Fifty Grand

After all the excitement we’ll both need another minute. He returns my gaze and, observing the gun, backs away crabwise, trying to make it to the shore. Painful to watch: hands resisting the desiccated ice, heels dragging.

Squeak, squeak, squeak. Clouds. Snowflakes. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

I walk to him.

“No,” he says.

His ass sticks to the ice. He rips it free and the crab walk recommences. It’s so pathetic I’m starting to feel bad. I point the gun at his stomach.

“No,” he repeats in a whisper.

Nooo. His breath a ghost that vanishes like all ghosts. Desperation in those red, coke crash eyes. I go behind him and lug him to his feet. Ice-burned skin. Human skin.

Sickening, but not much farther now.

“Listen to me, buddy, I can make you rich. I can get you money. A lot of money. Millions. Do you understand? Millions of dollars. Goddammit! Why don’t you understand, what’s the matter with you? Millions of dollars? Do you speak English? Do you understand the goddamn English language?”

I do. It was my major.

“I hope you understand me, because you’re making a mistake. A life-altering-I have men, they’ll find me, and when they do I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes.”

Better my shoes than no shoes.

“You just don’t know who you’re dealing with. You have no idea.”

What next? You’re connected? You’re high up in the mob? Your movements are tracked by drones piloted by the CIA?

Just a few more steps: one, two, three, four.

There, we’re about thirty meters out now, which is far enough.

I give him the universal “stop” sign and signal him to lie down.

He shakes his head. I place the barrel of the gun against his heart.

Still he doesn’t obey.

I walk behind him and kick him in the left calf. His knees buckle and I push his head down, shoving his face against the ice. His body goes limp. Bracing himself.

I put the 9mm in my pocket, remove the handcuff key, unlock one wrist, and quickly get out of his way. I grab the gun again and wait. For a moment he doesn’t believe that I’ve unlocked him, but then when he sees that he’s completely free he gets to his feet and begins rubbing the circulation back into his wrists.

Keeping the gun on him I place the backpack in front of me and unzip the central pocket. I take out the sledgehammer and slide it to him over the ice.

He looks with astonishment at the vicious maple-handled, steel-headed five-kilo sledgehammer.

“What’s this for?” he asks.

I point at the ice.

His face shows incomprehension, but then he gets it. “You want me to make a hole in the ice?”

I nod.

He picks up the hammer.

As I knew it would, my heart starts to race. This is by far the riskiest part of the whole plan. Now, if he tries his trick, I’m dead.

Maybe we’ll get that sweet karmic ending after all.

He’s got a fantastic weapon, he’s strong, he’s angry, he’s free.

He holds all the cards but one.

Information.

He doesn’t know that the gun is empty.

He stares at my masked face for a moment, smiles unnervingly, and tightens his grip on the maple.

He looks like Pitt at the party, like Thor at Ragnarok-the hammer, the ice, the bloody face, the blond locks.

I raise the Smith & Wesson and hold it in both hands. I sight him with the utterly useless gun.

“And what if I don’t?” he says.

I nod as if to say, Try it.

“This is totally insane,” he mutters. He shakes his head in disgust. “What kind of a man are you?”

No kind of a man.

Smith & Wesson. Hammer. Blue eyes. Brown eyes.

“Hell with it then,” he says and violently smashes the hammer into the ice. The first hit cracks the surface. The second makes a hole the size of a football. The third makes a large pancake-size fissure that I can easily lift out.

I put my hand up to stop him. Then with the flat of my palm I signal him to drop the sledge.

It would be easier to start speaking now, to actually tell him stuff, but I’m reluctant to reveal that much of myself until he’s completely where I want him to be.

“You want me to lose the hammer?”

I nod.

“How about I lose it in your head?”

He looks at me and then the gun and he lets the sledgehammer fall out of his hands. Keeping the 9mm on point I walk behind him and push him back to the ground. The car ride and the cold and this last piece of work have so wasted him that he embraces the ice like an old friend.

I put the snout of the gun on his neck and let him feel it there for a moment; then I take his hands and place them on his lower back; before he can try anything I quickly recuff him.

And that’s that. It’s over. No escape. If he gives me the wrong answers he’s dead.

I lay the gun on the ground, walk to the hole, pick up the ice debris, and throw it out. I widen the hole a little with the sledgehammer and then toss it away as far as I can.

Before he has the time to think I drag him backward by the cuffs into the ice hole. Takes all my strength, which isn’t much. When his legs touch the water, he begins to buck wildly but I’ve got enough momentum now to finish the job.

I shove the rest of him into the freezing lake.