Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell Read Free Book Online Page B

My voice sounded distant even to myself. Something—the exhaust, the stress—had made me light-headed, and I was worried I would fall.
    They turned around. They didn’t look scared. Just stupid.
    One of them said, “What?”
    The other one said, “Who the fuck are you?”
    “Cooperate and you won’t get hurt,” I said.
    For a second no one said anything. Then the first one said “ What? ” and they both started laughing.
    “Fucker,” the other one said, “you are fucking with the wrong two guys.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    “Cooperate?” the first one said.
    “You knocked over a house in West Orange, a year ago October,” I said. “Killed a couple of geezers. All I want is the tape that was in the VCR you took.”
    They looked at each other. Shook their heads in disbelief.
    The first one said, “Asshole, if we took a VCR from those poor fucks, we sure as hell didn’t keep the tape.”
    I took a breath so I wouldn’t have to for a while. Then I started pulling the triggers.
    Let me tell you about revenge. Particularly murderous revenge.
    It’s a bad idea. For one thing, it doesn’t last. The reason they tell you revenge is best served cold is not so you’ll take the time to get it right, but so you’ll spend longer on the fun part, which is the planning and the expectation.
    For another thing, even if you get away with it, murdering someone is bad for you. It murders something in yourself, and has all kinds of other consequences you can’t possibly foresee. By way of example: eight years after I shot the Virzi brothers, Skinflick completely destroyed my life, and I threw him headfirst out a six-story window.
    But on that night in early 1993, all I could feel was the joy.
    Shooting the Virzi brothers with my silenced .45’s was like holding a photograph of them, then tearing it in half.

5
    I take Squillante’s cell phone from his hands and twist it into pieces.
    “Talk, asshole,” I tell him.
    He shrugs. “What’s to say? As long as I stay alive, my guy Jimmy won’t call Brooklyn.”
    “Won’t call who in Brooklyn?”
    “A guy of David Locano’s who can get word to him in Beaumont.”
    I make a fist.
    “Relax!” Squillante says. “It’s only in the event of my death!”
    I jerk him up off the bed by the loose skin where his jaw meets his neck. It’s dry, like that of a lizard.
    “In the event of your death? ” I say. “Are you fucking insane? You have a terminal illness! You’re already dead!”
    “Les ho I’n ot,” he drools.
    “Hope won’t get either of us shit!”
    He mumbles something. I let his head drop back.
    “What?” I say.
    “Dr. Friendly’s going to operate. He says we might be able to beat this thing.”
    “Who the fuck is Dr. Friendly?”
    “He’s a famous surgeon!”
    “And he operates at Manhattan Catholic?”
    “He operates all over town. He brings his own OR staff.”
    My beeper goes off. I hit the “kill” button.
    “Him and me are gonna beat this together,” Squillante says.
    I slap him. Lightly.
    “Can the shit,” I say. “Just because you’re dying doesn’t mean you get to take me with you. Call off your connection to Locano.”
    “No,” he says quietly.
    I slap him a little harder. “Listen, dumbfuck,” I say. “Your chances of living suck as it is. Don’t make me kill you now.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Why not, if it doesn’t make a difference?”
    He starts to say something, then blinks instead. Starts again. Then begins to cry. He turns his head away and pulls up into as much of a fetal position as his various inputs and outputs will allow.
    “I don’t wanna die, Bearclaw,” he says through the tears.
    “Yeah, well, no one’s asking for your permission. So snap out of it.”
    “Dr. Friendly says I have a chance.”
    “That’s surgeon talk for ‘I need a slightly longer Chris-Craft.’”
    My beeper goes off again. I kill it again. Squillante grabs my forearm with his chimplike hand. “Help me,