Killer of a Mind

by Valerie Albemarle

  Ryan expected Mario to be shocked, astonished. But Mario didn’t show the slightest surprise; he didn’t even liven up. Something deep and measured, the opposite of surprise, rolled over his face like a heavy cloud. It was as if he’d recognized something very unpleasant. He nodded and spoke slowly.

  “A Ferrari. Who taught you to do that?”

  “A friend from school. Not really a friend, but—you know. One of those kids who like to gather a circle around them and show off their forbidden knowledge. Where he learned it I’ll never know.”

  “And did your plan work?”

  Ryan was too pleased with himself to pick up on the darkness in Mario’s voice. “It must’ve worked, because I never saw that car again,” he was happy to report. “And very soon the dealership went under, and so did the restaurant, and everything else he owned. He was destroyed. I’m guessing that a rival kingpin was blamed for sabotaging the car, and they went to war. There were reports of shootings in the papers right at that time, but of course those were only the foot soldiers involved in skirmishes. The rival kingpin must have been stronger and meaner, not least of all because he’d been falsely accused.”

  “Yes, that’s what happened; my friend whose dad was the cop told me. I remember it well,” Mario said in a strangely bored voice. “I was fourteen that year.”

  “There, I was right then! And he never suspected me,” Ryan concluded with pride. “Because to him I was nobody, a stupid kid to screw over and forget.”

  The next morning Ryan recalled this conversation in a hangover of disgust. He’d gone way too far in his bragging. He should never have told that long-ago story of the sugar in the gas tank; that was his first mistake. His second was to carry on after Mario’s face had turned to stone. Why had Mario changed so suddenly, and why had he looked as if he’d lost interest, as if it was the most ordinary story in the world? Maybe that was how he showed disappointment in a man he thought was worthy of his friendship. Maybe that was how he concealed his shock and disgust. Yes, that was it. Mario the lawyer, committed as he was to the truth of each case, disapproved profoundly of what Ryan had done. By his own admission Mario didn’t come across as a passionate person. Now Ryan understood that this was because he’d trained himself to be that way: the more passion he felt, the less he showed. People like that don’t brag about their plans and don’t change their mind. Ryan knew without a doubt that his indiscretion had put an end to any prospect of friendship.

  So when Mario came by Ryan’s hotel at noon, looking thoroughly happy with life and acting as if last night’s conversa-tion had never happened, Ryan stared at him in plumb bewilder-ment.

  “Hey, do you want to go night fishing?” Mario asked with an air of mystery and adventure. “I found a boat on the beach halfway between here and the bioreserve. We can borrow it, I don’t think anyone will mind or even notice.”

  “A boat? On a beach?” Ryan asked idiotically.

  “I only found the boat by accident, when I got off the bike to take a leak. It’s sort of hidden behind a rock. Looks like someone parked it there, hoping that it’ll be safe. We’ll borrow it, nothing wrong with that. An old fishing boat without a motor, only oars, but it’s nice and sturdy. I tested it out on the water. Tonight will be perfect for fishing.”

  “Fishing? I don’t have any gear.” Ryan still didn’t understand what was going on, why Mario was even talking to him let alone inviting him to go fishing.

  “I rented my rod and tackle from the guy who runs the scuba shop,” Mario prattled on. “He’ll be gland to rent you everything you need for eighty pesos. Legally speaking we also need fishing licenses, but we’ll skip that part.” He gave a sly chuckle.

  “Oh, okay. That’s great. It’ll be fun, night fishing.”

  “Well, try to curb your enthusiasm for goodness sake!” Mario laughed at the fullness of life. “What’s wrong? You look like someone died.”

  “Oh. No, nothing bad has happened. It’s just that I’m, you know, surprised you’re so cheerful today. Last night I thought you were mad at me.”

  “I admit you did come out of left field with that story of yours. Didn’t think you had it in you. After a good night’s sleep I realized I was overreacting to something you did as a sixteen year-old. I wasn’t exactly a saint at sixteen myself.”

  “So you don’t think I’m evil?”

  “No, I don’t think you’re evil. But you’re smart enough to be a scientist, ha ha!”

  “Here we go again...” Ryan rolled his eyes, but found himself smiling. “We’re all good then?”

  “Sure we are. You think too much, even for a scientist.” Mario patted Ryan on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get lunch. I’m starving!”

  “Yea, okay. Give me a few minutes.”

  So that was that. They might never be real friends, but Mario still wanted to be around him. Maybe it was because Ryan offered companionship but never pushed for a deep connection. He listened when people needed to unburden themselves, and he left loners alone. Maybe that was what Mario liked about him. And maybe Ryan really did need to stop thinking so much and to enjoy the beautiful day.

  Mario ordered one tequila after another with his lunch, and was merry but still remarkably proper. Ryan, not wanting to be left out, did some tequila tasting of his own. Soon he couldn’t remember why he’d been so concerned that morning. Mario had got over his sulking—or maybe Ryan had imagined the sulking—and life was very good indeed. At some point Mario excused himself to say hi to a lady who’d come into the restaurant with her friend. They invited him to join them at their table but he pointed at Ryan and must’ve said he wasn’t by himself. He kept standing, but without the awkwardness of a man who doesn’t have a place for his arms and hands. He wasn’t being socially charming in any obvious way, and if he was flirting, it was with someone or something in his own thoughts rather than with the woman at the table. Ryan wondered what made Mario come alive in that way around women, and only for them. It was as if he’d been waiting to lavish the joie de vivre brought on by the tequila on someone other than Ryan, with whom he’d been no more than chummy. Ryan had seen that liveliness once before, when Mario defended Sam’s right to a ring and marriage. A woman he’d never met and apparently didn’t need to meet; it was enough that she was a woman. His sister had needed protecting from their mother’s madness, and his mother had needed protecting from herself. Maybe a woman for Mario was both a delicate creature in need of defence and a half-crazy sorceress whose wishes must be heeded because she has the power to destroy you.

  “She seems nice,” Ryan offered when Mario was back at their table.

  “Yea, she’s staying at my hotel with her friend. Smart as a whip.”

  “And?”

  “Ha ha! No, not my type. Too independent. Fun to talk to, though.” His type was on the kidnapped photograph he’d left in his room, but he couldn’t very well tell that to Ryan.

  “Well!” Ryan concluded with a burp. “I need to go and sleep off this lunch and a half if we’re going to do any fishing tonight.”

  “Good idea. See you in a bit.”

  They met at the T-intersection as the sun was setting.

  “Got the fishing gear? Good.” Mario nodded at the folded fishing rod poking like an antenna out of Ryan’s backpack. “No lifejacket?”

  “What, we have to follow bloody safety regulations?” Ryan the old sea dog protested. “I thought this was a nice informal outing.”

  “Oh, it’s informal all right. No fishing licenses. I just thought you’d want a life jacket for your peace of mind.”

  Because I’m a wimp who can’t swim?“I could never stand those damn jackets. Can’t breathe in them, and they make you feel all sticky.”

  Mario shrugged and smiled. “Then you’ll just have to not fall out of the boat.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  They biked through the twilight toward the bioreserve. Once they passed the last hotel, the road was empty of cars and people. This branch
of the coastal road was never busy even during the heat of the day.

  Soon they reached the beach with the rock that concealed the little boat, and left their bikes in its place. They took turns on the oars, rowing into the heart of twilight where sky and water merged together. A heavy cloud had been waiting for the sunset to conclude its business, and now it rolled over the sky in a curtain of grey. Darkness replaced twilight. Mario wanted to row about a mile out to sea; he said the fishing would be better there. Their marker on the shore was a single light on an empty police checkpoint they’d passed on their bikes. They enjoyed the lapping of the water under the oars, the only sound in a universe of silence. Ryan got lost in thought. No, he hadn’t imagined Mario’s dark mood of last night. So why had Mario changed his mind and his heart so completely? And why had he seemed so indifferent to the attractive lady with whom he’d been chatting? Not his type: bullshit. She was everyone’s type, and he was turned on by her mind, by their conversation, so why not by her? For that matter, why had his two marriages failed? He was a good-looking guy, agreeable as could be, with a great job. He understood women and took their side. He took Sam’s side even though he’d never met her. He was everything a woman could wish for. Come to think of it, why had Mario been giving him strange looks all day? What was the meaning of these looks? And out of the blue, this night fishing expedition. This romantic little row boat. And the dapper fedora, the crisp good-as-starched cotton shirts. Who the fuck dresses like that? What is this, the fifties? Suddenly Ryan felt himself falling into an abyss of panic.Oh no. No, no, no! I like him, I do, but not that way. Did I give him ideas? Have I been giving him ideas all along? How could I be such an idiot not to see why he—

  “Do you want to know what happened?” Mario asked with sudden malice.

  “Huh? What?” Ryan had been jolted out of his paranoid musings too violently.

  “Do you want to know what happened after you put sugar in the gas tank?” Mario was more restrained and patient.

  “Are you saying you know what happened?”What the hell?

  “I know a man died when he crashed a Ferrari belonging to the dealership owner. The man was a customer, not one of the mob. I know the cops were bought off, and any reporters who might have got wind of what happened.”

  “Oh no! Shit! But why was he driving the Ferrari?”

  “You weren’t the first to buy a lemon from that dealership. The problem with this guy’s car wasn’t a major one, but it had been overlooked when the car was inspected before sale. Overlooked, or he’d been lied to; it doesn’t matter. Either way, it wasn’t good. The guy worked for a TV station and loved fast cars but couldn’t afford one. So our friend, your boss, decided he’d go above and beyond to avoid bad publicity: he lent him his own Ferrari for the day while they were fixing his car. What a nice guy to treat his customers like that, eh?”

  “Slimy asshole! The car was meant for him! But they found the sugar clogging the pistons in the engine? They knew why the car had crashed?”

  “I don’t know,” Mario said with annoyance. “None of what they found made it into the police report because ‘they’ were the cops on this thug’s payroll. But it was my friend’s dad who received the nine-one-one call from the driver who’d stopped at the scene of the crash. It was on the Coquihalla highway. He went there and secured the scene. There was nothing on the road itself because the car had literallyflownoff the highway and crashed on the rocks below. He took the witness’s statement. The witness was driving in the slower lane, about a hundred yards behind the Ferrari, when he saw m— saw the Ferrari jolt to a stop before it jack-knifed and flew over the barrier down the precipice. The puppet cops took over the case, witness statement and all, and that was the end of that. The official report said that the driver had been speeding—like, who wouldn’t, in a Ferrari?—and lost control of the car. But my friend’s dad clearly remembers the witness saying that the car jolted to a stop before it took off into the air. The driver hadnotlost control. He was going straight as an arrow on a straight section of road. The witness was doing one ten when the Ferrari passed him, but it passed at a leisurely speed, it didn’t zoom by. There was no explanation for what had happened until you gave it yesterday. When the engine seized up, it acted as a brake. A brake applied at a hundred and thirty kilometres an hour.”

  “I thought the engine would die before anyone drove off! I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt!” Ryan was frantic, and the glitch he’d heard in Mario’s speech was quickly forgotten. “I planned it so that even the boss didn’t get hurt, only the car! I even siphoned out all the gas before putting in the sugar.”

  “You didwhat?”

  “I siphoned it all out, and there were twenty litres!” Ryan was exhilarated, proud to tell the story, glad to have it appreciated. “I poured three kilos of sugar and seventeen litres back in. I figured that would keep the fuel gage at the same level so he wouldn’t get suspicious when he started the car. I figured the car would idle for about twenty minutes before the sugar started getting picked up and injected into the engine.”

  Mario hadn’t expected such deliberation from a sixteen year-old. “Impressive,” he said. “But your plan misfired. The new driver didn’t idle, he drove off right away, so the sugar reached the engine sooner than you’d calculated. If he’d idled for just a bit, the engine would’ve seized up before he reached the mountain road. He would’ve made it if this had happened in the flatlands. He would’ve been hurt, but not killed.”

  “That asshole!” Ryan sputtered. “He might as well’ve killed the guy with his own hands!He did it, not me! All I wanted was to teach him a lesson, but he just had to lend the car to an innocent man on the very day—”

  Mario cut him off. “No, you didn’t want to teach him a lesson, you wanted to do things on the sly. If you’d stood up to him, that person who died would still be alive. You accused your father of being a coward, but you’re the coward! So don’t tell me about teaching any lessons.”

  Ryan didn’t. He was too angry to say anything coherent. Mario gave him time to settle down and asked, “Now that you know what happened, would you still put sugar in that gas tank?”

  “It happened. I can’t take it back.”

  “But if you could, would you?”

  “Look, why are you even asking me this? You defend goodness knows what kind of people as long as they’re innocent in a given situation, as you put it. You know that my action was never meant to end someone’s life, don’t you?”

  Mario shrugged. “I hold you to higher standards than the kind of people I defend in court. And I’m not here to defend you.”

  “No shit, buddy! But I’m not the murderer here. You’re acting as if I am.”

  Mario ignored this. “Revenge is more important to you than a man’s life?” he demanded.

  “I can’t give him back his life! You know that, I know that.”

  “All I’m asking is for you to imagine that you could. Wouldn’t it make you feel better if you could?”

  “I’m not good at imagining the impossible, Mario. Can we please let it go? This morning everything was fine, you were all happy. Now you’ve turned on me. What the fuck, man?”

  Mario sighed. “Could you pass me the tackle box?” he asked quietly, as if the box contained some great revelation that would change Ryan’s mind when Mario’s words couldn’t.

  Ryan lifted himself off the bench to get the box. He didn’t exactly stand up, only pointed his ass skyward as he held onto the side of the boat with one hand and reached with the other. In the dark Mario could see which side of the boat Ryan was using to support himself, saw his hand, white as a grub. Mario heaved all his weight to that side; the boat gave a violent lurch, and Ryan fell into the water. The boat itself almost capsized but Mario was able to right it out.

  He had expected Ryan to scream. But Ryan was too annoyed to scream, too indignant; he hadn’t had time to shake the irritation of the argument, and it ended up in the water with him. He forgot to panic ab
out the water that had poured into his lungs, and he let his chest cough it out like a nuisance rather than a deadly threat. His body behaved as if the whole thing had been a clumsy embarrassing accident soon to be set right. His hands grabbed the side of the boat and his right leg tried to swing itself over the edge. But Mario wouldn’t allow it, and shoved it back. Only then Ryan’s mind roused itself from paralysis and took charge.This isn’t an accident. He threw me on purpose. He fucking threw me on purpose!! I knew he was planning something, but not this.And then it came to him. He got me in the boat before he told me about that guy. He was going to throw me no matter what I said.

  “Help me get in the boat!” he yelled in an attempt to be active, to shut up his panicking mind. His body, built to live and to stay alive, continued to insist that this was all a mistake, a practical joke that was wearing thin.

  “The water’s warm, you’ll be fine. Hold onto the boat and keep still. I’m holding an oar, and I will hit you if you rock the boat or try to climb inside.”

  “Help me into the boat! What the fuck, Mario?!”

  “No, Ryan. I need you right where you are. Try to pay attention. Because now it’s my turn to tell you a story. I’ve already told you part of it, but you didn’t appreciate it, or maybe you didn’t even listen. I told you that a person died as a result of what you did. Died! And all you wanted to know was if they’d found out why the car had crashed. All you wanted to know was if your brilliance had been appreciated. It’s all about you, isn’t it? It’s only ever about you. Ryan, what is wrong with you, buddy? What the bloody hell is wrong with you?! You didn’t ask me a single question about the man who died other than why he was driving that car. You never asked me about his family. Because I do know about them, you could have gathered that from what I told you. Never mind his family, they’re strangers to you, he was a stranger to you. But what about me? I told you my dad was killed in a car accident. You could’ve honoured that. You could’ve toned down your righteous anger out of respect for me, for the memory of my father. Do you even remember what I told you about my father?”