, wishing the building would fall in on me. It didn’t oblige.

  Chapter 9. Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams

  Benedict walked out the front of the building, down the concrete stairs, and headed straight toward the car. He seemed oblivious to the sleet and the chill.

  “Wait,” I said, pointing behind us. “What about—what about the body?”

  “Leave it,” Benedict said.

  “We can’t just . . .”

  It appeared that we could. Benedict didn’t slow, didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge me at all after that. He got in the car, and I had no doubt he’d ditch me here without a second thought. I glanced back at the burned body behind us. The flames had died already, and a faint smoke rose from the charred lump.

  I hastened after Benedict, getting into the car a second before the driver hit the gas. Benedict didn’t say a word on the way back to the club. Lazzaro continued to give me a hard time for a little while, but Benedict looked back and skewered him with a glare so poisonous it shut him up, which I would have rated about as likely as getting struck by a meteor.

  The car stopped outside the club, but B
enedict didn’t get out. I didn’t move, either. I sat hoping that Benedict would turn around and give me a few words to ease the guilt. Anything, even a simple “It was an accident,” would have helped. He said nothing, though, and the longest minute of my life stretched out while the car rumbled and the sleet dashed itself against the window. Lazzaro just sat, watching me.

  I got out, finally, and Lazzaro followed suit. He huddled up against the wind and rain and scurried to the door of the club. He paused in the doorway, waiting for me. His mouth moved, probably making some dumbass comment, but the words were lost to the wind. I turned away and watched the red embers of Benedict’s taillights recede.

  My hat was soaked through and freezing, and icy water slashed my face. I stood at the curb for a long while, perhaps doing penance, perhaps hoping the rain would wash me clean, and then I went to my car.

  Then home.

  * * *

  My apartment was a third-floor walkup, spare but clean, above a secondhand jeweler’s. I didn’t understand Benedict’s fetish for the bombed-out and trashed, so I’d found a building that looked likely to stay standing under its own power, in a part of town that minimized the likelihood of somebody using the back hall as a toilet. Luxurious, I know, but I was a high roller in those days.

  I trudged up the stairs, leaving sloppy wet footprints and small chunks of ice in my wake. At the top, I walked past a couple of doors to the apartment at the end of the hall and let myself in. Dropped my coat on the floor and got out of my sopping wet clothes right there where I stood. I left them in a heap in front of the door and walked, nude and dripping, to the bedroom.

  In case you’re interested, here’s what you feel like after the first time you kill somebody.

  You sit on the edge of the bed, distantly aware that your skin is cold and clammy, that your body hasn’t quite stopped shivering in forty minutes or more, but not really concerned. It’s like it’s happening to somebody else—or, no, it’s more like somebody telling you about something happening to somebody else, it’s so far removed. In the near-darkness of the room, the only light comes from a yellow diamond of street light projected on the ceiling, but that’s enough to illuminate the black streaks on your hands. You stare at the soot on your palms, rub them against your thighs to clean them, and succeed only in smearing the black streaks around. You stare at those for a while, like a Rorschach blot, wondering if there’s a message there that you’re too dumb to get.

  Eventually, the cryptic streaks of char having escaped your comprehension, you lie down on the bed. On top of the covers. You’re used to being cold now, and it seems like it would take a staggering amount of energy to lift those blankets and crawl underneath. Or maybe you’re doing penance again. You know you’re getting soot on the blanket. So it goes.

  You stare at the ceiling, at that sinister yellow diamond of light, and you replay the evening’s events in your mind. Bad, stupid luck. Idiotic eagerness to do a job well and please the boss, and look what happened. You run it backward and forward, looking for the moments when luck or action would have changed the outcome. Maybe there are some, maybe there aren’t. You’re not sure which would be worse.

  After a while, you start wondering who the poor bastard was. Maybe he was a crackhead, seeking shelter from the storm in a building that should have been condemned. What events in his life could have played differently, could have diverted him from the long course of years and movements that wound up with him there, then? What if he’d been just a little too tired that night and stopped one building over? What if he hadn’t missed a taxi on Fifth Avenue in 1986, and he’d made that job interview on time? What if his folks had moved to Ohio when he was five?

  The scenarios are endless, and as you imagine this guy’s life, tears—the only warmth you’ve felt in eternity—make their slow way down the side of your face. You blink them away, but there seems to be an endless supply.

  You close your eyes. The stink of burning won’t leave your nose. If anything, it grows stronger as you lie there. You breathe more deeply, and now the nasty scent of overcooked meat hits your nostrils. It becomes sharper, and something—a sound so faint you don’t consciously register it, maybe, or maybe shifting air currents in the room—gives you the sense of someone moving in the room with you.

  That can’t be, you think. Maybe it’s the blower from the heater, or maybe the window’s open a crack, or maybe you’re just overreacting.

  Then you hear the first slow, deliberate footstep. Not from the door to the front room, but from the closet on your other side, the open closet just to the side of the bed’s headboard. Terror grips you, but instead of leaping up, ready to do battle, you close your eyes even tighter. What’s there can’t be there, and if you keep your eyes closed long enough, it will go away.

  Another step, and now you can hear something sizzling. A third step, and a fourth, and you hear crispy black flakes dropping to the floor with each movement. Now you feel heat baking off something nearby, though this heat does nothing to warm your chilled body.

  Nothing happens, but it’s not leaving, no matter how tightly you close your eyes, no matter how long you wait. You know it’s waiting until you open your eyes, so it can fix you with its glistening, hate-filled yellow glare before it chokes the life out of you with its still-smoldering hands.

  Somewhere in the interminable hours while it stands watching and you refuse to open your eyes, you fall into a horrible, dream-filled sleep.

  That’s what it feels like after the first time you kill somebody.

  Your mileage may vary, of course.

  * * *

  I woke Monday morning still on top of the blankets, which were rank and clammy with my sweat. The sunlight forced its way through the blinds like a cop kicking down a door, lit up my soot-stained hands, and cleared the room of any phantom visitors.

  I sat up. I knew last night’s visitor was a product of my wound-up brain, but I couldn’t help checking next to the bed, and I confess I was relieved when I found no trace of ash or charcoal on the floor.

  Soap and water took the soot off my hands, sort of. I couldn’t see it anymore, but when I rubbed my fingers together, I could feel a gritty dust, and the whisper of skin on skin sounded different, scratchier than usual. A burned smell clung to them, too. I washed my hands a couple of more times, for all the good that did.

  I sat in a secondhand wooden chair at the small kitchen table and tried to put things into perspective. The last thing I wanted to do today was go to the club, but I’d be missed. Gossip would still be running high over the weekend’s events, and virtually everyone would be there. Worse, me and Ricky Giacomo had a job planned for the night, and we were supposed to meet this afternoon to go over the last few details.

  I used the tines of a fork to clean out under my nails while I thought. The screams of the guy I’d killed were more distant now, though I knew I’d never forget them entirely. The memory played itself over and over in my head, but if it weren’t for the dry, gritty feel of my hands and the faint smell of burning, I could almost pretend it was something I’d seen on TV.

  So I’d killed a man. That didn’t change the fact that I had five days to come up with my weekly two grand, and I was, oh, about two grand short. It didn’t change the fact that my folks were counting on me, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

  It didn’t change the fact that even now I could feel the magic compressed within me like a spring, aching for release, waiting only for my commands to flood forth and change the world as I saw fit.

  The dead guy was an accident. Just an accident. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

  I went to put on some clothes.

  * * *

  I must have been the last guy to get to the club, the place was so packed when I showed up. There weren’t a lot of us, maybe sixty or so all told, but everybody was there, jammed into the club, waving their arms and talking loudly. I had expected excitement, but this was crazy. Lazzaro saw me come in, and he pushed his way throu
gh the crowd. A wide grin split his face, and a disconcerting light gleamed in his eyes.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, shouting to be heard over the din.

  “Going to war!” Lazzaro laughed like a kid at Christmas. “The boss gave it the okay, and he’s even gonna send some guys up from Providence. Old Man Chebyshev has fuckin’ had it.”

  “What’s it mean?” I asked. Hey, I’d never been in a full-fledged mob war. It seemed like the thing to do.

  “Going to the mattresses, man. Shooting war. Means we hit ’em everywhere we can, everywhere they might be weak, and we don’t let up till it’s over.”

  Excitement and unease raced through my body in equal measure. This was big, and if we were really going to drive the Russians out, I couldn’t be happier. On the other hand, a whole lot of people were going to die, and I’d be a fool to think that all the casualties were gonna be on the other side.

  And there was the old man’s new wizard, the one that had electrocuted me and nearly blown Benedict to kingdom come, to worry about.

  Lazzaro elbowed me and grinned even wider. “We’re gonna get made out of this, you and me. Just wait and see.”

  I smiled back, best as I was able. Becoming a made man, or “getting straightened out,” was the high point of a mob guy’s life. After that, you were untouchable. You didn’t have to take any shit from anyone. You could do almost anything you wanted, and only the boss could say otherwise. I could understand Lazzaro’s excitement, but I couldn’t bring myself to share it. I thought it was more likely we were gonna get dead than made.

  Not long after that, the crowd started to disperse. It was like somebody gave a signal, and I was the only one that didn’t hear it. I grabbed Tink as he walked by.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.

  He wasn’t grinning. His face was solemn, and sweat trickled down his temples. My guess was that, unlike Lazzaro, he’d been through a war or two before. He wasn’t scared, not exactly, but he wasn’t laughing either.