“I get that. But as it says in one of Aesop’s fables, be careful what you wish for. Nothing’s changed, Bob. That millstone, it’s still there.”
“Sure. But it won’t always be there.” He looked at Mike. “Will it?”
Mike shrugged. “You’ve seen those animals in my store. They fade a little, but they don’t disappear. Just ask Tomás Gomez. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really doing my customers a favor by stuffing the things they love. My job is to freeze memories, preserve them in solid form. But there’s something unhealthy about it. You don’t move on. I can see it in my customers: they’re frozen themselves, they’re stuffed themselves, you know?”
31
The Great Equalizer, October 2016
Bob had taken off all his clothes and was sitting on the couch holding the Radica 20Q. When he had bought it for Frankie, Alice had said she was too young for a game like that, but Frankie had loved it when Daddy had asked her to think of a question, and only helped her a little bit with the answers. He stared at the TV, an old black-and-white movie on a channel that advertised it only showed classics. English aristocrats hunting a solitary fox across a rolling landscape. Bob had noticed there were messages waiting on his phone but couldn’t face checking them. A police siren somewhere out there mingled with the sounds of the hunting horns in the movie, which seemed to be about a man with a list of people he planned to kill. Bob closed his eyes and the questions came.
Did Tomás Gomez have a list like that?
How many names were on it?
Who could be next?
The siren sounds were getting closer. The foxhunt was in full cry out there. He imagined Tomás Gomez limping away to someplace where he could hide out. A man driven by grief, by the loss of his family, by hatred of a society in which fifteen-year-olds can buy weapons and shoot a young girl as she sits in her wheelchair. He thought about what Kay had said about the gun under her mother’s pillow. The great equalizer. Freedom. And he thought the same useless thought once again: that if Alice, he and Frankie had moved north of the border, the statistical chances of Frankie being killed were a fraction of the three-figure number of children that die annually of accidental deaths involving guns.
Did it make him angry? Of course it did. It made his head fume just thinking about it. But did he hate, the way Tomás Gomez obviously did?
He didn’t know. He knew only that another question had suddenly arisen:
Just how committed was he to actually putting a stop to Tomás Gomez’s crusade?
On his TV screen the fox raced across a field and into a forest. What was it thinking? Where was it headed? Did it have a plan?
Bob looked down at the Radica 20Q. It was lifeless, silent, the batteries dead.
—
Olav Hanson lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.
Listened to his wife who lay snoring beside him. Listened for the phone as though it might start ringing even though he’d turned it off. He’d done that when it rang for a third time after he got back from Track Plaza. Three different phone numbers, all unknown. Didn’t take much to guess they all came from Die Man. He must have seen the news and known that Lobo was still on the loose. Olav hadn’t answered the calls. What could hesay? That he’dalmostmanaged to rub out Lobo? That he’d have another try at the next crossroads? The Die Man didn’t often give people a second chance, and never a third. In other words, next time he spoke to Die Man it would be best if Lobo was no longer in the land of the living.
Olav was drifting off into sleep when he heard something. The living room was adjacent to the bedroom and the sound seemed to come from there. A slick, oily clicking. He knew instantly what it was. The barrel of a revolver being pushed into place. He knew because he owned a revolver himself, and that sound was unique. Olav reached for the gun under his pillow, slipped out of bed and crept over to the bedroom door.
Listened.
Nothing.
He peered out through the keyhole. He had two options. Push the door carefully and silently open and see what happened. Or kick it open, dive through and deal with whatever happened next. He swallowed. Tried to slow his pulse rate. And went for the first option.
The door glided open and he peered into the room.
No one there.
But he recognized the smell. And in the light of the street lamp outside he saw the smoke spiraling up above the back of the armchair that faced away from him.
“Sean?” he said quietly.
A head appeared from around the front of the chair and looked at him. Bushy hair, big grin, a thick, hand-rolled cigarette between its lips. “Yes, Father?”
Thatfather.His son somehow always managed to make it sound like a joke.
“I didn’t hear you come home,” said Olav, hiding the pistol behind his back at the same time as he closed the bedroom door.
“Firstly, this isn’t my home. Secondly, I didn’t intend for you to hear me because I was planning on stealing this.” Sean waved the revolver. He must have known that Olav kept it in a drawer in his desk. “What do you think I could get for this down in Phillips, Father?”
